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June 2011... MAJOR CHANGES ARE COMING TO THE SIERRA SAGE...CHECK BACK

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2011: The Promise and the Pitfalls


by Ed Feulner
Guest Contributor, the Heritage Foundation

It’s an exciting time for conservatives. Also a dangerous one.

On the one hand, we have opportunities aplenty now, thanks in large part to liberal overreach. An overzealous majority in Congress, revved up by their 2009 Christmas Eve health care victory in the House of Representatives, opened 2010 with a far-left agenda far removed from the will of the American people.

They can’t say we didn’t warn them. Conservatives said repeatedly that voters weren’t going to stand for more spending, more regulation, more control from “on high.” As I wrote in a column last January, “Our leaders would do well to listen to the wisdom of the people, before they learn it first hand in November.”

They didn’t listen. So they learned.

So why is 2011 a dangerous time for conservatives? Two reasons.

First, there is much to do -- and very little margin for error. Obamacare is now the law of the land, and we have a new START Treaty. New START will hamper U.S. efforts to field a missile defense. Obamacare will make health care less affordable. So we’re starting from a hole. 

Second, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s truly at stake. It’s more than a fight over one particular piece of legislation. It’s not just about health care, harmful treaties, tax hikes or defense cuts -- as important as these are. It’s about America’s First Principles. It’s about the fundamental relationship between citizens and their government.

For example, are we a nation where government can order people to buy health coverage? Set aside for a moment any discussion about whether such coverage is wise. The question is, does the Constitution allow government to force you to buy it? Critical debates such as this have motivated thousands of Americans to get involved in the public debate. 

Consider what we as a nation have seen unfold over the last 12 months. Across the country, people who had never before been engaged in politics have sprung to action. They’ve written letters, made phone calls, and attended town hall meetings. Whatever the forum, they’ve called for fiscal sanity, individual responsibility and limited government -- all constitutional principles. And it’s working.

Liberals can try all they want to place us on a “road to serfdom,” to use F.A. Hayek’s famous phrase. The fact is, conservatives are winning where it matters most -- and not just at the ballot box. We are winning the war of ideas. And liberals are taking notice.

In recent months, the Obama administration has begun to take ideas directly from the conservative playbook:

• On national security, they’ve canceled civilian trials for terrorists, kept Guantanamo Bay open, and extended key provisions of the Patriot Act.

• On federal spending, they’ve proposed a federal pay freeze as a first step toward fiscal sanity.

• On immigration, they’ve abandoned their pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform.

• On economic recovery, they’ve admitted that the Obama tax hikes are wrong for America.

Much, however, remains to be done.

My hope is that the new Congress will follow through on this momentum and fulfill the conservative mandate delivered in November. Standing firmly on principles, conservatives can push to repeal Obamacare, rein in government spending and regulations, and stop all tax hikes.

They can, in short, listen to the wisdom of the people. 


Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).

ENTITLEMENT: 

THE POLITICS OF SOMETHING FOR NOTHING


By: Orlis Trone
Sierra Sage Guest Contributor

From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”


That is what you should hear in your mind’s ear when you hear the term “entitlement” – because that is what is being said. What you need to understand about the persons who would enforce such an economic formula is that they are progressive socialists, thoroughly committed to the “transformation” of America. They insist that the “economic equality of socialism” confer upon them the authority to “redistribute the wealth” to those entitled to it. Needless to say, the potential recipients who stand to reap the windfall of looted money from such a class-action robbery are eagerly supportive of the political heist. 


Those among us of a certain age will recognize entitlement as the latest socialist terminology for what we know as the economic fallacy of “something for nothing.” Something for nothing has always proved seductive to persons for whom all that glitters IS gold. Forwardings such as “buyer beware” and “...too good to be true,” mean nothing to them until they are left with a handful of worthless claims to stock in a pyrite mine. History is strewn with the litter of self-made victims who sought to take a short cut to prosperity by buying into the allure of something for nothing. They are easy prey for demagogues and charlatans skilled at persuading the gullible to part with the bird in their hand for the two birds in the bush.


Something for nothing (hereinafter referred to as entitlement) is anything but. It is a scam – a promise of plenty that always ends up delivering the exact opposite of its offering. In the final analysis, it is a transaction in which the victim gives up all for naught. “SCAM” brings to mind such swindle systems as the pyramid and the Ponzi scheme, and may even conjure up the mug shot of Bernie Madoff as the poster boy of rip-off scoundrels. But the entitlement scam is so much larger than Madoff’s multibillion-dollar bilk-job that it dwarfs his crime to inconsequential by comparison. 


Unlike Madoff’s Ponzi scam, the entitlement scam goes beyond a swindle inflicted upon one private citizen by another private citizen. The scope of its objective is so vast that it sweeps “across the fruited plain,” from “sea to shining sea,” to assert a negative impact upon all of our Constitutional rights and freedoms. Its aim is to nationalize the economic infrastructure of the “American way of life,” which it plans to accomplish by growing government into a monolith of absolute power too big to fell. 


The growth of government into just such a resistance-proof bully is well underway, as is evidenced by the voluminous pages of unread bills shoved down our throats and the onslaught of federal regulations we witness being launched against every enterprise in America’s free-market economy. In the short span of two years, the socialist power grid running Washington today has grown itself into an enormous, invasive beast of encroachment that has taken up occupancy in every nook and cranny of private sector life. From small mom and pop ventures to big business investments, the proprietary right to determine the use and disposal of private property is being terminated.


This pervasive interventionism is nationalization by any other name, carried out now under the moniker of “entitlement.” We are not talking your mom’s entitlement here, such as pay-in Social Security or Medicare. The socialist’s version of entitlement is all encompassing. It includes Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac subsidized home loans, politically protected unions with union protected members who can never be fired, the Fairness Doctrine, welfare as a way of life, political correctness, financing community organizers, amnesty for illegal immigrants, Obamacare, wealth redistribution, on and on and on. 


Do not be mistaken about it. The road to the chain-gang-equality of socialism, otherwise referred to as “the road to hell,” is paved with entitlements. It is therefore imperative that those who can be credited with the 2010 “shellacking” of this entitlement-happy regime, stay the course of our victory until our government is once again subordinate to THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
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