Congressman Leonard Lance offers a prebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union Address

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Democratic N.J. congressman unloads on Obama for Castro handshake

Democratic N.J. congressman unloads on Obama for Castro handshake (via NJ.com)

NEWARK — Sometimes a handshake isn’t just a handshake. U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-8th Dist.), who immigrated to the United States from Cuba as a child, today slammed President Obama for shaking hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela…

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Not quite a shutdown

Sandy Hook, the Monmouth County arm of the Gateway National Recreation Area, is closed to the public as a result of the Federal Government shutdown.

But vehicles were driving in and out of the park when I drove by this afternoon.

Ranger Tim Quinn said the Marine Academy of Science and Technology is open as are “the cooperators,” the non-profit organizations that have their offices in the park.  The Coast Guard Station is also open.

Quinn said all others are prohibited from entering the park, by car bicycle or foot. He said several members of the park staff were sent home after working four hours today and referred me to the press office for the answers to any other questions.  I guess the press office is working.

In addition to Quinn, there were five rangers gathered in toll house at the entrance to the park.  Asked if he was getting paid, Quinn laughed and said, “I’m not volunteering for the government.

The Jersey Tomato Press reports that 800,000 “non-essential” government employees are out of work. Passport offices and the Federal Housing Administration are closed.  No mortgages or last minute overseas trips.  No SBA loans or background checks for gun licenses either.  The trash isn’t being picked up in Washington, DC, but lots of garbage is being reported in the media.

While President Obama and Senate Democrats are blaming House Republicans for shutting down the government, the House is taking up measures to fund the National Parks, veterans affairs and Washington, DC government operations.   Senate Democrats, budget chairwoman Barbara Mikuski and Majority Whip Dick Durbin rejected the piecemeal approach to reopening the government, according to Politico.

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Obama tells senators he wants diplomatic solution to Syria

Obama tells senators he wants diplomatic solution to Syria (via AFP)

President Barack Obama urged US senators Tuesday to help him seek a diplomatic response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons but said he wants Congress to maintain the threat of force. The president spent more than two hours on Capitol Hill in closed…

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Obama: Russia plan on Syria arms may be ‘breakthrough’

Obama: Russia plan on Syria arms may be ‘breakthrough’ (via AFP)

President Barack Obama said a Russian plan to head off threatened US strikes on Syria by securing a deal to destroy the regime’s chemical weapons could be a “significant breakthrough.” Obama warned Monday he had not taken military strikes off the table…

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What would Rand Paul say if he knew what Christie knows?

Gov Chris Christie and HUD Sec Shaun Donovan at Bahrs Landing, Highlands, 4/29/13, photo by Art Gallagher

Much is being made in the political media today about the “harsh assessment of libertarianism” and its most popular current spokesman, Senator Rand Paul, that Governor Chris Christie delivered in his remarks during the Aspen Institute forum with fellow Republican governors Bobby Jindal, Mike Pence, and Scott Walker last night.

Politico published an edited clip of Christie’s comment on “esoteric, intellectual” libertarianism that made it sound as if the Aspen forum was the kick-off of the 2016 Republican presidential primary between Paul and Christie:

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Lautenberg returns to Washington to vote for gun control measures. Anti-gun legislation still fails in the Senate

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg returned to the Senate floor in a wheelchair today, after a six week absence due to muscle fatigue caused by cancer treatments, in order to give gun control advocates a the deciding vote in legislation that would expand the use of background checks for gun purchasers.  The legislation failed, 54-46. Sixty votes were required for passage.  Other gun control measures failed in the Senate today by wider margins.

Four Democrats voted against the background check amendment.  Four Republicans voted for it.

President Obama said, “It is a shameful day in Washington,” as family members of children killed in the Newtown, CT massacre stood behind him.

Obama, Senate Democrats, NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, the New York Times, et al, as well as Barbara Buono and Sheila Oliver in Trenton, have been pushing to further restrict the right to bear arms since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown on December 14 of last year.

Today’s legislative failure by Obama and the left is a victory for law abiding gun owners and the 2nd Amendment.

Today could be marked as the beginning of the lame duck phase of Obama’s presidency.

Most Americans don’t care, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday.  Only 4% of Americans think guns are a major problem.  Yet Washington and the national media have been consumed with the issue for the last four months.

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Governor Chris Christie Requests Pre-Landfall Emergency Declaration for New Jersey in Anticipation of Hurricane Sandy

Trenton, NJ – Governor Chris Christie this morning formally requested that President Barack Obama declare a pre-landfall emergency for New Jersey. This declaration would allow the State to request funding and other assistance for actions taken in advance of Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to make landfall in New Jersey late Monday evening.

“We have taken this action to assist communities which have taken extraordinary measures to insure the safety of the public during this very serious and dangerous storm,” said Governor Christie.

“The National Hurricane Center predicts that Hurricane Sandy will move along the New Jersey coast beginning on or about October 28, 2012, bringing the potential for severe weather conditions, including heavy rains, high winds, dangerous storm surges and stream and river flooding that may threaten homes and other structures, and endanger lives in the state,” added Governor Christie.

Hurricane Sandy is expected to bring flooding, high winds and heavy rain across the state over a period of 36 hours starting early Monday morning.

A copy of the Governor’s letter to President Obama is attached to the here.

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Blame Hoover

By Jim Morford, cross posted at InTheLobby

When I was a youngster and things weren’t going well in the economy, the Democrats would always claim, “It’s Hoover’s fault.”  Republicans, on the other hand, blamed Democrats for “getting us into war” citing Wilson, Roosevelt (FDR) and Truman.

Today, things have changed. Democrats blame Bush for both the economy and for getting us into war.

But who really should bear the responsibility, if not the blame, for the problems facing our country today? To be sure, there is enough blame to be shared by both political parties for landing us in the deeply troubled economy that haunts us today. Politicians of all stripes and at all levels of government have, through fiscal irresponsibility, over taxed and over spent the public’s money. Truly, the blame can reach beyond politicians to include skillful labor unions who have negotiated benefits beyond the ability of governments and private sector employers to pay for them. Additionally, an apathetic public – perhaps the greatest cause of all our woes – has allowed corrupt politicians, avaricious businesses and organized labor to loot the public coffers.

Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, our country has been on a Fabian path to statisim. Some are surprised that the Obama Administration has accelerated the pace.

In his most recent book, The Next Decade, geopolitical analyst and founder of Stratfor George Friedman presents a provocative and insightful look into the next decade. It’s a book well worth reading, as he sees a time of massive change and what the US will need to do to survive.

Before we jump headlong into speculation about the next decade, let’s take a look at the recent past to get some idea of whose policies and actions have put us where we find ourselves today.

From 1949 until 1995, the Democratic Party held majority control of the House of Representatives, thereby acting as a restraint on one-party dominance when Republicans sometimes had majorities in the US Senate and/or the White House. The philosophy of bigger and bigger government, embraced to greater and lesser degrees by both political parties, has dominated the country since the 1930s.

It was the relatively short period from 2003 to 2007 that the Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. Even during the “conservative” presidency of Ronald Reagan, at least one house of Congress remained in the control of the Democratic Party and government continued to grow.

The current and dramatic shift in political dominance in Washington did not just take place on January 20, 2009 when President Obama was sworn into office. The shift actually began on January 3, 2007 when the Democrats recaptured control of the US Senate. At that time, the Dow closed at over 12,600; unemployment stood at 4.6% and the economy under George W. Bush set a record of 52 consecutive months of job growth.

It was on January 3, 2007 that Barney Frank (D) became Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd (D) took over the Senate Banking Committee. 15 months later a meltdown occurred in the banking and financial services sector of our economy, notwithstanding President Bush’s urging repeatedly that serious reform was needed.

One of the most important responsibilities that a member of Congress has is to enact an annual budget for the federal government. However, the US Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid (D) has failed to pass a budget since 2009. The House, under Republican control since 2011, has twice passed budgets and sent them to the Senate, which for purely partisan reasons has failed to enact a budget bill. Unfortunately, Majority Leader Reid and his Democratic colleagues believe that partisanship  is their primary responsibility, rather than fiscal stewardship and sound public policy.

The Federal budget cycle is governed mainly by six laws. Probably the most important of them is The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 that governs the basic practices of federal budgeting and spending. Because of partisan irresponsibility in refusing to enact a budget and to avoid government shutdowns, Congress gets along by enacting continuing resolutions. Doing so fails the test of fiscal responsibility. However, public apathy (cited above) allows negligent politicians to get away with it.

President George W. Bush was no fiscal conservative or effective small government advocate. During his eight years in office, he increased the federal budget by 104% and the national debt grew by $3.3 trillion.

The Obama Administration has accelerated the pace of spending and debt to unsustainable levels. Today, the national debt stands at over $15 trillion. The debt is dismissed by some as just money we owe ourselves, but the interest on that debt has to be paid out of tax revenues, or borrowed and added to the debt. That interest so far in 2012 is nearly $4 trillion. There are those politicians who see increasing taxes as the only answer to any problem. Others contend that the problem is not that government has too little in revenue, but that it is spending far too much.

Whether it is the fault of Republicans, Democrats or both, it is a useless exercise to simply blame. Rather, we must reverse course and get our fiscal house in order if we are to survive as a nation that resembles anything we have known up until now.

There are solutions, but no easy solutions. Our apathetic and dependant population “served” by corrupt and power-grasping politicians may result in our becoming more like Greece than the affluent land of opportunity we once were.   

In a 2011 interview conducted by economist Donald Luskin, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan observed that he sees the United States as having crossed the threshold, a point of no return, at which we’ve taken on too great a government debt, and at the same time made too great a commitment to government control of the economy. Luskin wrote, “He told us that we won’t recognize America 20 years from now, and that we won’t like what we see.”

Jim  Morford is former Associate  Director of Government Relations for the NJ Education Association, former VP and chief lobbyist for the NJ Chamber of Commerce, former President of the NJ Food Council and is Executive Director Emeritus of the NJ Society for Environmental, Economic Development (NJ SEED). He is a partner in the Trenton-based consulting firm of Morford-Drulis Associates, LLC. The opinions expressed in this column are his and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any clients or associates. 

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Contraception Debate Is No Fluke

“Contraception is working just fine.  Leave it alone.” ~Mitt Romney answering George Stephanopoulos’s questions regarding States having the right to ban contraception during the New Hampshire GOP presidential debate

President Obama and his allies in the mainstream media completely fabricated the recent contraception controversy in order to distract America from its real problems which are likely to get worse between now and November 6.

Rather than talk about almost 25 million working age Americans without jobs, Obama wants America to be afraid that his Republican challenger would ban birth control if elected.

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, formerly President Bill Clinton’s Communications Director, went to great lengths during the New Hampshire GOP presidential debate to get a sound bite of Mitt Romney saying that States have the right to ban birth control in early January. 

In November of last year, Obama told then Archbishop, now Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the leader of the Catholic Church in the United States, that he “get most of what he wanted” regarding contraception as the White House was hashing out the implentation of ObamaCare.

By early February, Obama changed his mind,betrayed Dolan and shifted the national debate away from the economy and on to issues that were “working just fine” —  birth control and religious freedom — when he announced the ObamaCare regulations that requires all employers, including those affiliated with religious institutions, to provide health care that includes the cost of contraceptives.

Romney avoided the trap in January, but Rick Santorum jumped into it with both feet in February, as did Republicans in the House and Senate.

Rush Limbaugh did the congressional Republicans a favor by drawing attention to himself, and away from the Blunt Amendment which was never going to pass, with his crass remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School student  who is as much a part of this Obama change the subject gambit as Stephanopoulos is.

But Limbaugh did Obama a bigger favor. The President called Fluke yesterday to thank her for speaking out for women’s rights.  Now he’s framing the contraception debate as a women’s right’s issue.

Fluke is not a 23 year old coed who can’t afford birth control as originally reported in the media.  She’s a 30 year old women’s rights activist.  It was no fluke that the Democrats wanted her to testify before congress.  She’s likely to be the President’s 2012 Obama girl.

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