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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (62820)	2/27/2013 6:40:15 PM
From: Joe Btfsplk	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Die-hard conservatives right now are "white folks" and their numbers in relation to the general population is SHRINKING, not growing That's largely true. Die-hards are also largely old, vessels of a fading though vastly superior worldview. The attraction to Ron & Rand Paul, John Stossel, et al, among some of the young gives some interim hope though. Their diminishing number has retained an understanding of the nature and constitution of a civil and prosperous society. They are being overwhelmed by a primitive and barbarous kultursmog. Again! They'll be back. Meanwhile, America will endure a nasty and bumpy road.

To: RMF who wrote (62820)	3/1/2013 10:56:47 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Chop Federal Fat, Not Bone Obama structures the sequester for maximum pain and chaos. By Deroy Murdock March 1, 2013 12:00 A.M. magine that your boss nicked your pay by 2.4 percent. Would you dodge next month’s rent, skip your insulin purchases, and unplug your refrigerator to lower your power bill? Most likely, you would cancel your Showtime subscription, repair — not replace — your old shoes, and ski Utah in 2014 (maybe) rather than this winter. In his immeasurable brilliance, Obama would pick premium cable instead of insulin and Park City over paying the landlord. Similarly, as March 1 triggers the sequester — an automatic spending-cut mechanism that Obama himself initiated in July 2011 — Obama won’t curb Washington’s extravagance to finance this year’s $85 billion sequester. Instead, like a fiscal Stephen King, Obama frightens Americans into embracing big government by siphoning Uncle Sam’s bone marrow rather than giving him liposuction. Fiscal year 2013’s $3.553 trillion budget will be $15 billon larger than FY 2012’s. Nonetheless, Obama hysterically claims that the sequester’s “cuts” mean: Fewer childhood vaccines. Next stop, a measles renaissance? Furloughed federal meat inspectors. This would present Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in IMAX 3D at your local supermarket. “Airport security will see cutbacks,” Obama prophesied. Lines will grow so long that a TSA frisking will come as a relief. “Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go,” Obama warned. After all, government’s last priority should be to protect property and prevent homicide. “The sequester makes it awfully, awfully tough” to shield America from terrorist attacks, declared homeland-security secretary Janet Napolitano. Why should phantom budget restraint frustrate al-Qaeda’s pitch-black ambitions? It would be bad enough if these really were Washington’s only options. Obviously, they’re not. Washington can and should whack spending without making life easier for rubella, E. coli, militant Islamists, and other lethal, low-level life forms. Among many others, these plans could help: Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representative Tom Price (R., Ga.) co-authored the Decrease Spending Now Act. It would shift to debt relief a whopping $45 billion in tax revenues now stalled in dormant federal accounts. “Hundreds of billions of dollars are borrowed and then left unspent because Congress routinely bites off more than it can chew,” Rubio stated. Added Price: “Leaving billions of taxpayer dollars to gather dust in federal coffers only encourages fiscal irresponsibility. By rescinding this unspent and unobligated money — funds that the government clearly can do without — we can contribute to the larger goal of breaking the government’s habit of borrowing and spending money we cannot afford.” Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) would cut $85 billion annually by not replacing departed federal employees ($6.5 billion in savings), bringing the $128,226 in average yearly federal civilian compensation closer to the private sector’s $64,560 (reducing $32 billion), curtailing federal travel by 25 percent ($2.25 billion), limiting Pentagon research to military applications ($6 billion), requiring competitive bids on government contracts and paying market wages on federal projects ($19 billion), and halving foreign aid ($20 billion). The Public Interest Research Group and the National Taxpayers Union jointly identified $1 trillion in ten-year savings through 56 budget cuts that liberals and conservatives should love. These range from killing a $10 million biodiesel-education grant to a $160 billion modernization of federal computer systems. The $77 billion Crop Insurance program should be uprooted. The feds own some 55,500 buildings that are “not utilized or underutilized.” Sell them. Even giving them away would save taxpayers $17 billion in maintenance expenses — on empty buildings! PIRG and NTU urge Medicare to calibrate excessive labor and office-space outlays with the actual prices that prevail in lower-cost communities. Savings: $47.6 billion. Rather than spend $179,750 per hour to fly Air Force One from rally to rally to demonize Republicans, Obama should sit still long enough to send Congress a budget request. The federal Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 mandates that the president’s spending plan reach Capitol Hill by the first Monday of February. Obama’s last two budgets arrived late, and this year’s is AWOL. Before Obama barks at Republicans yet again, he should start doing his job. Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He has spoken at several events sponsored by the National Taxpayers Union. nationalreview.com