THE FOUNDATION
"Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence." —Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, 1793TOP RIGHT HOOKS
Gun Salesman in Chief Raises Firearm Production by 140%
Barack Obama is proud of his numerous "accomplishments," but on the issue of gun control, his success rate is admittedly off target. "[T]he one area that I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied … is the fact that the United States is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient, common-sense gun safety laws," he lamented last week — a reality made more bitter by the fact Democrats strategically, and unsuccessfully, blame every nefarious shooter's behavior on the weapons used to inflict harm. Their continuous gratuitous assault on the Second Amendment has America's gun owners equally if not more frustrated. A new report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has found, "[U]nder President Obama, gun production has spiked 140 percent to 10.8 million firearms in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available," The Hill reported. If the Left's goal is to reverse gun figures in America, it's utterly failing. Erich Pratt, a spokesperson with Gun Owners of America, quips, "The ATF report confirms what we already know, that Barack Obama deserves the 'Gun Salesman of the Decade' award. People have been rushing to buy firearms because they're afraid that Obama will take away their Second Amendment rights." And for good reason. The administration is attempting to prohibit Social Security recipients from owning firearms if they are judged mentally incompetent. "[T]his amount[s] to the largest gun grab in American history," according to the National Rifle Association. In his final 18 months, Obama will do all he can to ensure his legacy won't go down as a gun salesman but as a gun confiscator. And that's all the more reason to remain vigilant.Comment | Share
EPA Extends Deadline on Clean Power Plan
The Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to realize that it might be asking a bit too much from the American economy. Sources at the EPA have told The Washington Post that it is extending the deadline for when coal plants must reduce their greenhouse gas output. The EPA has yet to release the final version of the regulation, but it said coal plants have until 2022 instead of 2020 to conform to the gospel of green and avoid too much stress on the electrical grid. By ceding ground, the EPA admits the Clean Power Plan demanded too much. On a related note, the new ozone standards that the EPA is working on would set the standards so low on the naturally occurring gas that Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon would be in violation, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Things have gone too far when an agency supposedly established to protect the environment finds nature in violation of its decrees.Comment | Share
Obama Spends $6M to Fly Air Force One to Africa
In the age of sequestered military spending — reduced forces, grounded Thunderbirds, Blue Angels stripped of their wings and even blockaded memorials — Barack Obama thinks nothing of pulling nearly $6 million from the Air Force budget to fund the 29-hour Air Force One flight to and from Kenya and Ethiopia. Presidential trips abroad are classified information, and no one quite knows how much Obama spent on this trip to visit his extended family and attend the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit. When he visited Africa in 2013, the trip cost an estimated $100 million. Typically, presidents spend more time abroad in their second term. Currently, Obama is not the executive with the most frequent flyer miles — that platinum membership belongs to Bill Clinton — but Obama is close. Michael Tasselmyer, policy analyst at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, wrote, "The last official accounting of any Presidential travel was conducted over a decade ago in GAO's 1999 report on President Clinton's trips to Africa, Chile, and China. … There are understandable security considerations to keep in mind, but until more information is made available, there can be no public debate on the costs and benefits of international travel." It's not so much the travel money, it's the priorities.Comment | Share
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Olympic Size Price Tag Too Much for Boston
By Nate Jackson
|
Boston and the International Olympics Committee (IOC) came to an agreement of sorts: No, it isn't worth the enormous cost for Boston to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
It's revealing that both parties agreed because neither wanted to be liable for the inevitable cost overruns. Boston Mayor Martin Walsh refused to sign a host city contract with the United States Olympic Committee that would put Boston's taxpayers on the hook for the extra costs (i.e., absolving the IOC), so the committee cut Boston out of the running. Walsh said, "This is me letting the taxpayers of Boston know ... that I will not sign a document that puts one dollar of taxpayers' money on the line for one penny of overruns for the Olympics."
Walsh is right in a sense; the spectacle of the Olympics is an expensive façade, and there are always cost overruns. Cities and countries spend billions of dollars updating or building infrastructure, with the accompanying traffic delays and detours for citizens, all for two weeks of glory on the world stage. That isn't to say those two weeks aren't really fun and glorious...
As a side note, this phenomenon is certainly not limited to the Olympics. American taxpayers fork over billions of dollars in what are essentially subsidies to our own major national sports. For example, the National Football League, a "nonprofit" until it dropped the charade in April, has secured billions for stadiums around the country, which are then replaced a couple of decades later when they're deemed "outdated."
The last time the summer Olympics were held in the U.S. was 1996 in Atlanta. But what of the Olympic venues in Atlanta today? Turner Field, formerly known as Olympic Stadium, is home to Major League Baseball's Braves, but it will be demolished when the team moves in 2017 to another venue built with $450 million in taxpayer money in suburban Cobb County. And Turner Field is the only Olympic venue in Georgia's biggest city still in operation. So much for the "investment" in 1996.
What about more recent years? Mark Alexander described his first-hand experience at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which cost China $40 billion:
"China put on its best face, rather like a movie set. Beijing’s new airport is among the world’s finest. Every main Olympic thoroughfare was newly paved, signed, landscaped and lighted. Even the primary rural routes outside the city had makeovers, with fresh paint and greenery covering 100 feet on either side of those roads. Beyond that makeup, however, was the dirt and dilapidation that makes up most of China’s rural areas.Just four years later, Beijing's shining venues looked no different than much of the rest of the country — worn and abandoned monuments to failed central planning. And the subjects of the "People's Republic" are certainly no better off, which is why Chinese activists are pushing the IOC to reject Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics bid.
"The new Olympic structures were certainly impressive, though few of the 250,000 people who were ejected from Soviet-era block housing that formerly blighted the Olympic green were adequately compensated. Indeed, many of them did not receive alternate housing."
Finally, remember when the IOC rejected Chicago's (and, by extension, Barack Obama's) bid for the 2016 games? The Windy City blew $100 million on that rejection.
All that said, there is a spirit about the Olympics that's tough to quantify with a price tag. National Review's Jay Nordlinger, for one, is sorry to see Boston give up. "Generations ago," he writes, "when we were a much poorer country than now, we did things like host the Olympics, because we felt we should. We wanted to. Such deeds comported with our sense of ourselves — with the way we thought of our place in the world, and what we had to offer mankind."
Who can forget the overwhelming national pride after the 1980 USA hockey team defeated the mighty and heavily favored Soviets in the "Miracle on Ice" at Lake Placid? Is there a price tag applicable to such a moment?
Perhaps it's the utter waste of the last decade in Washington that has left so many Americans feeling like saving rather than spending. Perhaps no one thinks all that much of Barack Obama's America any more — that was his goal, after all — and they conclude the Olympics just aren't worth hosting. We'd only note this irony: The Olympics are becoming unaffordable because other nations are driving up the cost with Obama-style "stimulus" bids. America can do better. But it won't happen in Boston 2024.
Comment | Share
|
TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US
- ANALYSIS: Perfectly Qualified Gilmore Makes Curious Presidential Bid
- Chattanooga Marine Veteran's Direct Address to Mr. Obama
- House to Obama: Please Fire IRS Head
- No Keystone, No $175 Billion in Economic Activity
- NOAA Fraudsters Prove Man-Made Global Warming Is Real
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
- Jonah Goldberg: How to Kill the Summer Job
- John Stossel: Governed by Zealots
- Brent Bozell & Tim Graham: Laughing Over Dead Babies? Media Bored
OPINION IN BRIEF
Jonah Goldberg: "Basically, working teaches young people how to work. There’s no substitute for it. That’s one reason I find the race to raise the minimum wage across the country so problematic. I understand the good intentions underlying it. But the idea that the minimum wage — at least for young workers — should be a 'living wage' is absurd, even immoral. Employers are taking a risk when they hire people with no work experience. Why further discourage that? Subsidize something and you get more of it. Tax it and you get less. There are plenty of ways to subsidize low-skill hiring — an expanded earned-income tax credit, for instance. Instead, a higher minimum wage taxes the employers who hire low-skill workers. That’s nuts. ... America is raising a whole generation of 'leaders' who see the people they are supposed to represent as abstractions rather than as individuals they have served, worked with or worked for. Just as we want civilian leaders who know what it’s like to wear the uniform, we want policymakers who know what it’s like to work — and hire — in the trenches."Comment | Share
SHORT CUTS
Insight: "[Tyrannical] power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing." —French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)Demo-gogues: "Coming from a rural state, I think I can communicate with folks coming from urban states, where guns mean different things than they do in Vermont, where [they are] used for hunting. ... I believe that we need to make sure that certain types of guns used to kill people exclusively — not for hunting — they should not be sold in the United States of America." —Bernie Sanders
Village Idiots: "[Keystone XL] is President Obama’s decision, and I am not going to second-guess him because I was in a position to set this in motion and I do not think that would be the right thing to do." —Hillary Clinton, who refuses to reveal her position on Keystone
Not a vote of confidence: "[N]othing in [the Iranian nuclear] agreement is based on trust. Nothing is based on an expectation of some change of behavior." —John Kerry
Cashing in on evil: "Right now, Republicans in Washington are pushing legislation allowing employers to fire single women for getting pregnant — AND they're leading an 'investigation' to undercut Planned Parenthood. This makes my head explode. I’m confident that if we had more women leading in Washington, we would not still be dealing with the right wing’s efforts to trample women’s health care." —Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in a fundraising email
And last... "59% of poll respondents said wedding-related businesses with religious objections should be allowed to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples. The other 41% think it's super smart to eat food made by someone you just finished bullying." —Fred Thompson
Comment | Share
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson
Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.
No comments:
Post a Comment