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.

The FCC's Gated Community

How would you like to live in a gated community?

I've heard they tend to be safer. In a regular neighborhood, anybody is allowed to walk the public streets. They might look at you. They might see your front yard. They might be slovenly, or sing loudly and drunkenly. Of course, you are perfectly able and allowed to lock your door. If they go onto your lawn, they are trespassing and you can call the police. If they break into your house, it is a crime and they can be prosecuted. But there's nothing to stop them from walking the street.

In a gated community, they can't get in. The gate guard has a list of requirements that anybody has to meet before entering. You have to buzz your way in and have him unlock the gate for you. Why doesn't everyone live in a gated community? It's so much safer, isn't it?

Thing is, as people who have left gated communities can tell you, giving someone the authority to prevent people on the street from entering also means giving someone the authority to determine who you can have access to from within the community. If they decide that your own mother looks too much like a redneck, you can only meet with her by leaving the safety of the gate behind. Furthermore, you alone cannot decide who will meet this criteria, when and how often the criteria will change, and how much you will have to pay for it. Hopefully, you have a system in which you at least have to have a majority of the community agree.

Now suppose you were living quietly in your neighborhood when, one morning, the most prominent neighbor decides that it will be a gated community. By lunchtime, the gates are up, and at suppertime, someone goes door to door handing you a pamphlet letting you know who will now be allowed onto your street for your safety. From now on, your neighbor can decide, at any time, who can enter and who cannot. Of course, this means that your neighbor can decide that his stinky party friends can enter and roister until dawn, but yours cannot. There is no guarantee that there will be no parties, or that nobody who enters will break into your house. You can only hope that your prominent neighbor is good-natured and good-willed... as well as all of his descendants, for as long as your family lives there.

When the FCC declared the Internet to be under its command, it basically did just that. The FCC is the government body that decides which radio stations are allowed to broadcast based on whether their content serves "the public interest". The FCC is the government body that decides which television shows are allowed to run during "family hour", and the reason why Die Hard is now linked with the phrase "melon farmer". The FCC created and enforced the Ma Bell monopoly, in which one corporation was allowed to provide all telephone services in the country. That only changed in the mid-90's and, even then, only under the FCC's careful control.

The Republican ruling that is making people scream that you now have no internet privacy left at all merely returns the role of internet safety to the FTC. It does the equivalent of taking down the gated community which was established by your neighbor acting alone. Yes, you may have slovenly people allowed to walk the street again. Yes, your front garden still may be seen from the road. Yes, you can still put up your own fences and lock your own doors. None of that has changed.

But now, your neighbor can't decide that your mother can't enter his gated community.

If you really want to live in a gated community, the answer is to go find one, not to get the government to force everybody to live in one.

Corporatism, Communism, and Christianity

I have to say it - we're in a bad place right now, as a country.

With a stagnant economy and hurting families on every side, the Democrats are heading towards nominating a socialist/fascist for the Presidency, and the Republicans have nominated a corporatist. With the Libertarians nominating a classless fellow, basically a liberal who wants to legalize pot, we haven't got a conservative running in the race.

So I think it's time to take a look and ask ourselves how this race and its result might impact those of us who are Christians.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that socialists are unhappy with Christianity. A socialist, at his or her root, believes that we can replace God with Government and do a much better job of taking care of everybody 'equally well'. Of course, we all know that it will fail, and we know why. A socialist government can't do God's job because they lack intricate knowledge of each and every person and the ability to tailor each person's life experience to his or her personality, ability, and greater benefit. A socialist government can't do God's job because they are as sin-stained as the rest of us... they have a sin-flawed notion of what is good, what is healthy, what is pure, and what is beneficial for us. Of course, in every socialist country, the government has been openly hostile towards Christians. This is true even in the "softer" countries dealing in "democratic socialism", in which Christians may be permitted to live in peace as long as they don't make any sort of decisions outside of their own homes regarding their faith when such a decision would conflict with the Absolute Power of the government. To a socialist, God is a competitor, and one that must be squashed (or, at least, the attempt made) by any means necessary.

In the history of corporatism, however, Christianity is tortured into a different role. Historically speaking, the greatest Christian-committed atrocities have occurred when a corporatist government cherry-picks and uses Christian principles in order to serve the government first, rather than the corporation. While the socialist tries to kill God, the corporatist merely tries to enslave Him and make Him do the government's bidding. The socialist insists that Christians abandon their religion, while the corporatist goes back to the age-old tribal method of trying to convince us that he bears the will of the gods (or, in this case, God) and we must obey him as we obey our Lord. The corporatist will pretend to be doing the will of God, usually by cherry-picking the parts of God's laws that he thinks will give him greater control over the people, and forcing them upon everybody by law.

Which is a greater threat to us? Robber barons are generally safer than moral busybodies, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in one of his most famous quotes. A robber baron (the corporatist) merely wants your wealth, while the moral busybody (the socialist) wants your heart, mind, and soul. We would think that it is better for us, certainly safer for us, to have someone who might use the government to persecute our enemies rather than a government keen on persecuting us. And yet... one of the strongest complaints that atheists have against us is derived from every instance in which a government tried to use the surface appearance of Christianity in order to implement its own goals, especially goals which are actually counter to the actual teachings of Christ. Caught in the quandary of socialism vs. corporatism, I have to ask... is it actually better for us to face open persecution, under which Christians have often been purified and Christianity has spread strongly (nothing exposes fakery and uncovers reality like difficulty), than a twisted form of 'Christianity', which might lead millions of people to Hell even as they are sure that they are headed for eternal paradise?

I do not have a good answer to this question at this time.

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.

God as an Economic Ruler

On Easter Sunday, I was reminded of the Jewish holiday which was fully fulfilled by Jesus's death on the cross. On Passover, the people spread the blood of a lamb on the lintel and posts of their door, to show that they were set apart by blood sacrifice, and the angel of death passed over them. That got me thinking, of all things, about economics and the upcoming election.

See, it's an oft-mentioned Christian (and Old Testament Jewish) notion that we are to give God everything we own and everything we are. We're afraid to do that, usually because we get this image of God acting as an earthly king, using up what He feels like having, and returning little or nothing to us. When a king demands your gold, he wants it so that he can decorate his throne. When he demands your daughter, he is looking for a maid and a concubine. When he demands your son, he is looking for a guard or a soldier, someone to die for his safety or even his comfort or convenience.

When people give things to God, though, God has a long-standing habit of giving the things back, as a sacred duty and stewardship rather than simple, selfish ownership. You offer your computer to God, and you find yourself typing out resumes and formatting flyers, or maintaining websites, for churches and other ministries while still being quite able to entertain yourself with a video game in the evening. You offer your house to God, and it becomes a quiet, refreshing place that offers shelter periodically to people in need. Instead of you keeping a house of your own, you are now steward of a shelter of God, and you are, of course, expected to enjoy it while you are keeping it.

We see this in the Passover story with Moses, who was born during a time when the Egyptian Pharaoh's men were killing baby boys, but letting the baby girls live. Moses' mother hid him for as long as she could, keeping him by her own power, but then she knew that all she could do was to give him to God. Of course, we know the end of the story. The Pharaoh's daughter found his basket in the water and decided to keep him. The detail we often miss is that the baby still needed to be fed, and his 'new mother' needed to find a wet-nurse for him. His sister, who had been watching the basket, stepped forward and bravely told the Pharaoh's daughter that she knew a woman who could do the job. And so Moses' mother, who had given her baby away to God, had her baby back in her arms by evening, with orders from royalty preventing him from death!

Where does this become political? Right here.

I see this election season as being a choice in direction, in which economic system we will take one more step towards in the coming years. Our choices are capitalism, corporatism, fascism, and communism.

Bernie Sanders embodies communism - the system in which the government collects and redistributes goods and services directly. Though the stated purpose is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," in practice this becomes "from each according to the government's need, to each according to the government's preference."

The economy in this system is controlled directly by the government as an oligarchy (rule of the few).

Hillary Clinton embodies fascism - the system in which the government controls the private companies, deciding what they are permitted to produce and fixing their wages/prices, but allowing them to act otherwise as 'private' organizations. People make the mistake sometimes of thinking that fascism is 'capitalist' because it involves 'nationalism'. The nationalism of fascism is not flag-waving and setting off illicit fireworks in vacant lots, but the action of permitting the government to take away rights, responsibilities, and freedoms for the (perceived) good of the nation. What decides what is good for the nation? The government, of course.

The economy in this system is controlled indirectly by the government as an oligarchy. There can be some crossover with corporatism, as members of government-favored companies may have a hand in setting policy.

Donald Trump embodies corporatism, previously called mercantilism - the system by which the corporations have the power to influence (or downright set) government policy. Through government taxation and regulation applied unevenly throughout the private world, the larger companies raise artificial barriers against their competition. With lack of competition, the pressure to provide a high-quality product at a lower price and the pressure to raise wages while improving working conditions are both greatly reduced.

The economy in this system is controlled (usually) indirectly by a few corporations as an oligarchy. There can be some crossover with fascism, as members of the government garner corporate support by promising increased corporate power in return.

Ted Cruz embodies 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. In this system, neither the government nor the corporations are allowed to enact a "command economy".

The economy in this system is not controlled by any centralized authority.

The economist Adam Smith described a capitalist economy as being controlled by an "invisible hand". In short, he argued, even though you don't have an authority in charge of ensuring that prices are low, wages are high, and the poor are fed, it happens naturally through the process of capitalism. Though secular capitalists may have any of a number of explanations for this, including 'game theory' and belief in the power of 'nature', Christian capitalists (including those who first set up the system in this country) view that "invisible hand" as being God.

In this way, capitalism is a rather scary system. We basically give the economy to God, and trust Him to give it back to us as stewards. Just as Moses' mother only gave him up when she saw no other way for his survival, people who are otherwise comfortable may be afraid to give up their economy to this "invisible Hand", unless they believe that they will lose too much otherwise. In this day and age, capitalism means reducing some government social programs and ending others. Cruz has said that he will end the Department of Education. That means that the Federal Government will no longer have ultimate control over what public schools teach children. For someone who sees no authority above that of an authoritarian oligarchy, this is a frightening thought. They don't want to trust God with these things. Those who don't believe in God, of course, don't want to trust "chance", "fate", "luck", or whatever they call it, even though capitalist systems tend to work very well as long as the people aren't panicking and giving their freedoms away in hopes of being able to point to specific people and claim that they, at least, are in 'control'.

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.

Why should this be a Christian nation?

Talk about a hot topic, especially today. What does it mean, to be a Christian nation? Is this a Christian nation? We can run the gamut, from those who believe that everyone in this nation should be taught Christianity and Christian morality in public school, and that laws should be made to enforce Christian morality, to those who believe that the Founding Fathers weren't really Christians at all, and that the most important thing is to never make any law that supports any other religion's morality at all. (Unless it happens to also support the morality held by the person who is arguing the point, of course.)

Forget all of that for a moment.

There are a few very important things that Christianity in particular, more than any other religion, brings to the philosophy that created this nation and this nation's government. They won't be found simply by attending the right kind of church for the right number of years, or swearing your oath on a Bible instead of a Koran, or even being able to quote Bible verses without sticking your foot so far down your throat that you can kick your own a-.........butt. These are principles that are simple and easily observable in the Real World, yet, in the U.S. political party which has basically repudiated God altogether, at least one of the most important is being forgotten.

Human beings are corruptible.
Government is made of human beings.
Thus, government is corruptible.

I'm going to pick on Bernie Sanders again, because he represents the epitome of this claim. Business owners, he argues, can be corruptible, because their mission is greed. (It isn't. But that's another topic.) The government, on the other hand, can be safely trusted with any amount of power.

Let me give you an invaluable little tip about socialism. When socialists, even purveyors of "democratic socialism", use the term "the people", what they really mean is the government. This makes sense, actually, doesn't it? If the government officials are elected by the people, that means that they speak for the people, right? Therefore, they practically *are* 'the people'. What's good for them is what's good for us, because they are us.

The reason why this mindset becomes a problem, the reason why socialism in all its forms has never yet worked, is because it assumes that government representatives are able to represent The People purely and perfectly. However, each representative is his or her own human being, and human beings are corruptible.

Our government was set up the way it was in hopes of reducing and decentralizing power, because it was set up by people who understand the Christian notion that man is corruptible. They practically counted on corruption in politics. The reason for separation of powers was the hope that corruption could be cornered and countered, and not given the power it needs to metastasize.

This is similar to the dual-hydraulic system in automotive brakes. You could just have one brake line with one cylinder, to make your brakes work when you press on the pedal. Instead, you have two. Why? If you lose one brake line (this happened to me a few months ago, actually), you will have weak braking power instead of no braking power. The hope is that both lines won't go at the same time, and generally, minus deliberate sabotage, they won't. The Founding Fathers never assumed, as the Democrats do, that they could create a government with no failure points. They simply tried to design a government which could have failure points without destroying the whole.

Bernie Sanders is advocating for simpler, more streamlined systems with higher government control, more centralized, to reduce the number of steps between us and our government. He believes that it will be less expensive and easier to run a country if all citizens must answer to the Federal Government in as many parts of their lives as possible. The Federal Government gives you your health care. The Federal Government handles your college education. His problem is that he really does believe - or at least preach - as if the government is the only human invention that is incorruptible.

He isn't the only one on my hotseat today, as you may have guessed from my allusion to Bible verses. Obama has been using executive orders in an unprecedented way, to circumvent a Congress which he complains is "too slow" and may not believe that his way is the right way. He is basically doing the equivalent of speeding up automobile production and making vehicles less expensive by outlawing the dual-hydraulic system instead of, say, loosening Federal restrictions on which types of extra peripherals a car might contain or, perhaps, ending Federal taxes on auto manufacturing employees.

I'm sure it sounds like a great idea.... until the inevitable corruption hits, and someone has to slam on the brakes.

What makes Christianity important in this nation? One of the most important theological guidelines is, increasingly, one of the most neglected - human beings do not become incorruptible just because they work for the government.

Don't we know that by now?

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.

The Law that Must Not Be Named

I noticed an interesting trend today. I've been hearing it for several months now, without really thinking about it. Today, however, it happened twice in a row, within less than a half hour, from two different people, and I found it rather disturbing. Note: I live in a state full of Independents, but most of them vote Democrat most of the time. Technically I live in a "blue state", though that doesn't quite describe the situation.

In both cases, we were talking about health insurance, because the first person was trying to help me sort out my paperwork. He was neither family nor friend; he had come specifically to "help me sign up for Medicaid", only to discover that I had already received my children's confirmation letter, and was still waiting for their cards. He nodded as I told him how our employer's PPO had more than doubled in price.

"Yes," he said. "I know, the same thing happened to me. Ever since," he began, paused, and said delicately, "the thing a few years ago, you know..."
"Yes, I know," I replied, and the conversation continued on from there.

My sister's boyfriend's mother drove in as the first fellow was leaving, and we got to talking about why he was here and the bureaucracy we were dealing with. "Oh, I know!" she said. "We lost our insurance! Right around the time that, you know..."

What is this? The Law that Must Not Be Named? Are people afraid? I talked to my House Representative staff yesterday, calling to complain about the problems with the ACA/Obamacare and the way it was affecting us. The staff member proceeded to tell me that people mistakenly thought that the ACA was involved in these problems, when in fact it was not. "Oh," I could not help saying, though I was trying to be nice, "See, I was under the impression that a law mandating a significant expansion of Medicaid had something to do with delays caused by significantly expanding Medicaid."

She deferred.

Yes, my House Representative is a Democrat and one that has remained in favor of the ACA.

A lot of people are angry about the changes. A lot of people are suffering. There are tons of stories like mine. I'm actually very lucky, in that we have not yet been turned down for treatment of serious health problems. Don't we have the right to speak up, speak out, speak amongst ourselves, and discuss this clearly? Are people afraid to criticize the ACA openly? Why are we suddenly saying "You know" and "That thing"?

This is the United States!

What's going on here?

So much for resolutions...

Of course I haven't posted in a while now. It seems that "real life" continues to intervene! For today, I have a piece that I wrote in response to a forum thread. The conversation shifted to various economic responses to various tax cuts and government spending.

The first gem was the reminder that the "Clinton Surplus" was created by a Republican Congress and finally passed after Clinton stonewalled it so hard that the entire government shut down for several weeks. In this post, I went into the reasons behind the recent economic problems and their results.

This is what happened in 2006:

Shortly after the Democrats swept Congress, there was a bursting of a gas bubble. Not a physical bubble, but an economic one. Refinery problems plus Middle East concerns plus an increased integration of ethanol worked together to bring gas prices up. Food prices followed quickly. Whenever gas prices go up, food prices go up, because grocery stores work on a shoestring budget. They make almost no profit. So when it costs more to transport food to the store, the items cost more.

Now in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by a Democrat majority Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA had good intentions... to end the practice of redlining, or refusing to sell homes in certain areas to minorities. However, it basically involved sending the government into real estate to enact something very much like Affirmative Action. It didn't impact us much, though, for nearly 20 years, because it didn't have much teeth.

That changed under President Clinton, who empowered Reno to set things into motion that would punish banks that didn't make enough loans to minorities who wanted to buy homes. The only problem was that the reason why fewer minorities were buying homes was because fewer minorities had the financial means and acumen to hold down a mortgage. The banks were ordered to make it work somehow, and the bank response was the Subprime Mortgage.

The Subprime Mortgage, like the Saltbox and the SUV, was something created by private industry trying to keep what they wanted/needed while skirting Federal regulations. In all three cases, you ended up with something that didn't have all of the advantages of what the government wanted to force or what the private groups originally used. (The SUV is a replacement for the Station Wagon that not only fails to meet sedan fuel economy, but it fails to approach station wagon fuel economy as well. The Saltbox has a partial upper story with a roof that drops to the first story on one side, resulting in a loss of useable space.)

These subprime loans were snapped up by people for whom they were and were not originally intended, creating a heavy demand for new and expensive housing. People who would have been steered towards a starter home were using subprimes to afford twice the house they would have purchased otherwise. We had a housing bubble. W Bush sounded the alarm multiple times, but Frank and Dodd staunchly refused to look into it. All of these subprime home owners were barely managing to make their finances work, and the slightest rise in any of their other bills would lead to disaster.

Then, of course, as mentioned above, the oil price went up. That started a comprehensive collapse that ended in failing banks, foreclosures/abandonments, and rampant unemployment in the construction industry. Unfortunately, instead of isolating this disaster and allowing it to burn itself out, Obama decided to ramp up federal spending, and now it's affecting private sectors that had nothing to do whatsoever with construction or mortgages.

And now the fix, being basically the "You still have to provide mortgages for minorities whether they can afford them or not, but you can't do it this way", is making it nigh impossible for smaller businesses to operate through lack of liquidity. The government we-can't-allow-banks-to-fail mindset has brought to a full stop the natural process of stronger banks buying weaker ones and fixing the problems naturally. Did you know that, at the beginning of the recession, if you had been saving up a little money during the good times, you could have any home renovation done well on the cheap? Before Obama intervened in hopes of getting people to refinance their mortgages, refinancing was easy and very useful. We did it ourselves. Now it's all but impossible unless you fit the narrow and confusing government standards.

Gas prices also started to fall as demand fell, but now the weak dollar plus inflation (both the result of government spending) kept prices up and are now primarily responsible for the current spike. Of course, every part of this, from an end to free checking (next month, I believe, part of Obamacare) to the 50-100% rise in basic food prices, to the tightening of loans and resulting unemployment, is impacting primarily the poor and the middle class.

In short, the particular Democrats who swept Congress in 2006 (aside from Dodd/Frank and other members of the Old Guard) really were no more responsible for the beginning of the recession than W Bush was for the tech bubble burst and 9/11. It's what they've done with it since that has landed us in the Pit of Despair.

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?

The President circumvents parental authority?

On September 8th, President Obama is planning to address schools across our nation.

Now we don't know what he's going to say yet, and having the President talk to kids is not necessarily an evil thing. It's good to teach children about our country and its political process. When I was young, I wrote a letter to President Reagan. I got a lovely little courtesy book with full-color pictures of the White House most famous rooms. I have it to this day.

However, we do not know what this community organizer plans to say to our children. There is no copy circulating of the speech that I can find. The one document I was able to find, a teaching guide for the event, did not inspire confidence that this would be a simple, friendly hello. The guide can be found here.

For those of you who don't want to read it, these are the parts that trouble me:

Before the speech, third point: Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

Indeed, why is what they say important? In this country, the government is created for the people and by the people. Of course it's important to listen to what they have to say. But why is that? Do you think that the teachers will encourage students to answer that they should become involved in the political process so that they can do their best to intelligently evaluate the truthfulness of their President's speeches and speak out against them if he is wrong?

During the speech, second point: Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

This troubles me, because it is basically evidence that, when our President speaks to our children outside of our presence, he will be asking them to do something. What sort of thing will he ask them to do? What was the last thing he asked people to do? The last thing he asked people to do was to go to town hall meetings specifically to shut up the people who disagreed with his nationalized health care plan.

Some people might say, "What's the big deal? So the kids have to sit through this speech. They'll probably be bored. They'll have forgotten it by tomorrow. Just let it happen and let it fade away." Unfortunately, the teacher's guide includes a followup:

Extension of the speech, second point: Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

Everyone should find this troubling. The President is encouraging children to work for him directly, and encouraging teachers to put a system into place by which children are made accountable for their goals. I would like to point out that in our system of government, children are traditionally considered too young to enter into contracts and have them enforced. There is a reason why, for instance, there are minimum ages on marriage and on entering the Armed Forces. Further points on the same section encourage teachers to set up school-wide incentive programs for students who reach their goals and graph student progress toward these goals.

This is no longer about a student sitting through a speech and then going home. It's about peer pressure and adult pressure for a student to do what the President has asked them to do. This is serious business, whether you approve of Mr. President or not. We do not live in an authoritarian society, and our elected leaders of the country should not be directly interfering with our children's lives in this fashion.

Quite simply, this is wrong.

I personally have no worries about this event for my family. My son is homeschooled and my daughter is too young to understand speeches. Still, I would like to encourage parents of public school students to keep their children home on September 8th. If enough people do so, perhaps we can send a message.

Now let me put in my "usual disclaimer". Suppose the President merely wants to ask the students to be more charitable? To help others? Isn't this a good thing? Don't we want our children to help others? Yes, we do! We definitely do, and I entirely agree with the goal in mind. What I disagree with strongly is its implementation. Children should be charitable because their parents and community teaches them to be. Charting progress toward charity goals should be done at home, or perhaps in Sunday School. Children should not learn the lesson that they must do whatever their President requests of them. That is the road, not to genuine charity, but to tyranny and despotism.

How dare you question my wisdom?

It looks as if town hall meetings are no longer meant to give us a forum in which to express our concerns and hear lawmakers try to support their decisions. It is now a forum in which the lawmakers tell us what we are going to roll over and allow them to do. It is no longer a place of persuasion and debate, but a place of demands and coercion. What happened?

Well, apparently Obama got tired of hearing people object to his plan, and so he rustled up his union buddies to go attend these town hall meetings. The result: Thursday night featured the first bouts of actual violence in the entire government-run healthcare debate.

A note about the protestors and town hall participants: They raised their voices. They held signs. They chanted sometimes. That's it. They are not violent people. They are not terrorists. They're people like you and me. The initial town hall meetings reminded me a bit of heavy metal fans. Now that probably sounds like an odd correlation to make. Let me explain it.

My sister and I attended a heavy metal concert with a couple of other friends. We found ourselves, country mice on a long journey, in the part of Poughkeepsie where the cops don't go, in line with a bunch of people (mostly men) wearing black leather, chains, spikes, ponytails, and various piercings. To hear the major news media reporting on town hall protests, you'd think these people had attended them. You might not be off the mark.

Why? Because they turned out to be the friendliest, gentlest, most respectable and respectful people you could hope to share an auditorium with. Imagine this: at a standing-room-only concert, I tried to step forward to get a better look at the band. The people in the audience readily parted for me, giving me an excellent view close to the stage. You could get bumped into in a crowd like that, but not without an exchange of "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me" and "That's alright". There were a couple of bouncers on hand, who were not needed. There was no violence, no trampling, no accidental injury, and the fans even left the place clean as it was when they arrived.

From what I have seen and heard of the town meetings, the people were very much like that. They would rail and shout, but nobody was getting trampled, nobody was getting separated from their group, and nobody was getting frightened... except for the Democrats up on stage, who are not used to having their wisdom questioned and did not know how to deal with well-reasoned opposition from the people who are supposed to follow like sheep.

Then Obama spoke up. He sent out emails to his supporters asking them to show up at the town hall meetings to shout down the protesters. This act made apparent that he was not looking for actual discussion. At the absolute best, he was hoping for a photo-op of people not disagreeing with his plan. Oh, he got a photo-op alright. The pictures and video taken of the violence has hit Youtube and, as the phrase goes, "gone viral". (This despite having not hit the major news media in any way except a vague sort of "there was violence between opposing groups" without revealing who was actually throwing people against walls.)

Now I've heard people raise various possibilities of why Thursday night's violence happened. The kindest opinion, however, is just as bad as the least kind. The least kind opinion is pretty obvious. Many people believe that Barry Obama, Chicago politician, purposely rounded up the union people in order to intimidate and attack the town hall attendees. They account the violence, which resulted in torn shirts, bruising, and one man beaten into the hospital, directly to his fault. They view him as a modern-day crime boss telling his minions to go out there and break a few knees.

The kindest opinion is that Obama is so blindingly inept at the only job he has any real experience in, community organizing, that he simply did not know what happens when you ask union officials to get their guys to show up and provide a counter to a protest. Despite my adventures to places like heavy metal concerts, I have grown up in a fairly sheltered community, among Christians and homeschoolers, in a rural neighborhood. Even I knew exactly what was going to happen once union thugs got involved in this wasn't-yet-a-mess. If even a rural Connecticut housewife knows how they behave, how could an urban community organizer and Chicago politician have no clue whatsoever?

Of course, this raises serious questions about our president. Is he utterly inept and astonishingly naive? Or is he purposely intimidating ordinary citizens with the only means of force that will target innocent people? Note that these first clashes were not against police (who were already monitoring the protests long before Thursday) or military (who have not been called in), but union people proudly wearing their union shirts.

In either case, it seems that the one thing the Democrats do not want us to do is to object to their plans. They are not interested in compromise; they are not even interested in our opinion. Now we find out whether they can strong-arm the American People into backing down and giving them their own way. If this issue is decided by force, our way of life just might be over.

We value your input

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

This simple statement has set off a firestorm across the country, among just about everybody who opposes the Democrat-proposed government-run health care plan, which is a majority, and even among some who support the plan. Some have argued that the White House plans to make an 'enemies list' by identifying people who disagree with them. Others have scoffed at the notion, noting that we have not currently lost the right to free speech. One person said, "Has it ever occurred to you knuckle-dragging sheep that he just wants your input?"

I immediately answered, "No."

I find myself once more in the "middle of the right". I do not believe that the original intent of this post was to mark conservatives for destruction. I don't think we'll be wearing little yellow stars on our coats anytime soon. After all, we outnumber him, and the military is majority-conservative. Even the liberal members would not fire on their own, and yes, I have heard that many of them are already considering what they would do if they were asked. The atmosphere is that volatile. Still, as I said, I don't take the worst possible interpretation of the White House request.

Even so, the nicest possible interpretation is not good. I answered "No" because Obama has not shown any interest whatsoever in changing his bill to meet our concerns. He has merely claimed that he wants to hear them so that he can refute them, so that he can explain them away, so that we will 'see the light' and stop opposing his plan. I also noted that the original forum poster listed a fact and a group of people were heartily agreeing with it, while Obama was trying to force something down our throats that we don't want "for our own good". Who was treating us like "knuckle-dragging sheep"? As you might have guessed, I was a little riled.

I have good reason to be. Under ordinary circumstances it would be nothing more than a poor choice of wording. However, with this administration, we have to look at it with the 'abusive-boyfriend principle' I noted in my previous post. "Joe the Plumber" opposed Obama's plans within Obama's earshot and look what happened to him. Then we got the Homeland Security memo that labeled those who peaceably assemble to protest liberal policies as "terrorist-lite". Now Obama wants to know what YOU think of his plan. Of course, his request has a nasty little Orwellian twist to it.

The White House blog could have said: "We understand that you have some concerns about the plan. Please feel free to send those concerns to this address so that we can address them." We're not fools, and we'd still know that he was interested more in denying our concerns than incorporating language into the bill to put our minds at ease. It still would have been an improvement over what was said, which basically amounts to this:

"We want you to send us logs of private conversations you've had with people who oppose this bill."

The same person who called me a knuckle-dragging sheep claimed that Obama was only looking for our opinion. I replied, "If you want our opinion, ask us to send in OUR opinion! Don't ask people to send in their NEIGHBOR's opinions!" That wording alone, even without the example of "Joe the Plumber", is enough to rattle a generation who grew up learning how Things Were Done in the Soviet Union. If a secretly-recorded conversation is submitted in a court case, the judge must rule whether it is admissible as evidence. Shouldn't there be some sort of consideration taken before asking people to basically submit private conversations to the Federal Government?

This nation, God love 'em, is still full of the same types of personalities who stood up to the British long ago. It is still full of people who emigrated here to escape totalitarian regimes. I have heard from a number of people who have chosen to send their own concerns about the White House request for other people's private conversations straight to that email. I am going to join them and send this post...

...but I'll use my spam-catcher email address.

Let's show them how we do things in cyberspace!

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_12/news/37125-1.html?type=printer_friendly

Congressional rules for franked mail bar Members from using taxpayer-funded mail for newsletters that use “partisan, politicized or personalized” comments to criticize legislation or policy.

The dispute over Brady’s chart is being reviewed by the franking commission, which must approve any mail before it can be sent. No decision had been made on the matter by press time.

Brady adamantly denied that the chart was misleading and said Democrats are simply threatened by the content of the graphic.

“I think their review was laughable,” Brady said. “It’s ... downright false in most of the cases. The chart depicts their health care plan as their committees developed it.”

“The chart reveals how their health care bureaucracy works, and people are frightened by it,” he added. “So this is their effort to try and discredit” the chart.

Republican Members have made 20 requests to mail a version of the chart to their constituents and have been told that the requests are being delayed while the commission reviews allegations that the chart is misleading.

...
The dispute centers on a chart (view PDF) created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan.

At first glance, Brady’s chart resembles a board game: a colorful collection of shapes and images with a web of lines connecting them.

But a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.

UPDATE: Congressman Carter's Twitter confirms this report in the blogosphere: The Democrats are blocking free speech in the House. We can not use the words "Democrats" or "Government Run Healthcare" in official mail.

**************************************************
I say let's show this "government of transparency" what happens when they try to block Republicans from showing us what's really going on. Please feel free to post/spread this on your own blog and/or email, complete with link to the PDF file. After the fiasco surrounding the DVD encryption key, the Democrats should know that you can't just hide things from the citizenry anymore.

If Cars Were People

I was honestly on my way to write this idea when a fellow blogger wrote this far better than I ever could. So without further ado, here is friday's description of health insurance... for cars...

My fellow Americans, we have a crisis in our nation. We have people driving around across this bountiful land with their engine light on, their oil light on, and no muffler. We have people who have to choose between going another 1,000 miles between oil changes or buying dinner. There have been stories told of people watering down their anti-freeze, disconnecting their O2 sensor, and some never changing their air filter because our auto repair industry is corrupt, overpriced, and needs reform.

These are the facts: Most employers do not provide their employees with adequate auto insurance. Most auto insurance is unaffordable and only covers accidents. Some auto insurance only pays for the other person's car in the case of an accident.

The fact is, lack of comprehensive auto insurance, including insurance for minor repairs and routine maintenance, is the leading cause of death in this country*. Most repair jobs are drastic and overpriced because Americans could not afford routine maintenance. Many people are forced to take public transportation, or walk to work which costs them their jobs or results in them dying of exposure. If we provided comprehensive auto insurance and repairs to every American, we could actually save money by preventing the need for drastic repairs.

Now, I know the opposition thinks we should keep the status quo. They say we should do nothing, let the chips fall where they may. Well, I tell you that we are a generous nation and auto care is a right, not just something for the privileged few rich people in our country. It makes no sense, in our rich country, for Americans to be going without proper brake fluid levels.

It is time to introduce a public option for auto insurance and repairs. It is time to make sure that every American is able to live and work and drive without having to worry where their next fillup will come from or if they will be able to survive if their alternator dies.

Now, I don't want to run the auto insurance or repair industry. That should be up to the private sector. That is why I am proposing a government funded public auto insurance and repair program that anyone can subscribe to and it will be subsidized and free for many. Some people say that this is socialist. That's ridiculous. I don't have time to run the auto repair industry. A public option won't undercut or replace private insurers, it will just compete with them at a far lower subsidized price.

To pay for it, we will cut funding to public transportation. This will save us billions of dollars. We will also tax gasoline additives, racing tires, tinted windows and performance products that cause people to take unnecessary risks and add unnecessary wear and tear on their vehicles. We will put together a computer database of every driver with their tickets, average mileage, and other factors to determine the best treatment of their vehicles. If they drive too fast, we won't pay for certain repairs. Also, to cut costs in the repair industry we won't allow for repairs on vehicles over 15 years old or 200,000 miles. Every year you will have to provide proof or auto insurance or you and your employer will each be taxed an additional 8% of your salary. These measures will make universal auto insurance and repairs deficit neutral.

To ensure high quality of repairs, anyone who works on a car in the public or private arena must have a federal license and at least 6 years of college education in automotive studies. Now, I don't want to choose your mechanic for you, so as long as you pick the most local, experienced mechanic matched to you by our database, you can have any mechanic you want.

Right now our automotive repair industry is worse than most third world countries**! This is America. I hope we can change this. I know we can do better and end the status quo. Please submit your ideas and questions via youtube.com, and we will give a prize of $2,500 to the individual who submits the question that best illustrates why we need universal auto care.

We must pass this quickly. America is relying on us and every day more cars die and more people die because of it. We can't afford not to reform our auto insurance and repair industry.

*Taking into account deaths caused by faulty auto repairs, automobile accidents, possible exposure caused by walking, suicides potentially related to not having a car, suicides with a car, deaths in subway systems and public transportation apparatus and global warming deaths.

**Taking into account total number of repairs, average cost for repairs, and how long individuals keep their cars before selling them.

Obama's motivation?

Many of my posts here are influenced by various forum discussions on political happenings. Most of them are ideas that I have fleshed out while taking my morning shower. This morning, though, I sat down and wrote an entire post, first draft, straight from my head, while giving my baby her breakfast after a record eight hour stretch of sleep! Upon re-reading it, I thought it was worth simply posting in its entirety.

The discussion started with the new credit card rules and soon moved to things that the administration has been doing that have raised or will raise prices on the average person, thanks to taxes, inflation, and/or changed business practices. One person doubted my take on the situation and basically suggested that I believed everything was Obama's fault because he and the "Demon-crats" had an agenda to bring the American traveler (the last subject was a Democrat-floated proposal to use tax to keep the gas price at $4) to his knees, because that "makes SO much sense *eyeroll smiley*". This was my response:

No, it doesn't, because that's not his plan. It's hard to say exactly what his plan is, but I think I've got the gist of it...it springs from a genuine desire to 'set things right' for the people he believes have been disenfranchised by capitalism.

I don't know if he personally endorses the $4/gallon plan. It springs, however, from a belief that Americans use "too much oil", thereby ruining the environment, and the only way to keep them from doing it is to raise the price until they start cutting back of their own accord. The idea itself follows logically... it just doesn't start with reality. The reality is that though a swatch of middle-class Americans may be able to slim out a small percentage of their driving, the working poor have already gotten it as far down as they can and now have to cut down on food and medical care, and the rich have enough money to continue paying for the increased prices and won't be affected much.

His actual ideas, as well, follow logically from their premise. The only problem is that the premise is not grounded in reality. The car fiasco springs from a belief that hybrids are utterly affordable and easily makeable and the only reason why they aren't all over the place is because the auto companies want bigger profits and the oil companies have it in for us. The truth is that hybrids are losses. They're significantly more expensive as new cars. you can't find them as used cars, and they STILL present a loss between manufacturing costs and selling price.

Obama and most of the Democratic majority are not businessmen, and they're not working poor families, and they're not farmers. They don't understand how you can make more without taking it away from someone else, something any six-year-old with a (supervised) vegetable garden learns by August. They don't realize that you can't make something happen just by saying it'll happen, because they've been steeped in the notion of "positive thinking" (which has its uses, but ordering the sun to shine isn't one of them). They've all gone to these huge famous colleges where the ivory tower notion of the way the world works is passed around and around and around like a cow chewing its cud, and then they have lived lives of privilege (compared to most of the rest of us) surrounded by people who have merely reinforced their beliefs.

This, by the way, is why the percentage of people who approve of Obama as a person, the much-quoted 55-60% depending on which day it is, is much higher (twice as high, last I heard) than the percentage of people who approve of his policies. Lots of people like his charisma, but polls keep showing that Americans don't want the government running banks and companies and such and Obama and his crowd just keep doing it, because they believe they can do a better job. And they can't, because their beliefs are based on a perceived notion of justice and injustice and equality and discrimination, instead of the kind of understanding about profit and loss that any business major already has.

But they won't hear it from businessmen, because they believe that businessmen are all collective Scrooges strip-mining the populace because they like to see people suffer as long as it makes them money money money hahahahaha, like any Saturday Morning villain from the '80's and '90's... at least, the ones whose goals weren't destroying the environment Just Because.

Giving back to whom?

President Obama said something in his speech at Notre Dame that caught my attention. Actually, he said many things that caught my attention, but there is one that I want to focus on here. I knew that there was something wrong with his statement, but I did not realize what it was until I started reading today's transcript from the talk show host Rush Limbaugh. I'll be using quotes from both Obama and Limbaugh before taking the discussion in a slightly different direction. Obama was trying to speak as a Christian. Limbaugh was trying to speak as a Conservative. I will be considering this from the perspective of a Christian Conservative. Let's start with Obama.

Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.

Of course, Obama has a fix for this. He spoke of it during another speech, this one at Arizona State:

With a degree from this university, you have everything you need to get started. Did you study business? Why not help our struggling non-profits find better, more effective ways to serve folks in need. Nursing? Understaffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help. Education? Teach in a high-need school; give a chance to kids we can't afford to give up on - prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world. Engineering? Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy that will power our economy and preserve our planet....one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative; it deepens and expands with each day that you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this nation.

Part of this is not news... he's been mistaking personal charity for nationalism for a while now. Nowadays what's important isn't helping people, it's contributing to the nation. This is, of course, the point at which patriotism becomes fascism.
Now Rush Limbaugh responded to the phrase on his radio program today, and brought up a very interesting point:

And then he was telling them, "Give back, give back," all these college graduates. Give back what? They've got nothing to give back. They haven't acquired anything yet! The things they do have, have been given to them, everything -- by their overindulgent Baby Boomer mommies and daddies. Now when they can go out and earn money so they can repay what they've been given, Obama is trying to tell 'em, "Don't do that! Don't give back. Go back and 'give back' by working at a nonprofit or some such thing." It's convoluted.

I hate this whole concept of "giving back" anyway, that somehow it is the duty of the successful to "give back." Walter Williams, an occasional guest host on this program, has it exactly right on this whole notion of "giving back." The only people need to give anything back are the thieves among us: the thieves and the criminals, the people who have taken things which are not theirs. They're the ones that need to give back... But this notion of giving back is so convoluted because Obama is talking to a bunch of college graduates who don't have anything yet and telling them to give back.

This whole notion of giving something back is rooted in the belief whatever you have is somehow ill-gotten. That you've cheated, lied, or stolen to get it or that you're somehow not entitled to it, and so you need to give back.

Now for a different perspective.

Obama is not telling people to do something wrong. It isn't a terrible thing to work for a non-profit. It's true that the country could benefit from more people being engaged in charitable work. Also, Rush is not off-base. To give, you need to have something to give. Some people choose to acquire and give money. Some give their time. Those who give their money support those who give their time. When's the last time you heard a missionary speak at your church? What's the first thing a new missionary needs if he's ever going to make it to the field? Funding. However, this is getting off my intended subject, so let me actually begin to make my point.

The problem with Obama's bent is that he is motivating by guilt. He would have you believe that being well-off is intrinsically evil, and trying to work at a well-paying position is nothing but rank selfishness. He also would have you believe that the rich only become rich at the expense of the poor, and there is no other way to do it except to not be rich. I've spoken on this before.

But the Bible does not motivate charitable giving by guilt. The story of Ananias and Sapphira proves that, when they are told that while they still owned the land, it was their own, and when they sold it, the money was under their control. In the Gospels, we learn that God loves a cheerful giver. Obama is trying to produce the fearful giver.

God wants us to give because we have charitable feelings towards our fellow man, because we care about others, and out of gladness for what God has provided for us. Obama is telling us to give because we owe our fellow man for the simple fact that we succeeded and they did not. (Of course, the definition of success is rapidly shrinking. At first it was $250K/year, then $200K/year, then $120K/year, and now it seems that merely having a college degree puts you in the crosshairs, even if you are not yet employed.) Obama is not approaching this from a Christian viewpoint, no matter what he claims. He is approaching this from a very authoritarian socialist viewpoint.

In the authoritarian socialist government, the State craves control. It cannot bear to rely on people's goodwill, which is why it seeks to control us through fear and coercion. The tax increases Obama is planning is the coercion, and his speeches to these colleges is the fear. He, like most or all liberal Democrats, do not believe that enough people will give to others unless they are giving back... unless they are paying a debt that they know will be collected upon one way or the other. Remember the death threats made against the AIG executives.

I actually have a way to describe the State craving for control. With my first baby, I had to bottle-feed. I got used to it pretty quickly and had him on a schedule. At x time, he got x ounces of milk. Now, for my second, I am able to successfully breastfeed. Breastfeeding is not like bottle feeding. It is a co-operation between the mother and the infant, a matter of supply and demand. It does not run on a schedule. She lets me know when she is hungry, which could be anywhere from one to five hours since her last feeding. There is no gauge, no ounce markers, and I have no way of knowing how much she has had when she refuses the breast and decides that she is done. The only way I can measure my success is when she is weighed at the doctor's office. Then I find out that, despite my fears that she isn't getting half what I would have given her on a bottle, she is actually gaining so well that the doctor is surprised that she is only on breastmilk. Now if I gave into my fear and switched to bottle-feeding, she would be deprived of a wide variety of benefits so well known by now that they no longer need to be proven, and that for no good reason, because breastfeeding is working perfectly well.

The authoritarian socialist government has the same sort of fear. It wants to know how much money is going into charity, and where it is going. It wants to be sure that everyone is "doing their fair share". It is not content with trusting a people who are so generous that, though our government's charitable contributions put us near the bottom of the list of contributors, the private outpouring put us clearly at the top. Obama will not be content with "measuring success by weight gained", in this case merely checking to see if there are fewer poor and/or they are better off than before. No, he must have full control over the very process, even if it is not the best and healthiest way for society to operate.

The Christian Conservative does not scoff at charity, nor does he believe that people can only be poor because they do not deserve help. He sees helping the poor as his blessed duty, blessed because he is capable of doing so, a duty because God's love motivates him to help. However, he must watch out for the liberal rhetoric, and understand that charity should not be coerced; nor must it be motivated by fear and coercion.