But that's not the only argument.
The one running in Virginia, near me, says: “Here in Virginia, we’re not better off under President Obama. His defense cuts threaten over 130,000 jobs—lowering home values, putting families at risk.” Similar ads in other states complain that Obama’s reductions in military spending threaten 20,000 jobs in Colorado, 20,000 in Ohio, and “thousands more” in Florida and North Carolina.So the Pentagon is a jobs program too.
Now don't get me wrong- I actually agree with Mitt that increased military spending would boost the economy- it's stimulative. But increasing the number of postal workers would stimulate too. Same with teachers, firefighters, policemen, and IRS workers. In other words, government spending can stimulate a demand-constrained economy like ours. Mitt Romney- Keynesian hero!
But in the hermetically-sealed bubble of the Republican party, only defense spending can add jobs, while other spending actually kills jobs. If Republicans want to use the government to add jobs, it has to involve blowing stuff up, or it just doesn't rate.
America deeply divided
ReplyDeleteWe're rapidly approaching a fork in the road. Obama wants us to follow him to the left. That is a path taken by most European Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and France. In the extreme it's a sharp left similar to Cuba and North Korea. I leave China out because Capitalism is rapidly taking over there. The left turn leads us to a more powerful Government that dramatically influences every part of Society. Social Programs will grow, Unions will grow and the cost of Government will grow. Politicians will have to find a way to pay for it. If Democrats take control in November they will need to dramatically raise taxes or we will go bankrupt as a country. No need to look in the crystal ball, just look at California.
If on election day we choose to take the right turn and elect Romney, our path will look very familiar. It's the path we've been on for over 200 years so there is no need to go into detail. The Private sector and The People will take control of our country again.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Abe Lincoln used those words in 1858 to describe a country that was careening toward civil war. Now we’re a house divided again and another civil war is coming, with the 2012 election as its Gettysburg.
Call it America’s coming civil war between the Makers and the Takers.
On one side are those who create wealth, America’s private sector–the very ones targeted by President Obama’s tax hikes announced Monday.
On the other are the public employee unions; left-leaning intelligentsia who see the growth of government as index of progress; and the millions of Americans now dependent on government through a growing network of government transfer payments, from Medicaid and Social Security to college loans and corporate bailouts and handouts (think GM and Solyndra).
An alternative to Democrats' moral bankruptcy
ReplyDeleteUnderlying the fiscal bankruptcy is a moral bankruptcy.
Maybe Democrats have some slick salesmen, like Bill Clinton and our current president, who can sell you swampland and have you convinced that you've bought choice beachfront property.
But the omission of any mention of God and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital from the Democratic Party platform, which were in it in 2008, and then the almost-failed attempt to add them after the fact, showed the clear truth about the 2012 Democratic Party.
It took three boisterous floor votes to add these principles to the platform. Listening to the ayes and nays on the third vote, it is questionable that they actually got the two-thirds that were needed.
The omission of these key principles from the Democratic platform was the party equivalent of what journalist Michael Kinsley calls a political gaffe -- when a politician inadvertently says what he really believes.
Democratic Party operatives panicked when they realized that the platform, as initially drafted, showed today's Democrats exactly for who they are: the home base for the nihilism, radical moral relativism and welfare statism that define today's far left.
But the Democrats are the party of the entertainment industry. They know how to create fiction and appeal to fantasies.
So the party of the radical left brands Republicans as extremists.
The United States is still a religious nation.
According to a 2010 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans attend church regularly. However, just 39 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of liberals do.
The alignment of the culture of the Democratic Party with that of bankrupt European welfare states provides a powerful hint where they are taking this country.
In a Pew Research Center survey last year, 50 percent of Americans said religion is "very important," compared to 22 percent in Spain, 21 percent in Germany, 17 percent in Great Britain and 13 percent in France.
Of the 50 percent of Americans who said religion is very important, 67 percent were conservative and 29 percent liberal.
Regarding Israel, in a Gallup poll done this year, 61 percent of all Americans -- 78 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of Democrats -- said their sympathies lie with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians.
Back in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law, 30 percent of federal spending consisted of payments to individuals. Today it's almost 70 percent.
In 1965, 24 percent of black babies and 3 percent of white babies were born to unwed mothers. Today 73 percent of black babies and 29 percent of white babies are born out of wedlock. More than half of births today to women under 30 are outside of marriage.
Unfunded liabilities of Medicare, plus those of Social Security, are $63 trillion, according to their trustees' latest report. But underlying the fiscal bankruptcy is a moral bankruptcy.
But you wouldn't know it, listening to La-La Land Democratic liberals.
Not only are we killing the goose that lays the eggs, but with 50 percent of Americans now living in a household getting government benefits, we're losing perspective that you even need a goose to get eggs.
God-fearing, family- and church-centered American values created the American prosperity that opened the door to entitlement programs.
Now Democrats brand those traditional American values as cruel and "on your own."
If you think debt, government dependence, broken families and moral relativism form the path to a strong and prosperous America, sign on with the Democrats.
But Republicans need to do a better job embracing and articulating the alternative.
Republicans need to step up to the plate and start talking about our nation's real crisis -- our moral crisis. The nation's searching middle class will understand the truth when they hear it.
But they need to hear it.