Friday, May 1, 2015

THE PATRIOT POST 05/01/2015

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May 1, 2015   Print

THE FOUNDATION

"Your love of liberty — your respect for the laws — your habits of industry — and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." —George Washington, letter to the Residents of Boston, 1789

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Freddie Gray Investigation Handed Over to Prosecutors

Baltimore city officials are mum after the police department handed its investigation into the death of Freddie Gray over to state prosecutors Thursday, a day before they said the investigation would be completed. The public still doesn't know the details surrounding the 25-year-old's death. Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby said, "While we have and will continue to leverage the information received by the department, we are not relying solely on their findings but rather the facts that we have gathered and verified. We ask for the public to remain patient and peaceful and to trust the process of the justice system." Prosecutors will decide whether or not to bring charges against the six police officers who are currently suspended from the Baltimore police force.
Meanwhile, the likes of Al Sharpton are in Baltimore, and they will not be satisfied if the prosecutors' decision doesn't go their way. Daniel Henninger writes in The Wall Street Journal, "When Al Sharpton popularized the chant, 'No justice, no peace,' it was unmistakably clear that 'no peace' was an implicit threat of civil unrest. Not civil disobedience, as practiced by Martin Luther King Jr. Civil unrest." Now is the time for conservatives to focus on ways to rebuild Baltimore to counter Sharpton's race baiting and give residents better paths to prosperity. More...
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In Campaign, Hillary Clinton Distances Herself From Bill

On April 29, Hillary Clinton stood before an audience at Columbia University and criticized America's criminal justice system, the system her husband helped create in 1994 with the passage of his Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. "We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance," Ms. Clinton said. "And these recent tragedies [in Baltimore and Ferguson] should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again." This is not the only instance where Hillary has positioned herself directly opposing the legislation and policies that her husband's administration instituted some 20 years before. Bill signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law; Hillary now says same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. Bill's administration repealed the Glass-Steagall Act; Hillary wants it restored. The Washington Free Beacon reports that this distancing extends all the way to edits of Hillary's official campaign bio. In 2008, her biography said "she followed her heart and a man named Bill Clinton to Arkansas" instead of pursuing a career at a big law firm. Eight years later, Clinton's bio now says she skipped the big-law career path because she wanted to fight for children and families at the Children's Defense Fund. With all the revisions, it seems Hillary only kept the name "Clinton" for the name recognition. More...
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Updated Satellite Data Puts a Chill on Global Warming

More bad news for climate scaremongers. Remote Sensing Systems recordings, which more accurately reflect global temperatures, have perplexed many scientists ever since they revealed a global warming hiatus that's now lasted for more than 18 years. In response, alarmists have trashed RSS findings in favor of NOAA's complicated and flawed method. Three University of Alabama climatologists, Roy Spencer, John Christy and William Braswell, just concluded additional research on UAH Version 6, an alternative system used to study global temperatures. Not only did the new research cast further doubt on the claims of climate alarmists, but the adjustments revealed similar results to that of RSS. You can read more about why revisions are necessary and, notably, how these revisions are different than NOAA's alleged tampering with historical data. To summarize, UAH's newest finding is another inconvenient truth for envirofascists — which is exactly why they'll ignore it.
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

Sen. Corker's Stand for a Better GOP Budget

By Lewis Morris
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Sen. Bob Corker
Republicans' first attempt to present a fiscally responsible budget after assuming control of Capitol Hill ran into some snags this week. A budget resolution hashed out between House and Senate negotiators was expected to see an easy passage before Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) stalled the process by refusing to sign on to the final proposal.
Corker, recently listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, where he was described as the "pragmatist of Congress," is known for having a strong grasp of economics after spending many successful years in the private sector. He withdrew his support of the budget because he saw the proposal as riddled with budget gimmicks.
The resolution that Republicans crafted relies on a budget tool that gives lawmakers flexibility in dealing with spending curbs. This budgetary shell game is cleverly known as CHIMPS ⎯ Changes in Mandatory Programs — and it allows for boosting spending in some areas by offsetting spending in mandatory programs. The trouble with CHIMPS is that those spending cuts in mandatory programs are rarely, if ever, honored, basically amounting to an overall increase in spending.
"CHIMPS is a budget gimmick that is $190 billion in extra spending over a 10 year period," Corker told reporters Tuesday. "And it's something our caucus all has been for eliminating."
Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress in part because of their promise of fiscal responsibility after a decade of budgetary chaos thanks to spendthrift Democrats. Under the leadership of heavyweight curmudgeon Harry Reid, the Senate flat out refused to craft budgets, as required by law, opting instead to hide the true nature of impending fiscal doom through a series of continuing resolutions.
The GOP wants to bring an end to this craziness by passing budgets that come into balance in ten years. But thanks to CHIMPS, military spending will increase in the coming fiscal year without any significant cuts to entitlements.
Corker's refusal to sign on to the budget proposal made sense for fiscal hawks. The GOP's inability to curb spending its first time out as the majority party on Capitol Hill does not bode well for the future of its grand plan to bring fiscal sanity to Washington. So-called moderate Republicans who are just as drunk on spending as Democrats gleefully rely on CHIMPS and other budget tricks to circumvent the sequestration caps put in place four years ago. Corker's opposition to the status quo offered a welcome change to the lip service being paid on spending.
But all is not what it seems in Washington. Wednesday, Corker reversed himself and signed on to the House-Senate budget proposal. "There is no question this budget is far from perfect," Corker said, "But it is some progress since it has been a long time since Congress has completed this basic part of governing."
With Corker allowing the budget to proceed, the House passed the proposal 226-197 Thursday, sticking close to their self-imposed deadline to move things forward before leaving town for a brief recess. Fourteen Republicans joined all the Democrats in opposition. The Senate will vote on the proposal in a few days.
Corker's change of attitude could be considered a flip-flop since there were no fundamental changes made to the resolution to get him on board. But by making his initial stand, he brought to light some of the fundamental problems that plague the budget process in Washington.
To say that federal spending is out of control may be the mother of all understatements. The national debt is over $18 trillion, close to $10 trillion of which has been amassed since Barack Obama took office. Budget deficits, which averaged around $1 trillion a year for his first term, are still in the $500 billion range. Obama is proposing a 7% across-the-board spending increase for the next fiscal year, and he has vowed to veto any Republican budget that adheres to the sequestration cuts that he suggested then later blamed on Republicans.
Democrats have remained resolutely committed to spending without limits while ignoring the inevitable consequences of the government's careless fiscal strategy, or lack thereof. Senate Democrats are expected to unanimously oppose the budget like their colleagues in the House.
The budget process is complicated and filled with numerous moving parts. It's no wonder that it puts people's brains to sleep. Unfortunately, it's had the same effect on those elected to actually negotiate it.
Many citizens know the dangers of not cutting back on spending, yet when it comes time for the government to actually do so people balk at their favorite programs being cut because so many are now on the government dole. This was by liberal design. Over the course of many years, Democrats have steadily convinced the public that people need the government to run all these services and provide cradle-to-grave entitlements. No one stopped to consider just how all these programs would be paid for.
That is why Corker's stand against the CHIMPS budget gimmick, brief though it was, is so important. It highlights the fantasy world in which Congressional lawmakers live, and it reminds us all that this world must give way to reality if America wants to avoid political and economic disaster.
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BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

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OPINION IN BRIEF

David Harsanyi: "After a night of violence and looting in Baltimore, Barack Obama spoke to the press and said that 'we, as a country, have to do some soul-searching' — by which he meant 'they,' as in conservatives, need to get on board. ... Where does the blame for the civil unrest lie? In plenty of places. Some of those places have absolutely nothing to do with politics and can’t be fixed by any Washington agenda — imagined or otherwise. The tribulations plaguing cities such as Baltimore are complex, having festered for years. But does that excuse the bungling of Democratic Party governance? Does it change the fact that massive amounts of spending have done little in the war on poverty? And if Democrats claim that they are uniquely sympathetic toward the poor and weak, that welfare programs can never be reformed, only expanded, and that perpetually pumping 'investments' into cities is the only way to alleviate the hardship faced by citizens, it’s more than fair to gauge the effectiveness — not to mention the competence — of those allocating and overseeing those policies. Because Republicans may be horrible, but they aren’t running Baltimore."
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SHORT CUTS

Insight: "A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties." —Historian Cyril James (1901-1989)
Non Compos Mentis: "We can't continue to frame law enforcement and the police forces in America as simply a bunch of good natured people and there happen to be a few bad apples among them. That's not the right analysis. ... [I]t's something about the job itself and the structure of law enforcement in America itself that becomes an occupying force and — they're an occupying force in the hood." —Morehouse College professor Marc Lamont Hill
Demo-gogues: "Excessive police force and staggering unemployment work together because what we’ve done in the United States is that we’ve said that the affluent part of our society is going to demand more tax breaks, more wealth, more privilege, leaving less for the less fortunate. The way we keep the less fortunate in control is policing and prisons — that’s the unfortunate formula that we’ve constructed. ... Our society is going to have to decide if are we going to just pay the police and the prisons to keep the poor under control or we can invest and include everyone in this economy. We are connected here; we are all Americans; we've got to say that, look, you can make good money, but do you have to make so much that whole neighborhoods have nothing, not even any hope?" —Rep. Keith Ellison on what precipitated the Baltimore riots
Village Idiots: "Here's my demand: I want every African-American currently incarcerated for drug 'crimes' or nonviolent offenses released from prison today. And the rest who [are] imprisoned — I don't believe 50% of them did what they're accused of. Lies. Greed. A modern day slave system.... Next demand: Disarm the police. We have a [quarter] billion 2nd amendment guns in our homes [for] protection. We'll survive til the right cops [are] hired." —filmmaker Michael Moore
Dezinformatsia: "Just be careful, because you know how [the police] are. If you seem like you're being provocative towards them, you know how things can go." —CNN's Chris Cuomo to a Baltimore demonstrator
And last... "It’s really hard to take seriously any criticism of capitalism that’s instantly shared worldwide through the internet. ... What did people do with opinions before the internet?" —Frank Fleming
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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.

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