Andrew Malcolm, IBD, “Obama, creator of the sequester crisis, decries crises created for political gain”:
To hear President Obama talk about the so-called budget cuts known as sequestration, his two-year-old idea of those required slashes in federal spending didn’t turn out to be such a good idea after all.
As usual with President Obama, however, the failure of his own plan is not his fault.
The president, his Cabinet secretaries and his press secretary are describing a veritable fiscal Armageddon for the country if the cuts he proposed in 2011 start taking effect on Friday, as legislatively required. And conveniently forgetting that in late 2011 Obama vowed to veto any attempts to disarm the sequester cuts he now raises alarms over.
Remember now, these aren’t real cuts in current spending. These are cuts in the future increases of current spending. We’ll still be spending more and more and more each year, as we have since Obama took the throne. In fact, he’s been spending more than $1,000,000,000,000 above what the government takes in every single year.
We’ll just be spending a little bit less of the usual annual federal budget increases. Only 2.3% less, as a matter of fact. Could you cut $23 in spending out of a $1,000 raise you might get someday if you ever find a job during this Obama economy? See?
But to hear Obama describe the ugly upcoming scenario you’ll probably have to send your kids to school unfed, maybe even naked. See how awful Republicans are?
“Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to deal with finding child care for their children. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings…..workers will sit idle when they should be repairing ships.”
Obama made these claims to the nation’s governors Monday and urged them to contact their congressional delegations. These are 50 men and women chief state executives, every one of whom balances every one of their government budgets every single year. And the White House Democrat has the nerve to seek their help avoiding modest trims that still add to his existing historic deficits.
Today, Obama takes his OMG Tour to Virginia’s coastline, where he might mention some awful alleged things those Republicans will force him to do to our once-proud Navy.
He probably won’t have time to explain that the Republican House has twice passed measures to address the sequester challenge but the Democrat Senate is too busy to take them up, as it has been violating the law and not passing federal budgets for the past four years.
I admire Andrew Malcolm’s continued good humor as he describes the surreal transformation of our country into something that runs on nothing but lies, media manipulation, will to power, and an increasingly single-party government that fights over who will control the federal leviathan at any given moment.
The TEA Party swept GOP governors to power. They returned the House to the Republicans. And what have they gotten for it? Broken promises, “pragmatic” (and dramatic) leftward turns, capitulations on tax hikes, reversals on “patient’s rights” manifestos that were meant to protect against the implementation of ObamaCare, establishment invective (coupled to active efforts to destroy their most prominent potential candidates, or new organizations designed to defeat them in primaries by labeling moderates “conservative” and labeling TEA Party challengers Sharon Christine O’DonnellAkinMourdochAngle) — all things that, taken in the aggregate, prove conclusively that the GOP has no desire to represent its conservative base, though it’s happy to use that base to win elections by pandering to them during primaries.
There is no saving the GOP. So while I’m happy to vote for solid conservatives I can trust who run under the GOP party banner, it’s time for a kind of third party challenge — without necessarily requiring us to adopt an official third party.
Here’s my thinking: we run TEA Party conservatives in Republican primaries. But when they win, they cease referring to themselves as Republicans (though they’ll run as such) and refer to themselves only as committed constitutionalists and protectors of individual liberty and equality of opportunity, and defenders against an overweening regulatory state and federal intrusion into your bathrooms, your lunch rooms, your vending machines, your restaurants, and so on.
I’ve been saying this for who knows how long know here, but let me repeat it again: losing more slowly is still losing. Radical measures must be taken. There will be no more voting for the lesser of two evils.
These candidates, who we agree to support, we agree to support in exchange for certain publicized promises: 1) that they represent the wishes of their constituencies 2) that they impose upon themselves limits of 8 years in the House and 12 years in the Senate 3) that they will refuse to caucus with party leaders who refuse to honor the principles of the party base, and no amount of arm-twisting can turn them; if the GOP establishment responds by withholding money from their re-election campaigns, the TEA Party / committed constitutionalists will counter by not only challenging establishment Republicans in primaries, but by refusing to endorse those Republicans should they win: electing those with Rs in front of their names just for the sake of doing so is turning politics into a team sport. And we shouldn’t think of it as a game, as too many people’s livelihoods are put at risk during games of political positioning that the GOP has proven itself so poor at playing; that they will, as a caucus of committed constitutionalists, hold daily press conferences to get their message out to the American people. If this requires televised ads to challenge the national press into covering their alternative message to the ruling class narrative, money is raised for precisely that effort.
Additional money and seed capital should be sought to build and promote a cable news network to compete with FOX. FOX has become the outlet for the establishment GOP to help shape the debate in “conservative” circles, with Karl Rove and every other Bushie sucking all the oxygen out of the individual sovereignty / constitutionalist agenda. Panels of “conservative” experts promote things like fiscal cliff surrenders, or continuing resolution surrenders, or capitulations on “taxes on the rich,” and so on — all while trying to relegate those who oppose these abrogations of principle as “purists” or “True Believers” with hairy feet and a desire to rape and pillage the language like rhetorical Visigoths.
This is an attempt to re-calibrate the political spectrum, with the Founders and Framers, who are best represented in principle by the various TEA Party factions, relegated to the fringe (with the Birchers, the KKK, the nativists, etc), while Karl Rove and the national GOP and an increasing number of “pragmatic” big government Republicans redefine moderates and leftwing Republicans as “conservative”, which has the practical effect of then moving the New Left socialists / Marxists to the center-left, pulling them off the fringes.
It is fair to ask at this point, just whose side are the national Republicans on?
And it fair to ask that as a purely rhetorical question: because increasingly it is obvious that they are on their side; that they are on the side of big government; and that they have very little interest in fighting the rhetorical tide of the Pravda media when they can receive praise for capitulating to the progressives — and can then keep their cushy jobs as the loyal opposition, consistently funded by the plebes in the hinterlands who keep sending in money hoping to elect people to represent them.
Which more times than not requires settling for the lesser of two evils.
It’s a largely closed system pretending to be a representative republic. Having recognized that, we have no one to blame but ourselves from now on for not being able to take it back from the entrenched ruling class who operates in its own interests while pretending to operate in ours.
Having myself been marginalized for writing this way long before it became fashionable, I expect these ideas to fall largely on deaf ears. So I post them here for posterity. And with the hope that somewhere in the conservative movement there are those who are willing to help me promote them from the obscurity in which they were tendered.
is boehner still sniffling about the devastating cuts?
he looks kinda misty-eyed on drudge
Will Congressional Republicans do anything about this? Illegal immigrants set free from detention centers as sequester approaches: http://tinyurl.com/alvb8uc
“[Napolitano] also hinted at the decision to release illegal immigrants, saying she would not be able to maintain the full slate of 34,000 detention beds mandated by Congress.
“How am I supposed to pay for those? There’s only so much I can do,” she said.
The largest problem facing conservatists is the branding and framing that is de facto fais accomplis by the State Media of any crisis or argument.
Take the 2A rights argument going on now.
Proponents of restricting rights of gun owners are labeled “Gun control Advocates” That doesn’t sound bad does it?
While Gun owners and advocates are called “Gun Nuts” “Gun Lovers” While the NRA is referred to as the “Gun Lobby” with no mention that they represent millions of law abiding gun owners.
If we had the outlets, we could try to reframe the debate and call these so called gun control advocates as “Gun confiscators” or “Gun Rights Violators” or something in that vein.
But, alas, we don’t and this actually should become conservatisms focus: the mass media at this time has become the largest and most powerful of the forces that are a danger to the Republic and it’s citizens.
They need to be taken down and reduced in their scope and degree of power. Yet only now are some finally realizing who the real threat really is.
They need to at least be called out for every lie and omission and at least the attempt made to use more truthful terms rather than use those imposed on us by the representatives of the left.
In an Ed Week article yesterday hyping the sequester and the damage it could bring, they mentioned we are operating under a continuing resolution because this Admin had not been able to get a budget in place for this year.
No mention of any year since Obama took office. No mention that he is not trying. Just leaving the impression if the House would only cooperate at all we would have a budget and no sequester danger at all.
I guess all those tax free foundations funding ed week are getting their action research propaganda organ. No wonder this is being so hyped.
If I still advocated concerning ourselves with trying to take back control of the national government, I would back your plan all the way, Jeff, because I think it is a well-reasoned scheme for doing so.
The only reason I cannot support it is that I strongly believe that the national government is beyond hope of being saved. As I wrote yesterday over at my place [regarding speculations by conservatives and Classical Liberals on the elections of 2014 and 2016]:
Further, we only have so much time, energy, and materials that we can call on in waging our fight – best to be economical in our use of them.
Refugium inveniemus in provinciis.
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*It is fair to ask at this point, just whose side are the national Republicans on?*
Their own. When what was supposed to be a citizen-legislator simply becomes a legislator, then staying a legislator becomes the most important thing to you – far more important than feedback from constituents, anyway. And staying a legislator means “getting along” with democrats who are actively promoting policies that are extremely bad for both the short and long term health of the country.
Excellent post though. As Jeff notes and I’ve been saying for a while, I think one of the most important parts of the plan is developing an actual conservative news network, that doesn’t try to remain “fair and balanced” but instead reports the truth, calls out the lies being told by the politicians and media (hell have a show called “Watchdog” where that’s all the show hosts do). I don’t need to hear from Bob Beckel or Juan Williams to know what idiocy the Left is promoting on any given day and Williams and Beckel’s presence is specious, considering no liberal is every going to admit Fox’s attempt to include liberal (loony) voices makes the network fair and balanced. Just go full on, unapologetic conservative, And from an economic standpoint, it could be a significant money maker, as I have no doubt alot of Fox news viewers are just as frustrated as we are with alot of their coverage. Though I could imagine the boycotts liberals would be organizing right out of the box, which might make a fledgling network less attractive to advertisers.
I know Glenn Beck was trying to do something like this but I don’t think he has the financial ability or the appropriate reputation for starting up and running a news network.
As I said over on my little acre of the internet;
Jeff says we must primary Tea Party candidates against establishment Republicans in national office elections and that is a noble cause. There is nothing wrong with more Ted Cruz’s, Trey Gowdys’ and Jeff Duncans’ in the Congress and Senate. But we know that they will still be a minority for years to come and will not have the clout needed to push the country in the right direction.
As Bob says, and I agree, we need to concentrate more on the state and local levels. That is where we have the power.
And then, there’s this;
It doesn’t take nearly as much money and resources to run campaigns at the local and state levels as it does at the national level. We must use our resources wisely and that means putting our money where it will do the most good…right at home where we live and work.
Joel Cheatwood does, which is why Beck hired him.
Get The Blaze.
Oh, and another thing that needs to be brought up- A Representative to the Congress now represents on average, about 700,000 constituents. You have better odds of winning the lottery than getting your voice heard from your Rep.
I’m not sure how we break out of the evil of two lessers.
oh my
link
your right he’s not a shill for the ruling class
I like the sounds of this Huelskamp.
Charles wins the thread. Maybe even the entire innertubes.
Oh jeez how what the…htmlfu.
sequester the diet
link
mr. g has added tagging to copying
16.5 calories times 365 is 6022.5 calories
you need to burn an extra 3500 calories on average for to lose a pound of unsightly weight gain
therefore, using math, one can observe that the french fry reduction in question could, all things being held the same, could lead to a weight loss of 1.72 pounds a year
which is about the same as how much you lose when you take a good-sized dump
which is to say Meghan’s coward daddy and John Boehner are full of shit I think
Years ago when I was running for a local elected office, I remarked about how the in-clique claimed it had spending under such tight control, then I pointed out that the budget had never, ever shrunk.
I likened the fiscal bragging to going around telling people about the great diet you’re on while constantly having to go to the tailor to have your pants let out.
It got good laughs, buit I lost the election.
So the government really is a couple french fries short of a Happy Meal?
It’s always “if you don’t give us more money, we’ll have to cut the fire departments, and the army, and the roads”. Never what Jerry Pournelle calls the “bunny inspectors”.
If you’re a stage magician who uses rabbits in his show, you have to have a license for that. A FEDERAL license. With federal bureaucrats to enforce it. They will fly into your town at public expense and cite you if you don’t have one.
You don’t (yet) need one to kill and eat the rabbit, mind, just for pulling it out of your house on stage.
It’s unclear t0 Jerry (and me) exactly why cutting programs like that would mean the end of civilization.
That’s kind of an odd number. If you think of this question as: “how many calories do I have to burn to lose one pound of adipose?” I would think that you need to burn at LEAST as many excess calories as are contained in a pound of fat.
Which, doing the math, is 9 calories/gram x 1000 grams/2.205 lb = 4081 calories.
Close, maybe.