Obama admin. has SLASHED budget for domestic bombing prevention by 45 per cent

From Daily Mail.co.uk (April 16):

Barack Obama's administration has cut the budget nearly in half for preventing domestic bombings, MailOnline can reveal.

Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security had $20 million allocated for preventing the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by terrorists working inside the United States. The current White House has cut that funding down to $11 million.

That assessment comes from Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three Americans and injured at least 173 others.

He told MailOnline that the Obama-era DHS is, on the whole, about as well-positioned as it was during the Bush administration to handle the aftermath of the April 15 bombings in Boston, 'but the Obama administration has continued to cut the budget for offices such as the Office for Bombing Prevention from $20 million started under Bush, to $11 million today.' [read more]

Of all the things to cut, the Obama admin. cuts national security. It would be one thing to cut waste in national security but no let’s cut bomb prevention. Couldn’t he cut oh, I don’t know, money from the EPA? or even the DoE or NEA? Oh, I forget. After Obama got elected the world became peaceful and the citizens of the world now like America. And the Boston bombings were caused by guys with mental problems—not because they are militant Islamists (That’s what the lame-stream-press might report anyway.) Uh, huh. Sure.

Why is it with the Left in a town or city whenever they have to cut some program they say emergency services (like the fire dept., police dept. etc.) are cut first? Seems like a reflex with them. What they are really saying is we don’t want to cut any program at all so if we have to we will make the citizens suffer. That is just pettiness.

Maryland’s Rain Tax

From The Gazzette.net (April 5):

Consider all the ways we’re taxed. When we’re born (birth certificate), when we die (death certificate), when we make money (income tax), when we spend money (sales tax), when we own property (property tax), when we sell property (capital gains tax), when we go to a concert or ball game (amusement tax), when we own a vehicle (license, registration, tolls, gas tax) and special taxes on cell phones, tobacco, alcohol, energy, etc. Then, when we die, they tax our income all over again (death tax). Heck, they even tax our bowel movements (flush tax).

But if you thought they ran out of ways to tax us you badly misjudged our lawmakers’ creativity. Get ready for their newest invention, the rain tax. Here’s what’s going on:

In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion.

And where do we get the $14.8 billion? By taxing so-called “impervious surfaces,” anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax.

And who levies this new rain tax? Witness how taxation, like rain, trickles down through the various pervious levels of government until it reaches the impervious level — me and you.

The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1. [read more]

The people of Maryland in certain counties have to pay this stupid/insane tax through their property tax. The article goes on to say that satellite imagery and geographic information systems measure your roof and driveway to determine your “impervious surfaces” so you don’t have to estimate the surface area. Isn’t that nice of the gov’t?

So, the new enemy of Mother Nature is people living houses and apartments. And the bigger the house (yea, I am speaking to you super rich) the bigger the property tax. The renters will see their rent increase because of this law. This is of course another cost to businesses.

This tax makes a good argument for getting rid of the EPA. Talk about abuse of power!

What Are the 5 Things to Know About the Obama Budget?

From Ask Heritage.org:

President Obama finally released his budget yesterday—more than two months late.

Heritage experts immediately went to work analyzing the mounds of new spending on education, manufacturing, “clean energy,” infrastructure, and small business.

Five key things to know about President Obama’s budget:

1. It hikes taxes by $1.1 trillion.
2. It underfunds defense.
3. It doubles down on Obamacare.
4. It doesn’t balance and never will.
5. It’s irrelevant.

           [read more]

So, it the same old tax and spend. Nothing new.

Obamacare’s 18 New Tax Hikes

[read more]

Congress is thinking about doing away with the excise tax on medical devices. Too bad they can’t think about doing away with all these taxes. Heck, just repeal Obamacare. It’s using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.

Survey Showing Law Enforcement Overwhelmingly Oppose Obama’s Gun Control Proposals

From The Blaze.com (April 10):

Law enforcement personnel in the United States overwhelmingly disagree with the controversial gun control measures being debated in Washington and across the country, according to a new survey [pdf] released by PoliceOne.

A law enforcement website with more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and 400,000 registered members, PoliceOne asked more than 15,000 verified active and retired law enforcement personnel more than 20 questions about how they believe stricter gun control will impact the community.

The participants were spread out across the country, and about 80 percent were current law enforcement, 20 percent former/retired.

Here are some of the results of the survey, which was conducted between March 4 and March 13:

• Nearly 96 percent said that a ban on standard capacity magazines with more than 10 rounds would not reduce violent crime
• More than 81 percent said that “gun buy-backs” do not reduce gun violence.
• Nearly 80 percent said that a ban on private transfers of firearms between law-abiding citizens would not reduce violent crime.
• 71 percent said that a ban on “assault weapons” would have no impact on reducing violent crime.  20.5 percent said it would actually have a ​negative ​impact.
• More than 70 percent opposed the idea of a national database of legal gun sales.
• More than 76 percent responded with either a 4 or 5 when asked on a scale of 1-5 how important legally armed citizens are to reducing overall crime.

[read more]

The police out in the streets more than any other people would know more about gun violence because that is their job. They deal with it almost every day. I hope, but not holding my breath, that politicians would consult the police community before making any rash laws about guns. Or even look at this poll. Or heck even use common sense and make sure any gun law doesn’t violate the 2nd amendment.

FDR, The Great Depression and The New Deal

How bad was the Great Depression? Over the four years from 1929 to 1933, production at the nation’s factories, mines and utilities fell by more than half. People’s real disposable incomes dropped 28 percent. Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their pre-crash height. The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933. One of every four workers was out of a job at the Depression’s nadir, and ugly rumors of revolt simmered for the first time since the Civil War.

The Great Depression was not the country’s first depression, though it proved to be the longest. Several others preceded it.

A common thread woven through all of those earlier debacles was disastrous intervention by government, often in the form of political mismanagement of the money and credit supply. None of these depressions, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The calamity that began in 1929 lasted at least three times longer than any of the country’s previous depressions because the government compounded its initial errors with a series of additional and harmful interventions.

Though modern myth claims that the free market “self-destructed” in 1929, government policy was the debacle’s principal culprit. If this crash had been like previous ones, the hard times would have ended in two or three years at the most, and likely sooner than that. But unprecedented political bungling instead prolonged the misery for over 10 years.

Unemployment in 1930 averaged a mildly recessionary 8.9 percent, up from 3.2 percent in 1929. It shot up rapidly until peaking out at more than 25 percent in 1933. Until March 1933, these were the years of President Herbert Hoover — a man often depicted as a champion of noninterventionist, laissez-faire economics.

Did Hoover really subscribe to a “hands-off-the-economy,” free-market philosophy? His opponent in the 1932 election, Franklin Roosevelt, didn’t think so. During the campaign, Roosevelt blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions on the dole. He accused the president of “reckless and extravagant” spending, of thinking “that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,” and of presiding over “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Roosevelt’s running mate, of socialism.”¹  Contrary to the conventional view about Hoover, Roosevelt and Garner were absolutely right.

The platform of the Democratic Party, whose ticket Roosevelt headed, declared, “We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party entrusted with power.” It called for a 25 percent reduction in federal spending, a balanced federal budget, a sound gold currency “to be preserved at all hazards,” the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise and an end to the “extravagance” of Hoover’s farm programs.²  This is what candidate Roosevelt promised, but it bears no resemblance to what President Roosevelt actually delivered.

Roosevelt did indeed make a difference, though probably not the sort of difference for which the country had hoped. He started of on the wrong foot when, in his inaugural address, he blamed the Depression on “unscrupulous money changers.” He said nothing about the role of the Fed’s mismanagement and little about the follies of Congress that had contributed to the problem.

Crisis gripped the banking system when the new president assumed office on March 4, 1933. Roosevelt’s action to close the banks and declare a nationwide “banking holiday” on March 6 (which did not completely end until nine days later) is still hailed as a decisive and necessary action by Roosevelt apologists.³

The Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Fed’s unconscionable monetary mischief were primary culprits in producing the conditions that gave Roosevelt his excuse to temporarily deprive depositors of their money, and the bank holiday did nothing to alter those fundamentals. “More than 5,000 banks still in operation when the holiday was declared did not reopen their doors when it ended, and of these, over 2,000 never did thereafter,” report Friedman and Schwartz.

One morning, as Roosevelt ate eggs in bed, he and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau decided to change the ratio between gold and paper dollars. After weighing his options, Roosevelt settled on a 21 cent price hike because “it’s a lucky number.” ⁴

The minimum wage law prices many of the inexperienced, the young, the unskilled and the disadvantaged out of the labor market. (For example, the minimum wage provisions passed as part of another act in 1933 threw an estimated 500,000 Current blacks out of work).

Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace personally gave the order to slaughter 6 million baby pigs before they grew to full size. The  administration also paid farmers for the first time for not working at all.

From the White House on the heels of the Wagner Act came a thunderous barrage of insults against business. Businessmen, Roosevelt fumed, were obstacles on the road to recovery. He blasted them as “economic royalists” and said that businessmen as a class  were “stupid.”⁵  He followed up the insults with a rash of new punitive measures. New strictures on the stock market were imposed. A tax on corporate retained earnings, called the “undistributed profits tax,” was levied. “these soak-the rich efforts,” writes economist Robert Higgs, “left little doubt that the president and his administration intended to push through Congress everything they could to extract wealth  from the high-income earners responsible for making the bulk of the nation’s decisions about private investment.”

During a period of barely two months during late 1937, the market for steel — a key economic barometer — plummeted from 83 percent of capacity to 35 percent. When that news emblazoned headlines, Roosevelt took an ill-timed nine-day fishing trip. The New York Herald Tribune implored him to get back to work to stem the tide of  the renewed Depression. What was needed, said the newspaper’s editors, was a reversal of the Roosevelt policy “of bitterness and hate, of setting class against class and punishing all who disagreed with him.” ⁶

The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies of the U. S. government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These policies included a litany of political missteps: central bank mismanagement, trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping  taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few.  It was not the free market that produced 12 years of agony;  rather, it was political bungling on a grand scale.

Source: Great Myths of the Great Depression (1981) by Lawrence W. Reed.

The notes below are my own comments.

¹ See, espousing conservative themes really do work even if you don’t mean them. Evidently, FDR and his running mate never had RINO republicans advising them.

² More faking to the right. Then again FDR lied about getting America into WWII. But that’s another story for another time…

³ Does this scenario sound familiar? Think: Cyprus.  And the so-called “experts” say this could not happen in America. It did already. When leaders don’t trust the free-market system will resolve its issues in its own time this over-reaction happens. Then again these kind of interventionist actions happen when leaders don’t trust the population over all.

⁴ I wonder if this how the minimum wage amount is created. Something to think about.

⁵ Obama anyone? Just like Obama FDR never had any businessmen as his advisors. Go figure.

⁶ Obama again.

Life in Germany 1923

Basic necessities were now priced in the billions-a kilo of butter cost 250 billion; a kilo of bacon 180 billion; a simple ride on a Berlin street car, which had cost 1 mark before the war, was now set at 15 billion. Even though currency notes were available in denominations of up to 100 billion marks, it took whole sheaves to pay for anything. The country was awash with currency notes, carried around in bags, in wheelbarrows, in laundry baskets and hampers, even in baby carriages.

It was not simply the extraordinary numbers involved; it was the dizzying speed at which prices were now soaring. In the last three weeks of October, they rose ten thousandfold, doubling every couple of days. In the time that it took to drink a cup of coffee in one of Berlin’s many cafés the price might have doubled. Money received at the beginning of the week lost nine-tenths of its buying power by the end of the week.

It became meaningless to talk about the price of anything, because the numbers changed so fast. Economic existence became a race. Workers, once paid weekly, were now paid daily with large stacks of notes. Every morning big trucks loaded with laundry baskets full of notes rolled out of the Reichsbank printing offices and drove from factory to factory, where someone would clamber aboard to pitch great bundles to the sullen crowds of workers, who would then be given half an hour off to rush out and buy something before the money became worthless. They grabbed almost anything in the shop to barter later on for necessities in the flea markets, which had sprung up around the city.

Having to calculate and recalculate prices in the billions and trillions made any sort of reasonable commercial calculations almost impossible. German physicians even diagnosed a strange malady that swept the country, which they named “cipher stroke.” Those afflicted were apparently normal in every respect except, according to the New York Times, “for a desire to write endless rows of ciphers and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in logarithms.” Perfectly sensible people would say they were ten billion years old or had forty trillion children. Apparently cashiers, bookkeepers, and bankers were particularly prone to this bizarre disease. Most people simply turned to barter or to using foreign currency. Every middle-class housewife knew up to the latest hour the exchange rate for the mark against the dollar. At every street corner, in shops and tobacconists’, even in apartment blocks, minute bureaux de change sprang up, with blackboards outside, advertising the latest exchange rates.

With the mark falling faster than domestic prices were rising, foreigners were able to live grotesquely well. Berlin apartments worth $10,000 before the war could be bought for as little as $500. Malcolm Cowley, an American literary critic then living in Paris, in Berlin to visit his friend the journalist Matthew Josephson, wrote, “For a salary of a hundred dollars a month, Josephson lived in a duplex apartment with two maids, riding lessons for his wife, dinners only in the most expensive restaurants, tips to the orchestra, pictures collected, charities to struggling German writers-it was an insane life for foreigners in Berlin and nobody could be happy there.” For one hundred dollars, a Texan hired the full Berlin Philharmonic for an evening. The contrast between the extravagance of foreigners, many of them French or British, but also Poles, Czechs, and Swiss, and the daily struggles of the average German to make a living only fed the resentment against the Versailles settlement further.

Inflation transformed the class structure of Germany far more than any revolution might have done. The rich industrialists did well. Their large holdings of real assets-factories, land, stocks of goods-soared in value while inflation wiped away their debts. Workers, particularly the unionized, also did surprisingly well. Until 1922, their wages kept up with inflation and jobs were plentiful. It was only in the last stages, from the end of 1922 into 1923, when the implosion of confidence caused the monetary system to seize up and the economy reverted to barter, that men were thrown out of work.

Those who made up the backbone of Germany-the civil servants, doctors, teachers, and professors-were hit the worst. Their investments in government bonds and bank deposits, carefully accumulated after a lifetime of prudence and discipline, were suddenly worthless. Forced to scrape by on meager pensions and salaries, which were decimated by inflation, they had to abandon their last vestiges of dignity. Imperial officers took jobs as bank clerks, middle-class families took in lodgers, professors begged on the streets, and young ladies from respectable families became prostitutes.

Source: Lords of Finance. The Bankers Who Broke The World (2009) by Liaquat Ahamed.

And then Hitler came in power.

Bullets That Snag DNA

From Popular Science (Jan. 2013):

A team of nanomaterials scientists led by Paul Sermon, of Brunel University in England, has developed a bullet that captures the DNA of anyone who touches it—and leaves a tracer on the person, too.

Scientists dipped a bullet in a formaldehyde-urea resin, creating a microscopic scratchy surface that snags skin cells. When fired in lab tests, the bullet retained 53 percent more analyzable DNA than an untreated one. [read more]

Interesting idea but like someone said in a comment what will this do to the price of bullets? And since different guns use different bullets will every type of bullet have this ability? Probably. And if someone uses gloves to load a gun then there won’t be any DNA on the bullets especially if a careful criminal finds out about the technology.

Big Brother is Going to Monitor Your Kids

From The Blaze.com (March 27):

TheBlaze has been at the forefront in uncovering the disturbing details of the nationalized curriculum standard known as Common Core. One of the most troubling aspects of this federal program is that government bureaucrats are currently mining sensitive and highly personal information on children through Common Core’s tracking system.

The data will then reportedly be sold by the government to outside sources for profit.

According to the conservative think tank American Principles Project, Common Core’s technological project is “merely one part of a much broader plan by the federal government to track individuals from birth through their participation in the workforce.” As columnist and author Michelle Malkin has pointed out, the 2009 stimulus package included a “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” to provide states incentives to construct “longitudinal data systems (LDS) to collect data on public-school students.”

In other words, an aggregation system to mind personal data on children including information about their health, family income, religious affiliation and homework. [read more]

The article goes on to say one data mining in the future could use fMRIs and “cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges [a child's] posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

That’s just plain unnerving. The old Soviet Union would have loved this kind of monitoring. The Soviet Union determined from mandatory tests what job you can have and where you can work. You couldn’t quit or even retire until the State gave you permission. After all being employed was a right.

I wonder if the powers-that-be have the same thing in mind for education. The State will decide what universities or trade/tech schools you go to if the State determines you worthy of further education. The powers-that-be will probably even choose your curriculum for you too. After all they know what’s best for you.

A mother called up the Glenn Beck show on Friday and said her child’s school wouldn’t even tell her what they are teaching her child. Basically, told her it is none of her business.

Welcome to the brave new world America.

Individual Health Policy Premiums Going Up

From The Blaze.com (March 26):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under President Barack Obama’s overhaul, the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts has estimated.

That’s likely to increase premiums for at least some Americans buying individual plans.

The report by the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act.

While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers. [read more]

The Act should be called the Unaffordable No-care Act. The article goes on to say that by 2017 estimated increase would rise to 62% for California (Wow! Those CA residences are really going to be stuck with high costs. Then again maybe that’s what they want.) 80% for Ohio, and more than 20% for Florida and 67% for Maryland. The premiums for most states goes up. New York premiums goes down –13.9%. The Society of Actuaries has an infographic where you can look at all the states premium changes.

So, what’ll happen is this: Most people will pay the gov’t fine for not having insurance which is less than the insurance premiums. That drives out the insurance companies eventually. Then the gov’t increases its fine because now it is a health insurance monopoly. Which is what The Left always wanted.

Still think the private sector can compete against the public sector? It can’t. The public sector makes the rules.

I wish this was an April Fool’s joke. But it isn’t. The joke is on the taxpayer.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 28

• The Left believes that big government helps those who won’t help themselves. Then again big gov’t doesn’t want people helping themselves.
• Don’t be surprised if property crimes rise when you have people in power talk about “economic justice” or “spreading the wealth” or “you didn’t build that.”
• Raising the tax rate in America would be a tough sell for the Left if it were a flat tax because every tax payer would be paying a higher tax if that happened.
• Do you think Isamo-fascist Leftists (if there is such a thing) shout “Big gov’t is great!” then raise your taxes? Just wondering.
• The Left plays the law of averages when it comes to gov’t pgms and spending money. Even if those actions work the tax payer would have to be immortal to see any payoff.
• If a person with a mean expression comes toward me with a switchblade, brass knuckles, and a baseball bat I am not going to think to myself he isn’t going to hurt or kill me because he isn’t carrying a gun. I believe the result would be the same.
• The term “collective bargaining” makes me nervous. Just how does a group of people bargain? That means everyone in that group would have to want to same thing. You stop being individual instead you are like a cell in a biological organism. That’s very close to group think. 
• I think political consultants should work on a contingency basis. If trial lawyers can do that why not political consultants? Either that don’t hire a consultant unless the person has 90% or better winning track record.
• Instead every Leftist is a conservative that is bound, gagged, and ridiculed that wants to come out.
• Jesus once said: “Those who praise themselves will be humbled.” I am still waiting for Obama to be humbled. Too many “mind guards” maybe?

Life Under Hitler’s Rule: Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away

This article is written by Kitty Werthmann a woman who lived under Hitler’s rule:

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I’ve never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna, Linz and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group — Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.  [read more]

Sounds like Hitler promised the Austrians everything they wanted. Most unscrupulous leaders do that—pretend they are Santa Clause. And the people were happy for awhile. 

“For awhile” is the key phrase here. She goes on:

• Hitler Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children.  The education was nationalized. Crucifix’s were replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Hitler wasn’t a Christian. He only used God’s name to make the German people like him. If anything the Nazi’s were pagans—they worshiped the god’s of ancient Germany. Hitler, I read, thought Christianity was a weak religion and Germany would have been better served by a stronger religion like Islam. I kid you not. By having his picture replace the Crucifix Hitler is saying he is now God. Kitty goes on to say that Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. If parents did not send their children to school they got a written warning. The second time they did not send their children a $300 fine, the third time the parents would go to jail. All the kids received political indoctrination at the school.
• The Full-employment Law.  All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.
• The Labor Camps. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.
• Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare. When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. She says the people who took care of the children were child psychologists.
• Health Care Suffer Under Government Controls. Kitty says before Hitler arrived Austria had very good health care then he socialized it. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries. She goes on to say tax rates went up 80% under Hitlercare (that’s my term not hers). What she is describing (except for doctors leaving part—they will just quit) will happen to America under Obamacare.
• Economic  Regulations.  We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control. We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

The oppression and evil continues. Mentally retarded people were murdered by the state. People had to register their guns at police stations (does that sound familiar?). Hitler said that was the real way to catch criminals. Not too soon after the state said it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. Since the guns were registered it was futile for people not to comply voluntarily.

Finally, freedom of speech was suppressed. Anyone, not only the Jews, who spoke against the state were taken away.

She writes:

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism.

That’s exactly how socialism or any other oppressive system get installed in a country. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snowstorms or Snowflakes?

An article by Lawrence W. Reed on FEE.org (Feb 25.):

There are two basic prisms through which we can see, study, and prescribe for human society: individualism and collectivism. These worldviews are as different as night and day, and they create a great divide in the social sciences. That’s because the perspective from which you see the world will set your thinking down one intellectual path or another.

No Two Alike

I think of it as the difference between snowstorms and snowflakes. A collectivist sees humanity as a snowstorm, and that’s as up-close as he gets if he’s consistent. An individualist sees the storm, too, but is immediately drawn to the uniqueness of each snowflake that composes it. The distinction is fraught with profound implications.
No two snowstorms are alike, but a far more amazing fact is that no two snowflakes are identical either—at least so far as painstaking research has indicated. Wilson Alwyn Bentley of Jericho, Vermont, one of the first known snowflake photographers, developed a process in 1885 for capturing them on black velvet before they melted. He snapped pictures of about 5,000 of them and never found two that were the same—nor has anyone else ever since. Scientists believe that changes in humidity, temperature, and other conditions extant as flakes form and fall make it highly unlikely that any one flake has ever been precisely duplicated. (Ironically, Bentley died of pneumonia in 1931 after walking six miles in a blizzard. Lesson: One flake may be harmless, but a lot of them can be deadly).

Contemplate this long enough and you may never see a snowstorm (or humanity) the same way again.

Dr. Anne Bradley is vice president of economic initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics. At a recent FEE seminar in Naples, Florida, she explained matters this way:

When we look at a snowstorm from a distance, it looks like indistinguishable white dots peppering the sky, one blending into the next. When we get an up-close glimpse, we see how intricate, beautiful, and dissimilar each and every snowflake is. This is helpful when thinking about humans. From a distance, a large crowd of people might look the same, and it’s true that we possess many similar characteristics. But we know that a more focused inspection brings us nearer to the true nature of what we’re looking at. It reveals that each of us bears a unique set of skills, talents, ambitions, traits, and propensities unmatched anywhere on the planet.

This uniqueness is critical when we make policy decisions and offer prescriptions for society as a whole; for even though we each look the same in certain respects, we are actually so different, one to the next, that our sameness can only be a secondary consideration.  [read more]

 

A great analogy. In psychology the snowflake perspective is called differential psychology. The snowflake perspective is how conservatives look at their fellow human beings. Or at least they should try to look at people. Classifying things and treating things alike is fine. Things don’t care. But doing this to people is dehumanizing at worst and disrespectful at best. But classifying or grouping things is what the mind naturally does to make sense of the world. Putting people into groups is hard not to do.

Yes, groups of people have similarities. For example, women like to go shopping and like to express their feelings (okay, this an attempt at stereotypical humor).

There even some people who think that teenagers are going to have sex no matter what so let’s give them condoms. Or that all women are for abortion rights. Or African-Americans will always vote Democrat. Or even that all homosexuals are for same-sex marriage (they’re not. Dennis Miller says he has gay friends who are not for same-sex marriage.) I could go on.

But having similarities is not the same as being the same. You can only generalize so much from the similarities then you start to diverge. Take a lesson from chaos theory. Small differences can lead to big changes later on. The butterfly effect if you will.

When an artist does a painting he leaves his own personality in the painting. The same with novelists and even software engineers. That’s what makes the world interesting. Trying to make everyone act the same or believe the same is a cult at worst at best group think.

The Founding Fathers saw American’s as snowflakes. Remember in the Declaration of Independence it says the inalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?” That line wasn’t talking about groups. Only individuals have rights. The Bill of Rights are about individual rights too.

We are treated same under the law (or should be) but we are not completely the same mentally or physically. Even identical twins aren’t completely identical. God made us as individuals not as clones.  We attain individual salvation. “Collective salvation” is not a concept in God’s mind. The Ten Commandments are about individual morality.

This Crazy Cyprus Deal Could Screw Up A Lot More Than Cyprus...

From Business Insider.com (Mar. 16):

Cyprus's banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt.

Cyprus went to the Eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have.

The Eurozone powers-that-be gave Cyprus a bailout — but with a startling condition that has never before been imposed on any major banking system since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008.

The Eurozone powers-that-be (mainly, Germany) insisted that the depositors in Cyprus's banks pay part of the tab.

Not the bondholders.

The depositors. The folks who had their money in the banks for safe-keeping.

When Cyprus's banks reopen on Tuesday morning, every depositor will have some of his or her money seized. Accounts under 100,000 euros will have 6.75% of the funds seized. Accounts over 100,000 euros will have 9.9% seized. And then the Eurozone's emergency lending facility and the International Monetary Fund will inject 10 billion euros into the banks to allow them to keep operating. [read more]

Cyprus’ gov’t hasn’t approved the deal yet, but they closed the banks temporarily to stop a possible dry run on the banks. So, a citizen of Cyprus can’t use an ATM or transfer money out of the country

The Obama administration response? Ask the treasury. Huh? What? You got to be kidding me.

Could this happen to America? It could or something similar to it if Congress  and the POTUS don’t act fiscally responsibly. And if we have to borrow money from another country that country could do the same thing that Germany did.

If you notice the “tax” on the bank holder’s deposits are progressive ie the more you have saved the more you will be taxed.

Sen. Graham claims Benghazi survivors 'told to be quiet' by administration

From Fox News.com (Mar. 15):

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been "told to be quiet" and feel they can't come forward to tell their stories -- as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.

The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that "the bottom line is they feel that they can't come forth, they've been told to be quiet."
The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on the surviving victims.

"I'm sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.

But Graham said he thinks the administration is “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold. [read more]

Not sure Obama is not preventing anyone from speaking? Really? You mean you don’t know? Hmm. The administration denies trying to hush the survivors’ stories. So, who is telling the truth? The Obama admin. or the survivors? I am going with the survivors. Why would they lie? I agree with Sen. Graham Obama is trying to cover up the Benghazi terror attack. Not only is Obama covering it up but so is the lame stream press. Could possibly be a violation of the First Amendment to me.

So, what’s the POTUS going to do if they do talk openly about their experiences? Have drones go after them?

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 27

• I am not pro-gun, I am pro self-defense. If you live in a dangerous area either learn self-defense or get a gun. The police may not get there in time to save you. Self-defense is what the 2nd Amendment is all about.
• According to the Left, if you think the federal gov’t is fallible or imperfect then you are anti-gov’t.  After all to them Big Gov’t = God. And God is perfect.
• Guns don’t kill people. Crazy or evil people do. Jack the Ripper didn’t use a gun and England’s very strict gun laws didn’t protect his victims. Even the Soviet Union had a serial killer. And that was supposed to be a utopia.
• The Left wants everybody to sacrifice except for Big Gov’t, Big Labor, lawyers, Hollywood, and universities (ever hear a Leftist want a university to lower its tuition?)
• Humor: I am waiting for Killing Garfield and Killing McKinley by Bill O’Reilly. Those are two presidential assassinations that he hasn’t written about.
• If you take a drink every time you hear a Leftist mention President George W. Bush’s name you could get drunk in no time.
• Humor: If a polka musician gets hit on the head does he see accordions revolving around it?
• If the POTUS can’t take blame for the state of the economy then he can’t take credit for anything that good happens to it either. Responsibility goes both ways. Otherwise you are delusional.
• A country’s constitution is its conscience. A week or non-existence one could lead to a sociopath dictator (like Hitler or Saddam Hussein) to rise to power.
• If so-called experts say society as a whole is responsible for a person’s bad choices then are these experts partly responsible for that same person’s bad choices? After all aren’t these experts part of society too?

The Left’s Version of The Book of Genesis Part 2

2:7 And the LORD Gov formed man’s mind of a progressive.

2:8 And the LORD Gov planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whose mind he had formed.

2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD Gov to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of truth.

2:10 And the LORD Gov commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

2:11 But of the tree of  truth, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely be ostracized.

2:12 And the LORD Gov said, It is not good that the man be indoctrinated by himself; I will indoctrinate him a help mate. So, Gov found a woman to indoctrinate.

2:13 And they were both indoctrinated and were none the wiser.

2:14 Now the conservative was more subtil than any person. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath Gov said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2:15 And the woman said unto the conservative, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

2:16 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, Gov hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye be ostracized.

2:17 3:4 And the conservative said unto the woman, Ye maybe ostracized:

2:18 For Gov doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall know the truth of Gov and progressives.

2:19 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

2:20 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were being conned; and they knew Gov was fallible and did not need him so much. That Gov would also treat them as children. That there no such thing as collective salvation. And liberty and self-control is healthy.

2:21 And they heard the voice of the LORD Gov walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD Gov amongst the trees of the garden.

2:22 And the LORD Gov called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

2:23 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was duped by thou; and I hid myself.

2:24 And he said, Who told thee that thou was duped by thee? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

2:25 And the man said, The woman whom thou indoctrinated with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

2:26 And the LORD Gov said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The conservative talked to me, and I did eat.

2:27 And the LORD Gov said unto the conservative, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all people, and thou will be ridiculed, insulted, and blamed for all the days of thy life:

2:28 And the conservative said, What else is new.

2:29 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

2:30 And so both Adam and Eve were kicked out the garden because they had their eyes opened and became conservatives or at least not progressives anymore. They had children and their children had children who also became conservatives which really ticked off Gov.

Is Obama a Narcissist?

According to the DSM-IV-TR these are symptoms of the disorder:

1. Reacting to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation
2. Taking advantage of others to reach own goals
3. Exaggerating own importance, achievements, and talents
4. Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance
5. Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
6. Becoming jealous easily
7. Lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others
8. Being obsessed with self
9. Pursuing mainly selfish goals
10. Trouble keeping healthy relationships
11. Becoming easily hurt and rejected
12. Setting goals that are unrealistic
13. Wanting "the best" of everything
14. Appearing unemotional

In my opinion, he has every symptom but 10. I am not sure on symptoms six and twelve. Since he doesn’t want to be seen governing I don’t know what his goals for the country are other than destroying the republican party and wanting the country to be another France.

He didn’t like criticism of his ears. That fits symptom 11 and possibly one.

Since he uses people around him as props for photos and deliberately canceled any white house tours so he could use the sequestration as an excuse that is symptom two.

When he gave his first inauguration speech he was by himself without any family standing in front of columns. He also said his speaking ability was a gift when asked. These behaviors are symptom three.

The main stream press and his accolades never criticism him. We are told he is the smartest and coolest president ever. Also, the press never investigated him during the first election. That’s symptom five.

As for lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others, he calls republicans or anyone who disagrees with his progressive\socialistic perspective  “evil” or even racist. Even if he doesn’t do it he doesn’t apologize or condemn those on the Left who do.

When he sang one time at a press conference when someone asked about his singing ability that’s symptom eight.

I could go on but you get the point.

Obama could very well be a Phallic narcissist. According to a wikipedia article this kind of  “individual is elitist, a ‘social climber’, admiration seeking, self-promoting, bragging and empowered by social success.” Yea, he fits most of those traits.

The Left’s Version of The Book of Genesis

c 1:1 In the beginning Gov* created money and power.

1:2 And the power was without form, and void; and liberty was upon the face of the country.  And the Spirit of Gov moved upon the faces of the people of the country.

1:3 And Gov said, Let there be regulations: and there were regulations.

1:4 And Gov saw the regulations, that it was good: and Gov increased regulations which diminished liberty.

1:5 And Gov called the regulations Gov’t Agencies, and liberty he called Dangerous.

1:6 And Gov said, Let the country increase taxes, regulations and more gov’t agencies across the land. Taxes then were created to feed Gov.

1:7 And Gov bailed out banks, car companies, and other businesses deemed too-big-too-fail. The Gov also gave money to solar power companies that failed in the end.

1:8 And Gov blessed the gov’t agencies, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and let regulations multiply in the country.

1:9 And Gov said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over things Gov doesn’t care about.

1:10 So Gov created man in his own image, in the image of Gov created he him; Secular and Progressive created he them.

1:11 And Gov blessed them, and God said unto them, Be resentful, and power-hungry, and propagandize the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the Commoners.

1:12 And Gov said, Behold, I have created public education where you can learn that Gov knows what is best for you and you don’t need your parents, friends or charities to help you. That individuality is not good and group’s have rights but individuals don’t. That guns and businesses are evil.

1:13 And to every Commoner I give to you welfare, social security, and socialized medicine because you are incapable of taking care of yourself.

1:14 And Gov saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And even more gov’t agencies were created.

1:15 Thus the money and power were finished, and all the host of them.

1:16 And on some unknown day Gov ended his work which he had made; and he rested temporarily on a gov’t holiday from all his work which he had made.

 

*Government as in Big Government

Taylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts

The Progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century—the doctrine from which the main current of modern liberalism developed—is sometimes erroneously viewed as an “anti-business” philosophy. It was anti-market to be sure, but by no means necessarily anti-business. Progressivism was, more than anything, managerialist.

According to Rakesh Khurana of the Harvard Business School (in From Higher Aims to Hired Hands), the first corporation managers came from an industrial engineering background and saw their job as doing for the entire organization what they’d previously done for production on the shop floor. The managerial revolution in the large corporation, Khurana writes, was in essence an attempt to apply the engineer’s approach (standardizing and rationalizing tools, processes, and systems) to the organization as a system.

And according to Yehouda Shenhav (Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution), Progressivism was the ideology of the managers and engineers who administered the large organizations; political action was a matter of applying the same principles they used to rationalize their organizations to society as a whole. Shenhav writes (quoting Robert Wiebe):

Since the difference between the physical, social, and human realms was blurred by acts of translation, society itself was conceptualized and treated as a technical system. As such, society and organizations could, and should, be engineered as machines that are constantly being perfected. Hence, the management of organizations (and society at large) was seen to fall within the province of engineers. Social, cultural, and political issues . . . could be framed and analyzed as “systems” and “subsystems” to be solved by technical means. . .

During this period, “only the professional administrator, the doctor, the social worker, the architect, the economist, could show the way.” In turn, professional control became more elaborate. It involved measurement and prediction and the development of professional techniques for guiding events to predictable outcomes. The experts “devised rudimentary government budgets; introduced central, audited purchasing; and rationalized the structure of offices.” This type of control was not only characteristic of professionals in large corporate systems. It characterized social movements,the management of schools, roads, towns, and political systems.

Source:  Taylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts by Kevin A. Carson.

What the Left doesn’t understand is that human systems are complex because the human being is not an atom or molecule that can be easily analyzed. People have free will atoms don’t. An atom doesn’t care what you do to it. People do care what you do to them. Free will is one of the main reasons psychology, sociology, and other sciences like them are called “soft sciences.”