Sinking Ship of State

          The national debt is over 16 trillion dollars and by every estimate is expected to soar in the coming years.  Both Democrats and Republicans have learned that if they hand out taxpayer dollars to enough voters they get reelected to their cushy positions.  From cradle to grave there are government programs to help and protect.  From the Administration for Children and Families, to Homeland Security and the Women's Bureau  these professional politicians have created a web of dependency and fear.  Every program has a constituency that advocates for it.  Politicians don’t have the courage to cut anything because a constituent might be hurt, but all of us are going to get hurt before this mess gets better.    

          Congress has not passed a budget in over three years.  Meanwhile the flood of debt pours down upon us.  The embedded video does an excellent job of showing the hole we are now in, but it doesn’t offer a simple or quick way out, because there isn’t one.  As Hal Mason, the narrator, illustrates the federal budget as it stands now can’t be balanced.  As Mason states the solution “will be painful.

          The professional politicians know only one answer and they repeat it over and over.  For them it is like a mantra.  Tax the rich.  But the rich are not rich enough to balance the federal budget.  No one wants to work and strive only to have their hard earned pay taken by the government.  Atlas will shrug if politicians raise taxes too high and, just as Ayn Rand predicted, productivity and revenue will decrease.  How hard would you work if the government took half or more of everything you earned?

          Congressman Ron Paul has been talking about the budget crisis for years, but few others in Washington seem to care.  However, as the numbers grow to unimaginable heights even the most naïve among us are beginning to wake up to the problem.  God only asks for ten percent of our wealth, but the politicians already demand more and I promise you they will require even more before they begin serious cost cutting in government programs.  With this profound lack of leadership, I fear for the ship of state.

Odds & Ends

Washington Caucuses
Washington State Republican caucuses were held yesterday, March 3^rd, and Mitt Romney was the winner with 37.6 percent of the caucus vote.  Ron Paul did very well at 25%.  The caucuses vote was non-binding, but they begin the process of selecting delegates to the state and national Republican conventions.     
http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results
 
Obama Plan to Save Spotted Owl: Kill Barred Owls
To save the spotted owl, the Obama administration intends to move forward with a plan to shoot barred owls, a rival bird that continues to move the smaller Spotted Owl aside.  The original plan to save the Spotted Owl cost thousands of jobs in the northwest.  This new plan affects more than 24 million acres of forest land in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.  I have not found a job impact estimate for this latest plan.   
http://www.kcby.com/news/local/Obama-plan-for-spotted-owl-targets-rival-barred-owl-140756093.html

Libraries, Porn and Child Molesting
At a Portland library a 13-year-old and her 8-year-old friend see an older man looking at pornography on a library computer. “When they reported him he left but not before touching the 8-year-old’s behind and thigh.”  Explain to me again why we allow people to view pornography on taxpayer funded library computers.
http://www.katu.com/news/local/Mom-wants-charges-against-man-who-touched-girl-at-library-140976113.html

TSA – Coming to a Highway Near You 
Even though the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has never caught a single terrorist they are expanding the scope of their mission and powers.  So far they have conducted 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations of trucks and cars along the nation’s highways in the last year alone.  “The very thought of federal employees with zero law enforcement training roaming across our nation’s transportation infrastructure with the hope of randomly thwarting a domestic terrorist attack makes about as much sense as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Justice tour.”  
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/

California Mails Condoms to Minors
The state may be broke, but the California Department of Public Health has begun a program of providing free condoms by mail to children as young as twelve.  “Teenagers are directed to a website, TeenSource.org, where, after filling out the request form, they can have a free package of ten condoms along with lubricant and sex-ed literature mailed to their home addresses in a plain yellow envelope.”  In this way the Democrats controlling the state can undermine parental authority and, at the same time, foolishly spend taxpayer money. 
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/california-govt.-mailing-condoms-to-teenagers-at-home-in-unmarked-envelopes

Stockton CA Bankrupt
California, as I mentioned above, is going broke.  In 2008 Vallejo, with a population of 155,000, became the largest California city to file for bankruptcy.  Now Stockton with a population of nearly 300,000 may soon be forced to file for bankruptcy.  The whole state may need to go bankrupt before the fiscal craziness in California can stop.  
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/29/stockton-california-could-become-biggest-us-city-to-go-bankrupt/#ixzz1nkSLl29P

Second Class Americans

          Hillary Clinton was quoted today as saying, she would avoid the TSA pat-downs.  That got me thinking, why has the response from congress to the pat-downs been so tepid?  Now I know why.  While your wife, teenage daughter and elderly mother are having their breasts and genitals groped, the police are escorting our elected officials around the TSA checkpoints. 

          The New York Times reports that Republican leader John Boehner was recently seen at Reagan National Airport where he smiled pleasantly at passengers as he walked by the security checkpoints.  When asked about it the Times reports that Michael Steel, Chairman of the Republican National Committee responded, “Mr. Boehner was not receiving special treatment.” Steel added that any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security.  It appears that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is avoiding the pat-downs.     

            WorldNet Daily quotes Deborah Jacobs, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, as saying the TSA procedures, “appear to violate the constitutional right to privacy (4th Amendment). Taking naked pictures of men, woman and children? We think there are a lot of constitutional violations. Americans should not be treated like criminals.”  I hate it when this happens, but my belief in God-given rights and the Constitution force me, in this instance, to agree with the ACLU. 

          I am a law-abiding American citizen—I refuse to be treated like a criminal.  The TSA “enhanced” procedures are a violation of the fourth amendment.  The desire to travel is not probable cause to be frisked, groped and scanned; it is an assault.  Texas Congressman Ron Paul agrees and has introduced the “American Traveler Dignity Act.”  This legislation would remove any immunity from assault statutes TSA agents believe they have while groping innocent passengers.  However, if our elected officials and the courts insist that these invasive procedures continue, all Americans, pilots, elected officials and judges, should be subject to it.

By What Right?

          In the blogpost, Big Brother is Asking, I told everyone that the Census Bureau selected me to complete the American Community Survey (ACS).  Even though my compliance is required under Section 221 of Title 13 of the United States Code, I have refused.  It is worthwhile to remember that we the people are bound together under a constitution.  This mutually agreed upon social contract defines the limits of government, not the limits of our individual freedom.  So, I ask, by what right does the government require me to divulge detailed personal information?   

          Article one, section two, of the U.S. constitution originally stated that, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers….”  To determine those respect numbers the section went on to authorizes the census.  Simply put, allocating taxes and representatives was the original purpose of the census.  The Fourteenth Amendment deleted the three-fifths rule from the section, but the amendment still states that, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers….” Dividing representatives among the states remained the purpose of the census.  Politicians and the Census Bureau have perverted the original purpose of the census into a gross intrusion upon the privacy of Americans.       

          In stating his opposition to the ACS, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas said, the Founding Fathers “never authorized the federal government to continuously survey the American people. More importantly, they never envisioned a nation where the people would roll over and submit to every government demand.”  Congressman Paul is correct that the Founders never gave such intrusive census power to the government.  If the action of the government is unconstitutional then citizens have an obligation to resist.  I will not roll over and submit.  Fine me if you will, arrest me if you must, I will not complete the survey.