Shooting Inconvenient People

The professional left in America and their chattering-class useful idiots have followed a consistent pattern for a century: sympathizing with tyranny in their musings over how to implement policies fueled by jealousy and an undying fear of economic liberty. (Ross Kaminsky – Stern Idiocy)

Never met a dictator he did not like

Add Andy Stern, former SEIU Kommisar, to the list of Communist China admirers

Inside of every good progressive is a very illiberal goose-stepper longing for the strongman. Planning committees and central control send a thrill up the legs of those who disdain the individual liberties enshrined in our moribund constitution. Bold action! Intervention!

Stern waxed poetic about China’s bold central planning:

China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development. (Andy Stern – I Love Communism)

That’s nothing. Tom Friedman’s ardor swells and his breast heaves as he gushes forth his paeans to the burly, bossy, ever so muscular Chinese Communist Politburo. If only the power elites here in America could snatch such willy-nilly decision-making from the ignorant clutches of workaday rubes! Why can’t we do away with all this messy democracy and have a dictator state like China, ask the ChiCom fanboys.

Jonah Goldberg knows how to puncture the balloon:

China had five-year plans before it started getting rich. Under the old five-year plans, China killed tens of millions of its own people and remained mired in poverty.

Oh, and what about labor? There’s one labor union in China, and it’s run by the government. (The Nazis had pretty much the same system.) Stern doesn’t seem to care.

Obviously, the core problem with China envy is not economic but moral. To the extent that China’s economic planning “works,” it does so because China is an authoritarian country. (Japan has been planning its economy within democratic restraints and has been dying on the economic vine for nearly 20 years.) You can hit your building quota a lot more easily when you can shoot inconvenient people and trample property rights at will. The Three Gorges Dam displaced more than a million people who were given three choices: move, jail, death. (Goldberg – China Envy)

Here’s the reality that the progressive toadies don’t want to face…

Now comes the hangover. The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks' nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent. The country is littered with luxurious county government offices, ghost cities of empty apartment blocks, unsafe high-speed rail lines and crumbling highways to nowhere. (WSJ – China’s Hard Landing)

This last statement could also describe the US just as well…

A financial sector that allocates credit based on politics rather than price signals led China into this mess. Popular pressure to dismantle crony capitalism is building, and the Communist Party would be wise to get in front of it while it can. (WSJ – China’s Hard Landing)

For an entertaining and excellent and critique of Stern and Friedman’s corporatist mindset, see Matt Welch’s The Simpletons.

Obama's Scorched Earth Campaign

President Obama took his classless act on the road, making political hay out of the catastrophic wildfires in Texas...

Without mentioning him by name Obama mocked Perry as "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change." (AP News)

A US president mocking a governor whose state is a disaster area because of wildfires (which also occurred before the “global warming” era) is unprecedented. President Obama is a low-class, disgusting Chicago machine pol.

Imagine President Bush mocking New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco after Hurricane Katrina:

"… a governor and a mayor who still believe in nanny-state liberalism, when it’s bred generations of people so benumbed by government assistance they no longer have the good sense to get out of the way of a hurricane! he he heh...”

This is not a man who is president of all Americans and unites us. This is a cornered, cracked-out street punk fearful of going down, wildly swinging iron bars at his enemies and dividing us so he and his gang can continue to dominate the government special interest trade.

It’s all about rescuing the progressive agenda

ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama charged Sunday that the GOP vision of government would "fundamentally cripple America," as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast.

No, Mr. President, you’re confused...

 The “GOP vision” if guided by the tea parties, would fundamentally cripple the progressive feral beast that has wiped its ass with the constitution, suborned the federal government, and is now engorging itself on more and more of our tax dollars and our freedoms. That is what we set out to “fundamentally cripple,” and America will be much the better once we get it done.

Progressives make an arrogant mistake: Equating Government with America

Their doctrinaire religion inextricably entwines the two, conflating them into one pseudo-patriotic package. It's a neat trick that allows them to slap an American flag on their horrible statist creature and then damn to hell anyone who speaks heresy against it.

It's not working anymore. Americans are turning againt the soulless progressive beast.

Tea Party Punks vs Stodgy Progressive Establishment

Tea party conservatives are now the anti-establishment radicals

We've got the dogmatic progressive prigs backed into a corner, screaming that we're terrorists and kidnappers, or bloodthirsty carjackers stabbing babies in their car seats, or whatever the fevered ranters are telling the Obama-bots to repeat this week. 

I guess the imagery of the tea partiers being bad drivers and running Uncle Sam's car in the ditch wasn't morbid enough.

The 1900's: A Progressive Century

The 20th century saw the founders' constitutional republic grow into a monster, gobbling ever more money and personal freedoms. Sure, some good things happened: Womens suffrage, civil rights. But we also got a pay-for-play government of czarist fiat and special exemptions. America's ruling oligarchy makes money crafting dense bureaucratic sludge and then selling indulgences to the moneyed class who don't want to eat it. And the progressives continue to defend this stinking status quo that now has us teetering on the Eve of Destruction.

Greg Gutfeld over at Breitbart's Big Hollywood writes...

To me, the Tea Party really is the punk rock moment of politics – harkening back to simple math – rescuing us from 20 minute organ noodling found on Emerson Lake and Palmer records.

Yep, in a bloated world typified by Yes’s Roundabout on F-M circa 1977, the Tea Party offered “Beat on the Brat,” a jolt of Ramones wisdom that reminded us of what worked before.

It also exposed a key problem with “hope and change” of 2008. When an organic American movement rose up to question the direction of the Administration, those ephemeral “good feelings” of 2008 withered against simple principle.

George Will piles on...

"Think of any customer experience that has made you wince or kick the cat. What jumps to mind?

Waiting in multiple lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Observing the bureaucratic sloth and lowest-common-denominator performance of public schools, especially in big cities. Getting ritually humiliated going through airport security.

Trying desperately to understand your doctor bills. Navigating the permitting process at your local city hall. Wasting a day at home while the gas man fails to show up.

Whatever you come up with, chances are good that the culprit is either a direct government monopoly (as in the providers of K-12 education) or a heavily regulated industry or utility where the government is the largest player (as in health care)."

Since 1970, per-pupil real, inflation-adjusted spending has doubled and the teacher-pupil ratio has declined substantially. But math and reading scores are essentially unchanged, so we are spending much more to achieve the same results.

That is what we are rebelling against. Will reviews Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch's new book on libertarianism in America, and he brings us good news. We are raising a generation of libertarians:

A generation that has grown up with the Internet "has essentially been raised libertarian," swimming in markets, which are choices among competing alternatives.

And the left weeps. Preaching what has been called nostalgianomics, liberals mourn the passing of the days when there was one phone company, three car companies, three television networks, an airline cartel, and big labor and big business were cozy with big government.

The America of one universally known list of Top 40 records is as gone as records. (George Will – Minds Opening to Libertarian Ideas)

And we punks aim to toss big government statism on the same junk heap...

Progressivism is Collapsing in on Itself, and it ain't Pretty

Why the irresponsible, angry and hateful rhetoric from the left? Because we are winning! 

Why is the poisonous progressive vituperation aimed primarily at the tea party? Because it is The Threat, the biggest gun in the pro-liberty arsenal, steadily pounding away at the walls of the statist citadels.

Gallup confirms that conservatives are consolidating gains, with an incredible 41% of Americans now self-identifying as conservative, and even greater number than the 36% who call themselves moderate. The ragged, saggy ranks of liberals continues to droop, now at 21%.

We're Killing The Beast

I still can’t believe it, but I think we are actually killing the progressive beast. It’s a long way from its final death throes, but we are slowly choking it, and it is now writhing violently, horned head, spiky tail and taloned limbs flailing mindlessly, lashing out at its tormenters. A wounded animal is dangerous. These are perilous times.

The Washington Examiner reports that as a result of the debt ceiling deal, real discretionary spending will decrease for the first time since the Korean War:

There are many reasons for conservatives to be unhappy with the increase in the debt ceiling, but they ought not overlook the very real possibility that it is a milestone in the recognition of the liberal welfare state's unsustainability. (Washington Examiner)

The editors go on to point out that entitlement programs are the real problem, and more and more Americans are waking up to the fact:

The American people understand that these welfare programs are unaffordable. According to Gallup, two out of three Americans believe Social Security and Medicare costs are either already creating a crisis for the federal government (34 percent) or will do so within 10 years (33 percent) (Washington Examiner)

Liberal Blogger Kevin Drum laments that progressive are losing, badly:

But no matter how many times we try to kid ourselves with one poll result or another, liberals just don't have that advantage.

The public is mostly in favor of raising taxes on the rich — though I suspect its support is pretty soft — but on the bigger issues they mostly aren't on our side. They think deficits are bad, they don't trust Keynesian economics, they don't want a higher IRS bill (who does, after all?), and they believe the federal government is spending too much on stuff they don't really understand.

Conservatives have just flat out won this debate in recent decades, and until that changes we're not going to be able to make much progress. (Kevin Drum – Mother Jones)

Liberal WaPo columnist Greg Sargent agrees, and provides as evidence this polling factoid about the agreed-upon cuts in the debt ceiling deal:

only 15 percent think the cuts go too far. (Greg Sargent-The Plumb Line)

He goes on to cite a fellow liberal blogger:

“We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for,” wrote Jared Bernstein.

These smart and honest liberals have identified the crux of the progressives' problem:

A majority of Americans now agree that government is Not something worth fighting for, but rather something worth fighting Against. 

Keynesian welfare states worldwide are now exposed as wealth-sucking failures teetering on the brink of collapse. We’re not going to support more debt to pay for them. Instead we demand a move away from the dark clouds of soviet-style centrally-planned economies, and towards the light of personal liberty and free market capitalism. Here’s a crumb for the anti-war left: We’re done funding costly wars and global community organizing as well.

It’s Because He’s Black

James Baskett as the beloved Uncle Remus

I try to stay away from racial issues, but when I get called a racist, or when I see others become the target of such noxious stink bomb attacks from the left, I just can’t let it pass

Racism is contemptuous, so by implying that we on the right are racist, the progressive social engineers are declaring us contemptible. It is an insult, but it doesn’t surprise me. The sleazy slimy left has shown over the past 100 years that there are no depths to which it will not sink to advance its dehumanizing agenda.

Ho Hum... Another Charge of "Racist!" Against Those Racist Republicans

DeWayne Wickham at USA Today is the latest lefty to reach for the tattered pack of race cards. His article accusing Republicans of racism towards our president is so exploitative and so completely over the top, I can’t believe I read it in USA Today. It’s more fit for the Daily Kook or the Democratic Underground Sewer.

First, he goes after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

“Even then, two years out from the next presidential election, the Alabama-born senator said the top goal of GOP lawmakers to oust Obama.”

Get the implication? McConnell was born with a silver slave whip in his hand down in Old Alabamy. He surely owns a flame-ready cross, itching to plant it on the white house lawn and set it ablaze at the drop of a pointy white hat.

He next turns his attention to Majority Leader Cantor, who should be admired for not busting out in laughter at naïve Obama’s tactical blunder blast, “Eric, don’t call my bluff!” Anyway, Wickham insists that Cantor dissed the president all because he's black...

He attacked this first African-American president with a palpable disrespect not only for Obama personally, but also for his esteemed office.

...the House majority leader complained that the president had cut short the meeting and stormed out of the room. "He shoved back and said, 'I'll see you tomorrow' and walked out," Cantor snidely told reporters— as though the president needs his permission to end a White House gathering. (USA Today – DeWayne Wickham)

Never! Never in the history of the United States has someone been so contemptuous of the president! I guess Wickham was on vacation during the Bush years, when loony lefties compared that president to Hitler, chimpanzees, and klansmen.  They even made a movie fantasizing about his assassination. That is palpable disrespect, as well as a disgusting disregard for one’s humanity.

DeWayne then shamelessly invokes Frederick Douglass in a historical non-sequitur that has nothing to do with the situation at hand.  The comments are so ignorant I don't want to stink up this forum with them.

A Congressional Tar Baby

In an unrelated racial incident, my Congressman, Doug Lamborn, used the term “tar baby” when talking about DC negotiations with the President and the Democrats, and the leftwing wackadoos are all over it like stink on a war protester.  Here is what Congressman Lamborn said:

"Even if some people say, 'Well, the Republicans should have done this or should have done that,' they will hold the president responsible," Lamborn said. "Now, I don't even want to be associated with him. It's like touching a, a tar baby and you get it . . . you know you're stuck, and you're part of the problem now, and you can't get away."

Poor choice of words, but not the personal racial attack some of the nuttier libtards are making it out to be, some going so far as to accuse Lamborn of calling the president a tar baby. No doubt hoping to fan the flames and turn this into a conflagration. Anything to keep hatred’s fires burning.

Fear and smear are all the intellectually bereft left has left

Finally, a lefty commenter at a lefty blog again accused me of opposing Obama because of his race. Instead of flaming her, I simply replied: “Prove it.” Because she can’t. And that is the staunch attitude I’ve been seeing from my fellow tea partiers.

The left has cried “Racist!” one too many times -- the charge has lost its sting

We see such outraged screams for what they really are: The last desperate gasps of a deflated, discredited movement, drained of all but its hatred. The American Left has bankrupted the nation and poisoned our culture, and they won’t go down without expending every last dirty trick in their arsenal of lies and slander.

The Obama presidency is a colossal failure

He’s surpassed the dreaded George Bush in debt racked up, people unemployed, inflation, dollar devalued, taxpayer money given to bankers and corporations, gas prices raised and Pakistanis killed. So why does the left still insist Obama is an improvement over Bush?

He has shown himself to be so woefully unprepared and incapable, he makes Jimmy Carter look good. At this point in the Carter presidency, liberals were already jumping ship, or at least no longer attempting to defend the indefensible. Why not now?

I can only conclude that liberals are only defending President Obama because he is black.

The King's Speech

No, not the Hollywood movie, I'm talking about our philosopher king, Barack Obama.  Although his Alinskyite Marx-channeling did make me want to scream the F-word more than once.

His central theme? 

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

Like almost everything out of this man's mouth, his speech was pure excreta.  He took bricks of leftist dogma, mortared them together with BS, and built a house of lies.

President Obama has racked up more publicly-held debt that all previous presidents combined, and he has the temerity to lecture us about fiscal responsibility, shaking his finger at Bush and Reagan.

Progressive America:  Brought to You by Lies & Propaganda
Obama repeated the lie that tax cuts increased the national debt.  As always, he is wrong.  Every time we cut taxes, the economy grew and actual taxes collected by the federal government increased.  Revenue is defined as the money the federal government takes in from taxes.

To refute the shameless lefty lies told to us by our president, here are the facts on taxes, revenues and economic growth

Tax Cuts Resulted in More Revenue
Contrary to the unhinged liberal propaganda, the data show that revenue did increase after the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush II tax cuts. The chart below is for the Reagan years and it shows the growth in constant 2005 dollars.  The same happened after the Bush tax cuts.   You can go here and run the numbers yourself.

The data plainly show that revenue increased after each tax cut, and GDP also kept climbing. So clearly, the culprit in all of this is the spending.

So Reagan and Bush tax cuts resulted in more tax money pouring into the government coffers.   Unfortunately, this goaded politicians on to even wilder spending orgies, resulting in the growth of the national debt.

The Liberal Lie
This is where the mischief comes in.  Liberals scream and point to the debt chart, ignoring the first chart showing the increase in revenue.  To them, this "proves" that tax cuts cause debt.  They have to leave out the fact that revenue increased and the economy grew in order to "prove" their lie.  That tax cuts caused the debt is patently and provably false.  Too much spending is what exploded the debt.

I defended John Boehner a few days ago, and I retract not one word.  I think he's a good man.  However, I now stand with the torches and pitchfork brigade. We need to cut trillions, not billions from the federal budget and the money needs to be returned to the people who earned it.  If the progressives insist on buying votes, they can do it with their own damned money.

Cool picture yoinked from IntelBook

Eat the Rich?

Todd Frankel asks, Do the rich deserve what they get?

It’s a provocative question, especially in egalitarian America. I also have a problem with “deserve,” as I do with almost all of the article, but it’s a fairly cogent argument for “social justice.”

As you have greater inequality, you have a greater and greater risk of distorting democracy. If only a small group of people hold more and more resources and money, they're really able to put a lot of pressure on the system to play out their agenda alone. So widening inequality really is detrimental to the principles of democracy. (STL Today)

Progressives forged a social contract over 100 years ago

The wealthy were feeling increasingly threatened by the grimy hordes of unschooled hayseeds and boisterous immigrants crowding east coast cities to work the factories. The kids needed education and the adults needed economic security. There really was generalized fear of peasant revolts or worse, a growing permanent underclass given over to a life of crime.  Gangs of uneducated poor marauding rich neighborhoods like packs of feral beasts was a specter that haunted the nation into governmental noblesse oblige.

This has turned into a crass form of “fire insurance.” Keep the money flowing, and they won’t burn the place down. While I disagree with the class warfare rhetoric, we are facing conditions ripe for community troublemakers to mobilize millions demanding their “fair share.” We’ve built an entitlement culture and you can’t blame the entitled. Government has encouraged them.

People don’t need handouts and grand social programs. We need schools that teach useful skills, economic opportunity, and a strong dollar that holds its value so that life savings are still worth something when we get to our old age. Those three things will not guarantee equal outcomes (nothing will), but they will give everyone an equal shot in this most prosperous, egalitarian, and upwardly mobile country in the history of the world.

Progressive Mistrust of The People

President Barack Obama’s budget willinclude $10.7 billion to build a nationwide wireless network foremergency workers and $5 billion to help Americans get mobileaccess to high-speed Internet service. (Bloomberg)

Like all progressive schemes, it sounds good, but there's a rat in there somewhere...

“High-speed Internet allows small businesses to reachmarkets beyond the one that they’re in, in the next town, in thenext state or even in a different country,” FederalCommunications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in aFeb. 8 interview. “We need to take that as seriously as we tookelectricity and telephone service in the 20th century.”

They declare the internet a public utility and they now own and control it. Their other angle is to put the internet on “the public airwaves” via WiMax, and the FCC now has a clear case for jurisdiction and control.

Also, businesses have discovered and leveraged the power of the internet all on their own.  They don't need Obama's Kommisars "helping" them.

This displays the fundamental fallacy of progressivism:  If government doesn't do it, it won't get done.

John Stossell quickly punctures this BS balloon, by explaining spontaneous order...

“Another way to understand spontaneous order is to think about the simple pencil. Leonard Read, who established the Foundation for Economic Education, wrote an essay titled, "I, Pencil," which began, "(N)o single person on the face of this earth knows how to make (a pencil)."

That sounds absurd -- but think about it. No one person can make a pencil. Vast numbers of people participate in making the materials that become a pencil: the wood, the brass, the graphite, the rubber for the eraser, the paint and so on. 

Then go back another step, to the people who make the saws and machinery that are used to make the materials that go into a pencil. And before that, people mine iron to make the steel that makes the machines that make the materials that go into a pencil. It's all without central direction, without these people even knowing they are all working ultimately to make pencils. 

Thousands of people mining, melting, cutting, assembling, packing, selling, shipping -- and yet you can buy pencils for a few pennies each.”  (Stossel – Spontaneous Order)

This is how the world works, and no single entity acts as a controller.  It is spontaneous order brought about by millions of self-interested people.  Not only does it work, it has worked to bring the price down on every consumer good imaginable.  Our homes are filled with luxuries our parents and grandparents only dreamed of.

I recommend you go read Leonard Read's little essay.  It only takes five minutes.  Better yet, have your kids read it as well.  I'll leave you with an excerpt:

Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. 

Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person’s home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one’s range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!  (I, Pencil – Leonard Read)

Bonus question.  Why does domestically-produced milk cost more per gallon that gasoline that is pumped out of the ground as crude overseas, shipped around the world, refined and shipped again to gas stations all across the nation?

Progressive Fascination with Choo Choo Trains

George Will explains why our progressive overlords are so obsessed with high speed rail: It’s about modifying our behavior.

OK, I get that...

What I don’t understand is how the rank and file (including fellow bloggers in Left Blogistan) can simply gobble up this nonsense and regurgitate it.

High speed rail, global warming, electric cars and a plethora of unproven theories taken as gospel belie a lack of thinking and critical analysis on their part. I’m not calling them dumb, just naïve and incredibly credulous. Even in densely-packed Europe, where rail travel is popular, it cannot make a profit and must be subsidized by government.

Back to George Will. He’s right. It’s about social engineering…

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. (George Will)

Further reading:
Robert Samuelson – High Speed Rail Folly
Ronald Utt – High Speed Rail Financial Disaster

Progressives of All Parties are Destroying America

The progressives of all parties who hijacked the federal bureaucracy have just about destroyed us. Sure, they started with good intentions, but we’re now morally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.

WASHINGTON—The federal budget deficit will reach a record of nearly $1.5 trillion in 2011 due to the weak economy, higher spending and fresh tax cuts, congressional budget analysts said, in a stark warning that will drive the growing battle over government spending and taxation.

As a percentage of the nation's economic output, the 9.8% deficit would be the second-largest since World War II, behind only the 10% level in 2009.

"This report is a reflection of the gross mismanagement of our nation's finances," said Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.). "It should make every American think twice about the latest calls by the president to increase spending at a time when Washington can clearly not afford to pay its bills." . (WSJ – Deficit)

We’ve spent ourselves to the brink of bankruptcy, but most sickening of all is that we have nothing to show for it.

Social Security is going broke…

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. (El Lay Times)

Obamacare will not save any money, and no, you can’t keep your coverage…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. (AP – Medicare Official Doubts)

Meanwhile, HHS is handing out Obamacare waivers, 733 and counting …

Over at HUD, they’re having a party with our money and creating failure, which justifies requests for even more taxpayer funds…

Even by Washington standards, $26 billion is a lot of money.

That’s the amount spent by taxpayers annually to provide housing for needy Americans. But there’s significant evidence that some of the monies have been poorly spent for years.

A joint investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has struggled to combat theft, corruption, and mismanagement in the more than 3,000 public housing agencies nationwide it funds, and particularly inside the172 that HUD considers the most troubled. (Public Housing – Private Frustration)

Now who want to stand up and deny that the progressive house of cards is collapsing?

Progressive Logic & Compound Interest II

There have been many calls from progressives for the government to slash military retiree benefits and an independent commission's call for an integrated active and reserve retirement system would put an end to immediate retired pay for active duty members after 20 years.

Under the proposal, retired pay would begin at age 62 for those with 10 years of service, age 60 for those with 20 years, and age 57 for those with 30 years. "There are people who see military retirement, with its immediate annuity as very generous at a time when pensions are disappearing in the private sector" said a house aide, who asked not to be identified.  (Army Times)

Let us take for an example an E-8 with 25 years of service from 1985-2010
In his last three years of service he earns $4499 (as an E-7), $4786, and $4948 in base pay. His high 3 average (which they use to calculate retirement) is $4744 and of that sum he takes home in retired pay 62.5% or $2965 a month, $35,889 a year. Sure seems like a lot, if he lives to the age of 75 the government will have paid him $1,076,400 over 30 years.

Suppose instead this upstanding young soldier had put $100 a month with 200% matching contributions (that's what my company does) for his first 10 years, $150/mo for his next 10 years, and $200/mo for his last five years. The average annual return from the S&P 500 from 1985-2010 was 12.43%. At the end of ten years, with $3600 a year invested, he has $65,000, increasing the contribution to $5400 at the end of twenty years he has $309065, and saving $7200 for the last five he ends with $601,348.

If he moves his portfolio into a more conservative investment earning 6% and is allowed to withdraw the equivalent of his retirement pay at age 45 ($35880/yr) he will still continue earning money on the principal. Withdrawing $35880 a year, he has over the course of time: 5-yr $590,342, 10-yr $575,612, 20-yr $529,525, and at the end of his life at 75 he leaves $446,974 to his heirs. Now if the government had done the same thing with the money it needed to pay for his retirement benefit, almost half a million dollars would go back in the fund. Some will die at 65 some will die at 90, it is these variations that allow the fund to cover everyone.

Effectively the military retirement system is the equivalent of a 401K without the employee contribution and without the age penalty restrictions. With military, federal, state, and other institutional pensions the same general equivalency can be made, the difference between a public and private pension is the government is the fund manager as opposed to a private company. What's sad is that for many years employees with the option to participate in government or private pension options chose the government because they trusted them more, today we see how far that trust was misplaced.


Bernie Madoff is Jealous
The federal, state, and local governments engaged in pension fund management practices that had they been civilian would have landed them in the cell next to Bernie Madoff, and today the progressives blame the retirees for being greedy. Little blame falls on the idolized political candymen who handed out unfunded or underfunded social programs like kibble. Politicians gambled and lost, now it is time to pay the piper and they are more than happy to throw their constituencies to the wolves.

Ask yourself...who's to blame? The retired Army Major, statehouse Secretary, Fireman, Schoolteacher? Or the politicians who played tricks with funding and money that would land them in jail if they worked for IBM? Our politicians pay off one credit card with another, and the Repo-man is catching up.

Progressive Logic & Compound Interest

Social Security by the Numbers

There has been a lot of talk on the left and right about slashing pensions, medical benefits, and other retirement plans of folks who are already retired, or who have contributed into those plans for many, many years.

"I would like to see any Tea Party member cut their Medicare Card. Or not to cash their SS check. Or quit their government job (whether state or federal) or refuse any benefits associated with a past or present government job."

"Federal, state, and corporate pensions should be substantially reduced if not eliminated entirely."

"A quick fix to all government budgets is to stop paying pensions and benefits."

"All pension should be abolished ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Including federal government." [sic]

You can opt out of the benefits, but not the taxes
These comments are not unique and are reflective of the problem with the progressive mindset. If you are against their programs, you ought to opt out... don't collect that social security check of which you are paying 6.2% (12.4% if you are self-employed) on the first $106,280 of income. Of course in the progressive mind, while you ought to opt out of the benefit, there is no opting out of the taxes. They seem to think that Social Security is some form of government largesse as opposed to a rather shitty return on a government mandated investment.

$252,246.35 in...
Let us perform a simple mathematical exercise on a hypothetical entrepreneur who started working at the age of 21 and who retires at age 66 on December 31,2010. This person, born in 1945 started working in 1966 and earned the maximum FICA taxable income through this period. This person, over his 45 year work history, would have paid $252,246.35 in Old Age Survivors Disability Insurance (OASDI) on his income.

The total is based on social security tables and breaks down all the payments, year by year. OASDI subtotal column used, because since 1994 there is no upper limit on what you are taxable on for Hospital Insurance (HI). In 1993, where the OASDI figure is $7142.40, our subject would have paid the maximum $3915 in HI, in 1994 there would be no maximum and our subject would have paid an HI amount based upon his total income. http://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/t2a4.pdf

$269,724 out!
Now, this person who is 66 years old, if a white male, can expect to live to 75.6 years of age, that's another 114 months. The maximum benefit payout is $2366 a month for a total annual income of $28392, so in the remainder of his life (ignoring cost of living increases) the social security payout will be $269,724 presuming he gets the full amount without any income offsets. AH HA you progressives exclaim... evil white conservative guy is stealing $17,478.


What if you put the money in a bank account instead?
But compound interest makes it a more interesting story. If our subject wasn't very investment savvy and had simply stuck all that FICA money in a savings account at 1% interest, he would have ended up with $285,833.49, more than enough to cover his predicted withdrawals of $2366/mo and his heirs would have received $30,062 (remember, the principal keeps earning interest). Had he invested conservatively and received an average return of 4% when he retired his portfolio would have been worth $440,270 and his heirs would have received $299,960.34... as it stands now, the SSA pockets all that money (or they would if the government didn't play funny money games).

What if you invest it?
Suppose instead that our subject had invested all that money in stocks, from 1966 until the day he retired. The Standard & Poor's annual average rate of return from 1966-2010 was 10.95%, had our subject invested wisely his portfolio upon his retirement would have been worth $1,621,653.73 and if he continued to earn 10.95% interest and withdrew only the maximum allowable under social security ($2366), when he died the portfolio would have been worth $4,074,116.83. So you can see, your government largesse has screwed our poor fellow and his heirs out of $3,804,392.83

So instead of not cashing my social security check, how 'bout I fold it into sharp corners and shove it up your...

That's the problem with progressives, they take your money and expect you to be obsequiously grateful as they dole out the pittance they think you deserve.

Compound Interest calculated using:
http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

End the Welfare State - Towards a New Morality

The Progressive Welfare State encourages irresponsible behavior and enslaves people, making them wards of the taxpayer and eventually rendering them helpless, and hopeless.  It would be less destructive to end all government assistance.

I tire of discussions dealing with how to incentivize the stupid, the irresponsible, the indigent and the downright lazy.  Our welfare system has produced multi-generational poverty and people too fat to leave their government-provided dwellings.  These government slums are gang-infested anyway, so it's not just the morbidly obese who are veritable prisoners in these cinderblock jungles.

Government concerns itself with so many questions.  How do we keep people off of drugs, get kids to go to school, make parents responsible, reduce crime...

A shared code of morality used to take care of much of this, but shame is dead and virtue sneered at.  We're left scratching our heads wondering how we can get irresponsible people to change their destructive behavior.

Natural Consequences

It's time to knock down the taxpayer-funded wall between irresponsible behavior and natural consequences.  You don't work you don't eat.  Blow your mind out on drugs and booze, and you will be living off the charity of others for the rest of your life--Uncle Sam won't help you.  Crank out all the kids you want, but you're paying for them.  You need food and housing?  Work for it like the majority of your fellow citizens do!

The safety net is now a hammock.  The progressive nanny state has spawned multi-generations of innocent victims who no longer know how to care for themselves, and it has also spawned legions of deadbeats gaming the system.  Left unchecked it will destroy America; it is already depriving us of the human capital we need to advance the economy. 

Cut off all public assistance

No housing, no welfare checks, no food stamps.  This would be a wonderful boon to those enslaved by progressivism.  People would learn again to be thrifty and self-sufficient.  Generous Americans would put their money in local charities that are better able to sort the deadbeats from the truly needy.  Best of all, families would grow closer and help one another, as it should be.  The moral choice between buying myself a new car or helping my broken down old Dad is crystal clear.

The beauty of this plan is that the incentives are self-evident and the consequences are natural

If sitting on your ass all day swilling sugared drinks and playing XBox instead of going to school has make you fat and stupid, you're going to have a harder time finding a job.  You will be unable to buy food and shelter, and you will be saddled with health problems.  That's not a nice life to look forward to, but at least you will serve as a warning to others.

WWJD?

Some will call this a cruel policy.  I was called all but un-Christian by a liberal in Left Blogistan for suggesting this in a thread.  WWJD?  I doubt he would advocate a government-run shakedown operation to "spread it around."   He commands us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the widows and orphans...  families used to do this until Uncle Sam stepped in, short-circuited our charitable activities and shook us down to build a multibillion dollar Frankenstein's monster.

This is why I say progressives are not evil.  They are merely delusional pollyannas who eschew time-tested ways and ignore human nature, instead preferring "modern," "scientific" nostrums cooked up by eggheads.  The more pointy-headed the intellectualism, the better.

They had a good run through the 20th century, but reality has a way of reasserting itself.  The progressive dream has turned into a nightmare, as it spawns an ever growing criminality, irresponsibility, dependency and despondency.  Time to try what's worked since the dawn of time.

A government check lasts days.  Virtue and character are timeless.

Live and Let Die: The Creepy Side of Progressivism

With progressive screams of “Palin is an accessory to murder!” still fouling the air, a story emerges from Philadelphia of a macabre chamber of horrors sponsored, funded and championed by progressives. 

The gory details of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s charnel house read like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Sadly, it’s all real, right here in America.

A Twisted Idea of Morality
The morality of a woman’s right to choose trumping human life is twisted and repulsive. It is important to recall that this dubious concept was developed by the likes of racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger. A progressive hero, Sanger’s work was referenced by Nazis as justification for killing not just Jews, but gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, the elderly and generally anyone else who was unwanted by society or deemed undesirable.




Think I’m being harsh? Let’s try out one of the abortion advocates’ favorite thought exercises, The Fireman’s Dilemma:

You’re a fireman rushing into a burning building with only seconds to spare. You spy a three-year old girl on the right, and a petri dish containing 20 fertilized human embryos on the left. You only have time to save one, which do you save? One life or 20?

It’s a ridiculous hypothetical trap set to spring on pro-lifers. Its purpose is to suck us into the depraved world of "moral" judgments where we weigh the value of one human life against another. Questions such as this are employed by philosophers to plumb the depths of a thought or idea, but treating it as if it has relevance in real life is absurd. And when has something like this ever really happened? Even if the hypothetical fireman had time to discern that the dish contained fertilized ova, his natural instinct would be to grab the fearful, crying girl and go. In real life, you do what you can.

The Devil’s Dilemma
Here’s the creepy, progressive eugenics part of this thought experiment: What if the choice were between an old person and a young person? Do you save a severely handicapped man or the beautiful and healthy young woman? Does a Chinese research scientist with a 180 IQ get saved instead of a cute little Mexican boy who is illiterate and struggles in his special ed classes?

See where this leads? Human beings have no right to evaluate the worthiness of other human beings and decide who lives and who dies. It is a slippery slope to hell greased with the blood of “undesirables.”

To the pro-choice crowd I ask, how can you condemn this man? 
How can you call this murder, but killing the baby inside the mother OK? Do your morals really hinge on such a thin legal distinction?

Based on pro-abortion logic, this man should not be tried for murdering the babies because the mothers wanted these children dead and he ran a legal practice that did just that.

This is the legal fiction (as Rick Santorum calls it) we have in this country: If the mother does not want the baby, he is tissue and can be aborted. If he is fortunate enough to be wanted by the mother, the law confers person-hood on him and it is murder to kill him.

Pro-abortion advocates cannot call for Gosnell being charged with murder without contradicting their own stance.

Safe, Legal and Rare
The Margaret Sanger Eugenics wing of the Democratic party likes to repeat over and over how abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” warning us of the dangers of illegal, back alley abortions that harm and kill women if we outlawed the practice. Well, abortion is legal. So tell us how this house of horrors happened?

http://www.slate.com/id/2281812/

Margaret Sanger, Sterilization and the Swastika

Black Genocide – How Planned Parenthood duped America

A Dark Past – Jonah Goldberg

Philly.com – Gruesome Details

America in the Progressive Stranglehold

What is Progressivism? 

Progressivism springs from a basic human urge to sort, organize, and move the human lot along the road of progress.  Life is messy, and progressives are intent on cleaning it up, usually shouting "science!" to justify their latest assault on the sovereignty of the individual. 

Conservatism does not rule the day here.  We are living in a progressive age ushered in over 100 years ago.


Professor Thomas G. West explains progressivism's roots:

A growing body of scholars -- including John Marini, Charles Kesler, R.J. Pestritto and my colleague Tiffany Miller -- finds the origins of today’s liberalism in the Progressive era. Leading intellectuals of that day openly repudiated the principles of the American founding. In that group, Wilson is often highlighted because he was uniquely both a major politician and an academic.

Referring to his own time period, Wilson continues,

“Life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live.”

In other words, the Founders’ idea of protecting property rights is outmoded. We need a government that intrudes into and even micromanages the private sphere. 

Wilson anticipates today’s liberals by telling Americans to follow the example of Europe:

“In the city of Glasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of [apartment buildings] are public streets. Therefore, ... the lighting department of the city sees to it that the lights are abundantly lighted.”

Glasgow is Wilson’s ideal. Government knows best. (NY Times - Government in Every Part of Life)

Think of Obama as a Wilson only without the professorship, scholarly writing, or intellectual firepower.  All he's got is a hopium-fueled cult of personality redolent of charismatic third world maximum leaders.  Nonetheless, he harbors the same Wilsonian belief in the power of the state over the petty concerns of the individual

George Will does an excellent job explaining why progressives persist in their pseudo-intellectual utopianism:

The point of progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of the enlightened - experts coolly devoted to facts and science.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Of course the masses do not understand that the only flaw of the stimulus was its frugality, and that Obamacare's myriad coercions are akin to benevolent parental discipline. (George Will - Progressives)

Progressivism is not pretty, but like a car wreck or the face of a benevolent dictator, we must look upon it and learn what it is in order to save ourselves.  We must, before its practitioners declare the hallways of our houses a public thoroughfare that can only be lighted by government-approved means.

Oops!  Too late...  They've already banned the incandescent bulb...

Further reading
CSM - Progressives
Heritage Foundation - The Progressive Movement

This is Progress?

A law not based upon natural law is no law at all...

"To give or make laws, Madame, is a task which God has left to no one. Ah! What is man, to think himself capable of dictating laws to beings whom he knows not?"
-- Mercier de la Rivière

 

Progressives are not evil

It springs from a noble urge, this liberal love of big government, copious laws and an army of bureaucrats to direct and enforce it all. Progressivism seeks to straighten the curves, flatten the hills and fill in the valleys. It’s a naive pursuit of equality and fairness.

Power differentials and inequality have always existed and they always will

Acting otherwise is plowing the sea. The rich and well-connected will always have more power than the poor and alienated. That’s just the way the world works.

But nature is the great leveler. Sloth and complacency often stalk riches and power. Other deadly sins like pride and greed can cause a precipitous slide in fortune or a downright crash to earth. Meanwhile, being poor and powerless brings hunger, and hunger spurs industriousness. Industry leads to riches, or at least to a material improvement to one’s life.

Even now, with social mobility apparently slowing, over 80% of those born into the lowest economic quintile in America will move out of it by adulthood.

Shaw Kenaw, a very smart and quite articulate liberal, recently accused me of being nostalgic for yesteryear and longing to turn back the clock to a simpler time. Nonsense. This has nothing to do with yesterday and everything to do with tomorrow. How shall we govern ourselves going forward? More laws, more bureaucracy? It hasn’t reduced child poverty or improved our education.

More and bigger government saw short-term crashes and panics turn into depressions and double-dip recessions, stagflation, demise of domestic manufacturing, tech bubbles, dot com bubbles, housing market misery. This is progress?

Further Reading:

Murray Rothbard-  With or Without God:  Natural Law and Property Rights

Murray Rothbard - Liberty and Property:  The Levellers

Progressives Hate the US Constitution

Progressives hate the tea parties and they hate the constitution.  These are the two principle impediments preventing them from finishing what Woodrow Wilson and FDR started.

"The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness."

-- Woodrow Wilson

Liberal Propaganda Deconstructed

The liberal propagandists in the press tried branding us racists, but such blatant attacks don't work anymore, so they have adopted more subtle tactics.  EJ Dionne is the latest to deploy a deft combination I call the non-sequitur straw man.  Follow me as I deconstruct a piece of progressive propaganda.

Unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process

Dionne's neat rhetorical trick asserts that we tea partiers equate the US Constitution with the Holy Bible.  This is a neat trick because yes, we believe the constitution must be followed just as The Bible must be.  His unstated non-sequitur avers that since we equate the constitution with The Bible, we must also equate the founders with God Almighty.  This sets up the straw man argument that we worship the constitution and the founders.  It's a straw man because unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process.

Dionne starts out with an innocuous statement...

I offer the Republicans two cheers for their fealty to their professed ideals. We badly need a full-scale debate over what the Constitution is, means and allows -- and how Americans have argued about these questions since the beginning of the republic. This provision should be the springboard for a discussion all of us should join.

He plants a few little seeds of doubt there, but so far so good.  Next comes the premise for the non-sequitur straw man...

From its inception, the tea party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is, but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.

Note that this statement contains two elements, the first is plainly stated, the second one tacitly follows:  1) The constitution is a document like The Bible that government must obey; 2) Unstated:  If the constitution is the equivalent of sacred scripture, then the founders are the equivalent of an infallible God. 

Number 2 is the strawman that does not follow from the first statement.  Since EJ cannot argue with statement #1, he invents the non-sequitur strawman, statement #2, and then knocks it down: 

Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. ... They were as enmeshed in historical circumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness."

See how he sets up the straw man so he can knock down those crazy rightwingers who want to tea party like it's 1776?  EJ Dionne is too smart to really believe that we deify the founders, so all I can conclude is that he is engaging in a deliberate propaganda smear.   

Progressives are not out to destroy the tea parties; they have bigger fish to fry:

An examination of the Constitution that views it as something other than the books of Genesis or Leviticus would be good for the country.

Yes, let's knock that dusty bit of outmoded parchment off its pedestal.  Good progressives like EJ Dionne and Ezra Klein are just following in the footsteps of Progressivism's great grand daddy, Woodrow Wilson.  They can’t quite muster the intellectual starch of this racist scholar and failed statesman, but it’s just the right pitch for the MSNBC crowd.  It's neo-progressivism reduced to valley girl vapidity:

"The constitution is, like, so old, and full of, like, so many old words that are, like, spelled funny.  Bogus!  It's like totally irrelevant, totally!"

They want a living, breathing constitution, to which Dr. Walter E. Williams has the perfect riposte:

How many people would like to play me poker and have the rules be "living"? Depending on "evolving standards," maybe my two pair could beat your flush.

Indeed.  Those who crave power and control must have "living rules."  Oh, and they also want to hold the book, because some animals are more equal than others.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/03/celebrating_the_new_gop_majority_108404.html