ThoughtRogue:  Considering America’s now rampant economic illiteracy and widespread ignorance of history and philosophy, I wonder whether we’re now past the tipping point and the American Dream is doomed?  You’ll notice that every policy decision that our beloved, alleged President makes is to further impoverish Americans – to make them wonderfully dependent, EQUALLY impoverished.

Two excellent books that lay a rock-solid foundation in economics is Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson, and Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.  Both explain economics to the layperson, without the use of formulas, with expert precision, allowing the reader to easily dissect for themselves the plethora of economic fallacies they are bombarded with daily.  These should be required reading of all students – not to mention of all politicians especially.

Turning the American economy around is really simple:

• Reduce the taxation monstrosity
• Reduce government spending even more
• Reduce onerous regulations and restrictions
• Reduce bloated, unconstitutional programs and bureaucracies
• Reduce the shackles on individual work and innovation

But, what has the Usurper-in-Chief accomplished and/or supported at every turn?

• Increased Taxes – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Gigantic Bailouts – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Increasing Federal Spending and Debt – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Repeal of Bush Tax Cuts – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• More Money and Power to Unions, Lobbyists, and Government – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The ‘Cap and Trade’ Energy Bill Boondoggle – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Support for an Ever-Increasing Minimum Wage – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The Mass Amnesty of Tens of Millions of Illegal Aliens – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The Takeover of the Medical and Insurance Industries – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The National Socialization of Banking, GM, Mortgages, Education.. – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.

Why Big Government Doesn’t Work

by DOCTOR ZERO, HotAir.com

A person living entirely on their own produces very little, beyond the bare minimum necessities of survival. He has no real “wealth” – no surplus production, to spend on discretionary endeavors. He has few real options in life, beyond daily survival. His moments of real choice come when he gets lucky. An exceptionally fortunate hunt might feed him for a few days, and give him some precious leisure time. Otherwise, he does what he must do, and rarely has time to think about what he could do. Some people enjoy living this way, but most do not.

The situation improves somewhat in a small, voluntary collective: a partnership with a trusted friend, or a small family living on its own. Their combined efforts produce more surplus food, and they can address the necessities of life with less individual effort. They may develop skills and talents that prove valuable to each other. Some people are content to live this way, with a small and isolated family that maintains very little contact with the rest of humanity – but, again, most are not.

When families begin cooperating with each other, production and wealth explode. Communities generate tremendous amounts of surplus production, and commerce allows people access to goods and services they could never produce themselves. The amount of time required to deal with personal survival dwindles away to virtually nothing. Doubtless the reader works hard at his or her job, but your job probably has very little to do with feeding or clothing yourself, or defending yourself from predators. Instead, you produce goods and services that would be unimaginable to a more primitive society – could you explain your job to someone from the tenth century A.D.? In exchange, you earn money, which you spend to purchase what you need – and, more importantly, what you want. Even the poorest member of an advanced society has options.

An advanced society requires a method for allocating its huge amount of surplus production, and meeting the basic needs of its members. There are two general mechanisms for doing this: commerce and government. Every society uses a mixture of these methods. Even the most totalitarian government has a black market, and even the most free-wheeling capitalist society will have a government. Attempts to artificially engineer a society without either commerce or government are doomed to failure, because they will form spontaneously, no matter how strictly they are forbidden.

Government and commerce don’t just co-exist in an uneasy truce. They need each other. Commerce, the free exchange of money for goods and services, produces wealth through choice. Remember the example of the man living alone: the poverty of his existence comes from his lack of choices. The value of money flows from the way it allows consumers to express their choices. For a simple illustration of this principle, compare a ten-dollar restaurant gift certificate to a ten-dollar bill. The ten dollar bill is more valuable than the gift certificate, because you have more choice in how to spend it. A government increases the wealth of its citizens by providing security – stable currency, secure borders, protection from criminals, respect for property rights, and legally enforceable contracts, to name a few of government’s duties. This has the effect of increasing the citizens’ wealth, by increasing the choices available to them. A ten-dollar bill has more value in a large, lawful city than on a tiny island where few goods are available, or a den of thieves where nothing can be bought with confidence.

Consider the example of the impoverished loner versus the citizen of a prosperous society again. The citizens’ money represents wealth, thanks to his many choices, but it represents something else of enormous value: extra time. The loner spends most of his waking hours staying alive, and seeing to his minimal needs. The wealthy citizen spends almost no time on these things – he uses it for economically productive work, self-improvement, and leisure. A ten-dollar bill will purchase you a shirt that you probably don’t know how to make yourself… and even if you had the knowledge, it would most likely take you longer to make the shirt than it takes you to earn ten dollars.

Government allocates wealth through top-down commands, imposed by force. There would be no need for massive tax and spending bills if everyone was freely choosing to spend their money the way the government wants them to. Capitalism has priorities, while government has imperatives. Capitalists fulfill their ambitions through competition, which increases the choices available to consumers. The ambitions of the working class lead them to work harder, and engage in increasingly valuable and productive labor, to earn a better living for themselves and their families. This system is not perfect – there will always be people who try hard but don’t get ahead, and people who don’t make a very productive contribution to society – but over the long run, and measured against a population of millions, free market commerce will tend to produce increased choices, improved technology, and greater value through competition.

Government fulfills its ambitions through compulsion, which reduces choice. Sometimes compulsion is necessary – you can’t fund national defense by passing around a collection plate. When government exceeds the minimal functions necessary to provide stability and security, and begins interfering in the economy for the benefit of certain constituencies, by definition it reduces the overall choices available to its citizens. It doesn’t matter if the government’s intentions are noble – every law it passes to redistribute wealth inevitably reduces wealth, because it reduces choice.

In an economy dominated by the government, the ruling class fulfills its ambitions by serving faithful constituencies at the expense of others. It tries to address its failures by increasing control, which reduces wealth even further, in a downward spiral. It’s not in the nature of government to abandon failed programs, because if government was intelligent and morally superior enough to assert control over a situation in the first place, it will not see the logic in surrendering that control to inferior free-willed citizens. Instead, it will redouble its efforts.

In this environment, the citizens can best fulfill their ambitions by joining favored constituencies if possible, and becoming adept at petitioning the government for greater benefits. This tends to be more successful than working hard, as there is little competition in a state-run economy for the most skilled and productive workers. There are always exceptions – people who give 100% effort out of compassion, personal drive, or a religious calling. There will be politicians who are truly selfless, and sincerely wish to act as wise stewards for the resources of society. Exceptional people cannot be relied upon to power a society of millions. In the long run, and projected over a vast population, the incentives of a government-dominated economy produce stagnation, and strife between warring groups of citizens, who can only gain more benefits at each others’ expense.

That is why Big Government never works. It can’t address conflicting priorities efficiently. The ambitions of its masters are best served by catering to the demands of small, energetic groups, or big corporations who wish to compromise its rightful duty to ensure free trade. Its citizens are not rewarded for exceptional effort, or taking great risks. Worst of all, every single action it takes destroys the very wealth needed to improve the lives of its citizens. Big Government pounds on every problem with a hammer that crumbles in its hands.

Obama’s Dissolving Credibility

By Robert Tracinski, RCP

Experience: ACORN. Any Questions?

We had our warning during the campaign, we really did.

Remember Barack Obama’s famous speech on race, back in March of 2008? Obama had spent 20 years listening to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright, full of venomous anti-Americanism and attacks on “white America.” Yet when the reverend’s rants were revealed to the public, Obama tried to convince us that he just happened to be missing from the pews on any well-documented Sunday, and that the Jeremiah Wright we saw and heard was not the Jeremiah Wright he knew.

It was a giant, implausible lie. Yet the speech was smoothly delivered and well-turned, perfectly balanced to seem to empathize both with the grievances of blacks and with the concerns of whites. So most people seemed to believe it.

This is what Obama’s supposed gift for rhetoric amounts to: the ability to tell a smoothly polished bald-faced lie.

And that was the whole essence of Obama’s big health-care speech. It was a pack of lies from beginning to end, and if we’re going to finally see through this flim-flam artist once and for all-as more and more people are beginning to do-then we had better identify them one at a time.

I’ll skip the lies by omission-his only mention of town hall meetings, for example, was of people who “shared their stories with us” because they are “counting on us to succeed” in passing a health-care bill. Yeah, that’s what happened at town hall meetings last month!

And I’ll skip the non-health-care lies, like Obama’s claim that he merely inherited giant deficits-when his first big legislative campaign was for three quarters of a trillion dollars in new deficit spending. Or his claim that the economic crisis was brought back from the brink “thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January.” (Does anybody remember that day in February when the Dow dropped 300 points because Obama’s Treasury Secretary gave a speech in which he failed to outline any details of his latest plan? Bold and decisive indeed.) Or Obama’s claim that Ted Kennedy was not an advocate of big government.

For now, let’s just stick to the speech’s seven big lies.

1) Obama’s proposal is just minor, incremental tinkering.

The key to Obama’s speeches is that he counts on you not to be listening carefully and not to compare what he says from one moment to the next. So while he vows to be the “final” president to reform health-care-indicating that his approach is a sweeping, once-and-for-all overhaul, he then goes on to tell you that everyone else is a radical, but he’s just in favor of cautious, incremental tinkering.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months.

Does it take a thousand pages of legislation to not “disrupt one-sixth of our economy”? The reality is that the proposals he advocates would create a vast new bureaucracy from scratch, with sweeping powers to regulate private health-insurance plans-eventually including employer-provided plans-and forcing individual health-insurance plans to be offered on a government-controlled “exchange.” It is a plan for the comprehensive restructuring of the health-insurance industry-but Obama wants you to think that he’s not really doing anything. Which makes you realize that he doesn’t want to you notice or think too hard about what he is doing.

2) Obama’s plan is bipartisan.

This is another attempt to deflect scrutiny by claiming that everything he is proposing is safe, bland, anodyne. Thus, his plan “incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight-Democrats and Republicans.” Which explains why Obama has so few Republican votes that his allies in Congress are now talking about ramming the bill through, in a dubious parliamentary maneuver, on Democratic votes alone.

Obama’s one token concession to Republicans gives you a flavor for his actual “bipartisanship.” Citing Republican arguments that curbing excessive medical malpractice awards would help reduce “defensive medicine,” i.e., extra tests ordered to avoid a lawsuit, the president offered to authorize “demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues”-an ineffectual, symbolic measure the Bush administration tinkered with because it couldn’t get Congress to pass real tort reform.

3) You can keep your existing insurance.

This is the central claim of Obama’s speech: “First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” Notice that this is already a minor change from his previous statements on this issue, in which he made the same assurance for all “private health insurance plans.” The change acknowledges the fact that individual plans would be swept into the government “exchange.”

But notice that, while claiming he won’t change your existing coverage, Obama goes on to detail a whole set of changes to that coverage that will be mandated by government:

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition…. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses…. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care.

And notice what each of these regulations would do: it would increase costs for private health-insurance companies. They would have to pay more to cover people with pre-existing conditions; more for people who go over their yearly or lifetime caps, more to make up for the limits on your out-of-pocket expenses, and more for routine checkups. Oh yes, and later on, Obama explains that his bill will be paid for by increased taxes on drug companies and insurance companies.

There is no way to increase all of these costs for the insurers without causing a corresponding increase in health-insurance premiums.

So you can keep your health-insurance-except that its cost will be driven up by all of the regulations imposed by Obama’s bill. This is a well-documented phenomenon. In fact, the states in which health-insurance is most expensive-places like New York-are those which have the greatest number of “mandates” dictating benefits that insurers have to provide.

That’s why most of us grasp that the “public option” is not really an option, in the long run. Obama’s bill is designed to drive up the costs of private insurance, making it even more unaffordable-and thereby herding all of us into a government-managed insurance plan as the only remaining alternative.

And that brings us to the next implausibility in the speech.

4) The “public option” will not be subsidized by government.

President Obama would have us believe that a government-run insurance company would be less expensive than private insurance because it avoids “some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs, and executive salaries.” Does anyone actually believe this? Obama himself acknowledges that the “public option” leads to less efficiency when it comes to delivering mail. Why should we believe the government is suddenly going to become a model of efficiency in the health-insurance market?

It is obvious what is actually going to happen. Since the whole purpose of the “public option” is to provide a cheaper competitor against private insurance, the government will do whatever is required to ensure that this is the case-including subsidizing the public option.

After all, weren’t Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supposed to be self-supporting enterprises, too? Why should “affordable health-care” end up any differently than “affordable housing”?

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Yet Another Washington Flop in the Making

Obamacare will be one of many federal failures.

By Deroy Murdock, National Review Online

Don't Tread on US!

As the health-care reform debate roars on, Uncle Sam resembles a restless college senior who is flunking economics, finance, and management. Despite a report card full of Fs, he suddenly announces: “I want to go to medical school!”

Similarly, Pres. Barack Obama stood before a joint session of Congress Wednesday night and re-embraced a government option for health insurance. As he explained, “Sometimes government has to step in to help deliver” on the promise that “hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play.”

Alas, too often when Washington steps in, failing grades follow.

• Medicare, the Great Society’s shining jewel, is a battered gem. Its hospitals program already bleeds ruby-red ink. “Medicare Part A again will spend more in benefits than it receives in revenues” this fiscal year, observes Heritage Foundation analyst Bob Moffitt. Its Trust Fund is an accounting fiction, but even that fantasy disappears in eight years, with depletion in 2017. Even worse, Heritage’s Brian Riedl calculates that between 2009 and 2083 Medicare’s budget will zoom from 3.1 percent to 14.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Its unfunded liabilities (promises backed by campaign balloons instead of cash) equal $36.3 trillion.
• Social Security, the New Deal’s cornerstone, is as cutting edge as a 78 RPM record. In 2016, barely six years away, it will begin paying more in pension checks than it collects in payroll taxes. Congress then will be unable to use Social Security’s surplus like a ShamWow to absorb red ink. Social Security’s unfunded obligations equal $17.5 trillion — again not financed by anything but congressional speeches.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: These two government options in the home-mortgage arena are widely considered the twin jet engines that flew the economy into a hillside. These were supposed to be money-making, quasi-private companies, with no federal involvement beyond an implicit guarantee that government would cover their losses. Emboldened by this cozy federal safety net, these enterprises embarked upon financial acrobatics they otherwise might have avoided. Rather than generate profits between 2009 and 2019, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, Fannie and Freddie will cost taxpayers $389 billion.
• The Hope for Homeowners program began last October 1. Congress gave it a hefty $300 billion to help some 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. According to an August 10 Newsday editorial, “It has produced exactly one refinanced loan.” One down, 399,999 to go.
• “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?” Obama asked in August. “It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Yes, indeed. Its two-year fiscal deficit approaches $8 billion. It has pried some 60,000 mailboxes off of America’s streets, the Lexington Institute reports. It also is weighing the cancellation of Saturday services. Even as e-mail, digitally attached documents, and online banking decrease demand for first-class snail mail, the Post Office keeps hiking the cost of stamps. What sort of business actually raises prices while customers walk away?
• The Internal Revenue Code is like John Donne’s poetry: It means something different to everyone. Perhaps flummoxed by its 67,000 pages, even IRS advisers offer conflicting answers to identical questions. But today’s U.S. Tax Code will be a triumph of window-like clarity compared with the U.S. Health Code that Obamacare would trigger. Just wait until every medical lobby — from the American Stethoscope Council to the National Tongue Depressor League — hikes up Capitol Hill to demand exemptions, loopholes, and subsidies.
• Although Washington already owns 54 percent of the square mileage west of the Rockies, it obsessively purchases new acreage. More than on private property, land-use restrictions on federal soil often prevent thinning of foliage. Flames frequently follow.

“Most western wildfires burn federal land,” William Welch wrote in September 9’s USA Today. To date this year, 123,554 private acres burned in California, versus 271,000 federal acres.

Rather than inaugurate a frivolous, bottomless government option for health care, Washington should launch a “private option” for nearly every federal activity outside the Pentagon.

ThoughtRogue:  This Marine is perfectly on target when he points out that the U.S. Constitution is a political COMPACT, a voluntary agreement among the States (and their Peoples) – which is utterly being VIOLATED daily in Washington.  As we know from natural law, when one party regularly abuses another party, breaking the contract (or compact, which is even less binding) it is the abused party’s absolute RIGHT, or obligation to negate that contract, declare it null and void and to walk away in peace (and/or to seek redress as they see fit).

It is beyond me why certain States, Texas in particular, have not exercised their natural Right to secede from their voluntary adherence to the now-shredded remains of the U.S. Constitution, and exercise their innate, inalienable State sovereignty to form a new government, perhaps a confederation among other States who share her great values – a government to which their Peoples give their new Consent.  Just as our Founding Fathers declared and conferred to us our sacred rights after their bloody procurement of our freedoms and liberty from a despotic tyranny – before we surrender ourselves fully to the out-of-control masters of tyranny now exploding in Washington, D.C. – WE MUST NOW DO THE SAME for OUR Posterity.

Fellow Citizens, Patriots, RECLAIM your liberties before they are lost forever.  Texans, demand that your State government recall your delegation from the ultra-corrupt federal center of tyranny.  Assert your God-given sovereignty to govern yourselves as the People wish.  We, the People, are the ONLY ones who will throw OFF this massive tyranny!

ThoughtRogue:   Welcome to the era of  HypenChains!!   Get it?   Well, you’re sure gonna…

Folks, wake up your friends and relatives before it’s too late.

The Following is Pre-Election:

The following is Post-Election!

More Info at Trends Research

Elliott Wave has been predicting a Depression and Trends Research is confirming that!  You can listen to an interview I had with a rep from the Elliott Wave.  Click on the Microphone in the sidebar!

Birther /börthör/ n.  1. A person who exhibits the audacity to read the U.S. Constitution, and then demands that his/her government actually obeys it.  2. A derogatory term developed and used by Leftists and Neo-Cons in a lame attempt to marginalize those who harbor the silly notions that Truth matters, and that Republics perish who refuse to uphold the Rule of Law.

Read It. Demand Compliance.

TR:  The United States of America is NOT a Democracy.  It is, and always has been, a voluntary confederation of 50 free and independent REPUBLICS.  The States formed the federal government as its agent, by delegating a small, limited, enumerated amount of authority to it.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Washington, because is it completely out of control and we have yet to stop it, now believes it rules supreme an American Empire, where the States have somehow been demoted to mere Provinces who must obey the Emperor.  Nothing could be further from the truth – it is exactly the other way around.  ALL sovereignty lies with the separate and independent States which authorize a federal government only by the voluntary CONSENT of their respective Peoples.

Reclaim your individual Liberty before it has been completely coerced into submission!

Jefferson Paine:  We “Birther” fringers just want a simple answer to a simple question.  We want the Truth:  Where’s Barack Hussein Obama II’s proof that he meets the requirements of the U.S. Constitution? – namely, that he is a “Natural Born Citizen” of the United States.  Still waiting…   Just when will we get the truth?

The burden of proof has always been, and remains, upon the current Usurper, BHO II.  It is absurd to ask someone to prove that he isn’t a Natural Born Citizen since proving a negative is always an impossibility.  This is not rocket science – so why does BHO II continue to employ an army of lawyers to hide and seal any and all documentation as to who this occupant of our White House actually IS??  Ask yourself, WHY this is?

In order for Mr. Obama to be Constitutionally eligible to serve as our President, he must prove that he is (a) currently a Citizen of the U.S., and (b) was born on U.S. soil to parents who were both U.S. Citizens.  Pursuant to requisite (a), he claims he was born in Hawaii, although NO ONE can verify it.  If he wasn’t born in HI, then Game Over.  IF he ever proves HI as his birthplace, then he’s not close to being done here.  When he became an Indonesian citizen, did he ever re-naturalize in the U.S. upon or after his return?  No One knows.  Secondly, he must also pass requisite (b) his mother was presumably a U.S. Citizen upon BHO II’s birth, although because of her age and shotgun wedding, it is unclear whether she could confer full citizenship to her son because there is no documentation to prove one way or the other on any of this.  And, lastly, Obama’s father BHO I, was a Kenyan national who also retained British colonial citizenship – which, for purposes of BHOII being a “Natural Born Citizen” – it’s GAME OVER.  Sorry folks – he’s an Usurper of the Presidency of the U.S.  Unless he can prove otherwise.. (but it will require him renouncing his own father’s identity per The One’s audacious autobiography..)

Where’s The Evidence?

by Joseph Farah, Worldnetdaily Exclusive Commentary

The Distinct Scent of Secession is in the Air.

The cacophony is growing.

There is a din of media outrage being expressed.

Pundits and talking heads are losing their heads – not to mention their cool.

Over what?

It’s not health care.

It’s not cap and trade.

It’s not even whether Barack Obama thinks black people are always right and cops are always wrong.

It’s whether the man sitting in the White House for the last six months is constitutionally eligible.

About three months ago, some of you will remember, I set out to make this happen. I launched a billboard campaign with just this goal in mind – raising the visibility of the story, which had been all but forgotten because of the bailouts, the stimulus packages and the government grab for power under the new regime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Utopia vs. Freedom

ThoughtRogue:  And by “Utopia”, it means fascism - the totalitarianism of Hopenchange is at our Gate.  Do Not concede.  We, the People, will not cower from the constant leftist lies.  Press on, wielding the sword of Truth!  Live Free, or you’re already Dead.

by Thomas Sowell

Obamunism Kills

‘Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether “change,” “universal health care,” or “social justice.”

If we can be so easily stampeded by rhetoric that neither the public nor Congress bothers to read (much less analyze) bills that make massive changes in medical care, then do not be surprised when life-and-death decisions about you or your family are taken out of your hands — and out of the hands of your doctor — and transferred to bureaucrats in Washington.

Let’s go back to square one. The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to “solve” our “problem.”

If we are, then there will be a never ending series of “solutions,” each causing new problems calling for still more “solutions.” That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of taxpayers money and — more important — ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.

Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom. This has been recognized for centuries by some, but many others have not yet faced that reality, even today. If you think government should “do something” about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don’t have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom.

Read the rest of this entry »

TR:  Like the proverbial frog in the pot, overcome by the ever-increasingly hot water, ARE WE EVER GOING TO JUMP OUT?  Or, are we now paralyzed, and will rest our fading hopes upon some miraculaous force turning down the Socialist heat??  WAKE UP – Do Something to save your country!

Socialist America Sinking

By Patrick Buchanan, WorldNetDaily Commentary

A new American Revolution is brewing. Secession is a peaceful, Natural Right of the Free and Independent States.

After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published “The People’s Pottage.” A year later, in 1954, he died. “The People’s Pottage” opens thus:

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.

Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When “Silent Cal” Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.

And today? Obama’s first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.

Tell Congress to stop spending America into the ground! Sign the WND petition demanding lawmakers stop the bailouts, stimulus bills and march toward socialism and national destruction.

The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.

Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and “sin taxes” on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.

Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi’s House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.

Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.

The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?

While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.

Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.

Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.

Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.

As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.

All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – “for ourselves and our posterity.”

China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that’s swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.

“The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event,” writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR’s Foreign Affairs magazine. “Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious.”

Even the establishment is starting to get the message.

ThoughtRogue:  Folks, take a look at the unbelievably sobering graphs below (courtesy of The Wall Street Journal).  Note the following: (1) Obama’s deficit is larger than Bush’s largest by a factor of FOUR – and the Usurper still attempts to shift the blame to others, especially Bush. (2) For the first time EVER, the federal deficit exceeds $1,000,000,000,000.00 (that’s 1 $Trillion in overspending) – and the fiscal year is far from complete. (3) The federal “revenues” have significantly SHRUNK in comparison to last year’s – that’s because business profits are disappearing along with tens of millions of tax-paying jobs. (4) The insatiable federal spending, bars on the right, are displayed on the same scale – and include all the bailout schemes to date.

WARNING:  These audacious, skyrocketing federal deficits do not yet include: (1) The “Cap and Trade” massive tax scheme (largest in American history if it passes the Senate). (2) The Socialized Medicine extravaganza – destroying our superior private health care system, in favor of the rationed ObamaCare “Universal” health care scheme. (3) “Immigration Reform” – aka The Mother of all Amnesty schemes.  And now, Congress is even contemplating another colossal “stimulus” pork-laden spending scheme.

Also, likely to compound this Obama Nirvana, (1) another stock market crash in the next few months. (2) a crisis in commercial real estate. (3) a continually collapsing value of our Dollar, and (4) a debilitating rate of inflation when our economy finally does become able to recover.

Ah, the wonders of Hopenchange!!  Perhaps we should have elected someone who is actually Constitutionally eligible (not to mention competent) for POTUS instead?

Economic Nirvana