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« on: March 20, 2012, 08:57:38 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Brief 3-19-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation
"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." --James Madison
Government
"During the three years of the Obama administration, 106 new major regulations have been imposed at a price tag of more than $46 billion annually -- and that's on top of nearly $11 billion in one-time implementation costs. How does this compare to the number of major regulations that were imposed under President George W. Bush? It's almost four times higher. And the cost? About five times higher. ... In December, the National Federation of Independent Business asked small-business owners to name their single biggest problem. The number-one choice, named by 19 percent of those who responded, was 'regulations and red tape.' ... And you can be sure that the weight of that burden is being shared. The costs of these regulations are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices and limited product choices. Take the price controls that bureaucrats slapped last year on the fees that banks may charge to process debit-card transactions. It prompted banks to cancel many rewards programs and free services. And it has led to higher fees on checking accounts and credit cards. Hardly an area of our lives goes untouched by regulation. The new rules for last year alone covered many activities, including refrigerators, freezers, clothes dryers, air conditioners, and energy standards for fluorescent lights. There were new testing and labeling requirements for toys, limits on automotive emissions of 'greenhouse gases,' requirements for posting federal labor rules, and more explicit warnings for cigarette packages. The list goes on." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner1
The Gipper
"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." --Ronald Reagan2
Essential Liberty
"[Friday] was James Madison's birthday, so today let us then remember his legacy as the father of our Constitution. Madison conceived the basic outline of the Constitution before the Constitutional Convention even met. He came to the Convention steeped in the histories of ancient republics, well-versed in the political theory of the ages, and prepared with a plan for the new government. ... After the Constitution was drafted, Madison teamed up with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write the Federalist, which in Jefferson's words was 'the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written.' The key phrases we associate with the Constitution -- federalism, checks and balances, and the separation of powers -- appear not in the document itself, but in the Federalist. ... Once the new Constitution was implemented, Madison served in Congress. As chairman of the House conference committee on the Bill of Rights, he was the principal author. This position enabled him to look after a cause dear to him throughout his political career -- religious liberty. ... We don't need a slab of marble to remember James Madison. Instead, we have the Constitution that created the framework for ordered liberty and more than 200 years of stable, peaceful republican government. We have the Bill of Rights that singles out specific individual liberties that all Americans possess, especially the right to religious liberty. And, most importantly, we have his legacy on how to defend this document." --Heritage Foundation's Julia Shaw3
Political Futures
"Right now, millions of adult Americans cannot legally fly on an airplane or rent a car. They're not allowed to drive one, either. And if they really need to get somewhere fast, they can't use Amtrak. When they (somehow) get there, they can't stay at a hotel. If they don't have a social security card, they cannot get one without considerable time and effort. In most cases they cannot rent an apartment, take the SAT or enroll in college. They can't buy cigarettes or alcohol, even though they are of legal age. They might be able to get credit cards, but in many instances they will not be able to use them. And they almost certainly won't be able to get a bank account or a business license or even cash a check. ... And yet the Democratic Party wants to do next to do nothing to fix that. I'm talking, of course, about people without proper identification. ... What astounds me is the almost entirely unremarked-upon complacency of liberals who seem to think it's OK that millions of Americans (by their own reckoning) remain locked out of the modern economy, but who are horrified by the idea that states might actually give these same people new forms of identification -- for free. ... The crisis is not that these people will be asked to prove who they are when they vote. The crisis is that there are ... millions upon millions of Americans who can't prove who they are at all." --columnist Jonah Goldberg4
Culture
"Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. ... But whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority. In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority? Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter's lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission? ... Americans have become compliant in nation-crippling ways." --economist Walter E. Williams5
Insight
"The goal of the 'liberals' -- as it emerges from the record of the past decades -- was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot -- by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli." --author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) |
