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The Republicans and the Democrats are showing their respective ineffectiveness at cutting runaway federal spending. Or their bad faith. You decide. They are unable to cut meaningful sums–just tip of the iceberg cuts.
Hello, Honorable Members! Do we really need to maintain two private 747s, a Gulfstream III painted with presidential colors, a fleet of helicopters and, effectively, a private airport so that "¦ our president can go on junkets to Rio while freedom fighters risk their lives in Libya? $181,000 per hour of flight time says the Air Force. Really, do we need, as is planned, to spend billions to acquire three new Air Force Ones? Let him fly coach!
So. Exactly who’s kidding whom?
The last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll, met with Alexis de Tocqueville long ago, and had this to say about the early days of our republic:
We were divided after the victory…. Each party wanted to use the people and, to gain their adherence, granted them new privileges, until finally the people became our master and showed us all the door.
The political elites of our era are not merely trying to “use the people.” They are abusing us. Time for the people again to become the master and show them all the door.
This phenomenon is manifesting itself with resistance groups such as the Tea Party Patriots. Thousands of activist members, including this writer, himself a proud member, gathered in Phoenix last month for its first American Summit.
The Tea Party Patriots’ homepage quotes the greatly esteemed Bob Williams, of State Budget Solutions, to illustrate the scope of the spending problem:
If every penny represents a billion dollars…
1. You would need a pile of 14,200 pennies ($14.2 trillion) to represent the Federal debt as of March 10.
2. Add to the pile 1,600 pennies to represent this year’s $1.6 trillion projected deficit. The total in pile would be 15,800 pennies.
Now let’s look at the proposals…
1. Senate Democrats’ proposal would remove 5 pennies from the pile. "¦ (15.795 pennies would remain). 2. Add the pennies back to the pile and show the White House proposal that would remove 6 and 1/2 pennies from the pile. White House proposed $6.5 billon cut "¦(15,796 pennies would remain). 3. Add the pennies back to the pile and show the House Republicans proposal that would remove 61 pennies from the pile (15,739 pennies remain). "¦
As you can see, even the House Republican proposal merely kicks the can down the road and doesn’t address the depth of the problem facing our country.
Nobody has diagnosed the problem better than the Tea Party Patriots channeling Bob Williams.
The reaction to, among other things, sickening levels of spending and exercises of power are beginning to evoke thoughtful manifestos from the populist-leaning intelligentsia. Last year, Professor Emeritus Angelo Codevilla wrote an immediate cult classic entitled The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It. This extraordinary book, handsomely featured by The American Spectator, caught the attention of the Great Voice of America, Rush Limbaugh, who contributed an introduction to future editions.
Now two of Professor Codevilla’s students, Matthew Parks and C. David Corbin, themselves professors at The King’s College, have written a brief but trenchant complementary volume, Keeping Our Republic: Principles for a Political Reformation. This writer liked it so much that he furnished advance praise calling it “an essential work, published at a moment of high political peril.”
Keeping Our Republic opens with the startling, but irrefutable, observation that “There is something wrong with our politics that elections cannot solve.” Its introduction closes with the declaration that “Keeping our republic is not a spectator sport but a grave contest that necessitates that we relearn how to think and how to act like republicans.” Note the small r in republican here. And the authors are right. Dead right.
Citizens are equivalent to the shareholders of the federal government. The president is the CEO, Congress the Board of Directors. Ultimate power resides with the citizens. Groups such as the Tea Party Patriots are the “shareholder activists.” Americans are uneasy. It is obvious that the government is badly out of control.
Nobody to date has proposed a solution–the restoration of small-r republicanism, citizens taking back the power that is theirs–better than Parks and Corbin. It is fretted with memorable observations:
“The idea of human equality is no charm with which to ward off the tendency of all governments to serve the interests of those with power and to demand fawning obedience from those without it.” “President Obama’s constitutional reasoning suggests a flexibility with language and an approach to politics that is incompatible with the principle of lawfulness.” “There is something noble in a political defeat that comes from standing on uncompromising principle.” “It is one of the iron laws of American politics that a tax cut proposed by a Republican president or Congress will be characterized (or caricatured) as a plan to benefit the wealthy.”
The Tea Party Patriots believe that it will take 40 years to restore the culture of honest republicanism. It now is engaged in a march through the desert to “convert 60% or more of the population to our core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.” This is a mission statement so obviously sinister as to draw the ire of the elitist Mother Jones as a “Plan for World Domination.” (Hi, Mom!)
Ben Franklin was asked, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, whether it had given us a monarchy or a republic: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping Our Republic calls us, at a moment of great peril, to do what it takes to keep our republic even if, as Charles Carroll himself found, “finally the people became our master and showed us all the door.”
's Categories: Economics, Op/Ed, Politics, byline=Ralph Benko
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So They created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one Year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cutback.” So they laid off the night watchman.
NOW slowly, let it sink in.
Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.
Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY….. during the Carter Administration?
Anybody?
Anything?
No?
Didn’t think so!
Bottom line. We’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency….the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember!
Ready?? It was very simple. and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted on 8/04/1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.
Hey, pretty efficient, huh???
AND NOW IT’S 2010 — 33 YEARS LATER — AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS “NECESSARY” DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!
(THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?”)
33 years ago 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.
Ah, yes — good old Federal bureaucracy.
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