It’s Now Or Never
1. The Compromise
2. Ezra Klein Supports Killing Black Babies
3. It’s Pretty Much Our Own Fault.
4. Republican “Austerity”
5. When Will the Real Fight Finally Commence?
6. Unions & Racism: An Age-Old, Institutional Problem Continues Unabated
7. Appeals Court Approves of Union Fining Member for Reporting Safety Violation
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It’s Now Or Never
On Friday the Republicans and Democrats agreed to cut just under four days worth of spending out of the federal budget, or only a few tenths, if that, off the budget deficit.
Friends, our economic liberty is being diminished and it is both parties doing it. It’s now or never — if you want to find out how our economic liberty is being diminished and what you can do to restore it, you need to attend Hillsdale College’s free townhall this week.
It starts at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 16, 2011. You can watch all or part of it from the comfort of your own home. Go here right now and register. Time is running out. It is now or never to save the Republic. Find out how to do your part.
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1. The Compromise
Friday night the Republicans and Democrats reached a deal to avoid a government shutdown. The Republicans had promised $100 billion in cuts. They back pedaled to $61 billion in cuts. They have actually agreed to $38.5 billion in cuts, or about four days worth of spending by the federal government.
Many of the conservatives who booed them for going from $100 billion to $61 billion are now ready to dip John Boehner in bronze and champion him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
The most depressing bit of all of this is how quickly conservative pundits who promised they were to going to throw off the shackles of fidelity to the Republican Party after Bush and become again true conservative warriors for freedom have descended, automaton like, into guttural cheerleading for a Republican Party that just went from $100 billion in promised cuts to a third of that in actual cuts while selling out the unborn for roughly $1000 per murdered child assuming reports are true that they got the Democrats to increase cuts $1 billion in exchange for dropping the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
God knows if there is one lesson for the Republican leaders in this, it is that they can promise the moon, deliver dirt, and the sycophantic conservative media will pop fireworks, fly American flags, and proclaim that dirt the second coming of Jesus Christ.
It’s embarrassing really. The deal is not terrible, but it is not nearly as good as some would have you believe. For starters, that $38.5 billion is total for the year — not an additional cut on top of what was already cut. Let’s review the good and the bad.
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2. Ezra Klein Supports Killing Black Babies
What’s wrong with you, bitter clingers? Don’t you realize that a dead child is a cheap child? I mean, all dead babies cost is the funds to suck or cut them mercilessly from their mother’s womb. Presto! No more pesky expenses of a living child.
Ezra Klein, writing at the Washington Post, actually proffers that argument in favor of taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood; that abortions are cheaper for the government than having an “unintended pregnancy”. (That’s their euphemism for unborn baby killed by abortion.) His article is filled with predictable talking points, all easily disproved – the SBA List has already done so here. Setting the horrid spin aside, his concluding paragraph is truly vile.
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3. It’s Pretty Much Our Own Fault.
Any honest reckoning of the budget deal the House GOP appears to have reached must view it as a result of negotiations in which one side — the Democrats — believed they had the upper hand, and the other — the GOP — agreed. From the start, the brain trust that nominally holds the majority in the House made clear that they would brutally knife their own mothers to avoid a shutdown, because the memory of the last is burned into their pathetic neurons for all of time, and they believe they’ll suffer the way the last Republican majority did. I don’t believe that’s an accurate assessment of the likely fallout of the shutdown the submorons on the Hill clearly felt they needed to avoid, and I’ll discuss that, but we all need to remember: This is our fault, yours and mine, and every activist’s and voter’s who helped these clowns get elected.
That’s sort of counterintuitive, isn’t it? It isn’t, if you think about it.
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4. Republican “Austerity”
o, let me get this straight…
After all the back and forth, pledges, promises, tough fiscal talk and discussions of shutdown… Republicans have agreed to pass another short term CR with a few billion dollars in cuts - all being jammed through tonight by voice vote and basically sight-unseen (classic Washington transparency). This to get us to next week.
Then, Republicans are likely going to cut a deal for something around $40 billion max (likely upper-30’s) of cuts, and not uphold their own pledge to cut $100 billion (much less the smaller amount of $61 billion originally offered), and then fail to draw even the faintest line in the sand on policies (so-called “riders”) of any significance, such as federal funding of Planned Parenthood (i.e. tax dollars used to support the death of hundreds of thousands of babies annually) or Obamacare.
Oh sure, Republican leadership will hide behind some symbolic votes in the Senate (which can easily be gained through any real effort anyway) and behind supposedly “significant” cuts of $39 billion, or some such.
Keep in mind that our national deficit - not debt, mind you, but annual deficit - this year alone will surpass $1.5 Trillion, and thus, the $39 billion in cuts represents well less than 3% of the hole we are digging…
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5. When Will the Real Fight Finally Commence?
Over the weekend, Speaker John Boehner showed that he is even more conservative than the Tea Party. While the petulant rubes in the Tea Party were credulously focusing on the ’small potatoes’ of the 2011 budget, Boehner wisely decided to proceed to the real fight; the debt ceiling and the FY 2012 budget. In the process, he even secured $38 billion, or 1%, in cuts from this year’s budget, along with the funding for a D.C. voucher program.
In addition to being an intrepid conservative and a tenacious negotiator, Boehner is also a skilled mathematician. He knew from the very beginning that 38 billion is more than half way between 0 and 61 billion. Game over, Democrats lose! Even though half of the alleged cuts might comprise of Democrat cuts in mandatory spending, and another $10 billion might include the previous CR cuts, those are just minor points.
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6. Unions & Racism: An Age-Old, Institutional Problem Continues Unabated
It is rather ironic that, last week, union bosses used the anniversary Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination to try to drum up support for the union cause. You see, even after all these years, racism and discrimination within the walls of the House of Labor is still very real. As noted by UnionFacts.com, since 2000, there have been over 4,200 complaints filed against unions for racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. In some cities, it is a bigger problem than in others. However, the one area where union racism seems to rear its ugly head the most often is with the construction trade unions, where African Americans are often excluded from work.
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7. Appeals Court Approves of Union Fining Member for Reporting Safety Violation
It should come as no shock that unions have rules. They are usually a codified set of rules and union members are expected to abide by those rules. Almost always, a union’s rules are spelled out in the union’s constitution. If a member violates a union rule, a union has the legal right to place that member on trial (a union trial). If the member is found guilty at the union trial, the union has the right to impose fines, suspend or even expel the member.
Some of the more well-known rules are don’t cross a picket line or don’t be disloyal to the union. However, there are some lesser known union rules that could cause members to be tried by their union. For example, showing up at a union meeting intoxicated, or trying to kick a union out of the workplace (that’s disloyal), or even wronging a fellow member are all examples of rules that are in many union constitutions. And, let there be no mistake, unions do enforce their rules and fine their members.
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Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
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