In this work, Kerpen lays out the Obama Administration’s serial abuse–in fact, outright violation–of our Constitutional republican form of government. President Obama is using the panoply of federal Departments, Commissions, Agencies and Boards to illegally force feed us new “laws.” Yet they aren’t laws at all, as Obama is bypassing Congress and the legislative process.  They are being foisted upon us by executive branch regulatory fiat. This is not democracy but dictatorship, as Kerpen’s excellent tome exhaustively proves.

Here is but a sampling of the research he presents to make his case. Chapter II: Democrats can’t pass the energy sector-assault that is Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has. Chapter IV: Democrats can’t pass the workplace-assault that is the Big Union-payoff Card Check?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)  and Department of Labor will start imposing large swaths of it as if it has.

Chapter V: ObamaCare–which did get shoved, bribed and cajoled through Congress–left WIDE latitude for Health & Human Services (HHS) regulators to go to town on our health care sector. And here’s a shocker; they already are. Chapter VI: The Dodd-Frank financial sector-attack slipped through Congress under cover of economic crash-fueled panic and also left WIDE latitude for a host of regulatory agencies to go to town. Shocker– so are they. And the list goes on, and on, and on…

Today I want to focus on Chapter III, which covers the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 21 illegal takeover of the Internet so as to then illegally impose Network Neutrality. This was a rerun of the FCC’s first attempt to impose Net Neutrality, which the D.C. Circuit Court unanimously threw out because the Commission must first wait for Congress to write a law giving them such authority. Congress still has not yet done this.

Net Neutrality is an egregious regulatory assault on the Internet sector, which has quickly become 1/6th of the nation’s economy, and it continues to rise. That’s precisely because it has thus far remained regulation-free. You want jobs?  How about 3.3% tech sector unemployment, juxtaposed with 9.1% nationwide?  It seems a government-free system is working quite well for the Internet.

And Net Neutrality is an alleged “fix” to a non-existent problem. Even the most virulent pro-Net Neutrality folks begrudgingly admit there are exactly ZERO Net Neutrality violations currently occurring. But rather than address any violations on a case-by-case basis, Obama’s FCC has jammed through an oppressive, everyone’s-guilty-with-no-chance-to-prove-innocence regulatory nightmare.

And Net Neutrality may very well be the least popular of President Obama’s myriad fiat jobs. Ninety-five 2010 Congressional candidates signed a pro-Net Neutrality pledge, and all ninety-five lost. That helps explain why Congress has never given Net Neutrality a vote or why President Obama’s FCC rushed to ram it through just after this 0-for-95 election.

The FCC has now contradicted its own rushed vote, slow-walking Net Neutrality’s imposition and taking nearly nine months to finally file it with the federal register (where regulations go to get imposed), perhaps in the hope that the anger over their Internet authoritarianism would have by now dissipated. Let’s show them it has not.

The fight to undo the FCC’s power grab currently resides in the United States Senate, as they have before them the House-passed Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval, which will overturn the FCC’s illegal Net Neutrality action. The bad news is the Senate has but a finite period of time to act (and the illegal order goes into effect on November 20). The good news is because of this short and closing window, only 51 votes are required for passage.  No filibusters allowed. It appears all 47 Senate Republicans are on board, ready to say Aye, which means we need four Democrats.  That’s where the fun begins.

23 Democrat Senate seats are up for election in 2012.  Some of the current sitters are retiring.  Many are running to re-up, several in swing or even Republican-leaning states.

Let us peruse some of these up-in-2012 Democrats, folks who should vote to undo Net Neutrality if they’d like to keep the gigs they currently have.

Let us begin with West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, who ran for special election last year sounding an awful lot like an anti-regulatory, Less Government warrior.  In a campaign advertisement, he famously shot the Cap & Trade bill with a rifle. In this ad, he also said, “I’ll take on Washington–and this Administration–to get the federal government off of our backs.” What better issue to take on and start peeling Washington off our backs than to vote to repeal this Administration’s illegal, authoritarian Net Neutrality Internet power grab?

Then there are these Democratic Senators:

• Arkansas’ Mark Pryor
  • He has, in the past, shown a bit of an anti-regulatory proclivity.  Here’s an opportunity for him to rollback not just unnecessary, but illegal government control of 1/6th of the American economy.
• Nebraska’s Ben Nelson
  • He talks a good conservative game in this conservative state, but at the end of the day usually votes terribly.  See (amongst many others): ObamaCare.
• Florida’s Bill Nelson
  • Represents a swing state (See: 2000’s Presidential overtime session) that just last year elected Tea Party Senator Marco Rubio.
• Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow
  • Michigan’s been a Donkey stronghold for a while–until last year.  In 2010, Michigan elected a Republican Governor and Elephant majorities in both the state House and Senate.
• Missouri’s Claire McCaskill
  • She represents a swing (and trending Red) state that just elected Republican Senator Roy Blunt.
• Montana’s John Tester
  • He represents a state that in Obama’s watershed, anti-Republican 2008 victory still went to Senator John McCain.
• Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu
  • She’s not up for reelection until 2014, but she has been good on job-killing, price-raising energy sector regulations.  Will she be good on job-killing, price-raising Internet sector regulations?
• Virginia’s Mark Warner
  • He’s also not up for reelection until 2014, but he made a mint investing early in tech companies. Perhaps that understanding of tech economic reality will lead him to vote to protect the sector from Net Neutrality.  It certainly should.

2010’s Tea Party-led off-year electoral revolution was historic and huge, and it will, from many indications, pale in comparison to 2012’s Presidential-year looming grassroots wave for Less Government. The American people want less of everything from Washington–taxes, spending, and regulation. The only thing they want more of is accountability.

The Obama Administration’s Net Neutrality power grab represents everything against which Americans voted last year and against which they will again vote in the next. It also represents everything about which Phil Kerpen has written in his excellent book. When it comes to their vote on undoing the FCC’s Net Neutrality power grab, Senate Democrats need to remember the will of their constituents. They need to remember how their will was embodied in last year’s landmark, landslide election, and they need to note that 2010 is looking more and more like a warm-up for 2012.

And reading Kerpen’s tome couldn’t hurt.

One of my life’s maxims is:

Education and knowledge are often mutually exclusive.

With the Barack Obama Administration’s all-out assault on the for-profit higher education industry, one of the books I have long intended to write is becoming ever more true:

College IS for Dummies.

We the People who closely follow politics have assuredly noticed an incessant trend on Talking Head TV.  Very often the Leftist debater is – a college professor.  Often teaching some very Leftist, completely pointless “scholastic” field.

For instance, National Review’s John Derbyshire rightly calls for an end to all collegiate programs that end in the word “Studies.”  Do a little Web search, and you’ll quickly reach the same conclusion.

The point being – college campuses are rife with hard Left ideologues posing as “educators.” Hiding there because their worldview doesn’t jibe with Reality.

And because they are paid handsomely to spout utter nonsense to the next generations – at a $100,000+ premium to the victims…I mean students.

The new meat can’t even get through orientation – the indoctrination is already underway.

Is this claptrap Leftist racket worth your time and considerable coin?  Hardly.

The Obama Administration certainly sees it exactly this way, given all they’ve done to further government-ize it all.

The Left does little better than funding its fellow travelers with our money.

We already have myriad federal government collegiate funding streams.  Scholarships, fellowships, grants, and on and on and on and….

Then came the Age of Obama.

Beginning with ObamaCare – for which the federal government nationalized the entire college loan industry.  Lock, stock and toga – swallowed up by the Leviathan.  In a feeble, tiny attempt to try to offset the ginormous cost of the Leviathan swallowing whole the private sector health care industry.

Flash forward a bit.  Can you in the very near future see the federal government waiving your mountain of college debt – meaning We the People pick up the tab – in exchange for some time spent community organizing?  I certainly can.

—–

Now the Obama Administration is going after the one facet of higher education that still retains some remnants of private sector freedom and rationality – the for-profit colleges and universities.

And they are doing so in the unilateral, Congress-free fashion that has become an Administration hallmark.

These Agencies, Departments, Commissions and Boards can’t legally do anything unless and until Congress writes a law giving them the authority.

As we’ve seen with Network Neutrality, Cap & Trade, Card Check and a whole host of other power grabs, the Administration does not find illegality to be any sort of impediment.

The Administration’s Department of Education in June jammed through new “Gainful Employment” regulations.  (Again, without the legal authority to do so.)

These new regs leave virtually unscathed public (read: government) schools.  They are written so as to almost exclusively assault for-profit schools – threatening to pull the plug on federal aid to most of these institutions.

Nothing like equal protection before the law.  Or unlawful regulations.

To “validate” this Huge Government move, Uber-Leftist Iowa Senator Tom Harkin commissioned an undercover General Accounting Office (GAO) report on for-profit schools.

Shockingly, the fix was in – it found for-profit schools were nearly universal corrupt.

The “report” itself, however, was deeply flawed.  The GAO themselves subsequently said so.

But this is standard government operating procedure.  Issue a flawed report to “justify” new Huge Government regulations.  Impose said regulations.  Then “revise” the report.

But the regulations remain.

Harkin also held a for-profit college show trial – I mean hearing.  So biased and corrupt it was that the Committee Republicans boycotted en masse.

Think this to be merely de rigueur Hill partisanship?  Hardly – Harkin’s office was tampering with witnesses.

Now we have Eric Holder’s Justice Department backing this multi-jurisdictional foul play.  Something they are not at all averse to doing – just ask AT&T.

Justice has filed a complaint alleging:

EDMC (Education Management Corporation) falsely certified compliance with provisions of federal law that prohibit a university from paying incentive-based compensation to its admissions recruiters that is tied to the number of students they recruit.

The fact that they have outlawed performance-based incentives in education is an irony not lost on too many of us, I am sure.

Congress enacted the incentive compensation prohibition to curtail the practice of paying bonuses and commissions to recruiters, which resulted in the enrollment of unqualified students, high student loan default rates and the waste of program funds.

We can’t have private sector “enrollment of unqualified students, high student loan default rates and the waste of program funds.”

That’s what government-mandated affirmative action is for.

What are the odds that this Justice Department filing is just as accurate and authentic as the aforementioned book-cooked GAO report?

I ask this aloud simply to induce pondering.

And the clock on the “revision” starts…now.

—–

The Obama Administration’s oft-illegal assault on all things private sector is nothing if not thorough.  These free market-seeking missiles have found targets aplenty throughout.

The nation’s for-profit colleges and universities have not been spared.

And, as always, these Leftists have not allowed facts to get in the way of a good beating.

Just another day in the Age of Obama.

During which we have spent trillions of public dollars trying to create (“or save”) private sector jobs.

The results have been simultaneously disastrous and completely ineffectual.  And utterly predictable.

We on the Right were all along explaining that we have historical evidence aplenty that the public sector stealing money from the private sector to

1. Waste a goodly portion thereof (as government always does) and then
2. Slosh the remainder around to political supporters and cronies

is not the way to create jobs.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deepened and deeply prolonged the Great Depression by so doing.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson increased and ensconced permanent, intergenerational poverty – by declaring War on and setting us up to spend trillions of dollars subsidizing it.

For resisting this serial economic and governmental folly, the Left has incessantly accused the Right of not having a plan to create jobs.

This ludicrous charge simultaneously reveals two immutable truths:

1. The Left is-outside of their exhausted government-borrowing-and-spending model-totally bereft of ideas.  On private sector job creation-and most other things.  And
2. The Right remains sorely challenged when it comes to communicating and explaining immutable truths.

Immutable truths like:

1. The government can’t create (“or save”) private sector jobs.  President Obama’s Press Secretary (finally) acknowledged it.  What it can do is damage and outright eliminate jobs and job creators in the process of trying to do so.  Because the money government uses (so poorly) has to first be stolen from…the job creators in the private sector.  Were it instead left there, it would in fact create (and save) gigs.  And, thusly, the other side of that coin…
2. Reducing the size, scope and sphere of influence of government is, in fact, a hay-yuge job creator – and a tremendous jobs plan.

Nature abhors a vacuum.  As government shrinks and leaves room, the private sector will immediately rush to grow and fill it.

Let us briefly examine (what should be) the obvious.

1. As government expands, the private sector contracts.  More money to government means more less money in the private sector.  Because it is from the private sector that the government takes it.
2. The more active government is, the less active the private sector is – a perverse and dangerous sort of Red Light-Green Light.  As we’ve seen with the President Barack Obama Administration – and its ceaselessly active and expansive Agencies, Departments, Commissions and Boards.  Private companies remain frozen in amber – not knowing when and where the next government money bomb or regulatory anvil is going to fall.  Ask not on whom the hammer falls – it may fall on thee.
3. All of which is why government “stimulus” spending is actually bad for the economy.
   1. It inserts government-funded competitors into the marketplace, created/subsidized to compete against private companies investing private capital. Which…
   2. Freezes into inaction private companies all over the place – not just in the areas in which the government competitors have been inserted.  Because (as we said) they don’t know if the next government money bomb is going to land on their heads.  So it makes private companies wonder…
   3. Why risk my capital to invest, hire or expand – if a government-funded competitor may the next day be created/subsidized to take me on, and potentially take me down?

Thusly, when government acts (Green Light) – the private sector stops and waits (Red Light).

This is why private companies are – to much consternation from the Left – sitting on trillions of dollars of capital.  Not investing, expanding or hiring – for they (understandably) live in fear of the government’s next debilitative move.

Thusly, any proposal that makes for less government is – inherently – a jobs plan.

House Republicans just this week announced their Fall plan.  It is deregulatory, it is fairly comprehensive – and they are calling it a Jobs Agenda (which, of course, it is).

To which I say: Bravo.  Keep that push – and that messaging – going.

President Obama, meanwhile, this week announced another $1 billion in private sector regulatory abuse.

To which I say: Terrible.  And typical.  Like more than a century’s worth of typical.

We need to end all of these pro-regulatory, Huge Government pushes.  And begin the WalMart-esque tax, tax law and regulatory rollbacks.

The President on Wednesday asked for a Congressional joint session next week to give yet another of his famous problem-solving speeches – so as to announce his latest Keynesian, Huge Government, big spending “jobs plan.”

Prepare for the wondrousness of – more of the exact same with which we’ve been poisoned since at least World War I.

—–

Which brings us to the private technology and communications sector.

Which currently serves as a pristine less government-more jobs visual aide.

The companies that provide us our Internet and cell phone access remain under the spacious regulatory confines of the 1996 Telecommunications Act – the last time Congress addressed these spheres.

As the year indicates, there was relatively little in the way of the Internet and the cell phone – so the Act intentionally left them relatively unregulated.  To allow them to grow unfettered into whatever they would become.

And that hands-off approach worked.  Huge.

Fifteen years later, the reg-free World Wide Web has become a free speech, free market Xanadu.

And cell/smart phones are increasingly bionic – perpetually becoming better, stronger and faster.

And the two spheres are becoming increasingly intertwined.  Every day brings us new and fabulous breakthroughs in the harmonic convergence of the Internet and what was once euphemistically called your “phone.”

Coincidences?  Hardly.

Less government – revolutionary freedom.

(Pun intended.  As we’ve learned from China, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the rest of the world, government involvement with the Internet is a BAD idea.)

Less government also means more opportunity.

For we are delivered word that while the rest of the American economy has now long been mired in 9+% unemployment, the tech sector rate is a tiny (by any standard) 3.3%.

Less government – many more jobs.

As (further) demonstrated by a recent report that determined that for every one regulatory bureaucrat you dump, you create 98 private sector gigs.  A year.  For each of the first five post de-regulator years.

Less government – many, many more jobs.

—–

But we are on the verge of President Obama dropping a ginormous Tech Sector regulatory anvil right on our gourds.

In December, his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) jammed through its illegal Internet regulatory power grab so as to then impose the all-oppressive Network Neutrality.

So when this unlawful order is finally filed with the federal register in a couple of months – the free speech, free market, job-creation joy ride will be over.

Unless – we can overturn the rogue Commission’s unauthorized seizure.  Which we can do with the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

The House has already passed its portion thereof.  The Senate won’t vote on it at least until the order is officially filed.

The CRA can not be filibustered.  Which means when the time comes, only 51 Senator Ayes are required.  All 47 Republicans have promised theirs, so but four Democrats are needed.

Which we can get.  In fact, they likely can be culled from amongst the 23 Democrats up for reelection next year.

Some of whom aren’t running – they may be less than persuadable.

The rest are running.  Many of them in swing – and in some cases solidly Republican – states.

We should be able to get the requisite four.

And we should definitely work very hard to do so.

So as to place on President Obama’s desk a golden opportunity for him to put his money – and pen – where his allegedly deregulatory mouth has been.

He’s been promising less government.  Let’s give him the opportunity to make good on his word.

(Please, insert jokes here – it’s in part what the Comments section is for.

The nation’s economic recovery – from this Leftist, Huge Government malaise – requires nothing less.

I’ve noticed that many of my Liberal friends constantly harped on George W. Bush’s faith in Jesus.  They wrung their hands in terror that something would be implemented that would…be really bad.  Ultimately, they just didn’t like his religion being foisted on them, although when pressed, they had trouble specifying exactly what would result from the President’s faith.

Now, we’re seeing the same fears being sounded over Gov. Perry’s faith. The message is that Liberals don’t want to be forced into believing something they don’t want to believe in, or that some religiously-driven policy will be enacted against their own interest, or that it will somehow restrict their personal freedom.

That is perfectly reasonable, and I agree with them completely.

The irony is that the Liberal approach to policy in general is cloaked behind its own ideological philosophy.  It may not be an established religion, but Conservatives and Libertarians are equally opposed to some policy being put in place that restricts freedom, that forces them to believe something they don’t want to believe in, or that is against their own interest.

And I naturally agree with them, as well.

In the case of Liberals, it isn’t called Christianity.  It’s called “fairness”.  Just like Christianity, it carries its own set of rules about an idealized view of the world and how to achieve it.  For every complaint the Left may have about Christians pushing their views on others, the Right has a legitimate set of complaints about the Fair-ites pushing their views on them.

The difference is that Christianity has rarely been actively forced into public policy, and when it has, it does not impact personal freedom in this country.  The country was founded on Judeo-Christian tenets, after all.  Sure, there’s the occasional attempt to restrict abortion rights via some state legislation.  I don’t support that legislation because it’s folly to begin with, never has a chance of passing, and is strictly political that only serves to further divide.  But there are those who consider abortion to be murder, and that position is well within the bounds of morality and the public interest.  Who wants murder to be legal?  Liberals, however, exclusively see it as an assault on a woman’s freedom, without once respecting the Christian view that it has nothing to do with that, and that there are plenty of easier ways to restrict women’s freedom were that the goal.

Regardless, I get why people are upset about an attempt to restrict abortion, seeing it as an attempt to restrict personal freedom.  Well, guess what?  A lot of folks are upset about Liberal attempts to restrict their personal freedom.  Yet Liberals belittle those concerns because they are done to make things “fair”.

The Fair-ites endorse policies that directly restrict freedom, and seek punitive action for those who have earned things such as status, wealth, comfort, a large radio audience, and good health care.  The Fair-ites seek to seize those assets and give them to others who have not earned them, and to do so by force.  They insist on imposing their own morality by taxing the rich for their “fair share”, and by combining it with their ignorance of economics, this makes things even worse for the economy.  They even name their attempt to censor free speech as the “Fairness Doctrine”, because they hate that Conservatives have achieved great (and earned) success in radio.

Folks, there’s a reason Superman stood for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” and not “Truth, Fairness, and the American Way”.

In short, Christians believe that “what’s mine is yours”, and leave it to one’s personal convictions whether or not to share (which they do, in vastly greater amounts than Liberals).   Fair-ites believe that “what’s yours is mine”, and seek legislation and regulation to accomplish this – all the while conveniently forgetting that Conservatives freely and willingly give more to charity than Liberals (and if you’re Joe Biden, you give almost nothing and it consists mainly of old clothes.  Such a class act).

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Left’s quasi-religious movement known as “Global Warming”.   Here they have a God (Al Gore), whose Gospel they try to spread to the heretics (which includes those who may simply be on the fence about man-made global warming), a Bible (“peer-reviewed studies”), proclamations about the unerring word of the Bible (“the science is settled”), an Apocalypse prophecy (“The world is going to be submerged under melting glaciers”), sin and absolution (“carbon emission” and “carbon offsets”), infidels (“Global warming deniers”), Apostates (“Bjorn Lomborg”), call for sacrifice (“hybrid vehicles” over “gas guzzlers”), ritual (“recycling”), Puritans (“Man is bad, we have caused global warming and must suffer to make amends”), control and imposition of authority (“environmental studies prior to construction”), and the AntiChrist (“Lord Monckton”).

Global Warming Alarmism seeks and has actually succeeded in doing that which has only been feared of Christianity:  to restrict our freedom by forcing us to engage in behavior that we may not want to engage in “for the greater good”, to over-regulate to the point where jobs are lost and the economy tanks further, and to insist upon the insertion of the ideology into our daily lives – whether we like it or not.

But here’s the most delicious part of this entire discussion.  I wrote a memoir about an extraordinary teacher named Edwin Barlow.  He was a follower of the Scholastics, who used reason to support their belief in God.  Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive.  And yet, Liberals seem to reject both faith and reason in favor of irrational fear and emotion.

So for Liberals who fear the Christian will force his religion upon you, I ask one simple question:  George Bush had both houses of Congress for four entire years.  Name one religious-based policy that was foisted on you personally from which you suffered.

Now, for Conservatives who fear the Liberal will force his religion on you, I ask one simple question:  Barack Obama had both houses of Congress for two entire years.  Name ten Liberal-based policies that were foisted on you personally from which you suffered.

Hint: The second question is much easier to answer than the first.

So as to feign the appearance of getting with the government cutting program – while carrying on with the Huge and Huger Government status quo.

One need only momentarily, cringingly recall the debt ceiling debacle for recent evidence of the Big Talk, No Action nature of all of this.

Where we saw the Tea Party, Insurgent-supported plan – which would have seriously cut and capped spending, started the ball rolling on a Balanced Budget Amendment and averted U.S. credit downgrade – be almost summarily dismissed by the DC Establishment so that they could instead force feed us a non-cutting, Super (Stupor) Committee alternative that fails utterly to address our catastrophic deficits and debt.

Wonder why Congress’ poll numbers are so low these days?  This is why.

Perhaps the worst faux government cutting offenders of all are to be found in the Barack Obama Administration.  Members thereof have been making so many head fakes towards Less Government that many must by now be suffering from whiplash.

(Luckily for them, ObamaCare has not yet gone into effect.)

Leading this disingenuous charge is the Commander in Chief his own self.

President Obama has time and again made speeches, pronouncements and proclamations allegedly professing his acknowledgement of the need to cut.  He has written editorials.  He has issued executive orders.

He has engaged in all of this fraudulence only after having been dragged kicking and screaming to the concept by those of actual Less Government mindset.

And all the while he, his Party and his fellow ideologues have thoroughly abused those calling for the type of Change in which they aren’t at all interested.

Calling them terrorists.  Hostage takers.  Racists.  Telling them to go straight to Hell.  Accusing them of holding a gun to their heads.

And on, and on, and on, and….

We hope you’re enjoying the New Tone.

As always with Leftists and things they don’t want but We the People do, there are words – and there are deeds.

The Executive Branch panoply of departments, agencies and commissions was during that time frame in overdrive to execute as many power grabs via regulatory fiat as possible.

To briefly discuss but a few….

The Democrat Congress couldn’t pass the energy sector-killing Cap & Trade?  No problem, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just began to implement it as if it did.

The Democrat Congress couldn’t pass the union-payoff, anti-free choice Employee Free Choice Act?  No problem, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) just began to implement it as if it did.

Then there is President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – and its December 21 illegal Internet power grab executed so as to then impose the absurd Network Neutrality.

So pardon us if we don’t take too seriously the Administration’s latest pretend Less Government issuance.

White House budget chief Jacob Lew has ordered agency heads to submit spending plans for the upcoming budget at least 5 percent below this year’s levels. He also wants them to propose ways to trim a total of at least 10 percent of their spending.

Wow.  5 whole %.  Maybe.  With the potentiality of – maybe – 10%.  Staggering.

These are “submit(ted) spending plans.”  Which means these cuts are just as ethereal and phantasmagorical as those in Years Nine and Ten of the debt ceiling “deal.”

So, clearly, the Obama Administration has finally learned the lesson of the historic 2010 Less Government election.  (Read: sarcasm.)

And does this titanic (read: sarcasm) proposed cut request apply to the aforementioned FCC – currently still in the process of their aforementioned takeover of 1/6th of the American economy?

We don’t know.  We called the FCC, and left a message asking.  We haven’t heard back.

The Commission has to be in the process of exponentially increasing its budget – so as to regulate in so huge a fashion.  But they’re being asked to draft a proposal to maybe cut their budget by 5%?

Just as the Department of Health and Human Services – ginning up so as to implement the monstrous ObamaCare – is likewise laughably being asked to propose 5% in pretend cuts.

Just also as the EPA is gearing up to dramatically over-regulate our entire energy sector.  And… 5%?  Maybe?

And on, and on, and on, and….

Does anyone else see the absurdity in this?

Are these maybe-perhaps-pretend 5% cuts to be executed after said massive budgetary ramp-ups, executed so as to implement all of this Huge Government?

Not unlike Leftists’ proposed reductions in the rate of growth of the federal budget – after they just finished increasing it by an obscene 29% in just the last four years?

What we’re seeing is ginormous increases in the federal Leviathan – subsequently back-door locked-in by 5% cut proposals to the new, gigantic amount.

These tiny proposed cuts will most likely never come to pass.  But the huge increases will have already done so.

And thusly does the Less Government seriousness of the Obama Administration and the DC Establishment (read: sarcasm) – and our rocket ride to Huge Government oblivion – continue unabated.

What those of us here in the Real World refer to as “lying.”

This serial falsehood-ity is executed in large part to buttress and bolster a Huge Government agenda – which these D.C. Denizens wish to continue implementing, but to which We the People are demonstrably opposed.

How else, for example, to explain the Democrat-led United States Senate defiantly and illegally refusing for more than 800 days to pass a budget?

They would rather shirk a fundamental job responsibility – and break the law doing it – than tell We the People just how much they want to grow the already obscenely obese federal Leviathan.

Which brings us to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Which has – in pursuit of their portion of the Barack Obama Administration Huge Government itinerary – taken serial liberties with the truth.

So as to under false pretenses assassinate the character of the private Internet sector.  So as to ultimately assassinate the private Internet sector.

How do we know this?  Because Robert McChesney, the Godfather of the Media Marxist “reformers” – whose bidding the FCC is subserviently doing – has said so:

“(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

The FCC has – bereft of any evidence – lied to us about mythical “evil” corporations that will block our access to websites so as to “justify” their imposition of the ridiculous and totalitarianism-inducing Network Neutrality.

They’ve lied to us about the broadband Internet market – two times giving the private sector an “F” for having achieved 95% and then 98% access for American consumers.

(T)hey must pretend that what is undoubtedly the most successful portion of the private sector – possibly ever – is failing.  To “warrant” their more illegal actions to come.

Their desired ends justify ANY – even these most absurd – means.

They’ve lied to us about Internet sector jobs – to which we’ve been allegedly “denied access.”

(T)hey claim that the scant 2% of Americans not having access to broadband is somehow “denying access” to gigs and fiscal prospects to “approximately 26 million Americans.”

All of this ridiculousness is proffered to foment a false crisis that requires as its solution – why of course, more Huge Government.

Without action by the FCC in partnership with the states and the private sector, prospects for broadband service in many of the areas cited in the Report will remain unacceptably low.

That’s 98% access – that the D.C. Denizens have deemed “unacceptably low.”

Think of all the abysmal government failures that have but a fraction of this private sector success rate, despite trillions in taxpayer coin wasted in the effort.  For which the Denizens are now fighting tooth and nail for even more coin – unfettered by any conditions or analysis of their “unacceptably low” performances.

A large part of the FCC’s ongoing “The private Internet sector has failed you” storyline has been their repeated assertion that the “evil” Internet companies are lying to you (projection, anyone?) – that the broadband speeds they advertise are faster than they deliver.

Then came last week.

Last week brought us a scientific, measured report on the broadband speeds being delivered by many of the nation’s largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

And what does the report say?

On average, during peak periods DSL-based services delivered download speeds that were 82 percent of advertised speeds, cable-based services delivered 93 percent of advertised speeds, and fiber-to-the-home services delivered 114 percent of advertised speeds.

Not quite the 98% broadband Internet access number that the FCC gave a failing grade – but the Commission knows that this is not an all-the-time exact science.

These results are so good, in fact, that the Commission has basically praised the “evil” Industry for them.

Maybe at least in part because said report was called for and conducted by – the FCC its own self.

Will this FCC acknowledgement of this facet of the free speech, free market Xanadu that is the Internet lead to more such admissions – and thereby less (mostly illegal) regulations?  Here’s hoping  – but I for one won’t halt respiratory activity in the meantime.

Does the fact that the FCC commissioned the report – and lauded the results – mean the Huge Government Media Marxists won’t assert it is an “evil” corporate conspiracy and summarily dismiss it?

Sadly, no.

“No matter how industry tries to put a positive spin on these results, the report shows conclusively that many Americans are simply not getting what they pay for.”

Because Huge Government Leftists never allow facts to get in the way of a good beating.

If these clowns can here continue to stand in willful defiance of readily obvious facts – facts even their FCC fellow travelers acknowledge – one has to wonder on how much else they are just as willfully, woefully and disingenuously wrong.

And to wonder why anyone still takes them at all seriously.

It’s going to die hard.  And ugly.

The collapse is well-underway in Europe – Greece has gone from the cradle of democracy to a cesspool of union-fueled mobs – but America faces the same trauma.  As the contradictions inherent in the vision of a societal plan based on the notion that an ever-expanding pool of Democratic-voting serfs sucking the wealth away from the mostly Republican-oriented producers who labored to create it become more apparent, the reactions and rear-guard efforts of the terminal liberal elite will grow more extreme.

We are already seeing the liberal elite lash out in anger and frustration at what is a perfect storm of failure.  Glenn Reynolds, the legendary Instapundit, chronicles the daily disintegration, while the brilliant Mark Steyn’s cheery new book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, drops on August 8, 2011 – I’ll race you to Amazon to get a copy.

As the three components of the liberal establishment – the media, the unions and politicians – rage at the dying of the liberal light, the insanity meter will swing far into the red.  It’s already begun.  The Tea Party has dared to speak the truth, and the uncomfortable realities it has pointed out have destroyed the bogus consensus that has allowed the debt Titanic to sail giddily on toward the iceberg.  That’s why the establishment response is to demonize the popular movement.  We’re “terrorists” or “lunatics” or, bizarrely, “hobbits.”  Our crime is telling the truth.

Never mind that the Tea Party candidates were absolutely clear about their debt crisis solution when running for election – the voters spoke.  Apparently, the only polls that matter get taken around the tables at Manhattan and Georgetown dinner parties – and, oddly, the results are always unanimous in favor of a “compromise” that tries to shore-up the crumbling status quo.

The problem with the Tea Party is not what it does – at best, right now, it can only make a moral and political case; it does not have the numbers to make anything happen without non-Tea Partiers joining it.  The problem with the Tea Partiers, in the eyes of the liberal establishment and the pet moderate GOP enablers, is that it dares to point out the indisputable truth that must be hidden at all costs:  That the social welfare state is unsustainable and will collapse.

But the demonization campaign does not seem to be working as expected – amazingly, the Tea Party caucus was able to provide the missing spine to the go-along/get-along gang running the House and present a primary-based incentive to the collegial Senate Republicans who have to face the voters next year and don’t want to join booted squish ex-Utah senator Bob Bennett in his new sinecure as the MSM’s go-to, slam-the-conservatives, pseudo-GOP nobody.  While the resulting deal was terrible, it was still a massive humiliation for the liberal establishment.  They are not in a forgiving mood, and it’s easier to hate on the Tea Party than face the fact that they’ve driven us to bankruptcy.

So when demonization doesn’t work, government lifers like Senator Kerry advocate silencing the opposition.  One might think that a United States senator demanding that the media refuse to report the views of his political opponents because too many people are accepting them might stir some outrage in the media.  But then, if you did, you probably might believe in unicorns, leprechauns and global warming as well.

Instead of a chorus of outrage at this creepy fascism, the media elite seem to think this is a great idea.  But that should not be a surprise.  The media – at least the old media (call it the MSM) – is dying, killed off not only by technology that allows conservatives to evade the gates it used to defend to prevent the political discourse from being contaminated with ideas that challenge its foundational liberal premises.  It is grasping at a life preserver, trying to take in a few more lungfuls of air before it sinks under forever.

With the establishment politicians far “out of their depth” in response to the coming crisis, watch for more moves by the Left not to resolve the situation but to kill the messenger.  Do not put it past the elite to actually try again to limit debate using law and/or regulations.  They still salivate at the notion of killing off conservative radio by resurrecting the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine, and the government at one point argued that it had the right to criminally prosecute citizens for publishing a book critical of politicians until it backed down.  Note that the MSM strongly supports these forays into fascism – not surprising since they think that the Constitution that allows conservatives’ voice to be heard is a “problem.”

But it will be impossible to regulate conservative opposition out of existence – not just because of the First Amendment but because the coming reckoning will be so severe that it can no longer be swept under the rug.  Yet, rug sweeping will become their next strategy.  Playing off the demonization tactics, they will continue to attempt to engage moderate – read “squishy” – Republicans toward some sort of “compromise” that will give them just a bit more time before everything comes crashing down.  Watch for this when the “Super Commission” comes back with its plan.  Their goal – get past November 2012 then hopefully use the crisis to their advantage to turn the ship of state even harder to port.

But that’s a fool’s errand.  The DC establishment can ignore math, but math won’t ignore it.  There is simply not enough wealth that exists or can be imagined into existence through borrowing to support the redistributionist utopia they seek.  Greece is a harbinger of the future.  The EU will cobble together a bogus bailout that will keep the Hellenic rowboat afloat just a bit longer before it is swamped, but Zorba best learn to swim because it is going under.

Then the other failed states of Europe – Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal – will collapse too, taking with them Europe’s banks and our banks along with them.  The only reason we won’t fail first – S&P did not act too early but, rather, far too late in downgrading the US – is that Europe’s social democratic elite is even more delusional than ours.

It’s over.  The system must crash and reboot.  The choice is a hard landing or a harder landing.

The prescription is clear to anyone looking at the situation, except for the establishment that will not see it because to admit what must be done and embrace it means to wave goodbye to its members’ power, prestige and position.  We need to slash spending to less than the revenue we take in – the difference going to pay off the $14 trillion-plus tab.  And we need to do it now, not in some hazy future where some other Congress will have to make the tough calls – though reality may just make them for it.

That means a radical return to Constitutional government where the federal government goes back to what it was formed to do – those things set forth in the Constitution and nothing else.  The relatively easy part will be zeroing out the cowboy poetry slams, largely unwatched government TV networks and creepy shrimp-on-a-treadmill study grants.

The hard part is the entitlements all of us were promised and none of us will ever see.  It means repealing Obamacare, but moreover returning the responsibility for health care to where it belongs – the individual.  The same with retirement – Social Security is a ponzi scheme and everyone knows it.

Government student loans, farms subsidies, corporate bailouts, food stamps, Section 8 housing  – none of these are federal responsibilities.  These should be eliminated not only because they are counterproductive, ineffective and soul-crushing for recipients but because if we don’t do it on our own terms fiscal reality will do it for us cold turkey.  And let’s not forget eliminating vast swaths of federal regulations – something that will both free up business and have the added benefit of dumping hundreds of thousands of government loafers off of Uncle Sam’s payroll.

There is a major change coming, and it could get ugly.  Union members will do their masters’ bidding with the support of the MSM, threatening violence and maybe committing some.  Look for well-planned and carefully-coordinated “spontaneous” mass marches on public buildings by scores of public employee union slugs demanding we keep subsidizing their retirements at full pay at age 50.

Fortunately, again as observed by Glenn Reynolds, the present crop of union activists aren’t the hardscrabble blue collar bruisers of the storied past.  Today, most seem to be skinny green tea-sipping public school teachers, naggy Department of Weights & Measures diversity officers, or massive welfare-dispensing office drones clad in form-fitting purple size-XXXXL SEIU t-shirts that were made in China.  Not exactly a fearsome crew, unless you’re between them and a muffin.

The Tea Party did not cause what will be a brutal reckoning.  It only pointed out the truth  and said, “No more” – an unforgivable crime to the people who caused this disaster and want to keep milking the system for as long as possible.  The key to getting through the coming trauma – and it will be traumatic, as the social contract the liberals unilaterally imposed is rewritten by an implacable reality – is for the productive citizens of the United States to stand firm and stand fast.  In other words, just the way Americans have gotten through every other crisis we’ve faced before.

America’s greatest days need not be in the past.  Guided by the Founder’s vision and the principles of the Constitution, we will find that they lie ahead, over just one more hill.