Freedom Line Blog

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Release:  CFIF’s “One More Vote” Campaign Launches Ad in Support of a Balanced Federal Budget with No New Taxes
Lee:  Spend, Then Tax: Like Killing One’s Parents, Then Pleading for Mercy as an Orphan
Senik:  Obama’s New Stimulus – Bailing Out the Classified Section
Ellis:  Conservative Latinos Launch Bus Tour for Carly Fiorina

Freedom Minute Video:  The Duty to Remain Silent – Liberals Stifle Free Speech on ObamaCare
Podcast:  Campaign to Force Washington to Stop the Excessive Spending
Jester’s Courtroom:  Sweet Dreams Are Not Made of This

Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week

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Interview with CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik on CFIF’s “One More Vote” grassroots campaign to force Washington to balance the federal budget annually without leaving a back door open to tax increases.

Listen to the interview here.

One week ago, we were treated to the pathetic spectacle of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert “testifying” before Congress in character.  Colbert was invited by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D – California), but even House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D – Maryland) called it “an embarrassment” and “not appropriate.”  Now this week, President Obama labeled Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s farcical October 30 rally in Washington, D.C. “really important.”  With all of the domestic and international issues pressing the White House and our nation generally, not to mention a pivotal election just days later, Obama considers Stewart’s inanity “really important?”

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, coming from a man who was elected largely on the basis of a cartoon “Hope” poster.

How’s this for drive-by media bias?  Today’s Washington Post runs the deceptive headline “Report Gives Stimulus Package High Marks.” Hmmm.  That sounds like a counterintuitive “Man Bites Dog” story worth reading.  So who issued the report?  The Post’s first paragraph admits that it comes from White House itself.  Worse, it was overseen by that respected rock of good judgment and common sense, Vice President Joe Biden.

Even with that baked-in bias, the White House report doesn’t seem to focus on how the $814 billion “stimulus” supposedly succeeded.  Rather, it emphasizes how the effort has already distributed 70% of the allocated funds, and managed to avoid “the fraud charges that plague more routine government spending programs.”  That’s it?  That’s the best that even Joe Biden can claim?  That should actually come as discouraging news, not encouraging news, to “stimulus” proponents.  After all, if 70% of its funds have already been spent, but we still haven’t experienced its promised results, what remains other than $814 billion added to our nation’s debt?  The White House promised that unemployment would top out twelve months ago at 8% if the bill passed, but we remain stuck at 9.6%.  Instead of igniting our economic furnace, it has merely clouded growth and undermined the business and hiring climate.

The White House and its apologists speculatively claim that the “stimulus” averted another great depression, but today’s Wall Street Journal carries an analysis by former Senator Phil Gramm devastating that assertion.  Gramm compares U.S. growth and employment figures to other developed countries that didn’t engage in the irresponsible “stimulus” profligacy we did, and shows that we lag far behind.  As the Post story notes, Obama’s “stimulus” was “the largest effort in U.S. history to counteract the effects of a recession.”  All it has done is prove once again that government doesn’t create jobs or growth, but economic uncertainty and debt.