A lot of fake activism clutters up the political scene these days – while too many of our friends and family members continue to sip that Obama Kool-Aid. What’s needed is some real activism. You can divide the genuine from the phony by measuring how many new people are reached as a result of the activity.
Preaching to the converted choir is nice, but more is needed.
If you’re waiting for elected Republicans to reach everyone, please stop. If you’re expecting enough Americans to visit websites like townhall.com, please stop. If you think the mainstream media is going to provide good information to enough American citizens, I assume you were in a coma last year and missed the presidential campaign.
As I’ve noted before, we need members of history’s best informed political choir doing – in the words of the old apostle – the work of an evangelist. Talk with everyone you can about materials like those provided below.
You can make a difference. Allow me to quote our president, who on election night last November referred to “that timeless creed: yes we can.”
Yes, he actually called “yes we can” a timeless creed. I kid you not.
Here are excerpts from just three terrific op ed pieces that appeared this week. Dozens are written daily. Unfortunately, too many people don’t tune in, click on, or pay attention. Your help is needed. Spread the word. Yes you can.
A Sham “Stimulus”
By Ed FeulnerTrue to form, Congress has loaded the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with hundreds of billions in wasteful spending. The bill includes $650 million for digital TV coupons, $140 million to study the atmosphere and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.
None of these proposals would create jobs or boost our economy. They’re just old-fashioned waste. And that’s a problem. Crying “stimulus,” Congress intends to spend money it doesn’t have to accomplish things that don’t need to be done on a scale never before seen. If signed into law, this leviathan would be the largest single spending bill ever passed, adding at least $819 billion (before interest) to the national debt.
If lawmakers had decided to borrow the money for this stimulus plan directly from Americans, the average family would have to fork over $10,520 this year. That’s more than what that same family will spend on food, clothing and health care for the entire year.
If lawmakers were honest about what they’re doing (spending borrowed money) they’d have to admit that they’re asking hard-pressed American families to loan the government more this year than those families will otherwise spend on essentials.
Of course, the government won’t borrow directly from Americans. It’ll attempt to raise the money on the international bond market, meaning our country will go deeper into debt to foreign lenders, especially Japan and China.
And what will this spending accomplish? Not much…
Their real goal seems to be to expand the government.
Click here to read the entire article.
The New Era of Irresponsibility
By Jacob Sullum
Last October, while campaigning in Toledo, Ohio, Barack Obama called for “a new ethic of responsibility.” The nation’s economic troubles, he said, occurred partly because “everyone was living beyond their means,” including politicians who “spent money they didn’t have.” In his inaugural address last month, Obama regretted “our collective failure to make hard choices” and heralded “a new era of responsibility.”
Now President Obama, as one of his first priorities, is pushing a gargantuan “stimulus” plan that will add around $1 trillion to the national debt and cannot possibly work as advertised. Welcome to the new era of responsibility.
Remember when the problem with Americans was that we saved too little, preferring instant gratification even when we couldn’t afford it? As Obama put it in October, “we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits, to borrow instead of save.”
Click here to read the entire article.
We Can’t Spend Our Way to Prosperity
By John Stossel
Washington never changes, no matter who’s in power. Give a gang of politicians a chance to spend our money, and they will spend it — the more the better. An economic downturn is hog heaven; for now they have a justification to spend big time: “economic stimulus.” Anything and everything can be proposed as long as it can be said to “inject money into the economy” and “create jobs.” …
It’s perfectly clear that the recession is a license for politicians to do what they’ve wanted to do all along. All the usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, have been washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry about that later…
President Obama says, “There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.”
That’s not true. Last week, the Cato Institute ran a full-page newspaper ad signed by more than 200 economists, including Nobel laureates stating:
“We the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s … Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”
Let’s hear no more about “everyone” agreeing that politicians can spend the economy into recovery.
Click here to read the entire article.
©2009 John F. Biver
