Politics

The word comes from two roots:
poli - many
ticks - blood suckers
Politics is "many blood suckers"

Last Gasps of the Democratic Majority

We should be outraged at the activities of the Federal
Government. They continue to break the law despite their
recent rhetoric. The Congress failed in their primary
responsibility – to evaluate the President's budget and
appropriate monies to fund Constitutional activities of
government.
Fiscal Year 2011 began 1 October with none of the
appropriations bills passed. As is customary, the Congress
has passed two Continuing Resolutions with deadlines of 4
December and 18 December to fund the government. The
leadership then uses extortion to force the rest of House
and Senate members to vote for legislation they would
normally defeat.
The line-item veto would not be necessary if Congress
ever passed a “clean” bill. The bill to prevent tax
increases on 1 January, forced Congress to extend
unemployment compensation (UC) another 13 months. The 2%
decrease in F.I.C.A. Payroll deductions will be an excellent
stimulus. It is strange that putting more in the workers
money was not tried earlier. The bailouts of unions and
mismanaged states obviously did not work. We are
“heartless and without compassion for fellow Americans”
if we do not extend UC to 99 weeks plus 13 months at Hanukah
and Christmas! It is possible that those folks on UC after
99 weeks are waiting for jobs which will never return. Over
three years of UC is as dumb as FDR's program to kill and
bury hogs and dump milk down sewers in the 1930s when
Americans went hungry. As Margaret Thatcher said,
socialism [central planning] fails because eventually you run
out of other peoples' money!
Congress wants to repeal “don't ask, don't tell”, pass START
and pass a CR with a deadline of February or March or … The
Conservatives need to stand firmly until they are dismissed.
The world will not stop turning if these matters wait until
5 January 2011 or later.
If you have read this blog at all, then you know that I favor
the Fair Tax as the needed stimulus. BHO has been anti-business.
Whether he is a socialist or simply anti-colonialist, his
policies work against a business recovery – since they are
anti-capitalist. At least one Federal Judge has also agreed
that the policies are also illegal (unconstitutional).

Tasks for the 2010 Congress

Hopefully we will see a different attitude when the
new Congress convenes in January. Few Congressmen are
talking about tax reform yet. This is surprising
considering what TEA stands for.
A real stimulus to the economy would have been to
implement the Fair Tax. If the Congress will cut the
corporate tax rate and stop picking winners and losers,
then that will be a good start. Our corporations pay the
second largest tax of the developed nations. Combine
that fact with the regulations for environment and labor,
and it is hard to understand why there are still factories
in the U.S.
Right now the Republicans could agree to "tax the rich"
while exempting and cutting taxes on small businesses who
are part of the "rich" and extending the other "Bush tax
cuts." The problem is that the "rich" are mobile. An
obvious example is the baseball player who plays for a NYC
team but lives in Florida. With decreased freedom in the
U.S. (heritage.org/index), it makes sense to leave the U.S.
Congress needs to get the Federal government out of
Education. Both DOEs have been costly failures. We trail
most developed nations in test scores, and we have no place
to store nuclear waste after spending $14B. We heavily
subsidize uneconomic energy sources while paying billion$
to our enemies each day. We need to cut agricultural
subsidies immediately for farms with a net profit over $1M
and by 10% each year for all other farms. We need to reduce
our overseas military presence in Europe, Japan and Korea by
10% each year. We continue to spend far more for defense as
a percentage of GDP than any other nation - and our GDP is
more than triple that of any other nation. We are broke,
and we can no longer be the world's policeman. That is
supposed to be the function of the United Nations, and we
need to tell it when it fails.
The U.S. should pay no more to the United Nations than
any other member of the Security Council (ex. Gabon). Some
want to get out completely, but that would confirm the false
claims of imperialism and war mongering. The UN is still a
useful tool for political dialogue - however ineffective.
However, to pay over 20% of the entire costs to be constantly
insulted is stupid! The U.S. should suggest to our creditors
whose debt to us has been "forgiven" in the past that they
should forgive our debt now that the "goose laying the golden
eggs" is now broke.
We must remember that the United States of America is the
greatest nation on the planet because of our form of government
and the freedoms that it gives. We must protect it from those
domestic and foreign enemies who would subvert it.

Where do we go from here?

The Republicans won a net of about 63 seats in the House
of Representatives and about 8 in the Senate. Just as
important was the net increase in Republican Governors and
Republican-controlled state legislatures. Early next year
(8 weeks), the state legislatures will determine the
districts to be represented by the newly apportioned (2010
Census) House of Representatives.
The Republicans do not control the Senate or the
Executive Branch, but they will control who the checks are
written to. They can control the czars and czarinas by
defunding their bureaucracies. They can defund the EPA's
regulation of carbon dioxide. They can defund the
government jobs given as rewards for political support.
They can even defund the creations of previous
“progressives”: The Department of Agriculture, The
Department of Education, The Department of Energy, etc.
The Republicans – and the Democrats – need to understand
that the American people want the rule of law in the United
States. Politicians – like the Illinois Congressman who
said “I don't care what the Constitution says, it's the right
thing to do” - must realize that the Constitution is the law,
and they are criminals if they violate it. If they have sworn
an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution against all
enemies foreign and domestic”, then it is treason to violate
that oath. Congress may no longer pass laws without concern
for their constitutionality and defer to the Federal courts to
determine the legality.
The Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party movement is a group
of American citizens – most without political ambitions – who
love America and its Constitution. Many favor the Fair Tax
because it gives freedom to the individual. It frees American
corporations to compete in the global economy. It should
create a booming economy that would be the envy of the world.
It is the America capitalist system which rewards hard work
and innovation which has made America great. We do not need
to apologize for what we have achieved.
We need to let the United Nations be the world's policeman –
and hold it accountable. We should pay no more dues and
expenses than any other member of the Security Council (Gabon
for example). Our funding for the International Monetary Fund
and World Bank should be no more than any other voting member.
We have a national debt of almost $14T. Unfunded obligations
for Social Security, Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug, etc.
make the debt more like $100T. We are broke. We are also
strong, smart, innovative, and we have a good foundation as a
constitutional republic. We have more than 200 years of
successful experience. Our schools can again be good if we
return to the Truth. We should proudly repeat our Pledge of
Allegiance and “In God We Trust,” and challenge those who would
diminish our founding principles.

"Debt Free America Act"

Who could be against a debt-free America?
The bill (HR 4646) proposes a transaction tax - in addition
to most of the current taxes. The purpose of the tax is to
raise revenue to pay for the illegal spending of the Federal
Government (unconstitutional = illegal).
The "Findings" in the bill make an excellent case for the
Fair Tax:
The Congress finds the following:

(1) The current tax structure creates economic distortions
that limit growth and job creation. [Amen]

(2) The estimated cost of compliance to taxpayers is five
billion hours and approximately $200 billion. [Amen]

(3) Restructuring the tax code will promote economic
prosperity. [Amen]

(4) Replacing existing Federal taxes with a fee on
transactions eliminates systemic inefficiency that plagues
the current tax code. [Fair Tax]

(5) The United States, from its beginning in 1790 to the
present, has been free of a national debt for only two
years, 1834 and 1835.

(6) The national debt has grown from $75.5 million in 1790
to $5.8 trillion in 2008. [Almost $14 trillion now]

(7) Expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP),
the national debt reached a high of 108.6 percent of GDP in
1946.

(8) After 1946, the national debt as a percentage of GDP
declined, reaching a low of 32.5 percent in 1981.

(9) The large budget deficits of the 1980s and 1990s reversed
this trend and pushed the percentage to another high of 49.5
percent in 1993. [Democrat Congress until January 1995]

(10) The Federal budget surpluses from fiscal year 1998 to
fiscal year 2001 were used to retire a portion of the publicly
held national debt. [Republican Congress 1995-2001]

(11) Between fiscal year 1997 and fiscal year 2001, the
publicly held portion of the national debt declined by more
than $400 billion. [Republican Congress 1995-2001; Clinton
had a deficit of about $310B for his 8 years]

(12) Since fiscal year 2002, a return to budget deficits has
caused the debt to grow again. [9/11, war, Medicare
Prescription Drug, triple Education budget, etc.]

Defense Authorization Act Allows Murder

The Defense Authorization Act, which has been approved by
the Senate Armed Services Committee, contains an amendment
that would allow abortions at military facilities and
effectively repeal Section 654, Title 10 -- the law that
says homosexuality is incompatible with military service
and has often been confused with Bill Clinton's "don't ask,
don't tell" policy.
With this bill, the Democrats have shown their disdain for
America's military.

The Cooling World by Peter Gwynne, 28 April 1975

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns
have begun to change dramatically and that these changes
may portend a drastic decline in food production — with
serious political implications for just about every nation
on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon,
perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to
feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of
Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number
of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia —
where the growing season is dependent upon the rains
brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.
During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree — a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
“A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases — all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”
Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.
They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.