US Budget Compared To Your House Budget

If you haven’t seen this before, it breaks it down to easy-to-understand numbers.

This will get your head wrapped around our problems.........why do we think these people have any mind at all? Take a moment and read this all the way thru…..

US Debt Status

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's YOUR Household Budget:

• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Current outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385

Then check these statistics:

(This list represents the percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is -- a real life business, not a government job. Here are the percentages...)

T. Roosevelt...........38%
Taft.........................40%
Wilson ....................52%
Harding...................49%
Coolidge...................48%
Hoover ....................42%
F. Roosevelt.............50%
Truman....................50%
Eisenhower..............57%
Kennedy..................30%
Johnson....................47%
Nixon........................53%
Ford..........................42%
Carter.......................32%
Reagan......................56%
GH Bush....................51%
Clinton ......................39%
G.W. Bush.................55%

And the winner is:

Obama.......................... 8%*

*This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what's best for GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, and for you and me?!

Do you think you’ll EVER see these facts in the mainstream media?

"One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." -Plato

Pearl Harbor, WWII, and a Lesson for Today

On this day 70 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress and requested a declaration of war against Japan following the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor the day before. Roosevelt's words carried forth across the nation via radio, and the consequences of the actions America would take would be felt around the world--and across history. The lessons America learned in those fateful days should be remembered even today.

Roosevelt noted that the day of Japan's attack would be "a date which will live in infamy," and he also pledged the following:

I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounding determination of our people -- we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.

At 4:00 p.m. that afternoon, Roosevelt signed the declaration of war, and the rest is history. Through America's incredible sacrifice and determination, the United States and its allies won victory, though it came at an incredible cost.

Just as Roosevelt proclaimed that "hostilities exist" 70 years ago, those words are true today. The United States faces threats at home and abroad--as we were reminded on September 11 and with every man and woman in military who makes the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms. The hostilities we face today are different from those we may face tomorrow, and there is no telling what challenges may lie around the corner. For that reason, our military must stand ready, prepared, and adequately equipped and funded to meet all threats, foreign and domestic.

Unfortunately, the U.S. military's ability to effectively carry out its mission is in jeopardy. Today, there are those who would like America to return to an era of disengagement while also slashing military spending to dangerous levels. Under the Budget Control Act (BCA), the military budget will be cut by almost $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Those cuts come on top of successive rounds of deep cuts in defense dollars and capabilities that Congress and the Obama Administration have already implemented. In a new paper, Heritage’s Mackenzie Eaglen writes that those cuts will undermine U.S. power and influence around the world and reduce the ability of the military to meet future threats:

The military is a vital tool of U.S. foreign policy. Slashing defense spending without any reduction in U.S. foreign policy commitments around the world is not only dangerous, but also more costly in the long run than maintaining stable defense budgets. A review of roles and missions will not change U.S. foreign policy; only the President can do that. Starving the military as part of a deficit reduction plan may cost taxpayers more in the future if it makes the country less safe and increases the risk of another terrorist attack or the likelihood of U.S. forces being drawn into yet another overseas mission.

The only responsible way to fund defense is to identify the nation’s vital national interests, ask what is required to defend the nation and those interests, determine what military capabilities are required to do so, and then build a defense budget to match the foreign and defense policies of the United States.

Eaglen recommends that Congress tackle debt reduction responsibly with American security interests in mind. That means stopping the current rounds of defense cuts, budgeting responsibly for America’s foreign policy needs and objectives, and repealing the debt ceiling deal "trigger." Other actions she recommends include stabilizing the military’s modernization accounts, aggressively promoting foreign military sales and increasing cutting-edge defense exports to friends and allies, and forcing the Department of Defense to innovate even as budgets fall.

Some would have Americans believe that defense budget cuts required under the BCA would reduce only the rate of increase in the overall defense budget. While precise defense budget projections under the BCA are not possible, it is a certainty that the overall defense budget will decline under its terms. And those are reductions the military can ill afford. Since President Obama took office, more than 50 major weapons programs at a value of more than $300 billion were cut or delayed. On top of this, the Administration told the military to cut almost $600 billion more over the next 15 years. That was even before the BCA took effect.

This is no way to fund a military or to fulfill the Constitution's prescription that the primary role of the federal government is "to provide for the common defence." That duty is just as important now as it was 70 years ago when America faced one of its greatest challenges. Just as they did then, Congress and the President should ensure that the federal government carries out its responsibilities today and fully funds our military.

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Originially published on December 8, 2011, by Heritage Foundation Morning Bell at morningbell@heritage.org

Pearl Harbor and Ned DiMartino

Ned DiMartino enlisted in the Navy early in 1941. On December 7, 1941, he was aboard the USS Maryland. It was a day he never forgot. This is his story. This is the way he remembered it.

We were all lined up on what they called Battleship Row. They had big cement pillars that went into the bottom of the harbor, called foxes, that we tied up to. The Colorado was ahead of us, and the Oklahoma was tied right beside us. The West Virginia was behind us, and then was the Arizona. We were lined up in that manner. That was battleship row. There were only battleships there, all the battleships of the Seventh Fleet. There were other ships in the harbor. Other ships at the submarine base, and Ford Island. All of us were getting ready for the holidays.

It was Sunday, December seventh, and I decided to go over to the Oklahoma. They had a Catholic priest over there. I’m Catholic and so I thought, I’ll go to mass over there. The Oklahoma and the Maryland we were tied side by side. The Oklahoma was on the outside of us. We were against the fox. They had a plank, like kind of a bridge, between the ships, so we could go over and board the Oklahoma.

It was about 7:45 when I started over the plank to go to church. The plank was on the aft deck, it’s called the quarter deck, or the half deck. The rear mast is there, the rear stack. I got to the plank and was just starting over, when I saw these planes lined up, coming in. I thought, what are they doing this early in the morning? We never had this kind of action in the morning, and we didn’t have any carriers in the area. I knew that. And they weren’t off the airfield at Schofield Barracks, you know, Schofield Field. All the aircraft there were on the ground. I couldn’t figure out who the heck they were. Then I see this big red deal on the wing. I was just 18 years old, had never been away from home before, and didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know anything. A green horn. Green as can be. I said, what the heck’s going on?

I started to get on the plank, and all of a sudden I saw it. Four planes coming in and four fish dropped. At that time, I didn’t know they were torpedoes, but that’s what they were. I could see them in the water coming right at us. And I’m standing there on that plank trying to figure out what’s going on. The next thing I remember was that they hit the side of the Oklahoma. By God, she saved us. We would have been the ones that got it if the Oklahoma hadn’t have been there.

In a matter of minutes, the Oklahoma bellied up. Just bellied up. I just stepped back on the deck of the Maryland. And I just stood there and watched it. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I stood there and watched it. Everybody was hollering and screaming. You could see guys jumping off the Oklahoma when she went down.

I looked up again and saw some more planes coming in. This time, there was a Marine behind the stack. I don’t know where he came from, or what he was doing there. He grabbed me by the seat of my pants and pulled me back behind the stack, when bup bup bup, right along the deck where I was, came these bullets. I wouldn’t even be here today if it hadn’t been for him. And I didn’t know the man. We got out of there fast. There were bullet holes in the stack and everything else. I wasn’t scared actually.

My gun station was up forward, in front of the pilot house. You might not believe it, but all we had were .50-caliber machine guns. Instead of going to my gun station, some of us went up the main mast on the back, on the half deck. There was a Marine up there with a machine gun and a couple of guys with rifles. With rifles. And I’ll tell you it was a party. They had the machine gun shooting. I was loading for that machine gunner, putting shells in for him, you know, holding the band for him. He got tore up. He got hit. I don’t know how I got by. There was blood all over me. Shit, I was drenched in it. I thought I was hit too. I didn’t know. I always heard you never feel it. I thought, hell, I’d had it too, but I kept feeling around and I was okay. But, that guy was gone. Hell, they just ripped him wide open. Hit one of the Marines, and there was an officer also. They killed him.

Somebody told us to get down off of there and get to our battle stations. We climbed down on the deck and went up to the pilot house. We went up the ladder there, me and another sailor, I forget who it was, and a big piece of shrapnel went between us, and it hit the side. It put a big hole right in the side of the ship.

We finally got to our station, and when we started shooting, half the damn shells wouldn’t go off. To this day somebody else claims that they knocked the first Jap plane down, but I think we were the ones that did it. The gunner that was on that 50-caliber, I was loading for him, was shooting, and he hit this plane, I know he hit it. It went down on and crashed on a tin can that was in dry dock, and blew it all to heck.

By now, the harbor was an inferno. An absolute inferno. It was blacker than night. The oil smoke, the debris, the hollering, the screaming, I mean it was horrible. It seemed like it lasted for hours, but it wasn’t long. It wasn’t long at all. It was like a tornado going through and that was about it.

We had some of our planes up. They had observation planes on the battlewagons, but they’re not armed. Every little noise that was heard, those guys on the guns would shoot. Oh, God. This poor guy up there, the pilot of one of our planes, was screaming, “For Christ sake, you damn fools, it’s me.” He told them it was our plane, it was our plane. He was coming in to land at Schofield Field. When he finally got landed, he came back aboard ship and he said, “Man, you guys are all crazy.”

Well, we weren’t crazy. We were just jumpy. We didn’t know what the Japs were up to. Nobody ever said, that was a Jap plane, or that was an American plane. We didn’t know anything. We shot down many of our own planes.
The funniest thing that happened for the whole thing, was that we had ammunition that was absolutely no good.

The powder magazines were all locked and nobody had the keys to them. We tried to get the locks off. We got axes, anything we could get, and busted the locks off. When we got them off, we got shells for the anti-aircraft guns, but when we put them in the guns, they wouldn’t even go off. We had to eject them, throw them in the damn bay, put another one in, and hope it would go off. Maybe one out of three would go off. Our ammunition was obsolete. It was old, deteriorated. As far as I’m concerned, we didn’t have anything to protect ourselves with. I don’t give a damn what anybody says, we just didn’t have anything to really fight with.

Most of the officers, I can’t say all of them, were off the ships. All they had on the California was one of the quartermasters. He ran that son-of-a-gun out of the harbor. At least, he tried to get out, but they nailed him. He had to back the California up on a rice paddy to keep it from sinking in the middle of the harbor. If he hadn’t, it would have blocked the harbor. Man, those screws were whipping up that harbor. It was something else.

It was just very, very bad. The worst thing was when the fires started clearing. When the smoke started to clear, we went out in the harbor with motor launches, whale boats, it didn’t matter what kind of boat it was. They had cleats, like what they call street car catchers, on the front of them, picking up bodies. Sometimes, a head, sometimes an arm. It was very gruesome I’ll tell you. Very gruesome. Over two thousand people were killed that morning.

When the smoke cleared, you couldn’t have seen a more pitiful, or a more disastrous thing, in your life, as the scene that was there. People can’t even imagine what the heck it was like. You would have had to be there. It’s hard to tell you, really, exactly how bad it was.

Ned DiMartino took part in the battles for Iwo Jima and Tawawa while on the USS Maryland. He also served on the aircraft carrier Lexington. He retired from the service after 20 years honorable service.

Agenda 21 and the Threat in Your Backyard

Ready to trade in your car for a bike, or maybe a subway instead? Interested in fewer choices for your home, paying more for housing, and being crammed into a denser neighborhood? You can have all this and more if radical environmentalists and "smart growth" advocates have their way and local, state, and the federal government impose the policies set forth in the United Nations' Agenda 21.

You might have heard of this nefarious-sounding policy in a recent Republican presidential debate, but even if you haven't, here's some background information: Agenda 21 is a voluntary plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. It calls on governments to intervene and regulate nearly every potential impact that human activity could have on the environment. The end goal? Getting governments to "rethink economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources and pollution of the planet."

As adopted, Agenda 21 was described as "a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment." That includes hundreds of specific goals and strategies that national and local governments are encouraged to adopt. And that translates into restrictive zoning policies that are aimed at deterring suburban growth. Ultimately, they suppress housing supply and drive up home prices, in turn imposing unnecessary costs, especially on middle- and lower-income households. These policies contributed to and aggravate the real estate bubble by putting inflationary pressures on housing prices.

But here's the catch: Nothing about Agenda 21 is binding, and it's not a threat in and of itself. Instead, the threat Americans need to be concerned about is the one that lies in their own backyard. In a new paper, "Focus on Agenda 21 Should Not Divert Attention from Homegrown Anti-Growth Policies," Wendell Cox, Ronald Utt, Brett Schaefer explain:

Opponents of Agenda 21 should not be distracted from the more tangible manifestation of the smart-growth principles outlined in that document. If they focus excessively on Agenda 21, it is much more likely that homegrown smart-growth policies that date to the early 1970s and undermine the quality of life, personal choice, and property rights in American communities will be implemented by local, state, and federal authorities at the behest of environmental groups and other vested interests.

In the United States, smart-growth policies started in California and Oregon but then spread around the country to "deter suburban growth for all but the well-to-do," as Cox, Utt, and Schaefer explain. They also write that those policies were not without detrimental impact:

As they became more prevalent and restrictive, their impact on housing prices and construction likewise expanded. An explosion of exclusionary zoning throughout the U.S. encouraged many communities to adopt zoning policies to ensure that they maintained a certain demographic 'profile.' Such zoning limited real estate development to higher-cost homes in order to 'price out' moderate-income households, which included a disproportionate share of minorities.

Where do these home-grown smart-growth policies stand today? The Obama Administration has embraced them while also increasing environmental regulations and restrictions on the use of natural resources. But the White House isn't the only one behind the smart-growth movement. Local and state officials, along with interest groups, are promoting the policies at all levels of government.

And that's where smart growth must also be thwarted. It's not just a matter of standing against the implementation of Agenda 21 at the national level; it's also about protecting our own backyards against the home-grown threat.

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(Originally published December 5, 2011 by morningbell@heritage.org)