Convicted Hammer Murderer Murders Again, Liberals Blame Guns

A man brutally murdered his own grandmother in 1980, got convicted, and went to prison. After getting out of prison, he once again went on to murder people. He set a building ablaze, then proceeded to lay in wait for the firefighters to arrive so he could murder them. I’m sure you’ve already heard a little about him. He’s the man in western New York that was on the news. But did you know he was already convicted of murder?

It’s already illegal for him to have in his possession the gun he used to murder the firefighters, because he’s a convicted violent felon. He already murdered before, using a hammer and not a gun. He murdered family. And did a stint in prison for it. But the Left, always looking for ways to prevent criminals from bearing full responsibility for their actions, let the violent murderer free to murder again. And the Left, always looking for ways to prevent criminals from bearing full responsibility for their actions, blamed guns for his next bunch of murders.

The solution is very easy to understand. The solution is also Biblical. Execute the murderer and that will serve as a deterrence. No murder, once executed, has ever gone on to murder another person. But a violent hammer murderer who murdered his own family member has gone on to murder other people outside his family after being released from prison.

It wasn’t the gun that murdered those firefighters. It was a convicted violent murderer who did. But the Left refuses to lay the blame at the convicted violent murderer’s feet. To do so would be to require adults to be responsible for their actions, and the Left is apparently incapable of the basic logic necessary to come to that conclusion.

No, they want to steal our Providence-given Second Amendment rights from us law-abiding citizens.

Make it illegal to carry a gun and only criminals will have guns.
Remember, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

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?

Texas vs California

From the Non-Hyphenated American:

The governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the governor’s dog, then bites the governor. The governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.

He calls animal control. Animal control captures the coyote and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases. The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and getting his bite wound bandaged.

The running trail gets shut down for six months while the California Fish and Game Department conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a ‘coyote awareness program’ for residents of the area. The Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

The governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training, re: the nature of coyotes. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.

The governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and tries to attack him and his dog. The governor shoots the coyote with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.

The governor spent 50 cents on a .380-caliber, hollow-point cartridge. Buzzards ate the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.

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.

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?

US House Of Representatives Vote To Repeal ObamaCare

The US House of Representatives voted today to repeal ObamaCare, with five Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with the Republicans. As I predicted, Harry Reid has declared the US Senate will not vote on the bill, just like Harry Reid prevented a similar House Bill from being voted on in the Senate in 2011.

More on this later, as I build the article. And apologies for the lateness as I was in the midst of writing an article responding to the radical Leftist Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware, and his unhinged, fact-free rant about Texas, which included the “severe drought” and how everything was going kaput, when I had to take a 3-hour break due to a strong thunderstorm which caused rivers of water down the gravel drive and heavy ponding in the yard, and caused an internet outage for me.

_____________________
From The Hill (HT Hot Air):

The five Democrats who supported repeal were Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Larry Kissell (N.C.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and Mike Ross (Ark.).

Matheson voted against the original law but did not vote for its repeal last year.

In a statement after the vote, Matheson, who faces a tough reelection bid, said he had voted against the healthcare bill “at every opportunity” but did not mention last year’s opposition to repeal. He cited statistics showing that healthcare costs are still projected to rise at a greater rate than the economy, indicating the law has had little if any impact.

“With the Supreme Court ruling behind us, and as I reflect on my conversations with Utahans, I think about protecting the future of our economy,” he said. “We must scrap this flawed effort once and for all, start over and do it right.”

Note: Jim Matheson (D – Utah) is up against Truth Before Dishonor endorsed Mia Love, and in a fight for his political life. That could very easily explain both his vote and his dishonest and dishonorable statement after his vote.

Kissell, also in a tough reelection fight, had earlier announced his intention to switch his position on repeal, citing the law’s continued unpopularity with his constituents.

The other three — Boren, McIntyre and Ross — all voted to scrap the law in 2011 and opposed its enactment.

I have updated my ObamaCare Roll Call page with today’s vote, with an extremely modified version of a roll call. If you wish to see the actual Roll Call as provided by the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, it is provided here.

The Oh So Terrible Condition Of Texas

Perry, the radical Leftist resident of Delaware who comments at The First Street Journal, decided to spout off “facts” that somehow “prove” Texas is terrible, and worse than the rest of the country.

Well of course our Editor wants to claim a pattern here, but he isn’t willing to peel back the curtain here, realizing that there is more to the quality of life than so-called business friendliness.

Consider this:

* Unemployment is higher than the national average,

* TX has a serious budget shortfall,

* TX has had to seriously cut back on education,

* TX is running out of groundwater, with no solution in sight,

* TX is currently in the second year of a serious drought,

* cattle and grain production has dropped precipitously,

* highest uninsured health care in the country,

* TX is turning down the medicaid expansion federal money,

* John Hitchcock lives in TX,

* and the highest number of death penalties in the country.

You name it, problems in TX are severe.

“Unemployment [in Texas] is higher than the national average.” From his very comment, he includes — but does not link to — something said on CBS last autumn, which included this dandy little statement: Texas’ unemployment has nearly reached the national unemployment level. We’ll check out that claim soon, but let’s point out here that Perry Hood’s claim at the top of his comment is directly contradicted by his link-free quote (something he does with regularity, quoting something without providing a link or a name) at the bottom of his comment.

As I previously noted in an article which made “Post of the Day” at Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion on June 21, the May unemployment figures showed Texas has had a lower unemployment rate than the national average for 65 straight months (and that will only continue to be the case). It’s some strange alternate universe in which Perry the Delaware Socialist lives where Texas’ 6.9 percent May unemployment rate is somehow worse than the US 8.2 percent unemployment rate.

From June 2006 to June 2011, Texas was one of only nine states plus DC that added jobs. During that time-frame, Texas added 537,500 jobs, or over 73 percent of the total jobs added (a rate of 2,138 new jobs per 100,000 population). At the same time the US lost 4,818,000 jobs (a rate of 1,561 jobs lost per 100,000 population). And, point in fact, during 2006 and up till March, 2007, the US was still adding jobs at a rate fast enough to easily keep pace with the population growth. So that only amplifies the rate at which the US lost jobs while Democrats held control of Congress.

In an article I wrote noting again how the Leftist-ruled states of California and Illinois are shedding jobs and productive people with their tax-heavy and regulation-heavy (especially in California) agenda, I pointed out yet another Leftist state’s demise. Maryland, in its anti-Tenth Commandment “soak the rich” Class Envy and Class Warfare mentality created a new tax on the wealthy, most productive residents. What happened? They fled the state and went to more Conservative, more business-friendly, less tax-heavy states. And, in violating the Tenth Commandment, Maryland’s tax revenue stream actually shrank. By quite a bit. Maryland raised taxes on “the rich” and lost money in the process. That’s an outcome we Conservatives have been loudly declaring would be the case with the Leftists’ Class Warfare “soak the rich” mentality. Of course, the “economics experts” are completely shocked to find when the Federal Government puts policies in place that closely track what those self-same “experts” espouse, the results are very notably dismal — again and again and again and again, providing the absolutely knee-slappingly hilarious, yet sobering “unexpected” mantra that those “experts” have been everpresently spouting for the past three and a half years.

Now, Texas does have its share of problems. Barack Obama’s Contempt of Federal Court activities in shutting down off-shore oil drilling and exploration, one of Texas’ largest industries. Barack Obama’s EPA working feverishly to shut down some of Texas’ electric generating plants while Texas is growing much more quickly than the rest of the nation in terms of both population and jobs. And, of course, Texas’ decades-long (or should I say Century-Long) explosive population growth, far exceeding that of the US as a whole, which means Texas has to produce far greater numbers of jobs per 100,000 population than the US as a whole — just to keep pace with population growth.

And how is Texas doing? The state’s unemployment numbers have remained well below that of the US for years and the unemployment rate is dropping faster than the US as a whole. As forecast by the Conservatives among us.

“Texas has a serious budget shortfall.” No, that would be Illinois, California, Maryland, New York, etc, etc. Places the Democrats have run into the ground. Texas has a Constitutional requirement to run a balanced budget. And its biennial Budget is balanced and was balanced without raising taxes, much to the chagrin of Paul Burka, Leftist Senior Editor of Texas Monthly magazine, whose rants I documented and shredded in an 8,500 word article that Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion also named “Post of the Day”. If you don’t want to read the entire thing (and you should), drop down near the bottom where Paul Burka rants and raves about the absolutely demanding, governing-free Conservatives and their orgasmic feeding frenzy of not eating. It’s a real knee-slapper.

“TX has had to seriously cut back on education.” Let’s let IowaHawk handle this one. In his first article, IowaHawk provides this:

So how does brokeass, dumbass, redneck Texas stack up against progressive unionized Wisconsin?

2009 4th Grade Math

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

2009 8th Grade Math

White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)

2009 4th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)

2009 8th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)

2009 4th Grade Science

White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)

2009 8th Grade Science

White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)

To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students.

In his second article on the subject, IowaHawk provides even more evidence that destroys the Leftist meme.

Average ACT Composite Score 2010
White students: Wisconsin 23.5, Texas 23.3 (national 23.1)
Black students: Texas 17.6, Wisconsin 16.9 (national 17.5)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 19.8, Texas 18.7 (national 19.4)
…
As an aside, reader Dr. William Borland (Principal Research Engineer, Georgia Institute of Technology, lah-tee-dah) points out that 2010 state-specific public high school dropout rates are now available- and bolster my case.

2010 Public High School Event Dropout Rates
White students: Wisconsin 1.4%, Texas 1.8% (national average 2.8%)
Black students: Texas 6.3%, Wisconsin 7.8% (national average 6.7%)
Hispanic students: Texas 5.3%, Wisconsin 5.4% (national average 6.0%)

While no dropout event is good, Texas is hardly the outlier national shame claimed by Krugman. In fact, it has below national average dropout rates for all 3 ethnic groups considered, consistently in both 2007 and 2010 measures. Among white students, Wisconsin had the second lowest state event dropout rate (NJ #1), where Texas was tied for 7th. Among black students, Wisconsin was #39, Texas tied for #24. Among Hispanic students, Wisconsin was tied for #21, Texas was tied for #17.

Here’s a chart from a September17, 2009 article at Demablogue:

We have been dumping more money per student into Public Education for over 40 years without seeing any improvement in test scores. Obviously, to any reasonable person, dumping even more money into the broken system will not fix the broken system. Continuing on with IowaHawk:

Hey, it’s been a fun two days based on a simple 30-minute study of educational statistics. As regards the effect of teacher collective bargaining on student learning, I wouldn’t call what I did conclusive; just pointing out the fallacy of aggregate statistical comparisons. For a definitive study of the effect, I would point to Caroline Hoxby’s (Harvard/ MIT /Stanford, lah tee dah) 1996 QJE paper [pdf], which statistically controls for additional variables. Her main conclusions: collective bargaining increases the input provided to schools (spending, construction and the like), but actual decreases school output (test scores and the like). If you don’t like Greek letters, here’s Hoxby discussing the effect on YouTube.

[Video added.]

Perry would do very well not to listen to Paul Krugman as the above very clearly shows the fraudulent huckster’s tomfoolery. Also, from IowaHawk:

But hey, if credentials and oak-framed vellum degrees are your bag, let me share this email with you:

Dear Mr. Burger:
I edit educationnext.org. I have a blog on the site. I would like to do a blog that will depends heavily on your material,quoting you at length, as I also think Krugman is a nobel prize winning fraud and because your data are intrinsically interesting… I will link the piece to your site, obviously.

Paul E. Peterson
Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government
Director, Program on Education Policy and Governance
Harvard University
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Degrees-y enough for you? Despite getting my name wrong, I accepted Prof. Peterson’s request and encouraged him to go at my results hammer-and-tongs. His comments are here.

As for Mr. Krugman, I’ll only note the remarks of his former ombudsman at the New York Times, Daniel Okrent:

“Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.”

No shit, Sherlock.

“TX is running out of groundwater, with no solution in sight.” “TX is currently in the second year of a serious drought.” I don’t know what “groundwater” Perry is talking about. Perhaps it’s the water that’s on the ground, which is directly affected by rain. Because there’s plenty of water under the ground. And I had to stop researching and writing this article for about 3 hours as a strong thunderstorm swept through the area, providing rivers of water running down the gravel drive and ponding heavily in the yard. But Perry doesn’t want people to know that Texas has had one of its rainiest Springs in many years, far above average precipitation.

“Cattle and grain production has dropped precipitously.” Because only Texans eat the beef from Texas cattle. There’s no export to other states or other countries. And no other states ever get effected by droughts (the Carolinas and Georgia a few years ago) or floods (the Great Plains states a few years ago). What foolish claptrap. And with the far wetter-than-average Spring, which is continuing into Summer, the cattle-and-grain issue will very easily resolve itself, without government intervention. That’s not to say the same thing about California’s very agriculturally rich Central Valley, where radical Leftist environmentalist wackos in the California EPA and the US EPA turned the water off, destroying the agriculture, destroying businesses, destroying employment, destroying private wealth, destroying lives. California’s Central Valley problem could be very easily solved. Turn the water back on, you radical Leftist nutjobs!

“Highest uninsured health care in the country.” That may or may not be the case, but Texans are a very Independent, Liberty Loving people on the whole. If they do not want to buy health insurance, that should be their prerogative, and absolutely no concern for the Socialist busy-bodies like Perry. Heck, for individual adults under 30, health insurance is a bad investment, overall. They don’t tend to get all that sick, so their overpayments just go to take care of other people and not themselves. That’s not what makes a good investment.

“TX is turning down the medicaid expansion federal money.” Imagine that. A principled position for Independence and Liberty, refusing “free” OPM (other people’s money) with all the Federal regulations, restrictions, throat-slashing strings attached, coming from an “entitlement” program that is quickly becoming bankrupt. How dare Texas stand up for fiscal responsibility, Liberty, Freedom and Principle! Texas should help bankrupt the US so we can become a Socialist dictatorship that much faster!

“John Hitchcock lives in TX.” That’s just a hate-filled personal attack coming from The First Street Journal’s resident hater. That is all.

“And the highest number of death penalties in the country.” This is a good thing. A very good thing. Violent felons who snuff out innocent lives, be warned. Try that in Texas and you lose your own life. Also, Texans are among the most heavily armed, and we have the Castle Doctrine. Enter my property uninvited after dark at your own risk.

Of course, I produced the evidence a month ago regarding Texas’ economic strength compared to the rest of the country.

The economic strength rankings of the US’s 366 metropolitan areas is out, and the Killeen-Fort Hood-Temple area (where I live and work) is 30th nationally. Dover, Delaware is ranked 158, Detroit is 215, Cleveland, Ohio is 185.

Overall, Texas is doing very well, with Austin at 5, San Antonio 10, Houston 12, Dallas-Fort Worth 14, Killeen-Temple 30, and Corpus Christi 49.

Among other things, cost of living and job growth are strongly considered to create the rankings.

Let’s do a little math. Of the 366 metropolitan areas in the US, Texas has 6 in the top 49. Washington DC, with its absolute dependence on Federal Government jobs and not economy-growing jobs, ranks number 1. With 6 metropolitan areas in the top 49, each of those six Texas metropolitan areas is guaranteed to have outperformed at least six entire states. With 4 of the top 14 metropolitan areas, each of those four Texas metropolitan areas is guaranteed to have outperformed at least 39 entire states. Is it any wonder Texas is the number one state in the Union, economically?

House To Vote On ObamaCare Repeal Tomorrow

The first vote to repeal ObamaCare since the outrageous Supreme Court ruling upholding it on “taxing non-activity” grounds is scheduled for the US House of Representatives tomorrow. With the majority of voters still in favor of full repeal, rumor has it some Democrats will cross the line and vote with the Republicans to repeal the monstrosity. (HT Hot Air Headlines) What will the US Senate do? The same thing it does with a great many House-passed Bills: refuse to bring it up for a vote, because doing so will only serve to hurt Democrat election chances. Just remember, every Democrat in the Senate at the time ObamaCare came up for a vote the first time around voted in favor of ObamaCare.

I intend to update my ObamaCare Roll Call page with tomorrow’s Roll call. (And I hope that I actually do update it. heh)

It is rare that an action which took place three years prior to an election has such a heavy impact on that election due to the “short attention span” of the American electorate, but these are unique times. Democrats will lose their election bids as a direct result of ObamaCare and the majority desire for its repeal. And the fact that the destructiveness of ObamaCare has remained in the spotlight ever since its anti-American start.

Stay tuned.

July 4th, 1776 – The Declaration of Independence (Which has turned into the Sheep of Dependency)

Declaration of Independence

(Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. Written 236 years ago and is still relevent today. This document represents a primary resource in understanding the history of America. The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.)

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

UPDATE (John Hitchcock): An online link to the US Declaration of Independence, along with the list of signers and brief biographies on each, can be found in the left-hand sidebar. An online link to the US Constitution, annotated, and with the list of original signers, can also be found in the left-hand sidebar.

The Ever-Present “Unexpected” Strikes Again

Hot Air’s Erika Johnsen, writing about the lower levels of support for Obama among the very young voters, hits on economics. And the ever-present “unexpected” laugh line strikes again.

And with Obama at the helm, it isn’t looking like there’s an end in sight — as Jim Pethokoukis summarizes, several of our already-anemic growth indicators are starting to slow up even more. The hits just keep on coming (unexpectedly, of course):

New data suggests the three-year economic expansion — as anemic as it has been — may be at an end, or is at least perilously close. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index unexpectedly fell to 49.7 in June from 53.5 a month earlier. A reading of less than 50 signals contraction.

Not one of 70 economists interviewed by Bloomberg thought it would be below 50.5. …

But these numbers are just the latest in a long string of worrisome reports including rising initial unemployment claims, slowing job growth, falling consumer confidence, and declining durable goods orders. Oh, and the rest of the global economy is slowing, too.

All these so-called economics experts, Keynesians to a man, who are constantly surprised by the bad economic numbers, and the Left keeps going to them for advice. Keynesianism has been a proven failure in the economically collapsed European community, in faltering China, in faltering US. Where there is real growth in the US, it is despite Obama and the Democrats, not because of them. I give you Texas, which has been an economic leader for at least 10 years. I give you Wisconsin, which threw off the Leftist Government and replaced it with Conservative governance. I give you Ohio and Pennsylvania, which threw off their Leftist Government and installed a far more Conservative Government.

As far as the Leftist position, I give you California, which has seen years of job-and-people flight to far more business-friendly states (like Texas and Utah). I give you Illinois, which has been Democrat-and-corruption-run (but I repeat myself) for quite some time, and pumped in the largest tax increases in Illinois’ history — to results completely “unexpected” by the “experts” but fully warned about by Conservatives (including here on this site, multiple times).

The Keynesian economic “experts” upon whom the radical Leftists so adamantly depend, will always be surprised by actual economics as they continue to tout their abysmally failed economic “theory”. As Conservatives and Republicans (not necessarily the same thing, but Conservatives already knew that) gain more governmental leadership in 2012 and implement much more Austrian Economic theory (the Hayek approach), the Keynesian economists will scream and kick and fight and bite, declaring the end of the world. But the economy will rise out of the Leftist Keynesian ashes, like a Phoenix.

 

 

 

UPDATE 20120703
While Bloomberg couldn’t find an “expert” economist who had forecast below 50.5 among the 70 Bloomberg interviewed, Reuters’ economists had predicted a score of 52.0. And the “expert” economists that the Associated Press talks to suggest the GDP growth rate for Q2 will fall to 1.5 from the 1.9 growth rate experienced in Q1. Those “expert” economists are now declaring their previously forecast 2.0 growth rate for 2012 was too optimistic. While the Baraka Obama propaganda campaign and “budget” ten-year plans have always been dependent on growth rates in the fives, far above historical growth rates, (also meaning his outrageously large self-admitted deficit spending would be ever more outrageously large since tax revenue would be far below “expectations”), a look at the US population growth rate over the past 110 years will clearly show that a 2 percent GDP growth rate isn’t even enough to keep up with the population growth.

Seriously, when will the Left quit listening to Keynesian “experts” when they are so clearly wrong in their predictions and in their philosophy?

EPA Mandates You Buy Unicorn Farts

The federal EPA has mandated that oil companies buy a certain amount of cellulosic ethanol made from wood chips, switchgrass, corn cobs and the like, a product that doesn’t even exist (unicorn farts for short), or pay hefty fines. And oil companies have already been forced to pay those fines for their 2011 non-compliance in their refusal to buy those unicorn farts. As a result, Americans get to pay more at the pump for their fart-free gasoline; an artificial, government-forced fuel cost inflation. Howard Portnoy writes:

Question: Do you fill your car’s tank with gasoline that is part cellulosic ethanol, an environment-friendly distillate of wood chips, corn cobs, and switch grass? Let me answer for you: No, you don’t. You couldn’t if you wanted to. Petroleum products blended with cellulosic ethanol aren’t commercially available, because the technology for mass-producing cellulosic ethanol hasn’t been perfected. None of which has stopped the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing hefty yearly fines on oil refiners. According to the The New York Times, in 2011 automotive fuel producers were assessed $6.8 million in penalties. That amount is expected to climb dramatically this year. Guess who ends up footing the bill for the difference?

As Mr Portnoy notes, George W Bush called for this sort of thing in his 2006 State of the Union address, and signed it into Law in 2007. This terrible government mandate to be fined for not putting unicorn farts into the nation’s gasoline was written by the 2007 Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into Law by the squish Republican George W Bush, when not a single commercial cellulosic ethanol plant was up and running. There still isn’t a commercial unicorn fart plant running, even after the government pumped over a billion tax-payer dollars into businesses promising to make those unicorn fart plants.

A December, 2011 article from Bloomberg notes the bankruptcy of one such failed company.

Range Fuels Inc., a cellulosic ethanol company backed by as much as $156 million in U.S. loans and grants from President George W. Bush’s administration, is being forced by the government to liquidate its only factory after failing to produce the fuel.

The closely held company, which counts Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder, as an initial investor, shuttered the factory in Soperton, Georgia, in January after not delivering on its promise to convert woodchips into ethanol, which was intended to help the U.S. become less dependent on foreign oil.

So, Range Fuels Inc shuttered its doors in January, 2011, after proving incapable of producing the unicorn farts, and after soaking up millions of dollars in tax-payer money. The government picking winners and losers, and still, those winners lose. And we all lose in the process. But that’s not all. A January, 2012 article from The New American has even more.

EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn told the Times that the 2012 cellulosic ethanol quota is “reasonably attainable.” The paper continues: “By setting a quota, she added, ‘we avoid a situation where real cellulosic biofuel production exceeds the mandated volume,’ which would weaken demand.”

Milbourn need not worry that production will exceed the EPA’s quota for many years to come. There are simply too many barriers to overcome.

First is that cellulosic ethanol production is so difficult and expensive that no one in the private sector is willing to invest in it without hefty government subsidies. Thus far the feds have poured at least $1.5 billion into ethanol startups, with more subsidies on the way. Not surprisingly, “the half-dozen or so companies that received the first round of subsidies never got off the ground,” the Wall Street Journal noted in a December editorial. Georgia’s Range Fuels, for example, received $162 million in federal and state subsidies to produce ethanol from pine chips; last week The New American reported that Range had folded a year ago, an utter failure. The Journal cited Alabama-based Cello Energy, whose ethanol production was supposed to account for some 70 percent of the 2010 cellulosic ethanol mandate. The company went bankrupt in October of that year, having achieved nothing except bilking taxpayers.

“Incredibly,” the Journal remarked, “those projections [of Cello’s production] were made before Cello had built its plant to produce the fuel and before the technology was proven to work.” Similarly grandiose claims for upcoming ethanol plants are thus to be taken with several grains of salt.

Did everyone get that? There is no commercial production of unicorn farts, but the EPA has stated the 2012 requirement to purchase millions of gallons of unicorn farts is reasonably attainable, knowing there are no unicorn farts to buy. And the businesses that are getting millions of dollars each in tax-payer money are going bankrupt without adding the first gallon of this “product” into the marketplace.

Last year, I wrote about corn ethanol being a net energy consumer instead of a net energy producer. I also showed that corn ethanol produces even more pollution than gasoline, is more expensive than gasoline, is harder on engines than gasoline, and causes “corn for food” prices to artificially inflate. And now, on top of that, we get to foot the bill for a nothing-burger.

Ain’t Big Government Leftists grand?

Texas Beats National Average 65 Months Straight

We at Truth Before Dishonor have covered the Illinois Democrat tax-raising scheme and the damage it has done to Illinois.

In order to keep Motorola in Illinois after the largest tax increases in state history, Illinois had to offer up 100 MILLION dollars in tax breaks, proving even Illinois Democrats knew the massive tax hikes were destroying businesses and employment in the state. So, those tax hikes intended to “soak the rich” actually decimated the middle class and not the rich, and led to massive job losses for Illinois.

We have also covered California’s job-and-people flight as the California Democrat Party taxes and regulates its state to death. We have covered Wisconsin’s budget repair without a single tax increase. In fact, the single move by the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor not only closed the State Budget gap, it also closed multiple municipal and school district budget gaps without a single tax increase. In fact, the budget gaps were closed while simultaneously lowering property taxes for the first time in 30 years. And Wisconsin had the greatest improvement in economic outlook of the 50 (or 57) states as a result. Ohio and Pennsylvania both improved their economic standing after switching from Democrat control to Republican leadership. I have provided the 2012 economic strength rankings for the 366 US metropolitan areas, showing Texas to be much stronger than the rest of the nation.

From June 2006 to June 2011, Texas was one of only nine states plus DC that added jobs. During that time-frame, Texas added 537,500 jobs, or over 73 percent of the total jobs added (a rate of 2,138 new jobs per 100,000 population). At the same time the US lost 4,818,000 jobs (a rate of 1,561 jobs lost per 100,000 population).

I have some new information that will help to drive the Leftists wild, from the print version of the Temple Daily Telegram. From a 16 June 2012 Cristina Waits article:

Statewide, private employers added about 15,300 positions in May, and 287,800 in the last year.

“It is good to see Texas’ private employers continuing to add to their payrolls,” said Tom Pauken, TWC Commisioner representing employers. “Texas’ economy continues to stand out, as our unemployment rate remains below the national unemployment rate for the 65th straight month.”

Some of the unemployment rates noted in the article:
Midland, 3.8 percent
Odessa 4.3 percent
Killeen-Temple 7.6 percent
Lubbock 5.3 percent
Texas 6.9 percent

Since Texas’ unemployment rate in May 2012 marked the 65th straight month that Texas’ unemployment was better than the US average, that means the streak started in January 2007. What happened in January 2007? Why, that would be the month Democrats took over the US Congress. Of the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, the US Presidency, Democrats have had two of the three bodies every month since then, including all three for 24 of those 65 months. But Republicans have held the leadership in Texas the entire time.

Now, with all the data points available for study, it is not post hoc, ergo propter hoc to say the Conservative and Republican position provides economic growth and health while the Leftist and Democrat position provides economic atrophy and hardship. The data prove the truth of it.

UPDATE!!
Legal Insurrection made this the Post of the Day for Thursday, June 21!
And with huge, impactful SCOTUS rulings expected to come out possibly today, people are going to be flocking to Legal Insurrection to try to catch the news and commentary, and we might get a residual link-love effect on top of the good Ivy League Law Professor’s normal mini-me version of the coveted Instalanche. The last couple times TBD made Post of the Day at Legal Insurrection, we got over 300 hits out of it. No small potatoes, that!

But it’s for our own good!

From CBS News:

Bloomberg soda ban: Board of Health eyes popcorn and milkshakes

By Michelle Castillo

(CBS News) While the New York City Board of Health approves of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to cut all large sugary drinks from New Yorker’s diets, some members are taking issue with one major point: They don’t think the plan goes far enough.

The city’s Board of Health met on June 12^th to approve the Mayor’s proposal; they scheduled a public hearing on the proposal for July 24^th, and a final vote on September 13^th. If approved, the new regulation would take effect six months later.

Certain members spoke up, however, saying that the proposal should include other items. Board member Bruce Vladeck questioned why large tubs of popcorn were not included in the ban, according to the New York Daily News. Another member, Dr. Joel Forman, pointed out that even 100 percent juice and milk-containing beverages have large amounts of calories and should not be excluded.

While Dr. Kenneth Popler, board member and president of the Staten Island Mental Health Society, recognized that it would infringe on New Yorkers’ rights, he felt that the health benefits were worth it, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reported. Obesity has led to 5,800 deaths a year in New York City and costs taxpayers $4 billion, according to statements presented at the meeting.

Fox & Friends had a short segment on this issue this morning,¹ and a nutritionist and dietitian, Laura Cipullo, presented the “pro” side of the argument. As always in these brief segments, Mrs Cipullo didn’t have a lot of time to flesh out her arguments — pun intended — but she began by noting that the government has assumed a responsibility for the individual’s nutrition with the Food Stamp program.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, in his skewering questioning of the hapless and hopelessly overmatched Solicitor General, Donald Virrelli,² suggested that the Obama Administration’s position on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could extend to requiring people to buy broccoli³:

Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.

If it is within the government’s authority to require health care coverage, and if it is the government’s ultimate responsibility to see to it that everyone has sufficient food on which to live, and if obesity and diabetes are serious health care problems which place financial burdens on the government and the public in general, I fail to see why the government wouldn’t or shouldn’t have the authority not only to compel you to buy broccoli, as Justice Scalia mockingly suggested, but to require you to eat the broccoli as well. After all, broccoli is good for you, being high in nutritional value and low in calories, and the more you fill up on green vegetables, the less room you will have for soda and popcorn and milk shakes, keeping your weight down. I noted, in 2005:

There are plenty of people who seem to find themselves in the business of regulating private conduct. We see it most obviously when it comes to tobacco: several major cities have major bans on smoking in public places and even private clubs. One company, Weyco in Michigan, has not only banned smoking on its property, it has banned smoking among its employees . . . even at home.

Weyco doesn’t see any problem with banning all of its employees from smoking, even off the premises, even in the privacy of their own homes, and has enforced the policy through at least three terminations. “There’s not a liberty right or any other right to have any particular employment, and I think it’s time for people in our country to start taking personal responsibility for many aspects of their life, including health care,” said David Houston, Weyco’s general counsel.

Well, if Weyco, a private company, can regulate its employees’ liberties to the extent that they cannot both smoke and remain employees, why couldn’t the federal government, if it were responsible for all health care costs, determine that Americans (all covered by the national health insurance (Jonathan) Cohn⁴ and so many others advocate) simply couldn’t be allowed to smoke?

Or eat fatty foods?

Or make any of the other private choices Americans are wont to make that don’t necessarily have the best of consequences?

The real problem with Mr. Cohn’s logic is that it is unassailable: he’s actually right about this!

1. If government is going to be obligated for health care costs, government has a reasonable right to take steps to lower those costs; then
2. Government has a reasonable right to lower the costs for which it has assumed responsibility; and thus
3. Government has a reasonable right to regulate private behavior which contributes to higher costs.

Smoking is the most obvious case, and there are plenty of people who advocate government stepping in and making the use of tobacco illegal, period. The fat police (and the ambulance chasers who Mr. Cohn noted were now following pizza delivery boys) have declared war against fatty foods, and if lawsuits against McDonald’s haven’t been successful yet — nearly 90 percent of Americans say they oppose obesity lawsuits against the food industry — it wasn’t all that long ago that the notion that tobacco companies being responsible for smokers’ illnesses, being that smoking was a private decision, was considered ridiculous. If the current lawsuit fails, which it probably will, there will be another, and another, until some idiot jury decides that someone is too fat not because of his hand-to-mouth disease, but because McDonald’s forced him to eat that food!

Count on it: federal government action against food producers and restaurants that serve fatty foods won’t be far behind, at least not if government has a huge vested interest in health care costs.

Of course, the New York City Board of Health isn’t the federal government, but their way of thinking is becoming fairly standard liberalism these days: if your individual choices happen to go against what some official panel of experts believes is contrary to the public good, those choices will simply have to be restricted. And we really shouldn’t object, after all, because it is for our own good!

They will never admit it, of course, and many have probably not even thought about it in any depth, but for many of our friends on the left what is really harmful to our own good, and to society, is freedom. The notion that your choices should not be any of the government’s business unless those choices violate someone else’s rights seems to apply only to abortion these days.
_____________________________
¹ – During the 0700-0730 segment.
² – Even The New York Times, which editorially supports the health care reform law, noted that, during verbal arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Solicitor General “got off to a rocky start and never seemed to quite find his footing during his hour at the Supreme Court lectern.“
³ – Department of Health and Human Services v Florida, Transcript of oral arguments, March 27, 2012, page 13, lines 8-12.
⁴ – The article was in response to Jonathan Cohn’s argument in The New Republic that the government had a reasonable right to punish or restrict personal behavior that costs the government money:

When you put it that way, the idea of a “Twinkie tax,” as it has come to be known, really does sound absurdly paternalistic. If you want to load up on french fries, health risks and all, why is that the government’s business? Unfortunately, fat consumption really is the government’s business in one, very literal, sense. As taxpayers, we all bear the burden of higher medical costs–either directly, by paying for Medicare and Medicaid, or indirectly, by subsidizing employer-based health insurance (which is tax deductible). So, when some people choose to eat poorly, we all end up bearing the financial burden for their decisions.

_____________________________
Cross posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.

How Obama Loses In 2012: Obama’s Actions

This is a follow-up to my previous article. (Again, originating as a comment on The First Street Journal.)

According to the US Census Bureau, the fastest growing part of the US is the South (not to be confused with the southwest). And, with the Census Bureau’s delineations, the South consists of 38 percent of the US population. (There are four regions.) The Northeast and the Midwest combine for 122.2 million people. The South alone stands at 114.6 million people. And the West has 71.9 million people. And nationally, Democrats are pretty much giving up on the South as a whole, ceding basically 38 percent of the electoral college to Republicans right out the gate. That means Democrats must win the states in the other 3 regions basically 9 – to – 1 (by electoral college numbers). An 8 – to – 1 Democrat win in the other 3 regions would mean a Democrat loss nationally.

So, the Democrat Party, with Obama as its titular head, has given up on the South. How is he doing with the rest of the nation? Reports have him giving up on white, middle class blue-collar workers, who did a lot of work to get him elected in 2008. Oops. Lost votes, some of which will vote Republican this time and others who will not vote for President or will cast a protest vote for a Third Candidate. Baraka alienated a great many Catholics, who traditionally vote Democrat, by telling the Roman Catholic Church that it absolutely must commit immoral acts if it wants to continue its charitable work. Big oops. Baraka alienated a not-so-small number of black pastors, who lead black churches (and thus, their flocks give much heed to what they say) by declaring himself a homosexual “marriage” proponent. Big oops.

Now, while The RCC constituency which traditionally vote Democrat could very well swing Republican — doing great harm to Barack’s goal of winning a second Presidential election — the black church constituency will likely not vote Republican in any major way. There will be more blacks voting Republican this time around than last time (percentage-wise), as Obama won an historic 97 percent of the black vote (making blacks the most lock-step, monolithic voting sub-group in US history), but overall, this huge outcry of horror from black pastors will mostly suppress the black vote. Many of these black pastors, who hold sway in their churches, have declared they cannot, at all, vote for Obama, but they will not, at all, vote for a Republican. That leaves not voting or protest voting Third Party. And Obama loses those votes, without picking up any votes (only scads of cash from rampant radical Leftists).

Every step of the way, these past 3+ years, Obama has alienated one base sub-group after another, without adding a single sub-group to his re-election bid. Every state’s voting output will shift more Republican as a result. Every state. It’s only a matter of degree. It’s called “focusing on the margins” and it’s not looking good for Obama at all. However, it is looking very beneficial for the survival of the US.