Why don’t I trust Obama’s motives?

It’s obviously not just me.

A quick Google search using the phrase “Dictators streamline government” popped with more than 41 million hits. Many of those hits include stories on President Obama’s latest talking point to streamline the federal government.

It’s easy not to trust this President when he says things like this… or at any time for that matter! While a majority of Americans favor cutting the federal government down to a much smaller and manageable size, the skeptic in me sees Obama as nothing more than a dictator on a quest for totalitarian rule under the guise of so-called Republican tenets.

Obama’s true colors and motives were blatantly evident when I heard a sound byte on the radio where he said that he will do this with or without the approval of Congress. Whatever happened to the rule of law and the separation of powers as articulated by the Constitution? Those are the words and premises of a dictator, not an executive who understands his authority and role!

Why wait until now to propose streamlining the government? Wasn’t that implied in the whole “Hope and Change” mantra that he ran upon? Why did he push the massive health care plan that had to be lied about and massaged to purportedly keep under a trillion dollars in cost? With government costs and debt spiraling out of control, why propose streamlining some of the smallest agencies in the federal government when the budgets of agencies such as the EPA have ballooned in size since Obama was elected? At what time in American history has any agency of the government had to do more with less (unless, of course, it’s the repeated call from Liberals to take a hatchet to the Department of Defense)?

The idea to streamline government is noble. It needs to be done if the United States collectively, as well as the individual states, are going to survive economically. But history shows that governments that accumulate power and wealth (the United States is no different) have never been able to vote themselves a smaller piece of the tax pie.

Related articles

• Obama Seeks Greater Power To Shrink The Federal Government (huffingtonpost.com)
• President Obama Seeks Power to Streamline Government: A Slog Poll (slog.thestranger.com)
• Obama seeks more power to merge agencies, streamline government – Washington Post (washingtonpost.com)
• Obama Wants To Shrink The Size Of Federal Government (alan.com)
• Boehner spokesman: Will agency merger help or is it just for show? (thehill.com)

It’s time for revolutionary change

The budget for the Federal Environmental Protection Agency has more than doubled since Obama was elected. Image via Wikipedia

The problem with politicians is that they’re, well, politicians.

Of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, which was deemed passed last year by the Democrats and hurriedly signed by the President, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio is quoted by the Associated Press as saying “”I think it is important for us to lay the groundwork before we begin to repeal this monstrosity.”

That doesn’t sound much different than what  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in the same story.

“I’m ready for some tweaking” on the health care law but would fight its repeal, Reid told the AP.

That’s not what America wants. We don’t want Congress to “tweak” anything, particularly anything as hugely expensive as the health care bill. America can’t afford to shave a dollar or two from something promises to cost in the trillions of dollars.

For Mr. Boehner, the response should be to simply write:  ”H.R. 3962 – the Affordable Health Care for America Act is hereby repealed” and put it for a floor vote on the House of Representatives, as Rush Limbaugh says, “every week and make the Democrats defend it.”

The point is: they can’t. Nobody can. At least not anyone who wants to be truthful and honest with themselves and the American public.

Which gets back to the problem at hand. Politicians can’t do anything simple because it goes against the very core of their beliefs that we the people are simply too stupid and too simple to understand the complex inner workings of the government.

Well, we do understand, and we don’t like it! That’s what the recent election was all about.

America didn’t overwhelmingly wake up one morning and decide that it wanted the Republicans to once again be in power as much as we began to get fed up shortly after Obama was inaugurated and discover the direction he and the Democrats wanted to take this great country was 180 degrees from the direction our fathers and grandfathers fought to prevent. It’s certainly not because we have a love-affair with the Republicans; we simply can’t stomach the socialism that the Democrats and their complicit Republican cohorts are forcing down our throats.

That’s why most of the so-called “Tea Party” candidates won big where they ran for office (except in California, where none of the incumbent legislators lost their reelection bids, but that’s another story!). Those Tea Party candidates who won were successful because of their no-nonsense approach, and that’s what America hopes takes place come January when the new Senators and Representatives are sworn in.

So to Mr. Boehner, who will likely become the next House Speaker, listen up sir: we do not want you to merely tinker around the edges to appease the Democrats or the GOP leaders who aren’t much different from the crop of socialists currently inhabiting and running the House of Representatives and US Senate. We want drastic and significant change, and we want it immediately.

Here’s some suggestions:

• Repeal H.R. 3962 as your very first act.
• Repeal and eliminate the US Tax Code and the IRS. Replace each with a simple flat tax of 10% on all income and all wage earners with no deductions, credits or similar “incentives.”
• Along with this tax reform, eliminate all corporate taxes for two years, then raise them to the 10% level to mirror the income tax. That should provide some incentive for private industry to grow and flourish in America, and once back on its feet, the taxes collected will be enough to pay for a leaner government.
• Eliminate most of the existing government agencies — don’t merely cut their budgets, but ELIMINATE them, including the US Department of Education and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
• For those departments we keep, such as State and Defense, cut their budgets by 25%. Government is too costly and it’s too big. Now is not the time to merely slow the growth of government or to propose a hiring freeze, but to perform major surgery and remove the cancerous growth that is affectionately known as the federal bureaucracy.
• Tell the United Nations it has 30 days to evacuate its New York headquarters and then sell the building space on the open market. Use that money to help pay back the Chinese and others who currently own our debt.
• Aside from the national parks, sell all remaining federal property that is not directly tied to defense. Put that land back on the tax rolls for local governments.

America will not die if we significantly cut government back. On the contrary, America will cease to exist as we once knew it if we don’t stop the insane spending and fiscal shell games that has ballooned our budget to numbers nobody can grasp, much less understand.

If government fails to heed the drastic changes we the people seek of them, on behalf of us and this once-great nation, then the only resolution will be to execute our duty as described by the Declaration of Independence and “alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

We have no other choice.

Calling Democrats on their admitted lies

There is a God and He has a sense of humor. How else do you describe gifts like this?

According to a story on the website examiner.com, Mary Francis Berry, the Clinton-appointed chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, admitted that Democrats regularly lie about Republicans and conservative causes by falsely claiming that they are racists, bigots, and homophobes in an attempt to discredit their causes. The saddest and most telling part of this is the implied admission that liberal Democrats (but I repeat myself) cannot articulate why their causes are good. They can only resort to name-calling.

Here’s what she told the Politico: “Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidate’s distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”

A response to the statement by Berry, runs on Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment website.

This just points to what many of us have known for a long time. Democrats lie because they have no other recourse. Unfortunately, they have willing accomplices masquerading as journalists who will gladly parrot these lies. What’s sad is that in an age where we’re supposed to be intelligent and informed, they cannot articulate their viewpoint with words and cogent arguments. They’re like the schoolyard bully called on his attacks by a larger group. Rather than fight back, he can only respond by name-calling and using infantile words at best.

It’s time to call these bullies on their attacks and show them just how irrelevant and insignificant to our success they truly are.

Purging the GOP of the liberal-lite

Articles like this seem to be growing in popularity as the partisan political operatives masquerading as journalists try to convince us that the days of the Tea Party are over. This might be true for those who tried to co-opt the Tea Party for their Republican election gain, but not for those of us who still hold the core conservative beliefs that started this movement in the first place.

But, like a gift from God, other reports point to a concerted effort by opponents of liberty and freedom to paint Tea Party participants in a negative light. Words like “racist” are peppered in a recipe that attempts to color every-day people as bitter clingers holding fast to their fringe conspiracy theories. The only thing they don’t regularly talk about is how many people are wearing tinfoil hats.

An opinion piece on the website examiner.com uses the case-in-point example of California’s gubernatorial race between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman where the differences between the two are arguably only visible in their gender. In the process of trying to defend their thesis that millions of hard-working Americans are stupid, the opinion piece suggests that Tea Party folks and those supporting a third candidate for California governor are not only wasting their time, but are not being good Americans by supporting the GOP, which has become nothing more than the new Liberal-Lite party. It tastes great and is less filling, but it’s just as deadly to our Constitutional Republic.

We all know what happened years ago when Conservatives and Libertarians got behind Ross Perot in the national presidential election. We wound up with a liberal named Bill Clinton instead of re-electing George (“read my lips”) Bush. While I’m not supporting going back to that failed example by endorsing the move to get behind Chelene Nightingale as a third party candidate for governor in California, I would like to see the philosophical and practical conservatives supporting her truly infiltrate the GOP and permanently purge the RINO’s from the GOP and give those of us tired of holding our noses every election a true choice when we go to the voting booth.

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.

Censorship has roots in political correctness

The very idea that “Congress shall make no law” that abridges free speech apparently did not consider the notion of political correctness. This scourge of forced self-censorship is worse than any law of prohibition that congress could enact because it is nebulous and subject to the whims of the self-important, self-righteous or those who make a living out of being easily offended (see self-righteous).

What is speech if not simply the verbalization of ideas or thought? What is so dangerous about stifling speech isn’t in the silencing of a voice; ideas related to politics and civics are usually shared by groups big or small. Silence one voice and the ideas behind that voice will likely be given air by another.

More dangerous and effective by any tyrannical opposition is the ability through political correctness to get people to self regulate their speech, which has a very real and negative impact on their thoughts, and even their mental health. Create a real fear in the hearts and minds of your subjects and you don’t necessarily need a law; they’ll censor themselves out of fear — fear of bodily harm to themselves or others close to them, fear of financial ruin, or both.

This worked well in the former Soviet Bloc and in Nazi Germany, and later East Germany under the National Socialists. Citizens (subjects) were legitimately fearful of speaking out, or even aloud to one another, because those in power had informants or were actively listening to them and dealt swiftly with anyone who’s ideas ran counter to the political powers of the day. Dissent was strictly verboten! This idea has been put into practice here in America under the subtler, but equally effective ideal of political correctness. Don’t believe me? Try talking openly and in a voice loud enough for others to hear you at work about Conservative ideals, particularly if you work in a large company. You can easily share your thoughts around the water cooler about what an idiot George Bush was, but criticize Barrack Hussein Obama, or dare to use his middle name in conversation, and you somehow feel the need to whisper for fear that someone might be listening in and deem your conversation “unacceptable” and worthy of punishment.

Ironically this ideal was birthed on college campuses, where free thought and critical thinking is allegedly honored and revered. I recall thinking about how ironic this notion was to the concept of free speech when I first came across it myself when I was in college in the late 1980’s. I found it rather distasteful and demagogic that, in order to use the free speech area, one had to gain permission by first sharing what they were going to say and their ideas to someone in the student union. It became widely known that Conservative ideals were unacceptable forms of free speech and not allowed in the free speech area. Maybe once a year the powers in the student union would relent long enough to allow college Republicans to set up a table and play patriotic music in the free speech area, but that was more an exception than the rule.

The very notion that someone’s thoughts are somehow unacceptable simply because they don’t fit a prescribed template is dangerous and offensive; it certainly flies in opposition to everything our American society stands for under our First Amendment and in our republican form of government. Political discourse that honestly and critically disagrees is a healthy part of a free society. While I would argue that this discourse should have within its core the altruistic desire to seek the improvement of others and the society as a whole, rather than the protection of the few and the expense of the many, even I recognize that some of the more repulsive ideals that folks can conjure up should not be automatically censored but remembered in such a way that a civil society we never allow them to take root and gain practical acceptance.

It’s not the point, but if it works…

KMJ Radio’s Ray Appleton almost had another stroke, this time on the air, as he expressed his outraged over a San Francisco Chronicle article that accuses Central Valley Republicans of trying to “steal” Democrat voters by targeting Latinos in their efforts to get more water for agriculture.

While this might be a legitimate strategy of some political pundits, linking this issue to the fight over farm water here in the Valley is, as Mr. Appleton put it: “Fightin’ Words!”

The issue to restore water flows to Central Valley farms has been, in the classic sense of the term, a true bipartisan effort here in the Valley. It hasn’t mattered what political viewpoints people bring to the debate, the end has and remains water, and more of it for Central Valley agriculture. While Appleton (a Republican) and Rep. Devin Nunes (also a Republican) have taken up the cause to turn on the spigots to Valley farms, others such as Comedian Paul Rodriguez, a Democrat and Central Valley farmer, along with a host of other Democrat Latinos — many of them farmworkers — have literally stood beside and marched along with Republicans with one goal in mind: to restore water flows to Valley farms. The tough thing is that while politics has not been the object of this effort, the sad fact is that this issue must be played out in the political arena if water is going to flow once again to Central Valley farms.

One glaring irony in this issue has been the behind-the-scenes efforts of Democrat politicians, including Rep. Jim Costa, D-CA, to derail efforts for more water. Still that hasn’t deterred folks like the Latino Water Coalition and Appleton from pushing ahead.

While Appleton’s outrage is completely understandable and shared by many, the article by Chronicle Staff Writer Joe Garafoli does point out a very obvious fact: Democrat leaders could care less about the Latino population here in the Valley; Latinos, to the Democrats, are mere pawns in their effort to gain dictatorial control of California and the United States.

This seems more apparent to a growing number of Americans of all shades that the Democrats aren’t really out to help the little man as much as they’re out for their own power and their own gain at the expense of those they claim to support.

If Garofoli’s opinion comes true, then it’ll be the fault of local Democrats, including those claiming kinship with groups like the Latinos and Portuguese here in the Valley, who will wind up driving voters away from their cause and towards the Republicans.

Paying protection money: a return on investment

Years ago I worked for an agricultural organization that has, as it’s soul purpose, the goal of promoting agriculture. For the most part, the farm members of this organization are politically conservative, or so they claim. If you ask them, they’ll tell you that they’re over-regulated by a political network that does not understand what they do.
Why then, do these very same farmers continue to donate to the political causes of the very same politicians who are denying them water and continuing to push legislation that will force America’s agricultural production to foreign nations?
I’ve heard the arguments; why are we donating to these candidates who are in bed, politically speaking, with the organizations that would take our water and farmland from us? The short answer that I noticed over time was that farmers, like many others, like receiving subsidies and political handouts. In short, it’s kind of like paying protection money to the mob to keep your store from being robbed on a daily basis.
I’m curious Mr. and Mrs. Farmer: how has paying this “protection money” to the Liberals in Congress and in Sacramento helped your cause? Can you pencil out the return on investment for the protection money that you’ve paid to these politicians and political causes? Why did the California Farm Bureau Federation, the statewide agricultural organization that you pay annual dues to, recommend that you vote YES on Propositions 1A through 1F when you know that those measures were going to raise your taxes? Could it be that the taxes that these measures would raise were promised not to hit you through a variety of other carefully crafted pieces of legislation to exempt you from other taxes and fees?
What about all that water that you don’t have right now for your farms? I know not all of you are impacted currently by the lack of farm water that used to irrigate the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, very few of you are impacted by this, but in the grand scheme of things, decisions like this affect us all because it’s one more nail in the coffin that will soon encase American agriculture and our national sovereignty.
I’m not a farmer; I’m a consumer with enough knowledge of agriculture to know, not only where my food comes from, but also how the political decisions that are foisted upon us by politicians owned by Liberal groups such as the Sierra Club and the Humane Society are making it impossible for American farmers to provide us with the safe food that we want and need.
To the farmers who know they’ve given PAC money to the political groups and politicians that would take your farmland by taking your water, and who have personally voted for these very politicians, I beg you to stop. I’m not interested in ceding America’s food production to foreign nations and paying for all this with my own personal safety. I’ve developed a trust in the food you produce; I don’t trust my life and health with the food that is produced in foreign countries, regardless of what my federal government says. There are too many examples of food-borne illnesses coming from food produced in foreign nations. I still see American agriculture as key to our own national sovereignty and hope that you realize that the money you continue to give to Liberal politicians and Liberal groups is not helping your cause, unless your cause is to get out of agriculture. If that’s the case, whose stopping you?

Democrat Lite is not the way to go

General Colin Powell is right, but not for the reasons many would like to think.

Powell, the consummate moderate Democrat masquerading as a moderate Republican, wants the Republican Party to be more inclusive. He apparently thinks that by being more inclusive, the party will be more effective in growing its ranks.

He’s wrong.

Powell is right, however, in suggesting that the country needs two parties debating each other. The two-party system helps mitigate the damage an all-too-powerful single party system would wreak upon America. It’s just that his premise that the best way to have this debate is by one party becoming the lite version of the other is wrong. Republicans will never have an effective party by becoming the Democrat Lite Party. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the GOP has become over the past several years.

The reason, Gen. Powell, that there are so many “disaffected Republicans” is because the conservative principles of the party have been buried while you and others in the party allow Democrats to define Republicans. Fortunately, these principles are not dead; you saw them on display recently as millions of Americans voiced their disdain in protests across this great nation over the direction our elected leaders are trying to take this country.

Moreover, the reason President Obama and the Congress have been able to make such a seismic political shift to the extreme left is primarily because people like Powell and others in the Republican Party have helped them by proposing a moderate-to-left shift in the GOP.

As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, “conservatism works every time it’s tried.” The Republican Party needs to stop listening to Democrat strategists, who have been quite successful in watering down the GOP by defining it in the mainstream media, and simply forge ahead on the conservative principles that propelled Ronald Reagan to two landslide victories, and in 1994 gave the GOP control of the House after decades of liberal Democrat control.

Gen. Powell, there’s plenty of room for you in the Republican Party if you truly are one. However, if you want to continue to be a Democrat, then by all means, stop pretending and simply change your party affiliation, as did Sen. Arlen Specter, to match your Democrat viewpoints.

It’s time to scrap the tax code for a simpler plan

The latest discussions over economic stimulus should lead us into a serious discussion over how the federal government collects taxes and how we change it. The US Constitution is concise in its language: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” (Article 1, Section 7)
In 25 words the framers of this great nation established a system to fund the federal government. How did our US Tax Code grow to such a gargantuan document that it requires a forest of trees on which to print?

For years Steve Forbes talked about simplifying the US Tax Code by implementing a flat tax on everyone earning an income in the United States. The idea is simple: completely do away with the Tax Code as it exists now. Start over from scratch and write a one-page law that establishes a fixed percentage of your income as the new tax rate. Rather than a document that is apparently too complex for our current Treasury Secretary and many members of Congress to understand and comply with, we could draft a document that would free millions of Americans, many with multiple part-time jobs, from the onerous requirement of seeking professional tax help every year in order to comply with federal law.

It’s ridiculous that a family of four, earning a combined income of less than $60,000 from three or four low-paying jobs, with two cars and a mortgage, must employ the services of a certified public accountant in order to file its income taxes once a year.

Our current system of taxes seems to reward those who conveniently fit into a host of seemingly custom-fit categories that allows them to take deductions and write off expenses. Some businesses that make millions of dollars annually can effectively not pay any taxes whatsoever because someone in Congress has written into law cleaver ways for that particular enterprise to get all of the money back that it fronted the government throughout the year. Not everyone is entitled to such a luxury.

A flat-tax system would immediately do away with the need for millions of Americans to pay someone else to file their annual tax statements. This alone would save taxpayers money and help boost the economy. More than that, a flat-tax system would eliminate the unfair reward-for-behavior system that Congress has written into the tax code.

Under current tax code statutes the American taxpayer has become little more than a trained circus seal, barking on command for some morsels from our trainers — Congress — just to meet our basic sustenance needs. Those who comply by barking the correct tune and clapping loud enough can earn even more morsels from Congress.

A truly fair and equitable system would be to establish a flat tax on all income. For argument’s sake, let’s establish it at 10 percent. The person making a million dollars a year would pay 10 percent of his income, or $100,000 to the US Treasury. The family making $100,000 a year would pay $10,000 to the US Treasury. Under this system there would be no deductions, credits or breaks. That alone would allow us to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service, as it would streamline the system by which the government is funded. You could hire a few unemployed accountants to record and count the money coming into the treasury. Rather than deducting that money from employee payroll, taxpayers would simply submit their payments once a year with proof of their annual salary. This would release employers from having to do this.

States would require much less income since they’re not tasked with the constitutional obligation of national defense, thus the flat tax charged by states could be much less.

Such a system would also force government to live within its means, knowing that once a year the US Treasury would see an influx of cash payments from taxpayers. It would also give taxpayers a much clearer picture of just how much they’re paying in taxes to those they employ in the state and federal government.

Simplifying the US Tax Code, and the state tax codes, would give greater accountability to the taxpayers and would help shrink the size and reach that government has in our lives. Government has a few necessary roles to play; as it currently stands, government has outgrown the ability of the US taxpayer to support the political empire-building endeavors that our elected officials continue to erect for themselves.