Entries Tagged 'National Politics' ↓

History repeats itself. Given our unsustainable national debt – nearing $17 trillion and climbing – America is dying. We bicker over entitlement spoils as we pile up trillion-dollar deficits. Government is our daddy. Enforced equality rather than liberty is the new mantra.

In 1970, the average annual income was $9,350 per year, the average home cost $23,400, a gallon of gas cost 36 cents and the average car cost $3,900.

In 2012 the average median income is $50,964, the average home costs $146,000, gas averages $3.43 a gallon and the average car now costs $30,303.

Incomes went up 545 percent but the average home went up 623 percent. Gasoline went up 953 percent, and the average car went up 777 percent.  Median income peaked in 1999 at $54,932.

Inflation outpaces income, by a huge margin. It’s why it seems like you work harder and harder and have less. It’s also why it seems like previous generations made less and had more. It’s true. Why? Inflation wasn’t as great then as it is now. And it’s going to get even worse.

Our government’s redistribution of shrinking wealth at the expense of the private sector is more destructive than even it’s most deadly enemy.

23 million Americans have no job. 46 million are living on food stamps. Our national debt is obscene. The U.S. government has lost its triple-A credit rating… and we are approaching a “fiscal cliff” in which hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts will strike another blow to our wounded economy.
America is getting older and is entering a state of decline. Political analysts see the nation bifurcating along “makers” and “takers” lines and like it or not, every man, woman, and child in the country is represented by an interest group. And the proliferation of interest groups eventually spells doom for the societies they inhabit.

What is an “interest group”? James Madison, said it best with his definition of “faction” in Federalist 10, as comprising “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” .
First, America’s mammoth federal government constitutes an interest group itself, which means it does all the things other public and private groups do to protect itself. Second, about half of the population receives some form of aid from the federal government, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Dependence on Government, and these recipients constitute perhaps the most behemoth group of them all. Third, close to one-half of the entire population does not pay federal-income taxes, a figure that climbed from 12 percent in 1969 to 34.1 percent at the beginning of the Bush administration to its current figure as President Obama starts his second term.
To recap, special interest groups within a society have little or no incentive to make any significant sacrifices in the interest of the society in which they exist. There is no constraint on the social cost such an organization will find it expedient to impose on the society in the course of obtaining a larger share of the social output for itself. This means nothing less than it says: a group will kill its host before relinquishing even a modicum of benefits for itself.
Hostess Brands, Inc., forced by a Bakers Union strike to shut down all operations and sell all company assets puting 18,500 out of work, is an excellent example. “Unfortunately, the company’s operating and financial problems were so severe that it required steep concessions from a variety of stakeholders but not all stakeholders were willing to be constructive,” said Ken Hall, the Teamsters’ Secretary-Treasurer. So much for our naïve notions about how interest groups proclaim to represent some greater good.

Taken from many sources and I apologize for lack of attribution.

Solyndra* – Received $535 million DOE loan and $25.1 million in California tax credit. Bankrupt: September 2011
Abound Solar* – Received part of a $60 million grant under the Bush administration, and was awarded a $400 million loan under Obama in December of 2010. Abound was awarded a $9.2-million loan from the Export-Import Bank in July 2011. Bankrupt: June 2012
Beacon Power* – Received more than $25 million in DOE grants and a DOE loan for $43 million. Bankrupt: October 2011
AES Eastern Energy/Energy Storage* – Received $17.1 million DOE conditional commitment on August 2, 2010. Bankrupt: December 31, 2011.
Amonix – Received $6 million in federal tax credits a $15.6 million grant from the DOE for research and development. Bankrupt: July 18, 2012.
Azure Dynamics* – Received millions in stimulus funds and over $1.7 million in Michigan state tax credits. Bankrupt: March 27, 2012
Babcock & Brown* – Received $178 million in the largest federal (1603) stimulus wind grant in December 2009. Placed into voluntary liquidation: March 13, 2009.
Energy Conversion Devices Inc./Uni-Solar – Received a $13.3 million Stimulus tax credit. Bankrupt: February 2011.
Ener1* – Received a $118.5 million DOE Stimulus grant. Bankrupt: January 26, 2011.
Evergreen Solar, Inc.* – Received Stimulus funds, grants, tax-credits, low-interest loans and subsidies. Bankrupt: August 15, 2011
Konarka Technologies Inc. – Received $20 million in grants from government agencies such as the DOE and the Pentagon. Bankrupt: June 4, 2012.
Raser Technologies – Received $33 million Treasury Department Stimulus grant. Bankrupt: May 2, 2011.
SpectraWatt* – Received $500,000 grant from the Renewable Energy Lab via the Stimulus. Bankrupt: August 23, 2011
Stirling Energy Systems – Received $7 million from a federal renewable-energy grant and was eligible for nearly $10.5 million in manufacturing tax credits. Bankrupt: September 28, 2011.
Thompson River Power LLC – Received $6.5 million in Stimulus funds from Section 1603. Bankrupt: July 2, 2012.

The Rich Don’t Pay Enough?
If you listen to America’s political hacks, mainstream media talking heads and their socialist allies, you can’t help but reach the conclusion that the nation’s tax burden is borne by the poor and middleclass while the rich get off scot-free.

Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, and I’m proud to say former GMU economics student, wrote “The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays?” in the Manhattan Institute’s Issue 2012 (8/12). Let’s see whether the rich are paying their “fair” share.

According to IRS 2007 data, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 22 percent of national personal income but paid 40 percent of all personal income taxes. The top 5 percent earned 37 percent and paid 61 percent of personal income tax. The top 10 percent earned 48 percent and paid 71 percent of all personal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earned 12 percent of personal income but paid just 3 percent of income tax revenues.

Some argue that these observations are misleading because there are other federal taxes the bottom 50 percenters pay such as Social Security and excise taxes. Moore presents data from the Tax Policy Center, run by the liberal Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, that takes into account payroll and income taxes paid by different income groups. Because of the earned income tax credit, most of America’s poor pay little or nothing. What the Tax Policy Center calls working class pay 3 percent of all federal taxes, middle class 11 percent, upper middle class 19 percent and wealthy 67 percent.

President Obama and the Democratic Party harp about tax fairness. Here’s my fairness question to you: What standard of fairness dictates that the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of the federal income tax burden while 47 percent of Americans pay absolutely nothing?

At the Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton told America that his solution to joblessness and budget deficits was one word — arithmetic. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s take a look at Barack Obama’s record these last four years — I think you’ll agree the numbers just don’t add up:

• 23 million Americans are out of work, have stopped looking for work, or are underemployed
• $16 trillion national debt (that’s $50,000 for every American)
• 43 straight months of 8% or higher unemployment
• 4 straight trillion dollar budget deficits in a row — more than any other president combined

Ultimately, it’s simple arithmetic — the policies of Barack Obama just don’t add up to the kind of future America deserves.

H.R. 2720 prohibits the government from interfering in the content of funeral services for veterans.

US Rep. Culberson originally filed H.R. 2720 in response to violations of religious liberty that occurred at the Houston National Cemetery in 2011, where a government official banned all references to God at military funerals, prohibited condolence cards with the words “God Bless You,” and even closed the chapel to the public.

To stop this unlawful and shameful religious discrimination against veterans and their families, Liberty Institute filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.  After months of litigation, Liberty Institute won that case.

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings.
The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
– Winston Churchill
“The problem with socialism is that at some point you run out of other people’s money.”
– Margaret Thatcher
“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
– Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“A government big enough to give you everything you want,
is strong enough to take from you everything you have.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
– Thomas Jefferson

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Republicans are asking the middle class to “pay the price for the fiscal irresponsibility” of the Bush Administration, “where much was spent and little was paid for,” Tuesday, on Capitol Hill.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, in less than four years since President Barack Obama took office, the debt of the federal government has increased by more than $5 trillion ($5,027,761,476,484.56).
Under two full terms of President George W. Bush — 8 years — however, the federal debt increased by $4.8 trillion ($4,899,100,310,608.44).
The $5 trillion additional debt added during President Obama’s 39 months in office is more than the federal government accumulated in the first 219 years of the Republic. The President has also presided over four straight years of trillion dollar deficits.
If it weren’t for double standards, Democrats and the media would have no standards at all.

Go here http://patriotupdate.com/articles/proof-that-obama-is-linked-to-radical-alinsky for the story