E-Newsletter No. 69                     September 2019     

Is that a good question, or what?  As we all recall, that was one of the main campaign themes for Barack Obama.  But why would we want to change the nature of our country?  In our July newsletter, we talked about three shared values that We-the-People hold dear, and which have served to make America great.  So, why does the radical Left despise each of these values? 

As we have noted, “identity politics” is the exact opposite of E Pluribus Unum.  America is the most inclusive, least racist multi-cultural society in the world.  That is the reason why so many millions of people around the world want to immigrate to our country.  The main thing conservatives want to see happen is to have each immigrant assimilate, embrace our shared values, embrace the principles in our Constitution, and learn to speak English, so that they can become a full member of our One society.  Multi-culturalism and diversity are good things, but only if they are secondary to E Pluribus Unum.  Unfortunately, if you do not agree with the radical Left’s agenda, you run the risk of being labeled a racist, a person of “privilege”, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, and / or a religious bigot (as per whatever their perceived “injustice” might be).  

Liberty is an American value as well as a French value.  However, the essence of this shared value means something entirely different in America.  The focus of the American value is on the Liberty of the individual.  The radical Left (and the French) want the equality of outcomes.  It should be readily apparent that you cannot achieve equality of outcomes without infringing upon the rights of the individual.  Many (hopefully most) Americans don’t want to be French.

Why does the radical Left want to eliminate the reference to God in our Pledge of Allegiance?  There is a quote from Karl Marx, who said “Religion is the opium of the people.”  Religion and our trust in God prevents the Left from elevating trust in government above our trust in God.  Big and Bigger Government has become the true religion of “progressives” and the American Left.

So, why DOES the Left want to transform America?  The common thread seems to be the Left’s desire for power and control.  As Dennis Prager mentioned in his video about the Seven Inevitable Results of Big Government, “The Left believes the State should be the most powerful force in society.  There should be no power that competes with government – – not parents, not businesses, not private schools, not religious institutions, not even the individual human conscience.”  Of course, the Left’s world view is exactly opposite from the founding principle that our federal government is subservient to We-the-People.  The government works for us, not the other way around.

The progressive movement is based on the belief that the political elites in Washington DC (along with their experts and “expertise”) can solve each individual’s problem, whatever it may be.  And if the radical Left is able to achieve their dream of One World Order, they would then be in a position to have power over the lives of everyone.  So of course, they want Open Borders, and want to eliminate the idea of sovereign nation-states.

As we all know, this was also the goal of global communism.  Fortunately, history intervened (along with individuals’ desire for personal liberty) and that terrifying goal was never achieved.  Having said that, this doesn’t mean the progressive movement’s desire for power and control has diminished in the least.   

US Debt Clock – – August 1st – $68,250 per citizen / September 1st – $68,426

E-Newsletter No. 68                     August 2019     

The Democrat Party’s “identity politics” agenda is the exact opposite of one of our country’s founding principles – E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One).  Unfortunately, this focus on various sub-segments of our citizens and on “victims” also seems to be contributing to the drop in their feelings about our country.  Is America perfect?  No.  Does America have a spotless history?  No.  Is America an exceptional country?  Absolutely yes.  That is the reason why so many millions of people around the world want to immigrate to our country (legally or otherwise).  No other country can make such a claim.

Recently, Gallup released the results of their latest Gallup Poll Social Series interviews.  Seventy-four percent of Republicans say they are “extremely proud” of our country.  This result has remained relatively consistent going back to 2013 and is on a slight upward trend over the past couple of years.  This is probably due to conservatives’ belief in our country’s shared values of Liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust (which are engraved on every coin).  This year’s result could also be partly due to our strong economy and low unemployment rate.

However, the Democrats’ results continue to slide.  There was a 12-point drop over the last three years of the Obama administration and an additional 12-point drop the past two years.  The Democrats’ response to the question now stands at a new all-time low of thirty-two percent.  There is now a 42-point gap between Republicans and Democrats.  Could this drop in the Democrats’ feelings be caused by the radical Left’s growing antipathy towards our country’s founding principles?

Conservatives’ pride in our country is one thing.  Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said about our citizens’ attitude towards our federal government.  This month we have added a new Conversation Piece to our website entitled Our Federal Government is Broke and Broken –

http://www.f2ppr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Broke-and-Broken.pdf

Our Editorial Board continues to believe that the best solution to deal with our dysfunctional federal government is to call a Convention of States, to propose amendments to the US Constitution to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for member of Congress.

US Debt Clock – – July 1st – $68,112 per citizen / August 1st – $68,250

E-Newsletter No. 67                    July 2019     

Just a short newsletter this month, because we’re going to let Dennis Prager and Dan Crenshaw share their thoughts about our country’s heritage and the shared values that have made America great.  In our May newsletter, we mentioned that we have added a new page on our Foundation’s website entitled “Videos”.  If you haven’t had a chance yet, you should check out these two videos (along with the other videos on our website). 

Dennis Prager discusses the American Trinity, which are the three mottos (our shared values) engraved on every coin – E Pluribus Unum, Liberty, and In God We Trust.

https://www.prageru.com/video/the-american-trinity-the-three-values-that-make-america-great/

Most Americans don’t care about a person’s national or ethnic origins.  However, it should be noted that the radical Left’s “identity politics” agenda is the exact opposite of E Pluribus Unum.

America gives Liberty to people, so they can end up wherever their abilities, work ethic, and luck take them.  Our shared value is that each individual is equal under the law.  Dennis makes some interesting observations about France, and he notes that even though each person is born equal, with Liberty, there will not be equality of outcomes.

Rights come from God, not from men.  If rights are given by men, men can take them away.

Dan Crenshaw’s video expands upon this discussion about American values.

Our Editorial Board is very appreciative of Dan’s comments about personal responsibility – “That is why personal responsibility is so important.  Because that leads to Liberty.  These things are connected.  You can’t escape them.  And that’s what America is about.”

Happy 243^rd Birthday, America. 

Our Editorial Board hopes that you and your family have a great 4^th of July.

US Debt Clock – – June 1st – $67,897 per citizen / July 1st – $68,112

E-Newsletter No. 66                    June 2019     

When you were growing up, how often were you told that “Driving is a privilege, not a right.”  Well, there is some basis to that statement.  If you screw up enough times (by speeding, or driving under the influence, etc.) the government can take away that privilege.

So, there is a distinction between privileges and rights.  There are also differences between “government-granted” rights and an individual’s unalienable rights that we discussed last month.  Through the legislative process, governments can grant (and can take away) certain rights.  Many of the instances where rights are being taken away are situations where an individual’s personal property rights (and liberty) are being diminished, oftentimes under the theory of being “for the greater good”.  Many people hold the view that government taxation is an attack on personal property rights.  (In fact, it was one of the main reasons for the Revolutionary War.  But we digress).

During the 2016 presidential election and during the 2018 midterm elections we began to hear a constant refrain from the Left that “healthcare is a right”.  Before we go any further, let’s ask a few fundamental questions – – Is food a right?  Is shelter a right?  Is transportation a right?  Is a job a right?  Is a guaranteed universal basic income a right?   Our Editorial Board has come to the conclusion that many individuals on the Left have lost the ability to distinguish between a personal responsibility and a right. 

Here is another way to address this question.  If someone wants a “right”, but it requires that someone else must be forced to fulfill that right, do you really have a legitimate right?  If healthcare is a right, can the benefit of that “right” be received without coercing someone else to provide that right?  This is a slippery socialist slope, and so we need to step back and have a conversation.  Unfortunately, the Left wants to finish the government’s takeover of the healthcare industry – it started with Medicare and Medicaid, and then Obamacare, and now the new proposed “Medicare-for-All” solution.  But doesn’t that Socialist line of thinking then also apply to food, shelter, transportation, jobs, universal basic income, social security benefits, government provided disability benefits, and / or a whole host of other yet-to-be listed “government-granted” rights?  Isn’t it time to halt the spread of socialism (which knows no boundaries) and re-educate our country’s citizens on the difference between personal responsibilities and “rights”?

Alexander Fraser Tytler (a Scottish history professor from the 1700s) once observed “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy.”  Isn’t $22 trillion enough already?      

We began last month’s newsletter with the question “Should convicted felons who are currently incarcerated be allowed to vote?”  Voting in an election is a right that can be granted by a governing body.  In fact, the rules associated with the right to vote are generally specified by the applicable governing body, whether it be a civil society group, a committee, a legislative body, a local municipality, a state, or the federal government.  As we all know, former slaves were granted the right to vote via the 15th Amendment, women were granted the right to vote via the 19th Amendment, and eighteen-year-olds were granted the right to vote via the 26th Amendment.  So, as you can see, these “government-granted” voting rights can be modified by the applicable governing body, and the question about incarcerated felons is a question that must be answered by We-the-People and the representatives that we elect. 

Our Editorial Board is opposed to any form of voter suppression.  However, we also feel that there needs to be adequate safeguards to protect the integrity of the voting process.  Therefore, we support voter ID laws.  If you need a photo ID to get on an airplane or to drive a car, it is not unreasonable to require a photo ID when you vote.  We also believe that voting is a right AND a privilege.  We believe in personal responsibility, along with a person being held accountable and being subject to the consequences of their actions.  We also believe in personal redemption and second chances (once a convicted felon has served their time).  And we believe that the current debate about whether convicted, incarcerated felons should be allowed to vote is absurd.  That line of thinking can only come from a world view that says you do not have to take any personal responsibility for your actions, and there shouldn’t be any consequences for your criminal act(s).

US Debt Clock – – May 1st – $67,672 per citizen / June 1st – $67,897

E-Newsletter No. 65                     May 2019  

Should convicted felons who are currently incarcerated be allowed to vote?  Before we get into a discussion that will help us arrive at an answer to that question (which is currently being debated by a number of candidates running to be the Democrat party nominee for President) we probably need to back up a few steps and have a discussion about the nature of rights in general.

Let’s start with the Bill of Rights, and specifically the first nine amendments.  (We will have a separate e-newsletter in the future about the tenth amendment).  But before we even get to the Bill of Rights, we need to back up even further to The Declaration of Independence. 

The second paragraph of the Declaration begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  So, let’s start with a discussion about unalienable rights.  Simply put, each individual person is born with these rights, and you do not need to look to the government or to any other individual as being the source of those rights.  These personal rights include the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble to address grievances (1^st Amendment) and the right to protect yourself and your family members (2^nd Amendment). 

The next six amendments are basically unalienable rights that deal with protecting the individual from the government (or a mob).  These include the right to not be forced to house members of the military (3^rd Amendment), to protect yourself against illegal searches and seizures (4^th Amendment), to not force yourself to be a witness against yourself or be deprived of your private property without just compensation (5^th Amendment). 

In regards to all criminal prosecutions, you have a right to a speedy and public trial and to be able to confront any witnesses against you (6^th Amendment), in suits at common law, you have the right to a trial by jury (7^th Amendment), and you have protections against excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments (8^th Amendment).  It should be noted that under the 6^th and 7^th Amendments, there is a presumption of innocence, rather than a presumption of guilt.

When the Bill of Rights was being debated, it was recognized that Amendments 1 through 8 are  unalienable rights of each individual, but each of these rights needed to be specifically added to the Constitution and guaranteed by the government.  However, as we all know, ever since these amendments in the Bill of Rights were approved in 1791, each and every one of these rights has come under attack by forces who want to diminish liberty and increase the power of the government.

The 9^th Amendment simply states that we are not capable of being able to list every unalienable right that has been endowed by our Creator.  Therefore, the 9^th Amendment states that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” (on behalf of each individual).

The other key passage in the second paragraph of The Declaration of Independence states “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  Unfortunately, this last phrase, along with the subsequent perversions of both the General Welfare clause and the Commerce clause, are the primary reasons why we have an out-of-control, intrusive, coercive federal government.  This phrase about “the consent of the governed” has become the primary gateway exploited by the progressive movement to alter the original intent of the Constitution.  We will have more discussion about that problem next month.  

In the meantime, please note that we have added a new page to the Foundation’s website entitled “Videos”.  If you have a moment, feel free to check it out      www.f2ppr.org/videos/ .

US Debt Clock – – April 1st – $67,462 per citizen / May 1st – $67,672

E-Newsletter No. 64  ______  April 2019  

If you weren’t looking for it last month, you might have missed the fact that the federal government’s “debt limit” was reinstated at an amount somewhat in excess of $22.0 trillion.  The main stream media seems to have overlooked any substantive reporting about this event, primarily because few in Washington DC seem to care about our government’s growing debt problem.

The federal government’s debt ceiling was enacted in 1917 via the Second Liberty Bond Act.  Since it was first established, the federal government has increased the debt ceiling roughly 100 times, and lawmakers have suspended the debt limit six times since February 2013.  The most recent suspension began on February 9, 2018, with the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.  With the passage of this piece of legislation, Congress “bi-partisan-ly” overrode the (ineffective) budget caps that had been established in the 2011 Budget Control Act. 

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 was a deal between the Republicans and the Democrats to suspend the debt ceiling until March 1, 2019.  It also allowed them to bust the budget caps, so that both parties could approve more spending for both “guns and butter”.  It’s interesting to note that the US Constitution only talks about federal government spending for guns, and it makes no mention of spending for butter.  It’s also interesting to note that Thomas Paine (in his pamphlet entitled Common Sense) discussed the differences between a government (which is established to protect us from evil) and the role of civil society.  

The Treasury Department is now using “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on the government’s obligations.  The government is anticipating that April tax receipts will help defer the day when the government runs out of wiggle room.  The extraordinary measures include halting contributions to certain government pensions funds, suspending certain payments to state and local governments, and borrowing from money set aside to manage exchange rate fluctuations.  The best estimate is that these extraordinary measures will run out sometime during September or October.   So of course, there is no sense of urgency to deal with the growing debt problem, because, hey, we have another five or six months.

The biggest problem is that spending caps and sequesters and the upcoming budget fights will deal with just 30% of the federal government’s annual spending.  But the annual deficit is primarily driven by the other 70% – – “mandatory” spending for “entitlement” programs and interest on the debt.

Based on all of the above, it is easy to conclude that the federal government does not (in any practical sense) have a debt limit, and the reinstated “debt limit ceiling” is a farce.  It has been said that government debt is simply deferred / future taxation.  The $22.0 trillion has been “borrowed” (some would say “stolen”) from future generations.  The career politicians in Washington DC, who supposedly control the federal government’s purse strings, have a long history of buying votes with other people’s money.  Is that “fair” to future generations?  We think not.  The federal government’s growing debt problem can only begin to get fixed if We-the-People call a Convention of States to consider amendments to the US Constitution to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its size and jurisdiction, and impose Term Limits on the members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

US Debt Clock – – March 1st – $67,141 per citizen / April 1st – $67,462

E-Newsletter No. 63  ____  March 2019  

February was a busy month.  President Trump delivered his State of the Union address.  Congress then “successfully avoided” another partial government shutdown by passing yet another “omnibus” spending bill (more on that later).  And then President Trump was forced to declare a state of emergency to deal with the long-festering emergency on our southern border with Mexico.

Let’s start with the State of the Union address.  Here are some key excerpts –  

… large, organized caravans are on the march to the United States…  This is a moral issue.  The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all Americans.  We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens…  In the last two years, our brave ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of criminal aliens, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 killings…

My Administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran…    We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people…

We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom…  Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.

Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, Congress played politics with the spending bill (which should have already been in place more than four months earlier) and generated a 1,169-page bill that no one had a chance to read.  The “deal” was struck behind closed doors and violated the House’s own budget rule that requires the text of legislation be available at least 72 hours before a vote is held. 

Kay Coles James (the President of the Heritage Foundation) issued the following statement –

… today’s announcement is an unacceptable resolution to a genuine national crisis…  Congress has responded with apathy, negligence and incompetence…  We’ve watched as vicious and violent cartels have taken advantage of our lax border and trafficked drugs, guns and people into our land…  Congress again failed to live up to its sacred duty to protect the American people…  Frustrated with Washington, President Trump believes he has no choice but to take this action today… 

Obviously, different people will have different definitions of what is “immoral” and what constitutes an emergency.  We recently read an Op Ed piece that stated illegal border crossings decreased to about 400,000 last year (as if that was supposed to be “good” news) but the number increased to 47,000 during the month of January.  As we mentioned in last month’s newsletter, it is estimated that the number of people living in our country illegally is somewhere between 14–22 million, and the estimate of government spending on immigrants range from $113 – $279 billion EACH YEAR.  Our Editorial Board believes that this is a “more-than-adequate” definition of an emergency. 

Our apologies, but here is one more piece of bad news – – the federal government’s debt crossed the $22 trillion threshold during February.

But the one piece of good news from last month is that Mike Braun (the newly elected Senator from Indiana) introduced his proposed legislation entitled “No Budget, No Pay.”  We can hardly wait to see who is going to support, and who is going to oppose, this bill.  Unfortunately, we suspect that there will not be enough support in either party, or in either chamber, for this bill to become law.  But hey, who knows??

US Debt Clock – – February 1st – $66,895 per citizen / March 1st – $67,141

E-Newsletter No. 62 _____ February 2019

First, let’s discuss the facts about the “partial” government shutdown. ‘Unfortunately’ approximately 70% of the federal government’s spending (i.e., “mandatory” spending) was not affected. Therefore, Social Security checks, interest on the $21.97 trillion of debt, etc. were not affected. Prior to the shutdown, five of the twelve appropriation bills for fiscal 2019 had been passed into law – the Department of Defense (good); Energy and Water; the Executive Branch; Military Construction & Veterans Affairs; and Labor / Health / Human Services. Seven of the twelve appropriations had not been passed by the start of the fiscal year (as they were supposed to be, and we are already four months into the new fiscal year) – Agriculture; Financial Services; Interior & Environment; Transportation / Housing / Urban Development; Commerce / Justice / Science; State / Foreign Operations; and Homeland Security.

There has been a lot of press about how the shutdown was affecting the 800,00 federal employees who had been furloughed. Unfortunately, if you work for a truly dysfunctional entity (the federal government) these types of things happen. The “good news” for these federal employees is that we all knew all along that they were going to get their full back pay. So, what was the purpose of this partial government shutdown? Well mostly, this is because that is the law. Other than “mandatory” spending, if funds have not been appropriated, they cannot be spent.

This is what happens when Congress does not do its job on a timely basis. Actually, Congress has not been effectively / timely doing its job for many (20 +) years now. Government shutdowns are basically “Stupid is as Stupid does” simply because Congress has become politicized, and deeply divided and dysfunctional. Fortunately, there have been a number of proposals put forward by a number of people – Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Troy Balderson, Glenn Grothman, Brendan Boyle, and others – to fix this broken process. One of the more interesting proposals is entitled the “No Budget, No Recess Act” by Joni Ernst, James Lankford, and David Perdue, which says that if Congress misses its deadlines of passing a budget by April 15th, and passing all of the necessary appropriations by August 1st, then members of Congress can’t leave Washington DC until they get their job done. Unfortunately, the only thing missing from this proposed legislation is a provision whereby the salaries of members of Congress are suspended effective October 1st, if we enter the new fiscal year without all of the required spending bills in place. (We wonder how this key provision was somehow left out of this proposed legislation).

But an even bigger problem is the radical shift to the Left by the Democratic party. You have probably seen the various videos from several years ago, where Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, etc. all said that we need to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, and that we needed effective border security. In fact, The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed with strong bipartisan support by both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by President George Bush. Unfortunately, Congress never subsequently passed the necessary appropriations to actually create a secure border and stem the flow of illegal immigrants into our country.

Now, evidently, in today’s world, border security has somehow become “immoral”, and our country should move away from the concept of maintaining its status as a sovereign nation. The Left’s agenda now appears to fully embrace the ideologies of “One World Order” and “Open Borders”. As we mentioned in our October 2018 newsletter, you can only imagine the flood of “refugees” that will occur if we have open borders, coupled with a mandatory minimum wage of $15 per hour. BTW – the preceding comment is not “racist” – it is just a (highly likely) prediction.

$5.7 billion dollars is immaterial in comparison to the estimated annual spending by the federal government and the states on illegal aliens. It is estimated that the number of people living in our country illegally is somewhere between 14 – 22 million. The estimates of government spending on immigrants range from $113 – $279 billion EACH YEAR. The estimate for effective border security back in 2006 was roughly $50 billion. Maybe that is the amount that should be back on the table for discussion purposes thirteen years later.

So, Congress has now punted these problems down the road to February 15th. Let’s see if Congress can come up with a solution to secure our southern border and keep the government open. Otherwise, we may need to go through the farce of yet another partial shutdown.

US Debt Clock – – January 1st – $66,739 per citizen / February 1st – $66,895

E-Newsletter No. 61 ____ January 2019

As of January 3, 2019, we now have a “divided” federal government, with the Democrats becoming the majority party in the US House of Representatives. But our Editorial Board is more concerned about a bigger issue – – the widening division among our country’s citizens between the Left and the Right, because the Democratic party has shifted radically to the Left. A number of pundits now say that our country has not been this divided since the mid-1800s prior to the Civil War. On the Left, you not only have the hard-core “resisters” who do not accept the results of the 2016 election, along with the people who act in an uncivil manner, but you also have a growing number of people who have begun to reject many of our country’s Founding principles (self-reliance, personal responsibility, limited government, Common Sense, etc.).

Our Editorial Board believes that we now stand at a definitive fork in the road. We can either choose to continue to go down the Socialists’ path of an ever-expanding, more-intrusive, coercive (mandating) federal government, or we can choose to go down the “Right” fork and figure out a way to restore and maintain a Free Market economy and minimize the amount of dollars flowing into the federal government swamp. Those funds would be much more effective if they went to Civil Society organizations instead. This change in the use of our citizens’ tax dollars is the primary objective of The 2020 Initiative.

We believe that most of our society’s economic woes can be directly attributed to the Socialists’ agenda and the marketplace distortions those types of policies cause. We find it interesting that the issues that seem to be the most vexing to our country’s citizens are those areas where the ever-expanding federal government has caused the problem and the associated price distortions – housing, education, and healthcare. Our Editorial Board has much more faith in individuals, Civil Society, Not for Profit organizations, private commercial enterprises, and the Free Market.

The 2018 midterm elections for the House of Representatives seemed to turn on the Left’s obsession with the issue of healthcare. Unfortunately, the Left was very effective in disseminating a lie that “The GOP was trying to take away people’s healthcare”. Healthcare is not the same thing as a health insurance policy. Yes, conservatives still want to repeal the Obamacare legislation that has disrupted and distorted the health insurance marketplace. What the Democrats failed to mention is that the GOP’s proposal to replace Obamacare included provisions to assist citizens who have a pre-existing condition or other affordability issues.

It is true that conservatives have a different view on the role of government versus the marketplace. Conservatives have more confidence in the Free Market (non-distorted) as being a better solution to health insurance issues. Our Editorial Board abhors the idea of the federal government’s involvement (at all) in our country’s healthcare system. We do not believe in a Socialist solution. Contrary to Senator Bernie Sanders, we do not believe that healthcare is a “right” that can be bestowed by the federal government. This line of thinking will continue to push our country down a slippery slope (down a bad fork in the road), because we do not believe that food, or housing, or education, or healthcare, or welfare, or any other “non-Constitutional” use of our citizens’ tax dollars should be used to fund these new, ever-expanding “rights”. These aspects of daily life are Personal Responsibilities, and if any of our country’s citizens need assistance, this assistance should be provided by Civil Society (families, supported by Not for Profit organizations) – – not the federal government.

Obamacare has been an abject failure, and our country should not “double-down” on the next bad (worse) “solution” that is being proposed by the Left – “Medicare for All”. There are much better ways to help address those situations where an individual has a pre-existing condition. Our coercive, bureaucratic federal government is the last entity on earth that should be involved in trying to resolve an individual’s pre-existing condition.

We have posted a new Conversation Piece on our website entitled Healthcare Re-Visited (Again), where we put forward a number of Common Sense solutions to these healthcare issues –

http://www.f2ppr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Healthcare-Revisited-Again.pdf

US Debt Clock – – December 1st – $66,237 per citizen / January 1st – $66,739

E-Newsletter No. 60 ____ December 2018

Our country’s long and painful political season is now behind us. Reading the various opinion pieces that have been written since the election, the general consensus seems to be that the end results were “mixed”. The number of Republicans in the US Senate increased to 53, and for the US House of Representatives, there was a “blue ripple”, with the Democratic party taking control of the House next month. In many ways, this year’s elections were no different than the vast majority of other previous midterm elections, where the party of the most recently elected president typically loses seats in both the Senate and the House. It was somewhat unusual for the GOP to have a net gain of two seats in the Senate.

Our Editorial Board members have read a number of opinion pieces that seem to indicate our country’s citizens might very well be most comfortable with a divided government. Maybe this is simply one of those other checks and balances that are built into the structure of our federal government. Maybe our country’s citizens won’t be getting the benefit of an additional tax cut, but this might be OK as the annual deficit continues to creep back up towards the $1 trillion range.

And maybe our country’s citizens won’t be coerced into paying for the Socialists’ agenda that calls for a massive new single-payer healthcare program (“Medicare for All”), or a guaranteed minimum income (whether you work for that income or not), or for “free” college, etc. In many ways, stopping the advance of Socialism would be a good outcome, because more “entitlements” simply lead to more spending and an increase in the level of dependency on the government.

As we mentioned in our September and October newsletters, Socialism doesn’t work – – it never has, and it never will. If the Democratic party’s “success” in the midterm elections can be attributed to one primary issue, it was healthcare and how to address the issue of pre-existing conditions. As we have discussed elsewhere on our website, there are other ways to address health insurance issues via the Free Market and Civil Society, without the involvement of the federal government. “Medicare for All” is a horrible “solution”. Obamacare has been an abject failure, and our country should not “double-down” on Obamacare 2.0. We will re-visit health insurance (again) in our next newsletter.

The upcoming 2020 elections will represent yet another opportunity for our country’s citizens to choose between a smaller (limited) government, versus an ever-expanding, more intrusive federal government. Our Editorial Board remains committed to advancing the concept of Personal Responsibility and re-establishing the positive aspects of Civil Society (versus “the government”). And we support the Founders’ vision spelled out in the Tenth Amendment – The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

US Debt Clock – – November 1st – $65,932 per citizen / December 1st – $66,237