If Prop 8 goes, then what's the point of the ballot anymore?

If you have somehow missed the insanely obnoxious amount of media coverage so far this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday, March 26th in regards to California's contentious Proposition 8 which limits marriage to between one man and one woman. The Obama Administration and gay-rights activists hope the Court will strike down Prop 8 and discover a "new right" in the Constitution granted marriage rights to same-sex couples.

In case these activists and the Court have forgotten, the United States is a Federal Republic. Most people wrongly call it a democracy but they get credit for being close enough. Regardless, the point is that in the United States the people own the government. The government does not own the people. The people have the power.

In California, without a doubt the most liberal voting bloc in the country besides perhaps New York, the will of the people was made quite clear when voters upheld Proposition 8 in a 2008 referendum, a huge blow to liberals and gay-rights activists across the country who felt sure California was a safe bet to strike down the proposition. This was the 2nd time in less than 10 years voters had taken to the ballot box to ban gay marriage. Proposition 22, passed by voters in 2000, had been struck down earlier in 2008. Yet the will of the voters continues to be under attack from an activist, openly gay judge and the Obama Administration.

If the Court ultimately decides to overturn Proposition 8, then we may as well just throw out the will of the power and the power of the ballot. If, with what would more than likely be a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court can just throw out and ignore what the people have now voted for twice, then why do we even let people vote at all? Why do we go around claiming the United States is a democratic system if judges on our courts can just throw out votes they disagree with? This is a state issue and needs to be left to the voters in individual states. The Supreme Court cannot just come in and decide that what voters have defeated at the polls in almost three dozen states is now all the sudden legal everywhere. The people, not the courts, have the power in this country. It needs to remain that way.

Jimmy Williams

SURPRISE! Business tells me higher minimum wage would mean cuts, cost hikes.

Just under a month ago I published a post about how Obama thinks the federal minimum wage can just go up to $9 per hour without any adverse effects on the economy such as job loss or higher prices. Obviously that is 100 percent fairytale thinking but to prove it I went out the next weekend and did some reporting about how the minimum wage hike would affect the cost of meal plans here at UMD, which are already slated to increase in price by $152 next school year.

I conducted an interview with a representative from Dining Services here at Maryland, whose name I am withholding because nothing is anywhere near official yet, in which I was told that an increase in the minimum wage could mean higher costs for students, fewer student jobs available and/or a loss in services available from Dining Services.

Everything that representative of Dining Services told me directly contradicts what the president said will happen if this country raises the federal minimum wage. The president says no one will lose their jobs. Dining Services told me that if the minimum wage goes up, some of the 400 students it employs every year would lose their jobs or not get hired to begin with. The president says costs for consumers will not increase. Dining Services told me the increased cost of labor would be passed on to student consumers in the form of even more expensive dining plans. The president claims businesses as a whole will go on as normal with a higher minimum wage. Dining Services told me services might be reduced.

The representative told me that Dining Services will do whatever it takes to avoid operating at a loss, which is not permissible. So who do you believe? The community organizer in the White House who has no idea how businesses and the economy work or the business here at UMD that has presented the harsh realities of foolish policy decisions?

Jimmy Williams

Blaming the Wrong People

The Diamondback here at the University of Maryland published an article from Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Thursday, March 7th, 2013, which effectively blamed Republicans for the sequester. He distorted the truth, omitted facts and outright lied to the university community which he claims to represent in Congress. The article can be found here.

The following is a response column I wrote to The Diamondback in an attempt to try and set the record straight. I'll be sending it to them sometime on Friday, March 8th and will update this post if it is actually published. However, considering I've written at least 4 guest columns/letters to The Diamondback in the nearly two years I have been in college without a single one being published, combined with my "lack of credibility" on this issue, I have little reason to believe my response will actually be published. I have also contacted Dr. Andy Harris (R-Md.) in the hopes he will take the time to also write to The Diamondback. I'll keep everyone posted on how my efforts go but in the meantime, allow me to set the record straight on the sequester:

While it is perfectly acceptable for Rep. Steny Hoyer to write an article about sequestration for The Diamondback, it is not okay for him to distort the truth, omit facts and lie to the community he represents about just how the $85 billion reduction in planned spending, known as the sequester, came to be.

In his article Hoyer accused Republicans of repeatedly refusing to bring alternatives to the sequester to the floor of the House. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

To clear things up and attempt to set the record straight, I’d like to remind everyone that the sequester was all President Obama’s idea. He and he alone owns it. In the summer of 2011, Speaker of the House John Boehner was incredibly close to an agreement on the debt limit with the president. That is until Obama blew that deal up at the last minute by demanding an extra $400 billion in new tax revenue, 50 percent more than the two had agreed on.

With that deal gone, Boehner, along with Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, put together the Budget Control Act which would have saved $917 billion, created a House-Senate “super committee” to find another $1.2 trillion in savings and would have blocked an increase to the debt limit a few months down the road if the committee failed to find the needed savings.

 

Despite bipartisan agreement to this plan in both houses of Congress, Obama blew this deal up as well because he didn’t want to face a debt-limit fight prior to his re-election campaign. His solution was to implement the sequester instead, which was added to the Budget Control Act in place of the debt limit provision and passed by both houses of Congress with just hours remaining before the debt limit was hit.

Following the passage of the Budget Control Act, Republicans repeatedly offered mixes of spending cuts and new revenue through reform of the tax code to no avail as Congressional Democrats and President Obama refused to accept these ideas. Obama even went on public record vowing to veto any Republican plan to stop the sequester. The super committee failed as a result, as did every other plan, and now we as a country find ourselves with the sequester.

And what was Obama’s “balanced alternative” that Hoyer mentioned in his article? Spend, spend and spend some more. The “fiscal cliff” deal ended the 2 percent payroll tax holiday and gave us $41 in new taxes for every $1 in spending cuts. Democratic plans to avoid the sequester called for much of the same; billions in new taxes and almost nothing in cuts.

Was the sequester the best way to cut spending? Far from it. But it was Obama’s idea, not Republicans’, and the blame for sequestration kicking in falls squarely on him, not Republicans. Republicans offered plans to stop this mess from happening. Obama offered campaign speeches and the blame game.

Despite the fear tactics and all the “statistics” employed by the likes of Maxine Waters, Janet Napolitano, Obama, Hoyer and others, the sequester isn’t really going to be that bad. The government can absorb a 2.4 percent spending cut. And the sequester certainly hasn’t stopped the federal government from spending enormous amounts of money, either. Since last Friday the TSA has spent $50 million on new uniforms (over $1,000 per employee), John Kerry has given Egypt $250 million that could’ve been better spent at home and the federal government is still hiring (400 new jobs posted on Monday alone) despite the potential for furloughs of 1000s of other employees.

Look for more posts next week as I head into spring break. I have lots of ideas in the works but the teachers have been pouring it on before we get our week off.

Jimmy Williams