If America can elect Obama for President then why cannot The Catholic Church elect: Silvio Berlusconi for Pope!
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Happy Valentine from my wife:
What I was seeking when I married you :
Original List
1. Handsome
2. Charming
3. Financially successful
4. A caring listener
5. Witty
6. In good shape
7. Dresses with style
8. Appreciates finer things
9. Full of thoughtful surprises
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 32)
1. Nice looking
2. Opens car doors, holds chairs
3. Has enough money for a nice dinner
4. Listens more than talks
5. Laughs at my jokes
6. Carries bags of groceries with ease
7. Owns at least one tie
8. Appreciates a good home-cooked meal
9. Remembers birthdays and anniversaries
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 42)
1. Not too ugly
2. Doesn't drive off until I'm in the car
3. Works steady - splurges on dinner out occasionally
4. Nods head when I'm talking
5. Usually remembers punch lines of jokes
6. Is in good enough shape to rearrange the furniture
7. Wears a shirt that covers his stomach
8. Knows not to buy champagne with screw-top lids
9. Remembers to put the toilet seat down
10. Shaves most weekends
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 52)
1. Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
2. Doesn't belch or scratch in public
3. Doesn't borrow money too often
4. Doesn't nod off to sleep when I'm venting 5. Doesn't re-tell the same
joke too many times 6. Is in good enough shape to get off the couch on
weekends 7. Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear 8. Appreciates
a good TV dinner 9. Remembers your name on occasion 10. Shaves some weekends
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 62)
1. Doesn't scare small children
2. Remembers where bathroom is
3. Doesn't require much money for upkeep
4. Only snores lightly when asleep, doesn't fart in public
5. Remembers why he's laughing
6. Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself
7. Usually wears some clothes
8. Likes soft foods
9. Remembers where he left his teeth
10. Remembers that it's the weekend
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 72)
1. Breathing
2. Doesn't miss the toilet
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Our daughter Abby, Dagny's mom, is going to be featured in Orlando's Style Magazine, as one of the city's outstanding realtors. The article is being run in the next issue and I will post when available.
Abby has truly had a remarkable career considering that she began at the height of the market and prospered even through the bubble because she was innovative and stayed ahead of the curve by thinking outside the box.
I am proud to say, all our kids are productive at their various endeavors and have benefited from the Free Enterprise System
Free Enterprise is what made our nation great but President 'Darth Vader' Obama apparently does not agree.
But then all dictators and monarchs fear free people because they cannot control their activities.
However, through taxation they can enslave them and thus, control the fruits of their labor and productivity.
Rubio responds to an out of touch president. (See 1 below.)
Hackng it with hacks! (See 1a and 1b below)
I did not listen to Obama's speech because I was having dinner with a prominent local attorney but when I got home I did hear that Obama wants to raise minimum wages to $9.00. If this is a good idea why not go to $25/hour so young people can make enough to pay off their college loans and save tax payers from another bubble?
Also, think of the increased revenue that would bring into government coffers through taxes so Obama could start more entitlement programs, redistribute more wealth and lock in the innocent youth vote. The same youth whose future his insane policies are screwing - read this article: "Will Obama Tell Young People He's Screwing Them? - N. Gillespie, Reason."
Better yet, why not begin a minimum wage program that escalates with inflation? That way Obama can destroy the free enterprise system faster than he already intends.
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Do you think there is some hanky panky going on between Obama and Hillary? Jay Leno does! Click on: "This was completed too late to be included in the super bowl commercials: http://www.mrctv.org/node/119755"
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SOTU comparisons: (See 2 below.)
Another take on SOTU. Good for growing grass -not the kind Barry used to smoke. (See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1) 'OBAMA THINKS FREE ENTERPRISE IS CAUSE OF PROBLEMS'
Rubio's response casts president as out of touch with reality
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., charged by Republicans with delivering a GOP response to Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union, said in prepared remarks the president probably needs first to understand the problems of the nation.
He said Obama actually blames the free enterprise economy, which has made America for generations the biggest economy in the world, as the problem.
“This opportunity – to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life – it isn’t bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business,” he said.
“And when they succeed, they hire more people, who in turn invest or spend the money they make, helping others start a business and create jobs. Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity. But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems.”
He also said the president’s policies have failed to protect the poor and middle class wage-earners as Obama has claimed.
“Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills,” Rubio said.
They’re immigrants who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy. The tax increases and the deficit spending you propose will hurt middle class families. It will cost them their raises. It will cost them their benefits. It may even cost some of them their jobs. And it will hurt seniors because it does nothing to save Medicare and Social Security. So Mr. President, I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich. I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors.”
Rubio noted that under Obama’s leadership, the American economy “actually shrank during the last three months of 2012.”
That’s going the wrong direction, he said, because the nation needs growth of 4 percent a year to “create millions of middle class jobs.”
A byproduct would be reducing the nation’s deficits by some $4 trillion over 10 years, he said.
“Tax increases can’t do this. Raising taxes won’t create private sector jobs. And there’s no realistic tax increase that could lower our deficits by almost $4 trillion. That’s why I hope the president will abandon his obsession with raising taxes and instead work with us to achieve real growth in our economy.”
He said Obama simply needs to shut down the government checkbook for awhile.
“The real cause of our debt is that our government has been spending $1 trillion more than it takes in every year. That’s why we need a balanced budget amendment. The biggest obstacles to balancing the budget are programs where spending is already locked in. One of these programs, Medicare, is especially important to me. It provided my father the care he needed to battle cancer and ultimately die with dignity. And it pays for the care my mother receives now. I would never support any changes to Medicare that would hurt seniors like my mother. But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now, is in favor of bankrupting it,” he said.
Rubio clearly stated his pro-life position, that “every life at every stage is precious.”
But he blasted Obama. “His solution for virtually every problem is for Washington to tax more, spend more…”
Rubio said Obamacare already is costing Americans their health insurance, their raises and even their jobs.
He also suggested an update immigration plan, a balanced budget, and more help for kids to pay for schools.
Talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh said, too, that Washington needs to get a grip.
“It’s not the State of the Union. It’s the Misstatement of the Union. … It’s an absurd sight, folks, to sit there and watch our government stand and applaud itself as it’s ruining our economy. They’re gonna sit there and applaud themselves all night long, and for what? Ruining the country, bringing the private sector to its knees, exploding the deficit, Obamacare, bye-bye freedom here, bye-bye freedom there,” he said.
CBS interviewed former Vice President Dick Cheney in advance of Obama’s speech, and the former Wyoming congressman said Obama appears to have an agenda aimed at hurting the U.S.
He cited Obama’s nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan for secretary of defense and CIA director.
“Just in the last week, their performance in front of the committees that have to confirm them has been pretty poor,” he said. “And that’s, you know, not my judgment. That’s the judgment, as well, of senators on both sides of the aisle.”
Cheney said Obama’s choices would make for a “second rate” national security team.
“I think the administration’s policies are terribly flawed. I think the president’s performance, by my standards, in the international arena, the Middle East and so forth, is worse than many of my friends and colleagues deem his domestic policies,” he said.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/obama-thinks-free-enterprise-is-cause-of-problems/#AgCc5P0KslppkkvK.99
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who delivered the response from the tea party, said in prepared remarks Congress simply is out of control – and failing to following the laws of the land.
“Washington acts in a way that your family never could – they spend money they do not have, they borrow from future generations, and then they blame each other for never fixing the problem,” he said.
“If Congress refuses to obey its own rules (the Democrat-led Senate hasn’t produced a budget in years, in violation of the law), if Congress refuses to pass a budget, if Congress refuses to read the bills, then I say: Sweep the place clean. limit their terms and send them home!”
He said unless the deficit is cut by trillions, America’s credit again could be downgraded.
Paul also called for work on the nation’s existing immigration system, where laws are not enforced and borders not secured.
“The path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation,” he said.
He pleaded for common sense, suggesting the U.S. should end “all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag” and that Obama should “stop giving F-16s and Abrams tanks to Islamic radicals in Egypt.”
“Big government debt keeps the poor poor and saps savings of elderly,” Paul said.
“The president offers you free stuff but his policies keep you poor.”
“The president offers you free stuff but his policies keep you poor.”
He said he will propose a five-year balanced budget soon. Lower taxes and less government are the keys to a revitalized economy, he said.
Obama’s speech called for an amnesty program for illegal aliens, he boasted that Obamacare already is cutting health care expenses, he called for a boost in the minimum wage, he called for more jobs being created, said the nation must do more on global warming, and asked for expanded preschool offerings to reduce violent crime and strengthen families.
An instant tracking poll by Bing showed any unity message that Obama may have intended about working together clearly fell far short of its mark. The graf shows members of the GOP and independents tracking their responses virtually in unison throughout the speech, while Democrats were isolated in another part of the spectrum.
1a)
Second-Rate Appointments From A Third-Rate President
By Geoffrey P. HuntSo, former VP Dick Cheney says "The performance now of Barack Obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal... Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people."
Well, to be charitable to Barack's second-raters, at least our third-rate president has learned one leadership axiom -- surround yourself with people smarter and more capable than you are. Yet what a tragedy to waste even second-raters on a national security policy that is but a portfolio of indifference and cynicism.
"What Difference Does It Make?" Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton's now infamous nihilistic retort to pesky questioning from Wisconsin's senator Ron Johnson capped nearly a century of profoundly second-rate performances from Democrats. It started with William Jennings Bryan succumbing to a severe case of mal-de-mer as Woodrow Wilson's top diplomat following President Wilson's stern rebuke to Germany for having torpedoed the Luistania in 1915.
Of course Bryan and Mrs. Clinton arrived at the State Department with identical motivations. Neither was the slightest bit qualified -- Bryan the Great Plains populist and perennial presidential aspirant, finally exhausted, pledging his support for Wilson in 1912; Hillary, the undistinguished convenient U.S. senator, merely stoic collateral from her husband's serial philandering, losing to Obama via suspect primary vote tallies. Both appointed as neat political tucks conveniently designed to marginalize one-time rivals.
What a contrast to George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, considered among the top ten secretaries of state since Thomas Jefferson held the job under President Washington, the only modern-era Democrat secretaries of state to be considered "first-rate". Marshall and Acheson, appointed by a first-rate president, actually brought legitimate credentials to the job. In fact, since Marshall, the Democrats haven't proffered a single distinguished secretary of state. So why start now?
Perhaps Democrats still suffering from their epic mismanagement of Vietnam are pathologically incapable of asserting anything but a "turn turtle" national defense and foreign policy. The emasculation of foreign policy by Democrats is hardly new or shocking:
George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is a fitting allegory for the Democrats' approach to domestic policy -- permissive sex, drugs, gambling, sleaze and co-dependency -- all on somebody's else's tab. Less obvious, Porgy's refrain from Act II, 'I Got Plenty o' Nuttin' and Nuttin's Plenty fo' me...' has also been the Democrats' contribution to national security for nearly 60 years.
How fitting for John Kerry, speciously decorated brown-water U.S. Navy officer in Vietnam, disgracing his service and his uniform with dubious testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, now the champion for the Afghan quagmire, and third in succession to the White House. Meanwhile Kerry's top treaty-making priority is defeating global warming. Such gallantry, deserving of another medal someday.
And Chuck Hagel, bringing assiduous mediocrity to the task as secretary of defense. He even struggles to make mediocrity respectable. The good people of Nebraska may be forgiven for pedestrian patronage in sending Hagel to the U.S. Senate. Yet why should cornhuskers' humble approbation be leveraged by confirming "Everyman" Chuck as secretary of defense? Because he served honorably as a combat grunt in Vietnam? Why not choose from among the 2.5 million other honorable vets who served in-country? Or better, pick from those 100,000 or so along with Chuck who actually endured day-to-day front line combat but unlike Chuck still have the capacity to think clearly and come prepared?
On the other hand, maybe Chuck Hagel -- Chance the Gardener -- is the most attractive antidote to those athletic know-it-all defense secretaries best represented by Robert McNamara , "the best and the brightest". What a relief to know "I won't be in a policy making position", as Chuck pleaded with the Senate Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hagel might as well join the rest of Obama's cabinet-level appointees in national defense or foreign policy, none of whom make policy either. Which fits the low-info know-nothings who voted in Obama for a second term.
Principled knight-errants in the mold of Robert Gates, secretary of defense under both Democrats and Republicans, akin to Henry Stimson, secretary of war for FDR and Truman and secretary of state under Herbert Hoover, were Republicans of the first order. Ah, but that was when a first-rate nation deserved a first-rate national defense and first-rate civilian leadership.
Instead, Barack Obama, the third-rate poseur, believes foreign policy and national defense consists of basking in the assassination of Osama Bin Laden while abandoning the U.S. Navy Seal Team who did the dirty work on his behalf, and popping an Ambien and shutting off the lights while his embassy is being firebombed. A nation that elected Barack Obama will get neither a first-rate national defense nor a first-rate foreign policy. So, "what difference does it make" if he can't or won't find a first-rate national security team to run it?
1b)Obama's 'friends of Hamas'? Records of Hagel and Brennan both suggest ties to Islamists
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Last week, 25 Republican senators wrote a letter to a former member of their caucus and the man President Obama wants to lead the Defense Department, demanding full disclosure of his financial dealings. To date, Sen. Chuck Hagel has demonstrated afresh his contempt for the legislature by declining to do so.
To their credit, the senators, including the Republican leadership and every member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have thrown down the gauntlet. They warned Mr. Hagel: "Your refusal to respond to this reasonable request suggests either a lack of respect for the Senate's responsibility to advise and consent or that you are for some reason unwilling to allow this financial disclosure to come to light." The signers added: "Until the Committee receives full and complete answers, it cannot in good faith determine whether you should be confirmed as Secretary of Defense."
It may be that the Hagel appointment has been effectively checkmated. Should the nominee continue to stonewall, even Democrats -- who are under immense pressure to hew to the party line but were privately appalled by his performance during a confirmation hearing two weeks ago -- get a face-saving way to disassociate themselves from this loser.
Mr. Hagel may have, as a practical matter, no choice but to try to brazen it out. Breitbart.com last week quoted Senate sources as saying that among the requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is one listing "a group purportedly called 'Friends of Hamas.'" At this writing and absent the requested disclosure, it cannot be determined whether Mr. Hagel is literally associated with the "friends" of a designated terrorist organization. The mere fact, though, that it seems entirely plausible -- given the nominee's record of hostility toward Israel and his affinity for its enemies (including Hamas' longtime sponsor, Iran) -- his refusal to make the sort of disclosure expected of all Cabinet appointees should be the last straw for Senate Republicans and Democrats alike.
What is incredible is that Mr. Obama's candidate to lead the Central Intelligence Agency could reasonably be considered a friend of Hamas as well. After all, he has been among the Obama appointees to engage with a group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). No fewer than four federal judges have, in connection with the 2008 federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation on terrorism financing charges, concurred that CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood front.
Indeed, in the course of that prosecution, the government established that CAIR was founded in 1993 for the purpose of providing political and fundraising support for Hamas. Yet on John O. Brennan's watch as counterterrorism czar for the first term of the Obama presidency, administration officials have, according to one, met "more than 100 times" with representatives of this terrorist organization's U.S. influence operation.
Even more alarming, as Steven Emerson and John Rossomando make clear in a must-read analysis of Mr. Brennan's record published last week by the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism, the CIA director-designate agreed to demands made in 2011 by CAIR and other Islamist and leftist groups to politicize the training of intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security and military personnel. In a letter dated Nov. 3 of that year, Mr. Brennan promised that an interagency review and new guidelines would "address the valid concerns" raised by this insidious Red-Green axis.
Among other things, the guidelines promulgated under Mr. Brennan's supervision required the purging of hundreds of documents and training materials from the files of the FBI and other agencies on the grounds that they might "offend" Muslims such as the Islamists of CAIR and other friends of Hamas. Experienced trainers including Maj. Stephen Coughlin -- a former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the nation's pre-eminent authorities on the enemy threat doctrine of Shariah -- were barred from providing instruction at the CIA and elsewhere. Also, "community partners" (read, senior officials of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts who profess to be "leaders" of the Muslim-American community) are to be consulted before any trainers or training materials are used to prepare with federal funds to counter "violent extremism."
Despite this record and myriad other examples of what is, at best, Mr. Brennan's willful blindness to the threat posed by Islamists and both violent and pre-violent jihad -- in which Shariah obliges them to engage -- not a single member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence used its hearing on his appointment last week to question the nominee on this score. A second hearing on Tuesday, this one behind closed doors, offers another opportunity to do so. Will it, too, be missed?
During the Cold War -- our last epic struggle with a totalitarian ideology -- it would have been unimaginable for individuals who were friends of the KGB or associated with those who were to have been nominated to lead the Pentagon or the CIA, let alone both. As Rep. Trent Franks, a member of a courageous group Newt Gingrich has dubbed "the National Security Five," said on the House floor last week: "I believe the success of the [Muslim Brotherhood's] 'stealth jihad' has been significantly enhanced by remarks and public statements made by John Brennan over the past four years. He should, therefore, not be allowed anywhere near -- let alone be given the responsibility for running -- America's premier intelligence agency."
Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, has said he will insist on 60 votes to confirm Mr. Hagel. The same should apply to Mr. Brennan and any other friend of Hamas. A true friend of Hamas is, by definition, an enemy of ours.
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| Comparison of 2012 and 2013 State of the Union Address by Pres. Obama |
#1 State of the Union - President Obama January 24, 2012 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state-union-address "Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations. ... Our ironclad commitment -- and I mean ironclad -- to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history." #2 State of the Union - President Obama February 12, 2013 http://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2013 "Likewise, the leaders of Iran must recognize that now is the time for a diplomatic solution, because a coalition stands united in demanding that they meet their obligations, and we will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon ... In defense of freedom, we’ll remain the anchor of strong alliances from the Americas to Africa; from Europe to Asia. In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy. We know the process will be messy, and we cannot presume to dictate the course of change in countries like Egypt, but we can -- and will -- insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people. We’ll keep the pressure on a Syrian regime that has murdered its own people, and support opposition leaders that respect the rights of every Syrian. And we will stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace. These are the messages I'll deliver when I travel to the Middle East next month. ..." 2a)The President’s Miracle-Gro Government Just add taxes to increase spending while shrinking the deficit.
Of course he believes that we have a spending problem, President Obama assured us, immediately before a State of the Union address in which he called for — you guessed it — more spending. Like Saint Augustine praying “Lord grant me chastity and continence . . . but not yet,” President Obama paid lip service to the idea of debt reduction but ruled out any real effort to reduce it.
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In fact, the president claimed that a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion, more than half of the sum that he believes is necessary to “stabilize” our debt. But, even setting aside the sad shift in target from balancing the budget to temporarily stabilizing the debt, the president’s version of events is fundamentally flawed.
Let’s be clear: There have been no spending cuts since Obama became president. In 2010, the first year that President Obama was fully responsible for federal spending (President Obama signed the 2009 budget, but it’s fair to blame most of the spending in it on President Bush, who essentially proposed it), the federal government spent $3.45 trillion. Last year, we spent $3.54 trillion, nearly $100 billion more. And, outlays for the first four months of FY 2013 are $39.3 billion more than in the first four months of FY 2012. If we have seen a slight reduction in budget deficits, it is due exclusively to tax hikes and additional increased revenue as the economy comes out of recession.
And given the presidential wish list, we aren’t going to see any spending cuts anytime soon. The president wants to spend more money on education, infrastructure, “green energy,” manufacturing subsidies, universal preschool, and pretty much everything else. At the same time, the president warned that the upcoming sequester, a 2.4 percent reduction in projected future federal spending, would return us to something akin to the Dark Ages.
In some ways, though, President Obama looks like a model of fiscal rectitude next to congressional Democrats. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem.” And lest anyone think that Pelosi misspoke, her whip, Representative Steny Hoyer, followed Pelosi’s remarks by declaring that we don’t have a spending problem: “The country has a paying-for problem. We haven’t paid for what we’ve bought.”
Yet, despite the president’s rhetorical nod to cuts in spending, he, like Pelosi and Hoyer, apparently believes that our real problem is not spending, but the deficit that results from insufficient taxes to pay for that spending — as Hoyer says, “a paying-for problem.”
That’s how the president can propose so much new spending while confidently decreeing, “Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.” If you raise taxes, then poof — the deficit (and therefore the problem) goes away.
This misses the point. Deficits are merely the symptom of the disease, which is an ever-growing government. Consider that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, even if we never add another new government program, existing commitments will drive federal-government spending to 43 percent of GDP by 2050. With state and local government spending, government at all levels will consume roughly two-thirds of all the goods and services produced in this country.
Pelosi, Hoyer, and Obama respond to this by suggesting that the only problem is finding enough taxes to pay for all this government. In fairness, if one uses a purely static analysis, eliminating deficit spending and thereby reducing future interest payments would reduce projected future federal spending to just 30 percent of GDP. With state and local government spending, that’s still 45 to 50 percent of GDP.
One wonders, of course, whether even President Obama can raise taxes enough to pay for all this spending. Obama wants to close tax loopholes for the rich, but the two changes that Pelosi mentioned on Sunday — imposing the Buffett Rule (a 30 percent minimum tax on the wealthy who earn their income primarily from investments) and eliminating tax subsidies for the oil-and-gas industry — would raise a grand total of $85 billion over the next ten years. The president’s favored plan — to cap deductions for couples earning more than $250,000 per year — does somewhat better, generating an additional $584 billion over ten years. On the other hand, that’s less than 10 percent of the cumulative $6.3 trillion in deficits expected over that period.
More important, the president and his allies ignore the dangers that such a gargantuan government poses to both liberty and economic growth. As economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Randall Holcombe argue:
As governments move beyond these core functions [of protecting people and property], they will adversely affect economic growth because of a) the disincentive effects of higher taxes and crowding-out effect of public investment in relation to private investment, b) diminishing returns as governments undertake activities for which they are ill-suited, and c) an interference with the wealth creation process, because governments are not as good as markets in adjusting to changing circumstances and finding innovative new ways of increasing the value of resources.
Economists debate the exact tipping point — at what point does the government become so large that it harms the economy more than it helps it? — but few would argue that government can consume an unlimited proportion of the national economy without its having a significant impact on that economy. That is true even if big government is “paid for.”
In the coming weeks, we are headed for a series of budget battles that will have far more impact on our lives than last night’s lofty phrases. But President Obama has clearly sketched out his vision for the future. It is vision of a growing state, with greater control over our lives, financed by ever-higher taxes. The need to resist that vision is what makes the budget fights ahead so vitally important.
— Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
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