Posts Tagged ‘government’

Joseph C. Phillips

Health Care and the Moral Imperative

by Joseph C. Phillips

I am always troubled by those in government claiming they have a moral imperative to enact this or that policy. A little digging often reveals that their motives are more self serving than moral. I am doubly troubled when those raising the moral banner tend to reject the very idea of an objective morality applicable to all men at all times.

Such is the case with liberal Democrats and their insistence that the moral laws of the universe – laws that have been with us since God breathed life into man (or as some would have it when we rose from the primordial soup) – command Government to supply every citizen (and many that aren’t) with health insurance.

obamacare

But as is generally the case all we need do is scratch the surface and the truth reveals itself.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, John Cassidy of the New Yorker lets the cat out of the bag when he writes on The New Yorker website that we must be clear about what the reform amounts to. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” Cassidy writes. “The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.” And why are they doing it? Again the WSJ quotes Cassidy: Because “ObamaCare serves the twin goals of making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.” (more…)

Chris Muir

Day By Day: Afterlife

by Chris Muir

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Big Hollywood

New Political Blog ‘Big Government’ Launches Thursday

by Big Hollywood

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FoxNews.com reports:

New Political Blog BigGovernment.com to Launch Thursday

A conservative blogger and publisher who took on Hollywood earlier this year is setting his sights on the nation’s political establishment.

BigGovernment.com will launch Thursday as a “one-stop shop” for commentary and other political information, according to Andrew Breitbart, the site’s founder.

“This is speaking to the zeitgeist of the blogosphere that every story has an underlying relationship to what’s going on in the Obama administration and how the Republican Party is going to regroup as it relates to issues of the expansion of government powers,” Breitbart told Foxnews.com. “We are just now starting to vet the president and the people he’s put into power.” (more…)

Evan Sayet

My Day At the Doctor

by Evan Sayet

I went to the doctor the other day and received some terrible news.  It came as quite a shock because, while I had not been feeling great — I was running a slight fever and I had the sniffles — I felt pretty good for a guy my age.  So to hear my doctor tell me that I needed immediate and radical surgery I was sent for a bit of a loop.

I asked him what the surgery entailed and he told me he didn’t know as he’d never read about it.  I sarcastically asked if he intended to read about it before he cut me open and performed this radical surgery on me and he told me he wouldn’t bother because it would be too complicated for him to understand, anyway.  I asked him what was wrong with me and he told me I had the sniffles and a slight temperature.   I asked him what massive radical surgery would do to help cure my cold and he said, “well, doing nothing isn’t going to cure it.” (more…)

David Kralik

Cyber-Thieves Rejoice: Feds Set to Open Social Security Data

by David Kralik

In the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” villain Thomas Gabriel justifies his plan to take down the American economy by saying to John McClane (Bruce Willis), “You think I’m the bad guy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m the good guy here. I told them this could happen if they didn’t listen. Did I get a ‘Thank you?’ No, I got a ‘F–k you.’ But they wouldn’t listen….That’s right. I am doing the country a favor.”

Thomas Gabriel’s plot was to take over a data center in Maryland and siphon off billions of dollars.  It’s frightening when life imitates fiction but a Gabriel-like plot may very well happen unless citizens speak up and demand more accountability with a contract that the Social Security Administration (SSA) intends to award that allows you to check your social security funds online. (more…)

Michael Mandaville

The Stamp of Revolution — Again

by Michael Mandaville

The American Revolution was fired up in earnest with the Tax Stamp Act, imposed by the British Parliament on the American Colonies. This Act required that a Stamp be affixed to any paper or document such as bills, newspapers, correspondence, leases, bills of sale, etc. It was invasive, arbitrary and onerous.

The Federal and State governments are continuing this tradition of oppression with Stimulus Bills which our representatives neither understand nor read. Yet these bills are passed without any mind to the financial indentured servitude for future generations. I believe that this debt will be a ‘fiscal press gang’ against generations’ optimism, opportunity and Freedom. (more…)

Jeremy D. Boreing

Encroaching Government Ensures We’re Not Free

by Jeremy D. Boreing

Americans beware. You are not free. Worse, you are being made more and more a slave each day by the very people who tell you incessantly that you are. In fact, the very word itself, FREEDOM, has become your enemy, as it is bandied about proudly and loudly, and distracting you from the encroaching tyranny all around. The word freedom has replaced the substance of freedom that was your birthright, and that is no more.

Of course, Americans were never completely free, which is expressly why freedom was so long sustained on these shores. Our founders knew what freedom is: The natural, God-created state of man, completely unrestrained by the conventions of other men. They also knew that such pure freedom was never practically experienced, and that if it was, it could never be sustained, because it would naturally and instantly consume itself as the powerful and strong exercise of their will without restraint upon the weak. Pure freedom replaces itself with tyranny, rapidly and violently in a shockingly Darwinian fashion. From the chaos of pure freedom rise despots and kings. (more…)

Bob Hamer

Book Review: Senator Jim DeMint’s ‘Saving Freedom’

by Bob Hamer

When I first met Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) in February of this year (full disclosure: we have the same publisher, Fidelis Books) I heard him say something that resonated…”We’ve been duped into believing government alone can solve our country’s problems. I believe often the government is the problem. America’s greatness is found in its people and its values not in its government…with every round of new regulation and increased spending our country slides further away from liberty and closer to socialism. ” He had my attention. 

Apparently I wasn’t the only one recognizing his efforts to put his beliefs into action. The National Journal named him the Senate’s most conservative member and the National Taxpayer Union ranked him the number one senator for responsible tax and spending policies.  (more…)

John T. Simpson

A Republican Platform For The 21st Century

by John T. Simpson

I have been a proud conservative Republican my entire life. My father and Jimmy Carter saw to that. My first vote ever was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and I have never voted for a Democrat. Ever. Even today, the reasons for my being so have not changed, despite the media’s and liberal Democrats’ tireless efforts to discredit my belief system. Though the times may change, core principles never do. I have also served this nation proudly in uniform for six years, and don’t regret a minute of it.

In the early 1980s, my military service brought me to some of the darker corners of the world. I spent time in South Korea and Marcos’ Philippines when both countries were under martial law. Knowing I could be shot just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time really woke me up to what exactly it is we have here in America. Seeing a thousand Vietnamese Boat People pulled out of the South China Sea in one day only reinforced my belief in America, Sweet Land of Liberty.

Today, the Party of Lincoln and Reagan appears to be in political disarray, which is why I am writing this OpEd now. Yet many promising developments, along with some huge mistakes by Congress and the Obama Administration, have opened many new doors for us. If only we will enter. (more…)

Steven Crowder

Lonewolf Diaries: Time to Body Check Obama

by Steven Crowder

I was back in junior high when my dad used this unforgettable analogy: “The role of the government is similar to that of a hockey referee. His job is to keep the players safe and keep the pace of the game. No more, no less.”

Granted, my dad was really just trying to simplify an explanation for me amidst a time in my life where I’d rather be lighting my own flatulence than engaging in true political discourse, but looking back… I realize that my father is a genius! Step aside Thomas Edison and Guy-who-invented-PopTarts, there’s a new sheriff in town.

The simple, yet brilliant description should be one of the “go to” weapons in any conservative’s quiver when it comes to debating the left. See, liberals hate it when you have a firm grasp on the role of government and more importantly, the founding fathers original intent. It makes their run-around, situational ethics a lot harder to peddle. Now of course using the “hockey referee” analogy may be blatantly Canadian of me, so for all you Southerners just replace “hockey” with “football”, and if you’re gay…. “Soccer.” (more…)

S.T. Karnick

‘Eleventh Hour’ Ends Season on High Note

by S.T. Karnick

As noted in my previous articles on the CBS TV mystery-drama series Eleventh Hour (here, here and here), the show consistently presents interesting, intelligent, and fair-minded discussions of science issues in a dramatic (if often far-fetched) context. In addition, the show doesn’t portray business as the catch-all villain, giving a much more balanced range of motives and miscreants.

Thursday night’s episode, “Medea,” ended the program’s first season on a high note in terms of the ideas and attitudes it expressed. FBI science consultant Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) investigates the case of a woman who appears to be suffering from delusions caused by schizophrenia. (more…)

Derek Broes

You’ve Been Warned

by Derek Broes

Over the past three months we have witnessed some truly amazing movements by the Obama administration. He has proposed more spending than all Presidents in history combined; he has trampled the Constitution by allowing the Treasury to take on a dictator style infringement on private companies, and now the democratically lead Congress has proposed the “Pay for Performance Act” which passed Thursday with even some Republican Congressman voted for it.

This bill essentially allows the Treasury to define “fair pay” for all employees, at any level.  Worse, the Treasury would like to be able to take over any company it deemed as important enough to take over regardless of whether or not it had accepted bailout funds. Worse still, the Serve Act proposes to make volunteering for the government mandatory (with pay, of course). Last time I looked, working for pay was called A JOB(more…)

Veronica DiPippo

Og, The Original Forgotten Man

by Veronica DiPippo

Perhaps it went something like this…

Og, Bog, and Grog were out hunting mammoth one day somewhere in the mountains of Prehistoric Europe.  Grog’s job was to select the most succulent, Grade A Prime Mammuthus primigenius available in the Mesolithic grocer’s aisle and herd it towards his spear-bearing buddies who were hidden in the brush.  Grog made his choice and, using his trusty, flaming torch, chased the big woolly one brush-ward.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all the excitement, Grog forgot the cardinal rule of torch-bearing hunters everywhere: always stay at least ten stone lengths away from the back end of a mammoth after it’s eaten a fir tree for lunch.

Over Grog’s ashes, Og ponders the lesson of his friend’s untimely incineration and thinks: “I’m gonna recommend the Chief hold a hunter’s refresher course and change it to twenty stone lengths.”  Meanwhile, Bog, though he has access to the same information, processes it differently.  He ends up dismissing the whole episode as a fluke and decides that, even if the conditions were similar, the same result could never happen to him.  As Og is busy absorbing the cause and effect of Grog’s sudden demise, Bog thinks: “Let’s see, I had half a bison for breakfast, eighteen crow eggs, hand full of pine cones, pig fat smoothie with a scoop of roe deer hoof powder…which means, if I jog back to the cave reallyreally fast I can eat that entire pit of flame-broiled grubs.” (more…)

Oleg Atbashian

Cracking the Obama Code: Don Quixote vs. the Windmill Owners

by Oleg Atbashian

Four hundred years ago, Miguel Cervantes described an archetypal delirious fruitcake who wanted to change the world by turning the clock back to the idealized Utopian times that never really existed. Imagine what Cervantes would write today about the futility of his satirical effort, if he were to learn that four centuries later, a whole movement would arise that emulated his loony character and elected one of their kind as the leader of the free world.

Some conservative commentators are demonstratively wishing President Obama well. My heart admires their good intentions, but as I watched Obama’s inauguration on TV, my mind couldn’t help but ponder the possible consequences thereof. As someone coming from another country (ex-USSR) I don’t participate in racial debates nor do I want to. Being post-racial is fine by me. So let’s accept Obama’s post-racial premise, leave the issue of melanin content aside, and judge the man solely by the content of his agenda. And the more I look at Obama’s agenda the more I realize that wishing him well is like wishing luck to Don Quixote in wrecking the windmill that feeds me and my family. (more…)