Tag: Patriot Post

A statement of Christian support

I saw this in my e-mail today and I’m now indirectly a part of it in two respects.

The Patriot Post has opened up a petition to show support for Chick-fil-A and over 6,000 have signed up. That’s all well and good, and I added my name to the list.

But the other interesting part is the “read more” afterward. Once I read the first sentence I said to myself, “that looks familiar.” Indeed, it was part of their Digest last week, and the article in question just so happens to be one of my contributions (although slightly edited from the original as the PP editor added the part about Louis Farrakhan and tweaked some wording here and there. He also changed the title, but that’s okay.)

It’s one of those jobs I do each week that doesn’t get noticed because I don’t get a byline there; however, that’s really not the point. I truly enjoy being part of a team of a couple dozen from around the country who work on that publication every week. But I thought you folks here might be interested to know that little tidbit and connection.

Now sign the petition and perhaps I’ll see you on Wednesday at Chick-fil-A.

Losing the war on poverty

Many of you know this, but some don’t: one of my tasks when I’m not working on this site is to contribute content to the Patriot Post. On Friday they ran a slightly edited version of something I wrote for them as a featured article. The purpose of today’s post is to expand on these remarks, which I rarely do for these assignments – maybe I should do so more often.

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Income Redistribution: Losing the War on Poverty

It costs us nearly $1 trillion a year between federal and state entities, but the vast redistribution of wealth that is government’s preferred solution for equalizing outcomes is doing nothing of the sort. Instead, it’s created two distinct but politically powerful groups: 1.) A permanent underclass comprising a vast group of indentured servants who pay little to nothing in taxes but who get just enough handed to them by the American sugar daddy to stave off rioting in the streets, and 2.) The government employees and contractors who hand out the largess.

Since the so-called “Great Society” was launched under President Lyndon Johnson, the poverty rate has fluctuated in a relatively narrow range between 10 and 15 percent. As a whole, Americans are far wealthier with more material goods than they were at the start of Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” but those at the lower end of the income scale are still deemed to be in need of assistance by those who believe they know best. According to a recent Cato Institute study, government spending on poverty programs now amounts to nearly $20,000 per person. This means that, on the average, a “poor” family of four benefited from almost $80,000 in government spending last year — certainly enough to qualify as a middle-class income if it were earned.

Of course, America’s poor aren’t living in a manner one generally envisions as indicative of a middle-class income. The various forms of welfare that federal and state governments distribute pass through many hands before finally reaching recipients. This creates a long list of those who like the programs and want to see them expanded. And since Barack Obama has turned many millions of Americans into government dependents, making any sort of meaningful cut will be a politically dicey prospect should Mitt Romney win this November.

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I try to keep these under 300 words or so given that I have to share space with many others who also lend their talents to this internet publication. But here I can write as many words as I wish.

What floored me was the vast waste cited in the Cato study. Yes, I realize it’s a libertarian-leaning organization and their method of coming up with this figure was simply adding up all the spending they considered “welfare” and dividing it by the number of people the government says live beneath the poverty line. So they probably fudged the figures to some extent, but I would hazard a guess that when all is added up it can be legitimately be claimed the federal and state governments still spend our median household income of roughly $50,000 per household on those who are poor. But they don’t receive $50,000 worth of benefits, do they?

There have always been people who live in poverty and squalor, although squalor as defined in our country might be a godsend to those living in the most wretched farflung corners of the world. This is why we have so many immigrants (legal and illegal) coming here, as America is still thought of as the land of opportunity. The question has become what opportunities are out there.

Yet those in the generation of our grandfathers who were considered poor were also ones who worked hard. Take as an example the Eastern Shore, which for generations has depended on two key sources of income: agriculture, including the growing and processing of chickens, and seafood, most generally crabs, oysters, and the like. A half-century ago most worked in those industries, with a few of the more affluent and industrious creating a merchant class to service the needs of these workers who needed to buy groceries, clothing, or other basic material goods. I’m guessing you didn’t have a whole lot of slackers and layabouts around here.

Over the last thirty years things have changed. Sure, the local economy still runs on the bounties of the land and the Bay, but now those who became affluent in the large cities come here to either spend their vacation time or to retire. So we have a third key industry many have become dependent on locally, but it’s perhaps the least reliable one because people need disposable income with which to enjoy their leisure. If they don’t have the money, we on the Shore go back to life circa 1962. The problem is that the work ethic which used to permeate the Shore (and most of the rest of America, for that matter) seems to have declined as people became accustomed to a modern lifestyle. It’s been aided by the welfare state.

We all know that if welfare went away tomorrow there would be rioting in the streets. But the question is whether the riots would be led by those who were suddenly left without their monthly checks and food stamps or by those government workers who unexpectedly find themselves without a job. Based on what we saw in Wisconsin my money (what little I have) is on the latter. I know charities would work hard to find a way to fill in the gaps for the truly poor if welfare disappeared, but it seems that, once established, government programs go on forever.

Maybe the problem with poverty is that we consider it a problem to be solved. The most charitable among us have always stopped to help those who cannot help themselves, but once the concept was created that government would step in and make it all better, the number who gave of themselves dwindled. It was now someone else’s mess to take care of, and the idea of poor but too proud to accept government-sponsored relief faded into obscurity. Instead, we now openly advertise for more food stamp recipients like they’re just another consumer commodity. We’ve gone from having to stand in line to get voucher coupons to spend at the store to having just another card to swipe because it reduces the “stigma” of being on the dole.

I believe we as a nation are approaching the crossroads. Either we cut back and restore ourselves to greatness or we follow in the footsteps of long-lost empires like Rome or ancient Greece. It pains me to say this, but in 2012 America it really is no more than bread and circuses. Sadly, it may not be up to us to change that but we have to at least try.

By the way, I have some ideas to address this. Watch this space and the monoblogue Facebook page (which you really should ‘like’) for more on that project.

Gingrich returns to school

My latest commentary, this time on Patriot Post. I took my reporter’s hat and added more of my opinion…

At one time in his life Newt Gingrich was at home in the academic world, perhaps even moreso than he ever was politically. On Tuesday he selected the small town of Salisbury, Maryland and the campus that he claimed gave birth to the Contract With America to begin a new phase of his Presidential campaign.

Gone were the big banners, the line of welcoming politicians, and the press entourage which followed him from stop to stop when he was the leading anti-Romney in the 2012 Presidential race. Instead, if it weren’t for the small “Newt 2012” logo buried in a corner of the campus flier announcing “An Afternoon With Newt Gingrich” you may not have even known he was still in the race. He didn’t even charge the College Republicans $50 for a picture at the small gathering he held with them afterward.

(continued at Patriot Post…)

On the next American Revolution

Rarely do I completely give over my website to guest commentary, but this is too good to chop up and I don’t feel the need to add to it – this stands well all by itself. The op-ed comes from Mark Alexander of the Patriot Post.

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(PUBLISHER’S WARNING: The following essay may cause heartburn and knee-jerk reactions, especially in those who are predisposed to “give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety.” But as Benjamin Franklin concluded, they “deserve neither liberty nor safety.” For such feeble souls, Samuel Adams advised, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” For those who are not cast among that faint-hearted lot, please read on.)

I receive hundreds of messages every day from Patriots across the nation. For the last three years, one thematic question has emerged with ever-increasing frequency. To paraphrase that question: “What is the authority to rebel against the central government?”

That question is most often asked by those who have taken their oath of allegiance to our Constitution, particularly active duty, reserve and veteran military personnel. Typical is this note from a disabled combat Patriot this week: “Please clarify for me when my solemn oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND [his emphasis] domestic,’ kicks in.”

Such questions were once considered too radical and discordant for consideration in civil discourse. However, as Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution has been all but completely usurped by the rule of men through the Left’s so-called living constitution, the frequency and tenor of questions about the future of Essential Liberty for our once-great Republic is propelling them into mainstream debate.

The unfortunate ascension of Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres had a silver lining: It revitalized the spirit of American Patriotism in dozens of millions of our countrymen. The imminent threat to Liberty posed by Democratic Socialism is the catalyst driving this great awakening and it is spreading.

To the question of the authority to rebel against government, we turn to the Constitution’s guiding document, our Declaration of Independence. It clearly affirms the “unalienable rights” upon which our Constitution was instituted, and those rights supersede the authority of the Constitution itself as they are the inherent rights of man.

This authorizing language reads as follows: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

So, is it time for another American Revolution?

The answer to that question depends upon the answer to a more fundamental question: Is it too late to restore authority of our Constitution? Moreover, will the current dire circumstances result in a sunset or sunrise on Liberty?

In my enthusiastic analysis, the degraded state of the union presents a great opportunity for restoration of Rule of Law, and this sunrise on Liberty is already in progress under the broad heading of the Tea Party movement. Further, having been in close proximity to revolutions on foreign soil, I am intimately aware that restoration (or revolution without shots fired) is a far more desirable path than the violent one — not that the latter must ever be excluded as an option.

But behind every sunrise is a sunset. As Ronald Reagan warned thirty years ago, when the “Reagan Revolution” temporarily restored our nation’s course toward Liberty, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”

Make no mistake; there are formidable obstacles to the restoration of Liberty. The most daunting of these impediments is complacency, the result of either a false sense of comfort, institutionalized ignorance or both. Nonetheless, I still believe that the ballot box is a viable alternative to the bullet box at this juncture. Every effort to work within what remains of our Constitution’s framework to restore its Rule of Law, as outlined in The Patriot Declaration must be exhausted.

If the 2012 election cycle does not provide sufficient momentum toward the goal of restored Liberty, there are substantial measures of civil disobedience that can ratchet up the pressure — measures which will find support among true conservatives in both the House and Senate.

Either way, we face a long, uphill battle. It has taken many years to degrade Rule of Law, and it will take many years to fully restore it.

As for timing, Obama has already dropped a debt bomb on our economy, the goal of which is to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” The greatest systemic risk to Liberty that this act of economic violence poses is the destruction of free enterprise by way of taxation, regulation and insurmountable debt. U.S. debt has now surpassed 100 percent of our annual gross domestic product (economic output).

It should, of course, be the highest aspiration of every Patriot to restore our Constitution’s Rule of Law, a fundamental principle of which is theseparation of economy and state. But is there still time, and are we sufficiently resolute?

Leading the forces arrayed against us are the statist extremists, the “useful idiots” on the Left who now vilify as “terrorists” those seeking to restore Rule of Law.

In a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting this week hosted by Veep Joe Biden, Demo Rep. Mike Doyle said of the recent budget negotiations, “We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” Biden, to his everlasting shame, concurred: “They have acted like terrorists.”

Biden, Doyle, and the Kool-Aid-drinking legions of the Left are formidable. But history shows that Barack Obama’s model for prosperity, is a blueprint for economic collapse, a model that is antithetical to prosperity and ultimately at odds with Liberty.

Patriots, we have an obligation to secure Liberty for our posterity, and in the words of John Adams, “Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison dated January 30, 1787: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. … An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

Today, Tea Party “terrorists” should expect no such accommodation, as “honest republican governors” are few and far between.

That same year, Jefferson famously wrote more pointedly to John Adams’s son-in-law, William Smith, “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. … And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

Short of the bullet box, it is my fervent prayer that on 6 November 2012, an unprecedented army of American Patriots will use the ballot box to further alter the course of our nation toward Liberty and Rule of Law.

That notwithstanding, American Patriots remain well aware of both the authority for rebellion and more importantly the obligation to overcome tyranny, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. There may come a time to fight, and our Founders wisely extended to us the means for rebellion. We also fully understand the cost outlined in its closing: “For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

We do.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

How the Democrats try and disenfranchise voters

My latest commentary for the Patriot Post.

Here’s more proof the left isn’t interested in your opinion unless they give it to you.

A couple weeks back on another website I detailed how conservatives in Maryland could score a rare victory based on the response to an ill-advised bill passed by our General Assembly. Having turned in over 60,000 signatures by a first-post May 31 deadline, supporters of a drive to place a recently-passed bill on the ballot for referendum in November 2012 were pleased that over 47,000 of the required names were ruled valid, leaving only about 8,000 remaining to be collected by June 30. In all, backers were hoping 100,000 people would sign their petition.

Their success frightened supporters of the so-called Maryland DREAM Act so much they resorted to a multi-pronged attack on those who oppose the bill. Would-be petition signers were being harassed upon attempting to sign the document in a public place and handed ‘Think Before You Ink’ flyers containing misleading information. There’s even a website with sob stories about immigrant children who would be affected called One Maryland Defense, which calls the petition an “effort…to eliminate access to universities for talented Maryland students” by “a small minority of extremists.” It featured an attempt to entice people to remove their names from the petition.

(continued at the Patriot Post…)

Osama bin Laden dead: what’s next?

A slew of news reports late Sunday night confirmed Osama bin Laden has died. While original news reports stated bin Laden’s death occurred a few days ago, later remarks by President Obama detailed the operation as happening Sunday. Whichever version of events is true doesn’t truly matter since the end result is the same: America’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’ is no more among the living.

But my personal take as a political observer on how this will affect our nation’s immediate future is complex.

(continued at the Patriot Post…)

The lessons of Madison

Over the past few decades, a familiar mantra of those trying to expand government via the avenue of new programs and bureaucracies was the catchphrase, “it’s for the children.” Wisconsin unions may use that claim as well, but many little darlings and their parents were adversely affected by the labor strife in Madison when area school districts closed because teachers called in “sick.” Teachers played the role even to the point of receiving phony doctor’s excuses for stress-induced illnesses onsite.

But before we embark on a discussion of the lessons being taught by these Wisconsin events we need to review our own annals.

(continued at The Patriot Post…)

Madison: the shape of things to come

I’ve written for The Patriot Post for a number of years, but they invited me recently to contribute to their commentary page.

Last May we saw violent political riots in Greece and last week a February of discontent began in Madison, Wisconsin. While the issues at the heart of the Wisconsin protest aren’t exactly identical to the austerity measures dictated to the Greek government as a condition of accepting a continent-wide financial bailout, they’re still all about spending money the government doesn’t have.

The Madison protest arose from a GOP bill which would both curtail the negotiable items in labor contracts and bring to heel the ability of public sector unions to continually collect dues by removing “closed shop” provisions for certain employees and mandating annual authorization elections — those provisions strike (no pun intended) at the heart of the Big Labor political machine. To stall the inevitable passage Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate took advantage of a rules loophole and left the state, leaving their Republican counterparts fuming but powerless to take action on the law. Considering these Democrats have been offered sanctuary by religious leaders in adjacent states, they could be gone awhile.

(continued at the Patriot Post…)