Justice Ginsburg's Teachable Moment

It seems that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn't all that enamored of our Constitution. She recently visited Egypt as part of a State Department trip to offer legal advice to the fledgling democratic movement there (which will not survive rule either by the military or the Islamists, but that's another issue).

Her advice on whether to use the US Constitution as a model: Don't.

Apparently, the US Constitution is too parsimonious with "rights", so the JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT suggested following the Constitution of South Africa, or the European Union Declaration of Human Rights, or the Canadian Charter of Rights instead. Really?

The significant difference between our Constitution and those others is the fundamental limitations on government embodied in our Constitution. Apparently, that's not such a great idea to Justice Ginsburg. Ugh.

Moreover, any "right" to material goodies that requires coercion of others to get it for you is a farce. When you hear the Leftists screaming that "Education (or other such benefit) is a RIGHT, not a Privilege!", lock and load.

Making the simple argument that the state taxing us all in order to provide education to the poorest citizens at no or minimal cost to them may be a good deal for society is one thing, but demanding that such a benefit is a "right" is something altogether different.

However, it does reveal the mentality of those who believe the government has the unbridled power to do whatever it wants. It's not hard to see why so many liberal Demunists today take one look at the vast gatherings of decent, middle-class Americans known as tea parties and instantly think "fascists!" Never mind that fascists, properly understood, don't usually demand less government intervention.

What we have here is a fundamental conflict of visions, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. One side believes that people are born into their station in life and it is the government's job to make their miserable lives a little better. Indeed, it is the natural order of things for the government to provide jobs, health care, homes to the people. If you object to this concept of government, it must be because you want to "punish" the downtrodden and discriminated. You must be animated by racism, sexism, greed, "fascism!"

The other side says that our rights come from God or from Natural Law, not from government. That while the government has an obligation to promote the general welfare, it doesn't have a holy writ to design the nation as it sees fit. The Constitution is not a coupon insert in your local paper, brimming with all sorts of giveaways and two-for-one deals. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights delineate what the government cannot do, not what it can. What was so fantastic and revolutionary about that is that for the first time in history, a nation was founded on the proposition that the government should mind its own business. Believing that doesn't make you a fascist, it makes you a patriot.

But leave it to a weenie at Slate to try to cover for "Justice" Ginsburg:

If you want, here you go: Proof that a Supreme Court Justice believes looks to other countries for advice on an evolving Constitution! Of course, we've known this about Ginsburg for years, because she's said so repeatedly. It's proof that a SCOTUS justice wouldn't use the American Constitution as a model for a new country -- but, well, neither does anyone who advises new republics about this stuff.

‎"An evolving Constitution", my ass. That, like "living breathing document", is an excuse for judicial tyrants to read anything they want into the Constitution, and read anything they *don't* want out. Constitutions are amended, not evolving. If a rule of law is one length one day and another the next, it is no longer a rule of law.

Why on earth is a Justice of the *United States* Supreme Court 'looking to other countries for advice' on our Constitution? Before you say "English Common Law" - such law is specifically incorporated by statute in California (and, presumably all other) state laws and was explicitly understood as the basis for our own civil laws. Sorry, but "Justice" Ginsburg's comment demonstrates a deep disrespect for the Constitution that she has sworn to uphold. This is pretty outrageous.

However, it is, to borrow a term from the Leftist scum, a "teachable moment". The "Progressive" Left (Newest Left?) are uniquely infuriating in their contempt for Americana. Compared to Ruth Ginsburg, Earl Warren was a regular flag waver in terms of his attitudes toward America, Western Civilization, etc. The New Deal / Great Society Left may have been wrong, but they were still patriots. The Left now has a whole new attitude that is openly contemptuous of this nation, and we the people. I don't just call them "Demunists" or "Commiecrats" for rhetorical pizazz.

And Ground Zero for this new attitude was arguably right here in the NorCal area, although Bostonians might beg to differ. I used to laugh the leftists off as minor figures in the picture, who got all the attention in The Land Of Fruits And Nuts, but were not the actual movers and shakers. But then the Cold War ended, the actual defense / hardware workers and producers packed up and left the state, and the Leftists became the "Creative Class Elites" (Destructive Class would be more like it).

Many leaders of the modern Left have open hatred and contempt for the traditional American ideals that made our country great. Limited and humble government, overseeing a responsible, individualistic, and strong citizenry who really were at liberty to arrange their own affairs largely as they saw fit. Instead, the modern Left wishes for all-powerful government that rules a citizenry that is dependent upon their largess.

The Leftist Government and Media Elites ceaseless orgasming over Barack Obama makes much more sense in light of "Justice" Ginsburg's remarks. President Obama was raised in a foreign country, under a very foreign culture, and was exposed to the most leftist politics as a child. He is what we would have called in the 30s and 40s a "red diaper baby." It is clear to me that he certainly does not love America, and I doubt he even likes America just a little bit. He spent 20 years attending church with a pastor who explicitly hates America. He was close pals in Chicago with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, actual, unrepentant, domestic terrorists who avowedly hate the American system and *killed people* to try to change it. His own wife proclaimed that the first time she was ever proud to be an American was when her husband was nominated to be President. One of his biggest campaign speeches during the last campaign was in Germany - to a largely foreign audience. He displays little or no overt patriotism (and, yeah, that matters a lot when we're talking about the President of the United States). He repeatedly bows to emperors and kings of foreign counties - an utterly unique and weak affectation among American Presidents. He clearly holds much of the American citizenry in total contempt, and thinks of us as "bitter clingers".

Susan G. Komen and Leftist Thuggery

Gee, could it be that an organization devoted to breast cancer might want to get better results funding direct efforts against just that, rather than funding a family planning organization whose involvement with respect to breast cancer is tangential at best? 

....there was never going to be a net loss in funding for women’s health. Komen was retargeting the $680,000 they granted Planned Parenthood, not dousing it with kerosene and setting it alight.

Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money. And I don’t care why that decision was made, frankly. If it was made because PP is controversial and under congressional “investigation,” that’s a perfectly valid reason for an organization to disentangle itself. If it was made because they judged that money would have a greater impact if directed toward the provision of actual mammograms and not just clinical screenings, that makes sense. And if the decision was made because a controlling faction at Komen feels a moral disgust toward the dismemberment of viable fetuses and would rather not subsidize an outfit that does that 300,000 times a year — well that’s fine, too. None of those rationales justifies the outrageous non-sequiturs about how Komen “hates poor women.”

And no, for the record, I am hardly anti-abortion. In fact, California could improve if the leftists here aborted more of their larval communist offspring.

Okay, I'm being nasty. More honestly, I just can't compel a woman to bear a child she does not want. I. Just. Can't. Sorry if that ruins my right-wing purity creds.

Pro-abortion libertarian writer Will Wilkinson has it spot-on:

You know, I'm not a big fan of Komen's brandification of breast cancer, I dislike seeing pink ribbons plastered over everything, and I think Planned Parenthood is real swell, abortions and all. So I'm not especially inclined to come to Komen's aid. But I'll be damned if this doesn't look a bit like PP throwing it's weight around, knocking a few pieces of china off the shelves, sending a message to its other donors: "Nice foundation you got there. Wouldn't want anything to, you know, happen to it."

However, the anti-abortion James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal is also correct:

While our sympathies are with Komen in this whole kerfuffle, we must say that the group has displayed an appalling naiveté in its approach to the matter. It's reminiscent of the last big controversy the group was involved in, which we wrote about in 2009. In that instance, Komen hosted a conference in Alexandria, Egypt, for "international advocates." Komen was sandbagged when Israeli doctors who'd been invited to the event received disinvitations from the Egyptian health minister. The Egyptians backpedaled, but by then it was too late for the Israelis to attend.

In breaking ties with Planned Parenthood, Komen made the same mistake: It failed to understand it was dealing with intolerant fanatics. Planned Parenthood's attitude toward abortion opponents is not unlike that of Egyptian officials in the old regime toward Israelis.
(...)
In truth, Komen was under no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood. Its decision not to do so was not punitive and did not even appear to be. The episode is reminiscent of George Orwell far more than Joe McCarthy. Komen's actual aim was to extricate itself from the divisive national battle over abortion by severing its connection with a leading combatant.

The conservative Media Research Center notes that CNN "aired a pretty one-sided piece including statements from Planned Parenthood's president Cecile Richards, evidence supporting her claims of right-wing 'bullying,' and even vitriolic Facebook posts decrying the de-funding." No supporter of Komen's position or critic of Planned Parenthood was included. Even more appalling than that lack of balance, though, was CNN's echoing the charge of "right-wing 'bullying,' " while the network was participating in Planned Parenthood's effort to bully Komen.

The Ministry of Information--sorry, the New York Times--editorializes:

With its roster of corporate sponsors and the pink ribbons that lend a halo to almost any kind of product you can think of, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has a longstanding reputation as a staunch protector of women's health. That reputation suffered a grievous, perhaps mortal, wound this week from the news that Komen, the world's largest breast cancer organization, decided to betray that mission. It threw itself into the middle of one of America's nastiest political battles, on the side of hard-right forces working to demonize Planned Parenthood and undermine women's health and freedom.

The truth is that Komen blundered into a political battle by supporting Planned Parenthood in the first place and was attempting to back out of it quietly.

The Times's view exemplifies feminism's gradual transformation into a totalitarian ideology. Totalitarianism politicizes everything, so that neutrality is betrayal--in this case, neutrality on abortion is portrayed as opposition to "women's health." As we wrote last year, this is also why purportedly pro-choice feminists can hate Sarah Palin and her daughter for choosing not to abort their children.

Komen would have been better off approaching the matter straightforwardly, by announcing that it wished to opt out of the abortion debate and would not support groups that take a position on either side of the issue, including Planned Parenthood. This would not have averted the smear campaign that followed, for Planned Parenthood and its supporters have internalized the notion that abortion is health, and are determined that everyone else internalize it too. But an honest position would have been easier to defend. No one would have been able to dent Komen's integrity.

I must say, however, that the anti-abortion activists who donated heavily to Susan G Komen at first news, but now are angrily demanding refunds at the SGK retraction, should think again. SGK is an organization dedicated to finding a cure for Breast Cancer. Why do we assume they should be expert in the ins and outs of left wing Commiecrat, scorched earth political attacks.

Santorum: 'Supply-Sider' for the Working Man???

An interesting point. It is not enough to pitch the goodness of capitalism and the badness of the welfare state to the receptive "one percent" (sic--it's almost 50 times larger than that); we must also appeal to the "99 percent" (sic--again, it is less than half of that, but still a large percentage).

"I'm someone who believes that making things creates wealth," says Rick Santorum. It is primary day in New Hampshire, and the former Pennsylvania senator and current presidential candidate is describing his plan to slash corporate tax rates. To encourage companies to make things, he would completely eliminate the federal income tax on manufacturers. For all other businesses, the rate would be cut in half, to 17.5% from 35%.

In other words, point out how Leftist tax policies have *driven* the manufacturing jobs of Joe Sixpack overseas.

Mr. Santorum also believes that making babies creates wealth. It's very difficult to grow an economy with a shrinking population, he says, pointing to the "demographic winter in Europe" as a cause of that region's troubles. To help avoid that fate in the U.S., he wants to triple the per-child tax credit and also cut individual tax rates.

The Leftist eco-fiends still harbor fears of a "Population Bomb" but the reality is that the modern industrial world--whether "post-capitalist" like the USA, Europe, Japan, and the little Asian Tigers, or "post-communist" like the former Warsaw Pact and Red China, are having too few babies, not too many:

Mr. Santorum argues that the cost of Europe's massive welfare states made it too expensive for young people to have families. He notes that with plummeting birth rates, many European countries have resorted to "baby bonuses" to try to reverse the tide, but the demographic picture remains bleak, while the costs of entitlement programs have exploded. 

"Who are benefits promised to, overwhelmingly? Well, they're promised to older people. And if you have a society like Europe that is upside down where there are a lot more older people than younger people, you have economic calamity," he says. Asked if giving generous per-child credits will result in an even larger number of households exempt from the income tax and therefore amenable to more spending, he says his plan will drive growth and that, in turn, will bring more people on to the tax rolls. Elimination of deductions might also keep some people paying income taxes. He aims to balance overall taxes and spending at 18% of GDP. Spending has soared to 24% in the Obama era.

In other words, make "supply side economics" work for the working class. This working class, once called "Reagan Democrats", then "Perot-nistas", then "bitter clingers" by President Obama and his minions, is an important, perhaps THE important, piece of the GOP winning coalition. In general, though, the tale of years since has been the refusal of the Republican establishment to seal the deal. As Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam pointed out in their book "Grand New Party":

Over the forty years since, this problem – that the working class wants, and needs, more from public policy than simply to be left alone – has prevented the Republican Party from consolidating an enduring majority, despite all the right-wing intellectual victories and all the conservative electoral gains. It defeated Goldwater, it ruined Gingrich, and it crippled the domestic policy of George W. Bush. It was at the heart of a marginal conservatism’s 1964 defeat, and it lies at the heart of conservatism’s present crisis....

In a still-crowded field of non-Romneys trying to compete for the Republican nomination, Mr. Santorum could emerge in the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary as the man who can bring together the old Reagan coalition. A champion of cultural conservatives with a blue-collar background, he is also making the case for deep cuts in federal spending. His credibility on this last issue derives from the political price he paid for being an early promoter of Social Security reform, which caused him to lose his Senate seat once.

Nor does he give ground in our discussion. I ask if his corporate tax plan opens him up to criticism that he and President Obama are both favoring particular sectors of the economy, with Mr. Santorum picking manufacturing while Mr. Obama anoints green energy. "Oh, green energy is not a sector, I mean, come on. It's like a half-dozen companies," says Mr. Santorum.

Does this mean the Obama policy would be more legitimate if the president were favoring a larger group of Solyndras?

"He's talking about handing out tax-free grants and loans," says Mr. Santorum, who adds that his own plan "is a conservative approach. It's supply-side. It's cutting rates. Why are we cutting the corporate rate to 17.5% and making it simple? . . . Because we think it's what's necessary to grow the economy. . . . So if what's necessary to grow the economy in one sector of the economy is different from another, then why should we have the same tax rate?" He argues that manufacturing has been hit particularly hard by the costs of regulation and litigation.

To avoid a lobbying festival, Mr. Santorum says, the existing IRS definition of manufacturing, which includes companies that make and process goods, will remain in place.

"No, we're not going to have a free-for-all over who is a manufacturer. It's pretty clear if you're making products you're making products and if you're processing products like if you're an oil refiner, you're a processor. . . . You're making things, as opposed to a lawyer who is not a manufacturer." And while only a small percentage of Americans still work in manufacturing, Mr. Santorum says that such businesses have a powerful "multiplier effect" as they support various other enterprises.

We could do worse than that. If Rick Santorum is not the anti-Romney, perhaps he *is* the Working Man's Capitalist.

The Club For Growth Presdential Voter Guide

Interesting! The Club for Growth has issued evaluations of where the remaining candidates stand on economic freedom. The topics covered include:
--Taxes
--Spending
--Free Trade
--Regulation
--Entitlement Reform
--School Choice
--Tort Reform
--Political Free Speech
--Political Activity and Endorsements

The following six candidates are evaluated:
Rick Santorum
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich 
Ron Paul
Rick Perry
Jon Huntsman

And previous Club for Growth Presidential White Papers on candidates no longer seeking the Republican nomination can be found by clicking here.

Because the Club For Growth does not evaluate foreign policy, I suspect Ron Paul will look a lot better to the Club For Growth than he really is. However, the Club For Growth has *this* to say about Ron Paul:

But Ron Paul is a purist, too often at the cost of real accomplishments on free trade, school choice, entitlement reform, and tort reform. It is perfectly legitimate, and in fact vital, that think tanks, free-market groups, and individual members of Congress develop and propose idealized solutions. But presidents have the responsibility of making progress, and often, Ron Paul opposes progress because, in his mind, the progress is not perfect. In these cases, although for very different reasons, Ron Paul is practically often aligned with the most left-wing Democrats, voting against important, albeit imperfect, pro-growth legislation.

Ron Paul is, undoubtedly, ideologically committed to pro-growth, limited government policies. But his insistence on opposing all but the perfect means that under a Ron Paul presidency we might never get a chance to pursue the good too.

Compare the Club For Growth summary of Rick Perry with their summary of Mitt Romney. For Rick Perry, the Club For Growth says this:

When evaluating members of congress, it is somewhat informative to look at the partisan nature of their congressional district in the case of a House member or their state in the case of a Senator. When evaluating a Governor, it is even more instructive to judge performance in the context of the political climate of their state and the partisan and ideological composition of their legislature. Working in the environment in which a Governor finds him or herself, the operative question is often whether he or she improved or worsened the climate for economic growth.

The Texas tax and regulatory climate Governor Rick Perry inherited from Governor George W. Bush was already among the best in the nation. Further, during Perry’s entire long tenure as governor, the Texas Legislature has had conservative Republican majorities. So the bar for judging Perry’s performance should be set high.

It is quite clear that Perry did not move his state in reverse, or on the wrong course. In many instances, he merely maintained a positive status quo. In others, such as tort reform and regulations, he improved the Texas economic climate.

Still, his support for taxpayer-subsidized funds to lure jobs away from other states shows he has at times an interventionist streak rather than consistent free-market principles. His semi apology for the big government interventions of President Bush suggests a similar inclination.

You would think they would give Governor Romney a big break by this standard, considering leftist Massachusetts. But they say this about Mitt Romney, and I think accurately:

(Romney) labels himself as a pro-growth fiscal conservative, and we have no doubt that Romney would move the country in a pro-growth direction. He would promote the unwinding of Obama’s bad economic policies, but we also think that Romney is somewhat of a technocrat. After a career in business, quickly finding a “solution”seems to be his goal, even if it means more government intrusion as a means to an end. To this day, Romney supports big government solutions to health care and opposes pro-growth tax code reform – positions that are simply opposite to those supported by true economic conservatives.

All in all, I do very much agree with the Club For Growth. However the Club For Growth has two flaws:

(1) The Club For Growth does not look at the immigration issue, despite its undeniable economic consequences, as we are experiencing with our overwhelmed public services in California.

(2) The Club For Growth are very sanguine to the point of goo-goo about economic globalization and "Free Trade". Never mind that much of the rest of the world does not really practice free trade and we Americans are played for chumps this way again and again. And never mind that national security does trump free trade, at least in the mind of any sane patriot, no matter how devoutly capitalist.

This myopia about trade is apparent in their evaluation of Rick Santorum:

In perhaps the most important free trade vote of the last generation, Santorum voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, perhaps the most important trade vote cast during his career in Congress. Days before the vote, he said, “NAFTA will produce pockets of winners and losers across the country. Our area is unfortunately one of the losers."

That analysis, while arguably correct with regard to a small number of industries in Pennsylvania, ignores the fact that every single consumer in Pennsylvania benefited tremendously from NAFTA, as well as did many more affected industries.

Oh, really? That claim would be called "bullshit" by most Quaker State residents after nearly two decades, even if better for the rest of the nation.

In 2005, Santorum voted in support of an amendment that would impose a massive, job-killing 27.5% tariff on all Chinese imports if China didn’t readjust their currency upward.

Because having our most likely next major enemy profit by their currency manipulation is such a good thing? Really? Sorry, Red China is not Colombia or South Korea or other places where recent good free trade initiatives have been proposed. Red China is a nation building up its military--including its nuclear missile arsenal and an unprecedented "blue-water" (global) navy, most likely for a future military showdown against the USA and/or its Asian allies.

The Club For Growth, like the Wall Street Journal and some others, sometimes seem to wish to prove Vladimir Lenin's assertion correct, that "when the time comes the hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope with which to do it...."

"Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare!"

Yes, there were senior citizens who opposed Obamacare who held up signs like that, and yes, the Leftists mocked them, as Medicare is a government program.

But the leftist mockery says more about the Leftists than it does about the senior citizens.

MediCare was supposed to be "self-financing" from the workers' payroll, right? Remember that, liberals? So you leftist statists were lying about that too, weren't you? Just like you lied about everything else, from the New Deal to the Great Society to the current Obamunism.

Meanwhile, Obamacare effectively dumps younger people who never paid a lifetime into Medicare into the program, increasing demand, and cuts payments to doctors, decreasing supply, while controlling prices. All of which means the existing seniors will get short shrift. You think they are not supposed to notice that, liberals? Really?

Or are they just supposed to do what you tell them to?

Just when the facts are that the retirement ages will have to be raised because people are living longer and there are fewer young workers in proportion to elderly retirees, Obamacare blatantly disregards these two inevitable facts.

And those who rely on Medicare *now* are supposed to just lay back and think of heaven, to which the New Obama oversight (rationing) panel will bring them to that much sooner.

Really, Leftists? You want to keep thinking you can pull off this crap? Even the naive elderly, who were raised on The New Deal and The Great Society, see through you now.

Rick Santorum: Not the Anti-Romney

It's Wednesday after the 2012 Iowa caucuses and this morning I caught an hour of Rush Limbaugh insisting that Rick Santorum is not a "big government conservative". Rush was attempting to allay fears that former Senator Santorum is yet another politician positioning himself as a conservative while actually being just another ally of bloated government, proposing new government programs, regulations, etc. in areas where the federal government has little or no Constitutional mandate. That's the charge against Mitt Romney and those paying attention to the post-caucus punditry know that Santorum did quite well and is now poised to be this week's "anti-Romney".

And, we need an anti-Romney. Romney is the neon "I Don't Get It" sign whose annoying, buzzing message is that the GOP establishment learned nothing about how to win elections or its constituents from 2010 and the TEA Party. Romney is this year's McCain, who many of us real, small government conservatives hoped was the last gasp of Republican presidential candidates nominated under the assumption that big government was okay with conservative voters, as long as "our" guy sat in the big chair. But, the epic fail that is big government - unconstrained by the Constitution, common sense, or any sense of fiscal responsibility - is not okay. In 2006 and 2008, voters told the GOP, "You aren't giving us much reason to show up at the polls." Putting another big government Republican statist on the 2012 ticket will result in another painful lesson for the GOP, which doesn't seem to realize that many Republican voters have no enthusiasm for politicians who are clearly just paying lip service to reducing government. Romney is an electoral disaster in a nice suit. If the 2012 Presidential race comes down to voting for one candidate who defends Obamacare or another candidate who defends Romneycare, well... Let's just hope the GOP can hold the House.

But, Rick Santorum? Rick Santorum is not a small government guy. Rick Santorum has a record and it's the record of a big government statist. And, no, I am not talking about his social conservatism. It's true that he's a traditionalist on social issues, for what that's worth. (So much for any hope of peeling away younger voters disillusioned with Obama.) But, the problem with Santorum is that he's also a straight up fiscal "I Don't Get It" statist. As in: Affirmative votes for Medicare Part D, for the "Bridge to Nowhere", for Ted Kennedy's No Child Left Behind, actually co-sponsoring the government-subsidized mortgage downpayment legislation, and so on. So, yes, Rick Santorum is undeniably another big government guy.

Johnson is out. Bachmann is out. Cain is out. Perry is dithering. Gingrich, articulation aside, is an another variation on Romney. Is there no GOP candidate with a record of opposing the expansion of the federal government? Is there no one to whom serious fiscal conservatives and TEA Partiers can look and say, "I am sure my vote for him is a vote for the limited government authorized by the Constitution?" Whatever the answer to that question, it is not Rick Santorum.

"The Bachelor(ette)": Wisdom for our times

Truer words were never spoken, and on a rather tacky "Reality TV" (sic) show, at that:

"Good things don't end unless they end badly...." -- Ben Flajnik, "The Bachelor", spoken to Ashley Hebert.

That goes for politics and for economics even more than for pseudo-romantic relationships arranged on television.

"What I don't need you to do is sugar coat it," either.....

2012: The make or break year???

In a 2008 radio interview, Barack Obama said:

" ... the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties."

And there you have it. There is a reason I call many of that political party Demunists, or Commiecrats.

No, Barack, it was NOT an oversight that the Founding Fathers never addressed the issue of the government taking your assets and giving them to who they deemed "deserving". Perhaps it's just an indication that George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison were cold, calloused individuals who enjoyed watching people suffer. That is what they teach in Multicommunist Ethnic Brainwash Studies 101 nowadays.
In the same interview, future President Obama went on to say that the Constitution:

 "[says] what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted ... and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was ... um ... because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change."

Excuse me? Do on your behalf? Those stupid Founding Fathers again. They didn't even think to put in the Constitution what the government must do on your behalf (which are code words for what it can do to you). What were those mentally challenged Old White fuddy-duddy guys thinking?

And what a tragedy it was that the civil rights movement didn't put together the coalition of powers that could bring about "redistributive change." Forget the fact that the Constitution never mentions the redistribution of anything. After all, as with man-made global warming, the debate is over: We all know that redistribution of wealth is the only moral way to operate a country, right? If we are caught alluding to the Constitution, Queen Nancy Pelosi herself simply laughs us off with, "Are you serious?"

America will go through a fundamental change in 2012 - guaranteed. Either the gains of Obama and his minions will not be reversed, which means we are that much closer to having our nation fundamentally transformed into a Euro-weenie welfare state, then, following the Europeans, a bankrupt state.....
Or those in the Republican Party who still believe in freedom (and sadly, they do not seem to be anywhere near an overwhelming majority) will do whatever it takes to overthrow the "czars" and policies of the Obamunist oligarchy that now rules over us.

If the Republicans, after winning back the House and Senate - or even coming close - continue to act like RINOs / Republicrats / Demopublicans and ignore the Constitution, it will be a sad time indeed.

Having said this, the only way that a "fundamentally transformed America" can be avoided is if:
1. Free elections without significant vote fraud are held in 2010.
2. Conservative Republicans sweep into power.
3. Said conservative Republicans immediately began to repeal ALL unconstitutional legislation - including ALL federal government involvement in health care, ALL forms of federal government welfare, ALL federal government involvement in education ... and so on.

State and local matters like education and public health belong back in state and local hands.

In short, get rid of ALL Federal government functions other than providing a legal system for arbitrating national disputes, protecting the lives and property of American citizens, and providing for a national defense.

And we must spend enormous amounts of time and energy educating the anesthetized, sports-crazy, entertainment-crazy, vacation-crazy masses about the wonders of the free market. We must expain to them why liberty is the most valuable commodity they can ever possess. We must have enough love in our hearts to help them understand that liberty, not government handouts, gives them the best opportunity to achieve economic freedom.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Winter Of California

On Winter Solstice Day, this grim essay seemed particularly apt. Some bold emphasis:

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around A.D. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it.

Last week an ancestral rural school near the Kings River had its large bronze bell stolen. I think it dated from 1911. I have driven by it about 100 times in the 42 years since I got my first license. The bell had endured all those years. Where it is now I don’t know. Does someone just cut up a beautifully crafted bell in some chop yard in rural Fresno County, without a worry about who forged it or why — or why others for a century until now enjoyed its presence?

Yes, Victor, they do--when they have been taught that a beautiful bell made by old dead white guys doesn't count, and when they have no roots to the community at all.

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness?

But they don't have wives, and they really aren't sure where, or even who, are the children they have fathered.

In short, all the stuff of civilization — municipal buildings, education, religion, transportation, recreation — seems under assault in the last year by the contemporary forces of barbarism. After several thefts of mail, I ordered a fortified, armored mailbox. I was ecstatic when I saw the fabricator’s internet ad: On the video, someone with an AK-47 emptied a clip into it; the mail inside was untouched. I gleefully said to myself: “That’s the one for me.” And it has been so far. But I wonder: Do the thieves not like to get their own mail? Do their children not play Little League? Do they not want a priest at their funeral? Would they not like to drive their cars without worrying about holes in the street? Or is their thinking that a rich society can cover for their crimes without their crimes’ ever much affecting them — given that most others still do not act as they do?

I know it is popular to suggest that as we (age), everything seems “worse,” and, like Horace’s laudatores temporis acti, we damn the present in comparison to the past. Sorry, it just isn’t so. In 1971, 1981, and 1991, city street lights were not systematically de-wired. And the fact that plaques and bells of a century’s pedigree were just now looted attests that they all survived the Great Depression, the hipsters of the 1950s and 1960's, and the crime-ridden 1970s.
(...)
There is indeed something of the Dark Ages about all this. In the vast rural expanse between the Sierras and the Coast Ranges, and from Sacramento to Bakersfield, our rural homes are like stray sheep outside the herd, without whatever protection is offered by the density of a town. When we leave for a trip or just go into town, the predators swarm.

Last summer several cars drove into my driveway, the surprised occupants ready with all sorts of innocent-sounding inquiries: “We just are looking for a rental.” “Do you have scrap for sale?” “We’re having car trouble.” And so on.

All this serves as a sort of red/green traffic light: If someone comes out from the house, the driver poses the question and then abruptly leaves; but if no one appears, he strikes quickly. I remember three or four intruders I confronted this year who had trucks as nice as or nicer than my 2006 Toyota. Two had sports apparel more expensive than my jeans and sweatshirt. All were heavier than I. In other words, malnourishment, the desire for basic transportation, the need for clothing on their backs — all the classically cited catalysts for stealing — are not what is driving these modern vandals.

At a local gathering last week, lots of farmers — of a variety of races and religions — were swapping just such stories. In our new Vandal state, one successful theft begets another — at least once deterrence is lost. In my case, one night an old boat in the barn was stripped. Soon, the storage house was hit. Ten days later, all the antique bolts and square nails were taken from the shop. Usually — as is true with the street lights — the damage to the buildings is greater than the value of the missing items. I would have given the thieves all the lost items rather than have had to fix broken locks and doors.

Yes, you weenie leftists, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have had Chinese-, Hindu-, Japanese-, Mexican-, and Sikh American communities, along with the various European ethnics, for decades before you decried an alleged lack of "diversity".

I just spoke with another group of farmers at a rural fairground. Every single person I talked to has had the copper wire ripped out of his agricultural pumps within the last two years. The conduits taken from my own 15-horsepower and 10-horsepower pumps were worth about $200 at most. The repair bill was $1,500.

Most farmers have lost any steel or iron lying around their barnyards, whether their grandparents’ iron wagon hardware or valuable replacement furrowers and discs. Stories of refuse piled in their vineyards and wrecked cars fished out of their orchards are monotonous. Did the thieves never eat raisins, a peach, an almond? And did they not appreciate that if we did what they did we would all starve?

As I write, I am looking out the window toward my barn at a strange new trash pile that, presto, appeared overnight while I slept: all the accouterments of an old car — seats, dashboard, outside moldings, etc. — are heaped together, along with household garbage. What am I to do with it? I can’t burn it. (Believe me, an environmental officer would appear out of nowhere at the rising of the toxic smoke to fine me, as surely as he is absent when the garbage and refuse are tossed on the roadsides outside of town.) There is too much of it to pile into my $100-a-month Waste Management bin, where I put the plastic garbage sacks tossed by the mailbox each week. It would take two trips in my pickup to haul it to the distant county dump. So for now, the problem is mine, and not that of the miscreant who tossed it. Was he thinking, “Mr. Hanson has more time, more money, more concern over trash, or more neuroticism of some sort, and therefore is more likely to deal with my trash than I am”? — as if to say, “I can live in a neighborhood where wrecked car parts litter the road; he obviously cannot.” So are these tossers simply comfortable with refuse on our streets, or are they not, but, like irked toddlers with soiled diapers, expect someone else to clean up after them?

And is not that the point, after all? Behind the easy criminality of stealing metal or driving outside of town to toss your garbage is an implicit mentality, as frightening as it is never expressed. Someone will indeed take the garbage away. And someone indeed will have copper wire for others to harvest for their needs. And someone will pay the taxes and costs associated with the commission of the crime, efforts at prevention, and rare apprehension of the criminal. And lastly, someone most certainly should. In our crude radical egalitarianism, the fact that one has more, and another less, is de facto wrong, and invites popular remedies. Now, for every crime committed, a new sociology will arise to explain away its commission. We are back to the bankrupt French philosophers who asserted: “Property is theft!”

In the last 20 years, several vehicles have zoomed off the road and plowed into my rather short stretch of roadside vineyard. The symptomology has always been the same: The driver fled; no proof of registration or insurance was left behind. The cost of replanting the vines and replacing the stakes remained all mine. Even the car was towed away and impounded by the state for its fees. As I drive these days across the valley, I play a game of looking at vineyards abutting the road to spot newly replanted vines and fresh stakes; these car-induced blights are quite common. Occasionally, I see the Catholic version of the Orthodox iconostases so common on Greek roadsides — commemorative crosses and shrines erected to mark the spot where one driver did not survive the zoom into the vineyard or orchard.

I just asked a neighbor how many times he has been rammed at a rural intersection, with the other driver fleeing the scene and leaving the car behind (my tally: twice). He laughed and said, “None, but I can top you anyway. Last month a hit-and-run driver swerved off the road, hit the power pole next to my farm, and fled as the high-voltage cables fell onto my grape arbors — and smoked ten acres of overhead vineyard wire.”

I agreed that I could not top that. Who could imagine electrified grapes? I wonder how much in taxes the hit-and-run driver has paid this year to make up for the cost of a utility pole, and the repair of downed wires and a vineyard’s trellising system? Even more frightening are the thousands in our society — journalists, politicians, academics, activists — who get up each morning more concerned about the fleeing "undocumented" driver who destroys power and vines than the victims who pay for the carnage.

The immediate reaction of the victimized in rural central California is predictable and yet quite strange. As in 5th-century North Africa, farmers feel that civilization is vanishing and they are on their own. The “authorities” of an insolvent state, like petty Roman bureaucrats, are too busy releasing criminals from overcrowded jails to want any more. The stories of cyclical releases are horrific: Criminals are not arrested and let go just twice a year, but five and six and ten times. Sometimes we read of the surreal, like this week’s story in my local Selma Enterprise of one criminal’s 36 arrests and releases — and these are only for the crimes we know he committed and was caught for:

TOP STORY

Chief says: Jail revolving door hurting Selma

Crime is Topic No. 1 in Selma, which makes the story of Adam Joshua Perez worth telling. Selma Police have arrested Perez 24 times since he turned 18 in October 2004. Charges against the Selma man have included burglary, theft, possession of narcotics, and weapons-related offenses, according to interim Police Chief Myron Dyck. In that time period, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department also arrested Perez eight times, and the Kingsburg Police took him into custody four times, Dyck said. Fresno Police also were looking at him for some car thefts, Dyck added. He calls Perez (born Oct. 23, 1986) a career criminal who’s getting the benefit of a broken criminal justice system. And there are other people like Perez on Selma’s streets, Dyck said.

Yes, there are.

There is also an unspoken acknowledgment of how state and local law enforcement now works, and it is predicated on a cost-to-benefit calculus. Reporting to the local police or sheriff a huge pile of refuse in your yard — even when the address of the tosser can be found from power bills or letters — or the theft of a tool from the barn is simply not worth the effort. It is not even worth the cost and trouble of activating a high-deductible farm-insurance policy. I guess the reasoning is that you in fact will replace the stolen item, and even if the criminal were apprehended, the costs of arrest, trial, and incarceration — even without the entrance of immigration authorities into the matrix — are too steep for a bankrupt state.

Indeed, farmers out here are beginning to feel targeted, not protected, by law enforcement. In the new pay-as-you-go state, shrouded in politically correct bureaucratese, Californians have developed a keen sense of cynicism. The scores of Highway Patrol cars that now dot our freeways are looking for the middle class — the minor, income-producing infractions of the generally law-abiding — inasmuch as in comparison the felonies of the underclass are lose–lose propositions.

If I were to use a cellphone while driving and get caught, the state might make an easy $170 for five minutes’ work. If the same officer were to arrest the dumper who threw a dishwasher or refrigerator into the local pond among the fish and ducks, the arrest and detention would be costly and ultimately fruitless, providing neither revenue from a non-paying suspect nor deterrence against future environmental sacrilege. We need middle-class misdemeanors to pay for the felonies of the underclass. 

The state’s reaction to all this is a contorted exercise in blaming the victim, in both the immediate and the abstract senses. Governor Brown wants to raise income taxes on the top two brackets by 1 to 2 percentage points, making them over 11 and 12 percent respectively. That our schools are near dead last in test scores, that many of our main freeways are potholed relics from the 1950s, that we just passed the DREAM Act to extend state financial support for college-age illegal aliens, and that the overtaxed are fleeing the state do not register. Again, those who in theory can pay, should — and should keep quiet about why they must suddenly pay a 12 percent income tax that was not needed, say, in 1961, 1971, or even 1991, when test scores were higher, roads better, and communities far safer.

There is, of course, a vague code of silence about who is doing the stealing, although occasionally the most flagrant offenders are caught either by sheriffs or on tape; or, in my typical case, run off only to return successfully at night. In the vast majority of cases, rural central California is being vandalized by gangs of young Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans — in the latter case, a criminal subset of an otherwise largely successful and increasingly integrated and assimilated near majority of the state’s population. Everyone knows it; everyone keeps quiet about it — even though increasingly the victims are the established local Mexican-American middle class that now runs the city councils of most rural towns and must deal with the costs....official accounts in the media are either incomplete or censored to reflect a sort of Ministry of Truth groupthink.

Poverty, racism, class oppression, an uncaring society, government neglect, exploitation, greed — cite them all endlessly, as our coastal (liberal) lawmakers, academics, and bureaucrats largely do. But most of these elite groups also seek to live as far away as possible from rural central California, the testing ground where their utopian imaginations become reality for distant others. The influx of over 11 million illegal aliens has had a sort of ripple effect that is rarely calibrated. Sixty percent of Hispanic males in California are not graduating from high school. Unemployment in rural California (of legal Mexican Americans) runs over 20 percent. There is less fear now of arrest and incarceration, given the bankruptcy of the state, which, of course, is rarely officially connected even in small part to illegal immigration. Perhaps because illegal immigration poses so many mind-boggling challenges (e.g., probably over $20 billion lost to the state in remittances, the undermining of federal law, the prejudice shown against legal immigration applicants, ethnic favoritism as the engine of amnesty, subterfuge on the part of Mexico, vast costs in entitlements and subsidies), talking about it is futile. So most don’t, in fear of accusations of “racism.”

For those who do not leave the area, silence for now remains the norm. We pick up the litter from our farms on the implicit logic that the vandal — and, indeed, the state as well — expects us to, given our greater worry that his garbage would be likely to attract rats, flies, and other historical purveyors of illness. Dead cats, dirty diapers, used needles, baby carriages, shattered TVs, chairs, sofas, rotting lumber, broken windows, concrete blocks, tree limbs, used paint cans, household poisons, bags of used toilet paper and tampons, broken toys, fast-food boxes, toddler’s pools, tires, rotting chickens and dogs — anything that does not have easily detachable clean steel or copper — I’ve picked them all up from my vineyard and driveways.

I do not (yet) move wrecked Winnebagos and trailers onto my single-family-zoned rural parcel to garner rental cash, as do many of my neighbors. After all, some must not, if the careful zoning work of a century is to survive. When one dog in four is not licensed and vaccinated out here, we have a problem; when four out of four will not be, we should expect a 19th-century crisis. When there are three outdoor privies used daily behind a neighbor’s house, the local environment can still handle the flies, the odor, and the increase in the chance of disease; but if there were to be 100 in a half-mile stretch, civilization itself would break down.

Cynicism is the result. We pay no attention to news accounts of new state measures to check the source of metals presented at recycling centers, because we know these efforts are futile — as futile as the “seminars” in which we are told to fence everything in, to buy huge guard dogs, to install video cameras in trees, and to acquire electric gates — as if we were not so much being protected but being held prisoner.

I stay here, however, because I now ask: Why should we change our way of life rather than demanding that those who are changing it should look inward and themselves change?

"Black Friday" insanity

As I watch the local and national TV news, I am shocked by the subtle egging on of the "Black Friday" shopping hordes--even on the relatively better Fox News. In a time of bad economic news, with personal debt at near record levels and with so many people paying off "underwater" housing mortgages, does this mad spending and camping out in front of stores for the latest Iphone or Xbox gizmo make ANY sense?

Perhaps the shopping mantra for the liberal media this year is this: We can't admit the Obamunist government mandates and Demunist economic "stimulus" policy, for which we were cheerleaders, utterly failed, and we know the future is hopeless, but we’re not going to allow the bad economy to ruin our "holiday" season.

The liberal media won't call it Christmas Season, of course.

Of course, I will shop for presents for my family and good friends too, but I will do it on my own sweet time and not get swept up in some media-driven frenzy. Nor will I go into debt for them. I don't think the supplies of goods are THAT low, and in this depressed economy, there will certainly be more discounted sales to entice me to buy in the future.

Then again, perhaps the Obamunists and their media apparatchiks are preparing us future proles for our lives under their socially rationed economic system, where we must stand in line for rationed goods like Cuba, or quickly spend our hard earned cash before it devalues in hyper-inflation like Argentina in the 1970's.

And under such economic policies, we will have to be prepared to be like the crazed shoppers who were pepper-sprayed on Black Friday at a Los Angeles Walmart by a woman who wasn’t about to miss out on one of the most sought after necessities of life — the new Xbox. Only next time, if the Obama Administration wins the 2012 elections and enough Demunists and RINOs hang on to their gerrymandered sinecures in Congress, next time the pushing, shoving, pepper spraying and even shooting may be over gasoline or bread or meat or even vegetables.

Perhaps the "Occupy" camps can be seen as training grounds for future Obama Red Guards. The Occupiers would be perfect candidates to put themselves in harm’s way to get their "fair share" of discounted playthings that they desperately need to keep their gray matter anesthetized. You could just picture many of them punching out the "rednecks" they hate, and then taking their electronic toys back to their Occupy Wall Street tents, and after taking some good drugs falling into a peaceful slumber, thinking to themselves, “Mission accomplished.” And the next day today, they will go back to the front lines fighting those "evil" guys on Wall Street for their Chairman Mao-bama— you know, the same Wall Street guys who have given Barack Obama more money than any candidate in history. But don't tell the Occupier dupes that!

I do not mean to imply that all, or even many, Black Friday shoppers are Occupy Wall Streeters or that all, or even many, Occupy Wall Streeters are Black Friday shoppers. Far from it. But the two groups have at least three things in common: They are very materialistic, they are angry about what they don’t have, and some have no qualms about resorting to mob violence.

When I use the word materialistic, I’m referring to wealth. And to be clear here, wealth is not what someone earns. Wealth is what someone owns. Wealth is cars and buildings and computers and television sets and iPods.

But wealth has to be created. It has to be earned by *somebody*. It takes money, management, and labor to produce all of those cars, buildings, computers, television sets, and iPods. The predicament that America now finds itself in is that there’s a lot of money and management around, but not enough good labor. At least not enough good labor at a cost that allows companies to manufacture goods at prices consumers are willing to pay.

Of course, there’s plenty of labor in places like China, India, Chile, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, and many other countries throughout the world. So it’s no mystery why these countries now produce a great deal of wealth.

The reason the Western world is broke is because it doesn’t have a workforce that is willing to work at wages that are competitive with non-Western nations. From Greece to California, from Italy to New York, the reason workers are unwilling to accept competitive wages is because they can afford to be choosy. Unemployment benefits (now extended to 99 weeks or more), food stamps (ditto), and other forms of "stimulus" welfare remove the motivation for Commiecrat ghetto lumpen proletariat to work at any job that is available to them, at whatever wage is being offered, in order to feed and clothe their families.Starvation no longer motivates people who are unemployed, because the government forces those with wealth to provide food, clothing, and shelter to those who don’t have them.

And with these factors removed from the survival equation, people can afford to camp out at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart for days on end and elbow, stab, shoot, and pepper-spray those who would stand in the way of their getting their fair share of stuff at the lowest possible prices.

Does this mean that people have to work 16 hrs a day for 10 cents per hour in order to compete with a Cambodian serf? Only if they have no more education than a Cambodian serf. Hopefully they went to school and learned a useful trade. NO, Bogus Ethnic Multicultural Commiecrat Studies Victimization is NOT a useful skill. "Social Justice" is also a worthless field. But if they actually studied in school, learned math, chemistry, physics, sciences, engineering, biology, a medical skill or perhaps computers, THEN they can make a good salary. They are not entitled to $30 per hour for sticking a bolt in a car door handle on an assembly line; those days are OVER! But if they can repair a transmission or restart some one's heart, or research how to get greater yields from grains, then they will certainly find jobs all over the place that pay $30 per hour. And that's ALL they're worth.

Then again, maybe not. The more productive business is bashed, the more it moves out of "blue" states, or now even out of this "blue" Demunist nation. (The "Red / Blue" political color scheme should be utterly the other way around, but I digress.) Perhaps they will study hard, like some US engineers, only to have the value of their study undermined by H-1B modern day indentured servant immigrants.

There’s no way to prove it, but I’d be willing to bet that a disproportionate number of those who had nothing better to do than camp out in front of superstores for several days prior to Black Friday are classified as “poor” by the federal government. But how in the world can poor people afford to go shopping for electronic toys?

Good question — and here are some facts about people whom the Census Bureau defines as “poor” that may help to answer it:
--43 percent own their own homes.
--80 percent have air conditioning in their homes.
--75 percent of poor households have a car, and 31 percent have one or more cars.
--97 percent have a color television set and 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
--89 percent own microwave ovens.

Clearly, being poor in America is a whole lot better than being middle class in most other countries. In fact, so-called poor people in the U.S. live as well as those in the median American household of the early 1970s. So when you get right down to it, poverty is relative. But as the living standards of the poor rise, vote-hungry Commiecrat politicians simply make those rising standards the new baseline for poverty. And the RINOs meekly go along.

The "Super Committee" fails--GOOD!

Dick Morris explains:

Mark Twain famously wrote that "no man's property or liberty is safe while the Legislature is in session." The same could have been said for the Deficit Reduction Super Committee. Now that it has reached an impasse, we can all breathe easier!

There is a fundamental, deep difference between the parties in Washington. Democrats want higher levels of taxes and spending and Republicans want lower levels of each. The gulf between them can only be adjudicated by the electorate at an election. That's the way we do it in a democracy. To split the difference in a spate of legislative deal making is to deprive our people of their right of self-government.

Because we are not Japan, we use our elections to air fundamental policy differences. Because we are not Italy, we come to conclusions and are not always looking to split the difference in fuzzy compromise.

For the last weeks many conservatives have been concerned that our Republican members of the panel would sell us out and go for a tax increase. Some, like Tennessee's Senator Lamar Alexander, urged one. For them to have agreed to a compromise would have been disempowering to the voters. It would have been a sin.

Now the great question looms before us: How large should government be? Should it consume the 41% of our national resources it now does or even less than the 33% it did when Obama took power? Let the debate begin and let the voters decide. And let one or the other party return to Washington in 2013 with control of both Houses and of the White House, determined to enact the will of the voters.

The insiders in Washington wanted a deal because they don't trust the voters. The insiders on Wall Street wanted one because they want predictability. But this decision is not to be made by insiders. It will be made by voters. It is not the triumph of gridlock, but of democracy. The absence of a deal is not a failing of our system, but a manifestation of its most glorious success.

We are still, after all, a democracy. 

Not a surprise really.

Let’s get real here. Only the play-along-to-get-along media could hype a business-as-usual non-event like the supercommittee’s thumb-sucking task into sounding like the Cuban missile crisis — or at least the lead-up to the Super Bowl.
(...)
Sorry, but the truth is that the media’s hand-wringing over the supercommittee’s deficit-reduction work is nothing more than a monumental farce. By getting the public to focus on the choice of cutting $1.2 trillion from the budget over 10 years or triggering automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion, Congress is once again able to distract from what really needs to be done.

And by “really needs to be done,” I mean cutting a minimum of $1.5 trillion from the budget next year. Why $1.5 trillion? Because that’s what it would take to balance the current budget, which is already 10 times greater than it should be.

It’s all part of the same old Washington game, and the rules of the game are very simple: Democrats never agree to any serious spending cuts, and Republicans always give in (while pretending to be victorious, of course).

In other words, from the Democrats’ point of view, it’s: “Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” And from the Republicans’ point of view, it’s: “Just let us continue to eat in the Congressional dining room, work out in the Congressional gym and have access to insider stock-trading information, and we’ll go along with just about anything you ask of us.”

It never really mattered whether the so-called “spending cuts” came from the super committee or as a result of “automatic, across-the-board spending cuts.” Either way, the budget, the deficit and the national debt were guaranteed to continue to rise — and at an accelerating rate, at that.

What does this mean in terms of next November’s elections? Well, if the Republicans run a progressive candidate like Mitt Romney, once again allowing themselves to be intimidated by the Democrats’ constant admonishments that “voters want Democrats and Republicans to come together,” then they will have learned nothing from their Mush McCain mistake in 2008.

It’s scary to think about, but even Ann Coulter has fallen into the ageless trap of believing that conservatives should once again set aside their principles and nominate a candidate who can win. Not only is such a position unprincipled, it also yields either a losing Presidential race or a Republican President who does nothing more than carry the water bucket for Democrats. (Think George W. Bush.)

Perhaps the biggest tip-off that Romney has Democrats licking their chops at the thought of his winning the Republican nomination is that their liberal media cheerleaders keep insisting he is the candidate Democrats fear most. That’s a dead giveaway for just how badly they want him to be the Republican nominee. Trust me, the thought of running nonstop ads that feature Barack Obama thanking Romney for creating the model for Obamacare has them both salivating and cackling.

Of course, if voters bypass Romney and flee into the arms of Newt Gingrich, Democrats would also have a ball with some of Gingrich’s more infamous positions — supporting the Troubled Asset Relief Program, global-warming couch sessions with Nancy Pelosi, favoring an individual mandate for health care, and, worst of all, referring to Paul Ryan’s serious budget-cutting plan as “extreme right-wing social engineering.”

The important question of the day is not whether the super committee will “compromise” and work out a spending-cut plan or take the easy way out and allow automatic spending cuts to be triggered. Either way, you can be sure there will be no significant cutbacks in government spending.

A far more important question is: Will conservatives be smart enough and tough enough to understand that promising to cut the size and scope of government and put an end to the criminality in Washington is what got them elected to Congress in 2010?

Or will they misread the political climate once again and run scared — right into the arms of their socialist pals across the aisle — and hand the only Marxist President in American history a default victory that will give him the time he needs to finish the job of destroying what is left of the U.S. economy?

Why Liberals Want Gun Control

Q: Why do Leftists, Liberals, Demunists and Commiecrats want "gun control"?
A: So we can't fight back when they foment mobs and unleash them upon our persons, homes, businesses or other property.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan shows the way:

Even after the bandanna-wearing, rock-throwing, fire-starting fringe demonstrators took over a downtown Oakland building and blocked off a street late Wednesday, Mayor Jean Quan did not want police to intervene.

Instead, Quan asked that police hold off on any confrontation until daylight - or, barring that, send in negotiators to try to work out a peaceful resolution.

"She didn't want to incite the anarchists any more than they already were," said one source who was in the city's emergency operations center when Quan stunned the assembled staffers with her comments.

Finally, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, with the backing of City Administrator Deanna Santana, made the call for police to take action. Both were in the emergency center with Quan.

The following day, at a press conference with Jordan and Santana, the mayor praised police for their handling of the situation, while a stone-faced chief and city administrator stood by her side.

Quan's command center call was the latest example of the mayor's resistance to using police force on demonstrators, a position that is being reinforced both by her closest advisers and her family.

In fact, eyewitnesses say Quan's husband was among the banner-wavers blockading the port in a nonviolent action earlier Wednesday.

Quan said at a press briefing the day after last week's riot that she was still hoping for a "peaceful resolution" to the Occupy encampment outside City Hall.

Sure you do, Jean. Sure....

But when asked what her idea of a peaceful resolution was or how it might be achieved, Quan said, "I don't know."

It will only be achieved when those goons are turned back by armed law-abiding citizens with weapons.

The Liberal Democrat Powers That Be won't help; in fact, they show their sympathy with the window breakers, robbers and looters.

Editorial Cartoon from 1934, Still True Today

But what has the Chicago Tribune, and ever other major newspaper, since come to?

The other plan of action they had was to infiltrate and slowly take control of the newspapers. Thank goodness for blogging.

How to respond to "Occupy Oakland" thug vandals

They form mobs, destroy property and threaten violence against working people. How to respond? With equal or more severe force. And one Oakland developer threatened to do just that, and one Oakland driver did just that! In a sane society we would give these guys medals.

Here's to you, Phil Tagami:

...though some businesses have been targeted and vandalized by Occupy Oakland protesters, there is at least one businessman who refuses to be intimidated.

Phil Tagami is a well-known Oakland developer. Late Wednesday night, instead of going over paperwork or brokering deals, he was forced to defend a downtown building where he personally oversaw $50 million worth of renovations.

He also has an office there.

“We had people who attempted to break into our building,” the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, Tagami said. According to comments he made to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tagami grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and “discouraged them.”

Although they didn’t get inside the building, vandals did scrawl graffiti on the outside walls during the post-midnight riot that broke out after Occupy Oakland’s daylong general strike, writes the Chronicle.

“I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it – I didn’t point it – I just held it in my hands,” Tagami said. “And I just racked it, and they ran.”

Meanwhile, a driver trying to get out of an Oakland BART transit station, after one of these creeps started pounding on his car hood, accelerated and hit the creep! He is unidentified at present, but hats off to him as well. Hats off to the BART Transit Cops for letting him go, too.

Lesson of riots: You can't appease the savages, like the Men's Wearhouse tried to do.

But I suspect the Commiecrats will try to prosecute these two guys. Why is that? Because they are in cahoots with the "Occupy" goons, as Mark Steyn points out:

Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland City Council have made "preserving disorder" the official municipal policy. On Wednesday, the "Occupy Oakland" occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation's fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of "shopping," destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation "F**k", etc. And how did Mayor Quan and the Oakland City Council react? The following day they considered a resolution to express their support for "Occupy Oakland" and to call on the city administration to "collaborate with protesters."

That's "collaborate" in the Nazi-occupied France sense: the city's feckless political class are collaborating with anarchists against the taxpayers who maintain them in their sinecures. They're not the only ones. When the rumor spread that the Whole Foods store, of all unlikely corporate villains, had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, the Regional President David Lannon took to Facebook: "We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today – rumors are false!" But, despite his "total support", they trashed his store anyway, breaking windows and spray-painting walls. As The Oakland Tribune reported: "A man who witnessed the Whole Foods attack, but asked not to be identified, said he was in the store buying an organic orange when the crowd arrived."

There's an epitaph for the republic if ever I heard one.

"The experience was surreal, the man said. 'They were wearing masks. There was this whole mess of people, and no police here. That was weird.'"

No, it wasn't. It was municipal policy.

In fairness to the miserable David Lannon, Whole Foods was in damage-control mode. Men's Wearhouse in Oakland had no such excuse. In solidarity with the masses, they printed up a huge poster declaring "We Stand With The 99%" and announcing they'd be closed that day. In return, they got their windows smashed.

I'm a proud member of the 1 percent, and I'd have been tempted to smash 'em myself. A few weeks back, finding myself suddenly without luggage, I shopped at a Men's Wearhouse, faute de mieux, in Burlington, Vermont. Never again. I'm not interested in patronizing craven corporations so decadent and self-indulgent that as a matter of corporate policy they support the destruction of civilized society. Did George Zimmer, founder of Men's Wearhouse and backer of Howard Dean, marijuana decriminalization and many other fashionable causes, ever glance at the photos of the OWS occupiers and ponder how many of "the 99%" were ever likely to be in need of his two-for-one deal on suits and neckties? And did he think even these dummies were dumb enough to fall for such a feebly corporatist attempt at appeasing the mob?

I don't "stand with the 99%," and certainly not downwind of them. But I'm all for their "occupation" continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement's aims: They're anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life – just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What's happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: the government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class and the criminal class in order to stick it to what's left of the beleaguered productive class. It's a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest – the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the "scholars" whiling away a somnolent half-decade at Complacency U – are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about "social justice" and whatnot.

But that's all it takes to get the media and modish if insecure corporate entities to string along. Whole Foods can probably pull it off. So can Ben & Jerry's, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch corporation UniLever that nevertheless successfully passes itself off as some sort of tie-dyed Vermont hippie commune. But a chain of stores that sells shirts, ties, the garb of the corporate lackey, has a tougher sell. 

The class that gets up in the morning, pulls on its lousy Men's Wearhouse get-up and trudges off to work has to pay for all the other classes, and the strain is beginning to tell.
Let it be said that the "occupiers" are right on the banks: They shouldn't have been bailed out. America has one of the most dysfunctional banking systems in the civilized world, and most of its allegedly indispensable institutions should have been allowed to fail. But the Occupy Oakland types have no serious response, other than the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by government-funded inertia.
(...) 

At heart, Oakland's occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the "idealism" that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge – at least until the window smashing starts. To "occupy" Oakland or anywhere else, you have to have something to put in there. Yet the most striking feature of OWS is its hollowness. And in a strange way the emptiness of its threats may be a more telling indictment of a fin de civilization West than a more coherent protest movement could ever have mounted.

Michelle Malkin posts what the lamestream media apparatchiks won't.

When You Have Lost Stephen Colbert.....

...it is time to pack it up and go home. "Occupy Wall Street" dupes get clowned. Even liberal weenie Stephen Colbert realizes they are a joke.

It's everything you'd hope it would be, and more. I would try to narrow down a few highlights for those who are pressed for time, but it's spectacular from start to finish. Especially entertaining is Colbert's interview with the "female-bodied" facilitator named "Ketchup," and her smirking consensus comrade.

Happy Halloween!

They put Election Day close to Halloween for a reason...

The hidden Obama inflation tax

It has been suggested in some quarters that The Tea Party Movement and their Republican allies have nothing to complain about because neither the Obama administration, nor Nancy Pelosi in her heyday of 2009-2010, raised tax rates. In fact, it is claimed through credits that the Democrats in Congress actually lowered taxes "for 95% of the population!"

Leaving aside the absurdity of cutting income taxes for that 47 percent of the population who pay no income taxes, this utterly ignores the hidden tax of inflation that is simmering away. The Fed has printed more money to pay for Barry and Nancy and Harry's "stimulus". This means more money is going after the same goods and services in our economy. This means the money you or I hold is worth *that much less*. In effect, our money *was* taxed away by Barry and Harry and Nancy, through the mechanism of currency devaluation and corresponding price inflation. You may have noticed prices creeping up in the stores already.

When Pelosi's Congress spent more money than they collected in taxes, and with nearly a *trillion* dollars of "stimulus" they certainly did that, they authorized the Treasury Department to borrow from the public by selling Treasury bills, bonds, and notes. The Treasury offers these securities for sale at public auction, and they are bid for and purchased by banks, pension funds, trusts, corporations, individuals, and above all foreign interests. These are widely considered to be the safest IOUs around. After all, they are guaranteed by the U.S. government.

Inasmuch as Treasury securities are offered at auction, there is no chance they will not be purchased. The Treasury can offer as high a rate of interest as is necessary to attract buyers. Thus, investors, including individuals, pension funds, banks, and life insurance companies needing safety of principal are induced to sell other private debt securities such as bonds, savings accounts, and certificates of deposit, and buy the government IOUs.

Sale of government securities thus absorbs the savings of individuals and corporations. The more that government borrows, the less money that is left over for other borrowers. As a consequence, other borrowers must offer higher and higher rates of interest in order to attract funds. Thus, when the federal government runs deficits, it tends to raise interest rates, and this in turn causes the cost of doing business to rise. As a result, business activity slows down, and both businesses and consumers curtail spending and the economy moves toward recession. Which also explains why Pelosi's and Reid's and Obama's "stimulus" was utterly ineffective.

However, all of the last paragraph assumes a money supply that is kept the same. Enter the "quantitative easing" (printing more money) of Ben Bernacke and the Federal Reserve.

It is widely believed that the Fed is sympathetic with the problems recessions create for politicians, and lowers interest rates in order to keep those politicians in favor with the public. That is not the case at all. The Fed is not a federal agency. It is owned and run by the banking industry. In fact, it is relatively insulated from political pressure, Democrat or Republican, but it has other reasons to act.

What are they? A recession means bad times for the banks. People stop borrowing, corporations lose business, and bank profits drop. When borrowers get into trouble, banks get into trouble. If the recession turns into a full-scale depression, widespread bank failures may result, as they did in the 1920s. Since the Fed is an organization made up of banks, it is clearly in the best interests of those running it to ward off the recession by lowering interest rates. And it does so by expanding the money supply.

When the Fed determines that interest rates should be lowered, or at least prevented from rising any further, it contacts private dealers who make the market in (i.e., who buy and sell) U.S. government securities. The Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve meets and issues orders to purchase Treasury securities. (Remember, these are the same T-bills and bonds that created the rising interest rates in the first place by absorbing the savings of individuals and corporations.)

The Fed pays the dealers for the securities with Federal Reserve checks, which the dealers then deposit in their banks. The bond dealers' banks then forward those checks to the Fed (where the banks have their reserves on deposit), and the Fed credits the reserve accounts of the banks.

Now the bank has new reserves against which it can make loans. These fresh reserves are just like new deposits from customers, and can be expanded by the same process that all bank deposits are expanded. Under reserve requirements in effect at any point in time (the Fed can change them at will), these reserves can be expanded by five, six, or seven times through what is calls "fractional reserve banking." Thus, when the Federal Reserve buys $1 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, the banks can loan out $5, $6, or $7 billion to borrowers.

Where did the Fed get the money to buy the Treasury securities? It created it out of thin air. It credits the reserve account of a bank by a simple bookkeeping entry. What does the Fed have to back up its IOUs? It has the IOUs of the U.S. Treasury, that is, the Treasury's bills and bonds.

The Federal Reserve accounts thus balance: They show a liability of the bank reserves and the offsetting asset of Treasury securities. The Federal Reserve Notes in your pocket or checking account mean that the Fed owes you money, and these are in turn backed up by the T-bills they hold - which means that the government owes the Fed money. The U.S. government continues to issue more and more IOUs to cover its ever-growing deficits, and the Fed continues to buy these up and issue its own notes in their place.

This whole process is known as "monetizing" debt, which means that the debt of the federal government is turned into money. The government borrows money to meet its deficits, and the IOUs it issues eventually are converted into Federal Reserve Notes. Those greenbacks in your wallet that you think of as money are only government IOUs broken up and reissued by the Fed. And as a result of what the Fed did, your hard earned money is worth that much less...

Thus, in the long run, there is no difference between Nancy and Harry and Barry and the other liberals in the government fighting a recession by taxing money from you and giving it to "green jobs" or "the needy", and the Fed doing much the same by buying up Nancy and Harry and Barry's Treasury bills and giving the banks new reserves. The only difference is in the timing. The effects of government borrowing are almost instantly offset by the effects of government spending. But when the Fed monetizes the government debt, it takes months, or even years, for people to offset the influx of new money by raising their prices. The Fed action just postpones the inevitable a bit longer than the government action does.

Federal deficits, then, are the primary cause of continued inflation of the money supply. Once banks have loaned out their depositors' money to the maximum limit set by reserve requirements, the only source of new dollars is the Federal Reserve.

Dirty Laundry

Saw a link to this T-shirt at cafepress earlier. I think it's a pretty good response to those whose T-shirts express the idea that "Our totalitarians are cool."

The text reads “My Che and Mao t-shirts are in the wash”. Not bad. And, the back depicts the numbers of people killed by the Soviets and the Maoists next to the number killed by the Nazis (hint: each of the former racked up a higher body count), with a general admonition against totalitarianism.