Death of the Duopoly
Nothing in American life today seems as archaic, ubiquitous and immovable as the Republican and Democratic parties.
The two 19th-century political groupings divide up the spoils of a combined $6.4 trillion that is extracted eachyear from taxpayers at the federal, state, county and municipal levels. Though rhetorically and theoretically atodds with one another, the two parties have managed to create a mostly unbroken set of policies andgovernance structures that benefit well-connected groups at the expense of the individual.
Americans have watched, with a growing sense of alarm and alienation, as first a Republican administration andthen its Democratic successor have flouted public opinion by bailing out banks, nationalizing the auto industry,expanding war in Central Asia, throwing yet more good money after bad to keep housing prices artificially high,and prosecuting a drug war that no one outside the federal government pretends is comprehensible, let alonewinnable. It is easy to look upon this well-worn rut of political affairs and despair.
And Americans are, in increasing numbers. Perhaps the mostimportant long-term trend in U.S. politics is the four-decade leak in market share by the country’s two dominant parties. In
1970, the Harris Poll asked Americans, “Regardless of how youmay vote, what do you usually consider yourself—a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or some otherparty?”
Fully 49% of respondents chose Democrat, and 31% calledthemselves Republicans. Those figures are now 35% forDemocrats and 28% for Republicans. While the numbers havefluctuated over the years, the only real growth market in politics is voters who decline affiliation, withindependents increasing from 20% of respondents to 28%.
Read More By Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, the Wall Street Journal
Short debt limit hike possible: McConnell
Congress and the White House could raise the debt limit for a few months while they seek a comprehensive, long-term budget deal, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday.
The Obama administration has warned it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills if Congress does not raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit by August 2 — a prospect that could push the country back into recession and upend global financial markets.
Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, have balked at raising the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by significant spending cuts.
McConnell said on Sunday the ceiling could be raised enough to last a few months so that negotiations can continue on a larger deal that would include changes to so-called entitlement programs like Medicare.
“The president and the vice president, everybody knows you have to tackle entitlement reform,” McConnell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Read More at Yahoo! By Dave Clarke, Reuters
L.A. Times Attacks Palin Because She Isn’t a Thief, Liar, Pervert or Criminal
Anyone not convinced of the abject terror Sarah Palin instills in members of the American media needs only read the brief, L.A. Times reflection on the former Governor’s released emails.
A number of media outlets filed Freedom of Information Requests demanding the release of Governor Palin’s emails upon her acceptance of John McCain’s VP offer in 2008. The fact that these self-proclaimed guardians of liberty have yet to exhibit the slightest interest in the murky, personal and political histories of the President or the workings of the Obama White House…well, no doubt there is a very good reason.
Imagine the giddy, Christmas morning type expectations of drooling journalists when 24,000 pages of Sarah’s most intimate, previously private correspondence were dumped on a desk in Juneau by Alaska State officials last Friday.
So certain were these Sherlocks of the airwaves that they finally held the key to Palin’s ultimate destruction, a number of media moguls even advertised for help from viewers/readers to wade through the mass of paper.
But in the end, liberal heads exploded in frustration as Sarah Palin was discovered to be an honest, hard working Governor. No schemes, no criminal enterprises, no racist tendencies, no theft nor lies, no perverse photo attachments or clandestine trysts.
Read More at Coach is Right By Doug Book, Coach is Right
Tea Party Caucus Leads GOP Charge Against Budget Crisis
The 2010 landslide election saw a revitalized Republican Party win 64 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives on a platform that rejected the fiscal policies of the Democratically controlled 111th Congress. One attention-grabbing key to this success was a new political force: the Tea Party.
More than a few pundits were skeptical about how this force would play out when it became institutionalized in the new Congress as the “Tea Party Caucus.” David Kurtz, writing for Talking Points Memo, called it “no small irony” that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) would form such an “insidery and cocooned” thing as a caucus in connection with a “supposedly grassroots, spontaneous, and defiantly outsidery … movement.” Juan Williams of Fox News wrote off the caucus for a different reason, noting that “Tea Party freshmen are all about talk radio rhetoric, campaign slogans and reveling in the widespread discontent with American politics. They have yet to display any capacity to govern.”
Have any of these criticisms proven true? Thanks to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s BillTally “100 Day Report” on Congress, we now have numbers, not just words, to assess what has happened in the House since January and examine the validity of these concerns.
Since 1991, BillTally has analyzed the fiscal impact of every proposed piece of legislation. The system then matches up legislation with sponsorship records for every lawmaker, showing what would happen to the federal budget if all bills supported by a given member of Congress—regardless of floor votes—instantly became law. Thus, BillTally offers a unique, by-the-numbers look at Congress’ agenda.
After 100 days, BillTally results show the average Republican would cut a net of $63 billion from the budget and the average Democrat would actually increase the budget by $6.3 billion. Both are sharp reversals from the same time in 2009, when the typical House GOPer was not backing a net agenda to cut spending, while the average Democrat was backing a much bigger boost in the budget.
Read More at Human Events by Douglas Kellogg, Human Events
Romney is What’s Wrong With the Republican Party
Reading Al Gore’s comments on Mitt Romney we were reminded of all of the reason’s we don’t trust the man: “Good for Mitt Romney though we’ve long passed the point where weak lip-service is enough on the Climate Crisis. While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party.
The so-called science of global warming is more media hype and Wall Street attempts to profit on trading carbon credits than it is real science. The scientific community is split on the topic with some climatologist predicting a new mini ice age. Mitt Romney’s gullibility on this issue helps us understand why he has been so wrong on most of the vital issue of the last decade.
Romney is often trumpeted by his supporters as having business experience and they love to site this record of taking Massachusetts from a three billion dollar deficit to a one billion dollar surplus. But the cost of his balanced budgets was tough on business. Peter Nicholas, founder of Boston Scientific Corporation, stated it this way: tax rates on many corporations almost doubled because of legislation supported by Romney. Romney’s tax policies were not helpful for many small businesses, when Romney took many IRS subchapter S businesses in Massachusetts and almost doubled their tax rates; it was an important disincentive to investment, growth and job creation.
The Cato Institute reports as Governor, Romney opposed $140 million in business tax hikes through the closing of loopholes in the tax code. This led to Joseph Crosby of the Council on State Taxation to say, Romney went further than any other governor in trying to wring money out of corporations.
Romney raised taxes on business by a total of $309 million. He increased taxes on business property. He then tried to raise taxes on hotels, but was stopped by the Democrat legislature. Romney at the time joined a coalition lobbying congress to tax internet activity, and he even supported a tax on out of state commuters.
Read More at Townhall by Douglas Kellogg, Human Events
Joe’s Blog- Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act
As a constitutional conservative, I’ve fought in both the political and legal arenas in defense of our Founders’ interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. This past week, I joined forces with the Gun Owners of America to defend the Second Amendment and Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act (MFFA) from the most recent assault by President Obama’s BATF and DOJ.
The MFFA is an extraordinary piece of state legislation. It provides that any firearm manufactured entirely in Montana and retained within that state is not subject to federal regulation. Penned by a patriot, this legislation arises directly from what our Founders intended through the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
At least seven other states have adopted similar legislation, but the patriots in Montana were the first. And they were the first to step up and challenge the BATF in federal court when it sent a letter to all gun dealers in Montana telling them that they must ignore the new state law.
The federal district court judge that heard the case ruled against the MFFA. Last week, we filed our amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit in hopes that it will follow the law and reverse the trial court. If it doesn’t, we’re prepared to help Montana’s patriots in their fight before the U.S. Supreme Court. We the People must never give up in our fight for states’ rights.