Category: politics, economy, etc.
Categories
Gonna Pay
More from ReasonTV: “We may not be able to address our current debt ceiling woes, but we can at least put them to a good beat.”
INCREASING THE STATUTORY LIMIT ON THE PUBLIC DEBT — (Senate – March 16, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. OBAMA:
Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.
Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is “trillion” with a “T.” That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.
Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.
And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.
Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans–a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.
But we are not doing that. Despite repeated efforts by Senators CONRAD and FEINGOLD, the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense Pay-go rules that used to apply. Previously, Pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts. The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues. Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned, and now the demands of budget discipline apply only to spending.
As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them. Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next 5 years. That is why I will once again cosponsor the Pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that has worked in the past and can work again.
Our debt also matters internationally. My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years. Now, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries. But we must remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Even without counting most unfunded liabilities, the national debt is now calculated to be nearing $14.1 trillion. It increases about $4.22 billion per day (each citizen’s share stands at roughly $45K). Thus, Democrats will soon demand that the debt ceiling be raised, lest the sky fall. When they do, they will be asking for a significant boost in a ceiling that is already 60 percent higher than the one Barack Obama said was “a sign of leadership failure” five years ago.
Senator Barack Obama Explaining his 2006 Vote Against Raising the Debt Limit, By Andrew C. McCarthy
Dear Visa,
I almost hesitate to mention it, but I maxed out my credit line, again. I owe only slightly more than half of what our entire country generates in revenue in a year. How about increasing my limit a few trillion more? Four trillion should hold me over for the rest of the year. I’ve got this spending habit I’m trying to kick. Despite being paid BILLIONS a day, I need more right now. I commit to getting that under control, soon. After the next election for sure. In the meanwhile, I think I should be paid more. Would help with my spending habit. Also, you better act quick on helping me out or somebody’s going to suffer. It’s going to look bad. I promise. Not a threat, just saying.
Yours truly, Uncle Sam.
| Current | Debt Held by the Public | Intragovernmental Holdings | Total US Public Debt Outstanding |
|---|---|---|---|
| 07/19/2011 | 9,753,904,328,297.12 | 4,588,994,138,771.95 | 14,342,898,467,069.07 |
Info courtesy of US Treasury Dept. (does not include State gov debts)
U.S. Long-Term Debt Situation Is One of the World’s Worst :
This year, the U.S. public debt is projected to reach 62 percent of the economy—up from 40 percent in 2008 and nearly double the historical average, according to recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. The financial crisis and recession drove much of this debt swing, yet larger problems loom in the future. By 2030, the CBO projects that debt will more than double to 146 percent of GDP.
Categories
Debtor Demographics
From Mark Steyn’s Happy Warrior column, National Review July 18, 2011:
A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the stage Greece is at and so, to one degree or another, is the rest of the Western world. In the United States, our democracy is trending as Athenian as the rest: We’re the Brokest Nation in History, but, as those Medicare polls suggest, getting enough people to give enough of it back isn’t going to be any easier than it is in Greece. From Athens to Madison, Wis., too many people have gotten used to a level of comfort and ease they haven’t earned.
…
The social capital of a nation is built up over centuries but squandered in a generation or two. With blithe self-confidence, the post-war West changed too much too fast. We changed everything, and yet we’ll still wonder why everything’s changed.
In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that barring same-sex couples from civil marriage was unconstitutional. In an advisory opinion to the state legislature on why enacting “civil unions” as an alternative to marriage was legally insufficient, the Court explained its view that “segregating same-sex unions from opposite-sex unions cannot possibly be held rationally to advance or preserve” the governmental aim of encouraging “stable adult relationships for the good of the individual and of the community, especially its children.” Under this decision, the state of Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in May 2004. Over the next seven years, activist courts across the country continued to rule that the failure or refusal to extend “marriage” to gay couples violated state and the federal constitution. See here.
Polls show an ever increasing number of Americans support the notion of gay marriages, demonstrating yet again the normative influence of laws over time and the power and consequence of an activist judiciary. See here.
This past June, the New York legislature was the first body of elected officials to pass a gay marriage statute on its own volition.
Two leading conservative evangelicals point the blame for this unbiblical re-defining of marriage not on the activist courts or the politicians, but instead on the Church. Ken Ham observes of the NY gay marriage law, “This is only the latest in a long list of how America has been turning its back on biblical authority.” See here. Mr. Ham points out that the church and Christian leaders have so compromised God’s word and failed to teach apologetics and that faith that the current generations are simply walking away from the faith and Biblical truth is increasingly ignored. Mr. Ham explains and demonstrates these points at the church and Christian college level in his two recent books Already Gone and Already Compromised.
In a recent interview with Charisma News, Dr. Michael Youssef expressed a similar sentiment:
Younger evangelicals have been sucked in by false teaching and are now walking away and turning their backs on biblical morality. The only morality they look at is taking care of the poor by the government—not by us but by the government. That is very dangerous. …
This problem started in the church. The society did not begin to collapse on its own, morally, when churches started to reject the authority of the word of God. The debate about homosexuality started in the church and not politics. The Episcopal Church started the whole thing by ordaining gays and blessing gay marriages. That came from the church pulpit into society. Then the Presbyterians followed and now many evangelicals don’t want to talk about it. The main issue is rejecting God’s word as authoritative over us as individuals and as a church. As goes the church so goes society. The church is the one that needs to repent first. It is my call to the church … to call the church to repentance. Until that happens society is going to continue going in a downward spiral.
Alan Sears recently wrote in American Thinker that the church’s morale failure has been by design, which would make repentance of the church even more difficult:
The church survived intact until late in the 20th century, when the leftist onslaught changed from “in your face” to “in your place,” and activists of every stripe pursued the pulpit in order to further their various causes. (Thus, certain churches are often accomplices in things like the homosexual agenda instead of an impediment to it.) Thus, rather than calling the culture to repentance in light of biblical truth, churches increasingly reflected the culture, actually providing a degree of spiritual comfort for all sorts of behavior.
Mr. Sears sees the church’s being encroached by the dollar and by government.
At CatholicCulture.org, Dr. Jeff Mirus recently explained why homosexuality may provide the impetus for the next gulag.
No group is more hateful to modern society than the perceived moralistic prigs who, out of what most perceive as religiously-motivated prejudice, seek to diminish the personal sexual liberty of others. Nothing could be more obvious in our current culture than that such people must be silenced and, if necessary, restrained. Moreover, it seems only right and just that their denunciation of the gay lifestyle and their opposition to gay marriage should be criminalized. In fact, it should be criminalized in the name of liberty. That is why gay marriage is the lie that will create the next Gulag.
Dr. Mirus concisely explains how we’re following the logical path of “sterile” marriages, i.e. where reproduction is no longer the central focus of marriage and sex. The path started with divorce and then to birth control, abortion, homosexual marriage and increasingly suppression of opposition. There is increasing evidence of a future where standing for Biblical truths will result in criminal and professional punishment. Dr. Mirus advises that we are to live the Truth of Christ in our lives and in our families in the days to come, particularly in the face of persecution.
The prospect of criminal and professional persecution of those who espouse or practice Biblical truths is not terribly far fetched or far off. Indeed, my State Bar of NC recently tried to prohibit its licensed attorneys from taking taking sexual orientation, transgender, or sexual identity issues into consideration during the course of practicing law, such as when hiring new attorneys or deciding whether to represent a client.
Not only are Baby Boomers leaving future American generations with trillions of dollars of debt to repay, but these sexual Bolsheviks appear intent on establishing Pink Fascism as part of their legacy. Pray hard for repentance and revival.
Categories
Freedom
North Carolina poised to defund Planned Parenthood after House votes to override veto
From the Washington Times: For 2009, Planned Parenthood affiliates performed 332,278 abortions, saw 7,021 prenatal clients and made 977 adoption referrals. That means for 97.6 percent of its 340,276 pregnant clients, abortion was Planned Parenthood’s provided “service.”
Victor Davis Hanson’s review of President Obama’s accomplishments on the economy, foreign policy, and promised “New Civility” here. In 2008, candidate Obama had the benefit of a very limited record in public office and was able to avoid details of what he would pursue. Many filled in the details of what they thought he would do, and a large number of voters filled in details of a moderate who would cross the aisle. President Obama’s reelection campaign will have no such luxury in 2012. Hanson provides an excellent preview.
Thousands have given their lives in service to our country, for our domestic security and for freedom abroad.
A total of 4,435 patriots gave their lives in revolt against monarchical English rule. Those lives paid for our republican experiment that we continue to this day some 236 years after the first shot fired in Lexington.
364,511 Union Soldiers died in our Civil War, fighting to preserve the Union and later against slavery as well. Authoritative statistics for Confederate forces are not available. Estimates of the number who served range from 600,000 to 1,500,000. The final report of the Provost Marshal General, 1863-1866, American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics indicated 133,821 Confederate deaths (74,524 battle and 59,297 other) based upon incomplete returns. In addition, an estimated 26,000 to 31,000 Confederate personnel died in Union prisons.
116,516 Americans died in WWI and 405,399 died in support of the Allies effort in WWII. 36,574 died in Korea and 58,220 in Vietnam. 6,013 Americans have given their lives in the current fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. See here and here.
Further, thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines lose their lives each year in training accidents and in personnel injuries while training and while serving our country. The government is not real open with these statistics, since they reveal that military service is a high risk occupation, particularly for those that serve in the combat arms. See, e.g. here.
Thank a current or former service member and pray for our service members. If you served our country – Thank you!
We should work hard to end the ongoing fiscal irresponsibility that threatens our national heritage from within, the heritage that so many paid the ultimate price to preserve.
Finally, let’s also not forget, Airborne Rangers lead the Way!
Categories
Paul Ryan on Medicare
What NY26? Love the confidence implicit in the timing. I also need to get one of those orange ties.
The U.S. House of Representative is considering some great new legislation known as the “NO TAXPAYER FUNDING OF ABORTION ACT” (H.R. 3). Here are some important points about the proposed new law:
- It would prohibit taxpayer funding of elective abortions as well as insurance coverage that includes elective abortion.
- It offers conscience protections for health care providers, health care institutions, and health insurance providers. The government would not be able to discriminate against any of these on the basis of their refusal to provide, pay for, cover, and refer for abortions.
- These conscience protections also protect the many Americans who prefer to do business with health care providers and insurance companies that do not support abortion.
- The law would create a legal cause of action for those whose conscience rights have been violated.
NO ONE should be compelled to act against conscience. The abortion industry would like to coerce unwilling health care professionals and other providers into supporting their agenda—regardless of their religious, moral, or ethical convictions to the contrary. This new law would grant permanent conscience protections and also ensure that your tax dollars are not siphoned off to fund abortions.
There is also encouraging new legislation being proposed in North Carolina: “WOMAN’S RIGHT TO KNOW ACT.” Any medical procedure required informed consent. Abortion should not be an exception. This new state law would ensure that no abortion is performed without the woman’s informed consent, and it would also create a 24-hour waiting period.
Praise God for these life affirming proposals in our federal and state legislatures!
I like what I’ve seen of this Congressman, and I like that orange tie. Presidential.
Are your rights as a parent free from governmental interference?
Do you believe that the government will only involve itself in cases of abuse and/or neglect?
The following ten questions are designed to test your knowledge of events that have affected the parent-child relationship in the United States. The last 5 questions pertain, specifically, to a treaty that has been ratified by many U.N. countries around the world.
TRUE or FALSE
- Child protective services forcibly removed a 13 year old boy from his parents after he complained to a school counselor that they took him to church too often (twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday).
- You have a legal right to know if your teenage children will receive or have received medical treatment through the public schools.
- In most states parents are held liable for public library fines issued to their children, but, they are denied access to information about the titles of the books.
- A 13 year old girl was ‘liberated from her parents’ after she complained of being grounded for smoking marijuana and having sex with her boyfriend.
- A mother in Illinois was twice refused her request to opt her daughter out of sexual education lectures that she found objectionable.
- The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC), which would allow the government to determine the “best interest of the child” (even in cases where there has been no parental neglect or abuse) and supersede all parental power, has been signed by the United States.
- If the UN CRC is ratified, religious schools would no longer be allowed to teach that Christianity is the only true religion and would be forced to teach “alternative worldviews.”
- Under the UN CRC, a child’s “right to be heard” would allow them to seek governmental review of any parental decision with which the child disagreed.
- Parents would still have the right to “opt out” their children from sex education.
- Proponents of the treaty are on the move and claim to be near victory.
ANSWERS
- TRUE. The child was placed in foster care until the parents agreed to a Superior Court Judge’s demands that the child be taken to church no more than one time per week.
- FALSE. Schools are not required to notify, request permission, or inform the parents of any medical treatment their children receive. In some states, this includes abortion procedures.
- TRUE. Many states have laws that protect the “right to privacy” in children 9 years old and older, so parents cannot see materials that their children have checked out.
- TRUE. In the early 1980s, 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents grounded her, went to her school counselors complaining about her parent’s actions. She was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was “conflict between parent and child.” Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care. Even though the judge found that Sheila’s parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away. (In Re: Sumey, 94 Wn. 2d 757, 621 P. 2d 108 (1980))
- TRUE. 35 states require sexual education as part of the curriculum. Of these, only three states require parental consent and 11 states do not permit opting out of the course at all.
- TRUE. President Clinton signed the UN CRC in 1995, however, the Senate has not voted on ratification. If ratified, it would supersede all current family law on the books and a committee of 18 U.N. ‘experts’ from other nations would have the authority to issue official interpretations of the treaty which would be entitled to binding weight in American courts.
- TRUE. Religious schools that teach that theirs is the only true religion “fly in the face of article 29” of the treaty according to the American Bar Association.
- TRUE. The treaty specifically outlaws all corporal punishment and has been interpreted (in Sweden) to disallow any punishment without the consent of the child (including “time out”).
- FALSE. The notion of “opting out” has been held to be out of compliance with the treaty. Today, even in states where “opting out” is allowed for sex education, parents have no right to oppose specific parts of a curriculum. In Parker v. Hurley, 514 F. 3d 87 (2008), a federal appeals court found that parents who opposed a part of a school curriculum related to homosexual rights and practices did not have the right to opt their kindergarten child out or be informed in advance of the curriculum content.
- TRUE. A meeting was held at the White House recently to discuss ratification, and the Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child claim they are near the 67 Senate votes needed for ratification.
Current law on parental rights tells parents that they have no say over their children once they enter the door of a public school.
In Fields v. Palmdale School District, 427 F. 3d 1197 (2005), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “affirm[ed] that the [fundamental parental] right does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door.” Numerous school boards have determined that parents do not even have a constitutional right to be present on the school grounds where their child attends. See http://www.erusd.k12.ca.us/ERUSDPolicies/1250.pdf
What can we do?
Senate Resolution 99 is currently being considered as a statement against the ratification of the UN CRC Treaty. There are 31 co-sponsors to date. If 34 sign the resolution, the chance of ratification during this congress decreases significantly.
The Parental Rights Amendment has been submitted as an amendment to the Constitution to grant parents the fundamental right to the upbringing and education of their children. This would prevent treaties from superseding, modifying or interpreting these rights.
Learn more at ParentalRights.org
or
View the Documentary
“The Child”
at
Cary Alliance Church (Room 115)
March 28, 2011
7:00 pm
Categories
It’s all about me
Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. James 1:15
Representative Christopher Lee recently resigned from Congress after his overtures, fraudulent representations, and shirtless photos to a woman he found on Craigslist were exposed. The Congressman was married. See New York Congressman Resigns Over E-Mails The incident is a sober reminder of basic truths regarding sin.
Foremost, unrepentant sin exposes and destroys. Sin is a cancer that ravages and eats away what is good. Even sins from which we repent can continue causing destruction for long periods of time thereafter, both to the sinner and to those whom it affected. While Christ’s blood washes away the weight and spiritual consequences of sin, the scars and temporal repercussions may be with us until our final breath, or Christ’s return. Mr. Lee was at the height of his career, a national leader in the prime of his life. That’s all gone. Career is over; he’s shamed; his name is sullied, and his family is likely devastated.
Which leads directly to a second nature of sin. It’s insatiable. Being a US Congressman with a beautiful family wasn’t enough. While Christ is the living water and bread of life, sin only creates a deeper hole in our being that demands more and more to be filled. It temporarily satiates, but the hunger returns quickly and more fiercely. There is no lasting peace or enduring joy in sin. Sin is a ferocious lion whose end purpose is destruction. Sin only feeds its own hunger, until it devours all whom it touches.
Third, sin is always self-centered. The NYT’s article does an excellent job “showing” this truth. The story shows a picture the Congressman sent to the woman — a self-portrait Mr. Lee took of himself posing in the mirror, flexing his muscles. His intentions for pursuing this woman are obvious and too common to the nature of man. His shirtless posturing in front of the mirror captures his utter vanity, the essence of sin. Sin starts with focusing on the self and taking our eyes off of Christ. Sin always focuses on the self first. If we focus on God and the needs of others before ourselves, sin falls away. Such focus comes from Christ; it is not of the flesh.
Sin leads to suffering and death. This is appropriate. Suffering breaks us and causes us to realize that we are not in control or in charge. It causes us to take our focus off ourselves and to reach out to God. It was for good reason that the lost and downtrodden sought out Christ and worshipped him, while the powerful and mighty plotted against Christ. At the end, death is the final reminder we cannot ignore that we are not in control. God is. And he offers the bread of life, the true source of peace and strength.
Please say a prayer for Mr. Lee and especially for his family.
The recent visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao was by my estimation the most signficant foreign policy event of President Obama’s administration, outside his handling of our ongoing wars in the Mideast. I agree with engaging the Chinese at the highest levels and trying to integrate them further into and encourage their advances in deregulated markets and currency, however, President Obama performed poorly in how he conducted this engagement. The Telegraph makes the case for polite, but firm appeasement of the Chinese, underscoring the fundamentally fragile nature of China’s economy and its demographics. See here. Obama is correct to engage, but incorrect to convey such deference and honor to a country that is not our ally — ideologically, economically or militarily.
PRELL: China: U.S. No. 1 no more:
And, while this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, rots in a Chinese jail, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Barack Obama, hosts a state dinner in honor of Liu Xiaobo’s jailers.
What a memorable state dinner it must have been, what with the ChiCom’s playing for President Obama one of their favorite anti-US songs about killing the US jackal, a patriotic song based on their Korea war experience. What audacity to play it in our Whitehouse to our POTUS. A dinner for the classless (no Marxist pun intended) offered by the clueless. See Nordlinger’s A Song and an Obscenity
The problem with freedom and human rights is that they’re mere principles, concepts really. They don’t DO anything like purchase American debt, let alone lots of American debt. They don’t manufacture inexpensive plastic toys and nearly everything else found in Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart.
Who cares whether the ChiComs tortured Gao Zhisheng to death? Who is he anyway? (See here and here.)
Yang Jianli served five years in prison in China for … attempting to observe labor unrest. He urged “Mr. Obama, speak up for human rights in China.” Well, Mr. Obama is instead regaling the dictators with a state dinner.
Jay Nordlinger calls President Obama’s state dinner for the ChiComs “A Stain Upon the American Honor”
The this-isn’t-happening-anytime-soon award of the day goes to Mr. Bolton for his provocation: The West Needs to Stand Up to China
Even if you believe that economics should trump human rights and democracy, China is still quite unattractive, not the type date you should host and honor with a state dinner. See China’s “state capitalism” sparks a global backlash
Sapphire Sky 