Big Brother Government Says “Trust Me”

ldebroux — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:12:21 -0500

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” — George Orwell, 1984

On May 5th, speaking at Ohio State University, Barack Obama lamented that “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”

Obama has it exactly wrong. It is not that our experiment in self-rule is a sham, or that it can’t be trusted, it is that the experiment has been undermined by the growing power of government in our lives, the very danger of which the Founding Fathers warned us. James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” declared that “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” Obama tries to convince us of just the opposite; namely, that we should place our trust in a benevolent government which will take care of us, and all we have to do is give up a little freedom.

Up until now, the media has steadfastly protected Obama from the effects of scandal. It has been singularly incurious as to the truth about the Fast and Furious scandal, a program through which the Obama Justice Department sold guns to Mexican drug cartels, which in turn have been used to kill U.S. law enforcement officers, and hundreds of Mexican citizens. Likewise, the media actively obscured the truth about the deaths of Americans in Benghazi on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The truth of that fiasco now pours out, with whistleblowers coming forward to expose the administration’s lies.

Yet no sooner had Obama tried to lull the OSU students, and the American people in general, into a false sense of security from which they can take comfort in Big Government, than more scandals began to break which show just how much we should distrust government.

The media, the human shield for Obama’s power grabs, now feels betrayed with the revelation that the Justice Department has secretly obtained two months worth of phone records of reporters and editors working for the Associated Press. This was not just for work phones, but home phones and personal cell phones as well. This information was obtained secretly, with no presentation of a subpoena, and it is unclear whether conversations were recorded during this time. Considering that the press is the only occupation protected by the Bill of Rights, specifically because of its (supposed) role as a watchdog which informs the people of government abuse of power, it is clear that such a move has the intended effect of warning whistleblowers and an expositive press to watch their backs.

In tandem with the revelation of government secretly gathering private information about the press is the revelation that the IRS has been singling out conservative political groups in general, and TEA Parties in particular, for “extra review”, which is a polite way of saying that they were harassed and intimidated by maybe the most feared agency in American government.

Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS department with oversight for tax-exempt organizations, learned nearly two years ago that groups whose names contained words like “patriot”, “TEA Party” and “9-12 Project”, were being given “special” treatment. In January of 2012, the criteria for targeting suspect groups was changed to “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement.”

If, as Obama says, government is not tyrannical and can be trusted, then why target groups whose purpose is to educate people on the principles upon which our nation was founded, and to hold government accountable? In a separate incident revealed just this week, it is alleged that the IRS stole 60 million medical records of American citizens after raiding a California company, without warrant or subpoena. On the bright side, this is the same IRS that will be enforcing ObamaCare. Nothing to worry about…right?

Even these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a push right now to ram through a “comprehensive” immigration reform bill. Republicans feel compelled to support it in order to reach out to Hispanics and prove they are not racist. Democrats support it because they see it as a guaranteed influx of ten million or more Democrat voters. But hidden in the bill is legalese which essentially authorizes the de facto creation of a National ID Card; a form of identification which uses biometric data on every American to track them, and which could eventually be tied into existing databases controlled by other entities, which would essentially allow government to know everything about our financial status, spending habits, health care, etc. Americans have repeatedly rejected such an effort, but government keeps trying to find a way to slip it in through the back door.

More than a decade ago, Congress authorized the USA PATRIOT Act with broad bipartisan support, allowing government unprecedented powers to gather information on those within our borders for the purpose of thwarting the next terrorist attack. At the time, I had serious concerns about its constitutionality, yet gave it lukewarm support out of fear of another attack. I reasoned that such intrusions were necessary to keep us safe, even as the words of Benjamin Franklin, which declared that those who would trade freedom for security will get neither, gnawed in the back of my mind. In recent years, I’ve begun to realize my initial concerns were very much justified. Concerns over safety were used to justify the imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens by Roosevelt during WWII. It is being used today to justify spying on U.S. citizens, and was even used by AG Eric Holder to justify the potential assassination of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by drone attack.

Government, said George Washington, “is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!” With each passing day, government grows larger and more powerful, and we as citizens grown smaller and weaker. Government now controls every conceivable aspect of our lives, and yet its current vast powers are still not enough to satiate the leviathan. It wants more power, more wealth, more control. And it will stop at nothing to get it.

Just days before the 2012 elections, Obama’s closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, said “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over…” According to Obama, government is benign and only concerned with doing good for the people it serves, so we have nothing to worry about.

Just trust them.

Americans Deserve Neither Liberty Nor Security

ldebroux — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:20:33 -0500

I have reached the conclusion that Americans have enjoyed so much freedom and prosperity for so many years that they have come to take it for granted, and not only fail to see such circumstances as unique in the history of mankind, but as commonplace. And because they assume such has always been the norm, they fail to realize that such prosperity and freedom must be nurtured, cultivated, and defended.

How else can you explain the re-election of Barack Obama, who added more debt in his first three years than the first forty-one presidents combined, and more debt in four years than George W. Bush (not exactly a fiscal conservative) accumulated in eight years? How else to explain the seeming indifference to stratospheric debt levels that keep rising by more than $4 billion per day? We seem to think that America, because it has been the richest and most powerful nation in our lifetimes, will always be such.

Likewise, while the world around us seems in constant turmoil, until the attacks of 9/11 (2001, not the Benghazi attacks that we still have no answers for), Americans felt safe and secure on our homeland, buffered from the violence in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world that fills our nightly news. But on that day we had our nose bloodied, and we felt vulnerable. Yet for the next eight years under Bush, we had no more attacks on American soil, and we once again slipped back in complacency.

Now, violent attacks are the steady diet of our news media. The Boston Marathon bombing. The ricin letters. Sandy Hook. Aurora. Virginia Tech. Columbine. The Underwear Bomber. The Shoe Bomber. The Times Square Bomber. The Giffords shooting. Suddenly we seem vulnerable again, and in that vulnerability we seek safety and security.

Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel famously opined that government should never let a crisis go to waste. And so it hasn’t. In the aftermath of these attacks, government has stepped forward with all sorts of solutions to “bring the perpetrators to justice” and to “make sure that this doesn’t ever happen again!”

Those solutions generally involve eroding individual rights and allowing government to exert greater control over our lives. But does that make us safer? No. The reality is that we live in a free and open society (unless you want to buy an incandescent light bulb…but I digress), and such freedom comes with a cost. It means that in exchange for individual liberty, we accept that some will choose to use their freedom to commit evil and harm us. Or, as President Dwight Eisenhower famously summed up the situation, “If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care, and so on. The only thing lacking … is freedom.”

In the name of increased security, government commits all sorts of violations of liberty, and infringes on our rights more with each passing day. The current furor over gun control is a perfect example. Those who loathe the thought of private citizens taking up weapons to defend themselves seek to make it more difficult, and nearly impossible, for anyone other than the police or military to own weapons.

They demand a ban on “assault” weapons, which are actually just semi-automatic weapons that they deem as looking too scary or “militaristic”. They call for expanded background checks, increased taxes on weapons and ammunition, and for requiring gun-owners to carry liability insurance on their weapons. There has even been legislation proposed that would allow doctors to add patient names to a list that prohibits gun ownership, without ever informing the individual or proving that they are a danger to society.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress passed with broad support, and Bush signed, a law which gave the government broad powers to investigate and detain American citizens in connection with suspected terrorist activity. We know that law enforcement agencies have for some time been intercepting our communications in search of potential threats, and now comes the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service claims that they have the legal right to read our email, based on their position that we have no expectation of privacy in that form of communication.

Two and a half years ago I wrote about the Z Backscatter Van (ZBV), cutting edge monitoring technology that fits into a common delivery van. While driving through your neighborhood, it uses passive surveillance technology to look through the walls of your home, collecting data on the number of people within the home, their movements and communications, etc. It lets government watch you without ever even announcing its presence, with no need for a warrant. Originally developed for the military for use in terrorist-filled, urban warfare scenarios, it is now being purchased and used by cities and states against our own citizens. They can look into our homes without cause, the exact opposite of what the Constitution dictates.

When George W. Bush was president, liberal Democrats warned that his government would spy on its citizens, and send jack-booted thugs into our homes in the middle of the night, arresting us on false pretenses, terrorizing us in ways reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Yet by and large, these same people not only passively accepted the renewal and expansion of the PATRIOT Act, but actually defended Obama’s use of military drones among the civilian population. It wasn’t until attention was focused on them by Senator Rand Paul’s lengthy filibuster that the Obama administration, in the form of a letter to Paul by Attorney General Eric Holder, finally conceded that it did not have the authority to assassinate American citizens by drone attack (Obama will, however, continue to use drones to spy on American citizens…he just won’t light them up with Hellfire missiles).

In the world of the 24-hour news cycle, which feed us every gruesome detail of every atrocity committed in our midst, recycled several times an hour, and populating the newsfeeds of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, we are now more aware of the dangers surrounding us than ever before.

Ironically, it is this same ever-present information tsunami that overloads our brains, and feeds our fears. I’d wager that most people would be surprised to learn that, despite the horrors of Boston and Sandy Hook which we’ve been exposed to constantly, such attacks are actually on the decline. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, over the last two decades or so the firearm-related crime rate dropped from 6 victims per 1,000 residents (1994) to 1.4 victims per 1,000 residents (2009). Additionally, “Gun-related homicide is most prevalent among gangs and during the commission of felony crimes,” so the danger is actually concentrated primarily in urban areas. So why the push to disarm law-abiding citizens?

If we are to retain our liberties, we cannot fall prey to emotional responses to the commission of atrocities by evil people. We must understand that, while we can seek to minimize the damage done by such crimes, we can’t ever eliminate them completely, and it is a fool’s errand to give up freedom for the illusion of safety. In the end, we’ll not have stopped evil people from doing horrible things; we’ll only have insured that when they do, it will take longer to stop them, and we’ll just have that many more dead to mourn over. As noted by historian Henry Steele Commager, “Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.”

Or, to borrow the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Americans have become soft and coddled, unfamiliar with the need to fight for liberty at all costs, and for holding tight to our freedoms even in the face of danger…especially in the face of danger. If such a pattern continues, we’ll have neither liberty nor security…and we won’t deserve it.

Media Bias Over Mass Murder

ldebroux — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:10:19 -0500

Editor’s note: United Liberty recognizes the divide amongst libertarians over the abortion issue and that there are strong, but thoughtful feelings coming from both sides. This piece covers an important issue that has been neglected by the mainstream media. It does not necessarily reflect the views of United Liberty or every contributor.

Murder. Exploitation. Blood money. Intrigue. The story of Kermit Gosnell has all of this and more, a story which is filled with horrifying and sensational details, a story of such heartless depravity and gory death that it could have been a George Romero film. So why it that you are almost guaranteed to have never heard of Gosnell? That is an excellent question, and one that anyone who believes in a strong and independent free press should be demanding answers to. If there was ever a case of clear-cut media bias and cover-up, this is it.

I first learned about Gosnell in January 2011 from a link to an article in Philly.com, reporting on his arrest and formal indictment on eight counts of murder and related charges. The trial of Gosnell began last month, and other than conservative websites and news sources, it is almost impossible to find a story in the mainstream print press until a few days ago, and as of the time of this writing, there has been ZERO coverage of the story by the major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS). The travesty of the media black-out was captured in an article in Investors Business Daily, which wrote:

“Media Bias: A basketball coach who shoves and curses at his players merits constant coverage by a media also transfixed by Newtown. But a Philadelphia doctor on trial for murdering a woman and seven babies? It’s ignored..Those who get their news from the three major networks have probably not heard of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, now on trial in Philadelphia, charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder for killing seven babies who survived abortions and a woman who died after a botched pain-killer injection….

According to the Media Research Center, in one week Rice received 41 minutes, 26 seconds of air time on ABC, CBS and NBC in 36 separate news stories. Gosnell received zero coverage…If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the subject of presidential hand-wringing.”

So why is it that a college basketball coach with anger management issues, or the idiotic comments about rape uttered by GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Murdock during the 2012 elections, or even the latest gossip about Kim Kardashian, manages to get more coverage than this story?

The summary of the Grand Jury report, as excerpted in The Atlantic, tells the story: “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors…The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”

Among then accusations of crimes committed in Gosnell’s clinic are these:

Robyn Reid, at age 15, a tiny girl of less than 90 pounds, went to Gosnell’s clinic for an abortion, but decided she could not go through with it. According to Reid, Gosnell “got upset and he ended up taking my clothes off, hitting me, my legs were tied to the stirrups,” where she struggled for half an hour before he was able to finally subdue her, removing all of her clothes, and telling her repeatedly, “This is the same care that I would give to my own daughter.” Reid woke up twelve hours later, the abortion performed, and her never having regained consciousness in the clinic.

Karnamaya Mongar died in Gosnell’s clinic as the result of an overdose of Demerol, a strong pain medication. Paramedics attempted to save Mongar, but the back door was padlocked and she died before they could revive her. Records show regulated pain medicine was routinely administered by untrained, unlicensed staff in pre-set dosages, not calibrated for the specific patient. Records also show that Gosnell recruited those that were poor and emotionally distraught to work for him, paying them under the table to work in his house of horrors.

Most horrifying of all though is the babies. Gosnell is charged with seven counts of murder for killing infants that survived his botched abortion procedures. Witnesses testified that he would take scissors and cut the spinal cords of the babies, even as one witness reported screams from one baby as it was killed, saying “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien.” According to co-defendant Steven Massof, who was hired in 2003 under an unlicensed “residency” program, Gosnell has killed in this manner at least 100 babies which survived his abortion attempts. Masoff said that the procedure was “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.” He described the scene as “rain[ing] fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.” Gosnell reportedly joked to one woman after he killed a baby that survived his abortion attempt “This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop!” Authorities also found jars of severed body parts and bags containing fetuses scattered throughout the clinic.

It would be easy to soothe our consciences by assuring ourselves this is just a single, terrible, tragic case of an inhumane monster that stayed hidden for decades. It would be easy, but it would be false. Though also getting virtually no coverage in the mainstream media, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, which receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars per year, also has no problem killing babies born alive, as evidenced during testimony before a committee of the Florida legislature last month by Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. LaPolt testified that Planned Parenthood believes the decision of whether to kill an infant who survives a botched abortion should be made by the mother and her abortion doctor (she was testifying in opposition to a bill that would require doctors to provide life-saving treatment to babies that survive abortions).

As gruesome as this all is, is it truly all that surprising? After all, it is simply the real world manifestation of the idea of post-birth abortion that is championed by leftist intellectuals like the celebrated Peter Singer, and the likes of liberal philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, as published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics. As disgusting as it is to contemplate, they actually have a good point when they argue that there is little moral difference between aborting a baby in the womb during the third trimester, and killing a baby a few days, weeks, or months old. They have roughly the same level of physical development and personal autonomy, and the only difference is their position relative to the mother’s womb.

And therein lies to crux of the abortion argument. Once we accept the idea that life is not inherently sacred, that life only obtains inherent value at a certain point in physical development, or of cognitive ability, or of self-awareness or sovereignty, we are simply debating the relative degrees at which life is no longer valued. If autonomy is the threshold, is it then acceptable to kill off those with, say, Down Syndrome, which rarely ever develop mentally beyond the level of a small child? Does that mean we can start killing off those in long-term comas, or the old and infirm which require constant care? The Gosnell case is an extreme but logical progression of the idea that life is not inherently sacred, and therefore not worth defending. And if we are so callous that were are unwilling to defend the lives of such innocent creatures as these children, can we expect that our lives will be considered worth protecting when we are old and dependent for care? I fear not.

TSA Foils Lotion Bomb Plot, Nabs My Daughter

ldebroux — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:12:09 -0500

One day last week, I woke up, got dressed for work, and hugged and kissed my 18-year old daughter goodbye, as she was shortly to be heading out to the airport to fly out west to visit a friend. I then got in my car and headed to work. About two hours later, I received a phone call from my wife, who was sobbing and inconsolable. It took me a minute or two to get her calmed down enough to understand what had happened; and when she told me what happened, I was livid.

It seems that my 18-year old, 5’7”, 125-pound daughter was involved in a dispute with a TSA agent (my daughter is many things, but meek and soft-spoken she is most certainly not). As she was making her way through security, the TSA agent began going through her purse, and proceeded to begin throwing away personal toiletry items, including a bottle of lotion that exceeded the maximum 3.4 ounce limit by a few ounces. My daughter, who is extremely sensitive to perfumes and additives found in most lotions, soaps, and shampoos, has to buy this expensive lotion for her hands and arms. Seeing the agent throw the lotion in the trash, she asked the agent if she (the agent) was going to pay to replace it, and when the agent declared she would not, my daughter removed the lotion and put it back in her purse.

At this time the TSA agent removed her from the line and sent her to a second line for additional screening. Unbelievably, after waiting to go through the second security line, the TSA agent in that line did not bother to even check her bag. It should also be noted that my daughter had these exact same items in her purse two months ago when she took the exact same flight. So, did the TSA catch a terrorist that day? No, but they did make my daughter miss her flight, which precipitated the call from my wife, who felt like an awful mother for leaving my daughter (who, not being a regular airline passenger, was now crying and confused and unsure what to do next) at the airport by herself. So now I found myself trying to console my wife (and explain to her that it is pointless to go back to the airport because she will not make it to my daughter without a boarding pass), and my daughter (who now thinks she can’t go see her friend and has lost the cost of the ticket that she paid for with her own money).

Tragically, this is just one personal anecdote out of thousands that occur each day at airports across the United States. And to what end? The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, ostensibly because a single government agency would do a better job or coordinating security needs than a disparate group. But has that been the case? In the decade since the TSA was established, its budget has skyrocketed by 63%, and it has ballooned to nearly 60,000 employees, yet we are no more safe, and arguably less so, than we were a decade ago. We waste massive resources looking in all the wrong places.

Now, it would be one thing if taxpayers were spending billions of dollars to hire the most astute, dedicated people possible to protect us from those who would do us harm. However, as with any bloated government bureaucracy, there are a certain number of hard-working, diligent, intelligent agents…and a bunch of bureaucratic hacks who couldn’t survive in the private sector and were lured by the enticement of getting paid a nice government salary, with nice government benefits, in a job funded by taxpayers (and therefore virtually immune from economic downturns and market forces), and the ability to push people around that can’t push back.

The stories of TSA incompetence and abuse are legion, from terrorizing a 3-year old, wheelchair-bound disabled child (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/02/tsa-apologizes-for-traumat…), to forcing a wheelchair-bound woman dying of leukemia to lift her shirt and expose her bandages from multiple recent surgeries, and making her do so in front of other passengers, denying her request for a private screening (http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Dying-woman-humiliated-by-revealing-T…). There is also the fact that many TSA agents are thieves, looting passengers bags of high-end electronics and other expensive goods (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-20-airports-tsa-theft/story?id=1753788… ), like Nelson Santiago-Serrano, who was caught stealing an iPad from a passenger and later admitted to having stolen more than $50,000 worth of items from unsuspecting passengers (http://www.digitaltrends.com/gadgets/tsa-agent-plunders-50k-in-electroni…). Of course, he was a novice compared to Pythias Brown, who was caught after stealing more than $800,000 worth of goods from passengers (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/tsa-agent-convicted-theft-stealing… ). To date, around 400 agents have been fired for theft. How many more have not been caught yet?

Maybe, just maybe, we could tolerate the horrific treatment and the theft by the TSA agents if they were actually protecting us, but they are not. They are making us miserable even as they fail the most generous definition of competency. According to a report by WSBTV Atlanta last year, because of a backlog in background checks, the TSA had been authorized to hire any employees needed across the country, even though background check had not been completed. We now know that some of these agents have been accepting bribes from drug smugglers to look the other way as drugs are brought into the U.S. A 2011 report found that there had been more than 25,000 security breaches under the TSA’s watch.

Former Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle once said of the efforts to unionize the TSA employees, “You don’t professionalize until you federalize.” Yet an internal report from the TSA shows that that is not remotely the case. According to another report from 2011, TSA screeners missed an astonishing 75% of explosives sent through screening at Los Angeles International by inspectors testing the effectiveness of security measures. By contrast, the private security firm screeners only missed 20% of explosives sent through at the San Francisco airport. Ask yourself this question…can you think of a single terrorist attacked stopped by the TSA? The Underwear Bomber and the Shoe Bomber were stopped by alert passengers, NOT the TSA. So what good are they?

On the other hand, if you are an airline passenger flying out of Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, you can rest assured that if my 18-year old, 5’7”, 125-lb daughter tries to hijack the flight, she’ll have to do it with a cell phone, a pack of chewing gum, and DRY, CHAPPED HANDS!!! Does she look like freaking McGyver!? Seriously, is there a federal regulation that mandates that TSA agents refrain from using an ounce of intelligence? Has there been a rash of disabled children, leukemia patients, old women, and teenage girls trying to hijack American passenger jets? I know it is politically incorrect to point out, but pretty much every terrorist attack, or attempted attack, of a U.S. jetliner to date has been committed by people sharing suspiciously similar physical characteristics and religion…and it ain’t Baptists or teenage girls from Georgia. Good heavens! Can we at least pass a law requiring all TSA agents pass a doctor’s exam certifying that they are free from the malady of rectal-cranial inversion?

The government says we need these TSA agents to protect us from the terrorists. But who protects us from the corrupt, incompetent, and tyrannical TSA agents?

Obamanomics: Not Smarter Than a Cave Man (or JFK)

ldebroux — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:01:47 -0500

One thousand, four hundred and twenty four…that’s the number of days that have passed since the Democrat-controlled Senate performed their constitutional duty to pass a budget, more than a year before the ubiquitous iPad was invented. Judging by the contents of that budget, we can see why Democrats were scared to reveal their plans before Obama was safely re-elected and no longer accountable to the voters. It is unbridled recklessness that passes for the Democrat budgeting process.

Such sheer irresponsibility reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke, the civil libertarian who once said “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” Admittedly, it is not fair to compare elected Democrats to drunken teenage boys who, even with a fleet of cars and a swimming pool filled with whiskey could not hope to achieve as much damage as is being done by Democrats right now.

The Senate budget demands nearly one trillion dollars in new tax increases, on top of the nearly $700 billion already conceded by Republicans just a few months ago in the “Fiscal Cliff” deal. An almost equal amount would supposedly be cut from spending, but considering the bait-and-switch tactics that have become the modus operandi for Democrats, it is hard to believe that those cuts would ever come to fruition.

The whole exercise has become Kabuki Theater, a laughable dance of fools and charlatans that has no basis in reality. It is impossible to take seriously the trustworthiness of a party which demonized as “harsh” and “draconian” the previous budget submitted by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), which contained near-double digit increases in the entitlement spending, and took more than three decades to balance the budget. In a nation of rational adults, the Paul Ryan budget would have been seen as irresponsible, and it is only due to the unadulterated insanity of the Democrat budget that the Ryan budget seemed reasonable.

The most recent Republican House budget takes a full decade to balance the budget, but only by assuming that funding for ObamaCare would be repealed; something that would never make it past the Democrat-controlled Senate or Obama. That has about as much chance of happening as Obama rejecting the corrupt special interest money he has long preached against (you can buy four face-to-face meetings a year with Obama for a cool half million dollars by donating to his re-branded Organizing for America campaign apparatus). By comparison, the Ryan budget is far more responsible, achieving deficit reduction and economic stimulus through growth rather than tax increases, but even it relies on unrealistic assumptions.

How do we get to a point where we can pass realistic, responsible budgets that fund the legitimate functions of government, stimulate economic growth by reducing the crushing tax burden, and in the process reduce the skyrocketing national debt (the interest payments on which we now spend more on than education, homeland security, transportation, and taking care of our veterans…combined!)? It’s impossible to know, since Democrats claim we have no debt problem. That’s like me saying that having a monthly credit card INTEREST payment higher than my mortgage payment is just fine. Americans get nothing in return for those hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments. How many of the salaries of those firefighters, schoolteachers, and policemen that Obama surrounded himself with in a press conference before the sequester kicked in could have been paid with the $359.8 BILLION dollars paid in interest on the debt in FY2012? That would be 7,196,000 of these fine workers at $50,000 per year.

But alas, getting Democrats to act responsibly is probably not an achievable goal in the near future. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, referring to the stark differences between the House and Senate budgets, said “We have presented very different visions for how our country should work and who it should work for…but I am hopeful that we can bridge this divide.” Who our country should work for? Shouldn’t it work for ALL Americans? Or have we now decided that certain Americans are no longer worthy of equality under the law?

The Democrat/Senate budget raises even more taxes, cuts hundreds of billions more from the defense budget (more than has already been cut, which former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, no defense hawk, warned would weaken America’s military readiness), and once again leaves entitlement and welfare spending, the primary drivers of the rising deficits and debt, virtually untouched.

Even Obama, no surprise, is apathetic about responsible budgets and getting the debt under control. Less than two weeks ago, Obama told ABC News “My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance…My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue. If we control spending and we have a smart entitlement package, then potentially what you have is balance…” Control spending?! Spending is up 25% under him! I hate to break it to the man, but we’ve tried his policies for four years and are far worse off than before.

It seems Obama, the so-called smartest president in history, is no scholar of history. If he were, he’d know that cutting tax rates and lowering government spending has a solid history of jump-starting the economy. It worked miracles under Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush. Each cut tax rates and each saw massive new revenues in response; new revenues created by growing the economy, NOT by taking a larger and larger portion of a shrinking pie.

I can only pray that Obama will indeed decide to become a student of history, and change his high tax, big spending philosophy of government. And he can even look to two Democrats for guidance.

As to whether government can spend its way out of an economic morass, he has only to listen to the words of Henry Morgenthau, Treasury Secretary under FDR, the president credited with getting us out of the Great Depression, but whom a growing number of modern economists now blame for worsening the Great Depression with his New Deal policies. Said Morgenthau in 1939, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… and an enormous debt to boot!” Sound familiar?

If he doesn’t want to listen to Morgenthau, he can turn to Democrat icon President John F. Kennedy, who said, “A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

Cut tax rates. Lower government spending. Lower deficits and the debt. Stimulate economic growth.

So easy a cave man can do it…but is Obama smarter than a cave man?

Is Obama At War With American Citizens?

ldebroux — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:12:52 -0500

“I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.” — Commanding General Douglas McArthur

A few weeks ago, a friend sent a YouTube link of a conversation between a radio show host and a man identifying himself as a police lieutenant in North Carolina, who claimed America was about to slide into internal war and martial law, saying the ATF is recruiting from local and state law enforcement agencies to form an internal security force to suppress domestic insurrection. The catalyst for the insurrection would be a collapse of the American economy, intentionally triggered, leading to a complete collapse of the social infrastructure, giving the government a pretext to consolidate power.

My response to her was that this was elements of truth mixed with a heavy dose of conspiracy theory, and suggested she’d feel better if she’d prepared her family for any emergencies by making sure they can defend themselves, and have enough supplies for their basic needs. After all, these things would be useful in situations other than the one she described, whether it be a home invasion by armed thugs, or the aftermath of a natural disaster where there was no access to electricity, fresh water, or food for an extended period.

I hoped that had calmed her fears, but the more I thought about it, the more I could understand how someone could come to these types of conclusions in light of the political environment unfolding in our country today.

French Algerian writer Albert Camus once wrote that “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.” We see the truth of these words in the history of the rise of the bloodiest and most oppressive tyrants of the last century. Adolph Hiter, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, and a host of others, all rose to power in times of crisis by posing as defenders and liberators of their people. They were cheered and deified by the masses. It was not until after taking power and strict obedience was violently enforced that the people learned that their saviors were actually their oppressors.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I am not asserting or implying that Barack Obama is a bloodthirsty dictator determined to subjugate the American people by violent force. What I AM saying is that his actions parallel some of the worst traits of oppressive dictators, if in a more passive way. He has shown absolute contempt for the Constitution and the Rule of Law, repeatedly declaring he will act when Congress will not, effectively creating law from the Executive Branch, and violating the separation of powers doctrine and his oath to uphold the Constitution. He seems to feel his agenda supersedes any mere laws, which he can ignore at will.

Tyrants quickly move to take over the apparatus of information dissemination upon taking power, to control the message heard by the people they seek to make subjects. In Obama’s case, the media in this country willingly does his bidding without threat of force. From Chris “Thrill up my leg” Matthews to unbridled fawning of 60 Minutes “reporter” Steve Kroft in his recent interview with Obama, to the blatant decision to whitewash the scandals of the Fast and Furious gunrunning program, or the administration’s role in the deaths of Americans in the 9/11/12 attack on Benghazi…it is clear the media have formed a protective circle around Obama to shield him from criticism. The same media that warned of jackbooted thugs sent by Bush into our homes in the middle of the night, operating under the USA PATRIOT Act, seem strangely unconcerned about Obama’s renewal and expansion of the act, and even greater encroachments on liberty. As exposed by Emmy Award-winning CNN journalist Amber Lyon, CNN routinely created pro-Obama propaganda pieces and aired it as news, and suppressed stories unfavorable to Obama. Other “news” outlets do the same.

Though rarely mentioned by the national media, recent months revealed more concerning developments by an administration that recognizes few checks on its power. One of these was highlighted by a 13-hour long filibuster by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who had written Attorney General Eric Holder for clarification of Obama’s position on using military drones over the skies of the United States, and whether an American citizen could be targeted for death using these drones. Holder’s response was sufficiently vague to cause concern, stating Obama had not used drones to kill American citizens and had no intention of doing so, but never stating explicitly that the administration understood it had no power to do so. The greatest controversy arose at the end of Holder’s letter where he stated that, theoretically, he could see “extraordinary circumstances” in which Obama could order the assassination by drone of an American citizen on U.S. soil without trial. One can imagine the outrage from the left had such a statement been uttered by the Bush administration, yet the national media seem indifferent about it, and some have even defended Obama.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Obama plans to let U.S. spy agencies access an enormous database containing records of financial transactions by nearly everyone banking in the U.S. This effectively gives them access to all of your purchases, from which they can build a profile, track you, and decided whether you are a threat. Considering the flawless performance of the TSA and the infamous “No Fly List” which allows terrorists on American jetliners, while getting young children detained and frisked, surely nothing will go wrong…right?

Now comes word that the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security), which is tasked with protecting the INTERNAL American homeland, has contracted to purchase 1.6 BILLION rounds of ammunition, including hollow-points, which are banned by the Geneva Convention. To put this in perspective, DHS (which operates ON AMERICAN SOIL), has purchased enough ammo to supply the current hot war in Afghanistan for 20 YEARS! They are also purchasing surplus armored personnel carriers from the military, complete with gun ports, for use IN AMERICA! Which begs the question…why does DHS, a DOMESTIC agency, require so much firepower? Are they planning for a large-scale invasion of America by the Canadians? Or do they fear their own citizens?

In 2009, the Obama DHS released an internal report titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment”. In this and other internal reports, Obama has repeatedly classified as dangerous threats Americans who hold opposing viewpoints (i.e., those who oppose abortion, homosexual marriage, who are strongly religious, who oppose the further expansion of the federal government, etc.). These are people Obama wants watched and potentially detained in a time of domestic crisis.

So while I have never been much of a conspiracy theorist myself, I can understand why some might be predisposed to assume the worst about the intentions of a president who repeatedly tries to foment hatred in his supporters for those that disagree with him, who seems intent on driving the U.S. economy to the brink of destruction, collapsing under massive debt; who seems content to violate in most egregious ways the constitutional rights and civil liberties of American citizens without due process, and who is arming domestic security forces to the teeth as if American neighborhoods were the streets of Kandahar.

An inquisitive reporter might just ask…”Mr. President, what are you up to?”

It’s the End of the World (and I Feel Fine)

ldebroux — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:10:13 -0500

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn…A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline…It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…” — R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine”

Dear world, I sit here writing from an secret underground bunker, the last refuge for my family as the world burns, the moon having turned red and the rivers running with blood, all because the intransigent Republicans refused to budge on (more) tax increases for the rich in exchange for a “balanced” approach of “smart” spending cuts by Obama. We now suffer from the “brutal” and “arbitrary” spending cuts of 2.2% that kicked in when the Republicans allowed the sequester to move forward.

I’ll write as long as I can until my family starves to death, but thirty gallons of water, a case of creamed corn, and a hundred packages of Ramen noodle soup go only so far with a family of ten. Well, nine. I secretly decided to sacrifice my 12- year old son and use him for food. A harsh move, granted, but necessary to prolong life for the rest of us. He’ll probably think I did it because I like him least, but that’s not true. It was a purely practical decision. He is a big, strong boy, with the most muscle mass. Seriously, the kid is as strong as a bull! I sure will miss him.

A horrible thing happened to Barack Obama last week; namely, the end of the world that he prophesied would come due to the sequester cuts came and went, and no one noticed or cared, despite his best efforts. Indeed, according to an email to Charles Brown (of APHIS, a subdivision of the Dept. of Agriculture, who’d asked for latitude in implementing budget cuts so as to minimize the impact) from his superiors, leaked to the press, he was told to make the cuts as painful as possible to prove the cuts were as bad as Obama said they would be, and therefore force Congress to restore the spending.

So why would the Obama administration want to maximize pain for the American people? For the same reason they do everything; to maximize political power through controlling the official narrative of political discourse, making Republicans appear cruel and heartless and the Democrats as the white knights coming in to save us all. Former Obama chief of staff, and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel famously exhorted Obama to “never let a crisis go to waste.” Now Obama, having reaped the rewards of turning each crisis to his favor and expanding his power, now resorts to manufacturing crises.

Obama knows his policies have created a stagnant economy, prolonged high unemployment, falling income for the average American, higher energy costs, and in general a far lower quality of life than we should have. These things are in line with his goal of reducing wealth in the name of “income equality,” but Obama also realizes people are very unhappy about it, and he needs a scapegoat. And what better scapegoat than Republicans? For Obama it is the perfect two-fer…he gets the statist, big government policies he wants, and he gets to destroy Republicans with blame for Americans’ suffering.

And if we are to be honest, these “brutal” cuts are a tiny fraction of what they should be considering the growth in government over the last two decades. According to the White House’s website, the projected spending for this year under Obama is $3.803 TRILLION, a 27.5% increase over the last year under George Bush (FY2008, $2.982 trillion; the FY2009 spending began October 1, 2008, and includes the $800 billion “stimulus” passed by Obama shortly after taking office in January 2009). Bush was a big spender as well, increasing the federal budget by just over $1 trillion in his two terms. This means that, between the first year of the Clinton presidency, and the projected budget for 2016 (the last year of the Obama presidency), the size of the federal government has increased an astounding 307%!

Yet Obama wants us to believe a 2.2% budget cut means an end to essential government services and suffering for the poor and vulnerable. And herein lies the truth about liberals and government spending; the proper size of government is always a little bigger than it is right now, and every dollar of taxpayer money is sacred and spent wisely and critical to the operation of government.

So Obama comes before the American people now, hands wrung as he lists his litany of lamentations, a veritable cornucopia of tragic travails inflicted upon the American people by evil Republicans. In his address, surrounded by first responders, Obama claimed the sequester would mean we could not deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to protect American interests, and that air traffic controllers would be laid off, as would firefighters, cops, TSA agents, meat inspectors, teachers and so forth. Nonsense!

Of course, he also claimed that under his administration, deficits have been cut by more than $2.5 trillion; a curious claim considering the national debt has risen by more than $6 trillion in just four years under his watch. The “cuts” were not actual spending cuts, but reductions in the rate of future automatic budget increases. If you plan on buying a new car but, because of a tighter budget, you spend $30,000 instead of the $45,000 you wanted to spend, you have not “saved” $15,000…you have spent $30,000. Your expenditures have still risen over what they were yesterday, just by less than you anticipated.

Obama is right about one thing though; both parties need to come together to fix this situation, and I just happen to have some solutions that will help us cut spending in a “balanced” way, with everyone sacrificing a little for the greater good, having “some skin in the game” as Obama likes to say.

We can start with Obama. He can cut back on the number of vacations (averaging 4-5 per year), the campaign trips and photo ops. His recent vacation to Hawaii cost taxpayers $7 million, the equivalent of the annual salary for 155 firefighters. The TSA just signed a $50 million contract for new uniforms, which equals the annual salary of 909 elementary school teachers. Of course, since the TSA is incompetent at catching potential terrorists, we could eliminate their $60 billion budget and just have airline passengers grope each other before flights; we still catch potential terrorists, and at least the average airline passenger will have the decency not to molest small children and the elderly, which cannot be said of the TSA.

We could also eliminate the $250 million just pledged to the Muslim Brotherhood-run country of Egypt, who want to kill us anyway, and make Mexican drug cartels find their own assault weapons instead of getting them from the Obama Dept. of Justice. We could eliminate the numerous “conferences” organized for government bureaucrats in exotic locations, complete with wine tastings and other lavish luxuries.

But the reality is that we must do something, and fast. Otherwise, the American people may just wake up and see how badly they are being scammed by D.C politicians. Or, to quote D.C. lobbyist Emily Holubowich, as reported in the Washington Post, “The worst-case scenario for us is the sequester hits and nothing really bad happens.” Worst case for lobbyists, politicians and other corrupt cronies, yes. But just what the American need; to see that big government can be shrunk and our lives still go on. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll then see a return of the liberty-loving, rugged individualists that made America so great in the first place.

Fathers, Families, and the GOP Identity Crisis

ldebroux — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:04:03 -0600

The Republican Party has an identity crisis. That crisis is rooted in two things; 1) their message is timid and easily demagogued by Democrats because, 2) they are not buying what they are selling. Or rather, while the rank and file members and the grassroots conservative base believe deeply in the principles of their party, the leadership of the party often seems embarrassed by conservative principles, and therefore their defense of said principles is anemic. And one thing Americans can detect like sharks with blood in the water is hypocrisy and lies (granted, that claim is undermined by the election and re-election of the Liar-in-Chief, Barack Obama, but work with me here).

For years I’ve said the problem with promoting conservative policies is liberal policies sound generous and compassionate, and conservative policies sound harsh and heartless. For example, Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest political and scientific minds in American history, advocated helping the poor by making them as uncomfortable in their poverty as possible, motivating them to better their station in life (leaving the rest of society free to aid the truly poor, needy, and infirm, rather than the slothful and parasitic). Franklin’s philosophy sounds heartless, but nevertheless he is correct. When Republicans forced Bill Clinton to sign welfare reform into law, the liberal left wailed that poor people would be dying in the streets. Yet just the opposite happened. Realizing that feeding at the government trough would no longer be an unlimited proposition, millions of Americans came off the unemployment rolls, took advantage of job-training programs and other counseling, becoming productive members of society, and in the process gained a dignity and independence which they did not before possess.

Another example is the current furor over gun control. In liberal Democratic strongholds like Washington, D.C., and Chicago, private gun ownership has been forbidden for decades. Liberals claim their goal is to reduce crime, but if so, it has been an utter failure. Major urban cities control by Democrats (D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Atlanta, and others) have the highest level of gun-related murders in the country. An American is more likely to be killed on the streets of Chicago than in the war zones of Afghanistan. Chicago is already on pace to top 600 murders this year, up from over 500 last year. Likewise, New Orleans (a single city) has a higher murder rate (62.1 per 100,000 according to the CDC) than any other country in the world except Honduras (68.4 per 100k). So while Democrats continue their attempt to strip guns from the law-abiding (semi-automatic “assault” weapons account for around 3% of all gun homicides) the murder rampage continues in our inner cities, the vast majority of which is comprised of black and Hispanic youth killing each other. If per capita gun ownership was the problem, then logically the most dangerous areas would be those populated by those white country folk Obama so disdains (the ones clinging to their guns and religion). However, statistics show that the higher the level of gun ownership, the lower the crime rate.

Liberals worship at the altar of “green energy” and “renewable fuels” because they say it will create jobs and help the environment. “Green” energy often creates greater carbon emissions than fossil fuels, and in the mean time the Democrat-led war on fossil fuels has gas approaching $4/gallon and rising, and electricity prices climbing. This disproportionately hurts the poor and middle class, who have more of their income taken just to pay for basic necessities.

Perhaps nowhere in American life has the destruction caused by liberal policies been more evident than on the structure of the family unit from feel-good “welfare” programs. The Great Society programs launched by LBJ in his “war on poverty” have devastated our families, and predominantly our minority families, even as we now spend a trillion dollars annually to supposedly combat poverty. Whatever the intentions, the facts show that these policies have effectively replaced a father in the home with a slew of government programs, creating an explosion of fatherless children. Unwed mothers give birth to more than 70% of all black children, and to around 40% and rising in the white community. It is a disastrous combination. Recent in-depth studies have shown that the single greatest determinant of future poverty, criminal activity and incarceration, is whether the child has a father in the home. It should be no surprise that when boys living in fatherless homes get older, they look for male guidance wherever they can find it, and in far too many cases that comes in the form of gang membership. That is a death spiral scenario for these fatherless boys and girls, and leads to a tragic end.

Fatherless boys are far likelier to join gangs, commit crime, drop out of school, and become mired in other destructive, anti-social behaviors. And girls suffer as well. Girls raised in fatherless homes don’t get to see a proper male role model against whom they can compare the boys and men with which they become romantically involved. They learn to be treated as a commodity, and don’t learn that they should demand that their boyfriends, and later husbands, should provide for, protect, and respect them (an antiquated notion in our society, I know).

In a recent article columnist and black conservative Larry Elder, who has seen the devastation wrought on the black community, told of a letter from a female counselor concerned about the plague of fatherlessness sweeping America. She told him, “No one is putting a gun to women’s heads and making them have intercourse with unworthy men prior to marriage. It is done willingly, leads to a life from hell and harms everyone involved, even the bum who has no motivation to shape up since he is afforded all the reward a good, respectable, hardworking husband would get without having to be a good, respectable, hardworking husband.

“The term ‘father’ used to be considered synonymous with the man who, in this order, a) courted a woman, b) married a woman, c) impregnated a woman, and d) stayed around for the next 20 years paying the bills, playing catch, disciplining the kids and loving the mom. Now, mere siring or donating sperm to the creation of a kid is called ‘fathering,’ when it’s barely more than breeding. It cheapens the meaning of the word ‘father.’

“Now picture this: If all women, black or white or whatever race, said to black men, ‘No marriage, sex, children or home-cooked food without toil and solid achievement first,’ do you really think any lowered bars that had been established would have stopped black men from achieving the finances and success required for romance? I don’t. They’d be working hard, wanting to get the top score and wanting to outshine others.”

But if you are still unbelieving and need proof from someone with “street cred”, look no further than iconic slain rapper Tupak Shakur. Before his death, in a documentary called “Resurrection”, Shakur himself revealed his understanding of the root of his suffering, saying “I hate saying this cuz white people love hearing black people talking about this. I know for a fact that had I had a father, I’d have some discipline. I’d have more confidence.” Furthermore, he admitted that he joined gangs because it gave him an identity and a source of protection, stating “Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can; your mother can’t reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn’t show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man.”

Fathers are critical. Families are critical. Conservative principles work, and we have an enormous body of proof that they work. Too bad so few people know the truth. The Republican Party needs to find leadership that believes its own rhetoric and stands by those principles and defends them with greater eloquence and ferocity that the liberal Democrats attack them. Not to get better poll ratings, and not even to win elections; but because if we don’t reverse the moral decline of our nation, reverse this destruction of the family as the basic, essential unit of society, then our republic will fall, just as other great republics and empires have fallen throughout history…not through external force, but with its very foundation rotted from within.

Exposing the Racist Underbelly of the Democrat Party

ldebroux — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:18:44 -0600

As we near the end of February, this article also closes a series in honor of Black History Month. In previous articles, we’ve reviewed the establishment of the Republican Party for the express purpose of ending the moral failure of slavery. We’ve looked at the accomplishments of Republicans in securing liberty for black Americans, from the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, to the 1866 Civil Rights Act (with Democrats refusing to uphold the law, and a Democrat-appointed Supreme Court later repealing the laws). We also looked at the violent, bloody history of Democrats and their sister organization, the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized and murdered thousands of blacks.

Despite the clear facts outlined in history, somehow the Democrat Party has audaciously claimed the mantel as the party that protects blacks, a claim as ridiculous as it is incredulous. Granted, the Democrat Party no longer relies on cross-burning and lynching to keep blacks in their place. However, today it uses far more subtle and sinister tactics to keep blacks on the government “plantation”. And despite their public proclamation of love for blacks in America, their private comments, and the disastrous results of Democrat policies, show us that the Democrats are not now, nor have they ever been, a friend to blacks.

Democrats like to take credit for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and claim Republicans were against civil rights efforts. Yet the truth is that when the 1964 Civil Rights law was passed, it only passed because of overwhelming support from Republicans, who were a heavy minority in both the House and Senate. Without 80% of Republicans voting in favor, the law would not have passed because of opposition from nearly 40% of Democrats. The longest filibuster in Senate history came about as Democrats attempted to derail the passage of the law. Among those deeply opposing civil rights for blacks were Albert Gore (father of former VP Al Gore), Robert “KKK” Byrd, and Democrat Senator Richard Russell, who said of the bill, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.” Democrats named the oldest Senate office building in his honor.

The bill was signed into law by Democrat Lyndon Johnson, which was interesting in and of itself, since Johnson had staunchly opposed passage during his tenure in Congress. In fact, it was Johnson who removed the enforcement “teeth” from the 1957 Civil Rights Act signed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, the same president who desegregated the military.

How does one reconcile the sudden change of heart by Johnson? Perhaps we understand it in a better light when we understand that Johnson was perhaps the shrewdest, most ruthless political operator in American history and a master at turning events to his advantage. Though he signed the bill, it is hard to imagine he’d had a complete change of heart when his private thoughts are revealed. According to testimony of Robert M. MacMillan (who served on Air Force One under Johnson), LBJ was once taking a flight when he bragged to the two governors accompanying him, “I’ll have them n*gg*rs voting Democratic for two hundred years.”

Modern Democrats have offered similar feelings, if in not quite so crude a fashion. In 2007, then presidential candidate Joe Biden said of primary opponent Barack Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Does that mean that all the blacks in public office before Obama were dirty, ugly, and illiterate? Likewise, the “first black president”, Bill Clinton, said to Ted Kennedy during the 2008 campaign (when Clinton was seeking Kennedy’s endorsement for Hillary), “You know, Ted, a few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags.” Now, lest one think that was a one-time faux pas, we now know, via wide coverage of the Edward Klein biography “The Amateur”, Clinton also said of Obama, “Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s…he’s…Barack Obama’s an amateur.”

Of course, those comments are downright complimentary compared to the insults and vitriol reserved for black conservatives. After promising a fair hearing, then- Senator Joe Biden savaged the character of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, in what Thomas would call a “high-tech lynching”. Thomas was painted as a scary, black sexual predator that preyed on women. So unfairly defamatory was the attack that the liberal Juan Williams, a Washington Post op-ed columnist at the time, described it as “indiscriminate, mean-spirited mudslinging supported by the so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women’s organizations.” Thomas would not be the only black man or woman to feel the hateful lash of liberal Democrats for leaving the Democrat plantation. Such notables as former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, and more recently TEA Party favorites like Herman Cain, Tim Scott, and Mia Love would all be savaged by liberals, their characters assassinated publicly, with nary a whimper of protest from the likes of the NAACP or the Congressional Black Caucus. I guess one can’t be “authentically” black unless they are liberal Democrats.

As for the myth of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and the claim of racist southern Democrats switching parties, a lie so often trotted out by liberal Democrats, that is easily debunked. Of the Civil Rights-era Democrats who fought so hard to prevent their passage, only one, Strom Thurmond, ever switched to the Republican Party. The rest would go to their graves as Democrats. Likewise, it was Nixon who worked hardest to desegregate southern schools, and it was Nixon who passed affirmative action programs to help blacks.

As harsh as the personal attacks on black conservatives have been, the policies of Democrats have ruined the lives of millions of black Americans. Astonishingly, presumably due to ignorance as to the impetus for these policies (liberals claim they are helping blacks, even as they cut their legs out from under them), blacks actually elect and re-elect Democrats with around 93% of their vote, insuring that these brutal policies will continue to destroy the black family for generations to come.

And what are these destructive policies? These are the policies that lead to the disintegration of the black family, leave them mired in poverty, leave them professionally disadvantaged, and that leave them impotent against violent criminals.

Despite significant and growing support in the black community for educational choice, Democrats continue to fight hard against allowing vouchers, charter schools, or any other avenue for improving education for black children. Indeed, it was Obama himself who cut off funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which served underprivileged minority children, and which outperformed other area schools at almost half the cost. Inferior education is a guarantee of generational poverty, so why do Democrats oppose giving these children a chance?

Likewise, gun control laws and union work laws were passed specifically to disadvantage blacks. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring decision in McDonald v. Chicago, gun control laws were passed as a way to disarm blacks who were being attacked by bloodthirsty mobs of KKK thugs. You see, thugs prefer unarmed victims. The union work laws were passed to protect white union workers from losing contracts to non-unionized black laborers who offered quality labor at a lower price. And most horrific of all is the holocaust of abortion which has devastated the black community. Planned Parenthood, the organization that grew out of Margaret Sanger’s eugenics plan (by which she promoted the elimination of “undesirables” like blacks and Hispanics through a program of abortion and sterilization) receives hundreds of millions of dollars from Democrats, funds which helped slaughter an estimated 16 million black children since 1973, more than twice the number of Jews slaughtered during the Holocaust. Planned Parenthood has been caught on tape willingly accepting donations for the specific purpose of killing unborn black children. How tragically ironic it is that blacks today give near unanimous support to a party that has achieved what the KKK of years past could only dream of accomplishing…the legal, systematic slaughter of millions of blacks?

So, as we conclude this annual Black History Month, I hope that for once we can take an objective look at which party has been a true friend to the black community, and which is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Which party was formed to secure freedom for blacks, which party fought in the halls of Congress, and which party soaked the fields of battle with their blood? And then consider which party has infiltrated the black community, their churches, their beauty salons, their schools, and their places of gathering, whispering comforting promises even as they plot their enslavement and demise.

The Republican Fight against the KKK Tyranny

ldebroux — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:17:35 -0600

February being Black History month, we continue a review of the long relationship between the Republican Party and black Americans. In the previous two articles, we discussed the establishment of the Republican Party for the specific purpose of ending slavery, and the backlash from pro-slavery Democrats (including a slavery critic being beaten almost to death by a pro-slavery senator) which ultimate led to the commencement of the War Between the States.

We noted the 13th (ending slavery), 14th (extending rights to former slaves) and 15th (securing voting rights for blacks) Amendments, as well as the first Civil Rights Act (passed in 1866) all have a common thread…they were passed by Republicans and viciously opposed by Democrats. Democrat President Andrew Johnson would refuse to enforce the law, and a Democrat-appointed Supreme Court would later rule them unconstitutional. Over the next hundred years following the passage of these amendments and the Civil Rights Act, Democrats fought Republican efforts to secure equality for blacks at every turn, often by violent means.

When Republicans began impeachment proceedings against Democrat President Andrew Johnson, he famously declared “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men!” It surely must have galled Johnson when, less than two months later, Pinckney Pinchback and James Harris attended the Republican National Convention, the first black men to ever serve as major party delegates. In the fall of that year, the Democrats announced the slogan for their national convention, “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule”. It was roundly denounced by the Republican Party.

The most well-known opposition to black equality (well, other than the Democrat Party itself), was and is the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan originally formed in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, and used violent tactics to terrorize blacks and Republicans into abandoning the pursuit of racial equality. While technically separate organizations, the KKK and the Democrat Party had a symbiotic relationship; virtually every member of the Klan was an active member of, or sympathetic to, the Democrats.

In an effort to combat Democrat efforts, either directly as a party or through their terrorist arm known as the KKK, the Republican Congress established the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute those persecuting blacks, in the process protecting blacks and the rights that had been extended to them. As history chronicles, this turned out to be more difficult than Republicans had hoped, taking another century before widespread and open violence against blacks by their Democrat tormentors would come to a merciful end (by then the party had learned to apply more subtle tactics to keep blacks oppressed).

Though Republicans continued passing laws protecting the rights of blacks, the power and influence of the Democrat Party/KKK rose over the coming decades, often through violent intimidation. High profile blacks and Republicans were targeted for violent reprisals, and injury and bloodshed common. One such incident was the case of Octavius Catto, a black man who had worked within the inner circles of the Republican Party and had helped organize one of the first volunteer companies in the Union Army, comprised of black soldiers. He was a vocal and vigorous opponent of slavery and the Democrat efforts to reinstitute it, which was perhaps why he was such an inviting target. On October 10, 1871, gangs of white Democrat thugs roamed the streets of Philadelphia’s black neighborhoods, intimidating them from turning out to vote, beating and murdering those that defied their tyranny. Local police refused to protect the blacks, which only encouraged the thugs.

Yet Catto would not be intimidated, and walked defiantly up the steps to his voting precinct, where he met Frank Kelly, a local Democrat operative and close friend of the Democrat Party boss. As he strode up the steps to vote, Kelly (having recognized Catto) drew his gun and fired several shots at Catto, with one entering his heart and killing him. Catto’s murder outraged many of Philadelphia’s citizens, and Kelly fled the city. Kelly was found six years later in Chicago and extradited back to face murder charges. Tragically, Kelly was protected from punishment, acquitted by an all-white jury sympathetic to his racist hate, despite the testimony of six eyewitnesses to the murder.

In his book “A Short History of Reconstruction,” renowned historian Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia University, said the following of the Klan: “Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a ‘reign of terror‘ against Republican leaders black and white…In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to destroy the Republican Party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.” Foner would also quote Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan (and descendant of the man of the same name who served as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK) from the September 1928 edition of the KLKK’s “The Kourier Magazine,” “I have never voted for any man who was not a regular Democrat. My father…never voted for any man who was not a Democrat. My grandfather was…the head of the Ku Klux Klan in reconstruction days… My great-grandfather was a life-long Democrat…My great-great-grandfather was…one of the founders of the Democratic Party.” As one can easily see, the Democrat Party and the KKK were inseparably intertwined, Siamese twins of tyranny in the eradication of blacks and Republicans.

The violence would continue for many years. In 1874, Democrats stormed the Louisiana state house in protest of the racial integration in the administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg, killing 27 people. Ultimately, the Ku Klux Klan and Democrats would murder, oppress, and torment untold thousands of black Americans. Cross-burning and lynching would become synonymous with the groups. One of the most notorious murders was the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, shot and killed by Democrat and Klan member Byron De La Beckwith, who in turn escaped justice for more than thirty years after two all-white juries failed to convict him. He was finally re-tried in 1994 following the exhumation and autopsy of Evers, and was convicted at last, serving only six years in prison before his death in 2001.

After the turn of the century and for many more decades, Democrats unapologetically condemned equality for blacks, proudly declaring their philosophical brotherhood with the Klan in denying equality to blacks. Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, serving from 1959 until his death in 2010, was a former member of the KKK, rising to the ranks of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops. Byrd famously wrote, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” Byrd was the same man who spoke for more than fourteen hours in a filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen who broke the filibuster, having worked tirelessly to invoke cloture and force a vote on the bill. Democrats often referred to Byrd as “The Conscience of the Senate”.

Despite its history of racist and violent oppression of blacks, including outright murder, the Democrat Party today is seen as the protector of blacks in America. Such a claim could only be the result of stunning ignorance and brilliant propagandizing. In next’s week’s final article in the series, we’ll take a look at what many white Democrat leaders really feel about the blacks who vote for them, and why Democrat policies have led to institutionalized poverty and the destruction of the black family. Stay tuned…

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