Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

What followed was a list of grievances that made the case for separation from the mother country, and this part was fiery. Jefferson was a cold man who wrote with great feeling. He trained his eyes on the depredations of King George III: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns. . . . He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compete the work of death, desolation and tyranny . . .”

Members of the Congress read and reread, and the cutting commenced. Sometimes they cooled Jefferson down. He wrote that the king “suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states.” They made it simpler: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.”

“For Thomas Jefferson it became a painful ordeal, as change after change was called for and approximately a quarter of what he had written was cut entirely.” I quote from the historian David McCullough’s “John Adams,” as I did last year at this time, because everything’s there.

Jefferson looked on in silence. Mr. McCullough notes that there is no record that he uttered a word in protest or in defense of what he’d written. Benjamin Franklin, sitting nearby, comforted him: Edits often reduce things to their essence, don’t fret. It was similar to the wisdom Scott Fitzgerald shared with the promising young novelist Thomas Wolfe 150 years later: Writers bleed over every cut, but at the end they don’t miss what was removed, don’t worry.

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On the Fourth of July, we don’t only celebrate the birth of our nation. We celebrate American exceptionalism—everything that makes the United States the greatest nation on earth. In celebrating this, we reject Barack Obama’s blueprint for the kind of country he seeks to make us.

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six dedicated patriots resolved to risk everything in the hope of a new beginning. Elected to represent colonists from across the thirteen British colonies on the American continent, they decided to embark upon a grand experiment, to form a self-governing democratic republic.

They were risking their lives. Had they failed, they would have been hanged as traitors, their lands confiscated by the Crown, their fortuned forfeited, and their families left disgraced and destitute.

Yet they succeeded, and the freest, safest, and prosperous nation in the world was born.

We don’t just celebrate the historical fact of America’s birth. When we celebrate Independence Day, we celebrate everything the United States stands for.

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When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

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Happy 4th of July!

Upon an initial read, a company owner’s actions that are described in this Newsday article appear to be way over the top…

The National Labor Relations Board required that Matrix Realty Group post this notice in its Danbury, Conn. complex: “We will not threaten to kill you or to cause you bodily harm because you engage in activities” in support of a labor union.

Eee gads!  At first glance, based on the above, it would appear that some company “boss” went off the deep end and threatened to kill his workers.

However, like all good SEIU stories, there seems be more to this story than meets the eye.

Apparently, the purple-shirts over at the SEIU decided to park itself outside the company owner’s home (reminiscent of the SEIU stormtroopers who targeted Greg Baer in May) for no other reason than to put pressure on him over a labor dispute.

The notice is the result of a dispute between Matrix owner Glen Nelson of Miller Place and the Service Employees International Union.

The dispute escalated last year when Nelson bought a Connecticut building and switched janitorial companies to a nonunion cleaning service, replacing a workforce of 40 union janitors to save $1.3 million a year.

The man who says he was threatened, Arthur Tiscia, 40, in a telephone interview Wednesday said he went to Nelson’s home in Miller Place on Dec. 21 with a group of the cleaners who had lost their jobs.

They set up a table and a banner in the street near Nelson’s driveway and intended to ask Nelson’s neighbors for food donations for Christmas, for the families of janitors who had lost their jobs, Tiscia said. Nelson came home and threatened him, Tiscia said.

So, it’s a case of the SEIU activists word against the home owner’s?  Since there was an alleged death threat made, you would think that would be in the police report, right?  Wrong.

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This whole debate about government stimulus versus austerity, and the impact of these policies on economic growth, misses a key point: It is business, not government, that creates jobs.

The economic power of business is the missing link in the faux debate that is now raging over spending and deficit policies. A brief look at the recent jobs report for June tells this story. After spending more than $1 trillion through so-called government stimulus, we are at best experiencing a grinding and anemic jobs recovery. Private payrolls are growing slowly. The workweek is again shrinking. And average hourly earnings have declined. The unemployment rate dropped to 9.5 percent, but that’s because 650,000 people left the labor force.

Most troubling, the household survey, which captures small owner-operated business employment, dropped 300,000 following a decline last month. In other words, this leading indicator is moving in the wrong direction. More generally, recent economic data suggest that the rate of recovery could be slowing to only 2 percent, or even less. Some fear a double-dip recession.

So what about all this stimulus spending? Well, it hasn’t worked.

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Have friends and family who don’t think the government getting involved in healthcare is a bad idea? Send them this video from the Heritage Foundation:

Read more here.

I’ve never met Glenn Beck, but after watching him for the past year and a half, I feel I know him to some extent, at least in that modern concept of knowing people, at a distance via technology.

I sincerely appreciate what he has been doing on his television program, particularly his emphasis on history. Specifically, I have loved the following:

1. The exposé of progressivism, showing how that philosophy has permeated our politics and government.
2. The excellent choice of guests ranging from Amity Shlaes to Jonah Goldberg to Larry Schweikart.
3. The Founders Friday series in which he reintroduces (or introduces, as the case may be) the thinking of the Founders to a national audience.
4. His desire to lead Americans back to faith in God and all the values that flow from that faith.
5. His sense of how to combine substance with entertainment, thereby making the substance far more interesting to those who watch.

Oh, I’ve had some quibbles with him along the way. First, I’m not overly fond of Thomas Paine. Yes, his Common Sense was instrumental in leading toward independence, but his later Age of Reason, which trashed Christianity, met with overwhelming rejection by the American people—justly so, in my view.

I’ve also wished at times that his critique of Republicans didn’t make all Republicans seem like sellouts. Not all are (and I’m sure he realizes this).

My third quibble has been his reliance on proponents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as a basis for championing the free market and capitalism.

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The president’s problem is largely a mess of his own making. Deficit spending did not begin when Mr. Obama took office. But he and his Democratic allies have supported, proposed, passed or signed and then spent every dime that’s gone out the door since Jan. 20, 2009. Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in “temporary” stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline. It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats’ profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year. This is indeed the road to fiscal hell, and it’s been paved by the president and his party.

Once again, this weekend, Americans will gather with their families to “celebrate” the 4^th of July.  What are we celebrating? What stirs us on this day? How much time will be spent reflecting upon its relevance to our way of life? Is it, as it should be, a celebration of the founding of this Republic, and its independence as a nation? Will many Americans talk with one another or with their children about the impossible dream made true by a handful of remarkable men?  Will many of our fellow Americans even think about the new concept of government they created for us, one based upon the adoption of a Constitution, which established the principles of self-government and the limitations on the powers granted to that government?

Unfortunately we fear that the answer to the rhetorical questions posed above, increasingly, is “no”.  If somehow our national government were to set aside that day as “National Take a Day Off from Work Day” little would change.  Families would gather for a mid‑summer day of hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecue and good old fun.  Yes, the 4^th of July features flags and parades but they often seem divorced from what it is we are all celebrating. They provide a sort of faux patriotic pageantry with an abundance of food, sparkle and noise.

Actually the 4^th of July, by its correct name, is Independence Day.  It signifies the true meaning of what was declared on July 2, 1776 and affirmed by the Continental Congress on July 4:  the document known as the Declaration of Independence.  This simple document lays out the fundamental meaning of America and it touched off a bloody revolution and several years of war to establish that all our citizens have the right to an independent life, to the liberty that allows for the freedom to exercise one’s own judgment and to the right to pursue one’s own path, career, associates, friends, etc., e.g. the pursuit of happiness.

John Adams, in a letter to his wife Abigail, correctly predicted that the day (he referred to the actions of July 2 not July 4) would be celebrated for as long as the American experiment in government continued.

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Today, in 1863, the Confederacy died on a hill at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the hubris of Robert E. Lee kept the war going for almost two more years.

The financial reform bill currently working its way toward President Barack Obama’s desk for signing is being touted as the biggest overhaul of the banking and investment sectors since the Great Depression.

But the new regs won’t be any more effective than the ones they replace in fixing anything or preventing the next major panic for at least three reasons.

1. New Watchdog, Old Tricks

They create a new watchdog consumer agency designed to protect consumers from their own supposed stupidity. You’ll now be facing fewer choices when it comes to getting credit cards, loans, and doing other basic financial transactions.

2. Never Too Big To Fail

They replace “Too Big to Fail” with… “Too Big to Fail.” One of the reasons why major financial institutions played Russian Roulette with the economy was because they were betting they would get bailed out. Which is precisely what happened. The new rules codify the idea that the government will make sure certain institutions can never fail. And if you think the big boys won’t game that system, then you don’t understand how well Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, et al have come through the current meltdown.

3. Housing Bubble Trouble

The financial crisis was set into motion by government policies that encouraged people to buy homes they couldn’t afford at prices that were unsustainable. Between desperate attempts to keep people in houses and to keep interest rates below an effective rate of zero, the government continues to pour more money down the same rathole.

Markets work best when the risk and reward incentives are clear cut. When investors know they really can lose it all, they act responsibly with their money. If regulators think they can create a system that cushions us from bad decisions and doesn’t encourage bad behavior, it’s a delusion we’ll all be paying for for a very long time.

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It’s the Independence Weekend edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the new jobs report, market reactions and China, and health care reform’s false promise as a deficit reducer. We’re brought to you as always by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com.

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Related Links:

TNL: The Coming Credit Takeover
AP: Latest Jobs Report Has Mixed News
Health Care News: The Patients Bill of Rights (Podcast)
AAPS: Why Government Can’t Lower Health Care Costs
Douthat: Things We Already Knew
Deficit, Debt Get Worse Despite Health Care Law
NPR: Worried about the Deficit? Blame Health Care
Daily Caller: CBO Says Deficits and Debt Will Soar
TNL: Daniels, Christie Top Latest 2012 Poll

Recent polling has made it clear that the top concerns of the voters are the two sides of the same coin: out of control government spending and deficits.  For decades on end, the wise have warned that a reckoning day would have to come to deal with decades of fiscal mismanagement.  In California, that day is here.  We need a leader strong enough to tackle the problem head on – Jerry Brown has made it very clear, he is not that person.

Keep in mind that leadership is not a function of getting elected.  Indeed, the vast majority of those elected are not real leaders – even among Presidents.  Think about it.  How many great Presidents have we had over the last 100 years?  You should be counting four or less – and if you do, you realize that real leadership is rare.

Among the many qualities required of leadership, vision ranks at the top – along with a plan on how to achieve that vision.  It turns out that if you want people to follow you, it is a good idea to tell them where you want to go.  If you are elected, a credible means to achieve your plan – and then resolve to see it through- are beyond necessary if you want to achieve your goals and maintain the support of the electorate.  In these days of an ever demanding electorate, the support a newly elected official receives is more easily kept than recovered and the only way to keep is to execute on that credible plan from day one and consistently.

Sadly, Running Man Jerry Brown simply does not have leadership qualities.  He loves to run for office – but once in office, he lacks the necessary leadership skills to succeed.  In the face of the exhaustive and  detailed plan of Meg Whitman, outlining a series of reforms to put California back to work and correct the fiscal problems of this state – Jerry Brown lacks the most elemental prerequisites of a leader:  a vision and a plan.

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The death of Senator Robert Byrd on Monday has upended the administration’s cap and trade offensive, as observers of West Virginia politics suspect his yet-to-be-named interim successor will defer to the state’s pro-coal politics on pending climate legislation.

Byrd, whose unprecedented fifty-one-year senate career bore out a series of outright and often stunning political evolutions, had warmed in recent years to overhauling the nation’s climate regulations despite broad opposition from his home state. His death, and the loss of a reliably-Democratic vote, has forced Senate leadership to reassess the viability of the White House’s aggressive climate legislation push in this difficult election year for Democrats.

“It is a tougher road, believe me,” Senator Dick Durban, the Democrats’ chief vote whip, said Monday. “A 58-vote majority is not as good as a 59-vote majority.”

Wildly popular and the leading candidate for the seat in 2012, West Virginia’s Democratic Governor Joe Manchin has not yet floated the names of potential replacements, saying only that he will not appoint himself. Instead, Manchin will tap an ally whose politics–and posture on coal, the state’s bread and butter issue–mirrors his own.

Though among the first governors to endorse then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid, Manchin has been in open rebellion against the Environmental Protection Agency and the president’s legislative agenda to reconstruct the environmental regulatory regime. It’s his rebellious streak–a level of insubordinance on climate issues that has further endeared Manchin to voters in an otherwise hostile cycle–that Capitol Hill Democrats worry may derail the fragile cap and trade coalition they have assembled.

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The American public education system is going the way of the auto companies and just like the $17.4 billion American taxpayers forked over to bail out outrageous employee contracts and spineless spending decisions of management, labor unions are hoping their allies in Congress will throw them a lifeline.

The difference, of course, is that prior to the bailout, those private sector companies could actually go bankrupt – no one was “too big to fail.”  There was an invisible mechanism that prevented labor from pushing too far because while it’s greedy, even the UAW knew that there would be a limit to the pay and bennies it could extract from the auto manufacturers.  In that instance, the parasite knew when to stop sucking.

Public schools, largely a monopolistic system not held accountable by competition, don’t have that same invisible force keeping labor in check.  Therefore, if the outrageous demands of labor and current spending practices of school districts outpace the money coming into the coffers, they’ll go out and wring their hands, tell sob stories about Johnny having to sit on Georgie’s lap in class because of a lack of desks and demand more “revenue.”  From you, the taxpayer.

This should be a huge issue for the Tea Party movement.  This has been a problem for far too long and we’ve allowed the tax eaters, that is, teachers unions, to fleece the American public into thinking that more spending, which ultimately ends up in their members’ pockets, somehow equates to better outcomes.

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Transport Workers Union boss John Conley says that he will deny airline employees the opportunity to vote on their own destiny.

Sandra Baker of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote:

“We are now at an impasse with AMR [American Airlines],” said John Conley, director of the union’s Air Transport Division. “We no longer have a tentative agreement, and no ballots will be presented to members for a ratification vote.”

The union asked the mediation board to declare an impasse in March, but the board told the parties to keep talking.

A few weeks ago, the union and American said they had reached a tentative agreement. But the proposal never went to a vote by the nearly 11,000 baggage handlers and other ground workers that clean aircraft, fuel planes and move freight.

Should the board declare an impasse and release the union from mediation, under the Railway Labor Act a 30-day cooling-off period would start, after which the union could call a strike or the company could enforce a lockout. [Emphasis added]

Unfortunately, employees are often left out of the union contract process because contracts virtually always grant union officials a monopoly voice and decision making powers over all workers whether they wanted it or not. This is just another example, among many, of how forced monopoly unionism is undemocratic and takes away the rights of individual workers.

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With the national unemployment rate hovering near double digits and the national debt reaching more than $13 trillion, Americans are rightly concerned about our economy and the federal budget. Americans expect their elected representatives in Congress to implement responsible and effective solutions for our deficit crisis.

Lately, however, it seems that for every problem our nation is facing, the answer from Washington is to spend and spend some more. In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the federal government has amassed $800 billion in deficit spending and is on its way toward surpassing last year’s record annual deficit of $1.4 trillion.

Now, amidst this major fiscal crisis, the House is refusing to pass a budget. This will be the first time since modern budget rules were adopted in 1974 that the House will fail to pass one of the most basic governing documents. Higher taxes, ballooning deficits and runaway government spending have had a chilling effect on job creation. Our nation cannot afford to have its government avoid the tough decisions necessary to map the course back to fiscal sanity and economic security.

Budgets are documents of priority and fundamental to effective governing. Congressman John Spratt (D-SC), who chairs the House Budget Committee on which I serve, said in 2006, “If you can’t budget, you can’t govern.” Congressman Spratt was right then, and he’s right now. Yet this is precisely the predicament that we as a country find ourselves in today. In the halls of Congress, a budget debate facilitates a national public discourse on our priorities as a country. This discourse makes us consider the appropriate levels of spending, taxation and debt.

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