The War on Terror has not made us freer or safer

TAMPA, December 5, 2013 — There has been predictable bluster about President Obama signing a deal with five other nations to begin the process of lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for commitments by Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. Neoconservatives have howled that it abandons U.S. ally Israel and endangers the entire planet.

Regardless, it is a harbinger of things to come. Economic reality is forcing the United States to change its interventionist foreign policy. Normalizing relations with Iran is just one part of that puzzle. Without a realistic political solution to crushing entitlement liabilities, the only place to make meaningful cuts is in military spending.

As the U.S. government comes to grips with the inevitable, Americans should expect to hear quite a bit about the end of a decade of war and of the sacrifices so many have made to “accomplish the mission.”

There’s no doubt about the sacrifice, both in blood and treasure. It’s the accomplishments that should be evaluated with a high degree of skepticism.

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The Thanksgiving Day deception: Exhibit A against public schools

TAMPA, Fla., November 27, 2013 — Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and millions of schoolchildren couldn’t be happier. Not only will they have a fantastic meal on Thursday, but they get a mini-vacation from school. For at least the past week, they’ve been cutting Pilgrim hats and Native American headdresses out of crepe paper and listening to stories about the Pilgrims’ first few years in Plymouth Plantation.

Little do they know they’ve been lied to.

It’s not that what they’re told isn’t true. The Pilgrims did sail over on the Mayflower. They did face incredible hardship, losing half their numbers during the first winter and half of their supplemented numbers again during the second. The Indians did help them. Squanto really did advise them to put a dead fish under each cornstalk to help it grow in the New England soil.

But that’s not why they stopped starving.

Governor William Bradford was quite explicit in his diary about the real reason the Pilgrims starved during the first two winters. It wasn’t because they were suddenly incompetent after prospering in England and the Netherlands for decades.

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Obama violates oath of office with insurance letter

TAMPA, November 17, 2013 – In a desperate attempt to diffuse criticism of his administration over the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), President Obama has once again broken new constitutional ground.

In a letter dated November 14, Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight Gary Cohen informed state insurance commissioners that insurance policies rendered illegal by the legislation “will not be considered to be out of compliance with the market reforms specified below under the conditions specified below.”

The president has just violated his oath of office. No investigation is necessary. He’s put it in writing.

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Why a free market would work for health care

TAMPA, October 26, 2013 – Conservatives are confused again, rejoicing in Obamacare’s early operational struggles. One would think that their only objection to the legislation has been that the Democrats wouldn’t run it efficiently. Maybe it was. After all, the Republicans ran a candidate against Obama that had implemented virtually the same program in Massachusetts, promising only to “repeal and replace.”

Replace?

Jon Stewart took the opportunity to join conservatives in criticizing the government’s performance during his interview with Kathleen Sebelius because he knew it wasn’t a principled argument. That the government didn’t have its website ready to handle the volume doesn’t address the principle of Obamacare.

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If Congress can defund the 2nd Amendment, it can defund Obamacare

TAMPA, October 28, 2013 – President Obama won a temporary victory in his standoff with House Republicans over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling. He signed a continuing resolution to reopen the government without conceding anything on his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. But continuing resolutions are temporary and this issue is far from settled.

Arguments by Democrats and some media that efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional show their lack of understanding of how government actually works. Their claims that because the legislation was passed by Congress, signed by the president and upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court, Congress has a constitutional duty to appropriate funds to execute the law illustrate just how woefully misinformed they are.

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Debt ceiling compromise: Cut military, postpone Obamacare

TAMPA, October 8, 2013 — Amidst breathless reporting by the media on the so-called “shutdown,” another supposed crisis looms. The federal government will reach its never-before-enforced debt ceiling on October 17. If Congress doesn’t both agree to raise the debt ceiling and appropriate money to pay the interest, the government would supposedly default on its debt.

Calling it a “ceiling” is a joke. It’s been raised 78 times since 1960. But some House Republican legislators have showed signs of digging in and doing whatever they can to keep the debt ceiling from being raised. This would render the government unable to borrow the approximately $1 trillion it needs to cover its revenue shortfalls. $1 trillion also happens to be roughly equivalent to all “discretionary” spending.

The other $2.5 trillion the government spent in 2012 was considered “mandatory spending.” Most of it goes to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

House Republicans are expected to continue their quest to defund Obamacare during the debt ceiling fight. They’ve sent several “compromise” proposals to do so in return for passing a continuing resolution, including one to postpone Obamacare for one year. Obama and the Democrats have rejected them all, saying that postponing a law that’s already been duly passed and ruled on by SCOTUS is not a compromise.

So, here is a real compromise: Defund and postpone Obamacare for one year, accompanied by cutting total military spending to $498 billion. That would be $173 billion in cuts over 2012 spending levels, according to the White House budget report.

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9/11 happens every day to victims of U.S. foreign policy

TAMPA, September 11, 2013 — Twelve years after terrorists perpetrated the most deadly crime ever committed on American soil, Americans still hold vigils and other events to commemorate the tragedy.

The 9/11 attack shocked the nation in a way people outside the western hemisphere probably cannot understand. Unlike most nations, Americans have not seen a war at home in over a century.

For the host nations of hot wars, 9/11 happens every week.

NBC reports that 9-12 civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan on Saturday. According to Abdul Ghani Mosamam, spokesman for the Governor of Kunar Province, four Taliban insurgents and 12 civilians died. The civilians were four men, four women and four children. NATO denies any civilians were killed, but no one denies that civilians are killed in airstrikes and offensives. Thus the term, “collateral damage.”

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