Another reasonable look at this week’s Congressional budget deal.
Link here.
Mitchell correctly notes that this deal occurred because of the reality of divided government. While Republican leaders have often acted like weak-kneed wimps, there still remains a limit on how much they can get, not controlling two-thirds of the government. As I noted earlier in discussing the science budget, the federal budget is no longer growing uncontrollably, evidence that the voters’ wishes from 2010 and 2014 are beginning to be heeded.
Only when we have elected more conservatives will it then start to shrink.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here.
Mitchell correctly notes that this deal occurred because of the reality of divided government. While Republican leaders have often acted like weak-kneed wimps, there still remains a limit on how much they can get, not controlling two-thirds of the government. As I noted earlier in discussing the science budget, the federal budget is no longer growing uncontrollably, evidence that the voters’ wishes from 2010 and 2014 are beginning to be heeded.
Only when we have elected more conservatives will it then start to shrink.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“the federal budget is no longer growing uncontrollably”
This is because there hasn’t been a budget signed by Obama. Ever. There have only been continuing resolutions, which authorize the government to continue spending as before (with only minor modifications in details, but not much modification to amount), thus there is no authorization to increase spending. It may seem like a way to control costs, but it means, among other things, that we have been spending on the 2009 “stimulus package” ever since.
The recently passed “communist bill”* — er — “cromnibus bill” is not a budget but a spending plan.
Reining in the EPA and IRS are small potatoes to the loss of our most basic freedoms: freedom to spend our money as we wish (what other tyranny has done this — I truly want to know) and freedom of association (we are now coerced into associating with a healthcare insurer). Obamacare’s many panels and decision-makers have limited our freedoms in other ways, such as the freedom to practice our religion as we wish — even companies are being forced to become atheistic (who wants a to own a company or shares in a company that violates his values? There are even mutual funds set up for people to invest in “socially conscious” companies). Even our freedom of speech was attacked: only companies who do not speak-out against Obamacare are allowed to delay implementing this cretinous law — a clear case of crony capitalism (rewarding friends, punishing enemies), ‘give up your rights or suffer the consequences.’ When laws are applied unequally, then we stop being a nation of laws and become a nation of (rewarded and punished) men.
Are we forced into a choice between reigning in the tyranny or reigning in the EPA and IRS? Why not get all three, plus the amnesty dictated by Obama (allowing those who sneaked in or overstayed their welcome to take American citizens’ jobs — why is it that the illegal aliens** have more privileges than the citizens and legal residents)? There have been so very many overreaches by this government, but we are supposed to be happy about a couple of agencies have been slapped on the wrists and about defense spending limits during wartime?
If we allow our government to continue its tyranny, then tyranny will become another “new normal” (as have so many other low expectations, over the past six years). The high rate at which we are being forced to accept laws and “new normals” that would never have been accepted a mere decade ago makes it hard to keep track of them all.
Yet the “communist bill” removes any possibility of Congress being able to reign in an out of control tyranny for yet another year, no matter how eager the new representatives are. Will they be as eager after a year of indoctrination by the old guard?
From the front, we may look like we are dying of a thousand paper cuts (a couple of which the “communist bill” helps heal, like adding Neosporin(TM) to those wounds), but it is the knives in our backs that are the real killer.
* I mis-heard this, the other day, and it stuck in my head.
** If you don’t like the phrase “illegal alien,” please substitute “misdemeanant alien.”