Category Archives: Tea Party

Bullet Points

Posted on by

There are a number of items in the news today. The top story is the rebellion in the GOP House ranks against John Boehner. The MSM, including FOX, poo-poos the idea that Boehner can be turned out. Other commentators, however, believe there is a significant chance to oust Boehner.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax/files/eb/eb93f57b-c271-41ee-9ca0-a84839e85d7d.jpg

Reps, Ted Yoho, R-Fla., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas., and House Speaker John Boehner. (Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Landov; Alan Youngblood/Ocala Starbanner/landov; Shawn-Thew/epa/landov)

Two GOP candidates have stepped forward to run against Boehner. The strongest is Louis Gohmert (R-TX). But there is a second candidate, too, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL). Gohmert is a strong conservative track-record. I don’t know much about Yoho other than he’s running against Boehner.

In the end, it matters not, who of these candidates receives the votes. The important thrust is that at least twenty-nine GOP Representatives—DON’T VOTE FOR BOEHNER! If Boehner loses the first vote, then the GOP can consolidate with another candidate, Gohmert I would hope, to choose another Speaker and put Boehner out on the curb.

I’ve already heard some RINOs say that a vote against Boehner is a vote for Pelosi. Not true, it’s another lie by the GOP establishment. The only way a ‘Pub can vote for Pelosi is to actually vote for her, or, to vote, “Present,” to reduce the number of votes cast. Boehner needs the majority of the votes, not just the highest number of votes. If he doesn’t get a majority, he loses.

A number of Representatives have already announced they won’t vote for Boehner. Many more have quietly let it be known they probably won’t. There are fifty new representative coming to Congress. Many of them ran on a ticket of opposing John Boehner. At first look, getting twenty-nine ‘Pubs to vote against John Boehner seemed impossible. When you look more closely, that impossibility fades.

A number of talk show hosts, Glenn Beck for one, are telling their audience to call the Capitol switchboard,1-877-762-8762, to speak to their representatives and to tell them to not vote for Boehner. The switchboard is being flooded and was shutdown once already this morning.

Go make that call!

***

Sarah Palin is back in the news against. Not for something she did but for something her son did. He used the family dog as a foot-stool.

PETA is outraged. Ho-hum.

The real thing that has the left outraged is not the photo of her son stepping on the family dog (it was a big dog. PETA looked the other way when Ellen Degenerate posted one like it,) but her 2014 award of being the top American Achiever.

The left rejects achievement. It is their antithesis. Achieving, in their minds, means someone loses, therefore achievement must be limited to be ‘fair.’

American Achiever of 2014: Sarah Palin

By M. Joseph Sheppard, December 27, 2014

It would be the height of churlishness for even the most inveterate leftist to deny the import of someone who made Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list, and then the Smithsonian Institution‘s “100 Most Significant Americans Of All Time” list.  Both affirmations were earned by former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

To then accept Governor Palin as “American Achiever of the Year 2014” would be for most, if not all on the left (and to be fair, many in the GOP) no doubt a bridge too far.  However, such partisanship should not stand in the way of a general acknowledgement of what was a remarkable year for Palin.

Palin achieved what such luminaries as President Obama did not: a place in the Smithsonian’s prestigious “Most Significant” list.  After being written off by many in the media, and especially the left, as “irrelevant” and predicted by MSNBC’s Krystal Ball as “not going to have an effect on the [2014] midterms,” Palin’s record of success of her endorsed candidates was nothing short of phenomenal. (The article continues on the American Thinker website.)

Sarah Palin is never far from conservative’s minds. She is the epitome of conservatism. Maligned and slandered by the left, she continues on, unrepentant, and speaks her mind. The left hates her with a passion because she is the standard the left hates and cannot beat.

The Many Memes of Sarah Palin

By M. Joseph Sheppard, January 5, 2015

Defining a politician’s personality, whether positively to build them up, or negatively to tear them down, is a basic rule of politics. Themes can define an image e.g. “Roosevelt’s categorization of Al Smith as “The Happy Warrior” or Democrat folklore depicting William Jennings Bryan as “the Great Commoner” are two classic positive examples. On the negative side, Mitt Romney never recovered from being defined as “Mr. 1 percent”, nor did John Kerry from being “Mr. Flip Flop.”

Once a politician is defined (fairly or unfairly doesn’t enter into the picture) as say, Rick Perry was as a forgetful ditherer, it becomes extremely difficult to shake off the perception — even though in his case it was based on a single, admittedly important, debate moment. Such is the power of media defining that an entire career as a successful governor of a major state can have that whole positive history shrouded in the fog of a slip of the tongue or a moments’ forgetfulness.

This eternal and unshakable truism seems to have one, and perhaps the only one exception to the rule, and that is Governor Palin. Once the media got over their initial shock at her 2008 convention address, the entire subsequent campaign was involved in a liberal media/blog attempt to stick a permanent, negative label on her. That a flow of constant new Palin memes continues to this day shows that for all their efforts nothing has stuck irrevocably and fatally detrimentally.

Before Palin’s convention address there was some flailing about by a confused media and a number of memes were tried out. “Palin’s a bad parent neglecting her children, especially the special needs one, for a campaign”. That such nonsense has never been used against a man, and the anger of many women at such a ridiculous concept put paid to that quickly. Next was “Palin’s a hypocrite because her daughter is pregnant” which quickly died after Palin describe her family as “having the same ups and downs as all families” which, rightly received an understanding and warm reception. There was even a despicable campaign from the likes of Daily Kos and the even wilder “progressive” fringes, which suggested Trig might not even be Sarah’s child.

After the Gibson interview the left crowed “Palin doesn’t even know what the Bush doctrine is”. As it turned out neither did 90% of the population either — it being unlikely that if the question was put to those crowing they could have answered it, so that quickly died the death. What did have legs, and is only 6 years later fading from the arsenal of even the lowest information voters, was the “I can see Russia from my house” statement. This line, of course, was not even spoken by Palin but had a life of its own, which is a sad reflection on some segments of the population.

No matter the lies, no matter the numerous slanders, no matter the accusations, Sarah Palin continues on, a stalwart pillar of American Conservatism.

Twenty-Fifteen is starting off with a bang!

Facebook

What’s next?

Posted on by
http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2010/03/20/1269131950_8125/539w.jpg

A typical Tea Party meeting.

I attended a Tea Party meeting earlier this month just after the mid-term elections. Part of the meeting was to celebrate the wins by the GOP. One of the ladies who attended was asking what’s next? I had my opinion but I listened for someone to answer her. No one did. I didn’t either because my opinion would have differed with some of those in attendance.

There was a lot of talk, talk about Agenda 21, GMOs, Common Core, a plethora of opinions about many subjects. But not one said what really was the next step—elect a conservative ‘Pub into the White House and the Governor’s Mansion in 2016 while building a conservative majority in both Houses of Congress and our Legislature.

In truth, I didn’t expect anything more than I heard. It’s the failing of the Tea Party and why it has lost it’s influence in political events—no common plan on what to do next.

When the Tea Party first appeared, there were many agendas driving the Tea Parties, but there was one common theme—No More Taxes, hence the name T.E.A Party or Taxed Enough Already party.

The Tea Party has lost that cohesion and watching many grassroots organizations, I doubt it will recover. The Tea Party is not, was not, a singular organization.

Everyone has an agenda. I do, too. I want to elect conservatives into office. That is the only way to effect change. Once we have those conservatives in office, then, we can change those push-buttons, like Right-to-Work, Common Core, Agenda 21, repealing Obamacare and Frank-Dodd and others. But, without achieving that first goal, there will be no success achieving the second nor the third.

Not only are those other agendas diverting our attention, some of them are questionable validity. Too many of us, now, have no experience in critical thinking, nor interest in validating their viewpoints.

There was a TV ad this last year, one about a dating service I believe, where a woman dates a phony Frenchman with an obvious phony French accent. She met him on the internet and “everything on the internet is true.” We all laughed. But it is an example of the failings of too many.

The left has created a religion of global warming based on a computer model that was created to fit the theory that Man was ruining the planet. Us unbelievers, looked outside an the lowering temperature averages, looked at the average temperature for the last fifty years, and saw no evidence of global warming. Then we watched while the studies supporting global warming were found to be manufactured and filled with cherry-picked and false data. We pointed out these flaws to the believers…and they refused to understand, nor accept any criticism of their beliefs.

We, like them, have our faulty beliefs. Beliefs founded on faulty science and the believers will allow no one to argue contrary to those beliefs. We’re just as bad as are those on the left.

But I digress.

So, what’s next? Is there a plan? Do we have a goal?

I do. I’m going to work to elect conservatives at all levels of government. I will do my own vetting of candidates. I’ll not rely solely on others who may or may not have the same agenda as I. I will make mistakes. I will, at some point, support someone who is not worthy. When I do so, it will be my error, not that of someone I followed blindly.

The lack of critical thinking, a concept no longer taught in school, is one reason why so many are lead astray. The lack of critical thinking like the failings in teaching real science, instead of pseudo-science, is one reason why our attention is diverted from a common goal, why we cannot reach a common consensus. We have not learned to question assumptions or even recognize when arguments are based on unsupported theory.

Like the TV ad, we believe whatever we’re told if the source appears to support our thinking while never questioning its validity…just like the left and the global warming advocates.

I have friends whose sole focus is fighting against Agenda 21. Other friends are strong activists for Right-to-Work, others are against Common Core. I will support them as I can because with my support, they will support me, in turn, towards my goal, electing conservatives.

I will not, however, allow myself to be diverted from my goal to theirs. The fault of the Tea Party today is that too many have no common view, no central goal. They’ve allowed themselves to be nothing more than a debating society with a different discussion topic each month.

The Great Grass Roots Uprising of 2010 has failed. Unless we conservative Tea Partiers consolidate our efforts towards a single goal, the Tea Party will just be another footnote in history, if that. Its epitaph may read, “The Tea Party. Died while dithering about a direction.”

Facebook

It is a new day

Posted on by

…or is it?

http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014_06_10_CantorLost.jpg

Yesterday’s Virginia primary had a big upset. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) lost his seat in the primary to challenger and economist Dave Brat. There are numerous articles being published this morning how that happened.

Some pundits say is was a Tea Party victory. In reality, it wasn’t, it was a grassroots victory assisted by some big-name conservatives like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin. There is a difference.

The national Tea Party organizations like the Tea Party Express and AFP ignored the race assuming, so say some, that Cantor was a shoo-in. Apparently, so did many of Cantor’s supporters because they stayed home and didn’t vote. The turnout was very low, 65,000 out of a population of over a quarter-million.

Cantor’s flip-flops came home. He hadn’t had much opposition since he first won his seat in 2001. He was unopposed until 2010 and 2012. In 2012, he courted the Tea Party and won by 79%. Since then, Cantor turned, vilifying his former supporters and sucking up to the GOP establishment.

David Brat, the winner of the primary against Cantor wrote this statement in an article for the Daily Caller earlier this year.

Congressman Cantor’s profile has been erratic even by Washington standards — flitting from eager establishmentarian coat-holder to self-glorified “Young Gun” and back again. His loyalties, both upward and downward, have shifted in his eager embrace of the Ruling Class. Washington’s only genuine article of faith: maintaining control regardless of how that control affects the life of the folks back home.

Like so many other GOP Representatives, Cantor let ambition override his duty to his constituents. Being elected in a strong, conservative district is no guarantee for incumbents. (Are you listening Vicky Hartzler?) So far this year, we are seeing numerous successful challenges to the GOP establishment, Cantor is one of them.

***

The worm turned…in California of all places!

Tenure for teachers in California received a severe blow in court this week. Judge Rolf M. Treu, Los Angeles Superior Court, found five California statues concerning teacher tenure unconstitutional.

Treu found that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state — and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.

He ruled that such a system violates the state constitution’s guarantee that all children receive “basic equality of educational opportunity.” In a blunt, unsparing 16-page opinion, Treu compared his ruling to the seminal federal desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, decided 60 years ago last month. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” Treu wrote. — Politico.

For decades the California educational system has been the prime example was what not to do. With test scores pummeling, teachers fought to block testing, lest it prove the abysmal results of their social engineering agenda.

Test scores should be used to review the effectiveness of education. Too many school districts—and state educational systems, would rather teach the tests than actually educate their students. Systems that do ‘teach the tests’ then blame the tests for their failures to educate. Long before this case, it was evident that local and state education systems were more interested in their own sinecure than teaching.

We will soon hear the howl of outraged teacher unions calling for this judge’s head for speaking truth. Once again, unions have been found to be the refuge of many incompetents. The good teachers will get tarred equally along with the bad. They have no other recourse…California is not a RIght-to-Work state. Teachers are required to join the teachers union if they want to teach.

But that was yesterday. Perhaps…just perhaps the students of California will have a new day now that it will be easier to be rid of the lazy and incompetents in the California school system.

Facebook

The Tea Party’s not Dead!

Posted on by

The GOP establishment took a Gibbs-style slap upside the head after yesterday’s primaries. The Tea Party still has power.

In Iowa, Joni Ernst, a state Senator…

…handily won the [Republican] nomination, receiving enough votes to avoid a nominating convention in the five-way race. She’ll face Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in the November general election to replace retiring Democrat Tom Harkin, who held the seat for 30 years. Ernst attracted national attention after she released an ad in March playfully suggesting her experience on her family’s farm castrating pigs will translate to her cutting ‘pork’ in Congress, pledging to ‘make ‘em squeal’… Ernst told a crowd of cheering supporters after being declared the winner that she is running to represent ‘Iowa values’ in Washington. ‘I’m running for Senate because Iowa means everything to me,’ she said.” — FOX News.

Ernst received support from the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, plus other grassroots organizations.

Another ‘major’ race yesterday was the primary election for the Mississippi Senate seat. At this time, it appears the GOP primary will head towards a run-off, none of the three candidates received over 50% of the votes. With 98% of the votes counted, the two leading candidates, challenger Chris McDaniel and incumbent Thad Cochran, acquired 49.6% and 48.8% of the votes respectively. The third candidate, Thomas Carey, “…finished with 1.6 percent of the vote and conceded the race late Tuesday night. (Daily Caller.)“

FOX News commented…

It looks all but certain that Mississippi’s vicious Republican primary will continue for another three weeks. With just a few precincts uncounted, Tea Party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel was leading but still below the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a June 24 runoff with the incumbent, six-term Mississippi GOP Sen. Thad Cochran. Barring a huge trove of McDaniel votes from unlikely precincts, the race will go on. That’s not good news for Cochran who, as Molly Ball reported, has not exactly been burning up the campaign trail. Cochran’s best chance to win was with the unusually large turnout on Tuesday, including some number of crossover Democrats supporting the moderate Republican. A runoff will distill the electorate to its concentrated conservative elements, and McDaniel’s supporters will be out in force. — The Atlantic.

Those, like Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell, who think they’ve beaten the Tea Party, are mistaken.

In other primaries around the country, former GOP South Dakota Governor. Mike Rounds, “took 55 percent of the vote in the state’s GOP Senate primary, far surpassing the 35 percent threshold to avoid a runoff. Republicans view the South Dakota race as one of their strongest chances to pick up a Democratic seat in 2014 with Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., retiring.” — FOX News.

In Montana, Republican Rep. Steve Daines was selected as the party nominee for the U.S. Senate against democrat Sen. John Walsh. According to the AP, both candidates have been campaigning against one another as if it was the General election instead of the Primary.

The campaign season is in full swing.

Facebook

Lies and Revelations

Posted on by

With McConnell’s win over his Tea Party primary challenger and the GOP primary poll lead of Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty (R-SC), the media and the GOP establishment proclaimed, “the Tea Party is dead!”

Wrong.

For example, Ted Cruz loudly and strongly supported a number of Tea Party candidates across Texas. He traveled extensively, campaigning for them. Every one of those candidates beat their primary opponents.

Ted Cruz, Tea Party Dominate Texas Republican Primary Politics

by 27 May 2014

HOUSTON, Texas—The clear winner in the 2014 Republican Primary and runoff election is the grassroots effort spawned by the Tea Party, no matter what candidates win. Every candidate on the ballot has shaped their campaign around illustrating their support of the Tea Party principles of limited government, reducing taxes and fiscal responsibility.

The other big winner in this Primary election is Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). His election in 2012 ignited Tea Party activists across Texas who have worked for the past two years to find viable candidates and support them through this long election process. Nearly every candidate on the ballot has tried to find some way of connecting themselves to Ted Cruz and the Tea Party movement by using quotes from or pictures with the prominent junior senator from Texas.

The Dallas Morning News reported, “In virtually every Republican matchup, candidates have espoused the movement’s talking points, attended groups’ forums, and adopted their issues.”  The Houston Chronicle also picked up this theme and reported, “Though the tea party has sputtered this year in elections around the country, Texas’ conservative insurgents are the front-runners in Republican primary runoffs for major statewide offices and positioned to bolster their ranks in the Legislature.”

In the race to be the next Lt. Governor of Texas, both the incumbent, David Dewhurst and his challenger, State Senator Dan Patrick, have claimed Tea Party support in their speeches and advertisements. Both candidates have also succeeded in gaining support from the various grassroots groups across Texas.

The same is true in the race to succeed Greg Abbott as the next Attorney General of Texas. State Senator Ken Paxton has been a clear leader in the Tea Party movement since its inception in 2009 while his opponent, former AFL-CIO union group lobbyist and State Representative Dan Branch has struggled to attempt to show Tea Party support.

Reuters reports, “Republican politics in Texas has become a race to the right,” Republican strategist Bill Miller said. “I do think the Republican Party could be eclipsed by the Tea Party here.”

State Senate District 10 candidate Konni Burton has leveraged her Tea Party relationships to place herself in a strong position for victory in this election. The Tea Party News Network reported, “The other race within the state that signals the strength of the Tea Party in Texas is the race to fill the state senate seat formerly occupied by Wendy Davis, currently the Democrat gubernatorial nominee. Konni Burton, a Republican and Tea Party leader from Fort Worth, has been endorsed by Ted Cruz in the race for that vacated seat.”

The exception to the potential Tea Party Texas takeover may be the race for the Congressional seat that has been held by Ralph Hall for thirty-six years. According to a report by Reuters, “Congressman Ralph Hall, a 91-year-old lawmaker running for an 18th term, is favored over his Tea Party-backed challenger, John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. Attorney.” Reuters stated Ratcliffe, age 48, has attempted to use Hall’s age against him. Much like Ronald Reagan who refused to use his opponent’s youth and inexperience against him, Hall has joked about his wrinkles he earned from battling liberal policies.“ Hall said, “By gosh, I’ve got room for a few more wrinkles.”

The full extent of the Texas takeover by Tea Party politics may become clear quickly after the polls close at 7 p.m. (CDT).

Of particular note is the defeat of these two GOP members of the Texas Establishment.

• “The oldest-ever member of the House of Representatives has been ousted at age 91, after a primary runoff against a little-known Republican challenger in Texas. Rep. Ralph Hall also Tuesday became the first congressional incumbent to lose a primary this year. He had told voters if he had been elected to an 18th term, it would be his last. Hall was defeated by John Ratcliffe, a 48-year-old former U.S. attorney… He also has won the support of powerful national conservative groups with strong Tea Party ties, including the Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund.” Fox News

• “Tea Party-backed candidate State Sen. Dan Patrick defeated three-term incumbent David Dewhurst for the Republican nomination for Texas lieutenant governor Tuesday after a nasty race that evolved into personal attacks. Patrick, a fiery radio talk show host who founded the Tea Party caucus in the Texas state legislature, ousted Dewhurst after a campaign full of attack ads and mudslinging over which candidate was more conservative.” Fox News

***

For all you Bill O’Reilly fans out there—never forget O’Reilly is not a conservative. In fact, he’s quite the statist. On his show last night, he said the government should round up around 10% of the population and put them in gulags. “only selected, very bad people,” he said. “To fight crime,” he said.

It bothered him not that it would be the government who would be deciding whom were the ‘bad people’ that would be rounded up. I’m sure O’Reilly’s competition at CNN/MSNBC/CBS/ABC/NPR would like to have O’Reilly on one of those ‘selected’ lists.

O’Reilly Pushes Mass Incarceration Of Americans As Solution To Crime

Brendan Bordelon, 10:40 PM 05/27/2014

Bill O’Reilly and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers clashed over the efficacy of America’s criminal justice system on Tuesday, with the Fox News host urging the imprisonment of around 10 percent of the population — “only selected, very bad people” — in order to extend the long-term decline of crime in the United States.

O’Reilly was reacting to a New York Times editorial “demanding” an end to the large-scale imprisonment of vast swathes of the population. At current levels, 2.2 million Americans — roughly 1 in 100 adults — are incarcerated, a precipitous drop from 2005-2006 but still the highest reported rate in the world.

Over half of these individuals are in jail for nonviolent, often drug-related crimes, with many being locked up for life due to arbitrary “three strikes” laws that can put someone away for life even if they commit a minor offense.

But “The O’Reilly Factor” host thinks that a decline in the prison population will lead to a rapid increase in crime, and slammed the “uber-liberal” Times for advocating such a measure.

“With victories in the gay marriage arena and legalized pot, the left is turning its attention to changing the criminal justice system,” he said. “The opinion piece says the USA is putting too many people in prison, but not ONCE did this editorial mention the victims of crime. Not once!”

But Powers pushed back on O’Reilly’s thesis. “Well, first of all, it’s not just liberals who are concerned about this,” she noted. “There are conservatives who are concerned about it. Newt Gingrich, in particular, is somebody who has spoken with the problems with mass incarceration in the country. So I don’t think we have to say this is just a liberal issue.”

“For you to quote the fact that the violent crime rate has dropped as somehow evidence of ‘We don’t have a problem’ doesn’t make any sense to me,” she continued, noting that most of the discussion revolved around “people who have been thrown in jail for 15 to 25 years for selling two ounces of marijuana.”

“Ok, that never happens,” O’Reilly replied. “If you can cite –”

“Are you kidding me?” Powers responded incredulously. “You don’t think under the Rockefeller drug laws people have been put in jail for that long? Under the Rockefeller drug laws, that’s the law, Bill! I’m sorry!”

“But that never happens,” O’Reilly interrupted, “you plea everything down.”

“That is astonishing,” Powers claimed.

Fox contributor Monica Crowley tried to walk a middle ground between the two points, but O’Reilly and Powers continued to disagree.

“I say, there are only selected, very bad people who hurt other people — maybe ten percent of the population,” O’Reilly explained. “You isolate them, you take them off the streets, and then the crime rate comes down.”

“But you don’t buy that,” he asked Powers — setting off another yell fest between the two talking heads.

Eventually Powers got a word in. “It’s a national trend,” she said, referencing the country-wide reduction in crime. “And for you to try to pretend that it’s just because you’re putting all these people in jail is not correct.”

“The more people you take off the streets, the less crime there is,” O’Reilly asserted. “And that is irrefutable.”

I’ve never cared much for Bill O’Reilly. He doesn’t support the 2nd Amendment, he doesn’t support pro-life issues, he loves to tax and spend. But…because he’s on FOX News, people think he’s a conservative. That could not be further from the truth.

 

Facebook

Thursday’s Topics

Posted on by

Quote and question of the day:

Does The Tea Party Need More Experienced Candidates?

This election season’s primary results, in particular Mitch McConnell’s lopsided trouncing yesterday of Matt Bevin, have produced their share of obituaries for the Tea Party. But the experience so far of Tea Party and other insurgent showdowns against the GOP establishment just goes to show that candidates and campaigns still matter – and that’s not likely to change. While both “Establishment” and Tea Party campaigns have gotten savvier in learning how to play the primary game, we are likely for the foreseeable future to see Tea Party challengers win when they are good candidates, with some prior political experience, talent and funding – and lose when they lack one or more of those attributes. I’d like to look here in particular at the importance of political experience, and whether Tea Party campaigns has been losing races because it was running complete political novices. — Red State.

After last week’s primary, the ‘net abounded with articles that proclaimed the Tea Party was dead. McConnell bragged about his win over Matt Bevin and other RINOs facing primary opposition took heart. They conveniently overlook Tea Party wins such as Ben Sasse in Nebraska and Alex Moony in West Virginia. The battle between the GOP establishment and the grassroot reformers, collectively called the Tea Party, is not over.

***

Democrats claim government cannot be accountable. What a despicable statement. Everyone, every organization is accountable—if we make them so.

If government is not accountable, then what are we? What is our relationship with government? Are we serfs? Peasants? Have we no rights? The Constitution says otherwise. That is why the liberals hate it.

Accountable government is impossible, according to liberals

By: John Hayward  |  May 21st, 2014 at 06:20 PM

No sooner did I encourage Republicans to make accountability one of their primary campaign themes then I came across Ron Fournier at National Journal tearing into lefty Ezra Klein for arguing that accountable government is a superhero fantasy:

“Presidents consistently overpromise and underdeliver,” he begins, a fair start. Surely, the editor-in-chief of Vox is going to make the obvious point that presidents and presidential candidates should know enough about the political process (including the limits on the executive branch) to avoid such a breach of trust.

Klein is a data guy. He must know that the public’s faith in government and poltics is on a decades-long slide, a dangerous trend due in no small part to the fact that candidates make promises they know they can’t keep. In Washington, we call it pandering. In the rest of the country, it’s called a lie. Klein yawns.

Klein is basically asking us to accept all of Obama’s lies and failures because we need to understand that politicians promise a lot of stuff they can’t deliver.  Presumably we’re supposed to smile and clap when a slick character like Obama does an especially good job of tricking us into believing he can deliver the moon and stars, but it’s extremely rude and unrealistic to complain when those celestial goodies aren’t delivered on schedule.

Fournier is having none of it: “A Harvard-trained lawyer and Constitutional scholar like Obama didn’t stumble into the 2008 presidential campaign unaware of the balance of powers, the polarization of politics, the right-ward march of the GOP and other structural limits on the presidency. He made those promises because he thought those goals were neither unreasonable nor unattainable. Either that, or he was lying.”  He goes on to note how eagerly Klein tries to separate Obama from his promises, writing as if some non-human entity called The Obama Campaign made all those inconvenient commitments to stuff like improving the Department of Veterans Affairs.

…

It’s not exactly new for Obama apologists to claim that running the mega-government they support is effectively impossible, a task too difficult even for the super-genius messiah they adore.  Obama himself is making that argument, every time he claims he learned what his Administration is up to by reading yesterday’s newspaper.  One of his efforts to avoid responsible for the ObamaCare launch debacle involved him whining that government agencies are “outdated” and “not designed properly,” which would seem difficult to square with his enthusiasm for making government ever larger.    His adviser David Axelrod said Obama should be let off the hook for all responsibility in the IRS scandal because “part of being President is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know, because the government is so vast.”

In order for Obama to save his own hide, and protect his top appointees – which is part of saving his hide, because he believes firing anyone, over anything, would make it difficult for the media to ignore his scandals to death – he’s basically making the accountability argument for Republicans.  All you have to do is quote his endless evasions and childish tantrums.  What good does it do the victims of bureaucracy to hear that Barack Obama’s super-angry about what happened to them, when all he does is order the offending agency to investigate itself, and maybe get back to him after the next election with the results?

It’s the Left that keeps inadvertently dropping these killer soundbites, and writing these op-ed screeds, to make the case that their beloved Big Government is inherently corrupt and out of control.  They’re doing a great job of indicting their philosophy, in order to protect their heroes from consequence.  They’re so wrapped up in personalized politics that they don’t realize how much their excuse-making is eroding public confidence in government.  They’re essentially telling the American people that nobody will ever be held responsible for anything that goes wrong, because the system has grown so powerful that it no longer fears the wrath of its subjects.

…

…it’s not good enough to simply restore the oversight functions of the press, by electing someone they’re not in love with.  The system itself has to be whittled down to size.  The quest for accountability is a crusade with bipartisan appeal, because a lot of rank-and-file Democrat voters expect it too.  Some of them believe in government control precisely because it thinks bureaucrats and politicians are more accountable than the robber barons of the private sector.  They are hideously mistaken, and the Obama years have given us plenty of examples to prove it.  Start with the VA scandal, but don’t stop there.  Go through the whole sorry mess, and ask voters if they can point to a single act of genuine responsibility from Obama’s government.

Not only has it become impossible for the public to hold any high official responsible for his actions, but there’s no way to escape from the broken system.  You can’t demand new management, you can’t escape from lousy “deals” that bear little resemblance to what you were promised, and you can’t stop paying for the government’s mistakes.  All of this is going to get a lot worse, as the power and reach of government grows, and more of its unsustainable plans collapse.

People are suckers for Big Government because they think the bums can be thrown out of office if they mess up.  The Obama years offer enduring proof that this belief is hopelessly naive.  Where do you go to vote the permanent bureaucracy out of office?  How do you hold a politician accountable for his errors, when he’s got an army of constituents hungry for more of the favors he dispenses?

But don’t take it from me.  Just listen to the liberal politicians and pundits who are increasingly insistent that no one can be held responsible for the failures of the Leviathan State, because no hand is strong enough to hold Leviathan’s reins.

To an extent, the liberals are correct in that a change of leadership will not return accountability to government. Any leadership change that want to limit government and constrict its growth and power, must have an internal house-cleaning from top to the very bottom. The abuses of regulations and the federal agencies is not possible without the willing compliance of all, to the lowest employee. Replacing the patronage appointees will do nothing to impose change. Only wholesale disbandment of those agencies and their regulations can achieve what this country needs.

When there are more unemployed federal workers than private sector workers, only then will we achieve any of our goals.

 

Facebook

Continuing on a theme

Posted on by

As I wrote yesterday, Shelly Moore Capito won the ‘Pub primary for US Senate in West Virginia. She left an open House seat in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District to run for the Senate. Four different ‘Pub candidates ran in the Primary to fill her 2nd District seat; Capito declined to endorse any of those candidate.

The winner of that four-way primary was the Tea Party candidate, Alex Moony, the former GOP ‘Pub Chairman for Maryland. Moony’s win once again exposed the lie that Tea Party candidates can’t win; he won handily over his other three opponents.

Moony had the backing of Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund (SCF) and grassroots organizations throughout the 2nd District. A number of other Tea Party groups, including the Tea Party Express, congratulated Moony on his win.

***

Obama’s FCC has, in spite of widespread criticism and Congressional warnings, approved a Rule that, in affect, implements Net Neutrality. The Washington Post reports:

FCC approves plan to allow for paid priority on Internet

By Cecilia Kang,

Net neutrality protesters outside the FCC. (Brian Fung / The Washington Post)

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers.

The plan, approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, could unleash a new economy on the Web where an Internet service provider such as Verizon would charge a Web site such as Netflix for the guarantee of flawless video streaming.

Smaller companies that can’t afford to pay for faster delivery would likely face additional obstacles against bigger rivals. And consumers could see a trickle-down effect of higher prices as Web sites try to pass along new costs of doing business with Internet service providers.

The proposal is not a final rule, but the three-to-two vote on Thursday is a significant step forward on a controversial idea that has invited fierce opposition from consumer advocates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and Democratic lawmakers.

Even one of the Democratic commissioners who voted yes on Thursday expressed some misgivings about how the proposal had been handled.

“I would have done this differently. I would have taken the time to consider the future,” said Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who said the proposal can’t allow for clear fast lanes for the most privileged companies. She said she supported a proposal allowing the agency to consider questions on how it could prevent certain Web sites from being blocked, in addition to figuring out the overall oversight of broadband Internet providers.

“I believe the process that got us to rulemaking today was flawed,” she said.  “I would have preferred a delay.”

The column continues here. FOX News chimed in with this article.

FCC to cripple the Internet

By FoxNews.com

The Federal Communications Commission thinks the Internet in the United States can be run at two speeds. Backtracking from an earlier proposal, the FCC now believes it will be just fine to let Internet service providers (ISPs) control what you access online, with a few exceptions that the FCC would police.

While this new proposal might not kill the Internet, as it exists now, it would certainly cripple it – at least for American consumers and businesses.

Multiple leaks about FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to the commission, which will be presented on Thursday, indicate that the agency would not allow ISPs to give preferential treatment – faster Internet access – to their own subsidiaries. But it would allow other companies to pay for faster, more reliable access. (No matter that such a similar restriction has already failed in the case of Comcast giving preferential treatment to its own Golf Channel.)

If the Internet does not maintain net neutrality, wherein all digital data is treated the same, countless businesses will suffer.

Unfortunately, there is no halfway approach to how data should flow over the Internet. It’s a binary proposition: Either access to the Internet is equal, no matter the type or size of the business, or it is not. Letting Amazon have better access because it can pay and because it is not owned by AT&T will not make the situation more equal.

If the Internet does not maintain net neutrality, wherein all digital data is treated the same, countless businesses – tech companies in Silicon Valley, auto companies in Detroit, health care providers in Houston, startups in New York – will suffer. And, of course, you and I will pay for diminishing service and be denied the option of choosing what we want to read, view and listen to at faster speeds.

Representatives of the country’s largest ISPs are claiming that the one solution to preserving net neutrality in the U.S. – legally classifying broadband Internet utilities as utilities – “would threaten new investment in broadband infrastructure and jeopardize the spread of broadband technology across America, holding back Internet speeds and ultimately deepening the digital divide.” That’s according to a press release attached to a letter signed by Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the first place, those companies are proposing to introduce their own digital divide, in which consumers would have no choice. Faster, more reliable Internet access would be granted only to those companies that would pay AT&T, Time Warner, et al. Want better access to your child’s school website? Too bad, Verizon will say no – unless the school can fork over the kind of fees that an Amazon or Facebook would pay. Thus, the digital divide would grow exponentially if these CEOs have their way. 

Secondly, there is no “threat to new investment in broadband.” Indeed, the situation is quite the opposite. There is constant improvement in optical switches, which increase speeds. And there is plenty of motivation for ISPs to upgrade: It’s called competition (can you say Google Fiber?). You and I pay dearly for these services every month, but if it’s not enough to run their businesses properly, then AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon should start charging subscribers more up front and providing better service. Crippling the Internet for their own profit, with no promise of improvement, is not a solution. It’s a disincentive for ISPs to upgrade.

Moreover, access to and the flexibility of the Internet have done nothing but improve under the de facto standard of net neutrality since the early ’90s. Suddenly handing over control of how reliably and how fast certain content gets sent to a few companies would kneecap the U.S. economy.

There is more to the article at the FOX website. Go and read it all. The reality of this move by the Obama government is to control the use, access and content of the Internet. If they can’t restrict the free flow of information by act of Congress, they will do so through the back-door via regulation. The real purpose is to violate the 1st Amendment rights of the free flow of news and information.

Facebook