13 posts tagged “government”

My friend over at Liberty Pen has posted another great video on his YouTube channel.  Milton Friedman is one of his major subjects and this video is an interview on TV from back in the early 60's.  Friedman gives one of the best arguments against modern liberalism.  Topics covered include Social Security, Minimum Wage, and The Great Depression.  But the key statement was his comment on the adjectives we use as titles.  He says, "I consider myself a liberal in the truest sense of the word, while those who call themselves liberal today are actually conservative.  They are conservative in the truest sense of the word because they want to preserve the course this nation is on which is bigger government and moving toward socialism.  They think of themselves as soft hearted but the softness has moved into their heads.  You know, I want the poor to be helped and for the underemployed to make a living wage, but the laws and policies they want to implement don't get the results they are seeking.  A worker with low skills doesn't get higher wages because the law forces the employer to avoid hiring him at all.  People I would trust personally actively lie to the American public because they believe these policies are best for the public.  For instance, with the Social Security program, the law states that the employee pays half and the employer pays half but the truth is the employee pays all of it.  If the employer is able to afford (adjusting for the times) $15.00 per hour he subtracts the amount going out for taxes and benefits so that the employee is actually taking home $8.50 for each hour he works.  The rest goes to the government to manage for him."  Considering that is nearly half the employee's earning power, you've yet to figure in sales, property, estate, and a slew of other taxes.  So if we figured the government's true cost, we can only conclude that the government's take is nearly 60% of our earning power with some 15% coming back in very limited benefits they should have no authority to purchase and dole out.

Ted West was commenting on his blog about his political motivations for ranting on the Liberals from another blog site and I thought I would go over and pour out my two cents on the community.  It seems they pay their bloggers to contribute.  So, I've started another new project and have been getting some payoff.  Literal payola.  So I have some articles written that I need to cross post back here.  Apologies to my VOX community for not responding lately.  The appeal of being paid to write was inebriating, but the reality of $10 a week payoff has sobered me.  You can check out the site and my work at BloggersBase.  I will continue to write here, but I need to adjust my rss to send complete articles rather than 1 or a partial paragraph so they will auto post there.  And, I'm going to have to go back to focusing on my blog theme instead of wandering all over the topic map as I've enjoyed doing over the past couple of years.  That said, I have a few issues of interest to broach just now, soooo...

I recently saw a report on the Aussie terror campaign in the form of setting wildland fires and accompanied that report with a photo of a wild koala being rescued from the ravaged forest.  Here is a video of that same koala during the rescue.

I ran across this report on Stumble Upon, the direction our country is taking and the reason so many states are suddenly so interested in the arcane secession movement is because our 'president' and this congress are making promises they have no authority to make, to put up the government's authority to implement eminent domain as collateral to China for the loans they are making to our government.  This story still needs verification but if true, we are either going to initiate a civil war or we are going to have our property and business sold off to the People's Republic of Communist China as the U.S. economy and the strength of the U.S. dollar decline.  This story has legs thus far on the back of an earlier report that China was calling for guarantees against the failing U.S. dollar.

This is literally a mortgaging of our sovereignty away to a communist state.  On a related topic, another blogger over at BloggersBase is predicting the global collapse of the international monetary system.  Personally, I think he is as bad as Al Gore using scare tactics to sell the global warming scam, but he is marketing gold.  Apart from that, he makes some compelling arguments for the gold standard.  Presently, we are experiencing a trend called Backwardation.  Essentially, Backwardation is the increasing real value of commodoty type money like gold and silver.  With fiat money like the dollar, the yen, the mark, there is no definition of real value.  With gold or silver, their value is set by the available quantity and the market demand on that quantity.  With fiat currencies both losing value and losing interest growth rates, the demand for commodoty currencies is ever increasing so that instead of paying 2000 ounces of gold for a particular piece of real estate, you can now pay 500 ounces of gold.  With the stock markets falling to 12-13 year lows and economists projecting worse and possibly much worse, investment wealth is evaporating.  Most investments have already lost half their value.  Investors are driving their wealth into liquid, 0 interest accounts for fear of continued value loss.  Banks are tight with their loaning principals all of a sudden and capital is nearly impossible to come by if you want to buy a big ticket item or start up a new business.  The only thing that will turn this all around is confidence.  Confidence in the dollar, confidence in the market, confidence in the investment structures, confidence in the government and thus far, not one of those entities is proving trustworthy.

Our government is putting up national sovereignty for collateral against loans from China.  States are moving to intercept the Fed's ability to interject eminent domain authority to sell all or parts of them, via Constitutional provisions for secession.  This does not breed confidence in our government.  Meanwhile, the stimulus continues to grow with each new examination of America's 'too big to fail' corporations and bailout programs.  The administration has submitted a projected spending budget of 3 trillion dollars for the year 2010.  What does the market have to be encouraged about?  The administration and the congress are legislating this country's hope and opportunity for recovery into the grave.  The move to sign away rights to business, property, or territories is a huge sign of failure and decline of the Great American Experiment.

Is America's governmental power a Right or Privilege

This is my proposal for the first case the Bench shall consider.  The Bench is a venue for 5 conservatives to consider evidence as argued for morality in line with the Constitution.  In this case, the power of the U.S. government to rule and protect its people shall be considered.  Much of what we've heard in the news over the past 8 years has been hype generated by Bush hatred from the left and the history changing media bias complicit with NGO's and PAC's operating from agendas charging the executive branch with everything from orchestrating 9/11 to torture of detainees at GITMO to bypassing the Constitution using modern technology to listen into private conversations of U.S. citizens.  We will attempt to cut through that hype to reach a consensus of our founding fathers' intentions for governmental powers and determine whether those powers are a responsibility and therefor a right or a privilege granted by the American public's ignorance or acceptance.  Keeping in mind that the next president will represent the Liberal ideology and push the envelop with regard to the precedence set by the current president, if we had the authority, would we forbid the executive branch the policies it has prosecuted over the past 8 years?  If so, which ones or to what degree?

The Marketing of Evil

Few of us realize that the widely revered father of the "sexual revolution" has been irrefutably exposed as a full-fledged sexual psychopath who encouraged pedophilia. Or that giant corporations voraciously competing for America's $150 billion teen market routinely infiltrate young people's social groups to find out how better to lead children into ever more debauched forms of "authentic self-expression."

Likewise, most of us mistakenly believe the "abortion rights" and "gay rights" movements were spontaneous, grassroots uprisings of neglected or persecuted minorities wanting to breathe free. Few people realize America was actually "sold" on abortion thanks to an audacious public relations campaign that relied on fantastic lies and fabrications. Or that the "gay rights" movement, which transformed America's former view of homosexuals as self-destructive human beings into their current status as victims and cultural heroes, faithfully followed an in-depth, phased plan laid out by professional Harvard-trained marketers.

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Taking America Back

How can Americans take back their nation? The author says the only way we can reestablish our freedom, our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is to break the hammerlock of statism and the notion that moral relativism holds the answers to ordering people's passions and behavior.

"Taking America Back" exposes the weaknesses in America's current political and cultural systems and offers practical solutions, solutions that are real and doable that can revive freedom, decency, and justice in our nation.

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The Liberals have produced a good marketing scheme for their agenda.  The populace have been told big lies for generations and the voters have been sold a bill of goods.  Given the expectations the people hold for the president, how will these policies affect an ignroant populace?  In light of the fact that few voters can describe how our government works, what can we expect the end result to be of the presidents' wide and widening powers?  How is the power struggle between the legislative branch and the executive branch cured.

Homework for the Jurors:

You have rights, the government has privileges 1-3

You have rights, the government has privileges 2-3

You have rights, the government has privileges 3-3

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These are all videos and will not require a great deal of time to bone up on the issues relating to this case.

Yes sir, we held the line.  Those elitist judges didn't get to make that law stick.  The law they legislated from the bench.  We've amended the California state constitution to specifically define marriage as between one man and one woman.  Other states also held the line during this election cycle as well.  In fact, everywhere it was placed before the people, Red state, Blue state, it didn't matter.  The people want marriage defined as between one man and one woman.

C Bradley Thompson

 I don't like cross posting entire articles because I view it as bad etiquette.  Aside from the legal implications it can be immoral unless the author personally requests that their work be spread around.  In this case, I think the author would prefer it be spread around.  So, I'll include the link back to the original location I found it and go ahead and put the whole thing up.  We have to know what is right and good and beneficial as opposed to what is bad, wrong and harmful.

pos 101 from Illinois State University

Socialism vs. Capitalism: Which is the Moral System?
On Principle, Vol. 1, No. 3
Autumn 1993

by: C. Bradley Thompson

Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization: collectivism and individualism. In the twentieth-century collectivism has taken many forms: socialism, fascism,
nazism, welfare-statism and communism are its more notable variations. The only social system commensurate with individualism is laissez-faire capitalism.

The extraordinary level of material prosperity achieved by the capitalist system over the course of the last two-hundred years is a matter of historical record. But very few people are willing to defend capitalism as morally uplifting.

It is fashionable among college professors, journalists, and politicians these days to sneer at the free-enterprise system. They tell us that capitalism is base, callous, exploitative, dehumanizing, alienating, and ultimately enslaving.

The intellectuals' mantra runs something like this: In theory socialism is the morally superior social system despite its dismal record of failure in the real world. Capitalism, by contrast, is a morally
bankrupt system despite the extraordinary prosperity it has created. In other words, capitalism at best, can only be defended on pragmatic grounds. We tolerate it because it works.

Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interestsŠrealizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luck­being in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.

But how does the entrepreneurial mind work? Have you ever wondered about the mental processes of the men and women who invented penicillin, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, the radio, the electric light, canned food, air conditioning, washing machines, dishwashers, computers, etc.?

What are the characteristics of the entrepreneur? The entrepreneur is that man or woman with unlimited drive, initiative, insight, energy, daring creativity, optimism and ingenuity. The entrepreneur is the man who sees in every field a potential garden, in every seed an apple. Wealth starts with ideas in people's heads.

The entrepreneur is therefore above all else a man of the mind. The entrepreneur is the man who is constantly thinking of new ways to improve the material or spiritual lives of the greatest number of people.

And what are the social and political conditions which encourage or inhibit the entrepreneurial mind? The free-enterprise system is not possible without the sanctity of private property, the freedom of contract, free trade and the rule of law.

But the one thing that the entrepreneur values over all others is freedom--the freedom to experiment, invent and produce. The one thing that the entrepreneur dreads is government intervention. Government taxation and regulation are the means by which social planners punish and restrict the man or woman of ideas.

Welfare, regulations, taxes, tariffs, minimum-wage laws are all immoral because they use the coercive power of the state to organize human choice and action; they're immoral because they inhibit or deny the freedom to choose how we live our lives; they're immoral because they deny our right to live as autonomous moral agents; and they're immoral because they deny our
essential humanity. If you think this is hyperbole, stop paying your taxes for a year or two and see what happens.

The requirements for success in a free society demand that ordinary citizens order their lives in accordance with certain virtues--namely, rationality, independence, industriousness, prudence,
frugality, etc. In a free capitalist society individuals must choose for themselves how they will order their lives and the values they will pursue. Under socialism, most of life's decisions
are made for you.

Both socialism and capitalism have incentive programs. Under socialism there are built-in incentives to shirk responsibility. There is no reason to work harder than anyone else becuase the rewards are shared and therefore minimal to the hard-working individual; indeed, the incentive is to work less than others because the immediate loss is shared and therefore minimal to the
slacker.

Under capitalism, the incentive is to work harder because each producer will receive the total value of his production--the rewards are not shared. Simply put: socialism rewards sloth and penalizes hard work while capitalism rewards hard work and penalizes sloth.

According to socialist doctrine, there is a limited amount of wealth in the world that must be divided equally between all citizens. One person's gain under such a system is another's loss.

According to the capitalist teaching, wealth has an unlimited growth potential and the fruits of one's labor should be retained in whole by the producer. But unlike socialism, one person's gain is everybody's gain in the capitalist system. Wealth is distributed unequally but the ship of wealth rises for everyone.

Sadly, America is no longer a capitalist nation. We live under what is more properly called a mixed economy--that is, an economic system that permits private property, but only at the discretion of government planners. A little bit of capitalism and a little bit of socialism.

When government redistributes wealth through taxation, when it attempts to control and regulate business production and trade, who are the winners and losers? Under this kind of economy the winners and losers are reversed: the winners are those who scream the loudest for a handout and the losers are those quiet citizens who work hard and pay their taxes.

As a consequence of our sixty-year experiment with a mixed economy and the welfare state, America has created two new classes of citizens. The first is a debased class of dependents whose means of survival is contingent upon the forced expropriation of wealth from working citizens by a professional class of government social planners. The forgotten man and woman in all of this is the quiet, hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying citizen who minds his or her own business but is forced to work for the government and their serfs.

The return of capitalism will not happen until there is a moral revolution in this country. We must rediscover and then teach our young the virtues associated with being free and independent citizens. Then and only then, will there be social justice in America.

C. Bradley Thompson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashland University and Coordinator of Publications and Special Programs at the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public
Affairs.

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More from C. Bradley Thompson

Historians vs. American History

Independence Day and American History

Will Atlas Shrugged Change Your Life Forever?

Origin of Income Tax

The U.S. income tax was first established in 1862 to support the Union efforts in the Civil War. Although the tax was discontinued in 1872, the government brought it back in 1894. The Supreme Court declared the tax unconstitutional the following year, but a constitutional amendment reestablished the income tax for good in 1913.

We are essentially paying a flat tax under the current tax code.  All 15,000 pages of it.  That almost sounds fair.  Almost.  Until you find out how much each of us is paying.  It is fair in the sense that everyone is paying their fair share but it is entirely unfair in the sense that it is a huge waste of our personal wealth.  The following study shows that all Americans, wealthy, poor, or somewhere in between are paying the same amount after everything is figured in.  To include sales taxes, income taxes, benefits taxes, property taxes, state and local taxes, excise taxes, etc.,  Now the amount we are paying is something to be noted here.  Forty percent.  I said 40% and more.  Yes, big business and the poor are both paying 40%!!!! and so are the middle class.  We all want tax reform.  We all have different ideas of what reform should look like.  The reality is we are all being screwed for about 30% of our income and getting crap results in education, in military payoffs and waste and general corruption from legislators to contractors to funded institutions.  Why?  Because our legislators are lazy or worse, corrupt.  Instead of requiring value for dollars spent, they are pouring ever more into the problem areas. 

I used to be on the supply side of a government organization.  I know how spenders of government funds think.  I've witnessed it first hand.  Every year government funded operations horde their budget trying to make it stretch to the next funding.  At the end of that fiscal year, they spend everything left in their budget.  They have to.  Yes, they have to or face having their budget cut for the next year.  Because, the bean counters aren't counting tools, or uniforms, or any other form of supplies.  That's under inventory on their pages full of numbers.  That's why you get news reports of school employees dumping perfectly good textbooks in the dumpsters year after year.  That's why you hear about $140,000 ashtrays.  They aren't interested in cost effectiveness until the budget reaches the voters' ears.  $10,000 dollars per student? per year? and you can't get that kid to pass a 3rd grade test after they graduate from high school?  Value for dollars spent is net loss and meta-negative in the world market.  Further, they operate on the 'bigger problems, more money' principal.  So, if an institution wants more money, they will sometimes create problems or exaggerate existing problems.

Back to that tax code.  This is also unfair.  15,000 pages nobody, including the IRS, can interpret fairly and consistently.  As a manager and small group leader, I can attest that people expect consistency from their authority figures.  Each individual will feel his is the worst lot measured against his coworker if you are not willing or able to give them consistency.  You don't necessarily even have to treat them well, as long as everybody gets equal treatment and the leader is up front with the expectations placed upon them.  That's why everyone in this country agrees the tax code must be reformed.  Everyone except those who are supposed to oversee it.  Our wonderful Congress in all its glory and with its 6% approval rating.  Now, given this little tidbit, how did at least four legislators wind up on the ballots?  3 of them are still on the ballots.  All of them Senators.  The only exception is the VP pick on the Republican ticket and she was never in the running for the top spot.  How did this happen?

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A Tax is a financial charge or other levy imposed on an individual or a legal entity by a state or a functional equivalent of a state (for example, secessionist movements or revolutionary movements). Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities. Taxes consist of direct tax or indirect tax, and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent (often but not always unpaid). A tax may be defined as a "pecuniary burden laid upon individuals or property to support the government […] a payment exacted by legislative authority."^[1] A tax "is not a voluntary payment or donation, but an enforced contribution, exacted pursuant to legislative authority" and is "any contribution imposed by government […] whether under the name of toll, tribute, tallage, gabel, impost, duty, custom, excise, subsidy, aid, supply, or other name."^[1]

In modern taxation systems, taxes are levied in money, but in-kind and corvée taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist states and their functional equivalents. The method of taxation and the government expenditure of taxes raised is often highly debated in politics and economics. Tax collection is performed by a government agency such as Canada Revenue Agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States, or Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK. When taxes are not fully paid, civil penalties (such as fines or forfeiture) or criminal penalties (such as incarceration)^[2] may be imposed on the non-paying entity or individual.

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In a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Boston University economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David Rapson have found that our all-in marginal tax rate is 40%, give or take a bit. Yes, you read that right: 40%.

Most workers will pay about that much on each dollar of income when all taxes -- federal and state income taxes, sales taxes, taxes for benefit programs, etc. -- are considered.

As a consequence, a 30-year-old couple earning only $20,000 a year has a marginal tax rate of 42.5%, while a 45-year-old couple earning $500,000 pays at 43.2%. There are some exceptions: A 30-year-old couple earning $50,000 a year, for instance, pays 24.4%, and a 60-year-old couple making $150,000 a year faces a tax rate of 47.7%.

The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

That's not a big range, particularly when you notice that it covers an income rise of 2,500%.

So I have a modest proposal: Ask your senators or representative if they have a clue about this. If they don’t, regardless of party, they shouldn't be in office. Vote accordingly.

Source: "Does It Pay, at the Margin, to Work and Save?" by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David Rapson

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Over at America's Right I read an article that stokes up my fires over the financial crisis even further than they were at first hearing of the crisis.  People who are doing business the right way, meaning they make their mortgage every month and pay their taxes every year and do their best to struggle along sometimes scraping change together for milk for the kids' breakfast are now going to be called on to bail out those who wear Armani suits and Bulova watches.  We who are struggling to keep the kids' clothed and fed are watching those suits and wigs argue about how to spend a billion here and billion there and multi trillion dollar budgets.  We who are working two jobs to make ends meet are watching suits and wigs work 45 minutes in the Senate and adjourn for a week while the metaphorical Rome burns.  We who spend two weeks worth of pay for one doctor visit are watching them write legislation that requires 1/4 of every paycheck for nationalized health care to bolster a system already ruined by legislation that requires health care for every visitor able to pay or not.  Legislators are writing laws that artificially drive prices out of reach not only for health care but for housing and that one is under the banners of "Affordable healthcare," and "Affordable Housing!!!"  Legislation that prevents our border patrol from guarding our borders effectively.  Legislation that makes it legal to loan money to illegal aliens.  Legislation that gives our wealth to our enemies.  Legislation that prevents us from providing our own energy reserves to our own market forcing us to export each year to enemy regimes another seven hundred billion.  Legislation that spends a billion here and billion there on wasteful projects so that each year our wealth is increasingly squandered to the tune of a trillion per year.  Wrap your heads around that sum.

Somebody did the math and surmised that if the $700,000,000,000 bailout money were divvied up between every man and woman over the age of 18, we would each get $297,000 after taxes.  Now hang on.  How many bad loans are there out there?  Certainly not 301,000,000 or the equivalent of the entire population of the U.S at between 2 or 3 hundred thousand each.  The entire debt of the U.S. is way beyond that already.  Are you telling me that for every seven hundred billion we are in debt, I personally owe the government spenders $297,000?  Let me check my pockets here.  Xkxka, nope, they're never going to be that deep.  Two million or so each plus whatever this war is going to wind up costing....and whatever they wind up spending on the next crisis...and the next...  You know, a trillion here, and a trillion there, its all moot at this point.  Why not go ahead and have a party with that next trillion and just tell the world, "Sorry, we declared bankruptcy."  We don't have anything to pay you with so go ahead, take over.  I suppose we could pull a Saudi Arabia stunt and just declare ourselves out of debt.  "Hey China, you want that half a trillion or trillion we owe you?  You're going to have to take it from us.  Hey House of Saud, you might as well ship that next tanker to India, we can't pay you for it."

Do you understand what is possible here?  We are now on the brink of the next great depression.  Our paper money worthless.  It was backed by gold at one point, but our economy was strong enough to trade on trust, so the legislators eliminated that security.  That trust is dubious at best at the moment.  If government doesn't pull a miracle out of their collective hat, we are no longer an economic powerhouse and without that economy, our military will be decimated by aging equipment and a limping technical improvement aparatus.  If you have paper, get rid of it.  If you are into the banks or the business that relies on disposable income, get out.  Get out quick.  If you have an acre or two, be prepared to rely on your garden and the common good will of the community.  Many now, are ready to welcome that depression rather than bail out the crooks on Wall Street and in Washington.  I have described stories related to me by my grandmother and parents of the great depression here before.  Go out and rent the old black and white classic, "The Grapes of Wrath" and see my own article at Hard Times.

If this is the model of democracy, a great depression every 80 years or so, the world won't want it and we very likely will not survive the next great war with technology being a key to victory.  In that process you will begin to understand why morals are so important to a society.  Why it is so important for you to hold your neighbor to a standard of behavior, not only monetarily, but sexually, socially, in every way we haven't over the past 50 years.  People will choose a dictator over a shepherd if that dictator promises continuity.  He doesn't have to promise peace or good times, just an even keel instead of stormy seas which include lawlessness on their own streets and food riots in their own town's stores and death from starvation or disease a very real prospect for most of the nation's citizens.

Pray God helps them pull that miracle out of their hat.  Pray now and pray hard.  We cannot afford to let the economy collapse for many reasons, not the least of which is many of our lives will literally depend on it, but also to insure our military might and powerhouse economy continues to influence the world toward peace and trade.  I know many believe we are THE greatest influence for evil around the world, but for your own sakes look at the evidence.  The cold war could have resulted in a U.S.S.R. led world.  WWII could have led to a Nazi led world.  Without America in the mix we could be living under a Red China led world.  Without the U.S. thwarting the Islamic extremist spread throughout the world, we would all be bowing down toward Mecca 5 times a day.  Where would your free speech be if America collapsed after any one of these conflicts in the last century?  Where will your right to choose your lifestyle be if America is not there in the next 5 years to face down the major despotic regimes vying for world domination?

Excerpt from America's Right http://www.americasright.com/

It angers me to no end that we will now be forced to take some of our tax money--money which comes out of our paychecks and bank accounts and bottom lines and kitchen pantry and Christmas presents and diaper budget--and bail out those who refuse to be held personally accountable for their own mistakes. It angers me to no end that we're on the hook for illegal immigrants who are breaking the law by simply being here in the first place and have defaulted on loans they should never have been granted, loans which they were able to procure without income verification, without identification, because our federal government forced banking institutions to relax lending standards in the name of political correctness, diversity, “social equity” and my personal favorite, “economic justice.”

I started out digging into the story behind Nancy Pelosi.  Twana had asked me to do an expose` on her but as I dug in, I found that Nancy is straight up Democrat Party hack to the core.  She has a further left voting record than Barak Obama.  Where Obama's voting record shows he has voted along party lines 96% of the time in the Senate (more than any other senator, Nancy has voted along party lines 98% of the time in the House of Representatives.  The further I dug, the more I realized that all of Nancy's astoundingly stupid moves have not been Nancy moves but Democratic moves.  She is simply following the party line and agenda.  The astounding dangerous games with national security and foreign policy are founded and supported by the Democratic version of wisdom.  So, here is what I've learned.

In the House of Representatives, the captain of the football team or the quarterback is the speaker of the house.  The position is the third highest in the U.S. government after the president and the vice president which means if anything should incapacitate both the president and the vice president, the speaker would assume the position of president until an emergency election could be held to fill the position again.  The fourth would be Harry Reid, president pro-tem of the Senate.  A Speaker of the House is elected by the elected Representatives.  So, when Democrats won the majority in 2006, Nancy assumed the position by House vote.  In this position she controls which bills come before the House of Representatives to be debated and voted on.  In essence as long as the bill is in the house, the speaker controls the political football.  The most visible responsibility of the Speaker is wielding the gavel in the House to allocate time for opposing parties to argue their points over each bill and to keep the order in the House.  This position requires a certain decorum.  One has to be fair to the minority party delegates with regard to counting votes and declaring wins or losses.  Often these are made verbally in the interest of expedience, but are sometimes disputed and so go to a recorded vote.  What happens if the speaker is less than honorable?

I'm using the game metaphor because that is the way the Democrats have been treating the policy making process.  Partisanship and political strategy takes priority over any other factor whether foreign policy, national security or issues of morality being legislated by our policy makers.   It doesn't matter if its pulling our troops out of Iraq or if its embryonic stem cell research or economic stimulus efforts, self defense via citizens legally arming themselves, or corporal punishment.  Results don't matter, good intentions are what matter to Democrats.  In my estimation, they don't believe the American voters' attention span is long enough to notice the damage done by their policies or agenda.

One demonstration of this strategic partisan games playing with foreign policy especially  in regard to national security and the war effort in Iraq was Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria to engage in talks with a hostile government for the express purpose of undermining White House efforts designed to put pressure on Syria to disengage from support for Muslim insurgency in Lebanon as well as material support for insurgency into Iraq.  The Wall Street Journal called this visit 'Dangerous' and 'Foolish.'  This gaming with policy in relation to hostile forces in the region does not just undermine the Bush administration, it undermines national and ally interests by emboldening our enemies making our national will appear divided and weak.  This puts our troops in the battlefield in greater danger and makes their mission that much harder to accomplish.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000197/

PELOSI, Nancy, (daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr.), a Representative from California; born Nancy D’Alesandro in Baltimore, Md., March 26, 1940; A.B., Trinity College, 1962; chair, California State Democratic Party, 1981-1983; finance chairman, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, 1985-1986; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundredth Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of United States Representative Sala Burton, and reelected to the ten succeeding Congresses (June 2, 1987-present); minority whip (One Hundred Seventh Congress); minority leader (One Hundred Eighth and One Hundred Ninth Congress); Speaker of the House (One Hundred Tenth Congress). (Source.)

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000197/

Nancy Pelosi has voted with a majority of her Democratic colleagues 98.1% of the time during the current Congress. This percentage does not include votes in which Pelosi did not vote. See a list of her votes against her party since 1991, a list of all Representatives in the 110th Congress with a similar score, or a full list of party voters.

As Barak Obama has the highest record voting along party lines with 96% in the Senate, so Nancy holds the highest record voting along party lines in the House.  What this means is a party hack with the most extreme leftist voting record is the third highest power in the land.  At the same time the fourth highest position of power in the land is occupied by Harry Reid, at the same time the highest party line voter in the Senate is the DNC pick for the Democratic presidential candidate.  If successful, the most extreme Leftist body in Washington will have full control of two of the three branches of government with the last one (the Supreme Court) having a history of taking specific cases to write laws by precedent and move our government and culture to the left.  This means, should Barak Obama win the presidency, for the first time in American history the dissenting voice of conservatism will have been shunted to the sidelines for at least two years and more likely as many as eight years of one sided power control.

What's at issue with partisanship is this self destructive nature of the Democratic agenda.  From national budget issues to workers' rights to human rights, every vote and every bill authored will be cementing into our governance further and further socialist action than we have ever known in America.  Nearly every position is either detrimental to freedom, to human rights, to societal health and strength, to even naming evil and will have no check or balance to limit this agenda.  The liberal mind is either dead set on destroying the greatest force for good in recorded history or simply doesn't believe our system is fragile enough to crumble under the weight of selling national pride for political currency.  Instead of defending the reputation of America's efforts to bring good and right into the world, they are celebrating its decline..