By Richard Larsen

The president, in his State of the Union address declared, “The problems we’re overcoming are not the heritage of one person, party, or even one generation. It’s just the tendency of government to grow. And there’s always that well-intentioned chorus of voices saying, ‘With a little more power and a little more money, we could do so much for the people.’ For a time we forgot the American dream isn’t one of making government bigger; it’s keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God.”

If you don’t recall that opening line, it’s understandable, for it wasn’t in the latest State of the Union, and it wasn’t this president. The president was Ronald Reagan, and the year was 1984. Whether one agreed with him or not, there was remarkable consistency in what he said, and his message didn’t vary based on the venue, his audience, or the grandness of the stage. Even more remarkable was his policies and recommendations to congress and the American people were consistent, at least incrementally, with what he said. This is an increasingly rare commodity, especially in politics, as we observed firsthand this week.

In this week’s State of the Union we heard, “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.” I couldn’t agree more! But what does he think those values are? The historical version of those “American values” and Obama’s are not synonymous. For the rest of the speech the only words uttered with greater frequency than “fair” and “fairness” were “I,” “me,” and “my.”

From what Obama said Tuesday night, his notion of our “American values” is not based on freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, or any of the ancillary principles or traits that have made America great. His overarching theme was “fairness,” which is simply a euphemism for class envy, based on increased taxation of the most financially successful Americans, to pay for more regulation, agencies, and programs. This concept of “values” is very un-American. They are distinctly antithetical to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that encompassed the nation’s political value system for two centuries.

This contrast is observed even more starkly with the 1986 State of the Union address when President Reagan put the role of fairness in proper perspective. “Private values must be at the heart of public policies.” He elaborated, “Americans have always valued faith, character, hard work, personal responsibility, self-reliance, discipline, competition, charity, fairness, and achievement. Values originate from what people believe, especially what they believe about God.” Clearly, from Obama’s speech, those are not his idea of “American values.”

Editors at The Washington Post observed this as well, when they said of Obama’s speech, “None of the proposals constitutes a single bold stroke to revive the economy, but the heart of Obama’s message was that America’s wealthiest citizens must do more to cement the economic recovery and pull the country from its dire fiscal condition.”

We should, with every major speech like the State of the Union, assess the consistency in speech and actions. If one tells us one thing but does another, that’s not just duplicity, it’s hypocrisy and prevarication. Here’s a perfect example from Obama’s speech the other night, “But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” He obviously doesn’t really believe that, since government now is expanding and encroaching into our lives more than ever before and he proposed even more government “solutions” in his speech.

In describing the period leading up to Reagan’s 1984 address, Reagan said, “There was a feeling government had grown beyond the consent of the governed. Families felt helpless in the face of mounting inflation and the indignity of taxes that reduced reward for hard work, thrift, and risk-taking. All this was overlaid by an ever-growing web of rules and regulations.” Sound familiar?

Every solution for Obama is another government program or more spending. This is clearly not an American value. But this one is, “I think the best possible social program is a job.” That, too, was Ronald Reagan. He also correctly assessed the relationship between expansion of government and individual liberty, when he declared factually, “As government expands, liberty contracts.”

For those of us who lived through the Reagan years, the contrast between our president from thirty years ago and our current incarnation could not be more stark. They are diametrically opposed in the role of government in our lives, the American values that define us culturally and economically, and in the inherent trust of people, versus a trust of the government.

History and our founding documents provide a documented transcript of what our “American values” are, and that transcript provides a narrative much different from what our current president portrays.

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By Richard Larsen

It’s too bad that we can’t rely on the headline numbers that our own government gives us. The headline numbers the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases each month obfuscate the real unemployment malaise across the country. Yet ironically, it’s in the BLS releases that we find a more complete unemployment picture, we just have to dig deeper for it.

When the BLS reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5% with December’s year-end data, media pounced on the headline figure but almost none delved deeper into the official report. What they report is the demographic composition of the workforce as calculated in Table A-1 of their monthly report. Since 1994, these are the primary data for headline purposes. They also “tweak” the figures for “seasonal adjustment.”

For a more complete picture, however, look at the BLS monthly employment report, table A-15. U-6 on that table indicates as a percentage of the total civilian workforce, the number of unemployed (those included in Table A-1), those who have given up looking for jobs, plus those who are working marginal part-time jobs who need fulltime positions. In the latest report, that percentage is 15.2%. This is a much more accurate indication of the state of the economy relative to unemployment and job creation.

It’s easy to understand why those figures wouldn’t be reported in the headlines. They don’t look good. But to understand how current economic policies have failed so dramatically in job creation, it’s imperative that we look at the full picture.

Based solely on BLS data, for example, we learn the following. Over the past year alone, the civilian workforce population rose by 1,726,000. That means we need to add an average 166,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the demand of those who are entering the job market. Yet over the past year the number of people actually working fell by 67,000.

In November alone, when the headlines across the nation reported that unemployment dropped from 9.1% to 8.6%, job creation was not what caused the decline. The cause of the drop, which should’ve been the real headline, was that 487,000 fellow Americans stopped looking for work.

In the 30 months since the recession ended officially, according to BLS data, nearly one million previously employed workers have dropped out of the labor force. That means that not only are they not working, but they’ve become discouraged and given up finding a job, and aren’t even looking for a job anymore.

Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) reports that this anemic job growth is atypical in post-recession recoveries. Their research indicates that in the past nine recession recoveries the labor force “had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point.” After the recession in 2002-2003, job growth exploded with over 4 million jobs created, culminating in an official unemployment rate of 4.4% by this point in the recovery.

Instead, we have a net job loss over the past few years. The participation rate, which is the percentage of the number of people either working or looking for work compared to the civilian working-age population, is now 64%, which is down nearly two points from when the recession officially ended in June 2009. The only time that figure was lower, according to BLS, was several decades ago when women began entering the workforce en mass. And total payrolls are still a whopping 6.1 million lower than when they peaked in 2008.

The nonprofit Employment Policy Institute tracks this data closely. They take the number of jobs lost since the recession began and add in the growth of the working age population. The resulting figure they report as a “jobs deficit,” and they calculate we have a current deficit of 10.8 million jobs, even factoring in the 1.4 million jobs added since the recession ended,

The anemic job situation has a pejorative impact even on those who are fortunate enough to still have one. According to Sentier Research, real median annual household income has declined 5.1% since the recession ended 30 months ago. That represents even more of a drop than what happened during the recession itself, which declined 3.2%.

Corporate profits have continued to improve over the past two years, but companies are still reluctant to start hiring again. Most small business owners and corporate officers cite the uncertain regulatory environment, high corporate tax rates, and new regulation implementation costs as obstacles.

If anything, it’s a testament to the resiliency of our private sector that we’ve had any jobs created in this hostile environment that Washington has created. What jobs have been added is in spite of, not because of what the administration has been doing to the private sector.

The only real hope for revitalizing America’s job market lies in policies emanating from Washington that are conducive to job creation, rather than punitive. Let’s hope November elections facilitate that most critical change.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

After being in session for two days this year one of my colleagues told me it felt like we had been in session for two weeks already. I’m not sure what that says about how things went this week, but I would say that that the interim seemed to me like it went by rapidly.

I get asked a lot about what to expect this year, and if the first few days are an indication of what is to come, it won’t be dull by any means. Governor Otter didn’t hesitate to declare that we have weathered the storm and predicted almost a six percent increase in revenues but only wants to spend about five percent of that. I have been told that our forecasting committee is not quite so optimistic. The State of the State message was brief this year and he did not give many specifics for his budget requests.

The minority party has wasted no time posturing on several issues but the most drastic is a sales tax bill to increase revenues by a mere 400 million dollars. It would reduce the sales tax rate to five percent but would eliminate a list of exemptions. I haven’t had time to go through the specifics yet but the most glaring is that when you buy a new or used car you would be taxed on the gross sales price with no allowance for your trade in. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination to see what that would do to auto sales.

Then the bill goes after nine categories of services, professional, (attorneys, accountants, etc.) personal, (beauticians, barbers, house cleaning, etc.) business, construction, (building a house, repairing your house, etc.) and repairs of all kinds including getting your car fixed. The list is too long to go through here so I would suggest you take a look at the statement of purpose for House Bill 345 and let your imagination wander. And most amazing of all is that they think they will be taxing a whole new group of folks. But in reality it is you, the consumer, the ones who buy this stuff who would be footing the bill. Our housing industry is still in the tank and there is thought that this would help things by increasing the cost? I guess I don’t quite catch the vision of how this would help the taxpayers.

Another topic that will be debated extensively will be the Health Insurance Exchanges. Every state has been told that if we do not have an exchange in place, the federal government will set it up for us and we will pay the costs. The two schools of thought on this matter are that it would be better to have a state program than a federal one and we would pay the costs, and if federal government sets it up for us, we will be required to do what we are told to do and we will pay the costs. Looks like we get soaked either way. Oh, I almost forgot. If the plan we come up with on our own is not acceptable to the federal government, they will require us to fix it to their liking and we will pay the costs. Confused yet? I’m sure you can see how much debate this will generate.

So it looks to be another busy session with a dab of controversy mixed in. My only hope is the session goes by as quickly as the interim seemed to escape. We’d be done in record time. What a dreamer I am.

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By Richard Larsen

So many things have changed since Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tragic and premature death. The country that was divided mostly along racial lines that he sought to heal and palliate is now divided more by ideology. His cardinal wisdom and teachings endure, can be universally applied, and appertain as much today as then.

King was a highly principled man, driven by self-evident truths and fundamental values. He referred often to those values. “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” Some of those values were the very principles upon which the nation was founded, that he found lacking in their application to all Americans equally. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

He was an ardent advocate of freedom and individual liberty. While his teachings were framed in a culture of racism and racial discord, they apply universally to all Americans in the quest for individual liberty. As he said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Certainly those are wise words of encouragement to those of us who object to the usurpation of individual freedom by a government seeking to micromanage its citizens.

He continued, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.” Individual and universal freedom was fundamental to him, without regard to ethnicity, and he advocated freedom, as opposed to government programs that diminish it.

On another occasion he said, “I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.”

He taught, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” He worked hard, understood how hard work develops character, and likely would not be a proponent of our welfare state, which in effect relinquishes personal responsibility and accountability to the state.

He likely would have consternation for those who engage in identity politics that are so pervasive today, where politicians sell out to special interests for votes, rather than doing what’s best for the nation. For as he said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” And as if to underscore this notion, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Edmund Burke, considered the father to conservatism, said, “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” King echoed that sentiment, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

I think Martin Luther King would have concurred with Morgan Freeman, who was interviewed a few years ago in a “60 Minutes” segment with Mike Wallace. Wallace started out, “Black History Month, you find…”, Freeman interjected, “Ridiculous.”

WALLACE: Why?
FREEMAN: You’re going to relegate my history to a month?
WALLACE: Come on.
FREEMAN: What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.
WALLACE: I’m Jewish.
FREEMAN: OK. Which month is Jewish History Month?
WALLACE: There isn’t one.
FREEMAN: Why not? Do you want one?
WALLACE: No, no.
FREEMAN: I don’t either. I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until…?
FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You’re not going to say, ‘I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ Hear what I’m saying?”

Freeman, in that brief exchange, echoed MLK’s conviction, that his children would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” For your enduring wisdom, we honor you, Martin Luther King, and your work. May we embody and perpetuate the truths you taught.

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By Andi Elliott

What a heartwarming story…Dogged Determination Rescues Pooch! Many thanks to the Clark County Sheriff’s Department for responding to this dog’s misfortune and especially to former neighbor, Chief Deputy Boyd Eddins, and to the SAR folks. Thankfully, Chester had the good fortune to fall into a mine shaft located in Clark County and not in Jefferson where he lives.

I can recall many instances of animals needing help in Jefferson County that were ignored. There was the missing prize Boxer that was left tied to a tree for three days in the cold because the Sheriff would not respond. (I heard that the owners were not happy when they finally found their dog.) Then there was the little Chihuahua puppy that was thrown against the wall resulting in a broken shoulder. Even with veterinarian documentation, the sheriff’s department ignored the cruelty this little one suffered. Then there was the badly starved horse over east of Roberts this past spring.

Just think of the terrific headlines that would have been possible had Sheriff Olsen responded with help for the mother dog with two broken legs left without vet care… “Sympathetic Sheriff Cares for Canine” or “JCSD Cares for Crippled Canine? How about “Owner Charged with Animal Cruelty”?

It’s a wise sheriff who knows the value of positive publicity. Before moving to Jefferson County, I was nominated as the State Public Affairs Officer for the Virginia Wing Civil Air Patrol and I’ll gladly volunteer to help Sheriff Olsen create a positive public image. Good job, CCSD!

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By Richard Larsen

The renowned iconoclastic atheist of the left, Christopher Hitchens, before graduating from mortality last week declared, “I have to say that I appear as a skeptic who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, of all discovery, and innovation.” His Washington Post Obituary said of him, “Mr. Hitchens was a self-styled contrarian who often challenged political and moral orthodoxy.”

Nearly everyone could find something to both love and hate about the man. He was a hero of the left as long as he was launching polemics against Republican presidents from Nixon to George Bush. To the anti-religious left he was a veritable “god” for his scathing diatribe against religion with his Book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” He remained a darling to the progressive crowd even after he declared that Bill and Hillary Clinton were “liars,” and only lost some of the liberal adulation after he defended the Iraq War.

Hitchens arguably epitomized what all cognitive and rational human beings should be, whether we agree with his personal conclusions or not. For is not our ability to reason, to self-examine, and to explore rational alternatives what separates us largely from the rest of the animal kingdom?

The intellectual challenge issued from Euripides to the great black author, Ernest Gaines to “question everything” resonates with the rational man. An old Irish saying seems to bring this inquisitive cognitive function back to where we started with Hitchens, “Questioning is the door of knowledge.”

But we see all too clearly in society today that we cannot truly “question everything.” One would think there is nothing more sacrosanct than questioning God, but apparently there is. There are sacred cows, messianic figures, hallowed ideologies, and quasi-religious belief systems that are not to be questioned. And what may be surprising to some, this strict orthodoxy of what is not to be questioned is imposed from the “progressive” left. And they use tools of intimidation, logical fallacies, and bigotry to enforce their version of intellectual orthodoxy, with the full participation and support of the mainstream media.

One of their most effective tools of intimidation they utilize against any heterodox questioning is the use of labels. For those who are non-conforming enough to question manmade global warming, they use pejorative monikers like “deniers” or “flat-earthers.” And for those who have the audacity to question the validity and authenticity of the president’s birth certificate, they employ the dastardly title of “birthers.” The disdain and bigoted loathing ooze menacingly from their lips and keyboards as they invoke their pejorative labels.

But it’s not enough to ascribe such nefarious titles to these heinous “questioners.” They invariably take it one step further by employing one of the most common logical fallacies so loved by those of specious thought; Appeal to Motive. The “deniers” must be anti-science, because they possess the temerity to question the validity of the pseudo-science behind the global warming advocate’s conclusions. And the “birthers,” well, they must to be racist to question anything produced by “The One.”

These methods, universally applied against heterodox “questioners” raise a host of questions. Why is skepticism so politically incorrect these days? Is not skepticism a healthy and logical subset of the critical thinking process? Is skepticism a casualty of an educational system that teaches people what to think rather than how to think? Can people now only question claims or information if they comport with a political correctness litmus test?

What makes James Hansen’s conclusions on global warming so sacrosanct that they are to be no longer scrutinized? Is it because Al Gore declared, “The science is settled?” What makes a digitized image of a birth certificate immune from expert scrutiny? Is it because of a cult-like devotion to the one whose citizenship is in doubt? Is it because one must be a racist since Obama’s the only one for whom the issue has arisen?

Perhaps even more troubling than the consequences of possible man-made global warming or an ineligible president, is the fact that people who would otherwise be considered intelligent and astute, would be so ideologically motivated as to not only fail to question such things themselves, but to intimidate others into not questioning them; that they would be so ideologically motivated and intellectually disingenuous as to be willing to ignore material facts and data which would not hold up in a court of law. That they would be so willing to “believe” that they will ignore substantive evidence that any objectively thinking person would find cause to be skeptical.

If you are a practitioner of these tools of intellectual conformity, you’re part of the problem. If you’re a questioner who seeks the truth in spite of efforts to quell or stifle your inquiries, congratulations! You still have a mind and have the courage to use it.

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By Richard Larsen

Liberals can find absolutely nothing positive about the remaining slate of Republican candidates for president. That shouldn’t surprise us; after all they have their messianic figure. I have a neighbor who still has a picture of him in their living room like most of us have a picture of Christ. I guess once you’ve been duped it’s hard to admit it.

What is surprising is the abject hatred displayed by some over the Republican candidates. Playing into the most predictable stereotyping, they’re portrayed as not just wrong, but evil. To one local columnist, Republicans are insultingly portrayed as either a Frankenstein-like amalgam that only people who “can’t think for themselves” would vote for, or as “kooks” in a reality cooking show, claiming none of them have any substance except a “Mormon waffle.” The attempt at humor does nothing to shroud the obvious disdain, which leaves all objectively thinking people wondering what precipitates such hate and anger!

While few Republicans may be totally enthralled with the available choices, any of the candidates would be far better than what we currently have in the Oval Office. I’ve heard it said that the only way to have a candidate that you agree with 100% of the time, is for you, yourself, to run. There’s a lot of truth to that aphorism.

Sometimes we have to take a little different perspective on candidates for public office, and this is a perfect time to employ such a paradigm shift. Let’s look at what none of the remaining Republican or even third party candidates have done, or any of the people that work for those candidates.

None of them have brought the nation to the brink of insolvency by nearly doubling federal spending in three years creating a “national security risk,” according to Hillary Clinton, by racking up so much debt that we’re left little wiggle room for dealing with any other threats to the republic.

None of them ramrodded an ideologically motivated health care takeover bill through Congress, virtually eliminating Medicare to make the CBO scoring look better, and got away with it.

None of them have taken over entire sectors of the national private sector economy, like the financial services sector and the auto industry. None of them have not run anything before. Yes, I know, it’s a double negative. Think it through.

None of them have proven for the past three years that they know absolutely nothing about basic economics. None of them have egregiously expanded government regulatory control over all components of the economy stymying economic growth and job creation.

None of them have presided over an economy that has lost 7.5 million jobs and has had 6.5 million people just stop looking for work. None of them have bailed out Wall Street firm after Wall Street firm, and bank after bank, claiming they’re doing right for the American people for doing so.

None of them have presided over an economy with runaway inflation, with gas 115% higher, corn up 78%, sugar up 164%, unemployment up 25%, food stamp recipients up 35%, long-term unemployed up 146%, poverty rate up 8.3%, and the highest misery index since Jimmy Carter.

None of them have claimed to be constitutional law experts while displaying complete ignorance of that document’s contents. None of them have hired a cadre of known socialists to run important components of the government and called them czars.

None of them shut down oil production in the gulf or prohibited domestic drilling and oil exploration contributing to record high gas prices nor did any of them ignore court orders to lift that ban. None of them have been using some guy’s social security number from Vermont. None of them have hoodwinked the mainstream media into portraying everything they do as successful.

None have run illegal gun operations over the Mexican border only to have the same contraband weaponry show up at the murder scenes of U.S. law enforcement agents.

None of them have jetted around the world apologizing for America. None of them showed up ostentatiously at G8 meetings in Europe during austerity talks due to excessive government spending, with an entourage of 500 people.

Not one of them promised to “bring everybody together,” and then violated that promise by engaging in the most divisive rhetoric of class warfare ever employed by a national leader. Not one of them have been implicated in making shady half-a-billion dollar loans to questionable “green energy” companies which went broke, and connived with them on layoffs to manipulate unemployment numbers.

See how a paradigm shift improves ones perspective? All of those “accomplishments” by the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue make any and all of those remaining Republican candidates look awfully appealing. Unless you’re an ostrich.

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By Andi Elliott

Today I received the copyright notification from US Copyright Office regarding my book, And None Would Help…The Story of Barbie…the Mother Dog With Broken Legs. You might remember that last year Raul Torres of Jefferson County filed charges against me for trespassing and against Troy Jackson of Boise for helping Torres’ dog with broken legs that he refused to provide veterinary care for. Both sets of charges were dropped months later as there was no basis in fact and it became the #3 top story on local Channel 3 TV for the year.

On the 3rd of December, I had Torres served with a summons and I have also filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office requesting that they take action against Torres for filing a false police report. Torres never spent one day in court throughout the entire six month ordeal. Many times I thought about how unfair that was…especially since I had been sent out to his home by the Sheriff’s department to offer help with the dog. All Torres had to do was to sign a citation. When the deputy served me with the paperwork, he told me that Torres was upset about the media attention.

Now I’m learning just how serious filing a false police report can be and the consequences for doing so. In Idaho, the filing of any type of false report with law enforcement is a misdemeanor and depending upon the situation, the charges can even be elevated to a felony. Penalties can include fines and even jail time. Additionally, civil charges can be filed and the time period to do so extends for years. You know…it’s time that folks learn that actions have consequences.

Andi Elliott

Tea Party Patriots Idaho State Co-Coordinator
President of For the Love of Pets Foundation

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By Richard Larsen

Parents in Nashville, Tennessee were concerned about their minor son’s health condition, including the possibility that the doctor was over-medicating him. The doctor recommended administration of drug tests to see if there were other factors contributing to his discomfort. The doctor made it clear, however, that he would not be able to release the drug test results to the parents, but only to the child. After all, as the doctor erroneously explained, the child had a right to privacy based on federal law that trumped the parental rights to care for, nurture, and protect their child.

Parents of a kindergarten age child in Massachusetts were shocked to find some of the books and materials being sent home with their 5-year-old were sex education materials and books that normalize and promote homosexual activity. After visiting with the teacher and getting nowhere on an “opt out” agreement for their child, the parents met with the principal, who in turn sent the parents to a “diversity” workshop to increase their acceptance of the indoctrination of their child.

After their disturbing experience at the workshop, the parents met again with the principal, begging for prior notification of sexual content instruction and for an opt out for their child. The principal responded to their request by having a police officer handcuff and forcibly remove the concerned parents for trespassing. Parental rights to protect, teach, nurture, and inculcate fundamental values were trampled by the education establishment intently motivated by an ideological agenda.

A child in Washington state complained to a school counselor about his parents making him go to church too much. Without notifying the parents, the counselor contacted a state social worker who took the 13-year-old boy directly from school and placed him in a foster home until a judicial hearing could be set for the parents to argue their case before a judge.

These are not isolated cases. Through legislative and judicial overreach, an increasing amount of power is given to the state over our children. As with the examples provided, all parents who fail to comply with a certain ideology are assumed to be bad parents, and the state’s intentions pristine. These efforts are methodically replacing parental discretion in all areas of child rearing and development with governmental and bureaucratic dominion over our minor children.

Karl Marx, in chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto, said that in order to establish a perfect social state you have to destroy the family. You have to substitute the government for parental authority in the rearing of children. Whether intentional or not, the current trend of erosion of parental rights and refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act are perfectly facilitating the socialist agenda.

In 1989 the United Nations adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a human rights treaty that delineates the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. Nearly all UN member nations have adopted the protocol, and are subject to review, sanction, and enforcement by the UN. The U.S. is one of two that have not.

While ostensibly appealing in its protection of children, the document codifies the supremacy of government over parental rights in the rearing of children. This grants government bureaucrats the ability to prosecute parents or remove children from homes where parents are suspected of being out of compliance with the UN’s objectives. In short, rather than being a proactive protection for the rights of children, it is an instrument to strip the rights of parents in child rearing.

A website dedicated to this issue, ParentalRights.org says of the UNCRC, “Despite the claims of its supporters, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is more than an international ‘wish list’ – it is an instrument of societal action. The evidence is clear in the nations that have ratified it, like France, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Member-states are expected to incorporate its provisions into their own laws, and failure to do so is met with intense international censure and pressure to conform. The United Nations, and its Committee on the Rights of the Child, tolerate nothing less.”

Even without adopting the UNCRC, the threat is real for American parents. Federal judges, who take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution and our laws, increasingly rule on cases relying on customary international law. International precedence and code often align more closely with those judges ideology, and drawing from international rather than U.S. law grants them the justification necessary for “legislating from the bench.” This is facilitating a judicial creep of the tenets of the UNCRC and laws from other nations that have adopted it en toto.

All parents need to be aware of this insidious process that is slowly yet methodically subverting the rights of parents, and granting increasing authority to government to control and govern the rearing of our children. All parents should be prepared and knowledgeable about this stealthy trend, and ParentalRights.org is a superb starting point.

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By Richard Larsen

Black Friday occurs the day after Thanksgiving, and signifies the day when most retailers go into the “black,” or profitability, for the year. For understandable reasons, it’s a day highly anticipated by retailers, and by consumers, for there are typically “killer deals” offered to draw traffic into the stores.

If national governments weren’t so dysfunctional, every nation would have a Black Friday equivalent, when revenue would catch up with expenditures, and there would be no budgetary deficit. European countries right now have to be wishing they could celebrate such a day, as several European countries are currently undergoing the equivalent of a fiscal colonoscopy being by exogenous institutions, the European Union and the European Central Bank, because they cannot get a handle on government spending. Many European nations have expenditures far outpacing their tax revenue, but the most pressing to the EU now are Greece and Italy. Their appetite for spending has pressed the EU to the verge of collapse.

Here at home, we find our own country sprinting toward the precipice of fiscal collapse with yearly spending at $3.7 trillion exceeding tax receipts of $2.2 trillion by 60%. We’re just $500 billion short of spending twice as much as we receive in tax revenues. In July, congress infamously raised the debt ceiling from $14 trillion, and in just four months, we’ve already surpassed $15 trillion. Anyone with any cognitive capacity can clearly see this is unsustainable. At what point such debt causes financial implosion is unclear.

But we may be getting the signals that we’re not that far away. China is the number one buyer of U.S. debt, in the form of bonds, notes, and bills. This week, after the “Super Committee” of twelve congressmen and senators was unable to reach any compromise on reducing spending, Xinhua, the official state news source had some unusually harsh words for our lawmakers. “Washington’s political elites … are obligated to muster the courage to defuse the ticking debt bomb and start to show the world they have the wisdom and determination not to further jeopardize the fragile global economic recovery,” Xinhua said. I’m inclined to think they chose their words carefully, especially in reference to “the ticking debt bomb.” Implosion could well occur when the Chinese are no longer willing to take the risk associated with buying our debt.

And no wonder they’re so concerned. Just four years ago our total debt (not counting unfunded entitlements) was at $7.2 trillion, with a budget of $2.5 trillion and a deficit of $252 billion. Even while fighting two wars, the projections indicated the deficit would be erased by 2011. Now, at $15 trillion of debt, a yearly budget of $3.7, and a deficit of $1.4 trillion, our “leaders” have dug a fiscal hole so deep it is questionable if we can ever climb out of it.

Just since 2008, the five largest growth areas in spending have added significantly to the total debt and the yearly deficit. Spending has increased by 30% in federal pensions; 50% in health care; 30% in national defense; 60% in federal welfare; and 50% in discretionary spending. And we should not forget that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed to even pass a budget for two years, as required by law. That’s like giving a spend-thrift spouse a no-limit credit card and telling her or him to go buy all the influence and power a limitless credit line can buy!

Yet with all that spending, the super committee couldn’t come up with $1.2 trillion savings over the next ten years. The Congressional Budget Office projects from 2012-2021 government spending will total $46.05 trillion. That means they couldn’t agree on a nickels worth of spending cuts!

Tax increases are economically unviable in our present condition. Peer reviewed research by former head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer, illustrates how an exogenous tax increase of 1% of GDP reduces real GDP by 2-3%. With our real GDP at under 3%, we can’t afford tax increases to reduce economic growth any more. We need jobs more than anything, and a contracting economy is decimating to job growth.

According to IRS data, 1.93% of Americans make over $250K per year. If we taxed 100% of their income, we could generate $1.41 trillion, which would be enough to cover the deficit. But that would be fiscal suicide, for that revenue would be nonexistent for all future years.

It wasn’t lack of revenue that got us into the problem we’re now in, it was a lack of discipline on spending. If the country is fiscally salvageable, it will come from a serious attempt to unwind some of the recent spending increases, and then look at potential revenue “enhancements” to make up some of the difference if necessary. We cannot tax our way out of the problem without destroying job growth, but we can, with discipline and some backbone, cut our way out of it.

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