Here is the opening of an excellent article by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters that I found on the New York Times' website. It is another warning of government spending that must be reigned in.

"WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power...

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.

Or, as Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, used to ask before he entered government a year ago, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”

The Chinese leadership, which is lending much of the money to finance the American government’s spending, and which asked pointed questions about Mr. Obama’s budget when members visited Washington last summer, says it thinks the long-term answer to Mr. Summers’s question is self-evident."

To read the full article, click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/politics/02deficit.html?sudsredirect=true#

Additionally, this morning I read another excellent article giving some perspective on the polarized congress who is supposed to be trying to fix this problem as the custodians of the government. It reads:

"After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs."

To read that article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17gridlock.html?sudsredirect=true

Finally, as evidence of Congresses inability to govern, Democratic Senator Bayh has chosen not to run for a third term. I quote, "Mr. Bayh, a centrist and the son of a former senator, used the announcement that he would not seek a third term to lambaste a Senate that he described as frozen by partisan politics and incapable of passing even basic legislation.

“For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should,” Mr. Bayh said. “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done...

“This is colored by having observed the Senate in my father’s day,” Mr. Bayh said. “It wasn’t perfect; they had politics back then, too. But there was much more friendship across the aisles, and there was a greater willingness to put politics aside for the welfare of the country. I just don’t see that now.”

“In my father’s day, you legislated for four years and campaigned for two; now it’s full time. The politics never stops,” he said. “My bottom line is that there are a lot of really good people trapped in a dysfunctional system desperately in need of reform.”

To read that full article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16bayh.html?sudsredirect=true

Something has to give... Regardless of our political idealogies, we all can agree that cannot sustain the kind of spending we have experienced for the last 9 years. We must think with soberness and realize that the evidence is not political hype - but a real problem that must be corrected.

Below is an adapted lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 9, 2009. Some individual statements I do not agree with, but all in all, this was a great speach and I think worth your time.

MY REMARKS are titled tonight after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire's great hero of the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die!" When I first moved to New Hampshire, where this appears on our license plates, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other—a bit of red meat to rally the boys for the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon discovered that the general had made his famous statement decades after the war, in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in a curious way I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many people can rouse themselves to rediscover the primal impulses: The brave men on Flight 93 did. They took off on what they thought was a routine business trip, and, when they realized it wasn't, they went into General Stark mode and cried "Let's roll!" But it's harder to maintain the "Live free or die!" spirit when you're facing not an immediate crisis but just a slow, remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. "Live free or die!" sounds like a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.

My book America Alone is often assumed to be about radical Islam, firebreathing imams, the excitable young men jumping up and down in the street doing the old "Death to the Great Satan" dance. It's not. It's about us. It's about a possibly terminal manifestation of an old civilizational temptation: Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble with the so-called "human rights" commissions up in Canada, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance profess to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as the cheap bus 'n' truck road-tour version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But in fact what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious incompatibilities: Both the secular Big Government progressives and political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.

In most of the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood—health care, child care, care of the elderly—to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. Hillary Rodham Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. It's supposedly an African proverb—there is no record of anyone in Africa ever using this proverb, but let that pass. P.J. O'Rourke summed up that book superbly: It takes a village to raise a child. The government is the village, and you're the child. Oh, and by the way, even if it did take a village to raise a child, I wouldn't want it to be an African village. If you fly over West Africa at night, the lights form one giant coastal megalopolis: Not even Africans regard the African village as a useful societal model. But nor is the European village. Europe's addiction to big government, unaffordable entitlements, cradle-to-grave welfare, and a dependence on mass immigration needed to sustain it has become an existential threat to some of the oldest nation-states in the world.

And now the last holdout, the United States, is embarking on the same grim path: After the President unveiled his budget, I heard Americans complain, oh, it's another Jimmy Carter, or LBJ's Great Society, or the new New Deal. You should be so lucky. Those nickel-and-dime comparisons barely begin to encompass the wholesale Europeanization that's underway. The 44th president's multi-trillion-dollar budget, the first of many, adds more to the national debt than all the previous 43 presidents combined, from George Washington to George Dubya. The President wants Europeanized health care, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized education, and, as the Europeans have discovered, even with Europeanized tax rates you can't make that math add up. In Sweden, state spending accounts for 54% of GDP. In America, it was 34%—ten years ago. Today, it's about 40%. In four years' time, that number will be trending very Swede-like.
But forget the money, the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn't the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They're wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal. That's the stage where Europe is.

America is just beginning this process. I looked at the rankings in Freedom in the 50 States published by George Mason University last month. New Hampshire came in Number One, the Freest State in the Nation, which all but certainly makes it the freest jurisdiction in the Western world. Which kind of depressed me. Because the Granite State feels less free to me than it did when I moved there, and you always hope there's somewhere else out there just in case things go belly up and you have to hit the road. And way down at the bottom in the last five places were Maryland, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and the least free state in the Union by some distance, New York.

New York! How does the song go? "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere!" If you can make it there, you're some kind of genius. "This is the worst fiscal downturn since the Great Depression," announced Governor Paterson a few weeks ago. So what's he doing? He's bringing in the biggest tax hike in New York history. If you can make it there, he can take it there—via state tax, sales tax, municipal tax, a doubled beer tax, a tax on clothing, a tax on cab rides, an "iTunes tax," a tax on haircuts, 137 new tax hikes in all. Call 1-800-I-HEART-NEW-YORK today and order your new package of state tax forms, for just $199.99, plus the 12% tax on tax forms and the 4% tax form application fee partially refundable upon payment of the 7.5% tax filing tax. If you can make it there, you'll certainly have no difficulty making it in Tajikistan.
New York, California... These are the great iconic American states, the ones we foreigners have heard of. To a penniless immigrant called Arnold Schwarzenegger, California was a land of plenty. Now Arnold is an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land: That's not an improvement. One of his predecessors as governor of California, Ronald Reagan, famously said, "We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around." In California, it's now the other way around: California is increasingly a government that has a state. And it is still in the early stages of the process. California has thirtysomething million people. The Province of Quebec has seven million people. Yet California and Quebec have roughly the same number of government workers. "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," said Adam Smith, and America still has a long way to go. But it's better to jump off the train as you're leaving the station and it's still picking up speed than when it's roaring down the track and you realize you've got a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express.

"Indolence," in Machiavelli's word: There are stages to the enervation of free peoples. America, which held out against the trend, is now at Stage One: The benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, and health care disappear. Every night of the week, you can switch on the TV and see one of these ersatz "town meetings" in which freeborn citizens of the republic (I use the term loosely) petition the Sovereign to make all the bad stuff go away. "I have an urgent need," a lady in Fort Myers beseeched the President. "We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom." He took her name and ordered his staff to meet with her. Hopefully, he didn't insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the bigtime tax-avoiding cabinet honchos to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence, with a swing set hanging where the drive-thru ATM used to be.

As all of you know, Hillsdale College takes no federal or state monies. That used to make it an anomaly in American education. It's in danger of becoming an anomaly in America, period. Maybe it's time for Hillsdale College to launch the Hillsdale Insurance Agency, the Hillsdale Motor Company and the First National Bank of Hillsdale. The executive supremo at Bank of America is now saying, oh, if only he'd known what he knows now, he wouldn't have taken the government money. Apparently it comes with strings attached. Who knew? Sure, Hillsdale College did, but nobody else.

If you're a business, when government gives you 2% of your income, it has a veto on 100% of what you do. If you're an individual, the impact is even starker. Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That's the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a "health audit" of the contents of your refrigerator. They're not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the "free" health care—and in the end you may not get the "free" health care anyway. Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of "lifestyle choices." Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his "lifestyle choices" get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.

And if they can't get you on grounds of your personal health, they'll do it on grounds of planetary health. Not so long ago in Britain it was proposed that each citizen should have a government-approved travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you'll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you'll be subject to additional levies—in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore's polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee.

Isn't this the very definition of totalitarianism-lite? The Soviets restricted the movement of people through the bureaucratic apparatus of "exit visas." The British are proposing to do it through the bureaucratic apparatus of exit taxes—indeed, the bluntest form of regressive taxation. As with the Communists, the nomenklatura—the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Madonna—will still be able to jet about hither and yon. What's a 20% surcharge to them? Especially as those for whom vast amounts of air travel are deemed essential—government officials, heads of NGOs, environmental activists—will no doubt be exempted from having to pay the extra amount. But the ghastly masses will have to stay home.

"Freedom of movement" used to be regarded as a bedrock freedom. The movement is still free, but there's now a government processing fee of $389.95. And the interesting thing about this proposal was that it came not from the Labour Party but the Conservative Party.

That's Stage Two of societal enervation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life. When President Bush talked about promoting democracy in the Middle East, there was a phrase he liked to use: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? It's unclear whether that's really the case in Gaza and the Pakistani tribal lands. But it's absolutely certain that it's not the case in Berlin and Paris, Stockholm and London, New Orleans and Buffalo. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world's wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.

And don't be too sure you'll get to choose your record collection in the end. That's Stage Three: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it's a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts. When my anglophone friends in the Province of Quebec used to complain about the lack of English signs in Quebec hospitals, my response was that, if you allow the government to be the sole provider of health care, why be surprised that they're allowed to decide the language they'll give it in? But, as I've learned during my year in the hellhole of Canadian "human rights" law, that's true in a broader sense. In the interests of "cultural protection," the Canadian state keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign TV operators, and foreign bookstore owners out of Canada. Why shouldn't it, in return, assume the right to police the ideas disseminated through those newspapers, bookstores and TV networks it graciously agrees to permit?

When Maclean's magazine and I were hauled up in 2007 for the crime of "flagrant Islamophobia," it quickly became very clear that, for members of a profession that brags about its "courage" incessantly (far more than, say, firemen do), an awful lot of journalists are quite content to be the eunuchs in the politically correct harem. A distressing number of Western journalists see no conflict between attending lunches for World Press Freedom Day every month and agreeing to be micro-regulated by the state. The big problem for those of us arguing for classical liberalism is that in modern Canada there's hardly anything left that isn't on the state dripfeed to one degree or another: Too many of the institutions healthy societies traditionally look to as outposts of independent thought—churches, private schools, literature, the arts, the media—either have an ambiguous relationship with government or are downright dependent on it. Up north, "intellectual freedom" means the relevant film-funding agency—Cinedole Canada or whatever it's called—gives you a check to enable you to continue making so-called "bold, brave, transgressive" films that discombobulate state power not a whit.

And then comes Stage Four, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as "hatred." In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control. Despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked: In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard's Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator is invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but is banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.

America, Britain, and even Canada are not peripheral nations: They're the three anglophone members of the G7. They're three of a handful of countries that were on the right side of all the great conflicts of the last century. But individual liberty flickers dimmer in each of them. The massive expansion of government under the laughable euphemism of "stimulus" (Stage One) comes with a quid pro quo down the line (Stage Two): Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do? And then—Stage Three—what to think? And—Stage Four—what you're forbidden to think . . . .

Which brings us to the final stage: As I said at the beginning, Big Government isn't about the money. It's more profound than that. A couple of years back Paul Krugman wrote a column in The New York Times asserting that, while parochial American conservatives drone on about "family values," the Europeans live it, enacting policies that are more "family friendly." On the Continent, claims the professor, "government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff-to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family."
As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman failed to notice that for a continent of "family friendly" policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America's fertility rate is more or less at replacement level—2.1—seventeen European nations are at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility—1.3 or less—a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks have upside-down family trees: four grandparents have two children and one grandchild. How can an economist analyze "family friendly" policies without noticing that the upshot of these policies is that nobody has any families?

As for all that extra time, what happened? Europeans work fewer hours than Americans, they don't have to pay for their own health care, they're post-Christian so they don't go to church, they don't marry and they don't have kids to take to school and basketball and the 4-H stand at the county fair. So what do they do with all the time?

Forget for the moment Europe's lack of world-beating companies: They regard capitalism as an Anglo-American fetish, and they mostly despise it. But what about the things Europeans supposedly value? With so much free time, where is the great European art? Where are Europe's men of science? At American universities. Meanwhile, Continental governments pour fortunes into prestigious white elephants of Euro-identity, like the Airbus A380, capable of carrying 500, 800, a thousand passengers at a time, if only somebody somewhere would order the darn thing, which they might consider doing once all the airports have built new runways to handle it.

"Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor," wrote Charles Murray in In Our Hands. "When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome."

The key word here is "give." When the state "gives" you plenty—when it takes care of your health, takes cares of your kids, takes care of your elderly parents, takes care of every primary responsibility of adulthood—it's not surprising that the citizenry cease to function as adults: Life becomes a kind of extended adolescence—literally so for those Germans who've mastered the knack of staying in education till they're 34 and taking early retirement at 42. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912. He understood that the long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.

Genteel decline can be very agreeable—initially: You still have terrific restaurants, beautiful buildings, a great opera house. And once the pressure's off it's nice to linger at the sidewalk table, have a second café au lait and a pain au chocolat, and watch the world go by. At the Munich Security Conference in February, President Sarkozy demanded of his fellow Continentals, "Does Europe want peace, or do we want to be left in peace?" To pose the question is to answer it. Alas, it only works for a generation or two. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latterday Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in.

As Gerald Ford liked to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's true. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. That's the position European governments find themselves in. Their citizens have become hooked on unaffordable levels of social programs which in the end will put those countries out of business. Just to get the Social Security debate in perspective, projected public pension liabilities are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8% of GDP in the U.S. In Greece, the figure is 25%—i.e., total societal collapse. So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I want my benefits. The crisis isn't the lack of money, but the lack of citizens—in the meaningful sense of that word.

Every Democrat running for election tells you they want to do this or that "for the children." If America really wanted to do something "for the children," it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That's the real "war on children" (to use another Democrat catchphrase)—and every time you bulk up the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.

Conservatives often talk about "small government," which, in a sense, is framing the issue in leftist terms: they're for big government. But small government gives you big freedoms—and big government leaves you with very little freedom. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." In the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogard is past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and has arrived at a kind of acceptance.
"I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, doesn't work—not for long. Back in New Hampshire, General Stark knew that. Mr. van den Boogard's words are an epitaph for Europe. Whereas New Hampshire's motto—"Live free or die!"—is still the greatest rallying cry for this state or any other. About a year ago, there was a picture in the papers of Iranian students demonstrating in Tehran and waving placards. And what they'd written on those placards was: "Live free or die!" They understand the power of those words; so should we.

One of the common themes I often hear when discussing our oversized and bloated federal government is "State's Rights." That theme almost kept us from becoming the United States and almost broke our Union during the Civil War. It was the battle cry of the South in the "War Against Northern Aggression" or the "War for State's Rights." It is the battle cry of many even today - especially among the very conservative. I do not fault them for that belief. However, they should think twice about ever promoting such a thing.

My only point in this is to document for anyone reading (all two of you (my wife and I)), that this is just more of the same. I am certain that the intent is to bring change but the motives and the rhetoric are the same of the past 16 years. Here is the headline from the political sports coverage by Politico:

I believe in freedom and in its boundaries. When another person's freedom infringes on the freedom and rights of others, they have exercised their freedom in an unjust fashion. Such an exercise becomes a crime.

Regarding the boundaries of free exercise, I would like you to consider part of the original draft of the Bill of Rights for Pennsylvania's first Constitution. In that first draft it read:

"An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

Is that true? Does the holding of an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals create a danger and destroy the common happiness of mankind? This isn't a question you should answer with your knee jerk as you may be inclined to do.

As I look in my minds eye at the vast expanse of humanity around the world, and knowing that the majority of wealth is owned by a minority of the earth's population, and knowing that wars are generally waged over wealth (i.e., gold, land, resources) and to get more of it either because the poor don't have it or the rich want more of it, and whereas wars cause so much misery to the people involved, and knowing that the lack of opportunities afforded to so many around the world is a factor in crime, social ills, disease and death, I can see the danger and destruction that the incredibly disproportionate distribution of wealth can create.

Does therefore the endless accumulation of wealth infringe on the rights of others? It may. It may cause people to be pressed into war who have no true interest in it. It may push others into poverty. It may keep people from basic services. It may cause so many of the ills we see and hear around us and in our world.

The endless accumulation of wealth was never meant to be the American Dream as so many think it is. The American Dream was about Freedom, Liberty, Justice, & the protection of Natural Rights. Let us never forget what our country was and should be really about - Liberty & Justice for all. We as a Nation have never been perfect at that but we have gotten better as we have looked to our foundation - the principles the founders aspired to. That foundation has continued to transform the way we have built & changed our society since 1776.

May Liberty and Justice for all continue to form how we look at the true American Dream versus the fraud so that our American home, and therefore our world home, can be one of freedom, justice and protection of natural rights for all mankind. And may each one of us consider again the question "Does the holding of an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals create a danger and destroy the common happiness of mankind?" and then live and act accordingly.

Scott McClellan

I have watched several interviews – probably four or five now - with former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan regarding his new book “What Happened.”

It shouldn’t amaze any of us the level of attacks that have come against him as he has shared with the American people, who he was sworn to serve, his story and perspective on what happened in the White House during his tenure there.

I know that there are many of us who would like to not believe what he is saying. It is hard to hear someone say that our Vice President manipulated intelligence and that our President and his advisors lead a war of propaganda to convince the American people and our elected officials that there was a clear and present danger.

Tonight I watched McClellan be interviewed by Bill O'Rielly. It was unbelievable how O’Reilly spent the whole time trying to defame and discredit McClellan – calling him a person of propaganda. Here are some of the things he said:

“Your book is Propaganda.”
“I think you’re naive.”
“Surely you know how you are being used.”
“Negative spin.”
“I think you are being used by your publisher.”
“Why didn’t you stick up for the president?”

And my favorite:

“It’s not the truth it’s your opinion.”

McClellan either saw it or he didn’t. He either heard it or he didn’t. It’s not his opinion. It’s what happened. Why is it so hard for us to believe and accept? Especially when Scott McClellan isn’t the first person to say these things either.

Let’s listen and let’s do something about it. Let’s believe the hard stuff and be wiser in how we vote and in how involved we are after the election.

O’Reilly said that McClellan didn’t have the courage to do what was right. He said, “It’s a matter of courage isn’t it?”

McClellan had courage – he had the courage to know before hand what he was going to get into when he told the truth.

Is O’Reilly unbiased?

Is O’Reilly fair?

Is O’Reilly balanced?

I don’t think so.

It is a shame that he calls himself a journalist and it’s a shame that he has such a large following. We need information and to be allowed to make our own decisions and not be tricked into believing something by him or any other person.

We need facts not opinions.

I am grateful that a true patriot that is looking beyond the election and his party has had the moral courage to stand up for the facts and to share them with us – the People.

At Saturday's state convention, while walking around and seeing the different candidates running for office, I met a few people who were campaigning on the agenda that, if elected, they would work toward stopping the creation of a North American Union. The North American Union they speak of would be similar to that of the European Union where the United States, Canada and Mexico would join together in a grand alliance of free trade, loosened borders, unrestricted travel, a common currency ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6638097241299092586&hl=en ) and defense strategy.

Those who talk about such a union and the government's covert plans to bring it about will often site a paper written by the council on foreign relations. I thought it would be useful for you to read this paper for yourself. You can click on the link below to read it:

http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NorthAmerica_TF_final.pdf

I have read it and do not find the recommendations threatening nor do I find the concept of working closer together for our common defense and prosperity a negative thing. I always have been and always will be for the principle that the government is ours and that all things must be done by the consent of the people and that to do anything else is a violation of oath and duty. It is my hope that any discussions to bring us closer together will be through open debate and the voice of the people.

Some progress has already been made to bring about these positive changes. You can read about them on the government's website for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America: http://www.spp.gov/

At the convention those who spoke out against such a union or the progress towards it spoke about conspiracies, surrender of sovereignty, surrender of our rule of law and the surrender of our voice in the government. These same arguments were used against our own Union following the revolution. I would say that generally their fears never materialized and that the Union of the United States was the greatest event that could have happened to ensure the security and prosperity of our citizens.

The more we are able to break down the barriers that separate us and to become a people of common interests, values, principles, laws and goals the better we will be able to pursue the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God be thanked for our Union.

One of the most important political issues besides the economy is health care. The rate of soaring health care costs is alarming to me and to most Americans. It is my belief that competitive forces should push prices lower - not higher. Solutions are being proposed in congress as well as by most of the presidential candidates. It worries me that most of the solutions being proposed involve more government. Not only do I not see the power over health care within the bounds of the constitution, but I also disagree with government involvement and regulation in private industry. Socialism is by definition the control of private property by the community or the government. At our nations founding, we, as Americans, ascribed to the free market system rather than a socialist system. However, when the free market system is perceived to have failed us, we move towards socialism to find a solution.

It is my opinion that we the people are being told that the free market system has failed us in the health care industry. By looking at health care premiums, out of pocket maximums, deductibles, co-pays and the like, I would agree with them. However, it just doesn't seem right to me - there has to be something missing.

What if our current health care system isn't really free market? That is what I proposed to Congressman Rob Bishop and Senator Orrin Hatch. In our current US Anti-trust laws there are two industries exempted: Major League Baseball and Insurance. I believe that the protection afforded to the insurance industry could be a likely cause of our rising health care costs - simply because they are not required to compete in a fair, open market system. This protection keeps them from competing against each other and allows prices to soar - and the consumer can do nothing about it.

My letters received two entirely different responses. I got a personal phone call from my congressman who said he was in favor of creating an environment of more competition but was unaware of the protection the insurance industry enjoyed and promised to look into it. Senator Hatch on the other hand sent me the following:

"Dear Mr. Coman:

Thank you for your letter... I certainly understand your concern regarding this issue. I have heard similar concerns from Utahns regarding these matters. In addition, over the past few years, legislation has been introduced in Congress that would repeal all or part of the insurance industry's anti trust exemption.

In general, I approach antitrust issues with the priority of doing what is best for the consumers... there are (however) many arguments in favor of maintaining the insurance industry's current exemption.

Rest assured that, as the Senate continues to debate this issue, I will work to ensure that we properly balance the needs of the consumers with the needs of various businesses. While I recognize that repealing or even imposing certain limits on the current exemption might have some market benefits, I would be hesitant to support legislation that would unduly harm small insurance companies and agents, especially those in Utah...

Sincerely,

Orrin G. Hatch"

I am inclined to disagree with my Senator. I am worried that this is a short sighted approach - if we don't do the right thing, it will hurt the consumer as well as all of the insurance companies as we move to more socialized medicine due to the failure of the current system to bring us the care needed, for those who need it, at a price they can afford. It is my opinion that the free market hasn't done this to us - it is everything but the free market. Plastic surgery is a great example - it's not covered by insurance but the prices have been falling year after year while care and quality has gone up and up. The free market could get us out - we need to send in our voices and ask the government to repeal the exemption afforded the insurance industry.

Freedom is the answer.

Thus penned Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and unanimously signed by the Continental Congress in 1776. These are the words that have transformed history, nations, kingdoms and our whole world. Prior to this, there was not a governor on the earth who believed, together with his people, that he received his power from the governed. Power to governwas a right – divinely bestowed and often ruthlessly used on the ruling family’s subjects.

Jefferson and the other members of Congress recognized that government was to be the servant of the people and not the other way around. They recognized therefore that the government could only possess those powers that the people were willing and able to bestow upon it.

The powers the people willfully bestowed were the powers to make laws for a just society, enforce those laws for peace and tranquility and defend the people from insurrections within and wars from without. These were powers the people themselves possessed. They possessed the ability to defend themselves, their families and their property and together with others to establish laws with consequences whereby there might be civil and peaceful living, interactions and transactions. These truths were held to be self evident.

The signers recognized that it was not possible for the people to give to the government powers that they themselves did not possess as individuals. A group of individuals cannot possess any more rights to act than an individual within that group could by themselves. Not all of the things government does presently could an individual do by themselves in the absence of government. For example, do I have the right, self evident or otherwise, to force my neighbor to go to church on my day of worship? The answer is as obvious to us today as it was to the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock – the right to worship God or not toworship God was their choice and privilege but it was not something that could in any way be compelled upon another even if the whole society would benefit from good, moral teachings that all religions provide.

Do I have the right take from my neighbor any money? The answer if obvious there as well. I have the right to ask and they have the right to give but no one possesses the right, even in dire situations, to rob their neighbor and not be punished by the law.

We hold these truths to be self evident… and a violation of these truths is a violation of natural law and our natural rights as part of the human family.

Even well intentioned practices by, at best, a well intentioned government infringing upon the rights of its citizens is unjust and immoral and completely contra the principles of these United States. The well wish of universal healthcare provided by the government is benevolent in thought but unlawful and immoral in deed as are the practices of government welfare in almost all shapes and forms when it is done by compulsion. I don’t have the power to take anything from you to help pay for my neighbors healthcare. I don’t – and there is no way around it. There is no philosophy, no dogma, no doctrine that justifies robbing from those who have to give to those that have not – for whatever the reason. I have the right to ask you, but if I demand it and take it regardless of your will, I am breaking the law – not just U.S. Code, but natural and self evident law.

It is so obvious it is almost unbelievable.

Rather than push for more unlawful, well intentioned welfare, we should strive to have government relinquish these self proclaimed powers and have individuals love their neighbor and out of the benevolence of their own hearts, give to those in need, succor the weary, clothe the naked and feed the hungry. The government can only derive its powers from those it governs and “We the People” don’t possess the power to take away by force from anyone – but especially the good, law-abiding citizens of our nation just the same as “I a Person” don’t. Caring for those in need is one of the greatest works we could ever engage in. It doesn’t come from a government office – it comes from family caring for family, frined caring for friend, churches caring for their members and neighbors caring for one another.

It comes down to agency - the proper use of our liberty - and the usurption of this power by the government (although well intentioned) limits our ability to do what only we can do and fails to truly meet the needs of those who so badly need us.