How To Tell Things Are Going Badly In Washington

April 4, 2013 9 Comments

New jobless claims are up to 385,000, an increase of 28,000 over last week. No doubt the administration has some sort of excuse for the increase. Instead of discussing the economy, Obama is busy campaigning for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. She’s apparently the sort of Speaker we should desire as she never puts ideology above doing what’s right. Yes, Obama was serious when he suggested that. Please stop laughing. If that doesn’t distract the public, perhaps Obama should send senior advisors out to complain about the Drudge Report and how it “hurts what we’re trying to do.” No, wait, they’ve done that.

The economy isn’t really gaining any strength, which is cause for ignoring the economy if you’re a Democrat. There are other things to ignore as well, such as the administration’s  inability to get the Obamacare exchanges up and running next year. We’ll have to “suffer” without the exchanges until 2015. Obamacare is collapsing in on itself as the regulators are unable to write coherent regulations and get the system up and running. It behooves the administration to ignore this problem, just like the economy.

The administration reaction to bad news is to ignore it and campaign. Obama has made it his goal to win the House back for the Democrats. He and the Democrats have a number of problems heading into 2014 beginning with Obama himself. Historically President’s who campaign for their party in midterm elections tend to lose. The last midterm, 2010, is a good example. Obama campaigned more than any other sitting President has before during the 2010 midterm and he lost big. The Democrats second problem is that Obama’s personal fundraising arm, Organizing for Action, is competing for Democrat money with the DNC and other party affiliated campaign funds. Lack of a single strategy and single source of funds will dilute the Democrats message and limit their slim chances of victory.

Of course when news isn’t good it’s best to focus on other things. As such Obama is talking about the next election rather than the daily dose of bad news coming from Washington. Add to that a dose of media blaming, always a sign of desperation from the White House. It’s one thing for surrogates to blame the media, it’s another thing when White House advisers point the finger at the media. It’s no surprise they’re going after Drudge. despite his conservative leanings, the left-wing media flocks to the Drudge Report. Obama is trying to get them to knock it off but the fact is reporters desire to have their stories linked on Drudge because a link from his website equals tens of thousands of additional hits for an article and increased notoriety for the writer.

Of course it’s Drudge’s fault that the Obama administration, with its adoring media, cannot get his message out properly. It’s almost comical that anyone in the administration would make such a statement. It had it’s intended effect though, we forgot all about the jump in new unemployment numbers and the Obamacare regulation problems. When this administration starts focusing on nonsense issues (for the administration anyway) and campaigning we know things aren’t going well. As things get worse over the next few weeks and months it ought to be fascinating to see how far they take this.

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Obama Is Neither The Democrats Reagan Or Lincoln Reincarnated

January 22, 2013 1 Comment

Obama’s second inauguration went about as expected. His speech started out with the sort of rhetoric one might expect to hear at your local Tea Party rally. Obama then rejected all of that in a sea of collective action that we can do “together.” Obama is a socialist, did you expect something else from him? Surely you weren’t surprised by his “climate change” paragraph or his reference to homosexuals. No one should have been surprised by his calls for more government, Obama is exactly what we know him to be. What he is not is the Democrats Reagan and his speech was not the reincarnation of the Gettysburg Address.

The liberal media is making Obama’s speech out to be one of the greatest in history while the conservative media is taking it as a declaration of war. It wasn’t a great speech and war was declared by this President four years ago, so both sides are wrong. We haven’t had a meaningful inauguration speech since Kennedy’s in 1961. Generally speaking these addresses are forgettable. They don’t set the tone for the administration to come. Does anyone remember what Obama said in 2009? Could anyone quote off the top of their head a single line from any of the Bush or Clinton inaugural addresses? Like those speeches, Obama’s will be forgotten by the end of the week.

The liberal media is setting up two narratives about Obama, that he’s the Democrat’s Reagan and he’s Lincoln reincarnated. It is true that Obama is largely the opposite of Reagan. Reagan spoke of individual freedom. Obama clearly rejects this in favor of collectivism. But that’s about where it ends. Obama isn’t a great public speaker, he’s largely monotone. Reagan was detested by the far left but a majority of Democrats liked him. He won 49 states and nearly 60% of the vote in his re-election campaign. Obama is detested by the entire Republican Party and lost votes last year. Reagan got a lot of things passed through a Democrat Congress. Obama has been able to pass little the last two years. He won’t be transformative because he won’t be able to transform anything at this point. He isn’t the Democrat’s Reagan.

The second narrative is that Obama is somehow tied to Lincoln. It was curious that the media fell to pieces over that Lincoln movie that came out of Hollywood a month or so ago. It’s now clear why they picked that film to fall apart over, they’re trying to link Obama with Lincoln. Chris Matthews bellowed that Obama’s speech yesterday was the Gettysburg Address. Absurd as that is, the media has been tossing Obama’s name around with Lincoln’s for the past few weeks. It’s absurd unless of course the left is calling for civil war against the Republican Party. Interestingly the CBS political director called for Obama to declare war on the GOP and he must “destroy” the party. Perhaps the left really is itching for a civil war to link Obama and Lincoln. Hopefully 600,000 Americans don’t have to die for it.

The GOP needs to keep moving forward with it’s plans for the year. We cannot get caught up in inauguration hysteria. We need Boehner to obstruct at all costs and we need to start vetting 2016 Presidential candidates. We need to see Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and perhaps Ted Cruz become the faces of the GOP opposition. The GOP needs to start the 2016 campaign today and it needs to be focused on the opposite of what Obama called for yesterday. Let the media fall to pieces over an irrelevant speech, our party needs to be focused on having our guy give the next irrelevant inaugural address.

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Leftists Attack The Constitution

January 3, 2013 5 Comments

The left has spent the better part of the last month attacking the Constitution. It began with the Sandy Hook shootings which brought calls for massive gun control and/or an elimination of the 2nd amendment. A Constitutional law professor wrote an op/ed in the NY Times Sunday suggesting that we don’t bother following the Constitution anymore. Over in the UK, they’re demanding that we eliminate free speech. If we are not governed by the Constitution, just what will we be governed by? This is of course never mentioned by the liberals who want to rain on the Constitutional parade.

Louis Seidman suggests that following the Constitutional form of government is ludicrous and antiquated. He more or less argues that the Constitution should be viewed not as the law of the land but as a grand list of governing suggestions. It’s sort of like how the left views the Bible, they ignore what they don’t like. What this means in practical terms is anyone’s guess. Seidman suggests that the government will of course protect free speech and freedom of religion. But one gets the feeling that Seidman would do away with the 2nd amendment. Seidman wants to change the foundation by which our governing institutions claim their legitimacy but if we have no Constitution where exactly do these institutions claim any legitimacy?

When a nation goes down the slippery slope of ignoring its founding document it ends in tyranny. If we don’t have to follow the Constitution what is to stop Congress from passing laws banning free speech? They’re attacking free speech on Twitter, demanding “hate” speech be banned. While privately held Twitter can ban whatever speech it wants, the argument rests on the speech other countries ban. The argument is against the American 1st amendment. If we no longer need to follow the Constitution there will be nothing compelling Congress, the President or the Supreme Court from enforcing Constitutional protections such as free speech.

All free nations have a founding document of one sort or another that details the powers entrusted to the government. The Magna Carta and the Constitution are perhaps the two most famous. When a nation begins to ignore the founding document tyranny usually sets in. The French Revolution saw one Constitution after another destroyed by tyrannical politicians who ignored such documents. The result was Napoleon. The Wiemar Republic had founding documents which were ignored and ultimately eliminated by Hitler. We may not head down the path of Napoleon or Hitler but what exactly will protect our freedom if the government won’t follow its founding document?

The left hates the Constitution because it limits their ability to turn America into a European Socialist state. The only way they can win in the end is to discredit the Constitution, mock it and convince the public that it is worthy to be ignored. We’re seeing an increasing assault on the Constitution from the left, largely because it prevents Obama from going forward alone with his left-wing plans. Make no mistake, if a Republican were President the left wouldn’t be attacking separation of powers in the New York Times. We must as a nation ask ourselves whether we want a government unlimited by the Constitution. Do we want a government that has the power to cast aside the first amendment or any other provision of the Constitution. If we’re willing to cast aside the details of the Constitution, we’re willing to forgo free speech, free press and freedom of religion. Give the government and inch and they’ll take a mile.

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Supreme Court Poised To Destroy Individual Freedom

June 26, 2012 2 Comments

The Obamacare decision is going to be handed down on Thursday. It appears that Chief Justice Roberts will be delivering the opinion. That means it’s either 5-4 to overturn at least the mandate or 6-3 to uphold the law. The liberal press is in borderline freak out mode over the notion that this law might be ruled unconstitutional, they can’t imagine how it can be. That largely stems from their refusal to take conservative jurisprudence seriously. Another like of articles the past few days, both on the left and right, have focused on how bad this decision will be for Obama. The bigger question is what will this decision mean for the American people?

A ruling that Obamacare is constitutional isn’t out of the question. I’d say it’s 60-40 that it doesn’t happen, but that means there’s at least a 40% chance that this law is ruled constitutional. What does that mean for freedom in American though? If the individual mandate is constitutional, is there any essential aspect of life that the government cannot regulate? Keep in mind, this is the argument the liberals have been making on Obamacare. Healthcare is something everyone will need eventually and therefore the Commerce Clause allows the government to mandate that we buy private health insurance.

If having the government regulate commerce means they can force us to buy essential products like health insurance there is nothing essential they cannot force us to buy. It is essential that we eat, therefore the government could regulate commerce by forcing us to buy healthy food. People laughed when Scalia suggested the government could force us to buy broccoli but why wouldn’t the government be able to do this? We all have to eat and government may decide to save money on healthcare the American people need to eat healthy food. Therefore as part of its Commerce power, the Congress could order us to buy healthy food. It’s not out of the question, in fact the argument for this is identical to the individual mandate argument.

We could come up with any number of other products that are essential in this life and because they require us to buy something and are commerce, the government could order us to buy them if the individual mandate is upheld. Funeral services, water, shelter, clothing etc. You may laugh at these suggestions but if Congress may use its Commerce Clause power to mandate the purchase of health insurance because health insurance is essential to living, then government can mandate the purchase of all these other essential products of life. You have to wonder though at what point does the consent of the governed cease.

The Federalist Papers argued for the Commerce Clause and nowhere did the founders argue that this clause could order the American people to buy private products. It’s one thing to regulate commerce between the several states to ensure that the states aren’t placing special taxes, fees or regulations on products produced out of state. It’s another thing for Congress to regulate commerce by ordering the American people to buy products, no matter how essential they may be. If government can order us to buy health insurance, there is no power over us that they don’t have. The government will cease to be of the people but it will have become a dictatorship.

I hope that the Supreme Court will rule the mandate unconstitutional and thus place limits on the power of the Federal government. It would not surprise me in the least though if they rule it constitutional. Kennedy is weak and I fear Roberts isn’t nearly as conservative as we had originally hoped. A ruling of constitutional will likely rile up Republicans and propel Romney into office. But even if he is able to repeal Obamacare, the damage will already be done. The Supreme Court precedent will be in place and the next Democrat, if not Romney, will likely take full advantage of it. What the American people must ask themselves though is whether this is the freedom that the founders wanted for this nation.

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Obamacare Ruling Will Renew Call For Socialist Single Payer

June 23, 2012 4 Comments

The Obamacare ruling is expected next week. We won’t know when it is actually going to be handed down, all the speculation on it is absurd. It’s likely that at least the individual mandate will be struck down, if not the entire law. Any ruling that all or part of Obamacare is unconstitutional will be a victory for the Tea Party and the Constitution. It will also be politically disastrous for the President. The big question though is what effect this will have on the Presidential race. There are some on the left who believe a ruling of unconstitutional will open the door for single payer socialist medicine. We must make sure this never happens.

Single payer socialist medicine would not per se be unconstitutional so long as it is based on the taxing power of the Constitution. The Congress could tax individuals or businesses and use the money to fund a massive, nationalized health care system. They already do this with Medicare, though the benefits are only for those 65 and older as opposed to all Americans. This system stands in stark contrast to Obamacare, which relies on the Commerce Clause to force Americans to buy health insurance. A single payer, socialist system would be easier for the left to get by the Constitution and let’s face it single payer is what they’ve been after all along.

Single payer though is a disaster wherever it is implemented. We forever hear the left telling us about the great health care system in Canada. In Canada you’ll find waiting lists a mile long. If you need surgery or therapeutic treatment you’ll wait an average of 18.3 weeks. Ontario leads the way, their citizens only wait 15 weeks, while Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Soctia have nearly six month waiting lists. Need to see a specialist in Canada? You’ll wait two months on average. You’ll wait a month to see a cancer doctor and God help you if you’ll need to see more than one during your battle against cancer because it’s a month for each doctor. Need a CT scan in Canada? You’ll wait nearly 5 weeks. Need a MRI? You’ll wait over 10 weeks.

Meanwhile in Great Britain they’re knocking off the elderly at the rate of 130,000 per year. They attempt to make excuses for this number (it isn’t denied) but we all know they’re killing these people because they’re a cost burden. Life becomes cheap when taxpayers are on the hook and there’s a deficit. Politicians don’t have to worry about dead people voting in the next election, they do have to worry about angry taxpayers who don’t like deficits.

The reason why socialist medicine is such a mess is because it functions outside of the market. It’s very easy to go see a GP in a socialist country because they are the lowest common denominator. All voters need to see a GP every year so the government props these doctors up and makes them easily accessible. Fewer voters need to see specialists or need special treatment so it pays at the ballot box to fund these people at lower levels than the market would otherwise demand. We have the opposite situation here in the US, we have specialists galore because Americans demand them. It’s why we have the best healthcare in the world and Canada and Great Britain do not.

In the next few weeks the far left will call for socialist single payer healthcare. Odds are the American public isn’t going to be much interested in another massive left-wing healthcare program. But we must be prepared to combat socialist healthcare when they call for it. The numbers from Canada and Britain are chilling. The lack of competition breeds waste. The political solutions to health problems is costly for sick people and the elderly. Do the American people, particularly the 85% with health insurance, really want four month waiting lists for treatment? Do we really want to wait a month or two for basic diagnostic tests that we can get tomorrow or the next day now? Do we really want a system that has incentive to knock off the elderly when they become “too costly”? That’s what socialist single payer will give us. God help us if Obama should ever manage to pass it.

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Is Obama A Socialist? AP Has No Idea

June 5, 2012 3 Comments

The Associated Press is running a supposed fact check article asking whether Obama is a socialist. The premise of the article is that conservatives are calling Obama a socialist but according to the “facts” Obama simply isn’t a socialist. As we will see, the article itself lacks in facts but it doesn’t lack in opinion and accusation.

According to the article no real socialist believes Obama is one of them.

Terence Ball, a political scientist at Arizona State University, said “socialist’ has gained currency as an anti-Obama slur because “the ‘L’ word (liberal) has lost it shock value.”

“I grow weary of Obama and the Democrats being called socialist,” said Ball, who has written about ideologies. “If you talk to any real socialist, they disown them very, very quickly.”

Professor Bell starts off alleging that liberal has lost its shock value so those rotten conservatives have turned to calling Democrats socialists. He’s personally tired of hearing Obama and Democrats being called as such. Then the good professor provides us with hearsay evidence that socialists have disowned Obama. Where are the facts? We have Professor Bell’s personal opinion and his hearsay accusation that socialists disown Obama. If the AP were doing a real factual article, they would have found an actual socialist who disowns Obama or provided us with evidence that large socialist organizations have disowned the President. As it stands the Communist Party USA endorsed Obama in 2008 as did several other socialist organizations.

The AP did actually find a socialist to talk to, though no word as to whether he disowns Obama. We’ll leave that issue for hearsay to determine. This socialist said the following on Obamacare:

“It makes absolutely no sense,” said Greg Pason, national secretary of the Socialist Party USA. Obama’s health care overhaul “is anything but socialist. It’s bailing out for-profit companies.”

Yet Pason has been pleased by the “socialist” rhetoric.

“We’ve had an opportunity to talk to people, and that’s been a blessing,” he said. “People have actually researched socialist organizations.”

What the AP doesn’t tell you is that there’s more than one kind of socialist out there. There were any number of socialists who opposed Obamacare because it wasn’t a single payer system. Others viewed Obamacare as a stepping stone to single payer, much like Marx viewed socialism as a stepping stone to communism. Just because Obamacare isn’t single payer doesn’t mean it isn’t a socialist program or have socialist elements to it. After all, we have the government now dictating what is included in health insurance policies and determining how much will be spent on individual healthcare decisions.

The piece then went on to discuss Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist.

One of the few contemporary U.S. politicians to embrace the socialist label is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He formally lists himself as an independent, but throughout his career — including stints as a mayor and House member — he’s described himself as a democratic socialist.

“Branding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh,” Sanders said in 2009. “If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.”

 While the Senator does a good job slurring conservatives he doesn’t make the case whether Obama is a socialist one way or the other. This is meaningless filler which perhaps is there to distract our attention away from the lack of evidence that Obama isn’t a socialist.

The AP then quotes another professor, Norman Markowitz of Rutgers University.

“There’s this hysterical outbreak of abuse to prove that the president is not American, that he’s a secret Muslim, that policies that past Republican administrations would have adopted are part of a socialist, communist conspiracy,” Markowitz said.

Once again, no evidence that Obama isn’t a socialist. All we  have here is one professor’s opinion and slander of conservatives followed by baseless declarations about what past Republican administrations would have done. There’s no evidence that Obama isn’t a socialist from Markowitz, he doesn’t really have anything of value to say at all.

Keep in mind the entire purpose of this article is to prove that Obama isn’t a socialist. The AP has set this piece up by suggesting conservative are crazy for calling Obama a socialist and here’s the evidence that he isn’t actually one. The problem is that there’s no evidence opposing the position of some, but not all, conservatives. The opinions of a couple of college professors, a hearsay statement and one socialist criticizing Obamacare isn’t proof that Obama isn’t a socialist.

There is ample evidence that he is one, perhaps along the lines of the democratic socialists of Europe. He does believe in single payer healthcare and advocated it during the 2008 campaign for the Democrat nomination. He believes in a massive welfare state and redistribution of wealth. He so much as said so to Joe the Plumber and he’s said it at various times as President. He believes in a massive regulatory environment and limitations on business, including business speech.

He’s a socialist, perhaps not as far left as the some of the communists or a number of other socialist groups but he is a version of a socialist. In many ways he’s a typical progressive, willing to inch his way towards socialism. The AP countered none of the conservative arguments against him though. At best the Socialist Party USA secretary’s attack on Obamacare ”proves” the AP’s case. But even in that, Pason’s argument is so ridiculous that it calls into question his ability to speak for his group. After all, health insurance companies are hardly in need of a bailout in light of the high amount of profits they earn.

The AP set out to prove conservatives are crazy slanderers. The AP no doubt believes it proved their case, otherwise they wouldn’t have published this article. But the fact is, the AP didn’t prove anything. It takes more than the opinion of a couple of random college professors and their hearsay arguments and one irrational critique by a socialist to prove the AP’s case. Whether or not Obama is a socialist can be determined objectively by looking at his policies and beliefs. Surely the AP is capable of putting together a substantive piece. But of course, that would require work. It’s much easier to quote opinions and hearsay than actually write something of substance.

 

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Leftists Busy Organizing 99% Spring Protests

February 28, 2012 3 Comments

If one were to listen to the mainstream media you would think Occupy Wall Street has gone away. But for a handful of violent clashes with police, the OWS movement has moved out of the headlines. Last year the media didn’t warn the country about the impending Wall Street protests organized far in advance by Stephen Lerner of SEIU, Van Jones and others. They then pretended like the movement was organic, suddenly popping up out of nowhere. Never mind that the left was on record concerning their plans to protest banks, investment houses and the rich generally. The media is pulling the same stunt again.

OWS is set to return April 9th with something called a “99% Spring.” This supposedly non-violent week of protests is being organized by a who’s who of leftists and leftist organizations. The UAW, Moveon.org, Engage, Progressive  Democrats of America, Van Jones, Sarita Gupta etc. These folks are planning for massive protests throughout the country during the week of April 9th. Yet the media is going to portray the protests as an organic, spontaneous event. Never mind that the left issued a press release on the subject on February 15th and has spent many months organizing the protests.

It appears the UAW is taking the lead in organizing the 99% Spring. This is interesting in light of the fact that the UAW was the biggest beneficiary of Obama’s car industry bailout. The UAW isn’t the only one organizing this though as several George Soros funded organizations such as moveon.org are also organizing.

While the 99% Spring rhetoric is peaceful and points towards Martin Luther King’s non-violent protests, we must not forget the violence of Occupy Wall Street. What the OWS folks are doing with the 99% Spring is trying to avoid a violent meltdown similar to 1968. It seems unlikely given the violence of OWS and the racism and anti-Semitism also found at OWS protests. They can talk about non-violence until they’re blue in the face, the fact is OWS was violent and many of the 99% Spring organizers have advocated violence in the past. In short, non-violence is just a buzz word meant to placate people who aren’t really paying attention. It means nothing to the organizers.

The whole point of this movement is to overthrow the American government as we know it. They want to enforce socialism, if not outright Marxism. Last year OWS at times advocated killing capitalists and in the very least sought to demonize anyone with money. Well, anyone with money not associated with them. George Soros is a good rich guy, so are rich Hollywood leftists. All the other guys are evil.

When the 99% Spring begins, all organized by the UAW, Van Jones and any number of other leftists, the media will act shocked by the grassroots nature of it all. They’ll be amazed at how much these protesters care. The truth is that just like OWS, the 99% Spring will be nothing more than a highly organized protest meant to bring chaos to the streets and push the country towards totalitarian socialism. The media won’t tell you that but if you follow what these people are, how they’re organizing and what they’re goals are it becomes very clear. The far left has a formula, they’re up front about it if you dig around a little bit. The dirty secret is that OWS and the 99% Spring are nothing but an organized astro-turf protest.

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OWS West Coast Blockade Will Destroy The Middle Class

December 12, 2011 Leave a comment

The Occupy Wall Street organizers are planning a shutdown of west coast ports today. OWS was marginally successful in shutting down the Oakland port earlier this year. Whether they can manage to shut down ports from San Diego to Vancouver via protest blockades remains to be seen. Their goal is to attack corporate profits. In reality their actions, if successful, will do nothing but hurt your average employee.

Keri Koch (presumably not related to the evil Koch Brothers) of Shut Down the Ports Working Group of Occupy Portland (only the left would come up with a name like that and proudly list it on their resumes) had this to say about the port blockade:

We will not stand for corporate profits at the expense of working people, we will not stand for attacks on workers, and we will not allow our schools to be closed, social services slashed, and families to be impoverished by your greed!

The boogie man of corporate profits is ever so amusing. I wonder if Miss Koch could provide us the names of schools that are being closed but would otherwise be open but for corporate profits. In fact, one wonders how she makes the connection between corporate profits and governments closing schools or cutting “social services.” The two really don’t have anything directly to do with each other. But it’s a nice sound bite that makes it look like corporate profits are to blame for all the problems of the world when in reality the problem isn’t corporate profits but government.

But let’s look beyond Miss Koch’s absurd connections and look at what the end result would be of a successful blockade of the west coast. We can only assume that a successful blockade would last more than a single day as OWS has tried to occupy parks for weeks and months on end. Who would be hurt if the west coast suffered a total blockade? No doubt corporate profits would be hurt as companies wouldn’t be able to ship goods and raw materials overseas nor would they be able to receive goods and raw materials from overseas. So the blockade would be successful in destroying corporate profits.

However in destroying corporate profits the left would destroy all manufacturing that is dependant on west coast shipping. Unable to use the west coast to ship, American manufacturers would have no place to ship their finished or partially finished goods or raw materials to China, Japan, Thailand or anywhere else in Asia. Who would that hurt? American workers of course. It would shut down factories, plants and mines across the country. It would substantially hurt farming. It would hurt the entire shipping industry. American workers, farmers, laborers and longshoremen would lose their jobs because their companies would have no means to ship goods or receive goods to produce products.

But of course it doesn’t stop there. Not only would people directly reliant on shipping via the west coast be hurt but so would all of those who are indirectly reliant. The local grocery store, fast food restaurant, clothing stores, lawyers, accountants and a host of other people would lose money and/or jobs because their customers or clients in the manufacturing or farming sector would lose theirs. Most of these people are the 99% that OWS claims to be protesting for.

There are unintended consequences concerning the west coast blockade that the average person needs to think about before supporting it. The goal of OWS is to create chaos to force “change” (read: socialism) on America. No doubt a complete blockade of the west coast would create chaos, which ought to make us suspicions of whether or not OWS leaders have thought about the consequences of their actions. They probably have and they don’t care how many people lose their jobs. In fact, they’ll argue the more who lose their jobs the better because it creates more chaos and anger. But before rank and file Democrats or college students hop on board with occupying the west coast, think about how many millions will lose their jobs if the west coast is shut down. This isn’t about corporate profits, it’s about middle class jobs. OWS is trying to destroy the middle class in the name of destroying corporate profits.

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Pelosi Proposes Federal Control of Child Care.

November 21, 2011 3 Comments

It’s no secret that the left wants to control everyone from cradle to grave. Lately leftist Democrats have more or less come out and admitted as such. Nancy Pelosi recently declared that if she becomes Speaker again she wants to do to child care what the Democrats did to healthcare. Several weeks ago Sen. Richard Blumenthal demanded a stimulus for diapers and other diapering supplies. Essentially the Senator wants to subsidize one of the major costs of having a baby. In short, the far left wants the government to have an increasingly large roll in our lives from the moment we’re born.

Pelosi’s proposal is perhaps the more outrageous of the two. She seeks to move us closer and closer to the European Democratic Socialist model of government and family life. In much of Europe, children are shipped off to government daycare before they’re able to walk. Parenting is more or less limited to evening playtime. The rest of the day the child is under the control of government daycare workers. Essentially children spend more time under the control of government than they do with their parents in a good part of Europe, particularly in Scandinavia which the American left loves so much.

You may say what’s the difference between this and the hoards of private daycare facilities that parents (unfortunately) trot their kids off to today? One of the biggest complaints of the left is that they don’t get to influence children before they start kindergarten. As such they’re trying to get control over children before they start school. Why? Because they’re trying to effectively turn them into little socialists. The earlier they can get these kids the better. As such, in the past two decades you’ve seen more calls for government funded pre-school and other early educational programs. Now you have Pelosi calling for government daycare. The left wants control of kids and they want that control before the kids can even speak so they can influence them.

What Pelosi and other leftists are pushing is just an extension of what John Dewey and Horace Mann pushed concerning government education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The goal of Dewey, Mann and other progressives was to separate children from their traditional Christian faith and the traditional view of the Constitution, founding and our nation generally. They sought to do this via government education. Keep in mind, the goal of government education has never been about education. It’s been about forcing a progressive outlook on the next generation. Go back and look at Dewey and Mann’s outlook as well as other education progressives of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Government education has been largely successful at moving the nation to the far left. Pelosi is seeking to move things to the next level. That’s why the next great leftist crisis in America is going to be childcare. We’ll be bombarded with all sorts of trumped up statistics and sob stories. Then the left will demand we “do something” about this crisis. Pelosi and assorted leftists will be waiting in the wings for some grand childcare plan that Federalizes the entire industry and brings control of it to Washington.

We should be very wary of any attempt to give children over to the government from the time they’re born. The government ought not be trusted with such control or power. They’ve already shown themselves to be incompetent educators (unless you have a progressive outlook, then the test scores don’t matter) and they’ve shown themselves to unable to do much of anything with any competence. When the left starts crying about a childcare crisis, we need to be prepared to step up and counter this nonsense. We must never forget that their goal is socialism and they’ll use our kids to further their goals. Unless of course they can’t get their hands on them.

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Why Is The Federal Government Involved In School Lunches?

November 16, 2011 2 Comments

Absurdity has gripped Washington. This isn’t a shock to most people but it’s become more absurd recently. We all know Michele Obama has spent the last three years pushing the typical far left health food kick. Controlling what people eat has always been a goal of the far left, Hitler, Stalin and the EU have all sought to control people’s diet. That Mrs. Obama believes it’s her responsibility to target American children in order to ”get their palates adjusted” is no surprise. The far left not only wants to control our diet but they’re going to target children. This again is typical of the far left, Mrs. Obama is behaving just like one would expect a leftist to behave.

The real kicker though is the Republican Congress. They’re pushing back against the Obama administration’s healthy school lunch programs. The GOP Congress wants pizza and french fries to be included in the school lunch program. They want tomato paste to remain a vegetable, whereas the Obama administration wants it labeled something else. The Republicans have some very good points. Children don’t eat the healthy food they’re given the end result of which is a lot of waste. The House GOP doesn’t want Washington to dictate what children eat for lunch.

These are all good points but they miss the overriding question. Why is the Federal government involved in school lunches at all? The Federal government spends billions subsidizing school lunches and regulating what all children eat at school. Why? How is this any of the Federal government’s business? The Federal government has no business subsiding school lunches, which of course means subsidizing large food manufacturers and distributors. The GOP Congress is being swayed not just by the absurdity of the Obama administration’s position or on principle. The GOP Congress is being swayed by tomato farmers, salt manufacturers and frozen pizza manufacturers. You can bet that the Obama administration and Democrats are being lobbied by whatever large farming conglomerate is providing all of the supposedly healthy school food kids don’t eat.

This is a perfect example of Washington gone wild. This is not a Federal issue. There is no constitutional basis for the Federal government to declare what is and isn’t acceptable in a school lunch. In fact, education is an entire area that the Federal government has no constitutional basis to regulate. Schools lunches are at best a state and local issue. In reality, they’re something that parents should be responsible for, not the government. Why exactly are government schools in the food service industry in the first place? The fact is, parents should provide their own kids lunch. Brown bagging lunch would save taxpayers a fortune.

But of course Republicans won’t take a principled stand like this unless they’re running for Congress the first time or at a Tea Party event. Once they get to Washington they’re swayed by lobbyists, just like the Democrats. The only difference is that the big government proposals the Democrats offer are in lock step with what they believe. The GOP has to pretend to support a small Federal government in order to get elected. It makes their regulation of school lunches, however lax in comparison to the Obama administration’s, all the more insidious.

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