The President is not proposing to cut spending by $400 billion. He’s only proposing to reduce future spending growth by that amount. In other words, his “spending cut” is only a cut if you play the dishonest DC game of measuring “cuts” against a baseline of ever-expanding government.

http://MinuteMenNews.com/2012/12/exposed-obamas-make-believe-spending-cuts/#ixzz2DvyHjUeI

ObamaCare Fallout: Walmart Ends Insurance For New Hires

And so the government takeover of our health care system begins:

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post. …

Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. …

Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.

By making the fine for not providing health care cheaper than providing health care, this was always the plan: to encourage employers to send us to the government.

Remember how Obama's big ObamaCare sell was, "You get to keep the health insurance you have"?

It was all a lie, a hustle, a con, a ruse…

But now it's the law of the land … forever.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/01/Nation-Largest-Employer-Ends-Insurance-Sends-New-Workers-To-ObamaCare

Tracking School Children With RFID Tags? It’s All About the Benjamins

But this time the nanny of the month comes to us from deep in the heart of Texas, where administrators at San Antonio's Northside school district are tracking kids with radio frequency identification chips. Dozens of electronic readers have been installed in the school's ceiling panels to keep tabs on the kiddos while they're at school. The official number-one reason for going RFID is to "increase student safety and security," but--since district funding goes up when attendance goes up--it's clearly all about the Benjamins.

Just as the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandates Radio Frequency Identification Device chips to monitor livestock, a Texas school district just begun implanting the devices on student identification cards to monitor pupils’ movements on campus, and to track them as they come and go from school.

And it appears that the educational move to Big Brother-style monitoring is motivated mainly by money, despite privacy and health concerns.

Two schools at the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when classes began last Monday. Like most state-financed schools, their budgets are tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn’t receive daily funding for that pupil, because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there.

But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desk but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/rfid-chip-student-monitoring/

PK's NOTE: It is a trade of liberty, for security….and they shall have neither. This is a ruse, it’s conditioning. Once these kids are trained to give up a little bit, they’ll give a little more. It’s passive monitoring. Each and every small sacrifice, each compromise makes the next small sacrifice, the next small compromise easier, just as a Frog is slowly boiled alive 1 degree at a time.

Chicago Food Truck Lawsuit Calls Out Political Favoritism, Freedom And Privacy

Then there’s Chi-Town, where officials are using GPS devices to track food trucks to make sure they don’t wander within 200 feet of any fixed businesses that sell food, including convenience stores. Violators could face fines of $2,000. Compare that to the $100 fine you’d face for parking in front of a fire hydrant and you get an idea for just how seriously city officials take the threat of competition.

The battle over food truck regulation in Chicago heated up another degree as food truck owners slapped the city with a lawsuit on Wednesday.

The lawsuit was filed in the Cook County Circuit Court by the Institute for Justice on behalf of the Schnitzel King food truck's owner and media relations director, and the Cupcakes for Courage food truck owner. The suit takes aim at two rules in the city's recently-passed food truck ordinance that plaintiffs say stifle competition and freedom.

Passed in July, the ordinance bans food trucks from operating within 200 feet of any fixed business that serves food -- including convenience stores like 7-Eleven -- and requires trucks to install GPS tracking devices that broadcast their whereabouts.

"It just feels like an ankle bracelet, as a small business owner, to have to have a GPS tracking device monitor your every whereabouts," said Schnitzel King's Kristen Casper in a video released in collaboration with their legal counsel. "Personally, I think it's wrong and I don't want it on my vehicle."

“[The law] exists for one reason and one reason only: to protect a few, politically-connected restaurants from competition,” lead litigator Robert Frommer said of the ordinance, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/chicago-food-truck-lawsui_n_2131744.html

End Runs Could Tame Obama

After four years of Barack Obama's presidency, we well know what to expect from the next four years. We know how he "governs," to the extent that he governs at all: When he's in Washington and not otherwise engaged on the golf course, he invites his supporters to the White House for meetings. And the rest of the time, he's on the campaign trail, taking his proposals "to the people" in certain, select areas that voted heavily for him. Almost unanimously for him, in fact. All of this "governance" is given ample air time by the White House public relations media, formerly known as main stream media, which, along with the president and Democratic leaders, ridicule, demonize, and diminish his "opposition" in every way conceivable.

Obama's style of presidential "leadership" in relation to Congress is to talk on the phone with Congressional leaders every six months or so, while his preferred m.o. is to ignore Congress' constitutional mandate to "legislate" by making end runs around them. He issues executive orders and regulates everything he (or his "assistant" Valerie Jarrett) can think of to regulate through his scores of appointed "czars."

He seems unstoppable in his quest for complete control of every aspect of our lives.

But there is a way out of this and the president has shown us what that way is: End runs.

As Newt Gingrich never tires of pointing out: The House of Representatives holds the purse strings. The House is majority Republican and the House needs to unfund, de-fund, and refuse to fund the president's ridiculously destructive orders and regulations and even his signature legislation, the sadly misnamed "Affordable Care Act," which was rammed through Congress against the will of the majority of Americans and with not one single Republican vote. And the Republican governors of the several states need to arm themselves with the 10th Amendment and refuse to comply with any federally mandated rule or regulation that impacts the citizens of their states adversely.

The president of the United States is not an absolute ruler; he is not a king. His is one of three branches of government. His position is that of an elected official who, ostensibly, represents ALL the people. Barack Obama has not fulfilled that duty, but has chosen, instead, to represent only the people who contribute to his endless campaigns and those who vote for him; in this, he has made himself irrelevant to the governing process of the United States.

It is time for those with the power, the will, and the intelligence to govern this nation responsibly as the Constitution provides to stand up and do it. It is time to take back America.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/end_runs_could_tame_obama.html#ixzz2Dw09atUR

The Asymmetry of Intolerance

By Tom Trinko

A group of Christians have just filed a lawsuit to have a statue of Nietzsche on Federal land near a Montana ski slope removed because they found a single person who says she's offended.

The vast majority of conservatives, including Christians, would find that lawsuit to be bizarre. Of course Christians, being tolerant, have done no such thing. Atheists, however, have sued to have a statue of Jesus on Federal land near to a ski slope, placed there at the request of WWII veterans back in 1955, removed. At first the litigants, a bigoted group of haters who have no tolerance for the personal beliefs of others, didn't bother to produce anyone who was in fact bothered by the statue. When forced to, the bigots managed to dig up one person who was bothered.

Some might question the use of "bigoted haters" to describe an organization which exists to drive the free speech expression of religious people off public property. However given that many atheists who support anti-Christian crusades also believe it's fine for the government to fund "Piss Christ", a crucifix in a jar of the "artists" urine, and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary covered in cow dung it's clear that these atheist extremists do not believe in the free speech rights of Christians; one cannot declare Federal funding of religious statues so long as they are designed to attack faith to be okay while declaring that the same statues -- minus feces -- are prohibited on Federal land.

The simple fact is that people of faith, and good people in general, are not offended by the symbols of other faiths. No Catholic has called for removing a statue of Buddha from a public spot in any major city's Chinatown. Similarly no Protestant has ever called for the removal of a crucifix from the outside of a Catholic church. Islamic symbols aren't common in the U.S. but Christians haven't filed suit to make Muslims remove minarets from their mosques. In fact, Christians have been effusive in their support for Jewish religious symbols right next to Christian ones on public property.

Finally people of faith haven't sued to remove statues of atheists from public property. The only group in America today which has no tolerance for the symbols which represent the heartfelt belief of others are atheists. They believe that all others should tolerate atheist symbols and anti-religious art but that atheists can have a zero tolerance policy for religious expression.

This latest atheist lawsuit is one in a long stream of such suits aimed at eliminating the free speech rights of Americans of faith. The Constitution says that the Federal, government -- not state governments -- is prohibited from establishing a religion. The Founders' writings make clear that the intent was not to prevent any expression of religious belief on public property but rather to avoid a situation where the government endorsed one specific brand of Christianity, a la the Church of England.

In fact the Founders were very clear in the First Amendment that religious speech and actions were very highly protected. The First Amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Notice that the First Amendment protects all aspects of an individual exercising their religion, not just an individual's right to go to church.

Clearly then, as Americans we have the right to have religious statues on public land, which is an exercise of our faiths, so long as we don't restrict which religions can have statues. By supporting a diversity of statues, artwork, or tablets on public property Americans are rejecting the right of the government to pick one faith and elevate it above all others while endorsing the rights of all Americans, no matter what their faith, to have their views memorialized on public land when appropriate.

The atheist perspective is that only atheists have First Amendment rights on public land. They base their reasoning on the dubious proposition that atheism is not a religion and that the Constitution is restricting religious liberty rather than defending it.

The thought of atheism being a religion may sound a bit odd to most. All the same, it's clear that atheism is in fact a full-blown religion identical in nature to any other faith.

First note that since science cannot prove that there is no God and science cannot explain everything that goes on in the universe -- it may be able to someday, but that day is far in the future if ever -- atheists have to reject God based on faith; their faith that God is implausible. Atheists tend to confuse their belief that God is unlikely with fact and declare that they don't have to defend their beliefs.

Second while Atheists don't have a god, neither do Buddhists, yet who would question that Buddhism is a religion? While there are dictionary definitions of religion that do seem to require a god there is also this one which is actually more accurate in that it covers Buddhism:

...a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

This brings up a key point. Given that people of faith do not summon lightning to smite their foes and that Heaven isn't visible, what is religion in a purely worldly light?

The answer is that religion, in a purely worldly way, consists of the moral principles of an individual irrespective of their source.

Therefore, from a general diversity and tolerance based perspective, the religion of an individual consists of the moral perspectives that guide her actions in society. Everyone has moral beliefs -- even serial killers, although clearly few of us would agree with a serial killer's moral compass -- so everyone has "religion".
Atheists attempt to introduce an artificial dichotomy based on the source of a person's moral principles.

Atheist extremists say that you can quote Nietzsche on morality but not Jesus at a public school graduation Why? If Jesus is God then it would be smart to quote Him, and if he is not God then he's a man, and hence no different from Nietzsche. The inconsistency in atheistic reasoning can be seen in that if one could show that Jesus was not God it would be okay to quote him at a graduation and have a statue of him on public land. Clearly saying we should honor a man more than we should honor God is a somewhat odd perspective.

In reality, atheist extremists are attempting to do what the Constitution expressly forbids: have the Federal government endorse one particular faith above all others. Atheists wish to allow symbols of the atheist faith -- that there is no god -- and sayings to be allowed on public lands, in public speeches, and in government documents while banning the symbols of all other faiths. This is nothing less than having the Federal government endorse one faith, Atheism, above all others.

In an America where we're informed that the most vile exploitive types of pornography are protected as free speech, where it's legal to erect a statue of a Meso-American god on public land, where it's perfectly legitimate to erect a statue of Nietzsche on public land, we must stop tolerating the attempts by atheists to establish their faith as the one and only faith favored by the government.

The Temptation of Babel

By Fay Voshell
But undeterred by the wreckage of dreams, there are always people who try again and again to create world unity via empire. Empire building is a constant of human history. There will always be an Alexander, a Napoleon, Hitler, or a Genghis Khan among us. There will always be rulers who want to bend the whole world to their will.

Those driven by ambition and power are also always driven by what they regard as a self-evident world view, an ideology that must be imposed on the entire world. Such visionary absolutists brook no opposition. Whether it be Hellenization or Islamization; whether it be the international brotherhood of communism or the progressive Left agenda, the goal is to force the world to sing in perfect harmony. But the outcome, achieved by force of law and/or militarism, is the monotonous one note of ideological correctness pounded over and over again.

Those who note in our time the Left's inclination toward and admiration of universal government are merely observing the recycling of the ancient historical phenomenon of empire building noted in the Genesis tale of Babel. Empire building is going on here in America and around the globe. Nation states, particularly democratic and republican nation states, are disintegrating as ascendant global entities such as the United Nations seek to render competing individual states and nations impotent by such means as Law of the Sea and control of the internet.

Here in the United States, the impulse toward empire has begun, as all world empires do, with consolidation of power.

The current ongoing executive coup continues to succeed by the elimination or vitiation of any and all institutions which stand in the way. The judiciary is subdued, the military is being emasculated. The individual states of our union are being subsumed under federal government via the suffocating rules and regulations of Obamacare, a pestilent plenitude of czars, and harassing nonelected entities such as the EPA and a host of other bureaucracies which are forming a suffocating exoskeleton around the states, businesses, and constitutionally established entities such as Congress. For all the fuss and fury of individual congressmen and senators, Congress is not a problem for the executive branch, as it is now almost completely bypassed by the White House, which has persuaded most Americans congress is an anachronism retarding the will of the people as revealed in Barack Obama, our Lord and Savior.

In sum, there has been a relentless consolidation of executive power at the expense of all American institutions. The nation's momentum and strength is increasingly at the beck and call of the executive branch.
The reason for the enervation of American free standing institutions and the Church -- the Church being another story unto itself -- is that this administration is more allied to the dreams of international organizations than the American dream. It is wedded to the idea of global governance.

Subsuming American institutions, states and the military under the executive branch more readily achieves the goals of international hegemony. Unifying the U.S. under an imperial presidency enables transference and use of U.S. power more easily. Executive hegemony makes matters so much more streamlined than constitutionally mandated balances of power. That's why this government is dedicated to "diplomatic" solutions rather than American self interests. It is why this administration has shown a marked penchant for "democratic" uprisings resulting in one-man rule. It is much easier to collude with a cabal of likeminded rulers than with presidents of fading colonial powers and debating bodies of messy, nascent or established republics and democracies filled with controversy and lack of "progress."

What will be the outcome of the executive power grab?

We can expect what is happening in U.S. to be applied internationally; namely, the destruction of independent nations and the substitution of global agencies as power brokers for the entire world.

In sum, there is a drive to substitute a new international order for the present hegemony of the United States and the West. The present structures of American institutions, already being retrofitted to executive uses, will by the end of President Obama's tenure in office be ready for retrofitting to international standards and use. The internet, which is to be controlled by the UN, is to become the means for establishing a universal language and ideology.

The utopian who is convinced his way is uncontested, absolutely correct and pure is always a conqueror for whom individual lives, independent institutions and freedom mean little or nothing, as the severe purity of his ideology warrants the destruction of all obstacles in his path. Especially suspect is the current utopian ideal of "equality," for the equality sought always requires violence.

The American people, with humility and acknowledgement of the limitations of earthly powers and governance, once created a model of earthly government that formed a mighty nation under God and which transformed the ideas of right government around the globe. She has provided inspiration and hope for oppressed millions and has until now retained the ability to correct herself by humbly returning to the principles which undergirded her laws and institutions.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/the_temptation_of_babel.html#ixzz2Dw3Yhzkj

Rachel Maddow's Blind Deference to Government Power

The MSNBC host doesn't want plain people calling the shots.

Is there a difference between government and society? Rachel Maddow seems to think not.

Pay close attention to these words from the MSNBC host's promo as she attempts to defend "America" against those who (in her view) believe its best days are in the past:

"No, no, no. We're not going to build it. No, No, No. America doesn't have any greatness in its future. America has small things in its future. Other countries have great things in their future. China can afford it. We can't"—you're wrong! And it doesn't feel right and it doesn't sound right to us because that's not what America is."

The first question that arises is: Who is it that says "America [unlike China] doesn't have any greatness in its future"? Who is Maddow arguing against? The last time I heard something like that, it came from the "limits to growth" crowd, which is probably part of Maddow's fan base.

This question continues to be a puzzle until you realize that when Maddow says "America," she means not individual Americans or society but government. And now her fallacy is clear. Frédéric Bastiat identified it in 1850. In his classic, The Law, Bastiat wrote that the "socialist" confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education... We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

I can see Maddow saying that. One need not be a state socialist, however, to commit this fallacy. It's done all the time all along the political spectrum. But Maddow offers us a particularly good example.

Note Maddow's unspoken premise: An achievement isn't great if the government has nothing to do with it. Government does big things. We mere private individuals do only small things. The bias toward government—a curious thing when you consider that its essence is the legal power to use physical force against peaceful individuals—couldn't be more stark. Yet what grounds are there for believing this? When people are left free to innovate and produce, they routinely take risks to achieve things that are great in the sense that they make our lives better, healthier, and longer. Moreover, much of what makes life better is the cumulative effect of many "small" achievements, marginal improvements in products and services. Any one of them may be small, but the total effect on our lives is great. We'd be worse off without them.

Echoing President Obama and Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren, Maddow apparently believes that no private accomplishment is possible without government support through spending on infrastructure, education, and research. But that is wrong. All of those things can be and have been provided in the private market. Government has a way of crowding out private efforts and then asserting its own importance because of the lack of private alternatives. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Government doesn't just crowd out private-sector activities; it also substitutes inferior ones in their place. No one is pleased with education—which has been under government control for close to 200 years. If the infrastructure is in disrepair, who's to blame for that? Politicians don't think about fixing things until they need a rationalization for "stimulus" spending. Why does it take a recession to make them think about the roads and bridges? American history is rife with examples of private roads and bridges, whose owners didn't wait for an economic crisis to fix them. Their incomes—their businesses—depended on satisfying customers. That goes for education and research too.

What sort of great things does Maddow have in mind? When historians rate American presidents, they tend to favor the ones who took America into war. A president who avoided war and just let people go about their business in freedom would have no chance of being ranked among the greats because he didn't "do anything." This attitude colors the views of pundits like Maddow. They also rank congressional sessions by how many bills were passed. A far better measure would be how many were repealed.

But let's assume Maddow isn't looking for a war to make America great. To her credit, she's written a book—Drift—complaining that America gets into war too easily these days. So what kind of greatness does she have in mind. Since she has shot promos at Hoover Dam and a wind farm, we may assume that these are the sorts of things she wants. She apparently likes industrial policy, government-guided economic activity in which politicians decide which industries and firms should be encouraged and which not.

Maddow needs to be reminded that we live in a world of scarcity. That doesn't mean great things can't be accomplished, but it does mean that if politicians and bureaucrats decide what is to be built, the scarce labor and resources used in those projects will be unavailable for other projects—particularly those that private entrepreneurs are willing to take risks on. It's Bastiat's broken-window fallacy again. We readily see a government project being built. (Don't worry, the politicians will make sure of that.) What we don't see are all the things not being built because government preempted free enterprise.

But we must ask: Who is better qualified to determine how scarce labor and resources should be invested, politicians or private individuals? Politicians operate under a perverse set of incentives and lack critical information. They aim to please electoral constituencies and special-interest donors, while having no market feedback to guide them in choosing among the many alternative projects; they risk no capital of their own and acquire resources by force—taxation. Why would we expect them to make good decisions? They may call what they do "investment," but in economic terms, it is consumption not investment.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs—at least when government provides no safety net of bailouts, guarantees, subsidies, cheap credit, and the like—do risk their own capital or must raise it from investors who are free to say no. (Try saying that as a taxpayer.) It's not an infallible process, but if consumers are ultimately unhappy with what is produced, they are free to withhold their dollars and send the misguided entrepreneur into bankruptcy, a process that will transfer resources to more able hands. That's a kind of clout which political subjects can only wish they had.

In other words, government may do flashy things, but they are things that are never subjected to the market test of actually serving consumers. Do political decision-makers pay the price for their failures? Usually not. Occasionally an incumbent may lose an election, but he never had any capital at risk.

Maybe that's why Maddow prefers government "greatness" to private "smallness." She doesn't want plain people calling the shots, which ultimately they would do in a freed market. She seems more at home with the governing elite and their court intellectuals, who promise to take care of the rest of us rather than let us look after ourselves through the vast mutual-aid society known as the free market.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/02/rachel-maddows-blind-deference-to-govern