AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

So if you are spending $100 a month for food and you sell your plane for $100 this month does that mean you won't have to buy food ever again?

I think you need to rethink your statement.
If the govt did sell their excess property, yes it would add money to the federal coffers.
But it wouldnt reduce the deficit any, because they would still spend that money on something else.
All it would do is create a temporary bulge in the govt wallet, one that wouldnt last 5 seconds before they spent the money on something else.

No, apparently you don't understand the point. The point is that alot of deer and elk for example are located on private ranches which are not open to hunting. Some ranches and private property holdings may be open to hunting, but it also may be at a very high fee, because among all the reasons, one reason may be the existence of trophy quality game.

One example of a form of private land would be the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico. Similar to private land, it is the private property of the Jicarilla tribe, and one of the most lucrative activities that they manage on their lands is hunting and fishing. They advertise trophy deer and elk, and part of the reason they can do this is because they limit the hunting pressure much more than the state would otherwise do, plus their reservation is one of the most prime habitats for big game in the region. If this reservation was public land, I do not believe the situation would be near the same as it is now.

Sometimes creating parks, national forests, and wilderness areas and other such public land management where private land once existed, only brings more people and more pressure upon wildlife in those areas, thus creating more adverse conditions for their well being.

In tonight's State of the Union address, President Obama will declare a new found commitment to "fiscal responsibility" to cover the huge spending and debt he and congressional Democrats have run up in his first year in office. But next Monday, when he submits his actual budget, I fear it will rely on gimmickry, commissions, luke-warm spending "freezes," and paper-tiger controls to create the illusion of budget discipline. Meanwhile, he and the Democratic congressional leadership will continue pursuing a relentless expansion of government and a new culture of dependency.

America needs an alternative. For that reason, I have reintroduced my plan to tackle our nation's most pressing domestic challenges"updated to reflect the dramatic decline in our economic and fiscal condition. The plan, called A Road Map for America's Future and first introduced in 2008, is a comprehensive proposal to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans, to lift the debt burdens that are mounting every day because of Washington's reckless spending, and to promote jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.

The difference between the Road Map and the Democrats' approach could not be more clear. From the enactment of a $1 trillion "stimulus" last February to the current pass-at-all costs government takeover of health care, the Democratic leadership has followed a "progressive" strategy that will take us closer to a tipping point past which most Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes"a European-style welfare state where double-digit unemployment becomes a way of life.

Americans don't have to settle for this path of decline. There's still time to choose a different future. That is what the Road Map offers. It is based on a fundamentally different vision from the one now prevailing in Washington. It focuses the government on its proper role. It restrains government spending, and hence limits the size of government itself. It rejuvenates the vibrant market economy that made America the envy of the world. And it restores an American character rooted in individual initiative, entrepreneurship and opportunity.

Here are the principal elements:

• Health Care. The plan ensures universal access to affordable health insurance by restructuring the tax code, allowing all Americans to secure an affordable health plan that best suits their needs, and shifting the control and ownership of health coverage away from the government and employers to individuals.

It provides a refundable tax credit"$2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families"to purchase coverage (from another state if they so choose) and keep it with them if they move or change jobs. It establishes transparency in health-care price and quality data, so this critical information is readily available before someone needs health services.

State-based high risk pools will make affordable care available to those with pre-existing conditions. In addition to the tax credit, Medicaid will provide supplemental payments to low-income recipients so they too can obtain the health coverage of their choice and no longer be consigned to the stigmatized, sclerotic care that Medicaid has come to represent.

• Medicare. The Road Map secures Medicare for current beneficiaries, while making common-sense reforms to save this critical program. It preserves the existing Medicare program for Americans currently 55 or older so they can receive the benefits they planned for throughout their working lives.

For those under 55"as they become Medicare-eligible"it creates a Medicare payment, initially averaging $11,000, to be used to purchase a Medicare certified plan. The payment is adjusted to reflect medical inflation, and pegged to income, with low-income individuals receiving greater support. The plan also provides risk adjustment, so those with greater medical needs receive a higher payment.

The proposal also fully funds Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) for low-income beneficiaries, while continuing to allow all beneficiaries, regardless of income, to set up tax-free MSAs. Enacted together, these reforms will help keep Medicare solvent for generations to come.

• Social Security. The Road Map preserves the existing Social Security program for those 55 or older. For those under 55, the plan offers the option of investing over one-third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees. This proposal includes a property right, so those who own these accounts can pass on the assets to their heirs. The plan also guarantees that individuals will not lose a dollar they contribute to their accounts, even after inflation.

The plan also makes the program permanently solvent by combining a modest adjustment in the growth of initial Social Security's benefits for higher-income individuals, with a gradual, modest increase in the retirement age.

• Tax Reform. The Road Map offers an alternative to today's needlessly complex and unfair tax code, providing the option of a simplified system that promotes work, saving and investment.

This highly simplified code fits on a postcard. It has just two rates: 10% on income up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers, and 25% on taxable income above these amounts. It also includes a generous standard deduction and personal exemption (totaling $39,000 for a family of four), and no tax loopholes, deductions, credits or exclusions (except the health-care tax credit).

The proposal eliminates the alternative minimum tax. It promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends. It eliminates the death tax. It replaces the corporate income tax"currently the second highest in the industrialized world"with a business consumption tax of 8.5%. This new rate is roughly half the average in the industrialized world and will put American companies and workers in a stronger position to compete in a global economy.

Even without the Democratic spending spree, our fiscal outlook is deteriorating. They are only hastening the crisis. It is not too late to take control of our fiscal and economic future. But the longer we wait, the bigger the problem becomes and the more difficult our options for solving it.

The Road Map promotes our national prosperity by limiting government's burden of spending, mandates and regulation. It ensures the opportunity for individuals to fulfill their human potential and enjoy the satisfaction of their own achievements"and it secures the distinctly American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.

• Tax Reform. The Road Map offers an alternative to today's needlessly complex and unfair tax code, providing the option of a simplified system that promotes work, saving and investment.

This highly simplified code fits on a postcard. It has just two rates: 10% on income up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers, and 25% on taxable income above these amounts. It also includes a generous standard deduction and personal exemption (totaling $39,000 for a family of four), and no tax loopholes, deductions, credits or exclusions (except the health-care tax credit).

The proposal eliminates the alternative minimum tax. It promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends. It eliminates the death tax. It replaces the corporate income tax"currently the second highest in the industrialized world"with a business consumption tax of 8.5%. This new rate is roughly half the average in the industrialized world and will put American companies and workers in a stronger position to compete in a global economy.

Even without the Democratic spending spree, our fiscal outlook is deteriorating.

One example of a form of private land would be the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico. Similar to private land, it is the private property of the Jicarilla tribe, and one of the most lucrative activities that they manage on their lands is hunting and fishing. They advertise trophy deer and elk, and part of the reason they can do this is because they limit the hunting pressure much more than the state would otherwise do, plus their reservation is one of the most prime habitats for big game in the region. If this reservation was public land, I do not believe the situation would be near the same as it is now.

parados wrote:

I think okie and ican are proof that public education doesn't work. We should contract it out to Hannity and Limbaugh.

Best idea I've heard yet, Parados, and then maybe we would not have the uneducated liberal dolts as we do now. And we could balance the budget for a change, both nationally and by state.

From: The Peter Morrison Report
Date: 1/27/2010 9:53:45 AM
Subject: Left Wing Propaganda Forced on TX Teachers

Summary of this week's report:

Public schools in Texas are already steeped in political
correctness, but the never-ending assault on our children's minds
by way of liberal indoctrination is getting even worse. A recent
report from a whistle blower reveals the far left-wing agenda being
pushed on our children in the guise of education.
SEE
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=120622
Texas teachers warned against being 'heterosexist'
'We must help people to become committed to social change'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: December 31, 2009
11:10 pm Eastern


By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily



Texas Education Agency
Candidates for certification to teach in public schools in Texas are being told that they will be held accountable for any "heterosexist" leanings and must become agents working to change society, according to one candidate who was alarmed by the demands.

The applicant, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions, told WND part of the teachings on multiculturalism required him to read several online postings about the issue inside the education industry.

One warns that "teachers and administrators must be held accountable for practices deemed to be racist, sexist, heterosexist, classist, or in any other way discriminatory." And a second warned that educators must not define education as the basic skills.

"How do we create a better world? How do we do more than simply survive? As educators, we must help people to become committed to social change," the article demanded.

The teacher candidate told WND the studies were mandated by the Region 10 service center for the public school educators' program.

The center had a recording that it was closed throughout the holidays and officials could not be reached by WND.

(Story continues below)




But spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe at the Texas Education Agency said the state rules require teacher preparation programs to cover 17 curriculum topics, but not multiculturalism.

The corrupt state of U.S. colleges exposed, now at the WND Superstore!

"Although the training should address educating special populations such as English language learners and children with disabilities," she added.

"While we establish the broad rules that are to be followed, we do not write or approve a training program's curriculum," she said.

She said the articles, if part of the program, were chosen at the region level.

One of the articles was on the EdChange Multicultural Pavilion and discussed defining "multicultural education."

There it states that there are several focuses for such programs, including those that insist "on education change as part of a larger societal transformation in which we more closely explore and criticize the oppressive foundations of society and how education serves to maintain the status quo " foundations such as white supremacy, capitalism, global socioeconomic situations, and exploitation."

The article demands, "Schools must be active participants in ending oppression of all types, first by ending oppression within their own walls, then by producing socially and critically active and aware students."

"The underlying goal of multicultural education is to affect social change. The pathway toward this goal incorporates three strands of transformation: 1. The transformation of self; 2. The transformation of schools and schooling; and 3. The transformation of society," the teaching material said.

The traditional teaching approaches, it continued, "must be deconstructed to examine how they are contributing to and supporting institutional systems of oppression."

It demands that the "transformation of society" be part of a school's goals.

"It is not enough to continue working within an ailing, oppressive, and outdated system to make changes, when the problems in education are themselves symptoms of a system that continues to be controlled by the economic elite."

A second article that was assigned to the student, the candidate told WND, was "Multicultural Education and Developmental Education: A Conversation About Principles and Connections with James A. Banks," and included the same concepts of change.

"In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed [the author] says that we must teach students to read the word, which is basic skills, but we also must teach them to read the world, and that is to critique and change society," the article said.

"One of the things that is happening in this assessment mania that is going on is that we've defined education too narrowly. We've defined it as only basic skills: reading, writing, and arithmetic. We're missing that the biggest problem of humankind is not basic skills but how to get along. How do we create a better world? How do we do more than simply survive? As educators, we must help people to become committed to social change," it stated.

The article also warned instructors must lead their students in a specific social direction.

"I think it is essential that students acquire basic skills and I don't think they're neutral. The skills are as value laden as the commitments we want students to share. Although it's essential that students acquire basic skills, this alone is clearly not sufficient for them to become effective citizens in a global society. They must also develop the commitment and ability to critique and change society," the article said.

A similar issue of demanding a specific social perspective arose recently at the University of Minnesota.

Officials at the school there backed off a proposal after publicity about its planned requirements to examine teacher candidates about "white privilege" as well as provide "remedial re-education" for those who hold the "wrong" views.

That case was taken up by the the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which promotes civil liberties on the campuses of America's colleges and universities.

FIRE officer Adam Kissel said the report from the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group apparently would involve screening teacher applicants for "wrong" views and withholding their degrees if "the university's political re-education efforts proved ineffective."

By any "nontotalitarian" standards, he wrote, the plans being made so far by the school are "severely unjust and impermissibly intrude into matters of individual conscience."

In Minnesota, among the issues discussed in the plans, are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the "myth of meritocracy" in the United States, "the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values," and the "history of white racism."

Those demands appeared to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware.

As WND reported, the Delaware university's office of residential life was caught requiring students to participate in a program that taught "all whites are racist."

School officials immediately defended the teaching, but in the face of a backlash from alumni and publicity about its work, the school decided to drop the curriculum, although some factions later suggested its revival.

FIRE, which challenged the Delaware plan, later produced a video explaining how the institution of the university pushed for the teachings, was caught and later backed off:



Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten said the Minnesota plan would have required teachers to "embrace " and be prepared to teach our state's kids " the task force's own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic."

She wrote, "The first step toward 'cultural competence,' says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize " and confess " their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the re-education camps of China's Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi.

"What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment?" she posed. "The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must 'develop clear steps and procedures for working with nonperforming students, including a remediation plan.'"

Just pretend you knew that, or that it isn't true.

Learn the difference between deficit and debt.

You believe the current deficit is the whole responsibility of the current administration and congress,

I believe the 2009 deficit is the whole responsibility of the current administration and congress, because they possessed the legal power to rescind or reduce expenditures initiated by the previous administration

I believe the 2009 deficit is the whole responsibility of the current administration and congress, because they possessed the legal power to rescind or reduce expenditures initiated by the previous administration!

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
The Constitution of the United States of America
Effective as of March 4, 1789

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Article I
...
Section 7.

All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill.

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Current Total Fed Debt (i.e., typically a negative number) = Sum of all annual Fed Surpluses (i.e., sum of positive numbers) - Sum of all annual Fed Deficits (i.e., sum of negative numbers).