Jane Chastain : Politically Direct

One of the most familiar comic strips in history has Peanut’s character Lucy holding the football for gullible Charlie Brown. It has been repeated again and again. We all know what is going to happen. At the very last moment Lucy will pull the football out of the way and Charlie Brown, with his full force behind the kick, goes sprawling.

It’s all very funny. Why does Charlie keep falling for Lucy’s promise that she will never, ever do this again? Still we laugh. We can’t seem to get enough of it. Why? Because it mirrors real life.

We the people are Charlie Brown, Congress is Lucy and our ballooning national debt is the football. Read the rest of this entry »

In ancient times, it was not unusual to kill a messenger who brought bad news.  Many of the great prophets in the Bible suffered unspeakable treatment and even death.  Tradition has it that the prophet Isaiah was sawn in half.

These dedicated men of old were desperately trying to warn their countrymen to keep them from  a horrible fate but few listened, especially those who had the power to change things.  Most rulers simply surrounded themselves with “yes” men.    Little has changed.

King Obama, who had never run so much as a lemonade stand, has surrounded himself with tax cheats and economic “yes” men like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who admitted that he has “never had a real job.”  The same holds true for most other members of his royal court.  The notable exception is his chief of staff, Bill Daley, the token businessman — a sop to “diversity.” Read the rest of this entry »

The American people just got flimflamed by their elected representatives, again.

It’s a matter of simple arithmetic.  You are spending more than you are taking in.  Your salary is flat with no relief in the foreseeable future so your family is forced to cut its budget.  Will you be spending more or less next year than you are this year?

“What kind of question is that?” you ask.  “Of course, I will be spending less.”

Not in Washington.  Our lawmakers were asked to cut the budget and they made a deal that has us spending more each and every year.  It’s a con game that has been going on inside the beltway for far too many years now and it has got to stop!

Read the rest of this entry »

There are certain words that are overused in Washington.  They have proven effective in covering a multitude of sins and soothing an angry electorate: These words include compromise, bipartisan, comprehensive, and deficit reduction.

The beauty of using these words in Washington is that there is no expectation by lawmakers that they be grounded in reality.  The “comprehensive immigration reform,” during the administration of George W. Bush was the code for amnesty.   Before that, we had back-to-back “five hundred billion dollar deficit reduction” bills offered by George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.   Both of these bills had nothing to do with reducing the deficit and everything to do with getting out from under the constrains of the current budget.  They were designed to increase, not decrease, federal spending.

Now we have this new word, “balanced,” trotted out by Barack Obama.  On Monday, he used it seven times in his brief address to the nation.    It is designed to make us feel comfortable about rasing the debt limit, again, because we have maxed out the national credit card. Read the rest of this entry »

If you still believe there is no such thing as a free lunch, you haven’t been to school lately.  On any given school day 31.6 million children sit down to a hot meal in the school cafeteria.  Sixty-three percent of those meals are free, or virtually free.

Furthermore, many of those same children show up for a free breakfast.  In addition, many schools have expanded their day to include help with home work and supervised play time and, what do you know?  It’s now time for dinner which calls for another free meal.   And, let us not forget free snacks.   If liberals get their way, there will be no need for children to go home anymore.  All that is left are school sleep-overs and, voila, the door to the “nanny state” slams shut.  Parents will be obsolete, except for the breeding and incubation process.   Read the rest of this entry »