The Patriot Post Chronicle 4-24-2013

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 4-24-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Making the Sequester Painful

April 24, 2013

The Foundation

"Remember, that Time is Money." --Benjamin Franklin

Editorial Exegesis

"As travelers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester -- otherwise known as modestly smaller government -- by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. ... Start with the Federal Aviation Administration, better known as the Postal Service without the modern technology. Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees -- about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s. Yet now the White House wants to make this agency that can't deliver what passengers are supposedly paying for even more dysfunctional. Ponder this logic, if that's the right word: The sequester cuts about $637 million from the FAA, which is less than 4% of its $15.9 billion 2012 budget, and it limits the agency to what it spent in 2010. The White House decided to translate this 4% cut that it has the legal discretion to avoid into a 10% cut for air traffic controllers. Though controllers will be furloughed for one of every 10 working days, four of every 10 flights won't arrive on time. The FAA projects the delays will rob one out of every three travelers of up to four hours of their lives waiting at the major hubs. Congress passed a law in 2009 that makes such delays illegal, at least if they are the responsibility of an airline. Under President Obama's 'passenger bill of rights,' the carriers are fined millions of dollars per plane that sits on the tarmac for more than three hours. ... This is a political pose to make the sequester more disruptive. ... It is actively creating even more delays, cancellations and missed connections in order to incite a public outcry on behalf of bigger government. ... For all of its rough edges, the sequester is proving to be educational. It is showing Americans how broken so much of government is, and it is revealing how our politicians refuse to distinguish between essential services and needless waste." --The Wall Street Journal1

Insight

"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork." --economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare." --British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Upright

"The Boston Herald has broken the story ... that 'Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism.' A responsible national establishment press would treat this as an important story, because, as the Herald's Chris Cassidy noted in the understatement of the day, it 'raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money.' ... It's pretty obvious that the family's dependence should be a national story at AP, the New York Times, and on the broadcast and cable TV networks, as it also raises the question of how many others might be living on taxpayer money while plotting to do us harm. Will it be? Don't hold your breath." --Newsbusters' Tom Blumer

"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the oldest of the two Boston bomber suspects, is now the fifth suspected terrorist to be questioned by the FBI before they attempted their acts of terror. ... Yet we not only persist with political correctness, we now go so far as to actually arm our enemies. The Obama administration persists in giving F-16s and advanced tanks to Egypt, even after the Muslim Brotherhood ... took power. The United States just pledged $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority, a government that is even now unifying with Hamas, one of the world's worst terror organizations. While we revise stylebooks and debate the power of movies and music over the power of jihad, our enemies laugh -- and plan future attacks. Political correctness kills." --Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice

"'They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated,' the president said referring to the brothers Tsarnaev. 'They failed because, as Americans, we refused to be terrorized.' That statement in and of itself is curious. First, the people of Boston were terrorized, even if it was a short-lived emotion. Furthermore, if three people killed and more than 170 wounded, several of whom have had limbs completely blown off, is considered a 'failure,' one can only imagine what this president considers a 'success.' ... There is no chance that the Obama administration is willing to admit something that would completely shatter the carefully crafted illusion under which they continue to operate: just like every other part of the world, the United States of America is also the 'field of battle' -- in the war against Islamic terror." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

"According to Dana Priest and William M. Arkin of The Washington Post, 'Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. ... An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.' ... Despite a domestic army of federal, state and local forces, the suspects managed to evade capture for days.... Osama bin Laden's announced intention was to conduct a 'war of a thousand cuts' against America to harm our economy and permanently change our way of life. If he can see from Hell, he must be pleased about the way things are going." --columnist Cal Thomas

Demo-gogues

Gun grabbers don't quit: "This [gun control] effort is not over. I want to make it clear to the American people we can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence, so long as the American people don't give up on it. Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities. ... And if this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and pass common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters." --Barack Obama

Throwing stones in glass houses: "Before I get to the [immigration] bill, I'd like to ask that all of us not jump to conclusions regarding the events in Boston, or try to conflate those events with this legislation." --Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

"In this age of instant reporting and tweets and blogs, there's a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions." --Barack Obama

Dump the Constitution: "The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex word where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change." --New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Hot air: "One gets the sense that this is more reflective of the, quote, unquote, new normal, if you will. So much of society is changing so rapidly, we talk about a new normal when it comes to climate change and adjusting to a change in the weather patterns. New normal when it comes to public security in a post-9/11 world where these random acts of violence, which at one time were implausible, now seem all too frequent." --New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo