Buyer Beware: Snake Oil sales pitches flying fast and furious in DC, Raleigh | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton knows well the nature of the beast in our political centers in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    The ruling class and their media lapdogs are pulling out all stops to whip up a state of frenzy over this impending fiscal cliff. We are here thanks to: (1) a political class that has ignored the specifics of The Constitution for far too long, and (2) voters who have allowed and continue to allow that same political class to disrespect The Constitution and buy their votes with their own money.

    The Founding Fathers were pretty specific in how they expected the government to operate. The House and the Senate write, debate and pass legislation that is forwarded to the president for approval. Instead, we now have John Boehner and President Barry holding private meetings, and Boehner limping back to Capitol Hill, tail tucked and licking his wounds, telling his colleagues what Barry -- and his little old friend Dingy Harry -- will and will not accept. We have 535 voting members of Congress. Why is the nation's economic policy being hashed out by THREE PEOPLE?

    The Supreme Court's job was meant to be one of verifying that the other two branches adhere to the details spelled out in The Constitution. Yet, we have a Supreme Court in 1973 fabricating a right to abortion from The Constitution's' Fourth Amendment protections against police kicking in the front doors of private homes for little or no reason. The Founders were looking to avoid a repeat of the terror occupying British soldiers inflicted on terrified American civilians -- not to codify perpetual subsidies to Planned Parenthood.

    Economist Tom Woods has an excellent take on how fraudulent the hype over the fiscal cliff truly is. The total amount of spending cuts that will occur -- if we go over this cliff -- is roughly about the same as the amount of money The Pentagon cannot account for during its recent adventures in Iraq.

    We're going to be subjected to bi-partisan scare tactics telling us that something has just got to be done. Taxes *HAVE* to go up on someone. (B-FREAKIN-S.)

    These people we elected need to start acting like grownups and do the job we sent them to do. Follow the procedures laid out in our Constitution. Everyone puts forth ideas. They get debated in each chamber. Each chamber passes something. Differences are ironed out in conferences between members of each congressional chamber. The final product goes to the president for his signature. What's so hard about that?

    It's not hard. It's inconvenient for a political class that enjoys the perks of office a wee bit too much. They view their voters with contempt -- that they are idiots who should be seen and not heard from (except on election day). These folks LIKE cutting deals in smoke-filled backrooms and -- maybe -- telling us about it once all is said and done.

    We need to end baseline budgeting -- the practice of assuming an eight percent growth in all lines each year. If you only increase a budget line item by five percent -- instead of eight percent -- the political class can claim A CUT has occurred. Only in government can spending more money THIS YEAR than you did LAST YEAR be called a cut. We actually need to PASS and ABIDE BY a budget constructed like those which govern our businesses and households. For the last five years, this whole crew in DC has been derelict in their constitutionally-mandated duty.

    We're getting some of this same garbage out of the "conservative revolution" in Raleigh. We're told that THE BEST WAY to pay off our $3 BILLION and climbing unemployment insurance debt to the federal government is to increase the unemployment tax on everyone for 2013 and beyond. Was this debated and voted on according to the legislative process? NO. This got decided in backroom discussions by power-brokers, who then came out and told the rest of us what would be best for us. This practice was put into motion by folks like Liston Ramsey and Marc Basnight and Jim Black, and is merely being fine-tuned by "revolutionaries" Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.

    Let's face it. We need to allow this "fiscal cliff" to happen. We need to hold our leaders' feet to the fire to get our fiscal house in order with REAL SPENDING CUTS and NO TAX INCREASES. They need to follow the process laid out in our founding documents. If they continue to ignore our documents and the will of the people, they need to be ridden out of town on a sharp rail. All of them.

    We are being lulled to sleep by charlatans in both parties who want to consolidate power among a few individuals and keep the people in the dark. These charlatans are doing a great job of painting people who demand they follow The Constitution as radicals.

    We've seen this kind of arrogance on high before. We saw it in France with Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. We saw it in the 1770s in this country with the actions of The British Parliament and American Tory loyalists. We saw it in the 1860s prior to that little dust-up at Fort Sumter. We all know how those stories played out.