The Collectivist Mind Game: Demonizing the Non-Compliant (Part 1)

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In the libertarian sci-fi classic, “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth’s tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future.

The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn’t neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic brainwashing of its subjects through the media, education, and entertainment channels.

If the tyrants on Earth were worth their salt, all the freedom-loving colonists would be subjected to an intense, manipulative indoctrination, which would shape their self-image as small and sinful “little guys” vis-à-vis the powerful, virtuous government that serves the powerless and protects them against all enemies, including themselves.

Thus, the government’s propagandistic narrative would establish the illusion of a society divided into three major classes: the ruling government class, endowed with benevolent powers to guide or punish; the majority class of hapless losers, whose survival depended on the government’s largesse and protection; and an unquantifiable class of demonized mysterious enemies of the government and, by extension, of the people, who would be the perceived culprits of all failures, hardships, and misery of the little guys’ everyday existence.

The majority class would itself be divided into an assortment of narrow-interest groups, held together only by the glue of government’s redistributive, pacifying and equalizing powers, as well as by their shared hostility towards the designated “enemies.”

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A ‘Fast and Furious’ Foreign Policy

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photo credit: al jazeera english

Let’s get this straight: Guns are too dangerous to be left in the hands of ordinary Americans. But guns in the hands of unknown rebels, who may turn out to be violent extremists, are just fine.

At the same time the Obama administration is threatening to curtail access to firearms in order to prevent gun violence at home, the president is channeling Warren Zevon abroad: “Send lawyers, guns, and money.”

And send them to the most dangerous, unstable places in the world.

The United States armed the rebels who overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. The administration is at least contemplating arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And although France balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we will be providing logistical support to our freedom-fries friends in Mali.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Let’s Not Double-Down on a Failing Medicaid Program

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In a few short weeks Gov. Tom Corbett will go before the state legislature and submit his FY 2013-14 budget. One vital decision the governor and our state leaders will have to make is whether to expand Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of the population already covered. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, mandated the expansion to include all individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty level – $30,000 for a family of four; however, last summer the Supreme Court held this mandate was too onerous for states.

Now it is up to Pennsylvania to decide whether it will expand this broken, costly program. Given the difficult budget choices the state has already had to make in recent years to balance its books, as required by law, the answer is very simple: Pennsylvania should join the growing list of states choosing not to expand. To embrace expansion would crowd out vital funding to our schools and universities, to rebuilding our roads and bridges, and to those social welfare programs to which our state is already committed.

Last month, the governor made the wise decision not to establish a state level health care exchange in Pennsylvania, joining 24 other states and protecting hardworking Pennsylvania families from burdensome government overreach.

Corbett stated: “It would be irresponsible to put Pennsylvanians on the hook for an unknown amount of money to operate a system under rules that have not been fully written.”

What is true in the case of creating a health exchange is even more so in the case of Medicaid expansion.

Pennsylvania currently has 2.4 million people enrolled in the failing Medicaid program. The program accounts for nearly one-third of the state’s budget costing taxpayers $8.2 billion in 2012. Overall welfare spending by the state was $10.5 billion (almost 40 percent of the entire budget). The Medicaid expansion would add between 800,000 and 1 million people to the rolls by 2022, burdening an already overworked system and exploding state spending. Even after the federal government’s generous cost-sharing, the cost of expanding the program is $2.8 billion by 2022 according to a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The federal government seeks to entice Pennsylvania and other states into expanding their programs by promising to pay all the upfront costs during the initial years and then pulls back in the outlying ones. However, this promise is not altogether true. The head of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Gary Alexander, testified before a congressional committee last month that the expansion would cost $222 million to the state taxpayers in administrative and other costs during the first year, $378 million the second year and $364 million the third year, rising to an estimated $883 million by fiscal year 2020-21.

Even that is not the end of the story regarding the open-ended nature of taking part in the Medicaid expansion. President Obama indicated in his 2013 budget that the federal government may renege on its 90 percent payment promise putting Pennsylvanians on the hook much more than the estimated $2.8 billion dollar cost for the expansion. Given the current fiscal realities in Washington, a decrease in the matching amount is an almost certainty. Given the current fiscal realities in Harrisburg, this new financial burden on the state’s already stretched thin budget is something Pennsylvania cannot afford without further putting the pinch on educating our youth along with other crucial spending needs in the state, which have had to undergo hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts in recent years to balance the budget.

The real white elephant in the room is the broken Medicaid program. Even with its high cost, Medicaid on average pays 55 cents for every dollar compared to private insurance. That’s even worse than Medicare, which pays 77 cents on the dollar. Many doctors reject the Medicaid patients outright due to the underpayments and thousands of pages of regulations. According to an August study in the Journal of Health Affairs, 32 percent of Pennsylvania’s doctors will not even accept new Medicaid patients.

Medicaid can be fixed, but is going to require the federal government to give the states more flexibility. A few have been granted waivers including Indiana, which established health savings accounts for Medicaid recipients: a free market reform proven to help lower costs. The best fix to the 50-year-old program would be for all the states to have their Medicaid funding block granted (as was successfully implemented with welfare reform in the 1990s) with no strings attached, and no illusory promises from the federal government. Then Pennsylvania and other states will be able to innovate and find the best, most cost effective ways to cover those in need of medical coverage.

Rather than doubling down on failure, Pennsylvania should not expand the Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of its population already covered. Let’s not make an open-ended promise Pennsylvania cannot keep to a program badly in need of a cure.

Randall DeSoto is the political director for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.

Obama Disarming Americans, Arming Terrorists

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While the White House was busy drafting proposals to ban assault rifles, the last of the regulations imposed on Saudi travel to the United States after September 11 were being taken apart. While some government officials were busy planning how to disarm Americans, other officials were negotiating the transfer of F-16s and Abrams tanks to Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt.

Obama is unwilling to trust Americans with an AR-15, but is willing to trust a genocidal terrorist group with Abrams tanks and F-16 jets. The F-16’s M61 Vulcan cannon can fire 6,000 rounds a minute and the 146 lb warhead of its HARM missiles can do a lot more than put a few dents in a brick wall. The Abrams’ 120 mm cannon can penetrate 26 inches of steel armor making it a good deal more formidable than even the wildest fantasies of San Francisco liberals about the capabilities of a so-called “assault rifle.”

While Obama has not been willing to respect the Constitution of the United States and its Bill of Rights, he was willing to arm a terrorist group whose motto is, “The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, Jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” If a High School student wrote that on his Facebook page, he would be in police custody within the hour, but an international organization and national government that trades in such rhetoric gets devastating firepower from our government… free of charge.

In addition to giving the Hezbollah-run government of Lebanon two hundred M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, Obama deliberately turned a blind eye while Al Qaeda and other Islamist rebel groups in Libya received arms shipments from Qatar. Those weapons included a good deal more firepower than anything you can buy at Wal-Mart and later made their way to Mali and Syria. More weapons made their way into the hands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Whether any of these weapons were used in the assault on the Benghazi mission is unknown, but entirely possible.

While the Al Qaeda attackers at Benghazi were heavily armed, with the complicity of the Obama Administration, the Americans had been forced to abide by Libyan gun control laws, because while Obama was willing to bomb a country and help arm its terrorists, he wasn’t willing to allow embassy security personnel to flout firearms law in a city ruled by terrorist militias. Instead the terrorist militia of the Muslim Brotherhood was hired to provide security for the Benghazi mission… with tragic results.

Read more from this story HERE.

False Fiscal Conservatives And Budget Crisis Realism

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Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal-Conservative Friend,

That’s pretty toothy, so I’m going to call you “Bob.” But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You’re the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, “I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues.”

When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline, and balanced budgets.

When Colin Powell was on Meet the Press the other day, you nodded along as he lamented how the GOP has lost its way since the days when it was all about fiscal responsibility.

And, Bob, you think Republicans are acting crazy-pants on the debt ceiling. You don’t really follow all of the details, but you can just tell that the GOP is being “extreme,” thanks to those wacky tea partiers.

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Trillion-Dollar-Coin Fever

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I was out of the country for a few days and news from this great republic reached me only fitfully. I have learned to be wary of foreign reporting of U.S. events, since America can come off sounding faintly deranged. Much of what reached me didn’t sound entirely plausible: Did the entire U.S. media really fall for the imaginary dead girlfriend of a star football player? Did the president of the United States really announce 23 executive orders by reading out the policy views of carefully pre-screened grade-schoolers (“I want everybody to be happy and safe”)? Clearly, these vicious rumors were merely planted in the foreign press to make the United States appear ridiculous.

And indeed, upon my return, it seemed to be business as usual. ABC News revealed that in 2007 President Bush’s secretary of the interior — oh, come on, it’s on the citizenship test: “Name a secretary of the interior. Any secretary of the interior.” Anyway, ABC revealed that Bush’s secretary of the interior spent 220,000 taxpayer dollars remodeling his (or her, as the case may be) office bathroom. Who knew the gig was really secretary of the interior design? I’ll bet the guy who made Saddam’s solid-gold toilets was delighted to get a new customer. But what can be done? If we changed the name to secretary of the exterior, he’d have blown a quarter-million on a new outhouse.

Meanwhile, hot from the fiscal-cliff fiasco, the media are already eagerly anticipating the next in the series of monthly capitulations by Republicans, this time on the debt ceiling. While I was abroad, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a Harvard professor of constitutional law, a prominent congressman, and various other American eminencies apparently had a sober and serious discussion on whether the United States Treasury could circumvent the debt constraints by minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Although Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider called the trillion-dollar coin “the most important fiscal policy debate you’ll ever see in your life,” most Democrat pundits appeared to favor the idea for the more straightforward joy it affords in sticking it to the House Republicans. No more tedious whining about spending from GOP congressmen. Next time Paul Ryan shows up in committee demanding to know about deficit-reduction plans, all the treasury secretary has to do is pull out a handful of trillion-dollar coins from down the back of the sofa and tell him to keep the change.

The trillion-dollar-groat fever rang a vague bell with me. Way back in 1893, Mark Twain wrote a short story called “The Million Pound Bank Note,” which in the Fifties Ronald Neame made into a rather droll film. A penniless American down and out in London (Gregory Peck) is presented by two eccentric Englishmen (Ronald Squire and Wilfrid Hyde-White) with a million-pound note which they have persuaded the Bank of England to print in order to settle a wager. One of the English chaps believes that simple possession of the note will allow the destitute Yank to live the high life without ever having to spend a shilling. And so it proves. He goes to the pub for lunch, offers the note, and the innkeeper explains that he’s unable to make change for a million pounds, but is honored to feed him anyway. He then goes to be fitted for a suit, and again the tailor regrets that he can’t provide change for a million pounds but delightedly measures him for dress suits, silk shirts, and all the rest. I always liked the line Mark Twain’s protagonist uses on a duke’s niece he’s sweet on: He tells her “I hadn’t a cent in the world but just the million pound note.”

That’s Paul Krugman’s solution for America as it prepares to bust through another laughably named “debt limit”: We’d be a nation that hasn’t a cent in the world but just a trillion-dollar coin — and what more do we need? As with Gregory Peck in the movie, the mere fact of the coin’s existence would ensure we could go on living large. Indeed, aside from inflating a million quid to a trillion bucks, Professor Krugman’s proposal economically prunes the sprawling cast of the film down to an off-Broadway one-man show with Uncle Sam playing every part: A penniless Yank (Uncle Sam) runs into a wealthy benefactor (Uncle Sam) who has persuaded the banking authorities (Uncle Sam) to mint a trillion-dollar coin that will allow Uncle Sam (played by Uncle Sam) to extend an unending line of credit to Uncle Sam (also played by Uncle Sam).

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Gun Solutions, Not Gun Control: Gun Free Zones Should be Liable For Murders

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Most of the mass shootings lately have happened in self proclaimed gun free zones. They have been a drawing card for deranged killers who want to make sure they can fire into defenseless people without the worry of having fire returned.

Time and again these gun free zones have been targeted and time and again, people are bewildered why it happens. But the answer is simple; these advertised gun free zones invite attack.

Politicians simplistic solution is to put tighter restrictions on law abiding citizens, thinking if they make it harder to obtain a certain type of firearm, it will make the senseless shootings stop. It won’t.

But perhaps it’s time to assign responsibility to those who think they can proclaim an area a gun free zone with a sign or a proclamation, but don’t provide protection for the people that frequent those locations.

Airports and commercial aircraft are “gun free zones.” You can be pretty much assured that these gun free zones offer you protection by strict security screening of those they allow in and plenty of armed security on the premises to quell any violence that may occur.

Government buildings in Washington DC are “gun free zones.” There is armed security everywhere, seen and unseen, to protect the precious ruling class.

In the self proclaimed, utopian, “gun free” zones set up all over America, law abiding citizens are not allowed to carry firearms. For that trade off, shouldn’t patrons, students, and employees expect tight security? If these entities are going to require law abiding citizens to be helpless, whether it is a movie theater, shopping mall, school or office building, don’t they owe their clientele the utmost security that can be provided?

The stark reality of this truth came through loud and clear when James O’Keefe, of undercover video fame, targeted journalists, many of whom were involved in the public outing of gun owners in their community. See O’Keefe’s hilarious video

O’Keefe’s group, “Project Veritas” poses as “Citizens Against Senseless Violence,” and visits the homes of journalists working for Westchester Journal News, MSNBC, and the Star-Ledger. They also visit the home of Eric Holder. Hypocritically, none will take the signs that say “THIS HOME IS PROUDLY GUN FREE.”

Even the rabid anti gun members of the left leaning media know that proclaiming you are a gun free zone, announces to the world you are easy pickings. Perhaps it’s time for the litigation industry to pick up on this fact when they seek damages for the death and injury gun free zones have triggered.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Alaska’s RINO’s Fail to Remove Liberty-Minded Chair-Elect; Kangaroo Court to Reconvene February 1

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Alaska’s Republican Party (ARP) leadership failed in its attempt last night to remove Chair-elect Russ Millette, a constitutional conservative, as well as vice-chair elect Debbie Brown, from the ARP.

Their efforts fell flat after a motion by Fairbanksan Ralph Seekins to allow Russ Millette a continuance so that he would have time to prepare a defense to the charges raised by leftist ARP Rules Chair and Ruedrich confidant, Frank McQueary.

The charges against Debbie Brown were raised by chairman Ruedrich himself, alleging financial improprieties. The fact that the charges were raised by a chairman who apparently not only transferred tens of thousands of ARP dollars to the Murkowski-supporting Juneau Capitol Hill club without proper authorization just a few weeks ago, but who also seems responsible for a significant FEC fine for financial improprieties related to VECO has many within the party scratching their heads.

It also is shocking that this same chairman was reportedly entrusted with hundreds of thousands of dollars for Joe Miller’s direct mail campaign in 2010 but who has refused to disclose the database evidencing that he actually spent the money for Joe Miller instead of Lisa Murkowski, as suspected by some party members.

To make matters worse, the inquisitors had the gall to confront Millette on who he supported for president in 2012 – despite the fact that the very people asking the questions failed to support Republican-nominee Joe Miller in the 2010 US Senate race. The fact that none of the Alaska press in attendance reported on this extreme hypocrisy reflects that little has changed since their efforts in 2010 to sink the anti-establishment candidate with false stories.

Russ Millette commented after the kangaroo court that McQueary had “brought up charges that he’d never seen before.” He stated that the “whole thing, the charges, were totally bogus.” Millette also noted that “most of the minds [on the ARP executive committee] seemed made up.”

Millette was amazed at the effort to remove him, suggesting that the effort by party-insiders to keep RINO’s in charge of the party would devastate its cohesion. If he were allowed to take office, Millette claimed that he would “unite [and] bring the party together.”

During the hearing last night, he was supported by a number of conservatives who waved signs outside of the ARP headquarters in Anchorage:

Stay tuned for the continuance of Ruedrich’s efforts to unseat his successor on February 1.

GOP Knows What to do on Guns, But Doesn’t Have the Backbone

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In the wake of the Connecticut school shooting, there is a desire to do something to try to prevent similar types of incidents from occurring again. The liberals understand this, and have run with it. They have run in the direction that feels good, but has no proof of effectiveness. Conservatives have the solution that has been proven everywhere it has been tried, yet are silent on this issue. Rather than Republicans answering questions about bad Democratic ideas, the President should be answering questions about Republican legislative proposals. Where is the proposal from a republican to allow for concealed carry rights throughout the country? This has helped reduce gun violence everywhere it has been tried, and could be administered by each state. With one proposal the conversation could be changed from what feels good to what works.

There are now 39 states that have concealed carry laws (where you can receive a concealed weapon permit if you meet certain criteria). This is up from 9 states that had these laws in 1986, and has been pointed to as being instrumental in the drop in gun violence in these states. The recent shootings in CT and Colorado were cases where concealed carry guns were not allowed. In the case of Sandy Hook school, it is not allowed in the entire state. In the case of the Colorado movie theater, there is concealed carry allowed in Colorado, but specifically not allowed in that particular theater. Imagine if the 5-10% of the population who typically carry guns when permitted, had them in that Colorado theater that night, or in the Sandy Hook school that day. How many lives might have been saved? Concealed carry should be part of the national debate on guns.

In 2008 some of the strictest gun control laws were lifted in Chicago and Washington DC. According to the conventional wisdom in the media, this was supposed to lead to the “wild west”. Instead gun crime and murder rates have plummeted in both cities. The fact that you have heard nothing from the media in terms of the removal of these gun control laws, is all that you need to know. If there was a case to be made that the elimination of gun control led to more crime, rather than hearing crickets, it would be force fed to us daily in the anti-gun media! This is typically what happens when these laws are removed or concealed carry is implemented. John Lott has been a leading light on this issue started with his book, “More Guns, Less Crime”.

Right now all we hear from Democrats and the media is which guns we can eliminate, or what restrictions we can put on the law abiding citizenry. Even gun advocates are taking a narrow, elitist view with the idea of one armed guard in each school. Where are the voices advocating more freedom to defend ourselves from horrific crimes such as these? With over 200 million guns currently in the US, we already know the bad guys can get them. Let’s let the good guys to have them as well.
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Michael Porfido is relatively new to the writing ranks. He has been an editor and contributor at the website www.freemarketsfreepeople.net for the past 1 ½ years. He has over 20 years of diverse business experience from running complex operations where he managed hundreds of people, to starting and running small businesses such as www.realinterestfund.com. He is blessed, or perhaps cursed, with a logical mind which he uses to analyze government, media, politics, and culture. He believes that his life experiences help him bring a unique perspective to the issues of the day.

The War Between the Amendments

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The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives, it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other.

Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution.

Many liberals believe there is no need to own semiautomatic assault rifles, magazines that hold more than ten bullets, or even semi-automatic handguns. They argue that hunters and sportsmen don’t need such rapid-firing guns to kill their game — and that slower-firing revolvers and pump- or bolt-action rifles are sufficient for home protection.

Implicit in the liberal argument for tighter gun control is the belief that the ability to rapidly fire off lots of bullets empowers — or indeed encourages — mass murderers to butcher the innocent.

Most conservatives offer rebuttals to all those points. Criminals will always break almost any law they choose. Connecticut, for example, has among the tightest gun-control laws in the nation. A murderer can pop in three ten-bullet clips in succession and still spray his targets almost as effectively as a shooter with a single 30-bullet magazine. Like a knife or bomb, a gun is a tool, and the human who misuses it is the only guilty party. An armed school guard might do more to stop a mass shooting on campus than a law outlawing the shooter’s preferred weapon or magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.