Southern Democrats called Abraham Lincoln a “sooty and scoundrelly abolitionist.” Winston Churchill was called a “fanatic” in his relentless effort to warn the world of Hitler’s evil intents in the early 1930’s. The Pharisees called Christ “demon possessed” and a drunkard.So I guess the recent tactics of Iowa State Senator Joe Bolkcom shouldn’t surprise me. In his recent editorial, Sen. Bolkcom resorted to calling Iowans who belong to Tea Party groups “fanatics,” “uninformed puppets” and “terrorists.” He also implied we were insane by not believing that age-old mantra of his party that government spending is the cure-all for any economic woes our country might encounter.
Sen. Bolkcom’s contorted logic is typical of his party as he accuses people who want the government to live within its means and Constitutional parameters (like non-government individuals and actual businesses in the real market place have to) as “dedicated to busting the economy.” Facts and economic principles are brushed aside by Sen. Bolkcom. Facts like the government’s mandate that banks go against sound lending principles and must lend money to borrowers whose credit was risky (Community Reinvestment Act, and other government regulatory legislation) are totally disregarded as to why the housing market went belly up.
We “fanatics” happen to believe leaving huge debt for your descendants (for multiple generations) is irresponsible and immoral. Because of our willingness to acknowledge these hard economic truths and a belief in America’s founding principles, Sen. Bolkcom says we are the “biggest threat to your job, your children’s future, and your own retirement.” No, we simply understand the basic laws of economics– that if you spend more than you make, you get yourselves into deep trouble. Who’s the real threat here? I’d say it is Sen. Bolkcom and men like him.
And herein lies the rub: Sen. Bolkcom’s socialist viewpoints collide with many other Americans who believe we own the money we make. True to his socialistic ideology, Sen. Bolkcom believes whatever money is generated in America belongs first to the government, so they can benevolently decide where to spend it in education, our health care, keeping the ozone layer intact, etc. Then they will allot to us whatever is left over. Another belief: anyone who makes more money than they do is the villain and the government bureaucrat “trying to redistribute the wealth” is the saint.
Just as Hitler said the Nazi’s “final goal was a radical reformation of Germany by legal means,” so too do politicians in Sen. Bolkcom’s camp mean to “radically transform America” using whatever means are at their disposal. So when Constitutionally-revering, patriotic Americans stand up to the likes of people like Sen. Bolkcom, they (Sen. Bolkcom and company) resort to name-calling, demonizing us and distorting the facts which shows how desperate they have become. Intellectual honesty, analyzing facts, and logically winning the argument are not in their repertoire. Maybe people who are called such names should simply wear it as a badge of honor, knowing that once again, history will bear out that people like Joe Bolkcom are on the wrong side of the issue.
Tammy Kobza
Sheldon Tea Party Patriots
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) upcoming air pollution regulation revisions are creating a bit of a stir both in the energy industry and in Congress. The emissions that would fall under more stringent limits are ozone, mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide; coal ash waste; and water used to cool facilities that generate electricity.
Many see the new scheme as one that will unduly burden the power industry, even forcing shut downs of numerous coal-fired plants altogether. Estimated costs of compliance for utility companies are up to $129 billion, with a reduction of up to 81,000 megawatts of electricity generation. Then there’s the jobs at stake. A Commerce Department analysis predicted a loss of 60,000 jobs due to the EPA’s rulings.
With 45 percent of America’s electricity being coal-fired — a resource that is abundant and cheap with at least a 200-year supply available in the States — these new EPA regulations seem a direct attack on not only the power companies, but on consumers. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is responsible for the reliability of the electric system warns that over-regulation of fossil-fueled electricity generation will make it difficult for companies to meet electric demand. 
There are at least three proposed bills that could rein in the EPA on this. One is H.R.910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, which has already been approved by the House in a 255-172 vote, and was referred to the Senate. Many claim it has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled chamber.
Another is H.R. 2018, the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, “To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act” which also passed the House 239-184 and was referred to the Senate. Many claim that this one, too, will not pass the full Senate.
And then there’s the REINS Act, S. 299, the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.). Not specifically tailored for the EPA, this bill would rein in all unaccountable federal agencies. Cosponsored by Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), it would require Congressional approval of any interim or final regulation from the Executive Branch bureaucracy that costs more than $100 million per year or that excessively increases costs or prices or has “significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation, or U.S. competitiveness.” This popular measure already has 28 sponsors and hearings completed. There is a companion bill in the House, H.R. 10, that has garnered 159 cosponsors.
House Republicans and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have vowed to bring up bills after the summer recess that would repeal or restrict federal regulations, and Cantor intends on starting with a proposal to delay the implementation of these new EPA rules. But we can do better than just delay the rules.
Contact your Senators and Representative and get them to support and pass this common-sense legislation that would REIN in the damaging effects to our utilities, the economy and jobs by a host of unelected czars and their bureaucratic agencies. Make specific mention of the EPA as one of the most out-of-control and draconian agencies within the federal government that needs to be relieved of its regulating power. And pressure the Senate into taking action on the already-passed House bills.
Thanks,
Your friends at The John Birch Society
The Tea Party was formed in large part to confront the culture of corruption in government. “We the People” were fed up with the trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds going to bail out corporations at a time when average Americans were losing their jobs. And while we’ve had tremendous success in changing the makeup of Congress, there’s still one government organization that continues to spend trillions of dollars with little oversight: the Federal Reserve!
American Minute with Bill Federer September 4 Rome fell SEPTEMBER 4, 476AD. In the centuries preceding, Rome had been overrun with illegal immigrants: Visigoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards and Vandals. They first assimilated, many working as servants, but soon came so fast they did not learn the Latin language. Though militarily superior and marching on advanced road systems, the highly trained Roman Legions were strained fighting conflicts worldwide, and eventually troops had to be brought home from the frontiers, such a Britain. Visigothic King Alaric, Vandal King Geiseric, Attila the Hun, and finally the barbarian King Odoacer, committed terrorist attacks, wiping out whole cities, till Rome itself was eventually sacked. Rome had been weakened by a large trade deficit, having outsourced its grain production to North Africa, and when the Vandals captured North Africa, Rome did not have the resources to retaliate. "Bread and the Circus!" Citizens of Rome were kept distracted with violent entertainment in the Coliseum and Circus Maximus. The Roman Emperor kept citizens appeased with welfare and free bread. One Roman commented: "Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them." Tax collectors were "more terrible than the enemy." Rome was crippled by huge government bureaucracies and enormous public debt. A history of court favoritism, infidelity, exposure of unwanted infants, perverted bathhouses, and sexual immorality led 5th-Century historian Salvian to write: "O Roman people be ashamed...Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us."
By Dr. Robert R. Owens on August 8th, 2011
Robert R. Owens, Ph.D.
It has happened just as foretold. The Progressive Republicans have joined with their Democrat fellow-travelers and once again sold our inheritance for a bowl of promises. We voted for an end to the out of control spending and what did we get? 3.5 trillion steps closer to the abyss. It’s time to admit that when you fall off a cliff it doesn’t matter much if you were pushed or if you walked. The fall might not be so bad but that sudden stop at the end isn’t so good.
Maybe it’s just me but I’m tired of the same old same old in our politics. The big-box monopoly parties have morphed into two sides of the same coin. Today we choose between the Conservative Progressives’ policies of tax and spend, infringe personal liberty, and outsource our sovereignty or the Liberal Progressives’ policies of tax and spend, infringe personal liberty, and outsource our sovereignty. We’ve been caught on the horns of a dilemma trying to choose between Tweedledee andTweedledum, and since we don’t want to throw our vote away we must vote for one of the big boys after which the campaign promises dissolve and we’re hung out to dry.
As a voter I’ve had my Damascus Road Experience. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I’ve reached the point where I would rather vote for someone who might actually try finding another way to operate our government besides taxing like the Sun King and spending like a drunken sailor whose credit card limit is constantly raised and who can print his own money.
It’s time to stop talking. It’s time to take action. The Founders of our nation dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to birth our state and this noble experiment. It’s time for us to do the same. This nation was conceived as a representative republic designed to operate on democratic principles. For over 100 years the Progressives have worked to transform the land of the free and the home of the brave into a People’s Democratic Republic. What’s the difference? The difference between a Democracy and a People’s Democracy is “the difference between a jacket and a straight jacket.”
How did we arrive at the current situation?
“Declaration of Independence” – This idealized depiction shows the principal authors of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, reading the document to colonists.
James Madison our fourth president and the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution said, “There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.” We didn’t get here all in one jump. First the camel said, “Can I just stick my nose in your tent to stay warm?” and finally the generous man found himself out in the cold as the camel settled down for a nice warm nap, one inch at a time.
The compassion of our people built a safety net for those who needed help and the greed of the lazy turned it into a hammock. America, the Land of the Free is being transformed into an America that is dedicated to the unsustainable achievement of, from each according to their abilities to each according to their need. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, eventually Peter changes his name to Paul and the house of cards tumbles down.
The willingness to share our heritage led America to welcome more immigrants each year than the rest of the world combined, and the abuse of our generosity turned into a migration invasion that threatens to overwhelm us and destroy the future of our children. Taxes imposed to meet the ever-swelling demands of government have turned into a blatant, wealth re-distribution program that makes most pyramid schemes look fair. It’s as if our predatory government looks at a productive citizen as merely a source of residual income. Or as the ads promise, our Progressive leaders lay on the beach of self-importance and our checks just keep pouring in. We’re no longer respected as Citizens. Instead, we’re coveted as consumers or human capital.
It’s time for action.
We as citizens who love our country must to break the logjam caused by an imperial presidency, an abdicating legislature, an activist court, a suffocating bureaucracy, and the strangulation of regulation. The constant growth of government destroys freedom for “as government expands liberty contracts.”
It’s time to actively work for America’s acceptance of a different way.
And what might this Different way be?
Something radical, something that almost strains the bounds of the imagination, something that would immediately unleash the bent-up energy of a free people: a return to constitutionally limited government!
But how do we get there from here? We need to build a new party to win the reins of government from the two-headed bird of prey which has assumed perpetual power through perpetual re-election. What we need now are citizens willing to sacrifice their repose and enter the arena. We need non-professionals to clean up the mess and right the ship of state.
What we don’t need is one more election where the Conservative Progressives replace the Liberal Conservatives because as Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
We need a new party. We must work to unite the Tea Party Movement with the many splinter parties which hold the same basic values. We must reclaim our liberty from the professional politicians and professional radicals who have manipulated the system to achieve unlimited power which they use to spend us into insolvency, tax us into poverty, and regulate us into serfdom.
This new party must siphon off all the conservatives who are members of the twin party out of habit or family tradition. This new party must rise fast and work hard. It must capture the center and the right declaring boldly that it will defend what America stands for but not necessarily all that stands for America. The time has come to fight for the right before we are swallowed by the wrong.
Winston Churchill said, “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
We can’t let divisions divide us or they will bury us. United we stand, divided we fall. None of us can do this alone but together we can. Keep the faith. Keep the peace. We shall overcome.
Dr. Robert R. Owens teaches history, political science, religion, and leadership for Southside Virginia Community College. Dr. Owens is the author of “America Won the Vietnam War,” “The Asuza Street Revival,” and called “The Constitution Failed.” He is available for speaking engagements.
(From Rep. Dwayne Alons “Capitol Comments”)
Led by Florida, 26 states won a major victory this month when the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the individual mandate requirement of ‘Obamacare’ was unconstitutional. The ruling, however, could create a different set of issues for states.
The panel found that the requirement for all Americans to have health insurance coverage violated the Constitution’s limits on federal power in the Commerce Clause. The court also found that the mandate could be separated from the rest of the bill and that Congress had the ability to enact the remaining provisions.
The ruling is important, as it establishes a conflict amongst the appellate courts on the individual mandate issue. While the Eleventh Circuit has ruled against the mandate, the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati upheld the mandate in a June ruling. This conflict presents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court as most times the Supreme Court will not hear a case if there is not a conflict in rulings amongst the Circuits. But there are a number of steps that must occur before the Court would hear the case.
Since the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling was by a three judge panel, the Obama administration has 90 days to ask the full membership of the circuit to hear the case. Most legal experts do not expect the Justice Department to exercise this option. But, asking for the en banc hearing (which is the term for this type of hearing) may be more of a political calculation than legal. Such a hearing would prevent the case from advancing to the Supreme Court before the 2012 presidential election. There would be risks to such a strategy, as the full Eleventh Circuit could rule with Judge Vinson and determine that the individual mandate could not be severed from the rest of the bill and thus rendering the entire law unconstitutional.
If the Supreme Court were to grant the Administration an appeal of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision, what would be the question they would be deciding – is the individual mandate unconstitutional or the entire bill? Because the conflict among the circuits is only over the mandate, it is possible that the Supreme Court could limit the question to just that. This would mean that the rest of the bill would still be in effect. And that would force states to enact the vast majority of the bill.
Finally, the Court could decide that they do not want to be seen as setting up a political issue by ruling on the case before the 2012 election. They could wait until other circuits have ruled. On Wednesday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on Missouri’s challenge of the law. The Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA is expected to rule on Virginia’s challenge sometime this fall. And the DC circuit is expected to schedule oral arguments in a DC-based challenge this fall.
The Eleventh Circuit ruling was a major victory for opponents of the health care reform law. But no one should assume that this decision is the final word on the subject.
| by Phyllis Schlafly | August 19, 2011 |
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USA TODAY published one of its colorful front pages last week detailing how America has not only grown dramatically in population over the last two decades, but has radically changed ethnically, geographically, and culturally. The most costly of the many changes is the fact that having children has become increasingly detached from marriage.Illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26 percent in 1990 to 41 percent today “and could be headed higher.” Among Hispanics, illegitimacy is 53 percent, among blacks it’s 73 percent, and among whites it has risen to a shocking 29 percent.
This extraordinary change is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated. Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to Big Brother Government. The economist Robert J. Samuelson recently concluded that “the welfare state is winning the budget war.” The bipartisan budget deal, which slashed our military budget but kept welfare-state handouts mostly off limits, turned out to be “a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon.” The Heritage Foundation reports that 77 types of federal means-tested handouts already cost $522 billion per year before Obama took office. He increased this giant amount to $697 billion per year in the first half of his term, and now half of Americans depend for their living expenses in whole or in part on government handouts paid by the other half who pay income taxes.That was exactly what Obama planned to do when he told Joe the Plumber he wanted to redistribute the wealth and told Chicago’s WBEZ-FM that his favorite Supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren, wasn’t radical enough because the Warren Court “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.” Estimates are that, over the next decade, the federal government will spend $7.5 trillion on means-tested welfare. That’s in addition to the nearly $200 billion a year doled out by the states. In Ronald Reagan’s famous caveat, when you subsidize something you get more of it. So the subsidies to women who have no husbands in the house have promoted more and more children growing up without fathers. read more http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2011/aug11/11-08-19.html |
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The Tea Party Patriots truck will be all decked out in flags for the parade with Sheldon Celebration Days! We’re looking forward to seeing you at our booth in the park, open from 9 AM to 4 PM. Come and visit, take a just-for-fun straw poll and a more than just-for-fun quiz on what you need to know to be a citizen of the United States. You might even win a prize!
(From NY Times – Charlie Savage and Mark Landler)
WASHINGTON — The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities……..In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the report asserted that “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.” Still, the White House acknowledged, the operation has cost the Pentagon $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September at the current scale of operations.
Read full article at NY Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?_r=3
For the past three months, the United States has been engaged in a war in Libya, and during that time Congress has remained largely in the dark and on the sidelines about central questions in the conflict, all while U.S. forces remain committed without congressional authorization. Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to President Barack Obama warning that the commander in chief may be in violation of the law if he refuses to ask Congress for that authorization.
In his letter, Boehner noted that the President is just days away from violating the War Powers Resolution, which maintains that, without congressional authorization, the President can deploy U.S. military forces for 90 days. In his letter, Boehner demanded that Obama provide legal justification for the operation in Libya by Friday. Though the War Powers Resolution is problematic, Congress is right to be angry and has an obligation to speak up on Libya. Read more