POLITICAL: Politics in two dimensions

Monday, April 5, 2010

http://www.caivn.org/article/2010/03/27/recreational-marijuana-use-likely-become-legal-california

Saw an interesting “vote” on a Web site. Unfortunately, it reinforces the right – left duopoly.

201003271232.jpg 201003271235.jpg

As we learn from the Nolan chart it’s not a one dimensional problem.

http://www.nolanchart.com/article7443.html

*** begin quote ***

ibertarian: supports the smallest possible government, supports individual liberty in all ways, prefers to only defend our borders and not interfere in other countries’ affairs.

conservative: tends to give a nod and a wink to liberty while placing emphasis on government control of “family” issues (gay marriage, abortion, borders, etc.) while pushing for major military involvement worldwide by America, in the hopes of creating a faith-based, “conservative” world.

liberal: tends to give a nod and a wink to liberty while placing emphasis on government control of “social issues” (social safety net, minority rights, etc.) while pushing for major diplomatic involvement worldwide by America backed by somewhat lesser military involvement, in the hopes of creating an inclusive, “liberal” world.

statist: the marriage of liberal and conservative aspects of big government. Supports both the conservative “family” agenda and the liberal “social” agenda. Supports both major diplomatic and military involvement abroad.

centrist: somewhere in the middle of all of the above.

*** end quote ***

So to be meaningful, the dimensions are socially and fiscally with individual liberty and government control.

The website SHOULD have “control” between to polar opposites “The Individual” and “The State”!

Liberal and Conservative are meaningless.

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POLITICAL: Social Security Ponzi scheme will become “everyone’s” problem

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/social_security_slush_fund_now.html

March 28, 2010
Social Security Ponzi scheme unraveling
Monty Pelerin

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The darling of the politicans in Washington has become not-so darling. Social Security, for decades a hidden slush fund that allowed pols to spend beyond what they taxed, has turned into an albatross. The Ponzi Scheme has unraveled.

*** and ***

Last year the crossover estimate was revised to 2017. Surprise! Surprise! The program is now in deficit. From this point on, there is nothing for politicians to “steal” from the “trust fund.” Instead, they will have to use general tax revenues to fund Social Security shortfalls. The fund has flipped from a cash-generator to a cash-eater.

*** and ***

At some point the privatization idea will be raised again. This time it will receive “broad political support.” There will be no principle involved. As a slush fund, the program had value for pols. As a cash drain, it is a liability that cuts into the “profitable” part of their criminal enterprise. It will be exorcised in some fashion.

It will likely be dumped on the American people, in the same fashion that bad banking loans have been.

*** end quote ***

You’ll get privatized now. When it’s worthless. The congresscritters have lied to the Sheeple. Now, when it comes time to collect on these promises, Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare! And, the poor young workers won’t want to transfer wealth tot he rich old people. Will then we get get “health rationing”? OK Grandma and Grandpa, here’s your Titanic ticket. Have a nice cruise. At least, the Eskimos put the old people on an iceberg. No illusions. (Does any one know if that is a real fact or just another urban legend?)

But, get ready, the population demographics have changed and the Social Security Ponzi scheme is unsustainable.

You don’t think the congresscritters are going to give up their retirement; do you?

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POLITICAL: The consequences of Obamacare

Monday, March 29, 2010

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/03/pelosi_proud_to_place_healthca.html

March 28, 2010
Pelosi proud to place healthcare reform beside two failed government programs
Anthony W. Hager

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One has to wonder if Speaker Pelosi realized what she was saying when she beamed about joining the creators of Social Security and Medicare. According to her own analogy Congress and the Obama administration have imposed upon America a program destined for high taxation, inadequate service, saucy bureaucrats, fraud, waste and future insolvency. If she was trying to boost public confidence in the healthcare bill she should’ve exercised greater care in picking her comparisons.

*** end quote ***

Interesting how economically unsound these programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare — are.

Unfunded liabilities are a way of life for the congresscritters. By the time that the excrement hits the proverbial fan, the particular congresscritters who passed it are long on their way to a very comfortable retirement. Or their just rewards! And we are left holding the proverbial bag!!

To any one who was economically literate, the problem was almost immediately obvious:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html#idamay

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On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.

Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.

*** end quote ***

So it’s an intergenerational theft. A welfare program in disguise. An a wealth transfer, due to disparities in lifespan, from poor minority men to rich white women.

And, probably unintended, but could be a tin foil hat conspiracy, it destroyed the American family. Grandparents, now enriched with Social Security “retirement” checks, could abscond to Florida and abandon their families. Generations of grandchildren would be deprived of their grandparents thanks to this terrible law. This, combined with the high taxes that force housewives back into the work force, forced those grandchildren into childcare. It turns the schools into de facto all day daycare centers where the family bonds are destroyed. Which makes the uber-State very happy; remember the Prussian school model was to make soldiers for the army and factory workers to be led by “the elite”.

So what are the consequences of Obamacare — intended and unintended?

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POLITICAL: Add “Honest Politician” to the pantheon of imaginary things

Thursday, March 25, 2010

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=131249

Can pro-lifers ever support Democrats again?
Posted: March 24, 2010
Jill Stanek … …
… … fought to stop “live-birth abortion” after witnessing one as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. In 2002, President Bush asked Jill to attend his signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. In January 2003, World Magazine named Jill one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years.

*** begin quote ***

We all now know Nelson blinked fairly quickly, and Stupak blinked five months into it. There were others, but these were the front men. Both men betrayed the pro-life and Christian groups they had been working with. Nelson disallowed both Nebraska Right to Life and the National Right to Life Committee from viewing his 11th-hour compromise health-care language, and Stupak turned away from those whom he had just said he sought advice, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, the NRLC and the Family Research Council. All three, as well as every other pro-life/pro-family group, urged him to reject the compromise pitched to him, a worthless executive order by the infanticide president.

*** end quote ***

This makes it obvious: (1) there’s no such thing as a “Democratic” pro-lifer; (2) there’s no such thing as a “Democratic” who is fiscally responsible; and (3) there is ALMOST never a politician who can tell the truth.

Forewarned is forearmed.

… … like jumbo shrimp, the Easter Bunny, and let’s add to the pantheon of imaginary things: the pro-life Democrat, the fiscally responsible Democrat, and an “Honest Politician”.

“Honest Politician” added with apologies to Ron Paul, and a few historical figures.

Argh!

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Seems wryly humorous and poetic to write about pro-life democrats on the Feast of the Annunciation!

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POLITICAL: Reigning in corporate salaries; a modest proposal.

Monday, March 22, 2010

http://rss.macworld.com/click.phdo?i=24a69419b68dce263a006cdb9675b4a0

AT&T CEO’s pay jumps 35 percent to $20.3 million in 2009

from Macworld by Ann Bednarz

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AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s stock awards fell 8 percent in 2009, but he earned a cash bonus of $5.85 million that helped increase his total compensation by 35 percent.

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Corporations are are a gooferment creation. So, needless to say, they are screwed up.

It’s unseemly for ANY corporation employee to have a salary greater than that of the President.

The gooferment’s creation fails to align the interest of the owners and the employees.

The gooferment could correct that error with five year stock options as the manner of executive compensation. Or maybe, a mix of options that vest from 10 to 50 years? With a sliding scale, weighted towards the middle?

That could be done with the stroke of a pen.

If I was “king”, I’d have the “Sheriff of Nottingham” (aka the IRS) audit any company that pays salaries greater than that of the Prez.

How fast could things change?

How many lobbyists and politicians would have their pockets stuffed with cash to kill this?

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POLITICAL: Obama’s NCAA Bracket

Saturday, March 20, 2010

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/obamas-ncaa-bracket-goes-bust-with-kansas-loss.html

Obama’s NCAA Bracket Goes Bust With Kansas Loss

March 20, 2010 8:43 PM

Joel Siegel and Karen Travers report:

*** begin quote ***

President Obama should hope that the big health-care vote scheduled for Sunday turns out better than his N.C.A.A. tournament picks.

*** end quote ***

Hmm, hope it goes against him as well. For the country’s sake!

Is this the new Presidential “Kiss of Death”?

He threatened the D’s that if they didn’t vote for his healthcare bill, he wouldn’t campaign FOR them. Maybe he should have threatened TO come campaign for them if they didn’t vote for his healthcare bill instead.

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POLITICAL: Drew Cary and Reson save Cleveland — Part 3

Saturday, March 20, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-ozphsuSk

Why not?

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POLITICAL: Copyrights for out-of-print books? No!

Friday, March 19, 2010

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23683

Volume 57, Number 4 · March 11, 2010
Publishing: The Revolutionary Future
By Jason Epstein

*** begin quote ***

To offset the decline of backlist I launched in the mid-Eighties the Reader’s Catalog, an independent bookstore in catalog form from which readers could order 40,000 backlist titles by telephone. The Internet existed but had not yet been commercialized. The Reader’s Catalog was an instant success, confirming my belief in a strong worldwide market for backlist titles. But I had underestimated the cost of handling individual orders and concluded, with my backers, that if we continued our losses would become intolerable. The Internet was now available commercially. Amazon bravely took advantage of it and in the beginning suffered the losses that I feared. But by this time I had begun to hear of digitization and its buzzword, disintermediation, which meant that publishers could now look forward to marketing a practically limitless backlist without physical inventory, shipping expense, or unsold copies returned for credit. Customers would pay in advance for their purchases. This meant that even Amazon’s automated shipping facilities would eventually be bypassed by electronic inventory. This was twenty-five years ago. Today digitization is replacing physical publishing much as I had imagined it would.

*** end quote ***

As a society, we extend “copy right” protection to authors to ensure that ideas are available to benefit every one. When a book is “out of print”, then why do we give it “copy right protection” when we are denied access to the ideas. With the Internet and publish-on-demand, there is NO reason for a book to be “out of print”.

Time to reassess copyright laws.

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POLITICAL: If this isn’t intergenerational theft, what is?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100305/ap_on_go_co/us_budget_deficits_3

Congressional estimates show grim deficit picture
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 5, 6:17 pm ET

*** begin quote ***

WASHINGTON – A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

*** end quote ***

Time for a serious acknowledgment. This generation was “robbed” by the last in the Social Security Ponzi scheme, as well as the continual addition to the debt. So to are we “robbing” future generations by piling on the debt and unfunded liabilities.

So what is the answer?

Well, clearly each year, the demographics change as to the intergenerational population. So there’s MUST be year to year deficit neutral budgets. Since there has to be a true up in the next financial year. So any deficit must be corrected in the following year. Since we can NOT eliminate the debt build up over 70 years in a few years, we need to have a 70 year deficit reduction plan. CLEARLY, we can’t have unfunded liabilities or off-budget expenditures.

So, it’s a giant mess.

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POLITICAL: Bears and bureaucrats

Monday, March 15, 2010

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20100313/COMMUNITIES/303130002/Animal-groups-Could-ruling-lead-to-hunters-shooting-cats

Animal groups: Could ruling lead to hunters shooting cats?
BY COLLEEN O’DEA • STAFF WRITER • March 13, 2010

*** begin quote ***

The cat: Common, popular house pet or exotic, dangerous animal?

A number of animal activists have contacted state officials in an effort to head off a potential reclassification of feral cats, which could end the growing number of programs that trap, neuter and return them back into neighborhoods or the wild, and allow them to be hunted.

The state Fish and Game Council has condemned the idea of leaving cats in the wild and now another committee that reports to the state Department of Environmental Protection is studying the issue of TNR programs.

*** end quote ***

Argh!

What’s wrong with “hunting”? Is it more humane to let these past pets starve?

The NJ bureaucrat diddled with the bear population until, after a few “near misses” and one dead dog, they were forced to reinstate the “bear hunting season”. (My prediction is that is the last one will hear about NJ bears unless they are near extinction.)

How long before they are forced to do the same with feral cats?

An increase in diseases coming to humans a la the dear tick and lyme disease? An increase in children being threatened?

Maybe the remain bears will feast on the out-of-control cats?

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