Common Core: Si oder nyet?

I shudder to bring this issue up, as I fear it will only lead to denunciation of conservatives for being paranoid or whatever. But education stuff interests me and it is kinda big news at the moment, so let's talk about Common Core.

No doubt you've at least heard the term before now, but if you're unclear on the details, well, Common Core is just what it sounds like--an effort to standardize the curriculum and objectives in primary and secondary schools nationwide. According to the official website, the standards, which so far have been adopted by all but five states, "focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well." Erm, okay. In layman's terms, it basically means "teach more stuff sooner."

Not a bad idea, though whether the suggested benchmarks per grade will accomplish that is anyone's guess. Third-graders should have basic comprehension of fractions and their place on the number line, while sixth-graders should begin learning about ratios, probability, and some basic statistics. In language arts, fourth-graders ought to be able to "compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided"; for eighth-graders, it's "analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new."

Okay, especially in the reading category, there's no way this won't get dumbed down quite a bit in the classroom. But it seems fairly innocuous on the surface. And yet, it's gotten a ton of pushback, especially from grassroots conservatives and some religious (especially Catholic) groups. Why?

Well, in summary, a lot of people see it as No Child Left Behind, only more invasive and altogether crappier. A lot of objections have been made about the quality of education kids would be receiving under these goalposts. High schoolers, for example, would be reading far less literature in favor of nonfiction texts, and many important documents, historical as well as literary, would be presented with little or no explanation of background context. Or, students will have to comprehend them through lots of "creative" mechanisms, like featuring the Gettysburg Address as a "word cloud." (If someone knows what this is, please explain it to me.) So, long story short, there's a lot of concern about the complexity and sheer novelty of the project.

Others are worried not only about this, but about the government possibly using this to create a national database tracking all our kids and so on. Blogger Michelle Malkin, for example, has argued that Common Core is connected to new federal programs requiring schools to track everything from household voting status to religious affiliation to dental records. Some Catholic publications, meanwhile, have claimed that this data-collection effort is completely unsupervised, and expressed concerns that it might be used to force more direct oversight of diocesan and private schools.

So how realistic are these worries? Hard to say. It's not exactly like this was the product of any left-wing Obama goons (at least to begin with); it originated under Dubya in '07, making it brought to you by the same guys who gave you those fluorescent bulbs and the jacked-up Daylight Savings Time schedule. And whatever claims may be made about it being a plot by D.C. to subvert the states, the Common Core standards were largely developed by state governors and their advisers, as defenders of the program have pointed out. Besides, it's not hard to find liberals who also are not fans of the program, or at least aspects of its implementation. Even many urban school teachers are siding against the new curriculum, because of its lack of balance and flexibility. As for the privacy concerns, I don't blame those who are objecting, especially in the wake of all the agency corruption scandals this year; but it's not clear whether all this will pan out.

In my opinion, the real problem with Common Core isn't necessarily any tracking database, or even the controversial educational standards themselves. The problem is this persistent notion of a "one-size-fits-all" approach, especially when applied from the top down. When you consider the wide range of school conditions across the U.S.--urban, suburban, and rural; some with strong academic histories, others not so much--it should be obvious that they can't all be made to meet a single benchmark. Plus, it goes completely against the decentralized ethos that is so much a part of American conservatism. Schools need some oversight, but that should be as localized as possible. Even at the state level, there are problems in trying to run too much; taking it to the national level is just asking for trouble.

Common Core probably won't be as bad as some of its critics worry. But it's probably not the best way to improve education, either.

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Debunking A Few Arguments

I like to think of our audience as a cut above. Indeed, it makes me happy that you all like to understand what is really going on rather than just running with the mob. So in light of that, let me offer a few more tidbits to add to your knowledge of politics and government. In particular, let me debunk a couple arguments you see used a lot these days. Before we begin, however, let me point out that this is not a defense of the Rubio bill, though I will discuss that because that is the context in which these arguments are arising at the moment. My point is to help you understand why some common arguments made against many bills are nonsense.

● “It’s a 1,000 pages long!”: You hear this a lot these days. It first gained prominence with Obamacare and now it’s being used with the Rubio bill: “It’s a 1,000 pages long!” and “Why do they need a bill that long?!” Arg.

Bills are long because they need to be to get the job done because everything Congress doesn’t explain in the bill is left up to the President to decide. Take the Rubio bill. We could whack off large parts of it by just writing, "Secure the border." But does that mean anything? No. That doesn’t tell the executive which border, how to do it, or what we mean by secure -- and don’t think this is just "lawyer games" with me trying to find ambiguity in things "common sense should tell us everybody knows."

Seriously, you tell me: what does "secure" mean? Does it mean no one can cross without permission? Does it mean anyone who does cross will be rounded up? Within how many days? What do we do with them when we catch them? Lock them up or send them home? How? Where do you send them if you don't know where they came from? What agency will do all of this? What money will they have to do it? What happens if you grab an American by mistake? Do the people you grab have a right of appeal? Under what legal standard? Where do they appeal or can they just pick a court? Do they need to be convicted before we send them home? That's a lot of questions. At least we know what "the border" means though, right? Or do we. Does the border include Canada? What about US military bases overseas? What about foreign embassies here? Do we make exceptions for defectors? What is a defector? What about those who are already beyond the border when they go illegal -- like those who overstay a visa -- how do they fit into the idea of "the border"? Now that we mention it, what does overstay mean exactly? And how do we know they've overstayed? Is there a system somewhere? Who runs it? Who follows up to make sure people are gone?

Every one of those questions requires that written direction be added to the bill. If you don't do that, you run the risk that the courts will invalidate the law for not giving the executive adequate guidance on how to implement the law -- this is because the executive implements the law, but cannot make the law. If too much is left to the executive, then courts will strike it down as allowing the president to make the law. Moreover, even if it isn't struck down, do you really want Obama answering all those questions himself? Do you see now why these things are as long as they are? Claiming that the law should be short and easy makes for a great soundbite appeal to "common sense," but is really only evidence that the person doesn't understand how government (AND THE CONSTITUTION) works.

Also, as an aside, these bills aren't nearly as long as you are told. When Congress puts out a bill, it uses 25 lines per page and heavy indenting. The result is that you get a little over 100 words per page on average, as compared to 250 words per page on a word processor or in a Harry Potter novel. So that 1,000 pages is really only 400, and much of it is repetitive. What matters is not the word count, but what the words say, and people trying to scare you with the page count are basically conceding they don't know how to scare you with the substance of the bill.

● “It’s Incomprehensible!”: When you read a law, a lot of it will look like gibberish to the untrained eye, but it's not. The US Code is a lot like a computer program. When you add a new law, you typically make minor tweaks to other existing laws and you often define the terms in your new law by referencing existing laws because all of the nation's laws need to harmonize. If each law stood alone within the code, the already-enormous code would be many times larger and full of fluff, and the chance of a contradiction would rise significantly. Referencing existing laws reduces those problems. That's why laws often look like logic puzzles. But these things are easy to understand if you take the time to look up the references to other laws. Unfortunately, the people making this claim are more interested in feigning ignorance than making legitimate arguments -- like Eric Cantor who criticized the Rubio bill and then said this weekend that he hadn't read it because "It's a 1,000 pages long!!" That statement tells us exactly what we need to know about Cantor.

● “It’s Got Waivers!”: One of the early criticisms of the Rubio bill (and Obamacare) was that it included a lot of waivers and exemptions. The critics latched onto this as proof that the whole thing was a shell game. That's not true, however. In fact, despite initially screaming about 400+ waivers, the critics ultimately were only able to point to one that raised some concern. But why have waivers at all? Three reasons:

1. When a law allows no exceptions, the courts will often find it unconstitutional because it denies those targeted by the law due process under the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Those Amendments guarantee people the right to challenge government action that applies to them and which violates their rights. The exceptions and waivers are often made to ensure that the requirements of the Constitution are not ignored, i.e. to preserve rights, because failing to do that would lead to the invalidation of the entire law. For example, suppose it would violate the Constitution to deport someone who is 9 months pregnant and might lose the child on the journey. If there is no waiver or exception excluding such people from deportation, the court would strike down the entire deportation provision... or maybe even the entire law.

2. Moreover, if the new law conflicts with existing laws in some way, the court may strike down the new law depending on various factors. Once again, waivers and exceptions prevent this.

3. Waivers are needed to make the system work. Suppose the law says you need to complete the fence by June 1. If you're 99% finished on May 30, then you need a waiver to be able to finish the fence. Otherwise, the law would expire, work would stop, and the whole thing would need to start over. Waivers and exemptions are ways to make rigid requirements less rigid so you can account for changes you encounter along the way.

This is why the fact of the inclusion of waivers and exceptions is meaningless. What matters is what the waivers realistically allow, not that they exist.

● Just Follow The Constitution: People who say this typically have no idea what the Constitution provides or how it works. The Constitution divides power between the federal government, the state governments, and the people. It talks about the procedures of government. It rarely delves into the substance of government. And when it does, it invariably gives more power than people want to admit. The Commerce Clause, for example, gives the Congress the power to regulate anything that affects interstate commerce. That is an incredibly broad power and saying, "follow the constitution" is not a meaningful restriction. Immigration is the same. In fact, consider immigration.

Congress’s power to regulate immigration comes entirely from this sentence in Article I, Section 8: Congress shall have the power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” That's it. So tell me, if someone says, “We should just follow the Constitution,” what exactly does that mean? Under this provision, Congress can pass anything it wants regarding immigration provided it is "uniform." And before you say, “that means everyone needs to be treated the same,” actually it doesn’t mean that at all. Uniform in this case means as between the states. In other words, one set of rules that will apply in all states; it says nothing about how we treat people who are here as citizens, visitors or illegals. Most other issues work the same way. The Constitution is rarely informative, except to the extent it tells us which part of the government has been granted the unlimited power to act this time.

Anyway, the point here is not about immigration or Obamacare, it's about legislation generally. The arguments above are false soundbites designed to make something sound like it is evil or obvious. The truth, however, is that these arguments are nothing more than misdirection. So when people pound the table saying these things, challenge them: ask them what the substantive problem really is... odds are they can't tell you.

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The Recovery That Wasn’t

There is something wrong with the stock market. The housing market too. I see no evidence that the economy is picking up. To the contrary, all the numbers are horrible. Yet, the stock market and the housing market seem to disagree. Why? Well, there are reasons.

● The Stock Market: Ug. The stock market. The stock market is my nemesis in rational times, but forget times like this. Since 2009, the stock market has been on one long, uninterrupted ride straight up. We’re up 117% from the lows of 2009 with no signs of stopping. Does that make sense? Well, consider this:

● Unemployment grew from 6% to 10% during that period and still remains around 7.5%. Is that good news?

● Corporate profits are weak. 80% of S&P 500 companies have issued negative guidance on corporate earnings growth, and 56% missed their revenue targets. As the market increased 5% in the first two months of this quarter, earnings actually dropped 3.4%. Should stocks really go up?

● Economic growth in the US has been anemic.

● The US government is paralyzed by debt and infighting.

● There have been repeated near-collapses of the Eurozone, which still has virtually no growth and no jobs.

● China’s economy has slowed to a crawl and is well below the level where the Chinese government fears a revolution.

So if things are this bad, then what justifies this long, steady rise? One thing: the Fed. The Fed is pumping money into the market each month. Right now it’s buying $85 billion in bonds each month to prop up the world’s biggest companies. Even a hint that the Fed might cut the heroin is enough to make the market lose 2% until someone at the Fed says, “Just kidding!”

In fact, we’ve reached a point where market watchers say that the worst thing that could happen to the market would be good economic news because it would mean the Fed might end its buying. Think about how sick that is that our stock market, which supposedly represents the value of American companies, wants bad news to maintain its drug habit. This is basically subsidy behavior. Buyer and sellers and profits no longer matter... government money matters.

● Jobs: And what has that government money gotten us? No jobs, that’s for sure. May’s jobs report showed that 175,000 jobs were added as compared to 149,000 in April. Sounds good, right? After all, it is higher than in April. Well, no. For one thing, this number of jobs is the average for the last 12 months. So this isn’t exactly a break out... it’s just more of the same. Moreover, 26,000 of those were temp jobs, meaning they aren’t real. Some number will also be summer jobs, which will end in August. So we’re looking at something less than 149,000 real jobs were created. Unfortunately, the economy needs to create around 180,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So all we did last month was increase the number of unemployed people.

Moreover, while the official unemployment rate fell to 7.6% the real number remains double that. And this is after five years of the Fed pumping 2-3 trillion dollars “into the economy.” So why didn’t this stimulus work? Well, the problem is that they didn’t put it “into the economy.” They gave it to rich banks, who sat on it. And as I point out in my book, just giving money to someone does nothing to make working more profitable nor does it make the cost of labor cheaper. In other words, it will never spur hiring.

● Housing: So what about housing? Strangely, over the past couple years, the housing market has started rising again. This makes little sense unless the economy is doing better and people have more confidence, right? Well, no, because it turns out that “people” aren’t buying the houses. According to a company that tracks mortgage financing, “first-time home buyers” are buying only 16% of homes at the moment. That is a surprisingly low number. So who is buying the rest? Well, it turns out that 69% of purchases are being made by “investors,” and these aren’t people who flip homes.

According to Fitch, “The housing price growth is being propelled by institutional money.” Companies like Blackstone are buying homes. (There are other companies too.) In the past couple years, Blackstone has spent nearly $4 billion to buy 24,000 homes with plans to rent them out. And they’re doing it in pockets, which is why the housing market has taken off in some cities but not others. For example, according to Bloomberg, Blackstone bought 1,400 properties in Atlanta in 2012 for a total value of $100 million. The result was that home prices increased 12.4% in Atlanta compared to 10% nationally.

But who cares, right? A buyer is a buyer, right? Well, no. For one thing, these companies are jacking up the price of homes in markets where the natural economy can’t support the price. That always happens when you get an influx of outside money. Basically, you get a price spike that is unrelated to the natural market value of a thing which distorts the market and makes it harder for the locals to buy homes. Moreover, when the outside money stops, the prices will crash. In fact, warned Fitch: “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects the market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple of years.”

Do I ultimately care that investors are doing this? No. But what bothers me about all of this, is that our economy is off-kilter because it no longer seems to be focused on helping average people. To the contrary, our government has decided that “the economy” means “Big Business” and it has set out to take care of them on the theory that this will make everyone’s lives better. This is called “socialism” and it doesn’t work any better when it’s done using a handful of big companies as agents than it does when it’s done directly by bureaucrats. We genuinely need to rethink our economy and open it up to the free market. The government needs to stop trying to prop up big companies and their stocks, it needs to stop giving tax breaks to investors to buy homes rather than home owners, and it needs to focus on eliminating the barriers to the creation of jobs. America is a country of people and their government should recognize that... it is time to think about the people and not the balance sheets of the incorporated. We are the United States of America, not America, Inc.

Free the free market!

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John McCain Kills MSNBC?

I’ve been saying for some time that the GOP needs to become more consumer friendly. Consumerism really is the driving engine of free market capitalism, yet the GOP always backs oligopolists. Imagine my surprise to see John McCain champion something that is definitely pro-consumer and which may have a surprising political result: the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013.

The TCFA may not be on your radar screen because it’s the type of “housekeeping” bill that doesn’t usually excite the ideologues, so you rarely see it discussed at blogs or on talk shows. But these bills can often be much more important than they seem.

If this bill passes, it will do several things:

● It will provide an incentive to encourage cable providers to offer “a la carte” programming. This would allow you to pick the channels you want to buy without getting others thrown in. Cable currently only offers “bundles” where you need to buy a bunch of channels bundled together. It would also prohibit certain channels from being bundled.

● It will prevent the networks from moving “event programming” (like the Super Bowl) to cable. This is in response to the networks threatening to take their biggest programs off the air and move them to cable to prevent them being re-broadcast over the internet.

● It will eliminate sports blackout rules which prohibit local broadcasters from showing games that aren’t sold out. This is based on the idea that local taxpayers already pay for stadiums and thus should not be denied the right to see the game if it is broadcast elsewhere.

The National Cable & Television Association naturally hates the bill. They claim that bundling increases the diversity and value of channels. Consumer groups applaud this. Either could be right, though I suspect the cable people probably are more likely to be right. Still, I’m more interested in the politics....

First, I find it interesting that a Republican would go against big business interests on this, especially with the limited outcry. Yes, people always talk about how they wish they could pick and choose which cable channels to pay for, but I don’t see anyone really being upset about not having that choice. The blackout rule makes people more upset, but there are few areas where that has an effect. Similarly, the only time I can think of when the “event programming” issue came up was the fight between Time Warner and the NFL in New York City a couple years ago. So why would a Republican jump on board this issue and pick the side of the consumer over Big Business?

To tell the truth, I’m not actually sure. It’s possible that this is another sign that the Republicans are realizing that the government should be pro-consumer and pro-competition rather than pro-oligopoly. I’ve seen growing signs of that from people like Bobby Jindal saying we need to stop being the party of Big Business and Big Government. I’ve seen several Republicans talking about breaking up the big banks. And I’ve even seen a good number of Republicans talking about cutting corporate welfare in the form of deductions and ethanol subsidies. That’s all encouraging.

It’s also possible the Republicans are starting to play hardball with companies who haven’t really been great friends of the Republicans. That would be nice too. Though I’ve seen little evidence of that one.

In any event, this idea raises an intriguing possibility. If this passes, what are the odds that MSNBC and, possibly, CNN won’t survive? Neither network has much left in the way of viewers, but they survive because they get bundled in with more popular channels. If the bundling ended, it would be easy to see MSNBC and CNN failing because of lack of consumer demand. That would be interesting. Indeed, it would be kind of fun to see liberal news channels get whacked by the market. That would be a real validation that the public has no appetite for the progressive agenda... not to mention that it would confirm that progressives are cheap.

Even more interestingly, I wonder what this would mean for the public’s perception of the rest of the media. Would this be more likely to expose the bias at places like the networks since they could no longer point to the very-fringy MSNBC and say, “That’s real bias... we’re not like them!” or would it allow them to hide behind the idea that only “unbiased” news has found a marketplace... well, that and Fox News.

This bill will be interesting. It’s interesting that McCain is trying to find things that upset consumers and offer them solutions. That’s a really good sign as the beginnings of an agenda. It’s will be interesting to see (if it passes) how this changes the cable landscape as well. That one is too hard to tell – some channels will die, some will reform, others will move to the net, and others survive with less. And it will be interesting to see the effect on the ability of the left to get their message out to. . . well, the few people who actually watched their garbage.

Thoughts?

P.S. As a bonus thought... I wonder if this isn’t the beginning of Republican intervention in the “stadium issue.” For some time now, it’s been obvious that cities get ripped off by the NFL for stadiums, and I’m seeing more and more backlash over it (“welfare for billionaires” is the catchphrase). The NFL has responded by using a move to LA as a threat to keep get more funding. I wonder if the Republicans aren’t starting to impose requirements on the NFL on the basis that they get public money for stadiums as a way to “encourage” the NFL to stop demanding public funds? We’ll have to watch to see how that goes.

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Have A Coke And A Smile, Tubby

Ok, this is political, believe it or not. I’m going to talk about Coca-Cola. Delicious, refreshing Coca-Cola. . . and why you stop drinking it. How is that political? Well, bear with me.

I love Coke. Always have. I could drink nothing but Coke and my life would be complete. I dabble occasionally in the diet drinks, but they just aren’t as satisfying. Anyway, it turns out this stuff is really bad for you... all of it. Yeah, makes me sad.

There have been numerous recent studies involving drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup is used in everything from Coke to cookies to tomato sauce. It’s made from corn. And according to these studies, high-fructose corn syrup activates the part of the brain which makes you hungry. In other words, there is scientific evidence gathering that drinking Coke makes you hungry. If this is true, then high-fructose corn syrup could well be a HUGE contributing factor to our nation’s obesity problem.

But is it true?

Well, I’ve done a little experiment. I track what I eat and I decided to go a few days without drinking Coke. Honestly, the difference was shocking. I found that I wasn’t nearly as hungry AND it was easier to eat less. In other words, I didn’t want to eat more than I should have and I had no interest in eating junk. I didn’t crave anything. I had more energy and I felt better. But that could be a fluke, right? So I tried this off and on for a couple months. Every single time the results were the same. Each time I skipped the cola (diet or otherwise), I ate less and felt better.

Hmm.

Now, I know that one person’s experience means nothing scientifically, but I am left to wonder when I see numerous studies all saying the same things and then I experience something this dramatic. That makes me think there is something to this and I’ve decided to cut my Coke to a bare minimum and even then to switch to the version with sugar in it (you can get that in Mexican grocery stores... at least around here).

As an aside, several studies say diet drinks are worse, i.e. they cause people to eat more, they slow the metabolism, and they are now linked to a significant risk of depression.

But here’s the catch: there is no such thing as certainty in science. Science simply doesn’t deal in absolutes. It deals in more likely than not. So you can never be 100% certain. And this is where the politics enters the picture. When a study comes out accusing some product of doing something harmful, the industry quickly runs out and attacks the study, and the preferred attack is bogus, it’s aimed at the idea that the study “isn’t conclusive”... which no study can ever be. This is a much higher standard than we even require to convict someone of murder.

Industry then calls their lobbyists who race to Capital Hill Republicans to get them to attack the study. In fact, all industry needs to do is complain that it must be “leftists attacking our jobs” and conservatives automatically knee jerk defend the product as blameless and Holy and accuse the scientists of being secret communists. This is really, really bad for America, for us, and for our ideology.

1. For one thing, there ARE dangers out there. Not everything is Alar. IF high-fructose corn syrup is causing the problem the studies claim, as it appears to be, then it’s foolish to defend that when a simple change back to sugar from corn could go a long way to fixing the public health. When did conservatism become about ignoring dangers just because we like the guy hiding the danger?

2. By dismissing everything, conservatives take themselves out of the debate. Name the issue and conservatives automatically jump to the defense of industry... nothing proven conclusively here folks, move along.

When you dismiss everything out of hand every time, people stop listening to you because they don’t think your position is fair or reasonable. They see you as an inverse chicken-little who will happily ignore real dangers for ideological reasons. And as much as some conservatives don’t want to hear this, the reality is that the public does care about pollution and consumer safety. The public simply does not want dirty air, dirty water, poisonous food or exploding cars. And the public doesn’t trust industry to police itself because they know better. They know that the incentive of industry is to get away with as much as possible because they are motivated by profit, not “the common good.” And they’ve seen industry take stupid risks to squeeze the bottom line. That means, the public trusts the government to regulate, not industry. Conservatives need to understand this and accept it as a fact.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t bad studies. To the contrary, leftists are big on using half-assed studies and bad science to push an agenda. Look at the global ice age/warming/cooling/climate change industry. BUT if conservatives want to influence the public on regulation... if they want to be taken seriously when they point to something as a bad regulation or a false study... they need to stop knee-jerk defending industry and demanding a standard of proof that is scientific nonsense. Just because smoke doesn’t always mean fire doesn’t mean it never means fire either. Liberals are in the always camp, conservatives are in the never camp. . . the public rejects both.

Finally, let me address another aspect of this. Conservatives have been played for suckers with this idea that these studies (and regulations) are an on/off issue: either you bless the product or you ban it. That’s simply false. The reality is that there are many levels in between and those are where conservatism used to lie. For example, most conservatives will agree that a proper role of government should be the dissemination of accurate information to the public. Hence, a warning label makes sense. Yet, when the cigarette industry got their hands into conservatism, suddenly conservatives bizarrely started opposing that. Ask yourself why? Why should conservatives ever oppose people being well-informed? Ditto on genetically modified foods and ditto on meat from clones and ditto on publicly-traded company financial statements. Each time conservative objected that it would “cost too much” or “hurt the industry” to make them warn consumers. What a load of crap. The real fear was the public would reject those products and the industry paid Republicans to try to stop the government from letting the public make up its own mind.

Our entire ideology depends on having a well-informed public making rational decisions, how does it help to suppress the very information the public needs? The next time you hear conservatives scream that some study is just another “assault on industry,” ask yourself if that’s really the case.

In the meantime, I recommend cutting back the Coke.

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The Wisdom of the Gypsies

Last Thursday, the Senate passed a bill, introduced by a Republican, which exempts animals used as “extras” on television and film productions from the requirements of the Animal Welfare Act. Why am I writing about this? Because this is wrong on several levels and it highlights a problem I’ve had with the Republican way of thinking for a long time.

Under the Animal Welfare Act, anyone who uses animals in any commercial endeavor must follow certain health and safety requirements to protect the welfare of the animals they use. For films, this includes paperwork requirements which document the way the animal is handled throughout the production to ensure that the animal is not mistreated.

The bill passed last Thursday was introduced by Louisiana Senator David Vitter, a Republican. What Vitter wants to do is to amend the Animal Welfare Act to eliminate the paperwork requirement for anyone who uses their own personal pets in a film rather than animals obtained from a commercial facility. The thinking behind this is that presumably, someone who owns a pet has an interest in maintaining the animal’s welfare for emotional reasons and therefore shouldn’t need to prove they are “providing a caring environment for the animal.”

Ok, first, this reasoning is nonsense. Every pet owner knows people who should never be allowed to own pets. We’ve all seen animals abused, beaten, starved and abandoned by their supposed caring owners, so this idea is crap. Moreover, how do you keep this exception from eating the law itself? What keeps a director from simply claiming the animals he’s using are his pets, and then abandoning them the moment the film is over?

... but that’s not the point.

The point is that this again highlights the problem with Republicans: they do the Democrats’ dirty work.

First, why are WE helping film companies? Yes, Vitter represents Louisiana and films are big business for them, but film companies are the enemy!! The Republicans need to stop doing things to help people who hate us. If film companies want something, let them get it from the Democrats... not us. Teach them that if they choose a side, then they cannot look to us for help or favors.

More importantly, however, consider “the optics” on this. When the Animal Welfare Act passed, I can guarantee you that the Democrats all patted themselves on the back and all their liberal followers felt quite morally superior knowing that they had legislated cruelty out of existence. Smug... smug... smug... smug... smug... smug...

Now ask yourself what happens when we introduce a bill like Vitter’s bill? Well, first, we help make laws like this more palatable because we fix the problems with them. Thus, we prevent a public backlash against Democratic overreach because we are alleviating the consequences of that overreach. Secondly, and this is the real kicker, we allow the Democrats to disingenuously smear us for attacking the thing they were trying to protect. In other words, since we are backtracking on their perfect bill, they can accuse us of “hating” animals or old people or whatever the bill was aimed at, even though they know they would have needed to backtrack if we hadn’t. This is so frustrating. It lets them remain smug because we are doing their dirty work!!!

Please Republicans, stop being patsies.

And this isn’t the first time, this is just one in a long line of examples where we let the Democrats pass some feel-smug bill and then we make ourselves the bad guys while simultaneously making their feel-smug bill more palatable.

Ask yourself this. How long do you think affirmative action would last if it applied to the NFL and other sports teams, to films, to television shows, to interest groups like the NAACP, to every business everywhere no matter how small? There would be a massive backlash and the whole thing would be crushed in a wave of public outrage. So why didn’t that happen? Because while the Democrats passed a broad bill which let them smugly claim they had ended discrimination.... the Republicans did the dirty work of carving out all the exceptions which kept the public from freaking out. We made their stupidity work. And in the process, they disingenuously smeared us for hating minorities as evidenced by the exceptions we created, without which the program would have imploded.

It’s the same with bill after bill. All their environmental laws, their anti-discrimination laws, their military/government contracting social engineering stuff, their workers’ rights laws, etc. .... all of it was unworkable and unpalatable to the public, until we came along and did their dirty work and made these things function. And in return, they always disingenuously smeared us for hating whatever it was they claimed they were trying to protect.

It’s time to stop enabling them.

It’s time to make sure that Democratic laws hit as many people as harshly as possible when they pass. No exceptions. No carve outs for sanity or to save the economy.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying do nothing. What I’m saying is that if something is the right thing to do, then we do it our way and we claim credit for it. But if it’s one of their lunatic bills, then you stop making those bills work, stop saving the public from the consequences, stop saving the Democrats from the backlash. Let those bills apply far and wide and attack the Democrats all along the way. Attack them for the harm they’ve done to real people. Attack them for NOT exempting people. Attack them FOR exempting people. Attack them every single time they amend the bill to fix a problem they create. Wipe the smug off their faces.

There is an old gypsy curse: “May you get everything you wish for.” It’s time the Republicans learned the meaning of this and taught it to the Democrats and their followers.

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Agenda 2016+: The Role of Government

Today we continue the Agenda 2016+ series. As I said, this isn’t about winning the 2016 election, it’s about creating an agenda that will permanently win over the public and set America back on course. So let’s start with something basic and vital. Believe it or not, government is needed. Without government, society will devolve into predatory chaos from which will spring a truly oppressive government. But how do we decide what government should and should not do?**

This question is key because it will influence everything we discuss hereafter. What we need right now is a framework for what circumstances would cause us to agree to government regulation and what wouldn’t. As I see it, there are four times when government is needed:

1) To protect the public from those seeking to do intentional harm.
2) To protect those who cannot help themselves.
3) To prevent externalities.
4) To make markets possible.

● Intentional Harm

This one is easy. This is about police powers and protecting against foreign enemies. The principle is simple: it is destructive to society and wasteful to make individuals protect themselves from criminals or foreign armies. The role of the government is to keep people safe in their lives and their property AND the exercising of their rights so that society may function.

● Those Who Cannot Help Themselves

This one comes in two flavors, helping people who genuinely need it and protecting people who cannot protect themselves.

The idea behind welfare and unemployment is that good people will find themselves hitting upon hard times at points in their lives. Those people need help until they can get back on their feet. Helping them is a valid role for government because it ensures the smooth functioning of society. I know conservatives hate this, but frankly, that’s the way the public wants it. Conservatives need to learn to accept that because whining about these programs and trying to kill them will only scare people. Instead, conservatives need to focus on the word “cannot.” This should not be read as “will not.” In other words, conservatives need to tell the public they have no intention of ending these programs, but they want to make them stronger and more fair by designing them to make sure that only those who actually cannot help themselves qualify. Moreover, they need to include incentives to get people off the program again as quickly and as easily as possible. So change the rhetoric from these people being lazy or leaches to talking only about helping those “who genuinely need help” and talking about “helping them get back on their feet again.”

The other half of this is demonstrated by the concept of caveat emptor. Big Business conservatives and some libertarians hide behind this idea like it’s something noble: let the buyer beware. But the public doesn’t accept it, nor should they. The government has a role in stopping deceptive practices. It has a role in stopping abusive and predatory practices as well. This goes back to the idea of the government helping those who cannot protect themselves. It is one thing to say “you bought something cheap, so you have no right to complain when it breaks” but it’s another when the person buys something that is falsely advertised or contains a genuinely hidden danger or creates a hazard of which reasonable people could not be aware.

The problem here is that conservatives conflate frivolous claims with genuine claims and they turn that into a policy of trying to dismantle things like FDA inspectors who should be monitoring the safety of the food supply or the EPA which should be protecting us from polluters, or consumer protection agencies who should be trying to stop scams and predatory business practices. It is an intellectual nonstarter to tell the public they need to do intensive research to know that their beef is safe, that their bank didn’t defraud them or that their car won’t explode. Nor does the public want to hear that a business has the right to poison the air. Conservatives need to accept that the public wants protection, and they need to focus on making the things the government does more reasonable.

● Externalities

This is the hardest for conservatives to accept because they’ve been programmed by Big Business and by misguided libertarians to ignore this. An externality is when a person engages in an activity but doesn’t bear the full price of their actions because they can shift the harm they do onto third parties. Pollution is the perfect example of this. If my factory belches out smoke that makes your land unusable, that is an externality.

If you believe in property rights (or in fairness if you’re a liberal), then you should believe that people should be made to pay the full price for the harm they do through their externalities. Otherwise you basically accept the idea that I can make you pay for my choices. Making sure people pay for their own externalities is a proper role for government. Indeed, where possible, the law should simply allow the aggrieved party to be made whole by the courts. BUT that’s not always practical, and sometimes, its a lot better for society to stop the harm before it happens. In those instances, government regulation is justified to prevent people from forcing others to bear the cost of their own externalities.

As an aside, thinking libertarians should actually be fine with this. For while the lunatics say, “I should be able to do anything with my land,” the reasonable ones will realize that your rights stop when you start taking away your neighbor’s rights.

● The Creation of Markets

Finally, there are times when government regulation is necessary to create a market or to make it run smoothly. This is particularly true where you have a chicken and egg problem.


These four instances are the times when government is good and government regulation is necessary. Conservatives need to grasp this and readjust their thinking. They need to realize that the public wants these things and opposing them will only scare the public. So they need to accept them... get over it... and refocus their policies on making sure these regulations are as narrow and limited and harmless as possible while still achieving what the public wants.

They also need to learn to flip this around. Think about this. Regulations that don’t fit these principles are things we should oppose and we will be on safe ground doing so because we have a clear reason for justifying it: “this does not protect the public.” Similarly, this gives us a framework to attack regulations created by interest groups as “cronyism” because we can point out how the proposed regulations don't help the public, but instead help individual companies or donors.

By adopting a solid philosophical framework for when regulations work, we can control the debate while simultaneously putting and end to the public’s being terrified that conservatives want a polluted planet, unsafe toys, and a public at the mercy of predatory business. Moreover, we can flip this around any time to expose the Democrats as stooges for cronies and fools who can’t protect the public. This gives us a framework for defining when the government should act rather than us always trying to defend Democrats advances.


** If you want to tell me to look at the constitution, then forget it. That ship sailed. The constitution is dead. Moreover, it doesn’t say what you think it says. The constitution has all these little spots in it like “promote the general welfare” and “regulate interstate commerce” which have opened the door to pretty much unlimited power.

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Somebody Think Of The Children!

I’m going to agree with Michelle Obama. How strange. But like I’ve said, when someone is right, they are right and I don’t care what side they are on. The issue is school lunches and there has been a lot of brouhaha about her attempt to make them more healthy. The things is, she’s right. Surprised?

One of the few (only) projects Michelle Obama has been involved in has been trying to make school lunches more healthy. And as a result of her initiative, and the corresponding legislation, the government has begun to impose health requirements on school lunches which have required that greasy bad foods like burgers, fries and pizza be removed and replaced with salads, vegetables, beans and hummus.

Naturally, the kids aren’t happy. They are whining about how bad these meals taste and how hungry they are when they don’t eat these lunches. Some creative young capitalists have even created black markets in things like chocolate syrup (paid for by the squeeze), cookies, chips, etc. Some educators too are complaining that the government is imposing these requirements and they are getting grief from the kids. And conservatives are joining them. . . wrongly.

So why are these conservatives wrong? Well, they are framing this as a freedom issue, but it’s not. These are state provided lunches and to argue that the students have a “freedom” right to have whatever they want provided defies any sort of definition of freedom of which I am aware. Likewise, it opens the door to this idea that government benefits should cater to the desires of those who receive them. What is the difference between this and a government housing recipient demanding a choice in housing style or a food stamps recipient demanding a right to use their stamps on alcohol or Twinkies?

Don’t forget that except in rare circumstances, any student who doesn’t want to eat what the government provides has the right to bring their own lunch from home. So where is the loss of freedom? If a student wants pizza, bring it, but don’t whine that you have a right to be served it by the government. That’s liberal talk!

Further, there is a very good reason for this. Like it or not, there is an obesity epidemic with somewhere around 30% of kids being declared obese and with that number rising each year. The fact of the matter is that obesity is the direct result of calories taken in. Feeding kids hamburgers and pizza not only gives them way more calories than they need (not to mention other unhealthy ingredients), but it teaches them bad habits which will lead to a lifetime of bad dietary choices. Doesn’t it make more sense that if the school is going to offer food to students (a lot of which is free and almost all of which is subsidized) that the food the government offers at least is healthy and teaches the right kinds of lessons? Think about it. This is the same reason we want food stamps limited to staples (something the program does not do well) and why we want education programs for the unemployed, those on welfare, etc. to teach them the kinds of values which won’t make them a burden to society in the future. How does getting kids hooked on fatty foods help society in the long run?

Also, the collateral issues are good for us. First, schools are the first place most kids come into contact with the government. Should we be teaching them that the government is a dispenser of pleasure or that the government will only give you what you need? Secondly, this will teach kids to think ahead. If they don’t want to eat hummus, they need to learn the responsibility of preparing a lunch and making sure they take it to school. Anything that teaches self-reliance is good. Finally, think of the kids who are operating the black market. They have learned the beauty of capitalism and the kids who buy from them at black market profiteering prices are learning the pain of monopolies and of irresponsibility.

This is good for the country and good for conservatism. But most importantly, it’s good for the kids. Do it for the children. ;)

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Killing ObamaCare From the Inside

Sometimes, evil can’t be killed. It can just be buried somewhere until the next generation of teenagers stumbles across it. Some suggest that’s the case with ObamaCare. Frankly, I see no reason why it can’t be killed with reconciliation, but let’s assume arguendo that the Republicans somehow don’t capture the Senate or can’t get it through reconciliation. Is there another way to drive a stake through this unearthly terror? Actually, yes.

There are four or five ideas being battered around right now on how to kill ObamaCare without a full repeal. I think a couple of these are excellent temporary measures, but a couple others would be disastrous. Here are my thoughts.

● Method One: Starve It. Most federal laws require funding to function. Without funding, they cannot hand out cash, award contracts or even assign government workers to perform tasks. In some instances, this won’t matter because the law is enforced by private individuals who can bring suit to make it happen or, in the case of criminal law, it can be used by DOJ without specific funding. But ObamacCare isn’t that kind of law.

ObamaCare requires the creation of federal exchanges, requires enforcement officials, workers to process paperwork, inspectors, etc. It requires the payment of money to insurance companies and states, funding for the creation of demonstration projects, etc. It even requires money for IRS agents to be able to pursue the penalties. Without money, none of that can happen.

Usually, when laws like ObamaCare get passed, the Congress appropriates (assigns) money in advance to make the law happen. Those appropriations then become line items in the federal budget and take on a life of their own because they become part of each subsequent budget unless they are specifically voted down.

But in this case, the Democrats got careless (or more accurately tried to hide the price) and didn’t appropriate any money. To make up for this, Obama has been funding the law from an HHS slush fund meant to pay for the Federal government’s general health care expenses. Romney can stop this on day one and effectively kill the implementation of the bill. And unless the Congress decides to force funding on Romney, the bill will be dead until Romney is out of the White House.

This could kill about 90% of the bill for up to 8 years.

● Method Two: Ignore It. An offshoot of the first method would be that Romney could simply tell his agencies not to enforce the law. Thus, the IRS would not collect the tax, HHS and Medicare would do nothing to implement the law, etc. Obama has done this with laws he doesn’t like, like many related to immigration.

The problem with this approach is that once money is obligated by Congress for a specific purpose, the President must do that. Until Nixon, Presidents often impounded such money rather than spend it, but a weakened Nixon administration gave up this power. So while Romney could ignore the law for a little, the courts would eventually force him to act. Although, that could take a couple years.

This could kill about 90% of the bill for up to two/three years.

● Method Three: A World Without Rules. To implement a law, the Executive Branch issues rules which tell everyone how the government will enforce the laws. In most cases, these rules are written by the agencies on behalf of the White House -- though a few are handled independently. A new President has the power to re-write any regulations which prior Presidents have issued. Thus, in theory, Romney can wipe out or re-write all the rules related to ObamaCare to neuter it.

But there’s a catch with this method: wiping out rules isn’t as easy as it sounds. For one thing, once rules are promulgated, the agency must go through the whole rulemaking process to change them. That means the rules must be issued in proposed form, the public must be allowed to comment, the rules must be issued in final form, and then dozens of lawsuits will be filed before the rules go into effect. Until that point, Obama’s rules would still apply. This wouldn’t apply to any rules Obama hasn’t finalized yet, but it would apply to all the rules he has finalized. Thus, most of his rules could stay in effect for two to three years.

The other problem is the legal review. As unbelievable as it sounds after Obama’s term, the Executive is required to enforce the laws as reasonably written. So it would be nearly impossible for Romney to just change the rule to “just kidding.” He could cleverly sabotage much of it, but not all of it. Also, the next administration could simply redo his rules.

This could eventually wipe out most of the law, but it would take time and it would only last until the next administration changed the rules.

● Method Four: Misimplementation. Because the law was written with the idea that Democratic administrations would handle all the dirty details away from the sight of the voters, the law gives HHS a lot of discretion in terms of how to implement the law. Romney could exploit this by certifying that people, businesses and states are in compliance when they aren’t really. This could defang the law.

Personally, however, I don’t like this option at all. This wouldn’t wipe out any of the law and it runs the risk of turning into cronyism. It also wouldn’t stop liberal states from taking advantage of the law to demand massive federal subsidies.

That leads me to another method of misimplementation. When the Democrats drafted ObamaCare, they made an interesting mistake. The way the law is written, it doesn’t allow the Federal government to give subsidies for buying insurance except through state insurance exchanges. Thus, if states refuse to set those up, the federal government can set up alternate exchanges but it can’t provide subsidies.

Some conservatives are saying this would be a good move. I completely disagree. This does nothing to kill the bill. It also allows the establishment of federal control, which can become rather oppressive, especially if the Democrats manage to sneak funding into a bill somehow. In effect, this would be like letting a robber hold a gun to your head just because you think it’s not currently loaded. Moreover, this would allow liberal states to implement the law and get subsidies from taxpayers all across the country, while people living in conservative states would not get the subsidies. In effect, conservatives states would be subsidizing big rich liberal states, and the bill would appear much cheaper. This is a bad solution.

Thoughts?

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Some Final Thoughts On Obamacare

I’m taking the week off until next Monday. But before I go, here are my final thoughts on the ObamaCare ruling. Basically, while this is a legal disaster for the country, I think politically this is a very good thing. Also, by way of a bonus, at the end of this article, I’ve included some links to the CommentaramaCare proposal which outlines the reform we really need.

● The Supreme Court Fails: Legally speaking, the ObamaCare decision is horrible. Some conservatives have latched onto the fact Roberts made a lot of great points about how the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause don’t extend nearly as far as the statist would have you believe. Sure, that’s nice. BUT then he turns right around and opens an unlimited window for Congress to use its tax powers to do anything! There may eventually be limits on this power, but as it stands right now, this is one of the five or six biggest power grabs in Constitutional history.

It is also troubling that this decision is based on verbal semantics: punishing someone for non-compliance is not the same thing as forcing someone to comply. Really?! That’s nonsense! That’s a distinction without a difference -- a verbal game -- and it’s disturbing that the Supreme Court would accept this double-speak as reasoning. This will lead to a whole new world of control once Congress realizes it can just “tax” you into compliance without ever triggering the limits on its power to “punish.” That’s troubling.

● The Conservative Opportunity: Politically, however, this is a very different story. Politically, I think this decision is a Godsend for two reasons.

First, this decision will destroy the Democrats, and not just Obama. Human nature tells us that people forgive and forget misbehavior if it stops before the negative consequences kick in. So long as people assumed the Supreme Court would rein in ObamaCare, the public was very likely to forgive the Democrats and consider this a non-issues. Now that assumption is gone, and this decision revives the possibility of negative consequences. That will wake up the public and end its forgiving mood. Indeed, I would suspect this will endanger another 3-5 Democratic Senators in flyover country and could ultimately give us another 2-3 seats. And while I don’t think that will give us enough seats in the Senate to overcome a filibuster, it will be the difference between a majority (52-53 seats) and a solid majority (54-57 seats), which should be all we need under the new scorched-earth Senate.

Secondly, I think this ruling saved us from a disaster. If the Supreme Court had struck down the mandate, but left the rest, I have no doubt the Republicans would have declared victory and just moved on. That would have left a plethora of horrible things ensconced in law, including trillions in taxes, dirty deals with drug companies, anti-competitive requirements on hospitals and doctors, new entitlements, the unfunded expansion of Medicare, the creation of these insurance exchanges, etc. In effect, the least damaging part of the law would have been struck down and the other 99% of the harm would have remained. Now the Republicans will need to address the bill itself, and the pressure will be to repeal and replace the whole thing. That means they will actually need to fix much of this. That is the real reason this decision may ultimately prove to be a saving moment for the Republic, because it means the Republicans can’t ignore the real problems.

● Repealing Stupidity: Repealing ObamaCare should be simple. Passing it by reconciliation means that by definition it can be repealed by reconciliation. And reconciliation only needs 51 votes. Naturally, the Democrats (and some weak Republicans) are whining that somehow the bill can’t be repealed by reconciliation, but that’s nonsense.

● Building A New Crisis: There is an economic crisis built into ObamaCare and it will be interesting to see what happens. The law expands Medicaid to the point that it will shatter state budgets. But states don’t need to sign up for this. Indeed, the Supreme Court ruled that the states can refuse to expand Medicaid as the bill requires, and the Federal government cannot withdraw Medicaid funding if the state so chooses -- it can only withhold the additional funds intended to cover that expansion.

But just because states don’t need to sign up, doesn’t mean they are smart enough to refuse. A few Republican governors have said they won’t sign up, but most see this more as an opportunity to negotiate a lot of freedom from the requirements of Medicaid. It will be interesting to see what they obtain. The problem, however, lies with the Democratic states. . . as always. These idiots are rushing to sign up as a show of support. This will result in a dramatic increase of their Medicaid costs, which will bust their budgets. At first, the federal government funds this expansion, but within a couple years, that subsidy vanishes. That’s when states like California and New York will find themselves in budget hell (as if they weren’t already). Without federal money, I don’t see this as sustainable, but how will they cut off so many people once they sign them up? Watch out if you live in a liberal state which accepts this expansion!

● Death to the Middle Class: Conservative economist and Senior Economics Writer for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore, just made an interesting statement. He claims that 75% of the cost of ObamaCare will fall on the middle class -- people making less than $125,000 per year. That’s not at all surprising because that’s who always pays for these programs. Still, this is unwelcome news for a middle class which has been hit with falling incomes, falling asset values, falling home prices, massive inflation, an ever-higher tax burden, and fewer job prospects. At some point, this rubber band will break.

Conclusion

To sum up my thoughts, this bill is a disaster. It will crush the stupid states, it will crush the middle class. It will damage our healthcare system a lot. The Supreme Court’s ruling has damaged our Constitution. BUT this will wake up the public and will help to finish off the Democrats. It will also force the Republicans to act. In the end, this decision may prove to be the moment which spurred the Republicans to actually fix the healthcare crisis, and thereby save the country. Let’s hope.


Finally, by popular demand, here are some links for you to consider:

First, here’s what’s wrong with our healthcare system: Out of Control Costs, Out-of-Control Costs II, Access, and Quality Control Problems.

Secondly, we have a report card on why ObamaCare fails to address these problems: FailureCare.

Lastly, we have CommentaramaCare, a proposal on how the system should be fixed: Com-Care Tort Reform, Com-Care Medical Reforms, Com-Care Coverage Reform, and Com-Care Summarized and Priced.

Have a happy and free Fourth everyone!

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Fairness My Rear End...

I am sick of hearing Democrats and other leftists the planet over talk about wanting “a more fair society.” They don’t want a fair society. Far from it, they want a deeply unfair society. And their policies are crushing the very middle class they claim they want to treat so fairly.

Whenever leftists want to get their spite on against the rich, they talk about “fairness.” They act as if somehow the rich have intercepted a gift meant for us all, and now the left wants to spread it around fairly. . . to redistribute it. But wealth is not gift. It does not fall from the sky, it must be created through hard labor or risk taking. So tell me what exactly is “fair” about taking away the value of someone’s labor or the benefits they have earned from taking risks? That’s called slavery, even if you don’t take 100%. In fact, I doubt very much the left would suddenly decide Southern slaveholders were morally justified if they’d only taken 75% of what the slave made.

In a truly fair world, everyone would have an equal opportunity to achieve their dreams. But that is not what leftists want. They care so little about equality of opportunity that (1) they stand in the way of school reform to keep kids from being educated, (2) they stand in the way of starter jobs through labor requirements and minimum wages, which keeps kids form learning the important skills they need, (3) they tax the heck out of success, which keeps all but the greatest risk takers from trying to achieve their dreams, and (4) they encourage a system that lets the powerful and connected run roughshod over the “have nots” using the government as a weapon. It’s no wonder they want equality of result with these policies, because there won’t be any opportunity. The fact is, they hate success and they want to cap how successful you can be. And in some instances, they want to stop you from even trying to achieve your dreams in the first place. How fair is that?

And how has all of this worked out? The middle class has been crushed. Check this out.

Using official inflation figures, a dollar today is only worth 32 cents of what it was worth in 1979. That means inflation has eaten 68% of the value of the dollar in 33 years. In that time, the Middle Class has seen their median income rise only 40%. That means they’ve taken a 28% pay cut over those 33 years -- almost a percent a year. The poorest 20% of Americans have taken a 50% pay cut.

Oh, but wait! This is all the fault of Republicans slashing government spending, right? No. Government spending increased 714% in that same period. That’s right, federal spending increased more than seven times in the same period where real people took a 28-50% pay cut. Are you starting to see the problem?

If you want to know how bad this is, consider this: in 2012, Americans will pay $4 trillion in taxes. That is $152 billion MORE than they will spend on housing, food and clothing combined. That’s right, Uncle Sam is now a bigger expense in our lives than the costs of food, housing and clothing combined. So when Obama talks about tax rates being low compared to what they used to be, laugh in his lying face. Sure, rates are lower, but rates don’t tell the whole story. Rates don’t cover tariffs, fees, excise, use and sale taxes, they don’t account for disappearing and fading deductions, they ignore the alternative minimum tax, and they don’t account for a million other hidden taxes and the cost of regulations. Remember this article (LINK) which showed how the number of “economically significant” regulations being issued has been souring. An “economically significant” regulation, according to the government, is a regulation that imposes at least $100 million in annual costs on the economy. Clinton issued an average of 56 per year. “Conservative” George W. Bush issued on average 62 per year. And now his downgrade-ness is issuing on average 84 per year. Here’s a handy chart:

This represents hundreds of billions of dollars in lost freedom. Combine that with the lost income and the excessive tax burden discussed above and is it any wonder that the Middle Class is getting crushed?

As a result of this, the economy stinks. The labor participation rate, i.e. the percentage of people working, is at its lowest level since 1981, with 30 million people unemployed. According to Paul Krugman, we are in a depression. And he’s probably right. . . for a change. If you look at how the Great Depression went from 1929 to 1940, you will see a series of crashes with each followed by a sucker rally. Basically, the economy would crash 70-80% in a year, then would appear to rally for a couple years recapturing almost exactly half of what it lost, only to give it all up again and more. We seem to be in the same pattern now unless something changes.

What needs to change? How about the elimination of these regulations strangling our economy or the taxes crushing our people? No one will hire or start a new business when they know Uncle Sam is lurking out there waiting to pounce.

But hey, at least it’s fair. . . we’ll all go down together.


Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site! (Politics of Trek)
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Obama Fails The Economy

Obama has been a failure all around. His foreign policy has been heavy on retreat and his domestic agenda sparked backlashes galore. But even worse has been his economic policies. His plan of high taxes, massive government spending, and corporate subsidies lengthened the recession and created a jobless recovery. Those “green jobs” he promised were all an illusion. And now it turns out, he’s made the biggest danger to the economy even worse.

Before we talk about how Obama “fixed” the “too big to fail” problem, you might be interested in a little data on those green jobs we’re all supposed to have now.

When Obama took office, he promised five million green jobs in the next ten years. He even spent $90 billion to make that happen. That works out to $18,000 per expected job. Of course, it’s actually higher because that $90 billion is just a baseline and will cause further federal spending, but still, that's not too bad.

So how has he done? According to the White House, rather than creating 5,000,000 jobs, this money now will create only “827,000 job years” over Obama’s four years in office. But a “job year” is not a job. It is instead the equivalent of one full-time position for one year. If we spread these job years out over the ten years Obama used for the five million claim, you come up with a total of 82,700 jobs. And that means the cost per job is $1.1 million. It also means, Obama still owes 4.9 million jobs.

And don’t forget that even beyond this, you have a variety of failures under the crony clean energy loan program out of the Department of Energy, such as Solyndra, Enerl, Beacon Power, Solar Trust for America, and others. Not to mention, the $2.4 billion flushed away on building fewer than 8,000 Chevy Volts no one wants.

Call me crazy, but Obama’s attempt to create a Mussolini-like industrial policy appears to have been a colossal failure.

Now we get word that Obama has made the “too big to fail” problem worse. Imagine that. When Obama came to power, he promised an end to “too big to fail” so that taxpayers would never again need to support failed banks. Then he signed the financial reform bill, Dodd-Frank, which supposedly did that. . . though Republicans claimed otherwise. Bloomberg News now reports that the five biggest banks, i.e. those that are too big to fail, increased their share of all banking assets from 43% in 2007 to 56% now. That’s right, those five banks absorbed an additional 13% of all the banking assets in the country under Obama. In total, these five banks (JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citicorp, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs) now control $8.5 trillion in assets. Moreover, the size of the banking sector compared to the rest of the economy has doubled in the past decade, making banks even more “too big to fail.” That means the problem is much, much worse than it was before the TARP bailouts.

Obama has flushed money down the toilet while squandering opportunity after opportunity to actually fix the economy and protect the country from another meltdown. His failure to act is shameful and dangerous. Let us hope the Republicans fix these problems when they finally gain control over the government.

As usual, don't forget it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site!

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Why The Nanny State Destroys All It Touches

Britain has just provided us with a fascinating example of why conservatism works and liberalism fails in the real world, and we should be paying attention. What they’re doing is removing street signs and other devices meant to keep people safe on the roads. Why they’re doing it, is because these signs were having the opposite effect. Get this!

Our story comes to us from the DailyMail Online (LINK), perhaps the greatest source of actual information left on the planet. This particular story deals with changes that have been made to Exhibition Road in the heart of London’s museum quarter.

For years now, liberal safety advocates have been installing ever more safety measures to protect drivers and pedestrians. This has ranged from restrictive rules for drivers to signs warning drivers about dangers to curbs meant to separate the road from the sidewalk to railings meant to pen in pedestrians to designated crosswalks, etc. The idea was that the government would find all the potential dangers and then warn drivers and pedestrians about them or they would find ways to eliminate those dangers.

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. Why? Because once the government took over warning people about what to watch for, they stopped taking precautions themselves and they relied on the government’s warnings. So now the conservative government is yanking these things out again and lo and behold, it’s actually getting safer. Here’s a picture of the road today with all the gates and curbs and signs removed:

Why is it getting safer? Because people are paying more attention. Said Sir Jeremy Dixon, the lead architect on the new project:

“When the rules by which traffic normally operates are removed - signs, barriers and curb markings - drivers become more observant. They make more eye-contact with pedestrians which produces greater watchfulness. They use the road more like pedestrians. They take more responsibility for their actions. [S]tudies have shown that when traffic lights are removed from crossings, traffic flows more freely and efficiently because drivers take more care.”

Imagine that. When the government takes responsibility for something, people take less personal responsibility for their own actions. When the government stops playing nanny, people take more responsibility for their actions. Who could have guessed?

And there’s more. Daniel Moylan, the Deputy Chairman of Transport for London said this:

“The psychology of this scheme is fascinating. Experience seems to show that when you dedicate space to traffic and control it with signs and green traffic lights, motorists develop a claim on it. It becomes ‘my space.’ Drivers become annoyed if people move into it.”

In other words, they develop a sense of entitlement.

Folks, this is exactly what conservatives warn about with government. When the government gives something to people, they develop feelings of entitlement and they become belligerent to anyone who violates “their rights.” What’s more, they stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions in those areas, i.e. they become dependent on the government.

This issue right here is the human condition in a nutshell and proves the conservative belief that the nanny state is destructive, not constructive. It destroys those it seeks to help. This is exactly why generations of government welfare have destroyed the families who accepted the government’s intervention in their lives. This is why big businesses who have come to rely on the government need bailouts to keep them afloat. This is why we are facing a crushing amount of regulation today, because once the government begins taking care of you, it keeps moving into more and more aspects of your life as you become increasingly helpless. These are not coincidences.

This is why government stinks on a human level and it applies to everything the government touches. There is an incredible lesson here, will anybody learn it? Seeing as how Los Angeles just banned footballs and frisbies from being thrown on the beach. . . I’m thinking the answer is no.

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News Roundup: Anger, Insanity and Nakedness

Let’s do another news roundup. Why? Because I said so! Just kidding. Actually, because there are several little stories we can’t cover in separate articles so here they are all lumped together in a big old steaming pile of news! Get ready for dogs, sex, and Hawaiian Stalinists!

● Item One: Dog Show Gone Wrong. In case you missed it, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show started last night and finishes tonight. I never miss this as I think dogs are great. And much like the Super Bowl, part of the attraction each year is when Pedigree puts out new ads. The last few years have featured David Duchovny talking about dogs with the tag line, “dogs rule.” Here are some samples: We’re for Dogs / Shelter Dogs / Doggie Dentures / Rub My Belly.

Imagine my surprise when these commercials did NOT appear last night. Instead, we got some lame generic commercial for Purina using some nondescript song. Totally forgettable pabulum. Hmm.

So I promptly turned to the internet to discover what had gone wrong. It turns out that Westminster decided to drop Pedigree as a sponsor because they didn’t like Pedigree focusing on shelter dogs. Seriously. Said Westminster’s spokesidiot David Frei:

“Show me an ad with a dog with a smile. Don’t try to shame me. We told Pedigree that and they ignored us. Our show is a celebration of dogs. We’re not promoting purebreds at the expense of non-purebreds. We celebrate all dogs. When we’re seeing puppies behind bars, it takes away from that. Not just because it’s sad, but it’s not our message.”

To quote Bufford T. Justice, “you aaaaasshole.” Over the past few years, Westminster has gotten a bad reputation because of many of the breeding practices associated with purebreds. Specifically, their standards are creating dogs with breathing problems, back problems, bad joints and mental issues. They’ve been protested and some people have even considered legislation against the things they promote.

Pedigree, by comparison, is for all dogs, not just purebreds, and they’ve matched seven million dollars in donations in the last couple years to help the dogs who need it most. Westminster has not.

Westminster is not only stupid, they are shameful. I suggest they fix this by next year or I won’t be back. In the meantime, up yours Westminster, and your little sponsor Purina too.

● Item Two: Accidentally Naked? A high school football coach had to resign the other day when he “accidentally” posted naked pictures of himself on Facebook. How does that happen “accidentally”? Between this and Sandusky and the guy in Syracuse and the various women’s coaches who keep getting fired for inappropriate behavior with their players and the NFL assistant coach who got arrested driving naked through a fast-food drive-thru, something has really gone wrong in coaching.

● Item Three: Bringing Sexy Back. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin wants Russians to have more sex to halt Russia’s population decline. Maybe they need more coaches? Interestingly, the land of mail-order brides and alcoholism actually has finally stabilized population-wise. In the 1990s, there was speculation Russia’s population would fall by a third by 2050, but that didn’t happen and now they’ve even begun to grow by a few thousand over the past few years. Still, it’s a good political strategy for Putin: how can you go wrong telling people to have more sex?

● Item Four: Machete. Liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer just learned a little something about the joys of law and order when he was robbed at machete-point in his Caribbean vacation home by a masked intruder. Being a liberal, he will no doubt draw the wrong lesson and endorse a seven-day waiting period for machetes. . . or vacation homes.

● Item Five: Big Brother Is Watching, Aloha. Finally this item. I’ve said before that Republicans get stupid when you mention terrorists or criminals. Too many “conservatives” will happily throw away all their rights in the name of safety based on false promises and vague assurances that we can trust government not to abuse absolute power. Combine this with the Democratic instinct to monitor and control you and you have the makings for an American police state. Here’s proof.

Hawaii’s legislature is debating a bill which will require Internet providers to keep track of every website their customers visit. Basically, your provider will need to keep a continuing file showing every website you visited in the past two years. In—flipping—sane!

Why would Hawaii do this? Because Republican Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine is being “harassed” by a web designer named Eric Ryan, who claims Pine owes him money. He launched a website called KymPineIsACrook.com where he makes the claim that she stiffed him (but not in a Russian way). She also contends that Ryan hacked her e-mail account. Hence, Hawaii needs “tougher cyber laws.” Of course, the Democrats jumped on this and are pushing this insane bill.

Ok, let’s cut through this.. First, if he’s lying about the money, sue him for slander. Clearly he’s not lying because she’s taken no action in that regard. Secondly, if he has hacked her e-mail, then he’s already committed a crime under the Patriot Act. So no additional laws are needed. Third, even if a law was needed, it is to punish someone for hacking an e-mail account, not a law that requires private companies to spy on all citizens so some messed up Hawaiian legislator can get her Stalin on.

Think about this. One man is harassing her, so she wants the government to keep Stasi-like files on everyone in Hawaii?? How does that make sense? What possible purpose could this serve except to let her see who visited his website. And then what? “Re-education” camps? This is pure totalitarianism, make no mistake. And for those inclined to trust the government’s motives, this should wake you up. This is why government really acts -- because some intolerant a-hole with a grudge and a debt problem decides to use the government to help them in a personal fight.

Government is evil and those who would use the government to control others are evil.


Also, don't forget that it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site (LINK), and in honor of Valentine's Day, might I recommend revisiting the Top 25 Romance Films article (LINK).

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The All-Rat News Roundup

It’s time to get you caught up on the news. Today’s roundup has a special theme: rats. They’re everywhere and now they have rights.

● King Rat: Lord Obama has decided he will formally accept the Democratic nomination at the 74,000 seat Bank of America stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. A couple thoughts:

1. It’s stunning hubris for an incumbent president to accept the nomination of his party at a 74,000 seat stadium when he is unopposed.

2. Given Obama’s recent inability to even fill pool halls when he speaks, should we wonder how many people will show up to this shindig?

3. How ironic that Obama picks a stadium named after a TARP bank!

4. Do you think the rich will descend from their stadium luxury boxes to mix with the peons?

5. This will be hurricane season, let’s hope God gets his smite on.

● Rat Relocators: Washington, D.C., which leads the country in homicides, corruption and abject stupidity, has passed the idiotic law to end all idiotic laws: the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010. This thing is so crazy you couldn’t make it up. It provides that exterminators may no longer kill rats and other vermin. Instead, they must be captured. . . in families. . . and then relocated to Virginia or Maryland. A few questions:

1. Do they have to do DNA tests to determine if they’re all from the same family? And how do they know they caught them all?

2. What, no counseling?

3. Can they incarcerate their captives until they have the whole family or do they need to get them all at once?

● Rat Hunter: In 2008, Romney was lampooned when he said he hunts “small varmints” when people demanded to know if he hunts. Apparently, you must hunt BIG GAME to show you support the Second Amendment. This time around, Romney got confused between moose (meese?) hunting and elk hunting. So naturally, idiots like David Asselrod jumped on this by joking that Romney was “on the horns of a dilemma.” (fyi, they’re called antlers David. . . if you’re going to poke fun at someone, don’t be a bigger idiot).

The issue of hunting came up in the debate as well. And this raises a question which has been bother me: when did the Second Amendment become about hunting? The Second Amendment isn’t there to protect hunting. It has NOTHING to do with that. The Second Amendment is a right to be armed to defend yourself against an overbearing government or whatever else may come your way, i.e. criminals, meese, foreign invaders, E.T. To require a candidate to prove they’ve killed some animal just to demonstrate their fealty to the Second Amendment is as ridiculous as requiring them to curse in public to show they support the First Amendment.

● Dirty Rats: Why are Republicans demanding that Romney release his taxes? What are they expecting to find? “Oh look, he took the ‘sponsor a pedophile’ deduction!” All this can do is harm the nominee by playing into class warfare arguments where rich journalists decry the amount of money Republicans make while ignoring the much richer Democrats. But more importantly, in America, it’s nobody’s business what you make. And Republicans need to stop playing this game.

● Sinking Ship Rats: Today is the day of the SOPA boycott when many websites (e.g. the Wikipedia) will shut themselves down to protest SOPA and PIPA. The bills are starting to fail. Not only will neither bill apparently be brought to a vote, but as the rats in Congress and the Senate have come to realize just how angry the public is at this, they’ve started to flee the sinking ship. Scott Brown and a group of Senate Republicans are the latest to declare their opposition. Even one of PIPA’s sponsors, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md), now opposes the bill. Apparently, Obama objecting the bill has scared the Democrats and reality has woken up many of the Republicans.

No doubt Republicans Lamar Smith and Marsha Blackburn are confused how the country could suddenly be so overrun with communists. Perhaps they should call for an exterminator relocator?

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