With all the bad budget news this week – here in New York and in Washington – let’s focus on something happier for a minute: Opening Day is almost here. The Mets are looking good heading into the season... but we all know that what matters is how they perform at the end of the season.
Let’s hope this doesn’t jinx them...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04012009/sports/mets/jinx_is_in__si_picks_mets_to_win_it_all_162368.htm
For right now, I’m just ready to enjoy some baseball and the spring weather it brings.
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/preview/ny-spbbmets0403,0,7742773.story
Here’s a game I’d rather not have to watch: Americans for Tax Reform is pitting New York against New Jersey in an “epic battle” to see which state can destroy itself first with higher taxes and uncontrolled spending. In this game, everybody loses.
http://atr.org/new-york-vs-jersey-battle-higher-a3088
Sheldon Silver and Gov. Paterson are certainly trying their best to drive taxpayers out of New York. We’ve been following the budget debacle all week here on the blog. Shaun Marie has posted links to the best stories. Make sure you didn’t miss any.
And remember: We’re also being hit by the bloated $3.5 trillion Obama budget just passed by Congress.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/04/03/2009-04-03_congress_passes_obamas_35_trillion_budge.html
At least Gov. Paterson is finding some humor in all of this. He thinks it’s hilarious that Rush Limbaugh is leaving New York City to get away from high taxes. Does the Governor really think that Mr. Limbaugh is the only person in New York planning to relocate to a more taxpayer-friendly locale?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04032009/news/regionalnews/rail_promises_162706.htm
That article also talks about the MTA bailout plan the politicians are trying to orchestrate. Get ready for even more spending, if you can imagine that. And no, the date on that article is NOT 4/1 – but this quote makes you think it came out on April Fools Day...
“‘The fact is, this is a balanced and effective budget,’ Paterson said.”
The brave New Yorkers serving in our military who wanted to vote in this week’s special congressional election might be finding out that the joke is on them. I saw this on The Corner over at National Review Online: “The Shameful Disenfranchisement of the Military in New York’s Congressional Race.”
According to the story, “In New York, ten counties make up the 20th congressional district, and nine of them sent their absentee ballots to overseas voters too late for them to be received and returned in time to count in this election.”
Shameful is the perfect word for this. Our men and women in uniform are fighting for our freedom – but they’re not allowed to exercise their own freedoms back home.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjUwYWJmMTRjNDNlOWYyMTVhNTFiOGFjMWJhYTJkZWQ=
This has been a rough week for taxpayers. Need a silver lining – besides baseball? Just remember that the Conservative Party can’t wait to take the liberals’ tax-and-spend policies to the voters of our state – so they can have a say in this.
It won’t be easy – but you can bet the Conservative Party will be working hard for you. If you’re as fed up as we are, make sure you vote in our new poll – and get your friends and family to register as Conservatives.
Try to have a good weekend.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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FIRST OF ALL...I GUESS YOU DON'T LISTEN TO RUSH AT ALL..IF YOU DID YOU'D KNOW HE LEFT NY IN 1997. AND IF YOU LISTENED TO HIM RECENTLY, YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT AS HE HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT THAT ALOT.
ReplyDeleteBUT SECOND OF ALL..EVERY SANE PERSON MUST READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT OBAMA THE NEXT MUSSOLINI: IT CAME OUT YESTERDAY:
By Quin Hillyer on 4.2.09 @ 6:09AM
Trying to handle the crisis, the Fascist government nationalized the holdings of large banks which had accrued significant industrial securities. The government also issued new securities to provide a source of credit for the banks and began enlisting the help of various cartels…. The government offered recognition and support to these organizations in exchange for promises that they would manipulate prices in accordance with government priorities. A number of mixed entities were formed… whose purpose it was to bring together representatives of the government and of the major businesses.… This economic model based on a partnership between government and business was soon extended to the political sphere, in what came to be known as corporatism.… The Fascists began to impose significant tariffs and other trade barriers.… Various banking and industrial companies were financially supported by the state.… [The national leader] created the [New Governmental Entity]….[which soon] controlled 20% of [the nation's] industry through government-linked companies.… [The national leader] also adopted a Keynesian policy of government spending on public works to stimulate the economy.… Public works spending tripled to overtake defense spending as the largest item of government expenditure.
As much as that description sounds like U.S. government policy begun under George W. Bush and now greatly expanding under Barack Obama, the above passage of course describes the economics of fascist Italy in the 1930s, as summed up by Wikipedia. (A quick Google search produces plenty of similar summaries of "economic fascism.") Furthermore, "The Fascist conception of life," Mussolini wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual."
Obama came close to those same sentiments in his most recent press conference: "But one of the most important lessons to learn from this crisis is that our economy only works if we recognize that we're all in this together, that we all have responsibilities to each other and to our country…. We'll recover from this recession, but it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that, when we all work together, when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interest to the wider set of obligations we have toward each other, that's when we succeed, that's when we prosper, and that's what is needed right now."
Just as Mussolini did (in slightly different words), Obama repeatedly talks about using government to "leverage" private investment for the greater good. And now, as of this week, he actually dared to force a private corporation, General Motors, to fire its CEO. Meanwhile, his close ally Barney Frank introduced a bill to give the Treasury Secretary the power to set all salary levels for all employees of any companies in which the government has a capital stake.
As George Will has written, Congress has delegated so much economic authority to the Treasury, the Fed, and the president that the Constitution itself has almost certainly been shredded in the panic.
Meanwhile, in Congress's rush to pass a huge expansion of "national service" programs, almost exactly as outlined by Obama in a 2007 speech, few congressman likely realized that the details included "campuses" with "superintendents" of uniformed youth, formed into "cadres," and indoctrinated even in math and science classes in the ideals of "service learning" financed through a "social innovation fund" funneled through favored "community organizations." (ACORN, anyone?) Even elementary school students would be recruited for these government-sponsored efforts.
As the Washington Examiner editorialized, it all sounds like a "creepy authoritarianism" on the loose. (See these examples just from last year's campaign.)
Again and again, Obama has called not just for a change of policies, but to "change America" or to "remake" this nation. And here, from his national convention speech last August, is his notion, his collectivist notion, of change: "That's the promise of America -- the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."
Well, no, not when it comes to state power. Government should have no authority to make us be our brothers' "keepers," lest the state itself become Big Brother. Obama said that "mutual responsibility" is the "essence of America's promise," but that's not in any Constitution or Declaration of Independence I can find. Oh, yes, voluntary mutual responsibility is essential for a healthy civic society -- but if government starts determining the shape of that responsibility and forcing it upon us, that is where freedom starts to fade.
Since when was it government's role, as Obama claims, to "invest" in all sorts of new technologies, and to "help our auto companies re-tool" while somehow making it "easier for the American people to afford these new cars"? And who is doing the insisting when Obama talks about "our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life"? Sorry, but if our public life -- defined by the left, in the end, always as that part of life subject to government control -- is larger, it means our private lives, our free lives, are smaller and more constrained.
All of this economic intervention and government expansion, all of this use of collectivist language and collectivist goals, combined with the first big steps towards Obama's goal of "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the American military, is straight out of Mussolini's playbook.
Then you combine it with the Obamanation of a growing, Il Duce-like cult of the leader. The stadium speeches in front of a Greek emperor's columns. The permanent campaign, the deliberate ubiquity. The "public service" radio ads with the president himself urging national service upon us. The iconic imagery on campaign materials. The millennial language about his own election as the moment when seas stopped rising and Earth started healing and about the need to "save the planet." The traveling abroad with an official entourage of 500 people (and a limo nicknamed "The Beast"). The fawning media. The simplistic slogans chanted over and over.
Then there were the words of Michelle Obama in February of 2008: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Finally, there is Obama's elevation of raw science to what he calls its "rightful place" as an end in itself, as if divorced from questions of morality. As Charles Krauthammer wrote, "how anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee…is hard to fathom."