The Patriot Post Digest 1-29-2014

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-29-2014
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jan. 29, 2014

THE FOUNDATION

“A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.” –Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Editor’s Note

If you’re like most Americans, you didn’t sit through another round of Obama’s statist State of the Union rhetoric. So Mark Alexander did the dirty work for you. Don’t miss his succinct analysis of the more egregious deceptions from the teleprompters – 2014 SOTU: The MO BO Show1.

TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS

SOTU Quick Hits

Here are a couple of teasers to kick things off. Barack Obama said last night, “I’m committed to making Washington work better, and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.” (This from a proven – and pathological – liar, the most disingenuous executive branch occupant in our nation’s history.) He also said, “Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do. … Citizenship means standing up for the lives that gun violence steals from us each day. … I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress …” (This was a thinly veiled threat to use executive orders to overstep the Second Amendment proscription on government interference with “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”)

The Narcissist’s SOTU

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” Case in point, last night’s State of the Union address was all about one person: Barack Obama. The narcissist in chief referred to himself a whopping 74 times during the speech (“I” x 50, “my” x 11, “me” x 11,“ and "as president” twice). Obama’s inability to shove his entire agenda through Congress has only elevated his plan of ruling by executive decree when he can’t get his way – a governing more reminiscent of a king or a dictator. Some “man of the people.”

State of Disunion

Just in time for last night’s State of the Union address, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that the “union” isn’t so unified. A whopping 71% of Americans aren’t satisfied with the economy, though this isn’t surprising given the sorry state of Obama’s “recovery.” Only 31% think the country is better off than when Obama took office in 2009, and just 28% think we’re headed in the right direction. It’s going to take a lot more than a teleprompted speech to fix all of that.

Pelosi on GOP Opposition

Nancy Pelosi registered her complaint about how mean Republicans are to dare to oppose Barack Obama’s leftist agenda. She swears that such opposition is new and different: “We did not treat President Bush this way,” she said. “We thought we had a responsibility to work with the president to get a job done for the American people and we did. This obstruction to President Obama is something quite stunning. It’s something quite different.” It’s laughable to think that Democrats treated Bush with anything approaching respect, but what’s also “quite different” is just how far Left Democrats have taken us.

Coburn Loses Doctor

Sen. Tom Coburn, who is retiring at the end of his term this year, signed up for ObamaCare to show that he’s not exempting himself from a law forced on the rest of us. However, the change means that he lost his oncologist while he’s fighting cancer. Coburn remains upbeat, saying, “I’m doing well from a health standpoint, got great docs. Fortunately – even though my new coverage won’t cover my specialist – I’m going to have great care and I have a great prognosis.” That’s because he’s going to pay out of pocket to keep the doctor he likes. Once again, so much for Obama’s promises.

For more, visit Right Hooks2.

RIGHT ANALYSIS
Plowing the Farm Bill

Lost in the arguments over the budget and debt ceiling in the last few months was another disagreement over the fate of a wide-ranging 959-page farm bill formally called the Agriculture Act of 2014. At one time House Republicans crowed about two major accomplishments in reauthorizing the spending: a separation of the actual farming portion of the bill from food stamps that account for the bulk of the spending, and then cutting $40 billion from food stamps over a 10-year period. The federal food stamp program is known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

But yet again we’re not surprised that House negotiators wimped out when push came to shove. The bills were reunited in conference, thereby making the food stamp program, which is rapidly becoming a staple of middle-class life for working-age Americans3, the largest part of the farm bill for years to come. They also ratcheted down the promised $4 billion in annual spending-growth cuts to a paltry $800 million. Moreover, while the House successfully ended the $5 billion direct payment program, they didn’t eliminate other subsidies, including a sugar subsidy that, for one thing, has driven a significant portion of our candy manufacturing to other countries. All told, the new farm bill reduces spending growth by a paltry $1.6 billion annually – a total that could easily be wiped out if a modest additional increase in SNAP occurs.

While reversing the trend toward making farmers wards of the government by eliminating all risk was perhaps too lofty of a goal – one farm-state Republicans reject outright anyway – the modest cuts4 announced by the House Agriculture Committee are little more than a rounding error in overall spending while maintaining an unsustainable status quo.

As agribusiness has consolidated from a patchwork quilt of more than six million mainly small family farms during the Great Depression to a far smaller segment of the population, the goal of farm subsidies has evolved from helping to feed the family and having a little left over to sell to making millions from government assistance. The “farm” portion of the bill is now little more than corporate welfare that artificially props up the price of food. And then we use food stamps to pay consumers to buy the food. That way Democrats and Republicans both get all the pork they want. No wonder costs are exploding.