Obamas' Cost of Living in the White House: $1.4 Billion a Year
As Carol touched on yesterday, while the White House keeps its doors closed to the people under the guise of "devastating sequestration," First Lady Michelle Obama is preparing for her glitzy 50th birthday party with performances by Adele and Beyonce. Although the party is being touted as private and therefore paid for by the Obamas, taxpayers will still have to foot the bill for secret service and other accommodations at the White House for the event. Meanwhile, President Obama just held a fancy dinner for Republicans just six blocks away from the White House and of course he took his massive motorcade to get there.Charles Cooke over at NRO has tallied up the total for the Obamas' cost of living in the White House: $1.4 billion per year.
The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio), or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year), or to trim his ridiculous motorcade ($2.2 million). If Ellen DeGeneres wants another dancercize session or Spain holds another clothing sale, the first family will be there before you can say “citizen executive.” Fear ye not, serfs: Austerity may be the word of the week, but the president is by no means in any danger of being forced to live like the president of a republic instead of like a king.
The current annual cost of the White House — just in household expenses, not the policy operations for which it exists — is $1.4 billion: Annually, presidential vacations cost $20 million (the low estimate for one presidential vacation to Hawaii is $4 million, but the true cost is probably five times that); the first family’s yearly health-care costs are $7 million; more than $6 million is spent on the White House grounds each year. Transporting the president cost $346 million last year. But as Michelle Obama might say, America is basically a downright mean sort of place, so the tours will just have to go. One hopes at least that the calligraphers were recruited to sign the docents’ pink slips.So there you have it folks. While the White House has given out talking points to every federal agency telling them to make sequester as painful as possible through canceling meat inspections, forcing long delays at the airport and releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens into the streets of America, the Obamas are planning their next vacation at the expense of the American people.
Last week Sean Hannity and Eric Bolling of Fox News offered to pay for at least one week of White House tours, a cost of $74,000. No word yet on whether the White House will take them up on their offer.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/03/11/obamas-cost-of-living-in-the-white-house-14-billion-a-year-n1530802
Washington on "the Emperor Problem"
Along with many Americans, I noted with alarm President Obama's Valentine's Day statement at a Google hangout on why he can't take more action on overhauling immigration policy:
"This is something I've struggled with throughout my presidency," said Obama. "The problem is that I'm the president of the United States, I'm not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed."
As any schoolchild should know, our country was established by throwing off the chains of King George III's monarchy. Everyone should also know that the public was so grateful to General George Washington that many would have supported making him king. However, Gen. Washington rejected these ideas, gave up any and all claims to political power and quietly retired to his farm in Virginia.
In a letter to Lewis Nicola dated May 22, 1782 on the subject of some people wanting to make him king, General Washington stated his feelings on this matter in detail and naturally with greater eloquence and force than any one of us could have hoped to express.:
With
a mixture of great surprise and astonishment I have read with attention
the Sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured Sir, no
occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful
sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in
the Army as you have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence, and
reprehend with severity. For the present, the communication of them will
rest in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter,
shall make a disclosure necessary. I am much at a loss to conceive what
part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to
me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country. If
I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a
person to whom your schemes are
more disagreeable; at the same time in justice to my own feelings I must
add, that no Man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice
done to the Army than I do, and as far as my powers and influence, in a
constitutional way extend, they shall be employed to the utmost of my
abilities to effect it, should there be any occasion. Let me conjure to
you then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself
or posterity, or respect for me, banish these thoughts from your mind,
and never communicate, as from yourself, or anyone else a sentiment of
the like Nature. (Volume 24, p. 272, John C. Fitzpatrick ed., The
Writings of George Washington, 1745-1799(39 vols), Washington, D.C.: United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission)
The Father of our Country, the man without whom we would never have had American liberty, could not imagine what part of his conduct could have instilled these sentiments in the people. Once again, we are reminded of how our free nation was formed in such large part by the character of Washington. By contrast, it is clear that the major problem we have today is not that our president is prevented being Emperor of the United States; it is that we have a president who would prefer to be King of the United States.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/washington_on_the_emperor_problem.html#ixzz2NFcQNcMh
PK'S NOTE: While the First Family lives on 1.4 billion a year...:
46,609,072 People on Food Stamps in 2012; Record 47,791,996 in December
Nearly a quarter of the people living in Washington, D.C. are on the program.
On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture quietly
released new statistics related to the food stamps program, officially
known as SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The
numbers reveal, in 2012, the food stamps program was the biggest it's
ever been, with an average of 46,609,072 people on the program every
month of last year. 47,791,996 people were on the program in the month
of December 2012.
The federal government also says that in a given month in 2012, the number of households on food stamps was 22,329,713.
The state with the highest average number of participants per month in 2012 was Texas, with an astonishing 4,038,440 folks drawing from the program. The second highest is California, with 3,964,221, and then Florida, at 3,353,064.
Washington, D.C., with an estimated population of 617,996, had an average of 141,147 participants. Meaning, roughly 23 percent of folks living in D.C. are on food stamps, according to the numbers provided by the federal government. The participation rate in Texas, which has an estimated population of 26,059,203, 15.5 percent.
The state with the lowest number of participants in the program was Wyoming, with 34,347 out an estimated population of 576,412.
Over the weekend, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that the Obama administration is encouraging growth in the food stamps program as a way to stimulate the economy.
"Amazingly, the federal government says that the more people we have on food stamps, the more it grows the economy. The Department of Agriculture proudly declares: ‘Each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.’ Our government is running food stamp promotions at foreign embassies. One worker was given an award for overcoming ‘mountain pride’ and getting more people to sign up. Where I grew up in Alabama, all honest work, even the hardest, was honored. And pride, self-respect, and a desire to be independent was valued, not a thing to be overcome," said Sessions, who delivered the weekly Republican address.
Sessions also pointed out that cities like Baltimore, which he said have have been "governed by liberal policies for decades," see particularly high numbers of participation in the program.
"Despite this fountain of federal funds, 1 in 3 children still live in poverty in our nation’s capital. Two in three children live in single parent homes. In nearby Baltimore--another city governed by liberal policies for decades--1 in 3 residents are on food stamps and in 1 in 3 youth live in poverty. Americans are committed to helping our sisters and brothers who are struggling, but we are seeing the damaging human consequences of our broken welfare state," said Sessions.
"We spend a trillion dollars each year on federal poverty programs. That’s more than the budget for Social Security or Defense. But poverty seems only to increase. Something is wrong. Compassion demands that we change."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/46609072-people-food-stamps-2012_706745.html
The state with the highest average number of participants per month in 2012 was Texas, with an astonishing 4,038,440 folks drawing from the program. The second highest is California, with 3,964,221, and then Florida, at 3,353,064.
Washington, D.C., with an estimated population of 617,996, had an average of 141,147 participants. Meaning, roughly 23 percent of folks living in D.C. are on food stamps, according to the numbers provided by the federal government. The participation rate in Texas, which has an estimated population of 26,059,203, 15.5 percent.
The state with the lowest number of participants in the program was Wyoming, with 34,347 out an estimated population of 576,412.
Over the weekend, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that the Obama administration is encouraging growth in the food stamps program as a way to stimulate the economy.
"Amazingly, the federal government says that the more people we have on food stamps, the more it grows the economy. The Department of Agriculture proudly declares: ‘Each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.’ Our government is running food stamp promotions at foreign embassies. One worker was given an award for overcoming ‘mountain pride’ and getting more people to sign up. Where I grew up in Alabama, all honest work, even the hardest, was honored. And pride, self-respect, and a desire to be independent was valued, not a thing to be overcome," said Sessions, who delivered the weekly Republican address.
Sessions also pointed out that cities like Baltimore, which he said have have been "governed by liberal policies for decades," see particularly high numbers of participation in the program.
"Despite this fountain of federal funds, 1 in 3 children still live in poverty in our nation’s capital. Two in three children live in single parent homes. In nearby Baltimore--another city governed by liberal policies for decades--1 in 3 residents are on food stamps and in 1 in 3 youth live in poverty. Americans are committed to helping our sisters and brothers who are struggling, but we are seeing the damaging human consequences of our broken welfare state," said Sessions.
"We spend a trillion dollars each year on federal poverty programs. That’s more than the budget for Social Security or Defense. But poverty seems only to increase. Something is wrong. Compassion demands that we change."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/46609072-people-food-stamps-2012_706745.html
6 Things the Next U.S. Budget Should Do
It’s time for
Congress to make a real budget—and not just any budget.
It’s been four years since the U.S. had a real budget. While the House of Representatives has passed budgets, the Senate has stopped each one. Instead, the Senate under Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has done short-term, stopgap measures to keep the government funded year after year.
But this year, Reid and others have said they are going to step up and do their job.
The President’s budget is already late—by two months—and will not appear until early April, according to the White House. To get things started, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will unveil his fiscal year 2014 budget tomorrow.
Heritage’s Alison Acosta Fraser and Patrick Louis Knudsen, the Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, have a blueprint for what that budget should look like if we are to have any hope of reclaiming economic growth and digging out of the hole we’re in. They make the case that the budget should do six things.
1. Balance. Achieve balance within 10 years, and stay in balance.
Why? Put simply, we can’t keep spending more money than we take in. Anyone who has paid a credit card bill knows that that bill just keeps getting larger and larger until you start living within your income. If we as a country don’t get our budget into balance within the next 10 years, government is going to swallow nearly all of the economy—leaving us all with a disaster, but especially today’s children.
2. Defend America. Fully fund national defense.
Why? The Pentagon has waste and inefficiencies like every other government agency, and these should be ferreted out. But President Obama has already been shrinking our military capabilities, and this can’t continue if we are going to defend ourselves. North Korea’s recent nuclear threats are a reminder that our forces must be modernized and ready at all times.
3. Reform Entitlements. Reform the major entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) with real policy changes that improve the programs, eliminate their shortcomings, and make them affordable.
Why? The major entitlements are the primary reason America has a budget problem. They are growing every year, and this growth is unsustainable. The levels of benefits will have to be cut abruptly if these programs are not reformed to keep them around for the next generation.
4. Repeal Obamacare.
Why? We haven’t begun to see the real impact of Obamacare’s new spending, because many of its largest provisions go into effect in 2014. Obamacare spends $1.8 trillion just in the next 10 years. All of these costs, and Obamacare isn’t going to improve patient care—it’s only going to make things worse.
5. Cut Spending. Reduce non-defense discretionary spending.
Why? The federal government has overreached into every area of Americans’ lives. Functions like transportation and education need to be returned to the states and localities so that the people closest to the services can have more say in how they are run.
6. Reform Taxes. Adopt growth-oriented tax reform capped at the historical level of taxation.
Why? Economic growth is the goal. A better economy means people are employed, they are advancing, and they are making more money. That’s why the government actually takes in more in taxes when times are good—people make more money and pay more taxes. Tax reform does not mean closing tax preferences (“loopholes”) to raise revenue. True tax reform is revenue neutral. Any revenue raised by eliminating tax preferences should be offset by lowering tax rates. The code should encourage saving and investment, the essential elements of sustainable, long-term growth.
All of these things are possible. The Heritage Foundation has laid out the way to accomplish them in the Saving the American Dream plan.
It’s been four years since the U.S. had a real budget. While the House of Representatives has passed budgets, the Senate has stopped each one. Instead, the Senate under Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has done short-term, stopgap measures to keep the government funded year after year.
But this year, Reid and others have said they are going to step up and do their job.
The President’s budget is already late—by two months—and will not appear until early April, according to the White House. To get things started, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will unveil his fiscal year 2014 budget tomorrow.
Heritage’s Alison Acosta Fraser and Patrick Louis Knudsen, the Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, have a blueprint for what that budget should look like if we are to have any hope of reclaiming economic growth and digging out of the hole we’re in. They make the case that the budget should do six things.
1. Balance. Achieve balance within 10 years, and stay in balance.
Why? Put simply, we can’t keep spending more money than we take in. Anyone who has paid a credit card bill knows that that bill just keeps getting larger and larger until you start living within your income. If we as a country don’t get our budget into balance within the next 10 years, government is going to swallow nearly all of the economy—leaving us all with a disaster, but especially today’s children.
2. Defend America. Fully fund national defense.
Why? The Pentagon has waste and inefficiencies like every other government agency, and these should be ferreted out. But President Obama has already been shrinking our military capabilities, and this can’t continue if we are going to defend ourselves. North Korea’s recent nuclear threats are a reminder that our forces must be modernized and ready at all times.
3. Reform Entitlements. Reform the major entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) with real policy changes that improve the programs, eliminate their shortcomings, and make them affordable.
Why? The major entitlements are the primary reason America has a budget problem. They are growing every year, and this growth is unsustainable. The levels of benefits will have to be cut abruptly if these programs are not reformed to keep them around for the next generation.
4. Repeal Obamacare.
Why? We haven’t begun to see the real impact of Obamacare’s new spending, because many of its largest provisions go into effect in 2014. Obamacare spends $1.8 trillion just in the next 10 years. All of these costs, and Obamacare isn’t going to improve patient care—it’s only going to make things worse.
5. Cut Spending. Reduce non-defense discretionary spending.
Why? The federal government has overreached into every area of Americans’ lives. Functions like transportation and education need to be returned to the states and localities so that the people closest to the services can have more say in how they are run.
6. Reform Taxes. Adopt growth-oriented tax reform capped at the historical level of taxation.
Why? Economic growth is the goal. A better economy means people are employed, they are advancing, and they are making more money. That’s why the government actually takes in more in taxes when times are good—people make more money and pay more taxes. Tax reform does not mean closing tax preferences (“loopholes”) to raise revenue. True tax reform is revenue neutral. Any revenue raised by eliminating tax preferences should be offset by lowering tax rates. The code should encourage saving and investment, the essential elements of sustainable, long-term growth.
All of these things are possible. The Heritage Foundation has laid out the way to accomplish them in the Saving the American Dream plan.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/11/morning-bell-6-things-the-next-u-s-budget-should-do/?roi=echo3-14834243561-11773352-b2d16a04d0b520d74ae7bf5745c74f61&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
The Panopticon State
Where the government can see, it can send a drone.
By Mark Steyn
I
shall leave it to others to argue the legal and constitutional
questions surrounding drones, but they are not without practical
application. For the last couple of years, Janet Napolitano, the
secretary of homeland security, has had Predator drones patrolling the
U.S. border. No, silly, not the southern border. The northern one. You
gotta be able to prioritize, right? At Derby Line, Vt., the
international frontier runs through the middle of the town library and
its second-floor opera house. If memory serves, the stage and the best
seats are in Canada, but the concession stand and the cheap seats are in
America. Despite the zealots of Homeland Security’s best efforts at
afflicting residents of this cross-border community with ever more
obstacles to daily life, I don’t recall seeing any Predator drones
hovering over Non-Fiction E–L. But, if there are, I’m sure they’re
entirely capable of identifying which delinquent borrower is a Quebecer
and which a Vermonter before dispatching a Hellfire missile to vaporize
him in front of the Large Print Romance shelves.
And in a certain sense they’re right: Afghanistan is winding down, at best, to join the long list of America’s unwon wars, in which, 48 hours after departure, there will be no trace that we were ever there. The guys with drones are losing to the guys with fertilizer — because they mean it, and we don’t. The drone thus has come to symbolize the central defect of America’s “war on terror,” which is that it’s all means and no end: We’re fighting the symptoms rather than the cause.
For a war without strategic purpose, a drone’ll do. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen born in New Mexico, was whacked by a Predator not on a battlefield but after an apparently convivial lunch at a favorite Yemeni restaurant. Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman was dining on the terrace of another local eatery when the CIA served him the old Hellfire Special and he wound up splattered all over the patio. Abdulrahman was 16, and born in Denver. As I understand it, the Supreme Court has ruled that American minors, convicted of the most heinous crimes, cannot be executed. But you can gaily atomize them halfway round the planet. My brief experience of Yemeni restaurants was not a happy one but, granted that, I couldn’t honestly say they met any recognized definition of a “battlefield.”
Al-Awlaki Junior seems to have been your average anti-American teen. Al-Awlaki Senior was an al-Qaeda ideologue, and a supposed “spiritual mentor” to everyone from the 9/11 murderers to the Fort Hood killer and the thwarted Pantybomber. On the other hand, after September 11, he was invited to lunch at the Pentagon, became the first imam to conduct a prayer service at the U.S. Congress, and was hailed by NPR as an exemplar of an American “Muslim leader who could help build bridges between Islam and the West.” The precise point at which he changed from American bridge-builder to Yemeni-restaurant take-out is hard to determine. His public utterances when he was being feted by the New York Times are far more benign than those of, say, Samira Ibrahim, who was scheduled to receive a “Woman of Courage” award from Michelle Obama and John Kerry on Friday until an unfortunate flap erupted over some ill-phrased Tweets from the courageous lass rejoicing on the anniversary of 9/11 that she loved to see “America burning.” The same bureaucracy that booked Samira Ibrahim for an audience with the first lady and Anwar al-Awlaki to host prayers at the Capitol now assures you that it’s entirely capable of determining who needs to be zapped by a drone between the sea bass and the tiramisu at Ahmed’s Bar and Grill. But it’s precisely because the government is too craven to stray beyond technological warfare and take on its enemies ideologically that it winds up booking the first lady to hand out awards to a Jew-loathing, Hitler-quoting, terrorist-supporting America-hater.
Insofar as it relieves Washington of the need to think strategically about the nature of the enemy, the drone is part of the problem. But its technology is too convenient a gift for government to forswear at home. America takes an ever more expansive view of police power, and, while the notion of unmanned drones patrolling the heartland may seem absurd, lots of things that seemed absurd a mere 15 years ago are now a routine feature of life. Not so long ago, it would have seemed not just absurd but repugnant and un-American to suggest that the state ought to have the power to fondle the crotch of a seven-year-old boy without probable cause before permitting him to board an airplane. Yet it happened, and became accepted, and is unlikely ever to be reversed.
Americans now accept the right of minor bureaucrats to collect all kinds of information for vast computerized federal databases, from answers on gun ownership for centralized “medical records” to answers on “dwelling arrangements” for nationalized “education records.” With paperwork comes regulation, and with regulation comes enforcement. We have advanced from the paramilitarization of the police to the paramilitarization of the Bureau of Form-Filling. Two years ago in this space, I noted that the U.S. secretary of education, who doesn’t employ a single teacher, is the only education minister in the developed world with his own SWAT team: He used it to send 15 officers to kick down a door in Stockton, Calif., drag Kenneth Wright out onto the front lawn, and put him in handcuffs for six hours. Erroneously, as it turned out. But it was in connection with his estranged wife’s suspected fraudulent student-loan application, so you can’t be too careful. That the education bureaucracy of the Brokest Nation in History has its own Seal Team Six is ridiculous and offensive. Yet the citizenry don’t find it so: They accept it.
The federal government operates a Railroad Retirement Board to administer benefits to elderly Pullman porters: For some reason, the RRB likewise has its own armed agents ready to rappel down the walls of the Sunset Caboose retirement home. I see my old friend David Frum thinks concerns over drones are “far-fetched.” If it’s not “far-fetched” for the education secretary to have his own SWAT team, why would it be “far-fetched” for the education secretary to have his own drone fleet?
Do you remember the way it was before the war on terror? Back in the Nineties, everyone was worried about militias and survivalists, who lived in what were invariably described as “compounds,” and not in the Kennedys-at-Hyannisport sense. And every so often one of these compound-dwellers would find himself besieged by a great tide of federal alphabet soup, agents from the DEA, ATF, FBI, and maybe even RRB. There was a guy called Randy Weaver who lost his wife, son, and dog to the guns of federal agents, was charged and acquitted in the murder of a deputy marshal, and wound up getting a multi-million-dollar settlement from the Department of Justice. Before he zipped his lips on grounds of self-incrimination, the man who wounded Weaver and killed his wife, an FBI agent called Lon Horiuchi, testified that he opened fire because he thought the Weavers were about to fire on a surveillance helicopter. When you consider the resources brought to bear against a nobody like Randy Weaver for no rational purpose, is it really so “far-fetched” to foresee the Department of Justice deploying drones to the Ruby Ridges and Wacos of the 2020s?
I mention in my book that government is increasingly comfortable with a view of society as a giant “Panopticon” — the radial prison devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1785, in which the authorities can see everyone and everything. In the Droneworld we have built for the war on terror, we can’t see the forest because we’re busy tracking every spindly sapling. When the same philosophy is applied on the home front, it will not be pretty.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342564/panopticon-state-mark-steyn
Why Is America Facing Economic and Societal Turmoil?
How
did the United States, a country founded on the principle of individual
freedom and having achieved great wealth and world influence, find
itself in its present financial
and societal predicament? Until the bulk of the American citizenry
understands the why, there is no hope of reversing the nation's headlong
plunge into the abyss.
The history of mankind is replete with the rise and fall of major civilizations. The downfall of these societies inevitably stemmed from a prolonged period without adversity, during which time internal strife developed out of political intrigue and avarice on the part of the ruling classes. In due course these empires were easily conquered or dominated by others.
This history was well known to the founders of the United States. The overall concept of government being answerable to an informed and involved citizenry was their effort to avoid such an outcome. Unfortunately, today's destructive political/economic philosophies such as Marxism and socialism, manipulated by the self-absorbed to achieve political power and an uninvolved and ill-educated citizenry, were factors the founding fathers could not have foreseen.
The end-product of Marxist thought is eerily similar to the reality of monarchies and oligarchies-- the domination of a state by a select class or individual. Today's progressives or socialists are no different than those throughout the history of the human race who believed they were pre-ordained to rule the masses. As modern democratic societies will not accept the concept of an authoritarian dictator or monarch, a powerful central government, with its trappings of legitimacy, serves as a substitute.
In order for this strategy to succeed, the public must be manipulated into accepting the premise that only government -- and not the individual -- can provide economic and personal security. This cannot be accomplished in a country such as the United States in an era of adversity but rather one of peace and prosperity.
The last period of true national hardship was the 1930s and the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt, despite his best effort, was only able to achieve the embryonic beginnings of an all-encompassing federal government. Regardless of the nation's dire circumstance, the people were not conditioned to willingly accept the broad strokes of change that FDR proposed.
However, in the intervening seventy-three years, as the United States became the most powerful economic and military force the world has ever seen, there has been an inexorable and near irreversible march to government domination of the citizenry. Parallel to this track has been the rise of the American Left.
The absence of true national adversity over these years allowed the adherents of Marxist and socialist philosophies to recruit among the college age and middle class by citing the so-called inequities of American society and the need to re-create the country. They further fanned the egos of these useful idiots by convincing them of their supposed superiority to the unwashed masses.
However, even with some success in recruitment, a strategy was needed to enable a faction that ultimately represented less than 20% of the citizenry to achieve their end game with a people overwhelmingly against the concept of a powerful central government, and within the framework of a written Constitution.
Using the backdrop of overwhelming prosperity, the Left seized upon the concept of "fairness" to promote their agenda and engender guilt among the populace. This "fairness" tactic was further reinforced by the incessant promotion that the United States, as a civilization, was responsible for all manner of evils throughout its history. In order to implement this strategy, it was necessary to gradually infiltrate and dominate the education, media and entertainment complex as a means of societal indoctrination.
The underlying tenet pushed by the left was: there is so much wealth within the country that there was nothing it could not provide. Further, to make up for past sins guaranteeing equal outcomes was the least that could be done. The simplistic argument became: If the United States can accomplish (fill in the blank) then surely it can afford to (fill in the blank).
As a result, much of the citizenry quietly accepted the argument and simply dropped out of active participation in government. They assumed the nation was in reasonably good hands with the two political parties whose motives or agenda were never questioned. Most did not realize that by the mid 1980's, the Left had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party, and far too many in the Republican Party were unable or unwilling to fully warn the populace of the future consequences of an all-powerful central government. They were content to slow down the march to socialism -- and that only when they were in power.
This march was not at gunpoint, but rather by the destruction of the economy and self-determination through massive spending programs which were unsustainable but became woven into the fabric of society.
In the 2008 and unfortunately again in the 2012 election cycle, the Left, with its ideal stealth candidate for President, actualized the culmination of their grand strategy. The nation now has the most radical government in its history. The victors are unabashedly brazen in their triumph. While still assuming that the general public is asleep, they do not hesitate to openly advocate and implement policies not wanted by the electorate. Among them: so-called green energy, health care restructuring, amnesty for illegal aliens, gun control, gay marriage and expanded welfare and social spending. The Left does so, not as a benefit for the country or its people, but to enhance and make permanent government power, regardless of the long term consequences to the nation.
However, to understand the true motivation of the American Left, one need only observe how they fawn over the rulers of countries controlled by Marxist governments -- such as the recently deceased Hugo Chavez. The diminishing standard of living, the loss of liberty, and the bleak future for the peoples of these nations are ignored while the power accumulated by the head of state is celebrated. It is that acquisition of power which motivates the self-identified "Progressives," not the welfare of the general public, as they so loudly proclaim.
Another false assertion is that the Left in the United States is simply trying to copy European socialism. However the grand experiment of Euro-socialism in many countries in Europe, now proven to be an egregious failure, stemmed from the unimaginable devastation of World War II. The motivation of the European political class was to promote the general welfare of the population, not for self-aggrandizement. The failure of their brand of socialism was due to a determination to never repeat the circumstances which brought about two World Wars in the twentieth century.
In the United States, there has never been a similar devastating factor to justify a socialist state and a powerful central government. What is happening now is purely driven by arrogance and manipulation. As such, there is the potential to reverse the process if the American people begin to understand what has happened and why. But only if they are informed and led by a fully revamped, conservative Republican Party that has purged itself of its current establishment.
The history of mankind is replete with the rise and fall of major civilizations. The downfall of these societies inevitably stemmed from a prolonged period without adversity, during which time internal strife developed out of political intrigue and avarice on the part of the ruling classes. In due course these empires were easily conquered or dominated by others.
This history was well known to the founders of the United States. The overall concept of government being answerable to an informed and involved citizenry was their effort to avoid such an outcome. Unfortunately, today's destructive political/economic philosophies such as Marxism and socialism, manipulated by the self-absorbed to achieve political power and an uninvolved and ill-educated citizenry, were factors the founding fathers could not have foreseen.
The end-product of Marxist thought is eerily similar to the reality of monarchies and oligarchies-- the domination of a state by a select class or individual. Today's progressives or socialists are no different than those throughout the history of the human race who believed they were pre-ordained to rule the masses. As modern democratic societies will not accept the concept of an authoritarian dictator or monarch, a powerful central government, with its trappings of legitimacy, serves as a substitute.
In order for this strategy to succeed, the public must be manipulated into accepting the premise that only government -- and not the individual -- can provide economic and personal security. This cannot be accomplished in a country such as the United States in an era of adversity but rather one of peace and prosperity.
The last period of true national hardship was the 1930s and the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt, despite his best effort, was only able to achieve the embryonic beginnings of an all-encompassing federal government. Regardless of the nation's dire circumstance, the people were not conditioned to willingly accept the broad strokes of change that FDR proposed.
However, in the intervening seventy-three years, as the United States became the most powerful economic and military force the world has ever seen, there has been an inexorable and near irreversible march to government domination of the citizenry. Parallel to this track has been the rise of the American Left.
The absence of true national adversity over these years allowed the adherents of Marxist and socialist philosophies to recruit among the college age and middle class by citing the so-called inequities of American society and the need to re-create the country. They further fanned the egos of these useful idiots by convincing them of their supposed superiority to the unwashed masses.
However, even with some success in recruitment, a strategy was needed to enable a faction that ultimately represented less than 20% of the citizenry to achieve their end game with a people overwhelmingly against the concept of a powerful central government, and within the framework of a written Constitution.
Using the backdrop of overwhelming prosperity, the Left seized upon the concept of "fairness" to promote their agenda and engender guilt among the populace. This "fairness" tactic was further reinforced by the incessant promotion that the United States, as a civilization, was responsible for all manner of evils throughout its history. In order to implement this strategy, it was necessary to gradually infiltrate and dominate the education, media and entertainment complex as a means of societal indoctrination.
The underlying tenet pushed by the left was: there is so much wealth within the country that there was nothing it could not provide. Further, to make up for past sins guaranteeing equal outcomes was the least that could be done. The simplistic argument became: If the United States can accomplish (fill in the blank) then surely it can afford to (fill in the blank).
As a result, much of the citizenry quietly accepted the argument and simply dropped out of active participation in government. They assumed the nation was in reasonably good hands with the two political parties whose motives or agenda were never questioned. Most did not realize that by the mid 1980's, the Left had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party, and far too many in the Republican Party were unable or unwilling to fully warn the populace of the future consequences of an all-powerful central government. They were content to slow down the march to socialism -- and that only when they were in power.
This march was not at gunpoint, but rather by the destruction of the economy and self-determination through massive spending programs which were unsustainable but became woven into the fabric of society.
In the 2008 and unfortunately again in the 2012 election cycle, the Left, with its ideal stealth candidate for President, actualized the culmination of their grand strategy. The nation now has the most radical government in its history. The victors are unabashedly brazen in their triumph. While still assuming that the general public is asleep, they do not hesitate to openly advocate and implement policies not wanted by the electorate. Among them: so-called green energy, health care restructuring, amnesty for illegal aliens, gun control, gay marriage and expanded welfare and social spending. The Left does so, not as a benefit for the country or its people, but to enhance and make permanent government power, regardless of the long term consequences to the nation.
However, to understand the true motivation of the American Left, one need only observe how they fawn over the rulers of countries controlled by Marxist governments -- such as the recently deceased Hugo Chavez. The diminishing standard of living, the loss of liberty, and the bleak future for the peoples of these nations are ignored while the power accumulated by the head of state is celebrated. It is that acquisition of power which motivates the self-identified "Progressives," not the welfare of the general public, as they so loudly proclaim.
Another false assertion is that the Left in the United States is simply trying to copy European socialism. However the grand experiment of Euro-socialism in many countries in Europe, now proven to be an egregious failure, stemmed from the unimaginable devastation of World War II. The motivation of the European political class was to promote the general welfare of the population, not for self-aggrandizement. The failure of their brand of socialism was due to a determination to never repeat the circumstances which brought about two World Wars in the twentieth century.
In the United States, there has never been a similar devastating factor to justify a socialist state and a powerful central government. What is happening now is purely driven by arrogance and manipulation. As such, there is the potential to reverse the process if the American people begin to understand what has happened and why. But only if they are informed and led by a fully revamped, conservative Republican Party that has purged itself of its current establishment.
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