#37 - "National Suicide"

[Note: (1) The past few days, the media has focused much on the life of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. While I agree we should applaud anyone who is involved in public service, especially for almost 5 decades, I think that we need to be careful to consider the overall emphasis of his or her years of service. I’d like to remind you that the record of accomplishment the Senator is being lauded for, while in the guise of helping the less fortunate among us, is basically one great government program after another that has enlarged the scope of government’s involvement in our lives and more importantly of government making us citizens more and more dependent on it for our “general welfare” (a phrase ironically found in our Declaration of Independence). And I have to mention that he was a pro-abortion Catholic, which I believe is hypocritical; (2)please check this site on Sunday for the first of a series of special postings – “Letters to the Christian Church” - that I plan to present from time to time; and (3) as always, I invite you to please check out the editorial cartoons (as well as the articles) at Worldmag.com They truly prove that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”; and (4) please check this site for a special "Letter to the Church" posting.]

I’ve been told that people like to have something to laugh about and so, because I rarely can put a humorous spin on the subjects I address on this blog, I will try to present at least one thing to hopefully bring a smile to your face with each posting. Here’s this one:(from Mickey's Funnies.com);">"In Florida they use alligators to make handbags. Isn't it wonderful what they can train animals to do these days?"

- the following book review is taken from an article written by Cal Thomas, dated August 25th, and posted on the Worldmag.com website

In his article, Cal Thomas previews a book to be released next week entitled, "National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z." It is written by an investigative reporter, educator, and columnist named Mark Gross. In his book, the author summarizes, as Publisher’s Weekly describes it, “a fiery A-Z compendium of government greed, chicanery, and plain incompetence …[and]enjoys a good rant, but his criticisms are sound and well-supported.” Of course he lists some of those outrageous pork projects [almost a thousand in the stimulus bill that became law earlier this year] – such as the “$107,000 to study the sex life of the Japanese quail; $150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud [!]” He goes on to point out even bigger expenditures such as the "Alternative Minimum Tax," which he says is ‘based on an accounting lie,’ will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years. America, he writes, spends $700 billion a year on various welfare programs, amounting to $65,000 for each poor family of four, yet we still have the poor with us. "Both political parties, Gross charges, secretly encourage illegal immigration (the Democrats for votes, the Republicans for cheap labor) and then reward the immigrants’ children with automatic U.S. citizenship.”

Gross further sites such things as: (1)1,000 duplicate programs that waste billions; ;">(2) President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program, “has left behind a lot of misspent money: $24 billion per year, according to Gross, even as primary and secondary education ‘continue to spiral downward;’” and weight:bold;"(3) 1,399 government programs handling disappearing rural areas. [Sure sounds like a bunch of pork barrel projects to buy votes back home.] “Gross does more than just list government’s sins. He offers a solution on ‘How to Better Govern America.’ If ever there was a must-read for people who are sick of the way government operates, this is it.” In his article, Cal Thomas asks us to consider these and many other examples of government mismanagement of our precious national tax dollars in light of the projected budget deficit. “The Obama administration forecast a 10-year budget deficit projection of more than $7.1 trillion, but when confronted with figures from the pesky and bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the administration was forced this week to raise that projection to approximately $9 trillion. That’s 9,000,000,000,000 dollars. [For most of us who think a $1,000 deposit in our checking accounts is a large amount and a $1,000 credit card balance is too much, $9 trillion is a figure that is almost beyond comprehension. It is certainly beyond defensible. To borrow a phrase used in another context by the House leadership, it is un-American.”

I didn’t know whether or not to break out laughing or screaming when it was reported that our local(just elected last fall) Congressman here in Central Florida, Alan Grayson, (who has voted 98% of the time in support of President Obama and Democratic Party proposals) actually said that we must remember that some of that deficit was what was inherited from the Bush administration. He failed to mention, though, that still inexcusable, that was about $4 trillion dollars accumulated over 8 years whereas the President has added $5 trillion dollars in just his first 8 MONTHS in office. And that doesn’t even include the so-called healthcare reforms he is proposing that he still has not determined how to pay for its $1 trillion plus price tag. That is what I call “chutzpah” of the highest order!