Keeping Up with the Joneses – Federal Budget 101

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

· U.S.income: $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 (about 1 % of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let’s remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.

· Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700

· Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200

· Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500

· Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

· Amount cut from the budget: $385

So in effect last month Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. What family would cut $385 of spending in order to solve $16,500 in deficit spending?

It is a start, although hardly a solution.

Now after years of this, the Jones family has $142,710 of debt on its credit card (which is the equivalent of the national debt).

You would think the Jones family would recognize and address this situation, but it does not. Neither does Congress.

The root of the debt problem is that the voters typically do not send people to Congress to save money. They are sent there to bring home the bacon to their own home state.

To effect budget change, we need to change the job description and give Congress new marching orders.

It is awfully hard (but not impossible) to reverse course and tell the government to stop borrowing money from our children and spending it now.

In effect, what we have is a reverse mortgage on the country. The problem is that the voters have become addicted to the money. Moreover, the American voters are still in the denial stage, and do not want to face the possibility of going into rehab.

Who We Are

The paradox of humanity is our given imperfections vs. our natural inclination to criticize, as it’s wise for one to weigh-out his own discrepancies prior to becoming vocal towards another.

And if a genuine yet savvy politician wishes to continue on with an elected career, he must be mindful that the real world states that we’re all self-righteous and so tend to relish the fall of our adversaries through insult.

With this in mind, our conservative politicians must remain vigilant to the fact that we live in the information age, where the dark side of the limelight can be what makes them politically vulnerable in terms of what makes them human.

Let’s take a gander at New York congressman Anthony Weiner.

It’s already a given that his name and facial profile too easily fall victim to the immature fourth grader in all of us.   By his tone and body language, we see that his time in just about any social situation as a young boy kept him susceptible to the two drum beats and the ring of a cymbal that can only come from his name in the unhappy  marriage with his physical features.

And according to his liberal philosophy, Weiner is poetically fitting.  Where a liberal like Mr. Weiner has commonality with a weiner  is that his agenda is nothing more than a by-product of the imagination, rolled and prepared to appeal to the more shallow ends of our senses.   In other words, it’s filler material with little or no substance.

His name and appearance in union with his arrogance can be the logical reason that his debating style seems geared toward condescension leading to an animus response that can cost his conservative colleagues points in a debate.  The opposing view finds itself having his/her intelligence questioned by a hobgoblin named Weiner.   Who knows?

Now that Mr. Weiner finds himself in this pickle, one may ask, “What would drive a high profile political figure like Congressman Weiner to place his reputation and marriage in the hands of a faceless 21 year old?”

Well, for one thing, he’s a man.   What women know, and what men choose not to realize, is their carnal urges are their drug of choice and are the most effective in terms of weakness and their egos.

With Congressman Weiner’s situation — in terms of where he may have been in the pecking order as a child or a teen — the only place where he may feel enough confidence to generate any form of ego is the lofty position of public office.   And it’s to the knowledge of such mundane individuals that they could gain notoriety at the expense of Mr. Weiner’s marital and political reputation through his carnal desires in union with the false courage that such conceit can bring.   In simpler terms, Congressman Weiner’s true colors were washed clean of deception through pride.

The fact of the matter is that in the political realm, one must be genuine as not to expose whatever vulnerabilities may ensue.    What Congressman Weiner fell victim to was a politically-charged culture war, where the conservative and tea party activists can seize the opportunity to embarrass the thin-skinned, smug, and scantily-clad Anthony Weiner at the expense of the liberal opposition so close to a presidential election.

It all boils down to him being what he is and what he shouldn’t be, causing him to forget how they can be, which placed him and how he truly sorry he is at the mercy of us and who we are.

Fight to Elect Conservatives

Mahatma Gandhi said “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

This seems to be the case with the TEA Party in Faulkner County.   When we first started attending local meetings to observe what was happening at the city, county, and school board, we were greeted and welcomed.   Conway’s Mayor Tab Townsell was happy to have us there, talked about “involved citizens,” and how the Conway City Council welcomed our presence.

Then, as we did our research on certain projects Conway was pushing — such as an unaffordable mass transit system for the colleges and downtown — they disregarded our comments, talking about their “vision” for Conway as reason enough to spend millions of dollars they didn’t have.

Recently Mayor Townsell made his true feelings about the TEA Party known at a meeting of city employees, where (as reported on http://markvaught.com/ )

“After the meeting, he spoke to a small group outside about his chagrin with the members of the council who don’t seem to be willing, ‘by simple majority vote,’ to add revenue to the city through increased property taxes, franchise fees, alcohol taxes, etc.

He blamed much of this unwillingness on the influence of the Tea Party and its constant presence at Council meetings in the last year.   He said that this influence has created some “strange votes” by members of the Council in recent weeks and months.”

So it seems we’re at the “fight you” part of the Gandhi quote at the Conway city level.

Faulkner County TEA Party is engaged in changing the status quo.   We know what we’ve “always” been doing is not working!   We are for smaller, fiscally conservative government working closer to the people.   We do not believe in a “nanny state,” or that parks are so much more important that they should be funded at the expense of good roads.   We believe taxes should be low to encourage business growth and job creation, as prosperity is our American legacy.   Most of all, we believe in our Constitution.

Our beliefs, in many cases, are the opposite of the aims of our mostly liberal government in Conway.   With an election less than two years away in which the mayor and all of the ward aldermen positions are up for reelection, we must continue the fight and elect conservatives.

By electing conservatives to every open position in Conway, we complete Gandhi’s quote:

We win.

Arizona Shooting & Calls for Extended Magazine Ban

:: Letter to Log Cabin Democrat, January 15, 2011 ::

I’d like to offer some thoughts on the horrendous shootings in Arizona and the Log Cabin’s editorials afterward.

To start, the January 8 Log Cabin Democrat editorial asked something like: “Since when did we reach a point that our Nation settles its disagreements with violence and bloodshed?” My answer is that, sadly, we have always been such a Country, dating back to the Revolutionary War and continuing in an unbroken pattern through old-fashioned duels between politicians, assassinations of presidents and public leaders, and even mailings of bombs and diseases to people of influence.

The Arizona shootings appear to be the action of one mentally ill young man — not the actions of any supposedly rational politician or political party trying to settle disagreements. But much to their discredit, the politicians and media seized on the shooting incident to further their various causes and increase their ratings. My message to the media is: this is not a political incident. And politicians, this is not the way to advance your agendas.

On January 14, the Log Cabin editorial asked “Why on earth should an individual be allowed to use a handgun magazine capable of holding 33 rounds?”

This is an irrelevant question. After all, would the Arizona victims be less dead if Jerad Loughner had used three 10-round magazines? Some say that changing magazines more often — as required with lower capacity magazines — would at least have slowed the shooter down. Maybe. But I’ve seen men target-shooting who change magazines and resume firing in less than one second! In any event, smaller magazines would not have protected the victims shot with those first ten rounds. Let me also point out that high-capacity magazines are self-limiting due to their increased weight and bulk. And, look at the lady who “grabbed the magazine” to stop Loughner. She would not have been able to do that if the magazine, due to its unusual length, hadn’t protruded beyond the normal handle of the pistol.

No, reducing the capacity of magazines sold to sane, trained, law-abiding citizens is not an answer. Surprisingly, none of the bystanders or victims was a certified concealed carry permit holder; if so, he or she could have defended themselves and the others on that terrible day. If so, the number of rounds the murderer’s magazine held would be even more moot, if that’s possible.

The LCD editorial asked a more pertinent question: “Why aren’t we doing a better job of screening applicants’ backgrounds to determine if they’re mentally equipped to own or possess firearms?” An even better question would be: “Why was a person with so many mental red flags out on the street without supervision in the first place, much less allowed to purchase a gun?” I fear the answer to that question, like the answer to so many others, would involve society’s unwillingness to appear Politically Incorrect despite the unintended consequences.

I sympathize and share the desire to find someone/something to blame for those senseless shootings. I think we would all like to find something we could easily “fix” that would prevent other horrible incidents like this one. However, moving to restrict high-capacity magazines is a simplistic reaction that distracts from real problems and the real questions we should be asking.

Sincerely,

Mark Lollar
Conway

Council Sends Sales Tax Rededication to Citizens for Vote

Mayor Tab Townsell announced that August 1, 2011 Fire Chief Bart Castleberry will retire and Acting CFO Lowell McClanahan will leave his position with the city.  The announcement was made at the Conway City Council Annual Retreat meeting held this morning at the Conway Police Department.

In other business, the City Council, by unanimous vote, approved a resolution (R-11-03) to authorize Metroplan to assist the City of Conway with redistricting the voting wards.

Council members Sheila Whitmore, Theo Jones, and Shelly Mehl listen to Mayor Townsell.

Activities included determination of scope and objectives of the taskforce, submission of names for members, and a timeframe for the taskforce to complete its mission.

Some of the questions discussed by the Council were:

• Staffing – are city departments staffed adequately to perform their duties?
• Are city operations as efficient as they could be?
• Review of revenue services, recommending additional sources of revenue.
• Migration to a priority based budget that will assign the city’s available resources to those areas of operation determined to be the highest priority.

Council conversations included the requirement that city employees should be able to comment to the taskforce anonymously to encourage more participation from employees.

Mayor Townsell commented that there would be no salary review or comparison in the taskforce project, which is targeted to determining how best the city can configure operations to meet future needs in an efficient and productive manner.

The recommendation to form the taskforce was unanimously supported by the City Council.

The final item on the Council’s agenda was rededication of the sales tax bond that was discussed at previous council meetings.

After detailed explanations and discussion of the bond rededication, the council was split – one group favoring rededication of the current sales tax as discussed in council meetings and the other favoring creation of a new tax to in addition to the rededication to increase city revenues.

The first option (the “painless option”) will extend the current ½ percent sales tax, splitting it into ¼ percent to pay off the bond debt and ¼ percent to institute the step raises to city employees, create a cash reserve for the city, and to help with the increasing cost of operations. This option was favored by Aldermen David Grimes, Theo  Jones, Shelia Whitmore, and Mark Vaught.

The second option was favored by Aldermen Shelley Mehl, Jim Rhodes, Andy Hawkins, and Mary Smith.  This option would add an additional revenue component to the rededication of the sales tax as outlined in the first option.  As described by Mayor Townsell, this would effectively be a new tax.

Mayor Townsell, as the tie-breaker, voted for “painless” option, stating he believes any additional need for revenue should stand on its own and be voted on separately.

If you have any questions on the happenings at this meeting, contact your alderman.  Their addresses, email, and phone numbers are listed on the City of Conway website at http://www.cityofconway.org/departments/city_council/city_council.html.

Political Reality

Democrats lost. Progressives lost. Liberals lost. Incumbents lost.

Where these people lost, the vast majority of freshman elected were Conservative or Libertarian. The elections that received the most interest were national and state, but there was a healthy Conservative swing in many local elections.

In Faulkner County, and Conway in particular this phenomenon did not occur as there were few contested races and fewer defeated incumbents. Local politicians will tell you the Tea Party election did not stretch down into our county or city.

They are wrong.

The fact that there were few contested races points to the fact that the local Tea Party has decided to educate rather than agitate. We are not political and have determined that we prefer to work with everyone who has a good idea and against those whose vision we do not share, be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent. We hold no party allegiance.

Notice has been served on the county and city; we will work with or against them, depending on the agenda they advance.
Cooperative action is always preferred to conflict, but Faulkner County and the City of Conway should know that because we prefer cooperation does not mean we will not fight for what we believe in.

The 2012 election is less than 24 months away. Faulkner County Tea Party will be educating candidates from all parties to run in the next election. Competition makes everyone stronger, and there have been too many un-contested races in the last decade.

Those of you holding public office, remember we support the values documented in the Constitution, smaller fiscally conservative government, and the ability for our children to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you share our conservative values, contact us, we’d like to work with you. If you don’t, prepare for a contested election.

Tea Party “Gets It”

Juan Williams (Fox News) says Harry Reid was “courting his Hispanic base” when he attached the DREAM Act to today’s (now defeated) Senate defense bill. Williams knows Reid wanted a Senate win, thinking that would drive the Hispanic base to vote for Reid this November.

Reid just doesn’t get it. Oh, of course he could be right on target with his attempt to secure the  Hispanic vote; this tactic has resulted in votes (from many different constituent groups) at the polls in the past.    Whether those Hispanic voters in Nevada can be “bought,” as Reid would like, remains to be seen till November.

But…  the tea party does get it.    We represent citizens who realize the fiscal policies  of old style Progressive politicians like Harry Reid (and George Bush) are simply not working – at all!    We just cannot afford to continue spending money we do not have!  We voters can no longer be “persuaded” by earmarks and “ social issues” bills.    We will not be bought.

We appreciate that our Arkansas Senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, voted “No” and helped to defeat today’s defense act bill – with its included DREAM Act and “don’t ask, don’t tell” back-door legislation.    But, just remember.    We get it.    We are not to be “bought.”    Our vote is based on values and actions, and trying to slide controversial legislation through Congress as an amendment to a so-called essential bill is a less than honorable way to govern.

We deserve better.     We “get” it.

We’re Concerned – Not “Against Education”!

The Conway School Board election and a 1.9-mill tax increase are on the ballot for the Sept. 21 election.

I have concerns.    Just to make it clear, I am not against education!    My college degree is in education.    My children graduated from CHS.    In every community I have lived, I have served with PTO or volunteered in the schools in some capacity.   I have always tried to support our schools with my time, energy or money.

But…

Today, I question the wisdom of raising a 1.9-mill tax in the worst recession since the 1930s.    We are experiencing growth in unemployment.    Most in Conway are learning they have to live on less!

The reality is that taxes / fees are rising within all levels of government.   Large and small businesses continue to cut back and are nervous about what is ahead.

Is an additional 1.9-mill tax increase fiscally responsible right now?

We need a reconstruction of CHS for several reasons, but the proposed reconstruction is a more extravagant design than necessary.   Real needs do exist at the high school — changes are needed.

I would support a simpler, less costly but functional design.     Dr. Greg Murry has said it can be stripped down and made a very plain building.    Really?    It would have been nice to have had that option presented to the public.    Dr. Murry has repeatedly said there is no plan “B” if the millage fails, outside of determining what they did wrong.

If the $55 million bond is placed on top of the approximately $90 million outstanding, the resulting debt load would be about $145 million (twice the annual income to the school) and not wise!

Rally for America’s Honor

I have just returned from attending the “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C.

I, and many more people from Arkansas, learned so much more about our nation and its people than we would have expected.    We rode a bus, and any time we stopped people asked us about the event and the Tea Party.    I was amazed by the lack of knowledge and misinformation about the event and the Tea Party.

First, the rally was not political, but rather a chance to honor those that have shown honor in many ways.    There were military heroes, there were religious leaders, there were even sports figures that exuded heroism.    There were heroes that created thousands of jobs.    It truly was a rally about honoring our nation and how it was created, and is about the heroism in each of us.

Second, we were told that the Tea Party was creating a third party that was going to divide the existing national political parties.    This is far from the truth.

The Tea Party is not a political party, but is many groups with a common goal of smaller government, a government that relies on the Constitution and a government of fiscal responsibility.    Some Tea Parties may support a candidate that is an advocate of our goals, but most don’t back candidates.    Our major goal is the education of the voters.

I would like to invite anyone who has a question about the Tea Party to come visit a meeting and learn what we are about.

Make No Mistake

Interesting….The Associated Press felt it necessary to issue “guidelines” on reporting about the Islamic mosque being built in New York:

“ We should continue to avoid the phrase “ground zero mosque” or “mosque at ground zero” on all platforms… The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area….”

This is our American “free” press, folks. Make no mistake about who they are promoting.

Interesting, also, that the AP has never felt compelled to issue “guidelines” on how to accurately report on the Tea Party Movement sweeping across America for almost 2 years now.    In fact (as we all know) the press mostly has insisted on mis-representing We the People, our intentions and our goals.   The AP is the one of the leading providers of press coverage in the U.S.

Think about it.    Make no mistake.