President Rewrite at it again. (See 1a below.)
Th Good Ship Obama continues to take on water and Democrats running for re-election are struggling to figure out a wining campaign strategy.
Some have agreed to accept the money he sends their way but refuse to be seen with him.
Some have decided the CBO report is a blessing because it allows them to twist portability to mean it frees workers to stay home , accept lower paying jobs, to try their hand at their desire to be entrepreneurs etc.
Politicians are good at torturing meaning when it serves their narrow interests.
You would hope the public has had it up to their eye lids with lies and deceit but then explain how the current Mayor of New York won election..
I bumped into a friend today who has his home up for sale because he has given up on our nation and will move to another country when a sale occurs.
I told him he should stay and fight the good fight but he said that was an impossible challenge in which he no longer wished to engage. I am not sure the country, he has in mind, will provide him with what he is seeking but I hope so.
He laments the fact that he is deserting the nation's young whose future he sees as bleak.
My friend feels deeply and he is doing something about it, rash though it may be. For those who stay we to can do something about the mess Obama has helped put us in and that is vote for candidates who are not self serving, who have the interest of the nation at heart and who have a proven record of not being beholden to any particular monied interest. They may be few in number but it is a beginning.
This is why I am supporting Dr. Bob Johnson for Congress!.
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Dennis Prager on what an high school principal should say if he/she could and what needs to be said regardless. (See 2 below.)
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And then there is that pesky IRS thing where no one was involved. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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It ain't over til its over but then it might just be over. You decide. (See 4 below.)
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Good ole boy, Jeff Foxworthy's, unworthiness sense of humor at the expense of Muslims:
There are bad Politically Incorrect jokes about Catholics, the Pope,Jews, Christians, the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Chinese, the French (including French Canadians) etc., etc., but its insensitive joke about Muslims?
For the sake of political incorrectness we should be inclusive.....
Jeff Foxworthy on Muslims:
1. If you refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor, You may be a Muslim.
2. If you have more wives than teeth, You may be a Muslim. (True of Georgians as well.)
3. If you wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon to be unclean, You may be a Muslim.
4. If you think vests come in two styles:
Bullet-proof and suicide.You may be a Muslim
5. If you can't think of anyone you haven't declared jihad against, You may be a Muslim.
6. If you consider television dangerous but routinely carry explosives in your clothing, You may be a Muslim.
7. If you were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs, You may be a Muslim.
8. If you have nothing against women and think every man should own at least four, You may be a Muslim.
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Some articles are worth repeating, as is this one. I am posting it here in the hope you will not miss reading it.
One of the first acts of Barack Obama's presidency was to send back to Britain a powerful Oval Office sculpture of Winston Churchill, looking beetle-browed and determined, the way Churchill really looked when he was defying Hitler.
At the time, Obama's gesture seemed another little eccentric footnote to this extremist administration. After all, Obama's Dreams from My Father celebrates his biological father who abandoned him as a baby, to return to Kenya after the terrorist Mau Mau Jono Kenyatta came to power. Obama Sr. soon fell out with Kenyatta, was purged from the regime, and managed to have two consecutive drunk driving accidents, the second of which killed him.
In the real post-colonial world, Obama's Leninist ideology is completely passé. India's Prime Minister Singh is a free market economist. Over there, English is still the language of politics and commerce, and free market policies have created a sustained economic boom. China is no longer rigidly Marxist either, and it is booming using free market principles. The real talents of individuals in India and China now have a greater chance to flourish. In Russia, Putin has introduced a 14% flat tax, and is boosting traditional morality. Only Obama still harbors that old post-colonial rage against white imperialists, which is why he can't tell the difference between murderous terror gangs and democratic revolutions. Iran is ruled by a corrupt and evil priesthood, opposed by hundreds of thousand of young people who look to the civilized world for hope. After Obama's Geneva Surrender we know that he honestly can't tell the difference between reactionary murder regimes and modern peoples.
For civilized people Al Qaeda is a mass child-murdering criminal gang, a horrific throwback to a dark and bloody past. Photos of AQ's slaughtering innocent children, women old people in the Syrian Christian village of Maloula have gone viral all over the web. The mall massacres in Nairobi, Kenya showed a primitive murder gang head-chopping black and white Africans alike, and those pictures were flashed around the world as well. Normal human beings of all faiths were terribly shocked, including many civilized Muslims.
But for Obama Al Qaeda is just like the Mau Mau terror group, who beat the British in Kenya by slaughtering white farm families in acts of horrific terror.
Obama truly is not like us; his beliefs are utterly alien to our political tradition.
That is why this administration violates all the rules. It is not an accident. It is simply who they are.
The act of sending the bust of Churchill back to Britain signaled Obama's hatred for the Anglo-American political tradition, including the US Constitution. So far only one prominent liberal has expressed open outrage -- Nat Hentoff, the civil liberties advocate who used to write for the Village Voice.
Obama's recent Geneva Surrender to the primitive Mullahcracy is still being seen by millions of dope-addled American airheads as the road to peace. So what if the Saudis are terrified about Iranian nuclear weapons that are now within the grasp of the mass-murdering mullahs? So what if Israel is now surrounded by 170,000 missiles in the Iranian Crescent? So what if the Geneva Surrender was instantly violated by Russia breaking the sanctions against Iran?
The media won't tell you this, but that solemn seven-power "peace" agreement broke down within days. John Kerry is now insisting on dismembering Jerusalem and the West Bank as a sop to please the worst totalitarians, an exact copy of the Surrender to Hitler that started World War Two. The nuclear horse is out of the barn, after sixty years of successful American efforts to thwart nuclear proliferation to mad regimes. Obama has welcomed Iran to big power nuclear status in the Middle East. The libs call this "diplomacy" but it is abject surrender to evil.
The Saudis remember that Ayatollah Khomeini tried to overthrow their regime during the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. They know the mullahs want to control Mecca and Medina, and thereby run the entire Sunni world, 80% of Islam. Arab-Persian hatred is ancient and enduring.
Obama's little spiteful act of returning the bust of Churchill signaled this whole administration's gangster approach to governance. Winston Churchill, for all of his human faults, was still the greatest defender of civilized values against Nazi and Stalinist tyranny.
Fortunately Churchill spoke prophetically about tyrant-appeasers like Obama and Kerry. We have his prophetic words when Prime Minister Chamberlain came back from the Munich Surrender:
"You were given the choice between war and dishonour.You chose dishonour, and you will have war."
One tick of history later and Hitler invaded Poland in alliance with Stalin.
Against the consistent advice of our best military officers, Obama has surrendered -- and surrendered to the most radical and fanatical mass murdering regimes in the Middle East. For five years the United States had an open window of opportunity to set back the Iranian nuclear program with minimal risk -- just the way we stopped Saddam from developing his nuclear program, using sanctions and a no-fly zone. Now that window of action has slammed shut.
Obama took no action. He lied and delayed and lied and delayed -- telling Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the civilized world that "Iran would never be allowed to get nuclear weapons."
If you want to see who won that confrontation, just look at the laughter on the faces of the mullahs today. They look drunk from their victory. Mullah Rouhani can't stop laughing.
Obama is a malignant narcissist, and therefore dangerous. The Democratic Party, which has known all about Obama for years, must have known about his openly confessed radical Leninist ideology. Today senior Democrats are leaving Congress for fear of the voters' revenge. They know exactly what they have done, just as Ted Kennedy knew how to undermine our borders and immigration laws during his decades in the US Senate.
These people act with malice aforethought. That is why they are allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and maybe the Iranians as well.
Maybe there will be a miracle that spares the world from another major war. We all hope so. But if Obama's arrogant fiasco comes tumbling down and war does break out in the Middle East, conservatives must remind America of Churchill's prophecy of 1938 and Obama's dishonor.
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1) Secretary ScarJo
What the actress could teach John Kerry about courage and clarity.
By Bret Stephens
Last month the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic blew himself up as he tried to open an old booby-trapped embassy safe. When police arrived on the scene, they discovered a cache of unregistered weapons in violation of international law. Surprise.
Then the real shocker: After prevaricating for a couple of weeks, the Palestinian government apologized to the Czechs and promised, according to news accounts, "to take measures to prevent such incidents in the future."
As far as I know, this is only the second time the Palestinians have officially apologized for anything, ever. The first time, in 1999, Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian children. Hillary Clinton was there. Palestinian officialdom mumbled its regrets.
In other words, no apology for the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the MunichOlympics. No apology for the 1973 murder of Cleo Noel, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and his deputy, George Moore. No apology for the 1974 massacre of 25 Israelis, including 22 schoolchildren, in Ma'alot. No apology for the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, where 38 Israelis, including 13 children, were killed.
And so on and on—straight to the present. In December, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas posthumously bestowed the "Star of Honor" on Abu Jihad, the mastermind of the Coastal Road attack, as "the model of a true fighter and devoted leader." Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the attack itself, had a square named after her in 2011. In August, Mr. Abbas gave a hero's welcome to Palestinian murderers released from Israeli jails as a goodwill gesture. And Yasser Arafat, who personally ordered the killing of Noel and Moore, is the Palestinian patron saint.
I mention all this as background to two related recent debates. Late last month Scarlett Johansson resigned her role as an Oxfam "Global Ambassador" after the antipoverty group condemned the actress for becoming a pitchwoman for the Israeli companySodaStream. SODA +6.65% Oxfam wants to boycott Israeli goods made—as SodaStream's are—inside the West Bank; Ms. Johansson disagrees, citing "a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] movement."
The second debate followed rambling comments on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from John Kerry at this month's Munich Security Conference. Israel, he warned, faced a parade of horribles if talks failed. "For Israel there's an increasing delegitimization campaign that's been building up," he said. "People are very sensitive to it. There are talks of boycotts and other kinds of things."
So here is the secretary of state talking about the effort to boycott Israel not as an affront to the United States and an outrage to decency but as a tide he is powerless to stop and that anyway should get Israel to change its stiff-necked ways. A Secretary of State Johansson would have shown more courage and presence of mind than that.
But Mr. Kerry's failure goes deeper. How is it that Mr. Abbas's glorification of terrorists living and dead earns no rebuke from Mr. Kerry, nor apparently any doubts about the sincerity of Palestinian intentions? Why is it that only Israel faces the prospect of a boycott? When was the last time the U.S., much less the Europeans, threatened to impose penalties on Palestinians for diplomatic or moral misbehavior?
In 2011 the Palestinians defied the U.S. by making a bid for statehood at the U.N.; then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice warned there would be "adverse negative consequences" for the Palestinians. Of course there were none, and the administration fought behind the scenes to make sure there wouldn't be any. Type the words "Kerry condemns Abbas" or "Kerry condemns Palestinians" into a Web search and you'll get that rare GoogleGOOG +0.47% event: "No results found."
No wonder one Israeli government minister after another has taken to calling the secretary "insufferable," "messianic" and "obsessive"—and that's just what they say in public. The State Department has reacted indignantly to these gibes, but this is coming from the administration that likes to speak of the virtues of candor between friends. Its idea of candor is all one-way and all one-sided.
This is a bad basis for peace. If one expects nothing of Palestinians then they will be forgiven for everything. If one expects everything of Israel then it will be forgiven for nothing, putting the country to a perpetual moral test it will always somehow fail and that can only energize the boycott enthusiasts. It all but goes without saying that the ultimate objective of the BDS movement isn't to "end the occupation" but to end the Jewish state. Anyone who joins that movement, or flirts with it, is furthering the objective, wittingly or not. One useful function of an American diplomat is to warn a group like Oxfam that it is playing with moral fire.
Instead, the job was left to Ms. Johansson. How wonderfully commendable. "One gorgeous actress with courage makes a majority," said Andrew Jackson—or something like that. We could do worse with such a person at State.
1a)
Obama Rewrites ObamaCare
Another day, another lawless exemption, once again for business.
'ObamaCare" is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law's employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever.
ObamaCare requires businesses with 50 or more workers to offer health insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, but last summer the Treasury offered a year-long delay until 2015 despite having no statutory authorization. Like the individual mandate, the employer decree is central to ObamaCare's claim of universal coverage, but employers said the new labor costs—and the onerous reporting and tax-enforcement rules—would damage job creation and the economy.
Liberals insisted that such arguments were false if not beneath contempt, but then all of a sudden the White House implicitly endorsed the other side. Now the new delay arrives amid a furious debate about jobs after a damning Congressional Budget Office report last week, only this time with liberals celebrating ObamaCare's supposed benefits to the job market.
Well, which is it? Either ObamaCare is ushering in a worker's paradise, in which case by the White House's own logic exempting businesses from its ministrations is harming employees. Or else the mandate really is leading business to cut back on hiring, hours and shifting workers to part-time as the evidence in the real economy suggests.
Under the new Treasury rule, firms with 50 to 99 full-time workers are free from the mandate until 2016. And firms with 100 or more workers now also only need cover 70% of full-time workers in 2015 and 95% in 2016 and after, not the 100% specified in the law.
The new rule also relaxes the mandate for certain occupations and industries that were at particular risk for disruption, like volunteer firefighters, teachers, adjunct faculty members and seasonal employees. Oh, and the Treasury also notes that, "As these limited transition rules take effect, we will consider whether it is necessary to further extend any of them beyond 2015." So the law may be suspended indefinitely if the White House feels like it.
By now ObamaCare's proliferating delays, exemptions and administrative retrofits are too numerous to count, most of them of dubious legality. The text of the Affordable Care Actspecifically says when the mandate must take effect—"after December 31, 2013"—and does not give the White House the authority to change the terms.
Changing an unambiguous statutory mandate requires the approval of Congress, but then this President has often decided the law is whatever he says it is. His Administration's cavalier notions about law enforcement are especially notable here for their bias for corporations over people. The White House has refused to suspend the individual insurance mandate, despite the harm caused to millions who are losing their previous coverage.
Liberals say the law isn't harming jobs or economic growth, but everything this White House does screams the opposite.
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2)New high school principal
This is the guy that should be running for President in 2016!
A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give
By Dennis Prager.
To the students and faculty of our high school: I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people. I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.
A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give
By Dennis Prager.
To the students and faculty of our high school: I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people. I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.
First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not
care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. t; I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American,
Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower
or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this
school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character,
your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this
;school will care about is American.
This is an American public school, and American public schools were
created to make better Americans. If you wish to affirm an ethnic,
racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go
elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity, race and non-American
nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America ,
one of its three central values -- Epluribus Unum, "from many, one."
And this school will be guided by America 's values. This includes all
after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students
based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion,
sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society
divided by political correctness.
Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic,
racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate
narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the
purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we
will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art,
music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and
more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being
interested in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity,
that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.
Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language.
My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school
speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English
language has united America 's citizens for over 200 years, and it
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons
this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if
you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I
would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to
successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other
languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- if you want classes taught in your native language rather
than in English, this is not your school.
Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in
this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among
other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many
people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than
for church or school. These people have their priorities backward.
Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.
Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this
school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic
events. If you can't speak without using the f -word, you can't speak.
By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal
Communications Commission, plus epithets such as "Nigger," even when
used by one black student to address another black, or "bitch," even
when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the
time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to
instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene
Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school,
self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people
attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it.
One immediate consequence is that there will be ONE valedictorian, not
eight.
Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away
from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring
you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual
harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to
condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or
primarily a health issue... There will be no more attempts to convince
you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or
not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of
you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself
inordinately fortunate -- to be alive and to be an American.
Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag
of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers
will hand them out to you.
3) AMERICA’S LATEST HEROINE FIGHTS BACK
We wrote here about the then-upcoming hearing on the Obama administration’s IRS scandal before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. One of the witnesses at that hearing was Catherine Engelbrecht; she was a sensation. She introduced herself to the committee:
Good morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. My name is Catherine Engelbrecht. I am the Chairwoman of True the Vote, a nonprofit election integrity organization; the Founder of King Street Patriots, a citizen-led liberty group; and President of Engelbrecht Manufacturing.
Her testimony included these ringing words:
But know this, my experiences at the hands of this government in these last five years have made me more determined than ever to stand before you and America and say I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I refuse to be intimidated. I will not ask for permission to exercise my Constitutional rights.
Ms. Engelbrecht detailed what has happened to her since she became a citizen activist:
In nearly two decades of running our small business, my husband and I never dealt with any government agency, outside of filing our annual tax returns. We had never been audited, we had never been investigated, but all that changed upon submitting applications for the non-profit statuses of True the Vote and King Street Patriots. Since that filing in 2010, my private businesses, my nonprofit organizations, and family have been subjected to more than 15 instances of audit or inquiry by federal agencies.* In 2011, my personal and business tax returns were audited by the Internal Revenue Service, each audit going back for a number of years.* In 2012, my business was subjected to inspection by OSHA, on a select occasion when neither my husband nor I were present, and though the agency wrote that it found nothing serious or significant, it still issued fines in excess of $20,000.* In 2012 and again in 2013 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms conducted comprehensive audits at my place business.* Beginning in 2010, the FBI contacted my nonprofit organization on six separate occasions – wanting to cull through membership manifests in conjunction with domestic terrorism cases. They eventually dropped all matters and have now redacted nearly all my files.
She is also to be commended for going after Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee:
I also refuse to let a precedent be set that allows Members of Congress, particularly the Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to misrepresent this governing body in an effort to demonize and intimidate citizens. Three times, Representative Elijah Cummings sent letters to True the Vote, demanding much of the same information that the IRS had requested. Hours after sending letters, he would appear on cable news and publicly defame me and my organization. Such tactics are unacceptable. It is for these reasons that immediately after this hearing I am filing a formal complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics and asking for a full investigation.The more we learn about the rot and corruption in the Obama administration, the deeper it goes. Obama’s misuse of federal agencies to target and intimidate citizens who disagree with him politically is the worst abuse of executive power in my lifetime, by a wide margin. We all need to fight back, at every opportunity.
3a)THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICACleta Mitchell may be the most dangerous woman in America. She is the prominent Washington attorney who represents several clients victimized by the criminal misconduct of the IRS over the past four years. She speaks with authority when she asserts, as she does in the video below, that the Obama administration is responsible for “lies upon lies” covering up the multifarious, politically inspired wrongdoing of the IRS. She gave a short course (seven minutes) for interested citizens at a House hearing yesterday. Listen to what she has to say. She knows what she is talking about
Reminder: The charge that Richard Nixon attempted to misuse the IRS for political purposes made its way into the second of the three articles of impeachment against him. Nixon “endeavoured” to misuse the IRS, in the fancy British spelling of the word used in article 2. As I have repeatedly tried to point out (here, here, here and, most recently, here), Nixon’s efforts to misuse the IRS were futile. They went nowhere. Nixon and his henchmen desired the IRS to “screw” their political opponents, but their efforts were a pathetic failure.
Reminder: The charge that Richard Nixon attempted to misuse the IRS for political purposes made its way into the second of the three articles of impeachment against him. Nixon “endeavoured” to misuse the IRS, in the fancy British spelling of the word used in article 2. As I have repeatedly tried to point out (here, here, here and, most recently, here), Nixon’s efforts to misuse the IRS were futile. They went nowhere. Nixon and his henchmen desired the IRS to “screw” their political opponents, but their efforts were a pathetic failure.
Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield astutely complained that the IRS was a “monstrous bureaucracy…dominated and controlled by Democrats.” As we have come to see, Caulfield was on to something. By contrast with Nixon’s failures to misuse the IRS, the IRS has very effectively “screwed” Obama’s political opponents, and we have yet to learn what the president knew and when he knew it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Historians have a tough time agreeing on many of the turning points in ancient history.when the Roman Republic ended:
(The republic) began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, c. 509 BC, and lasted over 450 years.
* * * * * *
Towards the end of the period a selection of Roman leaders came to so dominate the political arena that they exceeded the limitations of the Republic as a matter of course. Historians have variously proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator in 44 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Roman Senate’s grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian (Augustus) under the first settlement in 27 BC, as candidates for the defining pivotal event ending the Republic.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Historians have a tough time agreeing on many of the turning points in ancient history.when the Roman Republic ended:
(The republic) began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, c. 509 BC, and lasted over 450 years.
* * * * * *
Towards the end of the period a selection of Roman leaders came to so dominate the political arena that they exceeded the limitations of the Republic as a matter of course. Historians have variously proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator in 44 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Roman Senate’s grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian (Augustus) under the first settlement in 27 BC, as candidates for the defining pivotal event ending the Republic.
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There’s little doubt that the United States of America has reached a point where, relatively unhampered by legislative or judicial barriers, its president and his bureaucracy exceed the limits of the nation’s Constitution “as a matter of course.” They in turn are quietly but effectively under the control of our “independent” central bank.
Decades from now, it’s possible that historians will look back and conclude that the American experiment, which began with its declaration of independence from and defeat of Great Britain, ended sometime between 1999 and 2014. As with Rome, the pivotal event isn’t obvious, and the list which follows isn’t all-inclusive.
The failure by the U.S. Senate to convict Bill Clinton after his impeachment by the House was the first signal that the rule of law might not matter any more. These days, the law seems to be whatever Barack Obama and Eric Holder want it to be.
President George W. Bush’s formation of the mammoth Homeland Security Department and mission creep at the National Security Agency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks consolidated awesome and disturbing powers in very few hands. Now both outfits are out-of-control monsters.
The 2007-2008 crackup in housing and mortgage lending would be a leading candidate for the pivotal moment prize if one believes that it was the result of decades of conscious effort. Evidence that it was, including the Community Reinvestment Act and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo’s 1990s housing discrimination directives, both of which forced banks to make loans to vast numbers of borrowers who couldn’t repay, is compelling. Compounding the problem, government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “routinely misrepresented” the quality of both the mortgages they packaged for the securities markets and those they kept on their own books for 15 years. The amounts involved were in the trillions of dollars.
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