That’s how much we are spending on welfare programs, based on a family of four–$16,800 per person. That was in 2008, according to the Heritage Institute, as reported in the Forbes Magazine[*1] . We’re spending more now.
What’s that you say? Poor people aren’t anywhere near that much money? Well, no, I guess they’re not. Where’s all that money going then, if it’s not getting to the people we’re supposed to be helping?
Maybe it would make more sense to eliminate all of the dizzying number of government giveaway programs, and just institute a Department Of Cutting Checks To Poor People, and be done with it. It would be cheaper for the productive people, the poor would wind up getting more money. The only people such a move would hurt would be the government bureaucrats–and the politicians who live by taking money from people then turning around and buying their votes with it.
Re-focus society on using religious and charitable organizations to assist people–this strengthens those organizations, this strengthens the people they help, this strengthens all of society by binding us together in a way government can never, ever do.
The old, “progressive” ways do not work. That is obvious now to anyone with eyes to see. We need to start finding a new way.
Hillbuzz[*1] asked for suggestions about how to discuss politics at the table, this Easter holiday. Here’s my suggestion:
You: “Wow, everything seems like such a mess. What are we going to do to fix things?”
Other Person: “I dunno. Make the rich pay their fair share.”
You: “Well, yeah, you’re right, everybody should pull their own weight. But that brings up the next question–what’s fair? According to information released by the IRS (and compiled by the Tax Foundation),[*2] the top 1% of American taxpayers earn 20% of the money but pay nearly 40% of the taxes. The top 5% earn 35% of all earned income, but pay 58% of all income taxes. The top 50% of all earners earn 87% of the income, and pay 97% of the taxes, which means the bottom 50% earns 13% of the income but only pay 3% of the taxes.
“The three biggest government programs other than national defense–Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, mostly benefit the poorer people, because the richer people don’t usually need them. So, poor people pay the least and get the most, and rich people pay the most and get the least. So, you know, we get back to the question–what’s fair?”
Other Person: “Well, all that’s well and good, but the rich are getting richer!”
You: “Actually, no, they’re not, according to the latest statistics from the Treasury Bureau,[*3] they took a hit just like everybody else in the country–since 1996, the median household income of the very top earners went down, not up. But even it it were true that the rich were getting richer, is that really a bad thing? It’s not like Monopoly–the rich getting richer doesn’t mean that everybody else is getting poorer. It’s not a zero-sum game. What do you suppose the rich do with their money? They want to earn more money, usually, which for almost all rich people means that they invest it in for-profit companies–companies that make things, companies that give people jobs, companies that will make more money for the rich people. When you take money away from rich people, you make it harder for them to invest and harder for them to give people jobs. That doesn’t sound very compassionate to me, and I know you’re a pretty nice person, so you wouldn’t want to make it harder to make jobs, would you?”
Other Person: *sputters, probably goes negative/emotional on you* -or, if somewhat rational, comes back with- “Well, then, what do YOU think we should do?”
You: Well, it would be nice if we could start giving incentives to people to invest in companies, to go to work, to really improve themselves, rather than paying off political cronies and politically-correct companies, and bailing out failing companies–let them fail!–and start working on getting our government programs working on preparing people to find something they’re good at and getting them doing that, earning their own way, being productive. There will always be those who we’ll have to help, but we need to be realistic about it. People have to pull their own weight–rich people and everybody else.”
I’m going to (attempt to, once again) shut down the daily drip-drip-drip of the political/economic/world news, including and especially the daily recitation of the fundamental stupidity of Obama and the Washington Democrats. That stupidity is readily apparent to any rational, thinking person who bothers to pay attention, and it is useless to try to reach people who are not paying attention, who are irrational, and who do not choose to think. I have little patience with such people even when I am in the best of moods, anyway.
So, I’m going to focus future Whips more on descriptions and apologia for classical liberalism, along with links to sports, science/science fiction/writing, and other miscellaneous articles I come across that amuse me for one reason or another.
I’ve said all I really need to say about the political situation here. Additionally, author Larry Correla expands and extends many of my thoughts, perhaps more coherently and slightly less angrily than my post does. That’s why this post is:
. . .I’d like to talk about our nation’s current budget issues. You see, we face difficult times, and our noble president says that we are just going to need to give up just a little more.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, YOU STUPID LYING GREEDY SACK OF CRAP?
Government can’t balance a checkbook. They’re idiots. I know finance math. I do it for a living. And when I look at the numbers involved here, (and the interest!) it makes my head swim. Okay, for you non-accountants, when they start bandying numbers about on the news of 4 trillion such and such, and a hundred billion this and that, I know that your eyes glaze over. You think to yourself, “Oh, it is just the same old same old, bunch of politicians spending too much money, blah blah blah.”
NOOOOO!
Saying that this is the same old same old, is like saying that gophers digging up your lawn is the same level of disaster as Krakatoa. Over the last couple of years we’ve reached a whole new level of crazy. Our spending has gone insane. We’re spending more money, faster, than all of mankind, throughout all of recorded human history. Economists aren’t sure what’s going to happen, because this has never happened before. Ever. On Earth. We’ve strayed into strange new territory here and there are many possible outcomes if we don’t stray the hell back out. And don’t for a second think that any of those possible outcomes are remotely good. No. They range somewhere between the Great Depression and Mad Max.
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM Bee Stung [*2] — Most people will do as little as possible in order to get by. This is human nature. This is also why people vote for Democrats. This is also why all of the Democrats’ social policy schemes are doomed to failure. Eventually–and sometimes it takes quite a while–you run out of other people’s money.
Big Blog on Campus [*3] — I find it interesting that of the six academnid blogs profiled by the New York Times, most could easily be considered essentially classical-liberal in outlook.
Selected Excerpts from Letters From An Ohio Farmer:
This constitution in our American souls expressed itself in a small way recently in our expectation and gratification that members of Congress should take an oath to uphold the Constitution. This is an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, and not to us, the people. Our high regard for this oath, it seems to me, is the sovereign people’s way of telling our representatives that we expect you to be somewhat independent of us, that we think good government depends upon it.
Put simply, in our Constitution the branches are separate, but they are not equal: the vast preponderance of federal authority is delegated to Congress, which is without question the preeminent branch under the Constitution. One reason this may not be as obvious as it should be just by reading the Constitution is that, over the last fifty years, the separation of powers has tilted a bit out of constitutional balance. The presidential and judicial branches have become assertive and bold in articulating the national agenda, and Congress has largely deferred to this (or to the bureaucracy), sometimes in an effort to avoid difficult or potentially unpopular actions.
(Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s) rhetorical question—“Are you serious?”—was, of course, meant not to begin but to end conversation. Such contemptuous dismissal of citizens’ serious concern about constitutionality made many voters indignant last November, and they carried their well justified indignation with them to the ballot box. The arrogant contempt continued in the sniffing dismissals that greeted the new Congress’s show of respect for the Constitution. This arrogance comes from a belief that is held to be unquestionable. This is the belief that the New Deal irrevocably transformed America into a country whose central government has the authority to address any social or economic problem, and to mandate or proscribe any individual conduct plausibly related to alleviating that problem. To the former Speaker and those who agree with her, it is preposterous—mind-boggling—that any 21st century American should presume to question this article of faith. The same arrogant incredulity struts and postures angrily in Wisconsin and Ohio and other states where public employee unions and their advocates in the media assert a right to collective bargaining that is somehow supposed to be regarded as sacred and beyond question.
It is true, as I remarked in my last letter, that with the entrenching and expanding of the New Deal and the Great Society, America has reached a point where “the federal government can do just about anything it wants, and can do it just about any way it wants.” Our progressive politicians and intellectuals insist that this condition is irreversible—beyond serious question. The movement of American politics over the past two years seems to be proving that this is not the case. And so the progressive insistence that the question is closed gets louder and more desperate. Just opening the question is a significant achievement, though it leaves much statesman’s work still to do—as Hamilton and Jefferson teach us. We can learn much from both of them as we continue to recover the kind of constitutional reasoning these letters hope to help restore to governing in our country.
Proclaiming that all men everywhere and at all times possess by nature equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the American founders undertook the historic effort to secure these rights, so far as they thought they could then be secured, to a small people at a particular place and time. They were acutely conscious of the limits of their ability to secure these rights. When they were able to establish a “more perfect union” they understood full well how far from perfection they remained. It was all the new republic could do in the first century of its existence to keep the American experiment in freedom from failing miserably at home while other less fortunate experiments struggled to give birth to freedom in other parts of the world.
In the course of its history, the American people have many times fallen beneath the high standards they set for themselves at the beginning. They have strayed from those principles, and they have forgotten them, and become confused about them, and allowed misunderstood self-interest to obscure them. Our own experience has confirmed for us that democracy requires more of its citizens than any other form of government and that it is no accident that history provides so few examples of successful and enduring democracies.
Our deliberations will be well served by reflecting that the American founders thought the best thing Americans could do for the rest of the world was to succeed in our own experiment in freedom. As the founders thought of it, the American cause—the cause of liberty— is the cause of mankind. If we could show by the success of our experiment that free government could be good government, this would be the greatest gift Americans could give to their fellow human beings—our own political well being would be a constant act of philanthropy. America’s success would be cause for all men to rejoice. By the same token, failure of the American experiment in freedom would “deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”
Madison argued that the great danger was a faction comprising a majority of the electorate – whether united by a sectional, commercial, or religious interest – because it could operate democratically, winning a series of free and fair elections, even while disdaining the concerns and curtailing the rights of all citizens not belonging to that faction. He was more sanguine about a faction comprising a minority of the citizenry, because, he thought, the majority would be able to “defeat its sinister views by regular vote,” rendering the faction “unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.”
Here Madison may have been too optimistic. The lessons of recent American politics suggest that minority factions can be more dangerous than he imagined. The modern phenomenon he failed to anticipate was a government entrusted with so many responsibilities, and so much power and money, that it becomes a faction unto itself, with its own passions and interests adverse to the rights of other citizens.
The number and complexity of the issues being managed by government, at all levels, reach a point where the regular vote of the majority no longer prevails against the government faction.
Government employees, protected by strong unions and formidable civil service rules, have become an especially powerful and, in many cases, especially dangerous faction.
Guaranteeing every state a republican form of government appears to be one of the Constitution’s less difficult assignments. The harder part is to make sure that American government at every level is republican not just in form but in content. Are the people’s elected representatives in charge of the government, or do life-tenured civil servants constitute a permanent government, one that can humor voters and legislators with token concessions, knowing it has all the expertise and time needed to out-maneuver and out-last intrusive voters and their representatives?
We know from the relentless demonstrations in the streets of the Wisconsin city named after James Madison that the permanent government will go to great lengths to defend its prerogatives. Will the citizenry do what is necessary to reclaim its sovereign control over the res publica – the matters that properly belong to the public?
Democrats refuse to peer down the road and see the damage they are doing. While accusing Republicans of somehow taking something from others, Democrats have no qualms about stealing from future generations that have only the Republicans looking out for them before they even arrive.
Readers may have noticed a recent change in tone, here. Because Obama’s speech this week pretty much flipped a switch for me. He’s a dangerous demagogue. He is a son of a bitch. He is a bastard–quite possibly literally a bastard. He needs to be politically defeated and thwarted at every turn up to and including the 2012 election. Otherwise our children and their children and their children will be paying for our failure in the next year and a half to realize that Obama and the Democrats don’t give a damn about anything other than arrogating to themselves raw, naked political power to control every single God-damn part of your life. And you will either see that, or you’re a fool, or you’re a dangerous psychopath who probably is not only voting Democrat but donating and/or working for the bastards. I’m done arguing about it. He needs to go. And if you disagree, you need to go, too.
This doesn’t mean that the Republicans are “all that.” They’re not. They’re Democrat-Lite. They’re better than the Democrats in the same sense that having both of your legs broken is better than having them chopped off. With the one, you’ll probably be able to walk again on your own two feet, once you heal from the injury. With the other, you won’t, unless you get two artificial legs. And the Democrats intend to have the government provide you with both artificial legs and tell you when you can and can’t use them.
So, the Republicans just want to break your legs, then sell you the wheelchair and crutches. The Democrats want to chop your legs off at the knees and then “compassionately” help you as you flop around, begging for help–and maybe, maybe, if you’re very, very good generously provide you some artificial legs–if you conform to their bizarre notions of “social justice.”
Which do you prefer?
Neither? You’d rather have them just leave your legs alone in the first place?
‘No Poor Man Ever Gave Me a Job’ [*3] — They used to say “don’t criticize farmers with your mouth full.” Well, don’t criticize rich people with money in your pocket, or clothes on your back, or a roof over your head. Because their industry created the wealth represented by the money, they provided the jobs which not only paid for those clothes and that roof, but they also built the industries that made those clothes and built that roof.
Anyone who enviously attacks the rich is a fool. His or her time would be better spent trying to become rich. Or at least, helping somebody else become rich, and attaching his/her fate to that rising star, to help it rise as fast and as high as possible.
Taxing the rich is exactly like taking the hammer and saw out of the hands of the carpenter, while at the same time demanding that he build an addition to your house. Wealth is the tool that people–both the wealthy and people who want to be–use to create more wealth and jobs and products and services that people want and need.
If you take wealth away from people who create wealth, you have less wealth created. Democrats and “progressives” argue with this. They are idiots. Dangerous idiots.
What is worse? Telling someone honestly, upfront, that they’ll be expected to pay the first $5000 of their health care costs, but beyond that, we’ll pick up every dime, or lying to someone, telling them Daddy Government Got Dey Healthcare squared away, paying for minor shit that people really should be paying for themselves, but then, when they’re old and desperately sick, having death panelists step in and say “Too expensive; you’ve lived long enough. We’re pulling the plug. Here, here’s some advil and codeine. God Speed you on your way.”
That last part is a nasty surprise. But Obama prefers that scheme, because the people alive and voting are getting paid by the government and hence will vote for him, whereas the people death-paneled out of existence aren’t going to be voting.
GOP Leadership Betrays The Base [*8] — The GOP in the House needs to stand up and say NO MORE. STOP. NOW. Being politicians, and weasels, they of course will not.
About Those Medicare Savings [*9] — Obama lied. Again. Those “savings” are absolutely nonexistent. Not me saying it. The Congressional Budget Office saying it.
All Senate Dems, including Manchin, vote to protect Obamacare funding[*10] — The reality is that they don’t give a damn about your health care. They only care about keeping, and increasing their power over you. And if you’re willing to keep letting them do it, well, then . . .
Republicans will make US ‘Third World’ nation: Obama [*12] — Obama is delusional. Dangerous. A Demagogue. A Democrat. He lies–constantly. If you’re a Democrat, do you have the simple human decency to be embarrassed?
HIGHER EDUCATION Gales Of Creative Instruction [*16] — Disintermediation. Look it up. It’s what the Internet does. It’s why the current education industry will go the route of the news media: i.e. a near-terminal decline followed by a radical re-configuration to eliminate the middlemen/women.
If you’re fighting a weight problem, this would be an hour and a half very well spent, I think.
It’s pretty much convinced me to avoid anything at all with high fructose corn syrup in it. Yuck. I already was convinced that sugar was evil. Now I know why.
THE OBAMA DISASTER featuring but not limited to Obamacare, Keynesian economics, and other relics of 19th Century “Progressivism” Throw Grandma From the Train [*4] — The President is a liar.
‘Spending reductions in the tax code’? [*13] — I hope people caught this piece of shit flowing from the President’s mouth. What he means is “tax increases” but he thinks if he puts enough sauce on that piece of shit it will smell good enough for people to actually eat it.
Why doesn’t the President do something? Because maybe he can’t. Or maybe he won’t. Or maybe he’ll do it after he figures out his next bracket pick. And maybe King Abdullah is going to look at the letter carried by Donilon and wonder, what exactly is this worth? Then it may come to him that Obama has dealt himself out of the job the Presidents have filled so long.
Top Ten Reasons Why Sarah Palin is Running For President [*24] — Strangely enough, “She doesn’t call “tax increases” “spending reductions in the tax code” like certain bullshit artists we are all too familiar with” does not appear in the top 10 list, but perhaps it was compiled before Obama’s speech . . .
THE COLLAPSE OF THE “ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING” CONJECTURE What happened to the climate refugees? [*25] — When your premises are flawed, your conclusions tend to be wrong. Reality works that way . . .
Economics at AoSHQ U: Part 1 – The Economy [*3] — Something that distinguishes classical liberalism from, well, pretty much every other intellectual system devised by mankind, is that classical liberalism is based on the world as it is, with a minimum of value judgments regarding The Meaning Of It All. That’s what religions like “progressivism,” Marxism, Islam, or Christianity are for (and some of those are more benign than others–Buddhism for instance tends to be quite benign, at least when it isn’t spreading enervating apathy . . . but I digress . . .) DEMOCRAT/”PROGRESSIVE” VOTE FRAUD, CORRUPTION, ABUSE, AND INTIMIDATION
Or: “The appearance of corruption is in itself corruption.”
A Massachusetts Miracle In Wisconsin [*4] — Sometimes, when you hold a big stick over somebody’s head and tell them to do something, what happens is that somebody just gets very, very angry with you.
THE OBAMA DISASTER featuring but not limited to Obamacare, Keynesian economics, and other relics of 19th Century “Progressivism” An Arizona city’s sports mania encounters a hard check [*5] — Wherein John McCain stands revealed, once again, as a true “progressive,” Tweedle-dum to Obama’s Tweedle-dee.
Paul Krugman: Hey, I’ve Got a Great Idea! Let’s Raise Taxes on the Middle Class! [*9] — I was about to ask how this moron possibly won a Nobel Prize, but then I realize that Barack Obama, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Yasser Arafat have also won them, too (yes, I realize Krugman’s was in economics and the others were the much more ridiculous “peace prizes,” but still . . .)
WH: Obama regrets vote against raising debt limit [*14] — As the saying goes: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” And hey presto! Obama happens to now be sitting in the White House. He finds the view somewhat different than as a back-bench, no-experience Senator with no real-life experience that any productive American would realize and recognize as a “job.”
IT’S A DANGEROUS WORLD Yemen [*25] — “I say we take off and nuke them from space. It’s the only way to be sure.” – Aliens
Unfortunately perhaps, this would not only be technologically unfeasable, it would also catch many (several?) innocents in the various blast radii, and hence would be unnecessarily harsh.
ELECTION 2012: IF NOT SARAH PALIN, THEN WHO? Trump: If I Can’t Have The Presidency I’ll Make Sure Obama Wins [*26] — I can’t quite figure out if Trump is an idiot, or an Obama stalking horse. The two are not mutually exclusive, of course. In fact, the latter pretty much assumes the former.
Here’s my proposal: A 50% surtax on anything earned within five years after leaving the federal government, above whatever the federal salary was. Leave a $150K job at the White House, take a $1M job with Goldman, Sachs, pay a $425K surtax. Some House Republican should add this to a bill and watch the Dems react.
Oh, yeah. I want to see this. I want to see this so bad I can taste it. I want this so bad I’m using utterly inapt metaphors. Oh, please, House Republicans, do this, do this, do this, DO THIS!CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
The way we used to beleve in. The way that works. The only way to prosperity for everybody (who wants it and is willing to work for it).
Provocateur… Revolutionary… [*8] — “Progressives” and leftists in general just think that they’re “avant-garde” and “edgy,” when really what they mainly do is make everybody around them edgy. The nervous kind of edgy.
The Times Vendetta Continues [*9] — The Koch Brothers: Guilty of being Rich Without Being “Progressive.” The punishment: Everything the “progressives” can think of to throw at them.
Presidential dream: long walk in the park [*16] — Oh, my God. Did the man not read the job description before applying for the position? What a putz . . . what the hell is he going to do if things actually hit the fan? Things aren’t good now, but they could get a LOT worse. If he can’t handle it, he needs to get out now and let somebody else mop up his mess.
Tense Meetings, Stalled Talks Led to ‘Painful’ Last-Minute Deal on Budget [*17] — In which you learn, definitively, that preserving federal funding for abortion clinics is more important to Democrats than keeping open national parks and getting paychecks to serving military. That’s the bottom line, and it isn’t spinnable. We now clearly understand the priorities of the Democratic Party, and those priorities do not include seeing to the interests of all of the American people–only certain, favored special interests. And they’re willing to do anything–absolutely anything–to protect those interests.
While these Republicans are doing a victory lap and praising Boehner, and dumping on conservatives for not partying with them, the smart Democrats are plotting. They’re purposely framing this deal the same way as Ms. Rubin, et al –as a win for the GOP and Boehner. They’re agreeing that these are big cuts when they’re not. Why? Because Obama’s about to propose his own budget and deficit package and he’ll attempt to outmaneuver our celebrants. He will raise hundreds of billions in taxes (on “the rich” of course); he will slash defense spending; he will play with the numbers and claim to be cutting other areas; he’ll put out phony numbers on Obamacare again claiming it will save hundreds of billions; he’ll come up with more smoke and mirrors pretending to reform Medicare and Medicaid, and he will attempt to obscure the Ryan Plan, insisting his approach is reasonable, serious, and fair. Meanwhile, Obama will be fighting to protect trillions in spending while the GOP is proudly touting its $38.5 billion (if that) victory.
It is quite true. You can’t trust a Washington Democrat as far as you can throw him. (Or her. Mustn’t be sexist.) The Democrat Party is one big collection of mutually supporting special interests. They have by their behavior demonstrated zero interest in the country as a whole. Zero.
The Tea Party’s First Victory: Obama opposes spending cuts right up to the time he calls them historic. [*19] — I used to think Obama was a doctrinare leftist, even a Marxist. Now I’m not so sure–I wonder if he doesn’t just imprint like a newly hatched duckling on the ideas of whoever in the room seems to have the strongest persona–in the case of the shutdown pseudo-drama: Speaker Boehner and. especially, Paul Ryan.
Democrats will yield on everything but abortion [*23] — To be honest, I’m not completely happy with that but if the choice is inevitable national bankruptcy or back-burnering the abortion issue, I’ll gladly go for the latter–because to be honest, that will kill fewer people in the long run. Too utilitarian? Too cold? Too harsh? Maybe . . .
The Razor’s Edge [*31] — California: the shape of things to come. Are you paying attention? It will not be pretty. Or comfortable–at least, it won’t be comfortable for anyone who isn’t part of the ruling elite. Will that be you? Almost certainly not. Welcome to the Dark Ages, Serf. You still have time to change things. And I mean really change things, not the touchy-feely-faux-“change” of the 2008 Obama campaign, which turns out was just more of the same 19th Century “Progressive” wishin’ and hopin’.
IT’S A DANGEROUS WORLD Responsibility to Protect [*32] — In case you hadn’t heard, “responsibility to protect” is the shiny new rationale for the intervention in Libya. And it’s a dangerous, dangerous idea, especially in the hands of organizations controlled by thugs, totalitarians, and “progressives”–like the United Nations, NATO, and the federal government of the United States of America.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE “ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING” CONJECTURE Climate models go cold [*37] — or go read the original article (and behold the cogent counterarguments in the comments . . .) Climate models go cold [*38]
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy [*48] — “in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.”
Forget space travel: it’s just a dream [*69] — “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”–Quoted in Lemon, et al., Mark (1899). “Punch’s Almanack for 1899”, Punch (magazine) 116 (17). (from WikiQuote. [*70]
