CONSERVATIVE RIGHT- "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

Monday, February 25, 2013

Calling the Bluff on Sequester Hype

Calling the Bluff on Sequester Hype
February 25, 2013 | BA_Admin

Washington has been in full panic mode over the looming budget sequester, especially at the White House. We have been told the automatic cuts (which amount to a mere 3 percent of total spending) would be “drastic,” ”draconian,” and threaten to “eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research.”

If the hype matches reality, why is the White House going ahead with a 100-city tour promoting federal grant spending? Shouldn’t the sequester have annihilated all hope of any federal aid for years to come?

The fact is that the sequester will barely scratch the paint on the thundering locomotive that is federal spending, and the White House knows it. Some of the ‘vital’ government programs that we’ve been told are under threat don’t even exist. Washington would love to paint cutting three cents out of each dollar the spend as the next Mayan doomsday prophecy, but behind the rhetoric, beltway politicians know it’s business as usual.

It’s time to call Washington’s bluff. The sequester is far from ideal—but if our leaders refuse to get serious enough to give the budget a 3 percent haircut, it may very well be the best worst option for our nation’s long-term fiscal health.

Obama's Paycheck Exempted from Sequester | CNS News

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama won’t have to worry about his paycheck if the spending sequestration included in the Budget Control Act that he signed into law in 2011 begins taking effect this Friday.

A report published last month by the Congressional Research Service--“Budget Sequestration and Selected Program Exemptions and Special Rules"--identifies certain programs that are exempt from sequestration and lays out special rules that govern the sequestration of others.

Section 255 of the Budget Control Act includes “Compensation for the President” as one of those exemptions (Page 19).

“Most exempt programs are mandatory, and include Social Security and Medicaid; refundable tax credits to individuals; and low-income programs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income,” the report states.

Sequestration for dummies

Sequestration for dummies
By: John Richards Posted: February 25, 2013 No Comments
With all the confusion about what the sequester does I thought it was time to put my in-depth knowledge of politics and the inner workings of our government to work for you and once and for all end the unceasing speculation and horror scenarios being tossed around by Barack Obama and friends like just so many wads of taxpayer cash.
Obama will have to give up one of his two teleprompters.
The next World War will be named WW II ½.
Obama’s Secret Service detail will be forced to use blanks to save money. Current ammo will be auctioned off in Mexico.
Half of Joe Biden’s mouth will be sewn shut.
Jack Lew’s nomination as Secretary of the Treasury will be revised to Secretary of the Piggy Bank.
The presidential limo will be replaced with a Fiat 500 and renamed from “The Beast” to “The Cute as a Bug’s Ear”.
The Academy Awards will be limited to 1/3 their usual length.
Governor Chris Christie will be limited to one third his current food intake, although there will be no savings since the remaining food will be used to feed the entire population of Ethiopia.
Nancy Pelosi’s air travel budget will be cut so severely she’ll be able to fly from Washington DC to Baltimore and then take a Greyhound bus the rest of the way to San Francisco.
All full moons are to be replaced by half-moons or less.
White House staffers will be terminated and replaced with the Lobbyist Volunteer Program. (It’ll be the same people, they just won’t be paid directly by the government.)
Bill Clinton will now say, “I feel half your pain”.
Air Force One will be sold and replaced with a four seat Cessna named the Air Force One/Eighth.
Senator Elizabeth Warren will have to reduce her Native American heritage claim from 1/32 to 1/64 and have her “high cheek bones” reduced accordingly.
Aircraft traffic controllers will be cut by 50 percent and all aircraft will be required to install really, really loud horns.
All history teachers will be furloughed. Students will learn all the history they need to know through forced reading of “Dreams from my Father”, “The Audacity of Hope” and the ever popular “Change We Can Believe in”.
Electric vehicles will be mandated to run on reduced voltage.
Washington DC will be renamed Washington dc.
TSA staff will be reduced by one third forcing the agency to be renamed “T&A” (a much more descriptive name anyways).
Airline passengers at smaller airports must pat down each other.
Foreign aid to John Kerry’s mythical country of “Kyrzakhstan” will be cut in half.
Senator Bob Menendez will be required to hire only prostitutes less than half his age. (Prompting him to say, “No sacrifice is too great for my country.”)
President Obama’s Secret Service code name will be changed to “Half…”, um, let’s just leave that one alone for right now.

NORTH: Obama stands by while world goes nuclear - Washington Times

Last year, the Obama administration announced to the world that it was planning to pursue a new Asia/Pacific-oriented national security strategy. Since then, North Korea has countered with a strategy of its own. In December, Pyongyang successfully launched a multistage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a warhead-sized payload to the U.S. mainland. On Feb. 12, the North Koreans tested an improved-design nuclear weapon.

After the test, Pyongyang announced that despite tightened United Nations sanctions that theoretically went into force last month, its latest nuclear test bolstered its defenses against U.S. “hostility.” In a lengthy broadcast on the communist dictatorship’s Korean Central News Agency, a government spokesman claimed that countries that abandoned nuclear weapons in response to U.S. pressure have suffered “tragic consequences” and that North Korea’s nuclear program is “farsighted.”

Libya is the only nation known to have quit an ongoing nuclear program in the past 20 years. Moammar Gadhafi dropped out of the nuclear weapons club after Saddam Hussein was dragged from a spider hole in 2003. A former intelligence official tells me that Pyongyang’s reference to “countries” — plural — is likely “hyperbolic propaganda, but there is no doubt Gadhafi is dead.”

The latest rant from the hermit kingdom is a diatribe against the annual month-long series of U.S.-South Korean air, naval and ground exercises set to begin next week. On Thursday, a North Korean “diplomat” at the United Nations threatened his South Korean counterpart with “final destruction” if the U.N. tries to impose further sanctions. In a surreal twist on bizarre behavior, the confrontation apparently took place during a session of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

No open door: White House denies selling access to President Obama to wealthy supporters - Washington Times

The White House refuted a report Monday that President Obama’s former campaign team is selling access to him for wealthy donors who contribute at least $500,000 to a newly organized advocacy group pushing his liberal agenda.

White House press secretary Jay Carney offered a flat “no” when asked by reporters if donors to the group Organizing for Action — a spinoff of Obama for America — would be rewarded with quarterly meetings with Mr. Obama in exchange for their hefty contributions to the tax-exempt group.

“Of course not,” Mr. Carney said “The president is engaged in an effort to pass items on his agenda. And outside organizations that support that agenda … like organizations that support his manufacturing agenda, administration officials can meet with them. This is an independent organization.”

The White House may call OFA “independent,” but it’s a thinly veiled outgrowth of Mr. Obama’s reelection campaign. It was created immediately after the election by people such as Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, to build grassroots support for the president’s second-term agenda, such as gun control and immigration reform.

OFA’s executive director, Jon Carson, formerly ran the White House office of public engagement. Its spokeswoman, Katie Hogan, was a deputy press secretary for Mr. Obama’s reelection campaign.

Chuck Todd Slams Obama For Selling Access To OFA Donors

Chuck Todd harshly discussed Obama giving up the moral high ground with his hypocrisy of OFA Fundraising...

President Obama Faces ‘Cliff Fatigue’ in Latest Budget Fight - ABC News

Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk. Delays await at airports. Padlocks are ready at national parks.

The nation will suffer greater risk of wildfires, workplace deaths, and even surprise weather events, if government predictions are to be believed. Our entire military readiness and superiority are at risk.

What if nobody cares?

President Obama sure does. He’s making the case, aggressively and comprehensively, that the automatic spending cuts set to go into effect at the end of the month will have a devastating impact, both on the economy and on essential government services.

“They will slow our economy. They will eliminate good jobs. They will leave many families who are already stretched to the limit scrambling to figure out what to do,” the president said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

But there are few signs to suggest the public is listening. A poll out late last week found that barely one in four Americans said they’d heard much about the automatic spending cuts — known unhelpfully for public-comprehension purposes as “sequestration” — and four in 10 said they were comfortable with the cuts going into effect.

“Here’s yet another deadline, and everyone’s telling us everything will be destroyed if we go past it,” said Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducted the poll. “It’s very hard to get the same sense of urgency for a third time in a row, just two months after the last one.”

Call it cliff fatigue. After a series of dramatic confrontations with congressional Republicans, an American electorate that has little trust in Washington — and that’s seeing a soaring stock market, plus a recovering housing market — looks to be tuning out the latest round of fiscal fighting, at least for now.

That’s troublesome news for Obama, and not just for the recurring fights over spending and deficits. As his second-term agenda gets cranking with Congress’ return this week, the president needs to convince the public not just on the merits of his priorities but also on the urgency.

This may be the only time in his presidency where heavy legislative lifts are realistic. That period is starting with a rough stretch: The spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never take place now almost definitely will.

The fight is displaying Washington at its worst — all accusations and finger-pointing, no real attempts at problem-solving. Both sides have plans, but the president is spending far more energy explaining why the sequester is the Republicans’ fault, and how bad the consequences of those cuts will be, than he is trying to negotiate something that would stop it.

“It really is sad. The president’s stock in trade is political games, and this is another political game he’s playing,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., vice chairman of the House Budget Committee, told ABC News. “It results in greater cynicism on the part of the public, and none of the things he’s saying are true. And people recognize this — it’s 2-and-a-half cents on every dollar.”

Price said the president is exaggerating the impact of cuts that amount to less than 2.5 percent of federal spending — an estimated $85 billion this year, out of a federal budget in the neighborhood of $3.5 trillion.