Archive for the ‘Statism’ Category

History Repeats as GOP Establishment Seeks Unity With Democrats…Again

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

22nd House Speaker

There’s no denying the fact that as we watch the behavior of the Republican insiders, every action and proposal is aimed at shifting the party toward the left.  More and more, Republicans have ceded the ground on so-called “social issues,” where questions of right vs. wrong take precedence over matters of right vs. left.  On such issues, they would rather not engage, preferring instead to avoid the ugly potential fall-out with moderate and leftist voters if some candidates uses the clumsy or foolish language to describe their views.  They support old bulls of the Senate like Dick Lugar(R-IN) over upstarts like Richard Mourdock(R-IN,) but when Lugar could not win the primary, like saboteurs, the establishment wing arrives on the scene to campaign for the Democrat.  It’s not accidental that the establishment Republicans seem to agree so frequently with the statist left.  After all, they know who butters their bread, and it’s obvious that they’re gaining more than their congressional retirement benefits.  They claim leadership over a party largely composed of people they detest as “purists,” and you might wonder about the character of those who openly mock purity. You might ask yourself what kind of Republicans these are, and as Jeffery Lord writes in the American Spectator, history holds the answer:  Rove and his ilk are modern-day “Cotton Whigs.”

As Lord reminds us, the “Cotton Whigs” had been that branch of the powerful Massachusetts Whig Party that acted in most respects like today’s Republican establishment.  Their opponents, the “Conscience Whigs,” opposed slavery and were uncompromising in that pursuit.  In issue after issue, and election after election, the Cotton Whigs did all they could to undermine Conscience Whigs, often siding with the pro-slavery Democrats out of a desire to forestall addressing the slave trade.  Like our contemporary Republican establishment, they claimed to sympathize with Conscience Whigs, but underlying that sentiment, they wanted to hold the country together and continue making money indirectly through the continued use of slaves.  It was this divide that ultimately led to the building of the Republican party, and the abandonment of the Whigs.  Lord’s conclusion is that modern-day Cotton-Whigs are making a similar error, and that Karl Rove and his fellows in that group may soon find themselves kicked by history against the political curb.

It is also fitting that one of the so-called Cotton Whigs had been Robert Winthrop, who served as speaker of the House, whose close ties to the textile industry in Massachusetts made him a less than enthusiastic supporter of abolition. You see, much like modern day Republican establishment types, he couldn’t or wouldn’t take a firm stand against slavery, not because he agreed with it in principle, but because in practice, he profited from it.  Fast-forward to John Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment, and you find the same sort of principles of convenience that cannot be tolerated if they interfere with profits.  I warned my readers in 2011 that there were any number of Republican establishment types who were fine with Obama-care, because a.) they wouldn’t be affected personally, and b.) they had figured out a way to profit from it.  These are your putative leaders, and they bear an eerily resemblance to the Cotton Whigs of Massachusetts.

I agree with Mr. Lord’s appraisals of the modern-day Cotton Whigs, because much like their political forerunners in pragmatism, establishment Republicans are not interested in conservative approaches to social issues because they threaten to undermine the status quo.  Let us be blunt in admitting that the GOP establishment is comprised of people who have figured out how to make substantial fortunes from the growth of big government, and that they have no concern for underlying issues of morality so long as the cash continues to run freely from the treasury into their accounts through various devices of public expenditure.  They have sold their souls in exchange for ill-gotten loot, and they are willing to destroy “conscience conservatives” in order to continue on their way.  They side with Democrats in every issue in which their money or power comes up against doing what is right.

There are some who will interpret this as an attack against wealthy Republicans, but such is not the case.  It is a matter of examining who is enriching themselves not by entrepreneurial endeavors, but instead by graft and rampant cronyism.  In most respects, the modern day Cotton Whigs are the frequent beneficiaries of government expenditures.  What do they care if tax rates go up if their take from the treasury increases many times over?  Just as the Cotton Whigs were happy to profit from slavery, thus turning away from consideration of the moral aspects of the issue, so too are today’s “Cotton Republicans” willing to ignore the bondage into which you and your children are being cast. The Democrats play roughly the same part they played a century-and-one-half ago, happy to take such assistance as Cotton Republicans will offer while dividing and destroying Republican strength in opposition to their pro-bondage agenda.

Jeffrey Lord must be credited here with seeing an accurate analog to our current political troubles, reaching back to the founding of the Republican party to make it plain how rank-and-file conservatives, concerned as much with the long-term social and moral aspects of our country are again being overwhelmed by well-heeled interests who continue to profit from the bondage we must in good conscience oppose.  Whether the particular issue is abortion, crony capitalism, immigration, or an outrageous health-care mandate, the “Cotton Republicans” live on the wrong side of every issue, not wanting to stop the gravy train to which they’ve hitched their caboose.  What these charlatans offer is that one can gain the whole world, and to devil with one’s soul. There is one other person who deserves a hat-tip in all of this, because it had been Sarah Palin warning the GOP establishment that they might well end up going the way of the Whigs. Who better than the Alaskan crusader against crony capitalism and corruption to have pointed out the similarities between our modern Republican establishment and the Whigs? The time may have arrived in which her unheeded warning will be made fact by the intransigence of the Beltway political class.

There’s no sense pretending that the GOP establishment is on our side.  In fact, it’s so bad that we ought to stop considering them as Republicans at all, or abandon the party to them, as had been the ultimate result with their philosophical forbears, the “Cotton Whigs.”  One thing about which we must be careful is that some of them don’t manage to infiltrate our movement in order to co-opt it.  Given the opportunity, they will quickly set up shop and begin all over again, leaving us right where we started.  If you don’t think they’re willing to stoop to that tactic, I’d urge you to think again.  Wise conservatives will observe the actions of some of our newer brethren, judging their actions rather than merely listening to their words. If Mr. Lord is right, and I must admit that he has struck a chord with me, a single defeat or a string of them will not banish these Cotton Republicans from our party, whether in six weeks or six years.  We will be required to practice resolve and vigilance to keep them at arms length, because I believe that if one can keep them at bay for long enough, they will shed their masks and simply join up with Democrats who are their natural allies. If the GOP establishment wants to find unity with the Democrats, I strenuously suggest we let them.  Put another way, as Jeffrey Lord aptly reminds us, from the historical precedent he offers:

Briskly remarked a young Charles Sumner, another Conscience Whig (whose defiant anti-Cotton Whig leadership would eventually make him a Republican U.S. Senator from Massachusetts) of the differences with Cotton Whigs: “Let the lines be drawn. The sooner the better.” Said Sumner: “Thank God! The Constitution of the United States does not recognize men as property,” adding at another point “I am willing to be in a minority in support of our principles.”(emphasis added)

We should heed Lord’s analogy, but we should be willing also embrace Sumner’s advice.  In order to clean out the Cotton Republicans from our midst, we may need to be willing to briefly remain a minority party.  That will be the immediate cost of ejecting or abandoning the GOP establishment, but it is a cost we can’t afford to avoid for much longer.  They are unifying with the Democrats, adopting their arguments and their tactics, and isolating conservatives while claiming the mantle of conservatism.  It’s time we give up our fixation on winning at any cost.  If we stick to the fundamentals of our principles, rejecting statist arguments outright, victory will come in due course.  If we stand on principle, the American people will ultimately notice, and when the Republic begins to collapse, they will remember who refused to yield. If we don’t believe that much at least, for what are we fighting anyway? I am calling on all of my conservative brethren to reject the GOP establishment no matter the short-run cost, so that we may go on about the business of saving the country. We must be a people of no lesser a character than our predecessors, the “Conscience Whigs.”

 

 

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The Fantastic Delusion of Fiscal Conservatism Absent Social Conservatism

Monday, February 4th, 2013

Naked Contradiction

This is a subject that comes up frequently, as the GOP establishment attempts to drive out actual conservatives time after time.  It’s nauseating, really, because under the light of the first bit of logical torture-testing, this concept fails miserably. Let me once again address the foolishness of this proposition, this time in light of various current legislative priorities, with the understanding from the outset that there can be no way to square the two positions.  One simply cannot be both an actual fiscal conservative and an adherent of a liberal social agenda.  The latter cancels out the former, in the same fashion anti-matter annihilates matter.  The two cannot share the same space.  Translated, their proposition suggests approximately that while one is concerned with the fiscal condition of the country, one need not be concerned in the least with the fiscal costs of one’s social advocacy.  Confused?  I suppose there are still a few people who are tricked by this self-contradictory hogwash, but I think it’s important that it’s finally clarified. The two concepts stand in direct opposition to one another, and if you claim to be a conservative, it’s time to speak out against this blatant philosophical pollution that having successfully wrecked the GOP, is now destroying our country.

Let us take the occasion to point out that in various times and places, conservatives are tricked by DC insiders, and beltway establishment Republicans into believing there can be a way to have one’s cake while having eaten the baker before he could commence his baking.  In the case of “comprehensive immigration reform,” the bait-and-switch game is being carried down the field by Senator Marco Rubio(R-FL,) who insisted in multiple interviews on all the big conservative radio and television talk shows that no consideration could be given to immigration reform unless and until border security had been addressed in the first instance.  Unfortunately, the real legislation will not focus on security even slightly, relying on the Secretary of Homeland Defense to merely certify the border as secure. Since Janet Napolitano has already effectively done so, with our tightly secured border(?), let the amnesty commence in earnest!

Let us imagine for the sake of argument that the advocates of this social policy would do as they say, and that they would actually secure the border first(which they won’t.) What will be the cost in real terms of this social legislation preferred by the moderates and liberals?  In short order, all of these newly certified “guest workers” and their families will find their way into eligibility for welfare, and other entitlements, just as legal immigrants do now. despite the fact that it’s not supposed to happen that way. All of this “social moderation” will simply lead to more spending.  All of the rotten promises will be broken just like they’ve been in every previous iteration of this garbage.  Worse, for every one potential voter the GOP establishment hopes ultimately to gain, there will be two in the Democrats’ column.  In this issue, we have not only the galling spectacle of social liberalism negating any claim to fiscal conservatism, but in fact negating conservatism itself.

Next, let us imagine the beginnings of other social programs, like food-stamps, that were invented without respect to their fiscal costs, and continued despite the fact that they had exploded well beyond anything imagined at the time of their original enactment.  Food-stamps were presented as a way to alleviate the social problem of poverty, specifically hunger, and also promised as a way to reduce crime, but such programs have had neither promised effect.  Poverty has never shrunk, and indeed, the government and the politicians and bureaucrats who populate it have done all they could to expand eligibility requirements and grow the roll.  While crime statistics have moved up and down, none of the change can be attributed to so-called “poverty programs.”  What started out as a modest social program now serves one-sixth of our population at a staggering cost in real dollars.  We are borrowing those dollars, so let not the advocates of these programs posture as fiscal conservatives in any measure.

So-called fiscal conservatives who are merely liberals in disguise also prefer abortion rights.  It is said that they prefer to let women do as they will with their own bodies, as if that was the question at issue.  What they will not acknowledge as they plead for the increase in available workers to be provided by their amnesty plans is that if the United States did not have an abortion-on-demand policy, it is likely that our population would have grown by a net additional thirty million or more people, first subtracting the estimated twenty million illegal aliens.  These “social moderates” in fiscally conservative costumes pretend on the one hand that abortion is an individual liberty issue, but that illegal immigration is not, ignoring the liberty stripped via taxation and borrowing.  As they whine over the lack of new revenues to the treasury borne by forty years of abortion, they instead blame the lack of tax-payers on an “antiquated immigration policy” they’ve never really enforced in the first place.  The social costs are obvious, but the fiscal costs are gargantuan. If even half of those fifty million aborted children had by now attained working age, they would be prospective tax-payers helping to prolong the life of the Social Security Ponzi scheme for which the social liberals in the Republican Party now propose amnesty as the answer.

Let us consider a few other “social issues” in rapid-fire form, thinking about their fiscal impact. Irrespective of how you may feel about gay marriage, will including homosexual couples in the entitlement to spousal benefits for government employees cost the government more, or less?  Naturally, more.  Will the provision of abortion and contraception by government programs as a part of various government health-care initiatives cost taxpayers more or less?  Naturally, more, and by the way, they’re also cheated of help in paying the bills.  Will permitting women in combat, whatever your view on the issue may be, cost the services more, or less?  More. Absolutely.  As you begin to take inventory in this fashion, you will quickly realize that this business about “fiscal conservatism” is a complete farce once combined with the contradictory notion of “social moderation/liberalism.”  The latter simply destroys the former, making it clear that the claimed notion of fiscal conservatism had been a mask for rampant statism all along.

This applies nowhere more than in the examination of our federal fiscal disaster.  Consider the farce of Paul Ryan’s budget plan, that promises to reduce the rate of federal growth but assumes a preposterous five percent rate of growth in the GDP for as far as the eye can see, while doing approximately nothing to reduce federal expenditures, instead promising to grow our way out of our current fiscal morass while slowing the rate of spending growth.  Ryan and his fellow advocates of this plan pretend to us that it is a serious proposal that can offer us a way out, but that is a dishonest calculation based on highly deceptive number-rigging, and it is offered to us as a way to preserve all of these entitlement programs ad infinitum, in answer to the charge that Republicans are extremists who care not for the social good. One time after the next, the Republicans have shown us their true colors as they have repeatedly capitulated to  Obama and the overt statists at the expense of American not yet born.  Naturally, since they’re willing also to fund abortion, they’re be fewer of those anyway.  The thing to notice is that when the system collapses under the weight of these entitlements, nobody, neither recipient nor payer, will be spared by the calamity.

In fact, this has been the basic pattern of conduct by so-called “fiscal conservatives” over the last four decades. In virtually every social issue, they go along with the leftists, and each time, we pay not only a horrible social cost, but also an incredible fiscal burden, both measured in the lives and exertions of real people.  At each new increment, we are promised they will go this far, “but no further,” until the next occasion to surrender to the left.  Rinse and repeat.  They have been slowly increasing the temperature on the pot that is the social cauldron, asking us to accept a little more, and some more, and eventually the whole agenda.  Virtually all of our fiscal woes owe to the growth of “social moderation,” as expressed in the endlessly growing pile of debts accumulating in our treasury.

At some point, Americans, particularly conservatives, ought to stop falling for this nonsense.  Statism has grown by virtue of this sort of dereliction of fiscal conservatism in favor of social liberalism.  Education.  Health-care. Prescription drugs.  The list goes on and on, from colossal costs to smaller ones, but always, without fail, at some cost, somehow, for American tax-payers to bear. The entire budgetary deficit would be wiped out, and much of of our debt would not have accumulated but for all the times some allegedly “fiscally conservative” Republicans had gone along with social liberals in pursuit of some advertised social aim.  As people such as Karl Rove set out to create subsets of the Republican Party designed to finally vanquish actual conservatives, it is critical to understand how they have succeeded in stripping the party bare of all its former principles, remaking it to resemble the Democrat Party in every way, to include the long-maintained pretense of concern over fiscal matters.

It’s not as though any sober adult would believe the claims of these alleged fiscal conservatives, but that presumes a good deal too much about their intended audience.  As one final proof of the sort of idiocy explicit in this claim of the fanciful combination of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, I offer you the Super-Sunday tweet of one Geraldo Rivera, Fox News “correspondent” and professional purveyor of every tragedy into which he can insert himself, who has now said he is considering a run for the United States Senate, as a Republican(?) from New Jersey.  Given the ascendancy of Chris Christie, I hadn’t been aware that New Jersey had a viable Republican Party, but Rivera wasted no time in leaping into the sphere of social issues, predictably at a substantial cost:

“If elected I would propose a bill to make Super-Monday a national, no school, no work holiday/day of community service” – Geraldo Rivera via Twitter

Here then is the final abomination of “social liberals” who pretend to be fiscal conservatives. Ready to give every Federal worker and most everybody else a day off, irrespective of the colossal expense to the economy at large, never mind the taxpayers and businesses, Rivera is willing to ignore all of that in order to buy votes.  As if to further the absolutely idiotic meaning of this proposal, he then offers it as a day of community service!  Does anybody believe that having abandoned paid “community service” for another day, the government workers would then spend this “free time” laboring on behalf of “the community? “  Only the crudest idiot could buy into such a scheme, but then again, to whom do you think these social moderates make their appeals?   To those who would pay for such things?   No, these are aimed solely at those who would derive some benefit at a cost to others.

Only children or child-like minds are able to erect a wall of dissociation sufficient to separate policies from their fiscal costs, and yet this is the aim of every one of the self-described “fiscal conservatives” who abandon fiscal concerns at the first indication that they can use the treasury to buy votes with real or imagined social concerns as their excuse.  In the real equation from which they hide in abject fear and with loathsome evasions, one may be a fiscal conservative, or a social liberal, but one may never under any circumstance be both.

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New Hampshire Legislator Wants to Punish Freedom-Seekers

Sunday, January 6th, 2013

No Freedom Here!

This story is a perfect example of what I explained when I wrote The Return of the Wall last month.  In that case, it was a matter of French politicians seeking to punish Gerard Depardieu among other wealthy citizens for their willingness to move out of country to avoid the criminally high taxes their newly-elected hard-core socialist government is trying to inflict.  Now, as Breitbart is reporting, New Hampshire’s 3rd Legislative District Representative Cynthia Chase has gone to the blogosphere to urge her fellow lawmakers to make the State famous for the slogan “Live Free or Die” an unwelcoming environment to so-called “Free-Staters,” people who are moving to New Hampshire specifically with the goal in mind of converting it into a conservative or libertarian bastion.  The Free State Project has been around for some time, but lately, it’s gotten large enough to garner attention from lawmakers, and Democrats like Rep. Chase aren’t very happy about their presence.  She intends to use the law to restrict freedoms in the state, and thereby cause Free-Staters to rethink moving to New Hampshire.  Just as the Soviet Union’s wall between East and West served the dual purposes of imprisoning their people, while simultaneously keeping out the influences of freedom, Rep. Chase is urging her fellow legislators to help restrict the freedoms of conservatives to deter them from moving to New Hampshire.

According to Breitbart, Rep. Chase wrote the following in a blog post on the 21st of December:

“In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming.”

This is incredible, but reading the full text of her post, it’s clear that Rep. Chase is a typical leftist who opposes freedom.  She actually dares to quote Martin Luther King Jr. at the conclusion of her post, in which she asserts that the Free-Staters are “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” without offering the first bit of justification for her conclusions.  She made a vague reference to “their website” without linking to it or offering the first inkling of what it is that she’s referencing as a threat to the state of New Hampshire.

Legislators and activists like Rep. Chase are the reason it is so easy to believe the most absurd statements attributed to lefties.  When one realizes that she is actually hostile to people moving to her state because they may by sheer numbers change the base polity of the state, I wonder what her stance is on making our Southern border less permeable.  After all, the Free State project seeks to build a conservative state by populating it to the extent that they can sway the legislative process in that state.  Is that fundamentally any different from what liberals have been doing to places like Texas for years?  It’s amazing how the left is willing to punish people who have committed no crime, and to enforce their own views on what proper political views should be by virtue of punishing those with which they disagree, but they are always the first to scream when they believe they are being oppressed. With a threatening slogan like “Liberty in Our Lifetime,” you can bet the left will punish Free-Staters at every turn.

Here’s to the Free-Staters! May they move to New Hampshire and paint the place red!

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Another Sign Atlas Is Shrugging

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Prophet?

Long time readers will know that I am a fan of Ayn Rand’s greatest work of fiction, Atlas Shrugged, first published in 1957.  The famed novel  has developed a following over the years because it describes a frighteningly similar world in which the global economy has collapsed, while America remains as the last enclave of a free market, also on its way to collapse under the dogmatic application of the statist doctrine of mass sacrifice.   Through the novel, readers are transported to a world in which the news media has become a lapdog for the statists, economic news is contrived and rigged to hide the onrushing collapse, while most people go about their lives with self-constructed blinders by which they are able to permit themselves not to know or even notice the facts of their increasingly dire situation.  Rand never intended the book to be prophetic, and yet with each passing day, the global economy and the financial markets provide daily reminders of her fictional work.  Economic conditions have grown steadily more awful, and yet we find the media is unwilling to show the American people more than a glimpse of the truth confronting them.  It’s as though Rand’s fifty-five year-old novel is being acted out in real life, in a modern setting wherein the technology has changed, but acts merely as another shady disguise behind which to conceal the operative laws of nature.  It now appears that Atlas is finally Shrugging.

Government has become an enormous bully, not concerned with improving the economic conditions, but instead with concealing them, and companies across the nation have been forced to collaborate in the deceit. Consider the case of Comcast.  The company announced on Tuesday that it would be closing all of its California-based call centers, reducing their number nationwide from thirteen to ten.  The original announcement mentioned that the reason the California centers were being closed was due to the extraordinarily high cost of doing business in that state. According to the Mercury News, Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson said:

“We have concluded that the cost of doing business makes operations in California expensive and very difficult”

Scott Anderson, the chief economist with Bank of the West is quoted in the same article:

“The cost of doing business in California is a well-known problem across the country and among business owners in the United States. With the fiscal problems in California, these expenses will likely get higher. Tax rates may rise in California.”

As bad as that may be on its surface, the truth is far worse.  After pressure from the state’s Senate President Pro Tempore, Darrell Steinberg(D-Sacramento,) Comcast withdrew its earlier announcement, backing away from a statement that made clear the cause of the decision for the California closures. From the Belleville News Democrat:

“Instead, it said the California closures were needed for cost efficiencies and to consolidate its Western call centers from 13 to 10, based on customer needs, “rather than geography.” It noted that many customers rely on self-help and online tools to handle their service questions, which meant it doesn’t need as many call centers as in the past.”

I would direct my readers to consider what follows in the same article:

That turnaround was greeted warmly by the Governor’s Office.

“It is unfortunate that Comcast’s announcement to eliminate jobs in California inaccurately placed blame on the state, but I am pleased to see the executives at Comcast taking responsibility and correcting the statement,” said Mike Rossi, the governor’s senior adviser for jobs and business development, in a statement.

The governor’s involvement came after Steinberg issued a personal invitation to Comcast executives to meet “to outline their issues and discuss what my office and the Legislature might do to resolve their concerns.” Pending a meeting, he urged Comcast executives “to reconsider their actions.”

Steinberg said he was “puzzled and extremely disappointed” that Comcast representatives had not contacted his office, which represents the Natomas area, until after making its public announcement.

This is what the beleaguered people of California have as a state government:  A Governor who is more concerned with appearances and blame than with the facts.  Notice that Comcast is still going to close the centers, and more than 1,000 California workers are still going to lose their jobs, but the company’s official statements now reflect a more politically acceptable cause for the closures.  This is the sort of crime-boss mentality that now pervades government, from the Federal Government all the way down to State and local institutions of government.  They are no longer concerned with stopping the bleeding, but instead merely concealing it from your eyes, or in this case, merely causing you to believe they hadn’t been the cause.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is precisely the sort of thing that Rand described in her famous novel, and indeed, she even described a breakdown particularly in California, but she was no prophet, much as some might by now be convinced to the contrary.  Rand unflinchingly described the world as it is, and what happens when a people come to believe they have no further need to adhere to the laws of Nature, and that the technologies invented and built by others somehow insulate them the necessity to know the truth, or to somehow evade the objective reality that has been established by the laws of Nature.

At all levels, our governments now join in the gruesome spectacle of pretending that what matters is not what has happened or that will happen, but instead who will be blamed.  The mad rush of politicians to twist corporate arms is another small sign that we are well on our way to a national demise, and I expect that these instances will become more frequent as politicians try to disclaim and evade responsibility for their respective roles in the looming disaster.  Even now, our financial markets are beginning to realize the truth of QE3 (Quantitative Easing, round 3,) and as they do, the market will begin to lose its luster as a concealment for the impending collapse, and the banking industry will no longer be able to hide the truth of the looming collapse by effectively counterfeiting the value of collateral. As real household median income has fallen by 8.2% under President Obama, and as the shrinking number of jobs have caused the number of low-wage workers to increase by more than 30%, it is going to become increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion that “all is well.”

As bad as the government and media collusion in this deception may be, what may be more frightening is that as economic conditions worsen, ordinary Americans will become more polarized, divided into two general groups on either side of the gulf described by the bold line of truth:  Those who see what is and are no longer willing to conceal it for any cause or contrivance, and those who will avert their eyes lest they be forced to grasp the nature of the horrors their continuing silence will have enabled. It is questionable whether disaster may be averted, but it is certain that if the American people fail to recognize the danger, there can be no avoiding it.  It is therefore fitting that as we approach the release date of the second installment of Atlas Shrugged, the movie, and as we watch politicians scramble to avoid blame all while continuing their unrepentant war against us, it’s more important than ever that we refuse to accept the comforting lies they tell.  Their attempt to conceal their responsibility in the impending collapse should not serve as our excuse to conceal our own as Rand’s unintended prophecy continues to manifest around us.
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Note: For those interested, here’s the trailer for the upcoming release of Part II of the movie Atlas Shrugged

 

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The Dangerous Self-Delusion of Some Conservatives

Saturday, June 30th, 2012

Et Tu, Brute?

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, I have noticed a curious phenomenon in which some conservative commentators seem to be so desperate to find a silver lining to the ruling that they have abandoned all logic.  Consider George Will, who wrote a column in the aftermath of the ruling that actually puts forward the argument that we conservatives should take the fact that Roberts didn’t rely upon the commerce clause as evidence that there might be some constitutional limitation on the federal government after all.  That would be a wonderful aspect of this ruling, if they had overturned the law!  Instead, what we have is a monstrous precedent set in which the court re-writes a law in order to make it constitutional by imputing into the act a tax that had not existed in fact.  This is an unmitigated disaster.  I have heard a few who have noted hopefully that this ruling will energize the conservative base, and while that’s probably the case, I’m not certain I am so concerned about the political fall-out as I am about the long-run constitutional implications.  You see, the political situation may permit us to repair the law, but it doesn’t permit us to immediately repair the damage done to the body of case law  upon which future courts will rely as precedents in their own rulings.

The other thing I have read is the bizarre notion put forward by the National Review that what Roberts did was more conservative because he exercised judicial restraint in not striking down the law.  Balderdash!  Once you realize the legal contortions through which Roberts arrived at this ruling, it makes no sense whatever to claim he hadn’t acted as an activist.  The convoluted logic by which he found a tax in a law that plainly states it does not contain one is an onerous breech of any notion of strict construction.  I cannot conceive of any intellectually rigorous examination of this ruling by which this can be seen as a positive by anybody who is in favor of strict construction.  When it came to the Anti-Injunction section of the ruling, it was held not to have been a tax, but just a few pages later, as Roberts performed mental gymnastics, he declared it was a tax after all.

On Thursday evening, Mark Levin summarized the matter better than anybody I’ve heard speak to this matter, in part because he understands the legalities in question, his Landmark Legal Foundation having been a participant in this case, but also because he knew Justice Roberts years ago when they both worked in the Reagan administration.  Levin’s critique of the decision mirrors most of my own, and indeed, there was one aspect I hadn’t considered until Levin led me to it.  That premise led me to yet another that I don’t believe Levin has yet realized in full.  What one must understand is that this ruling is an unmitigated disaster, and no search for some alleged silver lining can repair it.

What justice Roberets actually did was to expand the definition of what constitutes a permissible tax .  Congress is permitted to levy only certain forms of tax, and this one doesn’t fit the definition of any of them.  In dispensing with that issue, Roberts held that it didn’t matter, and that words don’t matter, and that plain-written legislative language doesn’t matter.  He also ignored the context of the law, and the intent of Congress.  One version of this bill had an actual tax, but Congress could not pass it in that form, so Congress altered it to contain no tax.  What John Roberts did was to ignore the actual text of the legislation, and to say that the labels didn’t matter:  If it looks like a tax, it is one.  The problem with this is that it does nothing to restrain Congress from levying new taxes, and ignores the definitions of what sort of taxes Congress may enact.  This is a wholesale extension of Congressional taxing authority because what Roberts ruled with respect to the particular form of the tax, insofar as the question of whether Congress had met the constitutional limits on whether it could impose it was effectively: “Close enough.”

That is offered to us as evidence of John Roberts’ alleged strict construction?  Close enough?  What this means, effectively, is that if Congress enacts some tax that it has questionable constitutional authority to levy, smiling John will be there to tell us it’s “close enough,” with every leftist monster on the court standing behind him to uphold it.

Ladies and gentlemen, there exists no silver lining to this ruling.   All of the crackpot, delusional happy-talk from some conservatives in media is designed to make you feel better.  You’ve just lost both arms and legs in a brutal assault, but they tell you, you should consider this a happy opportunity to enjoy the comforts of a new wheelchair and mouth-controlled joystick.  You’ve just lost your family to a violent home-invasion, but, they tell you, you should view this as a chance to start over.  The intention here is to keep you calm.  The intention now is to serve a political end, while your country is dying around you.  Your most sacred law, the US Constitution, has been crumpled and tossed into the ash-bin of history, and you are told you should do a happy-dance to the calming sounds of “Oh Happy Days.”

I’d like you to inventory the whole of the conservatives to whom you listen, or whose columns and opinions you read, and I want you to take care to note which of them are imploring you to consider some silver lining.  They are lying.  They have good intentions, many of them, and they have contorted themselves into a formless spaghetti of reasoning in order to find some good in this awful plate of refuse you’ve been handed.  Don’t surrender your minds by sprinkling Parmesan on it and wolfing it down.  Are there some limited political opportunities as a result of this decision? Yes, but they require the fulfillment of a whole laundry-list of “if-then” statements.

IF Mitt Romney is elected, and IF he doesn’t sell us out, and IF we hold the House, and IF we recapture the Senate(and at least 60 votes) and IF the moderates in either house don’t screw us, and IF Boehner and McConnell have the guts to do in repealing what the villains Reid and Pelosi did in passing the ACA, and IF they can deliver a bill to President Romney’s desk, and IF John Roberts and the other liberals on the court can be replaced, and IF Mitt Romney can replace them with actual strict constructionists, THEN you might have a chance to undo this damage.  IF any of these don’t happen, your constitution is effectively dead as a restraint on government.

The danger of self-imposed delusions is that you come to believe them, like a pathological liar.  It is by this form of self-delusion that we’ve permitted our country to lose its roots in reverence for the Constitution.  We cannot defeat the statists by pretending this isn’t the disaster that it is, if we can defeat them at all.  I believe some talking heads know this, but do not want to yield to what will come in the wake of such a monstrosity.  They’re hanging on, stubbornly telling us that the stench of smoke reaching our nostrils is merely an air freshener of a novel scent.  Rather than screaming “Fire,” and warning conservative Americans that the house is ablaze, the barn is wiped out, the surviving farm animals running loose in a frantic bid to stay ahead of the flames licking at their heels, many are now telling you that it’s all okay.  It will be fine.

No, it won’t.

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I Would Like to Thank John Roberts

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

Thanks John Roberts!

I wish to thank Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. He has made plain what I have been arguing for some time: This nation is dead. Everything that had made it a nation, indivisible, has been wiped away, and in its place is a stinking, festering carcass of past glory. What remains is the fetid, reeking, scorched remains of a free people, now subjugated into tyranny by a United States Supreme Court dominated by a cabal of leftists and pragmatists, the former seeking to overturn our constitution, and the latter willing to join them in order to remain popular. There is no political liberty anywhere on Earth any longer.

There will be some number of conservative talking heads who will urge calm, and if you feel inclined to listen to that hogwash, you should follow your leanings, but I will have none of it. There is nothing in this but pure, unmitigated evil. This law has converted us to the Soviet Union. The walls are not [yet] built, and the barb-wired fences to restrain us are not [yet] erected, but all the necessary elements of a slave state are now in place.

Freedom of choice? Gone.

Freedom to be unmolested by outrageous governmental persecution? Gone.

Freedom to worship(or not) as one sees fit? Gone.

Freedom to live one’s life according to such beliefs? Gone.

Freedom to be secure in your person and your effects? Gone.

Freedom to decide what is in one’s own best interest? Stripped, wrecked, tormented, and tossed aside by John Roberts and the rest of the Statist Judicial activists on the Supreme Court.

Do you realize that to decide as he did, John Roberts had to ignore the plain language of the law, and imagine what is a penalty provision into a tax?

We have here a case of judicial activism writ large across our constitution, and it is a red-letter stamp: Null and Void.

Do you expect Mitt Romney to save you from this? Do you expect him to step up and do so?

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been rigged. The least-qualified Republican to campaign against Obamacare is our presumptive nominee. The least-qualified to criticize it will now be our candidate?

Shall I play the funeral dirge now, or wait until November 7th?

While the media has immediately leaped into the considerations of the horse-race aspects of this Supreme Court ruling, nobody is addressing the fact that our liberties have been stripped from us. Nobody but a few lonely conservative bloggers, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. I expect other talk-show hosts will address this matter, but what we have in this case is a complete dissolution of the United States as we have known it.

I will not pay for Obama-care. I am looking into pulling my own health insurance, and making them force me to pay. SCREW THEM! This is my life, my money, my health, my choice.

I refuse. I reference the first Texas flag:

I Mean It

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Counting Obama-Care Chickens Before They’ve Come Home to Roost

Sunday, April 1st, 2012

How Much Will We Matter?

There’s a good deal of talk about how the oral arguments before the Supreme Court seemed to have gone badly for the government, particularly Solicitor General Verrilli, with a good deal of talk about how unprepared he seemed to make the arguments before him, but let’s be careful about two things:  I’m sure Verrilli is an able attorney, but there’s no way to plaster enough lipstick on this pig to disguise its true nature, but more importantly, I don’t think we should take for granted anything about how this or any other court will rule based on their questions alone.  If all the people who’ve spent the week trying to read the tea-leaves are wrong, we may be in for a serious disappointment come the end of June.  For my part, while the questioning offered some measure of hope, I won’t count my chickens before they’ve hatched, or even count Obama’s before they have gone home to roost.

Listening to the media, you would think Verrilli had been the constant butt of jokes, and while it’s clear that there were a few laughs at his expense, I think this says more about the impertinent character of the Obama-care legislation than it says about Verrilli’s legal scholarship.  He was placed in this position by a Congress now long gone, defeated and sent home by voters in 2010, and a President who was willing to sign this tract of tyranny into law despite a 2 to 1 disapproval by the American people at the time, that has only managed to worsen, now just shy of three-fourths of Americans considering the law unconstitutional.  As any litigator will tell you, if you have his client with a smoking gun in hand over the dead body with a signed confession, and thirty eyewitnesses, you’re not going to make it far on the defendant’s claims of innocence, but as an attorney, if your client says he will plead not guilty, you must still stand in and defend him.  That he’s left you with no conceivable method for doing so isn’t your fault, so I’d prefer we not tread too heavily on Verrilli.  He may be a left-wing goon for all I know, but he was doing his job.

The question of severability on Wednesday seemed to cause the greatest stir from the leftist members of the court, because they wanted to find some way, any way at all, to salvage some part of the “Affordable Care Act.”  One after the next, they tried to set up questions designed to muddy the water, but fundamentally, the problem is this:  If the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional, the rest of the bill is eligible because it would be difficult to imagine how the exchanges and the rest of the complex structure of the law operates without the mandate provision.  Some have assumed that the court may bounce the remainder of the bill, because Justice Scalia pointed out the impossibility of going through the law and figuring out what stays and what goes without risking larger damage.  In other words, keeping some of the Act might well wind up causing more trouble than it fixes.

I think that’s the proper way to view it, and you might wonder in light of this why the liberals on the court are so intent on keeping such parts of it as they are able.  The answer is simple enough once you understand their highly political motive: The mandate, if carved out, would merely affect the funding mechanism, but it would not do anything to the spending side.  The spending would go on, and the Congress would face deficits even greater than those already envisioned with this irresponsible law, and the entitlement would become firmly rooted in the American culture.  Once that happens, repeal becomes almost impossible.  For the liberals, therefore, preserving as much as the bill by severing only the mandate becomes the object of the ruling.

The conservatives may not be inclined to tamper with any of it.  They may not wish to toss out the entire bill for what will to some be an appearance of a political ruling, but the truth is that no matter what the court rules, it will certainly have political ramifications.  The question is whether that matters to all of the justices.  We know it drives the liberals on the court, but the problem is the conservatives are generally disinclined to weigh politics in their considerations on rulings.  If that is the case, you could well see a bifurcated ruling in which they throw out the mandate but leave the entirety of the remainder in place.  This too would constitute a disaster because the spending would commence in full as the law comes into force, with the revenue then [more] uncertain.

It could also happen that the court rules 5-4 that the mandate is constitutional, and if that happens, the country is thoroughly screwed.  At that point, the whole severability question is moot, and the law is implemented on schedule.  Of course, there are many theories about how this may play out, but the fact remains that we won’t know until late June.  Liberals are preparing for the scenario in which some or all of the law is tossed by preemptive strikes in media against various justices, particularly Justice Scalia.  I expect those attacks to ratchet up, even though the voting is already complete, and all that remains is to write the ruling and publish.

This process is important to the function of our republic, and yet there are those who disparage it as anachronistic, but I believe that if we are to remain a nation of laws, we must give the process its due. Leftists want to know the ruling now, and you can bet every court clerk is being prodded for answers by media who want to know in advance.  I would urge conservatives not to become to happy over what they have heard and read from the oral arguments.  Politically, you should remain engaged as though the law is going to be upheld.  You won’t be surprised if it is, and you won’t wonder about what to do next.

 

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Paying the Piper: Who Should Pay for Emergency Costs?

Saturday, March 31st, 2012

Who Pays?

This story is creating a bit of an uproar, and while I understand why, I think it outlines an important question in American culture:  If you have an accident, a fire, or other emergency requiring the assistance of first responders, should you get a bill?  In Passaic, NJ, they’re answering that question in the affirmative, but with a twist: Rather than going to the people who use the service directly, they’re going to “go after insurance companies” for payment. They say from the outset that they’re not going to go after people who don’t have insurance, leading me to wonder what kind of free-riding they are now encouraging. Mayor Alex Blanco seems to think this shouldn’t affect insurance policy rates, but I wonder if that’s very honest.  Asked about the effect on rates, and whether the measure would drive them up, Blanco said “I feel that it would be unethical on their part.” There are certainly ethical questions involved, but the worst of them are not with the insurance companies.

Blanco’s claim is that coverage for such fees is built into most insurances, and whether that’s true, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people to pay when their activities result in a call to emergency services.  The bothersome part from my point of view is that it will not be uniformly applied. Leaving an exception for those without insurance seems to me to be an inducement to forgo coverage, but of course, how much is involved?  In this case, fees from $600 to $1000 are involved, and that’s a large expense to anybody who’s just suffered a loss of some sort.  The idea of exempting some people on the basis of a lack of coverage is the problem.

The fact that one person insures his or her assets, while another refuses to do so shouldn’t be a determining factor in whether to charge.  This puts the city in the position of acting as another re-distributor of wealth.  If the city determines that a charge of $600 to $1000 is appropriate, there should not be differentiation in this manner.  What the city is doing in this case is to go after the easy targets, and I think that’s fundamentally unfair. They’re going after insurance companies of those who are insured, because the insurance company is stuck, and the invoices will be paid, but it would not be so easy to collect from those without insurance, so they’re essentially saying they won’t even bother to attempt collection.

I understand that we can feel compassion in various situations for people who have had a run of bad luck, or had bad things happen to them, but the problem here is that the compassion is too selective, and looks like discrimination.  If they went after everybody, irrespective of insurance status,  perhaps the amount they charged per incident could be lower, meaning they would be hitting insurance companies for less, and therefore reducing the impact on policy owners via their rates.

Instead, what the city of Passaic has done is cause a cost-shifting to occur, and I believe that’s fundamentally wrong.  It happens in two ways: First, they will likely bill insurance companies more than an incident actually costs in many cases, and this means the insured are paying for the uninsured.  Second, even if the fees here are representative of the actual costs, and there’s no padding in them to cover the uninsured calls for service, then the residents who pay taxes are basically gifting the amount to the uninsured. Either way, and it’s probably a little of both, what is happening is to shift the burden in what becomes a redistributive scheme.

I don’t mind the idea of charging, because in point of fact, to do otherwise is to impose the whole cost of every instance on tax-payers.  Some will argue they pay for that already through their taxes, but that’s not always the case. Very often, what revenues come in through the taxes is enough to cover the expense of maintaining a fire department’s existence, but not nearly enough to cover the costs of all the calls to which they respond.  As more cities around the country find themselves in budgetary difficulties, I expect this to spread, and I’m not opposed to it, but I would argue that there should be no free-riders, and that those who have insurance or pay taxes shouldn’t be forced to eat the costs for the uninsured.

I think we do far too much of that sort of redistribution as it is.  Let’s not add another layer to this problem. One would think we’d learn something from our health-care funding problems, but it appears we have not. Redistribution of costs from the irresponsible to the responsible doesn’t improve the situation because it merely encourages more irresponsibility. Isn’t it high time were learned that lesson?

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Romney to Leno: Make Big Government More Efficient But Maintain Its Reach

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Secretary of Deck Chairs

Mitt Romney isn’t interested in reducing the reach of government into Americans’ lives, but instead making it more efficient.  That’s part of the message Romney delivered to Jay Leno’s audience on Tuesday evening, and what you need to realize about all of this is that Romney is not a conservative.  He’s a technocrat, and he’s a businessman, but his interest in making various programs and agencies of government more efficient does not make him conservative.  Conservatives realize that to save this nation, we must re-make the government in a smaller, less intrusive, and less-encompassing form.  We need to eliminate programs, bureaus and agencies, and discard their functions.  Romney won’t do any of that, and in fact, he will likely extend their reach. Here’s the video. The relevant portion is the last thirty seconds:


This is typical of Mitt Romney, and it demonstrates the concerns of conservatives in nominating this moderate.  If you wonder why conservatives do not trust Romney, this is part of substantiating their distrust. It’s not as though conservatives oppose efficiency, but it’s important to understand why inefficiency alone is not the problem with big government.

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Did the Solicitor General Lie to the Supreme Court?

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Asking the Tough Questions

In Tuesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said something in response to a question from Justice Antonin Scalia that I believe was intended to mislead.  Scalia was much too clever for Verrilli, and why he didn’t call Verrilli on it, he made it clear that he understood full well what Verrilli was doing with his wording.  It might not have been a “lie” in the strictest sense of the word, but it was intended to obfuscate the issue, and to do so in such a way as to shield the government from the very basis on which I have been criticizing the “individual mandate” since its proposal.  To understand this “lie,” “misleading statement,” or “obfuscation,” whichever you will prefer to call it, you must understand the basic issues in context. In my view, Verrilli tried to hide something crucial, and you should know it.

What General Verrilli tried to conceal is the fact that this “cost-shifting” that Obama-care’s mandate is intended to address was created by government statute.  Let us start with the transcript, available in full here:

GENERAL VERRILLI: That — that absolutely is a justification for Congress’s action here. That is existing economic activity that Congress is regulating by means of this rule.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Verrilli, you could say that about buying a car. If people don’t buy cars, the price that those who do buy cars pay will have to behigher. So, you could say in order to bring the price down, you’re hurting these other people by not buying a car.
GENERAL VERRILLI: That is not what we’re saying, Justice Scalia.
JUSTICE SCALIA: That’s not — that’s not what you’re saying.
GENERAL VERRILLI: That’s not — not -

JUSTICE SCALIA: I thought it was. I thought you’re saying other people are going to have to pay more for insurance because you’re not buying it.

Now for the key exchange:

GENERAL VERRILLI: No. It’s because you’re going — in the health care market, you’re going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get, getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social norms that allow — that — to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.

Here, Scalia absolutely demonstrates he understands the issue:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, don’t obligate yourself to that. Why — you know?

And now, for the slam dunk:

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I can’t imagine that that — that the Commerce Clause would — would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You could do it. But does that expand your ability to issue mandates to — to the people?

Let me explain why I’ve italicized the portions above.  When Verrilli argues that the receipt of healthcare by the so-called free-riders is the result of “the social norms that allow,” he stammered through a self-correction, “to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.”

What Verrilli is here talking about is that Congress has enacted laws prohibiting an emergency room from turning away patients on the basis that they cannot show an ability or willingness to pay.  Verrilli tried to hide this behind a “social norm,” and later a “deeply embedded social norm,” but in fact, Scalia understood with acute perception why it is that Verrilli would do this, and he spat it back in Verrilli’s face, as was right and proper: “Well, don’t obligate yourself to that.”   In other words, if you don’t want people to receive treatment without having paid, repeal the law that provides that treatment must be provided.

Verrilli wasn’t satisfied with this, and he claimed that “[he] can’t imagine that the commerce clause would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.”

Here, Scalia might have asked him: “How deeply embedded a social norm is it that has been enacted within my lifetime,” but he did not, preferring to underscore the larger point:

“You could do it. But does that expand your ability to issue mandates to — to the people?“

What Scalia is asking here is plain enough:  The government may claim an interest in taking this “deeply embedded social norm” into account in creating its policy, but a desire to support a “social norm” (deeply embedded or otherwise) confer upon the government the authority to stand in demand of participation in the social norm?

What Scalia here recognized is that which I’ve been telling you all along:  The government may enact a law forcing somebody to provide a good or a service(I reject that too, by the way) but the fact that the government creates a legal obligation for itself does not give them an additional claim of authority over you.

A good example is this:  You let one of your adult children move their entire family into your home with you, despite the fact that they can or should afford their own domicile on their own, but when you perceive it is too burdensome, you then go to your other adult children and demand they help you support them, since it’s now bankrupting you.  Your other adult children would rightly say to you:  “Don’t let them live their any longer.”

What kind of mind would actually propose this to their other adult children?  The other adult children would be best to remove themselves from the conversation and ignore the demanding parent.  The problem is that in this case, it’s the government that’s making the demand, and we(the other adult children) are prohibited from ignoring it.

What Scalia recognized, and every one of you must know, is that there is a cost to the choices one makes, but having made them, there is no authority to shift the costs of those choices onto unwilling others who would have chosen differently.  This is at the heart of the entire Obama-care insurance mandate argument:  The government voluntarily decides to fund or subsidize something for somebody, and then mandates that you participate in the payment.  There is no right to health-care, or any other material commodity or service, and nobody is obligated to pay for it.  This should be the basis upon which the entirety of the New Deal and the Great Society are tossed out to the curb, but what’s particularly objectionable about Obama-care’s mandate is that it compels you to purchase an insurance against such costs that you may well never incur.

Understanding this, you should see why it is that what Solicitor General Verrilli attempted to conceal, but Scalia didn’t permit, is that more than “deeply embedded social norms,” these are laws inflicted and imposed upon us by Congress, and that Congress is free to repeal them, but the creation of these obligations does not disparage our liberties.  I hope Antonin Scalia lives to be one-hundred-twenty years old, or longer,  and delivers us from as much evil as he is able.  His agile legal mind, and his clear understanding of the issues at stake is among the best hopes we have for maintaining our liberties, or reclaiming those we have forfeited already.  Our lives quite literally depend on it.

 

 

 

 

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What is the Difference Between the Left and the GOP Establishment?

Monday, March 26th, 2012

How Friendly Are They?

I find it bothersome that when I listen to some of the obvious establishment hacks, what I hear from them sounds suspiciously like the things I hear coming from the left.  They attack Sarah Palin, and as Breitbart famously pointed out, it’s almost like a membership card that people in the GOP establishment throw down to prove their credentials with the leftist media and cocktail crowd. Those who want in must pay the toll, and that will mean running down actual conservatives whenever possible.  They tell us it’s because we are all blithering idiots, and that’s evidenced because we don’t understand the art of compromise, but that too has the suspiciously similar ring of disdain that we most frequently get from the left.  Worse, when a conservative overcomes the GOP establishment, they tend to think all that remains is to defeat the left, but slowly and surely, the establishment crowd works its way back in.  Conservatives frequently find themselves wondering if there’s any difference between the Left and the Republican establishment.

One could examine the politics of Alaska to get an idea of how that all works.  Sarah Palin was a marvelous reformer who defeated a bastion of the GOP establishment when she beat Frank Murkowski on her way to victory and gubernatorial success. In 2010, Joe Miller defeated Murkowski’s daughter Lisa in the GOP primary, but as an establishment insider, Murkowski ran instead a write-in campaign, and defeated Joe Miller from the left.  This is emblematic of the way the establishment plays the game, and what quickly becomes apparent is how they’ll do anything to maintain power.  Lisa Murkowski won the Senate seat, but she had to abandon the base of the party she had claimed to support in order to get it done.  The Democrats voted defensively, by supporting her over their own candidate in many cases, because they knew they’d rather have Republican Lisa Murkowski than Tea Party-inclined Joe Miller. What that will mean in the future for Alaska politics is unclear, but I suspect the Tea Party and conservative base there are seething over her actions.

Naturally, this is just a microcosm of how it works in Washington DC.  where the establishment rules the Republican roost. When you notice that Republicans have wavered on this or that, you can almost always be assured that you will find one of the establishment pack at the root of the surrender.  It leads many to wonder, nowadays openly:  Is the Republican establishment really any better or any more than a fifth column for the institutional Left?  Of course, much like the Devil, whose best trick is purported to have been to convince others he didn’t exist, the GOP establishment denies their own existence too.  It’s actually a bit of a farce for George Will to have said this, but say it he did, and they run around pretending they do not exist.  Part of it is that they’re a bit slippery, because they will pose as conservatives on this bill or that, and come up with some dandy rationalizations for their sell-outs of conservatism.

Part of what makes conservatives wonder about the possibility of a “fifth column” appearance of all of this is that without fail, these are the same people to whom the media turns when they want a “republican” or “conservative” opinion.  Asking John Boehner on to speak on behalf of conservatism is roughly equivalent to asking Joe McGinnis his opinion on Sarah Palin.  John Boehner isn’t a conservative, though he frequently claims the title.  What Boehner really represents is a mind-set that Washington DC commands all, and that sometimes one must go along to get along.   The problem with Boehner, Cantor, et al, is that they really don’t care about the underlying principles in any issue.  They’re more interested in the appearance of a deal, but the deals are always with leftists, and they never, ever work out as advertised.

The great Debt Ceiling debate of last July is an example.  Boehner was catching hell from every direction, but in the end, who did he abandon?  Did he abandon his make-nice with the President?  No.  Did he force the issue via a shutdown?  No.  Instead, he sent another bill to the Senate after the bill his whole caucus had supported was pronounced “dead on arrival” by Harry Reid.  The truth of the matter is that the deal had been done for some time, and he was looking for cracks in his own party in order to push it through.  Boehner knew it, Reid knew it, and Barack Obama knew it too.  When you know your adversary’s alleged leader is undercutting his own folks in order to make a deal, you can go a long way in really pressing your advantage.  The Debt Ceiling debate ended with a victorious Obama and a devastated Republican base.  We watched people in whom we placed a great deal of hope walk the plank for John Boehner, and all to end up in the same boat just a little later in the year.

This prompted the question among many in the Tea Party at the time, including in this blog: “With friends like these…”  Of course, at the time we were turning our attentions to the Presidential primary season, but little did we conservatives suspect, with a field brimming with actual and potential candidates that the Republican establishment had a plan brewing for this too.  They managed to manipulate the early states forward, moving up the process for a purpose I still don’t think most have grasped.  Those early states are now bound by the rules to yield half of their delegates to the National convention.  Who will be choosing them, and who do you suppose they will be?  Conservatives?  Or more establishment hacks?  So you see, that’s been part of their back-up plan too, engineered to make sure they have a number of delegates they can throw to Mitt Romney if it comes down to it.  Drudge is happily running a story pointing out that Santorum will need to win 74% of delegates in order to win, but what he’s not reporting to you is that Romney will need almost 60% from this point forward.  While Santorum’s chore is an order of  magnitude more difficult, Romney’s road isn’t easy, even with the sandbag delegates the party now has put-away for just such an emergency.

All of this is much like what they did to Ronald Reagan in 1976.  They did everything possible to stymie him and still it came within a whisker of going his way.  I suspect if they could have stopped him in 1980, they would have, but they still managed to get one of theirs on the ticket.  In many ways, the conservative base of the party has been paying a price ever since.  Let’s be blunt, if we may, and suggest that in the halls of power, and where it matters, and in the money of the GOP, George HW Bush is still a terribly powerful force, or at least his legacy has been.  They’re already preparing the next generation, both for the Presidency, and up-and-coming, and there’s little doubt that they prepare a back-bench thick with their folks, ready to retake control when the opportunity arrives.  Given the way the GOP has been run since the Bush establishment took over, I wonder if we’ll ever see a time when our country is free of them, and if it’s even possible any longer.

I tend to agree with those who say that in order to be rid of them, the GOP must ultimately go the way of the Whigs.  The GOP establishment is nearly indistinguishable in their methods and goals from the institutional Left who is our open adversary, and in any case, they’re dragging the country in the same sad direction, albeit somewhat more slowly.  Win, lose or draw, when this election cycle ends, whatever happens, we’re going to be forced to confront this issue or accept that we’ve lost our country.  We tend to think of our fight for the country in terms of our battles with the Left, but I believe we must consider amending our thinking because I don’t know that we can ever defeat the left until we oust their friends from among our number.  We must at some point ask: Are these the actions of a friend?

 

 

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Posted in Bush Clan, Election 2012, Featured, GOP Establishment, News, Politics, RINO Alert, Statism, Tea Party | 4 Comments »

Inviting Government Into the Bedroom

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Does the Government Belong Here?

When you invite the world into your bedroom, don’t expect the world to withhold comments.  When you invite government to fund healthcare, there will be no holding back the ultimate encroachment into personal privacy.  There’s no ambiguity here.  When Sandra Fluke testified before Congress, she invited this, but more importantly, when leftists shoved government healthcare down our throats, beginning in the 1960s, and culminating finally in “Obamacare,” the whole question of privacy was suppressed with a finality that most people simply won’t like:  The government is involved in your healthcare.  By definition, it is no longer private information.  You cannot bring government into the matter of contraception without inviting it ultimately into your doctor’s office, your bathroom, and your bedroom.

People who are defending Fluke are ignoring the simple fact that when you make your sexuality and things related to it a matter of public record and government interest, you’re holding the door open for public judgments.  Your reproductive health, but also the health of your  kidneys is subject to governmental review.  Do not offer that you haven’t understood where this would lead.  Fluke wants others to be compelled to cover her contraception.  What did she expect would happen?  If you come to me and say “hey, pal, I need you to pay for…my kids to eat,” you can expect that I will soon ask you why you have so many children.  As long as people are going to try to redistribute their private burdens onto the public account, there should be no claim whatsoever that the demand-makers  can avoid public judgment. They’re inviting them.

What do you think is the meaning of the implementation of the various state EBT cards, so that at the grocery check-out, those living off of the rest of us can avoid any alleged stigma previously associated with food-stamps?  They want the dignity associated with the appearance of paying their own way without the necessity of actually doing so.  Such people are frauds, but their first victim is always themselves.  Before they can fool the rest of us, they must first pretend to themselves that this procedure is fine, and that there is no shame in any of it.  I won’t permit it. I’m not going to let charlatans parade around as though they are anything other than what the facts reveal.

If you’re a college student, or anybody else for that matter, and you wish to avoid pregnancy, but cannot afford your own contraceptives, there’s a simple answer, and as Foster Freiss might offer, it may involve an aspirin.  As a member of the paying public, my first response when you demand free contraception is:

“Nothing is free. Why do you think I should pay for it?”

What can you answer?  What is your moral premise?  What is the basis for your claim against my wallet? There are two important principles here, and the first is that to Ms. Fluke and any like her who demand contraception funded by others, the only rational answer must be “No.”  It’s an important word, and just as it applies in this context, where I do not give my consent, Ms. Fluke and all those like her should consider adding the word to their own vocabularies, in which case contraception might no longer be such a pressing necessity.

I don’t know anything about Fluke’s sexual habits, and I don’t really care.  I simply don’t wish to pay for them, and I don’t want government compelling coverages on faith-based institutions, including the university at which she is a student.  Her sexual life became a matter of public concern when she made it one.  She is not a victim of Rush Limbaugh, or anybody else.  She’s a victim of her own desire to put a gun to the heads of people of faith who will be coerced under the auspices of Obamacare to cover her contraceptive needs.

This is the truth of this issue, and when you consider what Obamacare will actually impose, from death-panels to medical records databases, and access to your financial records, it’s clear that there will be no effective protection of privacy.  I don’t know how any rational person can believe that they can get somebody else to pay for something on their behalf, and still maintain privacy.  You have a heart condition?  The government will know.  Diabetes?  The government will know.  Herpes?  The government will know.  They will know everything about you including the weight you register when you step on the scale in your doctor’s office.

What do you think has been the meaning of the “war on obesity,” the “war on bad eating habits,” the “war on smoking” or the “war on salt?”  Wait until this system begets a “war on sexuality” or some such thing.  It’s only a matter of time, because in the hands of politicians, it will be unavoidable.  There will be no privacy.  You will face inevitable judgments if you rely upon government directly or indirectly to meet or mandate the fulfillment of your needs.  Sandra Fluke complains that she’s going broke paying for contraception, and that may be the case, but life is full of choices, and it’s time for her to grow up and make them, or sustain the judgments heaped upon her for demanding others carry the burdens those choices impose.

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Healthcare, Media, News, Obamacare, Politics, Statism, Welfare State | 3 Comments »

Note to Big Government Statists: Leave Me Be!

Friday, February 17th, 2012

New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Dear Miserable Big-Government Jack-booted Statists:

I don’t know you well enough to give you even the most vaguely intimate details of my life.  Why do you want them?  I don’t love you, and you don’t love me, so why can’t you let me be?  Why is my contract in employment any of your business?  If my employer is happy, and I’m happy, apart from the fact that you’re already taxing both to death, why do you need to know how much I earn per hour, or anything of the sort?  Why are you involved in the question of my health insurance?  Not only do you wish to decide whether I will buy health insurance, but also what it will cover.  Note to jack-boots:  I’m a forty-something man married to a forty-something woman and we’re not interested in contraceptive coverage.

Why will my health-insurer be forced to cover it?  Florescent lighting gives me a headache.  CFL’s particularly are the bane of my existence.  Why may I not choose what kind of light-bulb I will purchase? I don’t mind paying extra for the slight difference in efficiency. Why must I be condemned to a life of headaches triggered by these lights, just to suit you?

Of course, you’re not satisfied with this, are you?  Hardly.  You don’t want me to buy weapons, but to the degree you permit it, you don’t want me to buy too many at once, and you want gun stores to report me if I buy more than one at a time.  Why?  Are you afraid I’ll arm a gang of Narco-terrorists with them?  Like you did?  Of course, since we’re speaking of terrorism, let’s cover your general ineptitude.  You want to scan Granny’s wheelchair, but you refuse to “profile.”  Why?  Profiling has been a crime-fighting technique for generations because it works.  Why is it that you’re willing to subject women to body-scanning abuse by some of your pervert agents?  Will you treat my wife that way?  My adult daughter?  What makes you think we’re chattel for your amusement?

Speaking of our children, you now seem to believe it’s your business what we pack in our kids’ school lunches.  Why is it that elected officials believe that their busy-body spouses should have any say-so in what we eat or drink, or don’t?  We didn’t elect them, but even if we had, why do you believe it’s any of your business?  You don’t buy my food.  You don’t prepare it.  You don’t feed my children, so when you explain to me how you’re seizing my kid’s lunch to be replaced by such meals as you deem suitable, are you confused as to why I might be upset?

As all of this grows and grows, I have begun to wonder if you’re even aware of how sick of you I have become.  If you were a person, I would charge you with theft, stalking, harassment, and torture.  Since you do all of this under color of your official authority, you also do it at the point of a gun.  I wanted you to know this, and to know that I no longer consent. You are in violation of the constitution that acts as the social contract between and among us. You have taken on the role of dictator, and frankly, I’m not interested in being your servant since our compact declares that you will be mine.  I don’t want anything from you.  I don’t want a single commodity.  My state and local governments are going to receive the same talking-to, but since I know you are arrogant and no longer believe you need listen, I’m going to make this explicit:  Leave me alone. I don’t want your hand-outs. I don’t want your iron fist. I don’t want anything but those limited purposes for which you were created: Defend the country against foreign enemies and domestic criminals, and act as an objective arbiters in our own domestic squabbles.  You have no other legitimate purpose.

 

Leave me alone.

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Education, Government Reform, Healthcare, Law, News, Politics, Statism | 2 Comments »