Paul Ryan's Budget Proposal is Half the Answer

This morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) unveiled a bold proposal to trim trillions off America's bloated budget. It represents the only serious proposal out there to get America's finances back in order, and as such he is to be congratulated for his courage and foresight.

However, as Margaret Thatcher found in the UK during the 1980s, spending is only half the battle. The nature of the bureaucratic beast is that it will expand again. That's why President Reagan's simplification of the Tax Code wore off, and we now have a far more complex tax code than we did before tax reform.

We therefore need a similarly comprehensive reform of the federal government that will address what might be termed the "supply side" of the federal bureaucracy, to prevent it getting in the way of an entrepreneur-led recovery.

This reform should include:

* Abolition of whole government departments that have no valid constitutional purpose, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Labor

* The rechartering of valid existing agencies as performance-based agencies that exist to serve the public, not hinder them

* Reform of federal pay and working conditions

* A reduction in the use of federal contracts and grants, to tackle the "shadow" public sector

* Introduction of a single, fair tax system and a new Taxpayers' Bill of Rights

* End labor unions' privileges that put them above the law

* Privatization of appropriate government functions

* and, above all: Genuine regulatory reform as proposed by Wayne Crews and Ryan Young.

A genuine public sector reform package must be as sweeping and comprehensive as Rep. Ryan's spending reform package. Only then will America be on the road to genuine, sustainable recovery.

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The Swift Death of the New Tone

Mary Katharine Ham


A child's handwritten sign that reads "We hate Scott Wacre" is seen taped to a wall in the rotunda during protests against budget cuts proposed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, R, at the state Capitol in Madison. The "new tone" the Left has been demanding from conservatives was nowhere to be seen during the union protests

Remember the days, in August of 2009, when conservatives merely raising their voices at health care town halls portended the sure destruction of the Republic? There were large numbers of conservatives gathering peacefully (and, yes, sometimes angrily) to express their discontent with Obama's health care law. The media decided these protests were threatening and dangerous on their face.

The mere gathering together of conservatives critical of the president caused Chris Matthews to sputter and Rachel Maddow to whine about the closed-minded, racist and surely violent crowds that would be the undoing of the Union. The only problem was there wasn't much violence to speak of.

During the most heated month of the health care uprising, when more than 500 town halls took place over one month across the country, there were exactly 10 instances of documented violence. Most of them were confined to the ripping of signs and minor tussles (though there were a handful of punches thrown), and seven of 10 incidents were perpetrated by ObamaCare supporters on protesters, according to photos, police reports and witnesses.

Nonetheless, the media kept up its "Climate of Hate" narrative through 2010, tsk-tsking over the tone of protest posters, often erroneously blaming tea partiers for Lyndon Larouche activists' Hitler signs and generally making a giant, scary deal out of the least errant word from any right-leaning protester in any place at any time.

There was evidence in 2009 that the stringent requirements for polite protest were not going to apply to everyone. Concurrent with the health care protests that made the media to tremble with their ferocity, the international community held the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh. There, a collection of liberal and anarchist protesters did approximately $50,000 of damage to local businesses, and 190 of them were arrested for blocking traffic and rolling trash bins and throwing rocks at police.

The CBS headline for that story? "Police fire gas on G20 protesters."

By 2011, the "violent right-wingers" narrative took its most irresponsible turn yet and blamed Sarah Palin's political speech for the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. Giffords is recovering, praise God, after being shot in the head by a mentally ill man who had been fixated on her since at least 2007. To this day, there is no evidence that he was motivated by anyone's political rhetoric, martial words or imagery. The 28-page federal indictment of Jared Lee Loughner does not mention Palin's now-infamous crosshairs map as a cause of the incident because it wasn't.

Nonetheless, the country was called by all of national media to a time of soul-searching about our "tone." There should be a new tone, they said, and President Barack Obama echoed that in his Tucson speech saying our rhetoric should "honor" those who had been killed while engaging in our democratic process in that Safeway parking lot.

Several right-leaning pundits joined the call to civility, giving credence to the idea that rhetoric and Loughner's crime were somehow connected -- among them David Frum, Joe Scarborough and Jeb Bush.

But the new tone didn't last long. After all, it could last only until it was necessary for liberals to protest again, at which point all the rules imposed on conservative activists would be swiftly jettisoned.

Excerpt from the print edition of Townhall magazine

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Pelosi: The GOP's getting ready to starve six million seniors or something

I don't know which budget bill she's talking about, the 2011 one or Ryan's new one, but if it's the former than she's actually complaining here about a GOP budget that she could have prevented by passing a budget herself last year when she was Speaker. (Of course, with Democrats in control in the Senate and White House, any Mass Senior Starvation Program would require bipartisan support to pass now anyway.)

Anyway, get used to this: Warnings about grandma being forced to eat styrofoam peanuts and Fancy Feast because of heartless Republicans and their insane crusade for solvency will be a staple of Democratic talking points by next November, especially with the White House desperate to win back seniors alienated by ObamaCare.

Last week it was the GOP wanting kids abroad to die of malaria, this week it's our nation's elderly being made to eat out of garbage cans or else waste away, next week it'll be something to do with puppies. So let me repeat the question posed last week: If they're this worried about important programs falling through the cracks, shouldn't they want to come to the table and make some sort of deal on a long-term sustainable budget that protects welfare programs to some extent?

How does letting the country collapse fiscally, which would prompt truly draconian cuts under an austerity plan to rebalance the books, put more food on seniors' tables?

In fact, that's one of my core complaints with the GOP's "messaging" thus far, as bold as it's otherwise been. Thanks to Obama's appalling, irresponsible budget, the public is still under the illusion that we're debating whether to reform entitlements. We aren't. We're debating when to reform them - now, when we have the luxury of lengthy debate, or later under extreme duress.

I know how Nancy would solve this problem, but her answer is no more realistic politically than wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare. So what's the magic Pelosi plan for keeping those seniors - and everyone else - fed and insured and averting a fiscal catastrophe, the part of the equation that somehow always gets lost in these heartbreaking tales of woe? She's the House leader for the Party Of Ideas, right? Let's hear some ideas.

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Time Magazine Moonbat Explains Why Koran Is More Sacred Than Bible

According to the liberal creed of moral relativism, all religions are the same, except that Christianity is bad because of the Crusades, and Islam is good because Arabs have slightly darker skin. Also, it's okay to burn Bibles, but burning the Koran is an affront to God. Time Magazine, the liberal establishment's outpost in the dentist's office, explains through "World Editor" Bobby Gauche to Hardball bench player Chuck Clod:

GHOSH: The thing to keep in mind that's very important here is that the Koran to Muslims, it is not - it is not the same as the Bible to Christians. The Bible is a book written by men. It is acknowledged by Christians that it is written by men. It's the story of Jesus.

TODD: Yes.

GHOSH: But the Koran, if you are a believer, if you're a Muslim, the Koran is directly the word of God, not written by man. It is transcribed, is directly the word of God. That makes it sacred in a way that it's hard to understand if you're not Muslim. So the act of burning a Koran is much more - potentially much, much more inflammatory than -

TODD: Directly attacking - directly attacking God.

GHOSH: - than if you were to burn a - burn a Bible.

TODD: Directly attacking God.

No doubt that received a hearty "Amen!" from the dhimmified moonbats in MSNBC's odious audience.

Hopey Change and "fundamental transformation" aside, this is still America. We can burn any book we like - even the one book our liberal overlords least want us to burn. If Muslims don't use it as a pretext to murder people, they'll find some other pretext, because violent intimidation is the only thing that keeps their evil cult alive.

SOURCE

A pretty poor understanding of Christian doctrine there. Many Christians believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God and is hence unerring. Muslims believe exactly the same about the Koran. The different responses of Christians and Muslims to desecration of their sacred book is in the religions concerned. Christians preach a God of Love. Muslims preach a God of jihad and world domination

May I make a small linguistic point in that connection? Some people (mostly non-Christians, I think) say that fundamentalist Christians believe in an "inerrant" Bible. They do not. "Inerrant" means "not wandering about". An "errant" knight is not a knight who makes a lot of mistakes but simply a wandering knight. "Errant" is ultimately derived from the Latin "iter", a walk or a journey. Compare "itinerant". The Christian belief is in an "unerring" Bible, a Bible that makes no mistakes.

Dictionaries report the mistaken usage these days but it is still a mistake -- JR

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ELSEWHERE

NV: ACORN pleads guilty in voter fraud case: "The defunct political advocacy group ACORN has pleaded guilty in a case alleging that canvassers were illegally paid to register Nevada voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday that ACORN defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen entered the guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters."

Obama's first 2012 campaign event: Facebook "meeting" on Hitler's birthday, Columbine anniversary: "In 2008 thousands of Americans turned out to mass rallies in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And the President has just announced plans for his first big rally of his re-election bid as he launches his run for a second term of office in 2012. But this time the first major gathering of the campaign is being held online as President Obama invites his Facebook friends to attend a '`virtual meeting.'"

How can anyone take this seriously?: "Republican fiscal conservatism is akin to a 500-pound-man declaring aloud in January that he is determined to lose weight, and so he promises to forgo exactly half a glass of eggnog on Thanksgiving - and if you protest, and insist he drink the whole glass, he will have none of it, because he has made up his mind to lose weight and refuses to compromise. This is the state of modern American politics."

Solis's pro-union bias: "Speaking to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted she was biased toward unions. Unions only account for 11.9 percent of the workforce, but Solis' favoritism puts them ahead of the other 88 percent of the American workers."

What if the government shut down... and nobody cared?: "Everyone keeps talking about a possible government shut down on Friday, April 8 as though it is a bad thing. Someone will get the blame. The president or the Republicans or Democrats will suffer at the polls. The planets will fall out of alignment. Reporters might run out of things to pontificate upon. Listening to pundits one gets the impression that there will be a federal tsunami washing away life as we know it; chaos in the streets; weeping and gnashing of teeth for all. But one wonders, how bad would it really be for government to call in sick for a few days?"

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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