• Reduced the deficit?
• Only cost what it says it will and lowered the costs of goods and services?
• Improved quality?
• Enhanced efficiency?
• Decreased delays?
• Fostered more choice and competition?
• Featured competent bureaucracy?
• Operated with honest accounting?
• Avoided fraud, abuse, waste, maddening red tape, and higher taxes?
~~John Kraushar
(Editor’s Note: If you don’t believe your privacy isn’t being intruded upon by the present administration, consider this portion of a letter written to our President re: data collection that has actually been encouraged by the White House. “The 1st Amendment? What’s That??”)
Dear President Obama,
I write to express my concern about a new White House program to monitor American citizens’ speech opposing your health care policies, and to seek your assurances that this program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America’s tradition of free speech and public discourse.
Yesterday, in an official White House release entitled “Facts are Stubborn Things,” the White House Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, asserted that there was “a lot of disinformation out there,” and encouraged citizens to report “fishy” speech opposing your health care policies to the White House. Phillips specifically targeted private, unpublished, even casual speech, writing that “rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.” Phillips wrote “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed “fishy” or otherwise inimical to the White House’s political interests.
By requesting that citizens send “fishy” emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House. You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights…
So I urge you to cease this program immediately. At the very least, I request that you detail to Congress and the public the protocols that your White House is following to purge the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech.
I look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator (TX)
Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.
According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.
President Obama announced his 2011 Budget which is $3.834 trillion dollars with a projected deficit of $1.267 trillion or 8.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As of Feb. 7, our total national debt was $12,348,804,540,946.54 or $12.35 trillion which is larger than the economies of China, the United Kingdom and Australia combined, says Don C. Brunell, President of the Association of Washington Businesses.
The national debt is growing with the spending spree in Washington, D.C. According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget:
According to the Department of the Treasury:
The National Debt has continued to increase and that is before Congress tacks on trillions for health care, cap and trade, new federal stimulus programs, and other yet to be identified spending programs, says Brunell.
Part of the way President Obama plans to pay for his new round of spending is to eliminate the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts families making more than $250,000 per year which impacts a ton of family-owned, small businesses which are the backbone of our economy and nation, says Brunell.
Source: Don C. Brunell, “The National Debt: Do You Know How Much You Now Owe?” Olympia Business Watch/Association of Washington Businesses, February 7, 2010.
Editor’s Note: Instead of partisan debate over how we should be doing “it,” whatever the “it” may be, the only question that really matters is “should we be doing it?” If we can’t afford it, we shouldn’t be doing it. We cannot pay for the unfunded obligations we’re already committed to as a country. The centuries’ old truth is just as universal and ominous as ever: “The borrower is slave to the lender.” ~ Dan Blanchard
One of the most effective ways of making sure that 1) you’re able to accomplish your own agenda while 2) those around you are left scratching their heads is to use language that means one thing to the speaker and something entirely different to the rest of us. This is the timeless ploy of the power-mongers of history, who first charm their listeners with slick, often-eloquent, well-turned phrases that put the masses at ease and then, following their own definitions of their carefully chosen terminology, do something that is just the opposite, usually to the detriment of the people.
So, in an effort to help you better understand what is the meaning behind what is being said, let me offer the following primer in Remedial Liberal-Speak 101.
1) What they say: ”We’re going to put a freeze on spending”
What they really mean: “Well, we’re going to freeze spending after we increase it dramatically first. Then, we’re going to put a freeze on those areas that amount to a fraction of 1% of our budget. The largest and most costly budget items will continue to grow. And beyond our control.” The $25 billion per year in budget savings proposed amounts to less than two-tenths of a per cent of the total budget. Please.
2) What they say: ”We need to tighten our belts.”
What they really mean: ”YOU need to tighten YOUR belts. We’re planning to raise the US debt level by $1.9 trillion (the equivalent of the entire Gross National Product of France!) even as we speak.” (Passed 2.4.10–total budget deficit as of now: $14.3 trillion!)
3) What they say: “We have invited Republicans to the table to try to build consensus.”
What they really mean: ”If they would just passively cooperate, not analyze/criticize what we’re trying to do and quietly and dutifully go along with our statist agenda, we could have ‘consensus.’” The liberals way of “reaching out” is to announce what they’re going to do, before, during and after, no matter how much it costs.
4) What they say: ”They don’t like what we’re proposing for healthcare reform? So let’s see what they’ve got. They have nothing and have proposed no meaningful alternatives.”
What they mean: ”We don’t like the numerous, detailed plans that have been put forth that propose simpler, far more cost-effective ways of reducing the burden of health care for Americans. What we’re after is a total, unequivocal, government takeover of one of the largest industries that remain in the private sector and we will oppose any other cheaper, easier plan that interferes with that goal. Better still: We’ll just tell the American people that no real alternative has been put forth at all.’”
5) What they say: ”We’re making our first priority, the passing of a Jobs Bill.”
What they really mean: ”We are committed to our ideology that real solutions to America’s problems don’t come from the private sector, that there are no free market solutions. What we need is yet another government solution–a huge stimulus that we’re going to give an appealing name because, after all, who could oppose job creation??” Note: As Rand Paul has pointed out, the government cannot create jobs (unless they’re government jobs), only business can create real jobs. The government “creating jobs” is akin to taking water from the deep end of the pool and pouring into the shallow end. It’s still taking from those who are working and giving to those that are not.
So the next time you hear some establishment politician, whether Democrat or Republican, say something that sounds too good to be true, look beneath and behind the words. Our leaders’ true message is revealed in what they do, not what they say.
~~Dan Blanchard
I believe that one the biggest indicators of TRUE leadership is the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s OWN words, one’s own promises, one’s own decisions and actions. No one disputes that every sitting President inherits challenges that may have occurred on a prior President’s watch (and those decisions made at that time are THAT President’s responsibility.) But true leadership does not look to heap blame upon or deflect responsibility away from oneself and toward those who have not been sitting at your desk occupying YOUR role for over a year. At some point, in EVERYONE’s life, someone ELSE’s responsibility ends and yours begins!
The more one keeps singing the “It’s His/Her/Your/Their Fault” song, the more one necessarily implies his/her own apparent powerlessness over the very issue one keeps crooning about. This does not inspire confidence in such leadership, but a feeling of defeatism and resignation. When one makes bold decisions and takes action on an immense scale, especially involving hundreds of billions of dollars that you yourself authorized, one is necessarily tied to their implications, good or bad.
Americans would respect and, therefore, follow a leader who would humbly channel the spirit of Harry S. Truman and acknowledge, even reaffirm: “The buck stops here!” A better country does begin with “me.” Even when one is President. Especially when one is President.
–Dan Blanchard
The 9-12 Project