Republicans Suck, Part I
Been reading “The Battle” by Arthur C. Brooks over the past couple days. The subtitle sums up the theme of the book: “How the Fight Between FREE ENTERPRISE and BIG GOVERNMENT Will Shape America’s Future.”
He divides America into two basic political groups. There the 70 percent for which politics really aren’t that big a deal, and the 30 percent for whom politics is almost religion. The divide is also along cultural lines, hence the culture war as described in the book between those who believe in limited government, individualism and free enterprise, and the collectivists, socialists, liberals, statists or whatever else you’d like to call people who look to government and government control of all aspects of life as the best way to ensure human happiness.
Anyway, Brooks points out how the current depression was caused and is owned, lock, stock and barrell by Democrats and liberals. It was bad policy, bad housing policy going back more than three decades that created the housing collapse that led to the financial system collapse and the current prolonged and long-lasting depression.
But, he also notes that Republicans had a very big hand in creating the mess we’re in right now:
It was a Republican administration that began the huge Wall Street and Detroit bailout. This raised expectations about future levels of spending that the incoming administration was able to fulfill. And for years before the crisis, Republicans weakened the culture of free enterprise, just like Democrats. During those years, the GOP talked about free enterprise while simultaneously growing the government with borrowed money and increasing the percentage of citizens with no income tax liability. These politicians spent billions of tax dollars on special interests with every bit as much gusto as the most shameless statists on the left.
Look at social spending at the federal level — always a target of Republicans running for office. From 2001 to 2008, when the GOP occupied the White House and during part of which they also controlled both houses of Congress, these expenditures rose. Even after adjusting for inflation, for example, the Department of Education grew by 54 percent.
It doesn’t stop there. Consider new entitlements such as Medicare Part D, the program to give prescription drugs to seniors, cooked up in a bipartisan process in 2003. The Medicare Modernization Act became the largest medical entitlement program in history… But it was enacted under a Republican government and created a climate of spending that made today’s future-sapping expenditures somehow seem acceptable.
Under the Republicans, Americans became aware of infamous “earmarks.” … President Bush signed spending bills containing more than 55,000 earmarks.
And then there’s good old-fashioned government pork and outright corruption with public money. Think of Alaska’s Ted Stevens, the seven-term Republican senator responsible for the infamous “bridge to nowhere.”
Republicans, who once counted spending discipline as a core value, have been responsible as Democrats for the growth of government in recent years.
I remember in 1994 (I think) when Republicans won control of Congress after decades of Democrat rule. They all came to Washington vowing to cut government and eliminate at least one government agency. Two agencies ripe for picking were (and are) the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
If ever conservatives get serious about defunding the left, those two agencies need to go. But, back in the early ’90s all the brand new GOP chairman of various oversight committees, particularly the HUD and Education committees, realized that without the agencies, they no longer had their committee grandstands upon which to pontificate.
Same thing with all the talk back then of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two secondary market leaches that are bleeding the U.S. Treasury dry. It was known for years that those two government-sponsored political cash cows were huge risks to the treasury. But, when the subcommittee chairman overseeing the two mortgage giants realized that privatizing took them out of his control, and possible dried up all the political contributions he and his colleagues got from them, the issue went away.
So now we have a bunch of Republicans hoping to capitalize on the mess the Democrats have made of the economy. They’ll talk conservative and free markets until after the election and then rejoin the Democrats in pursuing the same reckless spending, albeit at a slower pace.
I don’t trust Republicans, and no conservative should.
Hope or Change…?
Not sure which this is, but ABC News reports:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged that it is still a “tough economy” for most Americans, and warned it’s possible the unemployment rate will go up for a couple of months before it comes down as more people enter the labor force.
Thousands Suffering From Failed Economic Policies
The Obama once again trashed Las Vegas recently, and the governor of Nevada fired back.
Saw this on Gateway Pundit:
In a statement issued by Governor Gibbons he said he was stunned that President Obama was so thoughtless and heartless with his recent remarks about Las Vegas. Governor Gibbons said, “Doesn’t President Obama know that thousands of families in Las Vegas are suffering because of his failed economic policies?”
Only thousands? I’d say millions, with the unemployment rate hitting 17% or higher when you add in those who quit looking for jobs or don’t fit the traditional definition of “unemployed,” i.e. self-employed, contractors, etc.
Every other day or so I’m sending out a resume. About once a week, maybe two, I get a hit back asking for clips or more information, but beyond that, I haven’t had an interview in months.
I’ve got three friends, one of whom was making six figures, two others who were in the high five figures, who have been out of work for some time and they too can’t even get an interview.
My kids and their 20-something friends are all barely making minimum wage, if they’re lucky to be working at all.
I’m developing a thorough going hatred of The Obama and the asshats in his administration, as well as the clown posse in Congress, both parties.
Yea, the nation’s in the very best of hands.
Economy to Get Worse, Before It Gets Really Bad
Arthur Laffer, who’s economic theories, put in to practice by President Ronald Reagan, set the U.S. on a 25-year period of economic growth and prosperity, says The Obama and Democrats’ fiscal policies will drive the already desperate economy completely over the brink in 2011.
From Human Events:
Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve that showed how low tax rates boost economic growth, is warning anyone who will listen that the economy is headed for a “train wreck” in 2011 that will make the current recession look tame by comparison.
The famed economist, whose supply-side, tax-cutting policies enacted by President Reagan in 1981 put the economy on a record-breaking, 25-year economic trajectory of growth and prosperity, is telling Americans not to be lulled by sporadic signs of growth this year, because the economy is headed for a sharper decline next year when tax rates are expected to jump sharply, sending the economy into a new tailspin.
“It will make the decline in U.S. output from 2010 to 2011 worse than the decline in output in 2008 and 2009 which will catastrophic,” Laffer said in an interview with HUMAN EVENTS.
In a wide-ranging discussion about where the economy is headed, and the fiscal, tax and monetary reasons why, Laffer gives a bleak forecast of where President Obama and his administration are taking the country in the next three years — which he predicts will end with Obama’s defeat in 2012.
“Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy president,” Laffer said.
“Whenever a country is in the throes of spending too much and raising taxes, it’s a fiscal catastrophe in the making and this is what is happening now,” he said.
Read the whole thing here.
The Country’s In the Very Best of Hands
How’s that HopeNChange workin’ for ya?
Where Is John Galt?
I recently tried to reread Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the epic novel of the power of the individual fighting against the collectivists, but, sadly, just couldn’t get through Rand’s turgid prose. Still, I highly recommend it to anyone trying to get inside the heads of socialists like The Obama, and most of Congress.
Big Government talks about the book and the current mess our country is in:
John Galt leads a revolt by the productive class and outlines Rand’s philosophy in his 60-page radio address. Here, he explains how human beings—alone among life forms—can choose to be mindless:
A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and destroy the mind.
Sad to say, for a movement powered by the mindlessness, there is plenty of fuel to sustain “hope and change”:
•Who but the mindless can believe that government run health care will reduce costs and improve care while covering more people?
•Who but the mindless can believe that this President is now serious about reducing the deficit after shattering spending records during his first year?
•Who but the mindless can take seriously the sham “jobs summit” held by a President whose every policy is a lesson in job destruction?
•Who but the mindless can believe Obama’s lie that “Cash for Clunkers” which cost taxpayers $24,000 per car was successful?
•Who but the mindless would not outraged that our government has reneged on its promise pay back the unused TARP fund to taxpayers?
•Who but the mindless would not question the morality that the world’s finest health care, which has extended and improved human life in unimaginable ways—conceived and produced by countless unsung heroes in the private sector—should magically be transformed by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into a “human right”, taken over by the state and rationed out as they please?
The assault on reason by our President and Congress goes on ad infinitum. It is mindlessness that elected “hope and change” and mindlessness that sustains it. Ayn Rand recognized that the greatest struggle on earth is that between the individual and the collective, and to submit to the collective, the individual must lose his ability to think for himself. Howard Roark, hero of The Fountainhead explains;
The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain.
Christmas Miracle
Needed: $9,000 by Jan 4, 2010 to keep the house out of foreclosure.
Hit the donate button if you’re so moved.
Thanks
Global Warming Baloney
A Greenpeace global warming acolyte has her faith shaken by facts.
Yes Boss
Higher Electric Bills On the Way…
Thanks to environmental wackos, who incidentally now run the Environmental Protection Agency.
From The Washington Times:
Chalk up another 500 jobs to the list of jobs President Obama will need to create or save.
A Pittsburgh-based coal company, CONSOL Energy, will lay off nearly 500 of its West Virginia workers next year and its CEO blames environmentalists dead-set against mountaintop mining who have waged “nuisance” lawsuits for the job loss.
But CONSOL Energy’s political problems are not unique to the mining industry, which has suffered under the Obama Administration. The Environmental Protection Agency is already holding 79 surface mining permits in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The EPA says these permits could violate the Clean Water Act and warrant “enhanced” review. And, agency went even further in October, announcing plans to revoke a permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia.
The latest setback for the coal industry was announced on Tuesday when CONSOL Energy said close to 500 workers would lose jobs at their Fola Operations location near Bickmore, West Virginia in February 2010.
Before they gained total control of the EPA under The Obama, environmentalist waged a constant legal and regulatory war against coal mining, filing lawsuit and regulatory challenges against every permit filled by coal companies, even for renewals of existing mines.
If successful, the environmentalists will cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket. More than half of all electricity produced comes from coal-fired generators. By limiting the mines, reducing the amount of coal available, they will drive up the cost of coal, both in terms of the regulatory costs associated with mining and the market cost because of less production, they will make electricity hugely more expensive.
Coal is the United States greatest and least expensive source of energy. We have more coal in the U.S. than there is oil in the entire planet. But thanks to the environmentalists and their Democrat party enablers, this cheap resources is slowly being shut off.
I’m Not a Statistic
At least according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
A Comforting Video
As I contemplate the end of my 20-year journalism career and new embrace of the fascinating world of retail, my current Chapter 13 bankruptcy, as well as the impending foreclosure and sale of my house, I find strange comfort in this video of unemployment rates across the U.S. over the past couple years.
Ah, the Writing Life…
Here’s a cool essay on the value of a liberal arts education.
From PointInCase.com:
Now, I’m not telling you to not follow your dreams. But if you think you’re going to make it big in the dancing, acting, singing, writing or drawing worlds, you’ve got to come to a bit of reality. If you want the arts to be your career, you have to get a job first. And jobs usually suck. There’s a difference between a job and a career. When you have a job, you say, “Well, I’m a waiter. But I really want to be a writer.” When you have a career, you say, “I’m a reporter for the second-most-influential kitten magazine in the Northeastern United States. Please fucking kill me.”
After discussing the merits of taking your clothes off for a living, possibly the most lucrative career path for a female liberal arts major (not so much for middle-aged fat white guys), he talks about the time-honored food and beverage industry, garbage collecting and mail delivery careers.
For those language majors there’s this:
Are you majoring in Spanish-language literature? Well, I have the job for you! It’s called, “Construction Worker.” You see, since you can habla Espanol, that means you can work and relate with Hispanic people who build houses, dig ditches and clean sewers. That is, once you dump the wussy Spaniard accent. Real Mexicans think the European way of speaking Spanish is gay. And they’ll think you are too unless you learn their way of Spanish.
Like this guy,I thought I was a genius with my double major in journalism and economics, the value of which in real 2009 dollars is exactly, ummm, nothing. The practical benefit of my education is understanding how badly the U.S. economy is performing right now, will perform in the near and distant future and the realization that my entire career and financial prospects have been subsumed in a vast vortex of suckiness.
Hey, it’s rough out there. I know just as well as anybody else. I’m not just a dumbass who majored in English at NYU, I furthered my education and earned a master’s in print journalism—that’s about as worthless as a degree in steam engine repair. So I have two worthless stints of higher education and five years of writing experience. You know what my job prospects are? Yep, I’m getting demoted to working the door as a bouncer in a fucking bar. Guess how proud my parents are of their cultured little genius? Hopefully very proud, because I’ll probably be moving back in with them soon.
Hey, it could be worse. You could be working retail. Talk about hell on earth. Surly customers, cranky managers, despotic working hours and slave wages. What more could you ask for? A bullet in the head would be nice. Thank you.
Reminds me of a joke:
How do you get a journalism school graduate off your front porch?
Thanksgiving and Economics
At time when we have Marxists running the White House and an administration and Congress bent on turning the U.S. into a European-styled socialist dystopia, the original Thanksgiving story offers a valuable illustration on the power of the free market to provide for the basic needs of a society.
From The Independent Institute:
Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.
In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.
Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.
This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.
Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.
Nowhere in the history of the world has socialism been implemented and a nation’s standard of living risen. The socialist’s answer to the failure of his economic system is not to question the system itself, but to blame the citizens and impose even tighter controls on the economy and the citizenry.
That’s why true socialists eventually turn into the Marxists, who understand that freedom is inimical to communism. Marxist understand that raw power exercised by the few over the many is the only way to make socialism/communism work, and even so, it still fails to supply the needs of a nation.
That’s why all Marxist regimes turn into bloody tyrannies. Socialism runs counter to human nature and free market economices turns man’s selfishness into a productive tool for suppling the needs of society.
Happy HopeNChange
Check out the map of unemployment stats from January 2007 to now.
Pretty amazing.
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