Back to Basics

Ronald Reagan once said that it was fairly easy to sum up government’s view of how to handle the economy. “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it,” Reagan said.

Well, some liberals want to give new meaning to the first part of that phrase. Yes, Senator Chuck Schumer (D), who is always looking for some new way to get his grubby hand in the pockets of the doer class, is pushing for the “Ex-PATRIOT” [1] act which says, essentially, “if it wants to move out of the United States, tax it.” Along with Senator Schumer was my Senator from Pennsylvania. Dear God I am so ashamed to say this, Bobby Casey Jr. (D) who only pops up every now and then and has apparently decided, after many years, to stop seeking higher office and not shirk his current one.

Ex-PATRIOT, which stands for Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy. You can bet that someone got paid good tax payer dollars to come up with that long winded title that was able to be condensed to such a cutesy acronym. Ex-PATRIOT is designed to tax people who no longer want to live in the United States because they are tired of being targeted by liberal Democrats like Schumer and Casey for higher and higher taxes and to pay for more and more unconstitutional, socialist spending. Consider this the left’s modern day version of the fence with machine gun mounts, barbed wire and landmines that their fellow travelers have often put up to convince people to not leave the “paradise” liberalism always constructs. Those fences were designed to keep people in. Those fences were meant as a signal. Do not cross this line. Do not even think about looking for a better life elsewhere. Sure, you might make it though, but we will take our pound of flesh as you leave.

Liberals like Schumer are so outraged that people like Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin are renouncing their citizenship and leaving because liberals like Schumer are constantly vilifying them. So isn’t the problem clear? Well, it is to anyone other than liberals like Schumer it is. The problem is the policies of the left that drive these people to a point where they feel that they can do better elsewhere. The problem is the left, not people like Saverin. But as usual the left cannot see the solution because they are the problem and instead double down on their own self-created problem.

Taxes are too high.

People choose to flee the high taxes.

Liberals raise taxes even higher by taxing those who leave.

In the mind of the liberal this solves the problem. Right? After all, they are getting oodles of money when they kick the doer who has decided to leave as he is headed out the door.

Wrong!

The doer is gone. And he or she has taken his or her ingenuity with them. They will create no new wealth for America and now America must replace that doer with another doer of equal ability just to keep the same level of tax revenue that was had before.

Occupy Wall Street is back and gearing up for its latest round of attacks against America. Not surprisingly, the OWS crowd set May 1st, aka May Day, aka International Workers’ Day, aka a socialist holiday, to once again disrupt society and launch their spring offensive. Based on history, OWS is sure to become more and more “offensive” as the year rolls on. And yes, lest there be any doubt, I am indeed talking about the odor that the unbathed hordes will be giving off from the filth they will be wallowing in by about June 1st.

In San Francisco the left kicked things off a day early by smashing up cars and businesses in the Mission District [1]. Of course, as is often the case with the left, they quickly blamed the violence on “outsiders” (aka other people) who are not part of their “peaceful” movement. Taking their cue from President Obama, who often blames everyone else for his failures, the OWS crew of misfits has no shortage of other people prepared to point fingers at. Who would ever believe that leftists would resort to committing acts of violence, vandalism and disruption right? I mean there has never, ever been a leftist that promoted such thing! Ok, ignore, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Chavez, Castro, et al. But other than them … no other leftist ever promotes such horrid things right? Uh huh.

As much as they protest, the entire OWS movement has been nothing but one big orgy of violent activity as leftists do what leftists do. The left claims that they do not support such things, yet everywhere they pop up these sorts of activities happen. It is like the arsonist who lights a match and then says that the building did not burn down because of his actions. Oh no. “It was the match!” screams the arsonist before the judge. “The match set the fire!”

Yes. But who struck the match?

The fact is that the OWS movement is just the latest front group for leftists who want to incite their fellow travelers to take to the streets. They stand up on their soapboxes with bullhorn to lips and rail endlessly against the evil corporations, the vile Jews, the despicable banks and the wicked one percent. Yes, even though it is the one percent who are paying the freight and the monstrous bills those on the left have racked up over their years of running American into the ground. They tell those who listen how things are so bad and how there is no way out without ending what are seen as the sources of all wickedness. They then name those that must be taken out. They light the matches. Then the foot soldiers are dropped into the tinder. Like the match that falls from the arsonist’s hand, the hordes spread out and wreck havoc. The building burns down.

No, no, no, their leaders continue to shout as intelligent people connect the dots. They say there are troublemakers in all crowds who take messages incorrectly and that they cannot be held to account for people that have misinterpreted their calls to rise up against the wrongs and right them in the name of socialist revolution. Yet it is funny.

Al Armendariz, President Obama’s hand picked administrator for the EPA’s Region 6 office in Dallas, an academic with a radical environmentalist bent, has issued an apology. Previously, Armendariz had compared the EPA’s strategy of enforcement to terror campaigns conducted by the Romans. “It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them.” The purpose was to make, “that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

Armendariz, as if knowing how bad that sounded, then tried to hedge his words on the spot saying that even though the EPA’s policy, according to him, was to crucify random and innocent people, that the EPA would only do this against those breaking the law. “You make examples out of people who are in this case not complying with the law …” he said. Of course, whether or not “the law” is scientifically or constitutionally sound or not is never broached. It is important to note however to “crucify” someone means to treat them “cruelly” and hence beyond what is reasonable or lawful.

Look, despite his attempted hedging, this is another example of a liberal saying what liberals believe when their handlers let them off their leashes. Armendariz tried to further walk back his comments further by saying in an apology that he “regrets” his “poor choice of words.” Note that he did not say that what he said is not what he believes. He only apologized for poorly choosing his words to properly express those beliefs. Liberals, as well as those who refuse to believe that liberals are really mean people who want to use the power of government to “crucify” their ideological opponents, may not agree. However, all we have to do is look at the facts.

Range Resources, a company that makes its money drilling for natural gas by the process of hydraulic fracturing was recently targeted by Armendariz and Obama’s EPA. After an environmental activist rigged his spigot to his gas line and lit it on fire to claim that there was gas contamination from wells drilled by Range Resources, the EPA jumped on the case and began prosecuting. It is important to note that from the get go this case was obviously a fraud. Repeated reports by the State of Texas showed no contamination from Range Resources’ wells in the water table and the documentation of the event was so hysterical that anyone who knows anything about gas contamination in water knew that there was a scam afoot. But the EPA pushed forward with plans to “crucify” Range Resources anyway. However, Range Resources did not back down and fought the fraudulent charges being hurled against them. And they won the day. The fraud was completely exposed and the EPA, who had to know the fraud was a fraud to start with like everyone else did, dismissed its case. Not before costing Range Resources millions to defend itself however. You can bet that liberals like Armendariz seethed over having their wrists slapped.

But the liberal crucifixion of the oil and gas industry is not isolated to their attack on drillers like Range Resources.

Five months ago, if you asked any conservative in America what they thought about Mitt Romney as the potential GOP candidate for President of the United States what were they saying? Seventy five to eight percent were saying things similar to: Mitt Romney is no good and he is a liberal who will be ruinous for the country if elected. And you know what? They were right. This proves the old adage that the first response is usually the correct one. But when given time to think and rationalize people tend to make the wrong decisions.

Today, as both good and not so good alternatives to Mitt Romney have fallen like flies in the face of Romney’s inevitability, conservatives are left with little else in the way of choices and you hear a different tune. Oh, they still are not praising Mitt Romney. Their new found “support” of the man revolves around the hollow cry that he is not as bad as Obama and how we must unite behind Romney to defeat the current President in November. Wow. What a campaign slogan! Vote Romney! He’s not as big a schmuck as the guy we currently have! That is one heck of a way to get people to the voting booth if you ask me. Yes, the sarcasm on my part is fully intended.

This approach, sadly, is one that is far too often employed by conservatives. Defeated by the GOP establishment, after not putting up much of a fight, they bow their heads and fall in line. Conservatives entangle themsleves in the real world equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

The Kobayashi Maru, as any fan of Star Trek knows, is a purposefully designed impossible scenario administered to cadets in Starfleet Academy’s command program. For the uninitiated, the scenario involves a civilian starship, the Kobayashi Maru, which has become stranded in the Klingon Neutral Zone and which will be destroyed by the Klingons for the transgression. The scenario has only two options programmed into it. First, the cadet could opt to rescue the Kobayashi Maru and her crew. In doing so however, no matter how brilliant the strategy, he or she winds up violating the Organian Peace Treaty and instigating war with the Klingon Empire. The Klingons, rigid militaristic xenophobes, are unreasonable and are looking for any reason to attack the Federation and will, no matter what. The resulting war will kill millions if this option is taken. The only other option presented in the scenario is to do nothing. In doing nothing the cadet dooms the starship and its innocent crew to death. There is no option for negations that result in the ship being allowed to be rescued and war to be averted. There is no option that allows the cadet the come up with some daring strategy that will be successful in both saving the crew and averting war. Thus, the no-win scenario is established. It is inflexible. The purpose of the exercise is to see which of the two evils, the death of the ship’s crew or the death of millions in an all out war with the Klingon’s, the cadet will pick and even if they can pick.

Facts are stubborn things. So too apparently are the minds of certain individuals. These individuals usually, but not always, tend to lean to the left. This is so because in order to be an individual who believes in the power and glory of Big Government as one’s savior, it requires a mind so obstinate that facts simply cannot penetrate it. When facts attempt to enter a liberal’s mind it is the proverbial unmovable object (the liberal mind) meeting the equally proverbial unstoppable force (the facts).

I really do detest repeating myself. But stubborn sorts require that such things be done from time to time. Especially when those stubborn sorts are egged on by someone like President Obama. The President is possibly the biggest, most stubborn mule of all on the left at this given moment. He has to be. It is the only way he can keep promoting the failed ideology of liberalism. If he were not so stubborn, the President would admit he is wrong and adopt the truth as his guide and we would be happy and prosperous as a nation. Yeah, and if you think for a minute that the President will ever let the truth reign and ditch the failed policies of liberalism, then I have a bridge to sell you.

When the President is not out and about telling everyone who will still listen to him that taxing the rich and taking their money to pay for benefits for others is not redistribution of the wealth, he is still harping on the myth that the rich pay less of an income tax rate than the middle class and the poor. He is still out there pretending that the rich are scamming the system so as to not pay their “fair share” which President Obama needs to fund all his glorious dreams for a dependent America.

The whole scam the President is perpetrating is so heinous that it is nothing short of slander. While it is true that many rich people pay 15% on Long Term Capital Gains on the profits from their investments, the dirty little secret is that it is the same rate everyone pays on such things [2]. You, me, Mitt Romney, Warren Buffett, even President Obama himself all pay the rate. Now, if you do not have investments and have to live off of income earned at a job while people like Mitt Romney do not, it still does not mean that they are paying a lower rate than you on the same type of income. My suggestion is that if you want to pay Romney’s tax rate then invest your money and live off of it. What? You cannot do that? Hey not my problem. And it is not Mitt Romney’s problem either.

See, I am not so fortunate as to be able to put my money into investments and live off the proceeds. But do you hear me bitching about the rich paying 15% because they able to? Nope. See, I do not bitch about it because I strive to be at that level someday. I have goals beyond living hand to mouth and off biweekly paychecks or government handouts. And I work towards those goals.

One of the biggest fabrications I regularly hear about our President is that he is a “Constitutional Scholar”. Yet time and time again the President repeatedly shows he knows absolutely nothing about the Constitution. Some people suspect that he really does know the Constitution but that he actively chooses to ignore what he knows because his knowledge, if put into practice, destroys the ability for his liberal agenda to be moved forward. I completely disagree. The man is clearly a “Constitutional Dullard”.

This past week the President ran out to prove his ignorance of the document so many claim he understands so well. The President stood before anyone who would listen and spewed his ignorance while decrying the looming potential for the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare. He bloviated about how it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to throw out a law. Might I add boldly, a law with no Constitutional backing Mr. President?

President Obama ran about like a headless chicken imploring Americans to believe that the Supreme Court must show “deference” to Obamacare and concocting all sorts of superficial, non-legal and even non-Constitutional reasons for this. All of these reasons however amount to nothing more than saying because the law now exists, it should therefore be allowed to continue to exist. Wow. By that standard slavery should still be legal and segregation should still be legal. See what I mean about the President being a “dullard”?

Now the President was not the only liberal having conniptions. Liberal pundits who, are equally unaware of what our Constitution actually says, and even less aware of what it means, have been lamenting along side of him. They have said all sorts of crazy things. They have mused how if the Supreme Court were to vote five to four to overturn the Obamacare that such a decision should be ignored as meaningless, because, well, the vote is so close and not decisive enough. Some of the most insane on the left have even proposed that any judge who dares vote to kill the horrendous law should be impeached. Of course, these same liberals never, ever, say such things about the Court when a five to four decision mistakenly goes in their favor because enough partisan liberal justices join with waffling moderate justices on the Court and actually vote to uphold clearly unconstitutional acts by Congress.

It is important that all Americans, lest they be duped into believing that the far left-wing of American politics actually knows their posteriors from the proverbial hole in the ground, be reminded of the facts of the matter. Especially in light of the fact that liberals are trying very hard to convince the unwashed masses that the Supreme Court should be subservient to Congress and the President despite clearly being a constructed as co-equal branch of government with checks and balances to wield against them.

Liberals are going to hate me for this, but I am going to do it anyway. Yes, I am going to back up that statement with facts.

First of all, we will turn to the Constitution itself. Specifically, we will look at Article III. Section 1 states: “The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court”.

Semantics is the use language to manipulate the meanings of words in order to achieve a desired effect on an audience. For example when an angry liberal emails me and says, “someone should put a bullet in your head,” I ask if that said liberal thinks that it would be good if someone killed me and then said liberal emails me back crying about how he, “never said that!” Well, this is semantics. Yes, it is indeed true that said angry liberal never uttered the exact words, “I wish someone would kill you,” but what else does someone putting a “bullet in my head” imply? Still, to the liberal mindset, this liberal has never said anything as inflammatory as wishing me dead. This is precisely why it is so hard to argue with a liberal. No matter what they say, there is always some semantic argument that they will make that allows them to claim that they never really said what they said. It is like nailing Jell-o to the proverbial tree.

The examples of these semantic games played by liberals are numerous. Abortion is not “murder” because even though an innocent child is being killed in cold blood, they have come up with another name to call it. Formally declared wars are not “formally” declared wars because liberals do not like the verbiage that was used to initiate the use of military force (i.e. war). According to liberals, certain groups of people are not people (i.e. corporations) and said people are not entitled to their first amendment rights because liberals refuse to call them people. But on the other hand, labor unions, groups of people, had better be allowed their first amendment rights and then some or else holy Hell will break loose. Conservatives are “NAZIs” because, even though Nazism stands for National Socialism and was practiced by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the word “socialism” is not uttered when saying the words “NAZI”. Therefore NAZI magically comes to mean “conservative” rather than left-wing, socialist, progressive moonbat.

And then of course there is Obamacare. Liberals have been all over the place on this one and whether or not the funding mechanism for the program is a “tax” or not. Whether or not it is varies on how Constitutionally inept the person they are arguing with is. It is a “tax” when they want to justify it under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to levy taxes. For reference, the powers of Congress to “tax” are limited to [1]:
• To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
• To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
• To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
• To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
• To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
• To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
• To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
• To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
• To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
• To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
• To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
• To provide and maintain a Navy;
• To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
• To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
• To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
• To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Imagine you live in Indiana. Now image that you really want to get to New York City. But instead of asking how to get there, you ask for directions to Los Angeles. Do you think that you are going to get the right answer to the question you really wanted to know the answer to? Of course you will not.

Politicians act this way all the time. If there is a problem, but it is a problem they do not want actually solved, politicians often ask the wrong questions in order to prompt the wrong answers to come forth. Take your pick of Republicans or Democrats, among their ranks are gaggles of politicians asking the wrong questions in order to get the wrong answers. Admittedly, there are fewer Republicans than Democrats that do this. All Democrats seem to constantly do nothing but ask wrong questions. However only a blind fool does not see that many Republicans do it all the time as well. And, to be honest, all of them do it from time to time.

Which brings me to Representative Paul Ryan (R – WI). Yes, Mr. Ryan is back again with another budget proposal which he and many conservatives are agog over and chittering about how it is such a great blue print to solve our looming debt crisis. And as typical, hard core left-wingers are tossing up their lunch at the thought of having to cut one bit of spending which they need to spend to bribe their constituents to vote for them.

After examining Mr. Ryan’s proposal I find that there are many good ideas within it. Simplifying the tax code, for example is a grand idea. However, keeping the concept of an income tax still rubs me the wrong way, as it should any freedom loving American. Giving the federal government a claim to a portion of a worker’s paycheck before that worker even touches the money is not an American idea. His budget also starts to hack and slash through a lot of the unconstitutional stuff our federal government does every year. But it leaves a lot of the nanny state, socialist welfare state in tact as well which is bad. His budget spends less than President Obama would have us spend as a nation. Yet it continues to spend more money than the federal government brings in and swells our national debt for years to come.

There is no doubt that his plan is better than anything a Democrat could come up with without rending his or her garments in disgust at what they had done. Better does not mean “good” or “should be supported” however. Ryan’s budget compared to the left-wing’s idea of what the federal budget should be is more like agreeing to cut off just both our hands rather than both our arms to describe it accurately.

The reason why Paul Ryan’s latest budget is not a good idea or should not be supported is because he and other Republicans started out when crafting it by asking the wrong questions. Whether these wrong questions were asked because of stupidity, ignorance or cowardice will have to be debated. But the fact that these wrong questions were asked at all is not in doubt. To demonstrate just one example of Mr.

You know the old saying about how figures lie and liars figure? Well, it might as well become our national motto as far as I am concerned. When it comes to presenting numbers I am always wary when either a percentage or an actual number is given, but not both. I have seen it often enough to justify my hesitation. The way it works is the least offensive and shocking of the two is used to put as happy of a face on things or prove a point that seems silly when taken in actual context.

For example, maybe I hear that a baby crib is dangerous and needs to be recalled because six kids got their heads caught between the rails. How horrible! What a poorly designed product! Hang the malicious designers of this evil product up by their toenails! Oh, wait, there are over a million of said cribs in existence? Just 0.0006% of kids who sleep in this product get their heads stuck? Hey, I do not know about you, but I do not demand perfection. And the later tells me that, honestly, there is nothing wrong other than some kids with really small heads whose parents should be a little more careful and aware.

Now, let’s look at Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mr. Concannon actually stood before Congress and crowed about how good of a job the federal food stamp program was doing. His rationale was that the program’s rate of fraud standing at 1% [1] was, “one of the best records among federal programs.” [2]. However, with approximately 1 in 7 Americans on food stamps, 46.5 million [3], one percent does not sound as good as you might think it does. One percent of 46.5 million is 465,000 cases of fraud every year. And that is for just one federal program.

Of course, saying that fraud in the food stamp program stands at 465,000 cases per year is more shocking than saying “1%”, so the government opts for the less shocking and later measure to report their “success”. The government also crows about how well it is doing in weeding out food stamp fraud. It tells us all about how much fraud is dropping like how it was 9.86% in 1999 and 6.63% in 2003 [4]. But what the mouth pieces of the government forget to mention is that over time, despite some dips, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased. For example, in 1970 about 1 in 50 Americans were on the program. Let’s look at those numbers now. In 1970 there were 203.4 millions Americans [5]. That means about four million people were on the program then and it would take a fraud rate of 11% to match the amount of fraud, by number of cases, not total dollars, today.

Furthermore, with a fraud rate of 465,000 every month, and an average of $133 per month [6] paid per participant, it means we are flushing $742,140,000 down the drain every year. That is a lot of money, no matter how hard you try to spin it. It is $742,140,000 borrowed from our great grandchildren so that we can give money to people who are scamming the system.

If one only listens to the bullet points, one gets with the impression that liberals are the most compassionate people on the face of the Earth. Forget that that compassion is with other people’s money and the sweat of other people’s brows. It is only when you dare to delve a little bit past the headlining talking points that the real horror that is their ideology is revealed. Pick any issue you like. It does not matter. All the sugar coating in the world cannot cover up the bitter fruit that liberals really pedal. Sadly, it is true. The self-professed champions of the downtrodden, the poor, racial minorities, women and any other group they think they can get away with exploiting do nothing but set them up for further failure. All one has to do is be willing to look at the results of their proposals.

Case and point? The United States Department of Labor is focused like an environmentally friendly laser beam on helping women find “higher paying jobs in the clean energy economy.”[1] Ah yes, those compassionate liberals. They have nothing but the interest of women at heart. Right?

The specific initiative is called, “Why Green is Your Color: A Woman’s Guide to a Sustainable Career”. It was launched in Portland, Oregon this week. But I do wonder something. During this presentation, was there any mention about how unsustainable careers in the “green” sector are? Was there any reference or warning made to the women they claim to want to help that this choice of careers is probably only going to lead them to painful heartache?

The list of failed or failing “sustainable” energy companies is growing by the day. From Solyndra to Ener1 to Beacon Power to Abound Solar to Nevada Geothermal Power to SpectraWatt to Eastern Energy to Fisker Automotive to Sun Power to First Solar to Amonix to A123 Systems, the list is so long that it is an embarrassment. All of these “sustainable” companies, promoted by our federal government and propped up with tax payer dollars for their harebrained schemes, have either gone bankrupt, are going bankrupt or at the very best are staying afloat by casting off deadweight and laying off workers. So you see my previous question is a serious one. Did anyone from the government mention to the women who they want to put into “green jobs” at companies like this that after years of training and promises and maybe, luckily, landing a cushy job at one of them, that their world is more than likely to come crashing down around them?

I am sure all sorts of grandiose promises will be made to make the “sustainable” energy field sound swell. Nevertheless, what happens when reality catches up to those both making said promises and those who believed them and invested time and money into becoming proficient in the needs of these businesses? What happens when these women either get a job and then quickly loose it or cannot find a job in the sector at all because there is no more government money left to buoy them and keep their struggling heads above water? Who will be there to pick up the pieces of their shattered hopes and dreams?