Hat Tip: BB
First we (the Tea Party) are Hobbits. Then we are terrorists. Now we are Barbarians at the Gates and the unions, Obama and Biden are calling for open warfare with us. Do you even recognize your government and country any more?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 5, 2011
CONTACT: Levi Russell at [email protected], or (509) 979-6615
Tea Party Express, www.TeaPartyExpress.org, responded today to Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa’s dangerous and irresponsible remarks as he introduced President Barack Obama in Detroit.
Hoffa’s outrageous comments included, “We’ve got to keep an eye on the battle… And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”
Tea Party Express chair Amy Kremer said, “Jimmy Hoffa’s remarks are inexcusable and amount to a call for violence on peaceful tea party members, which include many Teamster members.
“We have called on President Obama to condemn this inappropriate and uncivil rhetoric, which has no place in the public forum. He should chastise Mr. Hoffa, his Vice-President, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Congressman Andre Carson and the other Obama supporters who have been outrageous in their comments.
“This is especially egregious coming from someone who supposedly represents working Americans when we have a President who has not only failed to create jobs, but won’t be holding his own job for much longer.
“Lying attacks on the tea party movement have disturbingly increased in recent days. It is high time that elected leaders like President Obama were held accountable when their key supporters engage in harmful and divisive rhetoric.
“We at Tea Party Express demand an immediate apology from Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa. We further urge President Obama to strongly rebuke Hoffa for his dangerous comments.”
For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Levi Russell at 509-979-6615 or [email protected]
Today we were thrilled to have Governor Sarah Palin speak to a giant audience at the Tea Party Express rally in Manchester. Her positive message spoke of individual responsibility, real-world solutions and confidence in the American people.
At the same time, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was on another stage in Detroit introducing President Obama, where he effectively called for a war on the tea party movement! Hoffa shouted, “We’ve got to keep an eye on the battle that we face — a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party.”
Then, Hoffa looked at President Obama and said, “President Obama, this is your army, we are ready to march…let’s take these sons of bitches out.”
One thing is clear – Obama isn’t listening to the tea party. He isn’t listening to We the People. The only voice he is listening to is that of far-left public employee union lobby groups who fund the campaigns of liberal politicians from contributions forcibly taken from their members.
It is disgusting and shameful that Obama allows this kind of violent rhetoric to continue. Isn’t he the President of ALL Americans? How dare he allow his supporters to “declare war” on American people who are standing up for liberty? The reason President Obama doesn’t put an end to the onslaught of attacks and insults is simple… he agrees with them.
As you can see, it is more important than ever that we keep the Tea Party Express caravan rolling across the country, standing proud for conservative American values and proclaiming liberty.
To union thugs like Jimmy Hoffa we say, we already beat you twice in Wisconsin, and we’ll beat you again in 2012!
If you want us to keep fighting back against the ongoing smears and get these reprehensible characters out of Washington, we need your help! We at the Tea Party Express are on a mission: to repeat the electoral victories of 2010 again in 2012 by taking back the Senate AND the White House from big-government liberals. Our strength comes from YOU, and we need your support to make this mission possible. Just click HERE to contribute!
You can contribute as little as $5 all the way up to the maximum allowed $5,000. And since we’re in a new election cycle, those of you who had previously “maxed out” are once again able to contribute as much as you’d like – all the way up to that $5,000 maximum.
As always, if you prefer, you may also make a contribution via mail, by sending a check to:
Tea Party Express
8795 Folsom Boulevard, Suite 103
Sacramento, CA 95826-3720
By: John C.K. Daly of Oil Price
While NATO members, led by France, piously proclaimed at the onset of their military offensive in Libya that their concerns were solely humanitarian, a covert tussle to gain a commanding lead in developing the country’s energy riches in light of Colonel Gaddafi’s departure is well underway.
The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute about 95 percent of export earnings, 25 percent of GDP, and 80 percent of government revenue.
Prior to the outbreak of conflict, Libya was exporting about 1.3-1.4 million barrels per day from production estimated at roughly 1.79 million barrels per day, of which approximately 280,000 barrels per day were indigenously consumed. But analysts believe that with reconstruction Libya could soon be exporting 1.6 million barrels per day of high-quality, light crude.
But current production is the proverbial mere drop in the bucket. Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa with 42 billion barrels of oil and over 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Causing oil company executives from Houston to Beijing to drool on their Gucci loafers, only 25 percent of Libya’s territory has been explored to date for hydrocarbons.
Libya is already Europe’s single largest oil supplier, the second largest oil producer in Africa and the continent’s fourth largest natural gas supplier and already dominates the Southern Mediterranean’s petroleum sector. According to the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC), more than 50 international oil companies are already present in the Libyan market.
So, peering into Libya’s future, who’s actually ahead?
France, apparently.
On 3 April a letter was allegedly sent by Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) to a coalition partner, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which mentioned that France would take “35 percent of crude oil…in exchange for its total and permanent support” of the NTC. France’s Liberation daily reported on Thursday that it had a copy of the letter, which stated that the NTC’s Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam, would negotiate the deal with France. In 2010 France was the second purchaser of Libyan oil after Italy, with over 15 percent of its “black gold” imported from Tripoli.
Zut alors!
The number one National Transition Council, Moustapha Abdeljalil recently reported that the States would be rewarded” according to support “given to the insurgents.
While NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil has not hidden the fact that the NTC would assign a higher priority for reconstruction and the allocation of oil contracts to countries that supported their uprising, remarking that nations would be rewarded “according to the support” given to the insurgents, the NTC’s UK representative, Guma al-Gamaty, said that future oil contracts would be granted “on the basis of merit, not patronage. The contracts will be concluded in a transparent manner. ”
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe solemnly denied during a radio interview any knowledge of a “formal” or specific deal but brightly added that it would be “logical” for countries like France, which helped the NTC in its struggle against Gaddafi, to take part in reconstruction.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy was the major European advocate for armed intervention in Libya and his administration was the first officially to recognize the NTC as “the sole, legitimate representative of the Libyan people” and the country’s sole governmental authority, as well as lobbying other nations to recognize the NTC.
Seeking a share of “la gloire,” France was also the first state to commence attacks on 19 March against Gaddafi’s armed forces in Benghazi and along with fellow NATO member Britain, have since provided the majority of the military equipment and personnel used during NATO’s operations in Libya. Going into grey areas of international law in its eagerness to oust Gaddafi France also supplied some weaponry to opposition forces in Libya, a move that came under harsh criticism because of the total arms embargo imposed by the UN Security Council on arms deliveries to any side in the conflict.
NTC’s Paris-based envoy Mansour Sayf al-Nasr denied that such a letter had been sent or that any such pledge had been given. But no one was backpedalling more furiously than Information Minister Shammam, who intoned that such an arrangement was unthinkable.
“It’s a joke. It’s false,” Shammam said.
Well, if you cannot believe an Information Minister, who can you trust? Sleazy journalists? It will certainly be interesting to see how the issue plays out in the days ahead, and if France does indeed get it 35 percent cut of the loot, which at present production rates, would average about 500,000 barrels per day.
By: John C.K. Daly of Oil Price
By: Mark Butterworth
Big Hollywood
It took forty years, but I’m finally on a roll. In writing fiction, that is.
Back in 1970, I was an eighteen year old, budding virtuoso on acoustic fingerstyle guitar, the kind of stuff Leo Kottke and John Fahey were doing. I was poor, and figured that in order to develop my music as I desired, I’d need a separate income. I was going to junior college, and fell in love with creative writing. Foolishly (hey, I was young!), I became convinced I could make a good living as a writer, and decided to pursue that parallel to my practice of music.
You can hear some of my music here and watch a few videos here:
Fast forward to 9/11/2001. I’d already caught on to reading early bloggers like Instapundit when the monsters struck the Twin Towers. I was shaken and infuriated to the core, and then discovered I had coronary disease after a heart attack three days later. I recovered with two implanted stents. I was not yet fifty, had yet to make a dime on either my music or prose, and now I was feeling mortal, yet patriotic like never before. So I got on the bandwagon and began blogging as Sunny Days in Heaven, a conservative Catholic blog that attracted 50 or 60 readers on a good day. Never had an Instalanche.
I blogged a few years with diminishing returns, and was going to quit when a start-up, Spero News, asked me to contribute. Just then, a Hollywood promo agency decided that bloggers could help sell a movie, and began inviting them to screenings. Free movies? Sign me up.
The first movie I reviewed was the delightful and fun, Serenity. I predicted it would be a smash hit. That was not to be, alas.
After few years reviewing a hundred or more films annually, 90% that I either disliked or hated, writing negative reviews wore me down, but the thought occurred: I could do better than what I was seeing. The chance of selling a spec script seemed much better than a literary novel. Very few first novels are published any year, and the authors get tiny advances (if at all). But Hollywood buys around 3000 scripts a year for good sums of money even if the stories are never converted to film.
I quickly wrote three (ahem, brilliant) screenplays, and got a brief nibble on one from a budding producer. The fact is, you have to be in LA to sell your stuff, and I couldn’t do that. Too old, too tired, and too unconnected. Late in life I learned you need to make a lot of friends and acquaintances in any business if you hope to succeed. You have to be in the game where the game is played.
The hell with it, then. I couldn’t not write, the juices were flowing, so I started writing funny and serious little novels for a conservative, tradition minded audience in the hope that the Right side of the media might take these things to heart and promote entertainment that encouraged and edified our side of the spectrum.
But there is no Regnery for conservative novelists. Neither National Review nor The New Criterion beats the bushes looking for the next Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. A few Christian agents nibbled on one of my stories. P. J. O’Rourke (peace be upon him) was kind enough to get his editor to read one manuscript (who passed it to his twenty-something asst. who pronounced it “entertaining and well written but I’ll pass”).
I kept writing fiction and pulling my few hairs out. I have to, I must write something commercial that everyone wants to read! That no one can pass on because it’s just too good to ignore.
And it came to me. Dog books do really well. Rescuing Sprite, Marley and Me were mega-hits.
I love dogs. I own dogs. I have two German shepherds. I had another one who died before these two. Okay. A story about my dogs. But what can they do? They just lie around the house. They don’t have adventures apart from the occasional squirrel chase and cat hunt.
Money. The story should involve money. Everyone cares about money. Since the last market crash, I finally bought some gold. What if the story was about dogs and real gold? Bingo! A Man with Three Great German Shepherds . . . and 1000 troy ounces of gold.
Logline: A retired Navy man with three beautifully trained German shepherds flees from Sacramento to Idaho with the IRS after his gold.
And I was off to the races. Agents loved the concept, my blurb and synopsis. But these three passed because their clients had dog books. These ten passed because it’s not an area they usually represent, but this one agent took the bait. He bit. “At last,” he said, “a Christian novelist who’s actually a fine writer first, and not like the Zondervan junk you always see.” We talked about signing a contract.
A week later, he informs me that his colleagues have convinced him that the fine Christian writer he’s been looking for all this time won’t do well in the Christian market. No deal. But but but, I sputtered, “You don’t know what a market will bear until you test it.”
Sorry, Charlie.
The hell with you all. People are selling tens of thousands of ebooks by pricing them for 99 cents. I’ll hit every libertarian, Christian, conservative online e-zine or blog, and every dog loving group in existence and maybe, just maybe, even National Review might sit up, take a gander and notice there are other writers on our side beside Andrew Klaven, Vince Flynn, and Brad Thor.
When folks have decided they love A Man with Three Great German Shepherds, well, I’ve got a catalogue and more good stuff to come.
And if you love dogs, how can you resist this.
Ed. Note: Tomorrow and Wednesday we will run excerpts from “A Man with Three Great German Shepherds”. — JN
By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
At this point on the calendar, the fact of Gov. Sarah Palin’s hesitance to declare a presidential candidacy lends a Gulag Bound instigator more freedom to enthusiastically endorse her message.
No need to write about it…
Thank you, Iowa. Thank you so much. The sign that says, “Thank you, Sarah,” no, I thank you. You are what keeps me going, keeps so many of us going. Your love of country keeps us going. Thank you so much. Iowa, you are good people. You are all good people who are here. Thank you.
It is an honor to be in the Heartland sharing this Labor Day weekend with you. And I thank you so much for the invitation, to these organizers who put so much work into all this. It’s so good to see the O4P and C4P people here today. Last night was fun – getting to run into some of you at that restaurant and to see so many different demographics represented and so many different states all across our great nation. We got to gather together last night – different demographics, different political parties even represented – and Todd reminded me as we walked out of that room, he said, “See, we’re not celebrating ‘red America’ or ‘blue America.’ We’re celebrating red, white, and blue America.”
So, what brought us here today out in this field? Why aren’t we catching a Cyclones game, or watching the Hawkeyes perhaps, or grilling up some venison and corn-on-the-cob, maybe some caribou with some friends on this Labor Day weekend? What brought us together is a love of country. And we see that America is hurting. We’re not willing to just sit back and watch her demise through some “fundamental transformation” of the greatest country on earth. We’re here to stop that transformation and to begin the restoration of the country that we love.
We’re here because America is at a tipping point. America faces a crisis. And it’s not a crisis like perhaps a Midwest summer storm – the kind that moves in and hits hard, but then it moves on. No, this kind will relentlessly rage until we do restore all that is free and good and right about America. It’s not just fear of a double dip recession. And it’s not even the shame of a credit downgrade for the first time in U.S. history. It’s deeper than that. This is a systemic crisis due to failed policies and incompetent leadership. And we’re going to speak truth today. It may be hard-hitting, but we’re going to speak truth today because we need to start talking about what hasn’t worked, and we’re going to start talking about what will work for America. We will talk truth.
Now, some of us saw this day coming. It was three years ago on this very day that I spoke at the GOP Convention where I was honored to be able to accept the nomination for vice president that night. And in my speech I asked America: “When the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away….what exactly is [Barack Obama’s] plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger, and take more of your money, and give you more orders from Washington, and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.” I spoke of this, but back then it was only my words that you had to go by. Now you have seen the proof yourself. Candidate Obama didn’t have a record while he was in office, but President Obama sure does, and that’s why we’re here today.
Candidate Obama pledged to fundamentally transform America. And for all the failures and the broken promises, that’s the one thing he has delivered on. We’ve transformed from a country of hope to one of anxiety. Today, one in five working-age men are out of work. One in seven Americans are on food stamps. Thirty percent of our mortgages are underwater. In parts of Michigan and California, they’re suffering from unemployment numbers that are greater than during the depths of the Great Depression. Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, and instead he turned around and he tripled it. And now our national debt is growing at $3 million a minute. That’s $4.25 billion a day.
President Obama, is this what you call “winning the future”? I call it losing – losing our country and with it the American dream. President Obama, these people – these Americans – feel that “fierce urgency of now.” But do you feel it, sir?
The Tea Party was borne of this urgency. It’s the same sense of urgency that propelled the Sons of Liberty during the Revolution. It’s the same sense of urgency that propelled the Abolitionists before the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th Century. The Tea Party Movement is part of this noble American tradition. This movement isn’t simply a political awakening; it’s an American awakening. And it’s coming from ordinary Americans, not the politicos in the Beltway. No, it’s you who grow our food; you run our small businesses; you teach our children; you fight our wars. We are always proud of America. We love our country in good times and in bad, and we never apologize for America.
That is why the far left’s irresponsible and radical policies awakened a sleeping America so that we finally understood what it was that we were about to lose. We were about to lose the blessings of liberty and prosperity. So, the working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box. And as much as the media wants you to forget this, Tea Party Americans won an electoral victory of historic proportions in November. We the people, we rose up and we rejected the left’s big government agenda. We don’t want it. We can’t afford it. And we are unwilling to pay for it.
That victory, remember friends, was only one step in a long march towards saving our country.
photo Organize4Palin.com
We sent a new class of leaders to D.C., but immediately the permanent political class tried to co-opt them – because the reality is we are governed by a permanent political class, until we change that. They talk endlessly about cutting government spending, and yet they keep spending more. They talk about massive unsustainable debt, and yet they keep incurring more. They spend, they print, they borrow, they spend more, and then they stick us with the bill. Then they pat their own backs, and they claim that they faced and “solved” the debt crisis that they got us in, but when we were humiliated in front of the world with our country’s first credit downgrade, they promptly went on vacation.
No, they don’t feel the same urgency that we do. But why should they? For them business is good; business is very good. Seven of the ten wealthiest counties are suburbs of Washington, D.C. Polls there actually – and usually I say polls, eh, they’re for strippers and cross country skiers – but polls in those parts show that some people there believe that the economy has actually improved. See, there may not be a recession in Georgetown, but there is in the rest of America.
Yeah, the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners – the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70% of the jobs in America, it’s you who own these small businesses, you’re the economic engine, but you don’t grease the wheels of government power.
So, do you want to know why the permanent political class doesn’t really want to cut any spending? Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done? It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed – a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.
It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen this kind of crony capitalism before. It’s is the same good old boy politics-as-usual that I fought and we defeated in my home state. I took on a corrupt and compromised political class and their backroom dealings with Big Oil. And I can tell you from experience that sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power-brokers. So, please you must vet a candidate’s record. You must know their ability to successfully reform and actually fix problems that they’re going to claim that they inherited.
Real reform never sits well with the entrenched special interests, and that’s why the true voices of reform are so quickly demonized. Look what they say about you. You are concerned civilized citizens and look what they say about you. And just look what happened during the debt-ceiling debate. We’d been given warning after warning that our credit rating would be downgraded if politicians didn’t get serious about tackling the debt and deficit problem. But instead of making the real cuts that are necessary, they used Enron-like accounting gimmicks, and they promised that if they were just allowed to spend trillions more today, they’d cut billions ten years from now. By some magical thinking, they figured they could run up trillion dollar deficits year after year, yet still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics that led to the downgrade. Well, they got a rude awakening from the rest of the world, and that’s that even America isn’t “too big to fail.”
When we finally did get slapped with that inevitable downgraded, the politicians and the pundits turned around and blamed us – independent commonsense conservatives. We got blamed! They called us un-American and terrorists and suicide bombers and…hobbits…couldn’t understand that one.
And what is the President’s answer to this enormous debt problem? It’s just spend more money. Only you can’t call it “spending” now. Now you got to call it “investing.” Don’t call it “spending.” Call it “investing.” It’s kind of like what happens with FEMA and some of these other bureaucratic agencies that don’t really want to refer to our centralized federal government as “government.” Now it’s called the “federal family.” Am I too old to ask to be emancipated? Never thought I’d say it, but I want a divorce.
No, the President’s answer to our debt problem is: Incur more debt. Spend more money (only call it “investing”). Make more folks even more reliant on government to supply their every need. This is the antithesis of the pioneering American spirit that empowered the individual to work, to produce, to be able to thrive and succeed with fulfillment and with pride; and that in turn built our free and hope-filled and proud country.
He wants to “Win The Future” by “investing” more of your hard-earned money in some harebrained ideas like more solar panels and really fast trains. These are things that venture capitalists will tell you are non-starters, yet he wants to do more of them. We’re flat broke, but he thinks these solar panels and really fast trains are going to magically save us. He’s shouting “all aboard Obama’s bullet train to bankruptcy.”
The only future that Barack Obama is trying to win is his own re-election, and he has shown that he’s perfectly willing to mortgage our children’s future to pay for it. And there is proof of this. Just look closely at where all that “green energy” stimulus money is “invested.” See a pattern. The President’s big campaign donors got nice returns for their “investments” in him to the tune of billions of your tax dollars in the form of “green energy” stimulus funds. The technical term for this is “pay-to-play.” Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and “green energy” giveaways, he took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again. Are you going to let them do it all over again? Are you willing to unite to do all we can to not let them do it again so we can save our country?
photo Conservatives4Palin.com
Now to be fair, some GOP candidates also raised mammoth amounts of cash, and we need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their “investments”? We need to know this because our country can’t afford more trillion-dollar “thank you” notes to campaign backers. It is an important question, and it cuts to the heart of our problem. And I speak from experience in confronting the corruption and the crony capitalism since starting out in public office 20 years ago. I’ve been out-spent in my campaigns two to one, three to one, five to one. (And, by the way, I don’t play that game either of hiring expert political advisors just so they’ll say something nice about me on TV – if you ever wonder. You know how that game’s played too I’m sure.) But the reason is simple: It’s because like you, I’m not for sale. It’s because we believe in the free market. I believe in the free market, and that is why I detest crony capitalism. And Barack Obama has shown us cronyism on steroids. It will lead to our downfall if we don’t stop it now. It’s a root that grows our economic problems. Our unsustainable debt and our high unemployment numbers and a housing market that’s in the tank and a stagnant economy – these are all symptoms. Politicians are so focused on the symptoms and not the disease. We will not solve our economic problems until we confront the cronyism of our President and our permanent political class.
So, this is why we must remember that the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country.
Yes, we need sudden and relentless reform, and that will return power to “We the People.” This, of course, requires deeds, not just words. It’s not good enough for politicians to just be throwing our way some vague generalities, talking about some promises here and there. It’s time that we hold them accountable. It is amazing to me that even some good conservatives run away from being honest and straight up with us about what needs to be done. They don’t want to rock the boat. They can’t hurt future election prospects evidently. They just talk vaguely about cuts and then they move on. They’re too busy saying what they think we want to hear, but instead they should be telling us what needs to be said and what needs to be done. So, let us today in this field have that adult conversation about what needs to be done to restore America. Let’s do that now.
In five days time, our President will gift us with yet another speech. In his next speech he’ll reveal his latest new super-duper “jobs plan.” It will have more lofty goals and flowery rhetoric, more illogical economic fantasies and more continued blame and finger-pointing. But listen closely to what he says. All of his “solutions” will revolve around more of the same – more payoffs for his friends and supporters. His “plan” is the same as it’s always been, and that’s grow more government, increase more debt, take and give more of your hard-earned money to special interests. And this is such a problem. But you know what the problems are. We could go on all day about the problems caused by the status quo in Washington. Status quo I think is Latin for “more of the same mess that we’re in.” That status quo won’t work any more. We could go on all day about the problems, but you know them because you live them everyday. So, let’s talk about real solutions. I want to tell you what my plan is. My plan is a bona-fide pro-working man’s plan, and it deals in reality. It deals in the way that the world really works because we must talk about what really works in order to get America back to work.
My plan is about empowerment: empowerment of our states, empowerment of our entrepreneurs, most importantly empowerment of you – our hardworking individuals – because I have faith, I have trust, I have respect for you.
The way forward is no more politics as usual. We must stop expanding an out-of-control and out-of-touch federal government. This is first: All power not specifically delegated to the federal government by our Constitution is reserved for the states and for we the people. So, let’s enforce the 10th Amendment and devolve powers back locally where the Founders intended them to be.
Second, what happened to all those promises about staying committed to repealing the mother of all big government unfunded mandates? We must repeal Obamacare! And rein in burdensome regulations that are a boot on our neck. Get government out of the way. Let the private sector breathe and grow. This will allow the confidence that businesses need in order to expand and hire more people.
Third, no more run away debt. We must prioritize and cut. Cancel unused stimulus funds, and have that come to Jesus moment where we own up to the debt challenge that is entitlement reform. See, the reality is we will have entitlement reform; it’s just a matter of how we’re going to get there. We either do it ourselves or the world’s capital markets are going to shove it down our throats, and we’ll have no choice but to reform our entitlement programs. The status quo is no longer an option. Entitlement reform is our duty now, and it must be done in a way that honors our commitment to our esteemed elders today, while keeping faith with future generations. I don’t think anything has irked me more than this nonsense coming from the White House about maybe not sending our seniors their checks. It’s their money! They have paid into Social Security all of their working lives; and for the President to say, “ah, we may not be able to cut their checks,” ah, well, where did all their money go, politicians? It’s like the Commander-in-Chief being willing to throw our military under the bus by threatening that their paychecks may not arrive. But the politicians will still get their checks and their secure retirements, and he’ll still get his posh vacations. Aren’t you just sick to death of those skewed priorities? It’s all backwards. Our seniors and our brave men and women in uniform being used as pawns – I say it’s shameful, and enough is enough. No more.
Fourth, it is time for America to become the energy superpower. The real stimulus that we’ve been waiting for is robust and responsible domestic energy production. We have the resources. Affordable and secure energy is the key to any thriving economy, and it must be our foundation. So, I would do the opposite of Obama’s manipulation of U.S. supplies of energy. Drill here, drill now. Let the refineries and the pipelines be built. Stop kowtowing to foreign countries and dictators asking them to ramp up production and industry for us, promising them that we’ll be their greatest customer. No, not when we have the resources here. We need to move on tapping our own God-given natural resources. I promise you that this will bring real job growth, not the politicians’ phony “green jobs” fairy dust sprinkled with wishes and glitter… No, a hardcore all-of-the-above energy policy that builds this indestructible link between made-in-America energy and our prosperity and our security. You know, there are enough large conventional natural resource development projects waiting for government approval that could potentially create more than a million high-paying jobs all across the country. And this is true stimulus. It wouldn’t cost government a dime to allow the private sector to do these. In fact, these projects will generate billions of dollars in revenue. Can you imagine that: a stimulus project that actually helps dig us out of debt instead of digging us further into it! And these are good-paying jobs, and I know that from experience. For years my own family was supported (as Todd worked up on the North Slope) by a good energy sector job. America’s economic revival starts with America’s energy revival.
Fifth, we can and we will make America the most attractive country on earth to do business in. Here’s how we’re going to do this. Right now, we have the highest federal corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world. Did you know our rates are higher than China and communist Cuba? This doesn’t generate as much revenue as you would think, though, because many big corporations skirt federal taxes because they have the friends in D.C. who right the rules for the rest of us. This makes us less competitive and restrains our engine of prosperity. Heck, some businesses spend more time trying to figure out how to hide their profits than they do in generating more profits so that they can expand and hire more of us. So, to make America the most attractive and competitive place to do business, to set up shop here and hire people here, to attract capital from all over the globe that will lead to an explosion of growth, instead of chasing industry offshore, I propose to eliminate all federal corporate income tax. And hear me out on this. This is how we create millions of high-paying jobs. This is how we increase opportunity and prosperity for all.
But here’s the best part: To balance out any loss of federal revenue from this tax cut, we eliminate corporate welfare and all the loopholes and we eliminate bailouts. This is how we break the back of crony capitalism because it feeds off corporate welfare, which is just socialism for the very rich. We can change all of that. The message then to job-creating corporations is: We’ll unshackle you from the world’s highest federal corporate income tax rate, but you will stand or fall on your own, just like all the rest of us out on main street.
See, when we empower the job-creators, our economy will soar; Americans will get back to work.
This plan is a first step in a long march towards fundamental restoration of a strong and free market economy. And it represents the kind of real reform that we need. And, folks, it must come from you. It must come from the American people. Real hope is in you. It’s not that hopey-changey “stuff” that we heard about back in 2008. We’ve all learned that. And real hope isn’t in an individual. It’s not in a politician certainly. And that hopey-changey stuff that was put in an individual back when Barack Obama was a candidate – that hopey-changey stuff didn’t create one job in August, did it? That’s the first time that’s happened in the United States since World War II. Real hope comes from you. Real hope comes from realizing that we the people can make the difference. And you don’t need a title to make a difference. We can get this country back on the right track. We can do it by empowering the people and realizing that God has richly blessed this most exceptional nation, and then we do something about that realization.
Don’t wait for the permanent political class to reform anything for you. They won’t. They can’t. They can’t even take responsibility for their own actions. Our credit is downgraded, but it’s not their fault. Our economy’s in turmoil, but it’s not hisfault. It’s the tsunami in Japan or the Middle East uprising. It’s Irene. It’s those doggone ATM machines.
Folks, the truth is Barack Obama is adrift with no plan because his “fundamental transformation” is at odds with everything that made this country great. It doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t make sense. Unbelievably our President declares that he “believes in American Exceptionalism… just as the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.” Well, the path he has us on will make us just as “exceptional” as Greece, alright – with the debt crisis and the stagnation and the unemployment and uprisings and all.
Friends, you are better than that. Our country is better than that. We’ve got to unite. We’ve got to stand together. We can confront the problem and we can achieve lasting reform. And I can tell you from hard-earned experience with bumps and bruises along the way, that the road ahead is not easy. You will be demonized. They’ll mock you. They’ll make things up. They’ll tell you to “go to hell.” But we’ll bite our tongue, we’ll keep it classy, and we won’t respond—as tempting as it is—to anyone who just has such disdain for our free market economy and for individual initiative and responsibility. We won’t say, “No, you go to hell.” No, we won’t say that. You know why we don’t have to say that? Because when we have time-tested truth and logic on our side, we win. And when we refuse to retreat because we know that our children’s future is at stake, we win.
No, the road isn’t easy, but it’s nothing compared to the suffering and sacrifice of those who came before us.
A few weeks ago, after my visit to the Iowa State Fair, I took my daughter Piper and my niece McKinley with us to the World War I Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. And standing in the rain, reading the inscriptions on the Memorial about the honor in one’s dedication to God and country, I thought of all those young patriots who suffered and died so far from home. And revering our vets there with the next generation by my side, there was such clarity – clarity in our calling, patriotic Constitutionalists. We have a duty not just to the living, but also to those who came and died before us and to the generations yet to be born. Our freedom was purchased by millions of men now long-forgotten throughout history who charged the bayonets, and they charged the cannons; they knew they were going to die, but it was worth it for them sacrificing for future generations’ freedom. They’re the ones who prayed in the trenches and suffered in the P.O.W. camps. They gave their lives so that we could be here today.
You and I are blessed to be “born the heirs of freedom.” As President John F. Kennedy said, “We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.” We are the heirs of those who froze with Washington at Valley Forge and who held the line at Gettysburg, who freed the slaves to close a shameful chapter, and who carved a nation out of the wilderness. We are the sons and daughters of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy and raised the flag at Iwo Jima and made America the strongest, the most prosperous, the greatest nation on earth forever in mankind’s history – the greatest, most exceptional nation.
America, we will always endure. We will always come through. We will never give up. We shall endure because we live by that moral strength that we call grace. Because though we’ve often skirted a precipice, a Providential Hand has always guided us to a better future. So, let us seek that Hand once more. Our Ronald Reagan said, “If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, we will be a nation gone under.” Yes, He shed his grace on thee, America! We will not squander what we have been given! We will fight for freedom. We will fight for America. We are at the tipping point. United we must stand. And we shall nobly save, not meanly lose, this last best hope on earth.
So, God bless you, Iowa! God bless the United States of America!
Gulag Note – An interesting account of Gov. Palin’s speech, a personal conversation with her on the evening previous, and discussion with a co-hort about a Palin candidacy: “Palin Shines Through the Rain,” by Natalie Nichols:
In the end, Jelayne Sessler, of Texas Organize 4 Palin, walked away with what she described as an “amazing speech” by the Governor. “In my opinion, it was the platform for her upcoming campaign, as I believe an announcement is imminent.” When compared to those already in the Republican field, Sessler thinks a Palin administration would be “a completely different approach,” adding that Palin is known for “exposing corruption in her own party,” something she believes the other candidates “would not do.”
Ms. Sessler’s blog: PalinDefender.com
In Memoriam
|
|
|
Get your
2nd Amendment
Shirts
over at
Libertas |
|
|
Available at Amazon.com on Kindle and in Paperback.
