A Constant Battle for Some

Battling the Media
Early on in our founding, The John Birch Society grew to be the target of the mainstream press. Not willing to toe the politically correct line of expanding the federal government beyond its constitutional limitations set the organization up as a figurehead of the conservative movement to be lambasted at will.

 

When one searches the organization online, many negative mentions and articles come up. Usually the resulting coverage revolves around a handful of smears which are easily debunked.

 

This past Sunday, the Dallas Morning News published a biased article attempting to implicate JBS as creating a "volatile atmosphere" in Dallas, Texas in 1963 that led to the assassination of President Kennedy. 

In our response, we state:

"On November 22, Oswald shoots and kills the president. Yet, the Dallas Morning News article would have you believe a “volatile atmosphere” generated by “right-wing extremism” contributed to the death of the president.  Are we to think that the Marxist Oswald surrounded himself with conservatives who led him to commit murder?

"This Dallas Morning News article is one of many in a trend the mainstream media has generated to use political correctness as a tool to discredit the discussion and the practice of limited government under the Constitution. For if the Constitution was obeyed, estimates show that the federal government would be about 20 percent its current size and cost. And for those politicians, lobbyists and crony capitalists who see the Constitution as a hurdle to be overcome or as an excuse to strengthen its grip on liberty, the idea and practice of constitutionally limiting the government is very dangerous and debilitating to their causes.

  

"The Dallas Morning News is merely playing its part in the smear of conservatives concerned about the country’s future. It’s a trend that will likely continue as long as big government advocates are losing the war they began on American liberty. We urge concerned Americans to read the Constitution and seek the solutions it contains to many of America’s ills. Then get organized and active to restore the liberties that have been taken away from us by an out-of-control federal government."

 

If you're part of any tea party group, you understand that the media doesn't just focus its ire on JBS. Effective action against big government comes with a price. Wear that badge proudly!

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Rough Road to Recovery: Newest Issue of The New American

If job figures, incomes, inflation, and debt are any indication, America is not on its way to economic recovery. Charles Scaliger offers the inside scoop in the cover story.

 

Plus, don't miss the following articles:

War in Syria: Empowering the Islamistsby Alex Newman

 

War in Syria: Empowering the UN
by Alex Newman

 

The Price of Price-gouging Laws
by Steve Byas

 

Educators Expose Dangers of Common Core
by Alex Newman

 

The Red Scare
by Thomas R. Eddlem

 

Pro-life Cause Needs a Clear, Steady “Trumpet”
by Jack Kenny

Well that's depressing to hear!

Is American Exceptionalism Dead?
Last week the Wisconsin state legislature held public hearings about Common Core standards it had adopted years ago even before the standards were written. The federal government had waved the carrot of funding in front of a legislature experiencing budget shortfall. Need we say more?

 

During the hearings, a superintendent from a public school district in NE Wisconsin made the shocking statement that American exceptionalism was dead and that Wisconsinites should just accept that we live in a global community. This is the ideology that public schools are turning out.

 

Yet, if American exceptionalism is dead, then isn't it because of this international attitude or agenda? When students are taught to think globally and act locally, how long is it before the foundation of what does make America exceptional crumble?

The great heritage of America's founding is either rarely taught in public schools or is just touched upon. How will students come to know of American exceptionalism when they do not know of the limitations of the federal government or of the rights of the states to protect its citizens? Or of the incentives that have pushed generations of Americans and immigrants to raise families, start businesses, freely worship, and rise where failure so easily lurks?

 

Fortunately other voices were heard at the hearings, including two (Alan Scholl and Mary Black) from JBS-affiliate FreedomProject Education, both of whom discussed the dangers of federal standards, the lack of local control and acceptance of plummeting educational standards.

 

Unfortunately, high school students were paraded through the hearings as well. They parroted the global rhetoric that had been pounded into them during their educational career.

  

Common Core is just one of the very many tools that establishment elites are using to strip America of its exceptionalism. Without exceptionalism, how are Americans to rise above to better compete with the global market?

 

The New American has published a reprint on Common Core, so you can share with others through your various functions and events. Also, FreedomProject Education has produced a video on it. You can view it free online and purchase either JBS (available Thursday, Oct. 10) or FPE branded copies of it to distribute. Be sure to contact your state legislators about blocking Common Core and contact Congress to block federal funding.

 

It is through education that we will be able to achieve less government, more responsibility and -- with God's help -- a better world. Get involved today!

Obama to America: "Shut up!"

Paul: Obama’s response to shutdown is just ‘shut up’

It has been said that politics is the art of compromise. Try as they may, Washington leaders hardly ever get absolutely everything they want.

Polls show Americans are worried about the implementation of Obamacare — worried about keeping their current health insurance plans, the new law itself, the exchanges, potential fines, personal privacy, keeping their jobs, their work hours and a host of other issues too numerous to list here. Both the country and the Congress have much to discuss.

Right now, though, President Obama refuses to engage in any debate or discussion. The president is demanding that he get 100 percent of what he wants, and if he doesn’t, he and his Democratic allies in the Senate will keep the government shuttered.

Republicans have offered compromises that might stop or dull some of the negative effects of Obamacare but that would also pass a budget and keep the government functioning. Still, Mr. Obama refuses to budge. He will not even consider compromise.

Republicans are told that the law has already passed and that we’re being obstructionists for attempting to question or modify it. However, since when in this country after a law is passed is it eternally set in stone? When has it ever been true that Congress cannot look at and alter or improve existing law?

The Obama administration announced in August that it sought to reform our current mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. I’ve been speaking out on the need to get rid of these unjust laws for some time and look forward to working with anyone in either party who is serious about doing so.

Some of those mandatory-minimum sentencing laws have been in place since the 1980s. Does anyone think that just because they were once passed into law, that Mr. Obama or I are somehow “extremists” for wanting to change them? Does a bad law have to be decades old before we do anything about it? When Ronald Reagan was elected and the top tax rate was at 70 percent and had been so for 40 years, did he just throw up his hands and accept it? Or did he change the bad laws?

Plenty of people are saying Obamacare is bad law, and not just Republicans. The Teamsters are saying Obamacare has serious problems. Warren Buffett says it’s a problem. Former President Bill Clinton says there are problems.

Even the president himself acknowledges that there are some significant flaws. He has sought to delay portions of Obamacare through executive order, including the employer mandate.

There are still many compromise solutions that would end the government shutdown, like a short-term spending bill while we negotiate. A conference committee with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats is historically how we solved an impasse.

Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is rejecting any compromise. There has to be some middle ground, and Republicans are willing to work with Democrats to get there, but the president refuses to listen.

We, as elected representatives in the House and Senate, are hearing from our constituents that they do not want Obamacare as it currently stands. A recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows that only 12 percent of Americans think Obamacare will have a positive impact on their lives.

We are looking for compromise with Mr. Obama. We are looking for give-and-take solutions.

The president is intransigent. He will not give an inch, yet he expects the entire country to take the whole Obamacare mile. It is his way or the highway.

It was not a good idea to shut down the government. It’s also not a good idea to give Mr. Obama 100 percent of what he wants on Obamacare. Why is the president so opposed to trying to make this law less bad? Why is he continually refusing to compromise?

What are we supposed to do with a president who is completely unwilling to negotiate? Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the Senate would rather shut down our government than work with Republicans on serious amendments and solutions.



Click here to read the op-ed on washingtontimes.com

Such a Positive Way to Look @ Things!

WILL WEISSERT 8 hours ago

 

HOUSTON (AP) — Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job — at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him.
"Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown.
"This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up."
Perhaps more than anywhere else, Texas embodies the factors behind the shutdown: big government and the rebellion against it.
The state is one of the richest beneficiaries of federal spending, with its sprawling military bases, Gulf Coast seaports and more than 1,200-mile border with Mexico, which help account for more than 131,500 full-time federal employees. Only California, Virginia and the District of Columbia have more.
Yet Cruz's firebrand opposition to the nation's new entitlement program — the Affordable Care Act — and his campaign to stop government growth at all costs were also born here, and resonate deeply with many conservatives. In Houston, home to thousands of federal workers and to Cruz himself, the shutdown has brought the love/hate relationship with government into plain view.
Huls said he doesn't believe his job is a waste of money: "The public doesn't think much of federal workers these days, but we're people with car payments just like everyone else."
Still, he said of Cruz, "He's fighting for what he believes in and I'm taking a side."

View gallery."

Dale Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was one of about 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Hous …

But Jeff Darby, an investigator with the wage and hour division of the U.S. Labor Department based in Beaumont, east of Houston, said he thinks the showdown is more about political ambition than ideals.
"It is not anyone's patriotic duty to make Ted Cruz a household name," said Darby, a leader of the American Federation of Government Employees, who said he's "at home looking at my two dogs instead of working" because of furloughs.
A rising tea party star, Cruz was elected to the Senate in 2012. He carried Harris County by 18,000 votes, even though it includes Houston's minority population and government workers. He had been in office barely nine months when took to the Senate floor for a 21-plus-hour quasi-filibuster decrying the health care law, and then led an effort to block a budget deal with Democrats.
Cruz supporters tend to make a distinction between government workers and government. The former can be worthwhile; the latter is taking on too much and must be pruned to its essential functions. In a Pew Research Center poll this week, 41 percent of conservative Republicans expressed anger at the federal government, up from 32 percent in 2011 and just 5 percent in 2006.
But with the workers now being idled, some conservatives in Cruz's hometown are debating whether his tactics have gone too far.
Carolyn Hodges, the Houston-based president of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, said her group was split between conservatives supporting Cruz and others who want compromise. She said she personally "would like to see some movement on behalf of both" Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
NASA is the hardest-hit federal agency in terms of furloughs, with 97 percent of its 18,000-plus employees nationwide sent home. At Johnson Space Center, only about 200 civilians remain working because they protect property and life, like two U.S. astronauts and four others currently aboard the International Space Station.
"It's frustration that others don't understand because they're not directly affected," Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, said of NASA employees sent home. He declined to comment specifically on Cruz saying, "We need him and he needs us."

View gallery."

Dale Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was one of about 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Hous …

President Barack Obama separated his time in the U.S. Senate from a cadre of first-term senators, Cruz included, who have channeled the tea party's anger toward the president while raising their own profiles.
" ... I recognize that in today's media age, being controversial, taking controversial positions, rallying the most extreme parts of your base — whether it's left or right — is a lot of times the fastest way to get attention or raise money, but it's not good for government," Obama said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "It's not good for the people we're supposed to be serving."
Huls said he has enough savings to tide him over for at least two months without a paycheck. But he's worried about not making up money he borrowed from his retirement plan and says he may eventually have to talk to other creditors about extensions.
"But I don't consider myself a victim," Huls said. "I'm in this fight too and this is my role."
Pedro Rivera, a space center programs specialist who is working on the Orion capsule the U.S. hopes to send to Mars, said he too is willing to accept being furloughed even if the shutdown means a delay in Orion's scheduled test launch next year.
"I think it's a small price to pay for the future generations," said Rivera, who says he considers the new health care law un-American.
But space center financial management specialist Bridget Broussard-Guidry said her colleagues include single parents who can't afford a long shutdown.
"Even though you save for a rainy day, you don't know how long it's going to rain," said Broussard-Guidry, president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees.
___
White House correspondent Julie Pace in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

This article was taken from Yahoo News!