Did someone Say "Un-biased???"

by David Barton of www.wallbuilders.com

America’s first Tea Party in 1773 was not an act of wanton lawlessness but rather a deliberate protest against heavy-handed government and excessive taxation. Its leaders took great care to ensure that nothing but tea was thrown overboard – no other items were damaged. The “Indians” even swept the decks of the ships before they left.

Tea Parties occurred not only in Boston but also in numerous other locales. And those who participated were just ordinary citizens expressing their frustration over a government that had refused to listen to them for almost a decade. Their reasonable requests had fallen on deaf ears. Of course, the out-of-touch British claimed that the Tea Parties were lawless and violent, but such was not the case.

Interestingly, in many ways, today’s Tea Parties parallel those of long ago. But rather than protesting a tax on tea, today they are protesting dozens of taxes represented by what they call the Porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009 (officially called the “American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act”). For Tea Party members (and for most Americans), that act and the way it was passed epitomizes a broken system whose arrogant leaders often scorn the concerns of the citizens they purport to represent.

Tea Party folks agree with the economic logic of our Founders.

• “To contract new debts is not the way to pay off old ones.” “Avoid occasions of expense…and avoid likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions…to discharge the debts.” George Washington
• “Nothing can more [affect] national credit and prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to…extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possible the incurring of any new debt.” Alexander Hamilton
• “The maxim of buying nothing but what we have money in our pockets to pay for lays the broadest foundation for happiness.” “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Thomas Jefferson

These are not radical positions – nor are the others set forth in the Tea Party platform – that Congress should: (1) provide the constitutional basis for the bills it passes; (2) reduce intrusive government regulations; (3) balance the budget; (4) limit the increase of government spending to the rate of population growth; (5) and eliminate earmarks unless approved by 2/3rds of Congress. Are these positions dangerous or extreme? Certainly not. In fact, polling shows that while Americans differ on the way they view the Tea Parties, they support these Tea Party goals by a margin of two-to-one.

Citizens are angry about the current direction of government. As John Zubly, a member of the Continental Congress in 1775, reminded the British: “My Lord, the Americans are no idiots, and they appear determined not to be slaves. Oppression will make wise men mad.” But does that anger automatically equate to violence? Of course not. It does equate to action, however; but instead of throwing tea overboard, modern Tea Parties are throwing out-of-touch politicians from both parties overboard.

The Tea Parties represent much of what is right in America – citizens reacquainting themselves with the Constitution and holding their elected officials accountable to its standards. Two centuries ago, Daniel Webster could have been talking to today’s Tea Party rallies when he said: “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution!”

It may be that the last people in America who believe that the $862 billion economic stimulus of February 2009 created millions of net new jobs are Vice President Joe Biden and the staff economists in the White House.  Yesterday, President Obama’s chief economist announced that the plan had “created or saved” between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs and raised gross domestic product (GDP) by 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent through June 30. 

Christina Romer went so far as to claim that the 3.5 million new jobs that she promised while the stimulus was being debated in Congress will arrive “two quarters earlier than anticipated.”  The official White House line is that the plan is working better than even they had hoped. 

However: 

• Since February 2009 the U.S. economy has lost a net 2.35 million jobs.
• Using the White House “created or saved” measure means that even if there were only three million Americans left with jobs today, the White House could claim that everyone was saved by the stimulus, says the Wall Street Journal.  

The White House also naturally insists that things would be much worse without the stimulus billions spent on the likes of Medicaid payments, high speed rail projects, unemployment benefits and windmills.  President Obama said recently in Racine, Wisconsin, that the economy “would have been a lot worse” and the unemployment rate would have gone to “12 or 13, or 15 [percent]” if government hadn’t spent all of that money. 

This is called a counterfactual: a what would have happened scenario that can’t be refuted.  What we do know is what White House economists at the time said would happen if the stimulus didn’t pass, says the Journal: 

• They said the unemployment rate would peak at 9 percent without the stimulus (there’s your counterfactual) and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8 percent or below.
• In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all.  

If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like, asks the Journal? 

Source: Editorial, “Three Million Imaginary Jobs,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2010. 

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703394204575367421573463984.html

“What you learn about America is people are a lot less interested in race than they are in character.”  Jackson believes that empowerment comes when you know who you are and what you stand for.

About: We are now just over three weeks away and counting for what promises to be the greatest grassroots gathering that the Commonwealth of Kentucky has ever seen. Buses are being chartered already from both the Louisville and Cincinnati areas. The collaboration across organizations has been what you might expect from like-minded “We the People” types: smooth, eager and focused on educating, motivating and mobilizing conservative Kentuckians to have a powerful voice in determing the direction of America. We’ll converge on the epicenter of the political landscape in KY: The “Great Lawn” at the Capitol, in Frankfort, from 5pm-8pm. In the heart of of summer, we’ll have ample cold water available at a nominal cost. But do bring your own lawn chair!

Speakers: This is not a “candidate’s forum,” though your conservative candidates for both the US Senate and US Congress are slated to speak. We DO  want you to get to know them better and help them take your concerns to Washington to help move our federal government toward the Constitution. This is instead a celebration of FREEDOM and those ingredients that made America great and can restore her to greatness once again. To that end, a number of grassroots speakers have been invited and will speak on topics such as Immigration Reform, Healthcare, Education, Energy Independence, Terrorism, the Founders and the Constitution itself. Those confirmed to speak (to date) include:

KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND SPECIAL GUEST: KEVIN JACKSON

Leland Conway of Lexington’s AM 630, WLAP
Kent Masterson Brown, Attorney & Historian
Brian Goettl, of Conservative Edge
Jerry Stephenson, of the KY Education Restoration Alliance 
Bobby Alexander, Sgt. Major (Ret), Central Kentucky Tea Party Patriots (invited)
Dan Blanchard, President, Louisville Tea Party
Jim Waters, of the Bluegrass Institute
Joyce Mucci, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
Dr. Rand Paul, Conservative Candidate for US Senate
Andy Barr, Conservative Candidate for US Congress, 6th District
Todd Lally, Conservative Candidate for US Congress, 3rd District

Music: What would a decent celebration of freedom be without music? There will be plenty of it, patriotic, pop and inspirational. Those bands invited to take the Freedom Festival stage are:

~Louisville-based acappella vocal band, Water’s Edge (www.watersedgevocals.org )
~Lexington’s Mike Huff (will perform “God Bless the USA”)
~Louisville’s own “The Over-Reactors” (www.over-reactors.com)
~Nationally-known Patriotic duo, “Rivoli Revue” (www.rivolirevue.com )

Booth Space: If you wish to have a booth on July 10th please contact Wendy Caswell today at eleganceshoestring@yahoo.com They are a mere $50, paid in advance. Please note that the $50 must be paid in advance. Your booth registration will not be reserved until after the $50 fee is received. The booth placement is on a first come, first served basis so please act soon. (And this is for booth SPACE. Each group’s table and set-up is their own responsibility.) Don’t miss this opportunity to have your group, business, or organization represented at what is quickly shaping up to be the biggest rally of WE THE PEOPLE Kentucky has seen thus far…

A human-rights group is calling on Americans – especially family and friends of loved ones who were lost when Muslim terrorists murdered 2,751 people in the name of Allah on Sept. 11, 2001 – to fight construction of a 13-story Islamic mosque to be built just steps from Ground Zero.

The five-story building at Park Place, just blocks north of the former World Trade Center site, was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory. That was, until a plane’s landing-gear assembly crashed through the roof on the day 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked the airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Now Muslim worshippers currently occupy the building, and they plan to turn it into a major Islamic cultural center called the Cordoba House.

The group Stop Islamization of America, or SIOA, led by Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs blogger and columnist, (hosted) a “No 9/11 Mosque” rally at Ground Zero June 6 at noon to protest the construction.

“What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack?” asked Geller, executive director of SIOA. “Any decent, American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn’t dream of such an insult. It’s a stab in eye of America.”

Just Before Impact: May We Never Forget

“I have long maintained that the Congress – not the unelected EPA – must decide major economic and energy policy. EPA regulation will have an enormous impact on the economic security of West Virginia and our energy future.

I intend to vote for Senator Murkowski’s Resolution of Disapproval because I believe we must send a strong message that the fate of West Virginia’s economy, our manufacturing industries, and our workers should not be solely in the hands of EPA.”

Thursday’s vote is not about climate science, or the auto emissions standards (which can stand on the CAFE law without EPA’s help), a “Dirty Air Act” (greenhouse gases are not the sort of air pollution that can be seen or smelled or felt, so they don’t “dirty” the air as anyone would reasonably understand the term), or bailing anyone out.

The vote is fundamentally about one thing: who decides our economic future?

In our Constitutional Republic, the Congress of the United States is the legitimate legislative branch of government, charged with making the laws. A decision to adopt any national global warming program is an enormous one, with hundreds of billions of dollars and personal liberties at stake. This is simply not something that ought to be done through the backdoor via an unelected, unaccountable agency like the EPA.

Today it will be in the Senate’s hands to vote on whether they will stand up for themselves as an institution. Will they decide to take control of the country’s economic future by voting YES on SJ Res 26? Will they put the question of whether the country should adopt a global warming program, potentially what it should look like, in Congress, where it belongs?

Any senator who votes NO will be voting to look the other way, to outsource legislative responsibility to the EPA, and allow that agency to run roughshod over the U.S. economy. They will do so at their own electoral peril.

There is still time to let your senators know how you feel about this vote…

(Editor’s Note:  The preceding is via the 9-12 Project).

Canada was called an “honorary member of the Third World” by the Wall Street Journal in 1995, and for good reason.  Out-of-control spending, soaring debt and the government’s bite of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growing at a furious pace prompted the Journal’s harsh putdown.  Sound familiar?  Those are exactly the trends that endanger America’s economy and standard of living today, says Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard. 

Only with Canada, there’s a difference.  Beginning in the mid-1990s, Canadians came to grips with their fiscal crisis: 

• They cut spending at both the national and provincial (state) level, reduced the size and payroll of government, slashed debt, and produced what Paul Martin, then finance minister and later prime minister, called smaller, smarter government.
• Canada is now in a far better economic situation than the United States — its unemployment rate is lower, its budget deficit breathtakingly smaller (after nearly a decade of balanced budgets), its debt burden far lighter, its banks more stable.
• The Canadian dollar, once worth as little as 62 cents, is currently nearly at parity with the American dollar. 

One lesson from Canada is that major fiscal reform requires bipartisanship, with the initiative better coming from liberals than conservatives.  It was the left-of-center Liberal party, facing what David Frum, a Canadian and prominent political commentator who lives in Washington described as “nightmarish debt and deficits,” that led the way with an austere budget in 1995.  Conservatives, divided at the time, were supportive. 

There is a simple explanation for the need for liberal leadership.  If conservatives propose to cut spending and downsize government, reflexive liberal opposition can be expected.   However, if liberals advocate a similar approach, they’re likely to be supported by many of their liberal allies and by almost all conservatives. 

At least it worked that way in Canada, with impressive results.  In Washington, however, the liberals in charge — that is, President Obama and Democrats in Congress — are moving in the opposite direction.   Rather than retrench, they want to spend and borrow more, says Barnes.   

Source: Fred Barnes, “O Canada,” Weekly Standard, June 7, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/o-canada