Churchill understood what Progressives want

“Wisdom”

It’s a heckuva busy day today with little time for posting, but I have to share this gem via Steven Hayward at Power Line. It’s an excerpt from a longer quote from Winston Churchill’s closing speech in the 1945 General Election, which the Conservatives sadly lost. Read these two paragraphs, and tell me if you don’t recognize the modern Democratic Party, at least by reflection:

Look how even today they hunger for controls of every kind, as if these were delectable foods instead of wartime inflictions and monstrosities. There is to be one State to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. The State is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, and arch-administrator and ruler and the arch-caucus-boss. . .

A Socialist State once thoroughly completed in all its details and its aspects—and that is what I am speaking of—could not afford to suffer opposition. . . Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils. . . Have we not heard Mr Herbert Morrison descant upon his plans to curtail Parliamentary procedure and pass laws simply by resolution of broad principle in the House of Commons, afterward to be left by Parliament to the executive and to the bureaucrats to elaborate and enforce by departmental regulations?

Churchill was of course criticizing the British Labour Party, which had been founded as an explicitly Socialist, albeit non-Marxist, party, but how well this describes President Obama and the dominant left wing of the Democratic Party! The worship of the administrative state, government by regulation and “boards of experts,” the inescapable, inexorable need to control everything — that bolded portion illustrates the progressive “theory of legislation” perfectly: pass a vaguely-worded bill, and let the unelected bureaucrats fill in the details with the full force of law. I’m surprised Goldberg didn’t quote this in “Liberal Fascism.”

Be sure to read the rest. While Hayward is thinking of Obamacare and the IRS scandal, I think Churchill’s quote reflects the heart of the professional Democratic Party in general.

Back to work…

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Lomborg: Californians are paying ridiculous subsidies for electric cars

Reblogged from Watts Up With That?:

 Guest post by Bjørn Lomborg

I've said electric cars get subsidized too much. Turns out I was wrong.

In California, they are subsidized ridiculously too much.

Tesla gets $45,000 for each car it sells in state and federal subsidies. The Tesla S starts at $69,000, so about 40% of its total cost is subsidies (Tesla isn’t making any big profits).

Read more… 230 more words

Yet another "Green scam." Makers of fossil-fueled cars are forced to buy, in essence, "carbon credits" from Tesla to meet California's "zero emission" standards. You can bet those costs are passed along to the consumer.

3D printed guns scare progressives, so of course they want to ban them

Because the future is frightening.

First, a BBC news video to show you what the fuss is all about:

The Telegraph describes it thus:

Instructions for making The Liberator, a plastic handgun that could escape detection by conventional airport security, were today made freely available to download from the internet by anti-government activists in the US.

It was created by a group in Texas that aims to make “WikiWeapons” that can be reproduced with a home computer and a $1,000 (£644) 3D printer that uses heated plastics instead of ink.

“It’s a demonstration that technology will allow access to things that governments would otherwise say that you shouldn’t have access to,” Cody Wilson, the leader of Defense Distributed, told The Daily Telegraph.

Emphasis added. And that scares statists like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who’s first, knee-jerk reaction is to ban it:

The Liberator may look like a toy, but “this gun can fire regular bullets,” Schumer said, calling for legislation outlawing the technology’s weapons potential.

The bill was drafted by Rep. Steve Israel (D-L.I.).

“Security checkpoints, background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print their own plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” Israel said in a statement.

To Schumer, the ramifications of make-your-own untraceable and undetectable weapons are “stomach-churning.”

“Now anyone, a terrorist, someone who is mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon, can essentially open a gun factory in their garage,” Schumer said. “It must be stopped.”

Apparently Chuck (and Rep. Israel) have never heard of improvised firearms, before, such as the Sten gun, meant to be made in home workshops. And Loyalist militias in Northern Ireland practically made a hobby out of homemade submachine guns. (So did the I.R.A., from what I’m told.)

But it’s not what the terrorist or criminal might do with the weapon that truly scares progressives, though I doubt even Schumer realizes this. Look again at the bolded quote above — Wilson nails it. What truly scares the progressive statist is the loss of control.  The ideal, for Schumer and those like him, is the administrative state run by bureaucratic experts who decide what’s best for everyone. Life is too complicated for the “average Joe,” so we need ever more legislation and regulation to keep everyone safe and prosperous in line. That includes access to firearms, which have advanced beyond anything the writers of that dear, but now obsolete Constitution could imagine.

What frightens them is that it makes their precious regulations powerless. Like I wrote before on this issue:

But now think about the effect on gun control: this (3D priting) is the discontinuous innovation. Statists and gun-banners and those standing on the graves of children can scream as loud as they want for ever more laws controlling firearms, maybe even get them, but, as long as you can download the plans and have access to a printer… All those laws are useless. They’re the modern buggy-whips.

An idea once conceived cannot be un-thought, and technology once discovered cannot be undiscovered. Even the secret of making an atomic bomb is out there, in spite of all our efforts to keep it classified;  only the difficulty of obtaining the materials and constructing it have slowed its spread.

But combine 3D printers (which are only going to get smaller, cheaper, and more portable) with easy information distribution — hello, torrent sites! – and, well, Schumer and his wise, progressive control-freak buddies can write all the laws and regulations they want; it just won’t do any good. People will ignore them.

And that’s what scares the pants off progressives.

PS: I can see one potentially big benefit to the advent of 3D firearms: by showing how useless gun-control regulations are, it might actually spur us to deal with the real problem behind mass shootings, such as at Aurora and Newtown — mental illness and the lousy state of mental health care in the US.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

This just in: Global Warming will turn women into prostitutes

Because there is nothing the Evil Demon of Climate Change cannot do! So speaketh Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of (I’m sorry to say) California (1) :

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.

The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

Climate change could also add “workload and stresses” on female farmers, which the resolution says produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in developing countries.

The Demon Climate Change will also bring an increased risk of war and refugee migration, according to Lee’s resolution. Really, in the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, this thing is more powerful than the Four Horsemen combined. No wonder they’re screaming “DOOM!!” at the top of their lungs.

Well, that and the fact that they lust after the tax money and power all the new anti-global warming regulations and legislation will give them. A “crisis” like this is just made for a statism-on-steroids solution.

But I’m just a cynic.

And Barbara Lee is an idiot.

But take a look at what she’s pushing: fear, not facts. Coulds, maybes, mights, but no science. This is what you do when the science is increasingly not on your side –for example, the troublesome fact that there has been no statistically significant warming since the mid-90s– you have to resort to scare tactics and various forms of baiting and then plead a crisis. This is all the Left has (in this case, Watermelons, the environmental Left), whether it’s climate change, the right to bear arms, or economics.

“Facts are stubborn things,” said John Adams, which is why the Left tries desperately to ignore them.

via Moe Lane

Footnote:
(1) However she was duly elected, so she arguably represents the views of California CD-32, which, you’ll be shocked to read, includes Berkeley.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Hide your IRAs: Obama admin. — “We think you’ve saved enough!”

“We’re here for your fair share.”

Or maybe it’s the off-ramp to Cyprus.

Over at lefty blog Talking Points Memo (h/t Joel Gehrke), Brian Beutler has noted an interesting item in the White House’s latest budget proposal: a cap on the amount one is allowed to save in tax-deferred accounts. Anything over that is open to the taxman.

Per the budget, “Individual Retirement Accounts and other tax-preferred savings vehicles are intended to help middle class families save for retirement. But under current rules, some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

But how would they close this loophole?

One way experts believe financial managers avoid the current annual contribution limit to IRAs is by using IRAs to participate in investments and assigning those investment interests a nominal value vastly below fair market.

Obama wouldn’t curb this practice directly. Instead his budget calls for an overall cap of about $3 million on the net balance across all of an individuals’ tax-preferred accounts. Only have one IRA? It can hold $3 million. Have three? Their holdings must sum to $3 million or less.

The $3 million figure is approximate. A formula would set the cap at a level just high enough to finance an annual distribution of no more than $205,000 per year in retirement for someone retiring this year.

Now, I can imagine TPM is just thrilled with this; it just reeks of class warfare disguised as “fairness.” We’ve got “reasonable levels” (Defined by whom? Oh, wait…) and the ever popular “loophole,” with its scent of someone getting away with something, cheating the rest of us.

What the administration is talking about, I believe, are self-directed IRAs  and other retirement vehicles that allow you to invest your money where you see fit (1). When you sell the stock and withdraw the funds, under the rules you’re taxed at a much lower rate. It’s a great vehicle for wealth creation and the encouragement of saving for retirement.

And that’s what they can’t stand. The rules as written prevent them from taxing this sheltered wealth to fund their bloated spending, so they’re going to change the rules. Oh sure, they say this is aimed the the “Romneys” of the world, those rich people who have sheltered more the $3 million, but how long do you think that barrier will last? About as long as it takes them to realize they need more.

Rocco always wants more.

This idea to tax sheltered money isn’t new; FDR, to whom Obama acolytes compare him, has his own undistributed profits tax, to punish businesses that were holding on to cash. (Look out, Apple!) That scheme blew up in Roosevelt’s face as business investment collapsed and the nation entered a new recession in 1937-38. You can bet a move like this would have its own unintended consequences, which the social engineers at Team Unicorn would blame on anyone but their own ham-handed, grasping, greedy policies.

This is progressivism showing its face as Leviathan. Forget that it was your skill and acumen and good habits that accumulated that wealth (and, through investing it, helped others by creating jobs, &c.); forget that this is, in the end, your money, yours to dispose of as you see fit, beyond that portion needed to fund the basic functions of government.

Forget all that.

The administrative state beloved by progressives knows what’s best. It has its plans and goals for us all, because it has divined the national will. Thus all the resources of the nation are at its disposal to meet those goals.

Including your retirement accounts.

This budget is dead on arrival, thank Heaven, but don’t think this scheme is going away. Oh, no. Once broached, it’s out there, waiting.

PS: I wonder if this is where Obama got the idea?

Footnote:
(1) You know: your money, your property, your liberty.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

So, one of the schmucks who designed Obamacare warns it’s “too complex.”

Now that he’s retiring and doesn’t have to face the wrath of voters, Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) feels free to speak his mind:

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller, one of the towering architects of Obamacare, on Tuesday openly criticized program managers for not moving quickly enough to build the system, warning that if it gets off to a bumpy start it will just get worse.

Decrying the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as way too complex, he warned the acting Medicare director that Obamacare is “so complicated and if it isn’t done right the first time, it will just simply get worse.”

The retiring senator also told Marilyn Tavenner at her Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that Obamacare rivals tax reform in its capacity to confuse Americans.

Gee, ya think???

“This? Confusing?? Surely you jest.”

Though I don’t see what Senator “I designed this monstrosity” is complaining about; people can always get a navigator and a translator.

And don’t you find Rockefeller’s naive faith that there was any chance in Hades that Obamacare’s implementation could ever be “done right” touching and quaint? He helped create it; surely someone can figure out how to make it work!

Why, I bet he believes in the tooth fairy, too.

Memo to those who voted for Obama in 2008 and, especially, 2012: We tried to warn you!

Next time, listen.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Reid gun bill criticized by radical conservatives at… the ACLU

“Post-constitutional”

From The Daily Caller via Ed Morrissey:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.

“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard, we think the current legislation, the current proposal on universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he went on.

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a registry could be “a second step.”

You know there’s a problem with proposed legislation when both the NRA and ACLU are criticizing it.

As Ed points out, it’s not that the ACLU has become a staunch defender of the right to bear arms, but they have do have serious concerns on 4th Amendment grounds, the retained database contributing to violations of rules against unreasonable searches and thus privacy.  Over at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein thinks a national registry –a step enabling a future confiscation– is just what the Democrats have in mind:

That they were discovered here watering down language to open the way for the beginnings of a national gun registry means only that, should they now be defeated in their plan by strong arguments and sunlight, they’ll merely try again later, in some other way, using some other bill or some other crisis to reach their ends.

That is, if the full-frontal approach doesn’t work, they’ll return to the incremental approach — and with respect to their gun control aims, the contours to that approach are already quite clear:  empower the AG to expand the parameters for what is included in a background check, wherein a partisan agent is given the power to determine what group or groups of people come to constitute a potential danger; cross-reference ObamaCare, with its governmental access to health and prescription records, with other databases, using medical professionals and (they hope) mental health professionals to create the conditions under which they can argue for “sensible” prohibitions on firearms ownership; use Democratic majorities in various states to drive draconian gun control measures through the state legislatures on a party-line vote, then see which of those state laws stand up to court challenges and which do not; use agencies such as the CDC to lend an air of scientific and medical emergency to the “gun violence” “epidemic” — as if gun violence is contagious in any way other than through some strained sociological metaphor — then demand action to combat the crisis or “epidemic” (regardless of what the crime statistics show).

We are living in a time when our government is looking for ways to usurp our rights, pressuring them from every angle, waiting for us to “compromise” if only to make them relent.

Jeff also notes the same simultaneous push at the federal and state levels I wrote about the other day with regard to healthcare. He’s right: this isn’t the old Democratic Party, anymore.  Having been taken over by Progressivism and then the New Left, they’re now the party of “constitutional deconstruction,” stripping the parts they don’t like at the moment of any meaning, something those who care about constitutionalism must struggle against constantly.

Thus making “strange bedfellows” of conservatives and the ACLU, at least in this case.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Obamacare as the gateway to state-run single-payer healthcare? Colorado is the foot in the doorway.

One of the charges made by those oppose Obamacare is that it’s really a Trojan Horse for state-run single-payer system (1); that, in fact, the annoyances and fatal flaws within the PPACA –which are legion– are a feature, not a bug. The idea being that the problems will grow so great that people will demand a solution and then, by that time, the public will be open to a full-blown single payer nationalized system, the ultimate goal of the Left. In response, Obamacare supporters call that idea nonsense and dismiss critics as paranoid “see a Socialist under every bush” types.

Oh yeah? Phase Two has already begun:

State Sen. Irene Aguilar wants Coloradans to imagine a day when 80 percent of them see their health care costs drop.

She says the wildly different health care system she envisions can make that happen – largely by eliminating much of what health insurance companies do, and by purchasing everyone’s medications in bulk.

The Denver doctor and Democrat is proposing that Colorado throw out the impending reforms know as Obamacare – which is permitted if the state comes up with a better plan. This week Aguilar introduced a resolution to ask Colorado voters to create a universal health care system for the state.

(…)

Specifically, Aguilar’s bill would ask voters to create a statewide health insurance co-op, owned by all Coloradans, which would replace health insurance companies. It would offer one wide-ranging policy for all residents. It would be funded by a tax, which would replace the insurance premiums that companies and people now pay.

Emphasis added. So, if Senator Aguilar’s measure passes, we’d have a single-payer system in one state (2). What’s the problem, that’s Coloradans’ business, right?

Yes, they’re free to sink their ship any way they’d like, just as we in California are doing. But, consider this hypothetical scenario: As the years go by and Obamacare becomes more hated as its problems multiply, there will be pressure on more and more states to invoke the same bail-out provision of the PPACA that Aguilar’s bill does and opt out of Obamacare altogether, if it’s replaced with “something better.” (3)

If enough states do this, the pressure for a national single-payer system to smooth out the differences between the states will be tremendous, almost irresistible. And the enactment of that, my friends, would mark the completion of “Phase Three” and the Left’s victory.

I’ll leave the critique of the economics of the Colorado proposal to economists, though I suspect they’ll find it’s another case of “unicorns and rainbows.” And I don’t doubt that Senator Aguilar genuinely wants to help her constituents, though her method is wrong. But, politically, this plan fits right in with the Left’s strategy to follow parallel tracks at the state and federal levels to incrementally pursue a Social Democratic agenda, the underlying spirit of which is wealth redistribution.

These efforts aren’t in conflict with each other, they’re complementary. And we have to fight them on those same levels, too.

via Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt.

Footnotes:
(1) And I have no idea where anyone would get that notion from.
(2) Variations of which have been tried in Maine, Tennessee, and Massachusetts, all of which are failing. But this time we know it’ll be different, right?
(3) “Better,” in this case, would certainly be guaranteed universal coverage that goes beyond the PPACA, not a market-based system. Try to opt out of Obamacare and implement the latter, and just see how fast your state gets sued by the Obama administration.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#GunControl as a sign of liberal cultural superiority

I came across an article this morning by Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner in which sees the current efforts to restrict our Second Amendment rights as another front in the “culture war,” a war in which the Left sees itself as morally superior to everyone else. That is, you can’t have rational reasons for disagreeing with them on gun-rights issues, you must be morally wrong.

The spark for his essay is a new book by Dan Baum, who’s both a Jewish liberal Democrat and a gun owner, called “Gun Guys.” As someone who sits in both worlds (the liberal and the gun-fan), Baum is able to understand how both sides thinks. Carney introduce’s Baum’s book with some examples of how the left sees gun enthusiasts as not just wrong, but inferior, even evil. Here are a couple:

The Post’s Gene Weingarten in 2011 spat on the Second Amendment as “the refuge of bumpkins and yeehaws who like to think they are protecting their homes against imagined swarthy marauders desperate to steal their flea-bitten sofas from their rotting front porches.”

After Columbine, a Boston Herald op-ed described the average participant in a 1999 Boston Common pro-gun rally as a wannabe “hicksville cowboy, as in way out there, somewhere off the Mass Pike or at the far reaches of 93. From towns with something to prove and lots of Amvets posts.”

And President Obama in 2008 famously told a wealthy crowd at a San Francisco fundraiser that rural voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … “

Well, the “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” clearly is mutual.

From this, Carney segues to Baum’s discussion of the liberal-left’s loathing for the culture that guns represent and how they think they can use the law to control or destroy that culture:

Liberals, Baum writes, “recognized the gun as the sacred totem of the enemy, the embodiment of this abhorrent world view. They believed that they could weaken the enemy by smashing his idols — by banning the gun if possible … “

Many liberals hate it that some conservatives have a different set of values, morals and aesthetics — and so these liberals want to use the federal government to fix that.

(…)

“Assault rifles,” writes Baum, “were just as powerful symbolically as they were ballistically. A renewed assault-rifle ban would really smash the enemy’s idols.”

Also, when speaking about sales without background checks, gun controllers always refer to “gun shows.” Most guns used in murders aren’t bought at gun shows — they’re stolen or bought on the street. But gun shows are large gatherings of the “gun tribe” — and so they must be shut down.

Not mentioned directly, but certainly a subtext in this article and, I suspect, Baum’s book, is the idea that gun control as an assault on the so-called “gun tribe” is, as Dan Bongino put it, a form of people control. And that is the real objective of progressivism.

Makes sense, when you’re convinced you’re superior.

RELATED: And if you need another example of how the other side sees us, don’t forget, if you oppose gun control, you might be an Antisemite.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) Is America Becoming Europe?

A philosophical question for you from Encounter Books and narrated by, I think, Bill Whittle:

My short answer is “No, and I’d  rather not live in Europe, thanks.” (Even though I live in one of the states closest to “might as well just join the EU and get it over with.”) If it means permanent 10% unemployment, economic stagnation, dependency on a cradle-to-grace welfare state, the high taxes meant to support it, and rule by a political class that thinks the people are to be controlled, not consulted… Well, I’ll pass.

Wait. I’ve  just described the modern (Social) Democratic Party, haven’t I?

Seriously, I’m old enough to remember the stagnation, declinism,  and national bad mood of the 70s, particularly under Jimmy Carter. Those times passed, and I’m sure these will too, but only if we work tirelessly to remind people there is a better way.

Complacency really will make us Europe.

PS: I can almost hear someone saying “Yeah, but we had Reagan, back then.” But few if any in the 70s knew that Reagan would become one of the most successful presidents in our history. Many didn’t take him seriously, calling him a fringe politician, a Goldwater throwback, even a nut and an amiable dunce. It wasn’t until several years into his presidency that we realized how right he was and how much good he was doing. We may or may not have a “Reagan” waiting in the wings, now, unnoticed or underestimated, but my point is that we can’t sit back, waiting for that person to save us. We have to work at it and stand against the spread of statism and dependency and for the promotion of liberty day after day, every day.

/soapbox

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The greatest issue facing America: a cruise-ship passengers’ bill of rights

And Chuck Schumer is on the case:

Sen. Charles Schumer is calling on the cruise ship industry to adopt a “bill of rights” to guarantee passengers certain protections while aboard their ships.

The New York Democrat says Sunday he’ll be asking industry leaders to voluntarily adopt the guidelines which include guarantees that ships have sanitary conditions, back-up power, medical staff and other standard procedures.

Schumer’s plan would also include the right to a full refund if a trip is abruptly canceled due to mechanical problems.

And thus we see the modern Democratic Party’s priorities in action: no budget from the Senate in more than 1,400 days? Bah! The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran or North Korea? Don’t waste my time! Food-stamp usage at an all-time high while labor force participation is at a record low? Small potatoes, friend.

No, as we see from the senior senator from New York’s example, what really matters is grandstanding whenever possible and wherever cameras and mics are available, so that you can pretend you’re fighting for the little guy and convince enough saps to vote for you again.

This also shows the different mindset of the limited government advocates on the one hand, and the statists on the other.

Limited Government Advocate:

“A company that provides poor service will eventually put itself out of business, and those who feel harmed by it have access to the civil courts. Annoying as these incidents are, it’s really none of the federal government’s business, and we should get back to tending to what properly is.”

Statist:

“This is an outrage! People need our protection against evil corporations; the government must do something! What? They already have redress under the law? They can take their business elsewhere? Insufficient! We must pass new laws, because that’s what we’re here for — to pass laws! Not in our purview? Nonsense! We’ll pass a law to make it our business! Call a press conference!”

Is it any wonder people are disenchanted with our political class, when so many of them ignore the real problems we face and instead go chasing butterflies?

via Liberty Unyielding

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Obamacare: one picture is worth 20,000 pages of regulations

And this is just the start.

Via Steven Hayward, this photo shows the stack of regulations released so far for Obamacare – a stack seven feet high:

In his post, Hayward writes:

…the effectual truth of modern American government is that Congress no longer enacts laws in the meaningful sense of the word.  Instead, they pass wish lists, and delegate the actual lawmaking to unelected administrators.

Simple test: if Congress passes a statute–even one that is 1,600 pages long like Obamacare, but the law can’t go into effect as written, it is not really a law at all.  The simple proof is the photo here that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office has released, showing the 20,000-plus pages of regulations issued so far for the implementation of Obamacare.  ”Regulation” is just a multi-syllabic word for “law,” after all.  The point is, administrators–the slightly nicer term for “bureaucrats”–now govern us much more than our elected lawmakers do.  One almost wonders why we have elections at all.  (Actually, many bureaucrats actually do wonder this.)

(Emphasis added)

That bolded portion is the key. Since the advent of the administrative state under the progressives, beginning under TR and Wilson, but really taking off under FDR, only occasionally slowing since, and now in a full-throated roar under Obama, Congress has ceded more and more of its lawmaking power to bureaucrats, chasing the progressive dream of an administrative state free of messy democratic politics and that obsolete Constitution. And this is only the start, not only of regulations under Obamacare, but the avalanche soon to come via Dodd-Frank, too.

Of course, while Congress gives away their duties to unelected mandarins, they continue to enjoy nice salaries and tremendous perks.

Nice work, if you can get it.

(h/t Jonah Goldberg)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Pelosi really does believe that all the money is hers

All the money! Give it to me! MINE!!

Well, the government’s, but you just know that, deep down inside, she sees herself as synonymous with the government — l’Etat c’est Nancy!

Bryan Preston noted this interesting bit of progressive logic while the Minority Leader was talking about reducing government spending:

“Tax cuts are spending.”

“Our whole budget is what $3.5 trillion,” Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “So, when we talk about reducing spending, we certainly must, and we certainly have–$1.6 trillion in the previous Congress, $1.2 of it in the Budget Control Act.

“But spending is also related to tax cuts,” said Pelosi. Tax cuts are spending. Tax expenditures, they are called. Subsidies for big oil, subsidies to send jobs overseas, breaks to send jobs overseas, breaks for corporate jets. They are called tax expenditures. Spending money on tax breaks.

“And that’s the spending that we must curtail as well,” she said.

Preston is right: the only way this logic works, the only way a tax cut can be intellectually considered a government expenditure, is if all money is the government’s in the first place. Then it would make sense: by lowering tax rates, the government spends money it otherwise would have had, by letting the people keep more. It is also the government’s right –superior to that of the people– to decide how the money is expended, because it’s their property, anyway.

And it’s an idea utterly alien to everything this nation was founded on.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, when Pelosi said something similar:

But, cynical me, I suspect that is not what Nancy wants. No, what she wants, like Rocco in “Key Largo,” is more.  More revenue, more of our money. There’s never enough. And she wants the power that comes with having more money to redistribute, to turn citizens into dependent clients of the State and the Democratic Party. She and her progressive brethren will take the money and then control who gets how much — and if they want to keep getting it, they’ll vote the right way.

The power to distribute money is the power to control.

That’s what’s at the heart of the repeated bleatings from progressives about “more revenue.” Forget “fairness,” at least as it’s understood in the real world.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

California’s big-government madness, drowning in a sea of laws

I ran across an item today in the Los Angeles Times that just floored me. The article was discussing a proposed new tax on sodas to fight the “obesity crisis” (insert eye-roll as needed). See if you can spot what caught my attention:

A proposal to tax sweetened soda in California has renewed debate over the state’s role in preventing obesity among its residents.

State Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) has introduced legislation that would levy a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages, including sodas, as part of an effort to fight obesity among young people.

The money paid by beverage distributors under SB 622 would go to a Children’s Health Promotion Fund to pay for a statewide childhood obesity prevention program. “This bill will combat the obesity crisis and ensure that our children– and future generations of Californians– are not doomed to a shorter life expectancy and can instead live longer, healthier lives,” Monning said.

(…)

The Monning bill was one of 2,189 bills introduced by state lawmakers by Friday’s deadline for this year,…

Okay, so maybe I helped you a bit there.

California’s elected legislators oligarchs have proposed two thousand one hundred eighty-nine new laws or amendments to existing laws.

Keep in mind that the legislature has 120 members in total, so, on a per-capita basis, each legislator has introduced more than 18 proposed laws. I have a hard time imagining us needing more than 18 new laws in total, let alone 18 x 120.

This is one of the unintended consequences of passing Proposition 1A in 1966, by which we created a full-time legislature, one that has the longest session of any in the nation, by the way. Legislators feel they have to have something on the resume to show the voters and to justify that $95,000 per year salary, and what better way to do it than write a bunch of laws? That’s what “professional lawmakers” do, isn’t it?

Again, eye-roll. No government anywhere, anytime needs more than 2000 new laws per year.

As far as I’m concerned, Californians back in 1966 made a tremendous mistake for which we’re now paying, as the legislature is controlled by a bunch of progressive full-time nanny-staters whose only solution to any problem –even problems that aren’t their business or may not exist at all– is more government, more laws, more intrusion in our lives. And if we ever hope to restore some sanity here, returning the legislature to part-time status will have to be a big part of the solution.

PS: I’m also strongly reminded of what the Roman historian Tacitus once said:

“The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws.”

Wise people, those Romans.

PPS: Oh, and the soda tax is lame, too. Another piece of useless social engineering brought to us by our Coastal Overlords.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

A Warning from Ronald Reagan

Reblogged from International Liberty:

If you want some inspiration from Ronald Reagan, these brief remarks reveal his understanding of both economics of history (especially with regards to the other great president of the 20th century).

And this short video excerpt also gets me fired up to fight big government.

But maybe it's also time to share a warning from the Gipper. Here's a quote (which…

Read more… 129 more words

Spot. On. And while I don't think the administration is Socialist (though I'm convinced Obama himself is), their nanny-state progressivism is different only by degree. And the same can be said for New York and California.

The progressive war on the middle class: Kansas vs. California

A few days ago, reactionary liberal E.J. Dionne wrote a piece in The Washington Post, part of which he devoted to bashing states that implement conservative fiscal and governance policies. And he singled out Kansas, the state with perhaps the most “Tea Party” government, for a ritual “two minutes hate:”

In some states where Republicans control all the levers of power, they are rushing ahead with astonishingly right-wing programs to eviscerate government while shifting the tax burden toward the middle class and the poor and away from the wealthy. In trying to build the Koch brothers’ dystopias, they are turning states in laboratories of reaction.

As Neil King Jr. and Mark Peters reported in a Wall Street Journal article on the “Red State model,” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has slashed both income taxes and spending. This drew fire from moderate and moderately conservative Republican legislators, whom he then helped purge in primaries.

Note the requisite invocation of the demon Koch brothers, lest any of the progressive faithful miss the clue that these conservative reforms are EVIL!!!

Anyway, Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll read Dionne’s screed and did something increasingly unusual for journalists these days: he looked for facts before turning on his word-processing program. Imagine that.

So, first looked at how things are going in Mordor Kansas:

If Dionne were to bother to visit Kansas, he would find a state with an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent, a full 2.5 points below the nation’s 7.9 percent average. Despite “eviscerated” state government spending, Kansas’ fourth- and eighth-graders beat the national average in both math and reading scores. The state’s 11.2 percent poverty rate is also well below the national 15.8 percent national average. And despite all those evil tax cuts for the rich, the gap between Kansas’ wealthiest and poorest citizens is also much smaller than the national average.

The most recent Jayhawk Poll showed Brownback enjoying a 55 percent to 37 percent approval rating. But I’m sure the backlash Dionne predicted is just around the corner.

Then he compared it to the progressive Paradise, my beloved California, where Democrats control the governor’s office and have super-majorities in the legislature:

At 9.8 percent, unemployment is a bit higher in the Golden State then in Kansas — or the rest of the country, for that matter. Despite California spending far more per student than most states, its fourth- and eighth-graders perform far worse on reading and math proficiency scores than the average American students. A third of all the welfare recipients in the United States live in California, and the Census Bureau reports that the state also has the nation’s highest poverty rate. Almost one-quarter (23.5 percent) of Californians live below the poverty line.

And there is plenty of wealth to go around in California, but it also has one of the nation’s highest levels of income inequality. According to the Census Bureau, it is getting more and not less unequal.

Oh, and Governor Brown’s claims that our budget is at last balanced turned out to be a total lie, too. No word about Kansas’ budget, but I’m willing to bet they’re in better far fiscal shape than we are. Even Albania is.

Anyway, based on just this brief comparison of two states that most embody, respectively, what Walter Mead has called the Red and Blue models of government, if anyone is waging a war on the middle class, it’s the liberal/progressive/statist Democrats. Instead of looking at conservative states and shrieking “My God, what are you people doing,” Dionne should look to places where “his way” rules and ask “My God, what have we done?”

PS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That California isn’t yet in flaming ruins after decades of progressive misrule is evidence of just how powerful this state’s natural economy was and could be, again, if only the oligarchs in Sacramento would pull their heads out of their collective backsides — and their hands out of our wallets.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Obama's Hidden $236 Billion Tax Hike

Reblogged from International Liberty:

• 

Obama imposed a big tax hike last year.

But I'm not talking about the fiscal cliff and the President's class-warfare trophy of higher tax rates on those evil rich people. That happened this year.

Instead, I'm referring to the increase in the regulatory burden.

Here are some excerpts from a report in The Hill.

The Obama administration issued $236 billion worth of new regulations last year...

Read more… 1,001 more words

If we're ever to get the regulatory state under control, we have to start thinking about regulations as a form of tax or imposed cost and, as Mitchell argues, subjecting them to a cost-benefit analysis.

Pelosi: “All your income are belong to us! For great revenue!!”

All your money! Give it to me! MINE!!

It was inevitable. Having won a meaningless, crony-rewarding, counterproductive tax increase during troubled economic times that only serves to pander to the class-warfare crowd, the statists and redistributionists in the House, lead by Nancy Pelosi, want more:

Pushing back against the Republicans’ deficit-reduction strategy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this weekend that more tax revenues – not just spending cuts – must be a part of Congress’s effort to rein in deficits.

Pelosi said the tax hikes in the recent “fiscal-cliff” deal are a start, but don’t go far enough to generate the revenues the government needs to run the country effectively.

“In this legislation we had $620 billion, very significant … changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent. But that is not enough on the revenue side,” Pelosi told CBS’s Bob Schieffer in an interview taped Friday.

Without offering many specifics, the California Democrat said she wants to scour the tax code for unnecessary loopholes and “unfair” benefits that help those – either companies or individuals – who don’t need it.

“Put it all on the table and see what is working,” she said. “Frankly, I’m fairly agnostic about what it could be. … But, you know, if it works for us, if it grows our economy, if it’s something that justifies its existence, it should be there.”

I’m actually not averse to reforming the tax code to eliminate a lot of loopholes and credits that constitute nothing more than subsidies to favored constituents by redistributing money taken from taxpayers. Best of all would be a flat tax at a low rate  that eliminates all such nonsense, or maybe a national sales tax in place of an income tax, so that you’re taxing consumption, not productive behavior or saving. It would be great for genuine economic growth. (But not both together, please! That way lies Europe.)

But, cynical me, I suspect that is not what Nancy wants. No, what she wants, like Rocco in “Key Largo,” is more.  More revenue, more of our money. There’s never enough. And she wants the power that comes with having more money to redistribute, to turn citizens into dependent clients of the State and the Democratic Party. She and her progressive brethren will take the money and then control who gets how much — and if they want to keep getting it, they’ll vote the right way.

The power to distribute money is the power to control.

And that’s really the point of it all, of ObamaCare, of huge deficits and debts, of cries of “fairness,” and of fiscal-cliff games and threats of chaos in the wake of sequestration: to justify ever higher tax rates on us all (1) and gain control over us by gaining control over our money. Nancy wants more.

She wants all of it.

Footnote:
(1) You did notice the shrinking of your latest paycheck, didn’t you?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

As in Brussels, so in D.C.?

Call it the EU-USA:

What Mr. Hannan accuses the EU of –spending more to buy the votes of client groups regardless of the harm it does to the economy– is a charge that could be laid just as easily against the statists in Washington.

Or Sacramento, for that matter.

Another reason to like Tim Scott

Aside from the fact that the current representative and senator-designate from South Carolina has a good character, the right politics, and a clear-eyed view of our real problem, he worries all the right people:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People isn’t too excited about the appointment of Rep. Tim Scott to South Carolina’s soon-to-be-vacated U.S. Senate seat.

(…)

Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy at the NAACP, told The Daily Caller Monday afternoon that the group welcomed diversity in the Senate, but expects the new senator to work against the NAACP’s agenda.

“It is important that we have more integration in the U.S. Senate,” said Shelton in a phone interview. “It’s good to see that diversity.”

“Mr. Scott certainly comes from a modest background, experience, and so forth, and should be sensitive to those issues,” he said, referring to Scott’s impoverished single-parent upbringing in Charleston, SC.

“Unfortunately, his voting record in the U.S. House of Representatives raises major concerns,” Shelton said.

Shelton explained that the NAACP platform is crafted through an annual voting process which engages grassroots-level delegates who vote on the group’s national agenda. That agenda calls for an expansive role for federal government spending in black communities.

Because federal intervention has done such a bang-up job for Blacks. Just ask any beneficiary of the Great Society’s urban policies. And that War on Poverty? We fought it, and poverty won.

While Ms. Shelton does have some nice things to say about Congressman Scott, it’s clear her views are trapped within the statist, dependent, and identity-group paradigm that dominates the Democratic party. And yet Blacks are far worse off under Obama, who is pursuing those very policies the way an alcoholic chases a beer wagon.  But, to be honest, the NAACP stopped being an organization seeking the best interests of African Americans at the same time they entered into a monogamous relationship with the Democratic party. (Helpful tip: if you’re an interest group and you give yourself wholly and forever to one political party — they no longer have to take you seriously, because they know they have your votes no matter what they do.)

Meanwhile, here’s hoping that Mr. Scott has a long and fruitful career in the Senate and that, rather than coming round to the NAACP line, he encourages NAACP members to realize there’s another, better way to help Black Americans prosper.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)