Just On Principle…

I don’t like it when the government takes 40% of my money or nearly 50% of others’ money.

I do not care for presidential candidates who plan on taking more of my money. And if they promise to give more of it back, my first question is: “why did you need to take it in the first place?”

And so I do not like Barak Hussein Obama as presidential candidate.

Barak Hussein Obama’s tax policies are untenable, immoral, and will tip this nation into financial ruin.

When it is hard to make an honest living, it is easier to make a dishonest one.

We are responsible for the the results of our ideas: Barak will be to blame for the worst recessional economy in America, he will be responsible for making America a little more like he thinks it is now: dirty, vile, unworthy.

And so, just on principle, I oppose his candidacy.

For The Love Of Power

Political Power, unlike money, is a zero sum game.

In order for one to gain and consolidate more of it, another must lose it through neglect and carelessness or bitter struggle.

At the same time, power is not necessarily directly correlated with size. A large organization can run fluidly and freely given good leadership and skilled and involved members. A power-grabbing entity does tend to bloat with those drawn to power and the ease of corruption.

It is not size that corrupts, but immoral people.

The presidential race should give us each an opportunity to see honestly and completely the morals, ethics, and skills of those who would lead us but which instead tends to show us carefully scripted appearances controlled by any number of variously corrupt entities.

The candidates themselves try to control their images. None of them have nothing to hide, and therefore, they dodge and obfuscate.

The media, with it’s control over what is shown in living rooms across the world, has a powerful ability to shape the discourse. If it doesn’t show up on the nightly news, it didn’t happen.

Charles Kessler, in a speech before Hillsdale College summarized in In Primis, speaks to the difference between size and power, and how size and corruption are not necessarily related.

Juan Gonzalez, in the New York Daily News, tells the sordid tale of pork and corruption which has birthed an amazingly idiotic tax hike in downtown New York:

No one could recall such a naked combination of arm-twisting and pork-barrel handouts to pressure City Council members to approve the huge tax increase known as congestion pricing.

The real problem is always complex and deep, but a significant part of the root is that we, the people, don’t really care.

Like Charlie Brown’s baseball team, we don’t want to be held accountable for our government. We pass the buck to the elected officials, who pass the buck on and on.

If we and a larger percentage of the population of America took responsibility for our government, there would not be a problem of usurpation of power and conglomeration of authority.

An aware and concerned citizenry is a powerful citizenry and the bane of corrupt politics everywhere.

Predicted: Spectacular Failure

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer Blog, V. David Sartin lays out differences in the two Democrat candidates health-care plans.

Can two practical failures, moral evils, and spectacularly bad ideas be compared?

Hillary Clinton and Barak Hussein Obama can claim as many times as she pleases that their plan will only cost X, but when the plan is applied, there is no telling how high the actual cost will go.

A key fact of every other socialized health-care plan across the globe is that the actual costs far exceed the proposed cost.

And is it really going to be cheaper? In my current insurance setup I (a single, healthy person) am paying about $40 from each paycheck of $1200 (or 3.5%) every two weeks. Meanwhile I am paying about 15-20% in taxes from that same paycheck.

The most conservative estimates of the increase in fees due completely to taxes will be about double, with an expected load of 30-40% in taxes alone, most of this going to pay for the increased costs involved in Government shouldering the burden for health insurance.

Government is not efficient, it is really the antithesis of efficiency. If you were to give the government and a private company each a dollar, the private company will accomplish more with their dollar than the government. Much more, even with the corporate salaries and such. A business which does not use it’s dollars well fails.

Government has no such check. It can use it’s dollars as wastefully as it pleases and there is nothing to stop it besides oversight by you and I. And government does not like us watching it, despite it’s own desire to watch us and our business more and more closely.

Even beyond the obvious efficiency issues though, is a constitutional and moral issue: Is it the governments responsibility to provide health-care to each and every one of it’s citizens.

Individually we are each very much for personal freedom: allow us to do as we please, please.

If we surrender control of our health choices to the government, are we not giving an extremely powerful entity control over our lives to an unprecedented extent?

A private health insurance company can ask us to live more healthily, can raise our rates based on our risk factors and history. But it cannot compel us with force of law and punishment besides increased costs and denied service.

The government can.

And as the government seeks always to expand it’s grasp in every way: say as much as you like that it will not abuse it’s power. Government will compel us, with force of law and real punishment, to live according to it’s ideal of health.

Now is that freedom?

Or is having universal, expensive health-care really worth that cost?

Super Duper Election Linkfest

From Doug Ross: Gomer Melts Down - Huckabee claims there’s a conspiracy against him, and proceeds to lose the facts left and right. Such as the fact that Clear Channel and Sean Hannity are not affiliated. Hannity is syndicated by ABC Radio.

Come on Huck, give it up already. You’ve damaged God, America, Arkansas (on top of the damage the Clintons have done to that (otherwise) fine state), and now you’re just hurting yourself.

WorldMagBlog asks Christian liberals to reexamine the nature of their belief: Evangelical Liberals Rejection Of Reality (link invalid):

If you set government policy based on bad economics — i.e. policies based on economic principles that do not correspond to the way God created the world to operate — they will be counterproductive and bring unhappy results. They won’t “work.”

Hugh sees Romney surging and talk radio leading:

Once the score was clear after Florida –a McCain or Romney nomination– the Republican base quickly began to rally to Romney because the Republican base cares deeply about the issues that bind the Reagan coalition –tax cuts, originalist judges, free markets, and of course the value of unborn life and traditional marriage.

And WorldMagBlog tells us what to watch (link invalid):

Super Tuesday will be key to deciding the presidential nominees but don’t expect the race for the nomination to end today — especially for the Democrats. McCain’s lead over Romney is widening, and if he captures the most states and delegates tonight he should emerge the clear victor. Obama has narrowed Clinton’s once-wide lead and Democrats award victory based on a combination of popular vote, delegates won, and states won. Expect some spin once the votes come in.

Now, stop reading and GO VOTE!

End Of January Election Links

Obama and Clinton being children:
There’s a bold line between idealism and fantasy,
neither of them have grown enough to know the difference.

With big thanks to Sweetness & Light.

McCain is the front runner, but he’s not won yet. America’s Mayor has endorsed him after ending his own bid to become America’s President. The Governator is expected to endorse him as early as today. (Politico)

McCain will be a “hold-your-nose-and-vote” nominee because even he will be preferable to any alternative.

It is telling that, following exit polls, we know that liberals and moderates voted for McCain in Florida, while conservatives voted for Romney.

Speaking of Romney, he has some tough choices to make: Will he write the big check?

Huckabee needs to get his personal vendetta against Romney out of his eyes, drop out of the race, and endorse the one man who will support a real conservative agenda who still has a chance of winning.

Liberals Anonymous is looking for new members:

Liberals Anonymous (LibAnon) is a nationwide organization of current, former, and recovering American liberals and Democrats. Its sole mission is to establish and maintain recovery programs designed to help similar individuals overcome the plethora of congenital illnesses inherent in postmodern American liberalism with which they are embittered. Liberals Anonymous accomplishes this worthy goal by making the idiosyncratic elemental disease nature of liberalism self-evident to the afflicted individual.

(From the American Thinker)

Back to Romney, and Hugh Hewitt. Ace of Spades apologizes for not getting it right…

I can’t keep knocking Hewitt for being a bit overly enthusiastic about being, ultimately, right. If some of us had seen the lay of the land as well as Hewitt and supported Romney as the best realistic consensus conservative candidate, we might not be in the position we’re in now.

…and endorses Romney.

Jay, do you truly think the media darling candidate is your candidate? Come on, you’re better than that. I know it.

And Orson Scott Card thinks religion may play a bigger part of this than we realize:

After the Iowa caucuses, an African-American friend of mine from Los Angeles wrote to me, scoffing at the idea that Obama’s victory there meant that a black man could now be elected president.

I thought he was too pessimistic. But then came Hillary’s “comeback” in New Hampshire.

I keep hearing about how the pollsters “got it so wrong” and how Hillary’s victory came from the Democratic regulars getting out the vote for her.

And Mitt Romney’s defeat was also laid at the feet of many causes, none of which sounded particularly solid to me. Yes, McCain is something of a “favorite son” in New Hampshire now. But he also has another “virtue” that Romney and Huckabee both lacked: He’s not openly religious.

I suspect that racial and religious prejudice are both playing more of a role than anyone is willing to admit.

Read Card’s latest WorldWatch.

Riehl ponders:

Has anyone stopped to think that if McCain gets the GOP nod, there will come a time when the party has to draft a platform with an obstinate, if not defiant, McCain - an often angry man with a history of holding conservatives in disdain?

We need speeches like this more often. Bob Corker, Senator from Tennessee, in debate on the tax rebate checks said:

“What I see in this package is nothing but a political stimulus,” said Corker. “It’s a stimulus to make the American people think that we, as a body, are doing something to actually cause the economy to be stronger.”

(From Copious Dissent)

My chief argument against this package is that it is not tied to taxation. Those who pay no taxes will get as much as those who pay taxes. That is wrong.

This will tie economic stimulus and government largess together irrevocably. Government is a burden. A necessary burden, but a burden nonetheless. The way the government to affect the economy meaningfully is to lighten itself, not to quixotically throw money back to us who were compelled to surrender it to them in the first place. That is adding insult to injury.

Back to Romney. American Thinker asks why the other candidates hate Governor Romney. Some of the answers:

• He can win
• He isn’t beholden to special interest groups
• He believes America’s best days are ahead of it

And once more, from the American Thinker: What does that ACU score really mean for McCain?

So where did McCain differ from the ACU?  The big areas were taxes, campaign finance reform, the environment and, most recently, immigration.  There was also a smattering of support for trial lawyers; federal intervention in health, education, safety or voting issues; internationalism; and some social issues.

Public Service Annoucement: Tax Scam

To all y’all who just may think the IRS will voluntarily tell you how much they owe you, be careful. Somebody else thinks you exist.

Things that should tip you off:

1. The IRS does not contact you by email
2. The email address is not a government address. IRS addresses would end with “@irs.gov”.
3. Government emails use more graphics. All your tax dollars have to pay for more bandwidth.
4. The website the link directs you to is not an IRS website.
5. No legitimate business ends their communication “Regards, <their company name>”
6. There is not a copyright on email communication any more than there is a copyright on letters you write.

So just in case you get one of these emails, kindly do the whole world, and especially yourself, a big favor. Just delete it or report it as spam so your email service provider can improve their filters against such scams.

Hat tip to thatmarkguy.

Healthcare, California Style

Either it pays for itself or it’s 4 billion of your dollars down the hole in 5 years.

The State of California (sometimes it’s more a state of mind than anything substantive) is facing a 14.5 billion dollar shortfall, and yet, in their reckless pursuit of assuaging all societal inequities, the majority of the Democrat Legislators and the Republican Governator are seeking to enact socialized medicine in California.

Using additional fees on each and every employer, worker, and hospital, plus a $1.75 tax hike on each pack of cigarettes, the system seeks to ensure universal coverage in the Golden State.

California’s big problem right now is that it’s legal climate has driven all meaningful business out of the state. It is getting more and more uneconomical to maintain a business in the state as stifling and confiscatory taxes, fees, and regulations increase alarmingly.

As businesses flee the state and close down, revenues will continue to decrease in an increasing trend.

California is a good example of liberal policy carried to it’s logical conclusion.

Soon, my parents and siblings and relatives will be waiting in line at the clinics to received government-mandated testing and/or procedures.

Think I’m getting a bit apocalyptic? What about the push to require the HPV vaccination of all girls? Somebody somewhere will have some golden idea that sounds great and looks like the “greater good” and someone else will believe them. That’s all it takes where there is no accountability and more stultifying bureaucracy.

The health care plan aims to extend insurance to roughly 70 percent of the state’s uninsured population by expanding government health programs, forcing businesses to provide coverage to workers or pay a fee to the state, and imposing new taxes on hospitals and tobacco. If the proposal wins the support of the Legislature, voters would have to approve a ballot initiative in November in order for it to become law.

In a best-case scenario, the plan’s revenues would cover its costs in the first year, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill wrote in her review released Tuesday evening. However, by the fifth year, she estimates the program’s annual costs would exceed revenues by $300 million.

From the San Jose Mercury News.

Read more articles on this, from Google.

And what about the plans being touted by each and every Democrat running for president? If the State of California will suffer this badly, let us just tank the entire US economy while we’re at it.

Remember, reform is not worthwhile if it makes the problem worse.

I Am John Doe

I know this is a little old, but with news such as this, it’s time to start remembering we are each and one of us John Doe.

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to “report suspicious activity.”

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: “If you see something, say something.”

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing “scholars.”

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates’ clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about “profiling” or “Islamophobia.”

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Michelle Malkin started this here and here. And Hot Air has put together a bit of Spartacus with a bit of voice-over for this:

Congestion: Hell On Wheels - Part II

Drew Carey has some ideas on how to improve transportation. One of them includes naming a freeway after himself. How? Just buy it.

Reason.tv host Drew Carey examines the costs and consequences of traffic jams and explores several solutions that can get our roads moving. How does a speedy trip on the “Drew Carey Freeway” sound? Plus, one lucky commuter gets a helicopter ride to work, courtesy of Drew.

So if we go. Click here to watch

Along a similar veign… 

While roads and the highway system will never be completely privatized, what will become of gas tax receipts? The taxes were levied to pay for road maintenance and construction. Today, they are increasingly used to supplement non-transportation projects such as health care, welfare, etc.

When the burden of road maintenance and construction on public entities are reduced, are drivers going to apathetically acquiesce to the diversion of transportation dollars to non-transportation causes simply because gas taxes have always been charged?

Of course, it could be a non-issue because we might all have electric vehicles by that time. Not likely though.

Congestion: Hell On Wheels - Part I

This article was posted by twisted1ogic a few days ago, but we were having difficulty getting the video to work. We’ve fixed it now and I’ve bumped it up.
~matthew

Is there any hope to the increasing congestion that plagues so many of us? Is congestion a weapon in the hand of progressives to push commuters from the suburbs into high-density housing communities centered around mass transit venues.

I’m not into the conspiracy theories, but read about Washington state’s Sound Transit, a monolithic monster of a light rail program that is a decade behind schedule and asking for a tax increase to pay for cost overruns, $10 billion of them. That’s a “1” with ten “0” behind it… a lot of overrun.

Some people like the idea of the rail, but others have the impression it is going down. One columnist asks:

If we really want to encourage a significant increase in public transportation usage, why would anybody in their right mind spend tens of billions on a light rail system that only has 12 stops, when we can expand a bus system that already has 9,141 stops and can serve many, many more people for a fraction of the price?

Duh.

Some news personalities are going to vote for it because they think it looks pretty. But what else should we expect when reducing congestion is not a priority for the state’s transportation department. Anything could look pretty to the poor souls sucking car fumes in multiple-hour commutes.