Government Slowly Kills the Private Sector – And Blames the Victim for Its Sputtering Demise

One of the advantages Big Government advocates have in their efforts to end the private sector – is the size of the victim. A $17-trillion-a-year economy is so huge – it almost always takes a lot of time to dismantle.

It’s like taking down those giant oliphants in the “Lord of the Rings.” Our economy can take a LOT of government arrows – and continue its march forward. Slowed, bowed – but still moving.

And here’s the really obnoxious part. As the private sector is dragged down by the government assaults – Big Government advocates say it’s proof that the PRIVATE SECTOR doesn’t work.

Which is like being shot – and then having the shooter yell at you for bleeding on them.

Occasionally, the government attack is so huge – it does rapid, recognizable damage. And the line of correlation can be easily drawn. See: ObamaCare.

Far more often, the injuries take time to accrue. An ever-increasingly regulated sector doesn’t go from 60mph to 0mph. It goes from 60 to 55. Then 55 to 50. Then 50 to 45….

So the Big Government advocates get away with the damage they do – and with blaming their victims for ultimately collapsing in a taxes-and-regulations-addled heap.

We Less Government advocates do our best to make people understand all of this. We are, as always, woefully outgunned – but we occasionally win a skirmish here or there.

For instance, we have successfully explained the damage government is poised to do to the Internet. With Network Neutrality. With unilateral regulatory “Reclassification” – which is the Barack Obama Administration all by itself deciding to impose on the Web 1934 land line telephone and railroad law.

We have successfully detailed the looming huge regulations. And huge taxes. And how any new regulation diminishes private investment – and how these huge new regulations will hugely diminish it.

In short, how the Internet was pre-Obama likely the freest part of the private sector – and is now likely the most under government’s thumb.

How do we know we won this fight? Because we never were given a chance to actually fight it.

Big Government advocates didn’t get Congress to pass a law creating Net Neutrality and/or Reclassification – because they couldn’t. Big Government big-footing the Web has never been popular. In 2010, ninety-five Democrats signed a pre-election Net Neutrality pledge. All ninety-five lost.

Having lost the messaging war – Big Government advocates turned to tyranny. And had three unelected Democrat bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unilaterally slam the Net.

How else do we know we won? Because they are spending a lot of time trying do undo our explanations of what they’ve done.

FCC Chief (Tom Wheeler) Argues That Net Neutrality Won’t Gut Broadband Investment

Tom Wheeler Claims (Reclassification) Order Won’t Affect Taxes

The new imposition has only been in place for less than half a year. Most of the (tens of) thousands of pages of new regulations – haven’t even yet been written.

And the Internet sector is 1/6th of our entire economy – i.e. HUGE. This oliphant won’t immediately keel over.

Thus, to say that the mostly-unwritten rules haven’t yet broken the Net – therefore the rules will NEVER break the Net – is…absurd. But Big Government advocates specialize in the absurd.

So Far Net Neutrality Hasn’t Broken The Internet

Net Neutrality Hasn’t Stalled Investment After All

The investment argument is especially ridiculous. Many companies plot their investment allocations YEARS in advance. They are currently investing money for which they budgeted – in the 2000s.

What hasn’t taken very long – is Big Government advocates using this newly minted Big Government to attack the sector.

FCC Swamped by 2,000+ Net Neutrality Complaints Against ISPs

Of course, taking them at their word is always…dubious.

Yet Again, the Left is Caught Fraudulently Faking Support for its Ridiculous Policies

We can’t be sure if the FCC has actually received 2000+ complaints. After all, we were told – about theactually-fifty-fifty nature of the Net Neutrality Comments the FCC received – that they were overwhelmingly pro-Big Government.

Remember when we said the FCC hadn’t yet actually fleshed out the rules? That’s not nearly all of the uncertainty that exists.

What is not clear, however, is exactly how the FCC is supposed to enforce its rules against companies that violate the open Internet laws. 

Speaking earlier this week in front of a congressional subcommittee, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler admitted to the commission that the FCC had yet to figure out how exactly it will be able to exercise its authority over ISPs and enforce penalties.

Get that? The FCC has “yet to figure out how exactly it will be able to exercise its authority over ISPs and enforce penalties.” This MASSIVE uncertainty won’t hurt the Internet at all, I’m sure.

But wait a minute. Wheeler and his FCC have in fact already figured out how to use its undefined, amorphous power-grabbed powers to line its pockets at the expense of We the Consumers – I mean, enforce penalties.

AT&T Faces $100 Million Fine in FCC’s First-Ever Net-Neutrality Case

Seems pretty figured out to me.

Of course, every penny government forces out of companies – forces companies to charge us more for their goods and services. Because pro-consumer – or something.

Anti-consumer is huge new government power grabs – with prospectively tens of thousands of new pages of regulation. Which are “in place” – but haven’t yet been written.

Anti-consumer is a huge grab that empowers the government to impose confiscatory new taxes. And unlimited fines.

All of that – and more – is what Big Government just did to the Internet.

Think that won’t damage the Web? Not necessarily now – but over time as the government poison seeps throughout the system?

Of course you know it will. So too do the Big Government advocates.

They just can’t admit it – and must instead blame the private sector at which they take perpetual aim.

Via: Red State

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Sundays will never be the same

While the witch-hunt against Confederate flags, statues, paintings and even stained glass windows continues to distract the masses, it’s really the churches Big Government most covet

 Now that Gay Day June 26th has come to pass,  and Barack Obama had the White House flooded in the colours of the gay rainbow, Sundays will never be the same.    Sunday, that is, as the day Christians come to church to worship the Creator.  The progressives want Sunday, and as sure as Lucifer is now calling the shots, they will be coming for it.

Sunday, the day of rest, will ultimately become the day of arrest.

While the witch-hunt against Confederate flags, statues, paintings and even stained glass windows continues to distract the masses, it’s really the churches Big Government most covet.

Before too long churches of every denomination will be incubators for ridding society of Christianity.

Seeking to replace the Christian God with Gaia; having long ago driven the Almighty out of the public square, progressives have decreed the Christian God as a false one and will have no false gods before them.

Instead of taking home profound reminders of the Gospel, worshippers who still turn out for Sunday service will be given pamphlets teaching them how to save the Earth as the ongoing cycle of Gaia replacing Christianity comes full bore.

Over time, congregants will be instructed from the pulpit that homosexuals practice a kind of love that cannot be described as sodomy.  Christian believers with the temerity to argue that this isn’t the truth will be left to the mercy of their pastors, pastors who are capable of having fellow congregants turn on them as hate-worthy ‘homophobes’. 

The progressives are imposing on society the unreal as the real.  How long will it be before self-made celebrities like Bruce Jenner and twerking Miley Cyrus will be brought up to the pulpit to lecture church goers that “love is love”?

Via: Canada Free Press

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A Real Halloween Scare By Charlie Daniels

When President Bush nominated John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and he was confirmed, I was extremely pleased as I believed him to be a man of integrity and common sense who would look out for the interests of the American people and defend the Constitution against all comers.

But with Judge Roberts's Obamacare Decision, evidently prompted by some arcane interpretation of semantics, he singlehandedly burdened three hundred and fifty million people with an unworkable, impractical, economy-destroying piece of legislation the slugs on Capitol Hill passed without even reading, the most nation-changing piece of socialistic corruption to come along in America's history.

For one man to wield this kind of power, to control the tie-breaking decision that will affect lives in this country for generations to come is a frightening and intimidating thing.

And when you stop and think about the power America has placed in the hands of the federal government, with no checks and balances, that can't in one way or another be manipulated by visible or invisible powers, it will dawn on you just how dangerous and freedom-threatening a clumsy, gluttonous, monolithic, central government really is.

Big government is cold, impersonal, always looking for ways to expand its power and control over our lives.

Via: CNS News

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SHUTDOWN SIMULACRUM by Mark Steyn

Just because it’s a phony crisis doesn’t mean it can’t be made even phonier. 

Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America’s political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. But that applies to government “crises,” too — such as the Obamacare “rollout,” the debt “ceiling,” and the federal “shutdown,” to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans.

This week’s “shutdown” of government, for example, suffers (at least for those of us curious to see it reduced to Somali levels) from the awkward fact that the overwhelming majority of the government is not shut down at all. Indeed, much of it cannot be shut down. Which is the real problem facing America. “Mandatory spending” (Social Security, Medicare, et al.) is authorized in perpetuity — or, at any rate, until total societal collapse. If you throw in the interest payments on the debt, that means two-thirds of the federal budget is beyond the control of Congress’s so-called federal budget process. That’s why you’re reading government “shutdown” stories about the PandaCam at the Washington Zoo and the First Lady’s ghost-Tweeters being furloughed.

Via: National Review Online 
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The Giant Stumbles - Government looks bigger, but not so sturdy, in Obama’s second term.

WHEN BARACK OBAMA won a second term, many conservatives and libertarians despaired. It seemed that the tipping point between the “makers and the takers,” between a constitutional republic and a social democracy, had been reached.

That was certainly vanquished Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s take. In a widely quoted postmortem conference call with supporters, Romney concluded, “What the president, the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from thegovernment, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.”

Romney then suggested this wouldn’t be a one-time event: “the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with.” It’s an observation as old as FDR adviser Harry Hopkins’ (probably apocryphal) quote: “Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.” Only in a deficit-financed welfare state, the “tax” part is often treated as superfluous. 

Not only are the demographics of the country gradually moving in the Democratic direction, but the number of clients of the welfare state is growing. With record numbers of Americans receiving food stamps, the baby boomers retiring and beginning to collect Social Security and Medicare, and increasing collusion between big government and big business, Obama’s reelection was hardly the only thing that seemed to guarantee government’s continued growth.

Yet the first year of Obama’s second term hasn’t unambiguously consolidated big government’s gains. Part of this is because the president has seemingly settled into the lame-duck funk that plagues many a second term. But there have been several developments impeding government growth, including some that will be hard to reverse.

First, Obama has been hit by a series of scandals that remind people of the power and intrusiveness of the federal government. The Internal Revenue Service singled out applications from Tea Party groups for special scrutiny. The Justice Department snooped on Associated Press reporters and other journalists. The National Security Agency scooped up Americans’ phone records in a domestic data mining operation far greater than anyone anticipated.

None of these scandals had the political impact Republicans might have hoped. The White House was able to insulate itself from the ensuing controversy—as was the case with Benghazi. Media coverage was ghettoized in the conservative press—as with Operation Fast and Furious. Though the NSA, AP, and IRS scandals received enough mainstream coverage to permeate the public consciousness, the president has weathered them about as well as can be expected.

Cumulatively, however, they took a toll on the public’s already shaky confidence in Washington. Gallup periodically asks Americans: “In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future: big business, big labor or big government?” In the last poll on this subject, taken in December 2011, 64 percent chose big government.

Via: The American Spectator

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