A moment of silence, please, for those affected by the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis.
Note, however, that it only took about a day for someone to blame George W. Bush for the bridge collapse. They claimed that if Bush had only cooperated with Democrats on raising the budget for US infrastructure, the bridge collapse would never have happened.
Anyway, on with the show… I’d like to say I’m kicked back right now, enjoying life and all… but I keep hearing too much coming from the mouths of the candidates.
CNN, in conjunction with YouTube, created a debate for the Democratic candidates in which YouTubers would submit video questions. During this debate one Democrat said that we should have U.S. ground troops in Darfur, to which Hillary Clinton strongly stated that we cannot put troops in Darfur because our forces are already stretched thin in Iraq and our troops are losing the war in Afghanistan to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I figured we would hear more on the news if we were actually losing, but then again, Clinton is merely the poster child of the current far-left mindset. According to her view, we are losing the war, the economy is in horrible shape (although the Dow (a leading indicator of economic strength) is still rocking around RECORD levels), the rest of the world thinks we are awful people, and we are not fulfilling our obligation to global governance.
And therein lies the problem.
Clinton, like many liberals, isn’t looking to return governmental power to the people, as was originally intended, but would rather take government to an even more powerful level. In order to keep the federal government powerful it is necessary to keep state governments weak. Step one in keeping the states weak; no longer allow state governments to be represented in Washington. This was accomplished by the seventeenth amendment. The populace now elects representatives and senators. Before amendment 17, the state governments elected the senators, so you had the people represented in the House and the states represented in the Senate. Now the states have no representations whatsoever.
I like the idea I heard on the Neal Boortz show recently. As most of you know, I’m pretty solid in my Libertarian leanings. Boortz was talking to newly elected congressman Ron Broun (R-Ga). He asked Rep. Broun what the likelihood was for the creation of a Tenth Amendment commission, to undertake a one or two year study of ways to return from the federal government the powers granted to the states. Broun laughed it off, but the idea is solid.
The Tenth Amendment grants any powers not explicitly given to the federal government to the state governments. The founding fathers intended for the power to spread roughly as so: state governments would have 80%-90% of the power, the federal government would have 10% - 20% of the power. Naturally, the federal strength would increase in times of war. Currently, you can basically reverse those figures.
Another question in the debate dealt with minimum wage. John Edwards vocally supported raising minimum wage to $9.10 per hour by 2012. This is all well and good, so long as you consider that raising the salary of workers means that the cost of products and services rendered by the employers will also go up in order to maintain a profit, which business in the United States are essentially legally obligated to do. The logistics don’t work. The better option for allowing American laborers to have more money is to repeal the plans set in motion under FDR. End federal withholding, repeal the income tax (preferably through means of the Fair Tax), reestablish the middle of April as the date taxes are paid, allow workers to opt out of Social Security, and rework the current tax system on corporations, creating a tax haven in the country and eliminating the need for businesses to outsource. The key part of this plan is for the politicians in Washington to get their filthy hands out of our pockets.
Global Governance. John Kerry spouted this type of terminology during the 2004 campaign, saying that our excursion into Iraq needed to pass the global test. Apparently, the United States is supposed to bow to the United Nations, as corrupt and backward an organization as has ever existed. Much like Homer Simpson putting Corn Flakes and milk in a bowl and somehow making fire, the UN has been an epic failure. The UN issued resolution after resolution against Saddam Hussein, but he did nothing until George Bush told him he only had three days to get out. Granted I don’t support how the war in Iraq has gone since, but the initial push, those three weeks when we first went in to when we deposed Saddam, were the most successful military campaign ever launched by this nation.
I still wish that Colin Powell had been nominated as our UN Ambassador. It would’ve been nice to see him walk in to the General Assembly, pick up the United States name plate, slide it into his shirt pocket, and say, “Britain, Israel, you guys want to come with us? We’re out.” And walk away.
The Crazy, volume 2, issue 1
The Pope recently issued a few statements about anyone not Catholic. Apparently, anyone not connected to the Catholic Church is not a member of a real church, because their church cannot be linked to an apostle. Also, non-Catholics are not really all that Christian because we actually question the infallibility of the Pope. I guess we’re taking that Bible verse that says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God a little too far in regards to his holy hatter.
3 comments:
Good post Blake... while the liberal progressive, tree hugging, commie in me shudders at some ideas in your post, I can still see where you're coming from... and damn if your discussion on an alternative tax strategy doesn't sound good to me...
Ah yes, the Catholic Church, keeping it real since 1054.
PS: It's good to have you guys back posting again... been damn lonely writing out here all by my lonesome.
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