John Stossel’ State of the Union address
President Obama fulfilled his constitutional duty and gave his report on the state of the union last night. Here’s mine:
We’re in deep trouble. You know why. Our debt has passed $14 trillion, and yet our current spending plans will make that worse. The U.S. debt will reach Greek levels in just 10 years.
But do not despair. If we make reasonable cuts to what government spends, our economy can grow us out of our debt. Cutting doesn’t just make economic sense, it is also the moral thing to do. Henry David Thoreau had it right when he “accepted(ed) the motto … that government is best which governs least.”
So what should we get rid of? We start by closing the Department of Education, which saves $100 billion a year. Education ought to be in the free market. It’s insane to take money from states only to launder it through Washington and then return it to states.
Next, we should close the Department of Housing and Urban Development: $41 billion. We had plenty of housing in America before a department was created. Let’s get government out of that business.
Then we eliminate the Commerce Department: $9 billion. A government that can’t count the votes accurately should not try to negotiate trade. Trade should be free. Free trade creates prosperity. And since trade should be free, we should eliminate all corporate welfare and all subsidies. That means: agriculture subsidies, green energy subsidies, ethanol subsidies and subsidies for public broadcasting. None of these is needed.
I propose selling Amtrak. Taxpayers will save money, and riders will get better service. Why is government in the transportation business? Let’s have private companies compete to run the trains.
And we must finally stop one of the biggest assaults on freedom and our pocketbook, the war on drugs. The drug war is really a war on our own people. The ends do not justify the means.
Now the biggest cuts. Republicans propose to cut discretionary nonmilitary spending. Good. But why stop there? That’s only 15 percent of our budget. We must cut more. That means cutting Medicare, Social Security and the military.
I know. Medicare and Social Security are popular, but they are unsustainable. We must privatize Social Security and slowly replace Medicare with vouchers.
And that brings me to Obamacare. The only way to cut costs and still have medical innovation is to free the market. So I propose that we repeal Obamacare immediately. Then we must do more: We must repeal all government interference in the medical and insurance industries, including licensing. All that impedes competition.
Now, military spending. Do you recall what candidate Obama said about the war in Iraq? “I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.”
But I am confused. We’re two years past 2009, but we still have 48,000 troops in Iraq. We must shrink the military’s mission to truly national defense. That means pulling our troops out of Germany, Japan, Italy and dozens of other countries. America cannot and should not try to police the entire world. We can’t afford it, and it’s not right.
Those cuts will put America on the road to solvency. But that’s not enough. We also need economic growth. Our growth has stalled because millions of pages of regulations make businesses too fearful to invest. Entrepreneurs don’t know what the rules — or taxes — will be tomorrow. This discourages hiring.
All destructive laws must go. I again propose the Stossel Rule: For every new law passed, we must repeal two old ones.
We need to progress to an America that cherishes individual freedom. That means a government limited by the Constitution, one that protects our shores and our persons but otherwise stays out of our way. We should take seriously the words of another president, Thomas Jefferson, and embrace “a wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned — this is the sum of good government.”
That’s my State of the Union address.
Source, HT to Dissecting Leftism
What ever happened to the Anti-War Movement?
Seems it was mostly the “Anti-GW Bush” movement. War and stuff is just dandy with most of them as long as it’s a democrat doing it.
Harry Reid Hypocrisy
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Culture of Corruption, Politics
Quote of the Day
“Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, ‘Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.’ Surely what’s good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator.”
— Liberal columnist Maureen Dowd
Meanwhile, in the Commonwealth
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Politics, Taxes, The Peoples Commonweath
Our democrat controlled Legislature voted to keep their action from public view.
The Massachusetts House and Senate voted to kill a Republican sponsored bill to put Committee roll call votes on the Legislature’s website. The democrats want to keep the current rules, which require citizens to drive to Boston during business hours in order to obtain information on how their elected officials voted.
Just what do the democrats in the state legislature want to keep hidden from the citizens of the Commonwealth?
There was also a strict party line vote in the House that killed a Republican sponsored bill that would have prohibited the House from approving any tax hikes without a two-thirds majority on a roll call vote.
OK, so one thing they are trying to hide is that they are going to jack up your taxes, and they want to be able to give political cover to some of the reps by not forcing them to vote for the tax hike.
Monday Book Pick: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist by Patrick Albert Moore
Speaking of Evniromentalists and watermelons, this week’s pick is by a founder of Greenpeace. This book is by someone who actually cares about the planet, who quit the organization he helped found after it was taken over by socialists using the environmental movement to push their political agenda. Here is the money quote from a recent article by Moore:
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas.
Oh ya, a watermelon is a politie term to describe those folks in the red berets, a thin skin of green, but red to the core.
HT to AoSH, who also has this bonus video by Michael Crichton
Quote of the Day
“Sarah Palin is the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein.”
John Cox points out the illusion
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics, Taxes
Yup, The spending and the taxes are real.
The Recovery? Not so much…
Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare
American for Tax Reform has a list of the multiple tax hikes hidden in Obamacare.
These include:
- Individual Mandate Excise Tax
- Employer Mandate Tax
- Surtax on Investment Income
- Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans
- Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax
- Medicine Cabinet Tax
- HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike
- Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax
- Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers
- Raise “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI
- Tax on Indoor Tanning Services
- Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D
- Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike
- Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals
- Tax on Innovator Drug Companies
- Tax on Health Insurers
- $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives
- Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2
- Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting
- “Black liquor” tax hike
- Codification of the “economic substance doctrine”
Yup, if you think Health Care is expensive now, wait until the Government makes it “free.”
Three Exculpatory Facts the MSM Continues to Overlook in the Arizona Shootings
John Sexton gets to the heart of the matter:
One – Sarah Palin’s map was nothing out of the ordinary
Two – Jared Loughner’s fixation on Rep. Giffords pre-dated the Tea Party and Sarah Palin
Three – Jared Loughner’s verifiable ideological commitments are on the left
Three basic facts the MSM refuses to publish.