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rand paul
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Tea Partiers Twice as Happy With DC as a Year Ago…WHY?!
07 Mar 2011 by Jessica Hughes / 8 Comments
A recent poll suggests that the Tea Party, as skeptics predicted, is losing steam in the wake of the Republican sweep of the House. Compared to a year ago the numbers among Republicans, independents, and Tea Partiers who profess to be “angry with the Federal Government” have plummeted; in many categories they have fallen to half their previous levels. The question is, “Why?”
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Support the Rand Paul Cuts
27 Jan 2011 by Jessica Hughes / 4 Comments
Rand Paul is not messing around. Proposing a bill that would double the cuts recommended by the Republican Study Committee, he is ready to axe federal programs like the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, collect the $3 Billion in delinquent taxes owed by employees of the Federal Government and clip the wings of Federal Jet-Setters by cutting their travel budget by $7.5 Billion.All told, Paul is proposing $500 Billion in cuts for 2011 alone and God bless him for it. Of course we can count on Democrats to scream and wail about the cuts in social spending like food stamps and HUD, which is to be entirely defunded. But be warned, there are military cuts in there as well and the big government GOPers will sure to use the military cuts and fears of depleting our armed forces in a time of war to kill this much needed legislation. We who advocate smaller government cannot let this gambit go this time around.
There are well over a hundred thousand military personnel stationed on hundreds of bases in places like Europe where we are not fighting anything like a war. The military should slash its budget, sell some of the 30 million acres worldwide the Pentagon occupies, and bring these men and women home. Not only will it save money, it will save morale as thousands of families are reunited. These newly free citizens will be able to transition into productive, private-sector employment or open new businesses. Instead of their money being spent overseas it will be spent right here at home.
Rand Paul is doing the hard work of proposing realistic cuts so broad that it is impossible to carry through without angering some sector of the population. But this is the game that politicians play – to give everyone a little stock in plundering others – and we must not get sucked back in. Nearly everyone in the nation will be affected negatively in some way by the cuts proposed but we cannot let that stop us. The initial pain must be borne in order to reenergize private industry and set free the ingenuity of the American People once again.I highly recommend that Tea Parties and Patriot Groups who are dedicated to free markets, limited government, lower taxes, and fiscal responsibility forward this bill to their State Legislators. Your Senators were intended to represent the state in the Federal Government. Ask that they propose a resolution in your State House or Senate to support this bill and recommend a ‘Yea’ vote to your Senators. Prepare for battle on this one. Educate your friends and neighbors so they are not taken in by the rhetoric they will hear denouncing these measures as cruel, heartless, or anti-military.
We must return to a view of government that mimics our own home. If you don’t have the money to install a security system then you don’t install one. Or you cut something you value less and use the money saved to purchase that which you value more. Tell Washington to do what you must do in tough economic times: Tighten its belt! Call your state and federal legislators today and tell them to read and support this bill.
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Destroying Sacred Cows
23 Nov 2010 by Jessica Hughes / 5 Comments
The great quandary of government used to be “guns or butter.” Would the resources of the state be put to feeding or fighting? The issuance of fiat paper money has supposedly rendered that question moot. Now we are told we can have both, and furthermore, that we must or else the world will fall apart without our global governance.
Within the Tea Party there are a wide range of beliefs on thi
s subject from the Ron Paul non-interventionists, to the George Bush pre-emptive warriors. A good deal of debate on this issue has been set aside because arguing over it will distract from the domestic agenda. But with said domestic agenda including such goals as cutting spending, lowering taxes, and ending the inflationary printing of fiat cash on Congress’ demand, the military budget has come into question.John McCain, RINO-extraordinaire, has lashed out at the incoming Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for his ‘isolationism’ because Paul has said that even the military budget should be examined for cuts. Speaking at DC think-tank Foreign Policy Initiative, McCain told the conference, “I think there are going to be some tensions within our party. I worry a lot about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party.” McCain would have us believe that the military budget cannot be cut without endangering our national security. This assertion is ludicrous.
First, the U.S. has around 1,000 military bases in over 100 countries worldwide. Is it ‘isolationist’ to imagine these may not all be necessary? It is interesting to note that in 2004 Donald Rumsfeld suggested closing several hundred overseas bases allowing 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members to come home to the United States. Rumsfeld estimated then that closing 200-300 bases would save $12 Billion per year and in 2004 ‘billion’ was still a big number. That does not take into consideration the return of the 170,000 people to communities where they would be gainfully employed and spending their income in their own towns rather than overseas.
Second, while there is no denying that our troops in most cases are brave and honorable young men and women who risk life and limb on our behalf, this treatment of the military per se as a sacred cow in conservative circles is dangerous. It plays right into the hands of those who would commit malfeasance unchallenged. The military, like every other collection of human beings on the planet, is going to have good people and bad people. The Department of Defense, like every other government-run agency, is a monopoly in its market with no competitors to force efficiency. It is guaranteed to be rife with corruption, embezzlement, waste, and cronyism just like every other government office and if we allow people like John McCain to convince us that questioning military spending is unpatriotic or an insult to our troops than we will be played for suckers.
If we expect to see drastic reductions in spending we need to be looking at every aspect of that spending. We need to be willing to be wise in our plans and we need to be willing to live in reality even when that reality is uncomfortable. In short, we need to be willing to choose once again between guns and butter. As an example, the debate over a domestic missile shield is being framed in terms of whether or not we will add this expense to our budget. Why is the debate not being framed in the context of replacement? If this missile shield is effective than shouldn’t we be able to drastically downgrade our overseas presence? Might we not be able to exercise the wisdom of Jefferson who advised “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none?”
With the specter of increased intervention in Iran and North Korea we need to ask ourselves whether we are able to carry on as the playground monitor. Surely there are good arguments for a wide range of opinions on whether, or how much, we should be participating in overseas feuds, but with over $100 trillion in unfunded domestic liabilities, military spending accounting for another trillion per year and the additional trillion-plus spent so far in Iraq/Afghanistan; the question is no longer even what we should do but what we can do. When big government RINOs like McCain start fear-mongering what dangers await if we just cut spending on the military, we should remind ourselves that we will have no military at all to defend us if the printing presses finally give out and the dollar collapses for their reckless refusal to live within our means.
Conservatives have no problem admitting that this is a fallen world when we talk about the problems associated with poverty and the fact that government cannot give us a perfect world with a social safety net. We need to acknowledge that government also cannot provide a world of perfect security, no matter how many bases, shields, troops, treaties, or embargoes. Our security is paramount, yes, and defense is one of the few functions government should provide, but we mustn’t allow propaganda from the likes of McCain to trick us into leaving the defense budget entirely unquestioned. No government expenditure should be considered so sacred as to be untouchable because wherever the sacred cow is, that’s where their corruption will best be hidden from we taxpayers who bear the true cost.
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