ABOUT THAT FISCAL CLIFF

John Stossel

Yikes, we're headed toward a fiscal cliff! It will crush the economy! Or so the media and politicians tell us.

The "cliff" is a series of tax increases and budget cuts that automatically go into effect Jan. 1 unless Congress acts.

Will Congress act?

It will! I see the future: The politicians will meet and fret and hold press conferences and predict disaster. Then they'll reach a deal.

It will just postpone the reckoning, but they'll congratulate themselves, and the media will move on.

America, however, continues to go broke.

"They're not going to admit that we're bankrupt, and they won't admit that we're on the verge of a major, major change in our society," says Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. "So they'll keep putting it aside, but then we'll eventually probably destroy the dollar."

The across-the-board cut, or "sequestration," was designed to be so distasteful that Congress would be moved to cut more deliberately. If it doesn't act, $110 billion in projected spending will be automatically cut -- half from domestic spending, half from the Pentagon.

"They assume that they made it so bad that they wouldn't accept it, but I don't think they did," said Paul. "They're not even ... talking about real cuts. They're talking about cuts in baseline budgeting."

Right, the old baseline budgeting trick.

"If they propose, let's say, a $10 billion increase for next year and cut it down to $9 billion, they say they're cutting 10 percent. But they're not cutting anything, they're only increasing it $9 billion instead of $10 billion. It's done on purpose so that people get confused."

Republican House Speaker John Boehner calls the fiscal cliff a "nightmare."

But why? Trillion-dollar deficits are more terrible.

Cuts of $110 billion would even be good for us because it would keep money in private hands, away from the bloated and freedom-killing bureaucracy.

"When government spending is about $3.8 trillion, you're going to cut $100 billion? That's a deck chair on the Titanic," said Russ Roberts of the Hoover Institution. "If they're actual cuts, I think that would be great. I'd cut 10, 20 percent across the board if I had my druthers. But across the board scares people because they think, 'Let's save the things that are really important and cut the things that are not so important.' (But) that never works."

It doesn't work because every cent in the budget is absolutely crucial to someone.

Lately the media are focused on the $400 billion in tax increases that make up four-fifths of the fiscal cliff. We're told that if the Bush-era tax rate cuts expire and the spending reductions kick in, catastrophe will follow.

"The tax increases sound scarier. But we have a trillion dollar deficit!" Roberts pointed out. "So to me, the idea of raising taxes is probably a good idea. It says this spending that we've been doing is not a free lunch."

I'm not convinced that giving politicians more money is ever a good idea.

And won't the wealthy high-earners find a way around the higher rates? When rich people do that, much of their money goes to lawyers instead of consumer satisfaction.

The other thing that scares Washington are the automatic cuts to Pentagon spending. "These draconian cuts represent a threat to our national security," say Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"The Pentagon is hysterical about it," notes Ben Friedman of the Cato Institute. "But it's about 10 percent, which would bring us roughly back to where we were in defense spending in 2006 ... adjusted for inflation, not exactly a crisis year in the Pentagon. They've gotten very spoiled at the Pentagon. They had years of luxury."

Automatic cuts might even be good, said Friedman.

"We need probably bigger cuts in the defense budget because we do too much. This will force us to make some choices. We try to be everything in the world ... pretending that every unstable country is a threat to us."

I won't lose sleep over automatic spending cuts. The "fiscal cliff" frightens me less than the bankruptcy cliff.

Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @Townhall.com

Maybe We Really Can’t All Just Get Along

Derek Hunter

During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Rodney King famously asked, “Can’t we all just get along?” The answer should be an easy and unequivocal “yes,” but it seems less and less likely these days.

King was speaking in term of race, but the same could be said of political ideology. Liberals, conservatives and every other point on the political spectrum used to co-exist fairly easily (with the exception of left-wing anarchists who don’t get along with anyone). But these days détente has given way to anger and open hostility.

Some, not all, people have become less civil to those with whom they disagree politically. The modern left, birthed with the start of the eugenics-loving, racist progressive movement at the turn of the 20^th century, always has embraced, to varying degrees, the concept of silencing opponents. Through the factions of communism, socialism and fascism (all takes on the same philosophy), leftists have made continuous attempts to silence and punish anyone who doesn’t toe their line.

President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive hero, made it illegal to speak German in this country and, in the Sedition Act of 1917, outlawed the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” against the government, flag or military. Wilson’s rabid racism and implementation of segregationist policies in the federal government are routinely ignored by progressives today. But they are all too real and did enormous and lasting damage to our nation.

But that was (and still is) what progressives stood for. They were the elites, the smartest the nation had to offer. And, as such, it was up to them to “improve” the world through government action. They were white, so blacks were inferior. They were smart, so anyone they deemed not to be was inferior, and so on. They believed certain “undesirable” people should be sterilized and thus bred out of existence.

Those deemed worthy or necessary to be allowed to continue to exist would be ruled by them because they, the progressives, quite simply knew better what people needed than the people themselves. Constitution be damned, they were “progressing” the human race.

Although their tactics have changed over time, their motivation and ultimate desires haven’t – they want control and don’t care who or what they destroy to get it.

Fast-forward to today. Progressives are in the process of seizing control of the health care system. Regulations and laws are making more and more businesses effective wards of the state functioning in the ever-narrowing window of what’s left of the free-market.

But it’s not just economics. The sentiments behind President Wilson’s Sedition Act are alive and well. They’re no longer embedded in government; they’ve moved to the media and academia. Speech codes limit not only the words students can use but their ability to express thoughts and opinions progressives deem unworthy. Progressive media outlets frame opposition to President Obama as racist in the hopes of scaring critics into silence.

Now this disparate world view and loyalty to ideology over country/liberty/reality is metastasizing into more places it will damage beyond repair.

Union workers voluntarily have driven Hostess out of business. Seems they’d rather have no pay than less pay, no pension over a restructured one. They commit economic suicide, and pampered, over-paid union bosses such as Richard Trumka blame the Bain Capitals of the world.

Even on something as serious as the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, progressives aren’t interested in facts. Calls for truth-seeking are met with cries of racism because UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the sacrificial lamb the president sent out to lie for him, happened to be black. These progressives are not remotely interested in why Rice lied to the American people about what happened that sad night, nor do they care about being lied to themselves. They care about their agenda. Lying to the contemptible masses is acceptable and encouraged because the unwashed masses don’t know what’s best for themselves anyway.

This “progressive” attitude toward reality is now amplified by the web of social media, which empowers the spread of their fact-lacking desires to once-unheard drones who parrot it unquestioned to the world. Like a cold virus on a plane, it spreads. The truth, or even a desire to find it (as in the case of Benghazi), immediately butts up against a wall of willful ignorance built by a left-wing industrial complex of moneyed interests and true believers. No amount of contradictory evidence can convince them what actually is if they wish it not to be.

The right has its own version of this suborn, wishfully ignorant army. But it is smaller with much less funding. The reason this hive-mindset doesn’t translate to the right is we are not all of like minds. Priorities to one conservative are not priorities to another. Diversity of opinion not only exists on the political right, it is encouraged. Nothing less would be accepted from a philosophy based on the individual.

The progressive left doesn’t suffer from intellectual diversity. In spite of its penchant for bumper stickers calling for questioning of authority, celebrating diversity and “tolerance,” progressives tolerate deviation from their prescribed norm like Hamas would tolerate the suggestion they observe Rosh Hashanah. That’s why there’s so little dissent from anything its leaders propose. No group of nearly 200 clear-thinking individuals who swore an oath to the Constitution and hoped to sway a majority of Americans to their cause would ever elect a radical San Francisco leftist their leader, yet Nancy Pelosi…

When Rodney King asked his famous question, we really could have all gotten along. But the intervening years saw the rejection of a liberal, almost moderate, left and the rebirth of a philosophy spawned from hatred and division with the sole goal of control. Although a great many Americans support this goal, the wool has been pulled over the eyes of many more who’ve been fooled into thinking liberty is a chip to be bartered for a crumb of pie rather than the key to making your own.

I opt against trading my liberty to sing kumbaya with those who seek to impose upon me that which I do not want because they deem it in my best interest. Our president can bow to anyone he wants, but I will no bow to him, nor will I bow to his ideological brethren. I will not bow to anyone. We can all get along, but as long as my opponents seek to deny me any of my liberty, I choose not to.

Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com

Petraeus and Benghazi: A Time for Truth

Pat Buchanan

The stunning resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, days before he was to testify on the CIA role in the Benghazi massacre, raises many more questions than his resignation letter answers.

"I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair," wrote Petraeus. "Such behavior is unacceptable ... as the leader of an organization such as ours."

The problem: Petraeus' "unacceptable behavior," adultery with a married mother of two, Paula Broadwell, that exposed the famous general to blackmail, began soon after he became director in 2011.

Was his security detail at the CIA and were his closest associates oblivious to the fact that the director was a ripe target for blackmail, since any revelation of the affair could destroy his career?

People at the CIA had to know they had a security risk at the top of their agency. Did no one at the CIA do anything?

By early summer, however, Jill Kelley, 37, a close friend of the general from his days as head of CentCom at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., had received half a dozen anonymous, jealous, threatening emails.

"Back off." "Stay away from my guy!" they said.

Kelley went to an FBI friend who ferreted out Broadwell as the sender and Petraeus as the guy she wanted Kelley to stay away from.

Yet, learning that Broadwell was the source of the emails, that Petraeus was having an affair with her, and that the CIA director was thus a target for blackmail and a security risk should have taken three days for the FBI, not three months.

And when Broadwell was identified as the source of the threats, did the Tampa FBI office decide on its own to rummage through her other emails? And when Petraeus' secret email address popped up, did the local FBI decide to rummage through his emails, as well?

Was the CIA aware that Petraeus' private emails were being read by the FBI?

Surely, as soon as Petraeus' affair became known, FBI Director Robert Mueller would have been told and would have alerted Attorney General Eric Holder, who would have alerted the president.

For a matter of such gravity, this is normal procedure. Yet, The New York Times says the FBI and the Justice Department kept the White House in the dark.

Is that believable?

Could it be that Obama and the National Security Council were kept ignorant of a grave security risk and a potentially explosive scandal that the Tampa FBI field office knew all about?

By late October, with the FBI, Justice and the White House all in "hear-no-evil" mode, an FBI "whistle-blower" from Florida contacted the Republican leadership in the House and told them of the dynamite the administration was sitting on.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office called Mueller, and the game was up. But the truth was withheld until after Nov. 6.

On Thursday, closed Senate hearings are being held into unanswered questions about the terrorist attack in which Amb. Chris Stevens, two former Navy SEALs and a U.S. diplomat were killed.

There are four basic questions.

Why were repeated warnings from Benghazi about terrorist activity in the area ignored and more security not provided, despite urgent pleas from Stevens and others at the consulate?

Why was the U.S. military unable to come to the rescue of our people begging for help, when the battle in Benghazi lasted on and off for seven hours?

Who, if anyone, gave an order for forces to "stand down" and not go to the rescue of the consulate compound or the safe house? A week before Petraeus' resignation, the CIA issued a flat denial that any order to stand down ever came from anyone in the agency.

Fourth, when the CIA knew it was a terrorist attack, why did Jay Carney on Sept. 13, David Petraeus to Congress on Sept. 14, UN Amb. Susan Rice on Sept 16 on five TV shows, and Obama before the UN two weeks after 9/11 all keep pushing what the CIA knew was a false and phony story: That it had all come out of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Islamic video made by some clown in California?

There was no protest. Was the video-protest line a cover story to conceal a horrible lapse of security before the attack and a failure to respond during the attack -- resulting in the slaughter?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sent word she will not be testifying. And she will soon be stepping down. Petraeus is a no-show this week. He is gone. Holder is moving on, and so, too, is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

President Nixon's Attorneys General John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst and his top aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were all subpoenaed by the Watergate Committee and made to testify under oath about a bungled bugging at the DNC.

The Benghazi massacre is a far graver matter, and the country deserves answers. The country deserves the truth.

Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com