The Consumer Option

When liberals (or most politicians in general) start losing a political fight, one of their tactics (tricks) is to change the terminology. George Lakoff, pusher of political framing, would be proud. It's like changing the war on terror to contingency operations, as that will make everything different.

The public option for health care is no longer public. It's consumer. Can you believe this? This just in from CBS:

It's not really a public option, it's a consumer option," [Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi said. "As we're mandating that people buy insurance we are saying to them, you have leverage, you have another choice. This is your consumer option." To back up her point, Pelosi said that the program would be self-sustaining and benefits would be paid for by premiums, not taxpayers.

First of all, I think that the federal government to mandate everyone buy health insurance is unconstitutional. But we'll probably lose that battle, ever since the Supremes ruled that social security was constitutional.

And the fact that benefits will be paid by premiums is a farce. If people currently either could afford premiums -- or if they can afford it but choose not to -- we probably wouldn't be going down this track toward socialized government health care.

The whole thing is smoking mirrors. The government can't get anything right. They need to stay out of the people's business.

As Shakespeare had Juliet say:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

How many examples of bad thinking do you need?

Here's one: Even after years of a laissez-faire ideology that allowed businesses to pillage the economy, the idea of government intervention makes a lot of Americans nervous. -- Cynthia Tucker.

Cynthia, 99.9 percent of businesses in this country did not pillage the economy. You're drinking the far-left kool-aid if you think so. It was the government that caused the problems.

Here's a little history, courtesy of Paul D. White:

This is not a new problem. Consider a memo written in 1965 to President Lyndon Johnson from Assistant Labor Secretary Daniel Moynihan in which the secretary expressed his great concern over the high rate of out-of-wedlock births among blacks (25 percent at that time). Unaddressed, Mr. Moynihan predicted, this large number of fatherless children would result in increasing school failure, criminal delinquency, and joblessness. Sadly, because liberals across the board condemned this call for action as racist propaganda, President Johnson didn't want to risk heated public debate and so did nothing. (emphasis mine)

See my point. Liberal policies have made things worse in this country, not better.

The article goes on:

The recent Chicago incident, and countless others that occur daily, are the result of not heeding Moynihan's warning 44 years ago. The previous out-of-wedlock birthrate has almost tripled, and 7 out of 10 black children now grow up not only without a father, but also in disproportionate poverty. That means millions of young kids lack adequate parental guidance to make the transition to become successful adults.

I have so many examples of weak or bad thinking by liberals (and some conservatives) on this blog, that you've have to be a true idiot not to see the truth.

A letter to my Senator

I sent this letter to my senator today. We'll see what comes back.

Senator Cornyn:

I voted for you, and I support your positions -- at least the ones I know of (I get your newsletter via e-mail.)

I have two questions regarding the ongoing attempt to "reform" health care vis-a-vis military health plans and retirement. First of all, I do not support the Democratic approach. Our system needs improvement, not over haul. I googled this, and what I found -- mostly confusing -- scares the wits out of me...

1. How will any pending legislation affect my retired military health care plan? I use Tricare Prime. I don't need anything else. This plan works well for me, and I feel I earned it after 25 years of military service.

2. I am counting on Social Security to supplement my military pension, which I cannot live on. Right now, I believe, Social Security is not affected by my pension. Am I right? Make sure you don't allow this to change. I earned the pension, and I have paid into Social Security for 40 years. I expect both.

If the Dems have their way -- increased health care costs and taxes, cap and trade, higher income taxes, VAT, and on and on -- won't be much left to put food on the table.

To allow the Federal Government (or any government) to force any one to purchase something they don't want, is not only unconstitutional, but tyranny. This is what the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate want. They must be stopped. I will be encouraging people to vote the rascals out in 2010.

Steve Taylor
Denison, TX


Thank you

Drain the swamp, more transparency

Remember when House Speaker Pelosi promised to drain the swamp, rid the House of the culture of corruption?

Democrats defeat GOP attempt to remove Rangel

Sinking with Mr. Rangel -- NY Times

So much for her promises.

Remember when President Obama promised more transparency in government?

Transparency in government: Obama and Pelosi need to let the sun shine in

So much for his promises.

No wonder most Americans don't trust government.

From apathy to dependence

Received in an e-mail. I thought it worth repeating.

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years"

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith
2. From spiritual faith to great courage
3. From courage to liberty
4. From liberty to abundance
5. From abundance to complacency
6. From complacency to apathy
7. From apathy to dependence
8. From dependence back into bondage

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..." Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

I believe the Democrats' goal -- if not all Democrats, then the left-wing of the party -- to move this country to the final stage of dependency. We'll then have one-party rule, which is a form of tyranny.

Unemployment to 9.8 (unexpectedly)

Are you surprised at the unemployment rate? The media is always surprised. The stimulus package, which is really a big government barrel of pork, is not working. And it won't. History proves that government spending does very little to stimulate the economy.

This is the problem with liberals. Over and over and over they try the same old worn out methods. And they never work. Haven't ever worked. Don't work here, didn't work elsewhere.

But on and on we have to try. And the American public (at least a majority right now) have bought the ideas -- because after a generation or more of the liberal hijacking of our education system, they know no better.

Read this. The Stimulus Doesn't Work. It might help you out.

But if you think 9.8 percent is bad, the latest statistics for unemployment of 16-24 year olds is now about 53 percent. Yea, ok. Maybe many of those aren't looking for work anyway, but the "official" rate of 18.3 percent is still very high.

Ouch!

You know, if government spending doesn't work, the libs in power will try more of the same. But when they pass their health take-over bill, the cap and trade, and all they other power-grabbing legislation, the economy will sink even lower.

Protect yourself now.

Go Obama.

Observations about Taxes and the Stimulus

Liberals want to tax the "rich" and redistribute this money to the "poor." Conservatives want the lowest taxes possible for everyone.

Remember, Bush's tax cuts were for the "rich." Yet, if you do any small amount of research and study, when these tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, the "rich" will actually pay less of a share of taxes than they do now, according to the Tax Policy Center. This is because the lowest bracket, 10 percent, will go away and be replaced by the older 15 percent bottom bracket.

My conclusion on the liberal argument is that it is really about class warfare and perception, rather than based on fact.

Liberals firmly believe in taxation. Was it a coincidence that the national income tax (with a constitutional amendment) was instituted shortly after the birth of modern liberalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s?

In 1894, Democrats in Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman tariff, which imposed the first peacetime income tax. The rate was 2% on income over $4000, which meant fewer than 10 percent of households would pay any. The purpose of the income tax was to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions.

The Supreme Court later decided this was unconstitutional, so the Democrats responded by getting the 16th Amendment passed (ratified in 1913), which stated that "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

As an amendment, it's pretty much permanent, hence the problems we face today.

Earlier this year, Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5), which, among other things, temporarily put into place some of the refundable credits proposed during the campaign. The Tax Policy Center estimates that under the new law, 47 percent of taxpayers will owe no income tax in 2009.

Also according to the Tax Policy Center, 80 percent of taxpayers earning less than $50,000 a year pay no taxes.

According to the IRS, 23 million taxpayers received earned income credit -- which means they did not pay taxes, but received an amount of money from the government. That is about 17 percent of all individual taxpayers. Millions more get other credits, rather than paying taxes.

I hear all the time from conservatives that more than 50 percent of all Americans -- or is it wage earners -- do not pay income tax. This is about right, according to tax statistics. About 40 percent pay no taxes, yet receive a refund. The other 10 percent is more fuzzy, because the statistics are divided into quintiles. Yet liberals want more taxes, especially for the "rich." But the top 5 percent -- I guess those are "rich" people -- pay nearly 45 percent of federal taxes. Seems enough to me.

Liberals also believe that the worst time to cut taxes is during a recession (of course, during growth periods, they want to raise taxes). Increases government spending will get us out of recessionary periods. Conservatives on the other hand, believe cutting tax rates along with smaller government actually stimulates the economy.

What is the truth?

The Stimulus Doesn't Work

As of Sept 1, 2009, about 17 percent of the $787 billion stimulus package has been spent. You can bet as we get closer to mid-term elections next hear, much more will be spent. But it probably won't make much difference, if government spending doesn't work. Of course, as the economy slowly recovers, the Dems will take credit.

A further study of history will bear out the fact over government spending, yet our friends on the left won't or can't believe it.

What about you?