Are you scared yet? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    It's too bad the Washington Monument remains closed following last year's earthquake. That is traditionally the first thing the bureaucrats (read - politicians) threaten to close when they haven't received the total amount of money they have requested in their budgets.

    Of course, perhaps since we have not seen or had the opportunity to discuss a budget from our resident Community Organizer cum Prez. there has been no way to tell if funding requests have been reduced. There haven't been any. (More about that later.) But then here comes sequestration, a concept that originated in the Executive Mansion, perhaps with the Prez and perhaps not. But does it really matter?? If it was allowed out the door of the White House, it belongs to the Administration. In case you were wondering, that is a gentle way of saying that the Prez should quit trying to disown the notion. He should quit trying to lay it on the Reps. He should also quit trying to lay it on the Secret Service. It came out of his White House. It belongs to him. Period.

    That brings us back to the Washington Monument. Without the Washington Monument to close, what's left besides the White House Tours?? Clearly, nothing. Nothing, at least, that would get the public's attention quite as quickly. And, of course, nothing that would serve to let the public know that even a 2.5% (or thereabouts) reduction (in the Prez' increase) is quite unacceptable to the Administration, and, more to the point, to remind us all that they have the power to punish us when we don't do exactly as they would like. (By the way, the Administration does not seem to have even bothered to see what has been the impact on the long suffering tax payers - especially on the middle class that the Prez. repeatedly tries to make us believe that he cares about - of the 2% tax increase that all working Americans we treated to this past Jan. 1. (i.e. FICA tax). Ahhh... But that's different. Really??...

    Adding insult to injury the, 2% FICA tax increase was accompanied by an increase in the amount of income taxable under FICA to $113,700 from $110,100. These increases were included in legislation entitled "The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012". It remains to be seen where the "relief" went. The imagination and alacrity evident in the naming of legislation is a source of unending amazement. It's too bad our legislators don't seem to be able to exhibit as much imagination when it comes to the substance of the legislation. They are able to create names that sound really good, but most frequently have little to do with the substance of what they are proposing when passing new laws. Think "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" - Obamacare. Go figure...

    Back to sequestration...What I find truly perplexing is not only the degree to which the Cabinet Secretaries seem to be following the White House lead (instructions??), but the heavy handed way in which they have been doing it. Frankly, I would have expected more (and better) from those folks (even though they are political appointees) than we have experienced.

    In his effort to paint the (2.5%) sequestration as earth shaking and quite obviously to alarm the public, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, talks about significant numbers of WV teachers getting "Pink Slips". It turns out that several WV teachers did, indeed, receive "pink slips" but none or them were the result of, or related to, sequestration. Whomever it was that wrote that speech for Secretary Duncan and would seem to be badly in need of a "there'llbenomore" meeting. (i.e. There'll be no more of that kind of sloppy work tolerated around here. In other places that might be called a "Come to Jesus" meeting - but in this White House, such a thought is likely anathema.) Perhaps a "pink slip" for his speech writer might be more appropriate. And, of course, the Secretary might want to consider reading the speeches that are written for him before he reads them to the public just to see if they will pass the "BS filter". Once the words come out of his mouth, they are his. Duh...

    We hear the Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, threatening to close a lot of air traffic control towers. That raises two questions. The first is, "How many of those towers are facilities the FAA has already been trying to close??" It would certainly not be the first time they have been unwilling or unable to stand the political backlash when they tried to close facilities. (Even with sequestration as the "excuse", political backlash has already begun to rear its ugly head.) The second is, "Does the Department of Transportation do anything other than Air Traffic Control??" It would not seem so. It seems as though whenever we hear from the DOT it is about the FAA. There used to be two modal Administrations in the Department that actually "did work". That would be the Coast Guard and the FAA. The remaining elements of the DOT don't seem to do much more than write regulations and hand out taxpayer money (i.e. grants). The Coast Guard is now part of Homeland Security, which leaves only the FAA to "push around". Of course, with regard to the rest of the Department, why would anyone want to cut back on an organization that passes out taxpayer money - or the amount of money they pass out??

    And then there is Janet Napolitano. She is really scary. She tells us that the border is more secure than ever, She proves it by providing us with figures that indicate that the border patrol is intercepting and arresting fewer illegals at the border than ever before. It is an insult to our intelligence that she apparently believes her charade is convincing. Not a word about how many are getting through. Hmmm... Do you suppose she knows - or cares?? The really scary thing for those of us who are so old that we may not be able to remember yesterday but can certainly remember 4 going on 5 years (or so) ago is that it was in that time frame that the Prez either said (or clearly intimated) that he would like to establish a National Police Force (Posse Comitatus be damned). Shortly after being anointed, her department published a report titled "Right wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" in which threats of potential "Redneck" uprisings were "suggested". Her opinion doesn't seem to have changed much since then. In late January this year Secretary Napolitano, gave a speech at a National Police Confab that seemed to be an extension of the earlier report still ignoring Posse Comitatus. And now we are told that her organization is buying up enough ammunition and armored vehicles to choke a horse (as the saying goes). In case you were wondering, it takes a LOT to choke a horse. Do we have the makings of another Civil War?? If we do, it will surely be because the South (mostly) is not interested in becoming slaves to the liberal ideologies espoused by "all the king's men/women"?? .

    D'ya think??
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