Even The Stupid Can Get Lucky

Rep. Alan Grayson, (Clown -FL) is usually a blowhard partisan without anything useful to offer.  And then he goes and does this:



I am not big on conspiracy like some are about the Fed, but I don't think it would be a bad idea to audit it anyway.

TheWorld Turned Upside Down

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senator Robert Bennett has been denied renomination for his senatorial seat from Utah.  The culprits in this theft seem to be members of the Tea Party:  Some may see this as the purging of the impure, much like the Democrats did to Joe Liebermann.  But I think that those who argue this are missing the real truth of the matter.
The Tea Partiers are not solely Republican.  But what they are could be fairly considered as small government activists.  While Liebermann was chased out of the Democrat Party for consorting with Republicans, it was done by the followers of Markos Moulitas, a committed and fervent "progressive."  Members of the Tea Party are just as likely to be Independents as Republicans, and there are even some thinking former Democrats thrown in.  This difference is the reason why the Tea Party will have a much longer lasting impact on politics then the "Friends of Ned."
Senator Bennett may feel that he has been treated unfairly, just because he voted for TARP and other expansion of the state without the ability to pay for it.  But he is just the first, and if the Republican Party is smart (not a given in any event) they will recognize that this group will have more influence than the usual get out the vote of the base in coming elections.  In fact, it is probably worse for the Republicans, because their base is more likely to sympathize with the goals of the Tea Party.
But the secret power of the Tea Party is that we are broke.  Not just overspent, but flat busted, make Greece look like Scrooge McDuck broke.  Some may cavil that the Tea Party never complained when Bush was spending, but they are absolutely wrong.  In fact, it was the general disgust with his overspending that led to the Democrats gaining control in 2006, and increasing their margin in 2008, as they cited their "fiscal responsibility bona fides.  Unfortunately, it was all just a lie.
The country is at a crossroads.  On the one path, we increase taxes in order to maintain what is now considered to be the minimal level of government.  This path will lead to higher unemployment, stagnating wages, and zero growth or innovation.  People will recognize that it is in their interests to not produce, but to relax and enjoy the results of those who do produce.  A sort of reverse Marxism, where the productive have their wealth stolen, only not by the capitalists, but by the non-productive. 
The other path is no more comfortable either.  It will demand a complete reodering of what we are to expect from the government:  National Defense, secure borders and a court system.  Everything else is going to be off the table until we get our debt under control. 
But if we do get our debt under control, we have the potential to unleash human productivity like the workd has never seen before.

The Real Problem With Immigration Reform

Apparently, wearing an American flag in a high school in California is now considered to be inflammatory.  I guess this makes sense only if you think that California is a part of Mexico and not one of these United States.  Maybe that is why all of the ruckus about illegals.  They are the legals, it's just those people who call themselves American who are illegal.

There He Goes Again

President Obama gave the graduation address at the University of Michigan.  In spite of his flaming rhetoric, luckily no one was moved to violence.  Yet.
Some of his lies cannot go unanswered.  For instance, he said

But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad.

Why is it troubling? Government, as presently constituted is immensely powerful, and to ignore that power, or to believe that it will only be used for good is delusional,  Waco Ruby Ridge, and others being just a small sampling of the government using force against their citizens.  But maybe worse than government being bad, is that government is incompetent.  It's not that they mean to destroy your life, they do it without thinking or meaning to.  While there is a difference in motivation, there is no difference in results.

Government, he said, is the roads we drive on and the speed limits that keep us safe. It's the men and women in the military, the inspectors in our mines, the pioneering researchers in public universities.

Okay, but it is also the DEA, NSA, IRS, Border Patrol, Forest Service rangers who are armed and so many others.  It is the petty tyranny of anyone with a badge and a gun telling me what to do. And that's not even counting the bureaucrats who make your life miserable, all the while proclaiming they are doing it for your own good.

The financial meltdown dramatically showed the dangers of too little government, he said, "when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy."

What he fails to mention is that the financial meltdown already had layers of laws and bureaucrats to prevent the meltdown, and yet, they still failed.  Why is the answer to all government failures, more government.  "We didn't do it right before, but with more money we will do it right. Just like before, um, er, I mean, I am sure there must have been at least one time."

Obama urged both sides in the political debate to tone it down. "Throwing around phrases like 'socialists' and 'Soviet-style takeover,' 'fascists' and 'right-wing nut' -- that may grab headlines," he said. But it also "closes the door to the possibility of compromise...

So, saying that Bush is a liar and a terrorist is okay, but don't use the S word?  Don't get me wrong, I admire that he has finally come to realize that a level of civility is necessary.  Better late than never.  Just would be a lot more effective if he acknowledged the past.

"At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response."
Passionate rhetoric isn't new, he acknowledged. Politics in America, he said, "has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. ... If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up."

Okay, another example might be that suppressing dissent is more likely to lead to violence, since the mentally unbalanced are less likely to think that it is their only venue.  Just like the Left did to Bush for eight years.
Sorry, but Obama has become a parody, even when he doesn't mean to be.

Understanding Proof

Gregg has an interesting discussion going on about illegal immigration, and one of the problems is that so many people don;t understand the differing levels of proof.  Here is something that I cobbled together, and hope that it will fit as formatted:

Presumption of innocence only exists in the courtroom.  The State is allowed to proceed on the basis of probable cause, which is enough to get you into the court.  I try to demonstrate it graphically using the jury bar, and I will try to do it here starting with unknown and going to known.  This is not strictly linear, except that preponderance of the evidence is considered to be 50% plus a smidge.




---  Total Unknown  Don't know, never can know.
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--- Particularized suspicion, Enough for a cop to ask for your ID, look into something that could be suspicious.
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--- Probable Cause, enough to arrest, get into court.  All that the state has proven prior to trial
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---  Preponderance of the evidence - more likely than not.  Enough to take your money
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--- Clear and Convincing - Amount of evidence for DPHHS to take your kids away.
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--- Beyond a reasonable doubt - Enough to take your freedom, or your life in a capital case.
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--- Total known  No question, no doubt, no way, no how.

Dealing with False Charges

John Hinderaker at Powerline has a good piece lambasting those scurrilous people who maintain that if you support the Tea Party movement, you are a racist.  He mentions that there is the same amount of evidence that TPers are racists as there is that those who make the baseless charge are themselves child molesters.
If you think about it, those who allege racism are homo sapiens, just like child molesters.  And they are also likely to deny that they are child molesters, just like real child molesters do. Why the more I think about it, there are unlimited similarities between those who make false charges and child molesters.
How dare these child molesters impugn the good and decent folks of the Tea Party.

An Existentialist Dilemna

Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot raises an interesting point:  Did the Democrats have to pass ObamaCare even though it was so widely unpopular?  Specifically, he said:

In a way, Democrats had to pass it, even knowing that it greatly endangered their House (and for all we know, Senate) majorities; if they looked at their own proposal and concluded it more harm than good, why on earth would the country need them?

Although many promises had been made that there would be a jump in approval ratings after the bill was enacted, because the people would finally get to see what was in it, just the opposite has happened.  Whether there are just general misrepresentations of its benefits,   or the fact that Congress cut itself off of all healthcare in their deliberate and careful approach to writing the bill, people are not happy.  And that's without even answering the question of its Constitutionality.

But what if this is all there is?  Do the Democrats honestly believe that the public are going to reward them with accolades?  If so, I want some of those drugs that the so-called "reality people" are taking.

And we still have three more years before the benefits kick in.

A Very Interesting Question

One should always try to think of the question not asked, and then ask why it wasn't.  The question in this article is one of those.  Why are there no glaciers in the Bob Marshall and Missions, nor are there proportional glaciers north of Glacier Park?
If the glaciers in the Park are the last remnant of the last Ice Age, isn't it more interesting that any glaciers remain rather than that they are disappearing?

Could Someone Please . . .

Show me an example of where people in positions of authority are actually urging violence or sedition by the Tea Party?  Not counting lunatics like Joel Klein, Frank Rich, or today on CNN where Gov. Granholm is claiming that certain speech is out of bounds.  Can you show me any unambiguous call for violence?  Not Palin's urge to "reload" because if that was all it took, I am sure that someone responsible would have objected to calls for Bush's assassination, or Cheney dieing of a heart attack.

If on the other hand, this is just a cynical effort to squelch legitimate public discourse, well then, you can just go to hell.

It's My Blogiversary

Five years ago, it all started with this.  What a long strange trip it's been..

That Was Quick

Doug Schoen has a piece where he tells the Democrats how they can save their bacon in November. Since the anticipated "bump" from the passage of Health Care Reform (or is it Health Insurance Reform?) never materialized, Democrats have to be standing around wondering what happened.  Especially after they felt so confident, they were predicting 40 years of Democrat dominance.
So, what actually did happen?  I will propose a few suggestions, confident that Democrats will never actually consider them, since they seem to lack the intellectual ability to examine an issue dispassionately.
First, Democrats, especially liberals (read Left, since some people who claim to be liberal are anything but) are really a minority.  They are outnumbered two to one by self proclaimed conservatives.The Democrats were also very successful in painting Republicans with a very negative brush, resulting in Conrand Burns losing his seat to Tester as an example.  The problem here is that the Democrats are not more honorable or moral than the Republicans.  Remember Nancy Pelosi was going to drain the swamp, except of course for Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Morin, and so many others.  In fact, the Democrat leadership has done yeoman's work in protecting these people rather than rooting out corruption.
Next, in 2008 the Democrats ran on the platform that they weren't Bush, just like in 1976, when they ran as not being Nixon.  You can run against someone only so far,  As it is now, the electorate is about evenly split between Obama and Bush as to who they would prefer.  Also in 2008, Obama ran on the solid platform of "Hope and Change."  It wasn't really his fault, but he did exploit the ambiguity of the mantra because everyone could project just what they thought they wanted onto Obama.  The downside is that Obama could never meet their expectations after he was elected.  Although the evidence seems to be that he never intended to do anything but to repay his Democrat allies in the auto industry and financial industry.
Then, believing their own propaganda, (I am wondering if Bill Clinton isn't deliberately trying to sabotage Obama by declaring an improvement in public opinion after the bills passage) led them to ram through a massive social program that the public was opposed to.  Nancy Pelosi claimed that all would be better when the public got to see the bill, but just the opposite happened.  A good part of their problem is that to even pretend it's fiscally solvent, they had to defer benefits for three years.  And in the process, because they rushed the bill through, in spite of all of these promises, they managed to cut themselves out of any health care until 2013.  The irony alone is delicious, but as a metaphor for being too complex, it is without equal.
Then, just to top it all off, the Tea Party arose, and the Democrats got it completely wrong.  First they claimed it was astro-turf, mostly because they are very familiar with astro-turf counters to anything that Bush did.  Since Soros paid for all of their projects, they assumed that there must be someone on the Republican side who was being the yin to Soros' yang.  Except there isn't anyone.  Next, the Democrats through their state controlled media tried to denigrate the Tea Party by asking where the leaders are, or what is the message.  They fail to grasp that this is a completely self organizing group who are angry with the direction of the country.  Then, the schtick is that the TPers are just ignorant rubes and hicks.  Which was shown to be false by the NYT  But still they persist in trying to denigrate and diminish TPers.  Some do it by falsely accusing them of racism, a most despicable tactic, because it minimizes actual racists.  And once the truth came out that the TPers were actually better educated and older, the new spin is that they are just spoiled elitists. 
I am sure though, that the Democrats are particularly frustrated by the fact that the usual tactics of social control that they have used these many years are not working.  How dare these people publicly disagree with their supposed betters.  Except they do.
Finally, I would offer this bit of solace to the Democrats - if the Republicans fail to act in a fiscally responsible manner, they won't be in officer for very long either.

The Original Libertarians

In honor of Tea Parties across the country, a reminder of our first Libertarians.

Of course, they did turn violent and shot at people later.

The Tax Day Cometh

Just wrote the check for $10k to pay for the taxes and the quarterlies, and that hurts.  Sure, my wife (The Good Democrat) did a land office business in helping people get on disability, so we reaped the rewards for her hard work.  But with the check that was written, I also had to wonder, did our accountant get every tax exemption that we were entitled to?
In fact, can any of us who use anything other than the 1040EZ actually be certain that we paid what we were supposed to, and not more or less?  And if we did use an accountant, how sure are you that you won't invite an audit?  Apparently, Money magazine sent out a sample tax return and asked several different accountants and tax attorneys and none of them did it right.
The problem is made worse if you are upper middle class because you don't know for sure that you are in full compliance, while the uber-wealthy can simply make the appropriate contribution to Rep. Charley Rangel and know that their problems are taken care of.  The tax code ceased to be an instrument for raising revenue, and is now used as a method of social control.  Regulating behavior that we don't like, and encouraging behavior that we want.  Of course, like everything that the government does, the actual results never match up against the success of the law of unintended consequences.
Just as a quick example of some of the headaches we suffer there is this:

Great One Liner

From a business show:  Congress is the only entity that when given an unlimited budget, can still exceed it.

Birthers

For the most part, I find "Birthers" tiresome.  Their claim is that Obama is not a legal native born American and without that he is ineligible to serve.  While I recognize there is always going to be a question of validity, since the Democrats seem willing to break any rule they can get away with, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are cheating this time.
But now, we have a LTC who is claiming that Obama is not his Commander in Chief, and is therefore refusing to follow orders.  While I disagree with him, I can appreciate his reasoning.  But one thing that I forgot, was that the Obama campaign demanded proof of McCain's birth certificate to show that he was eligible since he was born in the Canal Zone.  Would be kind of fun to remind Obama, Goose meet Gander.

A Radical Proposal

Government spending is spinning out of control. Yeah, I know, you are probably thinking what else is new. But one of the key problems with government spending is the explosive growth in wages of government employees.An example from the Cato institute shows that federal workers are making more than double the average for the private sector.

Montana public sector employees average $60,435 in average total compensation which is still more than the average earned by non-government workers.  So how did this imbalance come to pass?  It used to be that government workers were compensated less but had more job stability.  Some of the benefits of course were paid health care, but more than anything else, it was a retirement package that is pretty darned good.
The unfortunate thing about this is that the accumulation of retirement obligations by the government have to be met by the taxpayer.  And it doesn't take long before the obligations get so far out of hand that the rest of the state budget is put in peril.
As a state employee, I am going to make a recommendation that appears to be against my own interests but the alternative is having the state go bankrupt, which is an even bigger harm to my interest.  But I think we have to do two things.  First, freeze government wages until the average government worker is paid the same as the average private sector worker.  Second, we are going to have to change the way that the annual adjustment to retirement compensation is made.  My proposal is to give 100% of the CPI cost of living the first year, followed by 95% the second, and 90% the second and so on reducing the annual adjustment by 5% per year,  The net effect is that after 20 years, there will be no adjustment for inflation, but there will probably be less need as well when the retiree is 80 or older.
Putting a pay freeze is not going to be very popular when inflation starts to take off.  But the good news is that with inflation, it won't take that long for the state worker wage to come into line with the private sector pay.  As a flip side to this, the government would have to make a commitment not to let anyone go, except for job performance problems. Some workers may feel that they could be better served to leave government service and make their way in the private sector.  And I salute them.

If we do not take steps now, there won't be any retirement for anyone.  We have to recognize that state spending is a liability that has to be paid, but the workers have to recognize that killing the goose that laid the golden egg isn't going to work either.

Humor

Some examples of really bad ads for lawyers:



A really bad example of courtroom presence:

And this one, but don't say the name of the law firm out loud:


Finally, maybe not funny, but I still enjoy it nonetheless, Warren Zevon and Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Examples of Hate Speech by Tea Partiers

This kind of speech only leads to violence, and it cannot be tolerated:



Oops.

They are Liars

As was noted in the Corner of National Review OnLine, and elaborated even further for its falsity at BigGovernment the whole controversy over supposed "racist" Tea Partiers is a complete and utter sham. Throw in the Rev. (ha!) Sharpton claiming to have actually seen video of the use of the N word, and then backtracking when caught in such a lie is even more evidence of their desperation. These outrageous and false accusations are a made up tempest designed to marginalize concerned citizens.
It's clear that making an accusation of someone using such a disgusting word, that the burden immediately is shifted to the accused to prove that it didn't happen. And because proving a negative is impossible, the accuser can get away scot free. Well, not anymore.
The next question has to be, why do these people stoop to such despicable tactics? In part, it's because they fear those in the Tea Party movement. Not from any actual violence, but because the Tea Partiers are no longer to be herded like the cattle they are considered to be by their accusers. They are standing up to the tyranny of the minority that claims the mantle of moral superiority even though that mantle is undeserved. In fact, not just undeserved, it has been stolen.
There is greater similarity between the Tea Partiers and the Civil Rights movement and the reactionaries like Bull Conner and the Al Sharptons in this world than people are willing to admit. The only difference is that Bull Conner wielded the "N" word as a coercive tactic to remind African Americans of their proper place (at the back of the bus, or not at the lunch counter) and Rep. Cleaver who wants to remind the Tea Partiers of their place (shut up and pay your taxes and do as we say).
Oh yeah, one other similarity between Bull Conner and those who falsely allege racism on the part of the Tea Party: They're both Democrats.

What Are The Limits On Power?

Neil Cavuto is interviewing the blogger who got Cong. Hare to admit that he didn't care, and obviously doesn't know about the Constitution.

While the Congresscritter's sentiments may be altruistic, they are not based on any understanding of the concept of limited and enumerated powers.  Which begs the question:  Under the concept of ObamaCare, what powers are not given to the federal government?  Is there nothing that is beyond the pale for them to control, regulate, tax, ban or demand?

I ask the question, what the government cannot do, since it seems to be more constrained than asking what the government can do.

Some are predicting already future demands by the government of we the People.  How about, every home must purchase an American flag and pledge allegiance every morning.  Whatever you may think about it, how is there any limitation on this requirement.  Or, with sufficient majority in both houses, Congress bans abortions under the Commerce Clause theory because we need more future workers,
Where will it end?  Can it ever end?