Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Friday, November 7, 2008
545 People
This is an article written by Charlie Reese, a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper. Very interesting perspective on the state of our Nation!
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don' t propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.
The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gal l of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? The leader of the the majority party. That Leader and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivabl to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don' t propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.
The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gal l of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? The leader of the the majority party. That Leader and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivabl to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Letter from Venezuela's Communications Minister to the Washi
This letter is a concise and accurate description of the Washington Post's political and special interest bias to the right wing agenda.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Thursday, December 27, 2007
A THOUGHT FOR THE NEW YEAR
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." -- Somerset Maugham
Sunday, December 23, 2007
MERRY CHRISTMAS
December 21, 2007
Where is Our Tacitus?
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
By JACOB G. HORNBERGER
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government's war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, "You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.
Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who's to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn't torture depend on each person's subjective determination of the term?
By the way, wasn't there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.
As Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times today, Baghdad has now been divided into "cleansed" neighborhoods, in which Sunnis occupy some areas and Shiites occupy others. The U.S. military is helping to keep the neighborhoods free of violence by constructing walls that separate the respective neighborhoods. What an interesting way for the Pentagon to rebuild a peaceful society that it has destroyed with its invasion.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to neighboring countries given that the U.S. government refuses to let them emigrate to the United States, despite one of the U.S. government's claims (in addition to the WMD one) that it invaded Iraq out of love for the Iraqi people. Hey, what better way to reduce the death toll than by reducing the country's population?
And if things weren't crazy enough, we now learn that the U.S. government is helping Turkey to attack Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country. Can't you just hear U.S. officials exclaim when some Iraqi survivor of those attacks retaliates with a terrorist attack against the U.S.: "We're innocent! We're innocent! We haven't done anything to provoke this! They hate us for our freedom and values! God bless America!"
No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Nothing, not even "peace" in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of "terrorist," will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Where is Our Tacitus?
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
By JACOB G. HORNBERGER
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government's war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, "You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.
Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who's to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn't torture depend on each person's subjective determination of the term?
By the way, wasn't there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.
As Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times today, Baghdad has now been divided into "cleansed" neighborhoods, in which Sunnis occupy some areas and Shiites occupy others. The U.S. military is helping to keep the neighborhoods free of violence by constructing walls that separate the respective neighborhoods. What an interesting way for the Pentagon to rebuild a peaceful society that it has destroyed with its invasion.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to neighboring countries given that the U.S. government refuses to let them emigrate to the United States, despite one of the U.S. government's claims (in addition to the WMD one) that it invaded Iraq out of love for the Iraqi people. Hey, what better way to reduce the death toll than by reducing the country's population?
And if things weren't crazy enough, we now learn that the U.S. government is helping Turkey to attack Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country. Can't you just hear U.S. officials exclaim when some Iraqi survivor of those attacks retaliates with a terrorist attack against the U.S.: "We're innocent! We're innocent! We haven't done anything to provoke this! They hate us for our freedom and values! God bless America!"
No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Nothing, not even "peace" in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of "terrorist," will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
AFTERTHOUGHT
AFTER MY CHILDREN READ MY POST I DECIDED TO QUALIFY THE PREVIOUS POST,
MY DAUGHTER SAID IT SOUNDED KIND OF THREATENING
BUT SHE LIKED IT.
THAT WAS NOT MY INTENT, TO SOUND THREATENING.
MORE A CALL TO AWARENESS, OR A CALL TO ACTION.
MY POINT IN THIS IS TO REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE MADNESS OF THIS WORLDS EVIL MEN.
TO INVALIDATE THEM BY REFUSING TO BUY THEIR GAME PLAN.
AND IT IS A GAME,
ONE IN WHICH THEY WIN AND THE REST OF US LOSE.
THEY, THE GREAT 1% WHO LIVE IN McMANSIONS,
AND LIKE LEACHES SUCK THE LIFE FROM THE REST OF US,
TO FILL THEIR COFFERS PAST OVERFILL.
THEY THE ONES WHO CREATE WARS FOR THREE REASONS
FIRST FOR PROFIT, SECOND FOR AMUSEMENT, AND THIRD
TO ELIMINATE AS MANY OF THE UNWASHED MASSES (in their opinion)
AS THEY CAN.
THEY CAN BE DEFEATED, WE CAN DEFEAT THEM.
BY REFUSING TO ALLOW THEM TO HAVE POWER OVER US,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON FEAR,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON OBEDIENCE,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON OUR BELIEVING THEIR LIES.
THATS ALL FOR NOW, AS MIKE MALLOY ON AIR AMERICA SAYS;
KEEP IT LIT.
MY DAUGHTER SAID IT SOUNDED KIND OF THREATENING
BUT SHE LIKED IT.
THAT WAS NOT MY INTENT, TO SOUND THREATENING.
MORE A CALL TO AWARENESS, OR A CALL TO ACTION.
MY POINT IN THIS IS TO REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE MADNESS OF THIS WORLDS EVIL MEN.
TO INVALIDATE THEM BY REFUSING TO BUY THEIR GAME PLAN.
AND IT IS A GAME,
ONE IN WHICH THEY WIN AND THE REST OF US LOSE.
THEY, THE GREAT 1% WHO LIVE IN McMANSIONS,
AND LIKE LEACHES SUCK THE LIFE FROM THE REST OF US,
TO FILL THEIR COFFERS PAST OVERFILL.
THEY THE ONES WHO CREATE WARS FOR THREE REASONS
FIRST FOR PROFIT, SECOND FOR AMUSEMENT, AND THIRD
TO ELIMINATE AS MANY OF THE UNWASHED MASSES (in their opinion)
AS THEY CAN.
THEY CAN BE DEFEATED, WE CAN DEFEAT THEM.
BY REFUSING TO ALLOW THEM TO HAVE POWER OVER US,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON FEAR,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON OBEDIENCE,
THEIR PLAN DEPENDS ON OUR BELIEVING THEIR LIES.
THATS ALL FOR NOW, AS MIKE MALLOY ON AIR AMERICA SAYS;
KEEP IT LIT.
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