By Richard Larsen

There are so many disturbing elements to last week’s last-minute federal budget agreement that it’s truly difficult to know where to begin. Especially when we consider that such budgetary brinkmanship would not have been necessary if Nancy Pelosi’s congress had done what they were supposed to last year: have an operating budget for 2011. But because the political backlash would have been even more devastating at the polls last November, she forsook her responsibilities for perceived political advantage.
Instead, we waited through last-minute theatrics on both sides, and we still got an illogical, break-the-bank kind of budget that we can’t afford, while apprehension continues to increase over the cost and scope of government. The compromise arrived at with two hours to spare before the government “shut down” trimmed a scant $38 billion from a $3.7 trillion budget. A mere 1% cut to the proposed budget was enough of a stumbling block to some congressmen that they nearly let the government shut down.

And yet, playing to the politics of fear in grand theatrical fashion, many in Washington were lamenting in apocalyptic Jeremiads, what a devastating effect such a small reduction would have on the nation. At the center of the budgetary battle was whether the relatively minuscule $75 million appropriated to Planned Parenthood, seen by many as the primary social advocate for abortions, should be halted. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate told about the health risks to his wife and daughters and nine granddaughters if he agreed to the proposed cuts. Makes one wonder what he thought Planned Parenthood would do for them.

Not to be outdone in the politics of fear, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton called the potential government shutdown “the equivalent of bombing innocent civilians.” The Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, Daniel Inouye, said in a news release that some of the cuts would be “especially painful.” Collectively they were saying the proposed cuts were “draconian.” If they act like this with these minor spending reductions, we know they will never have the political backbone to make the necessary major cuts to ensure fiscal soundness of the republic.

The Democrats were willing to shut down the government over a scant $75 million for their abortion purveyor of choice. Yet the Republicans let them get away with holding the nation hostage based on ideology over a minuscule part of the budget, and not pushing for some serious spending reductions which may actually make a difference in the future solvency of the country. I don’t know what to be more outraged over.

The Democrats obviously have no will or backbone to make serious cuts, and are willing to sacrifice the entire operation of the government over relative pennies in the budget. But the Republicans, proving they are little more than “Democrat-lite” seem to lack the courage to seriously reduce spending as they boasted of the “historic” 1% spending cuts. Truth be told, the actual cuts are much less than 1%. The $38 billion figure was little more than figurative, since the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has now said that most of the $38 billion was accounting trickery, and that the actual cuts amount to a mere $352 million under 2010 spending levels.

President Obama has called for addressing the spending boondoggle like “adults.” Since much of it is a result of his and his party’s profligacy, that’s tantamount to calling for his replacement next year by a real adult. And based on all the posturing, theatrics, and budgetary trickery that resulted from such a minor figure in last week’s showdown, it appears we don’t have many adults in Washington.

There are a few exceptions, like Congressman Paul Ryan who is developing a long-term budget proposal that will actually reduce the deficit, pay down the federal debt, and increase the solvency of some of the core entitlement entities like Social Security. There is a little glimmer of hope for the nation since the House passed Ryan’s 2012 budget on Friday. If 1% cuts were “draconian” I can only guess the posturing they’ll pull on this one.

Considering the umbrage expressed by the left with George W. Bush’s $267 billion deficit, they should be outraged at Obama’s $1 trillion plus deficit. And Republicans, seemingly content with a 1% budget cut, obviously have no clue either. Our current spending trajectory is simply unsustainable, and portends serious consequences for the steadily declining value of the dollar, the viability of our debt instruments as investments, and our national security. Perhaps our only hope is if all those who voted for the budget resolution last week, and those who voted against it believing the cuts were too much, are replaced with people of common sense and a commitment to live within our means, like all of us real people have to.

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By Andi Elliott, Idaho Tea Party Coordinator

So many unanswered questions; so few straight answers…but I guess an unasked question will never receive a response. So….

How many soldiers will die fighting wars that we don’t aim to win”? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya come to mind.

How will Obama circumvent the states who have implemented a new law that citizenship must be proven before being on the ballot in their state? Wouldn’t it have been easier to produce the darn birth certificate and have saved $2 million dollars?

Why do we expect educational improvement when we keep doing the same thing? The NEA is the most powerful union in the country and continued failure is what we get. Don’t we need to try something different to get different results?

And tell me why my Democrat and law abiding friends support a party noted for voter fraud/intimidation and street violence tactics? Puzzling.

When will parents demand that their children be taught accurate history? We still allow them to learn that the Civil War was begun over the slavery issue and do they even know that the Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln was acting illegally when he invaded the South?

Why should we be “tolerant” of a religion whose “religious” book instructs them to kill or subjugate the “infidels” (us) and dictate that women are second class citizens? I’m not liking this at all.

Why do many Idahoans support Arizona’s stringent illegal immigration laws yet we have done little about the illegals in our own state? Cheap labor?

Andi Elliott

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By Richard Larsen

In 1986, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil declared President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Budget “DOA,” or Dead on Arrival because it recommended “draconian cuts” of about 3% off of a $994 billion budget. In a facetious twist, the Office of Management and Budget delivered the budget to Capital Hill in an ambulance on the chest of a supine OMB public affairs assistant, who, when delivered to the House Budget committee room, sat up, Lazarus-like, to prove that the budget was still alive.
Now fast-forward to the 2012 edition of the presidential budget request, and we see numbers which the House Speaker should have delivered to the House, perhaps not in an ambulance with flat-lining EKG monitors, but rather in a hearse. And just for good measure, with a stake driven through the heart of it.

Words cannot accurately describe the staggeringly outrageous figures themselves or the disconnect with economic realities in that massive document. It’s further clear that the president didn’t get the message from the November election.

With proposed spending of $3.7 trillion, and projected revenue of $2.6 trillion, the projected deficit for 2012 is a whopping $1.1 trillion. Based on the president’s own budget figures, the FY 2015 figures are $4.2 trillion in spending, $3.6 trillion in revenue, and a deficit of $768 billion.

The spending figures are astronomically illogical and unsustainable, but even more alarming is the projected increase of 65% in revenue. Where is that mythical 65% increase in revenue coming from that allows Obama to brag that the deficit will be reduced over the next five years? For those of you who subscribe to the notion that we’re “taxed enough already,” brace yourselves, for there’s only one way that revenue can be increased by 65%. And it brings to mind the classic idiom of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

As incomprehensible as the budget recommendation is, even more disturbing is the way the president represents it. In his press conference when he rolled it out (should’ve been on a morgue gurney), Obama shockingly declared, “On the budget, what my budget does is to put forward some tough choices, some significant spending cuts so that by the middle of this decade our annual spending will match our annual revenues. We will not be adding more to the national debt. It’s — so, to use a — sort of, an analogy that families are familiar with, we’re not going to be running up the credit card anymore. That’s important; and that’s hard to do. But it’s necessary to do, and I think that the American people understand that.”

Such a statement, in light of figures taken directly from his own budget, can only be characterized as an immense detachment from reality. Where are the “spending cuts” if total spending increases from $3.7 to $4.2 trillion? There is no cut in spending, perhaps only a cut in the rate of growth of that spending. And thank heavens for that, since the total government debt has increased by nearly 100% in just four years, having just surpassed the $14 trillion mark.

And yet still he has the audacity to declare, “we’re not going to be running up the credit card anymore,” Remember, this is his own budget. Either he didn’t know what was in it and was just saying what he thought we wanted to hear, or he knew full well what was in it, and still told us what he thought we wanted to hear. I’m convinced the latter is the case, and he just thinks we’re oblivious to the facts or that we’re too illiterate to know that he’s obfuscating the truth. That makes his statement no less than a prevarication, of the bald-faced variety.

It is with regret that I’ve come to the conclusion that there is little connection between reality and what this president says. We saw it through the health care debate, consistently making assertions that we know now were just not so. He gives new meaning to the old quip, “How do you know when a lawyer is lying?” Answer, “When his lips are moving.”

The President’s budget is supposed to be a blueprint of what the executive branch foresees from a spending and revenue standpoint. It is not enacted, unless adopted by Congress. The House of Representatives creates the budget that the government lives by, and we can only pray that our Congressmen are smarter than the president thinks we are.

We make a mistake if we assume that what he says is true and reliable. Don’t accept the sound bites at face value. A new level of scrutiny is required of all of us as citizens to sort out the facts from the propaganda that the president and the still-doting press spin for public consumption.

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By Andi Elliott

Next target…America! Multiculturism has failed…and this is according to some of our world leaders. Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Australia…all have declared their efforts to incorporate “multiculturism” as an abject failure that is leading to the destruction of their country. They, as the United States is in the process of doing, have been too concerned with the feelings of those immigrating into their country and have not focused on those already there. Far too many are not assimilating and have formed their own “mini-country” far from their country of origin. Doesn’t it make you wonder why they didn’t stay home?

For example, the accommodations made for Islam by many countries have resulted in open claims by Muslims that they are dedicated to taking over the country and imposing their own religion and system of laws…a system dating back to the 600’s that reflects few if any peaceful periods. Was I the only one bothered when after the election of Obama that on the CAIR (the Council of American Islamic Relations) webpage in very large letters the following was stated: OUR TIME HAS COME. What do you think that meant?

And, did you know that AIG used more than “$100 million in federal tax money to support Islamic religious indoctrination through the funding and promotion of Shariah-compliant financing. … SCF is financing that follows the dictates of Islamic law”. The Islamic Valley website lists mosques in Idaho. Just how stupid are we? Maybe being ethnocentric isn’t such a bad idea after all.

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By Andi Elliott, Hamer

Could this be treason? Idaho, China is coming to town. The Communists are coming and not by stealth but by open invitation from our Governor whom I have strongly supported…until now. I was personally able to thank Governor Otter for standing strong against the federal government regarding the unconstitutional health care law. Using his own example, I now am taking a strong stance against “the Communist-Connection” that he has invited to Idaho.

Our state officials during their taxpayer funded 2010 June trip, have “courted” and “won the hand” of the Chi Coms…and we won what? So, what does Idaho get from this deal? We get a 10,000-30,000 acre self-sustaining community of Communist who will be hiring “their own”…and yes, I’m sure there will be some crumbs for Idahoans. Will they be flying the Red China flag? I wonder.

While I realize that money is the “raison d’etre”, let’s set financial considerations aside for the moment. What do you think will be the unintended consequences (or perhaps “intended”) to the culture and sovereignty of our Idaho. This very day, China’s president is conferring with Obama about a “post-America” world. They are coming and they won’t be leaving.

In fact, Governor Otter has arranged “fast track” citizenship for them. Are we selling our much coveted “American citizenship” for financial gain…you know, the one that people are willing to die for while trying to come to America for the freedoms that only Americans enjoy? Is American citizenship being used as a pawn much as the pull-string game at a carnival to which a Chinese-made toy is attached? It certainly cheapens the coveted “prize”, doesn’t it?

Come on folks…remember about the Communist Chinese…where throughout history people have been rounded up and then disappear, or where educators have been sent to the fields to labor, or where tanks run over dissenters, where people routinely starve to death, where forced abortions occur…you know…that China. This is the China that steals our secrets and pirates our intellectual property. The China that makes over 16,000 attempts each year to hack into our security systems. The China whose environmental record is a disgrace even to the most indifferent of environmentalists. The China which literally stuffs crates with small dogs then cruelly “skins them alive”. You know…Wal-Mart China.

So, tell me again why we are allowing this? Oh, that’s right…it’s the money “stupid”.
America is in the crosshairs of Red China and they are out maneuvering us by quantum leaps condoned by our pro-Communist administration. This is about the best shot that China has ever had to make their long-awaited goal come to fruition. Tell me, why would you invite a stated enemy into your home? Could this be treason?

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By Wallace Hoffman, Idaho Falls

Do the states have the right to nullify the Healthcare Bill? Absolutely. In fact, they not only have the right, but the obligation.

First, the health-care bill is unconstitutional and has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. When the states formed the federal government, they did not grant it unlimited powers in the name of the general welfare. The Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Therefore, the states have the power to nullify unconstitutional laws.

Second, our government was formed with a system of checks and balances. One of these was a sharing of power between the states and federal government. The Senate originally represented the states in Congress, but this was changed by the Seventeenth Amendment, in which senators are now elected by popular vote instead of by the state legislatures. However, the Seventeenth Amendment did not invalidate the Tenth Amendment, since the Bill of Rights is not subject to amendment. Unalienable rights, by definition, are rights that cannot be revoked by government. That is why they are unalienable.

Third, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (Article VI, clause 2) states that the Constitution, federal laws, and treaties are the supreme law of the land, but only if they are made “in pursuance of the Constitution.” All federal and state employees take an oath to support the Constitution, not the federal government. This means that if the federal government passes a law which violates the Constitution, our representatives would be breaking their oath if they supported such a law.

Does the Supreme Court decide which laws are constitutional? No, it doesn’t. It only decides which laws shall be enforced. If the Supreme Court decided the constitutionally of laws, why are its decisions not unanimous by all its judges? Furthermore, past decisions of the Supreme Court have been nullified by later decisions of the Supreme Court, showing that it is not infallible. Also, since the Supreme Court is part of the federal government, its decisions tend to be biased in its favor. And finally, nothing in the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to interpret the Constitution. This power was usurped by the Supreme Court itself in the case of Marbury vs Madison.

The Civil War did not establish the federal government’s supremacy over the states. Politics is a branch of philosophy, and no philosophical debate is ever decided by force. Any law which is unconstitutional is automatically null and void, since you cannot have two laws which simultaneously contradict each other. Only the Constitution is the supreme law.

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By Richard Larsen

If you believe the Tea Party movement is comprised of a bunch of crazy, gullible, illiterate lunatics, this column’s for you, as a primer not a comprehensive exegesis. The mainstream media and career politicians are telling you that’s what the movement is comprised of. With the proliferation of “how to” books for “dummies,” the temptation was to name this column accordingly. Instead, let’s just say this is for the politically intellectually-challenged. So for you who take such deep draughts of the colloquial mainstream Kool Aid du jour, this column’s for you.

As one local columnist penned, the Tea Party folk are no better than the gullible fools responding to the cry of the street peddler hawking “gen-yew-wine” deals. By implication, they have no thoughts of their own and simply follow the loudest cry and their gullibility is exceeded only by their ignorance. And more explicitly, they’re “simple folk” who hate “’govermint.’ They don’t like it until they need it.”

Contrary to the condescending and ill-informed assertion of the columnist, Tea Party conservatives aren’t “simple folk,” especially if that’s his euphemism for “stupid.” They are, however, driven by common sense and logic. I believe they know the Constitution and the principles this country was founded on better than the entire administration in Washington, as well as many who deride the movement using such language as the aforementioned columnist.

Consequently, they know the proper bounds and limitations of government, which does not include bankrupting the country, foisting confiscatory taxes on the citizenry, expanding “corporate welfare” to the point where entire industries are taken over or controlled by bureaucrats in Washington who know little of the respective industries. And they expect them to do something about unemployment besides attacking and bashing the private sector that does most of the employing!

Tea Partiers support the constitutional functions of government, and logical and progressive levels of taxation in order to support them. They support logical, protective regulation, but reject centralized planning and government intrusion into every aspect of our lives at the cost of our liberty.

On the national front we are afflicted with a bevy of illiterate and ignorant pundits who likewise know little, and understand even less, where the Tea Partiers are coming from. Not least of these is Chris Matthews, who seems to think that if the 33 trapped miners in Chile were Tea Partiers “They would have been killing each other after about two days.” Matthews continues, displaying even more of his ignorance by claiming the Tea Partier’s “central belief is ‘every man for himself.’ …No more taxes, no more government, no more everything. No more safety net.”

This is so ludicrous it’s tempting to simply let it stand on its own speciousness. But it does command a couple of responses. To the contrary, Chris, Tea Partiers believe in a sense of community borne of compassion traceable to roots of religiosity. They reach out to help another because they have the freedom and heart to do so, not because a bureaucrat or politician commands them to do it.

And far from believing in “no more everything, no more safety net,” the Tea Partiers are fiscal realists and see the decimation caused to Medicare by Obamacare, and realize the security of Social Security is a broken promise to future generations (probably starting with mine) if fiscal discipline and responsible planning are not adopted expeditiously in the halls of Congress.

I honestly think no one can say what the 21st century Tea Partier believes in better than one of our 18th century founders, Thomas Jefferson. He succinctly stated, “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”

Right now we have a government that is neither wise nor frugal. In four short years since the majority party took over Congress, federal debt has doubled, and the yearly deficit has more than quadrupled. They pass regulations and laws that create more problems than they solve, while leaving the real underlying problems unaddressed. Exemplary among those are financial reform that doesn’t solve the problems that led to this recession, and “health-care” reform that, contrary to promises, is making everyone’s insurance more expensive and is drastically affecting Medicare.

We need a wise and frugal government. We deserve it, and expect it, and are motivated perhaps more than ever before to do something about it. For the intellectually challenged whose perception of the Tea Party movement is as convoluted as the aforementioned examples, we love America and the principles that made her great. And for us, these mid-term elections can’t come quickly enough!

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By Richard Larsen

On a daily basis the ruling elite in Washington and the media cast the blame for our current poor economy on George Bush, capitalism, Wall Street, banks, and Republicans in general. Facts do not support this oft-repeated creative fiction.

Tracing the roots of the financial meltdown of 2008 and the resulting recession, we must go back to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA). This Federal law intimidated lenders into not restricting their credit services to low-risk markets, a practice called “redlining.” The CRA required banks to submit regular reports proving that they were not avoiding home lending in impoverished regions. This started the process that has peaked over the past few years of lending with little proof of ability to pay. Lenders were pressured by government regulators to make creative interest-only loans, high-risk “no doc” and “liar loans,” in order to allow people to buy more housing than they could afford. We have come to know these loans as “sub-prime,” or loans with much higher risk of default.

In 1992, Boston’s Federal Reserve funded a study that resulted in increased pressure on banks to fund questionable mortgages. It led to increased regulation of the mortgage market at the bank level to the point where four government agencies were monitoring banking activities relative to CRA demands. A ranking system was put into place where financial institutions were rated based on CRA lending, and the penalties could be stiff against banks whose CRA rating declined. The data and analysis of that research was later discredited.

In 1994 then Attorney General Janet Reno declared the Clinton Administration would be even more aggressive in pressuring lending institutions into full compliance with the CRA.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored mortgage giants, (GSEs, or Government Sponsored Enterprises) became the underwriters for most of the sub-prime mortgages. GSE leaders bragged in internal memos about their expansion into the sub-prime business and how that augmented their earnings.

Jim Johnson, CEO of Fannie Mae, was forced to resign in 1999 over accounting irregularities. Franklin Raines replaced him and perpetuated the questionable accounting and funding of sub-prime mortgages. Fannie was levied a $400 million fine by the SEC for their fraudulent bookkeeping and risk management but that didn’t even slow them down, let alone stop them. There is an additional political component to this as both Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson have served as economic advisors to Barack Obama.

In 2003 and 2005 the Bush administration attempted to reform the GSEs. Both Bush Administration Treasury Secretaries and Alan Greenspan repeatedly called on Congress to clean them up. Those attempts failed mostly due to the massive contributions by the GSEs to congressional reelection campaigns. The top recipients of those funds were Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Barack Obama, some of the most ardent supporters of the GSEs.

Politicians created our recession with bad policy, bad regulation, and lack of regulation of the GSEs which resulted in a real estate market collapse. The GSEs sold the mortgages to banks and Wall Street as government guaranteed paper while rating agencies failed to make the distinction between quality loans and their sub-prime counterparts.

Congress has repeatedly exempted the GSEs from regulation that would hold them to a higher standard and would have likely prevented the financial market meltdown of two years ago and the resulting recession we still languish in. The new financial reform recently passed and trumpeted by the administration once again intentionally excludes the GSEs. Our problem is still not solved and it can happen yet again.

The media have been accomplices in this shakedown. There has been no accountability, and negligible factual coverage on who really caused this mess. It’s not Wall Street and the banks. They were writing and trading the mortgage paper that Fannie and Freddie wanted and the enabling congressional leaders encouraged. And the media have pointed the blame at everyone and everything except those who really caused it: their friends in government and the GSEs.

In short, the government created the problem by socially engineering the lending process by pushing lenders too far to make mortgages to too many and for too much. The foolhardy government mortgage lending policies led to a near collapse of our entire financial system. As the Investor’s Business Daily observes, the law of unintended consequences of government policy is now fully manifest.

When you hear causes of our recession, and they don’t list congress and bad regulation, they’re not telling you the truth. The causal elements of what brought us to this point were the creations of those most ardent in casting the blame elsewhere. They are most culpable, for they wrote the legislation and the regulations, refused to regulate the GSEs, and yet still they have the audacity to point blame at everybody but themselves.

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By Richard Larsen

An old Buffalo Springfield song from another tumultuous time in American history starts out, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Judging from the hundreds of thousands who turned out at radio and TV commentator Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington last weekend, something’s definitely happening here. And while it may not be exactly clear, there are some pretty good indications of what it is.

What’s amazing is the fact that Beck’s rally was more of a cultural event than it was a political one. He asserted that it was a “reflection of who we are, where we are, where we’re going, what each of us have to do. How do we get our way out of this? And it’s not politics, gang. It’s not politics.” It was a visual and aural feast for anyone who feels we’re forgetting our roots as a Judeo-Christian nation, codified by our founding documents and the writings of our Founding Fathers. Indeed the whole rally centered on a need for this God-fearing nation to return to the faith of our forefathers, and the need for all of us individually to live with honor and integrity. As Beck asserted, those were traits in ready abundance at the time of our founding but seem in short supply today.

While not overtly political, the political underpinnings were clear. And it’s not just that our national leaders have been lying to us about what Obamacare is going to do or not do, or the promises of no more than 8% unemployment if the stimulus was passed. Misrepresentation and dishonesty is all too common from the ruling class in order to bring us lowly subjects into accord with their statist and big government solution ideas.

There is a backlash that is building like a tsunami in the country, and it’s represented only in part by the contemporary Tea Party movement. And again, it’s not just over policy and politics, it’s fundamentally about what America is as a nation and what we as Americans are all about. This notion that we all have to think a certain way, because the power elite in Washington states it, the mainstream media parrots it, academics teach it as orthodoxy, and we’re all supposed to abandon our common sense and our sense of values to be good subjects and an acquiescing proletariat.

Americans are tired of being called every pejorative name in the book because we have opinions or values that don’t ape those of the ruling, reporting and academic elite. We’re tired of being called homophobes because we believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. We’re tired of being called bigots or racists because we believe the nation needs protection at the borders. We’re tired of the attempts to belittle, disparage, and trivialize our beliefs because they don’t happen to coincide with those of the effete self-identified “elites” and “enlightened” of the country. We’re tired of the mischaracterizations of us, and abject incomprehension of our traditional values and belief systems, as “bitter clingers” and as people who have “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

As Charles Krauthammer said in the Investor’s Business Daily last week, “liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, ObamaCare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque. What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.” And those cards are played, pardon the pun, liberally.

We’re unifying as a country, but not on the coattails of those who want to strip us of our liberty and convert us all to collectivists. No, we’re an obstreperous bunch and likely to become increasingly so as more force is exerted to make us cower in the shadows of the burgeoning monolithic government, calamitous national debt, and a godless society. If, as Hillary Clinton has said, dissent is patriotic, we’re the most ardent of patriots for we object to the hijacking of our nation and imposition of tyrannical, liberty-destroying statutes and court judgments that denigrate and invalidate the will of the people.

Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute claims we live in a 70/30 nation, where poll after poll indicates 70% of us are supporters of the free enterprise system, and 30% prefer European-style statism. And it’s not just regarding economics, it spills into cultural and social areas as well, he asserts. In other words, we are not a minority to be whipped into submission by the statists, we’re a clear majority and it’s high time for us to stand up and defend what has made America exceptional.

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Be sure to listen to Friday’s Halli & Friends show, where Larry Lyon describes his experience in Washington, DC, on August 28 at the Glenn Beck rally. Larry’s description will inspire you and give hope that America can return to it’s constitutional, God-fearing foundation.

Larry suggests viewing the entire event in YouTube video.