Why Gridlock is a Good Thing May 29, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.Tags: checks and balances, Dr. Robert Owens, gridlock, Progressive agenda, progressive republicans, Progressives, separation of powers
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Gridlock is one of the greatest blessings bestowed upon us by the Framers. It is a natural result of the checks and balances built into the system to stop any temporary majority from fundamentally changing the country. If it wasn’t for the checks and balances FDR would have completely socialized the country back in the 1930s. If it wasn’t for them now BHO would simply impose his agenda on us. Wait a minute I think he is.
Living as the occupants of an occupied nation those of us who believe limited government, personal freedom, and economic liberty are good things have to face up to the fact that a cadre of political savants who advocate for the collectivization of the American experiment have maneuvered their way into the halls of power. They have captured the media, the unions, Hollywood, and a large segment of education. The elections have been gerrymandered into a parody of democracy. Political Correctness dries up free speech and affirmative action uses racial quotas and discrimination while saying they are doing it to increase integration.
It takes a conspiracy theory wrapped in a spiral of silence to pretend the foregoing isn’t true. Every day the regime is bent on fundamentally changing this country from a representative republic founded upon respect for the laws of nature and of nature’s God into a centrally-planned social safety net. Our education system spends more money per capita than any other, and instead of academic superstars we produce illiterate whiners with high self-esteem.
The borders are open to a mass migration from the third world. Free trade has gutted our industrial base. Our foreign policy is in tatters as the conquerors of the republic allow our ambassadors to be murdered, our citizens to be unfairly imprisoned, and our national interests to be sacrificed for hidden goals and secret agendas.
America the beautiful where have you gone? From sea to shining sea your people watch as the alabaster cities rot into bankrupt hulks where socialism has failed. At the same time those who exemplify and lead the destruction of the once proud land of the free and home of the brave point to the very instrument which provided the opportunity for humanity to excel in the bright sunshine of freedom.
Seeing gridlock not as a brake upon the ambitions of temporary ruling factions to establish themselves as permanent oligarchies, President Obama attacks the structure of government as created by the Framers of the Constitution.
One of the greatest mistakes ever foisted upon this country by the progressives was the passing of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. This change to the Constitution was pushed through in the early days of the 20th century finally becoming law in 1913. This amendment took the election of U. S. Senators away from the state legislatures and made them part of the march towards democracy that has always been a hallmark of the progressive movement.
Before the 17th Amendment the Senators had acted as the representatives of the States preserving the federal nature of our government. Since its passage the various states must hire lobbyists to represent them in Washington as if they were just another interest group. This has given us the best government money can buy and left the States at the mercy of a central bureaucracy on steroids.
Now President Obama, as the leader and spokesman of our Progressive masters is railing against the fact that every state has two senators. In his political cradle the paragon of party politics, Chicago Mr. Obama described to a small group of wealthy supporters several hurdles to keeping Democrats in control of the Senate and possibly recapturing the House. One of those hurdles, according to the President, is that each state regardless of its population has two Senate seats. Or as Mr. Obama said, “Obviously, the nature of the Senate means that California has the same number of Senate seats as Wyoming. That puts us at a disadvantage.”
The President noted that the congregation of Democrat voters in big cities gives Republicans an advantage in rural states affecting both the elections for the House and the Senate. Of course it is those very concentrations and the massive political machines’ support that allow the democrat Party to control so many States and their electoral votes. In essence what Mr. Obama is complaining about is that while Democrat control of big city machines has perhaps locked up the electoral keys to the White House they are not able to translate that into a lock on the legislative side for a true one party state.
If you will remember the last time they were able to pull off this hat trick (2008-2010) they shoved Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or as it is also known as, the Federal Reserve Empowerment Law down our throats. This has socialized one sixth of our economy, has entrenched crony capitalism, and enshrined too-big-to-fail.
The Progressives from the Ivory Tower to the White House have worked tirelessly for over 100 years to change the iron-clad guarantees of the Constitution into a Living Document that is as firm as Jell-O and as clear as mud. They want a one party state and a unified centralized government to efficiently complete their transformation. It is in the interests of all lovers of liberty to vote for divided government so that we can bask in the light of gridlock. For when the lawyers in Washington and the bureaucratic minions aren’t able to do anything maybe we will have a chance to do something.
The biggest hurdle we have in maintaining the safety of gridlock is that the Progressives have captured the leadership of both major parties. They have also rigged elections in such a way as to almost eliminate the possibility for a minor party to win. Using our ballots strategically we must find ways to keep the Progressives from gaining one more shot at one party rule. We must maintain some breathing room so that freedom doesn’t suffocate.
Why is gridlock a good thing? Because it might be our last chance to get something done.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Why Liberty Dies May 15, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, EPA, federal bureaucracy, IRS, liberty, Obama agenda, Progressive agenda
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To understand why liberty is imperiled in our country today we must first state clearly and unequivocally what is liberty. Then and only then can we understand what is necessary for its preservation as well as see what is undermining it today. Liberty is the absence of coercion and the freedom to act upon your own will within the perimeters of not infringing the freedom of action of others. The only way that has been found among the societies of man to ensure, promote and protect liberty is through the rule of law.
The rule of law means that government is not allowed to coerce an individual except through the enforcement of a previously known and explicitly stated principle of limited government. This principle places a limit upon the power of government to legislate by calling into question what sorts of laws are legitimate and which is not. This looks beyond individual statutes to the very nature of legislation itself. This differs markedly with the modern notion of the rule of law that holds as long as all the actions of a government comply with the law it is meeting the standard. It is well to remember that under this definition both the Nazis and the Soviets operated under the rule of law.
This modern definition is actually an oxymoron. If a government passes a law which says that it can do whatever it wants than everything it does is legal. Hitler passed the Enabling Act and accomplished this in one fell swoop.
Because the rule of law is an absolute limitation on all legislation it cannot be a law of the same order as that passed by a legislature. No Legislator can effectively limit himself through legislation since he can always amend that legislation at a later date. Constitutions can make the infringement of pre-decided basic principles more difficult; however, as we have seen in our own Progressive land of the Living Document limitations can be re-defined away through courts and tradition.
The rule of law can only prevail where its basic principles are an organic part of the culture of the people. They must be part of the commonly held beliefs and standards of a majority of the people or they will be jettisoned as soon as they restrain that majority from following the path of least resistance and living as they believe they should. For if the rule of law is the common belief it will be followed closely and guarded jealously. If it is seen as impractical or as an impediment to life as the majority wish to live it, it will be soon rejected and replaced. Such a society will gladly embrace tyranny and arbitrary rule as long as they are convinced that they can now live as they want to live.
In our nation we have built a rather impressive framework to restrain the government: our Constitution. Though it has been interpreted into meaninglessness in many ways it is still given lip service and is still the penultimate law of the land. However there is one glaring hole that is currently being exploited to make an end-run around its remaining provisions: the rise of the Federal Bureaucracy.
We have gone to great lengths to limit what powers the elected officials of our government possess and left open the door for appointed officials to run rough shod over our lives. The legislature passes vague thousand page laws and then the bureaucrats interpret them any way they desire with little or no oversight. Elected officials, even the perpetually re-elected gerrymandered creatures of today come and go. The bureaucracy lives forever. When the elected officials cannot find the power to impose the Progressive agenda they do it through the bureaucrats they have appointed.
When they couldn’t pass Cap-N-Trade, they imposed it through the EPA. When they can’t pass gun restrictions they have their bureaucrats buy up all the ammunition and make it almost impossible for the people to obtain any. When they can’t pass amnesty they impose it through regulations and edicts. The control of private land is taken through wet lands regulations. Between the out of control legislators-for-life and their appointed regulators we are told to do everything from what kind of light bulbs to buy to how many gallons we can use to flush a toilet.
Liberty is being eaten away inch by inch and day by day, legislated, and regulated into oblivion. When our government can’t pass laws or impose regulations they will utilize the IRS, the NSA or anyone of a hundred of their alphabet agencies to spy on us or intimidate us into silence. Common Core is coming for the kids. Amnesty is coming for the jobs. Political Correctness is coming for free speech.
Unless patriots stand-up the country will fall. It will still be called the United States of America. People will still say the pledge of Allegiance. They will still sing the national anthem and salute the flag but will it be the same country that our forefathers fought and died for? Will it still be the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or will it be something else: a place where the rule of law once protected its citizens from the rule of men until the laws of men overwhelmed the laws of nature and of nature’s God?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau one those who inspired the Framers of the Constitution reminded us, “Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
Barry Goldwater said, “Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”
The enemies of freedom also speak of liberty. Vladimir Lenin said, “It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.”
Benito Mussolini said, “The truth is that men are tired of liberty.
The controllers of men may try to use the language of liberty to subvert liberty however, the God given spirit of man shall always strive to become what God meant for us to be, free people in a free world.”
Norman Vincent Peale said, “Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America’s problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.”
Winston Churchill told us, “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
And every school child should know that Patrick Henry famously said, “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
Why does liberty die? Because the people allow it.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Why Do They Lie to Us? May 8, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.Tags: Benghazi scandal, Clinton Scandal Benghazi, Dr. Robert Owens, Government lies, IRS scandal, mainstream media bias, Obama cover-up, Obama’s lies, Obama’s scandals, unemployment figures, unemployment rate
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When faced with the highest levels of unemployment in American History why does the government trumpet a falling unemployment rate? In the face of overwhelming evidence of ineptness at best in Benghazi why do our hacks and their flacks insult us with answers like, “Dude this was two years ago!” With the obvious politicization of the IRS why does the president tell us there isn’t even a smidgen of corruption in the IRS while professional bureaucrats who really run this country take the 5th, stonewall, and lie?
The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media regales us with oxymoronic statements such as, “Despite the unemployment rate plummeting, more than 92 million Americans remain out of the labor force.” The Great Recession grinds on in the lives of everyday working people while our leaders talk about a recovery that only benefits them and their cronies.
The shoes in the Benghazi scandal continue to drop finally reaching the point where go-along to get-along John Boehner has agreed to allow the House to vote on the establishment of a select Committee so that this long simmering embarrassment can hopefully come to the truth. But then again, “What difference at this point does it make?”
Article 2 section 1 of the Articles of Impeachment filed against President Nixon was about the abuse of power. It stated, “He has, acting personally and through his subordinated and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”
Now 40 years later, under the Obama regime, the taxman cometh. When massive harassment of conservative groups by the IRS came to lightas reported in The Daily Caller (DC) we were told:
- Progressives were targeted, too
For months, Democrats and the media relied on the talking point that progressive groups also ended up on an IRS “Be on the Lookout” list while the agency was auditing and seizing information from conservative groups. But as TheDC reported, IRS agents testified before the House oversight committee that the IRS scrutinized ACORN groups because it thought they were old groups applying as new ones; the group Emerge America was scrutinized for potential “improper private benefit;” and no evidence exists to prove that the IRS targeted any Occupy Wall Street group.
“Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word ‘progressive,’ all of which were then approved by the IRS… [T]here is simply no evidence that any liberal or progressive group received enhanced scrutiny because its application reflected the organization’s political views,” according to an oversight committee staff report.
- No White House involvement
“Not necessarily the White House” was the phrase that some Democratic “strategist” used when attacking one of our Daily Caller stories on cable television last year. He meant that while the IRS may have been corrupt to its very Washington core, President Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett have not yet been photographed sifting through tea party applications at a desk in the Lincoln Bedroom.
But we do know, however, courtesy of The Daily Caller’s reporting, that Lerner exchanged confidential taxpayer information on conservative groups with White House officials including White House health-policy adviser Ellen Montz and Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy Jeanne Lambrew, who just happened to be the most powerful official on Obamacare implementation within the White House.
- A couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati
Ah, yes. The “WKRP in Cincinnati” Theory of 2013. You know the episode where the wacky characters in the Cincinnati office make a little “whoops” and take it upon themselves to target conservatives nationwide? A team of reporters from The New York Times, including dreamboat Nicholas Confessore, even went to bat for the administration on this theory last year, publishing a disgraceful article about Ohio-based “confusion” and “staff troubles” among “Low-level employees in what many in the I.R.S. consider a backwater.”
But at least five different offices ranging from Chicago to Laguna Niguel, CA. were engaging in this kind of “confusion,” and the whole excuse got torn down like Riverside Stadium. A Cincinatti-based IRS official said that Washington “was basically throwing us under the bus.” The bus to the world-renowned American Sign Museum.
- Lerner can still cite the Fifth Amendment
That’s what her lawyer, Bill Taylor, wrote in a recent letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, calling a possible contempt vote “un-American.” But it’s just not true. Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privilege when she made a statement attesting to her innocence at a May 2013 oversight hearing. The oversight committee and U.S. House counsel both determined as much.
- It could take years for the IRS to get all of Lerner’s emails
That’s what new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who has been threatened with contempt himself, told oversight investigators. But the independent group Judicial Watch managed to obtain emails showing Lerner coordinating with the Department of Justice to potentially prosecute conservative activists. It only took Judicial Watch one Freedom of Information Act request to get that stuff. “Now I see why the IRS is scared to give up the rest of Lois Lerner’s emails,” said oversight member Rep. Jim Jordan.
- Don’t worry, federal government investigators are on top of things
Eric Holder’s Department of Justice tapped an Obama political donor to head its investigation. FBI investigators went months without contacting the conservative groups that were victimized by the IRS targeting, and leaked to the press that no criminal charges would be filed in relation to the case before much of the relevant information we currently have even came out.
The Obama administration’s investigation of the scandal was such a joke that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte accused Obama and Holder of “undermining” investigators on multiple occasions, and joined with other House GOP leaders in calling for a special counsel to prosecute the case.
But if the investigation was a joke, here’s the punchline: The Justice Department has been the only investigative body to ask Lois Lerner any questions, at an off-the-record “Q+A” that was not under oath.
- Only tea party groups were targeted
Good for the IRS for taking a firm stand against all those wacky tea party groups popping up out in Palookaville trying to exercise their little “First Amendment rights.” Bunch of Koch-funded rednecks.
But oh wait: The IRS also audited the Leadership Institute, founded by Morton C. Blackwell, which has been one of the Washington area’s foremost conservative activist training organizations since 1979, even demanding personal information about the institute’s college-aged interns. Oh yeah, and the IRS also told a pro-life group “you can’t force your religion” and tried to stop pro-life activists from picketing Planned Parenthood clinics.
- The targeting is over now
Sure it is. Just ask Ron Paul and his group Campaign for Liberty’s donors about that.
Why do they lie to us?
The easy answer is because they can. The major media has morphed from a watchdog to a lapdog barking on cue that everything is all right, there’s nothing to see here, move along.
The best government money can buy has shown us that they can safely operate on the assumption that American voters choose their leaders based on the philosophy, “I know he’s a liar but I like what he says.”
But hey there’s a game on tonight! Or as President Obama’s body double Alfred E. Newman has been known to say, “What me, worry?”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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