Story of a Diet

 So you've got a guy. He lives pretty well, does pretty well. And one day, someone offers him some candy.

As it happens, he hasn't had candy before. But the guy promises that it tastes great, and has very few calories, and is practically good for you, and it'll give him all these great feelings and such... and, you know what, the guy is right. He likes it. He gets some, and he starts eating it for dessert instead of pies, cakes, cookies, spiced fruit, and various other things he's used to.

His friends are a wee bit concerned, but not too much. After all, a little candy for dessert won't do any harm. But it isn't just a little after a while. He wants more, and then more, and then he starts to gain weight. His friends say, "Lay off the candy. It's just sugar." But he loves the sugar rush, and the way the artificial flavorings make his mind race for a while. So he has different ideas.

He finds some studies and warnings claiming that red meat is evil. It raises your risk of death. It has cholesterol, and that's bad. Candy doesn't have cholesterol in it. So he cuts all meat out of his diet, and in place of that meat, he eats candy.

I bet you can guess how that works - it doesn't. So, after citing similar studies about dairy, he gives that up, too, and he replaces it with candy. His friends are concerned, and they try to tell him that meat and dairy at least have vitamins and minerals in them. They tell him that a little fat and cholesterol won't hurt him, but the lack of nutrients will. But he'd rather eat candy than meat. It's quicker, easier, cheaper, more satisfying in the short-term.

Well, now he's doing even worse. His weight is still going up and he's starting to have tooth problems. But he has a new culprit - starches. Starches cause weight gain. Starches cause all these other problems, too. In vain, his friends try to explain to him that the risk of starches is that they break down into sugars, and the reason why the main problem is with refined and processed starches is that they break down more quickly into sugar. They try to explain to him that candy is already sugar, and trying to replace starches with sugar is just flooding your system more with what's wrong with starches. But guess what. By now, he loves the taste and feel of candy, and by now he's found that eating candy instead of meats and dairy means that he gets hungrier faster, and the lovely candy feeling fades faster, so he needs more candy and he needs it more often. So out the door go the starches, and it isn't long before the fruit follows, for the same reason... the sugars in it are 'bad for you'.

At this point, as anybody could guess, he starts getting more erratic. His doctor diagnoses him with Type 2 diabetes. His weight continues to grow. And he's got one final culprit left - the worst of all - and his arguments against it are even stronger than against the other foods. That culprit - vegetables.

Vegetables are what's really wrong with diet, he argues. Vegetables are worse than all else. He points to vegans and how many of them struggle to balance their diets. His friends try to explain that it's because of the lack of protein, iron, and other minerals in their diet and not because there's something wrong with vegetables, but he won't listen. He cites Eskimos and others who eat few vegetables and thrive, and they try to explain that Eskimos don't eat candy - they eat meat and fish, and the harsh environment means that their bodies make better use of such foods - but he won't hear it. They try to explain that what's wrong with his diet is the candy and the vegetables are the last thing he's got going for him, but he won't listen.

And he gets stuck on vegetables. When giving them up doesn't improve his health, he starts declaring that his problems are caused by people who eat vegetables. The only example he'll give of vegetables being problematic in a diet are vegans who don't put the effort into getting what they'd get from meat/dairy in other foods. He gets to the point where he's practically screaming it by reflex, his greatest enemy: "Vegetables! Vegetables! Vegetables!" He shuns his friends, because they eat Vegetables. He rails against society, because it allows Vegetables.

Unfortunately, this man does die young. He dies of malnutrition, while surrounded by good and healthy food. He dies obese, claiming that the only unhealthy people in the world are skinny.

First, he shunned religion and cultural tradition. in favor of socialism. Then, he abandoned principles of restrained and limited government and personal responsibility. Finally, he descended fully into communism while still believing that he was only dabbling in socialism, and his dying words were his rant against 'all that is wrong with this world'.

"Capitalism! Capitalism! Capitalism!"

The Other Path to a Living Wage

Living Wage.

This seems to be the new socialist bugaboo. I do call it socialist, even though its implementation may be more fascist in appearance. I have said this before: Fascism and Communism are two fingers on the same hand of Socialism, though one may be purer than the other. In the former, the government controls the people through the companies, while in the latter, the government forbids the companies and controls the people directly. There is very little difference; in Fascism, the government forbears the existence of the companies for the time being, while in a free market economy, the government is limited in the ways that it is allowed to control them.

Economics lesson aside, let's break into the actual thought. The usual suspects are now calling for a government-enforced "living wage", the ability of any job to support a spouse and family. They like to claim that this was quite possible and expected back "before all this deregulation", as if the 1950's may as well have been lived under the hammer and sickle or something. Frankly, I'm pretty sure they don't know what they're talking about. But let's take a moment and ask the question: Why are so many jobs no longer offering "a living wage"? There are a few reasons that we can note before stepping into this one. In the 1950's, a "living wage" supported a smaller home with fewer amenities, fewer electronic devices with monthly plans, fewer restaurant meals, and smaller wardrobes. If you were to study the time period and attempt to live only with the amount of stuff and amenities that they had, eating what they ate and owning the clothing that they owned, you might find that a minimum wage job would in fact provide your needs. But let's set that, also, aside for a moment and ask this question:

Are corporations not offering a "living wage" because they are already subsidizing it via government fiat?

A worker costs an employer a great deal. Government-required taxes and benefits alone may increase the cost of an employee a minimum of 25% and maximum (more common in larger businesses, which have additional mandates that small businesses do not) of 40% above the employee's base salary. Many of these 'benefits', like 'health insurance' (itself becoming increasingly expensive and useless), would have been paid by the worker back in the days of the Living Wage.

On the other side, we have corporate and personal income taxes. Why did I say "corporate and personal"? Many companies nowadays are taking advantage of the S-Corp filing status, and filing as if they are persons. That lowers the bewildering complexity of the process and may lower the tax rate. On the other hand, someone who makes $35K/year may be paying taxes on his company's $120K/year profits instead. When we talk about government income from employers, we need to include them. All in all, the top 1% of income earners pay nearly half of personal income taxes, the top 20% pay 85% (the bottom 60% pay 2%), and many, perhaps even most, of those are S-Corps rather than individuals like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. The average S-Corp tax rate is 31%, with a range of 19-35%. (Note: That information is pre-Trump and so is at least slightly out-of-date. But hopefully it gets some thoughts stirring.)

Including all Federal spending, over half goes to social welfare programs, and state spending further adds to the bundle. A cursory look 'round state budget pie charts shows that welfare spending seems to run about the 20-40% range in general. Where am I going with this?

The average low-paying job is indeed already paying a Living Wage.

How can this be? Well, in the 1950's, he would do it by giving you a paycheck with which you could purchase all that you need. Nowadays, he does it the same way the government does for nonworking families. He pays for your health insurance, pays for a fair bit of your tax burden (did you know he pays half your Social Security tax? Try to work for yourself and you'll quickly find that out!), and pays the government to give you food stamps, heating assistance, rent assistance, free school lunches for your children, possibly free medical care for your children as well (CHIP/SCHIP), and, as your salary, a small cash allowance with which to obtain that which he and the government through his taxes have not provided.

Indeed, we see that this provision is sufficient, as there are workers in California under an increased minimum wage who have asked for fewer hours in order to preserve the same Living Wage.

Now's the part where everyone starts accusing me of saying that the poor have it easy, that they are freeloaders, that I don't care if babies starve, yadda yadda. Let's see who can continue to keep an open mind and listen to what I have to say about that. This is not by any means an ideal situation, and the poor do struggle. The reason they struggle, however, is not due to lack of funding. It is because the method of that funding is almost the least efficient and least effective manner possible. I say "almost" only because full-on Communism exists in the world, and it is by far the least useful way to handle wealth.

Raising children has helped me to remember and think about what it was like to be a child. People look back to that time period fondly, thinking of it as being idyllic, because "the world was less complicated and more safe". Indeed, when an adult controls your life, you have less responsibility and you don't have to worry as much about the dangers that still surround you. You still have a chance of being hungry, of being homeless, but in that event the adult will tell you what to do. What people forget is the loss of freedom. Sure, there's a measure of it if you live in a suburban area and own a bicycle. Other than that, though... You still have to ask if you can go to a friend's house. You have to ask if you want to visit a museum. You have to accept the food they give you; your parents determine your diet. You are severely restricted in how you can earn income and how much money you will have. And, of course, your school takes up much more of your life than you would have ever remembered; your precious memories of freedom and fun were most likely snipped out of a plethora of weekends and holidays (the parts that don't involve mandatory visits and customs) and stitched together out of a pair of decades.

Well, the current method of providing a Living Wage is much like being a child. Someone else controls how often/much your house receives to heat, how much you spend on food, which doctors you see, and what your child eats for lunch every school day. This is great, if you live the exact lifestyle that these social programs were optimized for. The problem is that it does narrow you down into a specific form of lifestyle; a purely cash form of a Living Wage allows you to spend more on your housing and less on your cell phone, or more on your clothing and less on your groceries. It can be very, very frustrating to need money for one budget category and be blocked by the Government from simply doing what the middle class takes for granted and transferring it from another category.

What is the answer?

The obvious answer to me is to reduce and reform the welfare system, and with it the tax system. Every reduction in welfare spending must be paired with an equal reduction in employer taxes. I was hesitant to suggest this before, because there must be a time period, I thought, in which wages were still low and people would be hurting. However, the quick responses of businesses in handing out bonuses as they began to raise wages after Trump's tax cut surprised and emboldened me in saying this: As they spend less on the employees through the government, they will spend more on the employees through regular wages.

On top of that, market competition will come into play, this time with a strong emphasis on employee demands rather than employer offers. When you can get a job as a cashier at Walmart and have the government spend tens of thousands of dollars on welfare to make up your Living Wage, you will not have to insist that your employer pays you that wage or you will fight for one of the jobs that pays it. The employment market is indeed a market with customers and 'sellers', and companies that do not offer that wage will have difficult finding people qualified to do the work.

If we do this, I think we will find that the effect of "wages not rising with national wealth", an argument that Liberals tend to use to try to justify actions that depress wages further, will correct itself, and workers will receive their Living Wage as cash instead of an unholy mixture of cash, government-mandated employer spending, and government-mandated welfare spending.

Does "Trickle-Down" exist?

I wrote this up as a comment on another board, and have been asked to make it available as a blog post for easy linking. Someone noted that other people have been arguing that "Trickle Down" doesn't work, leading to the question: "Just what is 'trickle down' and how do we know if it's working?"

This was my answer:

There is a specific economic example of "trickle-down" that basically says that companies under a smaller government-levied financial burden will be more likely to hire new people (provide more jobs) and have a ladder by which people can improve their socio-economic status over time. There are people who seize upon this specific definition, try to find examples where it didn't happen exactly that way, and claim that "it fails" or "it doesn't exist" as a theory *at all* because of it.

But it isn't always going to work exactly like their rigid definition says it should, because, in a free market, companies don't all go on a huge growth stint. In a free market, companies are what they need to be. They go lean when they need to be lean, fat when they need to be fat, and they grow at a natural pace. This rigid definition of "trickle down" happens most obviously when the government is deliberately stunting economic growth (whether intentionally or not) through government policies, in which case removing the artificial limiting factor will result in growth.

The other mistake that they make when insisting that it doesn't work is in looking at living standards compared to the rich, instead of compared to the previous poor. Here's an example. Let's say you have a gym class. Billy starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 50 pushups. Bob starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 5. So they start a new exercise program. In next year's class, Jason starts the year able to do 20 pushups and ends the year able to do 100. Jon starts the year able to do 2 pushups and ends the year able to do 10. People claiming that "trickle down doesn't work", by the *same logic*, would claim that the new exercise program has failed in its goal to improve the physical fitness of the lower-performing students.

You guys with me? :) Trying to untwist corkscrews here and lay out their contents clearly!

* * * * * * * * *

Now that's the rigid definition of "trickle down" used to "prove" that "it doesn't work". If you actually look at it as a basic concept being "when the rich are *allowed* to be richer, the poor and middle class do receive the benefits of that", you'll find it all through a free market, profoundly affecting all levels of society. Trickle-down may happen directly, when a rich person can afford a private jet and therefore needs to hire a pilot making $70K/year. Bam, wealth created a job. It may happen the way the rigid definition claims, in which a company has record profits and opens ten new locations in rural markets where they may not have had the infrastructure to serve before, thus opening up a couple hundred new jobs throughout the nation.

It may happen, not through jobs, but through goods and services. Richer people get new furniture and have the old stuff hauled off to Salvation Army to be purchased by lower-class folk. I've seen slightly richer and less 'humble' people who buy a Walmart couch because they refuse to 'take rich people's cast-offs' have to replace a broken couch within a few years; a good quality piece of furniture, even bought used, can last the lifetime of its new owner. As Scott pointed out, the used car market is a prime example of trickle-down. Cash for Clunkers damaged it by focusing mostly on the fairly economical cars that the poorer people buy to replace their gas guzzlers instead of the gas guzzlers themselves, and not rebating enough for the poorer folk to replace their vehicle, thus basically breaking the chain in the middle instead of trimming off the end and arguably causing *more* pollution than if they'd just let the guy making $30K/year junk his '92 Chevy for $200 and buy a '98 Civic for $6K instead.

(A further note on goods: A lot of lower-class families practically depend upon a big circulating wardrobe of free and discounted used clothing, especially for young children, who grow into new sizes very quickly. Toys, books, DVD's... if you can find it sold used and discounted, that means a person who could afford it at its original price bought it new. If they couldn't afford it due to heavier taxes and regulations, they wouldn't have bought it, and you would not have the opportunity to afford it afterwards.)

It may happen through charity. Richer people who aren't hounded into "repaying society" through heavier taxes do often feel a desire to help other people out. Even if they aren't being altruistic, they will still like the good PR and having their names or the names of loved ones on hospital wings and park benches. Food kitchens aren't stocked by the hungry. Our Boy Scout troop and our church periodically have auctions or gift baskets as fundraisers for charities. To get these items, they go to local businesses and ask for, basically, free goodies to 'sell'. That business has to be able to afford to give away a free pedicure, a free pair of movie tickets, a free box of gourmet popcorn, etc.

And finally, it may happen totally indirectly/unconsciously. Have you ever wondered why you can go to Walmart and buy a 55" HDTV for under $500? I learned how it works when I was working at a defense contractor (long story) and listening to the higher-ups complain. Any new fancy appliance or entertainment item (or, for that matter, medical equipment or advancement) has a development cost. Factories also have to spend money to retool for the new item. That cost is factored into the initial price of these items. The only reason why HDTV's aren't still curiosities costing $3000 in the back of Best Buy is because a bunch of rich people bought $3000 HDTV's in the back of Best Buy and basically *paid the cost* of their research and development. Once that's paid off, prices drop sharply, unless another factor intervenes, like scarcity due to other factors. (DVD players are cheaper than VHS players now.)

* * * * * * * * *

Remember back up a few paragraphs where I was talking about opponents/skeptics comparing the rich to the poor over time and claiming that trickle down doesn't happen because of it? The analogy of the kids and the pushups? Part of the reason why I am so content with my own situation is because I compare myself to myself, and I compare my economic status to my economic status. I don't keep up "with the Joneses", and I don't measure success by whether I am richer compared to rich people now than I was compared to rich people then. I do what any *good* school does with classes like Phys Ed and compare myself to myself. As an aside, and to stick with the analogy, my public elementary school was considered to have a poor PE program, in part because the teacher graded students by ability compared to each other; my highschool was considered to have a good program, in part because the teacher graded students by their own improvement. In athletic ability and in economics, that really is the only proper way to do it. And doing so, I come up with this:

My grandparents raised three kids in a 960sqft house. They had one car, one refrigerator, one stove with oven, one washing machine, one television. They saved up and went out for ice cream once a year.

My parents raised five kids (now raising a sixth, adopted) in a 1500(roughly) sqft house. They had two cars, one refrigerator, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, a washer, a dryer, one television, one VCR, one video game console, one personal computer, and we managed to go out for pizza once every few months or so.

I'm raising three in a 1600sqft house. We had, at the same economic position as parents and grandparents, two cars, one refrigerator with icemaker, one dedicated freezer, one stove with oven, a microwave, washer, dryer, dishwasher, (quality) electric mixer, bread machine, window A/C, two televisions, VCR, DVD player, Blu-Ray player, three video game consoles (Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3), two personal computers, two laptops, three tablets, and one cell phone. We also have a monthly eating-out budget.

Am I to believe, then, that I never benefit from the rich being allowed to be rich?

* * * * * * * * *

I'm not going to get into this in detail, but let me offer this thought.

When the government streamlines regulations, lowers regulatory fees, lowers taxes, and doesn't punish wealth accumulation, the poor and middle class benefits in one more way that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the rich do with their money or if they even exist: they are more free to start their own businesses and make their own opportunities, and the social mobility in the country becomes much more fluid. So even if you can't thank the rich for your "new" car, your affordable new market-midrange TV, your kid's scholarship, or your job, you can thank the lower regulatory burden for your ability to afford to start a new business and keep what you earn.

However, this would not actually be part of the specific concept of "trickle down".

What I am not

Back in the 1950's and 1960's, there were two Civil Rights eras.

There are many different epoch's along the path that brought us here. Different people argue about which ones were most important, about which ones "started it", about which moments of history should be focused upon. I am choosing to focus here for several reasons, many of which should become apparent by the end of this post if they were not already.

In the 1950's, Republicans tore down "Jim Crow", series of laws that Democrats had enacted in local areas with the purpose of using the government to keep blacks down. In the 1960's, the Democrats succeeded in beating the Republicans with promises (which were fulfilled) of using the government to advance blacks over whites. At that time, a group of angry Democrats who had thought that the 1950's was about racism joined the Republicans, and they and their descendants are there to this day.

There are a couple of takeaways here. One is that when the Republicans retort that racism against blacks was a Democrat behavior, they are correct; when the Democrats retort that a bunch of those old racists are Republicans, they are also correct.

The big takeaway is that Civil Rights, for the Democrat Party, was never actually about racism. They didn't care if they were elevating or trampling blacks. What mattered was a particular core strategy: Get the populace to accept big government by making them enemies of each other and promising each group that you will use the government to trample their enemies.

Fast-forward to 2008 and Obama's election. He basically campaigned, more or less openly, on this strategy. He was elected by people who believed that he would use the power of the government, all the power they could give him, in order to bludgeon their enemies. They did not, as our founders did, fear the government more than they feared the people with whom they merely disagreed. Under the Obama Administration, we saw the IRS scandal among other incidents. I think the IRS scandal struck the hardest impact, because it showed us that Obama's government was willing to go after ordinary folk for disagreeing with him. Many praised his election as an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that "people were willing to elect a black man as our President". It was an achievement of the Civil Rights movement in that people were willing to elect a man on promises that he would use government power against their 'enemies'; their fellow citizens.

I did not cast my vote for Trump and did not speak in support of him during the election period. Too many people believe that I agreed with them that he is misogynist, or stupid, or somehow unqualified to be President. Too many other people believed that I was against him because I preferred "the status quo in Washington", because I hated whites, because I wanted to be marginalized as Obama had marginalized me. When he made his "bitter clingers" quote, after all, he was talking about me. When Hillary made her "deplorables" quote, she was talking about me.

This is the real reason I did not cast my vote for Trump.

I saw among his followers too many people who were looking to him to use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared this 'war'.

Angry people on one side elected Obama in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. Angry people on the other side elected Trump in hopes that he would use the government as a bludgeon against the people who had declared them to be enemies. (Let me offer credit where credit is due. At least to this point, from what I have seen, President Trump has not in fact used his office, as many followers had hoped, to bludgeon the other side, but has contented himself with tearing down regulations and releasing trapped power back into the wild.)

Now I want to go back to the first takeaway that I referenced about the Civil Rights movements. I have come to believe that the people on Trump's side against whom I have set myself are actually the people and their descendants who left the Democrat Party, not because the Democrats were using the government as a bludgeon, but because they were bludgeoning the "wrong" people.

So in this Charlottesville matter, I find myself set against the white supremacists who are anti-Constitution, who march because they want Trump to use the government as a bludgeon against their enemies. I find myself also set against the "antifa" groups who are anti-Constitution, who counter-march because they want the government to be used as a bludgeon against their enemies. Both sides engaged in violence. Both sides insist that we consider their side blameless. Both sides are very eager to assume that I am on the other side if I refuse.

I don't want either of them.

Am I a Conservative Republican? Am I a Conservative Christian? Am I a Christian Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Libertarian? Am I a Conservative Christian Libertarian Republican? I haven't figured that part out yet.

I'm the one who joins with those who don't hate "the other side" more than we fear government control over us.

I'm the one who doesn't want anybody, even myself, to have the power to use the government to bludgeon another group of fellow citizens.

No matter how much I don't like what they have to say.

Who is rich?

Trump's new declared tax plan has sent out ripples of reaction throughout the media, mainstream and not. Some say that he goes too far. Many say he does not go far enough. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on the specifics of the plan. Memorably, several scattered sources have claimed that the mortgage interest deduction currently causes rich people who pay the AMT to buy larger homes (and people being able to afford larger homes is a problem, for some reason). Others have claimed that some lower-middle class families may pay as much as $100 per year in additional taxes as a result of this "horrible and regressive" plan. (They were notably silent when Obamacare premiums rose by an average of about 25% this year.)

I have seen a theme repeated, though, among rank-and-file commenters on various news sources, that troubles me, because it is linked to a problematic underlying philosophy. They say that this plan is all well and good, but this tweak or that tweak needs to be made to ensure that the rich pay their fair share. Usually in debunking this argument, conservatives and libertarians lean on words like "pay" (does the government have the right to take the money?), "fair" (a higher percentage of their income? A higher percentage of the taxes?), or "share" (What do people owe society as tribute for the shame of being wealthy?). I would like to focus, instead, on the word "Rich".

Terry Pratchett was an economic and political genius, and we are all sadder for his loss. In one of his early books, Guards Guards, he described the mindset of a group of laborers coming together under the leadership of a man who hoped to rule the city by terrorizing it with a dragon that he needed their help to summon.

The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly lightheaded feeling. It was as if he’d known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such astonishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all.

“I bet a king’d have something to say about landlords,” said Brother Plasterer.
“And he’d outlaw people with showy coaches,” said Brother Watchtower. “Probably bought with stolen money, too, I reckon.”
“I think,” said the Supreme Grand Master, tweaking things a little, “that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving.”
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.

 This little mental exercise is undergone by each and every person who argues that "the rich" need to pay "their fair share". They celebrate tax cuts for "the middle class", of course, people making only [insert their own income here], but the "really rich people" need to continue to pay more. The definition of "really rich people" differs wildly by example, but it always represents a margin north of the commenter's own income.

If there's one takeaway I'd like my readers to get from this post, it is this, and I'll put it in boldface so that it sticks out despite being probably about halfway through my 'essay' by the time I'm done: You do not want someone else deciding what constitutes "wealth" for the purpose of government confiscation and redistribution of wealth.

This is actually a lesson that I first tried to give people when Obama was running for office in 2008, and many moderates took his speeches about how "the rich need to pay their share" and "we need to have a global mindset" in this exact same way: they mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. All the while, I was trying to pound away, to get people to listen and understand that, on a global perspective, even the poorest people who aren't even on welfare, even the homeless people on the street with no ID, no income, and no government social programs, are wealthy.

When the working-class started seeing their costs rise and their benefits decrease under Obama, I already knew it was coming. They fussed and fretted and felt betrayed, but I had already anticipated this move. The universe had been divided by the people with the power to make the changes, and these folks were not on the side where they expected to be.

The people now talking about the "rich paying their fair share" are mostly speaking against the total removal of the AMT. Don't remove it completely, they say. Just shift it up a bit. A bit further. You know, far enough so that I'm not "rich" anymore. What they miss is that this was the original intent and purpose of the AMT, which at first only targeted about 155 families, but which now reaches well into the middle class.

So let me remind 'my people'... 'ah, my people'... that the average American household in poverty has a large enough home that it would be considered 'wealthy' in most of Western Europe. You could halve the food stamp allotment to the poorest families and they'd still have more to eat than most people in the world. In fact, even in the country with the highest median income per household in the world (Norway, according to Gallup), that income is less than $52K/year... and some people claiming both that we need to keep the AMT and they shouldn't be paying it were claiming a household income in the $70-150K range.

Ditch the AMT. What with the removal of all these tax breaks, Trump would be practically enacting it on everyone anyways. Let the rich have their break. You have your break. Don't be so eager to define whether someone else has "too much" money, "too big" house, "too many" vacations, "too fancy" clothing.

Rest assured that someone else is doing it to you.

The real civil war in America

Democrats like to taunt Republicans by claiming that there are all these "racist old white men" in the party. Their claim is based in part in truth, in that there was an influx of old Southerners back in the 1960's who fled the Democrat Party over the civil rights movement. However, this is only the very surface of the story, and held at an angle that gives people a very misleading impression of what actually happened.

This is what actually happened.

McCarthy, previously vilified by history as having started the "Red Scare" and "being wrong", is increasingly being justified in retrospect. Though many of the people he targeted in his investigations were not specifically planning open treason against the government, they were card-carrying Communists who were bent on a much longer game plan. Communism did spread from its birthplace into America and lay dormant through the World Wars. In the 1960's, it finally did make itself visible.

History books talk about the "Civil Rights Era" and the "Civil Rights Laws". There were actually two Civil Rights Eras, each pushed by radically different people, for radically different purposes, with radically different results.

The first was the work of the Republicans. Old South Democrat racists, seeing their power slipping further and further as businesses saw no reason to refuse blacks (their money was as green as everyone else's, after all) and blacks themselves were rising quickly through the economic ranks, set out to make state laws prohibiting the free market from treating people of all races equally. This, like the American Civil War itself, was a desperate holding action against the natural, corrective power of our country the way it was created by our Founders. Blacks were on their way up. Within another generation, they would be indistinguishable from the rest of the country, from the Germans and Irish and all those other cultures which had started out on the bottom of the heap. The Republicans in the Federal Government correctly sought to strike down the artificial barriers being placed against blacks by the state governments.

The second was the work of the newly-infiltrated Democrat Party, and it was not actually about race at all. Like Modern Feminism, which came out of the same era and the same birthplace as Socialism (which is meant to be the transitional stage to Communism), this new Democrat Party was merely seizing upon the grievances of a minority in hopes of imposing government control on the majority. Their goal was not to remove artificial barriers that were oppressing a people, but to change the function of the government from one that keeps the playing field level to one that rewards 'winners' and 'losers' according to government policy. (If you want to know who sets the policy and how, I strongly recommend the entire Francis Schaeffer "How Should We Then Live?" series, made up of ten half-hour episodes.)

They sought, not to remove government barriers to one race, but to impose government barriers upon another race. The Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action (once more correctly called Reverse Discrimination) came from two different sources; from two different sides of this new civil war.

What is this new civil war about? It isn't about gay wedding cakes and transgender bathrooms. It isn't about birth control and 'Equal Pay'. It's about what President Obama so neatly explained as "negative rights" versus "positive rights". Is it more important that the government be allowed to pick winners and losers according to government judgment? Or is it more important that the government be restrained by the people? Some mistakenly believe (I have addressed this before and may do so again) that the fight is Corporatism vs. Fascism. It doesn't have to be. A government focused on "negative rights" does not have the power to support either path. As I've said before:

Capitalism - the system in which the government is empowered to prevent companies from using lawlessness to stifle competition, and the government is constitutionally fettered to prevent companies from using laws to stifle competition.

The Republican Civil Rights provided a shining example of "negative rights": the government shall not be permitted to force one race below another. The Democrat Civil Rights provided a shining example of "positive rights": the government shall have the power to elevate one race above the other.

What prompted all of this? The North Carolina Bathroom Bill, actually. Talk about going far afield, right? The Charlotte ordinance that the bill is meant to strike down is an artificial barrier set up by the government in order to have the government choose 'winners' and 'losers'. It embodies the "positive rights" that Obama loves: the government has the right to tell you what it can/must do for/to you. What it states, in short, is that no private business or organization has the right to bar anybody of either gender from a gender-separated space. In short, by the law, a battered woman's shelter must permit a man to enter the ladies' shower room, sit down, and watch them shower naked, if that's what he wants to do. He cannot be told to leave just because he is fully and unapologetically male.

The much-derided "bathroom bill", on the other hand, embodies "negative rights". It says that the government does not have the right to force a private business to let somebody into a gender-separated changing/showering/bathroom/etc. space, unless said person can show, if challenged, documentation that he or she is of the declared gender. (Your gender is on your driver's license and your birth certificate, and post-op transgender/transsexual people can have it officially changed.) Now this is not a requirement upon the business; nobody has to ask, nobody has to check, and nobody has to try to bar anybody from entering a bathroom. The choice is theirs. If they choose to tell a given person, "You look like a man, so you can't go in there," the person who is challenged can display that document and must be permitted to enter.

Under the "bathroom bill", the battered woman's shelter can bar anyone with  functional male genitalia from entering the shower. However, the Walmart can set up a DADT policy in which people who are obviously transgender and "passing" are allowed in, and any liberal fruitcake hippie shop can choose to let men and women freely intermix in one big, 'happy' locker room. And people can choose to frequent the places of which they approve and avoid the places which make them uncomfortable.

Along with the freedom to choose comes the ability to react quickly and fluidly to unexpected situations. The most religiously gender-separated facility can choose to let a desperate pregnant woman into the men's room, or to let an elderly man assisting his disabled wife into the ladies' room. When the government makes the decision, however, the leering middle-aged man cannot be removed even if a sexual abuse survivor needs to use the facility... because such reasonable decisions made by private people in the course of day-to-day business are now against the law.

The real two sides of this civil war are no longer to be found between the Democrats and the Republicans, because there are people who are only Republican because they disagree with the decisions coming from up high, not with the notion of centralized power. If the Democrats decided to set government policy throwing homosexuals in jail for engaging privately in government-forbidden sex acts, or to mandate that all public meetings must start with a prayer led by a confirmed member of their favorite Christian sub-denomination, there are "Republicans" who would quite happily jump ship again. The real civil war is between them and those who say, simply, "The government cannot have this power," and hold to it even when people are not forbidden from doing things that they personally find abhorrent.

The 2016 Election Season and Asimov's Caliban

From time to time, I focus on one of the books I've read as a good way to describe and understand the political climate. Lately, I have been reminded most strongly of the Caliban trilogy, sometimes called the "Second Robot Series", written by Roger McBride Allen, but set in Isaac Asimov's 'universe' from which came the well-known Three Laws of Robotics.

While Asimov spent a lot of time delving into discussion of what would happen when the Three Laws go wrong, Allen built his trilogy based on what might happen if the Three Laws worked just as they were meant to. He envisions worlds in which the people have cocooned themselves, living in large houses by themselves, every need and whim provided by the robots. The household robots, in addition to seeking their master's physical safety, also seek to meet his emotional needs. Understanding only that change is scary, they try to keep their masters soothed by 'protecting' them from any alteration in schedule. Overuse of robots has become combined with the belief that such overuse is necessary; people may have one robot driver for each day of the week, despite the fact that just one robot comes equipped with the ability to drive the vehicle, clean the house, cook the food, and manage the master's schedule.

In the course of the trilogy, the government needs to use robot labor to fix the terraforming job on the planet of Inferno, so the number of robots permitted in each household is limited to ten. Of course, there is widespread outrage, but this occurs at the same time that a leading roboticist begins to question the role of robots and humanity's perceived need for them. Many people begin to realize that they prefer having some human agency restored to them. They find that they like choosing their own clothing, standing at a balcony without five robots fretting over whether they might suddenly fall. and basically interacting with each other and their own lives in a way they have not done for decades.

The ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare, is unquestionably an unmitigated disaster. Even in the states where it was perfectly implemented, costs have become ridiculously high. Millions of people have lost their insurance plans. The HMO/PPO plan, once considered the standard of care, is now treated like a bauble for the wealthy. Before Obamacare, 1 in 10 people refused medical care at some point during a year because they could not afford it; last year, 1 in 3 people had the same problem. Just two years previous to that, the number was 1 in 4, so the problem is worsening.

At the same time, though, Obamacare did us a service that was likely unintended by its creators. Those of us who lost our insurance and could not afford another policy are discovering what health care actually costs, and how we can save for it ourselves. Even those who have a policy are forced by higher deductibles and lower coverage percentages to think about the care we are purchasing and how we can lower our costs. Unfortunately, due to the structure of Obamacare, we cannot lower costs sufficiently to please the government without foregoing care that we need, and monthly premiums are often so high that care cannot be obtained once they have been paid. People are starting to understand that they have to choose between having insurance and affording health care.

In short, I am not praising Obamacare.

However, many conservative and libertarian proposals which seemed terrifying in the days of the HMO/PPO are now looking more and more reasonable. People have been forced off the teat and crushed under a heavy burden, and they are more amenable to changes that would lift that burden than they were when they thought that they could not survive without the teat. They are beginning to understand that a single bout of strep throat will not bankrupt them. They are beginning to realize the reality of the study done pre-Obamacare, in which the uninsured reported the same level of satisfaction, availability, and affordability of care as the average Canadian citizen.

These people, who would have panicked had they been offered a market in which the high deductible plan would likely be king when they thought that the HMO/PPO was necessary for life and health, are now far more amenable to a deregulated market. They, like the people of Inferno as they were bereft of many of their robot coddlers, are beginning to enjoy their human agency in this new situation, and many may be unwilling to return from crushing government regulation to heavy government regulation when they have much more to gain from lightening the load far more than they would have dared in the 1990's.

Liberal cage match: Trump vs. Cruz

So what exactly happened over the past couple of weeks?

In summary, this is exactly what happened.

Anti-Trump liberals sent violent protesters to attack Trump's followers at a couple of events, one of which Trump canceled for the safety of the attendees. They then claimed that Trump's followers were violent. Cruz (among others) fell for it and told Trump that he ought to make it clear that he does not condone violence. Trump supporters responded by basically saying, "Stupid Cruz, don't you see it was the Democrats who did it?"

Then an Anti-Trump group put out an ad showing an old picture of Trump's (current) wife mostly-undressed as an attack ad. Despite the fact that both the group and Cruz clearly explained that liberals were behind this, Trump showed himself to be at least no smarter than Cruz, blaming Cruz and Cruz alone for the ad, and making veiled threats about Cruz's wife. Then Trump's buddy at the National Enquirer, the same one who ran a story about Carson's supposed barbaric maiming of children ("wields the scalpel like a machete", among other claims) when Carson was doing well in the polls and ran a story about Fiorina's supposed secret druggy daughter (she has never made a secret of her step-daughter's struggle; said step-daughter was in her mother's custody) when she was doing well in the polls, suddenly decided to claim that Cruz had a whole bunch of affairs with various staffers, associates, and a high-price prostitute (because if you're going to throw a bunch of charges at the wall, you might as well make them interesting).

Now I have my own things to say about condemning Cruz based on nothing more than the National Enquirer, but that's not my current concern, so I'll leave that part until the end. The short, short version of what happened was this:

Liberals managed to turn the GOP race from a discussion of the issues into a cage match, stopping all this uncomfortable talk about lower taxes and stronger military that resonates with the people whom the liberals hope will vote for Hillary or Sanders, and get people's attention on "more important" (to their candidate's victory) issues, such as whether Melania Trump is hotter than Heidi Cruz.

This is, frankly, the kind of thing that rich people can afford to worry about. If we wind up with Hillary or especially Sanders as our next president, we will no longer be rich. In the midst of making sure that we don't say the 'wrong thing' in public and bring the Federal Government down on our heads in a nation governed by people who staunchly oppose a simple law preventing gay couples from suing pastors who do not wish to conduct their 'marriage' ceremonies, while trying desperately to find enough post-tax cash to buy on the black market the health care that the government refuses to allow us to receive, we will laugh bitterly at our naive selves who worried so much about the issues that the liberals want us to worry about - some woman's partly-clothed body or some man's alleged affairs. Do you think that celebrity worship happens in countries where the people are scavenging for their basic needs after getting government-paid for their government jobs and being given what little shelter and food that the government can manage to provide for them?

Remember the real issues.

Discuss the real problems.

Never mind all this 'sex and violence'.

Trump and the Liberal Conspiracy Theory

I don't make decisions like this lightly, but I do hold them lightly. I will not pledge right here and now that I will unquestionably not vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee. I will, however, state that, as the election currently stands, my decision is that I will not vote for him, even against Hillary.

Nobody is going to guess the real reason.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons that liberals like to talk badly about Trump. They accuse him of being racist because he has an immigration policy that legally-residing Hispanics love. They send people to his rallies to violently attack his supporters and then call his supporters violent when they defend themselves. They take half of what he says so badly out of context that it doesn't even resemble what he actually says. They seem determined to attack him in all the ways that will make his supporters dig in their heels and promise to stay with him forever.

I'm not even all that concerned about many of the attacks on the Right. This whole kerfuffle about his wife... I can take that in a candidate. I can even take a certain level of moderate politics in a candidate. After all, I voted for McCain over Obama, and then I voted for Romney over Obama, and I encouraged my friends and family to do the same.

So what has changed?

I believe that the leadership in the Democrat Party has, for decades now, desired to establish full-out government control along socialist principles, whether by Fascism or straight-out Communism. They want command. They want to be in charge. This isn't really the condemnation that it may seem like. Throughout history, the majority of higher-ups have desired control over larger groups of people. Everyone wants to be the king, the general, the emperor, the supreme leader. The unusual thing in human society has been a free society, a system in which the people are, as individuals, in control of their own lives. It is no accident that these societies have invariably been Jewish or Christian. You have to feel as if someone is in control and, if that someone is God, then it is wrong for you to subjugate your fellow man. (Even in areas where they have failed in this, the precepts of Christianity have been a correcting action that have caused Christians, not outsiders, to correct it.)

But I digress.

Socialism doesn't just happen. It takes sacrifice. Even on the face of it, it takes sacrifice that the people believe will yield benefits down the line. In implementation, of course, the sacrifice continues to strengthen and the benefits do not appear. The important thing is, people don't just take to socialism "because". They start by believing that it is a better system than what they have. Either they lose faith in that "invisible hand" in a free market (whether you believe in God or in the laws of nature), or they live in a system that is not a free market, or both. Socialism took hold in Germany under a war-torn country forced to make heavy reparations from a destroyed economy. Socialism took hold in Russia as a replacement for the iron hand of Imperialism; early Party members were fighting, not for a command economy, but merely for the allowance of sick days for workers. When socialists started trying to find ways to implement their system in the U.S., they ran into a problem... they could not easily convince anybody that socialism was better than what they had, because what they had was freedom, prosperity, and even the poorest considered themselves to be "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

To peddle their system, they would have to change the one we already had.

Do I have proof that this is a conspiracy theory led by the leadership of the party? No, not really. I know this; though the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism went too far and was misused for witch hunts, history has vindicated McCarthy himself. Though most of the people he investigated were not foreign agents seeking to betray America to her enemies, they were dedicated socialists seeking to transform America into a socialist country over time. We've seen their efforts in the school systems (where they've been pretty brazen about their goals and plans) and in other areas of society. There's one in particular that I want to focus on today, and that is the effort to spread corporatism (what in the 18th century would have been called 'mercantilism') while redefining capitalism such that people believe that capitalism is really corporatism, and socialism is the other choice in the false dichotomy that they are working to set up.

We've seen this whenever Democrats have derided Republicans for being "pro-big business" for wanting to lower taxes or regulations on all businesses (because, of course, a big business makes more profits from it than a small business, even if the small business benefits at a much higher percentage). Then those Democrats tighten regulation and taxes, but they define loopholes for big businesses that support them, and declare this to be "their willingness to enable capitalism". They present the worst parts of corporatism to us, call it 'capitalism', and say that 'capitalism doesn't work'. I have been confused when I've watched movies like Robocop after being told that it's about the evils of capitalism, because it isn't about capitalism at all. It's about corporatism. (I've given you a few sketches here. I could probably write a book on this process and the harm it's doing.) And now we come to the crux of the reason why I don't think I can vote for Trump.

Trump is a corporatist running as a capitalist.

If Hillary wins because I vote for a third party, it's going to be bad. It's going to be tough. Short-term, it's going to be awful. But if Trump wins because I vote for him, then I have colluded in the Democrat effort to rebrand corporatism as 'capitalism'. In the short term, he will not be as bad as Hillary in most respects. In the long term, however, if he provides that last big push, if his reign in office brings us to the point where we truly believe the false dichotomy, the long-term ramifications will be far, far worse.

We will be choosing between Corporatism and Socialism.

And whichever wins, we will lose.

"Feeling the Bern" - The Middle Class Experience on Social Programs

Is my family middle-class? I persist in believing that we are. The term "class" is not as easy as the term "income". It carries with it a sense of lifestyle, of priorities, of emotion and atmosphere. The "working class" has one set of jobs, lifestyles, and priorities. The "middle class" has another.

Our family income alone would mark us as a member of the working class. That said, the way I usually try to describe us is by typing "working/lower-middle class" or simply using the term "lower middle class". The job is white-collar educated, my husband has his college degree (so do I), and we own our own home in a quiet rural area with a large yard. We really do not have much in common with the blue-collar lifestyle. We actually don't have much in common with other lifestyles either, to be honest.

Our food budget is less than that of the average family on welfare, yet we eat well, with my cooking and careful pantry choices. We have the lack of processed foods usually associated with the wealthy. Our furniture may be used, but it is kept in good repair. We get our clothing for free (a church giveaway room, to which we contribute as children outgrow clothing), and I can sew the type of well-fitted outfits for myself that one might associate with the upper-class, even if I have to take trashcan-bound XXXL clothing and cut them down to get the cloth. We take pride in appearing as well as we can with what we have. We take no vacations, and we buy our vehicles used, quite old (both are currently over 10yrs), and with cash on hand. We actually have several thousand dollars in the bank, in a time when the vast majority of this country, even people twice as rich as we are, live paycheck-to-paycheck.

I feel strange whenever I find myself asking for need-based scholarships for my children to go to summer camp or engage in similar opportunities (my daughter did a year of high-class preschool on a half-tuition need-based scholarship, and my grandmother helped us cover the other half), yet when I sit down with Social Services to deal with bureaucracy, the person helping me is always perplexed at our family size and income and has no clue how we manage to make our ends meet at all.

So what happens when a family like mine encounters Sanders'-style economics? (Also known, by me, as 'social programs creep') There are three stages that I've been able to identify over the past about seven and a half years, as liberal economics have caused the process to begin already.

Stage 1: Self-Sufficiency
This is the very best stage, and the reason why families in situations like mine tend to be "surprisingly" conservative rather than wanting to "feel the Bern", as they say. In this situation, the family has low taxes and a high percentage of disposable income. The family uses this income, setting its own priorities, choosing its own lifestyle. Alternative lifestyles or uncommon needs (such as rare medical conditions) are accommodated quickly and easily, as the point of decision-making rests with the family. Money is tight, yes. We don't have the new television. We don't take the vacation. We don't buy the boat. We simply don't have the money, we say to ourselves, because we have already chosen to spend it.. on a curriculum that fits a child's special learning needs, or a doctor who specializes in a parent's medical condition. We are, indeed, by historical standards, wealthy.

Stage 2: The Transition
Anyone would expect this to be the hardest part, a temporary difficulty that results in a family like ours being better off than it was before. It is, in fact, not. As taxes rise, we begin losing our ability to afford that curriculum or that specialist. Income never rises when taxes rise, and so our budget narrows. We wind up giving up things we want, and then things we need, in order to allow the government to give things we already could not afford to people who are poorer than us. As the process continues, we start going into our savings, cutting to the bone, and praying for relief. Unfortunately, we already know from experience that this relief will never come.

Stage 3: Social Programs
Now the government has finally seen fit to "help" us, not by allowing us to meet our own needs again, but by 'graciously' deciding to meet them for us. We are now eligible for the social program. We do the paperwork. We wait for months, since we are one of a large influx of people joining the program, and the staffing for the program has not increased. Finally, we receive our shiny new cards and vouchers, stamped with our identities... our entire lives, experiences, hopes, and dreams, everything that makes us people, collated down into a number and entered into a government file somewhere. We have now been stamped, filed, and categorized. At least now we can access education and medical care again, right?

No. This is the point where we find out that we can't.

The specialist is not covered by the government program. The educational curriculum is not on the government list. They've run out of the bread that's on the WIC list, and the cheaper, healthier store-brand loaf is not on the WIC list, so it won't be covered. If you want bread this week, you'll have to pay for it yourself... out of what's left when the higher taxes have been taken from your paycheck. This is the point at which you learn that the government apparently doesn't think you're supposed to have that medical condition, or need that curriculum.
In the end, you are transformed from a family that does not have what the wealthier families have, but meets its own individual needs with its own money, to a family that still does not have what the wealthier families have, and is now bereft of the means by which to meet its own individual needs on top of it.

People try to claim that conservatives just plain don't want to help the poor. That's unquestionably a lie, provable, if by nothing else, by the statistics that show how much more generous conservatives are to the poor with their own personal money. Even conservatives on the libertarian side do not oppose government programs as well, programs meant to aid those who simply cannot get what they need by any other means, programs that pay for surgeries and food for the destitute and the disabled. I think I can best explain my opinion on the matter by simply saying this:

The government should not be giving social programs to anybody who is paying taxes; in reverse, the government should not tax anyone who is receiving social programs.

Before a family is aided by the government, they should be permitted the full body of their resources in order to minimize or meet their needs.

We should never, ever be in the position we are in now, a position that Sanders seeks to worsen, in which the government takes money from us and gives us the goods or services we desire (or those that the government thinks we ought to desire, which does manage to coincide on occasion).

Flags and Issues

On March 19, 1777, Capt. Moses Dunbar was hanged for being a Loyalist. He had not only joined the King's army, but he was caught trying to recruit others to the cause. He was the only man in Connecticut ever hanged for treason. It is said that his own father gave them the rope that made the noose.

His (second) wife gave birth to their youngest son, also named Moses Dunbar, almost exactly nine months later. I am directly descended from that youngest son.

Am I proud of ol' Moses Dunbar? Well, no and yes. I don't support the ideals that he appeared to the patriots to endorse by joining the soldiers who were fighting them. I definitely don't advocate taxation without representation, or other methods by which the monarchy  refused proper governance to its territory in the New World. But honestly, I admire his willingness to stand up for what he believed, and he wrote a fascinating letter which he read at his execution, in which he forgave all involved and asked forgiveness for his own sins from anyone affected by them. He went to his death expressing confidence in God, and that is something to be proud of.

I wonder what the reaction would be if Connecticut insisted upon flying the British Flag from the State Capital in order to proudly declare their deep and abiding appreciation for the old British Colonial Empire. I wonder, furthermore, what we might think if the people who supported this action used the British Flag as a symbol to explain their distate for post-Christian government-forced social issues such as abortion and gay 'marriage'. What should such people say to those who question the wisdom of flying a flag of colonialism while claiming to be the only group in America who are truly interested in freedom?

This is a problem that we are facing now, with the Confederate Flag being flown by people who insist that it is all about "states' rights" and that anybody who is squeamish about Confederate history must be a big-government liberal. I can't help but wonder if, when the Southern States pushed through the Slave Fugitive Act, if they told abolitionists that it didn't have to affect them because "if you don't want to own slaves, just don't buy any slaves - nobody is forcing you to be part of it", while making anything but the whole-hearted pursuing and capturing of fleeing ex-slaves punishable by government action. In short, my point is this: Yes, it is possible to be in favor of deregulation and lowering taxes without flying the "Stars and Bars", and the Southerners would do well to remember that.

This said:

I can't say I like the push to remove the Confederate Flag from Civil War memorials in the South, or ending re-enactments, or basically pushing it 'under the rug' the way that Germany has done with the swastika. I also think that any choice to remove it from a state building should be the decision of the state itself, not the Federal Government, though I also see nothing wrong with The People pushing to make it happen through popular opinion. Granted, I don't think personally that the Confederate Flag belongs with the "Flags of the Present" on government buildings meant to administer the Present - tax collection, license renewal, etc. - but I would be about as 'shocked' at seeing a Confederate Flag at a Southern Civil War memorial as I would be to find a cross in the chapel of a college. (I would, however, encourage all who want to fly the flag personally to read the Reasons for Secession historical documents. You may find the modern perception of the Civil War, as being primarily about "states' rights" or "economics" rather than slavery, challenged... strongly.

And now that I'm on the outs with both sides, let me say what I want most to say about the issue.

This is not as important as keeping the government from imposing further gun control laws upon us. It is not as important as keeping the government from redefining the sexually-dimorphic pair-bond to exclude sexual dimorphism and pair-bonding. Every single Confederate flag in the nation is not worth the life of one baby destined for abortion. And killing Obamacare dead will save many more lives than are affected by that particular piece of cloth.

So debate it all you like, work it out all you like, choose sides... but don't let this issue make Southerner Republicans hate Northerner Republicans. The Democrats are weak. This is our country to win or lose, and breaking out into virulent hatred over this particular issue could leave us with Four More Years... of Clinton, or even worse, Sanders the Full-Out Avowed Socialist.

Ask yourself this: What means more to you? What do you think will do more damage to this country?

The Stars and Bars?

Or the Hammer and the Sickle?

Better the Stars and Bars in South Carolina than the Hammer and Sickle over all of us. That's my stance on the issue, as a Northerner Conservative Republican who has no love for the Confederate Flag.

Get out of the way and let us work

Let's talk about washing machines for just a moment. What kind of features do washing machines have? They let you choose your cycle. They let you customize your cycle if necessary. Then you start 'em up and off they go. Many washing machines are advertised as being "quiet". The quietest machines tend to draw the most interest. Imagine if someone tried to market a washing machine that sent alerts to your phone and beeped a tone for each part of the cycle, so that it notified you when it was rinsing, spinning, agitating, rinsing, spinning... How many people would buy it?

I don't want my washing machine to tell me what it's doing! I use a washing machine so that I can freakin' dump in my load and press two buttons and walk away! It tells me when it's done, but since my laundry area is down in the basement, I usually don't even hear it. My washing machine is my servant. I want it to shut up and do its job so that I don't have to.

How about operating systems? I'm a definite computer geek (used to work as a software engineer, actually), so I know operating systems. One of the biggest mistakes that Microsoft made at one point was integrating Internet Explorer too deeply into Windows. It complicated the use of the machine and hurt people who wanted to choose a different web browser. Microsoft had to back off and understand what an operating system is for. Users don't want to have to think about their operating system. They don't want to have to fiddle with it. They don't want it distracting them from their work. They don't want it choosing their productivity applications for them and penalizing the applications it doesn't think you should be using. We just want the darn thing to work - quietly - in the background - and leave us be.

Our government could take a lesson from the appliance and operating system markets.

This morning, I read an article talking about "what women want" in the context of government programs and government issues. What do women want from government? "Equal pay" for "equal work"? Free daycare programs? Free contraception? What do they want? One of my favorite webcomic authors, RH Junior, explains 'what women want' exceedingly well in a comic featuring a feminist character who is fed up with all of the expectations placed on her. "What you want ain't complicated. You want what everyone wants, male or female -- to be treated decent."

When I hear the question of what women want from government, the question I actually hear is, "What's your price?" It seems that liberal Democrats particularly are simply interested in more and bigger government, in bigger government regulation, in higher government taxation, in more control over our lives. That's why they bother to ask what "women" want from the government, rather than simply seeing us as people. What do blacks want from government? What do Hispanics want from government? What do parents want from government? What do the poor want from government? What do all of us have in common? We just want to be 'treated decent'.

In short, they aren't asking, "What do you want?" They are asking, "What can we give you to convince you to let us control your life?"

What we want is for the government to not have so much control over our lives that we could possibly need it to treat groups of people differently from each other. What we want is what we want from our operating system and our washing machine. We want a government that operates in the background and keeps an environment for us in which we can choose what we want in life and make our best try for it. We want a government that we don't have to deal with on a regular basis. We want a government that gets out of our way and does its job. We don't want pop-ups, we don't want "app suggestions", we don't want integrated crap that gets in the way of the programs we like to use... we just want it to be background, uncomplicated, and working properly.

Remember this as we launch headlong into this election year, and people start asking you what you want the government to give you in exchange for running your life for you.

It's 'okay' to be X-Men

"Have you tried not being a mutant?"

One of my long-standing beefs with the newer X-Men live-action movie franchises can be summed up in that line from X2. For generations, X-Men has been a story about outcasts, weirdos, and freaks struggling to find a place in society and just be themselves. It calls out to virtually every teenager alive, who feels as if he or she is the only person in the world going through this bizarre body-morphing process while struggling to figure out whether he or she is a child or an adult.

Originally, mutants were sometimes seen as a rough analog to racism. (In one extremely cute moment in the Larger Universe of the franchise, a mutant sent back in time is almost 'charmed' to be denied a seat in a restaurant, not because she is a mutant, but because she is black.) The more recent trilogy, though, especially the second movie, leaned heavily on a connection with homosexuality instead. Of course, they probably immediately alienated everyone who wanted to make that connection in X3, when a mutant 'cure' was found and at least one pitiable case decided to take it...

The more I began to think about this connection, the more I realized that it was actually pretty useful in untangling the modern 'gay rights' movement, much more useful than it could have been in understanding racism. The standard factions of the X-Men franchise actually correlate fairly well to the factions in this particular struggle. Of course, it isn't a perfect correlation, as a significant group of people (myself included) do not believe that homosexual behavior is inborn, unavoidable, and morally neutral. (Granted, arguments could be made about the morality of a mutant ability that can only be used to make other people deathly ill.) Still, for what it's worth, here are the correlations:

Charles Xavier and the Rank-And-File: On the good side, you have Xavier's school for mutants and his undying efforts to tweak society gently into one in which a blue-skinned girl can walk down the street alongside her 'normal' friend without fear. He simply wants mutants and regular humans to live in peace. To that end, he encourages mutants to show a sense of propriety in public. Being blue-skinned isn't an invitation to walk around naked. There is no harm in using your ice power to cool your tea, but don't go flinging shards at the neighborhood bully. Live in peace inasmuch as you can. On the other side, he opposes the Mutant Registration Act, which tends to lead to big stomping robots going about genetically identifying mutants and putting them in prison.

In the realm of 'gay rights', these would be the people who are quite willing to work with a gay person, or have one in the apartment complex, as long as he and his partner aren't tongue-kissing out in front of the children or doing drugs... things that are utterly avoidable no matter your sexual preference.

"Friends of Humanity" and the genuinely afraid: Everyone can agree that these people are basically either bad or misguided, so I don't need to spend a lot of time on them. They are analogous to the people in the gay 'rights' debate who want to throw all homosexuals in jail, the ones who see these people not as sinners with the rest of us, but as being in some way subhuman. In an irony that carries over to the real world, some of the angriest anti-mutant folk have mutants in their family, and the hatred spills over from fear.)

Now here comes the interesting part of the discussion.

Magneto and his followers: Unlike Xavier, who wants peaceful coexistence, Magneto sees himself and other mutants as superior to humans and believe that mutants should rule. He takes it as a no-brainer that mutants should not only appear in their natural shapes in public, but should have free and unfettered exercise of their mutant powers. He believes that they are the next step in human evolution and that the regular humans should submit to them.

This is a clear and not often-explored goal among the gay 'rights' activists. Many homosexuals are just as willing as many non-homosexuals to simply live in peace, respecting each other's rights. Gays don't claim religious significance for acts that religions ban; straights don't confront them in alleyways telling them to 'repent' or take a beating. That would be the Charles Xavier way. Gay activists, however, insist that homosexual behavior will "strengthen" marriage... how? By redefining adultery and removing 'old-fashioned' notions of longevity. The gay relationship is, to them, the next step in human evolution, and they will ensure that everyone be forced to submit.

Mystique/Raven, being a blue-skinned shapeshifter with golden eyes, is drawn alternately in the most recent movies to Charles Xavier, who says that she should be able to go to school with the other children in the proper school uniform and not ostracized for her skin color, and Magneto, who says that she should be able to go to school utterly naked (the actress wears a latex suit) and the other people should have no right to object. I can't help but be reminded by the school officials who are willing to extend to a single-stalled bathroom to a physically male student who thinks he ought to be female, and the activists who insist that he should be allowed to enter a bathroom full of girls and neither the girls nor their parents have the right to object.

I have consistently taken Charles Xavier's side in the gay 'rights' fight, affirming the right of any peaceful citizen to live and travel peacefully. I wonder what would happen if I started referring to the gay activists as "Magneto". Perhaps that simple act would be enough to get the homosexual lobby to leave X-Men alone... and for the next generation of geeks and freaks who are not homosexual to feel comfortable, as has been for generations before us, identifying with the mutants.

Fairness

When I was pretty young, maybe around that nebulous area from 3rd to 5th grade, my old church had a talent contest. No categories, no rules except, of course, for basic decency... any child who wanted to show up was welcome to come up on stage and do something for the crowd. Prizes were given out. They were pretty dinky prizes, of course, but I wanted one badly.

I was a piano player, and a good one, too. I selected a challenging piece that I loved, something beautiful, and I learned it by heart. I played it over and over. I worked through the rough spots over and over. I mastered that piece and learned to play it with emphasis.

There was another girl in my neighborhood who also played piano. She was a born genius. She was incredibly gifted. She taught herself how to play from a very young age. When she entered the competition, I knew one of the prizes would be hers. On the day of the competition, she played a song that she had written herself.

At my turn, I sat up there feeling nervous as anything, but I made a good start and carried it through brilliantly. I didn't miss a single note. I remembered my emphasis. I picked a darn good song and I played it well. I left the bench knowing that I had done as well as I could have hoped for. As I heard the others, mostly singers, do their piece one by one, I knew I had done well enough for a coveted prize. Most of the singers flubbed their parts. Few were on tune. Some simply got stage fright and refused to perform at all.

Then the prizes were given out. My neighbor got one, of course. The other five or six prizes were handed out among the singers, several of whom had made huge mistakes in their parts. After the show, I asked, politely and curiously, why my piece had not been good enough to merit a prize. I was not being rude or demanding. I was confounded, and I was seeking understanding.

"Oh, you were definitely good enough! But we got together and decided that since there were only two piano players, it wasn't fair to give both of them prizes. There were a lot more singers, so we gave the rest of the prizes among them. It was only fair."

This was my first experience with the term "fair" as it is now used in political discussion, and I learned a great deal. I learned that everything I was taught in inspirational movies and stories did not count. I learned that it didn't matter how much I dreamed, how long I practiced, how hard I tried, or how well I did. A society built on "fairness" could simply decide to deny me anything I earned for relatively arbitrary reasons.

Now I could look back at those cheap silly prizes - my neighbor got a simple curly drinking straw - and laugh that it ever meant so much to me. Truthfully, it didn't matter if the prize was a piece of paper, or simply a verbal "well done". From that day on, I never, ever regarded the argument "it's only fair" with anything but hostile suspicion. And to this day, the easiest way to turn me off to a proposed law or regulation is to use the phrase...

"It's only fair."

Extremism

Beware extremism in all its forms!

The extreme opposite opinion of "Outlaw guns in schools" is *not* "Permit teachers to be armed". The extreme opposite is "Force all teachers to be armed".

The extreme opposite of an alcoholic is a teetotaler, not someone who has half a glass in an entire week and puts a little sherry in the stew.

The extreme opposite of nationalism is anti-nationalism, as was seen by a teacher in South Carolina who stomped on the American flag and told his students that it meant nothing.

The extreme opposite of racism against blacks is affirmative action, not equal access for all.

Why should we beware the extreme opposite in all forms? Because the extreme opposites are, in their way, *identical* problems. The person who throws acid at women for wearing skirts above the ankle is just as consumed by lust as the one who gives women free drinks for exposing their bodies. The person who rages at his child for not being good at sports is not different from the person who rages at his child for not being good at music.

Why am I saying this? Well, it seems that, nowadays, the conservative viewpoint is being described as the "opposite extremist" from liberalism. This is most certainly not true. Increasingly, the conservative viewpoint is the one demonstrating moderation, and the exact opposite from liberalism is not being expressed at all.

Here's another example. The extremist on one side says that gays should have their relationships labeled and honored by the government and society as 'marriage', and woe to those who disagree however politely. However, they claim that the extremist on the other side is the one who simply allows the gays to live their lives in peace. The real extremist view is one that few, if any, Americans would tolerate... that of putting those who engage in homosexual behavior in prison or to death. And so people are called extremist because they do not think that a man and a man engage in the exact same kind of relationship as a man and a woman.

The budget is another matter. Those who want to streamline programs, cut spending, and run fewer services more efficiently are being labeled as extremists, with the exact opposing viewpoint being one of more power, larger programs, higher taxes, and more debt. No, the exact opposing viewpoint from Obama's is that of libertarianism, which believes that even the police department should be privatized.

Beware extremism in all its forms! Beware doubly, in this day and age, labeling the moderate and reasonable viewpoint as the extreme opposite of the only other viewpoint offered!

The 47% Dichotomy

There has been much ado lately about Romney being recorded at a meeting talking about "the 47%". Of course, everything has been blown out of proportion. In fact, Romney is making a very simple and good point, and Obama has made the exact same point himself in other speeches and policy-making.

Mitt Romney pointed out that there are about 47% (Obama's current support according to polls) who prefer government regulation to freedom. Then he pointed out that the 47-49% who pay no Federal Income Tax are not likely to be swayed by promises of lowering the Federal Income Tax. (It's the shame of the Democrats that they can't understand the simple concept of a Venn diagram.)

Obama said, in a speech when he was Senator, that he hoped to build a Democrat majority out of the people who received government assistance. That's basically the same thing Romney is saying! Obama is capitalizing on the Change that has put more people on government assistance than ever before and the Hope that they will support him to keep the "Obama money" comin'. You can see this clearly in his "Life of Julia" ad, in which he tries to impress upon us our complete inability to succeed without lots of government aid programs.

A while back, Romney claimed that he was not going to focus his speeches on the poor, because they were already well-served by government programs that he didn't plan to mess with. Obama has claimed that he is giving up on the working class. (The *white* working class, specifically, which is not only a horrible racist thing to say, but also will end up meaning the entire working class... unless he plans to start refusing government aid based on the color of your skin.) I have to wonder why Obama has decided to give up on the most hurting group in the country at a time when a family making *above the median income* is eligible for food stamps. It could be that he realizes privately that those who were independent under Bush will not be happy about losing half their wealth and (on average) 12% of their income in order to fall underneath the expanding government umbrella and receive government funding for which they must follow the government rules for everything from diet to housing.

So the question then to all of us is this: Which side? Which path? Which country? The one where aid goes to those in need and the rest of us flourish on our own two feet? Or the "'Julia' couldn't build that" country where the politicians hope that you'll vote blindly for them as long as they keep giving you free stuff? Both Romney and Obama have clearly stated the dichotomy and chosen a side. And I'm afraid the third party vote will not be strong enough to choose a third way... if indeed there is a third way between liberty and subjugation.

Note: Have you heard the latest, by the way? It appears that Romney is a hypocrite because he overpaid his income taxes (by not declaring all charitable contributions), and a hypocrite because he is one of the "47%" due to having paid no income taxes. You just can't win with these guys, even when they have to subvert the basic rules of mathematics in order to hate you.

Responsibility for education

In Florida, a State Representative has proposed increasing parental involvement in childhood education by having public school teachers grade the parents. Of course, there are many angles in describing the problems with this proposal. A friend of mine who is a Florida-certified to teach and knows the local public schools told me that the parents should be the ones grading the teachers.

On the plus side, the proposal does address a problem that is very real in today's society. Too many parents don't have enough involvement in their children's education. The question in my mind is, will this proposal solve or worsen the problem? I believe that it is a treatment of a symptom rather than the ending of a societal disease.

In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, young Scout does not take easily to school. Her teacher is appalled when she discovers that Scout knows not only how to read, but how to write cursive. Her father has spent so much time reading with her in the evenings, and her housekeeper copied out words for her to practice when she wanted something to do. The teacher is adamant that this is wrong.

"Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage-"                                                               
"Ma'am?"                                                                 
 "Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."

This book was published in 1960 and referred to the rise of new teaching methods including the much-lampooned "New Math" in public school systems. The adjoining message, naturally, was that these methods would be compromised if all these parents kept thinking that they could do the job of teaching their children how to learn. The movement coincided with the Feminist Movement, which championed pushing mothers, against their will if necessary, to leave their child-rearing and climb the career ladder.

Combine these two together and you have, nurtured for about 50 years by the Liberal Left, the belief that it is the job of parents to work outside the home while leaving the matter of their children's education in the hands of government officials and "properly-trained" instructors. I note that one of the biggest questions I hear as a homeschooling mother is, "How do you know that you're qualified to teach your child?" Before the '60's and its various revolutions, such a question would have been downright laughable. Who is better qualified to teach a child than the people whose genetics created him or her?

Of course, as with many such reforms, we are now discovering that parental involvement does in fact have a strongly positive effect on a child's education. What is the solution? Although Representative Stargel is listed as a Republican, she offers the very liberal proposal that the Government, having discouraged parents from involvement, must now mandate parental involvement for the exact same reason... the good of the children. This is worse than the purported ambulance-in-the-valley solution for the lack of fence on the dangerous cliff. This is tantamount to removing an already-present fence on the cliff before instituting the ambulance in the valley.

The New House and Obamacare

The new House started yesterday, with a reluctant Pelosi handing the gavel to Boehner, who immediately demonstrated that he knew just what to do with it. (No, he didn't hit Pelosi in the head.)

New House rules include a reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor today. That's a one-time thing, but there are other rules that are very nice, including a mandatory 72-hour online posting of bills before they are voted upon. People, they're giving us the responsibility. Find the website where they are doing this (I'll give you a link when I find it myself) and read those bills! Write to your Congressmen! The 2010 midterm election should be a beginning for the TEA Party, not an end. Now is not the time to sit back and start ignoring politics, not now that we have people in there who will listen to us! Now is the time to speak!

They also have modified "pay-go" into "cut-go", meaning that new spending must be paid for by cuts elsewhere, but tax cuts do not need to be 'paid for'. Considering that Bush's tax cut resulted in more tax money received by the Federal Government, I believe that we are on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve and 'paying for' tax cuts through spending cuts is unnecessary.

Here's the rule I like best: All new bills must be accompanied by a statement in the Congressional Record pointing out the specific Constitutionally-granted Federal power being exercised in order to justify the law.

Boehner has quickly shown that he's got the balls that so many Republicans have lacked over the past four or more years. The new regulations, set up to make laws more difficult to pass, have been waived for the first order of business which has also been declared exempt of all amendments. This first order of business is a call to repeal Obamacare, plain and simple. Will they do it? Yes. Will they succeed? Not likely, but our new Republicans already have a multi-pronged plan by which to rend Obamacare into unusable pieces.

Speaking of which, I want to show this around. Five top Democrat senators sent Boehner a letter warning him that the Senate will definitely block any repeal of Obamacare, so he may as well not try, because it will be a waste of time. Boehner's office sent back a prompt reply:

Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer, Murray and Stabenow:

Thank you for reminding us – and the American people – of the backroom deal that you struck behind closed doors with ‘Big Pharma,’ resulting in bigger profits for the drug companies, and higher prescription drug costs for 33 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D, at a cost to the taxpayers of $42.6 billion.

The House is going to pass legislation to repeal that now.  You’re welcome.

- Speaker-Designate John Boehner’s Press Office

Thank you, Boehner, new Speaker of the House, for showing the rest of them how it's done.

By the way, YouCut has been moved from the Minority Whip website to the Majority Leader website. The choices have not changed since the previous YouCut week, but the blog strongly suggests that the next set will arrive shortly.

And when they came for me, there was nobody left

I have several things to say about the BP oil spill, but many people are saying them already. I may devote another post to the government regulation that led to the spill and exacerbated its detrimental effect, but for now I want to focus on a slightly different topic.

The important thing about this society is that we enforce the law for everyone, not just the people we like.

This is important, and fairly unusual throughout human history. Before this Reformation-based civilization, it was fairly common for the authorities to turn a blind eye to abuses that happened to unpopular figures. If you were a pauper accusing your lord of rape, you couldn't expect to see him put up on trial. If you were a gypsy, you would be lucky just to keep your head down and avoid being killed on sight.

Even in this illustrious country, we have had problems with 'unpopular' people. The first gun control laws were enacted to prevent the newly-freed blacks from arming themselves. Why did they need to arm themselves? If a black man was brutally beaten for the crime of walking down a certain street, the feeling among the racist supremacists was that he deserved it because he was getting 'uppity'. However, we have always as a society followed the laws that permitted 'inconvenient things' like voting rights and innocent-until-proven-guilty, 'even if' that meant championing the human rights of the minority races.

In fact, even present-day America is not immune from the tendency to categorize some people as 'unpopular', showing less sympathy when they are victimized. There are some men who rape lesbian women and believe that the women deserved that cruel treatment. However, as before, we follow those laws and prosecute these men as the criminals that they are. The important thing about our society is that we truly have that equality, and we do not set laws aside just because we don't like the victim much

Until now.

It started with AIG. Husbands and fathers found their homes besieged and death threats made against their children for the crime of receiving the bonuses that they had earned by lawful contract. The government should have intervened on their behalf, upholding the law for them, even though they are unpopular as blacks, Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals have been throughout history. Instead, Obama decided to give these people a very unlawful choice... either give up the compensation for their hours of hard work, or face ruin at the hands of an angry mob.

We saw it happen again when Toyota's upper management was hauled in front of the liberal Democrats and badgered about a vehicle problem that they were already hard at work trying to find and fix. There was no need for that kind of humiliation. They were already doing the right thing. Still, as an auto manufacturer who makes such horrible things as SUV's and trucks, they had to be shown that the unpopular members of society are no longer protected by the law.

Now it's happening with BP. The guy who got into trouble for calling Obama's demands of money a 'shakedown' ought to be praised to the skies for calling a spade a spade. They are learning what Toyota and AIG have already learned, a lesson that should chill us to the bone, such that we should be demonstrating against the government instead of against that evil, evil company who seeks to fill our vehicles with gas and our homes with heat.

Whether you are doing the right thing or not, whether you follow the laws or not, what now matters in this country is whether or not you are an unpopular minority.

If you are, then you may find  yourself bereft of the Constitutional protections once intended for all, even those whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is 'inconvenient' to those who wish to tear them down in vile hatred.

Sure, it's just oil companies, bank executives, and auto manufacturers now. However, Obama once spoke out in contempt of those small-town Americans, the 'bitter clingers' to 'guns and religion'. How long will it be before he comes for you? And if you cheer on the suspension of law for the sake of those whom you despise, what will protect you when he comes for you?