At the risk of sounding too cliché... it's about damn time!

If you're like the majority of employees both in Oklahoma and throughout the United States, your employer likely subjects you to drug testing as a condition of your employment.  As it stands right now, if you are on welfare you are not required to submit to a drug test.  While I am all for freedom of choice as to whether someone wants to shoot their veins or snort coke, I'd much rather not be paying for it out of my taxes.

Senator Anthony Sykes has introduced a bill in the Oklahoma Senate to require all applicants and recipients of assistance through the state's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to submit to regular drug testing by the Department of Human Services.  The bill is introduced as an amendment to 56 OS 2001, Section 230.52, adding the following paragraph:

Obama has revealed his budget.  As expected, he proposes letting the Bush Tax Cuts on the "wealthy" expire while leaving those making under $200K untouched.  To "help stimulate" job growth, he also proposes a $5000 "tax credit" for employers each time they hire someone.  Some people are stupid enough to think that this makes some kind of business sense.

Let's take a look at what it costs to hire someone for a $20K per year salary.  In addition to the salary, the employer also has to pay unemployment tax (6.2% of the first $7000), social security (6.2%), and Medicare (1.45%).  This total comes out to $21,964.  This is just Federal requirements.  Add in State employment taxes, and you're easily looking at $24,000 total between salary and tax burden.  Hmm... so far that $5000 credit is making sense.

This is from Obama's recent State of the Union address.  In it, he takes 72 words to make an inaccurate polemic about the recent Citizens United decision.  Check out Eric Holder, Harry Reid, and Dick Durban jump to a standing ovation near the Justices as Obama openly criticizes their judgement of the Constitutionality of McCain-Feingold and making it out as a mistake on their part which, according to him, "will open the floodgates for special interests, including corporations, to spend without limit on our elections."

Maybe Wilson was right when he yelled "YOU LIE" at the President.  Here are some excerpts from the State of the Union:

Our most urgent task upon taking office was to shore up the same banks that helped cause this crisis. It was not easy to do. And if there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.

Then why, oh great one, were you all for it while you were a Senator?  It wasn't because it was "necessary" to save the Union, it was because it was necessary to grab power from the public sector.

And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

Bovine excrement.  They weren't raised effective 2009 or 2010 - they go into effect for 2011.

 Maybe someone should inform him that they are called LOANS for a reason.  From the transcript:

And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service. Because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.

 Seriously?  Obama expects your loan to get paid back after telling you that it will be forgiven in ten or twenty years anyway?

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery

The State of the Union

Wednesday, January 27, 2009

Washington, DC

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They have done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they have done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.

 Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 the restrictions in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law on independent corporate expenditures for political campaigns are unconstitutional.  They also upheld the disclosure requirements 8-1.

Already we have people freaking out.  For some reason, these people believe that if a business chooses to organize itself as a corporation then it should have its free speech restricted by the government.  It's another example of a "corporation" being made the enemy.  What's ironic is that many of these who preach that corporations are bad and should be restricted in as many ways as possible are themselves corporations.  Who am I referring to?  The media, of course.

Here's an excerpt from the majority opinion:

 Don't you wish you had this option? Get closer to maxing out your available credit, so you give yourself a higher limit?  That is exactly what Congress just proposed.  As the national debt nears it's cap of $12.4 Trillion, Congress wants to increase how much it can borrow to $14.3 Trillion... an increase of $1.9 Trillion dollars.

Only a decade ago the entire Federal government operated on less than $1.9 Trillion.  Obama's deficit last year was $1.4 Trillion.  That means Uncle Sam had to borrow $1.4 Trillion just to function.  Here's what that looks like: $1,400,000,000,000.  When you look at a number that big, then the $100,000,000 ($100 Million, $0.1 Billion, $0.0001 Trillion) that they borrowed to send as "relief" to Haiti doesn't look so bad.

 The best evidence was put on display in the Brown/Coakley race in Massachusetts.  The last Republican to win a Senate race in Massachusetts, Edward Brooke, was just as liberal as most Democrats.  However, Brown's "out of nowhere" (according to the media) victory just goes to show how upset Massachusetts voters are with Obama's administration.  So maybe we can say that Obama has kept at least one campaign promise: "change we can believe in."

 Since Scott Brown won Massachusetts and broke the supermajority held by Democrats in the Senate, top Democrats are preparing to use a "nuclear option."  Before the polls even closed, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) began outlining a few "nuclear tactics" that Democrats could use to pass their socialization of healthcare.

"We could go to something called 'reconciliation', which is in the weeds procedurally, but would allow us to modify that health care bill by a different process that doesn't require 60 votes, only a majority," Durbin said. "So that is one possibility there."

"Reconciliation" is a process where only a 51-vote (rather than 60-vote) majority is necessary in the Senate to make adjustments to the bill.