iPandora

Henry Waxman and... his brother?

Pro-Abortion Democrat Bart Stupak joined Henry Waxman in chiding AT&T, Caterpillar, and several other large corporations who have adjusted their balance sheets in response to some of the first changes of the Health Care Socialization bill to take affect.

These large corporations have been enjoying a substantial tax deduction in return for their paying for their retirees prescription drugs. Because they had built their budgets around the savings this program gave them, as this program ends, they have to report the loss of this expected revenue.

And it’s significant amounts we’re talking here. After all, several hundred million here, a billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real cash.

So Henry Waxman, from California (“sorry folks” says this former Californian)…

…sent AT&T, Caterpillar and Deere a sharp letter, questioning the charges and saying he wanted top officials from those companies to testify at an April 21 hearing he has scheduled on the issue.

What, he didn’t get enough validation of his supposed superiority after grilling Mr Toyoda of Toyota motors?

Congress is on a power trip the likes of which I haven’t seen before.

Bart Stupak joined in sending the letter which, among other things presumably, said:

The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern.

Ah, the ugly head of good intentions.

Some studies (which no doubt the Congress-people held to savagely in order to assuage their own consciences for this dastardly deed) projects savings of $3000/employee for employers under this bill.

Unlike the government, though, businesses have to abide by what are called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP (pronounced “gap”) which requires, among other things, that expenses be reported in the financial quarter in which they are incurred. A significant loss of revenue cannot be offset, on the books, with a hoped for or expected long term savings. The company can report that expected savings in their reports to shareholders in order to rally them up and encourage them to keep their investments. But to use a hoped-for (not even really expected) long term savings to offset a current expense is a serious No-No. And if the government were held accountable for it’s accounting, it might actually know that.

So AT&T and these other companies did what they were supposed to do.

Even the AFL-CIO isn’t very enthusiastic about this particular provision:

Gerry Shea, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s chief strategist on health care, stopped short of calling for a repeal of the provision. “We’re very concerned about the disruption that could be caused because of this, with people being pushed out of employer plans,” he said. “With all the changes we’re looking at because of the new health legislation, we feel you don’t need this.”

And the President’s response?

White House officials said the provision would not affect job creation because it does not take effect for three years and any charge for a given year would not be large.

They’re reflecting the reality of the situation reflected, in turn, badly on those who jammed this travesty of a Health Care bill through. And one thing we can be sure about, people on power kicks don’t like being shown to be liars and cheats. And since their on a power kick, in all likelihood they’ll use that power kick to try and arm-twist until they get what they please.

So, word of advice to AT&T and Caterpillar and all those other companies writing down significant losses: Don’t go to Washington. They’re out for your head and they’ll stage a show and the MSM will go along because they don’t like you either. You’ll not get a fair shake.

Instead, take your message to the masses. Use that advertising budget to do PSAs on TV, radio, newspapers, and internet. Go viral with your message on Youtube and the like. I’ll even post it here if you do it.

Show the hollow nature of these good intentions. Show how blinded the Congress was by their own ambition and greed that they crafted this nightmare. Show that it’s not just a nightmare for you and others with large pocketbooks, show that it’ll be a nightmare for us as you have to cut benefits and trim payroll.

Good intentions have once again reared their ugly head. Lets cut it off this time.

Quotes from NYTimes article “Companies Push To Repeal Provision Of Health Law”.

Is America a Christian Nation?

Among those brothers and sisters who claim the name of Christ as their redeemer and Lord there are as many social ideas and political persuasions as there are sequins on a glam rockers vest. Or more.

Anybody who thinks all professed Christians believe a certain way about nearly any subject, even many subjects central to the faith, is misinformed or worse. They may be correct in believe that professing Christians ought to believe certain ways, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they actually do.

Especially in recent years, as traditionally more professedly secular ideologies have come to recognize the power and persuasion of faith-based arguments, no one political party or social movement or cultural idea can claim to be leading most Christians in it’s way.

However, there are many social ideas and political ideologies that Christians ought to agree on, and at least basically agree on their importance in the grand scheme of ideas.

First, we must agree that all aspects of life are related. That words mean things, that ideas have consequences, that actions are the outward manifestations of inward ideas, though they can be easily controlled and manipulated to give a wrong impression, positive or negative. We must agree that out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. We must agree that what one does in private is the truer measure of who they are than what they claim in public. We must accept that dishonesty in one part of a life will mean that person cannot be trusted in other ways either. This doesn’t mean we only accept perfection. It means, more than anything else, that we only trust God for those things that are rightfully His to do.

Second we must agree that there are standards of right and wrong, and they are not situationally or culturally defined. When Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, He wasn’t leaving options open. If you don’t believe Jesus is the only way, you’re very welcome to call yourself anything you please, except a Christian. We use labels to mean things and allow useful and necessary classification in order to function as a normal, healthy society. Co-opting a label that has meant one thing for centuries to mean something completely different is to no ones benefit except the deceiver. And referencing to point 1, such deception in more indicative of your own heart issues than any intolerance true Christians may or may not hold.

The same goes for other truths that are defined in human nature and through the Word of God. Killing of innocents is always unjust and immoral. It doesn’t matter if you’re all in a life raft and starving and the weak ones wouldn’t survive anyways. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to live with the consequences of your actions. It doesn’t even matter if the choice was taken from you and forced upon you by evil people doing evil actions. Taking a life never expunges the memories or heals the wounds. It only adds to the pain and grief and lays actual and real and deserved blame on yourself. Abortion is murder. There is no argument that can change that plain and simple and very obvious fact. And to subscribe to and support any ideology that holds otherwise is to accept a huge burden of responsibility for the ugly truth that is our societies acceptance of this hideous and unconscionable act.

Third, we must agree that in order for God to justly judge the actions and intentions of each and every person, each and every person must be allowed the maximum use of their own abilities to do with as they please. Acting according to conviction or spite, or duplicity or compassion, or cynicism or malice or justice or pleasure, it is each and every one of our prerogative what we shall do with our own resources, got by our own hand, multiplied by our own skill, maximized by our own discipline. If the government or any other group takes from the able to distribute to the needy, they are removing that able person’s ability to show their own character and quality to God and man. And they are, more often than not, removing a powerful motivator for the needy to raise themselves up through honest and accountable charity and use of those resources they do have. A system of mutual dependency removes the onus of responsibility both from those who have and those who need.

I subscribe to conservative social and political beliefs not because I want America to return to its roots as a Christian nation. I don’t hold to my standards and ideas because I hope to create a wondrous theocracy here in the United States of America. Useful theocracies perished with the coming of Christ. At that point the theocracy moved to the heart of each and every man and woman and child. The responsibility is no longer with the nation but with the individual how they will go and who they will serve. The nation bears responsibility for maintaining an atmosphere most conducive to individual expression of their own faith, preventing such beliefs from infringing on others beliefs, and punishing where such infringment occurs. The individual bears the responsibility for using what freedom they have to serve whom they will in what manner they deem best.

The philosophies and ideas our Founding Fathers used to build such a nation were predominantly those derived from the Christian worldview. Because God does not want automatons but people who have freely and willingly chosen Him, He give to us complete choice and builds a framework, a worldview that is most conducive to such freedom while accounting for the human predilection for sin. It is the Christian government that is most conducive to all religions coexisting as peaceably as they may.

I am not Christian because I am conservative. No, political ideas can only at best be results of deeper things. I am a conservative because I am Christian. To be Christian is a deeper thing.

Run away!

Vowing to “reverse the overall erosion in middle class security” President Obama is trying to reconnect with us poor plebes left out in the cold with all this uncertainty.

Probably because he’s had his pants handed to him more often than he’s done the handing this year, and mostly because of massive levels of policy-specific disapproval in the middle class, he’s trying to make good enough to not have it handed to him again in upcoming elections.

His pet projects to engender warm fuzzies in my quivering breast (Ok, that sounded a little weird): use my money to pay for every other poor schmucks child care, retirement, student loans, and elderly parents.

In other words, if you’re living outside your means such that you need more than one parent can make, if your primary retirement plan is to play the lottery, if you’re attending a college you can’t afford, and if your parents had the same problems, you get my money to square your books.

Yup. I’ve got all kinds of warm fuzzies here for you, Mr. President.

This is what’s called a buy out. President Roosevelt (Franklin Delano, to be exact) was master at this, pitting party against party, class against class.

The problem here is that I’m middle class and I’m not going to be taking advantage of any of these programs, which means, by default, I’ll be getting taken advantage of.

See where all these warm fuzzies are coming from? They’re certainly not Tribbles.

Here’s my (unsolicited) suggestions, Mr. President. Back off. Stay away. Shut my pocket book. Quit meddling.

Why don’t I like being meddled with?

People don’t like to be meddled with.
We tell them what to do, what to think.
Don’t run, don’t walk.
We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right.
We’re meddlesome.

Line 4 there folks, “we haven’t the right” (Thanks to River Tam and Serenity for the above wisdom).

I’m most comfortable when I’m left alone (by the government) to do as I ought. That is an important distinction from doing as I like. The government does have responsibility to constrain those who do as they like to the detriment of those who haven’t liked what was done to them. Government has no right to do as they like to those who’d rather be left to do as they ought.

Thankfully, I don’t believe Mr. President, for all his awesome rhetorical ability, is former President Clinton. He’ll not be able to communicate this program in any way that will make it appear less than it is to those who care.

President Clinton actually changed his policies when he say how the chips fell against him. He became downright conservative in his fiscal policies and beguiled enough to remain in power.

President Obama has too much blood in the game, is too invested in his Marxist ideology to change his policies, and so he is left only to dress them up. Which is something he can only do to himself with any success.

The New York Times highlights, of course, that this is nowhere near the levels of rainbows and unicorns promised during the campaign:

Mr. Biden rejected criticism that the proposals Mr. Obama was unveiling were relatively small-bore compared with the vast and sweeping measures he pushed during his first year in office. �They�re big-deal things if you�re just able to give some respite for a husband and wife, both working, to give a little bit of help,� Mr. Biden said.

So no one is happy with President Obama now.

Darn.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on how he’s concerned about the middle class. What about the lower class? What about the upper class? Aren’t they all American’s too? The middle class must be the biggest, most homogeneous voting bloc.

Pudge at Sound Politics doesn’t “know Rep. Matt Shea (R-4th LD, around Spokane), but… consider(s) him a bit of a hero, actually standing up for rights and liberty when most people, on either side of the aisle, don’t.”

Read the list of bills Rep. Matt Shea has submitted that were dropped by that august assembly.

In the critical race for “the people’s seat” in Massachusetts, the ideological walls are as high as can be. Incumbent Martha Coakley (D), the favorite for the seat recently vacated at the passing of Teddy Kennedy is defending herself against the increasing tide that is support for Scott Brown.

Coakley supports ObamaCare, opposes the war in Afghanistan, and favors higher taxes on the wealthy. Brown is against the health care legislation, backs the president�s surge in Afghanistan, and wants across-the-board tax cuts � la JFK. Coakley is an EMILY�s List prochoice hard-liner; Brown condemns partial-birth abortion and is backed by Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Coakley has no problem with civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Brown thinks it reckless to treat enemy combatants like ordinary defendants.

Other differences abound. Coakley doesn’t like being questioned about her stated and public views when they may reflect poorly on her and she doesn’t like admitting the possibly she may have been incorrect in the past. Even CNN reveals her follies. While Brown homeschools his kids, speaks eloquently regarding the true nature of government, and promises to be a serious thorn in the side of the currently prevailing powers in Washington.

Should Brown win, the Democrats are already threatening to block his appointment to the Senate, until after the �health-care� bill is passed.� We shall see.

Pat Robertson, again

Neil asks for someone to please take away Pat Robertson’s microphone. I agree.

But they won’t take it away because the portions of our culture that despise Christianity are much happier if they don’t have to misrepresent. Even denying morality and absolutes, they’ll take a juicy truth over a conjured or fabricated tale if it achieves the desired result.

So I’d love for that man to just go away, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to happen until God deems his time right.

Neil again

Neil continues his fight against liberal theology and liberal theologians.

That man has more patience than I could ever find in dealing with these people so invested in lies and fabrications, so intransigent in their fallacies.

I am glad Neil is that way, though. Perhaps those he preaches against will someday hit their heads on a doorpost so hard the voices of rationalization and self-justification will shut up, and they’ll see, through the might hand of the one true God, the truth as it is, and not as they wish it to be.

Keep up the good work my friend.

The way things ought to be

WinteryKnight is very much about that, hence his many “MUST-READ’s“.

The good news is, they all are.

He’s also very concerned about the plight of manhood and boyhood in our society. From the feminized path that boys must take through our public school system to the extreme cases of insane feminism beating down men trying to do the right thing by their children and families, WinteryKnight chronicles the sad story of the life of the man today.

Frankly, I didn’t know quite what I was up against.

But I’m glad to have found this new blogging buddy and I encourage you to check him out to.

Bonus for single ladies: he’s single, is a great catch, and has very high standards (which some of us are working to fix).

I can’t stand having pockets over full. Too often pants pockets today are constructed shoddily, almost as an afterthought, and the contents of the pockets bump against my legs and rub and get in the way and abrade.

But what can you tell about a man from his pockets? The Art of Manliness posted a selection from a 1933 Esquire magazine which portrayed the story of a man through the contents of his pockets.

Contents of His Pockets at Ten

1 watch, lacking a main spring.
1 report card, badly frayed and unpresented at home.
1 much damaged cigarette, unsmoked.
1 penknife.
1 rubber band, for use in sling-shot.
Remains of an exploded toy balloon.
2 marbles.
4 caps of milk bottles, won in competition
1 dirty handkerchief.
1 piece of chewing gum.
2 keys which do not fit locks.
7 pieces of string.

Read A Pocket History Of Milton J. Wurtleburtle.

The mad hatter's haven't been to the real tea parties

Representative David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, wants you to share in the sacrifice of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. But not like you may think.

His “Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010″ is a tax.

So what? What’s new and wrong about a new tax?

It’s the rationalization for the tax that is so ugly here.

This tax is to raise money to prevent payment for the war in Afghanistan from interfering with the monetary obligations piling up from the numerous other new and continuing social programs including socialized medicine.

In other words, the tax and spend quibblers on the Hill are admitting they’ve spent more than we’ve got and they’re coming to us again. And in order to justify this new tax upon us, recognizing our growing antipathy towards additional confiscation of our natural and just property through damaging levels of taxation, they claim it’s for the war.

We’re not fooled.

You can’t keep your yes hand zipped or even dream of living within our means, and so your forcing us to cough up more of what we’ve earned rightfully.

The co-sponsors of this bill, H.R. 4130, are the usually laundry list of suspects from the hallowed halls, Reps. John Murtha, Barney Frank, and James McDermott, to name a few. The unprincipled lot are after our pocket books again.

OpenCongress.org is an excellent source of information on all things Congress, and you can keep track of this egregious H.R. 4130 there.

Bill Whittle at PJTV notes that conservatives have, by and large, failed to engage the populace with creative messages.

Tim Hawkins appears more than able to do his part to make up for this shortcoming.

Politics can get me incensed . . . but this is beyond that now. I have been casually monitoring the health care situation over the last couple days and want to pass on some very informative and exciting links to you.

First, I would recommend everyone to read this article. This is possibly the most succinct and clear perspective I have on the whole situation.  A short quote from it goes as follows:

They [members of congress] had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs.

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”

As we already know, and this article points out, there is now an “upper class” of congress people and guess what? They have no clue what is going on in the real world. In fact this congressman does not want to know. He is afraid (and rightly so) and is from a liberal state!

Now I know there are a ton of videos out there the anyone can watch . . . but I want to highlight this “listening” session by the AARP.

All I need is a pipe:

This was yesterday evening. I was actually reading Anna Karenina, not Tolkien’s Silmarillion. But the Tolkien book was better for the picture.

Frank and Earnest, May 20th, 2009

No Goliath (or GM) is too large to fail. Large things have extreme difficulty staying on top of the market when the free market is allowed run. When they stay nimble and able to anticipate demand, it’s good. But when they fail, they must be allowed to fail.

Any harm done in the failure of massive entities is more than undone in the growth allowed in the smaller upstarts in the newly opened market

Frank and Earnest, June 1st, 2009

Hundreds of people who spend years telling us their so smart we should trust them with our money and our futures, and then they can’t balance a budget on a geographic plateau with all the money they coerced out of us.

There should always be a combative attitude between producers and takers. Tax payers should never be accepting of the amount the tax takers try and take. And when people in position to take taxes have shown they will actually not pay their taxes when it serves them not to, they ought to be thrown out.

Or kept in so people like me can make a big stink about it.

In our increasingly government-controlled (-manipulated, -throttled, -ridden) economy, we get to see how people who do not believe in the free market expect the engines of American capitalism to run.

It’s not like we haven’t been able to see this before. After all, the 20th century is littered with the corpses of Command and Control Economies.

But this is the first (second: FDR tried really hard too with the alphabet soup of government agencies he successfully wielded to lengthen the Great Depression far beyond what it should’ve been) time we get to see what happens when our own beloved economy is ridden by the government to extremes we’ve not seen before.

Exhibit A is GM. Now bankrupt and after accepting huge loans from the government, the government will shortly own a majority of this company.

And now the revisionist history begins.

Today’s Bloomberg report on the bankruptcy, paragraph 1:

General Motors Corp. won court approval on its first day in bankruptcy to sell assets as soon as next month after collapsing under $172.8 billion in debt and failing to adapt to consumer demands for smaller cars.

All well and good except for one thing: Consumers are not necessarily demanding smaller cars.

Google “best selling cars” and you get a pretty consistent picture: trucks are selling well, and so are full-size sedans. The only compact cars in the top 10 of any list are the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, and they’re in the middle of the list. In the worst 10 selling lists are bloated SUVs such as the Hummer. No surprise there.

Green machines (hybrids and ultra-compacts) have always been a lethargic segment of the auto sales and they’ve suffered as much as anybody else with the economic issues.

The Bloomberg article was reworded shortly after initial press this morning and has dropped the bit about demand for small cars. (you can still find the original wording at this splog (spam blog) site that rips headlines to create content for itself. Not actually linking to prevent follow spam: http://itsp.info/index.php/2009/06/02/gm-bankruptcy-judge-approves-asset-sale-on-first-day-bloomberg.html).

One of the major plans of the now government owned GM is to increase production of one of the most lethargic segment of vehicle: ultra-compacts and small hybrids. From  Bloomberg again:

One idle GM facility in the U.S. will be retooled to make small, fuel-efficient cars as part of an agreement with union workers, GM said May 29.

Now what kind of business is run by making cars for which there currently isn’t a real market?

Especially for a company emerging from bankruptcy, this kind of action is pointless and worse.

Unless the leadership of that company is aware of changing market conditions well beyond the awareness we’ve seen to date, or they know something we don’t.

Unfortunately for what appears to be the deepest desire of most the leadership in the Obama administration: you cannot control demand so long as there is choice.

The only way communist countries control demand is by controlling the entire market. And even when presented with only one option, they still usually get to choose whether or not to take it.

Because the government will very likely own 60% of GM, they will be very interested in one or both of these two options: running the company according to the ideology, and making a return on their investment.

The ideology of the current government makes those two options almost completely exclusive. You cannot control the market and demand in what is still, essentially, a free market.

My prediction: GM will continue hemorhaging money. Lots of money.

Our tax dollars will continue to be poured into the black hole of stagnating demand segments and poorly made vehicles.

Until the price fixing monopolistic unions are torn free and GM is free to hire talent at wages the market supports…

Until GM recognizes the necessity of meeting the market where it is instead of where it ought to be according to some Command Economy wet dream…

Until the free market is allowed to destroy those who do not adapt and innovate…

…We will continue to be force to send good money after bad. And we’ll be told we like it.

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.