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The Patriot Post Brief 08-26
From The Federalist Patriot
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LIBERTY“It’s been at least five years since I’ve flown commercial, and for good reason: I don’t wish to be arrested for questioning actions by often arrogant, rude Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers. ... According to the February 2002 Federal Register, people can be arrested if they act in a way that ‘might distract or inhibit a screener from effectively performing his or her duties... But it’s going to get worse. The TSA aims to have 500 ‘behavior detection officers’ (BDOs) in airports by the end of this year. The job of the BDOs will be that of examining passengers for ‘body language and facial cues... for signs of bad intentions.’ They look for what the experts call ‘micro-expressions.’ Fear and disgust are the key ones, he said, because they’re associated with deception. That would make me a prime candidate for scrutiny and possibly trouble because if I ever had to go through airport security procedures, I would have those ‘micro-expressions’ of disgust and fear of arrest... Americans have been far too compliant and that has given the TSA carte blanche to treat travelers any way they wish. I’m staying away. TSA has its rules and Williams has his, and one of mine is to avoid tyrants and idiots.” - Walter Williams
INSIGHT“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now... Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.” - John F. Kennedy
THE GIPPER“First, if I may, I’d like to establish the scope of the topic under discussion. For when we speak about the economy, we’re dealing with more than mere numbers, more than statistics about productivity and employment. We’re dealing instead with one of the most basic aspects of human existence: We’re dealing with the way the great majority of men and women spend most of their hours, most days, throughout the most productive years of their lives...I believe it’s important to remind ourselves that in dealing with the economy we’re dealing with human creativity. This insight has represented the underpinning of our economic expansion. We cut tax rates, reduced government regulation, and restrained Federal spending; and we unleashed the creativity of individuals and businesses. We gave them freedom to create; to keep the rewards of their own risk-taking and hard work; and to reach for new, bold ideas.” - Ronald Reagan
POLITICAL FUTURES“There is only one way to drive down the rising cost of gasoline for the long term: significantly increase the domestic supply of oil. We are the only nation in the world with access to known oil deposits on our own land or off our shores that essentially refuses to tap those resources. The main stumbling block is a lack of political consensus, which is in especially short supply in an election year. Instead of coming up with real solutions to our growing energy crisis, the Democrats in Congress would rather rail against the oil companies. But oil company executives don’t set the price of oil - and taxing their companies more won’t do anything to lower the cost of gasoline at the pump... It’s time Congress put election-year politics aside and get serious about allowing domestic oil production to solve this crisis.” - Linda Chavez
FOR THE RECORD“[W]e constantly hear we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices, but how does anybody know when we haven’t even tried? Despite enormous improvements in extraction technology, the amount of oil produced domestically in America went down in the last eight years. It went down in the 1990s. It went down in the 1980s. In fact, it’s been trending down since the 1970s, back when Barack Obama’s ‘new’ ideas seemed fresh coming from Jimmy Carter. Today, we produce about as much domestic oil as we did in the late 1940s, even though we keep finding, but not utilizing, more proven reserves. That hardly sounds like a country that’s been dedicated to ‘drilling our way’ to anything.” - Jonah Goldberg
OPINION IN BRIEF“As we enter the second half of the campaign year, facts are undermining the Democratic narrative that has dominated our politics since about the time Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Gulf coast - most importantly, the facts about Iraq. During the Democratic primary season, all the party’s candidates veered hardly a jot or tittle from the narrative that helped the Democrats sweep the November 2006 elections. Iraq is spiraling into civil war, we invaded unwisely and have botched things ever since, no good outcome is possible, and it is time to get out of there as fast as we can. In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible. That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination - but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates.” - Michael Barone
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