by Don Rodgers

First, let me say this is difficult to write. I am a veteran and the most patriotic and courageous people I have ever known come from that connection, but as we see events unfold little is the same in America today as we want to remember her to be. A “National Security Threat” is a phrase with grave meaning, but like many words the meaning is being manipulated to fit an agenda.

This headline from “Liberty News”, “Pentagon Religious Advisor Calls Evangelical Christian Troops Traitors” & “Spiritual Rapists” seems impossible to believe. Many will look at this headline and read the article then shrug their shoulders and say it’s just a story as nothing like that can really happen in America. Some might see it as just the logical progression of what has been happening over the last few years and think there is nothing to be done. Both responses are missing the point.

“This (teaching the word of God) is a national security threat. What is happening…is spiritual rape and what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished”, Weinstein, Pentagon Advisor, said.

This is dangerous, even if the public exposure of it forces the Pentagon to fire Weinstein. This comes just after a military briefing placed Christians on the list of hate groups; a list where Al Qaida is listed below Christians in order of threats to national security. The seeds are planted and this is another, although one of the most in your face, move to destroy the moral compass of America in trying to intimidate and force Christians and People of Faith to cower in fear.

The Military is the last institution associated with government people still respect, but by indoctrinating those who enter it into the radical leftist mentality and a Godless group think the moral compass of the founding principles of America and our civil society will be weeded out. It leaves our military an armed force with only the current political policies of the day, no matter what they look like, as its guide. It is how you get to, “I was just following orders.”

Remember, those joining our military today are all going to the same radical anti-Capitalist leaning schools the majority of the population attends. What they are taught to think does not change at a core level with an oath of enlistment. The men and women who choose to put on the uniform are good and decent people, but they are victims of that radicalized educational system that no longer respects the greatness of America; a system that demonizes our history and poisons the minds of children against their birthright of God given rights afforded to every American. If the meaning of the Constitution is not taught in schools, then what meaning can the oath to uphold it have to the person speaking the words? As more and more of our current military leaders retire, the more distant the force becomes from the morality and connection to the Constitution many of us associate with the military. This radical policy of making the expression of Faith a crime, if ever enforced, will drive out of our Armed Forces those men and women who still see America as it truly is, “One Nation Under God” and all that comes with it.

Frankly, I hope they try and make what I believe a crime. It is time Christians, our Church leaders, and all People of Faith to be willing to stand against this mind set that is infiltrating all of society, to include now our military. This is not an attack on just our military personnel or religion in America; it is an attack on all of us. Even non-believers should be looking at this in horror as the implications for a government policy to make the expression of ones belief in God a crime is in fact
enforcing thought crime and can be expanded to any expression of ideas a government disagrees with.

This is happening in America and there is much we can do about it; we just have to have the courage and conviction in what we believe and to take a stand. We must fight to change our culture to one that once again respects the values that are truly American, fight to return our educational system to one that honors the greatness of the America of our founding and a system that teaches our children to prepare for real life based on our moral and traditional values and not the fantasy of a false utopia dream. We must fight for the men in women in our military to remove the sickness spewed upon our society by those who wish to destroy their characters and their profession by those like Weinstein and those who have the evil intent of placing him in the position to do so. The “fundamental transformation of America” and of our Armed Forces are true national security threats.

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Don Rodgers

Governor Sam Brownback

Yesterday I opined that I could hardly wait to see what would happen following Eric Holder’s letter to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback over the new Kansas law nullifying federal attempts at gun control in Kansas.

I didn’t have to wait long! Here is Brownback’s response:

May 2, 2013

Attorney General Eric Holder

Office of the Attorney General Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Holder:

The State of Kansas is in receipt of your letter in which you place Kansas on notice regarding the view of the Obama Administration concerning the state’s Second Amendment Protection Act.

The right to keep and bear arms is a right that Kansans hold dear.  It is a right enshrined not only in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, but also protected by the Kansas Bill of Rights.  The people of Kansas have repeatedly and overwhelmingly reaffirmed their commitment to protecting this fundamental right.  The people of Kansas are likewise committed to defending the sovereignty of the State of Kansas as guaranteed in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The state’s Second Amendment Protection Act, which expressly restates our commitment to these rights, was approved by wide, bi-partisan margins in the Kansas Legislature.  The measure was adopted by a vote of 35 to 4 in the Kansas Senate with the Democrat Senate Minority Leader supporting the bill.  The measure was adopted by a vote of 96 to 24 in the Kansas House of Representatives.  Again, the Democrat House Minority Leader voted for the bill.  This is not a partisan issue in Kansas.

The people of Kansas have clearly expressed their sovereign will.  It is my hope that upon further review, you will see their right to do so.

Sincerely,

Sam Brownback, Governor

From my perspective this is far too weak a response. That’s why Brownback is Kansas’ governor, and I’m not. My letter to Eric Holder would be based upon my understanding that he is assisting the president in his transformation of the United States from a republic into a dictatorship (see Trevor Loudon’s Barack Obama and the Enemies Within, see especially pp. 259, 270, 315, 377):

Mr. Attorney General:

We have received your outrageous letter stating that you intend to order federal officers to enforce unconstitutional laws in my state.

We welcome them. We have just the place for them: our El Dorado Correctional Facility.

Sam Brownback, Governor

For a much more reasoned response, I refer you to an excellent article by Joe Wolverton, a constitutional lawyer who writes for The New American magazine. He explains why Holder is off base, and explores the Supremacy Clause with great clarity.

Me? I just want to get it on with this thug.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Attorney General Eric Holder

Professor Tom Woods wrote Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century back in June 2010 which got a lot of attention – a lot of it favorable, some not so – because it spelled out the constitutional protections against an overreaching federal government.

Some folks in Kansas decided to go for it and passed a law which contained this language:

It is unlawful for any official, agent or employee of the government of the United States, or employee of a corporation providing services to the government of the United States, to enforce or attempt to enforce, any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States regarding a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately and owned in the state of Kansas and that remains within the borders of Kansas. Violation of this section is a severity level 10 nonperson felony.

Let’s look at that again:  It is now “unlawful” for “any official, agent or employee” of the federal government “to enforce or attempt to enforce any law…” regarding firearms in the state of Kansas.

This is called throwing down the gauntlet.

Attorney General Eric Holder has picked it up.  Here is the relevant part of a letter he just sent to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:

In purporting to override federal law and to criminalize the official acts of federal officers, [your law] directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional…

I am writing to inform you that federal law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration … will continue to execute their duties to enforce all federal firearms laws and regulations.

Moreover, the United States will take all appropriate action, including litigation if necessary, to prevent the State of Kansas from interfering with the activities of federal officials enforcing federal law.

I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop. Let’s see what happens when a BATF agent is arrested in Kansas.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Flag of Germany

It’s unnerving and yet comforting when a worthy such as Bill Bonner agrees with me. What’s more likely is we’re both singing off the same sheet of music. In Monday’s newsletter Bonner titled his entry “The Recovery That Never Happened,” and I agree. Whatever green shoots (remember green shoots, the ever hoped-for, greatly anticipated but never sustained recovery from the Great Recession?) appeared have withered away, leaving the US, Germany and the world with an economy that isn’t recovering. In fact, it can’t, as long as the manipulators continue to administer its poisons to the patient.

Bonner is like the 500 pound canary. He founded Agora Publishing, one of the largest newsletter publishers in the world. Until recently he wrote The Daily Reckoning, a daily e-letter that goes out to 500,000 people and now blogs on his own website.

In writing about what he thinks has happened to the price of gold, he makes a couple of very interesting points: one is that commodity prices, especially that of copper, have dropped significantly – about 15% so far this year. He explains:

Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything – houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft.

This is confirmed by the Baltic Dry Index which continues to languish well below 1,000.  It has been as high as 12,000.

He produces a chart showing the sharp disconnect between the S%P 500 and the Deutsche Bank commodity index:

He says that in Germany sentiment indicators are coming in negative. This is in line with the work I just did in preparing my article on the phony German “model” that is being touted as the one to follow to revive a foundering economy. I looked not only at sentiment indicators, but also Germany’s demographics, its declining birth rate, its impossibly expensive welfare state, and personal income taxes. Did you know, for example, that a single worker loses half of her paycheck to taxes in Germany?

I concluded that article:

Any country wishing to adopt such a model will likely soon begin to enjoy the same results: an economic slowdown, a demographic challenge of heroic proportions, a welfare state that will shortly become unsupportable, a likely decline in its fertility rate and the resulting implosion of its population. In short, if [the German] model is adopted, it won’t take but a generation or two before Mark Steyn’s prediction comes true, that Germany and most of its neighbors will “devolve into quaint locales for vacationers, romantic poets and history buffs.”

As I said, it’s a little scary to see someone of Bonner’s stature seeing the same thing.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

David walked into camp. His fellow Israelites quaking in fear. He can’t believe they’re letting this bully scare them. It’s EXACTLY how I feel. He knows God can do it through him. So he just steps up in faith and fights. And takes out the bully. It’s past time to stop the bullies in America. ~ mm

This last weekend, I was feeling pretty run down as we saw martial law imposed with little objection in a major US city to capture just one man. The majority party in Denver continues to hammer at our liberties bent on using the remaining 16 days of the session to inflict more harm on our families and businesses making reversing the damage all but impossible. News story after story reflects the collapse of our culture, radicalization in our classrooms, and a national blindness to events abroad.

All this and it just did not seem the people were “getting” what is occurring around them. The normalcy bias seemed stronger than ever and the means to fight back appeared more limited than ever before, but then I received an e-mail that said, “David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David”.

The “fight” really isn’t ours alone and the “profound effect of seeing God’s power work on our behalf is that our confidence is renewed to enter the fray.” This fight is temporary as our victory is already secure. America is founded on Truth, the natural law, and on Gods insight given to the men and women put in one place at a specific time in history to bring to the world the light that is America. It is a gift willed to us through blood and sacrifice.

Many have chosen to turn from that light, but there are enough to ensure it is not turned out. It is a struggle to stand against what is coming our way, but “our confidence is renewed to enter the fray.” We do not need a sword to win a victory that is already ours. We just need Faith and a fierce unwillingness to surrender what has been willed to us.

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Don Rodgers

Last Sunday the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it was being forced to furlough its traffic controllers because of cuts to its budget forced by the “sequestration” that began last month. Delays at major airports of 90 minutes and longer were being reported late Sunday night and were spreading into Monday in New York, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles.

Travelers can expect to see “a wide range of delays … [due to] staffing challenges … the FAA is working with the airlines … to try to minimize delays for passengers”, according to its statement. At New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports delays ranged from 37 to 74 minutes for inbound and outbound passengers, while delays at the Los Angeles International Airport were as much as three hours.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) called the FAA furloughs a “dangerous stunt that could jeopardize the safety and security of air travelers” which could have been avoided had the FAA even attempted to do so. Instead, according to Coburn, the FAA “has made zero effort” to avoid the furloughs and delaying passengers.

FAA Administrator Michael Hurta said that furloughs were necessary to offset the $637 million in cuts demanded by the sequester out of its $16 billion budget, that his people “could find no other way” but to furlough all 47,000 of the agency’s employees including its 15,000 air traffic controllers. Because of the furlough – initially requiring each employee to take off one day every two weeks – planes will have to take off and land less frequently, resulting in the anticipated delays.

Editors at Investors Business Daily (IBD) saw this phony furlough coming back in February, calling it “misleading”. IBD noted that back in 2000 the FAA handled 23% more air traffic with fewer controllers than it employs currently:

Either air traffic controllers have gotten far less efficient over the past 13 years, or the FAA could get by with about 3,400 fewer of them without affecting the quality of air travel one bit.

For proof IBD noted that the private company which now runs Canada’s air traffic control, Nav Canada, operates with one-quarter fewer employees than the government did before it privatized that responsibility back in 1996, while air traffic has increased by half.

This is part of the plan, according to Shikha Dalmia, writing for Reason.com. In early March President Obama flew around the country outlining all the terrible things that would happen once the sequester starting cutting essential government services:

There will be no first responders to help disaster-struck communities recover; prosecutors will be unable to put away criminals; schools will have to lay off teachers; parents will lose child care; and kids won’t get vaccinations.

This is farcical on its face. The $44 billion in sequester cuts for the balance of the fiscal year represent what the government borrows every two weeks. In a budget approaching $4 trillion, $44 billion is one percent, which some would call a “rounding error.”

What is more deceitful is that the president has on his desk a report from the Government Accounting Office (GAO) containing 17 areas of government “overlap” and 14 areas of potential savings totaling more than $95 billion, twice what is needed to make up for the sequester cuts he’s complaining about and 150 times the shortfall being “suffered” by the FAA and as a result being inflicted on air travelers. Said the GAO, “we suggest 81 actions that the executive branch or Congress could take to reduce or eliminate fragmentation, overlap, or duplication.”

And that’s just in this year’s report. In 2011 and 2012 the GAO pointed out another $200 billion in savings. Said Senator Coburn:

While millions of Americans have been doing more with less, the federal government continues to do less with more.

The $95 billion in overlap identified in this report, combined with the $200 billion in overlap identified in GAO’s previous two reports, could easily cover the costs of sequestration.

Yet, instead of preventing furloughs, reopening air traffic control towers and restoring public access to White House, Congress and the administration continue to defend billions of dollars in duplicative programs that are little more than monuments to the good intentions of career politicians in Washington.

This year’s report from the GAO includes:

679 renewable energy initiatives at 23 federal agencies,

76 programs to prevent or treat drug abuse … across 15 agencies,

Three federal offices … involved in overseeing catfish inspections, and

159 contracting organizations in 10 different Defense Department components … to provide foreign language support.

Even the $637 million in cuts that is forcing the FAA to delay air travelers is fraudulent, according to Logan Albright, writing for FreedomWorks:

The FAA only requested a budget of $15.172 billion for fiscal year 2013. After the $600 million dollar “reduction,” the amount they actually received was $15.999 billion…

If we examine the budget for the FAA in fiscal year 2008, we can see that they only received $14.077 billion in that year, which adjusted for inflation comes out to $15.056 billion in today’s dollars. That’s almost a billion dollars less than the FAA received this year, and yet the amount of air travel in 2008 was significantly heavier than it is today…

So the bottom line is that we are looking at an agency being given a billion dollars more to manage nearly 6,000 fewer flights a year, and yet we are expected to believe that longer lines and more delays are unavoidable.

The Obama administration has no interest whatever in cutting government spending. Its focus is on expanding government and denigrating or ignoring any attempts to cut it. That’s why the GAO reports have been all but ignored by the president. That’s why the sequester cuts must be seen as “drastic” and “draconian” and to pin the blame for the pain onto anyone supporting them. The FAA is one of the most visible of the government agencies which can apply the pain where it does the most good: onto air travelers dependent upon regular schedules who can ill afford disruptions and delays. It has little to do with real economic austerity and everything to do with politics.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Once again my economic friend Donald Boudreaux has simplified the complex while avoiding the sarcasm that so many are expressing over the celebration of Earth Day. 192 countries have joined in the chorus so it’s a fact of life. We can ridicule it as silliness but there it is. Instead, Boudreaux reminds us that free markets have done a heck of a lot more to make our planet a nicer place to live than any attempt at recycling or holding banners in a protest movement.

To wit:

I’m thankful for the automobile, which has cleaned our streets and highways of animal feces, which is both foul and filthy itself, and that attracts flies that spread it into our homes and workplaces.

I’m thankful for the automobile also because it allows us to travel in a cleaner environment than we had when we traveled on horseback or in buggies.  Modern automobiles cool or heat the air immediately surrounding their passengers, making these passengers comfortable and, in summer, less sweaty and stinky.

I’m thankful for air-conditioning that keeps our interior environments not only comfortable but more healthy, as it allows us to better keep insects out of our homes, shops, factories, and offices — and also, in humid places, to dramatically reduce the growth of mold and mildew in our homes.

I’m thankful for indoor plumbing.  (The anti-polluting properties here are too obvious to spell out.  Ditto for disposable diapers — yet another product for which I’m most grateful.)

He (and I) are thankful for the little things that we take for granted, like soap, shampoo, toothpaste, dental floss, toilet paper, detergents, dishwashers, plastic bags, light bulbs, refrigerators, t-shirts, socks, Windex, aluminum foil, eyeglasses, and …

He concludes:

I am, in short, thankful for private-property markets that are the main driving force behind these (and many other) anti-pollutants — a force so powerful that we today enjoy the incredible luxury of being able to worry, should we so choose, about very distant and very speculative forms of [alleged and often phony] environmental problems such as species loss and global warming.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Following the defeat of the gun control bill in Washington this week, pundits from across the political spectrum have commented on it. They range from outrage to joyous celebration. A rather thoughtful and fair article was written by Andy Sullivan of Reuters which often has a more balanced perspective than many others. He reviewed the clout of the NRA and its organized and effective resistance to Obama’s infringements but failed to mention two other powerhouses: Gun Owners of America with its 300,000 members, and the Second Amendment Foundation with its 650,000 members. And nothing was said about the individual American who is tired of Obama who isn’t a member of any of these groups but made his voice heard anyway.

There were two things that struck me. First, the gun owner base in the US is shrinking. Sullivan quoted the results from the General Social Survey done each year by the University of Chicago which showed that the percentage of households owning guns has dropped from 54 percent in 1977 to just 30 percent currently. When I saw that statistic I immediately questioned it and checked it out elsewhere and learned that it is accurate. Fewer than one in three households now own a gun, or at least admit that they do.

My first reaction was: time is working against us.

But Sullivan gave me hope and a reminder: small, noisy well-coordinated interest groups that are passionate about something have influence far beyond their numbers. Sullivan reported that Bloomberg spent $12 million on this issue to no avail:

As Wednesday’s vote showed, the NRA can count on their 4.5 million members to leap into action when it counts. Gun-control groups have yet to match that type of enduring intensity.

“People who own guns care about guns,” said Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist who now heads a gun-rights group called Independent Firearm Owners of America that supported the background-check legislation…

A motivated minority that cares passionately about an issue often carries more weight in Washington than a majority that is not quite as focused on that single issue.

And then I remembered this quote from Margaret Mead:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Besides that, truth is never decided by majority rule.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Back in the day, while the rest of us were warning the world that ObamaCare was going to destroy health care as we then knew it, big labor unions were some of the staunchest supporters of the gargantuan bill.  Now, the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International is calling for the “repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.”

Read the entire statement from Union President Kinsey M. Robinson here.

Our Union and its members have supported President Obama and his Administration for both of his terms in office.

But regrettably, our concerns over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored. In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer sponsored coverage could keep it.

These provisions jeopardize our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health plans.

For decades, our multi-employer health and welfare plans have provided the necessary medical coverage for our members and their families to protect them in times of illness and medical needs.  This collaboration between labor and management has been a model of success that should be emulated rather than ignored.  I refuse to remain silent, or idly watch as the ACA destroys those protections.

I am therefore calling for repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act to protect our employers, our industry, and our most important asset: our members and their families.

It’s always a beautiful moment when the left makes the case against their own freedom-choking cause.

h/t The Sacrament Bee, The Examiner

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Michelle Morin a conservative blogger and speaker for freedom and America’s founding principles. Join her for updates here.

Last week I waxed eloquent and enthusiastic about a bill headed to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s desk that I called the “strongest pro-gun bill” in the country. And for a brief period it was. It said that any gun in the state of Kansas was off-limits to federal intrusion, referring to protections granted not only under the Second, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, but also to Section 4 of the Kansas constitution as well. It prohibited state employees from assisting the feds from enforcing unconstitutional laws and further considered any violations of the bill as felonies. It was really something to rejoice about. I wrote:

It not only covers individual citizens in the state but also protects manufacturers of firearms or firearms parts or suppliers to those manufacturers. In other words, if it has anything to do with firearms in the state of Kansas, the federal government cannot do anything that the state considers to be unconstitutional.

I even quoted one of the bill’s supporters who exclaimed as the Kansas legislature passed the bill: “Passage of SB 102 means that the Second Amendment and the Tenth Amendment are alive and well in Kansas!”

But the change of just two words in the bill weakened it considerably, and has caused me to withdraw my rejoicing over it. Those two words, inserted at the last minute by person or persons unknown but who knew exactly what he was doing, eliminated any gun not manufactured commercially or privately inside the state that had never left the state from the protection of the bill. Any other gun is not covered. That no doubt excludes most of the firearms owned in Kansas.

So at the request of my editor who brought this ingenuous bit of political watering-down to my attention I have asked him to make this correction to the end of that article:

Correction: Never underestimate the ability of a politician or a conference committee to make hash of a great bill. In the final bill which reached the governor’s desk, a slight change in language in the bill weakened it considerably. That change limited the protection under the bill only to those guns that were manufactured commercially or privately in the state of Kansas, thus neatly excluding all others from the bill’s protection. The author regrets not only the error but the change in the language of the bill which weakens it substantially. Our enthusiasm for the bill has also been greatly reduced.

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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.