Conservatives can’t win playing prevent defense

President Ronald Reagan did not have a Conservative majority in the House or Senate, nevertheless, he managed to advance conservatism in ways today's Republicans seem impotent to do. Image via Wikipedia

If ever there were something I could be jealous that I didn’t think of first, this could be it.

The thesis that Conservatives are good at complaining about Liberal policies while even fewer of them can actually articulate conservatism, has not been lost on my Conservative friend here.

It’s time as Conservatives we go on the offensive and set our own agenda, promote what’s right for America and stop playing prevent defense with the Liberals. It’s not enough that we simply prevent them from scoring points: they must be summarily destroyed.

I’m frankly tired of hearing Republicans, for example, say that there might be some good things about the Obama Health Care Bill, and thus, we must somehow find a way to keep some of the less egregious parts of the bill while trying to repeal the rest of it. NO! America didn’t want it, doesn’t want it, and most certainly doesn’t need it!

McCain protests like a Liberal

Sen. John McCain does himself a great disservice when he protests accusations that he’s more of a Liberal than a Conservative. While his party affiliation says he’s a Republican it’s no secret that there’s a large chasm between his core beliefs and that of a true Conservative.

It’s offensive when politicians try to convince us of something that they’re not. I once had this experience with a Republican state senator in California when, as a newspaper reporter, I pinned him down on his votes to raise taxes via something called the Vehicle License Fee. His answers to my questions sounded an awful lot like Sen. McCain’s protests covered by the Yuma Sun, or Nancy Pelosi’s “We have to pass the (health care) bill so you can see what’s in it.”

Hey Senator: we’re not as stupid as you think we are. In fact, we’re a lot smarter than you because we haven’t had our minds reprogrammed by the Washington establishment after decades of insulating ourselves from the people you claim to serve.

Amazing how little things really changed since 1948

First at being the worst

 

 

The destruction started in California.

Remember the good-old days when California had the 5^th or 6^th largest economy in the world and Gray Davis was governor? And then we fired him!

Now, as we near the end of the second term for the man who promised to clean up Davis’s mess, California has sunk to the 8^th largest economy in the world and to No. 51 on the list of the worst states in the Union in which to do business. That in and of itself is hilarious since we have only 50 states, despite Obama’s comment during the presidential election campaign that he’d been to 57 states.

Nevertheless, ChiefExecutive.net just came out with its ranking of the best and worst states in which to do business and, well, you guessed it; California sucks! For you folks who see the glass as half full: California is the best state in the Union at driving business away. Either way, we suck! And, we excel at it!

In the May/June 2010 edition of ChiefExecutive.net, California ranked dead last in terms of its business acumen and its overall acceptance of private enterprise. From the online article, one CEO is quoted as saying “California is anti-business with anti-business regulations.”

Ironically, California seems to lead the nation in terms of setting political trends across the nation. How is that? How can a state that seems to excel at driving business away be looked up to by anyone serious about improving his or her standard of living?

What is really sad is one CEO was quoted in the article as indicating that he’d gladly move his agricultural business out of California if he could find another state with the kind of growing conditions we have here. Okay, so that’s two things we have going for us: our great soil and climate for growing the food and fiber that feeds and clothes the world, and our beautiful vistas from which to go “ooohh and ahhhh.”

 

California before and after? Once the icon for physical fitness, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has presided over California's colossal slide in economic status in the world.

As if California’s dismal business ranking by 651 of the nation’s CEO’s weren’t enough, the story likens California to Venezuela for its politics. Now that’s completely unfair: our leader is not a pudgy, tin-horned dictator who hasn’t missed a meal in some time; he’s the “Austrian Oak,” the six-time Mr. Olympia, the portrait of health and fitness who simply has a difficult time properly pronouncing “California!”

Then again our Legislature is a different story altogether. Some of these folks probably have photos of Hugo Chavez that they bow to during their regular religious rituals of socialist praise.

More telling of California’s utter failure from this article was the concern CEO’s have of California’s growing union workforce, much of which is employed by government. These public employees wield a significant amount of force in Sacramento, and as such are to blame for the notion that government must always grow. We’ve seen what an ever-growing government gets us, and it’s not good. While we lead the nation in tax rates, crime, public classroom size, and unemployment, these are not the kind of things that CEO’s and business leaders look to as positive indicators that relocating here would be a good thing.

I think California has struck the iceberg, and even if we change the command at the helm in November to a fiscally conservative, pro-business chief executive and replace the rest of the complicit crew, the ship is taking on water at an unrecoverable rate and no attempt at rearranging the deck chairs or altering the tune played by the orchestra is going to save this once-great state.

“Citizen: What is your name?”

A short video created by a friend of mine, Joe Dan Gorman. A clever use of the lies, distortions and thoughts of our elected officials to illustrate why every one of them is unfit for office and must be removed.

The duty to cleanse through revolution

We'll take our country back now!

What part of “Congress shall make no law” and “shall not be infringed” do the elected geniuses in Washington DC and the various state capitals not seem to comprehend?

The Bill of Rights is very explicit in its language and intent. Government cannot, shall not, and will not usurp the authority of the people, who are the ultimate owners and authoritarians of America. Yet daily we read stories in the state-controlled media here in America of moves by Congress or the states to violate the Bill of Rights and assume powers explicitly prohibited by the US Constitution. Additionally, we see daily examples in America of usurpations by government identical to the complaints that led colonists to the New World to draft the Declaration of Independence and ultimately enact it as law of the land shortly after ratifying the US Constitution in the late 18^th Century.

Contrary to the opinion of Barrack Hussein Obama in his 2001 NPR interview that “the constitution is a charter of negative liberties,” the very point is the Constitution and, more specifically, the Bill of Rights, recognize the natural law rights of human beings by specifically limiting government through clear and explicit language. The Declaration of Independence spells this out clearly by pointing out: “all men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”

Our rights aren’t given to us by government, they’re given to us by God Himself and government’s role in this, according to the Declaration of Independence, is to secure these rights, not twist, destroy and usurp these rights. For a great lesson in history, read the Declaration of Independence and focus on the indictment of King George by the writers of the Declaration and see how many of these points could apply today to our government officials.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has made similar public statements about the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution. It’s these beliefs that make people like Obama, Feinstein and other Liberal Democrats unfit for public office in the greatest nation on Earth and deserving of immediate removal from elected office.

This November when we go to the polls we need to begin to purge from our government all incumbents, regardless of political party or affiliation. No single person should have the longstanding ability to affect the lives of the people from the protected vacuum of political office. No more shall we allow individuals to make public office a lifelong career. We can do it through the peaceful means of public elections aimed at the peaceful transition of power, or we can do it with all the rights and authority we already have as human beings to “alter or abolish (government) and to institute new government.”

How is government intervention going to make the press free?

The attached link is from a blog that appears on the Cato Institute’s site titled: A Free Press Only Counts if It’s on Dead Trees. It asks a very poignant question about the freedom of this great nation. I’ll put it in my own words: How can the government guarantee a free press?

Give up? It’s really a trick question. Government doesn’t guarantee anything, and certainly not a free press. The great danger I see in the idea covered here is that it puts government more in charge of the Fourth Estate than it does to guarantee the health of America’s watchdog, which over the past several decades has aged into a lap dog that should have been euthanized long ago.

As a proponent of a free press, and one who made a living in it for more than 13 years, it’s been difficult for me to watch this watchdog-to-lapdog progression. I’ve written here some of my thoughts on how American newspapers could stop bleeding red ink. In fact, Jason Kuznicki, the author of this blog, says pretty much the same thing at the end of his piece. I encourage you to read it.

Why get angry over nothing?

Why do some people get so angry about something they say doesn’t exist?

By definition atheists all agree that God doesn’t exist; He’s a hoax… sort of like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, only apparently more dangerous because somehow the belief by much of the rest of the world that there is a God and that He exists in some form must be enough reason to scream, shout and sue.

Maybe someone smarter than me can explain the philosophical logic in the notion of protesting the belief in something that doesn’t exist.

Keep more of your money… a tax protest worth starting

© 2000, Columbia Pictures, Inc.

I just came across an excellent idea that was not mine, but deserves to be shared.

Everyone tomorrow needs to change his or her tax withholding status to 9. This is apparently the maximum allowed. By doing so you will keep more of your hard-earned money in your paycheck each time you get paid.

The protest angle in this is it seriously slows the amount of income taxes being collected by the government until that time when taxes are due (typically April 15th, but with legal extensions, this can be postponed). The goal is to slow the amount of money going on a regular basis into the US Treasury. Oh, they’ll eventually get the money, but it won’t be before it is legally due.

This also prevents the government from borrowing YOUR money, tax and interest free.

Typically people have low withholding numbers on their tax forms so that at tax time they get a refund. I’m arguing that we need to turn this around and simply wait until the legal date to submit your taxes. You can’t stop paying them — at least legally — but you can seriously slow the flow until the last minute.

Then, write letters to your elected representatives, letters to the editor, and in blog posts sharing that you’re protesting the use of YOUR money by the government in ways that you do not support. Tell your congressman that you simply want government to live within the same means that you are forced to live within while your employer cuts your salary and eliminates your ability to make more money.

It’s not your employer’s fault (I’m speaking to those who work in the private sector); it’s government’s fault for not living within the means of the income that is created by the private sector.

While this will force most of us to pay money to the IRS on April 15th, the point is to put government on notice, without firing a shot, that we’re not going to take this anymore.

This is not the only thing we can do to try to take our country back from the brink of the destruction being foisted upon us by over-spending politicians and a White House that wants to destroy capitalism and America as we know it, but it’s certainly a start.

Conservative thought expands through social media

While there’s about as much truth in Al Gore’s claim to have invented the Internet as there is in many of the other things he says, I’m finding it increasingly ironic that the World Wide Web may become the world’s truth detector, much to the chagrin and undoing of Liberals and other despots around the world.

The popularity of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have given voices to those who previously had no voice, or at the very least were ignored as the lone voice crying in the wilderness. Moreover, social media seems to be the one bastion of media left where conservative thought and ideals can flourish.

One such voice in the social media’s expanding wilderness comes from Joe Dan Gorman, a musician and Conservative beacon from Kentucky. Gorman uses his talents as a musician and songwriter to illuminate issues in thought-provoking and sometimes humorous ways. His talent for writing catchy tunes with provocative lyrics and a punchy beat has drawn a ground swell of support through social media outlets.

Gorman is just one of countless others in what might be called the 21^st Century’s democracy movement here in America that is capitalizing on technology to promote an old idea. That is, citizens disgusted with government today are really no different in their ideals than those who rallied against the crown over 200 years ago and subsequently wrote the Declaration of Independence to certify their opposition. Today’s brand of patriot literally has the world at his fingertips through the World Wide Web.

Recently Gorman’s freelance media creations on YouTube surpassed 100,000 unique hits, all within a four-month period. Folks started following Gorman earlier this year through his Facebook sites and gradually moved to YouTube and now his Web site at JoeDanMedia.com, which features many of the same things his like-minded followers have found interesting.

So what drives this middle-America man in fly-over country?

“I do these videos because I love it,” he said. “I love writing music and I love my country.”

It’s easy to see his patriotism through video titles such as: “Right Wing Women Rock,” “Mainstream Misinformation,” and “Soldier.” He doesn’t hide his love of country, nor hide behind it.

Gorman’s goal is to attach a Conservative label to his music of choice: rock.

“Over the years the only conservative music has been country,” he said. “And while I like country alright, I write what I write, and that’s rock.”

Through this he hopes to take what has been stereotyped and confined as “uncool” — that is, Conservative thought and ideals — and bring it into a more socially “cool” rock and roll world.

None of this comes without a price. Gorman has been self-funding his video and music projects, but it’s just not possible to continue at this pace, much less grow, without the influx of capital he’s going to need to continue funding things such as his Web site or promoting his rock and roll brand of Conservatism.

Currently he has links up on his Web site where people can make donations to his Conservative cause. He’s also begun soliciting for partners in his endeavors. “We’ve got to raise $2,000 to get me recording again,” he said. Requests have already gone out via his Facebook site for donors and partners. For $2,000, investors can have 10% ownership and royalty rights to his video “Right Wing Women Rock,” which has attracted more than 5,300 unique views since going up on Nov. 9^th.

Gorman’s focus is really on education and not merely mimicking another mindless talking-head who parrots talking points e-mailed from some central committee. He instead likes to talk about what he calls a “widespread mentality of ignorance and entitlement.”

“This breaks my heart,” he says of that mentality. “These people have no idea what they are throwing away: no clue as to the sacrifices that were necessary for the United states of America to become the greatest nation in the history of man.

“When I am able to cause someone to rethink their position, it does my heart good.”