Author: Mark Noonan

The Bankrupt States of America

Mark Noonan53 Comments

From USA Today:

…The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books… (emphasis added)

The report goes on to note, among other things, that for Social Security to be solvent we’d need to have $22.2 trillion set aside and earning interest.  Clearly, that is an impossible sum – we don’t have it and we can’t get it, ever.  And that is just Social Security – it doesn’t count the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, the upcoming ObamaCare bill, other entitlements and, of course, all the other bloated, wasteful spending which is built in to our government.  And it entirely leaves aside the amount of debt our State and local governments have accrued.  The bottom line:  the United States is bankrupt.

For now, we’re able to play around with this – pretend, that is, that we’re not bankrupt and that money will be there for everything.  But the reality is there – Paul Ryan is right:  we’re heading for the most predictable financial disaster in human history.  Unless we take charge of our nation and reform our taxing, spending and regulations, we’re doomed to an economic wipe out which will make the Great Depression seem like small potatoes.  If you want to see where we’re heading, look at Greece…and land of riots, bank runs and a government which can’t even pony up for the prescription drugs they promised the people of Greece; and I don’t mean “having trouble paying”…the Greek government simply stopped paying for the drugs.  They are out of money.

We’re probably three to five years away from that point…maybe as many as 7 years if we really go flat out with money-printing and financial gimmicks (which would also be disastrous in terms of rapid inflation and other dislocations).  But unless we fundamentally change how things are done, we’re doomed sooner or later (and I think sooner – the latest data from Europe and China indicates they are in recession and I bet we’ve been in recession for a couple months now, but the data are being fudged…they were being fudged in Europe and, especially, China, too…but you can’t “hide the decline” forever).  This is why November 6th is so crucial – a re-elected Obama, even if he’s set with a fully GOP Congress, simply will not make any move to disturb business as usual.  Even if he’s not able to increase spending the fact that we won’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate will prevent any budget from being passed…and we’ll be saddled with year after year of “continuing resolutions” which lock in place the bonanza of extra spending Reid and Pelosi piled on in 2009.  Obama must go if America is to avoid catastrophe.

Romney, on the other hand, is enough of a business man to know we can’t go on like this – and while he might want to compromise more with the left than we’d like, an increasingly conservative/libertarian Congress will ensure that a lot of really good policies are enacted.  Additionally, the force of circumstances will push Romney and the Congress towards the radical solutions needed.  It won’t do anyone any good getting a good write-up about bi-partisanship in the Washington Post if failure to act responsibly leads to35% unemployment in 2014.  With their backs against the wall, a GOP government has a good chance of doing something worthwhile.

This is serious, good people – we’re in quite a fix and like Obama’s old preacher used to say, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”.  We’ve spent too much for too long while harrying wealth creators with a regressive tax and regulatory system.  It is change it, or die.

 

Gingrich Gets it Right

Mark Noonan165 Comments

From CNN:

“I am not for a narrow victory,” he said. “I am for crushing the left in every single way.”

Gingrich was, of course, Matt’s first choice for nominee – he was my 2nd or 3rd (Santorum was always my first).  For me, Romney was a bit back there in the pack but always with the understanding that the crucial necessity is to ensure that Obama leaves office on January 20th, 2013.

The capstone for getting rid of Obama came, in my view, just recently – when it was revealed that in 1991 he was described as being born in Kenya.  Naturally, the Obamatons leaped to in action when this came out and called it a “mistake”.  But I don’t buy that – I call it a lie, instead.   Here is the key to Obama:  he’ll say or do anything to advance himself.  Back when he was just starting out being from an upper class, white Hawaiian family just didn’t cut enough liberal ice – being a foreign born son of a radical anti-British communist!  Well, that did the trick quite nicely.

From “composite” girlfriends in his autobiography (which, it would seem, millions of liberal pinheads bought but few read) to joining Wright’s racist church, Obama has merely crafted a narrative for himself as best suited his immediate needs.  And the cruelty with which he tosses aside old friends like Wright (say what you will about Wright, but have some sympathy:  for 20 years Obama and Wright were close and then Wright got in the way of the newest narrative, and he had to go) is just another indicator of the wrongness of Obama.

I don’t really know what Obama is up to – he’s up to radical leftism, but with what goal in mind, I don’t know:  I suspect there isn’t one in the traditional, political sense.  All we’re seeing now is yet another narrative, this one designed to get Obama re-elected.  After that, he’ll just go on to the next narrative – whatever makes him continue to rise up the ladder in his own estimation.  The trouble is that we need a President – someone who cares less about himself and more about the United States.  A re-elected Obama will not just pursue stupid, destructive policies, but he’ll also ignore any problem which can’t lead to more glory for Obama – and that is a recipe for national and global catastrophe.

Gingrich sees this – and sees more:  Obama must go, but the left as a whole must be crushed.  Our only task as conservatives, patriots and Americans from now until November 6th is to beat these people.  Because if we don’t, we’re going to pay too high a price for failure.

A Hero Recognized

Mark Noonan54 Comments

From a White House press release:

On May 16, President Barack Obama will award Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr., U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry.

Specialist Sabo will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions in combat on May 10, 1970, while serving as a rifleman in Company D, 3d Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division in Se San, Cambodia.

On that day, when he and his platoon were ambushed by a large enemy force, Specialist Sabo immediately charged the enemy position, killing several enemy soldiers.  He then assaulted an enemy flanking force, successfully drawing their fire away from friendly soldiers and ultimately forcing the enemy to retreat.  While securing a re-supply of ammunition, an enemy grenade landed nearby.  Specialist Sabo picked it up, threw it, and shielded a wounded comrade with his own body – absorbing the brunt of the blast and saving his comrade’s life.  Although wounded by the grenade blast, he continued to charge the enemy’s bunker.  After receiving several serious wounds from automatic weapons fire, he crawled towards the enemy emplacement and, when in position, threw a grenade into the bunker.  The resulting explosion silenced the enemy fire, but also ended Specialist Sabo’s life.  His indomitable courage and complete disregard for his own safety saved the lives of many of his platoon members.

Specialist Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown and his brother, George Sabo, will join the President at the White House to commemorate his example of selfless service and sacrifice.

We are a nation as long as we can find men like Sabo among us.

The Easiest Prediction in the World: That Liberals Will Fail

Mark Noonan55 Comments

First off, a blast from the past – January 1st, 2011:

…the Californians wanted it. People get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. California is America’s Greece and when the collapse hits, hopefully a majority will wake up to the fact that liberalism is a failure.

And, now – from the New York Times:

The state budget shortfall in California has increased dramatically in the last six months, forcing state officials to assemble a series of new spending cuts that are likely to mean further reductions to schools, health care and other social programs already battered by nearly five years of budget retrenchment, state officials announced on Saturday.

Gov. Jerry Brown, disclosing the development in a video posted on YouTube, said that California’s shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it…

Given that this is the New Y0rk Times, you do have to be careful – the budget shortfall didn’t “increase dramatically”; it was built in.  When Jerry and the liberals of the California legislature passed their budget they made a whole bunch of absurd assumptions both as to revenues and expenditures…that they would be, respectively, much higher and much lower than what has actually happened.  Any real analyst would have predicted this right from the start –  or, even, just a moderately informed amateur, like me.

The key to understanding what is wrong with America is to understand three things:

1.  We spend too much money via government.

2.  Our debt is too large to be managed given our current ability to create wealth.

3.  Our ability to create wealth is hampered endlessly by the tax and regulatory system.

All three of these problems are liberal-created problems:  it is liberals who want to spend too much (yes, plenty of Republicans join in, but liberals always lead the way…as is shown by the fact that they increased federal spending by a trillion per year since Obama took office).  Because we spend too much, we end up borrowing too much – and now our debt (federal, State and local) is so large that, given our current base of wealth, it simply cannot be repaid (when you factor in the un-funded mandates).  Our only way out of this mess is to cut spending and grow wealth – but we can’t grow wealth effectively because liberals have erected a positively Byzantine tax and regulatory system which rewards failure and punishes effort and success.

Liberalism must go if America is to survive.  Remember this as we approach November.

 

 

 

The Crusades, Reconsidered

Mark Noonan44 Comments

From an excerpt of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Tyranny of Cliches’:

…Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all. “The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineff ectual re­sponse to the jihad—a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language).  Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The cru­sades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”…

You can, of course, bring up some bad things which happened during the Crusades – most notably the massacre of the both the Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem when the Christians took the city in 1099 as well as Richard the Lionheart’s massacre of 2,700 Muslims at Acre during the Third Crusade.  Bad things.  Should not have been done.  No decent person in 2012 would ever contemplate doing any such thing.  But, by the standards of 11th and 12th century warfare, not at all remarkable.  And any Muslim who wants to whine about it is directed to what Muslims did when they took Constantinople in 1453…many centuries later, when we were all supposed to be much more civilized.

So, I leave aside such complaints – war is always nasty and the hard men of the 11th and 12th centuries, on both sides, did many a cruel act.  But the main facts cannot be disputed:  the Crusades were a counter-attack.  The Muslim attack upon Christianity began, entirely unprovoked, in 634 when some rapacious Muslim barbarians from the Arabian peninsula launched what was at first no more than a large scale plunder raid in to Christian Syria.  Quickly noticing how weak the Christian forces were (the Christian government of the area – the Byzantine Empire – was greatly weakened by a recently concluded, 20 year long war with Persia), the Muslims just poured in to a military vacuum.  For centuries thereafter, Muslim armies conquered Christian lands, massacred and enslaved Christians, treated Christians like dirt when they didn’t murder or enslave them and generally acted like pirates.  Europe was weak from the 7th to the 10th century as the new, Christian civilization developed upon the debris of the old Greco-Roman civilization…and that build up was hampered by the “barbarian wars” which absorbed the energy of Europe often over a period of centuries.  Because of this, the Christians could do no more than hold on…once Europe recovered a bit, there was a chance to push back…and it wasn’t just a push in to the middle east (though that was by far the more famous part), but also a push against the Muslims in Spain.

The only thing bad about the Crusades was that they ultimately failed – they did not extirpate the Mohammedan heresy.  And it is high time that people started to learn the truth about the Crusades.

The Results of Race Baiting

Mark Noonan68 Comments

From Bob Owens over at Pajamas Media:

The assaults on a pair of Virginian-Pilot reporters in Norfolk, VA, two weeks ago at the hands of 30 black youths, reported for the first time Tuesday, are the latest in a series of attacks driven by a warped sense of racial vigilantism hiding behind calls of “Justice for Trayvon.” At least 15 mostly isolated whites have been beaten not just with fists, but with potentially deadly weapons including hammers and lengths of chain. Many of the victims have been hospitalized, some may never fully recover, and one lingers on the verge of death.

David Forster and Marjon Rostami are just the latest victims of brutal beatings tied to the Trayvon Martin shooting, and some Virginians are outraged that the newspaper did not report the attack for “politically correct reasons.” The attack was revealed not as news, but in an opinion piece…

While none of us – not a single person who has spoken or written about the Martin case – knows all the facts, the evidence we do have clearly goes against the narrative which was created about the case:  the accusation that Zimmerman stalked and killed Martin because Martin was black.  That is clearly false.  Whether or not Zimmerman is guilty of a crime remains to be seen – that will be decided by a trial.  But in spite of the easily ascertainable facts showing that whatever else happened, the shooting was not racially motivated, we still got a story of racial motivation.  How?  My theory from just a few days after the case came to national attention was “grandstanding lawyers”.

Continue reading →

The Ryan Budget and Catholic Social Teaching

Mark Noonan42 Comments

The American Catholic has an excellent round of commentary on the Ryan budget and the ensuing debate carried out on the question, “is the Ryan budget in accordance with Catholic social teaching, or not?”.  While this might seem an arcane debate for only Catholics to engage, the fact is that the debate is ultimately about what sort of America we will have.

There are two words everyone has to familiarize themselves with:

1.  Subsidiarity.

2.  Solidarity.

In a nutshell, “subsidiarity” is the Catholic teaching that all decisions should be made as far as possible at the lowest level.  This covers all sorts of decisions – political, economic and religious.  While the higher authorities play a vital role, their role is rather one of support and instruction rather than mixing in the day to day activities of life.  It is for you and me, dear reader, to take care of the poor in our midst – just as it is our duty to work and earn our own living; it is for the federal government to assist us in this – mostly by ensuring law and order, the execution of justice and our common defense against outside enemies; but, also, at times by directly aiding us when our own good, solid efforts are insufficient to secure what is necessary for the liberty, safety and dignity of ourselves and our fellows.

And that leads us in to “solidarity” – none of us is an island; we are not a law unto our selves.  We are part of a group and while we have absolute rights vis a vis the group, we also have absolute responsibilities to the group.  We do, indeed, have a right to our property and the fruits of our labor – but we also have a duty to ensure that our neighbor does not lack the necessities.

Liberals tend to concentrate on the “solidarity” aspect and use it as a justification for the welfare State.  Libertarians tend to concentrate on “subsidiarity” and use it as a justification for government so small as to be incapable of doing the genuine tasks of government (especially in terms of ensuring justice and the defense of the nation).  Paul Ryan’s plan is a judicious mix of subsidiarity and solidarity – as it should be, because while the laws of God are absolute, the actions of human beings within the parameters of those laws are subject to many varying pressures and needs and thus prudential judgement is needed in each particular instance in figuring out what is best.  Neither libertarianism nor statism is the answer – in some cases the State must take a strong stand, in others the State must butt out…in most cases it has to be a little of both.

Ryan is being furiously attacked, especially by liberal Catholics who see in the Ryan budget the moral justification for dismantling the welfare State.  They are attacking Ryan’s plan because they say it will harm the poor – but the fact is the plan wouldn’t do anything of the sort; it would, though, harm the vested interests of the welfare State who do little for the poor, but seem to make quite a lot of money ostensibly caring about the poor.  But do have a care – if Ryan’s budget is ever passed (say in January, 2013 and then signed in to law by President Romney) then the attacks will start to come from the other side – libertarians who will be upset that the State refuses to become morally neutral and still seeks to have a role in American affairs.

While Ryan’s plan has a great deal of Catholicism in it (no surprise given Ryan’s Catholicism), it really brings up and clarifies the real debate – super welfare State, libertarian anarchy, or a well reasoned approach which understands that things don’t resolve themselves in perfect, little boxes?  The whole of the American experiment – our whole Constitutional order (currently hibernating) –  is based upon the Founders’ realization that (a) no one has all the answers and (b) a wise system will leave great latitude for individual and local action while still retaining a government strong enough to act forcefully when necessary.

We’ll see how it comes out – but Ryan has earned the gratitude of all Americans who wish to see the Founders’ vision restored to America.

 

 

100k Wounded Warrior Bike Ride

Mark Noonan51 Comments

From Everything Lubbock:

The president is hosting the 100k Wounded Warrior Bike Ride, a ride dedicated to military members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Riding with veterans who have overcome an injury is not only an honor it is a huge inspiration,” President George W. Bush said.

For the second day in a row the former president and his team of wounded warriors dressed down, geared up, and rode across the Palo Duro Canyon today.

All 19 warriors served under the former president and today all 20 of them worked side by side to make it through the trail.

“There are some places where it is very steep and a group of people will wait for me to get there and sort of push me up a hill,” warrior Dan Gade said.

Sergeant Major Chris Self said wounded warriors are proof that obstacles should never stand in your way…

These are the best of the best and President Bush hasn’t forgotten them.  Neither should the rest of us.   Go here if you’d like to help out a Wounded Warrior.

Obama’s Stimulus: Nothing but a Democrat Slush Fund

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Just in case any of you out there ever thought that Obama and his Democrats actually cared about America – from Breitbart:

In their explosive new book Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, Grover Norquist and John Lott, Jr. uncover a startling fact: heavily Democratic states with lower poverty rates, lower unemployment rates, lower bankruptcy rates, and lower foreclosure rates received most of President Barack Obama’s $825 billion Stimulus.

Put another way, Stimulus money went to precisely the states that needed it the least but were more politically connected to the Democratic Party….

You think that any Democrat leader out there believes that the money of the American people should be fairly distributed among those who need it most?  Oh, come on – if that were the case, the local Catholic Charities here in Las Vegas would have plenty of food to feed the homeless.  But, where is the upside in that for our Democrat wheeler-dealers?  Who gets paid when a bum gets fed?  For crying out loud, next you’ll be wanting to spend some “shovel ready” money to actually fix up distressed neighborhoods rather than having it spent on some more Solyndras!

There is a vile odor about the United States these days – something has gone horribly wrong.  Not just with Obama, of course – he’s just the tail-end-Charlie of a long, hideous string of events.  The capstone of a oozing pile of lies, swindles, hatreds and fears which have been used to extract power and wealth from the American people and transfer it to leeches and tin-plated tyrants.  And don’t get me wrong, here – there are plenty who claim to be Republican who are very much part of the problem.  But it is the left and its captive Democrat party which had led the way to degradation and which has nearly wrecked this nation.

We’ve really got to work hard for the rest of the year, folks – if you think things have been bad since 2009, just wait until a re-elected Obama gets to be flexible about things in 2013.

The TEA Party Lives!

Mark Noonan121 Comments

Reports of the death of the TEA Party are greatly exaggerated – from Slate:

The Tea Party movement is alive in Utah. With representatives from FreedomWorks in the audience, delegates at the Utah Republican Convention managed to force Sen. Orrin Hatch into a June 26 primary. He got 59.2 percent of their votes against Dan Liljenquist, a 38-year-old state senator. Hatch needed 60 percent to avoid the primary. He couldn’t do it. In two rounds of voting, he went from 2,243 votes to 2,313 votes. If he’d gotten 32 more votes, he would have wrapped this up…

Nothing against Hatch – in fact, I’ve met him and he’s intelligent, well informed and a complete gentleman…but he’s also been in DC for a loooong time and he has, at times, “worked across the aisle” which means, really, nothing more than helping liberal Democrats destroy our nation, piece by piece.  Hatch saw what happened to Bennett in 2010 and so has both shifted right as well as worked his GOP base in anticipation of this – but the fact that he couldn’t wrap it up shows (a) that he’s still mistrusted as a DC insider and (b) that he’ll have to fight hard to retain his seat.

The bottom line is that the Second American Revolution continues – we, the people, are not just going sit there and take it.  Hatch is likely to win the GOP primary – but what happened to him will both make a better Senator out of him, as well as show all GOPers in DC that they’d better darn well do the work of the people, not the work of the Ruling Class.