North Carolina Passes Background Check for Food Stamp Applicants

From The Washington Times --

The House Health and Human Services Committee in North Carolina voted Tuesday to require mandatory background checks for people seeking welfare and food stamp benefits.

All county Department of Social Services offices will now require background checks for people applying for benefits or for renewing their applications. DSS offices can choose whether they want to conduct formal background checks or simply ask the participant if he or she is in trouble with the law, The Blaze reports.

“We absolutely have to make sure our aid goes to law-abiding citizens first,” said state Rep. Dean Arp, R-Union who co-sponsored the bill. “This is a reasonable provision to ensure that.”

The DSS office will also be required to tell law enforcement agencies if an applicant is a fugitive or is sought for an outstanding warrant. 

President Obama Ignores Congress with Executive Order on Gun Control

From Tea Party Patriots -- 

Just before Easter weekend, President Obama signed an Executive Order to move forward his gun control agenda, giving federal agents greater access to information on gun owners and their weapons. From The Hill:

The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.

Despite minimal publicity given to the Executive Order itself – it was signed late on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend – the order authorizes a million dollar ad campaign for gun safety. New York Mayor Bloomberg has expressed support for the campaign, which could mirror his own gun control ads.

The order adds to a recent announcement of a new $20 million Department of Justice program that offers grants to states that provide more mental health and criminal history information to federal databases.

As part of President Obama’s comprehensive plan to reduce gun violence, the Administration is committed to enhancing and strengthening the national criminal record system in support of stronger firearm background checks.

The order also directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – whose area of expertise has more to do with small pox than small arms – to study “causes of gun violence.” The Institute of Medicine has been awarded the contract despite the fact Congress has blocked funding allowing the CDC to conduct gun control research since 1996.

Between redirecting funds to areas specifically banned by Congress, using other funds for government-sponsored commercials, and encouraging states – with money – to share more information about their citizens, it’s not surprising President Obama did this when no one was looking.

President Obama to Return 5% of his Salary -- Big Whoop!

As a show of solidarity with federal workers being forced to take furlough's over the Democrats inability to curb their out of control spending habits and the implementation of the Sequester cuts, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Deputy Ashton Carter declared they would be returning part of their salary.

President Obama, not wanting to miss this "I'm a great guy" publicity freebie like he does free throws on the basketball court - immediately jumped on the bandwagon and offered to return part of his salary....

From The New York Times --

President Obama plans to return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed as part of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, an administration official said Wednesday.

The voluntary move would be retroactive to March 1, the official said, and apply through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The White House came up with the 5 percent figure to approximate the level of spending cuts to nondefense federal agencies that took effect that day.

“The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury,” the official said. (More...)

With a base salary of $400,000 - returning 5% would be a mere $20,000.  In 2011, President Obama & Michelle Obama claimed a combined $790,000 in gross adjusted income, $1.7 Million in 2010 and $5.5 million in 2009.

This offer of returning a pittance of $20,000, should not only be an affront to the furloughed federal workers but also to all the unemployed, under employed and low-paid working men & women that President Obama claims to be out there fighting for while he frolics in a $24,500 a week vacation home.

In reality, we see the indifference and the "Let them eat cake" attitude of President Obama & Michelle Obama towards the American public with their continued vacationing on our dime, our paying for gun-carrying government babysitter's so his children can take lavish Spring Break vacations at Paradise Island, and President Obama's #2 - Joe Biden also taking his 3rd tax payer funded vacation this year.

In further thumbing their privileged nose's at the soon to be furloughed federal workers that will be forced to eat cereal with water because they are too poor to buy milk, and in placing them behind the Muslim Brotherhood, the Obama's will host a star-studded concert at the White House to celebrate Memphis Soul music.

But not too worry! These soon to be furloughed workers can take solace that President Obama has his best people hard at work on big picture type economic studies that will create jobs for them.  

Maya Angelou; "I Like To Have Gun's Around"

In a recent interview with Time Magazine, Acclaimed Author & Poet Maya Angelou, talked about her support of people being allowed to own guns and how she even uses one to protect her home.

Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011.

From The Washington Times --

In an interview with Time Magazine, famous poet and Obama supporter Maya Angelou recalled a time in her life when she fired a gun to scare off an intruder.

“I do like to have guns around,” she told Time’s Belinda Luscombe when asked if she shared her mother’s fondness for firearms. “I don’t like to carry them. But I like — if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.”

“Have you ever fired a weapon?” the interviewer asked.

“Of course!” Ms. Angelou affirmed. “I was in my house in North Carolina. It was fall. I heard someone walking on the leaves. And somebody actually turned the knob. So I said, “Stand four feet back because I’m going to shoot now!” Boom! Boom! The police came by and said, ‘Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how that happened.’”

Is there an "Obama Doctrine"?

From The Washington Times --

Years from now, historians may well write that the decline or upswing in the American empire of liberty occurred during the Obama presidency. They will either write that the Obama administration’s self-fulfilling prophecy and rhetoric of decline was overcome by the overwhelming greatness of the United States or that the ultimate downfall was caused by the conditions created by this White House.

Today, the country’s expert and pundit classes are obsessed, first and foremost, with the absurd autopilot of sequestration designed to protect us from adult decision-making. As a distant second, media make some mention of the pressing national security issue of the day: The use of drones in fighting what was formerly known as the “war on terrorism.” Both issues describe this presidency writ large, highlighting the desire to avoid clear and direct decisions, mixed with an overreliance on a peculiar and unmanned technology. It is a White House on programmed reflex.

A question that I have been asked on more occasions than I care to remember is whether President Obama, in fact, has a national security doctrine. Three schools of thought exist on this matter.

The first view is, at first glance, quite glib: There is a doctrine, and it can be labeled ABB — Anything But Bush. However, before we completely dismiss this attitude, one should keep in mind that the Obama camp rejected unilateralism, pre-emption, democracy promotion, prevention and, generally, the global war on terrorism. These were the pillars of American grand strategy under President Bush and the administration has struggled mightily (often to the detriment to the country) to wrest itself from the Bush legacy. The second school of thought denies the existence of an Obama Doctrine altogether. His supporters have argued that he did not need one, so he could remain light and lethal, unconstrained by the prisons of declarations and pronouncements. The president’s detractors, meanwhile, state that mass confusion and anxiety over national security issues is evidence of absence.

The third school, and the one that seems to make the most sense, posits that an Obama Doctrine does exist, albeit in a form that is too messy and murky to detail fully. Rather, the Obama Doctrine represents a cobbled-together robot that issues platitudes and seeks penance. Like Presidents Carter and Clinton before him, Mr. Obama has exhibited a disdain or disinterest in this singularly important aspect of the presidency. The two campaigns that elected him president were ones where the media allowed national security and foreign policy to be pushed to the back burner, rearing their heads only sporadically.

There was a moment when this could have changed. Mr. Obama, comfortable with his electoral victory, could have proved the critics wrong and set the stage for real leadership in national security. This moment, of course, was the State of the Union address.

Instead, what did the American people receive? A laundry list, tacked on pro forma, made up of vague posturing: We heard that we “need” to end the war in Afghanistan by telegraphing our withdrawal worldwide. Mr. Obama blisteringly called on the totalitarians of Pyongyang to meet their international obligations. There was the continued declaration that Iran will face a serious coalition of negotiation. And finally, the strong desire to disarm our nuclear arsenal. The Anything But Bush School received a shot in the arm by the president’s inability to mention the global war on terrorism, the 60,000 Syrian dead or the aggressive moves made by China in the Pacific. If there was a grand strategy, it was the embrace of a sort of neo-isolationism. Yet this was countered by resurrecting the Bush team’s desire for more free-trade agreements, and Mr. Obama’s support of a trans-Pacific partnership.

What are we left with at the start of the president’s second term? We are where we started, with a disjointed doctrine, vague strategy and ambiguity held at high altar. Mr. Obama effectively has patched together four prior presidential doctrines to form his own. He channels Nixon to achieve his burden-sharing, colloquially known these days as “leading from behind.” He invokes Mr. Carter’s multilateralism for the sake of same, and as a counter to charges of American exceptionalism. Mr. Clinton’s vision is summoned for its risk-averse nature, its faith in globalization and its worship of technocracy over ideals.

Ironically, though, the only success that the president has had in national security and foreign policy is where he had been unable to shake the spirit of George W. Bush. The Bush years have granted the U.S. government now the breathing room to engage in greater counterterrorism operations and a chance to establish a permanent presence in the Arab world and Central Asia. But this “Bush Lite” strategy has been embraced only out of a sense of inertia and the harsh encroachment of reality.

The areas where one lets Obama be Obama demonstrate the most dangerous results for strategy. The goals seem to be tactical: more treaties, adherence to more international organizations, an emphasis on soft power and greater diplomatic “restraint.” We have seen a souring of relations with nations such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Poland and Israel, a blind eye to Russian, Chinese and Iranian aggression, obsequiousness before the United Nations, and a glossing over of the grossest human rights violations in places such as North Korea, Sudan, China and Syria. Simultaneously, Mr. Obama’s reversal of grand strategy regarding the use of nuclear forces has been nothing short of breathtaking, signaling a reluctance to use the very weapons that have kept enemies at bay.

The key to the Obama Doctrine is the need to “rebalance American commitments,” code for managing our decline. His doctrine is more about process than strategy. When he does speak on national security, the president likes to say that he would intervene if America’s vital or national interests were at stake. However, in more four years, he has never once fully articulated what he believes those to be.

If the United States is to continue to claim its exceptional place in the annals of humankind, it has no choice but to be the only sword and shield for these. A president who fails his duty here has failed not only Americans, but all mankind. The president could still turn this ship around and embrace both the pragmatic and idealist destiny of his country. It will be his choice how history reads his presidency and this crossroads in our American epic.

Lamont Colucci is senior fellow in national security affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based American Foreign Policy Council and the author of “The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future” (Praeger Publishing, 2012).

Interest Payments: America's Silent Killer

From Tea Party Patriots --

When discussing and debating federal spending, liberals focus on defense spending and some subsidies. Conservatives focus on everything else.

However, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report discusses something many politicians and pundits miss – the fiscal threat of interest payments:

Following a recent hearing, we were asked by a Member of Congress: “How would higher-than-expected interest rates affect federal budget deficits over the next decade? In particular, what would be the effects of these scenarios:

1. Interest rates rise to their average levels over the 1991-2000 period;
2. Interest rates rise to their average levels over the 1981-1990 period; and
3. Interest rates follow a path that is consistent with the average of the 10 highest projections shown in the October 2012 and February 2013 releases of Blue Chip Economic Indicators.”

CBO projected Scenario 1 would have interest rates of 4.9% and Scenario 2 rates of 8.8%, as compared to the current 4% projection in CBO’s baseline analysis, from 2018 to 2023. In other words, interest rates would be much, much higher. Treasury note rates would also be higher:

Similarly, rates on 10-year Treasury notes would average 6.7 percent between 2018 and 2023 under scenario 1 and 10.6 percent under scenario 2, compared with 5.2 percent in the baseline projections.

What were the results? Devastating:

In other words, if interest rates go up even a little, the entirety of sequestration will be wiped out. And while entitlement spending will be the largest driver of our debt in coming years, interest payments on the debt will be even larger. The Treasury Department projects that interest will be almost as much a burden on the budget as budget as Social Security, and by the time today’s newborns are in their mid-twenties, interest will be the biggest item in the federal budget.

The only real answer to this problem is cutting spending. CBO notes a number of caveats to its estimates, including the impacts of inflation, an improving economy, and interest rates on the cost of interest payments. But only cutting spending, and substantively so, will prevent rates and payments from becoming unsustainable.

One other thing: CBO only examines publicly held debt, which is less than three-quarters of the total debt of the United States. So their estimates above are very likely to underestimate the total burden of interest payments on the federal budget.

Speaker Boehner and President Obama say we don’t have a spending problem now. They also have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell us.

Happy Easter