Mark Levin - The Liberty Amendments

Mark Levin, also known as "The Great One" (hat tip to Jackie Gleason!), has a new bestseller out titled "The Liberty Amendments".  In it he outlines a set of 10 Constitutional amendments that are necessary to the life, liberty, and happiness of America.  He proposes using Article V of the Constitution to achieve this.  Now, remember, this has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE...but it looks more and more like it is getting to a point where it has to be done somehow, someway.


ARTICLE V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,
which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article*; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. 
  

It is the underlined and italicized text above that is relevant.  And just what are these 10 proposed Amendments? 

1)      Term Limits:  Limiting service in both houses of Congress to 12 years.  Elections are supposed to be the best limit.  However, these elections are all to often decided by the resources, seemingly unlimited if they want, deployed by the main two parties.  If you don't have the official okie-dokie of your party, you have NO CHANCE.  Term limits exist in most states and it was debated in the Constitutional Congress.

2)      Repealing the 17^th Amendment:  Senators were originally elected by state legislators, which kept state power from being diluted in the face of the federal government.

3)      Restoring the Judiciary role:  This is actually a big change.  Away from life time appointments to single 12 year terms, as well as granting both Congress and the state legislatures the authority to overturn court decisions with the vote of three-fifths of both houses of Congress or state legislative bodies.

4)      Limiting Taxation and Spending: A balanced budget amendment with a spending limit of 17.5% of GDP.  Raising the debt ceiling would require a 3/5ths vote.  And, in an idea that would spur economic growth and investment, limiting income tax to a maximum of 15% of an individual’s income, prohibiting other forms of taxation, and changing the federal filing date to the day before elections.

5)      Limit bureaucracy:  Require all federal departments to undergo stand-alone reauthorization bills every three years.

6)      Defining the Commerce Clause:   Make it clear that the commerce is there to prevent states from impeding commerce among other states.  That’s what Madison intended and it has been turned on its head.

7)      Limiting Federal power to take private property:  Preventing the use of eminent domain to create private wealth in the name of public good.

8)      Allowing State Legislature to Amend the Constitution:  The framers of the Constitution made it difficult to amend the Constitution, they did so to prevent it from becoming a tool for those in power.  This amendment allows states to bypass Congress and propose an amendment with support of just two-thirds of the without convening a convention. 

9)      State Authority to Override Congress:  A proposed amendment to allow states to override federal statutes by majority vote in two-thirds of state legislatures.  The last two proposals are rooted in the idea that the states only agreed to the Constitution on condition that their power would not be diluted and that all federal power is derived from the states.

10)  Protecting the Vote: Require photo ID for all federal elections with limitations on early voting.

 

Open Letter to the Speaker of the House

As a life long Republican and patriotic American, I am absolutely aghast at your support for creating a "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens.  The three reasons that are being given for this are absurd.

1.  Legalization will "put them in the taxpaying economy".  The most liberal think tanks estimate an increase in GDP by something around $1 trillion....over the course of 20 years...only $50 billion a year.  This does translate to increased "revenue" as politicians refer to it (the rest of us call it taxes) and, as such, is insignificant to the deficits that YOUR HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES has created. 

2.  If we don't do something, it is going to get worse.  We have laws on the books to address this problem but you and the rest of the GOP leadership  allow the Executive branch to do what it wants to when it wants to regardless of the rule of law. 

3.  We need to do this for the future of the party.  As bad as the above reasons are, this is THE WORST.  I understand, although not enough people do, that your first allegiance is to YOUR PARTY.....because it is your party that keeps you in that position....then to your own best interests....and finally, and least, to your constituency.  This is the case with ALL national elected officials.  It is the party that provides access to the large fundraising opportunities and consultants that have co-opted our electoral system.  You have no interest or loyalty to those of us who get seemingly endless emails and letters asking for $25 here and $100 there.  Those of us who volunteer to KEEP YOU IN OFFICE.
Your first, and overriding interest and loyalty...that which you have uttered many times in your oaths of office...

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

is SUPPOSED to be to the citizens of The United States of America. 

This legislation is NOT in the best interests of American citizens and the way you conduct business in the Office of the Speaker is antithetical to your oath.  You should be ashamed...but I doubt very much if you will be.

Air Traffic Control and Sequester....

Just read a story, http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/21/delays-hit-major-us-airports-as-control-tower-furloughs-kick-in/, that states that the FAA is "expected to save about $200 million of the $637 million the agency must cut from its $16 billion budget"
as a result of sequester furloughs that started on 4/21/2013. It goes on to say that the furloughs are expected to last through 9/30, which is the end of FY 2013. That sounded a bit fishy to me (most statistics like this do actually) so I decided to whip out Excel and poke around.

Ok, $200,000,000 saved....

Let's start with how many days are the furloghs going to last? 4/21 to 9/30 =162 days

Alright $200/162 days.....$1,234,567.90 saved per day.... Doesn't that number look JUST A LITTLE too cute?

The article goes on to say that an average of 1200 to 1500 controllers will be off each day across the system so that daily savings is spread over that number of employees….or and average daily saving per day of $823.05 to $1028.81 per day per employee. or $102.88 to $128.60 per hour (8 hr day)!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics(http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/air-traffic-controllers.htm), the median pay for controllers in 2010 was $51.94/hr. Now if we assume that every controller is subject to furlough hours equally, that means that either they’ve gotten some pretty good raises in the last 2 years…..or the $200,000,000 savings is, as is most of the propaganda…I mean information…coming from the administration pure garbage. You decide!

In another story I see this quote:
"Government budget cuts that kicked in last month are forcing the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending. FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty."

So back to my Excel!  47000 employees losing 1 day every other week.....23 weeks....12 furlough days per employee.  12 days x 47000 employees into $200mm = $44.32/hr as the average hourly salary for the 47000 FAA employees.  Don't buy that either.

Obama, Guns, and Executive Orders

So Vice President Biden mentioned today that, with the defeat in the Senate of anti-gun legislation, that the President Obama has several executive orders that will soon be implemented to deal with gun violence.  I have a question.....if executive orders can deal with gun violence, why weren't they implemented WHEN HE TOOK OFFICE?!?!?!?!?!?!?  Just another bogus cover story from the most corrupt, anti-American administration in history.

Raise Revenue and Invest!!!!

"We must increase revenues so we can invest in infrastructure, jobs, and education."  Ever heard that?  If the spending WAS on infrastructure, jobs, and education it has SOME validity. But it is NOT.

It is spent on "bribes" to stay in office. The current "leadership" is interested in 1 thing...staying in power. If it enhances their chance to be re-elected, then they pursue it. If it is in the best interests of the country, that's all the better but it doesn't have to be! Democrats are better politicians than Republicans. They understand that to drive people to the polls, you have to touch their emotions, not their logic.

That was where the Tea Party succeeded in 2010. They used the same methodology.....but unfortunately, have been unable to sustain the gains because they are a threat to the establishment GOP power structure and have been met with resistance at nearly every turn. Since it is a grass-roots organization, it has a problem......it's foot soldiers HAVE DAY JOBS!!!!!!!!!! They have to work to pay the taxes liberals are so quick to spend...and increase.

It is almost always cheaper to pay today, but the Democrats have turned Wimpy's pleading on its ear...."I'll gladly eat a hamburger today....and I'll have somebody else pay for it Tuesday!"

Mandates and "revenue" enhancements

With the election results, it is clear that the democrats believe they have a "mandate" to raise taxes.  King Harry said as much!  So the Bush Tax Cuts are pretty sure to expire in my opinion.  If they don't, it will only be as camouflage for other, probably more costly, "revenue enhancements" 

Any limitation on mortgage deductions will primarily hit the wealthy AND middle income with children. My wife and I have a house with a mortgage in Dallas/Ft. Worth, yet we don’t itemize deductions because the mortgage deduction doesn’t add up to enough with other deductions…we have no kids. So I honestly couldn’t care less if that deduction is eliminated.

Eliminate charitable contributions and you effectively eliminate charities! Look back at the financial difficulties many fought when the deduction for donated vehicles was changed.

The non-taxable status of employer health insurance contributions will go first. It is the biggest and the proof is that employers will soon be required to report this on your w-2. It is a HUGE tax increase (4 times the so-called Bush Tax Cuts annually) and if those cuts expiration will cause trouble, what do you think increasing it by a factor of 5 will do? Depression here we come!!

Remember this quote before you vote

Barack Obama
4/6/2009
Speech to the Turkish Parliament

We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world -- including in my own country.

Education and the workplace

According to Hackcollege.com, there are 120+ with liberal arts degree programs pumping out 16,000+ grads a year in Texas alone. WHAT KIND OF JOB will they get?

The problem is that our 4 year institutions include degree programs and tracks that lead to nowhere! We need to change the makeup of our post secondary education system such that is produces workers ready for the workplace. Why would the entire University of Texas system need an Art History or Music degree program AT EVERY LOCATION?

Liberal arts should be a part of the jr college system or limited to very specific institutions who specialize there. This liberal arts curriculum that is required in most universities would be "farmed out" to a "feeder system". It would also lessen the burden of student loans on grads and non-grads, as only most people don't actually declare majors until their 4th term or later. If you can't hack it academically in the liberal arts tracks, probably organic chemistry and calculus are NOT going to be your cup of tea later on.

Sure those teaching in those areas would feel they are being relegated to "second class citizens", but honestly, do you think that a professor teaching advanced chemistry or grad level economic theory actually thinks that the guy teaching "Theory of Basketball" is on the same level?    Post secondary is where the seimic changes have to occur to fit the new workplace.

DO YOU REMEMBER JANUARY 3, 2007?

This is NOT a political message, but rather a clarification to remind us all of the correct facts.

Remember that on October 9, 2007, 11 months before our “economic  crisis” occurred (that was actually created), the Dow hit its highest point ever, closing at 14,164.53 and reaching 14,198.10 intra-day level 2 days later. Unemployment was steady at 4.7%. But things were already being put in place to create the havoc we’ve all been experiencing since then. And it all started on January 3, 2007.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, which was the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.

The Democrat Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.  For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's Fault", think about this: January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress.


At the time:

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77

The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%

The Unemployment rate was 4.6%

George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB GROWTH

Remember the day...

January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!  Add to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie - starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy.

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? OBAMA and the Democrat Congress.

So when someone tries to blame Bush. REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007....THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party.  Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009.

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself. In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is" I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th ".

Romney, Obama, Summers and the CBO

Lawrence Summers, Clinton Treasury Secretary and architect of the Obama plan, recently wrote an article in the Washington Post titled "Romney's fiscal fantasy plan".  In it, he criticized the GOP soon-to-be nominee for the fact that his economic plan can't be "scored" by the CBO.  He says that tax cuts would only benefit the wealthy instead of having the effect of stimulating economic activity and job creation.  Of course, this benefit to the wealthy is only because the people that liberals consider wealthy are those WHO ARE STILL PAYING TAXES!  In other words, if you are paying taxes, they want more regardless!  But I digress...  In the article, he cites CBO publication 42972 (http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42972) as proof that the Obama "budget" would cut the deficits and lead to economic stability.  He must have started in the middle or just doesn't comprehend well because the third paragraph states:

"The projected deficits under the President’s proposals would exceed those in CBO’s baseline—a benchmark showing the outcome if current laws generally remained unchanged—by 0.5 percent of GDP ($82 billion) in 2012, by 2.2 percent of GDP ($365 billion) in 2013, and by between 1.4 percent and 1.9 percent of GDP in each year from 2014 through 2022. In all, between 2013 and 2022, deficits would total $6.4 trillion (or 3.2 percent of total GDP projected for that period), $3.5 trillion more than the cumulative deficit in CBO’s baseline."

In other words, between now and 2022, the Obama "budget" will increase the federal deficit by $3.5 trillion more....ONLY BECAUSE OF THE THINGS IN THE BUDGET!  Why do I find it incredible that liberals will lie even when citing sources that refute their arguments because they know their sheep/followers will believe what they say and are, for the most part, not willing..or able...to read it for themselves!  

If I Wanted America To Fail. Incredible!!

http://times247.com/24-7-videos/if-i-wanted-america-to-fail

Free Birth Control and My Paycheck

Where did this "issue" devolve into the liberals' deciding that because I don't want to pay for your birth control pills, I'm somehow limiting your access to healthcare and violating your "reproductive rights"? I also don't want to pay for your lung cancer treatments because you choose to smoke. Why aren't you libs jumping all over those "tobacco rights"? I guess because there is no such thing....just like there is no such thing as reproductive rights.....unless it can be used to support your basic theme of economic equality and wealth redistribution.

Chris Matthews Needs To Go

Chris, Chris, Chris.....are those lights beginning to get to you? Southerners are out to lunch because they don't believe what a politician says? It takes the combined brain power of Debbie Wasserman Shultz, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Maher, Al Sharpton, and of course, Chris Matthews to meet with Media Matters to come up with the truth and spread it across the land to the unwashed masses. It's impossible for dumb country folk to arrive at logical conclusions through their own mental processes. Oh no...that can't happen. Well, considering the politician in question, 90% of what he says is either a distortion or out and out lie so a LOT of scepticism seems to be in order!

Oh, and of course your demented rant about Mormonism and Catholicism being cults couldn't be any more well thought out and spot on. Since a liberal said it, it can't possibly have any negative connotations or be considered offensive. We all know liberals carry that "get out of media jail free" card with them at all times.

Chris, I am on-line pretty much all day. I don't even know what channel MSNBC is my ATT Uverse at home. But I can tell you that few things cause me to feel a tingle up my leg like the thought of your dear leader and his cabal of "transformers" being shown the gate on 11/6/2012. What will you do when logic trumps emotion? I'm sure it will be as well thought out as most of your positions! Just hope you don't leave to big a mess to clean up!

The Liberal Assault

The Democrat party is leading the assault on our national and societal identities. Liberals attack conservatives in the name of political correctness yet give a pass to the same perceived, or real, missteps made by their allies because they are "just being who they are" and we all know liberals don't have a mean bone in their bodies!

When liberals like William Jefferson, who was caught with marked bills as bribe payment in his freezer, or Cynthia McKinney assaults a federal law enforcement officer, NOTHING IS DONE. When Charles Rangel or Timothy Geithner evade taxes, NOTHING IS DONE. When Bill Clinton lies to a Grand Jury, HE STAYS IN OFFICE. When Eric Holder instructs attorneys in the Justice Department to drop charges of voter intimidation against Black Panther members and to illegally withhold exculpatory evidence in a federal bribery and tax evasion trial of Ted Stevens NOTHING IS DONE.

The types of people who wait in the weeds for such absurd gotchas as Judge Cebull and his forwarded joke and then use it to push their agenda of economic equality and societal transformation are the enemies of our country. As real as the Soviet Union was...as real as radical islam, China, and Iran are today. They all want to "fundamentally transform" our society into something else. Into something that ensures that excellence is stiffled and only equality of outcome is celebrated. You don't want to fundamentally transform something you love...only something you hate.

Matthew Yglesias at Slate.com...Loon!

Recently I read about a tweet from some guy that writes for Slate named Matthew Yglesias.  He wrote:
"Incidentally, India would be a great place for all of America's deficit hawks to go and hang out for a while. India is actually in the situation that many people seem to want to believe that the United States is in. The central bank could easily cut interest rates aggressively to boost economic growth, but it's reluctant to do so because the baseline inflation rate is fairly high and the government's budget deficit is big. "

Sorry old boy, but apparently you don't get out much.  Real inflation in the US is approaching 9% (disregard the tripe from the administration about inflation, employment, etc.) and we have a budget deficit as % of GDP is the 14th largest in the world according to the IMF. Nearly matching that of Ireland and actually higher that Portugal! Maybe our central bank should cut interest rates to spur growth.....oh, yeah, interest rates have been cut until they can't cut any more. Looks like the deficit hawks have looked at India and saw the US and THAT is why they are deficit hawks. Lib economic ideas sound great to the unwashed masses because they see something for nothing, but the people who actually understand how the economy works know that they don't.

Keynes thought that free markets worked ONLY after fiscal policy achieved full employment...in other words the govt has to have its thumb on the economy at all times. Most of his theories have been proven to be unworkable in the real world, but the people who can only see the inside of the ivy from their offices never see the real world in action.