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« on: September 16, 2013, 06:06:03 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Monday Digest 9-16-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” –preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America
Constitution Day 2013
Tomorrow, Sept. 17, 2013, marks the 226th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution at the Philadelphia (Constitution) Convention in 1787. The best way to honor the day might be to read it1. It’s up to “We the People” to hold our elected representatives accountable for failing to honor their oaths.
Mark Alexander has an extensive archive of columns on the Constitution2 as it relates to various subjects over the years. Don’t miss it!
Tomorrow is also The Patriot Post’s 17th anniversary. Thanks to you, our readers – and our financial supporters3 – for making what we do possible!
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
The Vote Heard ‘Round the Country
Tuesday, in heated historic Colorado recall elections, two Democrats from heavily Democrat voter districts were fired by their constituents. State Senate President John Morse, representing Colorado Springs, and State Sen. Angela Giron, representing Pueblo, were ousted for supporting an unconstitutional ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds, and expanding background checks to include private sales.
A staple in the Democrats’ political playbook is plucking emotional strings4, particularly with female voters. Seizing the moment after a sociopath killed children in Newtown, Connecticut, and another sociopath murdered patrons in an Aurora, Colorado theater, Morse and Giron led Colorado’s legislative assault on the Second Amendment, building their political platform on the coffins of children5.
In the emotional tide of the moment, those legislative acts passed. But in retrospect, when reason was restored6, a few residents started a grassroots movement to recall Morse and Giron. Democrats estimated that movement wouldn’t amount to much.
They were wrong.
The recall election was seen by some as a proxy vote, and given that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his anti-Second Amendment allies poured money into Colorado to save these Democrats, that’s not an unreasonable view. Bloomberg spent $350,000 personally, and $3 million total was raised to retain Senators Morse and Giron, while only $500,000 was raised to oust them.
The Democrat Party even sent in Bill Clinton at the last minute to bolster support for the Demos.
On the unseating of Morse and Giron, naturally DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz concluded, “The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people. This was voter suppression, pure and simple.”
But the fact that Demos outspent Republicans 6-1 doesn’t amount to a “vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way.”
Two days after the election, Angela Giron, apparently having gotten Wasserman’s memo, claimed on CNN, “We know what really happened here … what this story is really about, it’s about voter suppression.”
That prompted even the liberal CNN anchor, Brooke Baldwin, to respond, “OK, forgive me, but I’m going to cut you off right there. I’ve read reports on lack of popularity on your behalf. Let’s just not go there.” Baldwin then reminded Giron that she and Morse were backed by “mega, mega cash.”
For his part, Colorado’s Demo Gov. John Hickenlooper, sensing a renewed grassroots movement that will unseat him in the next election, said, “You know, I was never as fired up on the magazine checks.” He then changed the subject, saying voters should “refocus again on what unites Coloradans – creating jobs, educating our children, creating a healthier state – and on finding ways to keep Colorado moving forward.”
No doubt he, and many other Democrat legislators across the nation, want to change the subject.
News From the Swamp: IRS Investigation Continues
With Syria sucking up all the media attention in Washington, other stories about the operation of the Obama administration have been reduced to background noise. One such story is the IRS scandal about the targeting of conservative groups for special attention when it came to tax exempt status.
Read more here7.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Agreement Reached on Syria’s Weapons
The U.S. agreed Saturday to Russia’s terms on Syrian chemical weapons, further cementing the disaster that is Barack Obama’s Middle East policy. Under the agreement, Syria has one week to account for its chemical arsenal, while international inspection will take place by November, and the weapons will (supposedly) be destroyed beginning next year. A UN Security Council resolution will provide stern warnings about “consequences” if Syria doesn’t comply. So there.
U.S. policy in Syria – for better or worse – has been regime change for the last couple years. However, once Obama’s “red line” was crossed, the “consequence” was that Bashar al-Assad is now in charge of – and an indispensable part of – Russia’s plan to disarm his own regime. Then again, bombing Assad’s regime on behalf of al-Qaida rebels wasn’t exactly desirable either, so perhaps credit is due to Obama and John Kerry for backing off that threat. By the way, 98% of Syrians dead in this civil war were killed without chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, Assad’s henchmen spent the year since the “red line” comments moving those chemical weapons around to numerous undisclosed locations not only in his own country, but also reportedly back to Iraq8, where at least some of them no doubt came from in the first place. In other words, look for Assad to “cooperate” just enough to postpone any U.S. attack but with enough flexibility to avoid real cooperation. And if the U.S. does strike in response, how will we ensure those weapons don’t end up in the hands of our al-Qaida foes?
ECONOMY
The Financial Collapse Five Years Later
Five years ago today, financial giant Lehman Brothers collapsed, precipitating the crisis of confidence9 in the financial sector and a deepening recession. We’re also four and a half years into the Obama “recovery” that has been anything but. So with all we’ve learned, could history repeat itself10?
Morgan Stanley Chief Executive James Gorman says no: “The probability of it happening again in our lifetime is as close to zero as I could imagine.” But Stanford economics professor Anat Admati says, “Fundamentally not that much has changed. There’s still a lot of risk in the opaque markets that we don’t see, still a lot of leverage that we only discover when it’s too late.”
The chief mechanism for fixing the problem was the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Yet with it’s massive not-yet-completed pile of regulations, it’s bound to fail – or worse. For example, Dodd-Frank established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an Orwellian-named bureaucracy that monitors markets in the name of protecting the little guy. However, the CFPB has become the NSA of the financial world, seeking to mine data on four out of every five consumer credit card transactions11.
Even congressional Democrats are worried that the practice violates not only two specific provisions of Dodd-Frank, but Fourth Amendment rights as well. At last week’s hearing on the subject, Rep. Jeb Hensarling warned that the CFPB “is designed to operate outside the usual system of checks and balances that applies to every other government agency.”
Will this massive apparatus keep 2008 from happening again? Hardly. In fact, big government helped create the panic in the first place. |
