Over at NRO,
Government dependency is on the rise according to a new Heritage Foundation study. Americans can thank President Barack Obama for a huge spike in the numbers of Americans dependent on government resources, but both parties can share in the blame. If the federal government does not make government smaller and less intrusive, then there may not be much private sector wealth creation for government bureaucrats to take to redistribute to dependent Americans. American are relying on government handouts rather than hard work for many of the necessities of life. One in five Americans rely on the federal government for housing, health care, food, college tuition and retirement resources. The 10th year of The Heritage Foundation government dependency study, the 2012 Index of Dependence on Government , proves that members of both parties need to take a hard look in the mirror and figure out a way to slow, then end, the creeping expansion of the federal government into every aspect of our lives. John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily writes that that the Obama presidency can take credit for 23% of the surge in dependency. The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation. Merline points out that the Obama increase is the largest two-year jump since the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. The reason for the stimulus in government dependency was President Obama’s and Congress’ efforts to increase housing subsidies, expand Medicaid and more welfare spending including food stamps. If more people become reliant on government, expect Americans to go down the road of our European friends who have relied on big welfare states for years. With a big welfare state and less people working to pay for big government, the federal government’s natural inclination is to raise taxes on job creators to engage in wealth redistribution. The take away from this study is that big government and a shift to a dependent society will be the death of free markets and the idea of a relatively unencumbered version of capitalism. Get ready for the slow walk to socialism that we can see every day destroying Europe. As Patrick Tyrrell of The Heritage Foundation, my employer, puts it “ Dependence on Government at All-Time High .” Tyrrell points to some facts in the new study that should shock Americans. Dependent Americans – One in five Americans—the highest in the nation’s history—relies on the federal government for everything from housing, health care, and food stamps to college tuition and retirement assistance. That’s more than 67.3 million Americans who receive subsidies from Washington. Government Stimulus for Dependency – Government dependency jumped 8.1 percent in the past year, with the most assistance going toward housing, health and welfare, and retirement. Record High Dependency Spending – The federal government spent more taxpayer dollars than ever before in 2011 to subsidize Americans. The average individual who relies on Washington could receive benefits valued at $32,748, more than the nation’s average disposable personal income ($32,446). Almost 50% of Americans Don’t Pay Income Tax – At the same time, nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes. Future Dependency Spending Projected to Explode – In the next 25 years, more than 77 million baby boomers will retire. They will begin collecting checks from Social Security, drawing benefits from Medicare, and relying on Medicaid for long-term care. 70% of Federal Budget Dedicated to Dependency – As of now, 70 percent of the federal government’s budget goes to individual assistance programs, up dramatically in just the past few years. However, research shows that private, community, and charitable aid helps individuals rise from their difficulties with better success than federal government handouts. Plus, local and private aid is often more effectively distributed. Government debt stands at about $15.2 trillion; a number higher than the economic output of the United States for an average year. Dependency is growing as government grows. These trends are bad for freedom and the future of America. Although this trend toward government dependency has accelerated under President Obama, he is not wholly to blame. Both parties have supported a massive expansion of welfare programs over the past few years. The food stamp program is the fourth largest entitlement program and stands at about $89 billion for this year. There are 72 means tested welfare programs that grow in size and scope every year. Bailouts have made big corporate America dependent on government money when they can’t make ends meet. Medicare Part D was a creation of a Republican administration that expanded dependency of the elderly on government subsidized prescription drugs. If both parties don’t stop promising more government largess in an effort to buy off American voters, our nation is endanger of insolvency.
See the article here:
President Barack Obama: “The Dependency President”
While the recent increase of attention to the ongoing carnage in Syria is a welcome change from the Obama administration’s collective state of denial over the past ten months, signals remain mixed, and our policy is unclear if not non-existent. This week alone, for example, we got the welcome news that the Pentagon is preparing military options on Syria for the President, but at the same time White House press secretary announced those options will not be exercised. The waters have been further muddied by the President’s insistence that there is no parity between the situation in Libya last year and what we face now in Syria. In Libya, the threat to civilians and opportunity to topple a vicious dictator were sufficient cause for Mr. Obama to engage the U.S. military, even without a pressing national security interest at stake. While it can be argued that once the U.S. engaged in Libya it might have been preferable to lead from the front to secure weapons stockpiles and guard against al Qaida encroachment, the fact remains that the world is a better place with Colonel Qaddafi gone, as Mr. Obama routinely reminds us. Meanwhile, as many as ten times the civilians killed in Libya before NATO’s intervention have died in Syria over the last year. Bashir Assad is no less cruel and repressive a tyrant than Muammar Qaddafi. The threat of Syria’s unknown stockpiles of WMD falling into bad hands demands our urgent attention. And, above all, the United States has a clear strategic interest in toppling this vital ally of Iran. But Syria is somehow different, and not worthy of the same sort of military assistance we offered to the Libyan rebels. Rather than taking decisive action in the form of military aid through our purported ally Turkey (perhaps in August when the President issued a statement calling for Assad’s ouster on his way out of town for vacation), the U.S. has remained on the diplomatic equivalent of a hamster wheel. From the ill-advised resumption of “normal” relations with Syria last January through the pathetic failure of the Security Council resolution this weekend, our efforts to resolve the situation have been futile wastes of time and energy as the slaughter in Syria goes on to the tune of 100 people a day. In dealing with Libya and Syria, consistency need not be the hobgoblin of little minds but can rather be the hallmark of a consistent and coordinated foreign policy. There are equivalencies to be drawn between the two crises, and once these are recognized we should take equivalent action. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but we would not be alone and the cause is just. We have the unified support of our European and Arab allies. We have moral and strategic interests at stake. Rather than whining about the shocking moral turpitude of the United Nations, the President of the United States needs to remember his responsibilities as the leader of the free world–and lead.
Read this article:
Is Syria Really “Different?”
If you’ve ever wanted to hang out with the next President of the United States, you’ll have your chance this weekend at D.C.’s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. The three top candidates for the Republican nomination — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — will speak Friday at the 39th Conservative Political Action Conference . Sarah Palin will give the final keynote speech on Saturday and, if that’s not enough to excite your interest, the protesters from “Occupy DC” have promised to show up and keep things lively. On their website , Occupy DC vows “non-violent resistance” at this year’s CPAC, aiming to “make this a conference the attendees will never forget.” And Occupy DC calls CPAC “a who’s who of dastardly politicians… another gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters,” who will “attempt to perpetuate the radical right wing’s imperialist ideologies… pursuing its racist, sexist, patriarchal and exploitative agenda.” Indeed, this is exactly what my friends and I have in mind when CPAC convenes Thursday. In between attending speeches, seminar panels and cocktail parties — where our “elite puppet masters” will exhort us to perpetuate their “imperialist ideologies” — we’ll make occasional visits to the Marriott lobby, hoping to catch an entertaining glimpse of the clashes between police and smelly hippies from the Occupy DC encampments. What could be more fun than watching left-wing scum getting tased, pepper-sprayed and hauled away in handcuffs by the Metropolitan Police? CPAC is, as I have called it, ” Mardi Gras for the Right ,” a three-day annual festival celebrating everything conservatives hold dear, including free-market capitalism. And it is entirely fitting that this year’s CPAC should be held at the posh Marriott Wardman Park, considering that two heirs to the Marriott fortune are among the billionaires who have donated money to Republican “super PACs.” Alas, the Marriott brothers are supporting Romney, but we won’t begrudge them that while we party with our friends in the VIP suites, gazing down from the balconies — champagne glasses in hand — at the Occupy DC protesters waving signs, chanting slogans and shivering in the cold on the sidewalks behind the police barricades. The conference annually attracts thousands of conservative activists from all over the country. Officials are hesitant to predict this year’s total attendance. CPAC spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said Tuesday that advance registrations are on track for a 20 percent increase over last year’s conference, which was the biggest ever. The first-ever CPAC appearance by Palin is certain to be a favorite event for many attendees. “We’re thrilled to host the governor,” said Campbell, noting that “logistical issues” had prevented Palin’s attendance in previous years. And the ongoing presidential campaign also adds a special element of excitement to this year’s conference. “I think, if you just look at where we are with the primary season… if you look at Friday, that’s really going to be a day to highlight the conservative alternatives to Barack Obama,” Campbell said of the three Republican candidates who will address CPAC. Campbell added that while a fourth candidate, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict, he will be represented by his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. The CPAC stage will also feature former presidential candidates Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Atlanta businessman Herman Cain. In addition to the presidential candidates, conference attendees will also hear from a long list of Republican congressional luminaries, including South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, as well as the Republican governors of Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, and Wisconsin. There will also be speeches and seminar presentations by many leading conservative columnists, authors, talk-radio hosts and TV personalities including Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Craig Shirley, Oliver North, Jonah Goldberg, S.E. Cupp, Cal Thomas, Dana Loesch, Rich Lowry, Ed Morrissey, Matt Lewis, Roger Hedgecock, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Dinesh D’Souza. The American Spectator ‘s own Jeffrey Lord will appear on a Thursday morning panel discussion of “The Future of the Conservative Movement,” and indeed, the future of the movement will be in heavy attendance at CPAC. “Every year we hold a job fair for young conservatives… a lot of people come here hoping to break into politics,” Campbell said, noting that student passes for the conference are only $35. “More than half of the attendees who come to CPAC every year are students. This is a great opportunity for students to come out and get involved.” Consider this ironic contrast: While conservative students who aspire to careers in politics will be inside CPAC attending job fairs and hearing paeans to the glories of free-market capitalism, outside the conference the left-wing protesters from “Occupy DC” will be complaining about economic woes they blame on what they call “another gathering of bigots.” But what really annoys the Occupiers, I suspect, is their envious belief that the right-wingers at CPAC are having lots of fun. And in that belief, at least, they are absolutely correct.
Continue reading here:
The Best CPAC Ever
The Battle of Midway By Craig L. Symonds (Oxford University Press, 464 pages, $27.95) As Branch Rickey famously put it, “Luck is the residue of design.” In The Battle of Midway , Craig Symonds, who teaches American Naval History at the U.S. Naval Academy, shows how that resounding American victory during World War II was the product of design and its residue, which historians might call contingency. Symonds’ book is another in Oxford’s series on “pivotal moments in American history.” In an introductory note for an earlier entrant in that series, Washington’s Crossing , by David Hackett Fischer, James McPherson explained that such pivotal events were the product of “decisions and actions by people who had opportunities to choose and act otherwise,” and that opportunity “introduces a dynamic tension into the story of the past.” Properly addressing the “dynamic tension of contingency and choice” calls for a combination of new scholarship “with old ideas of history as narrative art and traditional standards of sound scholarship, mature judgment, and good writing.” Symonds book succeeds on all counts. The battle of Midway is a remarkable story, and Symonds tells it well. On June 4, 1942, “in little more than five minutes,” aided by heroic but unsuccessful attacks by American torpedo bombers, American dive bombers destroyed three Japanese aircraft carriers. Later that day, they followed up by putting four bombs onto the flight deck of the fourth. The Americans lost the carrier Yorktown and a destroyer, aircraft, and brave pilots and sailors, but victory was complete. Symonds doesn’t just tell the story, he also describes the culture and equipment of the American and Japanese pilots and naval personnel, showing how the differences worked in context. Nineteen forty-two started badly for the United States and its Pacific allies, much the way 1941 ended. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, while they inflicted great damage on the American battle fleet, they missed the American aircraft carriers. Before 1941 was over, the Japanese had taken Hong Kong and Wake Island and invaded the Philippines. By mid-April 1942, they had taken Singapore, bombed Darwin, Australia, raided British bases on Ceylon, sinking a number of warships, and forced the surrender of the American forces on Bataan. That “dizzying string” of successes “fed what historians later labeled ‘victory disease’ in Japan.” After the American forces in the Philippines retreated to Bataan, the Americans began to fight back. In January, American carriers raided Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, inflicting “little more than a pinprick,” while sinking a transport and a sub chaser, damaging six other vessels including a cruiser, and destroying a number of aircraft. In March, American carrier aircraft attacked Japanese shipping off Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea with greater success, “savag[ing] Japanese sealift capability” in that area. Finally, in April, B-25s under the command of Colonel Jimmy Doolittle took off from the Hornet and bombed mainland Japan. In early May, the Americans achieved what historians view as a strategic victory even if it was a tactical success for the Japanese at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Americans went into battle knowing “more about the Japanese movements than they did about” ours because we had made progress in breaking the Japanese naval code. Symonds explains that this gave Admiral Fletcher, the American commander, “an indisputable advantage” but didn’t guarantee success. In the fighting, the Lexington was sunk and the Yorktown damaged. The Japanese lost only a small carrier, but the larger Shōkaku was damaged, and it and the Zuikaku lost a sufficient number of aircraft and experienced pilots that neither could participate in the upcoming Midway operation. The “complex timetable” of the Japanese operations was “irredeemably wrecked.” The battle of Midway in June 1942 resulted from design, in that both the Japanese and the Americans planned for conflict. The Japanese plan was complicated; four “different and independent” groups of ships sailed independently in the direction of Midway with the goals of taking the island and luring the American aircraft carriers into a decisive battle. (The Japanese fleet that headed for the Aleutian Islands in the Northern Pacific off Alaska was a “separate initiative unrelated to the Midway Operation apart from its timing.”) The Japanese planned to use six large carriers to both establish air superiority over and support the landings on Midway and engage the American carriers, an arrangement that “created the opportunity for confusion and uncertainty.” The Battle of the Coral Sea intervened, however, depriving Admiral Yamamoto of two of those aircraft carriers. At Midway, the Americans “knew what was coming, where it was coming from, and more or less when it was coming.” Admiral Nimitz, the American naval commander in the Pacific, planned to meet the Japanese with two or three carriers. In the end, Nimitz had three after the Yorktown , which had been hit by one bomb and damaged by several near misses, was repaired in a remarkable three day round-the-clock blitz. While “eager to confront the Japanese,” Nimitz “was not a gambler.” Rather, he “reviewed all the available information, weighed the odds carefully, and planned accordingly.” Nimitz stationed the American carriers to the northwest of Midway Island, where they lay in wait, hoping to hit the Japanese carriers before they were found. Significantly, in the war games conducted by the Japanese in preparation for the operation, Admiral Ugaki, the chief judge, ruled “that such a move by the Americans was so improbable that it could not be allowed.” Ugaki also overruled a roll of the dice that had two Japanese carriers sinking, holding that one was damaged, not sunk, and the other removed from the table to return later. Symonds concludes that the war game exercises were “all but useless.” On the fateful day, the Japanese began by sending 108 bombers, torpedo planes armed with bombs, and fighter cover drawn from all four carriers to attack the facilities at Midway. When those planes were gone, the crews began outfitting the next wave for attacks on the American carriers. At about 7:00, Admiral Nagumo, the commander of the carrier group, received word that another attack on Midway was needed. Nagumo ordered that the planes held in anticipation of an attack on the American carriers be rearmed with fragmentation bombs for that second attack. As Symonds notes, arming and rearming the planes was a labor intensive task; the Japanese had to lower the torpedoes from the planes onto bomb carts with a hand crank and lift them by hand onto holding racks on the bulkheads. Nagumo learned of the presence of American ships, then an American carrier by about 8:20, and ordered the dive bombers on the Hiryū and Sōryū to prepare for that attack. He was unable to send those planes off, though, for several reasons. First, American aircraft based on Midway attacked his carriers in a “haphazard,” uncoordinated way. Even though Nagumo’s carriers were unharmed, they had to maneuver to avoid the attacks, making it impossible to rearm the planes for an attack on the carriers. Second, Nagumo also put all of his remaining fighters aloft to defend against the attacks. He needed to recover and rearm those fighters, as well as the Midway strike force which was returning. He decided to do that and send his entire strike force against what he thought was one carrier. In the meantime, American torpedo planes, followed by dive bombers, arrived. The torpedo planes were all but annihilated, but they pulled the Japanese combat air patrol and antiaircraft weaponry down to sea level. When the dive bombers arrived, they put bombs on the Akagi , the Kaga , and the Sōryū , turning each into an inferno as the bombs found hangar decks full of Japanese aircraft gassed up and bombs and torpedoes in the process of changeover. While the Japanese later found the Yorktown , and the Americans got the Hiryū , the “tipping point” had been reached. It wasn’t just big decisions, like those of Nimitz, which contributed to the outcome. Symonds tells the story of an American submarine, the Nautilus , which was in the right place at the right time and sparked a duel with a Japanese destroyer, the Arashi . The Arashi kept the Nautilus underwater until the carrier group passed, then hustled to catch up with the other Japanese ships. American dive bombers from the Enterprise spotted the Arashi’s bow wave and followed its line to the Japanese carriers. As Symonds notes, the inconclusive duel between the Arashi and the Nautilus had a “profound effect” on the outcome, illustrating the way in which decisions, big and small, can affect history. Symonds concludes, “June 7 was a Sunday morning, and it dawned on a changed world.” Six months after Pearl Harbor, the “instrument” of the Japanese attack “had been smashed beyond recovery.” A long and difficult slog remained, but the battle of Midway was the hinge on which the war in the Pacific turned. Its story deserves retelling, and Symonds’ book does a wonderful job of it.
Read more:
Five Minutes That Changed the World
