Tag: sequestration

Sequestration: Palin and the Petulant President

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

palin-newsweekobamababyObama has locked the American People out of  “The People’s House”.

The Washington Times reports that

The White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the president’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

In a related story, posted at washingtonexaminer.com:

House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision.

“An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.

The ICE document contains a table that proposes “reduc[ing] invoiced daily population by 1,000 weekly.” Between February 22 and March 31st, this plan would drop the number of detainees from 30,748 to 25,748.

“The decision to release detained aliens undermines the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to keep our homeland secure and instead makes our communities less safe and more vulnerable to crime,” Goodlatte said. “[R]egardless of sequestration, DHS actually has plenty of funding to pay for the detention of criminal aliens. Unfortunately, it seems Administration officials are more interested in using sequestration to promote their political agenda than as an opportunity to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.”

Napolitano said that it wasn’t her decision, even though ICE is part of DHS. “Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” she told ABC.

She also confirmed that the releases would continue. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release,” Napolitano said at a Politico event, per The Daily Caller.

The New York Times profiled a “low risk” detainee released by ICE. The detainee was taken into custody “when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time.” NRO’s Jim Geraghty asked, “If convictions for ‘simple assault, simple battery and child abuse’ make you ‘low-risk,’ what do you have to do for Janet Napolitano to consider you ‘high-risk’?”

Back on February 26th, Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin posted the following on her Facebook Page:

D.C.: Cut the Drama. Do Your Job.

Americans are sick and tired of yet another ginned-up crisis. D.C. needs to grow up, get to work, and live within its means. The real economic Armageddon looming before us is our runaway debt, not the sequester, which the President advocated for and signed into law and is now running around denouncing because he never had any genuine intention of reining in his reckless spending.

Remember that this sequestration deal came about because of the long debt ceiling standoff in the summer of 2011. It wasn’t the ideal outcome for anyone, but it did at least include real deficit reduction of about $110 billion per year for 10 years, which is still nowhere near enough to close our massive deficit. Keep in mind that since the sequester passed, the President has already hit American families and small business owners with his tax increases, or “more revenue” as he likes to call it. The American public doesn’t want tax increases; we want government to rein in its overspending.

If we can’t stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.

If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.

If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine.

Governor Palin was prophetic. It now appears that, instead of working with Congress to come up with a compromise, Obama would rather live up to the nickname I gave him in 2009, acting  like “The Petulant President” that he is.

Now, he is locking us, the ones he is supposed to be serving, out of the house that we built and are still financing. 

Obama is determined to make his “Chicken Little” pretentious predictions about the Sequestration come true, no matter how much they hurt the people he is supposed to be protecting from “enemies foreign and domestic”.

Instead, our anti-American President, though his idiotic “Smart Power!” Foreign Policy, and his clueless Domestic Policy of unconditional amnesty and Obamanomics, which is is putting us all in the Poor House, has himself become the enemy of the American People.

This is not Presidential Leadership. This is Presidential  Sabotage.

Until He Comes,

KJ

“I Am Not A Dictator; I’m The President” …Really?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

obamaburningconstitutionYeah. And, Nixon was not a crook.

That was  a proclamation uttered by the 45th leader of our nation, spoken during a press conference held yesterday, as his plans to tax Americans more were thwarted by Capital Hill Republicans, who finally found their collective spine.

Fox News reports

President Obama signed an order authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting across-the-board spending reductions.

Obama acted Friday, the deadline for the president and Congress to avoid the steep, one-year cuts.

The president placed blame squarely on Republican lawmakers at a Friday press conference for failing to stop automatic spending cuts that were to begin kicking in later in the day, calling the cuts “dumb, arbitrary.”

Republicans, for their part, said the fault was his, for insisting that increased taxes be part of the resolution

The president said the impact of the cuts won’t immediately be felt, but middle class families will begin to “have their lives disrupted in significant ways.” He said that as long as the cuts stay in effect, Americans will know that the economy could have been better had they been averted.

“The pain, though, will be real,” Obama said.

He said he still believed the cuts could be replaced but he wanted a deal that includes more tax revenue.

“Let’s be clear: None of this is necessary,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “It’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. We shouldn’t be making a series of dumb, arbitrary cuts to things.”

Obama met for less than an hour Friday morning with House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Boehner’s office said he and McConnell told Obama they’re willing to close tax loopholes but only to lower taxes overall, not to replace spending cuts. Obama and congressional leaders have agreed that Congress should pass a bill funding the government beyond the end of March while they keep working on a way to replace the spending cuts, Boehner’s office said.

“The president got his tax hikes on January 1st,” Boehner said bluntly after the meeting with Obama. “The discussion about revenue in my view is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”

On Thursday, two proposals aimed at blunting the blame over the cuts — one Democratic and the other Republican — were rejected in the Senate.

Sequestration is just the latest in a long line of actions (or inactions) by President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) that could be called incompetent and best…and dictatorial , at worst.

Since low information voters re-elected the Manchurian President, he has blatantly attacked average American citizens, in a manner reminiscent of a “benevolent” dictator.

Let”s examine some of his benevolence:

1. Attacking a Free Press – Obama has always been very petulant and condescending toward those who disagree with his brilliance. He spent his first term as president in a constant war with Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio,. Now, he has upped the ante by attacked famed Liberal Journalistic Icon Bob Woodward, of Watergate Fame, who dared to point out the ‘madness” of the Petulant President. Since Woodward’s truth-telling, he has been the target of a smear campaign by Obama’s ministers of propaganda, who have called him everything by a child of God. The Emperor has no clothes!

2. Attacking American Citizens – Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have ruled that it is perfectly legal for unmanned drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere around the globe, if it is deemed that they are an “Enemy of the State”. Unthinkable? Wait…there’s more.  These same unmanned drones will be flying in the skies above our homes! SkyNet has become aware.

3. Attacking Christianity – Under the guise of the implementation of Obamacare, Catholic Hospitals are being told that they have to provide free contraception, including the abortiafacient known as the Morning After Pill, an egregious slap in the face to these institutions and a blatant attack on their denomination’s beliefs. Castro turned on the Church also, after he became dictator.

3. Attacking Christianity, Part 2 – Obama is pushing the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the redefinition of a centuries-old word, which is defined as a sacred bond, established by God, between a man and a woman.”Gay marriage, a contradiction in terms, would begin a descent down a slippery slope, regardless of the current national meme, offered by “the smartest people in the room”. Caligula’s Horse approves.

5. Attacking the Constitution – Obama and his lackeys has seized upon the mass murder of children, committed by a psychopath, in Newtown, Connecticut, to launch an all-out offensive against Americans’ Second Amendment Rights to keep and bare arms. Under the rallying cry of “It’s for the children”, ignorant Leftists across the country have joined arm-in-arm, marching lockstep, to take away those eviiil guns from law-abiding citizens, while ignoring those who are actually killing our children.  They don’t don’t call them outlaws, for nothin’. 

The greatest American President in our lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan had this to say concerning our country’s present plight:

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

My bride and I are keeping our 5 year old grandson, Robert, this weekend. I wonder what kind of country will be left for him, if average Americans do not push back against the Machiavellian schemes of this Manchurian President.

We must take a stand against the Tyranny of the Minority.

We must take a stand for Liberty and Traditional American Values.

It’s for the children.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Sequestration Apocalypse is Upon Us! We’re Doomed! …Or Something…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

chickenlittleToday is the day when the world as we know it is supposed to end, according to Obama and his minions.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that

The law mandating the so-called sequester cuts requires the president to sign an order for the across-the-board spending reductions to begin. White House press secretary Jay Carney said unless the parties reach a deal, Mr. Obama would sign such an order sometime before midnight.

“11:59 and 59 seconds, because he’s ever hopeful,” Mr. Carney joked.

The likelihood of the sequester cuts taking effect grew Thursday as both sides repeated their intractable negotiating positions. The White House said it would not accept spending cuts without revenue increases from eliminating certain tax breaks. Republican leaders said they will not agree to raising more tax revenue, and called on the administration to commit to real spending cuts.SEE RELATED: Looking for budget cuts? GOP suggests checking out Obamacare

“I’m happy to work with the president,” said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “But the House has done its job.”

The House passed two measures last year that would have replaced the sequester, for example, by sparing the Defense Department from cuts and instead targeting programs such as food stamps. Senate Democrats refused to consider the measures.

Senate Republicans failed in an attempt Thursday to approve a measure that would have given Mr. Obama more discretion in how to impose the cuts. The White House said it would have vetoed the plan.

“No amount of flexibility changes the fact that these severe cuts threaten thousands of middle-class jobs and slash vital services for children, seniors and our troops and military families,” Mr. Carney said.

Mr. Obama is seeking as much as $580 billion in new tax revenue by closing loopholes for mostly wealthy individuals and ending tax breaks for oil companies and others.

Just who is responsible for Sequestration?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”

— President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The president seems to have a selective memory. Per The Washington Post:

The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package.Woodward’s book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place — and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.

Here is a short summary of how it went down:

The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous” about using it as a budget tool.

Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea.

This is the third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier, but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.

Republicans agreed to the White House proposal for a sequester.

Republicans had to work through the night to understand the White House proposal.

Of course, the fact that Obama actually proposed the sequester, is the reason they are attacking Bob Woodward.  Obama, his administration, and the sycophantic Left want that fact buried as deeply as possible.

After reading this, is there any doubt that the most transparent Administration in American History has a believability problem, per foxnews.com?

Earlier this month President Barack Obama praised his administration as “the most transparent administration in history.”

American voters disagree.

A new Fox News poll finds that 37 percent of voters think the Obama administration is less open and transparent than previous administrations, and another 35 percent say it is about as transparent as others.

Twenty-six percent agree President Obama has met a 2008 presidential campaign commitment to openness and that his administration is more transparent than others.

The issue rose to the surface again last week when the White House press corps was shut out from watching President Obama play golf with Tiger Woods. Prior to that reporters had been questioning the openness of the administration on weightier issues, such as the Benghazi attack on U.S. diplomats.

The differing views of the administration’s transparency have a strong partisan bias.

By a 38 percentage-point margin, Democrats say Obama has been more transparent than previous presidents, while Republicans say it has been less open by a 58-point margin. Among independents, 14 percent say Obama has been more open, 40 percent say less open and 45 percent say it’s been about the same as others.

By contrast, by a 62-29 percent margin, voters say media coverage of Washington and the White House is focusing more on silly issues of little importance for the country than serious issues of great importance.

And, that’s why, way back in 2009, I nicknamed Obama “The Petulant President”.

I wonder if he will throw a Presidential Temper Tantrum at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, if he does not get his way today?

As we say in Dixie, ol’ Scooter is

All hat. No cattle.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Sequestration is Coming!!! Run For the Hills!!! Or Something….

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

ObamafraudJust 2 days away from the End of the World as we know it (according to Obama and his minions) and I feel fine.

However, ol’ Scooter is getting desperate…and dangerous.

The Washington Times reported yesterday, that

The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, with officials confirming that the Homeland Security Department already has released several hundred illegal immigrants from detention in order to save money.

The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, while Republicans questioned the decision-making.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that runs the detention facilities, said that with both sequesters and the annual spending bills looming, officials have tried to find places to cut, and releasing low-priority immigrants is one of those ways.

“Over the last week, ICE has reviewed several hundred cases and placed these individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention,” ICE said in a statement. “All of these individuals remain in removal proceedings. Priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety.”

While being released from detention, the illegal immigrants are still subject to supervision — either by electronic device or by being required to check in with ICE by phone or in person.

The move first was reported by The Huffington Post on Monday.

The sequesters are $85 billion in spending cuts this year, followed by equivalent cuts for the rest of this decade. They were set in motion by the 2011 debt deal and will require across-the-board cuts to all government spending save for entitlements such as Social Security.

The cuts take effect on Friday, and all sides on Capitol Hill say they want to avert them — though they cannot agree on how to do so.

SEE RELATED: White House raises terror threat, warns illegals could flood borders after sequester cuts

The Obama administration, which wants to see the cuts replaced in large part by new tax increases, has warned that the sequesters will hurt national security.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday told reporters at the White House that she would be forced to furlough Border Patrol agents, pulling them from their rounds along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She 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.

United We Dream, an immigrant-rights group, said the releases show the administration had been keeping folks detained who never should have been there.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer disagrees…

I’m appalled to learn the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun to release hundreds of illegal aliens from custody, the first of potentially thousands to soon be freed under the guise of federal budget cuts. This is pure political posturing and the height of absurdity given that the releases are being granted before the federal ‘sequestration’ cuts have even gone into effect.

This represents a return to exactly the kind of catch-and-release procedures that have long made a mockery of our country’s immigration system. The news is especially concerning when coupled with DHS’ acknowledgment today that it may not be able to maintain operation of 34,000 immigration jail beds, as mandated by Congress.

Everyone knows the federal government must get a handle on spending, and it is well past time that the President begin working with Congress to find real budget solutions. But we cannot let public safety and the rule of law be collateral damage of the President’s failed leadership to pass a budget.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hits the nail on the head concerning Friday’s upcoming”Apocalypse”…

D.C.: Cut the Drama. Do Your Job.

Americans are sick and tired of yet another ginned-up crisis. D.C. needs to grow up, get to work, and live within its means. The real economic Armageddon looming before us is our runaway debt, not the sequester, which the President advocated for and signed into law and is now running around denouncing because he never had any genuine intention of reining in his reckless spending.

Remember that this sequestration deal came about because of the long debt ceiling standoff in the summer of 2011. It wasn’t the ideal outcome for anyone, but it did at least include real deficit reduction of about $110 billion per year for 10 years, which is still nowhere near enough to close our massive deficit. Keep in mind that since the sequester passed, the President has already hit American families and small business owners with his tax increases, or “more revenue” as he likes to call it. The American public doesn’t want tax increases; we want government to rein in its overspending.

If we can’t stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.

If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.

If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine.

Twice,  publicly and privately, Barack Hussein Obama has taken the following Oath of Office, as specified in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

How is what he has just done, in releasing into the citizenry, those who have broken the law, not a violation of that Oath?

How are his attempts at needlessly panicking the citizenry, not a flagrant abuse of office?

Finally, what is Scooter going to do when the “Apocalyptic Sequesters hits Friday, and none of his dire warnings come to pass, and, he is exposed for the fraud that he is?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Gun Control Initiative: “You Say You Want a Revolution…”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

I have been writing a lot about the Quixotic quest of the Obama Administration and all of its minions on the Left of the Political Sguncontrolpectrum, to restrict the right of law-abiding American citizens to own guns.

If you have not noticed, the Obama Politboro has been arming itself in unprecedented numbers, under the guise of collecting taxes for the upcoming advent of Obamacare.

Under this wonderful capitalist system that we live under (at least, for now), some arms manufacturers are taking a stand, and exercising their right to refuse service.

CNSNews.com has the story:

A growing number of firearm and firearm-related companies have stated they will no longer sell items to states, counties, cities and municipalities that restrict their citizens’ rights to own them.

According to The Police Loophole, 34 companies have joined in publicly stating that governments who seek to restrict 2nd Amendment rights will themselves be restricted from purchasing the items they seek to limit or ban.

Extreme Firepower Inc., located in Inwood, WV has had a longstanding policy that states:

“The Federal Government and several states have enacted gun control laws that restrict the public from owning and possessing certain types of firearms…If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction.”

York Arms, located in Buxton, ME released a statement following new legislation in New York:

“Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York. We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York.”

Quality Arms, located in Rigby, ID writes on their website, “elected officials have their own agenda to circumnavigate the truth and destroy the constitution of the United States.”

The site states: “Quality Arms Idaho will not supply and firearm or product, manufactured by us, or any other company nor will we warranty, repair, alter, or modify and firearm owned by any State, County or Municipality who infringes on the right of its citizens to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment.”

Bravo Company USA states:

“The people at Bravo Company USA and BCM support responsible private individuals having access to the same tools of civilian Law Enforcement to affect the same ends…As such Bravo Company’s policy is that law enforcement officials and departments will be restricted to the same type of products available to responsible private individuals of that same city or state.”

Here’s a list of other firearms merchants who restrict sales to government agencies:

Cheaper Than Dirt, MidwayUSA, Old Grouch’s Military Surplus, Predator Intelligence, LaRue Tactical, Templar Custom, Bullwater Enterprises LLC, West Fork Armory, Smith Enterprise, Inc, Alex Arms, OFA Tactical, Spike’s Tactical, Doublestar Corp, American Spirit Arms, Tactical Solutions, Head Down Products, LLC, Exile Machine, J&G Sales, Ltd, ACE LTD., Barrett, Kiss Tactical, NEMO Arms, Inc, Top Gun Supply, Red Jacket Firearms, Badger Peak, Controlled Chaos Arms, Big Horn Armory,One Source Tactical, CMMG, SRT Arms, Norton Firearms

Now, I am not one prone to conspiracy theories, but I question the timing of the whole thing. I believe that all of this “Gun Control Campaign” was already prepared, and Obama and his sycophants were just waiting for the appropriate trigger mechanism to begin their push for gun confiscation. Unfortunately, the horrible tragedy in Newtown provided them the excuse that they were waiting for.

I mean, just look at the fact that the IRS has armed itself, under the excuse of getting ready to enforce the outrageous mandates under Obamacare.

Even as I write this, there are Executive Orders, sitting on the president’s desk, waiting to be signed, that we don’t even know about. He has stated, numerous times, that if Congress will not give him what he wants, he will go around them.

Yes, our Founding Fathers put in a System of Checks and Balances. However, that system relies on the willingness of politicians to enforce them.

Unfortunately, in 2013, we have a bunch of professional politicians, who are too afraid of being thrown off of the Gravy Train, to tell the Conductor he’s on the wrong track.When the Speaker of the House isn’t playing golf with the Manchurian President, he’s playing footsie with him.

What are the four “hot” issues right now?

1. Gun Control

2. Amnesty for illegal immigrants

3. Homosexual “Marriage”

4. Sequestration

Now, everybody sing: “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong…”

Have you guessed? Yep. Sequestration is a direct result of the fiscal irresponsibility of our professional politicians, up on Capitol Hill, being poor stewards of OUR money.

The vicious coiled snake, known as Tax and Spend, has finally eaten its own tail.  The revenue needed to fuel Obama’s Big Government no longer exists, because of his own ignorant economic policies. When Americans are prosperous and thriving,   government reaps the benefits. Not vice-versa.

Which brings me back to my original question: Why are these government agencies arming themselves so heavily. And, why the push to confiscate normal Americans’ guns?

If this “Gun Control Campaign” was about stopping violent crime, don’t you think that the government would be going after criminals like the gang-banging, murderous thugs in Obama’s hometown of Chicago, first?

Or, are they expecting Americans to take to the streets, because of Obama’s penchant to rule by diktat?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Shame and Sequestration

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

rush3Yesterday, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, while speaking on the subject of sequestration, said,

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country. To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it’s being insulted? It just makes me ashamed. Seriously, man. Here we get worked up over $44 billion. That’s the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year. In truth, we’re gonna spend more this year than we spent last year.

We’re just not gonna spend as much as was projected. It’s all baseline budgeting. There is no real cut below a baseline of zero. There just isn’t. Yet here they come, sucking us in, roping us in. Panic here, fear there: Crisis, destruction, no meat inspection, no cops, no teachers, no firefighters, no air traffic control. I’m sorry, my days of getting roped into all this are over. We have the media playing along with all this. The ruling class of both parties play along with all this. It’s insulting. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I’m into my 25th year.

I can’t tell you the number of times this has happened. This hit me yesterday. I’ve said the same things over and over for 25 years. Whether the Clinton presidency or the Obama presidency, whether it’s a Pelosi speakership or Tom Foley (who was speaker when I started), it’s the same stuff. It’s the same threats. It’s the same arguments over and over. Nothing ever changes! We just keep spending more money. We create more dependency, we get more and more irresponsible from one crisis to the next, all of them manufactured.

Except for the real crisis, which nobody ever addresses, and that is: We can’t afford any of this.

What’s happening here, folks, is we are being played for fools and being suckered — suckered into supporting the never-ending expansion of government, the wholesale destruction of the private economy. Everybody who joins in this debate under the premise that Obama puts forth, as well as debating the politics of this nonsense, is just being used to cover up what’s actually going on. Now, what’s going on is no great conspiracy. It’s no mystery. We’re spending much more money than we have.

The government is getting inexorably larger.

It’s less and less efficient at accomplishing anything. We’re creating more and more dependents. We’re robbing people of their dignity and humanity and of their opportunity to realize their dreams as they turn their lives over to the government. It’s like a never-ending cycle. The government makes the private sector smaller. There are fewer job opportunities. There’s less money in the private sector, less opportunity to accrue wealth. Income taxes and others threaten to go higher; they do go higher.

It all adds up to the government growing, the private sector shrinking, freedom being lost ever so slowly, and nobody ever talks about stopping this. Everybody gets sucked into debating the crisis of the moment according to the terms of the moment, without any context and relationship to the past and a knowable future and a relevant perusal of the present. These little debates take place within their own little universe, as though they’re unaffected by things that have happened in the past.

So if  sequestration actually happens, will the world as we know it come to an end? Hardly.

Back in September of 2012, fcw.com posted the following information:

The Obama administration has released its mandated report on how sequestration may be implemented, outlining in a nearly 400-page document detailed plans for cutting federal spending by $1.2 trillion.

The Office of Management and Budget released the report Sept. 14, a week later than the deadline set by the Sequestration Transparency Act. It includes line-by-line detail on more than 1,200 budget accounts, breaking down what is exempt from sequestration and what’s not.

Per the report, sequestration is estimated to result in a 9.4 percent cut in non-exempt defense discretionary funding, and 8.2 percent in non-defense, non-exempt discretionary funding. It would also cut 2 percent to Medicare, 7.6 percent to other non-exempt non-defense mandatory programs, and 10 percent to non-exempt, mandatory defense programs.

In the report and in a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials underscored their opposition to sequestration, which comes from the Budget Control Act of 2011. A “supercommittee” was chosen to hammer out agreed-on cuts, and when it failed to do so near the end of 2011, sequestration became the next step.

The last time America experienced a government shutdown was in 1995, when

…A wily Clinton politically outmaneuvered then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to turn the 20-day shutdown into a bruising PR defeat for the year-old Republican majority.

While Clinton had to eventually sacrifice on substance and put forward a budget that reflected much of what Gingrich and the Republicans wanted, he had set the narrative for his reelection campaign the next year: Clinton the moderate versus the radical Republicans in Congress.

That media narrative, combined with independent Ross Perot siphoning away mostly Republican votes in swing states, helped Clinton capture an 8-point victory in November of 1996.

Just who is responsible for Sequestration?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”

— President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The president seems to have a selective memory. Per The Washington Post:

The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package. Woodward’s book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place — and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.

Here is a short summary of how it went down:

The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous” about using it as a budget tool.

Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea.

This is the third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier, but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.

Republicans agreed to the White House proposal for a sequester.

Republicans had to work through the night to understand the White House proposal.

Of course, the Republicans eventually caved and agreed to raise the debt ceiling…and, so here we are.

Obama is trying to pull a Clinton. The problem is…he’s not Slick Willie.

He does not have the people skills, or the ruthlessness of a Hillary to back him up.

Additionally, the New Media was not as prevalent back then. 

Knowing the Republican Establishment, they will probably cave at the last minute, once again, on their quest to become Democrat-Lite.

Which would be a pretty stupid move, considering they did not come up with the idea in the first place.

Until He Comes, 

KJ