Thoughts for the Day

From Wolfshield:
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"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'" --economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

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 "'I saw many signs in this campaign,' said Richard Nixon the day after he was elected president in 1968. 'But the one that touched me the most was one that I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long day of whistle-stopping.... A teenager held up a sign, "Bring Us Together." And that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset: to bring the American people together.' ... The desire to see an incoming president as a unifier, a healer of the national breach, is an old American tradition, especially in times of acrimony and political conflict. But Nixon, needless to say, didn't heal the breach. ... Time and again, Obama promised what Nixon promised: to bring Americans together. That pledge ... went to the essence of his candidacy. And on the night of his election, before a vast crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, he underscored it: 'Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.' Yet far from resisting that temptation, Obama has rarely bypassed any chance to indulge it. The would-be uniter whips up envy and resentment, demonizing those who disagree with him, and aggravating the nation's racial, class, and party tensions." --columnist Jeff Jacoby

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 "Between 1787 and 1930, our nation suffered both mild and severe economic downturns. There was no intervention to stimulate the economy, but the economy always recovered. During the 1930s, there were massive interventions, starting with President Herbert Hoover and later with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their actions turned what would have been a sharp three- or four-year economic downturn into a 10-year affair. In 1930, when Hoover began to 'fix' the economy, unemployment was 6 percent. FDR did even more to 'fix' the economy. As a result, unemployment remained in double digits throughout the decade and reached 20 percent in 1939. President Roosevelt blamed the high unemployment on his predecessor. ... Americans have been miseducated into thinking that Roosevelt's New Deal saved our economy. That miseducation extends to most academics, including economists, at our universities, who are arrogant enough to believe that it's possible for a few people in Washington to have the information and knowledge necessary to manage the economic lives of 313 million people." --economist Walter E. Williams

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 "Some Americans are old enough to remember when going on the dole was something one did only when every other option became untenable. And even then, a certain degree of lingering shame accompanied that choice, along with an equal amount of determination to change course and return to being productive as quickly as possible. How quaint such ideas must seem to current generations of Americans, many of whom have been steeped in the idea that someone owes them something -- for nothing, no less. . . . It is remarkable how many Americans have become thoroughly convinced that there are more than enough workers -- who will go on working no matter how onerous it becomes, no less -- to underwrite all of the slackers, and ever-growing number of fence-sitters moving to their side of the ledger. It is far less remarkable that we have a president who would exploit such selfishness and ignorance by taking an American virtue . . . and turn it into a vice, which is what Mr. Obama is doing when [he] labels the alternative to his socialist/Marxist vision as an 'on your own' society. This is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on our national character. Or what used to be our national character until progressives convinced substantial numbers of Americans that success is something that should elicit feelings of envy, rather than admiration and a sense of aspiration." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

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“As U.S. GDP growth remains just one notch above stagnant, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by 70 percent since 2008. This increase, while certainly an indicator of the Obama administration's abysmal failure, is also part of a much larger picture: the growth of the Welfare State since the 1960s. In fact, the number of people receiving food stamps grew from 17.2 million in 2000 to an astounding 44.7 million in 2011, and the cost grew from $20 billion to $78 billion over that time. Even more disturbing is the fact that the food stamp program is only one of 12 food assistance programs and a mind-boggling 79 federal welfare programs.” –Mark Alexander

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 "The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all." --Ronald Reagan

Tea Party Woes

I keep hearing and reading about "the Tea Party losing it's grip on the Republican Party" and "the Tea Party failing to produce a good, alternate republican candidate." When, if ever, was "the Tea Party" part of the Republican National Political Party? My experience with the Tea Party is that it is made up of Democrats, Republicans, and independents; conservative and liberal. Also, The "Tea Party" is as much of a political party as the original Boston tea party (not at all).
The Tea Parties (yes more than one) of recent years are groups of citizens across the country who decided to rally and make some change. I don't know where the surge of patriotic activism is but they did have a very large effect on the most recent National congressional elections. I wish the fervor was still alive. The idea behind the Tea Parties was that the Federal Government is broken in very many ways and it's time to stop, take a step back and look at what is going on. The idea was to support each other as citizens and make a difference in the elections. It was never about re-shaping and existing Political Party, it was a fight against them.

Tea?

So I have read and heard a number of people lately who have attributed the Tea party supporters to different groups; radical and otherwise. I even read in a university newspaper how the president of their Republican club claimed the Tea party as part of or a sub set of the Republican party.
I blame the media mostly. The Tea party is a mercurial group of citizens who are finally fed up with government (INCLUDING the Democratic and Republican political parties) for one or more reasons . The Tea party includes young and old, conservative and liberal. It consists of the people who realize that our country is very quickly moving away from the values and strengths that have sustained it from the beginning. The Tea party wants Federal Government to be smaller, State Government to be more effective, politicians to be more responsible and citizens to be more informed and proactive.
I highly recommend we, the people listen more closely to those who speak out from the Tea party: it is the movement that has the best chance of saving these United States. The only thing you would betray by supporting this movement would be those people and ideas that would destroy this country and all she stands for.

I'm Back . . .ish

I know it has been far too long since I have posted. Life as well as a sea of political sludge has gotten in the way. I have been trying to follow the news and here are my thoughts in no particular order.

Why in the world does everyone on the news seem to think the Republican party needs "re-branding?" It makes it sound as if the ideologies of the Republicans has failed flatly and can no more rise. Is it because they lost badly in the last election? If so, where was the democratic "re-branding" 8 years ago? Also, I don't see any Republicans complaining that the party is "broke." Many do see supposed "Republican" politicians betraying the party ideals but that is a separate issue. I see this whole thing as an attempt by liberals to try and trick the uninformed into believing that political conservatism is dead. The Republican party may have issues but political conservatism is alive and well and we the people need to see through the "progressive" agenda and hold fast to the founding principals of this nation.

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I can't understand how Obama continues to spend money. I can't even comprehend the dire state of our worsening financial situation. We are dead in the water.

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I was amazed and delighted at the tea parties that were held recently. It show that we the people still get out there and make our voices known. It does sadden me that it takes so much for us to be activists. We need to live what we believe daily. Also, i am appalled at the way the parties were covered. Some more liberal media outlets made it sound as if there we a few people milling around in some podunk towns. They labeled them as something like "quasi-republican, right-wing nut jobs" who couldn't agree on what they were protesting. In reality, there were multiple tea parties in every state in the union which were made up of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians and more. All were out protesting the state of the union which did include things such as Obama spending too much money, congress not doing there job, tax absurdities and more. The main message was that the federal government is out of control and we the people are not being heard. We seem to have lost the "by the people" part of the government and we want it back.

Obama is up to something

My cousin sent me this article. It is from Fox News. Apparently Obama is attempting to take some control of the U.S. census. According to the article there are a number of different ways that messing with the census could affect the power in our government. It is subtle and sneaky and I don't like where it could go. The census gives government the official picture of who we the people are. If that view is skewed terrible things can happen.
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Utah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.

"This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans "before its too late."

"It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political," Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.

The U.S. census -- a counting of the U.S. population -- is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts

As a matter of impact, the census has tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager to have a hand in redrawing districts so that they can maximize their own party's clout while minimizing the opposition, often through gerrymandering.

The census also determines the composition of the Electoral College, which chooses the president. If one party were to control the census, it could arguably try to perpetuate its hold on political power.

The results of the census are also enormously important in another way -- the allocation of federal funds. Theoretically, a political party could disproportionately steer federal funding to areas dominated by its own members through a skewing of census numbers.

At this point the White House doesn't seem willing to say what Emanuel's role will be in overseeing the census, and White House officials say census managers will work closely with top-level White House staffers, but will technically remain part of the Commerce Department.

But critics say the White House chief of staff can't be expected to handle the census in a neutral manner. Emanuel ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 election, and he was instrumental in getting Democrats elected into the majority.

"The last thing the census needs is for any hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to manipulate these critical numbers. Many federal funding formulas depend on them, as well as the whole fabric of federal and state representation. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing field in their favor, and this has to be resisted," Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told FOX News in an e-mail.

Critics note that the method of counting can skew the census. Democrats have long advocated using mathematical estimates, a practice known as "sampling," to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say the Constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going door-to-door.

In 2000, Utah, which has three congressmen, was extremely close to landing a fourth House seat based on U.S. Census numbers, but the nation's most conservative state fell short by a few hundred votes because the Census Bureau wouldn't count Mormon missionaries from Utah serving temporarily overseas.

The GOP took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Utah leaders had hoped the 2010 census would rectify the problem, but now worry that they will lose again if the census is managed by partisans.

When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary -- he was later forced to withdraw -- he indicated that Richardson would be in charge of the census.

The decision to move the census into the White House was announced just days after Obama named New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, to be his commerce secretary. Gregg has long opposed "sampling" by the census and has voted against funding increases for the bureau.

Sabato said moving the census "in-house" will likely set up a situation where neither the Commerce Department nor the White House will know exactly what is going on in the Census Bureau. He said the process is "too critical to politics for both parties not to pay close attention."

"I've always remembered what Joseph Stalin said: 'Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.' The same principle applies to the census. Since one or the other party will always be in power at the time of the census, it is vital that the out-of-power party at least be able to observe the process to make sure it isn't being stacked in favor of the party in power. This will be difficult for the GOP since I suspect Democrats will control both houses of Congress for the entire Obama first term," Sabato said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/09/gop-sounds-alarm-obama-decision-census-white-house/