Gun Show Bans Guns, Kills Show

Yorkshire posted an article on The First Street Journal that discussed Reed Exhibitions’ sudden and unilateral decision to side with the anti-constitutional, Second Amendment killing gun grabbers and the aftermath of that decision. One sixth of the exhibitors and celebrities pulled out of the nation’s largest outdoor sportsman’s show in a show of solidarity with the US Constitution. You can find a large (but incomplete) list of the boycotters here. That list includes Cabelas, one of the nation’s premiere big box stores dedicated to the outdoor sportsman, muzzle loaders, knife businesses, bow organizations and businesses, turkey call companies, fishing related companies and organizations, conservationists, television shows and celebrities, and much, much more.

Reed Exhibitions tried to shrug it all off as “a small percentage of more than 1,000 exhibits” as if Cabelas was equivalent to Kokosing Backwater Beaver Traps, but decided to “stop loss” (an investment term for the first rule of holes) and cancel the show. Granted, they called it “postpone” but if Reed Exhibitions continues to side with the anti-constitutionalist gun grabbers, there will be no show. Period. Because the celebrities and exhibitors necessary for such a show will not participate and the people who go to such a show will not attend. As it is, Reed Exhibitions severely and possibly permanently harmed its reputation with the very people it depends upon for millions of dollars of profit a year.

Hey, Reed Exhibitions, spoiler alert: I watched Red Dawn and your side loses.

Constitution lovers, check out the list of boycotters and support them with your outdoor recreation dollars. You don’t have to be a hunter or even a gun owner. If you’re into boating, fishing, camping, hiking, mountain climbing, conservation or any other outdoor recreation, you can find your equipment and educational needs among that list.

Taxes and the Pyrite State

From

Jerry Brown: California Will Have Surpluses

That’s what he says:

After years of red ink, Gov. Jerry Brown said on Thursday that California’s $96.7-billion general fund is now poised to end next year with a surplus, thanks to years of deep budget cuts and billions in new taxes approved by voters last year.

“We achieved the position we’re in because of tough cuts … and then the people voted for taxes,” he said. “We broke the logjam by going to the people.”

Schools will be the big winner in the governor’s new spending plan, receiving $56.2 billion in state funds, an increase by $2.7 billion over the last year. That funding is set to jump to more than $66 billion by 2016.

The budget also dedicated an additional $350 million to the state’s public insurance program, Medi-Cal, to help implement President Obama’s healthcare law.

Brown’s budget predicts only the second budget surplus in the last decade, with an $851-million surplus projected at the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year — if all his proposals are approved by lawmakers.

Jerry Brown says we will have surpluses. I say we will not.

We’ll see who is right.

The boldfaced parts were by Patterico commenter Taney O’Haley, who said that it sounded like wishful thinking to her.

Donald Douglas referenced an article from Investor’s Business Daily which pointed out that the overwhelming majority the voters gave to the Democrats puts the restrictions under Proposition 13 at risk, and that there are already at least two proposals in the legislature to weaken it:

Already, state Sen. Mark Leno wants to put a measure on the ballot to lower the two-thirds vote threshold for school district parcel taxes to 55%. State Sen. Lois Wolk introduced a bill that would ask voters to drop the vote threshold to 55% for library parcel taxes and bond measures.

In the Assembly, Tom Ammiano plans to reintroduce a bill seeking to revise the definition of an ownership change that triggers a new business property assessment. Voters’ OK isn’t needed. Even if the bill stalls, as it has in the past, business owners fear that its goal — squeezing more tax money from commercial property — will surface in other proposals, some with better odds.

The tax increases approved by the voters in November were temporary increases, adding a 0.25% increase to the state sales tax, and creating three new brackets for the most productive Californians, lasting for seven years. For a single Californian earning $500,000 or more, the new 12.3% marginal rate, combined with the new federal top rate of 39.6%, means that 51.9% of his earnings over the thresholds will be seized just in income taxes alone. If his earning power is portable — and for many of California’s top producers, it won’t be — moving to a state like Texas or Florida, which have no state income taxes, is a completely rational economic decision.

How many will? We can’t know yet, but we’ll see in two more years, when Governor Brown’s projection of a balanced state budget is either realized, or it is not.
_________________________________
Cross posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.

Food Stamps

Not News: Food Stamp Participation Jumped by Over 600,000 in September; Last Pre-Election Number Revised Up
By Tom Blumer | December 07, 2012 | 23:57

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its latest report on food stamp program participation through September today. I received the email alerting me to the release at 5:17 p.m., so it seems reasonable to believe that USDA and the Barack Obama administration wanted the new data to get as little attention as possible (as will be seen later, it’s currently getting none). If so, they have two probable reasons for wishing to minimize its impact.

The first and more obvious of the two is that the food stamp rolls increased by over 607,000 in September to 47.71 million, yet another all-time record. That’s awful enough, but here’s the real kicker: the participation figure for July, the last month of data available before Election Day, was revised up by over 150,000, changing that month’s reported increase from 11,600 to just under 166,000. As will be seen after the jump, no other month’s data was revised except August, where the changes were infinitesimal

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/07/not-news-food-stamp-participation-increases-over-600000-september-last-p#ixzz2GBYVzcIv

The Democrats’ economic and taxation policies at work in Illinois

Remember how our friends on the left were so appalled that the Michigan state legislature passed a right-to-work law? How about in just-across-the-lake Illinois, that liberal bastion and home of President Barack Hussein Obama?

Unions blast state on plans for underfunded pensions

By Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune | 1:26 p.m. CST, December 19, 2012

A coalition of public employee unions issued a report today blasting state legislation to address their vastly underfunded pension systems and offering instead to make increased worker contributions if lawmakers raised $2 billion by ending tax benefits to corporations and imposing new taxes.

Appearing at the James R. Thompson Center, members of the We Are One coalition said plans backed by Gov. Pat Quinn and another proposal supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers would violate the state constitution by reducing pension benefits already guaranteed to workers. They predicted such a change would be overturned by the courts.

Moreover, the group said the plan Quinn was advocating would “cause deep harm to working and retired state employees and teachers, negatively impact the Illinois economy and yet still not solve the state’s primary pension problem — the failure to regularly fund its annual required contributions.”

The unions said their offer to require state workers and teachers to pay 2 percent more toward their retirement was conditional upon the state making an “ironclad guarantee” in state law that government fund its pension obligations.

To help fund those obligations, the unions proposed eliminating several corporate tax benefits as well as imposing new taxes on auto trade-ins, satellite TV service and downloaded digital entertainment. The new funds also could be used to help offset cuts in other public social services, the group said.

More at the link.

Illinois is an already-highly-taxed state, with significant companies considering leaving the state due to the already-passed increases in corporate taxes. Here’s another story:

Illinois Among Nation’s Worst State Business Climates, According To CEO Survey

Illinois has been struggling to keep big companies in the state since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn approved an income tax increase in January. Quinn has been widely criticized for the move, and a new survey ranking Illinois among the worst business climates in the U.S. will likely provide fodder to the naysayers.

According to a survey released Monday, California, New York and Illinois have the “least favorable business climates” to corporate executives in the U.S. Nearly 25 percent of the 322 corporate executives surveyed said Illinois was unfavorable due to high taxes and “anti-business climate/regulation.”

“With the battle for business more intense than ever, states and their economic development organizations need to pay close attention to the results of this survey,” Development Counsellors International (DCI) President Andrew T. Levine said in a statement. “Whether accurate or misguided, perceptions about a location’s business climate often play a crucial role in site selection decisions and where companies invest money and create jobs.”

Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina had the most favorable business climates, according to the survey.

More at the link. But Illinois’ business climate is so bad that the family of an Illinois state senator is moving their business out-of-state!

Mike Frerichs is running to keep his seat in the 52nd District Senate seat from Champaign County. He clams he’s all about small businesses in Illinois. Yet, things have gotten so bad during histerm in office that his own family is moving their business out of Illinois and into Indiana.

On the main page of his Senate website, Frerichs is all proud of the “job-creation program” he had a hand in but the best “job-creation program” would be to make Illinois more business friendly and tax-hike-Mike has no desire to do that at all.

The business climate in Illinois under Frerichs and Democrat Governor Pat Quinn is so bad that even Frerichs’ own family is moving its business out of the state.

Recently The Champaign News-Gazette reported that Frerichs cousin moved his trucking business from Illinois over to Covington, Indiana.

Frerichs’ cousin admitted that it is all true and that Illinois’ horrid business climate drove him out of the state.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that Mike Frerichs is a Democrat.

Illinois is doing just what our friends on the left say government should be doing as far as taxes and the economy are concerned, and the result is a loss of businesses, a state government which cannot fund its pension system, and calls for even higher taxes. Simply put, the Democrats’ economic policies are being put into practice, and they are not working!
__________________________________

The section above the line was published on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL on December 21^st. Today, I found this on Patterico’s Pontifications:

Chevron Moves Hundreds of Employees to Texas from California

Patterico @ 10:32 pm

Interesting:

Chevron Corp. will move as many as 800 jobs to Houston from its California headquarters to support its exploration and production operations, the company told employees Thursday.

The oil giant will maintain its corporate headquarters in San Ramon – just east of San Francisco – where 6,500 employees work.

In an email to its workers, Chevron said jobs moving to Houston include employees in support groups involved with technology, procurement and business development.

“Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company email said.

I wonder how many businesses are relocating employees from Texas to California. Somehow, I suspect not many.

An interesting move. Chevron is moving support jobs to Houston, which will improve efficiency and (presumably) lower costs. “Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company e-mail stated, and it makes sense that such jobs would be closer to the physical activity involved. The corporate leadership remains in California, so most of the top executives don’t have to move.

California and Illinois are both following the Democrats’ preferred model for government: unsupportably high government spending, and a high tax regime. Now the Pyrite State is losing another 800 good jobs. Those jobs might or might not have been moved anyway, even if California were governed better, but the anti-business attitude on the Left Coast couldn’t have helped swing the decision toward keeping the jobs in San Ramon.

Cumulonimbus + AgI = ??

A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.

And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.

 
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:

• Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
• Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
• Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
• Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)

ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.

A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.

In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.

Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.

How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.

Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).

Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.

US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).

From Apin Talisayon:

As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]

As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.

1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!

The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.

The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)

RELATED
This medical device tax is just not going to end well
Economics 101: Schadenfreude!
Video: What free-market medicine looks like
2013: A Century Of Progress
Gee, why do you think the Obama administration waited until after November 6th to mail these letters?

How Did The Weimar Republic Collapse?

Weimar Germany had an economic crisis.
The Germans elected a bunch of politicians who scapegoated large groups of Germans, pitting Germans against each other.
German political leaders turned their backs on their Constitution, and the German people followed along, like sheep, out of a sense of expediency and crisis.
Free Germany then collapsed into a totalitarian state, which soon crumbled into total devastation, but only after tens of millions of lives were lost.

We are repeating history. But this time, there’s no gleaming beacon on the hill to come to the rescue. We are the last bastion of Freedom left in the world. And We The People are willfully letting that freedom vanish.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

What Our Future Holds

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• from spiritual faith to great courage;
• from courage to liberty;
• from liberty to abundance;
• from abundance to selfishness;
• from selfishness to apathy;
• from apathy to dependence;
• from dependency back again into bondage.

–Dr Alexander Tytler, Scotsman, history professor at the University of Edinborough on The Fall of The Athenian Republic around the time of the birth of the US

Having reelected a Socialist who has vowed vengeance on us and to bypass Congress and maintained a Leftist Senate which has refused to obey the US Constitution and Federal Law by refusing to write a Budget since April 2009, here are a few things I see in our future:

1. Energy inflation and food inflation (two items left off the “official” inflation rate) will continue to far outstrip the inflation rate, as the Obama administration bankrupts electricity producers and rolling black-outs become commonplace in this land of plentiful natural resources we will not be permitted to use. The inflation rate itself will necessarily heat up heavily.

2. Businesses will continue to downsize due to the undue burdens of catastrophic regulations and taxes, reducing the number of employees and turning many full-time positions into part-time positions, causing the official unemployment numbers to climb and the real unemployment numbers to skyrocket.

3. The poverty rate and dependency rate will climb higher, as fewer people work and more people hold their hands out for “ObamaMoney”, causing even greater harm to those who are the producers. The US will further cannibalize itself.

4. The National Debt will continue to skyrocket and deficit spending will once again increase year-over-year instead of decreasing, causing two more reductions in US credit ratings. The Fed, which has caused the absolutely inevitable skyrocketing inflation rate, will no longer be able to keep interest rates artificially low. The interest rates will jump 7 to 15 points in the next 4 years, causing the US debt service portion of the (unwritten) Budget to explode.

5. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare expenses will reach half the (unwritten) Federal Budget, and beyond, as each work to bankrupt themselves and the US.

6. Religious Liberty will be curtailed as Government forces Christians to either fund that which is immoral or dissolve their outreach programs. Churches will learn they cannot preach on certain subjects without fear of criminal sanctions.

7. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to peaceably protest the Government will be restricted. Our Second Amendment rights will be severely cut. Our rights against illegal searches and seizures will be infringed upon. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, largely ignored now, will be blatantly curtailed.

In short, the “shining beacon on the hill” that was the Freedom and Liberty the US provided the world will have its 50,000 watt light removed and replaced with a half-watt red decorative light. The US has spent the last 30 years slipping from apathy into dependence. We are now sinking from dependence back into bondage. And it will take great men and women of steely resolve and moral strength to wrest this once great nation out of the entropic hands of the Socialists and the Dependent Class. And that means fighting both the Democrat leadership and the Ruling Class Republican leadership. Tooth and nail.

Are there enough of them left?

Dying California Cannibalizes Itself

I have written multiple articles chronicling California’s Leftism-caused death throes. Yesterday, Californians, in their great wisdom, have decided to cannibalize themselves, (HT Patterico) devouring whatever healthy parts they had left. As businesses and working families have been fleeing the state for healthier locales, Californians have just finished voting to raise income taxes on the most productive of what’s left, raise corporate tax rates for the businesses which haven’t yet fled, raise sales taxes. Californians have also voted not to curtail Public Employee Union power, that power that has already caused multiple California cities to declare bankruptcy. What does this mean for the once-great state of California? It means more business closures. It means more flight of the producers out of the state. It means less tax revenue for the state. It means higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, more personal and corporate bankruptcies. It means more cities going bankrupt.

And this time, it also means fewer places to run to. Because the next four years will be Sheol for all of the US, as Obama exacts revenge on everyone who stood in his Socialist way (meaning Conservative states and Conservative people) as he unleashes his bureaucrats to write all manner of growth-destroying laws, free of the need to even consult the US Congress.

The next four years are going to be a very bumpy ride for all of us, but never so bumpy as the ride Californians, Illinoisians, Marylanders, New Yorkers are going to take.

Welcome to the Socialist caused Sheol, folks.

When Will They Ever Learn? NEVER!

In March 1962 when I was a young teenager a storm quite like Sandy came up the East Coast of the US and destroyed most of the Barrier Islands in VA, MD, DE and NJ. The storm had no name, but it probably did more damage in today’s money than most East Coast Hurricanes. The storm was simply called the Nor’easter of March, 1962. We had vacationed in Ocean City, MD several summers so I was familiar with the Boardwalk, the pier, and the beaches. At that time, Ocean City only occupied about 4 miles of the Barrier Island from the Inlet (create by the 1933 hurricane) heading north towards DE.

We did go to Ocean City well after the storm to see the damage. A large amount of the houses were gone, or severely damaged. One would think, why do they build these places so vulnerable to Momma Nature. Of course the answer is because they can. To me then I thought having a place on the beach would be great, just rebuild it every 10 to 15 years. Since 1962 there have been numerous summer and winter storms that have taken out structures, towns, small condos, and whatever else man puts up, it will eventually come down at the hands of Momma Nature. (She can be a real bitch like the last few days)

So, since we never learn, we have flood insurance for these fools. Towns, and/or the Corps of Engineer will keep pumping sand onto the beach just to watch it go back out to sea. The storm of Feb 1993 is a good example. The summer before had the beach rebuilt, and in the winter 1993 storm took it away, just to throw it back up there. Some how no one has gotten the hint Momma Nature is in charge of the sand beaches of the Barrier Islands, and not man. But Hubris says NO, we are going to beat you Momma N. No one has ever won that battle.

So Sandy, a CAT 1 hurricane got in with some other characters off VA and turned itself from the warm center hurricane to the cold center Nor’easter because of various natural ingredients (kinda like in the movie The Perfect Storm) and made its own version of I guess the Perfect Storm 2. Man has found out Momma Nature won again, and hubris will make these idiots defy nature and build again.

It was in March 1962 I decided that no matter how inviting a beach front property is, don’t invest in this fool’s gamble.

Schadenfreudig!

To borrow from a fast food restaurant chain, who borrowed it from American culture: I’m lovin’ it!!! Gimme more, gimme more, gimme more!!! And, pass the popcorn (coconut oil and extra butter, please)

What’s money got to do with it?

Why, everything, of course.

Let’s throw out some seemingly random points.

Barack Obama’s reelection campaign claimed at one point (was it before or after he was innaugurated?) that they would spend ONE BILLION DOLLARS (pinky stuck to the corner of their mouth, no doubt) on this reelection campaign. Even with turning off the online security that would’ve prevented fraudulent over-seas contributions and other fraudulent contributions and other election law violations, the Obama campaign is coming up waaaaaay short of that ONE BILLION DOLLARS (muhahaha) goal. Oops.

Barack Obama told the DNC and all other Democrat candidates “you’re on your own; I won’t be giving you any money”. Sucks to be them.

Barack Obama, in his original run for President, told the Unions he’d put on his comfortable shoes and be front and center in their lines, right there with them, as they pushed for whatever they were pushing for. (What do they push for, other than theft of private citizens’ property?)

 
So, what happened in Wisconsin when the Unions needed Obama to keep his promise? Wisconsin Unions found out they were in Flyover Country! As Obama flew over Wisconsin while visiting all the states that shared borders with Wisconsin. Obama didn’t have time for them because he was working to get himself reelected (years in advance).

And the Unions screamed in torture that the DNC and Obama weren’t ponying up the money they needed to achieve their goal.

Oh, by the way, the Unions were spending tens of millions of dollars to lose at the voting booth, all the while their forced Union dues were drying up. One of the biggest Public Employee Unions in Wisconsin lost over half of its dues-paying members in under a year, all the while, the Union was spending like gangbusters on politics.

 

Obama didn’t put on his comfortable shoes and walk the picket like he promised he would. Quelle dommage! Quel suprise! Obama broke a promise! A promise made to get himself elected! Because he was too busy trying to get money to get reelected to help someone not named Barack Obama. And he isn’t getting his ONE BILLION DOLLARS (muhahaha), despite his aiding and abetting fraud and felonies.

I, for one, was loudly cheering on the Unions. I strongly encouraged them to spend all the money they could, and then to spend more. For a very simple reason.

Moving on, the DNC has decided to thank the Charlotte DNC Committee for the free lunch. That’s right. The national Democrat party has stiffed the committee that organized and ran the Democrat National Convention. “Thank you for putting on this extravagant gala. No, we won’t be giving you any money.” It turns out the Charlotte DNC Committee has run 12.5 MILLION DOLLARS short in paying its bills to run a gala for Barack Obama and the National Democrats. And Obama and the National Democrats aren’t about to help the Charlotte DNC Committee in its shortfall. And the Charlotte DNC Committee is depending on future donations to pay off that 12.5 MILLION DOLLAR debt. “Hey, buddy, do you want to chip in to pay for an event that has already happened, to support a candidate and cause that lost? We could really use your money, or businesses could go bankrupt and people could lose their jobs because we can’t pay them.” That’s not going to sell.

Oh, by the way, the Unions (who support Democrats 99 percent of the time and with 99 percent of their dollars) were busy boycotting the Convention because it took place in a Right To Work state!

And now we have news about the terrible financial state of the DNC (who refused to help defray the costs of their own convention). From The Other McCain:

RNC Trounces DNC in Fundraising as Democrat Party Goes Bankrupt

[Link to site that I don't link to] The official Federal Election Committee reports for September are out [end link to site that I don't link to], and Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC is a complete wreck. The Democrats ended September with cash on hand of $4.6 million, compared to the Republican National Committee’s $82.6 million.

That’s nearly an 18-to-1 cash advantage for Republicans.

Worse still for the DNC, they had to take out loans to pay the bills so that they owed $20.5 million at the end of September, meaning that that (subtracting cash on hand from total debt) they were $15.9 million in the red — essentially bankrupt. Wasserman-Schultz’s committee only raised $3.7 million in September; at that pace, it would take them more than four months to clear their debt, even if they didn’t spend another dime in the meantime.

So, let’s recap.

Barack Obama, who told all the other Democrats “you’ll get no money from me”, cannot get to his ONE BILLION DOLLARS (muhahaha) goal, and is losing in the polls and is losing in the Electoral College and is being rolled over by the political tide (Roll, Tide!).

The DNC, who refused to “pay their fair share” of the costs to bring you the DNC Convention and all its lies and pandering (not to mention the complete face plant with all those anti-Israel and anti-Providence boisterous boos), is 20 MILLION DOLLARS in debt and has 1/18 (one eighteenth) the cash on hand as the RNC.

The Charlotte DNC Committee is 12.5 MILLION DOLLARS in debt and cannot get any money from higher up, and is depending on people to contribute money for an event that already took place.

The Unions have spent tens of millions of dollars they couldn’t afford, only to lose the elections they had to win in order to zombify their dead Union Dues — to — Democrat Election machine. All the while, watching their Union Dues dry up as newly liberated people used their liberation to extricate themselves from the Union leeches.

In short, all those whose goals would necessarily impoverish America are, themselves, becoming impoverished. Their money-making outlets are drying up. They’re going deep into debt, spending their future election money today. They’re losing their enslaved contributors. And they’re losing the elections. All the while, they’re refusing to support one another, as they each look out for their own selves. Which is typical of the sort of mindset that is necessary to be part and parcel of any of their various sub-groups. And the outyears will find them needing to cover costs for previous losing campaigns with their greatly reduced future money, leaving them less able in the future to spend the big bucks.

All the better for Conservatives. All the better for the poor. All the better for the middle class. All the better for small businesses. All the better for America!!!

Schadenfreudig!

Dr Thomas Sowell Discussing Dishonorable, Duplicitous Democrats

Via Representative Michele Bachmann (R – MN).

It’s actually very simple, Dr Sowell. The Modern Left have decided that they have the Orwellian power to redefine anything they wish to mean anything they wish, and to Sheol with the Truth.

By the way, a race traitor (according to today’s Left) made the comment and a man with boobs (according to today’s Democrat office-holders) is helping make the comment viral.

Five Truths Found On Facebook

From Our Country Deserves Better PAC:

It has been proven for over 400 years, in places like the old Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Greece, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that the above Socialist program leads to impoverishment and death by starvation. The Massachusetts Bay Colony tried the “spread the wealth around” idea and half its population died due to starvation. When they switched to “you keep what you make”, the colony grew greatly in wealth, becoming a net exporter of food. And did so in extremely short order.

So, you can choose the “death by starvation” route Obama and the Liberals (and Big Government Republicans) push — OR — you can choose the “keep what you make” route that has proven to lead the most people out of poverty and into wealth in the history of the world, the route our Founders and Framers set us on, the route the TEA Party Conservatives want us to return to.

The choice has never been so obvious, so stark, so cataclysmicly important as this election cycle. The future of America and the world really does depend on this election. The future of freedom, liberty, prosperity is riding in the balance. Freedom? Or death by starvation and permanent subservience to Big Brother/Nanny State?

Socialism: The Deadly Destroyer

Everywhere you look, everywhere it’s been tried, Socialism has resulted in mass murder and mass impoverishment. Nowhere, no time, no ever, has Socialism ever, under any circumstances, ever improved the well-being of the masses. Oh, it has improved the well-being of the elites, but at the cost of the masses. The tippity top of the socialist pyramid are living in absolute luxury while the 99 percent are destitute and in fear for their lives, should they even think something un-socialist. Ask the 60 million Mao tse-Tung put to death. Ask the tens of millions of dead in the Soviet Union (which collapsed under its own Socialist weight). Ask the subjects of North Korea. Ask the subjects of Cuba. Ask the subjects of Venezuela. Ask the hundreds of millions of victims of Pol Pot, Stalin, Che, Chavez, Castro. Ask Europe. Ask the Massachusetts Colony!

Everywhere Socialism has been tried, it has failed. And has been a huge cost in number of lives lost due to its implementation. In what would become Massachusetts, a colony was formed which followed Socialist tenets to a “T”. It lost half its population to starvation. Do the research. It’s a fact. When the colony switched from Socialism to personal ownership and free-market principles, it suddenly became a net exporter of food, which the lack thereof had caused half its previous residents death.

Socialism has never improved the lives of the masses. It has only improved the lives of the tyrant class. The liar class. But that’s what the out-and-out liar Baraka Hussein Obama and the out-and-out liar Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware are pushing. I previously challenged Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware to point to anything –anything at all– that Socialists and Communists espouse which he opposes. He refused to take the challenge, instead accusing me of avoidance(!) because I raised the challenge he refused to accept.

Equality of Outcome, a Leftist, Democrat wet dream, is absolutely and unequivocally Socialist. And, as I already proved via histo-facts, Socialism is a philosophy that leads to mass murder on a cataclysmic scale and mass impoverishment on a cataclysmic scale and tyranny that causes both.

Here is the challenge:
Any Socialist or Communist, prove that your philosophy and agenda has actually worked better than Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and the Free-Market principles you so despise. Prove that it has worked anywhere, and at any time. Or admit your philosophy leads to DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.

Communism, Socialism, Progressivism And The American Founding

[This article was originally published on the Fourth of July, 2011. I am republishing it today, the Fourth of July, 2012. As the election cycle heats up, the choices Americans make this year will decide whether the USA survives as a Free country or descends fully into Tyranny.  Brought to the front page on September 29, 2012.]

As we celebrate American Independence, it is important to know what it means and what it doesn’t mean. It is important to know what to fight for and what to fight against. After 236 years of American Independence, we are once again in a fight for the survival of the United States. While militant Islam is a grave threat from without, an even graver enemy from within is threatening to destroy the United States. That enemy is Communism, Socialism, Progressivism.

Communism, Socialism and Progressivism is essentially the same thing. Oh, there may be differences between them, but the differences are slight. As the sassafras tree has as many as four different leaf patterns on the same tree, Communism, Socialism, Progressivism and Fascism are all essentially from the same tree. Fascism may be considered the most unique of the four, but like the other three, Fascism is dependent on a large, centralized, and omnipotent government.

A look at the Communist Party USA Constitution provides some scary stuff. It is definitely totalitarian in form and function. And it is dependent on class envy and class warfare. The Communist Party USA Constitution precludes individual Liberty and mandates a loss of liberty — within the document.

The document begins immediately with class warfare and class distinction and class identification. There is nothing “individual” about it.

The Communist Party USA is the party of and for the U.S. working class

The document very clearly spells out its aim, within the preamble.

Our party fights for jobs and economic security, … with socialism as our goal. Only through the abolition of the capitalist system and the socialist reorganization of society… We seek to build a socialist society…

Three calls for Socialism in the second paragraph of the preamble, with two declarations that Capitalism is to be destroyed. Communism and Socialism are two completely different things? Not so, according to the Communists’ own governing document.

Marxists have long hailed its progressive significance… This legacy gives us, the working class and its allies, the right and responsibility to build a new society. We advocate an expanded Bill of Rights to guarantee religious, political, and individual freedoms, but also freedom from poverty, hunger, joblessness, and racism.

Not only a tie to Progressivism in the third paragraph of the preamble but also a demand for Constitutional rights to not be poor, hungry, unemployed. Add in a Constitutional prohibition on racism. Now, that would destroy the First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech and of the Press and of Association.

Paragraphs 4, 5, 6 of the preamble hit the class warfare gong some more, with ties into Progressivism and more attacks on capitalism. But there is something even more insidious in paragraph 6.

In the spirit of working-class internationalism, the Communist Party builds the closest bonds with Communist and Workers Parties throughout the world.

There is zero interest in National Independence and an overarching aim for One World Socialist government. Remember, the very beginning of the Communist preamble said Socialism was its goal; therefore, a single Socialist government is the Communist goal. That means the destruction of the US and everything it stands for.

Founded in Chicago in 1919, the Communist Party of the United States has an outstanding history in the struggles for peace, democratic rights, racial and gender equality, economic justice, union organization, and international solidarity.

“Economic justice” is a euphemism for taking from the rich and spreading it around. In other words, class warfare. And there’s that “union organization” thing. The Communists are very strong on unions (which, not coincidentally, are destroying government budgets nationwide). You’ll see more of that later. And once again, the internationalism and rejection of national sovereignty.

Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 1:

The system of organization of the Communist Party is based upon the principle of democratic centralism, which means that decisions and policies are made through democratic procedures, and that once a final decision is made, all members are obligated to carry it out.

Centralized power. And no individual liberty. Everyone is required to work to fulfill the demands of the central power. No choice in the matter. Does that sound like the America you know? Does that sound like the America you want?

Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 3:

Collectivity is the basic style of work of the Party.

You work for the Collective. You are not an individual.

Article 2, Section 3, Paragraph 1:

All members, including those who disagree, are duty bound to explain, fight for and carry out such decisions, as long as they do not conflict with national policies and decisions.

Nobody has a choice. Individual Liberty is lost. If the Party says it, it must be obeyed. If you disagree with it, you have no choice but to fight for it and push it. Freedom is done. The Collective, the Party rules. They own you. Is that something you want? Or is that something to fight tooth-and-nail against?

Article 2, Section 3, Paragraph 2:

While the appeal is pending, the decision must nevertheless be carried out by all members of the Party.

So, you can take your problem up the Communist chain, closer to the omnipotent central power, but in the meantime, you are required to do that which you do not want to do. Because the Communist Party said so. No freedom; no individual Liberty; no individual identity.

Article 2, Section 3, Paragraph 3:

Once a final decision is made, no member, club, committee or leader has the right to violate the decision or to combine with others to conduct an organized struggle against the decision.

A grass-roots campaign to shift the Communist Party in a different direction is expressly forbidden. Everyone is mandated to march in lock-step with the Central Power. Further in this insidious document, the Party allows its members to voice their differences of opinion, but only within the Communist Party structure, never in public. And then, once the Elites at the Top make their decision, all differences of opinion are vanquished. March in lock-step. No individual Freedom. No individual Liberty.

As I said, I’d get back to the union thing.

Article 6, Section 5:

All Party members who are eligible must belong to their respective labor unions. If no union exists at a Party member’s place of employment, he or she shall strive to organize, or help to organize, a labor union whenever possible.

You have zero say in the matter. You are required to be a Union member. No freedom of choice, no individual Liberty, no individual Freedom. So, you are required to pay Union Dues. Oh, and further up, you are also required to pay Communist Party Dues. No choice, no freedom, no liberty.

I almost forgot. According to the Communist Party Constitution, if you are an “informer,” you get thrown out. What is an informer? That, in itself, is insidious. That means there are Communist Party secrets it doesn’t want the people to know about. That is a major danger to a free society.

There is nothing American about the Communist Party USA. But there is plenty that is anti-American.

The Democratic Socialists of America are just as dangerous to the survivability of the United States.

American movements for social justice must of necessity adopt the internationalism of the socialist tradition.

Internationalism, One World Government, the end to National Sovereignty.

We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit…

Private profit… no more small business owners working to better their situations. It must be Collectivized.

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources…

Internationalism, One World Government, take it away from those who have it and give it to those who don’t. You are not allowed to become too successful, to acquire for yourself too much stuff. It must be taken away from you and spread around.

A democratic socialist politics for the 21st century must promote an international solidarity… Democratic socialists are dedicated to building truly international social movements – of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, and people of color -that together can elevate global justice over brutalizing global competition.

More Internationalism, One World Government. National Sovereignty dies. Individual Liberty, individual Freedom, individual choice die. Power to the Unions! Power to the environmentalists (while whole swaths of rich farmland become dust bowls where nothing will grow)! “Competition” also known as the Free Market is the enemy of the Socialist.

In the United States, we must fight for a humane public policies that will provide quality health care, education, and job training and that redirect public investment from the military to much-neglected urban housing and infrastructure.

Does that sound familiar? Why, yes indeed. That is the cry of the Progressives. Socialized health care system with all its mandates and freedom-stripping. Pump more money into State-run education, where all the other money did nothing to improve educational outcomes (but private education, costing much less, outperforms State-run education). Deplete the National Defense. And that “much-neglected urban housing” sounds very familiar, as well. HUD wasting billions of dollars producing next to nothing. CRA causing the mortgage bubble.

Democratic socialists recognize that for individuals to flourish, a society must be grounded in the moral values and institutions of a democratic community that provides quality education and job training, social services, and meaningful work for all. Leaving the provision of such common needs to the private marketplace guarantees a starkly inegalitarian class system of access to opportunity.

The Free Market and private enterprise are to be banished and replaced by a central power that will distribute everything evenly among everyone. You cannot become wealthy by your own ingenuity because that would mean someone else doesn’t have as much as you. And that’s a bad thing. Doesn’t sound very American, does it? Doesn’t sound like individual Liberty or Freedom, does it? And there’s that class warfare, that class envy business again. Very Communist. Very Progressive.

A democratic commitment to a vibrant pluralist life assumes the need for a democratic,responsive, and representative government to regulate the market, protect the environment, and ensure a basic level of equality and equity for each citizen. In the 21st century, such regulation will increasingly occur through international, multilateral action.

Internationalism, One World Government, the loss of National Sovereignty, the loss of Individual Liberty. And “equity for each citizen” once again means you’re not allowed to have more stuff than the person living down the street. Ironic that this was put in the “Liberty” section, no?

As democratic socialists we are committed to ensuring that any market is the servant of the public good and not its master. Liberty, equality, and solidarity will require not only democratic control over economic life, but also a progressively financed, decentralized, and quality public sector. Free markets or private charity cannot provide adequate public goods and services.

Loss of individualism. Loss of Individual Liberty. Destroy the Free Market system. Pay lip-service to “decentralized” public sector, knowing full-well that an omnipotent Central Government must be created. And there’s that Progressivism again.

There is no difference between Communism, Socialism and Progressivism once all the masks are off. They all go to the same place: Loss of Liberty, loss of National Sovereignty, loss of the Free Market, loss of opportunity to become successful and better off than the lazy person down the street, complete loss of Freedom.

And DNW quotes Fascist Oswald Mosley:

“The Fascist principle is Liberty in private, Obligation in public life. In his public capacity a man must behave as befits a citizen and a member of the State; his actions must conform to the interests of the State, which protects and governs him and guarantees his personal freedom. In private he may behave as he likes …

Every man shall be a member of the State, giving his public life to the State, but claiming in return his private life and liberty from the State, and enjoying it within the Corporate purpose of the State. ”

Oswald Mosley, British Union of Fascists

So the Fascists are part of the same tree with the Socialists, the Communists and the Progressives. The people are to be subservient to the all-powerful Government. Individualism, individual Liberty, individual Freedom is to be a thing of the past. And Fascism works great with the Socialist, Communist, Progressivist One World Government.

But that’s not what the United States is about. That’s not what the Founders fought and died to create and protect. That’s not what the Framers worked so hard to protect. And that’s why the Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Fascists all need to destroy all meaning in the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

This Independence Day, think on those things. Consider the grave circumstances and events of the past few years and the great peril the US is now facing from within. Shall you be one of the “Good men who do nothing” or shall you fight for America’s survival?

Blogging Meme

I’d like to know – if you blog for other reasons versus blogging intentionally to build a platform for your writing/your apostolate/your cat – and I am not saying that it’s bad to try to boost blog traffic:

1. If that’s not your primary focus, what enjoyment do you derive from blogging?

2. Do you consider yourself to be a “successful” blogger? In what sense?

3. If you could choose between having a post shared 500 times, or having one of your Internet Idols send you an email to say “I really enjoyed your post,” which would you choose?

From over at Darwin Catholic’s place, shared from a gal trying to figure out why we’d do this for no pay. *grin*  Other authors might want to respond, as well; not sure if the guy has backlinks turned on.

1) Well, I find blogging is a social outlet. I’m much better at typing than I am at talking, and it’s much harder to browbeat me online when I can bring out facts and evidence from objective sources at a moment’s notice.  It’s a place to say things worth saying, and that I just want to say.

2) I don’t think about it.  I wish that I remembered to write more often, I wish that I could sway folks better, I wish that I thought of great lines that I think of days later, I wish that I could develop some of the posts that I think of.  (Part of the addictive nature of Ricochet is that I can pop on for an instant, write a response, and leave.)

3) Definitely a nice email.  I have had emails from online idols—or comments, or “hey, read this!” type links!—and I have had posts shared.  One is pure pleasure, the other just makes it easier for trolls to find you.