It's Not a Free Marketplace...

...  when government restricts freedom of action

It's not a free marketplace when a union can cry for government to use its coercive powers to tell a company that it can't open that new airplane factory it just built. That is exactly what happened in the Boeing case that was just resolved.

The National Labor Relations Board has dropped its controversial case against airline manufacturer Boeing, which had become a lightning rod for conservatives.

The labor board argued for much of the past year that Boeing decided to locate a new plant to build its new 787 Dreamliner jets in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, in retaliation for strikes by unionized workers at its existing facilities in Washington state. (The Hill - NLRB Withdraws Boeing Case)

"Retaliation" is a natural reaction to market forces

What if Boeing decided to lower all wages by 10 dollars per hour and workers quit because of it, going to a company that pays more? Why isn't that worker retaliation against the company? A better question is, why would government prevent employers or employees from "retaliating?"  Retaliation is just a dirty word for a reaction to a previous market force. If Starbucks jacks up the price of a vento to $10 dollars a cup, I ain't buyin' no more coffee there.

Coercion is the Key to Progressivism 

This also reveals the coercive mindset of progressivism. There are still people in America today insisting that our economic decline is due to the decline of unions, despite the lack of evidence to support their contention. The only way enforced unionism works is if you chain down businesses and take away their free agency.

This is why Detroit, a once-thriving union dynamo, collapsed into a liberal junk heap. Union Labor bid its prices up too high, Big Business foolishly accepted, and government failed to protect them from the free market "retaliation."  Tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs headed south to non-union climes, and foreign imports further impinged upon the Big Labor-Big Business fantasy land of price-setting insulated from market forces.

Progressives would use government power to prevent such free-market reactions, setting up trade barriers that would spark trade wars resulting in higher consumer prices, tying down companies and forcing them to "take it," which is what the big three pretty much did voluntarily, to their ultimate detriment.

Communism, Fascism, Corporatism

Back in the bad old days, raw communism would do this by expropriating the capitalists' property, eventually running the confiscated enterprises into the ground, murdering those who resisted, and miring their societies in misery.

Fascism, communism's little leftist cousin, was more sophisticated, adding some sweeteners in for the bourgeoisie. Fascists were smart enough to leave the means of capital in the hands of the business owners; it was more convenient and efficient to just shake down everybody at the factory door as they left for the day.

The modern-day way of chaining down a corporation is with state-sponsored corporatism. Businesses will stay put so long as they are protected by an archipelago of government regulations, protections, exemptions and other formidable barriers that protect them from competition, giving them free rein to continually jack up prices with government-sanctioned impunity, making consumers a captive audience.  

As an added bonus, they can freely dip into the government coffers to the tune of tens of billions when their unsustainable business model inevitably fails.

Welcome to Corporate America.

Further Reading:
Rothbard - Power & Market, Ch 6

Living Wills and the Will to Live

When the public funds your lifestyle, it has a right to question your lifestyle choices.  That includes health care.

"It is a good day to die"
-- Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man

"We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."
-- Colorado Governor Richard Lamm

A good discussion broke out in the comment thread of a recent blog post, Rule of Law. We got off on a healthcare tangent, but it was an interesting exploration of life and death.

Finntann kicked it off with a raw, ripped-off scab look at reality that had a sad ending ...

The failure of modern medicine is not in treatement or cost but directly attributable to our innate desire for immortality.

It's harsh, but we treat those that we should not treat. We refuse to accept the diagnosis of mortality. We trade vast fortunes for six months, a year, two years to the detriment of all involved, except those making money off of it.

What is reasonable action and what is reasonable cost? How much is six months of additional life worth?

My sister died of breast cancer a little over a year ago with medical bills well into the six figures. In the end, she wished she had gone to Europe instead of to the doctor.

AOW then chimed in with a report from real life about insurance and existing conditions. As her blogger buddies know, she's been navigating the health care system as she nurses her husband back to good health. She knows what she is talking about.

Ducky had good advice on medical directives...

My family knows exactly what to do. If quality of life has been lost, end it.

This spurred KP (after telling a great story about a Vietnam war combat pilot) to remind us that it's not always so simple:

A perfect example would be stroke in the midbrain. Patient is unconcious, surgeon tells you the stroke is "in a good place" making decent recovery possible. You have five minutes to decide what to do at 4:30am. The directive isn't worth the paper it is written on. You will decide while trying to gather some degree of medical certainty.

Quite simply, all of this is properly the purview of the individual and the family, upon consultation with the family's doctor and pastor.

Collectivizing health care by pushing our money into a big government pot makes our private affairs public

In a government-run, publicly funded healthcare system, every medical and lifestyle decision becomes the purview of every taxpayer and of the armies of bureaucrats who are charged with the custody of government funds.

Justice Kagan will shake her gavel at you and tell you to each your congressionally-mandated vegetables, and put out that cigarette!  If government-enforced diets and exercise save me from paying for the diabetes, obesity and other expensive health problems of the fatties among us, why not?

Life and Death

Who's life is worth more, the 87 year old physics PhD who is still doing productive research, or the poor child living in a ghetto?

Government-created scarcity will inevitably bring about such utilitarian decisions.  Wouldn't it be better to get government out of it, completely?  Free up the insurance industry to craft policies tailored to specific groups and let a well-policed free market set prices and determine what care looks like.  More importantly, let the consumer see what the real price of health care is.

Cut out the red tape and overregulation, and set the consumer free in the marketplace with his or her own dollars, and prices will come down.  They always do.  The truly indigent could be helped by government paying their health care premiums instead of setting up a whole bureaucracy.

The alternative is a scolding nanny state making all your decisions for you, creating a nation of infants.  Some would say we're already a long way down that road.

In an OWS World...

If you agree with OWS that more government control over the economy is the answer, then you must be willing to accept more Solyndras, more Fannie and Freddie failures, and more bailouts of businesses, banks and unions, as they gamble with your money.  


The result will be less entrepreneurship resulting in more expensive goods and services, lower wages, higher taxes and a lower standard of living.

Mark Steyn explains...

My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families on the "We are the 99%" websites have real problems.

However, the "occupy" movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable, lethargic pseudo university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. (Mark Steyn)

Indeed. Unrepentant capitalist Charles Gasparino reminds us that capitalism's predations on the proletariat are mere trifles when compared to the serial Marxist miseries that have stained humanity and snuffed liberty and the light of reason while slaughtering hundreds of millions:

Don’t try to explain to any of these protesters how those who sought to create a Marxist utopian dream of revolution also gave us the Stalinist purges, Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution and many other efforts to collectivize thought in the name of economic “justice.” (Gasparino)

Even the benign Western European democratic socialist model is collapsing. Germany is cutting back, and what's left of the safety net comes at a high price: Wage cuts, benefit cuts, compliant unions voluntarily  trading away worker bennies in exchange for no layoffs. Their tax system is grossly un-progressive, with consumption taxes hitting the rich and the poor equally.  A gallon of gasoline costs over six dollars, and everything else, including food and heating oil, is taxed at 19%, and that's on top of the income tax. 

"Call it Crapitalism"

Gasparino visited the socialist squatter's encampment on Wall Street, and came away with this observation...

Also absent was any notice of how the much-hated banks benefited not from free-market capitalism, which would have let them fail in 2008, but from crony capitalism that bailed them out.

The similar cronyism practiced by Trumka and the Obama administration -- massive spending on useless but politically connected businesses like Solyndra, paired with class-warfare rhetoric -- likewise has very little to do with free markets.  (Gasparino)

As John Stossel Says, Occupy Wall Street is Half Right...

If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too.

But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever.

I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, "You can't have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out."

So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.

Multi-Failure

The federal government has attempted to be all things to everyone, and as a result it has become damn near useless to everyone, except the political class and the narrow interest groups they service

Do you own a Leatherman, a Gerber multi-tool or some other all-in-one gadget? They're pretty handy, especially when you're in the back forty and the carburetor needs an emergency adjustment, or you're out checking up on some remote equipment and end up having to fix something unexpectedly.

The pliers can double as a wrench, but you usually end up rounding off the bolt a little. The screwdriver will work in a pinch, so long as it doesn't fold up on you and pinch your finger or wreck the screw head because it's not exactly the right size... And the knife cuts pretty good while the rest of the tool cuts into your hand as you use it, and same for the file, saws, awls, openers and other gadgets these tools have incorporated into themselves.

Federal Government:  Multi-Tool Failure

Over the past half-century, Washington has insinuated itself into a thousand-and-one decisions that individuals or local governments are more than capable of making for themselves.

Which medicines can you buy? How efficient should your light bulbs be? Can your children’s school day begin with a prayer? Who qualifies for a mortgage? When do unemployment benefits run out? Can you pay an employee $5 an hour if that’s what his labor is worth? Should abortions be restricted? Is health insurance optional? Do artists or farmers or broadcasters require subsidies? Are you in charge of your retirement income? (Jeff Jacoby)

Mentioning the Enumerated Powers elicits titters among the sophisticated class, and that's too bad. Toqueville admired our ability to order our own lives at the local and personal level without the aid of an overweening government at every turn.

In Federalist No. 45, James Madison emphasized that, under the Constitution, the powers of the federal government “are few and defined,’’ while those left to state and local communities “are numerous and indefinite.’’ For the first 150 years or so of US history that was largely the case. But New Deal and Great Society liberalism has turned the framers’ careful arrangement inside out. Today, there is almost nothing in American life that Washington does not consider itself fit to regulate, control, ban, tax, or mandate. (Jeff Jacoby)

The Federal Government has gone from a beautiful, narrowly-focused instrument into a horribly bulky multi-use tool with 10 bajillion gadgets that tears your pockets open, injures you every time you try to use it, and is so damned bulky it cannot be employed for its intended purpose.

Attack of The Killer B's

Like all of you, I struggle daily to try to make sense of it all.  I don't believe in conspiracy theories, and I believe that efforts towards unified field theories are futile.  Still, I try to make my way.  I believe that the interconnection between banking, business and governments is the root of what ails liberty-loving people.

An Unholy Trinity:  Big Banks + Big Business + Big Bureaucracy

When not locked together in an iron triangle, none of the Killer B's is inherently evil, and each is beneficial to mankind and society. However, when joined together, they form an axis of evil.

An Axis of Evil

I’m not much for shadowy conspiracy theories. I believe that people are motivated by rational self interest, and if you understand that you can figure most things out.

“Follow the money” is a more popular way to say it, but that doesn’t always work because money is not always the motivation. Why does billionaire Michael Bloomberg so enjoy the high stress, low paying job of mayor of New York City? Power. He enjoys wielding power and making things happen. There are myriad other motivations. People of an engineering bent just want to see things work right, be it a radio or a roadway. People in dangerous professions obviously receive gratification that fear cannot overcome.

The Killer B's

Bankers make money investing your money and loaning it out. No problem—it’s a millennia old institution. But marry it up with a government that can conjure money out of thin air, and a congeries of monetary horrors are spawned:  Fractional banking in which banks loan money they don't have, worthless pieces of paper known as fiat currencies, banks trafficking in valueless money, spinning ponzi schemes and creating bubbles and crashes.

Big Business makes money catering to the consumer’s every whim, until government gets involved. Then the game turns sinister. Instead of competing for the consumers’ money, they turn to romancing lawmakers to seek special favors for themselves. The free market is a jungle, better to trade a little liberty for some safety, and the consumer can go to blazes.

Big Bureaucracy also serves a useful purpose. We need public administrators to run our governments, but the problem comes in when they end up running our lives as well.   Big Bureaucracy wants to regulate Big Banks and Big Business, but it doesn't know squat about them, so it must invite in Big Bankers and Big Businessmen to create regulatory snarls and police these operations.  The fox in the hen house.

Another group not to be forgotten is The People. The Bureaucrats, Bankers and Businessmen use us as propaganda tools while simultaneously propagandizing us.

To Restore Liberty, We Must Shatter the Iron Triangle

I know, fat chance...

If you want to understand banking and money and how badly governments have screwed them up, I highly recommend Murray Rothbard's "What Has Government Done to Our Money?"  He is a brilliant professor with a PhD in economics, but he has a gift of breaking it down for the layman.

You can download the audiobook files for free in mp3 format from The Ludwig von Mises Institute's Media Page.  You can then listen to them at your leisure or while traveling to work.  You won't regret the time spent. 

Rothbard – What Has Government Done to Our Money?

Perfect Storm of Stupidity

Concerning Obama's (in)Justice Department arming Mexican Drug Gangs...

According to the report, Carlos Canino, Acting ATF Attache in Mexico, calls the strategy his agency employed: "The perfect storm of idiocy."

"We armed the [Sinaloa] cartel," Canino told investigators. "It is disgusting." Canino will be a key witness at the hearing. (CBS News)

Here’s an interesting game you can play. Remove "Sinaloa Cartel” from Mr. Canino's statement and replace it with your own appropriate word. For example…

“We armed the bankers. It’s disgusting”

Our government...
* Running guns to Mexican drug gangs,
* Inflating the housing market and creating a spectacular crash,
* Running a rape and fondle operation at airports and calling it security,
* Blowing money on international community organizing
* Paying people to not work,
* Paying people to dispose of perfectly good used cars thereby driving up the price of used cars,
* Allowing  people to enter our country illegally and roam around at will
* Encouraging immoral business owners to hire illegal aliens to avoid paying a fair American wage,
* Robbing the taxpayer and giving the loot to big banks and big corporations,
* Perpetually spending more money than it takes in…

Our Government: Creating shitstorms of stupidity. It’s disgusting.

We are Being Eaten Alive

Heavy hangs the sun blazing down upon a blistered landscape

I headed into the gym early Sunday morning and jumped on the elliptical machine to get my blood moving before lifting.  The wall of TVs offered up sports, that MTV Jersey Boobs and Biceps show, and various news programs...

Perpetual government gadfly Gene Sperling:  bla bla bla...  So our military and our old people can get paid...  bla bla bla...  The president is committed...

Mark Zandi of Moodys came on and said it would all be high tides and green grass and the economy would recover if DC would just raise the debt ceiling.  Gloria Borger nodded in agreement instead of laughing in his face.

Fareed Zakaria asked why we even had a debt ceiling at all?

The funniest one of all was CNN asking the president of GM about how to be successful in a down economy.  I was only looking at the captions, no sound, but I could imagine his answer.

"Well Gloria, just tell the feral government you'll collapse and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Ha ha!  Don't worry, they're too stupid to see through the scam.  Ha ha ha!  They'll stab the taxpayers and bond holders in the guts so fast it'll make your head spin.  Before you know it, you'll be swimming in other people's money!"

All this was performed by our press and their government guests with a straight face...

Here's something the soap opera disguised as news won't tell you:

The military, retirees and social security recipients have already been paid, so the drama and the stupid Countdown to Debt Ceiling Armageddon clock are all BS, aimed to keep us all in a perpetual state of panic and looking to The Government like the Munchkins eagerly look to The Wizard when the wicked witch of the west mounts her broom. 

We could go another month without defaulting.  It would take some brains over at treasury to prioritize, so Geithner and Obama are not up to the task, but there are probably some wiz kids over there who can figure it out.

The World is a Messy Place, and Global Elites Want to Clean it Up, Organize it.

The international oligarchy looks down from on high and frown upon us, little ants going about life, doing what we will, refusing to march to the master drummer.  They don't like it.  They need us marching in a line carrying money to the governments, all to protect their rent streams.

The media is the Handmaid of the International Oligarchy

...doing it every bidding, unconsciously, reflexively.  The oligarchy allows people like Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria into the inner circle, the power conclaves, the Bilderburger Covens and the Davos gatherings.  This fools the press into thinking they are in the club.

So now, the press afflicts the afflicted and comforts the powerful

We are being scammed, America...

If the Government Doesn't Stop Helping, Our Economy Will Never Improve

In Washington, success is measured by how much money is wasted

Liberals loudly trumpet the success of the Cash for Clunkers program, pointing to the three-billion-dollar handout as a successful government program.  In a nation where people are still falling for the Nigerian bank e-mail scam and prostituting their moronic lives to The Jerry Springer Show for a night in a luxury hotel, getting them to take free money is not much of an accomplishment.

Success!  Government got people to take free money!

What our governmental Department of Unintended Consequences ended up doing was destroying hundreds of thousands of serviceable cars, driving up the average price of a used car 10-30%.  Productive human beings create wealth.  Government destroys it.  Literally. 

Now Obama and his hallelujah chorus in the press are telling us how he saved the US Auto industry.  Actually, he saved Chrysler and GM from going through the painful restructuring needed to compete in the 21st century, but who cares?  And as usual, his math is off by billions.

GM still owes We The Taxpayer $24 billion, when special tax breaks are factored in, and Chrysler is in hock to us for about $5 billion.

God save us from more democrat "successes"

Worse than the loss to taxpayers was the "le etat cest moi" way Obama did it.  Not by the rule of law via bankruptcy court, but by kingly fiat:

As an exercise in what Zywicki calls  "state capitalism," the bailout was a procedural horror show. It was probably illegal to funnel TARP funds into the companies; they may not have been car companies worthy of the name any longer, but they certainly weren't "financial institutions." 

Chrysler's creditors, who held secured bonds and were guaranteed repayment first, got forced into taking 29 cents on the dollar. In contrast, the United Auto Workers' pension plan got 40 cents on the dollar. The creditors of both Chrysler and GM were denied their usual right to have a say in the reorganizations. (Rich Lowry)

Even more outrageous, Chrysler was a privately-held company, but the owners refused to put more of their own money in to save the company.  Would you invest in such a company?  Add in interest-free loans, and the government strong-arming investors into taking a 70% haircut, and you see just how close to Zimbabwe we really are.

Predatory Governing

Government is consuming us

Progressives believe that the government must be the biggest guy on the block, to protect us from a host of imagined predators, be they corporate, environmental, or some other bogey monster.  Well, big government has become the all-consuming predator, leaving nothing and no one unmolested.

Haley Barbour announced last week that he would not run for president. Most notable was the reason he gave:

"A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else," (Politico)

Roger Pilon at CATO observes.

We are moving inexorably not simply to news but to politics 24/7/365.

...politics has taken over so much of life. When government was more limited, and we didn’t look to it to provide our every need and want, those who “governed” didn’t feel such a need to cater to us — and we had better things to do anyway than obsess over politics.  (CATO – All Consuming Politics )

The imperial presidency, enlarged by President Bush and taking on baroque bureaucratic grotesqueries under Obama, will end up killing America.

The presidency is too-large-for-life because the president is the head of a government that is simply too large. (Kyle Wingfield)

I'd go even further and say that politics has become a societal corrosive.  Hope-filled naifs and crony crapitalists wait for governmental deliverance, lashing out at anyone who suggests senile old Uncle Sugar can't afford it anymore.

Even college football can't keep government off its back.  Government has poked its snout in every corner of our lives, making more and more decisions for us, stoking a 24/7/365 political shouting match.

Any member of even a small family who has tried to decide on what kind of pizza to order can see the fallacy of applying a one-size-fits-all approach to a nation of 300 million people.

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

Hundreds of Ways to Screw the Taxpayer

Our federal government is a clanking, soulless monster completely out of control. Good people like Senator Tom Coburn are looking to tame the beast.

Duplication of effort alone accounts for hundreds of billions in waste annually, according to the WSJ article, Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway.

"The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development."

OK, I can see food safety laws. I could even perhaps understand the government fostering economic development...  If I saw any evidence anyone in the federal government understood basic economics!  Given the current state of things, I’d say letting the federal government do “economic development” is kinda like allowing Freddie Kruger to perform heart surgery. The Homeless? The federal government has no mandate whatsoever to address that. It’s not in the constitution. Defund it.

The report says there are 18 federal programs that spent a combined $62.5 billion in 2008 on food and nutrition assistance, but little is known about the effectiveness of 11 of these programs because they haven't been well studied.

There is also nothing in the US Constitution that authorizes the federal government to take money from taxpayers and use it to hand out food to people. This is a function more rightly done at the local level, and better and more efficiently done by private charities. What does a DC apparatchik know about poverty in Denver or Detroit? Do they even care about the people they hand this stuff out to? Do they care if bums and welfare cheats are receiving benefits?

This is why faceless, mechanistic charity does not work, and in fact is not charity. There is no connection and no feedback loop.  The givers become callous cogs in a self-serving machine, turning the the entitled recipients into faceless, thankless wards of the state.


Here's More Wasteful Duplication...

"The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality…"

That clearly has failed—End it!

"80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation…"

Could you imagine President Washington and Congressman Adams handing out horses to those who have none?

"47 for job training and employment…"

That’s what schools and community colleges are for

"… and 56 to help people understand finances"

Government obviously does not understand finances. How in the hell does it expect others to do so? This is madness!

Many of my blogger buddies are probably tired of my Air Force budget cut stories from the Clinton 90’s, but they are apropos. He slashed the DoD budget, and to be fair to him, Bush the Elder started it. DoD ended up being the only department that took real, no kidding cuts, as opposed to others who just had their rate of increase slashed. Bottom line: It forced us to get rid of the dead wood and drop inefficient practices. We came out a leaner, meaner fighting force in the end.

Every corner of federal, state and municipal budgets should be slashed so they can experience the same beneficial process.

Government Unions are a Taxpayer Scam

Crossing the Mississippi heading east last summer, the Silverfiddle family van’s radio was tuned to a local Illinois station. We were subjected to angry government workers standing on the steps of the capitol shouting through bullhorns “RAISE OUR TAXES! RAISE OUR TAXES!. RAISE OUR TAXES!” Crowds of troublemakers bused in from Chicago provided the background chorus of hoots, chants and whistles.

“Of course that’s what they’d say,” my astute older daughter observed, “They get more out of the pay raise than they have to pay in the extra taxes!” I could have hugged her, but I was driving.

Government and Government Unions:  Partners in Crime

Unlike a private sector union, government unions are not adversaries of their employers. Instead they are a partner in crime of the government bureaucrats who pick our pockets:

Such unions are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself to do what it always wants to do anyway: grow. These unions use dues extracted from members to elect their members' employers. And governments, not disciplined by the need to make a profit, extract government employees' salaries from taxpayers. Government sits on both sides of the table in cozy "negotiations" with unions. (George Will)

They also pick the pockets of unwilling workers

The Unions have hijacked the public franchise and not only use it to squeeze increasingly more out of the taxpayer, but they turn the coercive power of the state against their own members as well.

In Indiana, a House committee on Monday approved legislation to change state law so that private-sector workers no longer would be required to pay dues or belong to a union that bargains on their behalf. Unions say this would erode union membership, and eventually their finances and political clout, if workers decided not to join or pay dues. (WSJ.com)

But don’t take my word for it!

Here are the words of a union kingpin, who explains the government-union shakedown racket better than I ever could…

Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation's largest public-sector union, said the moves in various state capitals to target state employees were an explicit effort to undermine a key source of Democratic funds.

"They know how much we spent in the last campaign," he said. "They're going to try and shoot us down."

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME last year tapped emergency accounts and took out loans as it poured more than $90 million into Democratic campaign efforts in the mid-term elections.

Overall, unions put around $400 million into the 2008 campaign to help elect Mr. Obama and other Democrats.

Big Money in Politics?  "Unions are Big Money"

You don’t blow that kind of cash for nothing, even if you're Charlie Sheen. It’s not a contribution, it’s an investment. They put in $400 million with the expectation of receiving much more from the democrats they elect. Here’s something else to consider the next time you hear some liberal whining about “big money” in politics:

But the unions are big money. Five of the top ten contributors to congressional and presidential campaigns since 1989 are labor unions according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the last election, 10 of the top 20 PACs were union PACs. (Washington Examiner)

The unions and our governments are running a scam on us, and honest governors with the help of conservative legislators are blowing the lid off and smokin’ em out! That’s why the idiot astroturfers with beet-red faces are shouting themselves hoarse in the streets of state capitals while liberal lawmakers scamper and scurry for cover like the rats and cockroaches they are.

We’ve got ‘em on the run, folks!

Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703800204576158851079665840.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22union.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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?

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.

Consequences

We are suffering the consequences of decisions made at the federal, state and local government level

These decisions were made by people we elected, so the pain we are going through is self-inflicted.  The first step on the road to recovery is to own up to our mistakes.  Victor Davis Hanson has a good article on the agitated state of those who are mired in a misery of their own making but still refuse to own up.

The problem as I see it is that government has protected us from the consequences of our actions.  Put more specifically, those areas of public and private life that are shielded from the results of irresponsible behavior become chaotic, dysfunctional, bankrupt.

Imagine if you were shielded from the consequences of your actions in your own personal life... 

You could cuss out the boss and beat up that annoying coworker in the parking lot and drive home satisfied in a car you decided to stop making payments on.  Drink till you fall down, buy a continuous stream of electronic goodies, to hell with the household budget.  No hangovers, kick the bills down the road... What a life! 

The real world doesn't work that way, and we know it.  Yet we allowed silver-tongued government orators to sprinkle magic pixie dust on everything and suspend disbelief.  

"Predatory Lending" and Other Government-Sponsored Ideas

Have you heard that public service radio spot about avoiding predatory lenders?  It encourages the blissfully ignorant to ask questions before they sign those mortgage documents.

Am I the only one who finds the idea of "predatory lenders" absurd?  Think about it.  If you suddenly found yourself flush with $10 million after hitting the lotto and decided you wanted to make more money, would you do so by "predatory lending?"  Would you accost poor people on the street, "Here, take this cash you can't pay back!"  Of course you wouldn't.  That would be a quick road to losing your newfound fortune.

End Government Backing of All Mortgages

Now, what if the federal government agreed to step in and assume responsibility for the loans you write, relieving you of all responsibility when the borrower defaults?  Then you'd probably hand the loans out like candy and get fat on the up front fees and interest you collect before the crash.  That is how the mortgage crisis happened.  The federal government, through Fannie and Freddie, shielded the lenders from the consequences of their shoddy lending practices.  The federal government now holds around 90% of all mortgages:  The good, the bad and the ugly, which means we're all on the hook for the irresponsibility of the government and our fellow citizens.

End Government Insurance of Wall Street

The Wall Street crash and subsequent raid on the US Treasury by Dirty Hank Paulson's band of pirates is a similar tale.  The DC-NY Axis of Evil plays a game of "heads Wall Street wins, tails taxpayers lose," encouraging wild speculation binges.  We shield big banking from the consequences of its actions and then wonder why the bankster bandits rip us off to pay their gambling debts.  If they had to worry about losing the house, or Guido busting their kneecaps, they would act responsibly.

Stop Rewarding Bad Behavior with Government Cash

Individual citizens who have no shame can cash in as well.  Swill sucrose-laden drinks, eat like a hog until you're too fat to fit through your front door, and you can collect disability, making a mockery of the system and tarring with the same shameful brush those who legitimately receive benefits.  Take drugs and drop out of school and you are eligible for government housing, food stamps and other taxpayer-funded assistance.  Crank out kids you can't afford and Uncle Sam will step in, shake down the taxpayers and reward you for your copious breeding habits.  Serial impregnators love that one.  They can knock her up and leave, knowing we suckers will pick up the tab.

It's time we faced up to the consequences of our actions, on a governmental as well as a personal level.