Tag Archives: Politics

2008 Election, 2012 Election, Economy, Florida, Organized Labor, Politics, Race Relations

A Time For Choosing

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Since we were never given the choice in the last presidential election, the next election will be the time to choose. The 2008 election culminated in eight years of bashing Bush, and Bush not responding once. Americans were offered only hope and change. And who is against hope, and who is against change that makes things better? ‘Better’ being the operative word.

Obama never said, elect me and I’m going to nationalize health care and interfere with free-market economics by declaring some industries and businesses as ‘too big to fail,’ and borrow and spend trillions of dollars, not to stimulate the economy, but to ‘save’ union jobs in the public sector and the auto industry. He never said elect me and I’ll make it the responsibility of government to increase labor union membership.

Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries if he ran on what he is doing to this country today?

But now there is a choice. And it is no better illustrated than in Florida’s new law to drug-test welfare recipients and certain state employees in order to enforce a drug-free workplace. Progressives argue that Gov. Scott was trying to save money on the backs of the poor.

I don’t think it’s a matter of fiscal conservatism. Whether conservative or liberal, broke is broke. Just because someone is using drugs is no justification for spending more than we have. And it’s not that Scott, or Republicans, don’t care about poor people. They care about people who are on drugs and getting public monies.

The disintegration of the family among many poor people is a good reason to make bad choices. And it is welfare programs that tend to replace the father, or mother, and create this welfare class that is evermore dependent on the government. What Gov. Scott is doing is a move in the right direction. A move in the direction of teaching people some personal responsibility. Get off the drugs and you can continue to receive help.

This bill brings out the differences between the political Left and Right. One endeavors to fix the problem by attempting to fix the person. In this case, to provide an incentive to kick the habit and become self-sufficient again. The other seems content to be the giver of money, with no reason or motivation to quit a bad habit, which also tends to garner a strong voting block of welfare recipients.  In this context, it is Republican policies that try to heal and raise the poor by making them independent, if not just less dependent on government. It’s the old, “Give a man a fish and he won’t starve for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he won’t starve for his entire life” thing. It is Democratic policies that tend to keep the poor right where they are, dependent on the government for their livelihood, meager as it might be. The uneducated will easily identify with the person who gives them what they want instead of the one that wants them to earn what they want on their own. It’s about trying to teach people how to get off of welfare instead of trying to find out how we can find money to subsidize destructive behavior. Healing the person or family is better, more compassionate, than keeping them where they are. The bill isn’t about hating poor people.

Let’s look at the results of a landmark Democratic program. Nearly half of the country is getting some sort of government assistance. Does it look like the war on poverty (that began 50 years ago) has worked? There are drug rehabilitation programs out there, some at no cost. Individual responsibility means taking advantage of it and choosing to use what would be their drug money toward their own rehabilitation. How else does one teach personal responsibility if they have to do nothing on their own to make a change? They can get their welfare, if they choose to get off drugs first.

Democratic programs do nothing to reduce the number of poor people. What they have done is grow government and make poor people more dependent on government, and on the Democrat party. That is the result, whether intended or not.

There will always be people at the bottom of the ladder. The bottom of the ladder for U.S. citizens is half-way up the ladder compared to other countries. Democrat’s policies tend to make that ladder horizontal, destroying the notion of the individual.

Similarly, you will hear Democrats complain about the so-called income gap. They think it is evil that some people can make and accumulate wealth while some don’t.  I wouldn’t be so concerned about a gap between the rich and poor. I’d be concerned to make sure that the poor have every chance, the same chance, to get rich on their own.

Republicans have a HUGE up-hill battle to get people to understand that their policies are geared toward people helping themselves instead of relying on the government as their caretaker. Encouraging personal responsibility is so easily demagogued as Republicans hating the poor. And Democrats never miss the opportunity to do just that.

The immoral aspect of the Democratic social vision is that they put their faith in the government instead of the individual, which conditions poor people to look to them for sustenance. The fact that it builds strong voting blocks is no coincidence.

I’d like to see no minimum wage and no capital gains taxes. Since that has never been the case in my lifetime, one can only wonder how much better off ‘the poor’ would be. Again, it highlights the difference between the competing philosophies. Big government and control of economic conditions, or less government involvement and allowing free-market economic principles to work.

You don’t have to look far to see the difference. The free-market capitalism camp made us the greatest country in the world in under 200 years. The rest of the world is in the other camp and has nothing but shared misery to show for it.

Economy, Fairness Doctrine, Media, Politics

FCC Drops ‘Fairness Doctrine’

What represents a big win for everyone’s first amendment right, the FCC once and for all struck the Fairness Doctrine from law.

“The elimination of the obsolete Fairness Doctrine regulations will remove an unnecessary distraction. As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead,” Genachowski said in a statement on the FCC website.

But that’s not all. The move to cut it was part of President Obama’s efforts to lift the burden on businesses from useless and costly government regulations.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the decision to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine was part of a larger mandate proposed by the Obama administration to ease regulatory burdens by getting rid of duplicative or outdated measures.

What’s amazing here is that candidate Obama was all about the Fairness Doctrine, albeit under the disguise of another name. He calls it media-ownership caps and network neutrality. And the Soros think tanks came up with the back-door Fairness Doctrine. A plan ‘B’ if you will. I wouldn’t expect that this decision will stop their efforts to destroy conservative talk radio. They’re not going away.

So the legal aspects of the Fairness Doctrine are wiped from the books. Which puts the focus on the President to come up with a Fairness Doctrine by fiat (like he is trying to do with amnesty for illegal aliens). The Progressives are not going to like this decision. Especially since it is being called an ‘outdated’ measure.

Link: FCC Drops Fairness Doctrine

2012 Election, Economy, Media, Politics, Race Relations

Listening Tour, It’s Like Voting Present

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President Obama speaks at a town hall-style meeting Monday at Lower Hannah's Bend Park in Cannon Falls, Minnesota

Update 8/19/2011: President Obama hits the campaign trail today in his two new multi-million dollar busses we bought him. The White House “explanation” is that they are on official business, not a political campaign.

Curious thing about President Obama’s campaign kick-off. If his first day on the campaign trail isn’t important enough to cover live, it begs the question “why is that? Ordinarily, the President is on every major TV network and most of cable. Could it be because he is not drawing crowds? Maybe it is because visiting states and localities where unemployment is low, and predominately white, would not set well with the  Congressional Black Caucus? Or both.

The big news of Obama’s new re-election campaign that is not being reported is that he is out of ideas. Not only is he out of ideas, but he is not taking any responsibility for the malaise we are seeing today in this, Jimmy Carter’s “second term.” Instead, he is pointing fingers at Republicans, Congress, the tsunami in Japan, and the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ The latter of which, you may recall, President Obama tried to claim credit for when Egypt overthrew President Mubarak.

Two and a half years into his administration, the “leader” of the free world does not have a plan for economic recovery that works and said that “there are a lot of good ideas out there and we’re going to listen to them” because he wants to “create jobs.” He must think the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill passed by the House was not a good idea.

What a disappointment President Obama must be to the people who believed he could deliver on his community organizer-style campaign rhetoric. He is voting present with each committee he forms. Nothing has changed where Obama is concerned. Well, except for our longest stretch of a stagnate economy, unemployment is up, no net increase in private sector jobs so far. And did you know that youth unemployment in Washington, D.C. is now over 50 percent? That’s up from 25 percent a few years ago. In fact, minority unemployment everywhere is as bad as it has ever been under President Obama. Sure, I’ll vote for more of that! What?

Media, Politics, War On Terror

Remembering 9/11

Reflecting back on the 9/11 attack is easy for me, because I’ve never forgotten it or the aftermath. The prayers and sympathy for the victims and their families goes without saying.

I remember vividly how that horrific attack galvanized America as one unit focused on helping the victims and, at the same time, finally fighting back at those who had been killing Americans for years.

Our enemy had a good day. Aside from killing innocent Americans, they hurt our economy so badly that it took years to recover.

Feeling eerily uncomfortable with pro-American unity in both political parties, Sen. Ted Kennedy must have felt his party was threatened to minority party status for decades unless he could do something to stop it. Sadly, I remember how America’s unity ended when Sen. Ted Kennedy made the false accusation that the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein had “planned the 9/11 attack.” I remember how quickly the political Left ate that up, buttressed by a willing media. It was the ‘lion of the senate’ who politicized what was called the ‘war on terror.’ For that strategy alone, Ted Kennedy deserves credit for being the one person most responsible for prolonging the war to a tenth anniversary, and counting. That’s what I remember.

The reason I’ll never forget it goes to survival. Because the people in charge of the war on terror now, all Ted Kennedy acolytes, want to give the enemy our constitutional protections, lowering the bar to a criminal matter. They want to scrap the ‘war on terror’ and the most effective parts of the ‘Patriot Act,’ calling it an ‘overseas contingency operation.’ And we have Ted Kennedy to thank for it.

There’s a saying, “what goes around comes around.” This applies to Sen. Ted Kennedy too. He went from the lion of the senate to a maggot in hell. A small consolation in the fight that continues to this day.

Link: Schneider: Tell us what you remember, why you will never forget

Economy, Florida, Judiciary, Pensacola, Politics, Supreme Court

11th Circuit Court Of Appeals Affirms Judge Vinson, Sort Of

Update 8/13/2011. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Friday that a provision of the law that requires people to buy health insurance or face an annual penalty is unconstitutional. The ruling affirmed an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola, Florida.

Curiously though, the court also ruled that absent the mandate, the Act can continue. What this means is that three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit pulled a severability clause out of their butt.

In Judge Vinson’s ruling, he concluded . . .

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” {emphasis added}

The survivability of Obamacare without forced participation is zero. Well with one caveat. For Obamacare to survive without forced participation, the administration would have to speed up the elimination of the private health insurance industry process to before the next election instead of after. I don’t see that happening. So for all practical purposes, the fact that the rest of the Act may stay is moot. The court knows this. They also know that the Act contained no severability clause. That the court found the rest of the Act is constitutional and ignored the non-severability of the Act looks like a political decision with no real consequences. Well, except for the fact that the judges made a political decision here, instead of a legal one. Isn’t that like, not their job?

Let’s hope this gets to the Supreme Court this year. Today’s ruling did nothing to reduce the FUD factor. In fact, it only made it worse. That’s not what an economy struggling to survive needs if it is going to recover.

Markets don’t do well in an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The power grab the Obama administration has perpetrated over various industries and companies is sending only one message to business. Watch out, you could be next.

Link: LegalNewsline | Eleventh Circuit rules against part of ObamaCare.

Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

Union Fight In Wisconsin Gets Settled Today

Wisconsin goes to the polls today. Six recall elections will be decided. All against Republican state senators who supported Walker’s bill curbing collective bargaining rights for most public union employees.

The sore-loser drive has brought BIG LABOR dollars and rent-a-mobs to try to ultimately repeal the reforms that Governor Scott Walker enacted by harassing their way to regain a Democrat majority again.

Ed Schultz is there, the rent-a-mob is there. Well, about 300 people who sound like a studio audience is there. He claims they are there to fight for the middle class, but they are there to support BIG LABOR. Actually, it is a fight to keep the state from going broke and avoid big layoffs.

You will remember the tough time Walker had in getting the state house to get his reform bill voted on because the Democrat senators fled the state. I don’t see the vote going against what the people in Wisconsin already voted for. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Link: Walker Union Fight Intensifies as Wisconsin’s Recalls Threaten Republicans – Bloomberg.

2012 Election, Economy, Politics, Race Relations

Obama’s Historic Presidency

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Yes historic. And I’m not talking about his race. Everyone got over that the day after the election. (well, except for liberals/progressives) What else is historic for President Obama is that he now has the bragging rights for overseeing the country’s fall into decline while in office.

  • the return of double-dip recession fears
  • an emboldened Tea Party
  • a sinking Dow
  • stagnating employment
  • and the nation’s credit rating downgraded for the first time in 70 years.

That would be the AAA credit rating that President Obama inherited from President Bush. A dubious honor for sure. What makes it worse is that not only was this train wreck of an economy predicted, it was preventable too!

The Obama administration says they’ve done all that can be done to fix the economy. They want to borrow and spend even more money, ostensibly believing that what didn’t work the last time, and the time before that, will work this time. Obama says we just have to sit tight and wait for the economy to improve. Recovering from the worst economy since the Great Depression is a “slow process,” the president said. What he really means is he has done all that he and his advisers know to do. It is not all that can be done.

There was a solution passed by the Republican-led House and tabled by the Democrat-led Senate called Cut, Cap, and Balance. By the way, Standard & Poor’s said that ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ was the only plan proposed by either party that would have preserved the AAA credit rating. So no one has the right to act outraged at S&P’s downgrade action. But for political reasons, not economic ones, the President has to pretend like there is nothing else that can be done. Just take it. Eat your peas. Get used to high unemployment, rising interest rates, rising costs everywhere, and a stagnant economy. That’s the change Obama has in mind. Don’t you wish you knew that a couple of years ago, before the election?

Link: Facing Economic Headwinds, Obama Struggles Again to Find an August Storyline

Economy, Media, Politics

Phony Unemployment Numbers

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent.  And that 117,000 jobs were added.

The BLS also noted that there were 38,000 fewer people working in July than in the previous month. So how can it be that the unemployment rate ‘dropped?’

It dropped because the bean counters in Washington have reduced the pool of workers enough to cause the percentage change go in one direction when what is measured is actually going in the opposite direction. The BLS calls this “seasonally adjusted” as modified by the “civilian labor force participation rate.”

[scribd id=61861912 key=key-2inwl0ufhv0awdanz1ti mode=list]

Look what the rate is if Washington used the same method of tracking unemployment that you and I use. Beginning with the active labor force as big as it was when Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be 11.7%.

If the unemployment rate goes up but is not reported, did it really happen?

Link: Jobs report shows some ugly truths  |  Bureau of Labor Statistics