Conservative Heritage Times

Stories of the IRS giving newly founded ‘Tea Party’ organizations asking for tax breaks, a hard time excites the masses as they dare to dream of a Nixonian end for Obama.  I will submit that I find something funny (not funny ha-ha) about “Tea Party” organizations petitioning the IRS for a tax break.

Since the Kennedy Administration, it has been official policy of the United States to use the power of the state to dismantle all “rightwing” organizations of any significance.  The policy was contained in the Reuther Memorandum.  

It has been official policy of the United States to use, among other tools, the IRS to dismantle potential threats to the legitimacy of the regime, particularly rightwing organizations–though the Earth First! bombing (Ed Abbey always seemed more like on our side) should be considered.  The truly fascinating thing is that this is even a story–and this is reason to be optimistic.  The Againstists are having their day, screaming “have you no shame?”  The bureaucracy is so far behind the times, they don’t understand that they have already won.  There is potential that this was over-reach.

For most of us, there was no American Rightwing when we were born.  The only elements of the Rightwing that were allowed to exist, were those that served other agendas (an example would be 1980s ‘rightwingers’ who supported sending mercenaries into South America to fight Communism.)  This was the Era of PATCON, (see Earth First above) an evolution of the Reuther strategy.  New mutations of PATCON are still going on (e.g. Fast and Furious).

That the old IRS soldiers of the Reuther Memo are reduced to bothering with astro-turf Tea Party organizations is worthy of a chuckle.

And abolish the IRS already.  Have Bernanke print the difference; cannot be any worse then the current course.

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<sarc>Yeah, great deal here. So glad the Republicans saw the light and compromised on taxes.</sarc>

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.

Read more…

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Well whaddya know! No sooner had I said below that the fiscal cliff deal would be a tax hike whether Grover Norquist gives the Republicans cover or not, that I noticed this on our Newsmax feed:

Norquist: Cliff Deal Won’t Include Tax Hike

If an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff does materialize, Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, doesn’t expect it to include higher taxes.

“I’m working with all the folks who are trying to defend taxpayers here in Congress,” he told CNN’s “Starting Point” Monday, Politico reports. “I don’t think you’re going to see something that actually raises taxes. We may get some tax cuts now and have to fight for others later.

Ummm … Yes it will. As the Newsmax story later clearly states.

Knowledgeable sources told the news service that the duo is near an agreement to raise tax rates on individuals with annual income of more than $400,000 and families with more than $450,000.

Norquist is outright lying at worst or engaging in the sort of deliberately deceptive Washington doublespeak that he normally criticizes at best. The Bush tax increases are set to expire. If they expire then taxes would go up more. So I assume Norquist’s “reasoning,” if such obvious weaseling can be dignified with that term, is that the tax increases in the compromise aren’t really increases because the automatic hikes would be larger. This is no different than the weasels who claim that cutting projected growth in a program is really a spending cut. But Congress didn’t have to sunset the Bush tax cuts in the first place. As well, the whole fiscal cliff is an artificial crisis of Congress’s own making. They didn’t have to build in the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts (which I favor) in the first place.

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Maybe.

Working with Congress against a midnight deadline, President Barack Obama said Monday that a deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” was in sight but not yet finalized. The emerging deal would raise tax rates on family income over $450,000 and individual income over $400,000 a year, increase the estate tax rate and extend unemployment benefits for one year.

Read more…

Make no mistake here, any Republican who votes for this compromise is voting for a tax increase whether Grover Norquist gives them cover or not. If this passes the spineless Republicans will have been worked again.

Update: There will be no vote tonight.

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National Review has some insider details.

It paints a picture of a very somber Republican caucus. I’m not sure why. The conservative members who killed it should be whooping it up. Even Justine Amash, the reputed successor to Ron Paul’s mantle, is pictured as somber, even though he was planning to vote against it. I’m not sure what is going on there. It really doesn’t paint a flattering picture of Amash, IMO, unless I’m missing something. I heard it suggested on another venue, that the people who were planning on voting against Plan B were voting against it for their own sake but were secretly hoping/expecting it to pass. This is the impression I get from Amash based on his comments. Again, am I missing something?

Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a conservative with libertarian leanings, was stunned. As he walked back to his office, he said the episode was unfortunate, even though he was planning to vote against the measure. For the past month, since House leaders booted him off the budget committee, he has been railing against Boehner for his management style. But even Amash wondered whether the House GOP was making the right move. “Too many people in there were arguing that this thing is a tax increase, and I don’t think that’s what Boehner was trying to do,” he said. As much as he disagrees with Boehner’s approach, even he regretted how the speaker’s plan was killed.

And RedState has some details.

I talked to two congressmen who were not involved in the purge or victims of it. They both said that seeing House leaders back “squishes” during the primaries including against some incumbents and then seeing them throw conservatives off committees was all they needed to strengthen their spines against the Speaker.

They said they’re happy to be team players, but they think conservatives in the conference are now treated as kids who are to be seen and not heard. They decided they needed to be heard.

 

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Take that Boehner!

In a stinging setback for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a lack of support from inside his own party for his “fiscal cliff” fall-back plan forced him late Thursday to cancel a much-trumpeted vote on the measure.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Boehner said in a written statement released after an emergency meeting of House Republicans…

It appeared that Boehner faced a rebellion from conservatives opposed to any tax hike, while House Democrats starved the bill of their support, making passage impossible.

See more at Yahoo News…

You know what happened here. Conservative Reps in conservative districts didn’t want to go back home and try and sell this stinker. It is a cave on taxes. It is allowing themselves to be bullied by the President, and their constituents know it.

Update: Here is the Roll Call article on this story.

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A group of “conservative” “leaders” have issued a statement denouncing Boehner’s Plan B. The group reads like a Who’s Who of Conservative Inc. But this is the problem with opposing Conservative Inc. per se. Occasionally they get something right. They should be opposed when they are wrong and worked with when they are right. Here they are right.

Prominent conservative leaders … scheduled a press conference this afternoon to denounce Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” tax increase for addressing the fiscal cliff. Some are accusing Grover Norquist of giving cover to the establishment to facilitate this cave-in and hand President Barack Obama a liberal victory.

Read more…

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This is pathetic! I actually didn’t think Norquist would cave. Sadly, I guess I was wrong.

I hope this makes Sean and the rest of the moderation caucus happy. And make no mistake about it, moderation is what this is. You can toss around the names Burke and Kirk all you want, this is not responsible conservatism or realistic conservatism or any other kind of conservatism. It is moderation. It is moving to the center. It is conceding an important element of the fight to the left.

I want to know how Sean and Gallupo and the rest of the gang think it strengthens the Republicans’ hand to cave rather than to go down fighting! Obama stood tall and Boehner and Norquist et al flinched. That’s what people are going to see, and that’s what happened. This makes Obama look large and in charge and Boehner and Norquist look like a bunch of (I’m just going to say it) groveling bitches.

I’ve got news for Boehner, Norquist, and company. All revenue bills MUST originate in the House. The House is controlled by Republicans. The way to tackle this fiscal cliff issue is to repeatedly pass bills making the current tax rates permanent, and let the Dem controlled Senate and the President whine about it. But don’t send then any bills that raise taxes. No tax increase gets to the Senate and the President unless the Republican controlled House sends it to them. Then when we go plunging over the fiscal cliff (which does what the moderation caucus wants anyway – raises taxes and cuts spending ) scream from the rooftops that the Dems forced a tax increase despite the best efforts of the Republicans to hold the line.

Ask yourself this, how do you think Ron Paul is going to vote on “Plan B.”

If the Constitution Party is smart, they should start writing up the press releases now: “Republicans Raise Taxes!”

And for those who decry outside influences holding the GOP hostage, one huge reason why the GOP sees the fiscal cliff as intolerable is because it would cut defense and make the defense contractors unhappy. So again, I hope you’re happy. The anti-tax lobby takes it on the chin and the defense lobby wins.

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Boehner is a pathetic wuss. Nothing more needs to be said.

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Here is the story.

As a Georgian, I have two words for Sen. Chambliss: Primary Challenger!

Addendum: Breitbart also has the story.

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So, people who want to take money from others to pay for their student loans, health insurance, and housing now know what it’s like to have their money taken.

Now that’s social justice we can all believe in.

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We’re over $14 trillion in debt. (Hey, anyone out there know who got us into that mess?) Anyway, the best and the brightest convened in DC, where they squabbled, haggled, and hectored to find a way out of this crisis. Finally, they hammered out a solution, one that I must confess I would never have thought of:

Add another $7 trillion to our debt.

Wow.

Yes, you read that right. Already drowning in debt, the DC Empire just passed “the largest increase in the debt limit in U.S. history.”

As I’ve said before, trying to survive in the 21st century without a huge central government would be like trying to swim the English Channel without your barbells.

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There was some thinking about how the government shutdown in Minnesota was a dress rehearsal for the  debt ceiling  negotiations in Washington D.C. and they were right, even up to the end game itself. Both Democrat executives, in Minnesota Mark Dayton and in D.C. Barak Obama, capitulating on eventual “deals” because the pain involved up such deals were not agreed to were too much for them to take. There is a reason for this. Republicans, who really don’t care if government works or is “functional” decided they could live if a shutdown (in Minnesota) and or a debt default (in Washington D.C) while Democrats decided they could not because they actually care if government actually functions or not. That’s not good position to be in when you’re dealing with deadlines and consequences.

Some will crow they won this or took that or won the battle but lost the war, blah. blah. blah. The reality is nothing has been “cut” in the sense of being eliminated or reformed drastically (like means testing Social Security). Spending may well be cut but that doesn’t mean it will stay cut if economy improves and revenues become flush once again and of course we have no specifics as to what is being cut and the sacred cows may very well stay unscathed in the backroom negotiations. All of which means which this is one of these Washington “deals” which winds up once again kicking the can down the road until the next crisis comes along (or at least until after the election). Again just like in Minnesota.

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After 20 days the end has come to an end, meaning Minnesota’s state government is back in business. The Gopher State’s budget is back to where it started, spending all of $35.8 billion, the largest in state history.

But never fear all you taxaphobics out there no one is going to pay an extra dime in taxes to pay for any of this spending. The Republicans held the line all right. Government is bigger and spends more but taxpayers won’t foot the extra bill. Some borrowing will be done, a delayed payment here, moving payments into this account, all the financial legerdemain a state government needs to show a balanced budget.

But no taxes were raised which is all Republicans really cared about. So they declared victory and on the surface they’re right. They calculated a government shutdown would hurt Democratic constituencies more than Republican so they thought they could hold out until the public employee unions cried uncle and Gov. Mark Dayton would give in. They voted for their budget and held out until Dayton, he of the old Dayton-Hudson Department Store fortune (which is now plowed into Target stores) gave up on his plan to tax people like himself and thus he worked out  deal the GOP’s state legislative leaders agreed to which they flogged their rank n’ file, the ones who promised they wouldn’t “spend a penny more” than $34 billion, into line support it. Thus, shutdown over with, government back in business.

When it was out of business, persons got a chance to see what life is like without it and what they found out is that it’s more than just closed state parks and idled road projects and unemployed state employees.  It’s bartenders and businesses who can’t get licenses, loggers in state forests thrown out of work and stores who have beer and cigarettes removed from the shelves. Government, no matter what the level, touches a lot of our daily lives, a good deal of it unnoticed until one day it’s not there. Then the people who supposedly hate it  get upset when it isn’t there because it inconveniences them.

They also get upset when government costs more than what comes in to pay for it. This is called a deficit, as we all know. Deficits are eliminated by cutting spending and/or by raising revenue. The former was done and latter wasn’t because many Republicans, especially those in their first terms in the legislature, were locked into Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge. But even Republicans who been around the legislature for a while also took a hard line on taxes after watching veteran colleagues who did vote for tax increase in the past get bounced out of office in GOP primaries and local nominating conventions.

Obviously as a matter of politics one does not wish to sign a blood oath and turn around and break it and wind up like George Bush I. But since Norquist established his pledge back in 1987, government is far bigger and runs bigger and bigger deficits than ever before. Far from “starving the beast” the beast simply goes out to eat on a credit card backed by the Federal Reserve and maintains a credit limit of “whatever you feel comfortable with”. In terms of political branding the pledge may well have been a success. In terms of policy, it’s had absolutely no effect whatsoever if judged by the size and scope of government in 2011.

Continue Reading »

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Here’s another TOTALLY objective piece from the oh-so-politically correct Charlotte Observer on the Latinization of the South:

Roughly 1,000 Latinos and immigrants packed into a church near uptown on Wednesday to hear from the Illinois congressman one supporter calls “Moses of the Latinos.”

People clapped and cheered as U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez entered the church.

Later, a chant arose: “Si se puede. Si se puede. Yes we can. Yes we can.”

“Yes, we can” what? Assimilate to the majority culture? I don’t think so.

And what TOTALLY objective article on Latino colonization would be complete without a few inappropriate religious references? This story has ‘em!

Maudia Melendez, who heads Charlotte’s Jesus Ministry, said Gutierrez is the face of immigration reform.

“I call him the Moses of the Latinos because, as you see, he goes to the government continuously to ask, ‘Let my people go. Let the people stop suffering.’”

Wait a minute! Moses? Didn’t he struggle to free the Jews from slavery in Egypt so they could return to their own nation? So why — oh, never mind.

Gutierrez doesn’t even attempt to disguise his ethnic bias. He once told Newsweek, “I have only one loyalty, and that’s to the immigrant community.” So much for his duty to the majority of Americans, his constituents, or the Constitution. He recognizes that Congress isn’t about to pass amnesty, but this revealing and frightening passage makes clear what Gutierrez and others see as their best chance to achieve their goals:

He said at the chamber reception he’s urging Obama to use his authority to act independently and stop deportations of some groups of illegal immigrants, including undocumented students and the parents of children who are U.S. citizens.

“When the president of the United States decided there was possibly going to be an act of genocide in Libya, he bombed Gadhafi’s forces,” he said. “He didn’t call anyone in Charlotte or Chicago. He didn’t call the Congress of the United States. … He used his discretion.”

In other words, Obama can just refuse to enforce existing immigration law, or even grant American citizenship to illegal aliens with the stroke of a pen. Gutierrez has a point: If the president of the United States can openly defy Congress and ignore the Constitution by declaring war, what’s to stop him from bypassing other Constitutional limitations? One thing the pro-war, any war crowd never quite grasped is that when the president illegally usurps power to provide them with entertaining wars, the path is cleared for even more unconstrained power, to be used in ways they hadn’t contemplated.

We may recover from illegal and counter-productive wars. But forced demographic revolution will permanently change this country.

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Worldnet Daily columnist, Constitution Party member, and potential Constitution Party Presidential candidate, Jerome Corsi has a new website, www.1776Nation.com, and his primary issue is going to be ending the income tax.

Throughout the coming year, 1776 Nation is going to lead a movement to eliminate the income tax, beginning with a resolve to review critically the various alternatives, starting with a fair tax.

The call to “Eliminate the Income Tax Now!” is the call 1776 Nation will champion, beginning today, with this statement of purpose.

Cross posted at IPR.

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Two very good articles from Front Porch Republic for weekend reading:

Patrick Deenen gives a good summnation of the deeper meaning of the Tea Parties which you won’t find on conventional political or opinion websites.

Bill Kauffman says to hell with Earth Day! Celebrate Arbor Day instead (which was the original date for Earth Day).

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See it here at Conservative for Change. This was definitely Paul’s crowd.

HT: Ron Paul (A True Conservative) Facebook Group.

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There has been some debate on the paleo/alt right about whether these TEA Parties are going to be neocon/mainstream dominated affairs or more alternative right or a mix. Let us know your experiences if you attend one. Thanks.

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In my previous two predictions about the coming Obama administration, I concentrated on the social issues and what his foreign policy will look like. In this posting, I will concentrate on what he is likely to do economically. Suffice to say, the Democratic majority in Congress is likely to push Obama farther to the Left as will be the case regarding the social issues. He will want to be perceived as governing from the center like Bill Clinton, but Obama doesn’t have a Republican-controlled Congress to keep him in check. That being said, there is plenty of evidence that he will be in conflict with his own party. Obama hasn’t even taken office yet, but he’s already threatened to veto a bill to block the release of the remaining bailout funds.

Whatever the situation may be, my predictions below are reflective of where he is likely to go on economic policy: Continue Reading »

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