Latest American Issues Project Column: “It’s The Government’s Money, You Just Earn It”
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Are we in a new America where the state runs the show and the citizens are bit players or are we still a government of, by and for the people? Judging by economic policy, I’d say we’re all servants of the state now. Here’s a snippet from my latest American Issues Project column where I elaborate:
Not to pick around the edges, but the most illustrative point of the Joe Biden interview, came for me when the subject of health care and paying for it came up. The Vice President crowed that the Medicare drug supplement only cost $40 Billion as opposed to the $72 Billion predicted.
Only?
That’s thinking like a politician, though. Taking money from the the taxpayer and feeling free to throw around terms like “only forty billion” is classic. It’s their money, you just earn it.
The last eight years reinforced one key point: politicians from both sides of the political sphere believe the government is a force for good. That is, both Democrats and Republicans are statists now. The question is how the government should be used not whether it should be involved at all.
Rather than setting up a right-left dichotomy, the real dichotomy is between those who value liberty, freedom and being left alone by the nanny state, and those within the government who like to nanny and the recipients of government largesse who like being cared for by the nannies. It’s this latter group that is concerning.
In a blog post before the election in November, I wondered how many people rely on the government for survival either as welfare recipients or as a government employee. And the next question is whether there can ever be a conservative, non-statist candidate win national election.
I’m not sure about the answer and that worries me.
Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com
Latest AIP Column: How Nice Is Too Nice?
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009If America is going to be Europe Lite and turn into a socialist country, soft, cushy, lacking innovation and miserably haughty, I think America needs to decide how “nice” is going to look. The idea is create a society free of hardship rather than a free society. So what will that mean?
Over at the American Issues Project, “niceness” is the topic:
Americans need to decide at what point the helping hand becomes the smothering death grip. What can start as a soft landing can end as a soft pillow affixed to the charity recipient’s gasping face.
Or put it another way. You know how when you’ve had a family illness or a new baby and some “helpful” relative visits. At first she (inevitably she’s a she) is cleaning and doing laundry. Then she’s rearranging all the shelves. Then, she is admonishing you about your toilet paper roll directional habits. Finally, you catch her rifling through your underwear drawer and hiding your bottle of prized scotch in her closet. You know it’s time for her to go, but you kinda feel obligated to keep her around because she did help a lot. Worse, when you finally tell her to go, that you no longer need the help, but that you’re grateful, she insists on staying. You’re stuck.
Kinda like the banks that took TARP money are stuck. Kinda like generations of welfare recipients are stuck.
Please go read the whole thing. Also, some other great writers, including Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft and Cassy Fiano have columns today. Check it out!
Treatise On Kind Capitalism & Scary Socialism
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009Yesterday, I had the honor to be on the same editorial page as Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft over at America Issues Project. Jim has been my blog hero since the beginning along with The Anchoress, so it was quite an honor. He’s talking about the big, fat liar, Al Gore. Kinda like when a rookie basketball player gets drafted onto a team which starts his hero. That was me yesterday.
It was the first day for AIP’s site and to introduce myself to that audience, I talked about how the perspective on socialism and capitalism is exactly backwards these days. Here’s a snippet of it:
The other axiom of socialism, the first being “I care,” is the inverse of this: “You don’t care.” Socialism depends on believing that people are fundamentally incapable of taking care of themselves. It’s a dark theory, really. A socialist views his neighbor with contempt believing that the neighbor needs to do things the “right” way. A socialist views his neighbor with suspicion and is convinced that his neighbor must be forced to do the correct thing because he won’t do the right thing on his own.
So please go over and read it. The AIP site is beautiful and easy to navigate and full of good stuff.
Obama’s Chavez-Love And America Ambivalence
Monday, April 20th, 2009President Barack Obama didn’t just greet Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, he gave him the hood handshake and the warmest smile he’s managed with any foreign leader. It’s not just that he shook hands with a socialist leader who is currently bankrupting his country, destroying the economy and cozying up to dictators and tyrants around the world, it’s that he pulls him in for the the thug hug.
In street parlance, our President is giving the world tyrants all sorts of respect while dissing our allies with lame gifts, protocol mistakes, diplomatic foolishness and mixed messages.
A genuine, fully joyful greeting to a 3rd rate wannabe dictator reveals everything a person needs to know about President Obama’s philosophy. He relates to the guy with a persecution complex. He relates to the guy who blames everyone else for his (or his country’s) personal failure. He relates to the guy who believes that the way to help the underdogs is to punish the productive–because, of course, they didn’t work for it, like President Obama himself, business leaders and the successful just got really lucky or were born with a silver spoon and don’t deserve it. He relates to the class resentment and social isolation.
And it’s with this distrust, resentment and “big and successful” loathing that President Obama governs. The irony is that President is now big and successful and powerful.
Not only does President Obama want to level the playing field in America–no rich and poor. He wants to level the playing field amongst the world. There is no better or worse government. Iran and Venezuela deserve the same, if not more, respect than loyal, strong democracies like India, Poland, Israel, Britain and France (well, they’re kinda loyal).
It’s a perverse egalitarianism that puts murderers, extortioners and general evil doers on the same moral plane as those who believe in freedom, the rule of law, and individual rights. Rather than being an incentive for the bad guys to do better, the good guys see no reason to be good–they’ll get the same respect either way. Just as the guy not working sees no reason to work harder when his neighbor gets the respect of a paycheck one way or another.
This is not going to end well.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
Mourning Michigan: Part II
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009After visiting Michigan, my home state, this last summer, I wrote an emotional post expressing my grief at how the state has declined. It is still difficult to contemplate, because the place is so dear to me.
You can understand why, then, this article from the Detroit News was difficult to read. Here’s the facts. The article itself includes distressing anecdotes.
Poorer, less educated
Michigan’s exodus is one of the state’s best known but least understood problems. Long ignored or downplayed, outmigration has been shrugged off partly because it was assumed that those who were leaving were unemployed blue-collar workers and retirees, groups that, in economic terms, don’t cripple the state with their departure.
But a Detroit News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data reveals that every day, Michigan gets less populated, less educated, and poorer because of outmigration.
The state’s net loss to outmigration — the number of people leaving the state minus those moving in from other states — has skyrocketed since 2001. Although the Census Bureau does not report totals moving in and out each year, Internal Revenue Service records show that the population decline is a result of two disturbing trends: The number of Michigan residents leaving the state rose 25 percent between 2001 and 2007, while the number of new residents moving in plummeted by nearly one-third.
Essentially, educated people are leaving because there’s no jobs and no future and taxation is oppressive. So those left behind are those who use most of the government services, only there’s no one to pay for those services.
The solution would to cut back services, be ruthless about budgeting and give incentives for businesses to come and work. But even if that were to happen, it would take time.
Michigan, like upstate New York, is quickly becoming an aging wasteland where there’s no jobs and those who still live there are taxed punitively.
The government doesn’t help the state with policies like these. Government interference only delays the inevitable.
What the Federal Government under President Obama want to do is not to cut services and cut spending, they want to make every state like Michigan so companies have no where to go. Redistribution of wealth and a steadily high unemployment rate, ala Europe, is just the way of life. Workers have guarantees but no one enjoys greatness.
In the socialist’s world, it’s not so bad if there’s suffering–as long as everyone is suffering. Michigan is what the President’s policies look like when played out.
Heaven forbid this happens nationwide.
Margaret Thatcher’s Modern Message
Monday, April 13th, 2009I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand”I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or”I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and[fo 1] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—” It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it” . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people:”All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say:”But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say:”Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!”
There is also something else I should say to them:”If that does not give you a basic standard, you know, there are ways in which we top up the standard. You can get your housing benefit.”
But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society.[fo 2] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.
Meanwhile, the collectivist bent seems to be gathering steam.
Americans have traded bootstraps for bailouts.
Class Warfare And The Left’s Populism
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009In order to have a true populist revolt, a person must define the enemy. Throughout the campaign, President Barack Obama did just that by saying that people owning small businesses making more than $250,000 are rich. (The actual number he’s using is $200,000 for individuals.) $250,000 is very subjective. $250,000 here in Texas is a mighty fine sum. $250,000 in New York City or San Francisco might land you in the middle class. For example, the cost of living in New York is 76% higher than in Houston, Texas, but the pay is only 15% more. The net change in disposable income is $150,856.00. Just think of how many health care policies a person could buy for that much money.
Second, we have to instill a sense of unfairness. It’s not that some people took bigger risks, or made tougher decisions to get where they got. It’s that the system favored them and needs to start favoring the disaffected masses. As Obama said to Joe the Plumber, “People who make $60,000/year work hard, too. If you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Finally, there needs to be the symbolic harm. Americans are not too thrilled with the bailouts. In this ownership society, lots of people have seen their 401Ks diminish into oblivion while the financial guys now get bailed out. It’s not fair. And then, to find out that they get $165 million in bonuses (they are retention payments, because guess what? no one wants to stay on a sinking ship). Outrage ensues. It’s a witch hunt. ACORN mobilizes their tiny force. AIG employees live in fear.
The fact is, I felt that President Obama was appealing to the basest of desires all the way around during the campaign. The have nots bought into the talk and nobles liked it, too. He spoke smoothly and had a presidential temperament. As the contemptible Christopher Buckley opines, fluish and back from landing his Cessna and gazing at the Iditarod:
I voted for Barack Obama largely on the basis of his temperament, which I thought superior. He is only 47 years old, but to me seemed older than that: a man of precocious aspect and judgment. In the French wording, un homme sérieux.
Of course you did, darling. You nincompoop.
So there were two ends of the spectrum that voted for Obama–the discontented and those suffering a fit of noblesse oblige. As in, no matter how much taxes the mighty Obama can put forth, it won’t matter for the super rich or for Senators, because they find their way around taxation anyway. Can you say Maryland?
In between these extremes, are the people who work for their money, who built businesses and who pour their earnings back into their business in order to grow it. What the President has been attacking isn’t wealth but talent and ambition. The working people are people who work with their hands, grunt and lift things, turn a wrench, while rich people, as Matt Yglesias said, “sit in cushy chairs.” James Joyner responded to that with this:
There’s no doubt that many low paying jobs require a lot of physical effort. Indeed, most of them are more physically demanding than most of the jobs that pay very well.
On the other hand, as Matt acknowledges offhandedly, those jobs have very low barriers to entry. One doesn’t study hard for four years of high school, four years of college, and three to eight years of professional schooling to become a mover or a stockboy or a stenographer. That’s a lot of work that’s generally put in while deferring income that those who took lesser paying jobs were earning right away.
Another key difference is that people who schlep boxes for a living don’t take their work home with them. They’re not thinking about better ways to get a piano down the stairs on the weekend or stressing about how much packing tape they’re using on the drive home.
Of course, we don’t pay people based on how hard they work any more than we grade students for how hard they studied. Ultimately, it’s about how much value others place on your services and how much competition there is for them. But the idea that an executive isn’t working hard because his chair is confortable is rather silly.
This resentment is more than resentment at the rich–it’s resentment at those who have taken the time, committed to the work and had the smarts to achieve. It’s not class warfare so much as it’s achievement warfare. Look at how the AP’s Matthew Brown summarizes the Montana plane crash victims:
Vanessa Pullen was a pediatrician, Michael Pullen was a dentist, Erin Jacobson was an opthalmologist and Amy Jacobson was a dental hygienist. Brent Ching was an orthopedic surgeon.
Buddy Feldkamp identified the pilot as Buddy Summerfield.
The Yellowstone Club, near Yellowstone National Park, is a millionaires-only resort that counts former Vice President Dan Quayle and Microsoft founder Bill Gates among its 340 members.
The loss, in terms of humanity, and brain drain is staggering and yet, the author finishes by making reference to Dan Quayle and “millionaires-only”.
The Leftist’s anger isn’t against rich, it’s against achievement. If you have succeeded in the private sector, you’re suspect and to be maligned. If you’ve achieved your wealth through graft and corruption like many in the public arena, well, that’s to be forgiven. The key is to make everything public-owned, then no one is better than anyone.
The ultimate goal of the Left’s populism is simple: socialism.
“It’s worse [Obama's Administration] than I could have imagined possible.”–UPDATED
Thursday, February 19th, 2009A blogger friend and I were talking yesterday and she lamented the Obama administration’s long-lasting affects and it was only one month into his presidency: the drive to nationalize banks, the class-warfare, the hostility toward achievement, the secretiveness, the cult of personality, the talk of inclusion then the actions of exclusion, etc.
The current push by the administration is to pass Employee Free Choice Act (more double-speak, this law is about everything besides free choice) that would eliminate secret ballots–so employees could be intimidated into voting for a union. At first blush, this seems like no big deal. Unions have been known to be heavy handed but so what. So what? So, this legislation would go to the heart of the economy where it is still humming: the South. Businesses in the sunshine belt, where unions and taxation are less likely, thrive precisely because there is no collective bargaining to coerce the companies into bad business practices. Even further, the employees in these places live as well or better because the states have less personal income tax (Texas has none, for example) and can make up in cost-of-living savings anything a union might be able to gain.
But this legislation isn’t about what’s good for the individual, business, community or state. This is about evening the playing field. That is, states with egregious taxation suddenly retain businesses because the business environment everywhere in the United States is made universally punitive. Unions represent more workers because workers are coerced into unionizing. As it is, the unions are aggressive and seem to not comprehend that many workers don’t want unionization.
That workers resist unions shouldn’t be difficult to understand, really. Look at what the UAW is up to in Michigan. Once again, even in the face of GM, Chrysler and Ford failing, they concede nothing. This will mean, of course, that business leaves Michigan and jobs are lost. Sure the few jobs that remain will be flush, but the vast majority of workers won’t have a job. Flint is a ghost town for precisely this reason. Workers in the South have seen the “benevolence” of the unions (many are transplants after all) and want no part of it.
Taking away secret ballots would create a hostile work environment for those who resist the union. What if the union takes hold and you, the worker, fought against it? Yeah, life will be hard. {More on the outrage that is Card Checks here.]
And this is just the beginning of Barack Obama’s drive to reshape the American landscape into one of “fairness”, i.e. mediocrity. Fairness means those who achieve and thrive are penalized and those who, say, can’t afford a house, buy over their ability to pay, and default are rewarded–with the money of those who live within their means.
There are plenty of Americans who have lived within their means over the last few years even with banks sending outrageous numbers of credit cards with “O% Financing!” and “No Interest For A Year!”, etc. And there were people who did not. The banks gave money to people who shouldn’t have been given money. The people who could not handle the money not surprisingly spent it all without considering tomorrow. Then the banks saw the impending balance sheet woes and lobbied Congress to make filing bankruptcy more difficult. So people were forced to keep paying enormous amounts of interest, enslaving the debtor for years and years. And then, when the person got overburdened, he walked away from his house–his largest liability. And then, the banks asked for a bailout for all their stupid lending decisions.
Now, Barack Obama (and President Bush started this before him), bailed out banks that gave money irresponsibly. But then again, that was because they were coerced by Congress to give money to people who couldn’t afford to pay. See what happens with the government tries to make things “fair”?
All these attempts to “level the playing field” and promote “fairness” sound great. What it means is that the people who make bad decisions control those who live responsibly. And really, that’s the ultimate goal.
While I find Europe’s soft socialistic society pathetic, American Democrats look at the various countries with envy. Barack Obama’s language in both Germany and France revealed his contempt for America and Americans. He saw their world and wanted to transport that society to America.
Far from being the agent of hope and change, Barack Obama represents hate and contempt. He fundamentally despises the individualistic American impulse. He scorns the notion of hard work and achievement. He believes America is a bad place that needs to be changed into something good. Something, say, like Europe.
He is succeeding in fulfilling his dream. It’s going to be a nightmare for America.
P.S. Ultimately, the problem is that to far too many Americans, Barack Obama’s words and actions appeal to them. The same people who couldn’t see to the end of their own misfortune, can’t see how Barack Obama is promising them “easy credit”, too. There ain’t no free lunch–this bill will be paid.
UPDATED:
My co-blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News, interviewed economist Walter Williams about his latest book. This is what Williams says about rich people verses the government:
…There is so much demagoguery against the rich and in that column I was asking the reader: Bill Gates, the richest person on the face of the earth — what can Bill Gates make you do? That is, during the 70s and 80s, the era of busing, could he have made you send your kid to a school that you did not want him to go to? Can Bill Gates deny you the right to dig holes on your property or put up a little shed on your property? He cannot do any of those things, but a lowly town clerk can…destroy your life just by denying you a permit to add an addition to your house. Bill Gates can’t stop you from doing that. I think that politicians and those that want to control our lives get us to focus away from the power that government has over our lives and cast our attention to rich people.
It’s working.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
