Archive for the ‘Editorials’ Category

Government doors stay open. Federal budget compromised.

Saturday, April 9th, 2011

Government doors stay open.

Here’s the federal government slant they’d like you to believe. Harry Reid and John Boehner were able to negotiate a budget agreement. President Obama is pleased that government is not forced to shut down.

Mainstream media will be reporting optimistic, celebratory news to show how wonderful it is that the two state-sponsored political parties were able to iron out differences and work together on a federal budget compromise. Exactly how terrible the budget planned will be for the economy will not be mentioned. It will be avoided by the politicians and the press so that people will see the approved version of the government spin and be the sheep of contentment.

Reporting of the truth about the budget, planned to increase the national debt, appears closed, kept from the mainstream.

It is true. The federal budget has definitely been compromised, just as it has been for years. This is planned bankrupting of the economy by budgets in which there are too many extremely expensive funding programs and big government departments that are sacred cows.

The President and Congress are planning to implement another out-of balance budget plan which will further bankrupt the federal government which has grown to 14.281 Billion dollars. The deficit numbers at the US Debt Clock are speeding up!

Much of what you’ve been seeing in the televised news media concerning a threatened government shutdown due to the House and Senate battling over 36 billion dollars in spending cuts, and arguments about whether or not to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, has been nothing more than theatrics, with all the major players failing to tell the people the ugly truth. The truth is that there will be, (by plan!) no balanced budget. They can’t balance the budget since the federal government and elected politicians want to spend, spend, spend.

All the discussion about withholding funding of Planned Parenthood being a sticking point has very little to do with the proper running of government. It is nothing more than a distraction issue to keep the people divided and bickering rather than demand an actual balanced budget.

Recently, just one day of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles into a distant country (Libya) we weren’t at war with cost about 150 million dollars. Let’s see Congress get real bold and take back the power to start wars rather than serve the beck and call of the UN. It is not just Obama who thinks the President can launch us into wars. George Bush’ simultaneous wars were costing over a billion per month. That is a lot of zeros but it translates to real indebtedness.

A reduction of 37 billion dollars is less than 1% of the spending they plan to do. Double digit percentage cuts were needed. If you and I ran our household economy like this, we would be going deeper and deeper into debt and lose everything. If a small business were to do this, their creditors would shut them down. When deep in debt, the only way out of it is either to drastically increase revenue or drastically reduce the spending. Since the working class is already at the stress point, revenue increases would have to come from those who can afford to pay more by doing away with tax deductions for expenses only the wealthy can afford, such as private jets, yatchs, real estate holdings, and other write-offs that you and I cannot afford in the first place. The idea of reducing spending by getting back to an affordable defense budget and reducing the extravagant financing of the ever-encroaching and developing police state, where cops all look like like SWAT, seems to be sacred cows. To have a military strong enough to ward off all attacks is one thing, but the US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. That kind of budget planning is unsustainable and idiotic.

Anyone who is able to balance their checkbook should see through the magicians smoke and mirrors and know that even if Reid and Boehner sent chocolates and flowers to each other, there is no cause for monumental celebration. An agreement to reduce an already bloated budget by cutting only 37 billion dollars or thereabouts is just a plan to continue in the red and further run up the debt. Does the federal government plan to fix the economy by getting serious about spending reductions? Ever?

If government had to plan to keep all planned expenditures at or slightly below projected revenue levels, double digit percent cuts in spending is required. Even a 10% reduction in spending, or about 370 billion dollars (or half the wall street bailout in 2008 during the Bush presidency), would still not put the federal government in budget surplus mode.

Although the politicians and mainstream media are doing a disservice by not reporting on the stark realities, so visibly displayed by the US Debt Clock, there are some segments of the population who have reason to celebrate. For example, this is very good news for those in the military who were in a panic because they weren’t sure if they would be getting paid, and when they might see their next paycheck. Many low-ranking enlisted personnel in the military live from paycheck to paycheck, and have no savings. They depend on that paycheck arriving on time.

Also celebrating are many government employees including the bureaucrats who have job security unlike anyone in the private sector. When you see agencies such as the NHTSA wanting to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to several states so that they will put up unconstitutional motorcycle roadblocks and hand out safety propaganda literature to promote helmets that are 63% ineffective, taxpayers should wonder how much they pay those statisticians and middle managers who come up with those figures and those ideas.

The federal government is the largest employer in the United States. At the end of the last millenium, during the Clinton administration, there were budget surpluses. The idea of budget surpluses changed drastically to budget deficits under the G.W. Bush administration which ran up over a trillion dollars in debt with invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by sudden massive bailouts of mortgage lenders, investment bankers, and insurance companies during the final months of his failed presidency. The strategies of bailing out the wealthiest entities that are too big to fail was like stabbing a sword into the heart, but not of the wealthy. Instead of paying for their own gambling losses government intervened, forcing payments and indebtedness onto the middle class and the working class.

The Federal Reserve Bank, which is not federal but private, must be loving these out of control spending sprees, as the interest payments on the debt is making them and their few banker friends, many of whom are foreigners, wealthier than over 300 million Americans combined.

So as other news sources will be optimistically posting headlines cheering the fact that the government is open, you have to ask if it is really open government or if we are all being led down the wrong path, by plan. At least it is great to be in America where alternative news media sources are still allowed to rant from a different perspective than the mainstream media.

This is the NC Home editors’ opinion. It is what it is.

What if US-Saudi Libya Bahrain deal is true?

Saturday, April 2nd, 2011

Editorial

Here is a description of the article published in Asia Times, “Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal”, by the writer Pepe Escebar, which is being reprinted across the blogosphere, including here at NC Home, simply because if it is true, our government has a lot of fessing up to do.

In the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the United States-Saudi counter-revolution in a deal where the US gave the green light to Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Bahrain in return for Arab League support for the the Libyan no-fly zone. Revealed is the Barack Obama administration’s hypocrisy, selling a crass geopolitical coup as a humanitarian operation.

The most shocking allegation, if it can be substantiated, is very damning. “Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighborhood in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.”

Thus, the very serious question, “What if it’s true?”

LIKE IT OR NOT if true, we have to know it and get to the bottom of it.

Well, if it is true, then the people of the United States of America and the world are owed an explanation, an apology, and there are people at the top who are going to have to be held accountable. This is not just serious. This is extremely serious and cannot be overlooked. The closed door backroom deals which we saw so many of during the Bush administration must stop rather than continue under Obama. The potential implications are enormous. However, before we rush to judgment, we need to ask the serious questions rather than turn a blind eye, and we must demand answers.

Editor

Motorcycle Helmets – Let Those Who Ride Decide

Saturday, April 2nd, 2011

Editorial

I urge the NC Senate Transportation Committee to support SB 480. Let Those Who Ride Decide.

Motorcycles are the original green vehicle, with almost twice the fuel mileage as passenger automobiles, and half the traffic congestion and half the parking footprint. As such, their use should be encouraged. Motorcycle helmets are a terrible nuisance, often torturous, and can be dangerous*.

Reference: NHTSA Office of Defects Investigations, complaints database, and recalls database. http://ns3.us/odi
In just 3 years since the end of 2007, there has been a 2000% increase in the number of official complaints about motorcycle helmets than there were in the previous 12 years since 1995.

All but 20 states allow adults to make their own decision. Of the remaining 20 states, most have active repeal legislation. North Carolina has opposed this individual liberty for 40 years.

As an avid motorcyclist for 43 years, I have studied this issue extensively. I refuse to wear a helmet. Instead, I have studied the laws, and have taught many people in North Carolina how to fight helmet tickets in court. One ticket issued to me resulted in a 2 day trial in Superior Court, and cost the state an estimated $8000. The trooper had to commute from Yadkin County, keeping him away from patrol for several days. During the two day trial, cases regarding actual criminals were not heard. The judge was furious at the legislators for passing such bad legislation. This is also true of other judges I have appeared before. From what I understand, DA and judges across the state now refuse to allow helmet tickets to go to trial. Courts should be used for trying criminals rather than trying good people of principle who believe in individual liberty in America.

Please support Senate Bill 480 as an acknowledgment of individual liberty and the right to decide. If the bill is enacted, those who want the false sense of safety which helmets provide will still be allowed to wear them.

Editor

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