Coercion is the Cornerstone of Progressivism

Obama Orders Regulatory Reform

When I saw this news item, my immediate question was, "what are they up to?"  The President can't be serious.  He and his statist minions love regulations!  The bigger and more complex, the better!

Leftists love regulating the lives of others.  They get a perverse pleasure from it.  Go try to comment on your average lefty blog.  You will quickly meet up with a giddy little potentate who has her twitchy finger on the delete button, ready to scold you for your offensive rightwing hatred.

Statism and Coercion Go Hand in Hand

Progressivism is not statism, but statism is the vehicle progressives have chosen to advance their agenda.  Friedrich Hayek rightly observed that governmental grand schemes logically lead the government to become increasingly dictatorial.  It must if it is to enforce the order.   The people have got to cooperate for the schemes to work.  The grander and more numerous the government projects, the more dictatorial coercion is required...

• Obama bars Boeing barred from expanding manufacturing to North Carolina
• The Federal Government forces you to buy into their healthcare scheme
• Taxpayer money is handed to Ethanol millionaires
• Congress bans the incandescent bulb
• In times of austerity in states, cities and private homes, a tentacular federal government stubbornly refuses to rein in programs, and instead recklessly increases spending and regulation
• The federal government responds to acts of terrorism by treating its own citizens as criminals 

Meanwhile, the clanking, soulless federal monster has set about destroying the value of our currency and now talks of government-private sector partnerships to "get the economy working."   It didn't work in the Soviet Union and it wont work here.

Here is what will work, for indeed it has always worked since time immemorial:

Remove the roadblocks to economic activity which are taxes, regulation, barriers to trade, and cheap, unstable money.  (John Tamney - An Entirely Predictable Economic Dip)

Our Economic Emperors Have No Clothes

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke admits he doesn't "have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting." He is only our latest economic emperor revealed as having no clothes.

It apparently takes a tenured Princeton economics department chairman not to understand what the average Joe knows only too well - that an $800 billion-plus stimulus that didn't stimulate on top of Washington turning the mortgage industry into a welfare program isn't something the jobs market can easily recover from.  (IBD - Fall of Economic High Priests)

So, What Would Fix It?

As economic historian Thomas Woods points out in his book on the financial crisis, "Meltdown," a few bankruptcies of too-big-to-fail firms would do more to jolt the financial sector "into being sensible and cautious instead of reckless and irresponsible than all the regulatory tinkering in the world."

A free economy doesn't need an elite of government high priests named Bernanke or Greenspan or Rubin or Summers to reach and maintain the greatness that has marked most of U.S. economic history. It needs protection from such arrogant figures.  (IBD - Fall of Economic High Priests)

This Weekend Brought to You by a Long Line of Patriots

Happy 4th of July!

Here are some quotes to get this patriotic weekend started...

A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774


But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
-- John Adams


I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
-- Abraham Lincoln


Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
-- Ronald Reagan


Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
-- Ronald Reagan

Enjoy the long weekend, but please pause to remember those who fought and died to make that enjoyment possible. Also, say a prayer for the over 100,000 Americans celebrating this Independence Day far from our shores.  Many of them are voluntarily in harms way.  Freedom is never free.

It Has Always Been The Soldier

It is the soldier,
not the President who gives us democracy.
It is the soldier,
not the Congress who takes care of us.
It is the soldier,
not the Reporter who has given us Freedom of Press.
It is the soldier,
not the Poet who has given us Freedom of Speech.
It is the soldier,
not the campus Organizer who has given us the
Freedom to Demonstrate.
It is the soldier,
who salutes the flag;
who serves beneath the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
that allows the protester to burn the flag.
(Father Dennis O'Brien, US Marine Corp. Chaplain)

http://www.foundingfathers.info/
http://www.vfwpost1503.org/it's_the_soldier.html

4th of July Weekend - Afghanistan

Please forgive the self-indulgence of this post, but since that one 4th of July weekend back in 2005 at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Independence Day will always hold special meaning for me.

I was up there to work on an ASOC air to ground system that had been giving us lots of problems.

The frenetic search for Navy SEAL "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell was on-going.  I was not involved in the effort, but I talked with those who were when I had to go into the Joint Operations Center to troubleshoot and test the operator console end of the communications system I was working on.  It added extra urgency to what we were doing.

I also stood on the flightline that evening, with everyone else, tears in our eyes and saluting, as they loaded the flag draped caskets containing the bodies of the SEALS who had died trying to rescue Petty Officer Luttrell.  The Taliban had a golden BB moment, shooting a rocket into the open door of the helicopter before the rescuers could unload.  It was the greatest single-day loss of Special Forces troops in the history of the United States.

Navy SEAL Petty Officer Danny Dietz

Two 4th of July's later, I stood with my wife and kids in Littleton, Colorado.  The city dedicated a park, along with a bronze statue, to fallen hero and Navy Seal Petty Officer Danny Dietz, one of Luttrell's SEAL team members who died in Operation Redwing.  His remains were recovered by Combat Search and Rescue on the 4th of July, 2005

I was just a support troop, but I was there.  Regardless of what the critics say, our efforts there were noble.  Like every war, the politicians screwed it up.  Our fighting forces were tactically brilliant but our government was strategically stupid.   Getting the hell out does no disrespect to those who have fought and died there.  They were selfless heroes who fought to give Afghans a shot at a better life.  We did our part and it's not our fault if the people failed to grasp the opportunity we presented them.

Mark Steyn sums up my feelings.  We should leave...

...the mullahs, warlords, poppy barons, and pederasts to have at each other without the distraction of extravagant NATO reconstruction projects littering their beautiful land of charmingly unspoilt rubble.

After the C-17 took off with the caskets, I wandered by the pax terminal and took this picture of the back wall.  I don't know who painted it, but it sums things up beautifully

Caption:
This is a tribute to all who have fallen during Operation Enduring Freedom
Live a life worthy of their sacrifice.

Amen

Protesting Reality

 

The Welfare State is in a Death Spiral, and Liberals Can't Handle the Truth

"The spectacle of government workers, cranky retirees, militant unionists, and mad dog socialists locked arm in arm protesting reality is a sight we'd better get used to."  (Bill Frezza - Our Greek Future)

As Robert Samuelson notes dryly, we are witnessing "the death spiral of the welfare state."  Greece now, with the rest of Europe and the US soon to follow.

Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

Budget deficits and debt are the real problems; and these stem from all the welfare benefits (unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, health insurance) provided by modern governments.

 
Taxing the Rich at 100% Still Won't Pay for the Democratic Socialist Agenda

 The Wall Street Journal notes that Obama has set a post-WWII record for government spending.  His feral beast now consumes 25% of GDP, besting Reagan's highest spending level by three percentage points.  Here are a few salient points from the article:  


$$$ Taxing all millionaires and billionaires at 100%  "yields merely about $938 billion..."

$$$ Taxing the "top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000 [...] throws up only $3.4 trillion."

And that's assuming these job creators will just lay down and take it as federal bandits rape them and steal their property.  Contrary to wild-eyed liberal fantasies, they won't.

Progressivism is morally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.  From Europe to the United States, there's not enough money in the world to pay for the Utopian agenda.

Further Reading:
The Library of Economics & Liberty article Reaganomics does an excellent job combating the liberal lies about President Reagan's record.

Higher Taxes or Increased Revenue: Which do You Want?

Big government statists make the common mistake of confusing taxes and revenue. They are not the same thing

Taxes are an assessment by government on your earnings. Revenue is the money flowing to the US treasury as a result of taxation. There is not a direct correlation between the two.   In fact, government data shows that often it is an inverse relationship.





Liberal Nostalgia

Poor liberals, staggering blindly around Left and Right Blogistan, suffering under the crack-brained theories of a Robert Reich or Rachel Maddow, parroting nonsensical "theories."  The latest shiny ideological bauble that has enraptured Left Blogistanis is the idea that government can restore fiscal sanity by returning to the sky high tax rates of the 1950's.

Why 70% Tax rates won’t work

...and this is what Mr. Reich and his friends always fail to mention—the individual income tax actually brought in less revenue when the highest tax rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest tax rate was 28%.

President John F. Kennedy's across-the-board tax cuts reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 14% and 70% respectively after 1964, yet revenues (after excluding the 5%-10% surtaxes of 1969-70) rose to 8% of GDP. 

President Reagan's across-the-board tax cuts further reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 11% and 50%, yet revenues rose again to 8.3% of GDP. The 1986 tax reform slashed the top tax rate to 28%, yet revenues dipped trivially to 8.1% of GDP.  (WSJ - Alan Reynolds)

So Robert Reich and his fellow travelers are peddling a cartload of statist crap.  The other factor these petty statists ignore is that in the 1950's we were the only viable post-WWII economy still standing.  We weren't just the only game in town, we were the only game in the world!  The rich had few options to hide their money from the avaricious clutches of the US government. Nowadays, the wealthy have a global smorgasbord of tax avoidance options.  They won't just sit here and take that level of taxation.

Our tax code is an incoherent mess. Half pay no income tax, the rich escape it, the working class cannot, businesses keep their money overseas to avoid US taxation, and friends of Obama like GM poobah Jeffrey HeMelts pay no taxes at all.

Caroline Baum lays out the solution quite nicely:

The solution, of course, is “the lowest rate on the broadest base with the least incentive to avoid, evade or not report taxable income,” Laffer says.

And once we find that illusive rate, let’s leave it there. Walk away. Forget about it. Tax policy, almost all experts agree, should be designed to raise revenue for necessary government programs as simply and as fairly as possible while minimizing economic inefficiency.

As things stand, tax policy is informed by special interests and implemented by lawmakers in the service of those interests. What’s good for one isn’t good for all, which is why tax uniformity should be the goal.

But no, some progressives don't care about facts and numbers, they just want to punish the rich, even if it results in less revenue flowing into the treasury, higher unemployment, and tax breaks for friends of Obama.

Picture yoinked from The Astute Bloggers

Liberal Lunacy will be the Death of Us All

Pfleger & Farrakan:  Peas in a Pod

Failed New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a man responsible for the deaths of more blacks than the average Ku Klux Klan member, describes in his new book how he feared being taken out by a CIA poison dart attack.

He sadly and shamelessly engages in the continued propagandizing of the New Orleans tragedy, where Dick Cheney ordered the levees destroyed by Halliburton cannons because he hates black people.  Add in blackwater stormtroopers and racist cops, and we lose sight of the salient facts that could actually teach us something:

The New Orleans Police Department was dirty, and it was dirty before the disaster.  FEMA is incompetent, and our government way overmilitarizes everything, especially during such natural disasters.  Every swinging federal worker and local goomba on a payroll has to deck himself out like a Navy Seal hunting the Taliban in the wilds of Afghanistan, when what the people really need are food, clean water, shelter, transportation, and medical assistance    

We already knew the candy-brained mayor of Chocolate City was an indecisive, simpering fool, but here is what caught my eye:

At a news conference Wednesday, the mayor-turned-disaster consultant called writing the book a “therapeutic” experience. (NOLA - Nagin Paranoia)

Ray Nagin is now a disaster consultant???    What does he do, consult on how to create them?  Teach courses on how to make them worse?  Does he explain how to cower in an air conditioned hotel while your citizens are drowning or trapped in a fetid nightmare?  Does he explain how to dither instead of performing a simple evacuation?

I don't know how the media can report this stuff with a straight face.  This is sick.  Any government that hires this man should be charged with fraud, waste and abuse.

Bush Relieved:  Liberals Now Blaming Palin for Everything

If this isn't enough for you, you can go here to read about how Rahm Emanuel's Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy preaches to Chicago's God Damn America crowd.  The video is there also.  Of course, it takes place at Father Pfleger's church, the man who shows us that white demagogues can do the race hustle just a well as a Jackson or Sharpton. 

Violence is rampant in Chicago, you know, that place where Obama did all the community organizing?  So who's fault is it, according to Chicago's top cop?  Whitey, of course!  McCarthy gets the crowd going sometime after the five minute mark.

"Government sponsored racism"

Oh how they cheered for that!  The music cranks up as the people get to their feet

"Rich gun owners living in gated communities"

A chorus of amens

"Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms, into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children,"

Oh yeah!  He's got 'em going now!  Here's the grand finale:

McCarthy illustrated his point by recalling a crime scene investigation while he was a police official in Newark, New Jersey where five children were shot, two of whom were killed. McCarthy said when he got home, he turned on his television to unwind and found an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" showing.

"She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms. Why wasn't she at the crime scene with me?"

I was waiting for him to actually accuse Sarah Palin of hunting and killing black people on GOP-sponsored inner city safaris, but the video ended. 

This is sick and disgusting and it perfectly illustrates what is wrong with our nation
It's everyone's fault but the people involved.  Can't blame the cops, can't blame the corrupt Crook County government, and you certainly can't blame the irresponsible parents who spawn the little murderers, and the last people in line for blame are the criminals themselves.  That's a broken society, from top to bottom.

We don't hold people accountable.  Not in government and not in their own personal lives.  On 9/11 over 3,000 people were killed yet nobody was fired.  Nagin kills his city and many of its citizens, yet he's now an expert with a book tour, speaking engagements, and a consultancy.  Chicago suffers under the corrupt Democratic Machine, but it's Sara Palin's fault.

We are stupid.  We are stupid for rewarding incompetence and bad behavior.  We are stupid for putting up with such bald-faced demagoguery.  Why are we going down the toilet?  Why do conspiracy suckers believe they are being oppressed?  Why do we make such poor decisions at the ballot box?  Garbage in, garbage out.

Gay New York

New York has approved gay marriage in that state. I don't agree with gay marriage, but they did it the right way. I believe it is a states rights issue and that it should not be decided by mullahs in black robes at the federal level.

My opposition to gay marriage is definitional 

There is no society in the history of mankind where gay marriage ever existed.  This is a post-modern theft of the word.  Advocates counter that gay couplings have been observed in the wild among apes, but simians also throw crap at each other, so I don't think that is a valid example to point to. The term marriage has always had a specific meaning, and it should not be changed. Call a gay relationship whatever you want,  protect gay rights in contract law, but don't call it marriage.

A Victory for Polygamy

Can anyone keep a straight face while telling me Muslim advocacy groups will not bring lawsuits to strike down polygamy bans? Unlike gay marriage, polygamy has a robust history. What makes marrying someone of the same sex more valid than a man marrying two or three or four women? Or a woman marrying multiple men for that matter. We've struck down a standard and now have nothing to take its place, so it's anything goes for the cultural vandals. The next ten years should be exciting.

A Dangerous Blow to Religious Liberty

The New York Legislature, God bless 'em, insisted that churches should not be coerced into doing anything against their beliefs. While I applaud the good intentions, it sets a dangerous precedent, in that the state legislature is granting by law a right to a church that the state has no right to grant.  Freedom of religion is a preexisting right recognized in the First Amendment to the constitution.

According to the Founding Fathers and The Constitution they authored, religious liberties come from God, not a politician. If a legislature can grant rights to a church, it can also take them away, and that is the Trojan Horse. The law should be struck down because it pretends to grant the God-given right of religious liberty that has already been guaranteed by the First Amendment to The US Constitution.

This is another shot over the bow of religious liberty.