08.26.10
California’s Freedom-Haters accomplish a twofer
Not a good time to be in the construction industry in the Golden State.
08.05.10
Don’t try to absorb every detail of this unless you have several decades
Have you stopped to wonder just how dense the complexity of FHer-care is? Here’s a chart that depicts about one-third of that density.
07.20.10
That tiresome race issue just won’t go off somewhere and die like it needs to
You know that post from a couple of days ago, asking what department in the FHer regime is the most sinister? My nomination that day was Justice, but now I’m thinking it may be Agriculture, for its employment of a monster like Shirley Sherrod. Of course, there’s her racism. Then there’s the obvious disdain for the occupational field of farming dripping from her remarks. Then there’s the reinforcement of the notion that, even though actual farming is for squares and crackers, there are some real cool bureaucratic jobs to be had on the government gravy train, from which you never get laid off and in which you can push those square cracker farmers around.
You know, this morning as I was giving the Real Clear Politics line-up a once-over, I saw a column title for a piece by lefty writer Eugene Robinson along the lines of “Tea Partiers Must Do More To Repudiate Racists Within Their Ranks.” I can’t remember the exact wording, but I checked it out because I was intrigued to see what kind of substantiation he would provide that the movement has racism in it. Turns out his big evidence is some California talk-show host named Mark Williams who posted a mock letter from Ben Jealous to Abraham Lincoln on his website. Hell, I’d never heard of Mark Williams, and I’m pretty knowledgable about players in the world of right-of-center punditry. Was the letter in over-the-top poor taste? You bet. Does it provide substantiation for the claim that Williams may harbor racist sentiments? Absolutely. Was he expelled pronto from the Tea Party Federation? Of course.
So, Mr. Robinson, what else ya got?
Another thing that needs to be pointed out is that Williams is a commentator. He is not in a position to affect the livelihoods of hardworking people who make possible the nation’s food supply.
Memo to yay-hoos who inevitably are going to be a small element within the tea-party movement: Shut up and grow up.
Memo to all Freedom-Haters in the employ of the federal government: Your goose is cooked. We’re going to oust every last one of you and reverse all your policies. Oh, yes.
07.06.10
No moon missions, but plenty of patty-cake for the kiddies and the “international community” and self-esteem therapy for those who would like to subject us to sharia law
Isn’t it creepy to live in an age when hearly every news item ought to be prefaced with “You can’t make this stuff up?”
The Most Equal Comrade has told the new head of NASA that his three highest priorities for the agency are to inspire young peeople to study science and math, do general international outreach – whatever the hell that has to do with space exploration, and make Muslim cultures feel better about their contributions to math, science, and engineering.
Seriously.
06.11.10
Our culture’s struggle for the legitimate use of the term “mainstream”
Mona Charen has a great column today on how Harry Reid is going to try to paint Sharron Angle as a nutcase because she’d like to see the Department of Education closed up. (She’d also like to see Social Security phased out, the IRS abolished, and the US withdrawn from the UN. It’s going to be delicious to see Harry Reid come to his embarrasingly public realization that millions and millions of Americans also would like to see these developments, and sooner, not later.) Angle would do well to trumpet the litany of failures on the part of the DoE as her handy response to Harry as he gets his campaign underway. The idea that there’s anything fringe about shutting down a massive government entity wasting billions of dollars is a phantom held only by those whistling past the graveyard.
06.03.10
Because the regime hates economic well-being
The MMS has extended the drilling ban beyond just deep-water sites to include water of any depth.
05.02.10
The RP (responsible party) is supposed to pay for it, but the federal government is supposed to deal with it
BTW, I have a real basic question: Do we know what caused this yet?
04.20.10
The regime intends to join you at lunch – today’s edition
The FDA has a plan to reduce the American populace’s salt intake over the next few years. This is anti-Constitutional. This is an expenditure of resources we don’t have on matters outside government’s proper purview. This is finger-wagging do-gooderism on steroids. This is surreal.
04.05.10
From “I’m pursuing a high calling” to “at least I have a job”
Excellent Michael Barone column in which he compares the climate of diminished expectations in the age of the Most Equal Comrade with the robust sense of vision and possibility of that 1983 – 2007 era, when people assumed they could make a living delivering what the world deeply needed and they found deeply fulfilling.
03.28.10
No end to the nuggets of totalitarianism to be unearthed in FHer-care
Well, looky here: a mandate requiring fast-food chains to put calorie information on their menus. There’s even a new supervisory body to make sure they do it. States had increasingly been going in for this kind of tyrannical meddling, but the fed-level FHers apparently felt that you don’t send a Mugabe out to do a Stalin’s job.
This is yet another example of the gastonomic nanny-state-ism my American Thinker piece last Tuesday dealt with. As I’ve said several times before, I consider food – the preparation, consumption and sharing of it – to be one of life’s most sublime delights. This is personal. (As well as national.)
Something we ablsolutely must do at this juncture is cultivate sharpness. Take great pride in how sharp you are. The regime is trying to spread the notion throughout society that we are too dense to come in out of the rain. They want you to think of yourselves as cattle, dumbly staring into space as you’re corralled into the pen.
Stay sharp.
03.16.10
As Hayek said, the worst will wind up on top
Ed Fuelner at Townhall says that the government’s zeal to respond with regulation to any financial crisis proves that Congress does two things well: 1.) nothing, and 2.) overreact. He points out that Sarbanes-Oxley, enacted in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom collapses, wound up costing, like all government programs (think Medicare and Social Security) vastly more than originally envisioned, and harmed smaller businesses’ access to credit. We’re about to do the same thing with Chris Dodd’s panel or council or whatever that will sit in judgement of investment banks that don’t meet government standards of performance. Just who is going to sit on these panels? The reason I ask is that the FHer record for choosing people to fill such seats of wisdom is not encouraging. Think Andy Stern and deficit reduction.
03.03.10
Some bureaucrat on the public payroll is a poor substitute for the self-correcting mechanism of the free market
Among the questions that Blankley raises:
Who gets to define “systemic?”
How big is the scope of this “system”?
What if an overly cautious approach would make a give situation worse?
Given the pointy-headed nature of these kinds of positions, how much real-world experience is such a person likely to have?
03.01.10
The numbers will add up, either by choice or circumstance
The governor of my state, Mitch Daniels, about whom I had a post a few back, has a great column in today’s WSJ about medical savings accounts for Indiana state employees and how it’s been win-win for all parties involved.
The core of his argument is that behavior – and motivation for it – is the key factor in not only health care, but government’s fiscal health as well. If the cost of something is your direct responsibility, you will be motivated to keep an eye on the numbers.
There are other columns out today, notably those of Irwin Steltzer and Robert Samuelson (HT for all of these: Real Clear Politics) that deal with this larger issue of fiscal responsibility. Samuelson is quite blunt, saying today’s so-called governmental leaders are living in la-la- land. He takes the right as well as the left to task for failing to provide grown-up solutions to what they claim the problem is.
That’s where my own set of views comes in, and it gets us back to Gov. Daniels’s point about behavior and incentives.
We’re going to have to touch some third rails in this country. We’re just going to have to. The New Deal and Great society entitlements – most notable Social Security and Medicare – are the fastest-growing items in our federal budget, and they’re going broke fast. We absolutely cannot continue to dish out those programs’ benefits in the manner that previous generations enjoyed.
I try really heard to be a serious thinker on matters of public policy and stay away from obvious crank proposals for anything. I get quite tired of callers to talk shows who make these sweeping “why, we just otta do away with this” or “make everybody do that” pronouncements without considering the actual details of the process by which it would be possible to do that. So it is with the fortification of forethought that I say that we could dismantle some entire departments and agencies of the federal government in addition to drastically altering the nature of Social Security and Medicare. Education could go this afternoon. We’d be a better society for it. Ditto Housing and Urban Development. The EPA. Diversity officers in any department or agency that has one.
My wife and I have made periodic stabs at Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course. The steam always seems to go out of our efforts when we get to his lesson on putting a strict household budget in writing. He says that you must account for every dollar that will come in during a given month before the month begins. Where it gets squirmy is when hs says, “This will bring your stuff up. It will make you look at certain aspects of your marriage and your life.” We know he’s right, but it’s about at that point that various other time commitments encroach upon the agreed-upon times to sit down with the pen, paper and calculator. You know, like getting nails done, or heading to the gym.
Still it would be the best way to get and keep a handle on household finances. Once one is through the squirmy stuff, one sees that it’s really about declaring mastery over one’s own life.
This is what our federal government will ultimately have to do. It becomes a necessity when the creditors start calling during dinner hour (which is not going on in our household, which may be why we’re not fully motivated to buckle down and put numbers on paper), which is where our country is.
There is really only one way for an individual or household to get financial traction: control the income and outgo numbers, and create more wealth. Since government can’t create more wealth, it must control its numbers and free its citizens to create wealth.
Really controlling the numbers is going to bring various factions’ stuff up. The alternative is living in la-la land, but there arrives a point where your green card for that realm expires.
02.28.10
The clear intent is to make government everyone’s source of everything
This sounds like something John Podesta and Andy Stern would cook up.
02.23.10
The main culprits were politically correct lending, localized housing regulations, and the Fed fiddling with interest rates
Thomas Sowell on why “Wall Street greed” doesn’t hold up as an explanation for the housing bust.
02.20.10
When you think you’re indispensible, you’ll assume the ultimate sugar daddy is going to pull your fat out of the fire
Tom Blumer at Pajamas Media on how big business is prone to act in ways antithetical to free-market capitalism, such as appeasement of the regulatory leviathan and an attitude of entitlement to public largesse.
02.18.10
What we’re up against as we try to return this land to its identity as the United States of America
Hell, I’d never heard of this Corporation for National and Community Service. The name was certainly creepy. And my tax dollars have been going for this dog vomit? So I checked it out. It’s the umbrella organization that encompasses AmeriCorps, among other hey-everybody-let’s-get-together-and-do-this-program outfits. It was founded in 1993, the last time the FHers felt like they had America by the throat.
There is so much totalitarianism that would be easy pickings for any Pub who wanted to offer the American people a sane alternative to the Freedom-Hater vision. Get rid of Patrick “ACORN” Covington. Dismantle this whole corporation. Defund this envoy-to-the-OIC position. Cut off the grant to the seniors-claiming-special-identity-status community in Chicago. And that’s just real recent stuff.
02.17.10
Here’s how many human beings live here; now, that’s all the information you’re getting
Walter Williams on the 2010 census.
Does anybody else find the advertising blitz for what’s supposed to be a simple head count of citizens and legal residents a little creepy?
10.03.09
“Vapor bill” . . . what an interesting term
You could also say it refers to the way fog obscures a transparent surface – or process.
Or another hopeful interpretation is that it denotes the wispy, ephemeral hopes of Freedom-Haters, who are aware they still face a challenge from Blue Dog Dems who don’t want to be out of a job thirteen months from now, as well as an American public that overwhelmingly – as in 92 percent – is satisfied with the way its health is cared for.
