How I’m voting on California initiatives of 2012
Now that I’ve worked my way through all of the state initiatives, I thought I’d publish my guide to these, and how I voted. Some of the initiatives are confusing, and it’s hard to figure out the actual outcome! However, when the thuggish, criminal SEIU is involved, I know which way NOT to vote. Thank God they weighed in on some of these confusing initiatives. You can research all of these initiatives at votersedge.org.
Prop 30: Temporary Taxes to Fund Education, Public Safety – NO
While this initiative proposes to raise money for schools and public safety, it’s a temporary fix to the bigger problem of spending. Also, I’ve never met a temporary tax that didn’t want to become permanent. Additionally, Prop 38 takes a long term view that doesn’t just tax the employers (those earning > $250K a year), but everyone. Now THAT’S what I see as ‘fair.’
Prop 31: State and Local Budget. Constitutional amendment and statute – YES
The SEIU is against it. Do I need any more evidence to vote for it when a known criminal organization is against it? No.
OWS – Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription
I’m a political and religious conservative, but I like to be in conversation with the evangelical left, since they keep us on the right from drifting into fanatical, judgmental, or extreme positions. Not that I believe in the logical fallacy of the argument to moderation, but I do like to keep my mind open even when I have drawn conclusions.
But today I got a money raising email from the Evangelical left publication Sojourners, which displayed to me the assumptions and logical mistakes of leftist logic regarding our economic woes and solutions for it. I have to discuss!
The Christian duty to bear children
As Christians, we have an absolute duty, if married, to obey the biblical mandate to procreate, as given to both Adam and Eve and Noah and his family:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. (Genesis 9:1-3)
But how many children is too many? And is it immoral to use any kind of birth control? And is it immoral to overpopulate the earth?
What is a billion?
Another interesting conservative ‘spam’ letter that I thought I’d share.
——————————–
$1,000,000,000
This is too true to be funny. The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it’s releases.
- A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
- A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
- A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
- A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
- A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
What can we do to REALLY help Haiti?
While the tradgedy of Haiti rightly moves us all to help, there are some reasons to think about what kind of help Haiti needs in the long term, not just in this emergency, in part because Haiti has been in crisis almost continually for decades. Perhaps the way we have been helping them IS NOT WORKING.
A few facts to consider (sorry, no time for footnotes, you can correct me if you need to):
- Since 1992, the US alone has poured in over $3B dollars into Haiti, and the UN has done more on top.
- Haiti’s population is only 10M, so how much money has been spent per capita?
- The current earthquake in Haiti was about the same strength as the big Loma Prieta quake in CA. Some 60+ people died in CA, while the body count in Haiti is now easily over 100,000
- Some experts say that the reason that Haiti’s economy hasn’t grown (besides the rampant corruption and thuggery) is it’s dependence on foreign aid
What’s wrong with the Senate health care bill? OMFG
I don't often curse, especially in print, but can I just say that the current administration's health care and climate plans are the height of idiocy! Especially since these crises are largely manufactured, and not real. The health care 'crisis' is really a crisis of EMPLOYMENT, which the Obama admin, despite their claims of saving jobs ('Mission accomplished'), has run into the ground since Bush, promising us that it would have been worse without it (even though under their plan, unemployment got even worse than their projections had we done nothing).
So here's some conservative 'spam' that is making the viral rounds. OBAMACARE IS AN ABOMINATION, and he is turning out to be one of the worst presidents in history.
—————————————————————
Senator Bayh,
As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the health care bill
before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the
brazenness of the government's proposed involvement in the
patient-physician relationship. The very idea that the government will
dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in
designing a health care system that works for all. Every physician I work
with agrees that we need to fix our health care system, but the proposed
bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if
passed.
I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following
troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe
that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our
fellow citizens.
Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of
all employers that self-insure!!
Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that
decides what treatments/benefits you get.
Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!
Create jobs with government spending? STUPID
Conservatives are getting tired of Obamanomics – it’s just plain idiotic to think that we can tax, spend, and borrow our way out of our economic problems. It’s contrary to reason and history. In fact, as Orrin Hatch recently remarked in exasperation at this anti-sense position, it’s stupid.
WSJ Says “stimulus did not work”
In the words of Iago the parrot from Aladdin, "there's a surprise! I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die from NOT surprise." (.wav)
In the WSJ's article The Stimulus Didn't Work, the subtitle actually says it all:
The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all.
Consider first the part of the chart pertaining to the spring of this
year and observe that disposable personal income (DPI)–the total
amount of income people have left to spend after they pay taxes and
receive transfers from the government–jumped. The increase is due to
the transfer and rebate payments in the 2009 stimulus package. However,
as the chart also shows, there was no noticeable impact on personal
consumption expenditures. Because the boost to income is temporary, at
best only a very small fraction was consumed.
I think it's time to get one of these:
Seriously, though, the only thing that worked about the stimulus was getting taxpayer money into the hands of liberal cronies. I am serious about the legacies of GWB and Obama being the opposite of what many think – GWB's will be good, Obama's will be a setback for both liberals and African Americans. Long live Clarence Thomas!
Congress creates or solves the economic mess, not the President
It is a pervasive myth that the President is the one who kills or saves the economy, but in reality, the President can only set a tone and direction through his proposals, as well as what he may approve or veto.
It is the Congress that creates the bills and determines the spending. In fact, the Congress can totally ignore the President if they have a super majority, and in times when the Congressional majority is from the opposing party of the President, they often do. The American thinker has a great article entitled Whose Mess?, in which they use unemployment numbers to show that the economy ALWAYS worsens under Democratic congresses. Why? Because liberal economics do not work. Overtaxing the successful is the failed model of pseudo-socialism, not free-market capitalism.
The graph above speaks for itself – see the pattern? Every time a DEM Senate takes over (blue), unemployment goes up. When a GOP Senate is in session (red), it goes down. Maybe you read this differently – I mean, in 1993, it did begin to go down, but that's probably because of Bill Clinton approving NAFTA, which the majority of the DEMs voted AGAINST. So again, the only successful reduction of unemployment during a Democratic Congress may have been due to the minority GOP.
Something to think about.
Gingrich: “there is a world that works, and one that doesn’t”
The world that fails? Government programs. Obama was not mistaken when he compared the quality of private services (FedEx) and government (Post Office) to health care – DOH! Correct! Government healthcare sucks and WILL suck! Gingrich uses this example, plus the difference between private banking knowing your unique PIN, and the Social Security Admin not recognizing the same SSN used over 40 times. Enjoy the vids.
The Class That Failed – A socialist allegory updated for Obamanomics
Here's an Obama spam making its rounds among us neocons. It reminds me of A lesson in economics using beer. These allegories are always a bit oversimplified, but they are important in that they:
- Communicate the essence of the proposed plans in a simple to understand analogy
- Communicate the clear and simple problems of the proposed plans
- Communicate the real concerns, fears, and anger of the opposition
- Involve ridicule from the minority, which should be viewed as a warning that failing to heed the concerns will lead to the next step – public defiance (can you say "Town Hall meetings"?)
What such allegories lack in sophistication they easily make up for in clarity, something most political plans, including Obama's, lack.
What is the conservative alternative for health care reform?
Don't know? It's not because it does not exist, it's because the MSM could care less, and so could the Obama administration. It seems to me that all he is doing is trying to streamroll his ideological and non-sustainable program through as fast as possible.
But ask Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona if the GOP is just trying to make Obama fail, he responds "that's just a political ad." In a short interview this morning on NPR, he was clear, calm, and sensible. Please, may sense prevail, because
- Health care in America is still better than elsewhere in the world, not on the verge of catastrophe (like all liberal issues which are trumped up to emergencies)
- The Obama plan will make it WORSE, not better.
I mean, wanna see government run healthcare? Look at Medicare (insolvent), Veterans Care (poor), Native American Care (poor), and Social Security (insolvent). They can't even run the "Cash for Clunkers" program well.
The minority whip sounds sane. Obama's plan is insane, just like a real Joker might promote. Give a listen to Kyl: Health Care Fix Should Be Right, Not Just Quick.
Obamanomics in the real world – deficit
The CBO brings a little reality to the Hope and Dreams machine (HT: James).
Obamanomics in the real world – Unemployment
Perhaps we would have been better off WITHOUT the 'recovery' plan, eh? (HT: James)
Obama’s Liberal Socialism – stupidity, fear, greed, or conspiracy of evil intellectuals?
The American Thinker has published a very interesting article entitled Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis, in which the author examines what amounts to a liberal socialist conspiracy started by radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
This strategy, now known as The Cloward-Piven Strategy, is what The American Thinker is accusing Obama of being a pawn of, and perhaps to some extent, a pawn that knows what he is doing.
As the image to the right outlines, the links between Cloward and Piven, the many modern socialist thinkers, the founders and activities of corrupt organizations like Acorn, and Obama are too numerous to ignore. This is not just some kookie conspiracy theory, this is how the power of ideas corrupts higher education and government, and can lead to a nation's downfall.
And to me, it in part explains why liberals can so enthusiastically buy into the social and scientific negligence of Global Warming Panic and the absurdity of the astronomical debt of Obamanomics. It is an exercise in mass brainwashing, and like watching the Communist revolution all over again as if we never saw it happen before.
Germans not getting onboard with ‘the Debt President’
Der Spiegel had an article on the five fallacies of the Obama economic
debacle plan. You can read the English version of Chancellor Merkel Visits the Debt President for the details, but here are the five fallacies:
- It's not as bad as it seems. The US amassed much more debt during World
War II, it is often said. That, though, is not true. According to
conservative forecasts, Obama's policies could end up being three times
as expensive as US expenditures during World War II. - The money is part of an effort to resuscitate the crisis-plagued
economy and is thus serving a good purpose. The truth of the matter is
that the bulk of the borrowed money will be used to finance the normal
US budget. - When the crisis ends, borrowing will automatically fall. The truth is
that it could climb afterwards. The graying of American society creates
a new fiscal policy challenge for the country that so far hasn't been
reflected in any budget plan. According to calculations by the
International Monetary Fund, Washington would need to spend several
times more than it is now just to service current pension entitlements. - The world believes that the US is borrowing money from capital markets.
It is often said that the Chinese and the Japanese will buy government
bonds. But the truth of the matter is that trust in the gravitas and
reliability of the United States has suffered to such a great degree
that fewer and fewer foreigners are purchasing its government bonds. - The additional money is harmless because the economy is starting to
pull together again and there is no threat of inflation. The truth is
that the quiet on the inflation front is deceptive. The hot money is
accumulating in people's savings accounts and in the balance sheets of
banks that aren't keen to lend money at the moment. The supply of money
has increased by 45 percent in the last three years and there has not
been a corresponding rise in hard assets or production. That imbalance
will eventually make itself felt in the form of inflation.
In my opinion, if Obama succeeds in all of his spending (which it looks like he has), we will spend the next 40 years trying to get out from under it. As my mom, who is a lifelong Kennedy Democrat said to me this week "I don't think I'll live to see the economy recover from what Obama is doing, but I can damn well vote Republican in the coming elections." Now that is saying something.
How to measure the success of the stimulus
Judging the success or failure of the stimulus spending has always been a difficult task. To evaluate it, you have to determine what would or could have happened had it not been implemented. That uncertainty allows both sides to play up the issue. The administration can say things would have been worse. The GOP can say things would have been better. It would seem a generous way to judge the stimulus' impact would be to evaluate it in terms of Obama's own projections.
Looking at the New Deal with Amity Shlaes
One of the most fascinating books I have read over the last few months is The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Actually, in reading the book I was amazed at how much President Barack Obama's economic policies are like that of FDR. Needless to say, that was not comforting.
Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Amity Shlaes, author of the book. Click here to read more about our conversation and what she had to say about the current economic crisis.
Dilbert on Political Hypocrites
Via Hot Air, this strip from Dilbert had me laughing out loud:
Memo to Washington: before you start criticizing these executives for flying around in corporate jets how about you give up your own private jets first.
