Are you prepared for catastrophic spending cuts? [sarcasm]
Posted By RichC on February 27, 2013
I find it difficult to listen to “the sky is falling” coming from special interest groups with the politicians looking out for them … or for that matter President Obama “crying wolf” once again. If it is so difficult to trim a few percent federal budget (something that was suppose to be done several years ago), how is Washington DC ever going to address the three sacred cows which amount to 40% of all federal spending? (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security)
“At one point several weeks ago, the president said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.’ " Boehner told the Wall Street Journal.
Can you honestly look at the chart above and justify our bloated federal government and the ridiculous growth of spending (in the past 20 years, government spending has increased 71% faster than inflation – link)? Congress has shown an unwillingness to reel in the size of government for years and continues to pile up record debt by the trillions of dollars while our president won’t even admit that Washington DC has a spending problem – that’s unbelievable! Voters … be they uneducated or just expecting a “quid pro quo” bacon-bit like
Detroit Councilwoman JoAnn Watson (mp3) … they don’t seem to get it either.
Dr. Ben Carson may be onto something when he stated, “When everybody has skin in the game, then everyone will be responsible.”
Haven’t Americans reached the boiling point with irresponsible deficits and and the wasteful spending?
Is Carson’s out of the box thinking logical (more of Biblical based thoughts below) … or does the status quo leadership and class warfare gamesmanship give you confidence that Washington DC has this $16.5 Trillion dollar debt figured out?
Tithing is such a fair way to tax people is because it’s proportional. As soon as you move away from proportional taxing, ideology takes over. As a result, ideology is—quite frankly—arbitrary and depends upon the latest trendy or fashionable prejudices. A growing number of people seriously think that the rich should pay more, while some feel they should pay less. One could legitimately make the argument that if the top one percent pay 37% of the income taxes and the top 5% pay 59%, this clearly demonstrates their tax base should be lower. The top 5% don’t make 59% of the income and yet they pay 59% of the taxes. Therefore it is simple and fair to make the argument that they are being over taxed.Simplification is the only true and fair solution.
If you pay God 10% of your wealth, why should you pay the government more than that? Unlike our tax code, tithing is simple, and it is fair.
Tithing represents 10% of one’s increase. A proportional tax system does not have to reside at 10%. It can be higher or lower depending on the needs of the government. Because it would be applied proportionally to the entire population, the government would be unlikely to raise taxes to a very high level, for it would effect everyone and not just a small group of voters. This is a clear advantage of a proportional tax rate, that everyone participates. A country where half of the population pay no income taxes, but are allowed to vote to make the other people pay more taxes, makes absolutely no sense.
When everybody has skin in the game, then everyone will be responsible: imagine if when you ate ice cream, somebody else got fat! That’s how our tax and spend government works: 51% of the people vote for spending paid for by the other 49%.
Here are some great quotes from Dr. Carson’s books:
“Do your best and let God do the rest.”
― Ben Carson“Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give.”
― Ben Carson“If you hear how wonderful you are often enough, you begin to believe it, no matter how you try to resist it.”
― Ben Carson“God has given us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Why would God give us such a complex organ system unless he expects us to use it?”
― Ben Carson“Successful people don’t have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn’t mean we won’t have difficulties along the way. We will–we all do. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. "We can’t win," we moan. "They won’t let us win.”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“If we recognize our talents and use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, we will rise to the top of our field.”
― Ben Carson“Everyone in the world worth being nice to. Because God never creates inferior human beings, each person deserves respect and dignity.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“When I treat other people with kindness and love, it is part of my way of paying my debt to God and the world for the privilege of living on this planet.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Here is the treasure chest of the world – the public library, or a bookstore.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don’t have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won’t have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need instead of beating you, they’ll beat a path to your door.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Anyone who can’t learn from other people’s mistakes simply can’t learn, and that;s all there is to it. There is value in the wrong way of doing things. The knowledge gained from errors contributes to our knowledge base.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“We get out of life what we put into it. The way we treat others is the way we ourselves get treated.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“God cares about every area of our lives, and God wants us to ask for help.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“…I became acutely aware of an unusual ability–a divine gift, I believe–of extraordinary eye and hand coordination. It’s my belief that God gives us all gifts, special abilities that we have the privilege of developing to help us serve Him and humanity. And the gift of eye and hand coordination has been an invaluable asset in surgery. This gift goes beyond eye-hand coordination, encompassing the ability to understand physical relationships, to think in three dimensions. Good surgeons must understand the consequences of each action, for they’re often not able to see what’s happening to see on the other side of the area in which the area they’re actually working.”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“First, we cannot overload the human brain. This divinely created brain has fourteen billion cells. If used to the maximum, this human computer inside our heads could contain all the knowledge of humanity from the beginning of the world to the present and still have room left over. Second, not only can we not overload our brain – we also know that our brain retains everything. I often use saying that "The brain acquires everything that we encounter." The difficulty does not come with the input of information, but getting it out. Sometimes we "file" information randomly of little importance, and it confuses us.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“I have to come to realize that God does not want to punish us, but rather, to fulfill our lives. God created us, loves us and wants to help us to realize our potential so that we can be useful to others.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“I am convinced that knowledge is power – to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new obstacles, to make better decisions.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If we would spend on education half the amount of money that we currently lavish on sports and entertainment, we could provide complete and free education for every student in this country.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“The doors of the world are opened to people who can read.”
― Ben Carson“Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“I’m a good neurosugeon. That’s not a boast but a way of acknowledging the innate ability God has given to me. Beginning with determination and using my gifted hands, I went on for training and sharpening for my skills. ”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story“…the brain can process two million bits of information per second. It remembers everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever heard…”
― Ben Carson“When we are confronted by failure and mistakes, we can leave them behind and go on with our lives.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If we make every attempt to increase out knowledge in order to use it for human good, it will make a difference in us and in our world.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God’s sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“An important verity about knowledge is that the brain works most effectively with consciously retained information. We more easily remember what we want to recall later. When we feed our fourteen billion brain cells with information that will enrich us and help others, we are really learning to Think Big.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If we develop in-depth knowledge it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“Maybe that is the best lesson I learned in my first semester at Yale, because if I had gone to a less-demanding school and continued to sail along on the top, I am sure I would never have attained the subsequent achievements in my life.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angles, but am note nice, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but am not nice, I am nothing. If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but am not nice, I gain nothing.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn’t stand it. My mother couldn’t stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn’t think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn’t read but we didn’t know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn’t care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn’t hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.”
― Ben Carson“There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior.”
― Ben Carson“the doors of the world are open to dose who can read.”
― Ben Carson, Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk
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