Obamacare Architect Says "Liberals" are Stupid

You may have heard, or read, by now about the controversy surrounding Obamacare (and Romneycare) architect Jonathan Gruber.  If not, here's a pretty good summary in video form.

If you follow the video link to YouTube, you can watch much longer versions of his remarks in context, which makes them even worse.

Most of the controversy surrounds Gruber's insults directed at American voters.  He called American voters stupid and economically illiterate, and accuses Americans of not caring about the uninsured.  His solution, then (in his own words) was to "[exploit] the lack of economic understanding of the American voter", and to use the "tortured way" in which the bill was written, and the bill's "lack of transparency" to trick American voters into accepting a law they would have otherwise rejected.

Gruber's statements shouldn't be controversial.  Gruber is right.  Sort of.  If you actually believed that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor", and "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan", and that Obamacare would cover the supposed 40 million uninsured Americans, and that Obamacare would cover preexisting illnesses, all while "bend[ing] the cost curve down" and not "add[ing] a dime to the national deficit", then you sir/ma'am really are naive, gullible, economically illiterate - and yes - stupid.

In other words, Gruber is saying that "Liberals" are stupid, because "Liberals" swallowed every lie that Gruber - and more importantly, every Democrat politician - sold them, hook, line and sinker.

Ladies and gentlemen: Gruber is referring to you.

Conservatives and Libertarians have been warning the country about all of Gruber's and the Democrats' lies since 2009.  Conservatives and Libertarians aren't Gruber's "stupid", economically illiterate, stingy voters.  "Liberals" are.

Possibly the most important part of this whole controversy is that Gruber unintentionally gave the whole world a glimpse into how Leftists think.

Leftists believe ordinary people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, and too stingy to care for the needy through voluntary charity.  Leftists therefore believe that ordinary people need Leftist elites - like Gruber and all the Democrats who forced this monstrosity on the rest of us - to make decisions for ordinary folk and force them to care for the needy at gun point, through taxation.

The fact that charity provides politicians with no opportunity for graft, and taxation offers myriads of opportunities for graft, never enters the Leftist elites' minds, of course.  It's all for the children, you see.

So, thank you, Jonathan Gruber, for being honest.  Even if you never meant to be. 

Obesity Is a Choice, Not a Disease

In another case of science confirming the obvious, a study conducted by the University of Minnesota concludes that telling people that obesity is a disease implies that they have no control over their weight (more importantly, their health) and discourages them from finding solutions by absolving them of responsibility. 

University of Minnesota researchers asked more than 700 adults to read one of three articles about obesity. 

One was a real article from the New York Times about the decision to classify obesity as a disease.

A second article focused on standard tips for managing weight, including having a weekly weigh-in and varying exercise to keep it interesting. 

The third piece argued that obesity is not a disease and emphasised [sic.] the importance of a person’s lifestyle to their health. 

... 

The obese men and men who read that obesity was a disease saw dieting for health as less important than the others.

They were also less concerned about their weigh, happier with their size and chose higher calorie sandwiches.

As with most things in life, the most important factor determining health and fitness is personal responsibility, especially in a country as wealthy and technologically advanced as the US.  Yes, genetics play a role, but as this chart from USA Today demonstrates, the obesity rate in the US rocketed from 13% in 1962 to 36% in 2010.  Even if the data is only 80% accurate, that's still an enormous increase in only 50 years.  A population's genetics simply cannot change that drastically in one generation.  Genetics are not the issue.

Another factor that comes up when discussing obesity in the US is poverty, because in the US the poor are fatter than the rich.

Wages were inversely related to BMI and obesity in a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 adults – meaning, those with low wages had increased BMI as well as increased chance of being obese (Kim & Leigh, 2010).

Supposedly, this phenomenon is the result of "food deserts".

Many Americans reside in food deserts—communities where retailers offering fresh food are scarce but fast-food restaurants and convenience stores selling prepared foods can abound. 

... 

Gallagher says. “You can’t choose healthy food if you don’t have access to it.”

According to this theory, poor people tend to be fatter because they can't afford to eat healthy foods. 

NPR.org: Food deserts mapped from coast to coast

I've always thought this theory was a load of steer manure based on personal experience.  First, my family and I are immigrants.  We moved to the US in 1983 and lived in poverty for years, and eating fast food was an extremely rare treat for us precisely because eating at home was far more affordable.  Second, although Aimee and I are solidly middle class, we still eat out rarely because we have eight kids and cooking a healthy meal at home is far less expensive than eating at a fast food restaurant or eating "prepared foods".

Personal experience is anecdotal, but now we have empirical evidence that my hunch was right.   

three years and $500 million into the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative, there's a problem: A study suggests it's not working. 

... 

When a grocery store was opened in one Philadelphia food desert, 26.7 percent of residents made it their main grocery store and 51.4 percent indicated using it for any food shopping, the report found. But among the population that used the new supermarket, the researchers saw no significant improvement in BMI, fruit and vegetable intake, or perceptions of food accessibility, although there was a significant improvement in perception of accessibility to fruits and vegetables...

As James Taranto puts it...

The results "mirror findings in the U.K., where researchers created a similar comparison of two neighborhoods in Scotland and observed no net effect on fruit and vegetable intake," 

...

It's not that most "food desert" denizens eat unhealthy food because grocers refuse to supply them with fruits and vegetables. Instead, grocers don't supply them with fruits and vegetables because the demand is insufficient. 

You mean poor people are endowed with free will and are therefore responsible for their own actions, just like everyone else?  Isn't that amazing?

So then, why do so many people refuse to admit that obesity is a matter of individual responsibility?  It seems to me that those claiming that the obese are helpless in their plight hail from the political left.  Leftists, as a general rule, don't believe in individual responsibility, and believe deeply in paternalistic, sugar daddy government.

If obesity is not a matter of individual responsibility, if instead it's the fault of those mean old Capitalists, that gives them an excuse (as if they ever need one) to demand more government intrusion in free markets - which is just another way of saying individuals' free will choices.

Before anyone claims that stating that obesity is a matter of individual responsibility is a form of "fat shaming", let's think about some questions.

What is more shameful; being helpless, or being in control of ones self?  What is more empowering; being at the mercy of outside forces, or having the power to control ones own actions?

The choice seems obvious to me.

Capitalism is Good for the Environment

Remember the Kyoto Protocol?  It's alright if you don't.  Nobody else seems to.  Which is funny, because "Environmentalists" warned of war, famine, pestilence and death if the world didn't ratify it.  No, seriously.  

Then-VP Al Gore signed the treaty, but the US Senate never ratified it, making it invalid in the US.  Leftists, of course, blamed President Bush, because everything is Bush's fault.  Supposedly, Americans' "Commercialism and greed overcome all common sense and thought for the welfare of future generations. This failure causes hatred not only of the Bush administration, but of American commercialism in general".  Also, the refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol was a failure of American leadership in the world.

Sixteen years later, we "greedy" Americans must look more dastardly than ever, right?  Wrong.

In 2012, a surprising twist and without ever ratifying it, the United States became the first major industrialized nation in the world to meet the United Nation’s original Kyoto Protocol 2012 target for CO2 reductions.

 

How is this possible?  How did we "greedy" Americans succeed in meeting the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol - having never ratified it - while all those virtuous nations that enthusiastically signed the treaty failed?

One word.  Frack.

The largest drop in emissions in 2012 came from coal, which is used almost exclusively for electricity generation (see figure below). During 2012, particularly in the spring and early summer, low natural gas prices led to competition between natural gas- and coal-fired electric power generators. Lower natural gas prices resulted in reduced levels of coal generation, and increased natural gas generation—a less carbon-intensive fuel for power generation, which shifted power generation from the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel (coal) to the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel (natural gas).

We know that the increased supply of natural gas in the US economy resulted from advances in, and the increased use of, hydraulic fracturing techniques, which unlock reserves that were previously inaccessible.  We also know that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques became economically viable because of the recent increase in energy prices.  Higher prices created an incentive to invest in fracking.  Fracking increased supply, which, along with innovations spurred by competition, resulted in lower natural gas prices, and that prompted energy producers to switch from coal to natural gas.

In other words, free markets succeeded where bloated, collectivist government mandates failed.  In other words, American "greed" turned out to be more virtuous than multinational "virtue". 

There is another, less rosy possible reason why the US's carbon emissions fell since 2007.  The recession began in 2007, and the American economy remains weak.  A weak economy results in reduced energy consumption and demand.  But I don't think that was a major factor here.  After all, Europe's economy is even weaker than that of the US, but all European nations failed to meet their Kyoto goals.

The lesson here is one sensible people learned when they saw the devastation the Soviet Union caused to its environment - free markets work, even in environmental matters.

But don't expect "Environmentalists" to embrace free market solutions to environmental problems.  "Environmentalists" are, for the most part, watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside.  Environmental concerns are an excuse for them to give government even greater power over people's lives.  No matter how well free market solutions prove to work, most "Environmentalists" will always reject them, because their main concern is not the environment.  Their main concern is bloated, morbidly obese, inescapable government.

California Running Out of Other People's Money

In the past, when I've written about how, "the trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money", I've used Greece as an example.  Although I still think Greece is the best example, several states in the US are doing their best to catch up.  California is arguably in the lead.

The real cause for California's fiscal crisis is simple: They spend too much money. Between 1996 and 2012, the state's population grew by just 15 percent, but spending more than doubled, from $45.4 billion to $92.5 billion (in 2005 constant dollars).

What are Californians getting for all this government spending? According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation's welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country's population. That's four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York [another "Liberal" bastion ~ OS]. Meanwhile, California eighth-graders finished ahead of only Mississippi and District of Columbia students on reading and math test scores in 2011.

Surely, California can solve all its problems by taxing the rich, right?  I mean, that's what Democrats always tell us.  Except, California has already tried that.

Despite Brown's historic tax hike, the California Legislative Analyst's Office announced this week that the state still faces a $2 billion budget deficit just for the next fiscal year. California's liberal electorate has already racked up an additional $370 billion in state and local debt over that last decade. That is more than 20 percent of the state's gross domestic product.

According to the California State Budget Crisis Task Force, that comes to more than $10,000 in debt for every Californian. And because the state's credit rating is so low, California taxpayers must fork over about $2 for every new dollar borrowed. In 2012 alone, the state budget included more than $7.5 billion in debt service -- more than most states' budgets.

Don't think for a second that California's chronic deficits are caused by low taxes. Even before last Tuesday's tax hikes, California had the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate. Now it has the nation's highest top marginal rate and the nation's highest sales tax. And the budget still isn't balanced.

What do Californians do when fed up with excessive taxation, regulation and debt?  Move to Texas.

Middle-class families that want actual jobs, not welfare, are fleeing California in droves. According to IRS data compiled by the Manhattan Institute, since 2000, almost 2 million Americans have left California for other states. Their most popular destination: Texas.

It isn't a tough move to make. Thanks to low taxes and simple regulations, Chief Executive magazine ranked Texas as the best state to do business in for 2012. Guess who ranked dead last? That's right, California. And not only does Texas (6.8 percent) have a far lower unemployment rate than California (10.2 percent), but, according to the Census Bureau, income inequality is worse in California than it is in Texas.

Again, this is a case of federalism at work.  States with low taxes, light regulation and a business friendly climate attract businesses (duh!), which create jobs, which attract people.  The opposite is also true.

From the Manhattan Institute's Civic Report of September 2012.

Note how the top "sender states" - the ones people are leaving in droves - are "Liberal" bastions, while the top destination states - the ones to which people and businesses are escaping - are largely Conservative.  This shouldn't surprise anyone.

What makes matters worse for California is that when they push people out of their state, those people take their money with them (duh!), which shrinks California's tax base.  California isn't just losing people to other states, it's losing money.

From the Manhattan Institute's Civic Report of September 2012.

So, California keeps raising tax rates on a smaller number of people, which causes more people to move out, which shrinks the state's tax base, so they raise tax rates...

California really should be the #1 place to live in the US.  The state's natural beauty, raw materials (petroleum and natural gas abound), fertile soil and weather should make it a great place to live and do business.  Instead, California's politicians, elected by California's people, keep making it increasingly difficult to make a living, so people move to Texas, where doing business is much easier.

So, which model do you think the US as a whole is currently following; California or Texas?  Which model should we follow?

Euro Zone Back in Recession (Updated)

How's Socialism working for Europe?

The debt crisis dragged the euro zone into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite  modest growth in Germany andFrance, data showed on Thursday.

The two leading economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period.

Got that?  Their two leading economies grew at the roaring rate of 0.2%.

But the resilience could not save the austerity-hit 17-nation bloc from overall contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2-percent drop in the second quarter.

Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone’s 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy in recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.

Incredibly, this is the direction some Americans actually want to follow them off the cliff by spending more, borrowing more and taxing more.  It's insane.  We should be taking the opposite approach, because as Ed Morrissey states...

At some point, the Germans and French citizens will tire of having their production dedicated to rescuing less disciplined neighbors on the Continent.  When that day comes, the Atlantic will not protect us from the shock waves — which is why it’s more urgent than ever for the US to get its own fiscal house in order.

Fortunately, our president promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  Of course, it's his second term now, and he hasn't even tried, but it's the thought that counts, right?

UPDATE (18NOV2012): Half of UK voters want to leave the EU, and I can't say that I blame them.

The survey will fuel the growing political debate about Britain’s future place in the EU, which has seen even Cabinet ministers suggesting that the UK would prosper outside the union.

The YouGov poll showed that 49 per cent of voters would vote to leave the EU in a referendum. Twenty-eight per percent said they would opt to remain a member, while 17 per cent said they did not know how they would vote.

British voters are also gloomy about the future of the EU: 65 per cent said they are pessimistic about the union’s prospects, while only 22 per cent were optimistic.

Another poll published yesterday in The Guardian claims it's more like 56%, but the link wouldn't work for me (maybe it'll work now).

Remember when Americans thought the EU would overtake the US as the world's leading economic power?  No nation, or group of nations, can spend more than they take in, lavish their population with welfare programs that give them incentives to not work, punish those who do work with excessive taxes, make it excessively difficult to start or run a business with excessive regulation,  produce too few children to replace in the future the people who are working today, and expect to survive.

And we're making all the same mistakes.

Just Can't Please Some People

Cornel West thinks Pres Obama isn't "Liberal" enough.

“I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion,” West lamented to host Amy Goodman. “Poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people,” he continued.

West then took a stab at the president: “It’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies,” he said.

That is an incredibly racist thing to say, but because Cornel West is a Leftist "civil rights activist", he'll get away with it.

Running Out of Other People's Money

Margaret Thatcher famously said that "the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".  She didn't say what happens then.  Greece gives us an idea.

Private businesses have closed down in the thousands. Unemployment stands at a record 25 percent, with more than half of Greece's young people out of work. Caught between plunging incomes and ever increasing taxes, families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Higher heating fuel prices have meant many apartment tenants have opted not to buy heating fuel this year. Instead, they'll make do with blankets, gas heaters and firewood to get through the winter. Lines at soup kitchens have grown longer.

But at least Greeks are pulling together in hard times, right?

Life in Athens is often punctuated by demonstrations big and small, sometimes on a daily basis. Rows of shuttered shops stand between the restaurants that have managed to stay open. Vigilantes roam inner city neighborhoods, vowing to "clean up" what they claim the demoralized police have failed to do. Right-wing extremists beat migrants, anarchists beat the right-wing thugs and desperate local residents quietly cheer one side or the other as society grows increasingly polarized.

.....

After battering his Egyptian assistant, the mob turned on Mr Abdulbasset, who had defied police to keep his shop open...  The riot police watched on but did not intervene

The authorities will take care of all this vigilante justice, right?

Greece's sclerotic justice system has been hit by a protracted strike that has left courts only functioning for an hour a day as judges and prosecutors protest salary cuts.

At least if they get beat up, Greeks still have "universal", government-provided medicine, right?

A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May," it read, "Please respect their work."
.....
"When the pharmacies are closed and I can't get my insulin, which is my life for me, what do I do? ... How can we survive?" asked Voula Hasiotou, a member of an association of diabetics who turned out for the rally.

Keep all this in mind when politicians tell you we need to keep borrowing over $1 Trillion per year, as we have during all four years of Pres Obama's first term. 

Think this can't happen in the US?  On the contrary, there's no reason why it can't.  And if we let it happen, it'll be far worse.  The US and EU bailed Greece out.  Our population is 31x bigger than that of Greece, and our economy is the biggest in history.  No one is big enough to bail us out.

Here's one last quote from the AP article on Greece.

"Our society is on a razor's edge," Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said recently, after striking shipyard workers broke into the grounds of the Defense Ministry. "If we can't contain ourselves, if we can't maintain our social cohesion, if we can't continue to act within the rules ... I fear we will end up being a jungle."

Not even close, Mr Dendias.  Greece is following the eternal cycle.  From oppression to revolution, from revolution to freedom, from freedom to prosperity, from prosperity to entitlement and indolence, from entitlement and indolence to anarchy, and finally from anarchy to dictatorship and oppression.

And we're heading in the same direction.

Democrats' Plan for the Debt Crisis

I've asked this question of several "Liberals" and, so far, received exactly zero answers.  What is the Democrats' plan to avert America's approaching debt crisis?  Does anyone out there have an answer?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Here's a little background.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Budget Committee Thursday that President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget — “the most expensive in United States history” — would “put the U.S. on an ‘unsustainable’ course” if enacted.

Geithner also told committee Chairman Paul Ryan that although the Obama administration doesn’t have a “definitive solution” to the debt crisis, it definitely knows it doesn’t like the Republican solution. ...

“We have millions of Americans retiring every day, and that will drive substantially the rate of growth of health care costs. You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours,” Geithner said.

Steal From the Poor, Give to the Rich

Big government often passes itself off as a kind of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but in practice, it often works the other way around.

As a part-owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, Jay Z profited at taxpayer expense when the state of New York abused its eminent domain powers to seize privately-owned homes and business and then handed that land over to fellow Nets owner and real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner, who built a new arena for the Nets to call home in Brooklyn.

Oh, and Jay Z endorsed Pres Obama.

But that shouldn't be surprising, since most wealthy people vote Democrat.

UPDATE (08NOV12): Pres Obama won eight of the ten wealthiest counties.

In an election that often focused on debates about class warfare, President Barack Obama was favored over multimillionaire businessman Mitt Romney in eight of the nation's 10 wealthiest counties.

And his margin of victory in all eight counties was greater than that of the national vote, in which Obama was leading by 50 percent to 48 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting.

The findings are based on a CNBC.com analysis of Census Bureau numbers on average annual household income from 2006-2011 and results from Tuesday's elections.

Which is the "party of the rich"?

Why No "October Surprise"?

Every presidential election seems to bring out some "October surprise"; a scandle involving a major candidate revealed in late October to try and sway voters.  That didn't happen this year.  PJ Media has a theory as to why.

In Mitt Romney’s case, the answer is pretty obvious: He’s squeaky clean. His entire adult life has been like a boring treatise on Mormon moral rectitude.  There are no skeletons in Romney’s closet, otherwise we would have heard about them.

But in Barack Obama’s case, the situation is reversed: Everything he’s ever done is scandalous. The reason there was no October Surprise for Obama is that we’re all scandaled out. Anyone’s who been paying attention since 2008 has literally been in paralytic shock every single day. We spent October 2012 exactly as we’ve spent every month of the last four years: Our jaws on the floor, aghast, stupefied, unable to breathe. Almost every single thing Obama has done since he’s been in the national spotlight could have been and should have been a career-ending October Surprise. But the mainstream media, as we all know, has devoted itself to protecting him.

The article then provides an extensive list of scandals that would've ended almost any other politician's career.  Here are a few of them.  And I really mean few.

• $6 trillion in new national debt under Obama…after he promised to decrease the deficit.

• In both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the Obama campaign purposely disabled the credit card verification system for its Web site donations, allowing anyone from any foreign country to donate with no limit and no proof of identity

• Operation Fast & Furious — a government-sponsored illegal gun-running scheme designed to purposely go awry so as to induce public outcry for gun control.

• Militarily intervened in Libya in 2011 without the Congressional approval required by the War Powers Act — technically an impeachable offense.

• Under Obama’s watch, for the first time in history America’s credit rating was downgraded, due to his poor economic policies.

• Appointed Van Jones, a former avowed communist who supported a “9/11 Truth” petition, to be “Green Jobs Czar.”

• Appointed Anita Dunn, who said Chairman Mao was her “favorite philosopher,” to be White House Communications Director.

• Appointed John Holdren, who perviously entertained the notion of forced mass sterilzation to stop overpopulation, to be Science Czar.

• Appointed Steven Chu, who openly advocated an artificial increase in gasoline prices to $10/gallon (and similar increases in other energy prices) to be Secretary of Energy.

• Appointed Kevin Jennings, who led a group that promoted X-rated “sex-positive” textbooks for 13-year-olds, instructed teenagers at a conference how to perform “fisting” (anal penetration by fists), who refused to report instances of statutory rape, and who expressed admiration for a member of NAMBLA, to be America’s “Safe School’s Czar.”

The list goes on and on.  If you din't already know all of these, you haven't been paying attention.  Or, you've only been paying attention to the dinosaur media.

But here's the best part; a poem from the comments.

The Sixth of November

Remember, remember, this sixth of November,
The radicals’ treasonous plot.
I know of no reason the radicals’ treason
Should e’er be forgiv’n or forgot.

The Sixties were waning, and Leftists were claiming
That radical changes were due.
Their Marxist solution was armed revolution:
The Weathermen made their debut.

The radicals raged on the national stage, and
Horrific explosions ensued.
Their bombs were dramatic, but also erratic;
They sometimes killed radicals, too.

The Leftists grew older, the underground, colder,
And so they came in from the cold.
“Subvert from within – in the long run, we’ll win,” said
The Leftists, determined and bold.

And thus it began – this nefarious plan – and
The radicals slowly took charge:
Complete infiltration of all education;
The long institutional march.

The journalist schools would produce useful fools, for
The Left would need media shills.
And Hollywood, too, would assist in the coup, with
Its slick propagandizing skills.

“Community action” would build a new faction;
’Twould organize proles on the street.
A smooth politician would front for the mission,
And run for the president’s seat.

The radicals’ goal, which they proudly extol, is
A communist U.S. of A.
Collectivist schemes lead to brutal regimes, and
For this do the radicals pray.

But Jefferson’s aim, with the charters he framed, was
To guard individual rights.
And “redistribution” was not a solution,
But one of the evils to fight.

So let us remember, this sixth of November,
Just what is at stake on this date.
Will Jefferson’s dream, or the radicals’ scheme, now
Determine America’s fate?

The Nanny State Fails the Sandy Test

What's wrong with bloated, morbidly obese government?  As if the expense and violation of basic rights wasn't bad enough, it turns out that big government doesn't do it's job.  Take New York City, for example.

With an almost eerie foreshadowing, the dangers laid out by scientists as they tried to press public officials for change in recent years describes what happened this week: Subway tunnels filled with water, just as they warned. Tens of thousands of people in Manhattan lost power. The city shut down. . . .

“A fair question to ask is, have we been as focused as we need to be for emergency preparations,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize ties to the administration. “We’ve just been lucky. We need hardening for the risk we’ve always faced. Until things happen, people aren’t willing to pay for it.”

Government has important, limited, legitimate functions in society.  Infrastructure is one of them.  So, why didn't New York City build the infrastructure that could have prevented the destruction caused by Super Storm Sandy? 

Here in New York we have a very busy government. It’s worried about the kinds of fats we eat and the size of the soft drinks we buy, and there is no shortage of regulations affecting businesses, street vendors, and individuals. But in all this exciting fine tuning, nobody seems to have bothered to think about the much greater task of keeping floodwaters out of the subway system. Admittedly, getting public support and finding the money for flood protection would be hard, but it is exactly that kind of hard job that governments are supposed to do. Leadership is getting the important things done, not looking busy on secondary tasks while the real needs of the city go quietly unmet.

Every law, every regulation, every tax requires enforcement, and that requires resources.  When government gets busy regulating every aspect of people's lives, there are no resources left to do what it's supposed to do.  The result is what's happening now at Staten Island.

Even as the city and feds rushed food, water and generators to the borough, residents and their elected officials fumed that Staten Island was being prepped as the starting line for Sunday's New York City Marathon, even as the rest of the island is left to deal with the aftershocks of the mega-storm.

"The notion of diverting even one police officer, one first responder, one asset away from this carnage is beyond irrational,” Councilman James Oddo told the Daily News. Earlier, Oddo called the idea of hosting the marathon as “idiotic” on his Facebook page.

Obviously, NYC's government has its priorities backwards.  But that shouldn't come as a surprise.  That's what happens when government tries to do too much.

UPDATE (04NOV12): The inimitable Mark Steyn puts is far better than I ever could.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/

Even in those few parts of the Northeast that can legitimately claim to have been clobbered by Sandy, Big Government made it worse. Last week, Nanny Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, rivaled his own personal best for worst mayoral performance since that snowstorm a couple of years back. This is a man who spends his days micromanaging the amount of soda New Yorkers are allowed to have in their beverage containers rather than, say, the amount of ocean New Yorkers are allowed to have in their subway system – just as, in the previous crisis, the municipal titan who can regulate the salt out of your cheeseburger proved utterly incapable of regulating any salt on to Sixth Avenue. Imagine if this preening buffoon had expended as much executive energy on flood protection for the electrical grid and transit system as he does on approved quantities of carbonated beverages. But that's leadership 21^st-century style: When the going gets tough, the tough ban trans fats.

Then he relates it to our federal government's inaction in Benghazi.

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats' calls for help – even though he had aircraft and Special Forces in the region. Too bad. He's all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America's uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite Special Forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandoes? In Iraq, al-Qaida is running training camps in the western desert. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are all but certain to return most of the country to its pre-9/11 glories. But in Washington the head of the world's biggest "counterterrorism" bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees.

However, even within big government, common sense sometimes wins.  Mayor Nanny Bloomberg finally canceled he NYC Marathon.  But he failed to even get that right.

Fresh off his flight from San Francisco Friday afternoon, Leland Kim had just picked up his numbered marathon bib and registration packet at the Javits Center and was headed to the ING New York City Marathon Expo.

Then he got a text message from a friend: "We're so sorry the marathon got canceled."

Confused, Kim asked someone working at the expo about it, and was told the marathon was still going on. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had been saying so all week. And Kim had already spoken to runners who'd come from New Zealand, Argentina, Russia and Ireland.

Welfare, Work & the Future

It never fails.  Every election year - presidential, general, mid-term or special; doesn't matter - Democrats accuse Republicans of being big, bad meanies who want to take money away from poor people (welfare) and give it to rich people. 

Here's the reality: federal welfare spending (entitlement spending, the social safety net; whatever you want to call it) has increased almost exponentially since the 1950s.  Look at the chart to the right.  Every small decrease in welfare spending subsequently gets dwarfed by an enormous increase.

In fact, today about 70% of Federal spending goes toward some project that keeps people dependent on the Federal government.

Worse, it hasn't done much good.  While welfare spending has skyrocketed, the poverty rate remains essentially constant.  Is the purpose of welfare spending to pull people out of poverty?  If so, it clearly isn't working.  If not, then what is its purpose?

Clearly, we're not getting our money's worth.  We keep spending more, but the poor stay poor.  In fact, right now the poverty rate is rising.

So, if all this spending is not pulling people out of poverty, what effect is it having?  George Will has a great column on that subject, which highlights the book, A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic.  Author Nicholas Eberstadt points out multiple detrimental effects of federal welfare spending. 

As evidence of the moral costs, Eberstadt cites the fact that means-tested entitlement recipience has not merely been destigmatized, it has been celebrated as a basic civil right.

.....

Since 1948, male labor force participation has plummeted from 89 percent to 73 percent. Today, 27 percent of adult men do not consider themselves part of the workforce: “A large part of the jobs problem for American men today is not wanting one.” Which is why “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are lower in America than in Europe.”

Is that what we want?  Does anyone think it's a good thing that an increasing number of adult men feel no need to work?

“In 1960,” Eberstadt says, “roughly 134 Americans were engaged in gainful employment for every officially disabled worker; by December 2010 there were just over 16.” This, in spite of the fact that public health had improved much, and automation and the growth of the service/information economy had made work less physically demanding.

Think about that for a minute.  The percentage of people working is shrinking, while the percentage of people not working is growing.  Therefore, a shrinking number of workers is supporting a growing number of non-workers.  The following cartoon depicts this problem perfectly.

In case you think this is a Democrat vs Republican problem...

“The growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Between 1960 and 2010, the growth of entitlement spending was exponential — but in any given year, it was on the whole over 8 percent higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat. . . . The Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations presided over especially lavish expansions of the entitlement state.”

...which is borne out by the first chart above. 

Worst of all, the spending listed above adds enormously to the federal debt, which stands at over $16 Trillion.  Our children and grand children will either pay that debt, or worse, default on it.  We're robbing them tomorrow to pay people not to work today.

Economist Herbert Stein (father of Ben Stein) said, "If something cannot go on for ever, it will stop".  America's welfare state can't go on for ever.  It will stop.  That is certain.  There are only two questions:

When?

How?

Why We Home School (Continued)

Educating Ourselves has some great information on the "education" bureaucracy's priorities.

Between 1950 and 2009, the number of K-12 public school students increased by 96 percent. During that same period, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew by 386 percent. Of those personnel, the number of teachers increased by 252 percent, while the ranks of administrators and other staff grew by 702 percent—more than 7 times the increase in students.

....

...if student growth had matched that of non-teaching personnel from 1992 to 2009 and if the teaching force had only grown 1.5 times faster than the pupil enrollment, American public schools would have an additional $37.2 billion to spend per year—the equivalent of an $11,700 a year increase in salary for every American public school teacher.

The "education" bureaucracy's priorities have nothing to do with educating children.  They have everything to do with providing high-paying, high-benefit jobs with cushy retirements to government bureaucrats.  It's a self-perpetuating waste machine.

The worst part is that the government stiff forces people like Aimee and me, who choose to opt out of it, to pay into it.

But here's the biggest question.  Teachers whine incessantly that they don't get paid enough.  Why don't they do something about this?

When Theories Trump Evidence

Have you ever known anyone who insists that Communism is a wonderful system, despite all the evidence - particularly the piles of hundreds of millions of dead bodies - contradicting their theory?

I have.

Without exception, they always reply with some variation of the following statement when I point to that evidence: "But they didn't do it correctly".

My reply to that excuse is always the same.  It doesn't matter how an idea works in theory.  All that matters is the results of its application in real life, and Communism applied in real life always, without exception, results in misery, poverty, repression, oppression, a complete loss of civil liberties and millions of people murdered by their own government.

So, why do some people continue to sing the praises (or at the very least make excuses on behalf of) Communism?  Bill Whittle explains that some people are just so personally invested in a theory, that no amount of evidence will change their minds.



This explains why most of the people I've met who still think Communism is a good idea, or at least not all that bad, were in college.  Ideas have consequences in the real world.  Academia shields people from the consequences of their ideas.  It shields people fro the real world.

There's a good reason for that.  People become gun shy after facing negative consequences brought on by their ideas, so they get stuck in an intellectual rut.  By protecting people from the consequences of their ideas, academia encourages people to think big.  But that protection is supposed to be temporary.  People are supposed to leave the academic cocoon, apply their ideas in the real world and face the consequences.

Those who stay in the cocoon never learn the lessons that experience alone can teach.  Which is fine.  Until they take that lack of experience to the White House.

Why Democrats Refuse to Do Their Job

Speaking of infuriating enlightenment, watch DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) explain why Democrats in Congress have refused to do their job for almost 2,000 days.  Warning: you may want to have a barf bag handy.



Nauseating, isn't she?  Don't you wish you could simply refuse to do your job and continue to collect a fat paycheck and lavish benefits and perks?  Probably not.  You're probably a decent person.

If I Wanted America to Fail

"If I wanted America to fail, I wouldn't change a thing."

Exactly.  We're headed toward a cliff.  We have been for a long time, and politicians from both major parties have been driving us toward that cliff.  Some have driven faster than others, but the direction is the same.

I don't think it's too late to change course, but eventually it will be.  How soon?  I don't think anyone knows that for sure, but I suspect it won't be long.

Fisker Lays Off More American Workers

Obama-Biden crony corporation Fisker laid off even more American workers.

On Friday, Delaware Online reports, 12 more workers – including engineers and maintenance technicians – were laid off at the plant, leaving "only a small maintenance team" left there. One of those let go was Jeff Garland, who had been working on community affairs and business development efforts in Delaware. He said the plant is currently "absolutely empty." This is because Fisker has taken out the old GM equipment but has not yet installed the machines it would need to build the Atlantic.

Again, if Pres Obama invests his own money in failing "green" ventures, that's his business, but that's not what he did.  He invested your money and mine - half a billion Dollars of it.  Did he ask your permission?  He didn't ask mine.

You Tax Dollars (Not) at Work

Take a look at this picture of yesterday's Senate Budget Committee meeting.

Note that one side of the table is full, while the other is empty.  The empty chairs belong to Democrats on the Committee.

It's been 1,087 days since Congress has passed a budget.  In case you didn't know, writing, voting on and passing a budget for the Federal Government is one of the fundamental functions of Congress.  In fact, Federal law (written, voted on and passed by Congress) requires Congress to pass a budget by 15 April each year.  Congress has violated this law since 2010.

Why hasn't Congress passed a budget?  Democrats refuse to even try.  As the photo illustrates, they don't even bother to show up to budget meetings.  Democrats claim the reason they haven't attempted to pass a budget is because Senate Republicans will filibuster, which is, of course, a lie.  Under Senate rules, budget votes are not subject to filibuster.  Are Democrats ignorant of Senate rules, or do they bet that the people who voted them into office are stupid enough to believe the lie?

The question pretty much answers itself, doesn't it?

Please remember, ladies and gentlemen, you provide these people's salaries, their pensions, their security details and all the perks that accompany a seat in Congress, and if you're an average American, their salaries, pensions and perks make yours look like pocket change.

Now ask yourselves this question; what would happen to you if you refused to do your job for 1,087 days?  Would you keep your job and all its benefits?

Again, the question pretty much answers itself, doesn't it?

Why aren't more Americans outraged over this?  What is wrong with the average American that, first, they elected these people to office, then allowed them to stay there?

Here's a list of the Senate Budget Committee members who didn't even bother to show up for work.

(1)   DSCC Chair Patty Murray (D-WA)
(2)   Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
(3)   Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
(4)   Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
(5)   Sen. Ben Cardin (D- MD)
(6)   Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
(7)   Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
(8)   Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
(9)   Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK)
(10) Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE)
(11) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

If your Senator is on this list, do something about it.

Save Endangered Species. Eat them.

Why am I not surprised that this is happening in Texas?

They're nearly extinct in their native habitats of the African savanna. But because of an unusual exemption under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, these animals have thrived into the thousands by being hunted legally on sprawling ranches in the United States. In all, there are more than 5,000 such ranches in Texas, mostly in the south-central region known as Hill Country. 

Alongside the antelope exist exotic animals of every stripe, including zebra, African bongos, kangaroo and regal rare Pere David's deer, which are extinct in the wild. 

This particular exotic 3,000-acre ranch, like many in Texas, is for sport hunting, what Morani River Ranch owner and master bow-hunter Kevin Reid calls "re-creating the African experience."

The Texas game ranches have the cachet of the wild, providing hunters with the experience, game and trophies of endangered and extinct-in-the-wild animals they want without leaving the United States. A successful trophy hunt can cost up to $15,000, depending on the beast.

These ranchers keep animals that are endangered - or extinct - in the wild alive by the thousands to profit from them.  Environmentalists must be thrilled that someone provides this invaluable service to the Earth's ecological diversity, right?

Animal activists counter that conservation doesn't mean raising an animal to kill it and put its head on the wall. 

"A Texas game ranch is not an ecosystem wherein animals are protected," said Priscilla Feral, the president of Friends of Animals, which successfully sued the government to force the rule change on the African antelope. "They're a commercial product."

Yes,  they're a commercial product.  No kidding, genius.  That's why they're alive, because they're economically valuable, and people protect that which is economically valuable to them.  Most environmentalists would rather see these animals go extinct, than live to be profitable.

Why?  Because most environmentalists are "Watermelons"; green on the outside, red (Socialist, Communist, take your pick) on the inside.  Their first loyalty belongs to Socialism, not Gaia.

Yes,
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/30/143729/quandary-on-texas-ranch-can-you.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/30/143729/quandary-on-texas-ranch-can-you.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/30/143729/quandary-on-texas-ranch-can-you.html#storylink=cpy

Why We Home School (Continued)

In 2009, American public schools spent on average $10,499, according to the US Census Bureau, more than any other country.  By now it's more like $12,000 per student per year.  Keep in mind that American private schools charge $8,549 for tuition on average.  In that same year, American students ranked... 

...about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. 

Obviously, we don't get our money's worth.  But wait, it gets worse.

Not content with wasting your money and mine on a sub-standard education, public schools often forego education completely and substitute political indoctrination.

A Virginia middle school teacher recently forced his students to support President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign by conducting opposition research in class against the Republican presidential candidates. 

The 8th grade students, who attend Liberty Middle School in Fairfax County, were required to seek out the vulnerabilities of Republican presidential hopefuls and forward them to the Obama campaign. 

“This assignment was just creepy beyond belief — like something out of East Germany during the Cold War,” one frustrated father, who asked for his family to remain anonymous, told The Daily Caller.

... 

“I was shocked that a school teacher would so blatantly politicize the curriculum of a middle school classroom,” the parent said. “I asked [my child] if a similar assignment had been handed out to examine the background and positions of President Obama to see if the teacher was at least being bipartisan.” 

No similar assignment was given to research Obama’s history, identify his weaknesses or pass them along to the Republican candidates.

When I was in second grade in then-Communist Nicaragua, my Communist teachers forced me to undergo Communist indoctrination.  Needless to say, It didn't take.  In fact, it backfired and made me particularly hostile to political indoctrination of children in schools.

My parents gave up the life they built in Nicaragua and suffered all kinds of uncertainty and hardship in a new country where they didn't even speak the language to escape that kind of political indoctrination.  I'll be damned if I voluntarily subject my children to it.

Why do so many parents put up with this garbage?  Even if their kids' teachers don't pull this kind of stunt, why do they put up with public schools' obvious waste of money?  When public schools come around begging for more money, why don't more parents ask; "what did you do with the $12,000 per student you got last year?"  Why don't more parents demand school choice, which would increase competition among schools and force them to improve?

I don't get it.