iPandora

So, first we have a large number of nominees that have not paid their taxes. Second, we have a state run media service. Third, we are now being threatened to watch our words when discussing a political appointment.

Can anyone spell Anarchy. Sure we still have a governmental structure but does any respect of that structure really exist. Actually it does. That is why Obama is still the President. However, the problem is that there is no respect of the governmental structure from inside the government.

Point in fact, the government now owns GM (why isn’t GM just giving out free cars now? they have received enough money). This is not the government owning a government industry but rather the government owning a part of the private industry and crossing a sacred barrier that will probably never be able to be built again.

The government is filled with people who lie to the populace by not filing their taxes right, lying under oath (hm . . . does that mean they don’t take their oaths as lawmakers seriously?), and then run a state media service to protect their god from any negativity.

On top of our government not following the laws they make, they also support the reforming of the laws in our court system and the abuse of that system from the bench.

And now they want a 10% VAT tax . . . what are we, their next paycheck?

I am not called to politics (yet). They wear me down and wear me out. However, I pray hard that a leader would step up and change the tide. We have reached the point where we need some type of revolution. We cannot bring a leader to build on this system, we need to bring in a leader to destroy what has been built and give us a new start.

Burris is a crook. Whodathunkit?

And a liar, of the worst kind. Pretentiously hiding behind his squeaky clean image and claiming he’d never talked to Blagojevich about favors that resulted in his appointment to the Senate. Santimoniously sermonizing ad nauseum about how he was about the people’s business and wouldn’t allow sordid speculation sway his resolve.

There’s no sordid speculation here and that sactimonious sermonizing can go right back down the vile gullet it emerged from to add it’s putrid mass to the seething stench that inhabits that man’s soul.

Just a question, an honest one here: knowing the FBI had recorded phone conversations and in all likelihood had him incriminating himself with incontravertible proof, how did Burris walk the halls of Congress with his debonaire smile? Was  his conscience eating him at all? Or is his corruption so complete that he’s quelled all better things within him?

Oh, and now he’s “torn” over helping Blagojevich.

This much is true: as a parent we want our child to feel bad about doing wrong, not about being caught.

Burris is feeling bad about being caught. His emotional development is very likely so incredibly stunted it would take a redemptive work in his life to make him feel grief over his actual wrong.

So throw the Senator out already.

Judge Sotomayor has lots of things going for her: Obama likes her, and… Obama thinks she’ll do a good job.

Why?

A significant number of her decisions have been reversed, and of those upheld, her arguments have been faulted by superior judges. This indicates a consistency only in fallacy and not in skilled jurisprudence.

Reading through a list of Sotomayor decisions, one finds very quickly she is anti-business, pro-union,  and pro-regulation.

She believes business is out to hurt people.

She believes unions are completely good and no bad thing can come from them.

She believes generally that government knows best, especially when the right kind of people run government.

One thing conspicuously absent from her beliefs is a belief in the rule of law and the supremacy of law over all men equally.

It’s no unfair fear tactic to quote her (from the NY Times):

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life

Would a white male judge saying a version of that phrase last any longer than a water drop on a hot iron skillet? Of course not, and for good reason. There’s no place for preference or opinion in the law.

Justice is supposed to be blind.

Sotomayor, in her arrogance and conceit, proudly claims her judgement issued with her eyes of justice wide open and uncovered is best.

It may indeed her best judgement, but it’s not the judgement we require of those occupying the highest chairs of justice in our land.

Newt Gingrich:

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California last week.

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.

The elites ridiculed or ignored the first harbinger of rebellion, the recent tea parties. While it will be harder to ignore this massive anti-tax, anti-spending vote, they will attempt to do just that.

Voters in our largest state spoke unambiguously, but politicians and lobbyists in Sacramento are ignoring or rejecting the voters’ will, just as they are in Albany, N.Y., and Trenton, N.J. The states with huge government machines have basically moved beyond the control of the people. They have become castles of corruption, favoritism and wastefulness. These state governments are run by lobbyists for the various unions through bureaucracies seeking to impose the values of a militant left. Elections have become so rigged by big money and clever incumbents that the process of self-government is threatened.

Albany is even more corrupt and dysfunctional. The special interests that own the legislators in both parties have been exploiting New York for two generations. They have impoverished the Upstate region to the point where it is a vast zone of no jobs and no opportunities. Their predatory tax and bureaucratic union behavior is beginning to cripple New York City. More and more successful New Yorkers are leaving the state. In the face of multiple crises, Gov. David Paterson has shown himself incapable of carrying out reform.

…the machines don’t care because all they want to do is own the wreckage.

…look again at the 62 percent-plus majority in California in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.

In the great tradition of political movements rising against arrogant, corrupt elites, there will soon be a party of people rooting out the party of government. This party may be Republican; it may be Democratic; in some states it may be a third party. The politicians have been warned.

Read all about it: States have become castles of corruption

But Dan Walters, in the Sacramento Bee,  says we shouldn’t be as upset as we are:

When… new taxes expire in a couple of years, Californians’ relative tax burden could also drop further – but if the economy is rising by then, it could also mean a surge of revenues even when the increased rates disappear.

If nothing else, these data indicate that while income and sales tax rates may make a difference, the economy is the biggest factor in how much tax Californians pay in aggregate.

When the economy rises, so do tax collections, and when it falls, revenues fall with it.

Walters asks if Californians taxes are too high or too low.

It’s not that the taxes are too high or too low, it’s the socio-political philosophy which supports such confiscatory policies and uses the money to pad pockets and entrench power.

Crisis is the best thing that can happen to California. However, California is not going to do any better or learn a thing from this crisis due to the paradigm of the government.

As Governor Schwarzenegger correctly stated, the state government is in trouble and cannot just print more money like the federal government (though the federal government really can’t do that either without destroying themselves).

So, instead California must take steps to fix this problem. Their steps could turn them into the leading state again and make them a model for the other states. California is in debt do to overspending but cutting any part of the government would hurt someone. However, California still has to cut 25% of its budget no matter what.

The solution is simple. The California government needs to increase the value of the dollar to the government. Instead of trying to figure which part of government should inherit more money, there needs to be a search to find out how to get more for the dollar. Money for schools needs to be cut and then returned based on performance. Or, even better, schools need to be privatized (and districts abolished) and made to compete for the money. The DMV needs to be privatized or forced to run on only its receipts. Government employee contracts need to be privatized (the unions would just love this). The operations of state parks and museums needs to be turned over to private hands, or the parks needs to be required to operate on the money they generate.

In short, the government needs to require that its services operate on the money they generate and the services that do not generate money need to be contractually privatized or given funding based on performance.

However, California will not do this. Instead, they will prepare themselves for even greater failure.The reason is because the paradigm of a politician (at least in our society) is to throw money at the problem. The examples of this expound on every level of government. Right now we are about to throw $4 Billion more dollars at GM before they have even submitted a new restructuring plan (hm . . . why don’t they just stop selling cars and give them away now?). And where did all that stimulus money go? It just got thrown at the problem, but did it fix the problem? The examples just keep going on . . . Money does not fix the problem. Thought , precision, and execution brought on by competition solves the problem.

However, all that California will do this year is cut budgets and hurt people. There will be no inspiration to improve value or production. Instead, ineffective people will lose the money they needed to be ineffective and they will just stop. That is the future, that is what will happen in California . . . and your state and my state are going to be next.

As I’ve said before, several times, government involvement and control of business is a recipe for failure, disaster, loss, pain, hurt, evilness, etc.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Steele Gordon:

In 1913, for instance, thinking it was being overcharged by the steel companies for armor plate for warships, the federal government decided to build its own plant. It estimated that a plant with a 10,000-ton annual capacity could produce armor plate for only 70% of what the steel companies charged.

When the plant was finally finished, however — three years after World War I had ended — it was millions over budget and able to produce armor plate only at twice what the steel companies charged. It produced one batch and then shut down, never to reopen.

But epic failures on the Government’s part aren’t relegated to such ancient history.

Medicare is a prime example of government-run medical care:

Last year the Government Accountability Office estimated that no less than one-third of all Medicare disbursements for durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and hospital beds, were improper or fraudulent. Medicare was so lax in its oversight that it was approving orthopedic shoes for amputees.

And such failures through the history of government are not aberrations, they’re inherent to the system. John Gordon argues there are at least seven reasons government failure is the rule and not the exception when it comes to running things:

1. Governments are run by politicians, not businessmen
2. Politicians need headlines
3. Governments use other people’s money
4. Government does not tolerate competition
5. Government enterprises are almost always monopolies
6. Government is regulated by government

John Gordon ends his argument admitting that Capitalism isn’t necessarily pretty or perfect:

Indeed, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous description of democracy, it’s the worst economic system except for all the others. But the inescapable fact is that only the profit motive and competition keep enterprises lean, efficient, innovative and customer-oriented.

In other words, Government hurts and harms. Damage and destruction are in it’s nature. Why else is government the best at war?

And private enterprise is the best there is at alleviating suffering and maximizing wealth to the most people most effectively and efficiently.

Read John Gordon’s whole article.

So, the British government is under intense criticism right now. However, it has nothing to do with their foreign policy or their international interactions. It has to do with a miss use and abuse of the public money.

A member of the British government just publicly denounced the “claims” that are leaking out and said that the papers should stop leaking the information. However, all I can ask is why?

Accountability has always been regarded as the most painful, but most effective, method of keeping track of progress. Many of us have been through times where we learned the value of accountability. Often these situations hurt, but they always helped. So, why is the British government so afraid.

Because they are about to hurt. After years of fighting for transparency (hmm . . . that word sound familiar), the British populace have now learned that the public funds that are to be used to support a second house for members of the government, have been used for vacations, relatives houses, pornography, and many other trivial expenses not related to the running of the government. The populace is not happy. It has been remarked that they look at the members of government with disdain and every government member that has been caught in the scandal (about 1/5 of Parliament, and more information is still leaking out) is expected to not be reelected or is offering not to run again.

Some members of the government are lamenting this public outrage. But why shouldn’t the public be outraged. After all, public funds were misused, public confidence was abused, and now the government is berating the populace for wanting honesty. Yeah, I would be enraged.

I honestly don’t care about the British government though. However, the government closer to home isn’t too different. Sure, they are probably not abusing public money for private uses too much . . . but they are fighting for earmarks, they are involved in petty politics, and many of them disdain the populace that elects them.

In fact, the general attitude of many politicians (and the basis of any form of socialism) is that the populace is incapable of self government and that the established government must become their god. This god they have made though ignores our pleas for reasoning and bipartisan efforts.

Instead, many politicians have lost touch with reality and live in a petty world. After all, many of them do not work in reality (immunity, not paying taxes, dictating their own income, passing unconstitutional laws without hesitation) and yet they feel like they are the answer to our problems.

They should be scared, transparency is a scary thing and eventually it will come. It was seen recently in California where the government proposed a myriad of proposition that would increase taxes and employ funny economics in order to balance a budget. The only issue is that the government created the problem when they (unconstitutionally) refused to balance recent budgets. However, the electorate voted every proposition down (most by 60/40 margins) except the propositions that suspended politicians wages in times of a budget deficit. The people aren’t stupid.

If politicians are smart, they would become very careful right now. Sure, they have nothing to fear if all they need to do is apologize about not paying the taxes, but a lifestyle of cheating the public is a dangerous one, and payday may be right around the corner.

The fawning over Obama has not yet ceased in the mainstream media.

BBC headlines a story this morning with the appallingly thoughtless “Obama to curb vehicle emissions“.

First off, grammar police here to say: didn’t your mother tell you that every word in a headline or title is capitalized?

Now, to address the fallacy here: The President is not tasked with invention, nor with development. His expect forte is not to spearhead industrial progress, nor is his path laid alongside that of Carver, Watt, or Fermi.

The purpose of the President is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. And nowhere within that auspicious document, envied and imitated by many and equaled by none yet, does it state the role of the Government of the United States or the President thereof have either the responsibility, prerogative, or power to direct industrial invention.

The Times of London leads with the much less misleading but no less grammatically faulty  “Obama to introduce emissions curbs on gas guzzlers“.

It is true I parts of me would prefer the no less true but much more provocative headline “Obama Corks US Industry, Innovation”.

The BBC article begins by quoting the talking points of the White House Press Release:

The plan will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil by 2016 and be the equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road, White House officials said.

Words sure to bring warm fuzzies to everybody with fuzz between their ears, for sure.

I’m completely for innovation making things more efficient and development making things more clean.

I’m all for using the incredible wealth and depth of technology to preserve the environment. I love clean air, camping, tree climbing, fishing, and all the good things tha come with living in a clean place.

But arbitrary requirements which have only shown in history to destroy and hobble and prevent and impoverish have no place here.

A dirty little secret about gas mileage and lower emissions is that, with current technology, there is a bit of a trade off.

My current car qualifies in the state of California as PZEV: Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle. It is a small SUV, crossover-type from Mitsubishi. It is in the same emissions category as the Hybrid Toyota Camry. But it would fail Obama’s new “standards”. I only get 20-25MPG. Good for this car, but much less than the 35MPG proscribed by our Inventor In Chief.

One thing consistently noted in the reviews of this vehicle was that Mitsubishi decided to go with lower fuel economy to achieve the lower emissions.

On it’s face this trade-off doesn’t make much sense: burning less gas should mean less emissions, right?

But when you take into account all the various factors that affect emissions, compression in the engine, efficiency of the catalytic converter, richness of gas mixture, you will find that the cleanest burning calibration of the various elements is not the most energy efficient.

And, according to the Times of London article, these regulations and constraints will cost us more:

New vehicles at present average 25mpg, with most cars required to reach 27.5mpg and light trucks 23.1mpg. New Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules passed by Congress are already expected to add an extra $700 to the price of a new vehicle, and today’s announcement will add about another $600.

So in this economically difficult time the Savior of the Earth is costing each family who needs a car an extra 5-10% of the normal cost. So those claims about how these changes will make it as though there are 177 million cars aren’t lying, except for the “as though” bit.

It won’t be an “as though”, it will be fewer cars. It will be reality.

Add this to the heaping mountain of evidence against the Government controlling anything:

In Network World magazine issue May 4th, 2009 (hardly the political rag), Johna Till Johnson writes “Of subways, gov’t subsidies and broadband“. She begins with a question posed, by implication, from a friend of hers:

“Governments do a good job running subways — so why not the Internet”

Johna opens the pages of history showing that the New York City public transportation systems began as private enterprises operating for profit.

There were three independent companies competing for fares and riders.

Innovation and growth were paramount and service was excellent.

The entire system was flash-frozen, as it were, by the stock market crash of 1929. The for-profit systems went bankrupt and the city bought them all out.

The subway map circa 2009 is extremely similar to the subway map of 1924.

Since the government takeover, without competition, innovation and growth haven’t occured. At all.

(M)illions of folks who live and work in New York have had access to a more-or-less reliable, more-or-less affordable form of transportation for the past 80 years.

But prices have risen, ridership has stagnated, and there is no such thing as a realistic or even probable plan for further development.

Johna is talking about the government taking over the internet:

Sanford-Bernstein’s Craig Moffatt’s conclusion? “Broadband is today’s transportation grid. … The story of the subways highlights the fundamental trade-offs between competition – and its inherent sloppiness and redundancy – and nationalization (or, in this case, municipalization), with its inherent stagnation.”

But what about medicine and healthcare? With the government controlling all healthcare costs, it will control all medicine, period.

The greatest strength in American medicine is it’s relentless and constant innovation.

With government control we may have relatively reliable (or at least an expected level of non-service) medical care for existing conditions.

But what about future conditions?

What about the disease little Johnny is supposed to find the cure for in 50 years?

With government control the urge to control all but the corrupted costs will be as relentless as the innovation is today, and Johnny will be told his medical research isn’t cost-effective.

And the conditions we currently consider untreatable but with promising new developments may soon be, will be simply: untreatable.

Government does not fix things, it breaks things.

Government doesn’t innovate, it retrogrades.

Government doesn’t manage, it controls.

Nothing government controls ever flourishes, besides itself.

The proof is in the pudding, they say.

Timothy P. O’Neill claims the history and roots of the current members of the High Court are too similar, their backgrounds too homogeneous, to allow for true justice to be dispensed.

According to O’Neill, President Obama has an historic opportunity to correct the court. To broaden it’s foundation and strengthen it’s ability to work in this modern time with an open-minded understanding of our current situation.

Professor Lee Epstein of Northwestern has observed that “Diversity of inputs makes for stronger outputs.” Obama should cast the widest possible net to find a person who can bring a fresh set of experiences and perspectives to the work of the Supreme Court.

O’Neill claims as evidence of the problem the dearth of unanimous decisions in recent court history. And states as a possible cause the acrimonious attempted appointment of Bork and the travesty of political murder that borked Bork.

With the reticence of succeeding Presidents to propose any but established Federal judges to the high court, the court’s base has indeed narrowed, but is the non-unanimous nature of the court a bad thing?

I say not. And I say that a preconceived notion with an aim toward heterogeneity is not the solution to any problems the court now faces.

The purpose of the high court is to apply and interpret the law in difficult cases. It is not to have empathy or to make exceptions or to make law. Anything more or less than application and interpretation of the law is a failure and a grab for power not allocated to the judicial branch by the Constitution.

Reasonable people may disagree and the stress of disagreement slows down a mad human rush towards oblivion.

Such enforced conflict is not the best solution, but in our current era of stratified ideology, it’s pragmatic and effective.

The aim, in selecting judicial appointees, for any President, ought to be whether or not the person selected has an understanding and appreciation for the law. That is the only criteria which is reasonable.

Thomas Sowell counters with the basic argument of Constitutional rationality:

People who are speculating about whether the next nominee will be a woman, a Hispanic or whatever are missing the point.

That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group “representation” is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land.

That Obama has made “empathy” with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much further the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process.

It is always interesting to me that those who are so (mistakenly) tied up with the “Democracy” of America are so very un-Democratic about critical moral, cultural, and social issues. America is designed to be a Republic (if we can keep it) because of the innately sinful nature of man.

Those claiming the mantel of Democratic ideals are often the first to bypass them and the will of the people, or directly contravene it, by seeking attention and action from the legislative and judicial branches to impose their minority ideas upon the majority.

Fairness is too often very unfair for someone else, and the flip-side of tolerance is tyranny.

We are an equal society, say many. But Sowell cautions that this is often no more than smoke and mirrors:

We would have entered a strange new world where everybody is equal but some are more equal than others. The very idea of the rule of law would become meaningless when it is replaced by the empathies of judges.

Obama solves this contradiction, as he solves so many other problems, with rhetoric. If you believe in the rule of law, he will say the words “rule of law.” And if you are willing to buy it, he will keep on selling it.

We live in a society governed by the rule of law. Our society requires that it’s members be knowledgeable and intelligent and involved.

When we sacrifice knowledge and intelligence at the altar of equality we lose the ability to be involved.

As more and more power is usurped from it’s right and proper owners, we all lose.

Thomas Sowell ends his article with a somber warning we would all do well to heed:

The biggest danger in appointing the wrong people to the Supreme Court is not just in how they might vote on some particular issues — whether private property, abortion or whatever. The biggest danger is that they will undermine or destroy the very concept of the rule of law — what has been called “a government of laws and not of men.”

Under the American system of government, this cannot be done overnight or perhaps even during the terms in office of one president — but it can be done. And it can be done over time by the appointees of just one president, if he gets enough appointees.

Some people say that who Obama appoints to replace Souter doesn’t really matter, because Souter is a liberal who will probably be replaced by another liberal. But, if no one sounds the alarm now, we can end up with a series of appointees with “empathy” — which is to say, with justices who think their job is to “relieve the distress” of particular groups rather than to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

John Stewart gets his comeuppance when Bill Whittle on PJTV sets the record straight regarding necessary force and the nature of human-inflicted necessary tragedy in times of war for the  “snowy standards of (this) liberal’s Olympian intellect and morality.”

The video is 16 mins long but oh so very worthwhile.