When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 passed Congress earlier this year, I knew it was only the beginning of a long four years under the Obama Administration. When President Obama was elected, he promised us, repeatedly, (Can I get a “Let me be clear…” anyone?) to run a transparent and honest administration, a goal I hope any political opportunist candidate lives up to.
However, mere months after the implementation of this so-called stimulus package, we’ve learned the “jobs saved or created” numbers were falsified and that someone got a little lax with their number checking regarding Congressional District numbers. But the whole point of this whole kerfuffle isn’t the fact that some Congressional District information was iffy.
The real issue here is the sanctity of the American Republic. What time machine did we step into that dropped us off in an alternate-universe called Soviet America? As The Next Right wrote today, “Politicians lie,” but never before in American history have we had an executive branch so blatantly use the 1984 treatment on figures and data with the expressed intent of creating more support for a political agenda.
But with lax legislative language regarding the posting of “estimates” (h/t TNR) of jobs created (or saved, whatever that means), it’s no wonder we’ve ended up where we are today. Language such as this is nothing more than a cop-out on the part of our elected officials. They provided enough wiggle room for themselves to claim accountability, but, at the same time, offer some justifiable deniability. It’s just “politics as usual” in Washington, to quote my favorite former Governor; we’re still beating the same dead horse named corruption. The problem is, she’s not really dead; the sleaze bags in Washington just renamed her.
Final thought: how much better would the world be if America could trust her leaders?
Tags: 1984, ARRA, Congress, George Orwell, obama, Palin, Recovery.gov, stimulus, The Next Right
As many of you know, I serve the Pittsburg State University Campus Republicans as the Events Coordinator. We’re a new chapter in the Kansas Federation of College Republicans; apparently my university has a problem with holding on to any on-campus Republican organizations. By any means, when we formed our group last semester, we jumped head-first into the election cycle without knowing much about organizing a political group, and since then we haven’t looked back. It’s definitely been a learning experience, but we’ve come out on top every time. This semester we reached the point where we can have actual events besides debate and election result-watching parties.
Suffice it to say, the Tax Day Tea Party in Pittsburg, KS was our coming-out party, and what a success it was! We teamed up with Virginia Crossland of Crossland Construction to put on a massive event that hosted around 500 people from the area. That’s an impressive number when you consider there were at least five other Tax Day Tea Parties in the area! We had Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS02) speak, along with my organization’s Vice President, Jason Billberry, a local city commissioner, and a local businessman. Mark Kinsely from 1310 AM KZRG was our Emcee.
I’ve included some of the best photos below, but you can check out the full gallery here.
Protest Signs
Proud American Patriots
CR VP Jason Bilberry Speaking at Tea Party
U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS02) and Me
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Did you host a Tax Day Tea Party today? Let me know in the comments how it went!
Tags: Campus Republicans, College Republicans, Crossland Construction, Lynn Jenkins, Pittsburg, Pittsburg State University, Tax Day Tea Party, Virginia Crossland
Posted by caleb on Feb 12, 2009 in
stimulus Madam Speaker,
First of all, I want you to know how much I oppose your so-called stimulus bill. I feel that instead of kick-starting the economy, all it will do is burden my generation and the generations to come with more and more debt.
Madam Speaker, how can you sleep at night knowing you’ve mortgaged our future? How do you reconcile the fact you’re about to spend $1 trillion of our money on YOUR pet projects? How is spending an amount greater than the total appropriations for the entire fiscal year fiscally responsible?
In the news, you and your party keep claiming you have “won” and yet you also claim you are pushing for bipartisanship. Speaker Pelosi, I want to remind you that one party never “wins;” the American people are always in control. Also, while the Democratic Party has an unsightly majority in the House, those GOP Representatives “won” as well, and you should have made a better effort to listen to AND implement their ideas. Bipartisanship only works if BOTH sides are able to contribute.
Since you have stated you will be rushing this bill to a vote, I urge you to post it online at least 72 hours in advance, as a gesture of bipartisanship and transparency. If the American people are to be saddled with this socialistic nonsense, they should at least be aware of what awaits them in the future.
Once again, I urge you to use common sense. Fiscal responsibility is key, and more spending is not it. Cut our taxes, and cut wasteful spending. Only then will we see an economic recovery.
Thank you,
Caleb Hays
#tcot Operation Fight the Stimulus
Tags: fiscal responsibility, House, letter, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, stimulus
Tonight, the U.S. Senate will vote on Obama’s so-called “stimulus” plan, a bill that is really just a left wing wish list in disguise. Even though it passed the House, we as Conservatives one a sort of ideological victory: not a single Republican voted for H.R. 1. It looked like our stalwart opposition would continue in the Senate.
That is, until Sen. Collins (R-ME) decided for some reason that she would like to support such a spending bill, under the guise that she’d helped to trim off around $100 billion. While that’s a great feat, she’s missing the point. What’s occurring here isn’t stimulus, it’s generational theft. We are stealing from the younger generations, from our children’s and grandchildren’s generations. How will we ever pay this off?
Thanks to President Obama, and now Sens. Collins, Snowe (R-ME), and Specter (R-PA), we’re about to fall off the cliff into the cesspool of European-style socialism. So much for capitalism, free-markets, and plain ol’ American success.
Luckily, unlike what President Obama would have you believe, all is not lost; there is still hope (and I thought he was the one who owned that word!). The Senate will not vote on this bill until this evening, so we still have a few precious hours to stave this thing off.
Below is the entire text of the email I sent to the three fence-sitters, replacing “Maine” for “Pennsylvania” when necessary.
Dear Senator,
I am writing in complete disgust. While I appreciate your efforts to work with others, frankly, this is not the time for cooperation across the aisle, unless it means the defeat of this so-called stimulus package. I laud your efforts to cut spending from this spending bill; truly $100 billion is a large number. However, when you compare this figure to the monstrosity of spending that still exists, you can surely understand my frustration.
Senator, the future of this bill depends on you. If you support it, you will catapult our nation into a world of European-style big government socialism. If you oppose it, we may still fall off the deep end into the cesspool Obama is creating, but at least when it falls apart, the world will know you stood for what is right. On the other hand, with your opposition, we may very well defeat this so-called stimulus once and for all and save capitalism and our free-market system.
The voters have spoken. If you view the latest polls, you will see that you are not on the side of the American public, your bosses. If you do not stand for us now, why do you expect any of us to stand for you when you run for re-election? I don’t live in Maine, but I support out-of-state politicians running for national office. I don’t, however, support cowards.
The choice is yours.
Thank you,
Caleb Hays
#tcot Operation Fight the Stimulus
Please contact these Senators while there is still time! Feel free to use my email, above. Just make sure you replace my name with yours.
Contact information for the three fence-sitting Republicans.
If this passes, it will fail. I want to be able to tell my grandchildren I did everything I could to stop it. I pray you’ll do the same.
Tags: #TCOT, Arlen Specter, Maine, obama, Olympia Snowe, Pennsylvania, pork, Senate, Spending, stimulus, Susan Collins, Waste
