The Fiscal-Cliff Mirage

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The politics of the “fiscal cliff” deal is debatable: On the one hand, Boehner got the “Bush tax cuts” made permanent for most Americans; Obama was forced to abandon his goal of increasing rates for those earning $250,000. On the other, on taxes Republicans caved to the same class-warfare premises (the rich need to pay their “fair share”) they’d successfully fought off a mere two years ago; while on spending the Democrats not only refused to make cuts, they refused to make cuts even part of the discussion.

Which of the above is correct? Who cares? As I said, the politics is debatable. But the reality isn’t. I hate to keep plugging my book After America in this space, but if you buy multiple copies they’ll come in very useful for insulating your cabin after the power grid collapses. At any rate, right up there at the front — page six — I write as follows:

“The prevailing political realities of the United States do not allow for any meaningful course correction. And, without meaningful course correction, America is doomed.”

Washington keeps proving the point. The political class has just spent two months on a down-to-the-wire nail-biting white-knuckle thrill-ride negotiation the result of which is more business as usual. At the end, as always, Dr. Obama and Dr. Boehner emerge in white coats, surgical masks around their necks, bloody scalpels in hand, and announce that it was touch and go for a while but the operation was a complete success — and all they’ve done is applied another temporary band-aid that’s peeling off even as they speak. They’re already prepping the OR for the next life-or-death surgery on the debt ceiling, tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday or a week on Thursday or the third Sunday after Epiphany.

No epiphanies in Washington: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the latest triumphant deal includes $2 billion of cuts for fiscal year 2013. Wow! That’s what the government of the United States borrows every ten hours and 38 minutes. Spending two months negotiating ten hours of savings is like driving to a supermarket three states away to save a nickel on your grocery bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Restoring the American Spirit in 2013

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Ronald Reagan, who is credited with restoring the American spirit during the 1980s–as well as reestablishing our economic and military might as second to none–warned that the United States place as a “shining city on a hill” would be lost, unless active steps were taken to pass on the vision. President Reagan said in his Farewell Address, “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

Evidence that Reagan’s warning is coming to pass can be seen in Washington today. The willingness of President Obama and many members of Congress to divide Americans for political gain over taxes, while in no way even beginning to address the country’s true fiscal cliff of pending national bankruptcy indicates we have forgotten the lessons of the 1980s and other times of national renewal. The good news is that we have been here before.

The first era when the United States faced a crisis in spirit came only eleven years after the country declared its independence. In fact, many prominent political leaders, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, wondered if the fledgling nation was going to survive due to the inherent weaknesses found in the Articles of Confederation. In May 1787, delegates from the states gathered in Philadelphia at Independence Hall, where the Declaration had been signed, to take on the great challenge of creating a new form of government. However, after five weeks of deliberations little progress had been made.

In the midst of another discouraging day, Franklin signaled the Constitutional Convention’s President, Washington, that he wished to address the body. He first marveled at how being so far into the proceedings, and “groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us” producing as many “noes as ayes” on any given question, how it had not occurred to any of them to humbly ask “the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings.” Dr. Franklin, the oldest member of the Convention at eighty-one, reminded the delegates that during the Revolutionary War, when he and his fellow members of the Continental Congress were “sensible of the danger,” they prayed daily, and their prayers were answered. “All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor.”

Franklin continued, “And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men…We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it’ [Psalm 127:1]. I firmly believe this; and I also believe without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and by word down to future ages.”

The delegates heeded Franklin’s words, in part, a few days later when the convention recessed to commemorate the Fourth of July. Together they attended a church service, prayed, heard a patriotic oration and participated in other events celebrating the momentous day. When they reconvened on July 5th, the political climate in the room had changed, and the delegates were able come together and create the longest standing form of government in the world today.

Leaders have made calls to renew our national spirit not just by having faith in God, but also faith in our founding beliefs. Abraham Lincoln poignantly said during his remarks at the dedication of military cemetery at Gettysburg in November 1863 (when the future of the nation once again stood in the balance), “Four score and seven years ago [referring back to the year 1776 and the Declaration of Independence], our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Lincoln concluded his short address exhorting, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of by and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The United States of course survived and secured the God-given right to liberty to all as promised in the Declaration of Independence and went on to become the predominant power in the world in the century to come.

At the dawn of the 1960s, John Kennedy called for a renewal of the American frontier spirit. He said in accepting his party’s nomination for the Presidency, “…I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier.” Then quoting God’s reassuring words to Joshua and the children of Israel as they made ready to enter the Promised Land with its unknown enemies and difficulties, JFK added, “My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age–to all who respond to the Scriptural call: ‘Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.’ [Joshua 1:9]. For courage–not complacency–is our need today–leadership–not salesmanship…For the harsh facts of the matter are that we stand on this frontier at a turning-point in history. We must prove all over again whether this nation–or any nation so conceived–can long endure…” The United States made incredible strides in civil rights during the 1960s and led the world in innovation, including the greatest triumph of all: putting a man on the moon.

Americans will once again need that same frontier spirit, if we are to change direction and get off the road that leads to Greece. We will have to face the fact that entitlement programs begun fifty and even eighty years ago, now accounting for over half of all federal spending, must be reformed in order for the country to remain solvent. As in times past, our spirit and nation can be renewed, but it will require the same ingredients that have led to renewal in the past: both faith in God and the wisdom He can provide and faith in our Founding ideals of limited constitutional government. Then we will have the frontier spirit required to look to the future and smile.

In September of 1787, as the Constitutional Convention delegates rose to sign the document that would change not only America, but the world, Benjamin Franklin remarked to some nearby that he would often look at the chair in which George Washington was sitting during the course of the deliberations, with its depiction of the sun on the horizon, and wonder “…whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” May 2013 mark the beginning of another season where the sun is rising once again over our land.

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Randall DeSoto is the author of WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS which addresses how leaders, throughout United States history, have appealed to the beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence.

GOP Should Stand for Opportunity

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Since Election Day, much energy has been spent analyzing why Republicans did so poorly. Many have urged that Republicans must “moderate their views,” by which they mean we should adopt more policies of Democrats.

That advice misdiagnoses the problem. The 2012 election did not reflect popular approval of the Obama policies of out-of-control spending, taxes, deficits and debt. To the contrary, 51 percent of voters on Election Day agreed that “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.”

Nor did the election reflect satisfaction with the paltry economic growth that President Obama’s abusive regulatory approach has produced. Voters are rightly unhappy with the anemic growth in gross domestic product the past four years; the average, just 1.5 percent, is less than half of our historic average since World War II, but 53 percent of voters believed the economy was George W. Bush’s fault.

Why did voters believe that? Obama repeated it relentlessly, and Republicans never responded.

First you win the argument, then you win the vote, Margaret Thatcher famously admonished. Republicans did neither.

Read more from this article HERE.

Why Are People Stocking Up On Guns? Fear Of Government

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A new-year stampede is developing that we have not seen for a long time. Gun stores are swamped with panicking customers. They are looking for handguns, semiautomatic rifles and as much ammunition as they can afford.

But buyers are not just camouflaged hunters, conspiracy theorists and gun hoarders. Instead, many of those purchasing firearms and ammo are so-called ordinary people, convinced that this administration will soon begin to centrally register — then ban — far more than assault rifles.

There were probably lots of reasons Adam Lanza shot 26 innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

But so far the government and media are not focusing much on his prior obsessions with violent video games, on society’s seeming inability to hospitalize the unstable or on the crude violence peddled in Hollywood and through popular music that portrays shooting people as a sort of cheap fantasy without consequences.

Instead, the administration is zeroing in on the ability of Lanza’s mother to legally buy semiautomatic weapons that her son then stole to murder her and the schoolchildren and employees.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hobby Lobby CEO: “Government Cannot Force You to Follow Laws That Go Against Your … Religious Belief”

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When my family and I started our company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames. Our first retail store wasn’t much bigger than most people’s living rooms, but we had faith that we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God’s word. From there, Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 locations in 41 states. Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together, as a family.

We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.

But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million PER DAY in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules; that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief.

So, Hobby Lobby and my family are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult. The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that’s a choice no American and no American business should have to make.

The government cannot force you to follow laws that go against your fundamental religious belief. They have exempted thousands of companies but will not except Christian organizations including the Catholic church.

Since you will not see this covered in any of the liberal media, pass this on to all your contacts.

Day Traders: How Congress, Wall Street and the Media Traded America’s Future for the Next Short Term Fix

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If someone had woken you from a dead sleep 20 years ago and asked what the Republican Party stood for, you would’ve had no trouble answering: Fiscal restraint, a strong national defense and lower taxes. Those were the three pillars of the GOP. The party’s brand was clear. Voters understood it, and many approved. In the days before Obama, Republicans won seven out of ten presidential elections.

Things have changed for the muddier. Scratch the surface and you’ll find there is no longer a consensus among Republicans on foreign policy. Fiscal restraint? Years of earmarks, record deficits and at least one new federal entitlement under Republican congresses make that idea a bitter joke.

Of the three principles that have united the party since Reagan, only taxes remain. Republicans have been able to claim — sincerely, and with continuing success at the ballot box — that they are for lower taxes. Until Tuesday.

Here’s what happened: For reasons that aren’t entirely clear but are probably related to panic and a basic lack of principle, the Speaker of the House and other Republicans in Congress signed on to Democratic calls for “balance” between tax hikes and spending cuts — this despite the overwhelming evidence that spending is the real problem.

So, even before the negotiation began, they abandoned decades of principle on taxes. The result: Two months later, we have a deal, but no balance. It’s all tax hikes. Zero spending cuts. Nice job.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Tax Evaders of the Year

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President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their “fair share” in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal-cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior-in-chief’s richest pals are getting a pass.

It’s a golden pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.

Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley’s biggest campaign-finance boost to Obama, with individual-employee donations supporting the tax-hiking candidate by a ratio of more than 31-to-1. Google rank-and-file workers pitched in some $800,000 to Obama. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, co-founder Sergey Brin, chief legal officer and senior vice president David Drummond, and vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf are all vocal Obama supporters and top donors.

In December, Google’s Netherlands subsidiary disclosed in a tax filing that it had shifted nearly $10 billion in revenues to a Bermuda shell company. That’s “almost double the total from three years before,” according to Bloomberg News. In response to criticism, Google defended the scheme as a legal response to government incentives. “It’s called capitalism,” Schmidt snarked defiantly.

Wonder what all of Obama’s operatives and media lapdogs who bashed evil, selfish Republican offshore tax havens have to say about that? Cue crickets chirping.

Read more from this article HERE.

‘I am Not Your Subject, I Won’t Register My Guns’

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The following is a letter written by Marine Combat Vet Joshua Boston to Senator Diane Feinstein in reaction to her threat to require nationwide registration of firearms:

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston

We Already Gave Up on the Constitution

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photo credit: chuck coker

Two and a half cheers for Louis Michael Seidman, the Georgetown law professor whose “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution” was a dead fish wrapped in the New York Times op-ed page.

Seidman calls the Constitution “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil.” He’s wrong, but at least he expresses his contempt for the rule of law openly and honestly, instead of insulting our intelligence with insincere twaddle about a “living document.”

The people who pretend to venerate our Constitution as a living document are most responsible for it being a dead letter. They are like parents trying to soften the blow of telling their children that Santa Claus isn’t real by saying he lives on in their hearts.

Imaginary Santas give no gifts and imaginary Constitutions protect no rights.

Seidman exercises his constitutional right to miss the point when he blames the fiscal cliff on the fact that revenue bills must originate in the House, or a “grotesquely malapportioned Senate.” But those are the Constitution’s procedural restraints, the equivalent of Robert’s Rules of Order. We got into this mess precisely by flouting its substantive limits on federal power.

Read more from this article HERE.

Happy New Year?

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The beginning of a new year is often a time to look forward and look back. The way the future looks, I prefer to look back — and depend on my advanced age to spare me from having to deal with too much of the future.

If there are any awards to be given to anyone for what they did in 2012, one of those rewards should be for prophecy, if only because prophecies that turn out to be right are so rare.

With that in mind, my choice for the prediction of the year award goes to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his column of January 24, 2012 titled: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.”

Despite reciting a litany of reasons why President Obama deserved to be booted out of the White House, Stephens said, “Let’s just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.”

To me, the Republican establishment is the 8th wonder of the world. How they can keep repeating the same mistakes for decades on end is beyond my ability to explain.

Read more from this article HERE.