Share your Ignorance

Just got another creepy email from one "Jon Carson", aka "info@barackobama.com". It asks me:

"Why are you fighting to reduce gun violence?"

What a clever, presumptive title that places me immediately into one of two boxes!

• EITHER:  I'm aiding these "control junkies" in their quest strip off rights and liberties of the general population "for a common cause",
• OR:  I'm apathetic and unconcerned with violence (at best) and causing the deaths of my fellow citizens (worse). 

This stuff is exactly the kind of plainly-executed Orwellian nightmare fodder that would make someone like Joseph_Goebbels glow with pride.

Here's the message:

Maybe you've seen firsthand how gun violence can rip apart a family and a community. Or maybe you're concerned by what you see on the news. Whatever your reason, those in Congress who oppose sensible change need to hear from you: Share your personal story or views on why Congress should act right now to help protect our kids and reduce gun violence. Notice how Jon's last paragraph says essentially nothing - except that you should help provide their propaganda operatives with more ideas that can be utilized to reinforce their agenda,  Nothing is said about what that agenda is, or how it is helpful.  So any cooperation you provide will be akin to writing a blank check for them. It's right about one thing though.  What I see on the news does disturb me, quite often in fact.  But I don't think we're talking about the same events at all. It continues... Your story will inspire others to speak out and show legislators that now is the time. President Obama said it: "More than a thousand birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun" in just the two months since the tragedy in Newtown. Billions and billions to be served. So why is our government buying up guns and bullets as fast as possible right now?  Is this a new economic stimulus program?  Why are there ammunition shortages where the public is concerned?  It's hard not to think that their is a deliberate effort afoot to deprive the citizens of ammunition, possibly in advance of Something Big... like a total economic collapse, for example.  It would be advantageous for the showrunners to be the only ones with firepower in such a calamitous scenario, wouldn't it?  Oh, I know, I'm just being paranoid.  But 1.6B (yes, billion) bullets? Each of those families deserves a vote by Congress on commonsense measures to help protect our kids. But we need to demand it. It's easy to share your story or point of view: Blah blah blah ... instructions are provided next, supposedly to submit a story to be shared with your fellow citizens in a public forum... However, I'm sure my own would never be published, only ones which fit the right "mold" that supports the gun-grab agenda of the radical left in our country. Notice, to submit anything you must provided enough information to be located and "subsequently corrected" if your thoughts are "wrong". The email continues, imploring me to participate in their zombie horde: Please share your story today: Well gosh.  If you insist, team-Obama.  But instead of wasting space reposting the instructions to aid anti-constitutional traitors, I'm going "green" to save you some server bandwidth and carbon-credit.  I'll just go ahead and post my own story and point of view here.  I will make my demand known in very short and concise language, which I am more than happy to share with everyone: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." You might recognize that from the Bill of Rights.  Or maybe not. The needs of the many... or the one? Then, Jon provides us with the courteous closing pitch, replete with the insipid and perfunctory "needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many" fallacy that we have come to loathe as much as any public statement by Dianne Feinstein ...

The Fractional Reserve System

If you want to be scared -- really, really scared -- watch the following video.  It excellently, and understandably, explains serious flaws in our system of commerce and finance.  Most chillingly, it explains:

1. That all the debt we have (as a nation) can never be repaid fully, because we must repay debts with interest, and nobody creates the "interest" money - it just drains the money supply over time.
2. Without an ever-increasing spiral of debt, the economy would not be able to function.  How can we have an ever-increasing spiral of debt, where we are now?
3. In the long term, banks must eventually (by the math) hold all "real" money AND property, leaving nothing - money or otherwise - for anyone else.

Tax Collections Fall

 Oh dear, oh dear.  It seems that tax hikes aren't working like they're supposed to.  States like California and Washington are seeing their tax revenue drop "unexpectedly" after both states raised their tax rates under Democrat leadership.

As expected, analysts are surprised and bewildered by the drop in revenue.  Once again, Keynesian economics has failed to deliver the goods it promises.  Washington looks like they're heading for a $2 billion shortfall, after having passed an $890 million tax increase earlier in the year.  California is already more than $650 million behind their projected take.  New York, too  is $392 million behind its projections for the year.

Go figure.  Must be those evil 1-percenters again.  Where is Paul Krugman when you need him?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/states-warn-that-tax-revenues-arent-rebounding.html

Big Goverment, Big Taxes, Big Problems

When government creates taxes for the purpose of changing your behavior, your freedom of self-determination has been violated.  Do you understand this?  Do you care?

Shouldn't you be making the choices which shape the way your life story unfolds?  Should government be choosing the correct path for you instead?  Which would you prefer?  Does either of these two options sound scary to you?

One political party in this country is particulary in love with taxation.  They want to tax practically everything.  And they'd like to coerce your behavior whilst imposing said taxation upon you.  It utterly amazes me that there is any popular support whatsoever for a political party bearing such a platform.  Basically, their message is "We'll take what's yours, and tell you what to do."  Oh, how inviting.  Yet there are advocates for this.  They are known as the liberal leftists.

I often see articles with reader comments afterward wherein "tea-partiers" are immediately referred to with the most vile derogatory terms.  Descriptions along the lines of "moronic", "racist", "stupid", "uneducated", "backward", etc.  Sometimes it's not just in the readers' comments, but the author's prose as well.   It's quite frustrating, because I just feel like I've missed the logic altogether (it seems so natural and automatic in their writing, how could I not draw the same conclusions?).

For the record, the Tea Party Movement stands for the following principles:

• Fiscal Responsibility
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets

What's wrong with any of that?  Is there something there which isn't really a good idea?  So why all the insults and name-calling?  Aren't those three points all good things? 

According to Paul Krugman  "... among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it."  Well, uh, yes.  I'd say our government displays a "belligerent sense of entitlement" -- to its citizens' money.  Once laundered through the purifying act of conversion into "tax revenue", your money becomes government property.  Never mind how they got it, right?

Let us not forget that the Soviet Union provided for us a brilliant example of what happens when you erase economic incentives from your society.  When an engineer earns the same wages as a bus driver, innovative technological inventions are far less common.  When a doctor earns the wages of a trash collector, the quality of your health care (and enthusiasm on the part of its provider) tends to decline.  Your local grocery's shelves are poorly stocked with a bland selection of minimal choices, as deemed necessary by the central-planning administrators (who are also poorly motivated and completely uninterested in your level satisfaction with said choices).

Maybe the folks doing that name-calling have something to hide.  Perhaps this strikes a raw nerve.  Maybe they're insecure in their own beliefs.  Why anyone would want to have less freedom and property rights is beyond me.

Benjamin Franklin wrote:   "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  Thus, the benefit of constitutionally limited government should be readily apparent.  And yet we have an army of Krugmans out there, professing that exactly the opposite is true.

As we near the expiration of the oft-maligned "Bush Tax Cuts", I am reminded of one of my axioms for civilization:

Taxation should not be used as a tool for coercion.

Never have I found a case in contradiction of this rule.  Test any tax, proposed or enacted, against that.  Will it serve a purpose with rational basis, or is it a punitive tool by which the government seeks to alter your personal decisions?  Examples:

• Soft drinks taxed, because "they make kids fat."  You're making the wrong choices for yourself.  Watch out for that trans-fat, too.
• Carbon taxed, because of "purported environmental damage" based on dubious scientific claims from Al Gore.
• Tobacco taxed at ludicrous levels of 400% or more, because of "increased costs of the resulting healthcare needs."  Oh, and by the way, government just assumed responsibility for administering your health care.  Conflict of interest, anyone?
• Ammunition taxed because, well, "it's for guns, and of course, they're just bad."  Only the government has a need for weapons, pal.
• Gasoline taxed, "to pay for infrastructure development" that never actually happens.  Oh yeah, they spent that money on a boatload of other budgetary pork.  Sorry.

Now, since all the taxes in place still aren't enough to feed the gigantic bureaucratic monster's hunger, California is mulling handing out IOUs again.  Isn't that just wonderful.

Al Sharpton: Let the Hate Begin

 The following are quotes taken from news media today regarding Glenn Beck's rally in DC...

 "We are not sure what the message of the Beck rally is, since he told them to leave their signs at home. We have to revitalize jobs and schools and reclaim Dr. King's dream." 

-- Ben Jealous, NAACP President

"We will not stand silent as some seek to bamboozle Dr. King's dream." 

-- Marc Morial,  National Urban League President

Those gathered at the Mall with Beck "represent angry white people and hate-mongering.  We will not let them stand in the way of the change we voted for!"
-- Jaime Contreras, SEIU-32BJ President

"Don't let anyone tell you that they have the right to take their country back.  It's our country, too. We will reclaim the dream.  It was ours from the beginning." 

-- Avis Jones DeWeever, Executive Director of the National Council of Negro Women

"Glenn Beck's march will change nothing.  But you can't blame Glenn Beck for his 'March on Washington' envy.  Too bad he doesn't have a message to match the place or that is worthy of the march."

-- Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.

"Glenn Beck uses the phrase 'wake up, America.'  I noticed this identical phrase has often beem used by the Klan--for year--as code words for "White America". But, could this just be another mere coincidence on poor, innocent Glenn's part? Is he just a misunderstood misfit? Gee, I really don't think so, anymore. This freak seems to be actually pushing for racial violence. And, it's really about time that the Feds stepped in, and shut his sick operation down, before he incites actual racial violence." 

-- comment on MSNBC website

"Glenn Beck is a fear monger and a racist. The people that listen to his line of crap are nothing but mice that follow the Pied Piper." 

-- comment on MSNBC website

"Glenn Beck panders to xenophobes, racists and the intolerant, cynical and judgmental worst in of all of us. He does not stand for America, he stands for conflict which increases ratings."

-- comment on FoxNews website

"Keep drinking the kool-aid. Beck is a self serving, manipulative, Fascist ... It is so sad that he has continues to enflame the far-right extremist fascism and distort/manipulate our Constitution, Founding Fathers, and Christianity ... the anger, lies, obstruction, manipulation, and pure hate spewing from Glenn Beck is not the way to behave in a civilized, Christian nation." 

-- comment on FoxNews website

"Anyone whose 'deep concern about the country's political leadership and direction' should reject the blowhards of the "tea party" movement. They represent the greatest threat to the country's well-being since Soviet Communism with their stubborn ignorance and sly dissembling."
-- comment on Washington Post website

And about that last one -- it's extremely disturbing to think that people who write things like this might actually be voters.  If honor and credibility, freedom and liberty are the greatest threat since communism (threatening to you anyway) -- I suggest you migrate to North Korea where you may find accommodations more fitting.  Sheesh.


There's not much more to add to that now, is there?

Washington Post article
CNN article
FoxNews article

Brain ... Damaged

Oh, it hurts.  It really hurts bad.  I think my brain may finally be dying.  There's only so much strength left to fight the tide of morons beating against my sanity's shoreline.  Let me explain, and through this catharsis, relieve some of my pain...

I was reading a little article on Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally in DC, and when I got to the end, I ran into this paragraph brimming with Al Sharpton's patently mendacious stupidity:

Sharpton argues that Beck's message is counter to King's. "Glenn Beck and others are expected to push for the expansion of states' rights - the exact antithesis of the civil rights movement and Dr. King's legacy," Sharpton said in a news release promoting his march. "The Tea Party and allied conservatives are trying to break that national stance on justice and, in turn, break the crux of what the civil rights movement symbolized and what Dr. King fought and literally died for."

 For the love of Pete, why, why, why?!?   Why do citizens of this country ever act this way?  Well as I sit here, I can think of only these possibilities:

• Sharpton is truly a pathological dunderhead, and cannot understand the simple notion that freedom is good, oppression is bad.  The Tea Party Movement is, fundamentally, at odds with the overreaching control exerted by our federal government (contradicted by the tenth amendment).
• Sharpton does understand this, and wants to prevent others from understanding the truth.  He is therefore evil and deceptive, and when his time comes (eventually) he will go to hell and spend all eternity playing tiddly-winks with Adolf Hitler.

 In case Al Sharpton is reading this blog, I will provide for your educational enlightenment our constitution's tenth amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Since this has nothing to do with civil rights at all, Sharpton's remarks (quoted in the article) are left intolerably detached from reality.  This is either completely lost on him, or he's working to milk the civil rights issue to perpetuate his own livelihood.

In fact, were he alive today, King would probably be attending the Tea Party Movement rallies himself.

Remember When...

...about ten years ago, when the dot-com bust happened at the tail end of Clinton's second term in office?  Ol' George took office after the extremely contentious election fiasco with Gore.  And he implemented policies to stimulate the economy (among them, those super-evil tax cuts, as we often are reminded).  Then a short time later, 9/11 was a major economic disaster (at the worst possible time).

After 2001, though, things looked pretty good.  Actually, times were pretty good, for most of us.  We had to put up with about eight years of constant whining and complaining from the democrats, though.  It seemed like there was no end to the doom and gloom they could generate.  On many occasions, I heard lefties saying "this is the worst economy we've seen since the depression" and "it's a jobless recovery" and so on.  "George Bush is the worst president in history" was a common one, too (but they never said exactly why).  Sound familiar?

It seemed to me, at the time (circa 2005) that the democrats were just unbearably eager to have an economic disaster to get them back in power;  It wasn't much of a leap to envision that they'd do anything they could have behind the scenes to cause one to happen.  They hated George Bush with such passion, that their rhetoric frequently became incoherent and illogical (Janeane Garofalo comes to mind).  And they kept telling us, day after day, things are terrible.  Awful.  Miserable.  But through it all, life seemed pretty good to me.

Fast forward to today.  Mirroring the dot-com bust Bush inherited from Clinton, Obama has inherited the housing and bank crash that occurred at the 11th hour of Bush's presidency.  Lots of gloom and doom.

What's strange?  Well, I keep hearing news stories that start off something like:  "Contrary to expectations, the ____ industry shrank by __ percent over a year ago.  Experts had predicted modest but positive growth over the same period..."  You know the type, wherein some economist or think-tank seems to express complete surprise that the "recovery" isn't going strong.  Excuse me, but does anyone out there actually see a recovery, for real?  It sure doesn't seem like it, to me.  For real.

Where the Bush years were marked by plentiful jobs, increasing salaries, and overall improvement in living standards -- today we see the opposite.  Jobs are scarce.  Credit is scarce.  Forclosures, layoffs, and food stamps abound.  The standard of living is declining, most will say.  Few expect a prosperous future right now;  many even think the best days our behind us.

So why are these *!@&!?$ experts so cheery and optimistic now?  They sure found it easy to seek doom and gloom over the Bush years, when we had it pretty good.  And now that things stink, they're suprised that they're not better?

Do you think they've got an agenda or something?

By the way, look at the symmetry we have:

• In the 90's:  Ridiculous amounts of money dumped into pointless dot-coms that could never become profitable.
• In the 00's:  Ridiculous amounts of money dumped into massively overpriced housing.
• In the 10's:  Ridiculous amounts of cash dumped practically everywhere, to a whole variety of places, in a desperate attempt to stimulate economic activity.

The only difference, really, is that today, not only are we out of money, so is our nanny-state.

Hey, This Isn't How It Was Supposed To Be!

So, there are a lot of angry people out there now who are not quite satisfied with the hope and change they have received thus far.  You got your Democrats, so why aren't you guys happy?

Protesting union members in Los Angeles demand jobs outside City Hall on 13-Aug-2010.  Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

Instead of waving signs and shouting angrily, perhaps you should actually be out looking for work, instead of demanding it.

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It
(Laurence Kotlikoff - Bloomberg)

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.