Is it a threat to the U.S. economy?
Bruce Bartlett, Forbes
John Maynard Keynes: “Owe your banker £1,000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.”
Virtually every budget expert knows that the U.S. federal debt is on an unsustainable course. This means that something beyond our control is eventually going to force us to live within our means. Historically, it has been foreign bond holders who ultimately imposed fiscal austerity on profligate nations. That is why America’s growing foreign debt should be a matter of concern to policymakers.
As is well known, the Founding Fathers were quite hostile to the idea of a national debt and deficit spending. The Constitution itself came into being because the federal government was institutionally incapable of balancing its budget, leading to a financial crisis and a constitutional convention to fix it. Yet, the framers of the Constitution neglected to include a provision requiring a balanced budget.
It’s possible that the framers thought it superfluous to have a provision explicitly stating that the budget should be balanced, since it was a view so widely shared by all Americans at the time. They also didn’t see any need to explicitly state that the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and religion and other important provisions that were subsequently included in the Bill of Rights.
Wickenburg Schools Superintendent Dr. Howard Carlson responded last month to the Arizona Office of the Auditor General’s performance audit of the local school district that discovered several areas of concern.
The following is a summary of the issues addressed by the Auditor General, followed by a summary of Carlson’s response.
Administration
In fiscal year 2008, the Wickenburg district’s administrative costs per pupil were 10 percent higher than the comparable districts’ average costs primarily because it employed more administrative positions. Further, the district did not properly safeguard its computer network, and it inappropriately paid performance pay to some of its administrators. In addition, the district improperly included several non-district employees in the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS). Based on Internal Revenue Service and ASRS criteria, those individuals were actually employees of the non-profit foundation that partners with the district to operate the performing arts center.
Carlson’s response summary – The district will explore cost-cutting measures for administrative staffing for the next fiscal year. The district also is ending Webb Center employee participation in the Arizona State Retirement System and is working with the community to restructure the operating agreement for the next fiscal year. The district should implement controls to safeguard its computerized accounting system, student information system and network by improving security access levels, adding a locked door and secured window and hiring an outside consultant to provide guidance for a comprehensive IT plan.
Goldwater Institute Watchdog Report
March 10, 2010
The Goldwater Institute Watchdog Report is a periodic publication intended to identify government corruption and waste and to hold politicians and public agencies accountable to taxpayers.
A handful of taxpayers in a small community north of Wickenburg, Arizona are being targeted by the local school district in a lawsuit that asks a judge to declare they have no right to request public records, sue the district, or complain to outside agencies.
The Congress Elementary School District claims that past efforts by these residents to obtain documents such as minutes of board meetings and spending reports amount to harassment that should not have to be tolerated.
But Jean Warren, one of the four defendants named in the lawsuit filed January 28, 2010, said the complaint is an illegal attempt to silence citizens who have questioned the district’s policies and spending practices.
“The whole thing is based on trying to shut us down so that nobody has any rights,” Warren said. “Just because you live in a small area does not mean you don’t have rights. Everything I believe about the Constitution and what it means to be a citizen of the USA is being shot down.”
The school district has a history of violating state laws mandating government transparency, according to investigations dating to 2002 done by the Arizona attorney general and state ombudsman. In 2002 and again in 2007, the district was found to be in violation of the state’s open meeting law by the Attorney General’s Office. In June 2009, the state ombudsman’s office admonished the district for its slow response to public records requests.
Liz Hill, the assistant state ombudsman for public access, told the Goldwater Institute she is not aware of any other instance in which a government agency has filed a court action seeking to block citizens from even requesting public records that should otherwise be available. It is something that frustrated government officials have talked about, but to her knowledge none has ever followed through, said Hill, who did not want to comment on whether the district’s lawsuit is justified.
“There’s a lot of talk about entities going and getting injunctions or other kinds of protective orders not to have to respond to certain individuals or certain requests,” Hill said. “But I haven’t actually been aware of any specific case, just more the theory of it. This is the first time I’ve actually seen someone go and attempt to do it.”
A Commentary By Tony Blankley—Rasmussen Reports
The publishing of the Declaration of Independence 233 years ago by our Founders was responded to in London by two of the 18th century’s greatest minds: Dr. Samuel Johnson (after whom a literary age was named) and Edmund Burke (the intellectual father of modern Anglo-American conservatism).
Dr. Johnson made the harsh assertion that our Declaration was “the delirious dream of republican fanaticism” that, if sincere, would “put the axe to the roots of all government.” Moreover, he went on, it was the rankest hypocrisy for owners of slaves to shout for freedom, or, as Johnson put it: “Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?”
But it was Edmund Burke who had the more profound insight. He recognized that it wasn’t despite being slaveholders that American Colonists felt so powerfully about liberty. Rather, being in the midst of the obvious evils of slavery, those men who were free more fully appreciated their freedom. “Those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of rank and privilege,” Burke argued. Or, as Jedediah Purdy (from whose historically rich and ingenious book “A Tolerable Anarchy” I have abstracted these observations) put it: “Slavery made masters uniquely sensitive to any invasion of their independence.”
These sensitivities — sensibilities — that Burke so shrewdly observed in 1775 continue to manifest themselves in American politics today as we fight over socializing health care, nationalizing industries, indebting our grandchildren, regulating and taxing energy creation and the other intrusions into what Americans have long considered not to be the government’s business.
Burke would understand what Europeans (and many European-influenced Americans) in 2010 continue to scoff at as America’s obsession with the slogan of freedom. Because although we Americans may talk about freedom as an abstraction — and believe in freedom as an abstraction — our politics come alive when we experience an intrusion into what John Adams called “the sensations of freedom.”
There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia, that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring of political fanaticism. Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests? What reasonable cause of apprehension can be inferred from a power in the Union to prescribe regulations for the militia, and to command its services when necessary, while the particular States are to have the sole and exclusive appointment of the officers?—Federalist Paper No. 29
Despite the Brady Bunch’s downplay in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the case will have some impact on the ability of States and cities to restrict or eliminate the right to bear arms. The Wall Street Journal wrote, “The Supreme Court seemed likely to rule for the first time that gun possession is fundamental to American freedom, a move that would give federal judges power to strike down state and local weapons laws for infringing on Second Amendment rights.”
Bloomberg printed an editorial—I’m not sure if it was for a practical joke—by Ann Woolner entitled “Give Us a Right to Be Free of Those Who Bear Arms.” This is not the blonde Republican on Fox News.
Her opinion is, “In my home state, Georgia lawmakers are pushing a bill that would welcome handguns into bars and houses of worship, onto college campuses and state playgrounds. Subways would be fine places to bring your firearms, as would the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s. Political rallies, too.
“Chicago’s looking better to me all the time.”
A recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 69% of Americans do not believe that cities have the right to ban firearms. “In part, that’s because 70% of all adults believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun.” The rest are probably products of the California or New York public school systems.
Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just nine percent (9%) of adults put more blame on the unwillingness of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
Ninety-four percent (94%) of Republicans and 91% of voters not affiliated with either major party place the blame on politicians, and two-thirds (66%) of Democrats agree. Of course, neither party seems to be willing to cut spending so that they can take the blame for lowering taxes.
Just 11% of all voters now think the government spends taxpayers’ money wisely and well. Seventy-eight percent (78%) do not believe that to be true.
This is probably why 46% of voters favor a tax cut for all Americans. With concerns about the economy and mounting federal deficits before them, 46% of voters nationwide favor an across-the-board tax cut for all Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% oppose such a tax cut, and 19% are not sure. Of course Obama does not favor this kind of stimulus package which would prove better than the one he and Bidden love which is the tax-and-spend method. It must be working. His approval rating rose all the way to -8.
The bank bailout still seems to remain unpopular, despite the insistance by Obama that it saved jobs, as 42% of Americans still seem to have faith in the banking system. Those figures include just 6% who are very confident and 10% who are not at all confident. I haven’t seen the movie theater ads by Ben Bernake and the Federal Reserve (brought to you by your tax dollars), but one wonders if they are working.
Congressional Reform Act of 2010
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> 1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.
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> A. Two Six year Senate terms
> B. Six Two year House terms
> C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 2. No Tenure / No Pension:
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> A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:
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> All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, server your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 6. Congress looses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> 8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.
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> The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.
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> Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.
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> If you agree with the above, pass it on to all in your address list. If not, just delete.
An Native American walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand, pulling a male buffalo with the other. He says to the waiter, “Want coffee.”
The waiter says, “Sure, Chief. Coming right up.”
He gets the Native American a tall mug of coffee.
The Native American drinks the coffee down in one gulp, turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere and then just walks out.
The next morning the Native American returns.
He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter, “Want coffee.”
The waiter says, “Whoa, Tonto! We’re still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?”
The Native American smiles and proudly says, “Training for position in United States Congress: come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave mess for others to clean up, disappear for rest of day.”
(Received through the email and made “politically correct.”)
By Ian Talley, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. legislators have obtained a court order unsealing documents in a case involving a multi-million-dollar cap-and-trade fraud.
Republican legislators say the records–due to be opened to the public in early January–could shed light on the potential challenges of policing a new, trillion-dollar commodities market that would be created under climate legislation that Congress is considering.
In a rare filing by House lawyers, Reps. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the ranking members respectively of the Energy Committee and the Oversight Subcommittee, asked a federal district court in California to unseal all the closed records regarding the successful prosecution for fraud of Anne Masters Sholtz, a former California Institute of Technology economist.
Lawmakers say Sholtz’s case could expose the weaknesses of a federal cap-and- trade system because it involved the same market mechanism meant to cut emissions.
Timothy Baldwin
Tenth Amendment Center
December 22, 2009
After my latest article, Our Dead Constitution, was released, I received much response, many from those who understood and agreed, and some by those who were opposed to my statement, “Our constitution is dead.” This leads me to reasonably believe that many of us need to be educated about what a constitution actually is before constitutional law and freedom can be restored throughout the states.
1. A constitution does not create freedom. A constitution is created only to protect and secure freedom which already exists, through forms, structure and limitations of government. This is what our founders said in the Declaration of Independence: “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Therefore, if one’s perspective about the U.S. Constitution is that it statically creates freedom for all the people of the states, then I could understand how he would be shocked or angered at the suggestion that the U.S. Constitution is dead. To the contrary, we know that freedom exists in a state of nature, created by God, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These natural laws and rights never die. They existed prior to 1787 and they will exist after we are gone. Thus, a distinction must be made between natural freedom (which never dies) and a constitution (which can die).
2. A constitution may be worthless to secure freedom. History proves this–even America’s history. A constitution rests upon a serious distrust of human nature, and simultaneously upon the skeptical and temporary trust placed in delegated power, which supposedly will “be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives of their governments.” James Madison, Federalist Paper (FP) 46. These principles determine the constitution’s nature, character, form, and function. This necessarily means that a constitution itself is to be contrasted to the eternal principles that formed the constitution, and where government does not conform its actions and intentions to the principles of the constitution, the constitution itself is practically meaningless and dead. American jurist, William Rawle, expresses the same: “By a constitution we mean the principles on which a government is formed and conducted.” William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, 2.
That our government must conform its actions and intentions to these principles is confirmed by the United States Supreme Court, by those who formed our constitutions, and by those who helped form the very fundamental thoughts of American jurisprudence: (1) “Let the nature and objects of our Union be considered; let the great fundamental principles on which the fabric stands be examined.” Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 423 (1821). (2) “[N]o free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but…by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” Benjamin Kidd, Principles of Western Civilisation, citing Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776, (London, The Macmillan Co., 1902), 511. (3) “Once the principles of government are corrupted, the very best laws become bad and turn against the [people of the] state.” Charles de Baron Montesquieu and Julian Hawthorne, ed., The Spirit of Laws: The World’s Great Classics, vol. 1 (London: The London Press), 116.
Thus, a maxim must be admitted: where the principles of freedom are abandoned, the constitution no longer serves its constituted purpose; that is, to limit the government as the consent of the governed demanded at its creation. And once the constituted purposes and principles are abandoned, how could it be argued that the constitution has life? Is the form (the constitution) greater than the substance (the principles)? Certainly not.
3. When a government breaches its limitations placed upon it by a constitution, (a) the government agent loses its trust to rule, (b) the powers delegated to it are reverted back to the creators of the constitution, and (c) the constitution becomes non-binding on those who created it. This is the natural law concept of “the consent of the government,” as expressed in our Declaration of Independence. It is further a concept regarding the rights of the parties who enter into a compact. As noted by our founders, we do not normally exercise this natural and compact right over “light and transient causes,” but in cases where a “long train of abuses” are evident. European forefather, Hugo Grotius, recognizes that when a government contradicts the principles that created its power, that creation (i.e. kingdom/constitution) dies and the people have the right to institute new government:
“[I]f the king act, with a really hostile mind, with a new to the destruction of the whole people…that the kingdom is forfeited; for the purpose of governing and the purpose of destroying cannot subsist together.” Hugo Grotius and William Whewell, trans., Hugo Grotius on the Rights of War and Peace, Book II, (Cambridge: University Press, 1853), 57–58.
The Barr Code:
Welcome to Health-care Bizarro World
A proposed amendment to the Constitution.
Amendment 28 — Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.—Thomas Jefferson
Governor Jan Brewer issued an Executive order to allow the executive branch to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. In other words, she used the unconstitutional edict to enforce a Constitutional provision.
The First Amendment provides that
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
So in the thirties, as he so often did, Roosevelt went around the Constitution using the Klu Klux Klan member Justice Hugo Black to declare a “separation of Church and State.” Roosevelt was the first to appoint Supreme Court Justices based on their adherence to the Communist Manifesto. This is a procedure followed by Republicans and Democrats since. To appoint based on ideology since they can make legislation from the bench.
Brewer’s executive order reads:
Executive Order 2009-11
Declaring Christmas and Hanukkah Celebration
WHEREAS, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian religion, and has been celebrated annually for more than two millennia as a significant historical, cultural, and religious event; and
WHEREAS, Hanukkah also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BC; and
WHEREAS, Christmas and Hanukkah bring joy, love and good will to the hearts of the people of the State of Arizona and hundreds of millions of people across the world; and
WHEREAS, the spirit of good will which has been found each December has been at the heart of our ability to live as one people despite differing faiths and backgrounds; and
WHEREAS, the Constitution does not permit the government to tolerate or engage in hostility toward religion, and the United States Supreme Court has affirmed that the public celebration of religious holidays, and the acknowledgment of religious origins, does not offend the Constitution; and
WHEREAS, state and local officials in Arizona (and elsewhere) in the past have attempted to strip both Christmas and Hanukkah of their meaning, including establishment of policies forbidding state employees from placing religious items of celebration at their desks, re-naming of Christmas trees as “holiday” trees, and renaming of Menorahs as “candlesticks;” and
NOW THEREFORE, I, Janice K. Brewer, Governor of the State of Arizona, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and the laws of the State of Arizona, do hereby order and direct as follows:
1. No executive agency of the State of Arizona shall require that any state employee refrain from personally celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah, including the placement of items traditionally associated with a particular holiday.
2. No executive agency of the State of Arizona shall prohibit any state employee from referring to the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays by their accurate names and wishing others a “Merry Christmas” or a “Happy Hanukkah.”
4. No executive agency of the State of Arizona shall participate in any censorship of the lawful celebration and acknowledgment of Christmas, Hanukkah or any other recognized religious holiday.
5. All executive agencies of the State of Arizona, and any political subdivision thereof, are authorized and directed to cooperate with the implementation of the provisions of this Order.
6. This Order is effective upon signature and shall continue in effect until amended, modified, terminated, or rescinded by the Governor, or terminated by operation of law.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have set my hand officially and caused to be affixed the Great Seal of Arizona, at the Capitol, in the City of Phoenix, on this 16th day of December, 2009.
WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE – Ron Stanis is told by the city he has 14 days to remove a sign from his yard, but the man says he’s been unfairly targeted. He says it’s not the sign itself that’s the problem. he says some neighbors just don’t like what the sign says and called the city to complain. The sign has been up for more than five-years.
A sign in front of a house that displays the 10 Commandments is causing a stir in Milwaukee.
Homeowner Ron Stanis says the sign has been in his yard for five years.
No one ever objected to the sign until this year when someone filed a formal complaint.
Officials told the homeowner he must apply for a permit or take down the sign.
Stanis says he won’t do either and plans to protest against the city.
If he doesn’t comply with the rules, he could be issued citations that would cost him more than $300.
WITI Milwaukee
Ten Commandments Sign on Front Lawn Creates Controversy
CBN.com
Welcome to Constitutional Republic Party.
The Polls are open
Do you support health care reform as proposed?
- No (100%, 3 Votes)
- Yes (0%, 0 Votes)
- Not sure. (0%, 0 Votes)
- Haven't had time to read it. (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 3
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