Republicans Overreaching? I’ll Tell You What’s Overreaching!

The Democrats have taken to using the term “overreaching” to describe the Republicans’ efforts to get to the bottom of the IRS, AP, and Benghazi situations.  What I think is that someone needs to throw the following list loudly and repeatedly into their faces.

To my way of seeing things:

Overreaching is when the IRS, motivated by Administration-driven partisanship and rhetoric, targets conservative groups for “special” attention.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when a public employee (e.g., Ms. Lerner of the IRS) proclaims her complete and utter innocence in the matter of IRS targeting of conservative groups and then arrogantly thumbs her nose at a duly constituted congressional probe and proclaims she will answer no questions, taking the 5^th instead.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

On the other hand, overreaching is when congressional committees demand higher ethical behavior (e.g., truth) from witnesses that appear before them than these congressmen demand of themselves.

Overreaching is when a huge health care bill that affects every American is rammed down the throats of Americans, who opposed the bill in majority;  a bill that the congressmen never even got a chance to read and digest  – now seen to cost Americans billions, if not trillions, of dollars, while not even achieving its coverage promises.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration decrees that all birth control (including morning-after pills) must be provided free of charge in all employer insurance plans, thus both formalizing an infringement on freedom of religion and the government’s approval of removal of all constraints on casual sex and personal responsibility.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when there are lies about Benghazi concocted and promulgated for weeks after the terrorist event has occurred, in order to prevent damage to a presidential campaign.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration targets phone records of journalists to serve its own nefarious purposes.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when government starts telling us what size drinks we can buy in the marketplace.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United States presumes to tell Americans that the market system is “unfair”, when he has little or no experience in the market system — and the American market system has been the greatest engine of general prosperity ever seen on earth.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United States inflicts unnecessary “pain” on Americans in the name of sequestration, when sequestration does not actually reduce spending by the federal government, and can be implemented with little actual “pain” and inconvenience.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the federal government imposes national education standards that actually lower the standards in some states that have implemented their own high standards, and now must reduce those standards to qualify for federal funds.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration decrees that free speech can be limited on college and university campuses, and that lives can be destroyed based upon a simple charge of sexual harassment or misconduct without proof being necessary – the assumption of guilty until proven innocent.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when a gun control bill is slammed together in the aftermath of a tragic shooting event, simply for political show, when the particular bill would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration throws billions of taxpayer dollars at financially and logically unsound “green” energy companies, companies often with strong Obama supporters as investors or board members, only to see that taxpayer money go down the drain in bankruptcies.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the federal government engineers auto manufacturers’ bankruptcies, entering into financial business partnerships at the cost of the taxpayers in order that supportive unions won’t suffer too much, instead of letting the normal bankruptcy-and-re-emergent process take care of the problem.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the federal government makes it more economically advantageous for the unambitious among us to be on the taxpayer dole than to be a part of the work force.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United States stays in constant campaign mode for over 5 years (and counting – with associated costs being charged to the taxpayers who are having to tighten their own belts – millions upon millions of dollars.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United States makes a college graduation speech in which he re-emphasizes the mindset and continuation of victimhood in the United States.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United States weighs in on white-on-black crime in America (e.g., the Trayvon Martin case), when it is a fact that black-on-black crime is a far, FAR more serious problem than either of the other two combinations.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration’s Justice Department overlooks direct violation of polling place neutrality by failing to seriously investigate those in the New Black Panther Party who adopted on-site intimidation methods.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when a Democrat-controlled Senate fails to obey the law and pass an annual budget – for three years running.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the Administration not only selectively fails to enforce federal immigration laws, but prevents states from then passing and enforcing their own.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the federal government puts together an “immigration reform” bill that is loaded with “overreaching” garbage, for example the fixing of wages of immigrant workers, and special consideration for foreign ski instructors (both of which are found among dozens of other “overreaching” provisions in the new immigration reform bill.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when politicians blame any specific administration, party, or market segment for The Great Recession when they know that it was loose government policies and failure to execute to existing regulations that caused the major problems.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the government tries to cover up its own contributions to The Great Recession by blaming market forces and piling on new [mostly unneeded] regulations for business, thus significantly slowing down the economic recovery.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

Overreaching is when the President of the United Sates repeatedly lies to the American public about the intentions and beliefs of his political opponents.  Democrats, Republicans, and Independents should ALL be outraged at this.

You can feel free to suggest your own examples of overreaching.  But in my opinion, these are the overreaches, NOT a committee’s attempts to investigate them.  Where there is true innocence, there is truly nothing to fear.

Constitutional Protections? Not at Our Colleges

For a glimpse of where this country is headed under the Obama ideology, please read Mona Charen’s column entitled “Obama Administration Scraps Free Speech”.  You can find it at

http://www.creators.com/opinion/mona-charen/obama-administration-scraps-free-speech.html

The last few paragraphs of the column are reprinted below.  However, the first several paragraphs are well worth the reading.  This is pretty scary stuff.

Excerpt:

A letter from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice addressed to the University of Montana but explicitly intended as a “blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country,” the government has altered the legal meaning of the term “sexual harassment.” The new rule directly contravenes Supreme Court decisions and previous rulings from OCR that harassment “must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.” The Supreme Court has ruled that to meet the test of sexual harassment, behavior must be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.” Note the word “objectively,” meaning that a reasonable person similarly situated would be offended.

The reasonable person standard is now gone. The new definition of sexual harassment decreed by the Obama administration is “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct.” The purported victim now has the power to decide whether a young man or woman (but it’s nearly always a man) is branded a sexual harasser. It’s entirely subjective.

Obama promised fundamental transformation. This is part of it. Freedom of speech is sacrificed, and a new army of sexual harassment “specialists” will descend on America’s campuses to enforce the new dispensation.

[End of Excerpt]

How Sad — What of West, Texas?

Even in the highly charged aftermath of the Boston bombing, the low level of reporting on the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas is shameful.  Ten “First Responders” lost their lives, along with four others.  Two hundred (?) injured.  Now THIS is an American tragedy.

The bombings are hot news, but the explosion in Texas pretty much blew up a town, and not a person in that town will be unaffected in a major way.

And ten brave responders died as heroes, having chosen to face and fight a very dangerous situation.

Where is the appropriate recognition of this horrific event?

 

The Joys of April 15th

I distinctly remember a time when I was fine with paying my federal income taxes.  Proud to, in fact.  I have paid income tax every year for 45 years, some years a relatively small amount (my military years), and some years huge amounts (by my definition).  But it used to be about how blessed and fortunate I have been.

But the pride has entirely gone now.  And what is worse, I am at a point in life where I have to actually pay money when April 15^th rolls around – withholding does not cover the “tab” at this phase of my life.  In fact, over the past several years I have found it galling, disgusting, disturbing, insulting, angering, and downright ridiculous to have to pay money out-of-pocket – to “write a check” – for an additional few thousand dollars (beyond withholding), well knowing that it is going to the most bloated, inefficient, misguided and corrupt organization in the United States – or passing through to millions of people who are on the public dole for no good reason other than they CAN be (and I am NOT talking about the truly needy here).

I believe Andrew Jackson made a comment after the Missouri Compromise of 1821 (?) that he was glad, or hoped, that he would not still be around when the country paid the price for dealing with the slavery issue through such compromises.  He happened to be on the wrong side of history (to say nothing, perhaps, of the wrong side of morality), but I understand his sense of foreboding.

The thought does cross my mind to take the Alfred E. Neuman approach to the destabilization and decline of what has possibly been the greatest, most innovative, most prosperous and most generous nation the world has ever seen – “What, me worry?” – since I expect the country will hold together until my passing.  At least I hope so.

Can we recover?  The only ways I can see a recovery is to 1) regain our moral footing and dedication to founding principles and common sense laws and regulations, 2) eliminate multiculturalism in favor of unity of purpose and culture (i.e., assimilation), 3) prevent the dependent class from achieving majority-voting-block status, and 4) get our financial house in order by constraining the size, reach, and spending of the federal government.

And do I see all these things happening?  Hardly.  But I am a great believer in miracles.

Afterthought:  I find that it is one thing to have money withheld for taxes out of salary, and maybe get some part of it back, and quite another to actually have to pay “extra” out-of-pocket.   Maybe what we need is a tax system in which there is MORE of a requirement to pay out-of-pocket — say, a target to withhold only 50% of estimated tax burden — so that ALL Americans (the tax-paying portion of us, anyway) can feel the pride or anger in writing that extra check to those bozos at the end of the year.  Think the cumulative outrage might get better performance out of them?

A Gem from Dr. Sowell

From the book, “Intellectuals and Race”, by Thomas Sowell, 2013

Excerpt:  [Bolding is mine; content in brackets [ ] is mine]

“Although economic and social inequalities among racial and ethnic groups have attracted much attention from intellectuals, seldom today has this attention been directed primarily toward how the less economically successful and less socially prestigious groups might improve themselves by availing themselves of the culture of others around them, so as to become more productive and compete more effectively with other groups in the economy. When David Hume urged his fellow eighteenth-century Scots to master the English language, as they did, both he and they were following a pattern very different from the pattern of most minority intellectuals and their respective groups in other countries around the world. The spectacular rise of the Scots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – eventually surpassing the English in engineering and medicine, for example – was also an exception, rather than the rule. A much more common pattern has been one in which the intelligentsia have demanded an equality of economic outcomes and of social recognition, irrespective of the skills, behavior or performance of the group to which they belong or on whose behalf they spoke. In some countries today, any claim that intergroup differences in outcomes [result from differences in behavior or performance] are dismissed by the intelligentsia as false “perceptions,” “prejudices,” or “stereotypes,” or else are condemned as “blaming the victim.” Seldom are any of these assertions backed up by empirical evidence or logical analysis that would make them anything more than arbitrary assertions that happen to be in vogue among contemporary intellectual elites.”

[End of excerpt]

Most of you know that Thomas Sowell is a black conservative economist (a rare combination) who is unrelenting in his attempt to expose errors in the thinking of liberals when it comes to race relations.

File Under “Some Things Never Change”

G.K. Chesterton, in a 1909 essay titled, “On Lying in Bed”.  An excerpt that is as timely (or more timely) today as it was over 100 years ago.  I picked this up from

http://essays.quotidiana.org/chesterton/lying_in_bed/

Excerpt:  (Bolding is mine; content in brackets [ ] is mine

Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic acid [an industrial compound, seriously poisonous to humans]. .  .  .

It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired candour.

[End of excerpt]

The fact that this tendency has been around “forever” may explain why it is so easy to succumb to loosened morals, but very difficult to regain true moral high ground.  What do you think?

Another Great Commentary on Sequestration

Mona Charen has produced a great column titled “Gullible Nation”, in which she cuts right to the core of the sequestration issue and the incompetence in D.C.  Below are the first 5 paragraphs – you can read the entire piece at

http://www.creators.com/opinion/mona-charen/gullible-nation.html

Excerpt:

Responding to the Obama administration’s operatic warnings of catastrophe for Meals on Wheels for the elderly, Head Start, meat inspections, air traffic controllers, and police, fire, and 911 operators if the government reduces the rate of increase of federal spending by 2 percent, radio host Chris Plante offered the following suggestion: “Since this two percent obviously covers all essential government spending, let’s cut the other 98 percent!”

Even if these “draconian cuts” are implemented, the federal government will spend more this year than it did last year.

Another way to think about it is this: In 2007, the government was 40 percent smaller than it is today. Were poor people sleeping under bridges? Were the elderly starving? Were planes grounded? Was food unsafe to eat?

Here’s another question: Are Americans really this gullible? The president’s doom saying is so absurd that a mature country would hoot him off the stage. As it is, the housebroken media credulously report his obviously partisan scare mongering as fact.

As the sequester has loomed, the president and even many Republicans have argued that these “across the board” spending cuts (they’re actually just reductions in the rate of increase) are “stupid” and “destructive” and so forth. This raises (it doesn’t beg) the question: if cutting spending across the board is so stupid, what does that say about the priorities of the congress and president who passed these spending bills in the first place? If our spending priorities are so out of whack that cutting everything equally is unthinkable, why hasn’t the government adjusted those programs before now?

[End of excerpt]

Beautifully said.