Arguing with Democrats

Arguing with Democrats

I spend way too much time on Facebook arguing with ideologues of the left - I don't know why. Yesterday I made a few points that looked good enough to post here. You can fill in the blanks, since I have no intention to memorialize the statist argument of the other side, but rest assured that it is the typical hackneyed dross about the importance of government power.

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Remember that Bush was an idiot but Kerry was brilliant, then when their records came to light it was shown that Bush had slightly better grades and it had no effect on their opinion. To the left, it is not enough to have the better argument, they must dehumanize their opponents. That is the only semi-coherent they can demand statist solution to our challenges. We the People are idiots, thus only the "experts" in Washington and academia are qualified to exercise and limit the freedoms that the fools will abuse.

It is an evil movement, whether you call it statism, progressivism, socialism, communism, or the democrat party platform, it is all about control, and usurpation of constitutional freedoms. To a leftist, those who oppose them are stupid and evil, which we prove to them with every policy position we take. Our challenge is to convince a supermajority of voters to see it. Right now we seem to have a bare majority, which will not ensure victory, given all the dead leftists who will vote against America, again.

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Without respect for the four walls of the agreement [the constitution] there will be chaos. You people are in the midst of a grand experiment of replacing the family with the government. The failure of that experiment is obvious for anyone with eyes. None so blind as those who refuse to see.

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You are deluded. Social security and Medicare, while founded on high principles, have had the direct effect of the destruction of the extended family. When our parents get old and infirm we abandon them to the state. When my mother could no longer live alone we took her in, and the amount of pressure we received to abandon her was atrocious. Mothers on welfare are forced by the state to put their menfolk out or lose their benefits. You guys can either recognize this, or you are dishonest. Bad enough to lie to me, you are lying to yourself. Making allusions to Calicutta is fraudulent argument. We have never had anything like that type of poverty here, but screaming about that bogeyman is the only way you can hide your shame at what you have wrought.

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Prosperity is what happened in the South Bronx, and you guys want to take credit for it. I know the South Bronx. Urban renewal destroyed it, now gentrification is reviving it. You need to get out more before you pick a place that makes my point perfectly. Wealth is the engine of American success, and government programs and needless regulation are a drag on it.

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Very Obamunistic, your argument. Take a false choice, in this case an unjustified defense of the indefensible system we have today, and whine that the only alternative is doing nothing, or worse. That is not the position of the right, and you know it. Shame on you. There will be no solution to our intractable deficits and debt unless and until intelligent people on your side become willing to view things as they are, not through a prism where your opponent's argument is both evil and stupid. Allen West said it best - we either end Social Security and Medicare as we know it or we end America. Democrat leaders refuse to change a jot or a tittle, according to democrat senate majority leader Reid. Which side is being stupid and evil? All for power, and we the People can all go to hell. You people make me sick.

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This is not about tone. This nation is currently borrowing in excess of three million dollars per minute, 188 million per hour, over four billion dollars per day to support your "Great Society." That is not great, that is pathetic. Supporting the continuation of this charade is profoundly unserious at best, so excuse me for suspecting your motives. You are not stupid enough to believe your position. If you are, I apologise. Meanwhile you keep pointing to examples that make my point, which at least shows you to be confused.

How the democrats sunk themselves this time

How the democrats sunk themselves this time

A particularly accurate piece of meta-transcript is on display on PJ today, written by Frank J. Fleming. Like most political humor, it is dead-on accurate:

AMERICANS: “So, the economy is pretty bad and there’s high employment. You think you can do something about that?”

DEMOCRATS AND OBAMA: “We can spend a trillion dollars we don’t have on pork and stuff.”

AMERICANS: “No … that’s not what we want. We’d really like you not to do that.”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re stupid. We’re doing it anyway.”

AMERICANS: “That’s not going to help us get jobs!”

DEMOCRATS: “Sure it will; millions of them … though they may be invisible. You’ll have to trust us they exist. And guess what else we’ll do: We’ll create a giant new government program to take over health care.”

AMERICANS: “That has nothing to do with jobs!”

DEMOCRATS: “We don’t care about that anymore. We really want a giant new health care program. We’re sure you’ll love it.”

AMERICANS: “Don’t pass that bill. You hear me? Absolutely do not pass that bill.”

DEMOCRATS: “Believe me; you’ll love it. It has … well, I don’t know what exactly is in the bill, but we’re sure it’s great.”

AMERICANS: “Listen to me: DO. NOT. PASS. THAT. BILL.”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re not the boss of me! We’re doing it anyway!”

AMERICANS: “Look what you did! Now the economy is way worse, we’re even deeper in debt, and we have a bunch of new laws we don’t want!”

DEMOCRATS: “You’re racist.”

AMERICANS: “Wha … How is that racist?”

DEMOCRATS: “Now you’re getting violent! Stop being violent and racist, you ignorant hillbillies! And remember to vote Democrat in November.”

So the Democrats sucked. But not just plain old, usual politician sucked, but epic levels of suck where it’s hard to find an analogue in human history that conveys the same level of suckitude. It was sheer incompetence plus arrogance — and those things do not complement each other well. We’re talking sucking that distorts time and space like a black hole.

It’s Godzilla-smashing-through-a-city level of suck — but a really patronizing Godzilla who says you’re just too stupid and hateful to see all the buildings he’s saved or created as he smashes everything apart. Or, to use Obama’s favorite analogy, you have a car stuck in ditch, so you call the mechanic, but the only tool he brings with him is a sledgehammer. And then he smashes your car to pieces and charges you $100,000 for his service. Finally, he calls you racist for complaining. Obama and the Democrats have been so awful, it’s hard for the human brain to even comprehend.

They suck like a black hole? Nice. And true.

My choice for best campaign ad by a democrat. Ever.

My choice for best campaign ad by a democrat. Ever.

Tax Rate Shell Game

Tax Rate Shell Game

These days everybody is talking about how the tax rates used to be 70%, then were dropped to 28%, and now are about to be raised again. But all this talk forgets that we are not comparing apples and oranges. That 70% rate was levied on a much smaller portion of our income.

I am old enough to have paid a rate over 50%. In those days states and cities would never have dared to levy their own income taxes, so federal was the only income tax we had to deal with. The deductions that were available, however, protected just about as much of your income as you wanted. I was audited in 1978 because my net taxable income was only 20% of my gross wages and 1099 income. My accountant asserted the "creature of business" concept, i.e. everything I did was related to my business, so we refiled amended returns and asked for a refund. After a lot of struggle between my accountant and the IRS there was a trivial amount of additional tax to pay, sort of a fig leaf for the tax examiner. I was advised to pay the tax and take it to tax court. The lawyer said I would probably win. I passed and paid a few hundred dollars, and forgot about the whole thing.

So when they say that rates are going up "only on the rich" I always look at deductions that are disappearing. Even though we have very few deductions left, those are being repealed also. This represents an additional tax on all Americans. We are also facing taxes that will be hidden from us, and state and local income and other taxes will be increasing as well. That 95% of Americans who will not see an increase must include Paramecium and bacteria, since even dogs and monkeys will see higher taxes, and they are about to make Chimpanzees illegal altogether.

We need to understand that the new government in this country is attempting to change our society in ways that are, in some respects, broader and more sweeping than anything FDR did, since these new-age democrats seem to have no compunctions about being truthful with the American people. That's not an opinion, it is fact.

Government Running Amok

Government Running Amok

Is there any limit to the reach of Obama's ambition to change the way we live? His proposals are so broadly cast, even breathtaking, that even reliable lefties are pulling to the side, trying to catch their breath.

The reliably left-of-center David Broder writes that “The size of the gambles that President Obama is taking every day is simply staggering” and adds that the agenda set forth in Obama's speech to congress is, in Broder's view "a dramatic reminder of the unbelievable stakes he has placed on the table in his first month in office, putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington.”

Obama talks the talk of fiscal restraint even as he sets into motion a $787 billion stimulus package, a $410 billion omnibus budget, and a $634 billion health care fund. He inherited, and promised to reduce, a budget deficit pegged at a half trillion dollars, yet what is it now? Even with Washington's legendary obfuscation techniques, it must be well north of two trillion by now. How will he pay for it? His tax increases on "the wealthy" are claimed to raise a mere 318 billion dollars over ten years, by reducing deductions on home interest and charitable deductions. What effect will this have on the levels of cash donated to food banks and other services that serve the poor?

Even power drunk democrats have to know that you can not pay for trillions of dollars of spending with one third of a trillion dollars. Do they think they can fool the electorate? Obama promised to not raise taxes on any American making under a quarter million dollars. What happens when we all feel the tax bite that will settle on us? Remember the rest of Obama's agenda? His "cap and trade" system will cause electric bills to skyrocket. Taxes on corporations will make everything we buy more expensive, and it will not all be invisible. Surcharges will be appearing on telephone and cable bills, taxi and bus rides, airline tickets will go through the roof, and on and on.

Overall, Obama showed a remarkable disdain for the truth in his speech, even for a politician. Not just getting the inventor of the automobile wrong, he larded his speech with lies and distortions throughout. That's not a good sign of what we can expect from him as this recession settles in.

Where will this all lead us? In two years we can guess at the electoral outcome, but I wonder what our nation will look like by then. I will never forget the picture of democrats, absolutely giddy with glee as Obama announced the breadth of his agenda Tuesday night. I wonder if they have gone mad, or is it that they have no shame? Their agenda has been bottled up since 1981 and the Reagan administration. Could it be that they have been anticipating this moment of power so long that they have taken leave of their senses? Only time will tell. As David Broder ends his piece, "When we elected Obama, we didn't know what a gambler we were getting."

Entrepreneurs Beware

Entrepreneurs Beware

The effect of democrat control of two thirds of our government are becoming more clear, as we can now compare their campaign promises to their actions in office. They clearly want to give "workers" more and "the rich" less. This is the class envy game writ large. Before these were ideas they argued for in their attempt to achieve power during the campaign. But these actions have already taken effect in some areas, thus the result of these policies are predictable. Detroit has already lost half its population. And if you think unions are bad, just wait and see what happens if democrats put through their "living wage" proposal. I am surprised they did not put it into the fraudulus already.

Democrats clearly value entrepreneurship so low since they assume that economic activity is a zero sum game - less for "the rich" will mean more for "the people" as if overall economic activity will remain the same when entrepreneurs are rewarded at a lower rate. They downplay the element of risk, and the willingness top take risk, in the formation of capital and companies.

It is not supply/demand that creates companies, it is risk/reward. If demand is there but entrepreneurial achievement is less likely, then a few giant bureaucrat-friendly companies will do all the business and the rest will go out of business. Many niche demands will not be met, but what the heck, democrats do not look that far into the future anyway. And who needs so many brands of bread or cars anyway?

This is not socialism, it is fascism. The fascist state finds it more convenient to deal with a few huge corporations instead of all these little greedy entrepreneurs. Look at California today - it is a harbinger of the future democrat/fascist Amerika. We the People get less and less even as Nancy gets a bigger jet and The Won keeps his office at eighty degrees - it is happening already.

Kerry On Taxes

Kerry On Taxes

Senator Jim DeMint has captured the essence of John Kerry and, presumably, the rest of the democrats explaining how much he believes the American people are too stupid to know how to spend their own money. There is no guarantee, he says, that we will invest the government's money in the right things. Under a minute, this should not be missed.

More Reasons to Hate the Fraudulus Bill

More Reasons to Hate the Fraudulus Bill

The more we read, the more reasons we find to hate this monstrous bill. On Bloomberg today, Betsey McCaughey writes about one of the health provisions of the bill. This small piece of the proposed law places much of the pain we all will have to bear on the elderly. Give it a few years, and that will include me. The references to Tom Daschle in the piece refers to his book, that is apparently the genesis of this proposed provision. A sample:

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

Read the whole thing.

Similarly, another piece of this puzzle rolls back Clinton's welfare reform, by removing the work requirement from AFDC payments. The New York Times especially likes this. This will return us to the day when government paid any woman who had a child out of wedlock, whether she had a job or not. I can well remember what the ghetto looked like back then. Why in the world would American blacks do not cry out for this provision to be left out is beyond my ken.

All we citizens can do is sign the online petition to stop the bill from passage. It is the least we can do, and we can all do it. If you have not already done so, do it now.

Does No Earmarks Mean No Pork?

Does No Earmarks Mean No Pork?

Words have meaning. They must, or effective debate is impossible. But as all students of Newspeak know too well, words can be twisted to convey meanings that are not in evidence. Thus "The One" and his minions feel free to state that the fraudulus bill contains no "earmarks," and thus insinuate, and even claim, that it contains no pork. So we need to define our terms.

An earmark is an item in an appropriations bill (or law) that states exactly what money is to be spent on and who will get it, and how. In Wikipedia it is defined as "In US politics an earmark is a congressional provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects..."

Pork is money conveyed to favored constituents in an appropriations bill (or law). Again from Wikipedia "Spending that is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support..."

See the difference? No? Well, these are terms of art, as strange as that shows the art to be. A discussion on NPR tries to make sense of the distinction, coming up with this:

When congressional leaders began to assemble the mammoth economic stimulus bill, top Democrats and the Obama administration decided that there would be no earmarks: no "special projects," no pork-barrel spending. In so doing, they gave up some control over how the money is spent, leaving the decision to public servants around the country.

"Someone has to decide how money gets spent. It's either going to be Congress or the executive branch or states or municipalities," says Fred Wertheimer of the congressional watchdog group Democracy 21.

Lawmakers had good reasons for stripping earmarks from the bill, Wertheimer says, because "they are simply going to become huge targets for attacking the credibility of the package, and they may very well end up as abusive earmarks."

It was a wise political decision, he says. But pulling earmarks out of the bill changes the balance of power in the government. If members of Congress aren't writing into the bill how the money will be spent, then someone else must make those decisions — or, in this case, a lot of people.

"Because there is so much money here, and in so many different forms, there is no single pathway for the money to go out to states and localities," says Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution.

'This Is An Emergency'

When this bill passes, a Niagara Falls of money will flow out of Washington and into the accounts of state highway commissioners, governors and legislatures, local school boards, county executives — even mayors, Binder says.

"It raises a whole host of questions about how efficiently money can be spent, how effectively it will be spent, how quickly money can be spent, just because there's no set process here for determining how money will get out the door to create jobs or, as the president said, to save jobs," she says.

U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, helped write the bill and says he doesn't like being asked about earmarks.

"We simply made a decision, which took about three seconds, not to have earmarks in the bill," he says. "And with all due respect, that's the least important question facing us on putting together this package."

Leaving out the earmarks does mean Congress will have less control over how the money is spent. But, Obey says, "So what? This is an emergency. We've got to simply find a way to get this done as fast as possible and as well as possible, and that's what we're doing."

That doesn't mean Congress will be responsible if the money is spent badly, he says.

"The person who spends the money badly will be responsible. We are simply trying to build as many protections in as possible," Obey says.

Now we know. Not using earmarks, a decision which took "about three seconds," merely means that congress has less control over how the funds are being spent. So nameless and faceless bureaucrats are now in control of the uncountable "Niagara Falls" of cash. And this is a good thing?

Federal Self-Stimulation

Federal Self-Stimulation

Today our fearless leader has posted an Op-Ed in the Wapo, claiming that the sky will fall if congress does not give him another trillion dollars immediately. Democrat chicken littles in the Senate have taken up this clarion call to decisive action. Apparently the reason for the brinksmanship is that more and more of We the People are deciding the bill is a bad idea every day. And with good reason.

In today's Wall Street Journal Daniel Henninger offers his take on the bill and its concentration on giving most of the money to themselves. A sample:

Check your PC's virus program, then pull down the nearly 700 pages of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Dive into its dank waters and what is most striking is how much "stimulus" money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure. This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus.

(All sums here include the disorienting zeros, as in the bill.)

Title VI, Financial Services and General Government, says that "not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be used for construction, repair, and alteration of Federal buildings." There's enough money there to name a building after every Member of Congress.

The Bureau of Land Management gets $325,000,000 to spend fixing federal land, including "trail repair" and "remediation of abandoned mines or well sites," no doubt left over from the 19th-century land rush.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are getting $462,000,000 for "equipment, construction, and renovation of facilities, including necessary repairs and improvements to leased laboratories."
The Opinion Journal Widget

The National Institute of Standards gets $357,000,000 for the "construction of research facilities." The Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets $427,000,000 for that. The country is in an economic meltdown and the federal government is redecorating.

The FBI gets $75,000,000 for "salaries and expenses." Inside the $6,200,000,000 Weatherization Assistance Program one finds "expenses" of $500,000,000. How many bureaucrats does it take to "expense" a half-billion dollars?

The current, Senate-amended version now lists "an additional amount to be deposited in the Federal Buildings Fund, $9,048,000,000." Of this, "not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be available for measures necessary to convert GSA facilities to High-Performance Green Buildings." High performance?

Sen. Tom Coburn is threatening to read the bill on the floor of the Senate. I have a better idea: Read it on "Saturday Night Live."

This is no laughing matter though. It is nothing less than a bald-faced plan to take an immense amount of power from us and empower the Faceless Federals, far beyond what the constitution allows and in a way that the founders most feared. These self serving myrmidons of power fully intend to get themselves past the tipping point, and make more than half the electorate directly beholden to them, with jobs or checks "refunding" taxes they never paid. Prior to the founding of this great nation philosophers debated the very idea of a large nation operating under a system of republican democracy, and some believed that no democracy could survive beyond the point that a majority found that it could vote itself largess from the treasury. We are at that point today. If this monstrous idea is enacted, if this bill passes in its present form, we will have passed that point.

Fascism

Fascism

We are witnessing the end of what used to be called Liberalism. As Pat Caddell, democratic strategist said during the attempted takeover of the U.S. government by Algore in 2000, the party of his grandfather was taken over by gangsters. They just want power. And current democrats have continued the tradition, as they have moved liberalism over into territory previously occupied by fascism.

Current liberals are the heirs to Fascism, as they exhibit these traits:

1. Intolerance to any opposition to the Party line.

2. Destruction of the free market.

3. Nationalization of all industry, as well as;

4. Government regulation on businesses.

5. Free health care.

Throw in a smattering of good old Nazi Socialism: organic farming, anti-smoking, pro high minimum wage, abortion, euthanasia, gun control, speech codes, racial quotas, animal rights - (Yup, the Nazis were all those), and Voila!

You have the Western Liberal.

Democrats Have Not Changed

Democrats Have Not Changed

I can not read anywhere as much as I need to - or used to, but I rarely miss David Warren. He may be Canadian, but that does not stop him from being a more than average writer, almost necessary, in fact. He almost always gets it right. And so it is with a recent post about Iraq, and how things are looking up, and how the democrat forces are praying that the clock runs out on victory, so they can feast on another American defeat. But within that post, there is a great description of how the Democrats of today are alike to those of the Viet Nam era. As he writes:

[i]t is important to remember the history. A previous generation of these Democrats first insisted on shoving their South Vietnamese allies aside, and trying to run the war for them; then of imposing all kinds of restraints on their battlefield commanders which, in aggregate, made victory impossible. And then, when they tired of the war, they abandoned the Vietnamese to their fate, with the additional Congressional touch of cutting off South Vietnam’s supply of arms and ammunition. Finally, they just watched as the Communist guerrillas from the jungle were replaced by North Vietnamese regulars in tanks, driving openly down the American-built highways to receive the surrender of Saigon, while the U.S. Seventh Fleet was hovering offshore, with the equipment to "mow them down to marmalade."

It was a rout so ignominious, that it destroyed the credibility of the United States, probably adding ten years to the life of the Soviet Empire. It inspired Communist advances in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and elsewhere; and, little appreciated at the time, Islamist advances overtly in Iran, and covertly throughout the Muslim world.

Such Democrats -- not all Democrats, there were “Scoop Jackson Democrats” throughout the Cold War -- often complain that their Republican opponents “question their patriotism,” when all they have done is advocate a policy of defeat and humiliation for the United States abroad. All I can add to Dr Johnson’s famous remark that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” is the observation that traitors tend to be especially sensitive to the charge of treason.

Precious, absolutely on the mark. I know that fossils like David Warren (and me) are always getting back to Viet Nam, but we do need to learn the lessons that 58,000 of my contemporaries lost their lives for, or they will have given their lives in vain. I keep telling myself that, if only we can get past the next election in one piece, everything will be all right. And we just might.