Last Sunday, on ABC's This Week, in an interview with Baba Wawa, Scott Brown called for a freeze on federal hiring and federal pay raises (something he'd advocated before on the campaign trail):
WALTERS: President Obama has asked for a spending freeze on almost everything except matters like the military, Social Security, and Medicare. He says he's going line by line through the budget. Now, you have said that's not enough for you; that you want to cut spending and not just freeze it.
Time out: What a bogus question. The "almost everything except" that's supposed to be frozen amounts to just 13% of the federal budget, according to the Cato Institute. So 87% of the nearly $4 trillion dollar budget is exempted from the Obama "freeze." And as Cato's Chris Edwards noted, "a very large part of the 2009 spending spike of $699 billion will be sloshing forward into 2010 and later years," so even that 13% isn't really "frozen" — it will grow by the hundreds of billions of yet-unspent "stimulus" funds already appropriated and still "sloshing" around.
So what are the first 3 items that you would cut?
BROWN: The problem with what the president said is he's not doing it until 2011. We need to do it immediately. We need to put a freeze on federal hires and federal raises because, as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.
Sen. Brown's assertion about federal pay apparently came from a Cato study from last fall based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data. It showed that total compensation (including fringe benefits, which are much more generous for federal employees than those in the private sector) averaged $119,982 for federal civilian employees versus $59, 909 for those in the private sector.
Americans for Limited Government's Carter Clews thinks Sen. Brown's proposal is a good beginning, but doesn't go far enough. He thinks we should cut the federal government's workforce of 1.9 million civilian employees (which has grown steadily for many years, in good times and bad) instead of just freezing it:
… Scott Brown was right – as far as he went. And he should have gone much further. We don’t simply need to put a freeze on federal hires and raises. We need to fire federal employees. The American people, themselves, are clearly prepared to do their part come November. But, it would be a chipper idea to get a head start now by firing about ten percent of the drones and dregs now feeding from the federal trough.
Everywhere else in America, workers are reporting to work each morning not knowing whether they will have a job by the end of the day. More than ten percent of American workers – if you believe Barack Obama’s Labor Department – are now unemployed. And if you add those who are working part time because they can’t find full time jobs, as well as those who have simply given up looking, the figure is nearly double that.
But, there is one place where no one worries about losing his or her job, where the very idea of a pay cut is little more than laughable, and where the next pay raise is as certain as the sun rising in the east and Barack Obama spending money. No, it’s not the Enchanted Kingdom. It is, of course, the federal “work” place.
It is almost impossible to fire a federal employee, but the government would work much better if at least 20% of them were fired. That is just the one's who are not even trying to do their jobs. If you were to fire the ones who are trying somewhat, but doing their jobs badly, that would eliminate another 30% of federal workers. Then there are those who are doing what they are assigned to do adequately well, but what they are doing is so wrongheaded that it is hurting the country. Fire them and you will have eliminated another 25%. The remaining 25% might largely be federal employees who are doing things that ought to be done and doing them well enough that it is reasonable to spare them the axe.
I'm with Charles on this. I like his math. Cutting the federal payroll by about 75% sounds pretty good to me.
In the New York Post, Brian Riedl tried to put the President's breath-taking 2011 budget into perspective (bold emphasis added):
Last year, Obama swept into office promising to make tough choices — and then released a budget proposing the largest debt-and-spending spree in American history. This year, he's at it again: Over 2010-2019, his new plan boosts spending another $1.7 trillion and the deficit by $2 trillion over what he proposed last year.
In fact, this year's budget shows yearly deficits as much as 49 percent larger than even last year's bloated proposal. This spending spree will drive up both taxes and deficits to levels unseen in US history.
Nor are the Obama deficits a temporary result of the recession. Despite a modest recovery, the 2010 budget deficit will be higher than the 2009 deficit. Nearly 42 cents of each dollar Washington spends will be borrowed.
Even by 2020 — which Obama's planners assume will be a time of peace and prosperity — annual deficits would still exceed $1 trillion. By that point, nearly a fifth of all taxes would go toward paying the interest on this record debt.
The president who said "I didn't come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation — I'm here to solve them" would, over the next decade, dump $75,000 per household in added debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren.
Those disturbing budget numbers include the three-year "freeze" (starting next year) that the President bragged about as proving he's a fiscally disciplined deficit hawk — a "freeze" that will theoretically prevent a pitiful $20 billion of additional spending in a budget of nearly $4 trillion (that's $4,000 billion for the math-challenged).
I can think of only three explanations for what the Obama administration is doing to this country:
The President and his top advisors are cynical manipulators, saying what they're saying to fool us, and doing what they're doing to accumulate power and wealth for themselves and their friends, while betting that the day of reckoning will fall on someone else's watch.
If that's the case, they're like many politicians who preceded them, but on a much larger and more reckless scale. And they're much more ignorant and lacking in judgment.
The President and his top advisors genuinely believe that they can improve the economy and make us all better off by spending in excess of 25% of GDP and enacting massive tax increases, especially (but not exclusively) on "the rich" — i.e., the producers, the people and businesses that create jobs and wealth.
If that's the case, they're out of their minds. Completely delusional.
The President and his top advisors are rabid leftist ideologues intent on deliberately destroying capitalism and dragging down the successful and productive regardless of the effect on the economy. They're determined to create a more egalitarian (albeit much poorer) society, no matter what the consequences.
If that's the case, there is no dissuading them, compromising with them, or appealing to their patriotism, values, or concern for average Americans.
I'd like to believe that #1 is the case (because then they could be reasoned with, cajoled, bullied, or bribed). But their utter failure to adjust after multiple electoral warnings (including an astonishing repudiation in Massachusetts), their unwillingness to "triangulate" a la Clinton and tack to the center even a bit, their dogged determination to "double down" regarding takeovers of health care, energy, etc., and their unrelenting focus on wealth redistribution — these things make it more and more likely that, sadly, either #2 or more likely #3 is the case.
As the late Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." This fiscal insanity clearly can't go on forever — or even, I suspect, for a decade. It will stop either because people with a modicum of good sense and concern for the nation recognize the danger and make it stop or because the dollar and the economy completely collapse.
But it seems that the former are not in charge.
That must change, and the sooner the better. This November would be good.
Veronique de Rugy graphed employment and labor force changes against the government's "stimulus" spending, and the results aren't pretty:
Using data from the administration’s website Recovery.gov and from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this accompanying chart shows the monthly increase in the number of unemployed workers and the shrinkage of the civilian labor force in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending. In other words, it shows how not only that many workers have lost their jobs since the administration started spending stimulus funds, but also that many more workers have exited the labor market. The civilian labor force shrinks when individuals who were looking for work or were employed decide that their labor market prospects are not good enough to keep looking for a job or to stay employed. For instance, some people might decide to go to grad school instead of keeping a poorly paid job, while others might decide to not seek a job and instead stay home with their kids. One reason for the shrinkage could be that the current economic state is so bad that workers feel it is not worth their time and energy to keep looking for a job when there is no hope in sight.
Two things are sure. First, if it weren’t for workers’ mass exit from the labor force (600,000 workers exited in December alone), the unemployment numbers would look even worse that they already do. Second, government spending cannot create jobs.
This shouldn't surprise anyone with a modicum of economics education. In fact, it's an utterly predictable result. A study released last March by researchers at Madrid's Juan Carlos University determined that each "green" job created by Spain's rush to embrace "alternative" energy (at a cost of $750,000 apiece in subsidies) cost the Spanish economy 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy.
The problem isn't specific to "green" energy, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about direct government hiring, government contracts, government mandates on private activities, or government subsidies.
When government takes resources out of the economy (by increased taxing or borrowing) to fund any of these activities, it redirects resources from a more productive use to a less productive use. If that weren't the case, the heavy hand of government wouldn't have to forcibly redirect of those resources.
Ipso facto, these activities make us as a society poorer — although they certainly enrich the special interests who benefit from the redirection of those resources.
Remember when candidate Obama promised transparency in the creation of a health care plan, that negotiations would "be on C-SPAN," and that "the public will be part of the conversation and will see the choices being made"? Newt Gingrich remembers, and he has the video:
In a Dec. 30 letter [PDF], Brian Lamb, CEO of C-SPAN, asked the President and the leadership of the House and Senate to "open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage" and pleaded with them "to allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American."
The campaign promises were broken. Lamb's plea was ignored. The secret meetings to craft a government take-over of health care continue. Nothing — not even the overwhelming opposition of the voting public — can be allowed to slow their headlong rush toward socialism.
Today, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid met for eight hours behind closed doors in the White House, and they're rumored to be "very close" to having put together a deal. A deal that we know almost nothing about, and probably won't even have a chance to read before Pelosi and Reid try to ram it through Congress without debate.
The Senate health care bill contains a provision so outrageously anti-democratic, unconstitutional, and fraudulent that Harry Reid and everyone associated with it ought to be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of Washington on a rail. Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government blasted it (emphasis added):
In the Reid Substitute, under Section 3403 in a section entitled “Limitations on Changes to this Subsection,” it states, “It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”
Section 3403 establishes the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB), which would “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending” under the Reid substitute. Wilson said that is “rationing.”
“The whole purpose of this panel is to ration health care to seniors, no question,” Wilson said.
…
The Senate rules change was exposed on the floor of the Senate by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), as reported by the National Review Online. Senator DeMint said, “This is not legislation. This is not law. This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or repeal the law.”
A Senate rule change requires a two-thirds vote. And the Senate cannot constitutionally enact a rule that binds the House:
“This is completely unconstitutional,” Wilson noted, pointing to Article I, Section 5 of the Federal Constitution, which states: “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings…”
But the Democrats' lapdog parliamentarian simply dismissed Sen. DeMint's objection. I'm sure if this abomination of a bill is passed, the same pissant parliamentarian will dutifully rule that this provision, once enacted, can't be changed without a two-thirds vote. So, without a two-thirds majority, the Democrats are going to enact a provision that can't be changed without a two-thirds majority!
Reid applied this rule change only to the section dealing with IMAB and not to the whole bill. I guess that shows how critical he thinks this board, which will control who gets what care when, is to their total control of health care. And it shows he doesn't have the balls to go all-out just yet.
But this is a first cautious step down the road these Democratic Socialists sorely want to travel. If this bill passes and this outrageous rule change stands, I predict we'll see many more efforts to enact unrepealable legislation in the future. This is a means to ensure that even if they lose their majority, the changes they enact now can never be reversed (at least as long as they control at least a third of the votes).
The Democratic Socialists running this country, from the President to the Senate and House leadership and down through the ranks of their rabidly leftist minions, are profoundly undemocratic at heart. Think about the implications of enacting laws that can't be changed or repealed: if broadly applied, future elections become irrelevant. The people who know what's best for us are decreeing how we are to be governed (in defiance of strong public opposition), and we will not be able to overrule their decisions. Ever.
If this effort succeeds and is replicated, we're on our way to no longer being a democratic republic.
The current leadership of the Republican Party leaves a lot to be desired in terms of commitment to the party's alleged limited-government principles, ability to articulate those principles, and willingness to fight hard for those principles. As Obama applies the screws to wavering Democratic senators, and the terrifying specter of government-controlled health care looms closer, the failure of Republican senators to mount any effective opposition is simply unconscionable.
It's not like they're helpless to stop the Obamacare juggernaut. Erick Erickson makes it clear that they have a multitude of tools for stopping this thing dead (emphasis added):
The Founding Fathers created a Republic, but 60 Senators are poised to take it away. With the pending disaster of the passage in the Senate of a bill nationalizing one sixth of the U.S. economy and our entire healthcare system at a cost of over $2.5 trillion, we are faced with a crucial question: are the Republican senators using every means at their disposal to stop this looming, tyrannical abuse of power? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be “no.”
The Senate, unlike the House of Representatives, has parliamentary rules and procedures that give the minority the ability to stall legislation. In fact, unlike the House, the minority have the ability to virtually paralyze the Senate. Doing so is not something we would want or expect for every bad bill that comes through Congress, but the proposed healthcare legislation is probably the worst piece of legislation ever considered by the United States Congress. It is the most intrusive, most damaging, most costly, most dangerous bill to the economic and personal freedom and liberty of individual Americans that Congress has ever considered. If there is any bill that deserves being stopped by shutting down the Senate, it is this one.
There are a whole series of parliamentary maneuvers that could be used by Republican senators to stop this bill. There is a hard backstop to the current process (Christmas). The Republicans’ goal should be to prevent Reid from passing the bill before that time. If he goes past Christmas and is forced to adjourn or recess, the momentum will shift in favor of those opposing the bill.
How could this be done?
To start with, they should stop constantly agreeing to “unanimous consent” requests from the Democrats. Senate Republicans, to date, have allowed Democrats, by unanimous consent, to process 10 amendments. The amendments that have been accepted – Democrat amendments – did not make the over 2000-page atrocity any better. The Republican strategy of trying to pass their own “message” amendments carries no message unless you consider “no strategy to kill the bill” a message. There are no amendments that could possibly make this bill a palatable piece of legislation – and any amendments the Republicans get passed that supposedly make the bill “better” may just make it easier for the Democrats to get final passage. If the Republicans want the news media to cover what they are doing to educate the American people even further about the atrociousness of this bill, they have to create drama on the floor of the Senate. And the only way to do that is through an all-out fight with no holds barred. They need to look like Braveheart, fighting to the end to save freedom. Because, in fact, it is our very freedom and liberty that is at stake.
Erickson has nearly a dozen examples of ways to delay, derail, and obstruct this abomination of a bill — if only the Republicans have the will to fight. Read the whole thing. If you have a Republican senator, send him or her a copy (or at least a link)!
Robert Tracinski urges opponents of government-controlled health care to stop being distracted by all the blather about abortion funding and the "public option." Those are merely sideshows:
Three provisions constitute the vicious heart of the Democrats' health-care overhaul.
The first is "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." This is the requirement that insurance companies have to offer coverage to people who are already sick, and that they be limited in their ability to charge higher rates for customer who pose a higher risk. The extra expense to the insurance companies of covering people with pre-existing conditions will get passed on to existing customers in the form of higher premiums. But why spend years paying these inflated premiums for insurance you're not using, when you can get exactly the same benefits by waiting until you actually fall ill? …
Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. …
Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers another intervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The "individual mandate" requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. …
… Congress didn't have the guts to make this new tax very large—only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year—and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won't actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.
But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.
Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) …
But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills—which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.
So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.
Forget Harry Reid's nonsense about a "compromise" that eliminates the "public option." This monstrous (in every sense of the word) bill, even without the much-debated "public option," is guaranteed to destroy the insurance industry and eventually drive us all into the functional equivalent of Medicaid. It will lead to single-payer with a vengeance, turning health care into a gigantic welfare program. We'll have no choice but to be its "beneficiaries." Ask someone on Medicaid or a health care provider serving Medicaid clients how desirable that is.
This isn't about "choice" or "affordability" or even "access." It's about control, folks. They want more control. It's unconstitutional as hell, dangerous as hell, and evil as hell. Call or write your senators and tell them not just "No," but "Hell, no!"
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
— Daniel Webster
Full disclosure: I have exactly the kind of coverage that Tracinski has — a high-deductible health insurance policy coupled with a Health Savings Account. I love it. I think encouraging more people to embrace this option would go a long way toward addressing the problems with our current health care system.
Does your car insurance cover oil changes, tire and battery replacements, and other routine maintenance? Of course not! Insurance should be for unanticipated expenses. A high-deductible health care plan works just like your car insurance — it covers unanticipated or "catastrophic" expenses (my United Health Care policy also covers "preventative care," including annual physicals — like paying for oil changes to encourage you to do them to minimize future costs).
In any case, both the Senate and House versions of Obamacare go out of their way to eliminate such patient-centered, consumer-controlled choices. They're determined to substitute their choices for yours. The Senate's POS "compromise" legislation would outlaw such an option.
Even if you're not sure such a plan would be right for you, don't you think that option should be available? Email or phone (PDF) your senators! Now!
Last week at AEI's Enterprise Blog, Nick Schulz posted about the astonishing curricula vitae of Obama cabinet members:
A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.
When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15 percent and 19 percent of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet—over 90 percent of its prior experience was in the public sector—is remarkable.
Remarkable, indeed — especially since cabinet officers who arguably don't need private sector experience (plus the Postmaster General, who arguably does, given the USPS's financial woes) were excluded from the data. But I suppose they're the perfect fit for a president who's proud of having turned his back on productive private-sector work.
These people have neither the experience, nor the temperament, nor the mindset to effectively deal with our current economic woes. They and their union buddies, academic associates, lackeys, and sycophants are exactly the wrong crowd to conduct Thursday's "jobs summit." As Investor's Business Daily observed:
The government, from lawmakers to bureaucrats, does not create jobs. It can move jobs from the private sector to the public through tax-and-spend wealth redistribution policies. But because government spending crowds out private investment, it is not a wealth creator and therefore cannot be a job creator.
Government is often a job killer. Economist Richard Rahn noted during the last Bush presidency that "government spending reduces more jobs in the private sector than it can create in the government sector."
"Countries with large government sectors," such as France and Germany, Rahn said, "tend to have much higher unemployment rates than countries with smaller government sectors."
Economic reality won't matter at the summit, though. What matters are appearances.
The White House wants to make a show of doing something, especially after its policies have done nothing to boost growth or stop the job losses. It would like to erase from public memory the utter failure of the $787 billion stimulus legislation approved just after Barack Obama took office. The administration knows its claim that thousands of jobs have been created or saved by the stimulus is bunk. And it knows the public knows.
But the stench of failed government solutions will remain.
The Wall Street Journal has a wonderful opinion piece by Daniel Henninger that I think really explains why the polling numbers have gone so south on all the variations of ObamaCare (and on Obama and Congress, too):
In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939.
…
Everything about the health-care exercise is looking very old hat, starting with the old guys working on it. Max Baucus, Patrick Leahy, Pete Stark—all were elected to Congress in the 1970s, and live on as the immortals in Washington's Forever Land. But it's more than the fact that Congress looks old. The health-care bill is big, complex, incomprehensible and coercive—all the things people hate nowadays.
…
The larger point here isn't necessarily partisan. It's a description of the way people live their lives in a 21st century world, and how disconnected politics has become from that world.
If we were really living in the world of leading-edge politics that many people thought they were getting with Barack Obama, he would have proposed an iPhone for health care—a flexible system for which all sorts of users could create or choose health-care apps that suited their needs. Over time, with trial and error, a better system would emerge.
No chance of that. Our outdated political software can't recognize trial and error. What ObamaCare is doing with health care—the "public option"—may be fine with the activist left, but I suspect it's starting to strike many younger Americans as at odds with their lives, as not somewhere they want to go. Wait until EPA's ghost busters start enforcing cap-and-trade.
I think he's spot-on, but the House Democrats certainly don't get it. They're doubling down — almost literally. After declaring the other day that they want a do-over (I think they called it a "reset"), they've now revealed that they have a new, improved health care bill. The old one was 1012 pages. The new one is just shy of 2000.
Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the TV broadcast "Rendezvous with Destiny," a 30-minute campaign commercial for Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, delivered by Ronald Reagan. It was a variation of a speech called "A Time for Choosing," padded with some "vote for Goldwater because…" stuff.
Reagan delivered this speech many times in 1964, including when he nominated Sen. Goldwater at the Republican National Convention. Reagan fans of a sufficient age have always just called it "The Speech." It is as meaningful today as it was in 1964. These excerpts are (despite what the intro at this site says) from his nominating speech at the convention:
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
This idea — that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power — is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
…
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. …
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Hat tip to Rush Limbaugh for reminding me (albeit a day late) and for these quotes:
"In holding up Reagan, we're not holding up a man, a cult of personality figure. We're holding up principles. We're reminding people of how the country was founded." — Rush
"If you think that the era of Reagan is over simply because the external threat of the Soviet Union was beaten down, you have missed the whole point. Reagan was talking about tyranny, liberty, and freedom, and freedom is always threatened, always has to be fought for." — Rush
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? …
They haven't quit in Washington. They're still working hard to come up with a government-controlled health care plan, to enact a crippling cap-and-tax energy bill, to regulate and control ever more of our economic activities, and to make more and more Americans beholden to the government and controlled by the government.
Our Country Deserves Better has announced the next vehicle for Americans to express their disapproval of the current administration's ongoing efforts to turn the U.S. into a socialist banana republic. Tea Party Express II is another cross-country bus tour with rallies scheduled in nearly three dozen locations (including Denver!):
All throughout the recent Tea Party Express national tour we kept receiving emails and phone calls from people around the nation who lived far away from the route our buses took across America. We vowed at the time to keep the Tea Party Express effort alive – and that’s exactly what we are doing.
It is our pleasure to announce the “Tea Party Express: Countdown to Judgment Day” which will cross the nation from coast-to-coast, border-to-border October 25th – November 11th — 1 year ahead of the November 2010 congressional elections… or as our Czarina of the tea party movement, Amy Kremer, likes to refer to as “Judgment Day.” The Tea Party Express will kick-off the tour with a rally in San Diego, California on October 25th and wind up the tour with a rally in Orlando, Florida on November 11th (Veteran’s Day). We’ve just posted the new tour map and itinerary (with the dates of rallies in each city) at our website: www.TeaPartyExpress.org
This won’t just be a continuation of the tour we just completed. We will be having a lot of special surprises and additions as we grow this effort — and continue the fight against government-run healthcare, Cap & Trade, bailouts, out-of-control deficit spending and the growth in the size and intrusiveness of government.
Check out the route map and rally schedule here. And if there's a stop near you, get your ass out there!
If you're in the Denver area, I hope you'll join me in attending the rally Saturday at the State Capitol from 10 AM to 2 PM (I'll be the bearded guy wearing the "INFIDEL" t-shirt). Here's a description from Colorado Tea Party Patriots:
Please join a coalition of 9-12 and Tea Party groups from across the state for a "March on Denver". This event is in support of the national "March on DC" that is taking place on September 12th in Washington DC. March on Denver speakers will include: Jason Lewis, John Caldera, Amy Oliver and Ari Armstrong. Live entertainment will be provided by the rock band "Citizen Pain" and country singer Rich Owen. LET FREEDOM RING!
If you're elsewhere in the U.S., I bet there's a 9/12 event or rally near you. Go to Tea Party Patriots and scroll down to the list of states to access information for your area. Of course, there's the big 9.12.09 March on Washington if you're in that neighborhood, or you joined the Tea Party Express. If you can't be there (or anywhere), check the D.C. schedule and look for coverage on Fox News.
(BTW, if you're still wondering if all this tea party stuff is a real grassroots movement or astroturf, go to Tea Party Patriots and scroll down past the list of states to the list of local Tea Party Patriot Groups. OMG, there must be 500 of them!)
Mark Steyn was the "undocumented guest host" today on the Rush Limbaugh Show. I listened to a bit of it at lunch, and he totally cracked me up. It seems that Canada is suffering from a sperm shortage. The entire nation of 30 million people has only 33 sperm donors.
I figured Steyn had probably written a funny column about that. But before I got around to looking for it, a friend had sent me the link. It's quintessential Steyn — brilliant writing, wicked humor, and groan-inducing word play sprinkled with enough serious truths to make it more than an amusing trifle. Canada's sperm shortage, you see, was created by the government:
… Apparently, the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act makes it illegal to pay donors for sperm. I mean, it wasn’t even the usual Canadian Wheat Board-type racket whereby you’d only be able to sell your seed to the Canadian Sperm Board at a price agreed upon by representatives of the federal-provincial Semen Commissions. Instead, they just nixed the whole deal, and, once Johnny Canuck found out he wasn’t going to be remunerated, virtually the entire supply dried up.
As a result, this once proud Dominion now has to import sperm. According to CTV, 80 per cent of Canadian women who conceive through donor sperm are getting it from the United States, mainly from men in Georgia and northern Florida. Canada’s future is now in American hands.
You know how it is: you wait ages for a good sperm story and then they all come at once. It seems there’s also a shortage of the stuff in Sweden. But, in contrast to Canada, this is caused not by government intervention in supply but by a surge in demand, from Swedish lesbian couples anxious to conceive. Inga and Britta had been trying for a child for ages but nothing seemed to work. Then it occurred to them this might be because they’re both women. So they headed off to the sperm clinic, whereupon the Sapphic demand ran into the problem of male inability to satisfy it. There appear to be higher than usual levels of non-functioning sperm.
Don’t worry, I’m not being Swedophobic in mocking the watery emissions of Nordic manhood. It’s a widespread problem: “Concern As Sperm Count Falls By A Third In UK Men” (the Daily Mail, 2004). … Still, even for a demographic doom-monger such as myself, you could hardly ask for a more poignant fin de civilisation image than a stampede of broody lesbians stymied only by defective semen, like some strange dystopian collaboration between Robert Heinlein and Russ Meyer set in a world divided into muff divers and duff donors.
Read the whole thing . Then delve deep into the 490+ comments — really, it's worth it. Some are unintentionally funny, and others are intentionally funny (a call for a "cash for spunkers" program). Some add useful information and insights (another cause of Canada's problem: their courts have held sperm donors liable for child support!). And some are just good comments:
george: I'm shocked that anyone alive today is still able to write like this.
Kevin: The idea that sexual freedom is the only freedom left is met by an immediate cry to censor. Who said Irony was dead?
reliapundit: liberty without natural law isn't libertarianism; it's libertinage.
the postmodern left has rejected natural law and embraced moral and cultural relativism.
these people want a paternal state in which the parent supplies food, shelter, clothing an allowance but also let's them stay out all night uses drugs sleepo with anybody and anything and not be required contribute a penny to household expenses or work doing any hopusehold chores.
iow: postmodern lefists are the functional equivalents of teenagers.
I think reliapundit is onto something. In my experience, we are simply awash in mature adults who are the functional equivalents of teenagers. And the vast majority of them are leftists.
"Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by a Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?" — Rush Limbaugh
