“God is not disillusioned with us. He never had any illusions to begin with.” (Luis Palau)

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’  (Lewis Carroll)

Goebbels, Germany’s Information Minister under Hitler firmly believed that if you make a lie big enough and repeat it often enough, a large portion of the audience that hears it will believe it. Now contrast that with the advice of a refugee from Goebbels’ Germany, Albert Einstein, who insisted that a proper definition of insanity is to continually repeat a given action and expect the result to be different.

Today it is popular to have “Summits” which is another word for Conference, (hopefully covered by the media) that will provide support for the illusion of the day and allow those who are most well-known to spout what they have said before, not adding anything to the dialog but filling the vacuum, feeling important and further delaying the examination of what really ails us and therefore delaying a first step on finding a remedy.

The National Fiscal Summit in New York was really not any different. It featured all the usual suspects. I have great respect for its sponsor, Mr. Petersen and appreciate his support for the Concord Coalition and David Walker’s “Come Back America” effort. While I applaud the effort, the attitude of most speakers and all interlocutors compounds the illusion that what we are facing is a “blip” in opposition to the general operations of our growing centralized state. It is not.

The conference failed to consider the possibility that what we are faced with is a general revolt by the two thirds of our electorate who consistently favor a balanced budget amendment and who do not want government as usual to be our solution. They represent both major parties, but they are looking for fundamental realignment and a return to a capital “S” when talking about State governments and small “g” when talking about our bloated federal bureaucracy.

In part this argument is as old as the Republic and harkens back to Jefferson’s fear of centralized power and Hamilton’s insistence on a federal presence financially strong enough and with its citizens bound to it to perpetuate itself. There is not much doubt that Hamilton won that skirmish, but the fear of an all-encompassing federal presence remains and with many, it is visceral.

This feeling is at the core of The Republican Senate candidate’s comment in Indiana that compromise is the Democrats’ adoption of his position. It is difficult if not impossible to compromise on what you feel are existential issues, and that is where we are.

Our founders and most of our citizenry have lost faith in a central government that tries to be all things and do all things for the people. Like their ancestors they know that a government big enough to do everything for you is big enough to take everything from you. Problems should be solved closest to the citizen and accentuate local and regional solutions for the customs and wishes of those to be served.

The federal government needs to have as its first priority a strict budget amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced annual budget based on no more than 20% of last year’s GNP. Without it there is no stopping Congress from responding positively to the constant wishes of their constituents for another program or more of an existing one. The amendment will require them to say “NO” and to bargain out an operating government we can live with.

Multi state assistance should be delivered as block grants not federal mandates. Except for truly national problems, welfare programs need to be determined on a local, state and regional basis. Federal programs should not encroach on personal liberty except wherever really necessary for a federal traditional responsibility. Government is about empowering the citizen not to require equal outcomes but only equal opportunity. To do otherwise is immoral. Morality is on the side of individual freedom and self-reliance. National trust fund programs must truly be TRUST funds not a slush fund for irresponsible federal expenditures.

I have written on this issue a number of times. It is not pie in the sky. It can work well for most of our countrymen, not fundamentally encroach on general welfare and will, in fact improve general welfare by turning on the productive engine now buried under heavy regulation and a one size fits all mentality. The solutions for our problems are not new laws but enforcement of those on the books for generations and freeing the states from bankrupting mandates while at the same time requiring them to step up and together with their own citizens decide what they want and what they can afford. National block grants can be used to level out programs for which national and state constituencies agree need to be done together. The states and private industry are where the solutions can be found not in a bigger federal presence.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) continues to stand up against the idiotic policies of the administration, in particular the kid glove treatment and release of terrorists that have killed our soldiers, airmen and sailors, versus our military leadership’s treatment of our own military members who, in most cases, were just doing their jobs within the ridiculous constraints political correctness and of “rules of engagement”.

This letter, from Rep. West to the man-child-in-charge, is powerful and demonstrates both the wrong-headedness of the administration’s policies as well as his own commitment to boldly speak out when he sees something is wrong with the picture.

Be sure to support this brave patriot. He faces an uphill battle to hold his seat in FL against an onslaught of attacks from the left, which will no doubt intensify as a result of this letter. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has her talons out already.

Milton Friedman

Government planning and detailed control of economic activity lessens productive innovation, and consumer choice. Good, better, best, are replaced by “approved” or “authorized.”

In this episode —”The Tyranny of Control” — Dr. Milton Friedman visits locations in India, Japan and U.S. and shows how “established” industries or methods, seek government protection or subsidization in their attempts to stop or limit product improvements which they don’t control.

Milton Friedman starts this session with a history of Adam Smith and his effect on theBritish empire.

His analysis of India at the time (1980) is so relevant today as we see a totally different India which is gaining in the world market.

Today, the headlines are about JPMorganChase and the $ 2 Billion that they lost.  The argument for more regulation goes on.  Milton Friedman makes the argument that governments should not interfere in the free market system making winners and losers.  The free market will make the winners and losers on their own.

The panel discussion for this discussion includes a very young Donald Rumsfeld who at the time was President of GD Searle and Co. and Helen Hughes, director of  Economic Studies of the World Bank.

Join the discussion.  Attend this special at:

The Citadel

171 Moultrie Street

Bond Hall, Room 165

Thursday night 5/17/12 at 7:00. 

MAP

Sponsored by the Citadel and BB&T Charitable Foundation,

And Proudly Supported and Promoted by The Charleston Tea Party

 ————————————————————————————————-

If you missed the first episode, “Power of the Market”, you can enjoy this video below

Hi – this is The Candid Conservative with today’s minute…

North Carolina just handed the left its most stunning defeat in recent memory.  By a resounding majority, voters supported a Constitutional amendment affirming marriage as between one man and one woman.  North Carolina has been a successful playground for liberals seeking to downgrade America with their corrupt version of progress.

In word and deed, deviance, division, and dependency define the Democratic Party.  They’ve had great success in capturing the Tar Heel state – to a point of arrogant assumption on their infallibility.  Sounds a bit like our President, doesn’t it?

Curiously, PBO came out in favor of same sex marriage after the vote.  For liberals it was a day late and dollar short.  For conservatives it was just the affirmation they needed to further rally against Obama’s brand of liberal socialism.  Election day was a reality check for the left’s culture vultures.  Their head bird may have also wrung his own neck.

I’m Dr. Carl Mumpower and you just spent a minute with a candid conservative…

Please pass this important and urgent information below to your members and/or post on a website. 

Dr. Mick Zais, the SC Superintendent of Education, supports The Teacher Protection Act (S.18) 100%.  It needs to be passed BEFORE JUNE 7th.  I spoke at the  CCGOP Executive Board meeting on May 14, 2012, and sitting in the audience was the Honorable Bobby Harrell, Speaker of the House.  He listened and took notes.  Now we can assist Dr. Zais and support the many hard working teachers in South Carolina.  Please read below and MAKE THE CONTACT NOW!!

************************************************

Teacher Protection Act, S.18 by Glenn McConnell and many others,

can still be passed this year.

S.18 has sat in House Judiciary Committee since last year after passing the Senate unanimously. It is still alive and can become law if passed by the House before June 7.

The above information was sent by Jay W. Ragley

Deputy for Political Legislation, SCDE per the request of Dr. Mick Zais. 

ATTENTION GOOD CITIZENS:  Please write to your House Representative (and all the others as well) and say you want this Teacher Protection Act, S.18 to be passed “as is” without any amendments.  We need to get away from frivolous lawsuits against teachers.  Discipline needs to be put back in the schools and allow teachers to teach without fear.

(1)     It is easy to find your Representative and your Senator…as well as all others.

(2)       www.scstatehouse.gov  This will take you to the Legislative page.

(3)     Locate the bottom box on the right side where it says, “Contact Your Legislator” and then click “All Representatives” and/or “All Senators.” 

You can send out to as many as you want – all done with

a message box right there.

PS:  If you really want to be heard, please call your Representative and/or Senator by phone. Addresses and phone numbers are listed on the website.

PLEASE HELP THE TAXPAYERS, THE STUDENTS,

AND THE TEACHERS.

Rep. Tim Scott

District 1 US Congressman Tim Scott will hold a town hall meeting to discuss economic challenges and jobs situation facing our country.  Audience questions and comments will be taken after his remarks.

When: Wednesday, May 23, 5:30 – 7:00 pm

Where:  Charleston County Council Chambers

4045 Bridge View Drive

North Charleston

Map Here

The late US Congressman “Tip” O’Neill once said “All politics is local”.  Certainly that’s been true for the Tea Parties that have worked to put conservatives onto city/town/county councils and administrations and school boards, but we’re living in an altogether different world than Speaker O’Neill knew then.  

With the abundance of instant news and commentary on the internet, mobile communications and internet social media that are available, more people are paying attention —– or at least have the tools to if they choose —-to all manner of politics and events, and are taking action to turn this mess around. Unfortunately, so are the opposition —- mainly unions and left wing interest groups whose main MO is to scare and intimidate while feeding off the taxpayers to advance their socialist agendas. 

Harry "The War is Lost" Reid, in a happier mood

Consider the US Senate. Who among us doesn’t know that the Senate under the pathetic “leadership” of the weasely Harry Reid, faithfully followed by his equally weasely liberal and RINO colleagues, hasn’t done anything truly productive in several years, and the things they claim as “accomplishments” threaten to do little more than abridge more of our freedoms and waste more of our money.  These people, including many that call themselves conservative but don’t act that way, have either lost touch with what their constituents think is important, or lack the cojones to do the right thing and stand up for freedom and fiscal and personal responsibility. 

Richard Mourdock

But things are looking up!  Last week in Indiana’s primary, conservative Richard Mourdock soundly defeated 6 term RINO Richard Lugar, who often sided with his liberal colleagues on key issues.  In Utah, back in 2010, the long time RINO Sen. Bob Bennett was ushered out by the Utah GOP Convention, and was later replaced with conservative Sen. Mike Lee. These races were national in stature, with financial contributions flowing in from conservatives across the country to help the conservative candidate. My wife and I are proud to have supported these guys and others that are still in primary contests. 

My point in all of this is that We the People can turn this country around by throwing some financial support to candidates across our state, or from other states, that have demonstrated conservative principles and values are positioned to clean up the political mess.  We can start by kicking out other US Senate RINO’s (adios Sen. Lugar) and voting in genuine conservatives, first in primaries and then in the general election. 

2012 is an unusual year in that there are a number of US Senators that have announced they’re not running again:

• Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), 87, 3 terms
• Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), 68, 5 terms
• Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), 64, 4 terms
• Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), 68, 3 terms
• Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), 77, 4 terms
• Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), 70, 3 terms
• Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), 70, 4 terms
• Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), 70, 2 terms
• Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), 65, 3 terms
• Jim Webb (D-Va.), 66, 1 term
• John Ensign (R-Nev.), 54, 2 terms

And there are conservative “upstarts” challenging incumbent RINO’s and not-so-conservative Senators elsewhere. Opportunities for change are in abundance!.

Sen. Jim DeMint

So, if you want to help get more conservatives elected to the US Senate, I can think of no better way than to join Senator Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund and make a contribution.  (Note that Richard Mourdock is one that DeMint’s fund supports.) You can make a general contribution that the fund will targeted to races where particular help is needed, or you can give to a specific candidate that you want to help. 

Let’s take back the Senate, along with the Presidency, in 2012, and we’ll finally have a little “Hope and Change” we can really believe in!

Follow the evidence wherever it leads. Socrates

Heritage Keepers® is on a roll!

After 17 years and three studies reaffirming the success of the Heritage Keepers® Abstinence Education Program, Health and Human Services added it to the Federal list of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.

What does that mean? It means that for the first time (ever) there is now a proven-effective, evidence-based authentic abstinence-until-marriage education program qualified to receive Federal support and funding.

School districts, state agencies, faith and community-based organizations and taxpayers, who pay for entitlements, that have long hoped for and wanted to use an effective abstinence program, but were told “abstinence education doesn’t work” and ”wasn’t on the List”, can now feel confident asking for the Heritage Keepers® Program.

It also means that the naysayers can no longer claim that ”abstinence education has failed” and that such programs should be shut down and defunded. The naysayers have already complained, “they (Heritage Keepers®) have cracked the holy grail”.

This is huge, folks!  Science has validated the science-based Heritage Keepers® Program.

Let’s all work together to raise the standard for the next generation.

Read more about Heritage Keepers®

Read a surprisingly very positive article from The Washington Post:

Under Obama administration, abstinence-only education finds surprising new foothold

By Sarah Kliff, Tuesday, May 8, 2:08 PM

Last month, for the first-time ever, Health and Human Services added an abstinence-only education curriculum to the list of 28 evidence-based pregnancy prevention programs that the Obama administration will fund.

This was something of a surprise. When it comes to preventing teen pregnancy, the Obama administration has staked out a decidedly anti-abstinence-only-education stance. The president has, in previous budgets, zeroed out funds for such programs as federal reviews have found such programs to have no impact on sexual abstinence and, in some cases, include inaccurate information on sexuality.

“I do believe that contraception has to be part of [the] education process,” Obama  said on the campaign trail in 2008.

Even so, abstinence-only education has hardly disappeared from federally funded teen pregnancy prevention programs. Curriculums that teach abstinence as the singular method of birth control retained a $55 million budget in 2012, a full third of the $176 million available during President George W. Bush’s last year in office.

In April, the Office of Adolescent Health added Heritage Keepers’ Abstinence-Only curriculum to a list of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. Heritage Keepers is the first abstinence-only curriculum to become eligible for the Obama administration’s $75 million Teen Pregnancy Prevention Fund.

“What we’re hoping is that getting one program on the list shows they’re willing to look at the issue of teens and sexual risk avoidance,” says Valerie Huber, president of the National Abstinence Education Association. “I certainly do hope this could be the beginning of a new trend.”

The move quickly drew the ire of liberal groups, many of whom signed onto an April 30 letter asking Health and Human Services to explain the decision.

The department, however, has no plans to do so. Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber said that the program met the two benchmarks for approval as “evidence-based:” It had a strong study design and demonstrated a statistically significant impact on students’ behavior.

The vast majority of programs reviewed do not make the cut: Of the 225 pregnancy prevention strategies that the administration has so far reviewed, it has approved just 31 as “evidence-based.”

“What we’re committed to is impartial research, and then sharing the information so that communities can make the choices that are appropriate for them,” Weber said.

As evidence on the Heritage Keepers curriculum, Health and Human Services cites a 2011 unpublished study of 2,215 middle school students conducted by a group of Salt Lake City-based researchers. It compared the portion of “sexually-experienced” students among those in the abstinence-only program, and those outside it. This metric frequently is used in evaluations of comprehensive sex education as well, as a proxy for understanding how student behaviors may change.

For the control group – which was not in the Heritage Keepers curriculum, – the number rose from 29.2 percent at the start of the program to 43.2 percent one year after the program concluded. Among those in the abstinence-only program, there was a smaller increase, from 29.1 to 33.7 percent.

“It’s encouraging that the science is recognized,” says Anne Badgley, CEO of Heritage Services, which developed the curriculum. “All sides of this issue have a long way to go on connecting why programs do or don’t work. I really think what we need to be having is a discourse that gets out of the deep ideological divide and starts focusing on the outcomes here.”

Moving forward, Huber hopes to see more programs added to the evidence-based set of interventions that Health and Human Services will cover. The Obama administration certainly hasn’t been kind to abstinence-only education; aside from $250 million in earmarked, Affordable Care Act funds, there’s only about $5 million in dedicated funding in other government programs.

Working with an administration whose budgets have repeatedly attempted to end abstinence-only education, however, could be a whole lot worse. “I’m actually hopeful that we will see more good, good sexual risk avoidance programs developed,” says Huber. “That can really set a foundation for us.”

© The Washington Post Company

Hi – this is The Candid Conservative with today’s minute…

A Private Company That Performs Like This Would Have Long Ago Been Put Out of Business!

One of my pet peeves (among many) has been federal government meddling in our schools and dictating what our schools should be teaching, all with carrots and sticks and other “incentives” attached.  (The latest attempt at meddling is the “Common Core Standards” thing that’s tricking states into adopting it, and that’s a subject ripe for another article.)

I’m among those that support abolishing the US Department of education, and I sent a letter to that effect in late March to Sens. Graham and DeMint and Rep. Tim Scott.  .

As of the date of this posting I have yet to receive a response from any of the three.  This is unusual in my experience.

I don’t blame them personally for not answering.  Their staffs that handle correspondence probably react mostly to emails because it’s more efficient; and I’m guessing that for security reasons, all USPS letters go into some infinite “detection and decontamination” process to make sure some kook isn’t sending something —-um—- harmful.   I’ll be resending the letter by email and hope to hear back in a reasonable period of time.

Here’s the letter:

 Defunding the US Department of Education

Gentlemen:

I believe it’s long past due that the US Department of Education be defunded and eventually abolished.  Conservatives have decried federal meddling in our children’s education ever since Congress, under the Carter administration, established the DOE in 1980, and funded it to the tune of a “measly” $14B.  Since then the programs and bureaucratic growth have steadily increased every year.  The President has asked for $68B for DOE in 2012!

As you all know, the left’s usual solution to any problem is to throw more of other people’s money at it.  No matter how much, it’s never enough and if only there were more “investment”, the problem would be solved. With this exceptional spending growth in the DOE’s budget alone, our childrens’ competitiveness with other countries in terms of subject matter proficiencies has shown scant improvement over many years.  Add to the DOE budget the fact that $100B in “stimulus” funds were sent to the states over the past couple of years, along with the “Race to the Top” program awarding prize money aimed at “stimulating education reform”, federal education spending is indeed out of control.

Speaking of reform, DOE Secretary Duncan is visiting Charleston on March 30 to discuss “school reform” with a number of known liberal attendees including US Rep. James Clyburn, Charleston County School District Supt. Dr. Nancy McGinley, and Charleston Mayor Joe Riley.  It has been billed as a “roundtable discussion” for which attendees were “hand picked”.  As far as I can determine, it’s not open to the public, and no conservative leaders were invited, least of all our own SC Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, to whom school reform has great importance.  This event is nothing more than a feel good exercise among like minded liberals that will result in little more than a proclamation that more money is needed to reform our schools.  This is typical of the problem with federal meddling.

Gentlemen, I urge you to initiate legislation to defund the DOE and return responsibility for education to the states and local communities where it belongs. The caterwauling from the left wing demagogues will be deafening, as it always is when responsible conservative leaders try to curb unnecessary spending, but please ignore the outcry and press forward. We need to put an end to 32 years of DOE’s wasteful spending and bureaucratic largess.

I would greatly appreciate having a reply from each of you.