Free In Idaho!

So, the coffee is made, my Sweetie and the dog are both asleep here on the couch beside me, so it’s time to do some Saturday morning reading.  Let’s see…

Fiscal baloney.  Yup.  Reason has “Five Lies About The American Economy“.

How can the American economy keep getting worse under the intensive care of an interventionist economic team almost universally praised for its brilliance? The answer may be that the Obama administration is dealing with a fictional economy, one that bears little resemblance to the economy the rest of us inhabit. And when the difference between fact and fiction becomes too apparent, they just make stuff up.

The American people don’t want it. But Obama doesn’t care. IBD has “Why The Health Bill Makes No Sense“.  But really, who needs 15 reasons?  The American people have said NO.  That oughta settle that.

Health Reform: So it’s come down to this — desperate Democratic leaders strong-arming members on the worst bill ever before they go home to explain to constituents why they decided to commit political suicide.

I was at the Sheriff’s yesterday getting my CWL renewed. A lot has changed in the years since I was there last.  Then it was a small desk tucked away in the back of the drivers license office.  Today the weapons permit desk has been moved out to the main lobby, and made much bigger. There are now two ladies working it because, let’s face it, they’re doing a lot of business. At 11am there were five or six folks behind me and two ahead of me. Only a couple of these were renewals, so the ranks of those carrying concealed is growing daily. Here’s a short article with some good tips for those just beginning.

So select the size of your pistol first and foremost, and base it on what you need in order to carry it 24-7, 365 days a year (all the time).

Something to think about, concerning the differences between libertarians and conservatives (esp neo-conservatives). Is Libertarianism Real Conservatism? Give this a read, see what you think.

Considering their new, radical definition, it’s easy to see why Rush and other mainstream conservatives don’t consider libertarians part of their movement — because they’re not. And while it remains to be seen how the irreconcilable differences will play out between limited government libertarians (whose numbers are growing) and big government neoconservatives (whose ideology still dominates), let there be no more ignorance about which philosophy is truly more alien to the historical American conservative movement — and let there be no further delusions about which philosophy was most responsible for creating it.

Did you know that 36% don’t pay any taxes at all now? Actually, when you think about it, it’s worse than that. How many of those 36% actually get cash payments _from_ the government? Spreading the wealth. If you tried to open a restaurant and fed 36% of your “customers” for no charge, how long could YOU stay in business? Here’s a couple of interesting charts on who pays taxes these days.

Well, enough of that.  It’s getting light out.  Time for some fresh eggs and bacon, then load some rifles in the truck and head for the range.  Hope you all have a great day!

I don’t usually listen to Glenn Beck.  Better things to do I guess.  But this morning I was driving and caught a few minutes of the show.  In particular, I caught the advertisement for the “survival seeds”.  Wow.  Guaranteed non-hybrid seeds, enough to grow a full acre, and save your family from starving to death in the coming fill-in-the-blank apocalypse…

Oh my, where to start?  I hope that nobody falls for this BS.  Seriously, 98% of America hasn’t a clue how to grow a seed, much less a full acre’s worth.  Do you even have access to a full acre of good dirt, in a defendable spot?  And assuming you lucked out bigtime, and your acre of survival food -did- grow, then what?  That same 98% of America hasn’t a clue how to preserve an acre’s worth of food, all at once.  Or how to save some of the seeds for next year.

$149 for all kinds of beans and cabbage and corn and tomatoes and lettuce and spinach… seeds.   All with different growing requirements, water and soil needs.  Some are cool varieties, some are hot.  Go ahead, plow up your front lawn (are you serious?) and plant all those seeds.  Do you know when to plant them?  Do you have tomato worm problems in your area?  Or corn fungus?  Slugs? 

Sheesh.

It reminds me of some of the “how many and which guns” conversations, or the arguments over how much ammo to store.  Fine.  But can you shoot and do you practice?  Or is all your experience from your mom’s basement playing shooter games on the computer?  Same thing with gardening.  If your total gardening experience is the bean you sprouted in grade school, forget it.  And if your food storage expertise stops at the pizza under the front seat of your car, an acre of food, even if you could grow it, wouldn’t do you any good.  Take your money over to the freeze dried food site and buy a case instead.  You’ll get a lot more real food that way, and despite what the seed guy says, it’ll last a lot longer than his seeds will.

The commercial was good for a laugh though…

I heard Bob Brinker this past weekend talking about the plans that are starting to surface in Washington D.C.  Some wonderboy has seriously floated the idea that the government should take your 401k and in return give you a promise to pay you when you get old.  This subject came up before, in October of 2008 if I remember correctly.  And hmm.  Where have we heard that bright idea before?  Oh yeah, Social Security.  Now that’s security for ya.

What is wrong with the people in government today?  What is wrong with the American people?  It is NOT the government’s job to assure that the guy down the street has enough money to retire on by stealing some of yours.  Using the government’s guns to steal from one citizen in order to give it to another is theft.  Pajamas Media has an article on the subject this morning.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are little better than the Democrats with regard to respecting your rights to your own money. Republican Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed his own “Roadmap” to “reform” Social Security, where you could divert some of your Social Security money into a nominally private individual account. But you couldn’t invest your money as you saw fit. Instead, if you met certain eligibility requirements (set by the government), you would be allowed to put some of your money into special accounts (approved by the government), to be managed not by the private investment service of your choice — but by the government.

In his Newsweek interview, Ryan claimed that his plan “unapologetically applies our nation’s founding principles — individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise — to the challenges of today.” But his plan does nothing of the sort. In fact Ryan openly admitted to the New York Times, “I make a lot of concessions here to the left.” As with the Obama administration’s plan, under the Ryan plan your money wouldn’t really be yours to do with as you wished. Instead, you could only do with it what the government permitted.

If Republicans truly wanted to respect the principles of individual liberty and limited government, they would respect Americans’ rights to save or spend their money as they wished. The government’s job is not to somehow guarantee a fixed standard of living to all retirees but instead to protect individual rights — including each person’s right to enjoy the fruits of his labor and his right to plan for his retirement according to his best judgment.

Both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party begin with the belief that everything in America belongs to the government, so government can determine who gets to do what and who gets to have how much. That goes for food, money, and property. Take a look at the death tax if you don’t believe me. The argument is not against the government stealing part of a dead man’s estate from his heirs, it is only about how much of it they will take. It’s an immoral confiscation, but nobody seems to care. Same with Social Security, and apparently, the same will soon be the case with your 401k.

This government is broke, not just financially, but morally.  The stock market bubble and the real estate bubble were simply symptoms of a dysfunctional economy overseen by a dysfunctional and corrupt government.  I have read some speculation that the retirement account takeover is a last ditch attempt to keep the whole U.S. Treasury system afloat.  Fine.  You and I can do nothing to stop them or to change it.  But please folks, take steps to protect yourself.

Ever have one of those mornings when your eyes pop open an hour earlier than normal?  You lay there in the dark, trying to convince yourself you don’t need to go down the hall to the little room, and you don’t need to get up yet, and you really wanted to sleep in till 6, and…

then your Sweetie says, “Are you awake too?”

Yeah.  One of those mornings.  The dinky dog wasn’t happy with us for waking him up at 4am, and it was too early to wake up the chicks, so we made a big pot and started watching the news.  Oh what a surprise, the soap opera is still going on.  Hmmm.  Wonder what’s on the internet?

CPAC is getting a lot of press, at least on the right side of the web.  So in the midst of all the good and happy talk, it’s essential that someone remind us that the current crop of GOP politicians is the same old pack of, uh, crapweasels politicians that have been there and got us here.  Anyone remember the “Medicare Prescription Drug Program”?  David Paul Kuhn reminds us over at Real Clear Politics

The drug bill episode also included its share of Democratic double standards. Democratic leaders like Harry Reid lecture Republicans today about obstructionist tactics. But Democratic leaders attempted a filibuster and murkier parliamentary maneuvers to kill the Medicare bill.

This is why the drug bill captures both parties’ hypocrisy. It explains why we have millions of conservatives more aligned to the Tea Party movement than to Republicans. It’s why we have more independents than Democrats or Republicans. It’s why a recent CNN poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans want a major third party.
…
Americans crave leaders from both parties, who will sit down together and take the hard stands.

But until those leaders emerge, we will likely suffer the fiscal hypocrites. A Democratic president who said “I don’t” believe in big government in the same 2009 budget address that heralded the return of big government. And we will suffer the Republicans who lecture, “do as I say, not as I do” about spending, without recalling what they did and what they said.

Yes, that quote goes easy on Republicans, but go read the article, there’s plenty of tar and feathers to go around. And while JD is getting plenty of good press right now, it’s good to remind everyone he’s got history too.

Speaking of hypocrisy and being disconnected from the will of the American people, have you heard the one about Obama and bipartisanship?  How about the one about Obama being against cronyism?  Then there’s the bit about understanding health care costs.  Whooboy, it’d be funny, except so far he’s getting away with it.

The Obama administration’s apparent intention to use the “budget reconciliation” process to try to advance its proposed health-care overhaul has shined the spotlight on why it, and the federal government as a whole, should not control what will soon be one-fifth of our economy. Simply put, the president has repeatedly emphasized three problems that must be addressed, while pursuing a course of action that would exacerbate all three. 

Did you hear that the National Enquirer may be up for a Pulitzer for breaking the John Edwards story? I know, me too. But hey, if AlGore can win an Oscar for horsefeathers, and Obama can win a Nobel for nothing, it’s fitting that the Enquirer win a Pulitzer for gossip. Wonder if Matt Drudge has a feeling or two about that? You really didn’t expect any Climategate stories to win, did you?

Speaking of Climategate, despite the fact that sports and gossip is getting all the press right now, the fallout from the exposure of the global warming hoax continues to increase, this time in that nasty marriage of convenience between politicians and big corporations.

It’s hard to tell right now which part of global warming policy is in the fastest free fall — the economics, the politics or the science. The politics seemed to be winning the race yesterday. At least five major U.S. corporations have pulled out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an agglomeration of business and green groups lobbying Washington for climate legislation. High on USCAP’s agenda is a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

The withdrawal of BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar from USCAP is widely seen as another sign that cap and trade, which would allow corporations to buy and sell emissions credits, is losing ground politically.

OK, that’s enough coffee for now. The light is on in the chicken house and there is a light dusting of snow on the deck. Think I’ll start the fire, then head for the kitchen… there’s a bunch of fresh brown eggs in the fridge, a hunk of ham left over from dinner the other night, and some cornbread muffins we made last night. You folks have a great day too.

Tea Party.  It isn’t about “anti tax”.  It isn’t a “Third Party”.  It isn’t about religion and sex.  What was that old line the Dems used to use?  Oh yeah, “it’s the economy, stupid”.   Seems like nobody in the ruling party cares about that anymore.  It’s going to cost them.  Mark Davis wrote a good short piece over at Real Clear Politics.

At long last, people who might disagree on a number of other things are uniting in a fight for strong but limited government, run responsibly and frugally. It took Democrats and Republicans to create this mess, and entrenched members of both parties could soon find themselves back in the private sector if the enthusiasm of tea parties and town halls carries all the way to the November elections.

A crash of this magnitude.  Doctor Zero’s latest deserves wide attention. Here’s just a taste.

The system was doomed to crash because its vast array of taxes, spending, and regulation destroy the very wealth that sustains it. It ran out of fat long ago, and began feeding on muscle… and now it has worked its way down to the bone. Wealth is a product of choice, and every action taken by a collectivist government destroys wealth by reducing the options available to its citizens. Liberal politicians assume the population will go on blindly producing the same extraordinary prosperity, no matter how much the government skims off the top. That’s why every outbreak of bad economic news is “unexpected” to them, as well as the media who share their assumptions. Has a nation ever grown poorer after reducing the cost and power of its central government? Why would anyone assume a nation could grow richer by reducing the size and power of its private sector?

So much more. Go. Read.

State of the Union?  Deep in debt, nothing in the bank, and living way beyond rapidly declining means.  Hmmm…. sounds like a lot of Americans.

ObamaNomics is built on the assumption that politicians are better stewards of economic resources than the millions of individuals and business enterprises who created those resources.  The Democrats’ plan is to dramatically increase taxation to fund programs through which government can exert greater control over our lives.

But these data show that the private sector’s ability and willingness to generate wealth for government to seize through taxation is rapidly diminishing.  These data show that Obama’s own actions are are literally killing the goose that lays the golden eggs he needs to fund his agenda.

The drop in individual income tax revenue in fiscal 2009 was the steepest since 1939.  As the chart shows revenue continues to plummet in fiscal 2010.

Thank goodness we’ll never get worse than 8% unemployment because we’ve passed some of Obama’s policies. Oh, wait. It’s over 10% now… well, just think how bad it would have been if we didn’t have him in office? We’re so lucky that he’s in there fighting for us. (And that, my dear reader, is the capsule summary of his State of the Union speech.)

From Governor Butch Otter’s State of the State speech this afternoon

Idahoans are people who want only to define their own success.

They want only what they earn by their own intellect or the sweat of their own brow, and they want jobs that can become careers by virtue of their own hard work, creativity and commitment.

From government, they expect us to be accountable, to live up to our commitments and to live within their means – and then to get out of the way.
They do not want a federal-style, one-size-fits-all, nanny government that not only tells them what to do but how and when to do it.
They do not want a federal-style government intent on spending us into recovery by mortgaging our children’s future.
They do not want a federal-style government that is willing to cut any deal, put aside any principle or risk any freedom to build costly entitlement programs at our expense.

That’s why it’s so very important that those of us entrusted with these jobs fulfill our responsibility to make government as efficient as it can possibly be and to never forget that this is the people’s money.

There is no need today for me to recount our economic situation. We all know this downturn has been among the deepest and longest since the Great Depression. We also know that State government must limit our spending to our revenue.

As H.L. Mencken said, “[Government’s] great contribution to human wisdom … is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.”
Now, I wouldn’t go quite that far. But our history does shows that it’s far easier to expand government than to rein it in.
It also is true that government which tries to be all things to all people inevitably fails both itself and the people whose expectations it raises.
I will not ask you to believe that there is a magic potion to cure what ails our economy or our State government.

It will require sacrifice and hard work.

To hear some of the reports about this speech you’d think the Governor had announced the closing of all the schools in Idaho in oeder to fund big welfare payments to “his rich Republican buddies”, whoever they are.  One of the most astonding comments I’ve heard this afternoon is that the State Republicans are so hell-bent on their small government agenda, they’ll take advantage of this “depression” to slash what little progress Idaho has made in the last hundred years.  We’re doomed, they warn.  It’s back to the dark ages of one roomed schoolhouses with hundreds of barefoot and starving students per underpaid teacher.  Hmmm.  It looks to me like he proposed a small budget decrease, from $2.50 billion this year to $2.46 billion next year. Wow… Idaho must be in pretty good shape if we can make the state fly with only a 2% budget cut.

“This is the people’s money”.  Good on you Butch, that’s exactly right, and it’s something the crooks in Washington D.C. don’t seem to care about.  And unlike the Feds, the State of Idaho can’t just run the printing presses or sell a bunch of funny-paper-IOUs to China… some pretense of fiscal responsibility needs to exist at the state level.  Ignore the whiners, the mooches, the liars.   Don’t take the “easy way out” and raise taxes.  Don’t spend more than we take in.  I hope you believe what you said this afternoon.  I hope even more that the State lawmakers follow through.

The employment numbers came out, poorly again.

The December payroll report was disappointing, with 85,000 jobs lost last month vs. expectations for a flat reading and “whispers” of a gain of as much as 40,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 10%, as expected.

That’s as expected because it’s the official “Obama Gives Himself A B+” unemployment number. The actual rate is much higher.

Beyond Friday’s lackluster headline payroll figures, the “real” unemployment rate (or U6) rose to 17.3% and the average hourly work week remained near record lows at 33.2. In addition, the average duration of unemployment rose to 29.1 weeks as the ranks of the long-term (or “permanently”) unemployed continue to swell. Furthermore, the household survey showed a decline of 589,000 employed persons to the lowest level since 2003, according to Miller Tabak.

Dismal. Now for the praise… my Sweetie talked to youngest daughter this morning and she just got what amounts to a promotion and a little more money. Not only that, she informed us that she made $xxK last year, which is more than her mother and I made together. Praise God! Now we have both kids making more than we do. I know, shameless bragging on the kids. Aren’t you glad I don’t do it very often?

What’s better than a government promise of “social security”? Raising kids who grow up to be successful adults. I asked my wife if she told them “good, now we can really retire” and she told me no, we’d better not scare them off yet. Darn. After all the scares they gave us, I thought it was time I could get one back. But then, they know me and they’d probably say “fine, but you have to move out here to (California or Washington)”. Yikes! Not. A. Chance. I’d sooner buy a snuggie and live under a sagebrush and eat gophers…

You’d think we got enough lazing around yesterday, but no, it’s 20 degrees out, the coffee is fresh, and I didn’t have the computer on most of the day yesterrday.  We’ll have to make that up this morning.

Over at BIGGovernment, some Lessons From John Galt

An epic demonstration of the inverted morality that Rand described was on display in Copenhagen last week as the world’s worst most evil dictators—Mugabe and Chavez—partnered with the world’s most visible and misguided progressives—Al Gore , Gordon Brown, Barack Obama—in an orgy of depravity. Sadly, even the Pope lent his moral support to the lunacy, saying, “Industrialized nations must recognize their responsibility for the environmental crisis, shed their consumerism and embrace more sober lifestyles.”

Oh look! Doctor Zero has a gift for us. If you haven’t read him yet, by all means, go see. He’s been posting in the Green Room over at Hot Air since early this year, and he has hit a number of them over the wall.

I have two gifts for everyone, both simple, but heartfelt. The first is that I’ve finally found the time to put together my own website, where I’ve re-posted everything I’ve written for Hot Air, and set up a way for people to contact me. It’s rather plain right now, but I’ll keep working on making it better, and maybe do some more interesting things with it in the future. The address is http://www.doczero.org/

Ann, honey, please, quit poking the donkey with that stick.

Instead of being honest and telling us that their plan is to make health care worse and more expensive — but fairer! — liberals have recently begun claiming that providing universal health care will actually save money. Overnight, they went from wailing about basic human needs being “more important than bombs” to claiming: “Our plan will be cheaper!”

Hmmm, I didn’t make any notes to debate the manifestly insane points. But I’m pretty sure that extending full medical benefits to 30 million people who don’t currently have them — 47 million once the federal health commission rules that illegal aliens are covered — will not be less expensive than the current system.

From someone who knows, Christmas Under Communism

I will never forget the awful reality of Communism or believe that it can ever be anything other than the hell it was. The facts of the last century should be enough to put an end to that vicious ideology forever, but now I find that many in our own government support something similar. Barack Obama has lost no time at pointing the country toward socialism during his first year in office. Given the chance, he will soon transform our dear country into a socialist state in which liberty will be restricted and private property much reduced.

And I didn’t get one of these for Christmas this year. Someday though…

Are you hoping he’ll eat you last?

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.

If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what’s at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
                       - Ronald Reagan 1964 “A Time For Choosing“

Should I be surprised that a Democrat would bring this up?

The newspaper industry is suffering “market failure” and the government will need to help preserve serious journalism essential to democracy, an influential US congressman said Wednesday.
“The newspapers my generation has taken for granted are facing a structural threat to the business model that has sustained them,” said Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California.

Yes, the newspaper industry is pretty much right where the buggywhip industry was at the birth of the automobile… teetering into irrelevance.   Their business model is outdated and unsaveable.  Pouring a gazillion dollars into the print newspaper industry will not change some fundamental facts, the main one being that Americans don’t use newspapers as their primary source anymore.

Americans have a multitude of choices these days for where they will get their information and news. The internet and television have reduced the daily newspaper to a notch above “quaint anachronism”.   But Henry Waxman is going to save it. With YOUR money, I might add.  And his reasoning? Faulty, at best.

“While this has implications for the media it also has implications for democracy,” he added. “A vigorous free press and vigorous democracy have been inextricably linked.

“We cannot risk the loss of an informed public and all that means because of this market failure,” he said.

How does anyone see the decline of printed newspapers as evidence of a less informed public, or a less vigorous democracy?  Let me repeat, Americans do not get the bulk of their daily news and information from a printed piece of paper flopped on their porches or desktops any longer.  Print journalism is no longer the best way to stay informed, so it has lost its place in the marketplace.  Simple as that. 

And who could possibly think that the government pumping a bag-o-bucks into the newspaper industry would be a good thing?  Unless of course, you’re a Democrat, and fear that an unregulated press, as exists on the internet, is somehow not desireable or preferred.

“Eventually, government is going to have to be responsible to help resolve these issues and our whole society depends very much on reaching some resolution of the problem.”

No Henry, you’re wrong. Government is NOT the answer. It is NOT responsible to resolve this issue. And our whole society will be much better off if you just get out of the way and let the people do it, not the government.