THE TEA PARTY IS HERE TO STAY

In elementary school, our teacher screened a little known Cary Grant film "The Howards of Virginia". Now you might ask, why would a teacher be showing a Cary Grant film during school hours? Well, we were studying American Colonialism (you know, Obama's favorite 'hate America' topic), back in the day when American History was still taught in schools with great detail. It was a film [and subject] I never forgot, and still hold near to my heart today.

It’s about the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, encompassing the early career of Thomas Jefferson. The film pays meticulous attention to detail, and tells the story about pioneers who paved the way for the riches we enjoy today, through hard backbreaking work, untold sacrifices, pain & suffering, and the joy of success.

Juxtapose that with what we have today - - a nation almost 50% dependent on entitlements, most of whom do nothing for it. It’s not surprising that Obama and his ilk want to terminate our Senior citizens, because we know history, and the importance of hard work, charity, capitalism, and above all – freedom.

Is it any wonder why so many of us have gotten our second wind, and mustered up the strength & confidence to get out there and save our great country for our children and our children’s children. Long live the Tea Party and the spirit which drives this great force.

One of our biggest supporters, The Heritage Foundation writes an excellent piece about the Tea Party, what happens when a country is dependent on Big Government, why the Tea Party has grown by leaps and bounds, and why it’s here to stay. God bless Heritage for keeping us so well informed and strong enough to fight Goliath. Consider becoming a member and sign up for their Morning Bell. Check out the link to Jim DeMint's great piece about us in POLITICO.

The Tea Party Is Here to Stay
The Heritage Foundation - October 14, 2010

Today, The Heritage Foundation released its 2010 Index of Dependence on Government. This annual report tracks the growth of dependence-creating federal programs, programs that crowd-out what was once America's great civil society. At one time, social obligations and services were carried out by community groups, family networks and even local governments. Now, an ever growing and ever more unaccountable federal bureaucracy undermines our spirit of self-reliance and self-improvement by making more and more Americans dependent on Big Government. In 2010, we witnessed a record-breaking surge in American dependence on the federal government including:

Government support for dependent persons has grown from $7,293 per person in 1962, to $31,950 per person today (adjusted for inflation).

132.5 million Americans either pay no income tax or live in a household that pays no income tax. This is up from just 34.8 million in 1984.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eat up 41% of all non-interest federal program spending. Unchecked, this will grow to 62% over the next decade.

Not all dependence is bad. As Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis director Bill Beach writes: "People spend most of their childhoods utterly dependent on their parents, and many people will rely on caregivers during their last years. Dependence on family, neighbors, fellow members of community groups, and—yes—local government is the normal, everyday stuff of life." But dependence on the federal government is categorically different. Federal government aid does not strengthen communities and families: just look at how the federal welfare system undermined family structures and hollowed-out communities for a generation.

Worse, federal government programs quickly become a drain on the vitality of the nation. Jonathan Rauch explains in his book, "Government's End": "By definition, the power of government to solve problems comes from its ability to reassign resources, whether by taxing, spending, regulating, or simply passing laws. But that very ability energizes countless investors and entrepreneurs and ordinary Americans to go digging for gold by lobbying government. In time, a whole industry - large sophisticated, professional, and to a considerable extent self-serving - emerges and then assumes a life of its own. This industry is a drain on the productive economy, and there appears to be no natural limit to its growth."

But there is still hope for our country: the Tea Party. Decentralized and skeptical of central authority, the Tea Party offers baffled politicians and lobbyists no one to co-opt. Sally Oljar of Tea Party Patriots recently told Rauch: "Our real mission is education and providing resources to grassroots activists who want to return the country to our founding principles. We recognize that's going to require a cultural change that will take many years to accomplish."

The Heritage Foundation fully supports their endeavors and believes the Tea Party movement is here to stay. Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) write in today's Politico:

Americans have been disappointed by leaders in both parties who campaigned to right past wrongs and then, after getting to Washington, cared more about power than promises. Tea party supporters care more about principle than party labels or politics. ... [T]he tea party has roots that are deeper and aim higher. Deeper because it is within the best tradition of popular movements in our history — from the Great Awakening that gave rise to the American Revolution to the conservative revival that helped elect Ronald Reagan. Higher because it aims to recover our moral compass, bequeathed by our Founders and preserved ever since.
...
Some past grass-roots movements have succeeded, and others have failed. Success comes because the energy of the moment is translated into a lasting, governing philosophy consistent with the settled opinions of the American people. On this score, prospects look good. The tea party isn’t about to go away after the November elections. Its powerful message of limited government is likely to remain a sharp thorn in the side of those in both parties who want to continue politics as usual.

As The Daily Caller notes today: "The Heritage Foundation think-tank has made it clear: they may be an established conservative organization, but they’re with the Tea Party activists who’ve risen up to protest Washington’s old ways." The only way for us to end the era of big government dependency is to fight against it together. As Ed Feulner would say: "Onward!"

Take the Heritage Foundation with you here

BLOOMBERG WANTS TO BE A KINGMAKER

While Obama and his administration work to control every social aspect of our lives, the need to learn and understand our Founding Documents couldn't be more critical. What is the purpose of government, and what are its limitations? Important to know, and critical to enforce -- by the people. Because government will not do so on its own, as we have painfully witnessed over the past 20 months.

We are in the fight of our lives, as dependency on government has grown like a cancer. "It's the chief purpose of Obama's big-spending bills", says Ms. Schlafly, and continues "The decline in marriage and the increase in illegitimate births (41 percent last year of all U.S. births) are the principal cause of the growth of the welfare state."

There have been two recent reports that should shake the world of every hard working, tax paying, responsible American citizen. One report tells us that welfare is at its highest level in the history of our country. So much so, that it is unsustainable. The great Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain, said "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

The other recent report informes us that America is at the highest level of poverty in 51 years. This is absolutely unacceptable. How can a country so rich with resources, talent, and innovation get to this state?

Liberalism! A mental disorder.

One of my most favorite political activists, Phyllis Schlafly, writes another brilliant piece on government intrusion in her Eagle Forum:

There is no way to cut the current fiscal havoc unless we reduce the handouts of taxpayers' money caused by social issues and cut taxes on small businesses so they can create more jobs. Remember Ronald Reagan's maxim: if you subsidize something, you'll get more of it; if you tax it, you'll get less of it.

Bloomberg Wants To Be a Kingmaker
by Phyllis Schlafly - September 24, 2010

New York City's billionaire Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has decided he wants to be a political kingmaker using his own deep pockets plus his rich friends. He's unhappy about the remarkable success of the Tea Partiers in nominating conservative candidates, and he wants to remake the Republican Party under the label Moderate.

His first foray into this venture is to host a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. That alone should disqualify him from respectability in the Republican Party.

Other Democrats Bloomberg is endorsing include the candidates for Colorado Governor and Senator, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet. Bloomberg says his idea of how the Senate should function is the 40-year collaboration of the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

Bloomberg is famous for getting the New York City Council to allow him to run for a third term as Mayor, despite the city's two-term limit. He won with only 51% despite spending a ridiculous $185 per vote.

Bloomberg plans to finance candidates who agree with him in supporting abortion, same-sex marriage, suffocating gun control, and amnesty for illegal aliens, but keep silent about the social issues in the hope that voters won't notice these candidates' rejection of conservative principles. But the Ronald Reagan model for victory requires a coalition of active fiscal, national defense, and social conservatives, and Republicans will be losers if they don't stick to that winning formula and rejoice that, as Time Magazine's cover announces this week, "It's Tea Party Time."

Candidates in 2010 cannot fail to address and answer questions about the social issues decided by judges this year. One major social issue is support of marriage as one man and one woman, which is defined in 31 states by vote of the people, plus the federal law (Defense of Marriage Act: DOMA).

Supremacist judges have been overriding the will of the people on marriage. Although a majority of Californians passed a citizen initiative outlawing same-sex marriage, on August 4 a federal judge knocked this out, saying Prop 8 is unconstitutional.

On July 8, another federal judge declared that DOMA's one-man-one-woman definition of marriage is unconstitutional. On July 15, the D.C. Court of Appeals approved same-sex marriage, writing that it would somehow violate "human rights" to allow D.C. residents to make the final decision through a citizen initiative.

Social issues? You bet. All federal candidates should be required to address the issue of marriage and the abuse of power by out-of-control judges.

Immigration is another social issue where decision-making power is being taken away from the people and assumed by supremacist judges. On September 9, a federal appellate court ruled against the Hazleton, PA city ordinance that required landlords to rent only to legal residents and employers to hire only legal residents.

On July 28 a federal judge proclaimed that Arizona cannot enforce its new law passed to enforce existing laws about illegal aliens. The judge thus overrode the will of the big majority of Americans who not only support the Arizona law but want their own state to pass a law just like it.

On July 14, a federal judge stopped enforcement of a Nebraska law (passed by the unicameral legislature 44 to 5) establishing that abortionists should inform women about health risks (such as breast cancer). Abortion is a very live social issue now that polls show the majority of Americans believe abortion is wrong.

Congress is now debating the military rule called "Don't ask don't tell." But on September 9 a federal judge grabbed the issue away from our elected representatives, calling it unconstitutional.

The fiscal conservatives who argue that only money issues should be part of political debate should face the reality that social issues are the chief purpose of Obama's big-spending bills. The decline in marriage and the increase in illegitimate births (41 percent last year of all U.S. births) are the principal cause of the growth of the welfare state.

Federal taxpayers are now providing some or all the living expenses for 40 percent of Americans through means-tested handouts, mostly to the unmarried. This is the actuality of Barack Obama's boast to Joe the Plumber to spread the wealth around.

The Obama Democrats know which side their bread is buttered on: 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008, and Obama's strategists want to increase that number. They even put a marriage penalty in Obamacare.

There is no way to cut the current fiscal havoc unless we reduce the handouts of taxpayers' money caused by social issues and cut taxes on small businesses so they can create more jobs. Remember Ronald Reagan's maxim: if you subsidize something, you'll get more of it; if you tax it, you'll get less of it.

Read previous Phyllis Schlafly columns

AN OBSERVATION

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

BUY ONE, TAKE TEN - Entitlement Programs

It's easy enough to describe socialism to your children with the Halloween candy story, but put it into prospective, in real life terms, makes hard working Americans see red -- no pun intended. Americans who have played by the rules, are paying for those who did not.

Paying for someone's gas in their car, or your neighbor's mortgage, or the person's food in front of you at the market doesn't set right, and yet the government takeover is expanding these programs -- again. Re-starting the housing mortgage lending policies, after it was the main reason for the economic melt down, should infuriate every hard working citizen.

PajamasMedia writes:


Buy One, Take Ten
Entitlement programs have convinced citizens that the government never runs out of free money, a view that is psychologically crippling.
by Richard Fernandez, October 16, 2009

When a society has been told for years it can have something for nothing the damage is not just physical, but psychological; an entire mentality is crippled. A former British official who is now a director at the London School of Economics says that Britain is in deep trouble. Years of entitlement have convinced people that government is an endless source of wealth. With the economic crisis in full swing, the government has to cut back for national survival. The problem is that no one wants the music to stop. Even the intellectual class, according to Sir Howard Davies, has come to believe that any crisis can be met by simply borrowing and printing more money.

Sir Howard Davies, now Director of the London School of Economics, said Britain faces a dangerous rise in the levels of public debt – even taking into account tax increases planned for coming years.

“The next six months are going to be extremely delicate in the UK”, he told a gathering of HSBC clients in London. “It is very clear that something dramatic has to happen to control spending: but is the economy robust enough to survive fiscal tightening?” …

What is disturbing is that the British people seem unwilling to face minimal belt-tightening. Even professors in higher education are balloting to strike, demanding a continuation of boom-time pay raises. “You have the best minds in the country planning to go on strike for 8pc. People are miles away from understanding what is needed.”

Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts and only 20pc see the need for retrenchment. Britons appear to assume that the “fantastic growth in public spending” over the last decade has become an entitlement.

It’s laughable, right? But how sane is everyone else? A riot which broke out at a Burlington Coat Factory outlet when a mentally disturbed woman, posing as the newly rich winner of a lottery, hoaxed customers into believing she would pay for everything that they bought illustrates how credulous people can be. She drove up to the store in a rented limo and announced that she was going to pay for everything the customers bought. Before long the store resembled the scene of a civil disturbance.

A woman arrived at the store in a Hummer limo, announcing that she’d won the lottery and offering to cover tabs totaling up to $500. … Before the hoax was even revealed, two dozen police officers were called in to quell the unrest sparked by the woman …

As cashiers rang sale after sale, Brown left in her limo to withdraw funds to cover the large scale shopping spree- but returned empty handed. The situation predictably worsened, with the large crowds expecting free things and not willing to leave empty handed. Shoppers began throwing merchandise on the floor and looting.

But it isn’t just the people at the Burlington Coat Factory or Britain who can be tricked into buying things on fake credit. Forbes recently described how health care “reform” is going to be paid for with a windfall that will never come. Is there any difference between a woman who imagines she’s won the lottery and politicians who will pay for future expenses from invented revenues?

A careful reading of the evidence suggests that the Baucus bill will add as much as $376 billion to the federal deficit through 2019. And that figure understates the full impact of the bill on the budget. If the big-spending parts of the proposal started next year rather than in 2014, the fiscal damage would be much greater.

At face value, the Baucus bill seems to be close to what the president ordered. According to the CBO, the bill gives coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans for less than $900 billion while simultaneously reducing the deficit. The problem is that the bill counts as savings large cuts to Medicare providers that will almost certainly never happen.

The most blatant example is the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians. The cuts started out small, about 5% a year, but even that was unsustainable. To “solve” the political problem without having to admit to a big increase in the deficit, Congress has given doctors a series of one-year fixes. The foregone payment reductions add up, and next year Medicare is supposed to slash doctor’s fees 21%. Clearly, that will not happen.

The Ohio hoaxer was arrested and she is believed to be mentally disturbed. But politicians can do the same thing without worrying about being dragged away by the men in white coats. Steve Chapman talks about how Washington, having just watched the financial system destroyed by a real estate bubble, is inflating another to take its place.

Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.

There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.

That’s the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it’s had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.

Another likely consequence looms: you and I eating the losses.

Chapman says, “a former executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae told a congressional subcommittee that the FHA ‘appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months.’” Is anybody surprised? Should anybody be surprised? Chapman describes the behavior as akin to being “clinically insane”. Maybe the problem is exactly as Sir Howard Davies described it: the culture of dependency which in some circles is confused with the phrase “scientific socialism”. When even people who should know better believe they can get something for nothing — striking academics in the UK, shoppers in a store, people with health care insurance, people with mortgages — the problem comes to resemble not ordinary debt but participation in a scam. It’s almost as if a hoaxer had appear on the national scene and grandly offered to pick up the tab for a dazzling future without a real dime to his name — and people believed him. How could it happen? And what happens when the joker is unmasked?


Read more articles by Richard Fernandez here.

OBAMA'S PLAN TO SPREAD THE WEALTH

It seems like an eternity since we heard those infamous words by Obama, "spread the wealth around" as he answered the man in the street, now known as Joe the Plumber. Some of us heard it for what it was, but most chose not to see it.

One question -- Is this the Hope & Change you wanted?

The ever informative, and always elegant Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum writes:


Obama's Plan to Spread the Wealth
by Phyllis Schlafly, September 25, 2009

When Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber he planned to "spread the wealth around," many people didn't realize he was not talking about spreading the wealth only of the super-rich. Now that Obama is elected, he is moving rapidly to expand welfare handouts for non-taxpayers, running up a tremendous national debt that will inevitably lead to higher taxes on the Middle Class.

The enormity of this transfer of money away from working, taxpaying Americans to non-taxpayers (who voted overwhelmingly for Obama for President in 2008) has just been detailed in a sensational 53-page report by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. There are not enough superlatives in the English language to adequately describe the colossal amounts of money involved in the Obama Administration's shocking cash transfers.

Most people don't realize that the federal budget has become a vast machine for transferring wealth from the upper third of Americans (who pay 90 percent of federal income taxes) to the lowest third who earn less than 200 percent of the government-stipulated "poverty" level and pay no income tax. The size of this massive annual transfer rose by 40 percent to $714 billion over the last ten years, and is projected to rise to $1 trillion per year by the end of Obama's first term.

The term "welfare" embraces much more than the single program formerly called AFDC that was "reformed" (and renamed TANF) in 1996. It includes 70 other programs that provide unearned cash and non-cash benefits to people living in low-income households (but does not include Social Security, Medicare and unemployment compensation, which are earned through work and available to almost everyone).

Obama didn't invent these means-tested transfers; they mostly started with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society welfare programs. Like most government programs, the cost of these welfare and aid-to-poor-and-low-income persons has increased, and Obama demanded vast additional increases, which Congress passed in the Stimulus and Omnibus bills.

Welfare spending was 13 times greater in FY 2008 than it was when LBJ started the Great Society in 1964. Means-tested welfare spending then was 1.2 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and now has reached 5 percent.

These programs are now the third most expensive government activity, ranking below Social Security and Medicare spending, and education spending. National Defense ranks only fourth.

The real cost of these programs is unknown to the American people (one could say, kept secret from them) because the spending is distributed by 14 departments and agencies though 71 different programs. We are fortunate that Rector, a numbers expert, has made a painstaking analysis and shone light upon these transfers.

In fiscal year (FY) 2008, government spending on means-tested welfare or aid to the poor amounted to $714 billion, of which approximately three-fourths was federal spending and one-fourth came from state government funds. States are required to match a percentage of federal welfare outlays.

Of the total means-tested spending in FY 2008, 52 percent was spent on medical care for the poor and low-income persons, 37 percent was spent on cash, food, and housing aid, and 11 percent was spent on social services, training, child development, federal education aid, and community development for low-income persons and communities. Roughly half goes to disabled or elderly persons, and the other half to households with children mostly headed by single mothers.

Rector ran an adding machine tape and concluded that means-tested handouts in FY 2008 amounted to about $16,800 for every poor person, defined as below 100 percent of the designated poverty level. When welfare spending is related to the larger group of persons who qualify for benefits below 200 percent of the "poverty" level, we are giving $28,000 per year to every lower-income four-person household.

Why are we told that we have so inequality in the United States? That's because the Census counts only 4 percent of these welfare gifts to low-income people as their income, and most government discussions of poverty do not even refer to the massive transfers of money taking place.

To get an idea of how big is the debt Obama is creating, which ultimately will have to be paid by the Middle Class, let's compare spending on welfare to spending on fighting wars. Since the beginning of LBJ's Great Society spending, our government has spent $15.9 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars) on means-tested welfare, which is more than twice the cost of all major fighting wars in U.S. history. We spent only $4.1 trillion (in 2008 dollars) on World War II, which was the most expensive single undertaking in U.S. history.

Under Obama's budget, which has already been passed by Congress, federal welfare spending will increase by $88 billion in 2009, plus an additional $175 billion in 2010. This two-year increase of $263 billion will bring total federal and state welfare handouts to $890 billion a year, which is more than 6 percent of GDP.


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