TeaPartyWire.com – Tea Party News by and for Tea Party Members

Obamacare, Czars, Federal Agencies, Oh My!

By: Kassandra

How do you feel when you think of the word “bureaucracy?” I did an experiment and wrote down all the adjectives I could think of when I thought about bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Stop for a moment and do this yourself. What were your results? All negative?
Do we need bureaucrats?
A Bureaucrat’s job is to stand between the lawmakers who create public policy, their attached programs and the people. For example, if the recent Obamacare Mandate (tax) is established, bureaucrats will multiply in front of our eyes to oversee the new policies, new taxes, new programs, and will set up the “new rules” on how you and I are governed.
Who oversees the Obamacare tax?
The tax collectors do (Internal Revenue Service), of course. The new health care bill is the largest Internal Revenue Services expansion, or at least since the concept of withholding taxes, first introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee estimates the added staff will amount to a potential 16,000 new IRS personnel to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses.
Do not misunderstand me; the public sector has many jobs that are critical to the working of our nation and communities for a peaceful existence. These jobs include fire departments, law enforcement, the military, the people who work in the judicial system, public parks and recreation, street lighting, and many other small collateral services.

Past to Present: Seeing Double…triple, quadruple.
The current excessive bureaucracy and spending burden on our national budget has risen greatly through the expansion of duplicative agencies, czars, and programs, but who’s counting? We all should, as we pay for these countless programs.

To clarify, we have 15 Cabinet Agencies, 32 Czars, and over 1300 Federal and State Agencies! How did this happen when the framers main objective of governance was to:

1. Provide an environment for citizens to succeed and fail by their own choices.
2. Protect the citizens so they can live and fulfill their lives by their own choices.

Public Expansion
Because 32 “czars” aren’t enough, Washington is becoming the home of at least 31 new federal programs, agencies to oversee the government-run health insurance bill.
• 159 new bureaucracies
• 47 new agencies, boards, and commissions
• 68 new grant programs
• 12,000 pages of already-issued regulations
• 16,500 new IRS agents, who are needed just to enforce
• 20 new taxes

The 2,801-page government-run health bill threatens to:

• Cost taxpayers at least $1.4 trillion over 10 years
• Mandates the purchase of private health care for all Americans
• Create an onslaught of economic and legal consequences that kills jobs
• Drive up the cost of health care for families
• Make the powers of the federal government limitless.

It is apparent we have moved far away from our founder’s vision of a free enterprise and individual rights. Our elected officials are consumed with serving their own interests, out of control spending, and government making life’s decisions for you and I.

You don’t need an accounting degree or to understand that our existing federal programs have put us in an extremely dangerous position as a nation. We have literally climbed to the end of the cliff and dangle by a thread. You and I must vote to stop this in it’s tracks this November. If we start implementing the health care law, this will surely throw us over the edge come 2012 if we do not repeal and replace it.

Who Keeps Bureaucrats on Life Support?
You do. I do. WE do! Ultimately it’s as simple as this: you and I are forced to pay for a “trade” we had no part in. This is done through taxes, regulation, etc. This certainly is not the True meaning of Capitalism where all the trading partners believe they receive equal or greater value. Federal Bureaucracy is growing and the consequences will fall like dominoes. Here is the chain reaction:
• Unnecessary expenses
• Rules that limit our ability to provide energy autonomy for the nation
• Costs that are passed on to consumers
• The limiting of the private sector’s natural growth, or worse
• The shrinking of the private sector, and by that
• Reducing the taxes that are collected
• Worsening the federal budget deficit

A New-Old Deal
This administration mirrors the same advances as FDR envisioned by turning citizens with individual choices and freedoms into citizens governed by the state. It empowers a bureaucracy and belief of “what is best for your own good,” which in reality redefines your rights as a mere perk of “general welfare” system.
There’s one thing all Americans are fed up with: Government lording over our lives thinking that they know what is best for you. Share this article with others and highlight the section on the Chain Reaction of Federal Bureaucracy. We must take back control. We must hold each other accountable, as well as congressman for not one, but many electoral elections to come.
The path to this end is less, not more, government, czars, programs, or agencies.
By Kassandra Kuehl of American Citizens for Economic Freedom (http://truecapitalism.org/). We are the super PAC for the Tea Party and Women’s Organizations, founded by prominent business entrepreneur, Peter M. Vessenes.

Source: TPT Community

(Courtesy: Navajo Nation)

By: Matt Longdon

Posted: June 16th, 2012

WINDOW ROCK, AZ -Frank Chee Willeto, a Navajo Code Talker and former Navajo Nation vice president, has died. He was 87.

Navajo Nation officials said Willeto died Saturday in his home in Pueblo Pintado, NM.

The Crownpoint, NM-born Willeto enlisted with the U.S. Marines 6th Division in 1944, where he completed Code Talker training classes. He then served in the Pacific Theater in Saipan and Okinawa.

After World War II, he returned to the reservation and worked with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs roads department from 1946 to 1974.

He also served as vice president of the Navajo Nation under the Milton Bluehouse administration.

Willeto received the Congressional Silver Medal in 2001 for his role as a Code Talker.

Funeral services are pending.

(Photo of U.S. Marines on Pelelui Island)

Can World War II Truly Be Memorialized?

by Javan Browder
Source: TheSouthCarolinaConservative.com

I had not planned on writing anything for Memorial Day, but after having watched most of Ken Burns’ WWII Documentary film “The War” I feel compelled to put together a quick post, so here it is.

If you’ve not yet watched “The War” I would recommend that you do so as soon as possible.  I have always been fascinated by WWII, and love watching every documentary, movie, and reading as many stories about it as I can.  I have always been amazed at how inexhaustible that 4 and a half years of history is.  No matter how much time you spend studying it, you will never even scratch the surface of all that took place during that time.

(Photo: Pforzheim Germany April 1944-March 1945 – 21,200 killed)

There was the European and the Pacific theaters of the war.  There was fighting in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, North Africa, Japan , China, the Philippines, countless Pacific Islands, and many other countries across Europe and Asia.  Then there are all the many countries that did not see fighting on their mainland, but sent their troops to war.  I find stories from the home front, especially those from Britain and Germany to be especially interesting.

Read More: TheSouthCarolinaConservative.com

(Photo of U.S. Marines on Pelelui Island)

Can World War II Truly Be Memorialized?

Source: TheSouthCarolinacCnservative.com

I had not planned on writing anything for Memorial Day, but after having watched most of Ken Burns’ WWII Documentary film “The War” I feel compelled to put together a quick post, so here it is.

If you’ve not yet watched “The War” I would recommend that you do so as soon as possible.  I have always been fascinated by WWII, and love watching every documentary, movie, and reading as many stories about it as I can.  I have always been amazed at how inexhaustible that 4 and a half years of history is.  No matter how much time you spend studying it, you will never even scratch the surface of all that took place during that time.

(Photo: Pforzheim Germany April 1944-March 1945 – 21,200 killed)

There was the European and the Pacific theaters of the war.  There was fighting in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, North Africa, Japan , China, the Philippines, countless Pacific Islands, and many other countries across Europe and Asia.  Then there are all the many countries that did not see fighting on their mainland, but sent their troops to war.  I find stories from the home front, especially those from Britain and Germany to be especially interesting.

Read More: TheSouthCarolinacCnservative.com

Remembering My Father

by Gerald A. Honigman

All of us have regrets in life. Some have more than others.

I’ve probably shot myself in the foot more than should ever be allowed…and hurt my loving parents and others as well in the process.

Sure, my “luck” was not the best, I was naive in many ways, and there were, at times, truly nasty and unbelievable things being done to me. Still, my own shortcomings contributed to the problems–no doubt. A different person, perhaps, could have found a way to overcome those obstacles or may have not had to face them in the first place.

Oh well…

I think about all of this as I ponder the fact that this year will mark twenty years since my Father’s passing. I realize how hard he worked for us all of his life–often endangering his own life in the process. Lieutenant Edward Honigman, of blessed memory, passed away on December 2, 1992. I remember that horrible night as if it was yesterday.

Dad had put twenty-seven years in on the Philadelphia Police Department. He joined the latter not long after returning from fighting in several theaters for four years in World War II. There’s a few brief stories of his days in the U.S. Navy that I’d like to share at this time because of their relevance to today’s events in the Middle East.

As a gunner in the Armed Guard, his duties included the protection of merchant shipping crossing dangerous waters. When I was a teenager, this very “macho” man had no qualms revealing to me that he spent many a night at sea worrying about whether he’d be alive the next morning. German U-boats were sinking ships all around him. Indeed, his sister ship went down. There but for the Grace of G_d go I…

But I’m not writing now simply to recall war stories.

One evening, while on shore leave during the Allied North African Rommel Campaign, Dad visited a cafe in Alexandria, Egypt. While sitting at a table with his buddies, he happened to notice several soldiers who walked in with Star of David patches on their uniforms.

Curious, Dad walked over, introduced himself, and inquired about the patches. It turns out that he had met up with members of the Jewish Brigade, a fighting unit consisting mostly of “Palestinian” (which in those days meant exclusively Jews…Arabs called themselves Arabs) Jews attached to the British Army. These were besides tens of thousands of other Jews who served in Allied militaries.

Towards the end of their conversation, Dad’s new friends had some chilling words that he later repeated to me. They said that when the war was over for him, G_d willing, he’d be able to return home and all would be calm. But when World War II was over for them, it would simply mark the beginning of yet another major conflict–the battle for the rebirth of the Jewish State…the answer to all the would-be Hitlers our people have been periodically confronted with for thousands of years. Those words haunted my Father from that day onwards.

During one of Dad’s later stops in Aden near the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, his friends decided to play what they considered to be a joke on their Jewish shipmate. Now, keep in mind that these were the same guys who repeatedly fed non-Jews more ammo in fleet gunnery competition so that the Jew wouldn’t beat them. They told Dad to call one of the Arab attendants over and address him as “Yahudi.” After my Father did this, the distressed Arab then said, “ curse me, curse my mother, but please, please sir… never call me that!”

My Father had called him a Jew.

A look at those last five paragraphs tells you much about what Jewish existence was like over much of the world, in the Muslim East as well as in the Christian West, before the rebirth of Israel. And Dad had experienced both versions firsthand.

Many years later, I had become the father of three children of my own.

On one of the last of our hundreds of fishing trips together over the years, Dad asked me why I wasn’t thinking about having another child. I kind of jumped on him for that…one of my many above-mentioned regrets. I told him that I was much older than he was when he had his first child, was a teacher living from hand to mouth with nothing too much to spare in Florida (having what we do have largely due to the generosity of my wife’s and my own parents), etc. and so forth.

A few months later, Dad was gone.

After partially recovering from the pain, Mom and I had to eventually go to the rental storage facility where Dad had stored lots of stuff in a zillion different boxes. We had to weed through the latter to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Hours later, we opened a box that had something wrapped in newspaper on the bottom of it. And, as I unwrapped it, I was in shock….

Yehudit is Hebrew for Judith, the female form of Yehudah, Judah…Dad’s Hebrew name. It is customary for Jews to name children after deceased loved ones. There is no letter “J” in the Hebrew language.

And here in Dad’s box was a statue of Judith, the ancient Hebrew defender of her people.

Did Dad know? Was that the reason why he wanted so much for me to have a fourth child…so that he would have a name?

Well, Dad probably had a number of good reasons why he wanted this. But what a truly amazing, unforgettable experience.

My grandfather, of blessed memory (a veteran of World War I), was a “collector” of all kinds of things. Dad used to make jokes about Pop’s “collections.” But the best I can make out from all of this is that Dad acquired one of those “collectables” from his father and, for some reason, held onto it for who knows how long.

Elana Judith Honigman, G_d bless–the “unplanned baby” and fourth child–was born on February 9, 1993…about two months after Dad passed away. She just completed her sophomore year in college. And, like my other children, Abigail Zipporah, Jessica Beth, and Jonathan Ze’ev–whom I am also especially grateful for as I, myself, get older–I am amazed at what a blessing she has truly turned out to be.

What else is new? Dad was right again.

I can only hope that G_d permits the soul of my Father to know how this story has turned out.

www.geraldahonigman.com

The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable.  Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face.  Take the U.S. economy for example.  Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have worked and that the U.S. economy is improving.  So that is what he is telling the American people.  The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that we are experiencing an economic recovery.  A very large segment of the U.S. population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream media is feeding them.  But is the U.S. economy really improving?  The truth is that it is not.  The rate of employment among working age Americans is exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down while Obama has been president.  Home ownership levels and home prices continue to decline.  Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more expensive.  The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars under Obama.  We simply have not seen the type of economic recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War II.

The horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that you are about to read are not talked about much by the mainstream media.  They would rather be “positive” and “upbeat” about the direction that things are headed.

But lying to the American people is not going to help them.  If you are speeding in a car toward a 500 foot cliff, you don’t need someone to cheer you on.  Instead, you need someone to slam on the brakes.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was four or five years ago.

We have never come close to recovering from the last recession and another one will be here soon.

The following are 25 horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that Barack Obama does not want you to know….

#1 The percentage of Americans that own homes is dropping rapidly.  According to Gallup, the current level of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.

#2 Home prices in the U.S. continue to fall like a rock as well.  They have declined for six months in a row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.  The last time that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.

#3 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

#4 Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer.  Today, that number is above 30 percent.

#5 When Barack Obama first became president, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was 2.6 million.  Today, it is 5.3 million.

#6 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is about three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

#7 Despite what the mainstream media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing.  Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  In March 2011, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  So how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment situation in the United States is getting better?  The employment rate is still essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.

#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#9 In 1962, 28 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.  In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.

#10 In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.

#11 According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.

#12 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.

#13 The student loan debt bubble continues to expand at a very frightening pace.  Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

#14 Incredibly, one out of every four jobs in the United States pays $10 an hour or less at this point.

#15 Household incomes all over the United States continue to fall.  After adjusting for inflation, median household income in America has declined by 7.8 percent since December 2007.

#16 Over the past several decades, government dependence has risen to unprecedented heights in the United States.  The following is how I described the explosive growth of social welfare benefits in one recent article….

Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages.  In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages.  Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.

#17 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#18 Right now, more than 25 percent of all American children are on food stamps.

#19 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, today 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some form of benefits from the federal government.

#20 Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars.  That comes to $328,404for each and every household in the United States.

#21 During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars.  U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.

#22 At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.

#23 The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office.  In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.

#24 The Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.

#25 The Federal Reserve continues to systematically destroy the value of the U.S. dollar.  Since 1970, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 83 percent of its value.

But the horrible economic statistics only tell part of the story.

In communities all over America there is a feeling that something fundamental has changed.  Businesses that have been around for generations are shutting their doors and there is a lot of fear in the air.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Richard Yamarone, the senior economist at Bloomberg Brief….

You have to listen to what the small businesses are telling you and right now they are telling you, ‘Hey, I’m the head of a 3rd or 4th generation, 75 or 100 year old business, and I’ve got to shut the doors’ or ‘I’ve got to let people go. And if I’m hiring anybody back, it’s only on a temporary basis.’

Sometimes they do this through a hiring firm so that they can sidestep paying unemployment benefit insurance. So that’s what’s really going on at the grassroots level of the economy. Very, very, grossly different from what you’re seeing in some of these numbers coming out in earnings releases.”

All over the country, millions of hard working Americans are desperately looking for work.  They have been told that “the recession is over”, but they are still finding it incredibly difficult to find anyone that will hire them.  The following example is from a recent CNN article….

Joann Cotton, a 54-year-old Columbus, Mississippi, resident, was one of those faces of poverty we met on the tour. Unemployed for three years, Joann has gone from making “$60,000 a year to less than $15,000 overnight.” Her husband is disabled and dependent on medicines the couple can no longer afford. They rely on food stamps, which, Joann says, “is depressing as hell.”

Receiving government aid, however, has not been as depressing as her job search. Joann says she has applied for at least 300 jobs. Even though she can barely afford gas, she drives to the interviews only to learn that the employers want to hire younger candidates at low wages.

The experiences have taken a toll: “I’ve aged 10 years in the three years that I’ve been looking for a job,” Joann told us. “I want to get a job so I can just relax and exhale … but I can’t. After a while you just give up.”

Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his family continue to live the high life at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

Even many Democrats are starting to get very upset about this.  The following is from a recent article by Paul Bedard….

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.

It simply is not appropriate for the Obamas to be spending millions upon millions upon millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on luxury vacations when so many Americans are deeply suffering.

But Barack Obama does not want you to know about any of this stuff.

He just wants you to buy his empty propaganda one more time so that he can continue to occupy the White House for another four years.

Source: USActionNews.com

More proof Obama will SAY anything to get elected. Here he proposes new spending be offset by cuts. Now after increasing the debt by $5 TRILLION– which is more than any other president or world leader ever– he claims such cuts are mean spirited and only benefit the “rich.”

Obama will tell you what you want to hear, what SOUNDS good. Don’t be fooled again.

“Whether one believes in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin.” Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816)

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said it’s because the US economy is “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former WY senator), co-chair of Obama’s debt commission: Economic collapse will “be very swift and very dramatic.”

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama, Office of Management and Budget website.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” – James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

Source: USActionNews.com