McGuire went on to state that President George W. Bush was the first to blame in the series of issues that have caused us to fall into this horrendous debt. He stated that Bush’s tax cuts were the first issue to bring us to the state that we are in, but what McGuire doesn’t account for is that it is not just one president, or one issue. It’s a whole stream of issues that have been building up into deluge of the ocean of debt that is threatening to drown this country.
He does not point out that rampant spending is a huge part of the issue. This spending falls on both sides of the spectrum, in government and private sectors. In April 2001, roughly two months after Bush got started due to the hanging chad debacle, Bush’s administration warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were getting too large, lending at alarming rates to people that could not afford the loans.
This includes the second mortgages, subprime mortgages and adjustable-rate mortgages that ballooned beyond peoples’ ability to pay. These loans are what have been putting so many home-owners underwater, because they were spending beyond their means — they were getting used to the small house payment which then became unmanageable with their other debt. Bush’s administration warned that there would be problems down the road if they weren’t addressed, and it came to pass in the past several years.
President Thomas Jefferson promoted frugality in government, and President Ronald Reagan said “Government is not a solution to our problem — government is the problem.” The more that we spend as a nation on programs and on inflated pensions for government employees and politicians, the less American citizens have in hand, which is the reason that we get bipartisan politics.
Republicans try to put the money back in the hands of the citizens through tax cuts, while the Democrats are trying to create programs to spread the wealth — which is nonexistent but better than Third World countries — to everyone. If we can’t curb our spending habits, we’re just enslaving our children to our own debt.
The problem we have here is that we’re not delaying our gratification, and everyone is expecting our children to pay it back. Even my stepfather had his pension disappear, because the company he was working for went bankrupt and walked away from all of their responsibilities.
Obama could not possibly fix all the problems within his tenure, nor could Bush in his. President Bill Clinton’s choice to push the NAFTA agreement, which encouraged the outsourcing of jobs, caused problems as well. Many people had to upgrade their skills, since their jobs disappeared.
Problems happen in each presidency.
• Deborah Littleton is a Tracy resident.
The FBI in the press release neglected to mention the handcuffing, the interrogations without miranda, the forced removal of all clothing and the cavity searches that were done.
What they did was illegal, and opens them up to a massive civil lawsuit, which would include the passenger who defamed these three, the airline, and everyone involved in that detention and strip search. It was highly illegal.
They are talking a good game because they know they are in deep cr*p now. They will be in court for years.
If you think ignoring the facts and ignoring the real human cost of such actions is "viewing all sides" of this, you are deluding yourself.
I am pointing out the choice you are making by supporting these awful things, the support for real harm done to real people. If you feel your manhood is being questioned, it is not I that is doing that questioning.
You can read the story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44501310/ns/us_news-security/.
When the plane landed, the two men where whisked to an undisclosed location in handcuffs, along with a young mother of twins who happened to be seated in the same row. None of these people knew each other. All of them, including the young woman with two kids, were interrogated and forced to take off their clothing by the FBI agents, and each of them were subjected to a cavity probe including the young woman, who was forced up against a wall. Then they were allowed to leave, as they were guilty of NOTHING other than spooking a flight attendant by their normal actions.
You asked me why I don't suggest remedies. If you and people like you won't stick up for their own wife, for their own daughter, for their own kids, but are willing to let them go through such an ordeal as that young lady on that aircraft, or thousands more at airports subject to similar abuses, if you won't stick up for them but are willing to sacrifice them for your own illusions of safety, I cannot help you.
I have no remedy for such a deficiency in common sense and decency. There is nothing left but to wait for the final collapse of what was once a great country filled with principled, strong, and free men and women. It is now filled with fearful souls who understand little about what makes life worth living.
The 4th Amendment specifically forbids the strip searches and full body gropes being done at the airport. Your assertion that what is reasonable and unreasonable searches are up for grabs is simply wrong and no Supreme Court ruling backs you up. If you care to educate yourself about the administrative search carve-out go read this law journal article on the topic (it's not hard if you're decently educated): http://www.columbialawreview.org/assets/pdfs/111/2/Primus.pdf.
I do fly, my job requires it at times. I'd rather be blown up than have my wife and daughters have their genitals groped by a government goon, when that provides no safety at all. It is a bi weekly story that some TSA clerk gets bribed to let a drug package slip by--that could easily have been a bomb. Your fear would sacrifice our most cherished freedoms in the vain hope to save your life by it.
On Sunday, people scared just like you got spooked when one brown skinned man went to the lav on a Frontier flight, and when he came back, another brown skinned man went. The authorities were called, and fighter jets were scrambled to escort the aircraft to Detroit.
The Constitution alone cannot preserve freedoms; it is only a document. If the citizens value neither it nor the freedoms it preserves, then it has no force, and the citizens pass into the slavery they have chosen, to be completely dominated by their rulers.
Why is limited government good? First, because Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution demands it. Second, the reason that condition was made in the first place, namely the bigger the area of action ceded to the government, the smaller the area remaining to personal liberty.
The TSA's strip search and sex organ groping you find allowable is specifically forbidden by the 4th Amendment. There is no clause in that amendment that waives this prohibition "if we're scared and feel the need".
Reconsider support for Israeli security. They actually do make you remove all your clothing and they will probe into body cavities.
Freedom is a little more extensive than the ability to walk around in a halter top and miniskirt. But even if we take *your* measure of freedom, let me ask you if in Saudi Arabia the clerks at the airport ask to look at your wife's breasts, butt, and genitals under her clothes, and feel over her breasts, feel all over her buttocks, and feel in her crotch.
Because that is what WE do to our own people at our own airports. We force 750 million passengers a year to go through our whole body scanners which produces a nude image of you and your family to some pervert in a booth, and if you decline this, or even if you don't decline but accidently move in the scanner, or if the scanner can't see one of your orifaces (say, an article of feminine hygiene is in the way) they will feel all over your body.
The people coming to this country are no longer the best and the brightest of other countries. There are better prospects for them elsewhere. What we have streaming here are folks looking for welfare.
That very same drive to direct and control has extended overseas, where the federal government decides who can and cannot rule in whatever country, the prices those countries can and cannot charge for the products we buy from them (through commodity board manipulations and threats of force).
Among other things, the costs of such unwarranted control and direction "from the top" has resulted in massive economic dislocations and malinvestments which prevent the natural discernment of needs and the supplying of them that would otherwise have occurred.
The federal government has freed itself from all political limits and seeks to free itself from physical laws-making up money when it has none. It convinced itself it could do so, which brings us to the pass where we owe 66 to 202 TRILLIONS that we cannot pay. No political party can solve this now. We have a debt that will destroy the status quo and that will put an end to much of the federal government's seizure of powers forbidden to it by the US Constitution.
The Republicans had Congress, the Whitehouse, and the Supreme Court under Bush and what did they do with their power? They greatly expanded the scope and activity of government in many areas: in increasing benefits to Medicare, created the vast DHS spy network and the TSA which sexually molests people and strip searches them at our airports, and this list goes on and on. And they turned a blind eye to the fiscal threats that are now capsizing us.
Because their behavior was as bad as the Democrats they were elected to replace, they were thrown out of power starting in 2006, culminating in the election of President Mistake in 2008.
The core problem we face is that the federal government was designed to be limited in powers and scope to specific, enumerated things. Read the US Constitution, Article 1, section 8. These limits began to be removed by Presidents Hoover and FDR, and progressively destroyed until now, there is no effective limit on the federal government's powers or scope. It does what it pleases.