Tuesday, November 30, 2010

America "...destined for complete destruction."

Not too long ago I was severely chastised by someone who will remain unknown for not offering any solutions to today's problems.  The problem with solutions is the same as opinions; everybody has one!  Surely I must have a solution or two but by the same token I'm not suicidal enough to carry them out on my own.  Give me one million able bodies with like-minded minds and I could solve the problem almost overnight...me thinks!  But what about you?  Do you have a solution*?  If not, do you know where we are headed?  I've been identifying these problems since the mid 1970's  and I continue to do so with the hope that I will eventually find enough like minded souls willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor...many may feel the call, but few have the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing.  The following editorial clearly tells it like it is but for the ignorant fools who fail to see beyond their own selfish interests this is just one more notification that will go unheeded. ~ Norman E. Hooben

*Some solutions are suggested in the commentary "Major Economic Problems Facing the United States"
  See also Heritage Foundation summary at bottom of this page.
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1. (first of two parts)


FROM RAGS TO RICHES AND BACK TO RAGS
By J.R. Schwiesow, Ret. NewsWithViews.com

Since its inception this nation has survived a calamitous civil war, two ominous world wars, the dust bowl, the grinding poverty of a fateful depression, and a series of grievous recessions. The truth is that this Commonwealth survived these events only by the moral fiber of its people, by an unyielding belief in free enterprise, by the individual selflessness that prevailed through perversity, by the industriousness of the people, and - most importantly - by a sustaining and unshakeable belief in the Supreme Being of the Universe in whom the people placed their faith and their earthly and eternal destinies.
Over the course of time the vagaries of successive generations has undergone a metamorphic transition, the previously described sterling character of the people has been replaced with a new morality, ethical codes have changed, and the bounds of propriety have disappeared. Old generations have been replaced with a new generation of doped up, immersed in dumbness, indolent creatures of little initiative, malformed character, and no faith. A generation acclimated to lives of luxury and decadence, indoctrinated in Godless socialism, nurtured in greed and avarice, and grounded in selfishness. All of this is not happenstance, but was rather engineered by the conscienceless elite, illuminati if you will, in an incremental and cunningly patient quest for a one-world arrangement of demonic design.
So skilled in deception were these agents of the dark domain that even the elect were deceived into believing that such changes were normal and acceptable, that they were cyclical events that always presage a return to normalcy, integrity, and resurgent moral soundness. This was, they said, inevitable. The cold, hard, dank truth is that there will be no return to wholeness or wholesomeness. This nation is treading a treacherous seamless linear plain that will inevitably lead to its total destruction.
THE LAW AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE LAW
“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.” -Isaiah 10:1-2
Much has been made recently of the venality and corruptness of government on all levels. One has to wonder what the catalyst was for such seemingly sudden introspection given the fact that government corruption in these United States has been prevalent and systemic for half a century and longer. I note that just lately the sheep are becoming increasingly restive about the tyrannical machinations of the Transportation Safety Administration and that agency’s intrusion upon the intimate privacy of those who avail themselves of air travel. There seems to be in addition to a prevailing governmental tyranny an increasing voyeuristic predisposition among the personnel of that agency that manifests itself in the fondling of the person, the groping of the genitals, and the glimpsing of the nakedness of hapless passengers. When queried about these aberrational excesses Home Land Security Director, Janet Napolitano said if the public does not like it too bad, they should not fly. I think that she is right; if the flying public would absolutely quit this mode of transportation you can bet that there would be a swift solution to the incursions upon the privacy of those who fly.
Such intrusions and invasions upon intimate and supposedly inviolate privacies are predicated upon - as they always are when the government perpetrates dictatorial excesses - an entirely subjective government position on what is necessary to ensure the public safety. It is in fact about power over individual prerogatives and a mechanism that the various levels of government in this nation have used to effectively subvert and avert the Constitutional guarantees of protection against the nullification of individual rights.
How is it when governments entrap the public with a virtual minefield of traffic light cameras, altered signal light timings, embedded speed strips, mandatory seat belt use and the host of other cute gimmicks that are used to empty the pockets of hapless victims to the tune of millions of dollars that it always about safety?
If such inventiveness in regard to justification fails there is always the law, have you noticed dear reader that whenever government officials are queried in regard to these tyrannical encroachments they will respond with, “It’s the law?” How providential for these that such incursion upon Constitutional rights can be written into the law. The people in this nation have had this corrupted rule of law theme pounded into them ad nauseam. 
The rule of law , which was intended by the founders to be connoted upon the Constitution, is now what some activist judge says it is, what some legislative body decrees it to be, and what thousands of unelected unrighteous bureaucrats set out in administrative rulings. The law has, in this nation, has become a tool to enhance unfettered totalitarian rule over the people and as an instrument to enable the curtailment of individual rights.
THE REPUBLICANS WILL SAVE US
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. -Psalms 146:3-5
In a previous piece I wrote that this nation is soon to go to its grave in the most ignoble collapse since the Roman Empire breathed its last, and that the unwitting instrument of its now inevitable death is the Republican Party. As the nation treads a tortuous path to the end the people cast about wildly for a savior among men. They switch their allegiance from one party to another in desperate hope for deliverance from what they now perceive as an inevitable crash and burn scenario.
During the last few decades the Democrat Party has demonstrated that it is a party of moral weakness, corruption, and social perversion. It is the Democrats who celebrate and endorse communist ideology, and it was the Democrats that initiated the now prevalent internal loathing of the foundations and wonderments of the Republic. This would, on the surface, seem to be a logical argument in favor of the opposition Republican Party, but for the Democrats to have achieved such monumental success in bastardizing and corrupting this nation it was necessary that they have the aid and support of an enabler, and that enabler was the Republican Party.
The Democrats have achieved nearly every inimical social perversion that they have pursued, and they achieved the same by the acquiescence of Republicans who kissed the behinds of their political enemies of the Democrat Party and fawned all over them to the point of embarrassment.
Under that rogue George W. Bush the Republican Party handed the Democrats the biggest political endowment in history, thirty million illiterate aliens who were trained like chimpanzees to pull the lever for Democrats. They may be illiterate but they understood quite clearly that it was Democrats who were willing to bankrupt the nation to provide them with the necessities of life, such as food, schooling, lodging and medical care. The complaisance of the Republican Party in this loose border chicanery and the illegal immigration fiasco was shameful, and remains shameful to this day.
There will be those who write to complain that I have laid the putrid state of the nation solely at the feet of the Republicans, and that by doing so I have been too hard on the darlings. Someone should be hard on them they have frittered away every opportunity to coral the unconstitutional excesses of the Democrats and move this country back to constitutional governance. They have completely alienated the conservative base of their party and taken to their bosom socialistic causes once thought to be the sole province of liberal Democrats. 
If the people are waiting for the Republicans to pull them out of the current slide into oblivion they are going to have a long wait, it isn’t going to happen.
A SHAPING OF THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE
Recently a local jeweler, whom I respect, lamented that the spectacular rise in the price of gold was ruinous to his business and seriously jeopardizing his livelihood. He stated that the price of a modest gold ring had appreciated nearly two hundred percent in a relatively short time, thus placing it out of the reach of the middle-income earners of modest means who comprise the majority of his customers. This precipitous rise in the price of precious metals portends financial ruin for him and those like him.
Not concerned about jewelers and the sellers of luxury items, you say. How about your local bakers, butchers, food merchants, hardware merchants, dry goods sellers, and appliance and automobile dealers? Thanks to the Federal Reserve and its weak-minded chairman, Ben Bernanke, along with the Obama Administration’s dim-witted treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, and the fat-cat speculators in commodities and durable goods all of the aforementioned main street dealers in goods and services are in serious jeopardy. The price of gold is simply a leading indicator of a precipitous decline of the dollar in value and purchasing power. Who wants to invest in the future by hoarding bank notes or dollar-bound equivalents of no intrinsic value? Gold they believe is the way to go.
If you have visited the local food merchants lately you will have picked up on the subtle indicators which signal that we are headed for an economic crisis. Even huge chains such as Wal-Mart are having trouble maintaining a perpetual inventory. This can only mean that such interruptions in the flow of commodities and goods are the result of shortages of supply and a vicious international competition for supplies on hands.
In order to cope with the rising costs of materials and the declining value of the dollar the manufacturers of processed foods and periphery grocery items are resorting to chicanery and deceitful pricing practices in regard to their products. Toilet paper and other paper items are shrinking in width, length, and thickness in an attempt to obfuscate price increases. Deceptive innovative packaging that contains smaller quantities at the same price, and inventive pricing gimmicks do not fool discerning customers. The handwriting is on the wall, the dollar is crashing and inflation is on the march.
All of this means that you dear reader may all too soon find yourself in circumstances similar to the Biblical Lazarus and Rich man didacticism delivered by Jesus. If, or when, the complete economic collapse comes you may find yourselves under rich men’s tables begging for scraps. Whether or not they favor you with a tidbit from their ill-gotten largesse will depend entirely upon your slavering acquiescence to their control over your lives and circumstances.
One final thought here before I move on. For those who are hoarding gold and laughing up their sleeves, I hearken them back to the days of the great depression when that old socialist despot Franklin Delano Roosevelt reorganized the banks, confiscated the gold in the hands of the citizens, and devalued the dollar. This was government theft of a monumental dimension and would most certainly be repeated by the despots who rule over us these days.
They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity. -Ezekiel 7:19
THE END, THE INEVITABLE END
Biblical prophecy warns that in the last days - these times – there will be a turn to preponderant immorality of a bestial nature, and that the people will give themselves up to perversions precisely such as those that were pursued and acted on in Sodom and Gomorrah and their surrounding environs. Scripture makes clear that these perversions were taught by demons and that these very despicable and filthy practices will be institutionalized by governing authority and endorsed and sanctified by an apostate church in the latter days.
No one can deny that in this nation and in these days that these predictions have come to pass. Sodomy is pursued with militant aggressiveness. Activist judges - many of them sodomites - unfettered by ethics, scruples, morality or the Constitution are by-passing the people and legislative prerogatives with judicial decrees that are rapidly institutionalizing sodomy.

A majority of the denominational churches now condone, support, and encourage sodomy and the co-occurring spin off of same sex marriage, this even to the point of ordaining sodomite pastors and uniting same sex couples in marriage. That they would pervert the sacrament of marriage and deny the authority of God’s word thusly speaks to the depth of apostasy to which they have descended. Those that use Jesus, the very author of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as justification for their despicable and impious religious dictums in regard to sodomy have reserved unto themselves the punishment of eternal fire.
”Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.” -Jude 1:11
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2. (part two)

"This country is well beyond being salvageable.  It is in fact destined for complete destruction."



FROM THIS TIME FORWARD

"Despite the seamless calamities that descend steadily upon this nation there has been not the slightest discernable lessening or reversal of the deformed moral character of the people. It is popular to blame the putrid immorality of our society upon the courts and the politicians, but the truth is that no inimical legislation is passed, no immoral law is upheld, and no vice is encouraged or protected without the collective approval and commendation of the people."  
By J. R. Schwiesow NewsWithViews.com
“I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there were none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.” -Isaiah 63:3

From this time forward the people of this nation will not know a day of peace, there will be no good news, each bad day will fade into another equally bad day, and the black and ghostly apparitions of the former will blend with the grim and ghastly tidings of the new. The Lord has departed from a people that have departed from Him and prostituted themselves before heathen gods, a people who will in the coming days loathe themselves for the evils that they have committed in all of their abominations. They will surely know that He is the Sovereign God who will carry out His word to do evil unto them that defy His word and deny His Lordship over all of creation.
The great spiritual sickness that has settled across this land has progressed beyond the limits of a cure; a pagan people have spurned the divine corrective persuasions visited upon a sinful nation, and the loving God who sent them has been disdained and blasphemed. The day of reckoning is at hand.
GOD VERSUS MAN -
Thinking themselves to be gods men have, they believe, gathered to themselves the wisdom to control their own destiny. They profess to have discerned the knowledge to control their environment, yet floods continue, hurricanes persist, tornadoes demolish, tidal waves devastate, volcanoes seethe, fires rage, hail destroys, drought endures, and earthquakes rend the earth and swallow cities.
Medical scientists claim to have the key to the mysteries of the human body and the ability to heal. Yet disease-causing bacterium thrive, cancers kill, MS cripples, ALS paralyses, kidneys fail, brains atrophy, limbs whither, and hearts falter and stop. If the victims of such afflictions do not perish from the maladies upon them they succumb from the treatments rendered. This despite the billions of dollars bilked from people through the years by various organizations to fund the research to conquer all of the aforementioned killers of men, women, and children, all to no avail. Is it money misspent or is it, in fact, that healing comes only from God and men have not the power of healing within them.
For men to think that their teensy little brains are on a level with the mind of the Lord God of all creation is in itself a profanation.
Unless the defending hand of God abides with men and provides security from the adversity of the elements, delivers upon them the life-sustaining constituents, and guides them in their endeavors they will perish. Men cannot exist apart from the God who created them. Without the maintaining presence of God all endeavors of men will fail. They are as helpless as a newborn baby without the nurturing hand of a parent. It is a foolish man indeed that despises the power that gives him breath and scorns a presence with absolute ascendancy over the universe of which man is an exceedingly infinitesimal part.
“WE HAVE HAD OUR LAST CHANCE”
“If we will not devise some greater and equitable system, our Armageddon will be at the door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence, an improvement in human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, and literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” -Gen Douglas MacArthur
Our last chance is now encapsulated within the past; this nation has progressed from bad to intensely filthy to demoniacally evil. The Lord has given us up to our own devices and our powers are woefully inadequate to solve the problems that confront us. 

Dear reader if one is startled or surprised at the alarmingly portentous trend of the events upon this nation it would have to be that this person is not truly committed to, or a believer in, the Lord Jesus Christ. The occurrences that we are witnessing are in fact the birth pangs associated with the Day of the Lord. Those who are conversant with His word and believe in its inerrancy are not in the dark. They recognize that the world and this nation are traversing the final leg of the road to perdition.
HEADLINES: GOVERNMENT REGULATORS DOWNPLAY ENVIRONMENTSL IMPACT OF OIL SPILL – OBAMA ORDERS BP TO STOP SPILL
Just when I think that I have plumbed the depth of the foolishness that is abroad in this country something, such as these headlines, comes along to disabuse me of that thought. Certainly such silliness as this puts to rest Darwin’s theory that an intelligent species morphed from that lovesick amoeba that supposedly oozed from a primordial soup and ultimately became man.
Why, I ask do these cretins continually refer to this disaster as a spill? What we have is a gusher of crude oil emanating at high pressure through a hole in the earth’s crust from a huge reservoir of crude in the bowels of the earth, and this a mile down on the floor of the Gulf waters. This is no less than a manmade catastrophe, but to hear Mr. Obama and his government regulators tell it one might think that Paul Bunyon kicked over bucket of crude and that we will wipe it up with a rag.
BPAnd if it were not for some truthful caring and sharing independent engineers the entire population would still be in the dark as to the dire magnitude of this man caused eruption that has the potential to turn into a worldwide cataclysm, and most likely will.
Of course we need not be apprehensive any more now that President Obama has ordered that the “spill” be stopped. Since “We will change the world” Obama deems himself to be our savior one wonders why he hasn’t just gone to the gulf, parted the waters, and plugged the leak. I am sure that all those who have put their faith in this novitiate’s campaign messiah rhetoric will certainly rest easy knowing that the people’s savior has now ordered that the “spill” be stopped.
PRIDE GOES BEFORE A FALL
For well over a decade this nation has been continually assailed by cataclysmic events, the circumstances of which have cost billions and destroyed lives, property, and peace of mind. At no time through this series of catastrophes have I observed a stiff-necked people turn to Almighty God in repentance and ask his forgiveness of our national sin. I have witnessed a remorseful response to the losses that were incurred, but remorse for the sins of the nation is conspicuously absent. Not a single politician has kneeled in the presence of God in humble subjection and appealed, in the name of Jesus, for mercy and forgiveness. To do so in these times would ensure the defeat of that politician by his, or her, constituency. In this nation and in this time the false gods of heathen religions are accepted and protected by the people, the courts, and the political system, but the one true God is rejected and despised.
THE CONTINUING LAWLESSNESS OF A SINFUL NATION
Despite the seamless calamities that descend steadily upon this nation there has been not the slightest discernable lessening or reversal of the deformed moral character of the people. It is popular to blame the putrid immorality of our society upon the courts and the politicians, but the truth is that no inimical legislation is passed, no immoral law is upheld, and no vice is encouraged or protected without the collective approval and commendation of the people.
Infanticide continues at a steady pace in this nation, murdering medical practitioners have exterminated some sixty-one million babies. It is an abhorrence of monumental and cold-blooded savagery. If sixty-one million puppies were similarly systematically annihilated the population would be howling for the heads of those doing the killings. Such is our twisted sense of morality and justness. This nation is stained with the blood of these infants, and their blood cries out for justice, and justice for these little creatures of God will not be denied. 
The minds and bodies of our youth continue to be corrupted and defiled by indoctrination by the schools, the government, and the social institutions of this nation in the filthy practice of sodomy and the encouragement of same sex marriages. These perverse practices are promoted and accepted by the media, the legislative bodies, the courts, and the majority of the denominational churches. A solid majority of the people deems them normal and acceptable even though the Bible condemns such as abominations.
Surely repentance is not going to emanate from the bulk of the church pulpits in this society. Too many preachers have not the faith of a gnat or the integrity of an ant when it comes to upholding scriptural instruction. They ignore the Gospel and evade the teachings of Christ and His disciples in order to preach social justice and universal salvation. Many embrace the false doctrine of universalism as an alternate to Christ’s teaching that no one comes to the Father except by Him. By their evasion of scriptural admonitions against destructive behavior they encourage degenerate and unbiblical practices. And then they have the temerity to call themselves ministers of God.
In spite all of the foregoing we have the audacity to ask God to bless this country. Every time I hear a politician close a speech or an address with God Bless America I cringe for that person in abject shame before the sovereign God.
AND THE END OF THE STORY
There are some hard learners who think yet that the nation can be rescued by correct political leaders and a return to constitutional principles. They still seek a restoration by and of men. They fail to take into account that the perverse in this nation far outnumber the honest and honorable. But, more importantly they fail to recognize that it is a spiritual disease that afflicts our society and saps the life’s blood from a once blessed republic. We are under condemnation by the Lord God for our national sins.
There are no saviors among men; one would think that after one year of Obama that lesson would have been brought home. Still we know that men rely upon men, and we also know that this will continue until the people of the entire world turn their lives over to the antichrist and slip completely into the evil grasp of Satan, the enemy of God and man.
This country is well beyond being salvageable. It is in fact destined for complete destruction. This is what happens when one shuns his creator and rests his faith in corruptible men. We are staring disaster in the face. Our national debt now exceeds thirteen trillion dollars, and will soon be greater that the entire national economy. Nothing is going to stave off an economic collapse. Continuing disasters of one kind or another coupled with the desperate and dumb endeavors of the government and the Federal Reserve serve to deepen the crisis and hasten the coming breakup of the economy. When that collapse comes it will be a catalyst that sets into motion a rolling series of events that will bring this nation rapidly to its knees.
The mestizo hoards that the political dimwits and social liberals have encouraged to pour across our borders have seriously disrupted social order and social cohesion, they have dissipated local economies and siphoned off monies earmarked for the native indigent and elderly, they have escalated crime and threatened the personal safety of individual American citizens, and they have resurrected and spread diseases had been nearly eliminated in the United States. They have inflicted no less injury to the nation than the barbarian Huns, Goths and Visigoths visited upon an equally stupid Roman Empire.
When social unrest reaches a volatile point and social wars are ignited these will join with the subversive Muslim elements that we have, in our limited wisdom, allowed to infiltrate the society to propagate their kill the infidel agenda. This country is destined to experience an internal turmoil that will so weaken our ability to fend off foreign belligerents that we will be attacked and destroyed. In plain blunt language this nation is toast.

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” -Matthew 7:13-14
Dear readers you can escape destruction: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Seek the narrow gate.

Jim Schwiesow is a retired sheriff with 46 years of law enforcement service. He served with the Unites States Army with the occupation forces in post war Berlin, Germany, and has a total of nine years of military service, which includes six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.
His law enforcement service includes: three years in the military police, fifteen years as an Iowa municipal police officer, and twenty-eight years as the duly elected sheriff of Sioux County, Iowa.
Jim has written a number of articles, which have been published in various professional law enforcement journals.





The following from: The Heritage Foundation

Majorities of Americans believe that:
  • America is an exceptional nation worth preserving and defending, and the best way to do so is through military strength;
  • America’s virtues are such that, when an immigrant settles here, he should embrace our culture, values, and heritage rather than become isolated in the culture, heritage, and language of his country of origin;
  • The government has too much power, wastes too much money, and cannot be trusted to pursue the right priorities; therefore it should be smaller in size and more limited in scope;
  • The closer a government is to the citizen, the more effectively it will spend the citizen’s tax dollars; i.e., the federal government wastes the most, state governments somewhat less, and local governments waste the smallest portion of each tax dollar;
  • Government regulations usually backfire and generate unintended consequences, whether it be in lowering the quality and increasing the cost of our health care or negatively affecting businesses in other policy areas;
  • The best way to promote job creation and economic growth is by exerting a lighter regulatory touch, which includes lightening the burden of environmental regulations;
  • Government should not use its power to pick winners and losers, whether it be policies that grant preferences to unions, certain racial groups, trial lawyers, corporate subsidy-seekers, or other politically connected entities;
  • Welfare recipients should be required to work in exchange for their benefits; and
  • Judges should make decisions based on what is written in the Constitution or clearly delineated in the law, and not on the basis of their own viewpoints and feelings.
A policy agenda faithful to these sentiments will both win the support of the American people and restore American greatness in a manner consistent with our nation’s founding principles.
What follows in these pages is a comprehensive policy agenda compiled by a team of Heritage experts. They identify the nature and scope of our most pressing problems in 23 discrete policy areas, and recommend 128 specific policy prescriptions for Congress to consider.
These recommendations may strike some as being too ambitious or unrealistic. But bear in mind that seldom, if ever, has our nation faced challenges as profound as those described above. Now is not the time for tepid proposals or “small think.” Our nation is on an unsustainable trajectory.
Robust and ambitious policies are required to revive America.
Highlights:
  • Place a firm cap on overall federal spending, and limit future year-to-year growth to inflation plus population growth. Federal spending is on an unsustainable trajectory because we lack a mechanism that forces Congress to live within agreed upon spending limits. A binding cap will force lawmakers to make the tough decisions required to get us back to fiscal sanity.
  • Require the Big Three entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—to live within firm, congressionally approved budgets. If Congress is ever to control spending, it must end the era of open-ended entitlements. Currently, Big Three spending is on autopilot—increasing automatically year after year. Entitlement spending must be brought into the congressional budgetary process. Lawmakers should establish a five-year budget for these programs and include protective mechanisms, such as triggers, that will automatically keep spending within the congressionally approved limits.
  • Revive federalism. The federal government has usurped the states’ traditional role in areas such as transportation, education, health (especially Medicaid), homeland security, and law enforcement. Washington must cede vast swatches of its policymaking authority—and the funding that goes with it—to states willing to reassume leadership in these areas.
  • Limit the unsustainable growth of welfare spending, and require recipients to give something back. Aggregate welfare spending now approaches $1 trillion annually and does more harm than good. Congress must treat all 71 means-tested welfare programs holistically, as a discrete category of federal spending, and cap annual year-to-year welfare spending growth at inflation. This will force Congress to consider new approaches that could actually help the poor surmount poverty. To this end, Congress should require able-bodied adults to treat a portion of certain welfare benefits as loans to be repaid rather than as an open-ended grant from taxpayers.
  • Pay federal workers wages and benefits comparable to what their counterparts earn in the private sector. Federal employee compensation is far too generous. Total compensation—hourly wages plus benefits—is 30–40% above that of comparable private sector workers. By bringing federal compensation in line with market rates, Congress would save taxpayers approximately $47 billion a year.
  • Do no harm. Tax increases, especially those loaded on small-business owners (our most productive and entrepreneurial individuals), are counterproductive at any time. To raise taxes during a recession is a recipe for crippling economic growth and job creation. Maintaining the tax burden at its current level is the least Congress should do.
  • Encourage investment and job creation. Reduce the top tax rate on corporate earnings—currently the second highest among all industrial nations—and let businesses immediately deduct investments in new plant and equipment. These two changes to the tax code will unleash the most productive investment and create the most private sector jobs. Specifically, lawmakers should align the top rate on corporate earnings to those that prevail in our 30 largest trading partners—approximately 25%.
  • Liberate employed seniors from payroll taxes. As part of the broader effort to reform entitlement programs, seniors who wish to work beyond retirement age should be freed from the burden of paying Social Security payroll taxes. Employers willing to retain or hire these older workers also should be exempt from paying the employer share of the FICA tax.
  • Invest in peace through strength. A robust military is the surest way to deter aggression and reinforce U.S. diplomacy. To accomplish this, the Pentagon procurement holiday must end. Congress must refurbish our armed forces, especially our depleted Navy fleet and vital missile defenses.
Perilous times necessitate bold action. America is at a tipping point. To continue on the current path of ever-expanding central government will plunge us into a statist abyss of lost liberties, vanishing opportunity, and dying prospects of a better tomorrow. But our nation can just as well correct course, as she has so often in the past.

1 comment:

Dean said...

Excellent Norm.

In these times of extraordinary events we are plagued with immoral, corrupt, ordinary leaders.

To restore the Republic this nation was founded upon, we must first seek the face of God. Until we do that our fate is sealed.