The Foundation

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” –Thomas Jefferson

Government & Politics

The Unsinkable U.S.?

Congress passed and the president signed the increase in the debt ceiling Tuesday, and that, as Leftmedia outlets rejoiced, ended the “crisis” just hours before the default deadline. On the other hand, the Left is grousing that the Tea Party got everything it wanted. But did the deal really end the crisis? Hardly. World markets plummeted in its wake – the Dow fell 512 points Thursday, erasing all gains from 2011, evoking this response from the White House: “Markets go up and down.” Furthermore, credit rating agencies continued to warn of a looming downgrade of the nation’s AAA rating. And did the Tea Party come out with everything it wanted? Not a chance. On the contrary, the ship is still sinking. The Tea Party and the markets know that, despite all the back-patting in Washington.

The $2.4 trillion debt ceiling increase is the biggest ever. In fact, total U.S. debt didn’t reach $2.4 trillion until 1987. Immediately on Tuesday, the Treasury borrowed another $239 billion – the largest one-day debt binge in history – bringing total federal debt to $14.532 trillion, or just over 100 percent of our gross domestic product. Debt has not exceeded GDP since 1947 – immediately after World War II – and 30 years ago it was just 32.5 percent of GDP. Could there be a connection between the market collapse and this debt “milestone”?

Democrats foisted upon the nation the biggest Keynesian spending bonanza in history, and the result has been almost no GDP growth, headline unemployment exceeding 9 percent (despite 117,000 new jobs in July), decreased consumer spending, inflation, debt as far as our great-grandchildren can see and a possible national credit rating downgrade.

On Aug. 3, 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned an op-ed for The New York Times titled “Welcome to the Recovery.” That rings awfully hollow now. In fact, many think that we’re headed for a double-dip recession.

As for Barack Obama, later this month, he will embark on a three-day bus tour of the Midwest that he’s styling as a “listening tour” focused on jobs. That’s after his 50th birthday bash this week, which featured dinner at $35,800 a plate. In any case, it’s become clear in recent weeks that the American people have lost confidence in Obama’s policies and are tuning him out.

Not to worry, though. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) says, “[W]e’re going to focus on what we know is the number one priority on Americans’ minds right now – that is creating jobs and continuing to get this economy turned around.” Um, “continuing”?

As for debt “deal” specifics, the House passed the increase 269-161, despite opposition from many Democrats and Tea Party Republicans. The Senate followed suit 74-26. Congress then quickly left for August recess. Barack Obama also signed the increase Tuesday saying the deal was “an important first step for ensuring that, as a nation, we live within our means.” He even said it with a straight face.

On the contrary, “living within our means” doesn’t actually seem to be part of the plan. The debt ceiling was immediately increased by $400 billion. By the end of September, another $500 billion increase is subject to a congressional vote of “disapproval,” and Obama can veto that measure. After that, a “blue ribbon” joint committee of Congress (six members from each chamber, divided equally between Democrats and Republicans) will meet to recommend another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by Nov. 23, which Congress must take up by Dec. 23, in exchange for that much more in debt. If the committee or Congress fails, which is possible, if not probable, the debt ceiling will increase by $1.2 trillion anyway, with across-the-board cuts – including to ObamaCare – equal to that amount kicking in automatically.

Adding insult to injury, every spending cut is over 10 years, while every debt increase is immediate. So even with the deal, the forecast for the next decade is still trillions more in debt. As Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who voted against the bill, put it, “It eliminates no program, consolidates no duplicative programs, cuts no tax earmarks and reforms no entitlement program. The specter of default or a credit downgrade will still hang over our economy after this deal becomes law.” Is that what the Tea Party wanted?

None of that is to say the deal is the worst possible outcome. In fact, with no tax-rate increases and some spending cuts, despite Democratic control of the White House and Senate, it’s quite the opposite. Retaking those two should be paramount in 2012 to work peacefully toward restoration of constitutional Rule of Law. In the meantime, the Tea Party should continue fighting for everything it can win.

Essential Liberty

“[T]he projections for this and that for 2030, 2050, 2080 are all irrelevant. We have half-a-decade to turn this around. If we really intend (as is apparently foreseen by our bipartisan saviors) to add $7-10 trillion to the debt by 2020, then America is over – because clearly there is no intention ever to repay that money, and the world will make its dispositions accordingly. … The Democrats want to plunge over the cliff at full throttle. Too many Republicans think it will be fine as long as we go over the edge in third gear.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Quote of the Week

“The White House doesn’t create jobs.” –White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

This Keen-Sense-of-the-Obvious moment is quite a change from all the administration’s claims of millions of jobs “saved or created” via the “stimulus.”

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Files

In perhaps the only heart-warming aspect of the debt-ceiling debacle, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) returned to Congress to cast her vote for the first time since being shot in the head in Tucson in January. Her recovery has been incredible, and we wish her well.

Her return, however, provided a striking picture of the hypocrisy of the Left. When she was shot, leftists couldn’t say enough to blame so called “right-wing hate speech” for the shooting. Now, it’s leftists who are employing “destroy,” “hostage,” “terrorist” and even “gun-to-the-head” metaphors to describe the Republican approach to the debt ceiling.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that, for Republicans, “It isn’t about reducing the deficit, it is about destroying the public space. It is about destroying … federal involvement in education. It’s about clean air, clean water, food safety, public safety. You name it, they’re there to diminish it. Destroy it.” (New Democrat bumper sticker: “Republicans Hate Clean Water – Vote Democrat”.)

According to Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), “The Tea Party acted like terrorists in threatening to blow up the economy.” Vice President Joe Biden reportedly agreed, “They have acted like terrorists,” though he denies saying it. “What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists,” Biden said. “I never said that they were terrorists or weren’t terrorists, I just let them vent.” By his own admission, then, the vice president allowed “left-wing hate speech” to infect his ranks. So much for the administration’s calls for “civility.”

Former Democrat congressman Martin Frost added his two cents with a Politico op-ed titled “The Tea Party Taliban.” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called the Tea Party the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP, saying they’re bent on forcing the nation on a “suicide mission.” Fellow Times scribbler Maureen Dowd described conservatives as “cannibals,” “zombies” and “vampires.” Other Times writers as well as the editorial board engaged in similar rhetoric, despite their sanctimonious smears of conservatives in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Did we mention they totally ignored Biden’s comments?

Especially in light of Giffords’ return to Congress, it was galling to hear MSNBC analyst and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson accuse the Tea Party of “putting a gun to the president’s head” on the debt ceiling. Former White House “green czar” Van Jones likewise said, “When any faction in America that would put a gun to the head of 310 million people and say ‘if you don’t do it our way we will blow your dreams away, we will blow a hole in the American economy,’ that is un-American and that is not how we do business and we refuse to bow down to those kind of bully tactics.” On the related issue of delayed Federal Aviation Administration funding, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused Republicans of “hostage taking” and said Democrats felt they had a “gun held to [our] head.”

Giffords, we should mention, voted “yes” on the debt increase.

We would normally classify this last remark as “Non Compos Mentis” instead of “Alpha Jackass,” but while we’re on the subject: Joe Biden reportedly welcomed Gabby Giffords to “the cracked head club.” Smooth move, Joe.

On Cross-Examination

“It is not tea party people who are the ‘terrorists.’ A terrorist seeks to destroy. Who is the real destroyer in the debt-ceiling debate? Who wants to continue spending money we don’t have, borrowing it from nations like China that would be happy to destroy us if our politicians don’t do it first? Tea party people simply want to make their government accountable again and for this they are called ‘terrorists’?” –columnist Cal Thomas

On the Campaign Trail

The first GOP presidential caucuses and primaries are still months away, but recent polling by Rasmussen indicates that the contest for the Republican nomination is shaping into a three-way race among Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and the yet-to-declare Rick Perry. We’re skeptical of polls for many reasons, but this one bears a closer look. In Rasmussen’s most recent survey of 1,000 likely Republican voters, Romney drew 34 percent, Bachmann 27 percent, and Perry 26 percent in a three-way matchup. The balance of respondents liked another candidate or were undecided. In two-way match-ups, Romney edged out Bachmann 44-42 and he beat Perry 43-39. In other words, each combination is a statistical dead heat.

Tea Party supporters trended toward Bachmann and Perry, who split at 39-39 in a head-to-head match-up. Romney has positioned himself as the establishment candidate, and the Rasmussen poll indicates that is where his support is strongest. Still, the news from this poll should be unsettling to the Romney camp, which has been far and away the largest fundraiser in the GOP race to date and has prided itself as running a top-notch campaign operation. Romney, who ran a strong campaign in 2008, has been laying the groundwork for this run ever since. Yet after all that hard work, all those photo ops, and all that money spent, he still remains neck and neck with a congressional representative who was virtually unknown eight months ago and a Texas governor who hasn’t even declared his candidacy.

National Security

Warfront With Jihadistan: About That ‘Arab Spring’

As we enter August, the Egyptian “Arab Spring” uprising of early 2011 appears to be wilting in the summer heat, just as expected by those who understand Arab culture and the influence of the Arab world’s Islamists. Six months after throngs of these allegedly “liberal” pro-democracy protesters led a popular uprising that helped oust President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian troops on Monday forcibly removed the remaining protesters from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many Egyptians stood by and applauded the army, while others harassed the protesters as they ran from the site that symbolized the Arab Spring, demonstrating just how far the uprising’s leaders have fallen in the eyes of ordinary Egyptians. The protesters’ criticism of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has failed to move the larger citizenry, and their continuing demonstrations have also angered many Egyptians who say the tumult has frightened away tourists and otherwise damaged the country’s economy.

Monday’s rout of the protesters followed a massive rally in Tahrir Square last Friday by Islamists who called for Egypt to become an Islamic state and railed against the secular protesters who led the uprising last spring. Tellingly, the Islamists’ numbers dwarfed those of the protesters. It now appears that the military has formed an informal alliance with the Islamists as a defense against the protesters’ attempts to strip the military of its power. The dream of secular “democracy” in Egypt, if it ever was real, appears to be dead.

As for Mubarak, on Wednesday the cancer-stricken 83-year-old former dictator appeared in an Egyptian court, lying on a hospital bed inside a metal defendant’s cage. His two sons, in white prison uniforms, stood beside him as he denied charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of protesters last spring. Many Egyptians, watching the proceedings on state television, savored the humiliation of the man who ruled for 29 years, a time when opponents were tortured or killed, corruption was rampant, poverty spread and civic life was non-existent. Sadly, Egypt’s military is staging this trial as a sop to the Muslim Brotherhood, under whose Islamic rule life may remain all too similar to that under Mubarak.

In related news, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces continue to kill and generally terrorize protesters in his country. Given NATO’s pitiful efforts in Libya, it’s unlikely that the West will intervene in Syria, nor should it do so. The UN did, however, issue a somewhat-strongly worded statement condemning Assad’s actions. “Those responsible for the violence should be held accountable,” the Security Council said. Well then. That should do the trick.

Speaking of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi’s son Khamis was killed by a NATO air strike. To get a picture of the strange story of the military action in that country, just eight days before strikes began, Khamis was given a VIP tour of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Immigration Front: Another Border Scandal

The El Paso Times reports, “U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the [Mexican] Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court. The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzman and the son of Ismael ‘Mayo’ Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.”

The case certainly reminds us of “Operation Fast and Furious,” run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in which illegally obtained guns were allowed to be taken into Mexico in return for information on drug cartels and other smuggling operations. We have recounted that scandal on numerous occasions. This time, it’s drugs crossing into the U.S., and though not as dangerous, it’s an outrage nonetheless. Estimates are that some 3,000 people lost their lives due to Fast and Furious, including some at the hands of the Sinaloa cartel. Information about the cartel is apparently worth a lot of cocaine.

Can Israeli Techniques Work With U.S. Travelers?

At an implementation cost of $1 billion, the TSA is laying down a huge bet that Israeli-style security protocols can be transplanted to American shores. As the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks approaches, specially selected TSA agents, most with college degrees, are undergoing a four-day classroom course followed by 24 hours of on-the-job training in how to use visual cues and other methods to deduce which travelers may be threats. Known as the Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques program (SPOT), the Israeli technique is to ask a traveler four simple questions, with the TSA agent trained to spot “micro expressions” that could lead to further questioning or eventually the dreaded pat-down.

Of course, this new security method has civil libertarians up in arms and charging that the technique amounts to “profiling” and “security theater.” However, if the Israeli approach works, it could mean fewer embarrassing incidents like the many well-documented instances of traveler harassment for which the TSA has become infamous. The question is whether we can trust the TSA to come up with competent screeners for the job.

Business & Economy

Regulatory Commissars: The EPA Costs Jobs

As the unemployment rate hovers above 9 percent and job creation remains abysmal thanks to this administration’s policies, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a proposal that will destroy millions more jobs by 2030. Of course, the EPA isn’t admitting this consequence, but such would be the impact of the agency’s plan to constrict ozone standards from the 75 ppb (parts per billion) set in 2008 to 60 ppb. According to a study by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, the proposed new standard would not only kill 7.3 million jobs but also carry a price tag of more than $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030, not to mention that the idea is downright ridiculous. For perspective of just how much so, consider that not even Yellowstone National Park consistently meets a 60 ppb standard.

Icing the cake of idiocy, the anticipated health benefits of the proposed standard aren’t at all significant. As HotAir.com reports, “EPA’s assumed causal relationship between ozone and mortality has not been supported by EPA’s science advisors, [and] the EPA’s own data show that the benefits of the proposed ozone standard will not outweigh the costs.” So in short, a negative cost-benefit ratio, seven million-plus jobs gone, and an annual cost of $1 trillion. Sounds like a typical Leftist-inspired EPA program.

To be fair, it’s not just the EPA wreaking havoc on the economy. According to a memo distributed by Sen. John Barasso (R-WY), the administration added or finalized 608 regulatory rules in July alone at a total cost of $9.5 billion. That’s what Obama has previously called a “massive, job-killing tax increase.”

The Union Label

Workers of the World unite … or else. That’s the latest message sent to American workers by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The union has now resorted to outright blackmail to keep its stranglehold on American industry.

The story in a nutshell is “The Godfather” meets “Reds.” A few months ago, IAM filed an action with the NLRB to stop Boeing from opening a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. Boeing had decided it made more sense to build its new 787 Dreamliner in a business-friendly state, rather than Washington state, where the union is firmly entrenched. The company has already hired 1,000 workers, whom the IAM had no problem putting out of work. Now, however, it has magnanimously offered to withdraw, if Boeing’s workers allow the union to “organize” at the new plant.

Unions have long been known for their underhanded dealings, but few so blatant as this. Perhaps it’s the backing of the White House that has emboldened them to – as Americans for Tax Reform claims – violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the extortion law under which several mafia dons have been incarcerated.

Neither the IAM nor the NLRB seems to care that American workers already have enough problems. According to the Institute for Supply Management, U.S. manufacturing activity fell to 50.9 percent in July from 55.3 percent in June. This is a new low since July 2009 – the “official” end of the recession. So much for “Hope and Change.”

HHS Birth Control

The Department of Health and Human Services issued new guidelines this week ordering health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive health services without co-pays starting Aug. 1, 2012. This mandate covers not only Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and diabetes screening, but also birth control and voluntary sterilization. Apparently, the Obama administration and its supporters view pregnancy as a preventable disease like HPV. That should come as no surprise considering their track record of support for abortion on demand in any and all circumstances.

This latest element of the travesty we have come to know as ObamaCare assumes that widespread government-supported access to birth control will cut down on the number of unwanted pregnancies that the government funds, thereby saving taxpayer money. There is a fatal flaw, however, in that logic. Federal, state and local governments have been providing free or heavily subsidized birth control programs for the poor for several years now with insignificant success in actively reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies among the social service-dependent population. Virtually any woman in this country who wants free birth control already has access to it even without the new HHS mandate. The only outcomes that this new rule is likely to achieve are a further burden on already stressed Medicaid resources and a further erosion of the concept of personal responsibility in our society.

Public Health Insurance Costs

A recent study by Josh Barro of the Manhattan Institute indicates that many state governments are reaching the fiscal breaking point thanks to their inability to reform their public employee health insurance plans. Public employees enjoy a number of advantages over their private sector counterparts when it comes to benefits. They contribute, on average, only 15 percent of their own income to premiums, compared to 25 percent that private employees generally pay. Public employees also receive a wider array of services with lower co-pays and deductibles.

The cost for this government generosity has tripled over the past 15 years, but it can be slowed by switching to consumer-driven benefits options with a greater employee buy-in for premiums and managed-care coverage. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels did just that in his state in 2006, and taxpayers and public employees saved a combined $31 million last year. Barro’s study notes that a similar strategy employed nationwide could save $30 billion.

Culture & Policy

Second Amendment: Gun-Grabbers International

The United States is almost unique among nations in that its citizenry generally enjoys the right to keep and bear arms – the palladium of all liberties. That’s a sore subject among international statists, and the United Nations has been working on a treaty designed to limit armaments of all sorts in order to assume greater control of otherwise sovereign nations.

If you look at the document through the prism of American sovereignty, it’s clear the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which has the support of Barack Obama, has a number of drawbacks (The Heritage Foundation has them outlined. Because of that, it also now has a bipartisan group of 57 senators (45 Republicans along with a dozen Democrats) opposed to it in its present form – in particular, its “wide-ranging and unrealistic scope.” It also violates the Second Amendment. But since when has the UN cared about our Constitution? For that matter, when was the last time Democrats cared about our Constitution?

More important, that group of 57 senators – one for each state, if you count like Barack Obama – is more than enough to deny adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty unless significant changes are made in the final product, which is due in 2012. With that sort of political timing, the chances of the Arms Trade Treaty being enacted are between slim and none. Just keep a wary eye on the executive branch, because with Obama as a proponent, other avenues are possible.

Around the Nation: Kansas Pleads the 10th

Planned Parenthood took Kansas to court over its new law that halts the flow of state taxpayer dollars to the abortion provider and ends abortion funding in health insurance programs. Claiming the law infringes upon their rights to free speech and due process, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri filed suit in U.S. district court. It seems the abortion mill believes it’s entitled to taxpayer dollars. Kansas disagreed. Responding to the lawsuit, the state invoked the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, arguing, “The proposed injunction would commandeer one of the State’s agencies, forcing the State to cancel past contracts and enter into new ones selected by the Court,” and, “The proposed injunction would violate the State’s sovereignty and unconstitutionally replace the State’s discretion with the Court’s judgment.”

Indeed, the 10th Amendment clearly says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Kansas believes that it has the authority to determine state tax funding.

Yet on Monday, Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten agreed with Planned Parenthood and granted a temporary injunction against the law. He didn’t ignore the Constitution but instead perverted it for his own ends, saying that the state’s law is an unconstitutional restriction on a federally funded program. Marten said it therefore violates the Supremacy Clause, as well as Planned Parenthood’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. “The purpose of the statute was to single out, punish and exclude Planned Parenthood,” Marten said. He did not, however, point to the constitutional clause authorizing federal funds being spent on an abortion provider. We suppose he couldn’t find it.

And Last…

The University of Tennessee bookstore pulled from the shelves this week a satirical item mocking the president – “This is Change? Disappoint-Mints.” The complainant wasn’t just any Young Democrat, either, but state representative Joe Armstrong. After some very sensitive students alerted him to the product, he went to the bookstore to personally investigate. He concluded that this manner of gaining fresh breath was “very specifically insulting to the president,” and he added that the university should be careful of “politically specific products.” Oddly enough, no one complained when the bookstore carried breath mints poking fun at George W. Bush. Maybe Democrats just don’t like minty fresh breath.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
The Patriot Post Editorial Team