What Subsidiarity is all about

The mask slips again

We don't belong to the government. Honestly, how wrongheaded, how un-American, how statist is this concept? I'm a citizen of this country, I'm a resident of this state, of my town. So, what -- do I belong to the federal government? Or just maybe two-thirds of me and state & local owns the other third? This is a statement truly worthy of ridicule.

So let's review. First, they tell us we're racists because we don't like their ideas. Was Karl Marx black? Lenin? Ted Kennedy? Harry Reid? Didn't think so.

Then Obama says "You didn't build that!" Meaning our businesses, our careers, our projects. Stuff the government could never have conceived on it's own anymore than a computer can turn itself on and start composing the 9th Symphony.

Now we have this smarmy, didactic voice asserting that "gee, whiz, we ALL belong to the government! That's what we have in common, don't you know! Because we have to have multiculturalism and our own favorite coffee shops and sports teams. So what, oh what, pray tell, shall unite us? THE GOVERNMENT! We belong to it!"


Unfortunately we are going to hear even sillier things from the Obama campaign, and I doubt they will stop even if Romney and Ryan win. Romney kills people with cancer, Ryan wants to push your grandma off a cliff and then we'll all party while black people drown. Because we like that kind of thing....

Hey, just found this on Facebook. Now this is more like it:

Hey Ohioans, what's in your neighbor's wallet?

You can find out if he or she works for a Federal, State or Local Government (*) institution. Just go to the Buckeye Institute website and click the proper sub-category on the left side.

Or, of course, you could download their iPhone app which allows the same thing. This is useful when you are waiting in line at the post office and want to know how much that slowpoke behind the desk is getting paid to bitch at customers. In fact, a recent press release from the Buckeye Institute shows that searches on USPS salaries are the most common among the federal salary searches. Interesting.

(*) - Actually I don't think they have all the localities in their database yet. But the do have some major cities (Cleveland, Youngstown, etc.) and pretty much all the school districts which are most interesting to me anyway.

Please don't ever shut down the Guardian!

This Guardian piece with an ongoing countdown to the Gov't shutdown is priceless. My fave quote is "He may look like a bank manager but Harry Reid has a useful ability to insert a stiletto." Also near the bottom: "As the clock ticks closer to midnight, where is Jack Bauer when America needs him?"

I suppose it shouldn't be all the funny, seeing that Republicans will probably be blamed for it. But it still is humorous to me, somehow. I just hope when everything settles that they push through the Ryan bill somehow and the President is somehow forced to sign it. I.e., I hope he loses.

Nat Hentoff on Obamacare Rationing

The bureaucratic rationing of health care is on it's way. It is stupid to think otherwise. If you do, better read Nat Hentoff's piece, "Health Care Rationing Obama Believes In". Excerpt:

Unlike Obama, Berwick is enthusiastically, openly candid in his support of Britain's socialistic National Health Service. In a 2008 speech to British physicians, our new health czar said: "I am romantic about National Health Service. I love it (because it is) 'generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just.'"

That "just" National Health Care Service decides which care can be too costly for the government to pay. Its real-time decider of life-or-death outcomes is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Here is how "nicely" it works, described by Michael Tanner, senior fellow and health-care expert at the Cato Institute (where I, too, am a senior fellow):

"It acts as a comparative-effectiveness tool for the National Health Care Service, comparing various treatments and determining whether the benefits the patients receives - SUCH AS PROLONGED LIFE - are cost-efficient for the government" (lifenews.com, May 27).

So listen to our very own decider of how the Obama administration will lower our national debt by cutting inefficient health-care costs. After declaring his ardent romantic attachment to the British system, Berwick said: "All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country." He will, of course, be too busy to attend the funerals of the sacrificial Americans whose lives - not only those of the elderly - may thereby be cut short.

Scary.

Historic low for "trust in government" poll numbers

My previous post linked to a piece in Investor's Business Daily stating that only 22% of Americans polled favor a Value-added Tax be implemented. Now I'm looking at Dan Henninger's "Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff" article in WSJ and he's pointing out the record low in public trust of government, also 22%.


I don't think this is a coincidence; I think this 22% represents the same people.

There are some more ominous numbers in the last 2 paragraphs:

A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday has the Obama presidential approval rating down to 44%—after health care, after the arms treaty with Russia, after the 47-nation, anti-proliferation convocation in Washington.

He insists on more government. People want less, and don't trust what they've got. They want reform. Here's the Pew blowout data:

In 1994 when the Democrats lost over 50 House seats at mid-term, the party's favorable rating was 62%, and for the Congress they controlled it was 53%. They still got killed. Now the party's favorable is 38% and Congress's approval is 25%. The Republicans' numbers are low, too, but they're not in charge.

The Democratic Party is on the edge of an electoral cliff with a long fall to the bottom. No wonder they're seeing a demon under every bed.

Government-run Health Care Kills Again in UK

People should go to jail for this, hopefully they will. But one must admit that the system worked as intended; a cancer patient was eliminated from the system.

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.
They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.

She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.'

Cancer Survival Odds: Government Health Care Sucks

The Net Right Nation blog reports on "Cancer Survival Rates With Government-Run Care". Excerpt:

Prostate Cancer Awareness Month has just ended, so it is timely to bring to mind the innovation and capability of the American doctors and researchers who have made America’s prostate cancer survival rates the highest in the world. Americans’ five-year survival rate is 91.0%. It beats out the Canadian survival rate of 85.1%, trounces Europe’s 57.1%, and obliterates England’s 50.9%. As Democrats in Congress seek to make America’s health care more like the government-run bureaucracies in these other countries, I cannot help but fear that our survival rates will decline.

Here's a chart from the article.

70% of American People Don't Think like Obama

Great new Rasmussen poll out. From the Associated Content site:

Rasmussen conducted a poll asking Americans on whether they would prefer a:

a) Government that would provide fewer services, imposing lower taxes OR
b) Government that provides more services, imposing higher taxes

The results of the poll revealed that 70% of likely voters favor a Government that offers fewer services, imposing lower taxes. 88% of registered republicans polled shared this view. 78% of Independents shared this view. And surprisingly 48% of Democrats shared this view.

I just wish these people would have voted with this in mind. Yes, I know that McCain could have done a better job revealing Obama's big government tendencies. But remember this little poll? John Ziegler revealed that many Americans who voted for Obama thought the Republicans were in control of the House. So they didn't even realize that putting Obama in the Whitehouse would be a vote for one-party control, not gridlock.

It's all a shame, but we'll keep fighting.

Evil and Stupid Misconceptions, Right

William McGurn's piece in WSJ shows the grasping quality of the defenders of the health care bill. Unwilling to discuss details of the bill, they attack the unbelievers with accusations of evil, stupidity and misconceiving. First he deals with Harry Reid's latest "evil" remark:

We saw it again in 2002, when George W. Bush characterized North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as an "axis of evil." Tom Daschle, a Democrat and then Senate majority leader, warned that "we've got to be very careful with rhetoric of that kind"; former President Jimmy Carter called it "overly simplistic and counterproductive"; and comedian Will Ferrell parodied it on Saturday Night Live. Soon the phrase became acceptable only in the ironic sense—as in the Chris Fair cookbook titled "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations."

With all this history, you would think Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had ample warning. Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader invoked the e-word himself last week at an energy conference in Las Vegas, where he accused those protesting President Barack Obama's health-care proposals of being "evil mongers." So proud was he of this contribution to the American political lexicon that he repeated it to a reporter the next day and noted the phrase was "an original."

And then . . . nothing. No thundering rebuke from the New York Times. No outburst from Mr. Carter. In fact, it's hard not to notice that the good and gracious people who instinctively recoil at words like "evil" or "un-American" (the preferred term of Mr. Reid's counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi) have all been silent.

Yeah, well, Reid is a Democrat, so he has immunity. Next, he examines how Obama goes after the stupidity of a straw-woman he carries around to townhall meetings:

It's a point of view Mr. Obama inadvertently encourages when he indulges in, say, the trope about Medicare that has become a staple of his town halls. The president tells the crowd he's received a letter from a woman upset with his plans for health care. "She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want you meddling in the private market place. And keep your hands off my Medicare.'"

Get it? The applause tells us the audience does: How dumb can this woman be?

Gibbs hits it from the misconception angle:

It's much the same with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. In his press briefings, Mr. Gibbs seems to suggest that all hard questions about health care are based on "misconceptions." Really?

Is the Congressional Budget Office's finding that the House plan would significantly raise health-care costs a "misconception"? Was it a "misconception" that the now-abandoned section covering end-of-life issues had an in-built conflict of interest between lowering costs and providing care for the elderly? And is it a "misconception" that Mr. Obama's ultimate goal is a single-payer system, when Americans can watch him on earlier videos saying as much?

Read the whole thing, it's funny yet revealing. He points out that everyone in DC is asking "what went wrong with the administration's sales pitch" without suspecting that it might be substance. He's right; they're trying to sell Americans a shit sandwich for a trillion dollars. If we don't want to buy it, they'll try to ram it down our throats.

And the winner is... MEDICAID!

Job creation, my butt. Derek Thompson shows us where the "stimulus" money is really going. Short answer: failing government programs.

The best explanation I've found for why the stimulus didn't work is this graph from the GAO analysis of the stimulus act. It shows pretty clearly that the 76 percent of stimulus spending through the first four months went to fill in the gaping holes in Medicaid and state budgets. In other words, the stimulus isn't acting like a pole vault lifting job creation above the baseline. It's been acting like a crutch to keep state budgets and payrolls from tumbling.

Hat tip to Mark Hemingway on the Corner who states the following:

Color me shocked. I realize there are people that think it's a noble goal, but spending billions preserving the status quo in government over the next four months while America bleeds jobs is most certainly not the rationale given to the American people who were told there was an immediate need to railroad through an economic stimulus.

Time to put away those shovels you had ready.

Sorry, Beach Boys...

...but I'm glad they're not all "California Girls".


EMBED-Genius Plan to Fix California Economy - Watch more free videos

Hat tip.

Jimmy Carter and His Cockroaches

I've always had misgivings about Habitat for Humanity ever since I heard one-term disgrace Jimmy Carter was involved. Kathy Shaidle shows these misgivings weren't entirely unfounded in a column which is hilarious if you don't live in one of slumlord Carter's houses:

Now, in a development sure to embarrass Nobel Peace Prize laureate Carter and his widely admired charity, a recent investigation by the Times of London revealed that the Fairway Oaks housing development is “better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.”

April Charney is a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks who are now suing Habitat for Humanity. The charity, she told the Times, failed to tell residents that their new homes were built on a reclaimed garbage dump.

Some residents blame their health problems on the Fairway Oaks location, and their crumbling homes on Habitat for Humanity’s philosophy of using volunteers as construction workers, rather than experienced, licensed professionals.

“The intentions are good,” Charney told the Times, “but when the politicians and big-shot stars have left we’re stuck with the consequences. This house looks pretty but inside it either stinks or sweats.”

This part was darkly funny to me also:

Habitat for Humanity’s problems seem to date back to 2005, when the organization’s founder, Millard Fuller, was dismissed by the board of directors following sexual harrassment accusations by former Habitat employees.

Fuller and a legion of supporters, including Jimmy Carter, denied the allegations and worked to overturn the decision. In a confidential letter to the board, after Carter warned that a “national scandal” could ensue if Fuller was relieved of his duties as cheif executive.

In the March 26, 1990, letter, Carter explained that in the Southern culture that he and Fuller shared, physical displays of affection were commonplace. He came to realize, however, that such gestures were not universally welcomed, citing his dedication of the John F. Kennedy Library in 1979, when former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had “visibly flinched” at his attempt to hug her.

I wish I was a fly on the wall for that Jackie-O moment.

Huckabee and Homeschooling

Yes, I realize that the following video is propaganda, but 'tis the season. The occasion is that my wife told me that there is a homeschooling mom who has been blogging about how Huckabee is unfriendly to the homeschooling cause. He's even got an endorsement from a national homeshooling group and I guess she is furrowing her eyebrows about it, like it's some kind of obvious conspiracy. My guess is that it's another desire for "egg in your beer" on the part of the puristas.

But, speaking of conspiracies, it might also be partially due to an article on World Net Nut Daily which is written in their standard fear mongering fashion. Huckabee received the NEA's endorsement in New Hampshire for the Republican nomination. So what? They endorsed Hillary for the Dems and everyone on the east coast thinks that he's the easiest to beat in the general. Could the NEA be playing politics here? I'd take those odds to Vegas.



And speaking of eggs and beer, I can't think of a better way to ruin a beer than to crack an egg in it. I like mine crisp and clean with no protein. Maybe the saying should be changed to "What do you want, Dewars in your Dos Equis? Stoli in your St. Pauli? Grand Marnier in your Grand Ridge?"

Please feel free to suggest other creative boilermaker combinations in the comments, along with substantial comments about whatever I started talking about here. Oh, yes, Mike Huckabee. Full disclosure: I could be happy vote for that guy, tho' I think he has some nutty, unrealistic ideas about deporting illegals. That's red meat for the wild-eyed fringe, IMO, and he'll convenient toss it in the event that he goes all the way.

Hemp 08

I was really into Ron Paul in college and in 1988 I even voted for him for President on the Libertarian ticket. But I was recently trying to think, trying to remember exactly why...

Whoaa! Dude, I just remembered!

Actually I was trying to find the latest recording of Ron Paul's appearance earlier today on 9/11 truther and all-purpose whack job Alex Jones's radio show. I know it's at least appearance number 4 in a year. Personally I liked former Pres. Bill Clinton's recent reaction to a disruptive member of the mindless "9/11 Truth Movement": "HOW DARE YOU!"