Conservatives To Boot Incumbents
Assoc. Press' M.L. Johnson wrote an article entitled, Conservative Group Sets Sights on Chafee. In it, Johnson writes:
Fresh off their first victory over a Republican incumbent, GOP conservatives seeking party purity on taxes and spending are focused on ousting moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
The Club for Growth and its 36,000 members spent around $1 million to help challenger Tim Walberg unseat first-term Rep. Joe Schwarz in Michigan's Republican primary on Tuesday. The win came despite Schwarz's support from President Bush and the National Rifle Association.
This is what
VOID has advocated all along, and it appears many more Americans including Democrats and Republicans are getting the message. To achieve more responsible fiscal, domestic and foreign policy management in Congress, incumbents responsible for the grotesque mess we see today must be ousted.
It is particularly impressive that the NRA failed to reelect Schwarz. It is long past time we voters sent the special interests the message, that the nation and her future supercede all other special interests when they are in conflict with each other. If Lincoln Chaffee is defeated, the anti-incumbent movement will have achieved a major step forward toward more responsible fiscal managment of deficits and national debt, now on track to reach 11 trillion dollars by the end of 2008.
Comments
About 90% of congress are long term incumbents. Many have been there for decades. Perhaps voters will see the connection between that high re-election rate and our pressing problems that continue to grow in number and severity?
83% of all federal campaign donations ($200 or larger) come from a mere 0.1% of the U.S. population. How can the remaining 99.9% of the U.S. population compete with that? Government is FOR SALE, and the average American does not realize they are being out-spent. When 99.9% of Americans send in their $20, $50, $100 campaign contribution, do they realize how little influence they have?
A better, less expensive, way to influence government and make it more responsible is to simply stop re-electing irresponsible incumbent politicians. That's what we were supposed to do all along, always. The 99.9% of Americans may get out-spent, but not out numbered. Stop trying to out-spend the vastly wealthy, because that's not working. 1% of the U.S. population has 40% of all weatlh (never worse since the Great Depression of 1929).
The National Debt is $8.4 trillion. But, less publicized, the Social Security debt is larger ($12.8 trillion), and Medicare has several hundred billion of unfunded liabilities for the next year. Also, the Pension Benefit Guaranty is $450 billion in the hole (which will dwarf the S&L bailout). And, to make matters worse, the government and Federal Reserve are printing over $370 million of new money PER DAY ($135 billion per year=370 million per day=$15.4 million per minute=$257K per second; NOTE: currency in circulation has increased from $150 billion in 1950 to $6.9 trillion in year 2000, an average of $135 billion per year)!
Why print so much money?
Nevermind that your $100 saved (at only 4.5% inflation) will shrink to only $82 in 5 years and only $45 in 15 years. Not good for retirement savings and those on a fixed income.
The National Debt is $8.4 trillion. Social Security debt is $12.8 trillion. PBGC is $450 billion in the hole. Medicare has hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities for next year. That's over $22 trillion of federal debt (11 times total annual federal tax revenues). The nation-wide personal debt is about $20 trillion. Combined, nationwide debt is about $42 trillion. That is 21 times total annual federal tax revenues. That is 3.4 times GDP. That is $140K of debt per person (every man, woman, and child). That number will climb drastically, but largely due to the ever present, destabilizing inflation caused by our dishonest fiat funny-money monetary system.
Posted by: d.a.n | August 14, 2006 8:38 AM
Dan, Good points. I would add that inflation is injurious to our children. Because when we print money due to debt and deficits, it decreases the buying power of future dollars which our children will earn when they become adults. It means they will have less purchasing power for their hard earned dollars than we do today.
This threat upon our children's future in America through the transfer of national debt to their shoulders so we can spend with abandon today, MUST END. We must reach out to parents across this land to explain this to them. Understanding what our present government is doing to our children's future, I can't think of single working parent Democrat, Republican, third party or Independent, who would not see the wisdom of voting out incumbents as a means of restoring responsibility toward our children's future work lives.
Posted by: David R. Remer | August 18, 2006 7:20 PM