The Bad Economy and the Need For Gun Control
The gun control advocates, with their all too willing accomplices in the White House and in the current administration are amping up their efforts to increase gun control laws. But first they are looking for an excuse to use to begin the infringement.
Initially the gun control advocates, certain administration officials, ie Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the house of representatives thought they had their excuse, they were attempting to use Mexican drug violence as the conduit to punish those of us who practice our second amendment right.
The spin was, it isn’t the Mexican drug dealers fault that drug violence is up, it is our fault. America needs stricter gun control laws to stop Mexican drug violence because we are selling them 90% of the guns used in drug crimes. Well, that angle may have fallen by the wayside because as stupid of an argument as that was, it would only be a matter of time before it was disproved. It was.
So with that lie exposed the gun control advocates have moved on to a new angle, the gist of which can be read in the first paragraph of this article:
A 22-year-man who shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers over the weekend had been stockpiling guns and ammunition, buying and selling the weapons online “because he believed that as a result of the economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society,” according to a court report.
The recent uptick in violence across the country has opened a new door for the gun control advocate to try to exploit. The new spin goes like this; with the recent downturn in the economy, and with people becoming more an more distraught, people are turning violent and committing gun related crimes. I have read a few articles and heard a few radio shows that were advancing this premise.
The souring economy is the new Mexico in the reasoning for the need for stricter gun legislation. Those who would infringe on the second amendment know that they have the biggest enemy to the second amendment in the White House that has ever occupied that residency and they are just looking for ANY reason to begin the constitutional assault.
Gun owners realise this also and that is why there is such a surge in gun sales since last November. Even as these efforts get underway to impose strict gun control laws, gun owners are still being assured that there is nothing to worry about and that the panic, is unwarranted:
Mr. Hamm said many people in the gun lobby have been fanning fears that the Obama administration would take guns away. “They have a lot of people running out and buying guns in a panic buy. This is unnecessary,”
All that one has to do is read this president’s background and how he feels about the second amendment to know that there is good reason for gun owners to be leery about this president. There is no panic, this president looks to both implement stringent gun control laws and also tax the hell out of the ammunition, and because of this gun owners are buying while they still can.
Now with the angle that the worsening economy is driving people to commit violent crimes the president, through the gun control advocates, has found an angle that he can use to implement his radically unconstitutional views on gun ownership. This is the one part of the economy that the president has had a positive effect on.
Instead of punishing just those who committed these horrible crimes the advocacy groups look to punish all those who own guns, even those who obey the law and have never committed a crime, other than the crime in the eyes of the gun control advocates of having the audacity (of hope) of practicing our rights which are guaranteed under the constitution.
And the president is right there with them. The new angle has been found, we must stay vigilant.
When a bank or a private company takes federal (taxpayer) money that money should come with some strings attached. The bank or the company which takes my money should not be able to do whatever they want with the money. There has to be some control and oversight of where the money is going and how it is being used. When you make a deal with the devil you have made your bed and you must lay in it.
Having said that, nobody could have foreseen that the president would abuse those controls by firing people, deciding who makes too much money and cutting their pay, and becoming a de-facto CEO of these banks and companies. But that is an argument for another day and an argument that I have made in the past already. There is another, even more troubling trend that began to take place just last week.
Four banks which received TARP money tried to repay the loans, totalling $340 million, so that they could return to running their banks. The president refused to take back the TARP money. As long as the banks owe money to the government the government has control over them, it seems as if the president has grown quite fond of his extended power and is not willing to give it up.
The president seems to want to have this Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the banks so that he can remain in control of them. He is more interested in controlling the pay of CEOs and expanding that control to the pay of ALL employees and in general overall input in the banking industry than he is in turning around the economy. Isn’t it supposed to be a good thing when a bank no longer needs the TARP money? Isn’t it good that these four banks were trying to give back our money? These banks DON’T NEED THE MONEY, and they want to return it.
This was never about helping the banks through this crisis and it was never about helping America through this crisis, this was about grabbing power, and nationalizing the banks. This was about controlling private businesses and running their organizations and it is not going to stop with the banking industry. The auto industry and health-care are next, what is after that? Toxic Timmy Geithner is already talking about seizing companies that did not accept federal bailout money so that the government can run those companies as well.
I have written before that once a government takes more power they never give it back. This appears to be proof of that statement. There can be no other explanation of why the president will not let the banks give the taxpayers back the money that they owe us.
Obama’s Cap and Trade Plan is Dead…For Now
Included in the president’s budget was a cap and tax trade plan that would have raised taxes on every single American. Do I even need to mention that this would be breaking his promises that he would only tax those making over $250,000 and that 95% of Americans would get a tax break under his plan? I didn’t think so. This is a huge part of the president’s agenda and willing Democrats, such as Harry Reid, were threatening to use, or should I say abuse, a political maneuver called reconciliation to require only a simple majority to vote on the cap and trade amendment in the budget.
Earlier in the week the idea of using reconciliation was voted down; every Republican and 26 Democrats voted against the idea of using reconciliation to vote on the cap and trade amendment in the budget. This means that cap and trade will need a 60 vote majority to pass and the votes are not there.
This week the president’s agenda was dealt a steep blow. Does this mean he is losing some of his political capitol? How is it possible that This Charming Man (to steal a song title from The Smiths) was not able to pass such a big part of his agenda if his capitol remains high? The shine must be coming off of the president’s political star, at least a little.
Cap and trade is dead….for now. We may have won this battle, but that is all that this was; a battle. The cap and traders are not going to go quietly away just because they lost this battle. They will re-energize and come back stronger than ever. We must not let them win, there is too much at stake.
As for the Democrats who voted against reconciliation, first let me say thank you and second; watch your back. Remember, the president is “keeping score.”
Obama to Democrats “We Are Keeping Score”
The president recently had a meeting with the House Democratic Caucus. Dismayed by the fact that not everybody likes everything that he is doing he got a little testy with members of his party.
This is what he had to say to one House Democrat:
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.”
That comment was made toward a Democrat, Peter DeFazio, who had the audacity (of hope) to vote against the stimulus bill. In the arrogant mind of the president nobody is supposed to disagree with him.
This was a threat. “We are keeping score.” In other words if you do not support the president 100% you can forget about support (money) from the national Democrat party when it is time for re-election.
Just in case the president didn’t know it, the representatives are elected by the people to serve the people, they are not elected to serve the president. The reason they face re-election every two years is so they can be held accountable to the people on a regular basis.
The only score that should matter is the score that the people are keeping.
The recent uptick in violence at the Mexican border is going to be used as a conduit for the United States government to begin establishing strict gun control laws. This is going to be just the excuse that the biggest enemy to the second amendment ever to hold the White House was looking for to implement his usurpation of the constitution.
Every time that we hear a politician talk about the violence in Mexico and along the border we inevitably hear about the fact that the criminals are smuggling the guns into Mexico from the United States.
The anti-gun politicians like to say that 90% of the guns used in crimes in Mexico and along the border were purchased in the United States. That is an outright lie. It is fuzzy math and it is being used as the beginning arguments by gun control advocates.
The 90% number is a real number but it is being out of context. As the linked article points out; 90% of the guns sent to the ATF to be traced did in fact originate in the United States, but 68% of the guns recovered at crime scenes were not sent to the ATF for tracing. Most of these guns were not sent to the ATF for tracing because it was evident by their markings that they did not come from the United States. There was no need for the United States to trace them.
That means the percentage of weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes that were traced back to the United States was 17%, in other words 83% of weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes were not traceable to the United States. A reversal of nearly 180 degrees.
On a side note; another interesting fact is that of the 17% of the guns that were traced back to the United States, many were legally sold by Colt to the Mexican government for issue to the Mexican military. Perhaps we would be better served to investigate how weapons sold to the Mexican military ended up in the hands of the drug cartel.
Here are the numbers quoted in the article:
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
This whole notion that it is the United States’ fault that criminals in Mexico are killing people is bullshit. This is a lie being propagated by the anti-gun crowd, activists and politicians, and it is probably being done at the behest of the president. He is all too willing to let the lie unfurl and grow because he wants an excuse to implement radical gun control laws.
The president wants people to see the Mexican violence and he wants us to think that we are to blame, he wants us to say “we have to do something.” And then he will swoop in and infringe upon our second amendment rights.
The law abiding citizens of this country will have to suffer because the government will not enforce the laws that we already have. The law abiding citizen will have to suffer because Mexico won’t enforce the laws that it has. The law abiding citizens will have to suffer because we won’t prosecute the criminals who actually are committing the crimes. We are being politically prosecuted while the criminals walk free.
The gun control advocates are pointing to the fact that 90% of the traced guns came from the United States while at the same time ignoring the fact that another 68% of the guns were not traced at all because it was known they didn’t come from the United States. At best this lie is dishonest, at worst it is criminal.
In their desperation to find an issue that can be used to write new gun laws they have found an issue they hope will find them sympathy and they have twisted the numbers around. How they reach their goal doesn’t matter to them, as long as they reach it.
The lie has been exposed.
With the president’s move to force Rick Wagoner, the CEO of GM, to resign the precedent was set. It is now acceptable for the government to step in and decide who should have a job and who shouldn’t. We would be foolish to think that this was a one time deal and that the president would not step into the everyday dealings of other private companies.
And now toxic Timmy Geithner has seconded that notion and admitted that he and the administration may force other CEOs into the unemployment line.
That is what I had feared when I heard the news that the president forced the CEO of a private company to resign and now I am seeing my fears justified. The government is enlarging and taking over more and more power. The government is now in the business of running private business, of deciding who stays and who goes, of deciding how much money a person can make.
As Thomas Paine once wrote; these are the times that try men’s souls. The context in which those words were written were different, but only slightly so.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Proposes Raising Taxes on People Who Make Over $104,000
The president promised that he would only raise taxes on people who made over $250,000 and the president also promised that 95% of Americans would see a reduction in taxes. Both of those promises were broken on April 1st when the cigarette tax was increased, but that is neither here nor there. We all knew that the president’s promise not to raise taxes was bullshit.
While campaigning, the president told every American who was listening that he was going to raise taxes, but he promised to only raise them on a certain group. As I stated above, that simply wasn’t true. But now that an admitted tax raiser is president it is only natural that more politicians would try to raise taxes.
If a man can promise to raise taxes and still be elected it tells our elected officials that we are open to tax increases. This naturally leads to the government slowly extending the tax increases out to more and more Americans. After all we did vote for tax increases last November.
During the campaign at one point Joe Biden claimed that no American who earned over $150,000 would see a tax increase, that is $100,000 lower than the number that the president had claimed would not see a tax increase. This was written off as just a mistake, a slip of the tongue.
But was it? Was there truth behind what Biden said? Did Biden let the cat out of the bag?
Perhaps Joe Biden knew what he was talking about for once. Senator Max Baucus (Democrat), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which in turn writes the federal tax laws, has introduced legislation that would increase taxes on anyone who makes over $104,000. Simple math tells us that that is less than half of the amount a person could earn before the president promised would see a tax increase.
Maybe Joe Biden knew what the plan was all along and in a moment of candor he spoke out of line and accidentally spilled the president’s true goal in regard to tax increases. Surely this senator wouldn’t propose raising taxes on a group that is in direct contrast to the promise that the president made during the campaign without the president’s approval would he?
The president’s promise to only raise taxes on those who make over $250,000 was never feasible, the numbers never added up so slowly but surely the number came down to the point where Biden made the reference to those who make under $150,000, he was softening the blow, and now the number has crept even lower. But this time the person proposing the legislation is in charge of writing tax laws so this is more than mere campaigning and pandering, this is probably about to become law.
The president is smart, he still sticks to his claims about those who will receive tax increases. He still claims that nobody who makes under $250,000 will see a tax increase even as the department which writes tax laws is slicing that number in half.
In the end he will claim that HIS proposal would not have raised taxes on those who make under $250,ooo but that he couldn’t have foreseen the dire economic outlook. He will claim that he had to give in to the Baucus legislation even though he didn’t want to. It is for our own good.
This is what happens when people vote in a person who admits that he is going to raise taxes. It gives the person in question the impression, and rightfully so, that the people are willing to be taxed at a higher rate. The politician can not then be blamed when he raises taxes for he is just doing what he promised to do. And in the end if he raises taxes on more people than he promised to he is just taking a little liberty with the mandate he feels he was given.
To the people of America I say, you asked for higher taxes and now you are going to get them. I hope that you are happy.
Illegal Immigrants to be Counted in the Census
The census bureau is dedicating themselves to making sure that every single illegal immigrant in the United States is counted in the census next year. The census is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives.
This is being done to assure that the people who broke the law to get here, and the states that harbor them, get more of a voice in congress.
This means that a state harboring more illegal aliens can gain more House seats as long as the Census Bureau finds the illegal aliens and counts them. This also means that the illegal alien population resident in the United States during a census year has the potential to alter the regional and philosophical balance of power in Congress
This is being justified because these illegals are residing in the United States, it doesn’t matter if they are supposed to be residing in the United States.
Our job is to count everyone that resides in the U.S.–count them once. So, certainly that’s our goal to count every individual, every resident whether they’re documented, undocumented, whether they are citizens or non-citizens
They are going to count them whether they are citizens or not, and those numbers are going to be used to dole out house seats.
But it gets worse still. Today the president has named Robert Groves as senate director. Mr. Groves is a big proponent of sampling. With the news that the census bureau is planning on counting illegals coupled with the news that Groves is an advocate of sampling we can see that there is political maneuvering in the works here.
Using sampling in the census is unconstitutional, period. Article 1, section 2 states “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years.” It is clearly stated in the constitution that the census will be an actual census , and that ruling has been upheld in court.
The Supreme Court later ruled in 1999 that the use of statistical sampling cannot be used to apportion House seats
Here we have a census director who favors an unconstitutional means to count the people and an agency dedicated to counting illegal aliens. They already have two major strikes against them, or should I say, the American CITIZENS already have two strike against us. It is pretty clear what the president and the census bureau are trying to do here, I don’t even need to say it. We all know what the goal is here. You all know what I am talking about.
There may be a fissure opening up in the Democrat party. It may be small right now but it appears as though it may be growing.
Yesterday I wrote about the “Mod Squad” Democrats and their reservations about the president’s budget proposal here, and it appears that, according to this article, more Democrats are worried about passing the president’s budget with some of the more expensive, leftists items that are included.
Democrats appear ready to trim down the president’s budget by removing the funding for socialized health-care, and tax cap and trade, two of this president’s most cherished issues. Essentially they will be punting these items down the road, not eliminating them altogether.
During this time of crisis, to use the president’s word, it is time to reduce spending. The country cannot afford to increase spending. The left had a saying about the high gas prices last year, they were fond of saying, “we cannot drill our way out of this,” well now we have a fiscal crisis and we cannot spend our way out of this.
Now, more than ever, it is time for fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has been AWOL for far too long and will continue to be absent under this president. Let us just hope that the Democrats and Republicans who are leery of this budget proposal will stick to their guns. I have my doubts.
We can debate the socialization of health care and we can debate the fraud that is the cap and trade, global warming hoax but the time is not now. Now is the time to bring spending under control, we have to stop spending money that we do not have. Once the economy turns around we can have the conversation about health-care and global warming, but we can’t afford to further burden an American people who are already stretched too thin and nervous about their future finances.
Steny Hoyer Admits That Obama May Not Have the Authority to Oversee Auto Makers Restructuring
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has admitted that he has no clue as to whether the president has the authority to oversee the restructuring of the “Big Three” auto makers.
Naturally he went on to say that congress would grant the president the authority if he doesn’t have the authority that he has already exercised.
Just in the last week this president has fired the CEO of a private company, assumed the role of CEO of said company, and is now overseeing the restructuring of the company. It seems to me that there is already a procedure in place for this process– one that would not have cost the taxpayers one fucking dime; bankruptcy. But we were told that these companies could not go into bankruptcy for whatever foolish reason and now this president is in essence instituting a bankruptcy type restructuring deal, but this one is on us– the taxpayer. Eventually these companies are going to file for bankruptcy anyway, it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper for us if they were allowed to do so in the first place.
But I digress, back on topic now.
As I wrote above, the bill is falling on the taxpayers, but should it be? Does the president have the authority that he is now asserting? The rub here is that the senate never approved the auto bailout plan to use TARP money which is supposed to be reserved for financial institutions. This little technicality did not stop President Bush from giving the auto makers the welfare check anyway, and this president is now taking it to the next level.
I have written in the past that when a company takes bailout money that the government should be able to put some conditions in the deal. But when the president actually starts firing people and overseeing the operations he has gone too far.
Senator Chris Dodd, who already threw this president under the bus when it came to the AIG bonuses, is a little miffed that he had to find out about the president’s plans to become CEO-in-Chief by reading the newspapers.
Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.), meanwhile, toldCNSNews.com he was somewhat surprised that the administration did not consult with him at all about its auto industry plan despite his key committee chairmanship and that he had “been reading about it in the papers basically.”
But what did he expect from this president? The president feels he can do no wrong and that he can’t be questioned for any of his moves. If the president decides he needs to oversee a company’s operation he will, no questions asked. And while right now he has only done this to companies who have received bailout money the treasury secretary, toxic Timmy, wants to expand the government’s power and allow them to take over any company they deem necessary. If this is allowed now then it is only natural that the president would then be able to step in an interfere with the daily operations of those companies, isn’t it?
Sorry, once again I digressed. I guess I am having trouble focusing tonight.
Did Chris Dodd really think that the president was going to care what his opinion was? Did he really think that the power hungry president was going to consult with anyone?
Remember, he won, he will trump you on that Chris Dodd. Did you think that statement only applied to the other side of the aisle?
This president has the authority to oversee the restructuring and the day to day operations of the auto makers because he said he did. Don’t ask him any questions because is is giving no answers.
He is above that.
