Conservative Donnybrook

I spent a fair amount of time last night engaged in an increasingly heated email exchange with an acquaintance of mine. The exchange involved the recent hoo-ha surrounding the Transportation Safety Administration’s new security protocols, namely the nudie picture or sexual grope requirement for boarding a plane. It began when I pointed out that if these jokers had committed these sexual assaults anywhere but in an airport, they would be headed for prison. Exhibit A was this traveler’s experience in the San Diego Airport.

My acquaintance’s response was “Patriot Act saves lives. I support it fully. You’re with the ACLU. Congrats!” I wish I could say I was stunned, but I have had prior conversations with this person who claims he is conservative, but whose every instinct adds power to Washington and removes it from individuals. If ever there was a bigger statist, I couldn’t tell you who it was.

I pointed out that even pilots and stewardesses – those whose lives are directly at stake in the question of airport security most often – have organized a protest against the new procedures. No matter how forcefully I illustrated the evil that is being done by TSA agents, my interlocutor refused to budge maintaining that security was more important than any highfalutin constitutional right like the Fourth Amendment. He explained that as long as the Muslims got their share of the attention, he would be okay with “racial profiling and nude scans, cavity searches or whatever,” adding, “I’m for racial profiling. Period. I cannot be any clearer.”

At that point my argument got muscular. I wrote:

You encourage the molestation of minors in the name of security? If this becomes the norm, what is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment? Would flyers be subject to anal probes (which have FAR more relevance to discovering possible terrorism than gropes of crotches). Won’t you feel upset when some unknown guy with a TSA patch on his shoulder thrusts his hand between [your wife's] legs to determine whether the “anomaly” that was reported from her nude body scan was a Maxi-pad or something more sinister? What if it takes three or four tries to be sure? . . . . In defense of [your wife], I will object!

In response, he blocked my email, called me anti-Semitic (I suppose because he is Jewish and I was arguing with him and also, undoubtedly, because he has learned through experience that the easiest way to get someone to abandon an argument is to insinuate that it is anti-Semitic, whether it is or not), accused me of insulting him and his wife (by pointing out what the TSA agents will actually do to them) and suggested that I must be drunk and that he should call the cops on me.

It is tragic that the description of what the TSA agents are authorized to do is “sick shit” that demands intervention by “the authorities,” but the actual doing of those things by the agents is acceptable in the name of enhanced security. Apparently, defending one’s constitutional rights is the exclusive province of the drunkard. I feel bad for his wife that he would offer her up on the altar of national security to be groped by persons who achieved the level of high school diploma in order to land a sweet job at the Transportation Safety Administration. If she were married to someone with a real backbone, she would be protected from incursions like he would allow her to be subjected to. Moreover, I despair for the fact that he and his wife are young and will likely have children. I hate to think that his 13-year-old daughter, when the time comes, will be subjected to the fondles and gropings of those high school graduates who make up our first line of defense against Islamic terrorism. I would save him the embarrassment, humiliation, and fury that comes with the policy announced by TSA, but he can only respond with fury at my obtuseness, cut off my email address, and tell me that what I write is “sick shit” never pausing to think that what I write is EXACTLY what the TSA will be doing to his wife and daughters. I daresay it is not me who is sick, but those individuals who would defend the TSA’s actions.

I stand by my disgust.

Note to Reader(s): Some of you may have noticed that this is now a different version of the original post. The prior version was a blow-by-blow account of our discussion, directly quoting the email messages. Instead, I have provided a summary of what was written and few quotes.

Barack will save us
From oily doom approaching
Stand back, let him work!

Barack will save us
From unemployment malaise
With clever taxing.

Barack will save us
From global warming danger -
He’ll lower the seas.

Barack will save us
From free market ravages
And give us free drugs.

Barack will saves us
From national default shame -
Call our Chinese friends.

Barack will save us
From Middle Eastern warfare -
Give them all the Jews.

Barack will save us
From judicial activists -
Send Prof Kagan in.

Barack will save us
From fat and lazy children
If Michelle has say.

Barack will save us
From Islamic terror threats
Trying Navy SEALS.

Barack will save us
From global low opinion
Bowing to despots.

Barack will save us
From Europe’s collapse sending
Them borrowed money.

Barack will save us
Ev’rybody sing along,
He’s the Chosen One.

All that being said,
Who will save us from Barack
And his Hope and Change?

The Anti-Planner, like Savoir-Faire, is everywhere! VREG, however, is local.  Keep up the good work!

I did indeed attend the Tea Party last weekend with my esteemed colleague Karl, which inspired the following thoughts.

One particular meme that I’ve seen cropping up among the Tea Party circles is those signs with pics of Bush and Cheney, along with the line “Miss Me Yet?” This is something that never fails to send the vomit shooting up the back of my throat. I won’t recount, yet again, the multitude of sins against limited government and fiscal sanity that have been promulgated by the Bush-bots and their neoconservative counselors. Sure, as Karl pointed out to me this weekend, for all his wretchedness, McCain probably wouldn’t have been foisting socialized (or cartelized) healthcare on us, at least this year (although it’s not inconceivable). Nevertheless the prominence of these die-hard Bushie fanboys among the supposedly revolutionary Tea Partiers is the number-one piece of evidence that the movement has been co-opted by amoral GOP set and its talk-radio enablers.

Depressingly, Ron Paul types and associated libertoids, apparently, were completely non-existent among this crowd. In fact, I would guess that, say, a Ron Paul Revolution t-shirt would get some hostile attention from these guys. That’s too bad, because the hard-libertarian forces are younger, more geographically diverse, and are much more serious about pushing back at against the growth of the state. This is not to criticize the undoubtedly fine and dedicated middle-American family men who seemed to make up the bulk of the Partiers, but a broad-based coalition is becoming increasingly essential.

Continue Reading »

Mitt Romney, you are a jerk of epic proportions.  How dare you claim to be against socialized medicine when YOU expanded it into your state as Governor?  Do us all a favor and shut up.  Today is a day of sorrow, we have no time for your two-faced campaigning.

This morning we awake to a brave new world. By sleight of hand, trickery, and lies, the House Democrats have passed the Senate health care reform bill by inducing those who were inclined to vote against the measure with empty promises. Astoundingly, Pelosi was able to convince otherwise sensible Democrats to switch their votes by making promises that she has absolutely no ability to deliver and which everyone should have known have little chance of being delivered.

What Pelosi and company did was to load up an amendment bill with all sorts of goodies specifically targeted toward those Democrats who were maintaining no votes on the Senate bill. The problem is the bill that goes to the President’s desk is the Senate bill – not the amendment bill. That bill still has to go to the Senate to be voted on by the Senate. This is where it becomes obvious that those who changed their votes because of measures placed in the amendment bill have been duped – in some cases probably willingly. Most of those measures have absolutely no chance of passage in the Senate. Indeed, the Senate Republicans have made quite clear that they do not intend to pass any of the measures and that they will publicize the individual bribes which induced each of the former no-voting Democrats to change their votes.

Of course one presumes that the members of the House know the rules and that the promises being made were unlikely to be kept. Therefore, the only conclusion that one can draw from this is that these members are full-blown cynics who believe they can go back to their constituents and claim that they only changed their votes because of the promises made to them without ever mentioning that they knew full well that those promises were illusory. In other words, the amendment bill was simply cover to allow those Dems who were afraid of their constituents to flout the desires of the folks back home. Indeed, Nancy Pelosi, who had considered using the “deem and pass” rules of House procedure for this landmark legislation, spoke to liberal bloggers on Monday saying, “Nobody wanted to vote for the Senate bill….It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know, but I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” While they ended up voting anyway, the amendment bill is designed to give Democrats with cranky constituents cover. Each knew that it was the Senate bill that would go to the President’s desk.

Probably the most astounding reversal came from Bart Stupak, whose amendment banning federal expenditures on abortion caused problems during the initial round of passage. Indeed, the Stupak Amendment was one of the major differences between the House version and the Senate version of health care reform. The Senate version contains no limitations on federal spending to kill babies. Now Stupak has aligned himself with those who urge American women to kill babies for convenience sake. He must know that a presidential executive order is entirely worthless as the President cannot, by executive order, repeal a bill passed through Congress. The President has no power to prevent the operation of the Senate mandate that abortion be covered by the new health care plan. Yet Stupak willfully allowed himself to be duped into compromising whatever principles he may have once had.

This morning, the Change™ promised by our savior, Barack Obama, is headed to his desk. That change will be fundamental and, I fear, irrevocable. I was speaking to a friend who has a two-year-old daughter. His daughter will grow up in a country where every time she has a sniffle, she will run to the government to take care of her. Her individual relationship with government will be substantially different from the traditional one in which Americans viewed the federal government as a threat to liberty. Instead, she will see the government as the source of her rights and welfare, the font from which all good things come. After an entire generation or two of this new relationship, it is impossible to imagine a true conservatism taking root in the psyche of the American people again. We will never again be independent from the care of, and control by, an all-encompassing government. And once that impulse to individual responsibility for our lives has been quashed there is no impediment to despotic rule or even outright dictatorship, which will be instituted for our good.

Karl and Willmoore protesting the health care bill

It was with this thought that I drove to Washington D.C. this weekend to join in the protest against the end of our American experiment. The photo above shows that there were thousands of like-minded people who also made the same trip. I met with fellow Conservative Donnybrook contributor Willmoore. Willmoore and I took the Metro to the Capitol and were greeted at the top of the steps by an operative from the Republican National Committee who was passing out signs that read, “Listen to me!” The West lawn of the Capitol was packed with people who rejected the notion of a government large enough to give us everything. While we listened to House members and ordinary citizens take turns at the microphone, someone reported that the Park Service had estimated the crowd at 25,000 people. And, even as that announcement was made, more continued to join the throng.

I had attended a local Tea Party rally in Indianapolis last summer and Willmoore had attended the Rally for the Republic back in 2008. While outwardly the basic format of the Tea Party protests where ordinary citizens addressed the crowds alternating with Tea Party-friendly politicians was followed at this rally, the overall tenor seemed to have shifted ever so slightly to the mainstream Party line. Indeed, the Tea Party has been crashed. On the other hand, not a single Republican voted for the health care overhaul bill so it appears that at least they heard the voice of the people. It remains to be seen if the Senate follows through with its promise to obstruct the overhaul. At this point, we are left to hope that the Supreme Court will read the Constitution and realize that nothing in Article I, Section 8 authorizes the Congress to mandate health care for all and strike down the bill. The only other hope is that after November 2, the Republicans will find a way to repeal the law before it goes into effect, at which point it will never be repealed. Indeed, if universal health care goes into effect, it will only ever be expanded, like all entitlements.

Upon my return after twenty hours’ round trip in the car, my wife asked me if I thought the trip was worth it. Did the presence of thousands of people outside the Capitol mean anything? In the short run, it appears that our exertions were wasted. After all, the Democrats passed the health care bill and the Senate bill will now go to the President’s desk. But, had there been no one outside the House chambers, the decision for the Dems who caved would have been easier. They could have argued that nobody cared. This way at least they know that there is an angry mob ready to take their seats from them. The same goes for the Republicans. It is good (and perhaps a little surprising) that not a single Republican voted for the bill. Had there been no crowds outside, one wonders if that would have been the case. In the long run, it will be interesting to see if the coherence that we have seen among the Republicans in this fight will remain once the amendment package goes to the Senate. Let us see if the Senate Republicans can show the same mettle that their brothers and sisters on the other end of the Capitol have shown. If they have, I believe, it will be in part because of the crowds that gathered in Washington this weekend. That may be the true measure of whether all the driving was worth it.

Genesis 25:27-34  (MRAV – modern revised American version):

27                As the boys grew up, Esau became a Democrat, a man who loved big government; whereas Jacob was a simple man, who kept to his tents.

28                The people loved Esau, because they were fond of largesse; but the founding fathers preferred Jacob.

29                Once, when Jacob was treating a wounded sheep, Esau came in from the open, with a hangnail.

30                He said to Jacob, “Give me some of that medical treatment, I am uncomfortable.” (That is why he was called America.)

31                But Jacob replied, “First give me your birthright in exchange for it.”

32                “Look,” said Esau, “I’m on the point of dying. What good will my freedoms and liberties do me?”

33                But Jacob insisted, “Swear to me first!” So he sold Jacob his birthright under oath.

34                Jacob then treated his hangnail, and Esau sighed in relief, got up, and went his way. Esau cared little for his birthright.

Having completed the race and finding that Achilles could indeed beat him to the finish line, the Tortoise handed over a check to cover his wager.

Tortoise: I trust you will take a check from me, my friend?

Achilles: Of course, Tortoise. You and I go way back. Into antiquity you might even say. In any case, I could really use the money.

Tortoise: Are you still looking for work?

Achilles: Yes. It seems there is very little call for heroic Greek warriors in today’s economy. If only we would declare war on Turkey. I could probably round up any number of Greek warrior heroes for that war.

Tortoise: Maybe you could get Norman Podhoretz to put a bug in Obama’s ear. Just remind him the Turks are Muslim. That should be reason enough for him to advocate for a war. And, at the same time, think of all the jobs that would be created for idled Hellenistic soldiers.

Achilles: I wish I knew what went wrong. I thought for sure the government stimulus would lead to prosperity. I kept hearing that every dollar of deficit spending would create $1.50 of expansion in the economy. Maybe we should have spent more.

Tortoise: That is one way. Or, we could learn from our failure and try something different. Can I ask you a question, Achilles?

Achilles: Of course.

Tortoise: Where does all of the money that the government spends come from?

Achilles: Why, it comes from taxpayers. You should know that.

Tortoise: And who does the government give the money to?

Achilles: Other taxpayers who will spend the money. That’s how jobs are created.

Tortoise: What you are saying then is that the government takes the money from one taxpayer and gives it to another to spend. This seems to be a recipe in spinning one’s wheels. Why would we do that?

Achilles: Well, Tortoise, the people from whom the government takes the money are those who are savers and the people who they give to are spenders. The government just wants to make sure that the money is being used. That way, new money is injected into the economy. It is really quite elementary, Tortoise. Continue Reading »

Ordinarily, I would take a good deal of time to point out that many here at the site have repeatedly pointed out the nakedness of the emperor. I would rehash the times Patriot-Act statists in conservative wool have been called on their leftism, secularism, and big-government authoritarianism. I would also bewail the unmitigated gall of such a character having the chutzpah to call his critics allies of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Nancy Pelosi.  I would loudly and often decry the shameless and unguarded honesty of those who reduce their philosophy to “kill” to the exclusion of sound economic policy, the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of our country, and a host of other issues. Normally. Not this time. This time I’ll let the argument you presented dismantle itself and show the readership of this blog how one-note, indefensible, and breathtakingly destructive your side is.

The article to which you linked, when read through the lenses of one conversant with history (which one would expect a self-described historian to do), demonstrated far better than I could of the bankruptcy of your side. Kagan starts out by mentioning the Great Depression. He failed to note any of the actual causes of that depression. He failed to take into consideration the “adventurism,” to borrow one of your words from a recent comment, of the United States leading up to that crisis. The economic decisions in the midst and wake of the Civil War (National banking acts of 1863 and 1864 which consolidated currency to fund the Union’s war; Federal Reserve creation in 1913; Aldrich-Vreeland in 1908, etc.) and the domestic and foreign policy decisions in the wake of the war (Reconstruction; almost immediate attempts at imperialism in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Liberia – all of which came about due to slavery and its end; westward expansion, Indian wars, Alaskan purchase; Roosevelt’s splitting of the Republicans, his appointments to the Supreme Court, etc.; financial, monetary, and fiscal management and mismanagement), not to mention World War I, all contributed directly to the spreading thin of the American military and building resentment throughout the world.

Kagan goes on to insinuate that, because the United States seemed to somehow ignore foreign policy, Japan militarized and Germany fell under Hitler’s sway. This is howlingly funny. What we are required to do if we are to accept Kagan’s hypothesis is to absolutely and unequivocally deny that black is black, that water is wet, or that fire is hot. Aside from the fact that it was American “adventurism” (e.g., with the Great White Fleet, which further fueled a zealous desire to militarize in newly-nationalist Japan) which thrust Japan on its path toward imperialism (read about Perry’s Black Ships and the cracking of isolationist Japan, the Meiji Restoration, the Manchurian, Korean, and Russian campaigns of Japan), we can hardly be faulted for “ignoring” Germany: we had shipped thousands of American boys there to fight, bleed, die, and kill, and had established a new world-political body to deal with the German problem only 20 years before the 1933 Nazification. One could be excused for refusing to read any of the rest of Kagan’s ludicrous bombast after realizing this, but, intrepid soul that I am, I trudged on.

Kagan engaged in your least-favorite pasttime. He had the balls to criticize Ronald Reagan (gasp! the horror!) in practically the same breath as he criticized Jimmy Carter. Calling Reagan’s policy decisions about Lebanon “failed” and asserting that these policies led to the bombing of the Marine barracks is hardly what one would expect to hear you lauding. Implicit in this is the recognition that we should not have been there to get bombed. Reagan quickly and wisely realized this and did exactly the right thing: he got out and left Israel to what it was perfectly, demonstrably capable of doing: defending itself and letting Beirut and the Lebanese tend to their own damned affairs. No more Marines were killed there after that. No Al-Aqsa,  ”Quds Force,” or Hezbollah started trouble by killing Americans there. What a concept.  What were “Reagan’s failed policies” in Lebanon? Assisting a “multinational force” along with French troops and others to “keep the peace” in a sectarian civil war. What spawned the Muslim hatred and subsequent suicide bombings? Perceived American preference for Maronite Catholics and the shelling of Druze areas which inadvertantly killed civilians.

Kagan touches tangentially and seemingly accidentally upon one truth: things now are probably more dangerous for the U.S., but because of our huge overseas presence and constant “spreading of democracy” or “war on terror” or “search for WNDs” (we really do need to find those nasty World Net Dailies) or whatever they’re calling it these days, not because we are letting our guard down.

People are growing weary of the wars, growing weary of the constant misequation of the United States of America with Israel by the radical Zionists, and people are growing weary of the stubborn economic hardships put upon them by constant imperialism. Bring Americans home to defend America. Root out radical Islam here and deport it. If the resistance starts here, put it down swiftly and with no remorse. But there is no way we need to be defending South Korea from a tinpot near-dead in charge of a run-down non-entity. There is no justification for making all those “security guarantees” to states in the Russian sphere of influence. There is no way you could possibly believe that Kagan essay if you know and understand history. There is no way you can continue to call yourself a conservative and defend such Wilsonianism. It is definitionally schizophrenic, or alternatively simply mendacious, to claim to be conservative and yet espouse this baseless, historically-illiterate, radical Ledeenishness while at the same time believing it makes us safer. Your apologists split their time between appealing to how much safer we are and how dangerous it’s getting. Your side constantly purports to support “democracy” and “freedom” while working overtime - often in cahoots with outright radical socialist would-be totalitarians – to quash them through Patriot Acts, occupations of foreign countries, propped-up banking cartels and outdated unionized auto companies (remember which President started those great things?). Your side is trying to cling desperately to relevance, which is understandable. But for whom are you striving?

Hey everyone, remember me?

Just a quick note to mention, since secession is a topic that crops up here every now and then, that Daniel McCarthy has a thoughtful post up on the subject, in effect a paleo word of ambivalence on the subject.

In particular, on the issue of constitutionality in the case of the US, he writes:

The answer is that the Constitution neither allows nor forbids secession — the Constitution’s answer, in effect, is “don’t ask that question.” That’s the correct answer because responding to the question of secession in any other way would destroy the Constitution: even if only a few states secede, once the principle is granted, any state may leave whenever it pleases, weakening the Constitution to nothing. But if secession is not possible at all, the states may not leave even when the central government becomes overbearing, and if this principle is established in fact — as it has been — the result is the destruction of the federal system, rendering the Constitution a dead letter. The only way to have kept the Constitution intact was not to press the question in the first place.

Sounds about right to me; the arguments on the subject that I’ve heard, pro and con, have a certain legalistic character, a tendency to take some disparate historical and legal threads and try to weave an airtight case when it can’t really be done. The subject is left unaddressed in the Constitution for a reason. But granting McCarthy’s take on the subject, is a stable, decentralized, federalist system possible at all over the long run?

This is a great visual of the $100 million that Obama has been urging his cabinet to trim from his bloated $3.5 trillion budget. The cuts are supposed to show the president’s commitment to “go line by line through the budget to cut spending” and “reform government.”

Yes. Very committed. Seeing the level of the president’s commitment, I am left only with Hope™ that government will somehow be reformed and spending truly cut. Right now the cuts seem to amount to chump Change™.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 328-93 to impose a 90% tax on recipients of bonuses from taxpayer-supplied bailout monies. It is nice to see Congress suddenly concerned about taxpayer money for a change, or even that they recognize the money as coming from the taxpayer and not belonging to the government.

I suppose before I jump off into my rant, it is required that I offer the obligatory distancing speech from AIG. Here goes: What AIG did was reprehensible and there are plenty of bad actors among the leadership of that company that paying bonuses was questionable at best. Many of them don’t deserve bonuses for the harm their actions have wrought. However, I would stop short of suggesting that these execs fall on their swords.

Having said that, what in the hell was the House thinking? Sen. Christopher Dodd inserted a provision in the bailout contractually obligating AIG to pay bonuses to its executives (although Dodd is now pointing at Geithner as the guilty party, either way…). As a result, AIG paid out $165 milllion worth of the $173 billion it received in the bailout. (For those who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s less than 1/10th of 1%). The company was contractually obligated to make the payments and the Senate Banking Committee and Treasury Department were well aware of the fact. But, when folks like Barney Frank heard that AIG was paying out bonuses to its execs, the spittle began to fly and politicians across this great land began to grandstand and demogogue. They so whipped themselves into a frenzy, that they thought nothing of passing a bill of attainder in the House to recoup 90% of the bonuses. After all, let us not forget who that money really belongs to (and the right answer is not taxpayers). If AIG is going to try to give that money to people who are politically toxic, Congress has an obligation to reassert its authority over those funds – no matter how unconstitutional the measure it has to adopt.

The one comforting thing I think we can all take from this is the certainty that we can trust that this is limited to the bailout money. We should not worry that contracts have been imperiled by Congress’ act. We should go about our daily business entering into contracts freely, secure in the knowledge that, at least as long as the politicians approve of both parties to a particular contract and don’t perceive that any politically disfavored person is being enriched by the contract, that your contracts are perfectly safe from government interference.

Add to that Doublethink: “Its not nationalization, its protecting the taxpayer’s interests.” A la Harry Reid discussing the potential take over of insolvent bank Citi Group by Uncle Sam.  We can also include President Obama in the Ministry of Truth for his statement that he will slash the budget deficit in half.  He said this on the heels of increasing the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars!  Under Obama, the deficit climbed from $1.2 trillion or nearly $2 trillion and he hasn’t been president for even 100 days yet!  Let me get this straight, we can only save ourselves by spending more and increasing the deficit, yet “We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.”  Which is it, Mr. Obama?

I now leave you to spend some quality time with Jim Rogers.

Mark (Willmoore) wrote an interesting post over at Spinline in which he posed the question of whether there is hope for laissez-faire economics (in particular) and prinicpled opposition to Big Government (generally). As I am wont to do, I left a lengthy (and gloomy) comment. On second thought, I probably should have simply posted my response here (if I was going to be so windy) and left a trackback to Mark’s post. With that in mind, here is the response I left:

Mark,

I would agree with you that if there is hope to be found, it is in the prospect of an “alternative” right rising. Of course, the problem with that presecription is that, if the alternative right is to have any hope of forging a new path, it necessarily has to capture the imaginations of a large number of people. It will, in other words, have to become a new movement conservatism. Perhaps it just a failure of my own imagination, but I cannot conceive of how this will come about practically without this new movement’s descension into the same sort of party politics as led the Republican Party down its path.

Perhaps the nature of all reform is that it is cyclical. A movement rises, captures the imagination of a segment of the population, ascends to power through the formation of bloc alliances with others who share common goals, becomes a major movement, and degrades due to its love of the power that it has seized. If so, even the Paulite movement will inevitably degrade to the point where its primary goal is to enlarge its tent in order to retain power.

It seems as though those of us who wish to retain our Constitutional form of government with its coincident freedoms are doomed to spend a long time in the wilderness crying out and attracting followers. And just when we begin to enjoy the fruits of those labors, we will find ourselves needing to form a new following to counter the excesses of the one we birthed. In the end, the little success that is ultimately achieved by an ascendant “alternative right” will be measured in terms of having slowed the decay of freedom and not in rolling back the abuses.

Sorry to be so gloomy. Huge spending (and ultimately taxing) packages tend to do that to me.

A new Jersey couple who named their children after Nazis have had their children seized by the state. There is no comment from officials as to why the children were seized though there have been no reports of abuse.

There is little doubt that the parents are less than perfect, even undesirable but that does not give the State any authority to take their children.  Officials in New Jersey had better provide information as to what lead to the seizure and it better be legitimate.  I don’t like the names of the children either, but that alone is not enough to rip children from their parents and destroy inalienable rights.

Stand by for updates.

The American auto industry will be taken over by a czar, a “car czar” that is.  President Bush and top Democrat lawmakers have agreed in principal to continue robbing the taxpayers while expanding the scope and power of the federal government.

Under the plan, the Bush and Obama administrations will work together to find a “suitable” de-facto owner of the Big Three.  This “car czar” will hold the strings of a purse filled with $15 billion in looted cash.  He alone will have the right to spend, demand repayment and force bankruptcy of the now federalized industry.  The power Motor City once generated will now be delivered by the Big Red Washington Machine.  In return for stealing from the taxpayers (again) and giving the funds to private businesses (again), Washington will receive a massive cut of profits (if any); A sort of steal-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-dumb-and-rich maneuver.  Shareholders, however, are to be barred from receiving dividends or other distributions.  So, the only real winners here are the federal government, the giant and lazy unions and auto executives.  Everyone else loses big time.

Those who know me know that there has never been a bigger supporter of the American auto industry than myself.  I have never owned anything other than a Ford product.  Should FOMOCO take one penny, one red cent from this “loan” I swear I will never buy another of their products.  The same goes for Chrysler (owned, incidentally, by a CANADIAN company with plenty of money) and GM.  As crazy as it sounds, the most American thing I could do under those circumstances would be to buy…gulp…a Toyota or Subaru.  I swear it shall be done.

With the take-over of the financial markets and now the stealing of the auto industry, I have to wonder what is next.  Utilities?  Already happened or happening.  Water?  Ditto.  Agriculture?  Probably not too far off.  How far will this go until we see full fledged fascist socialism in this nation?  We are goose-stepping at an ever increasing pace.

Andrew Sullivan over at the TimesOnline penned and interesting piece.  I went looking for something sympathetic to my anger by Googling “Bush is a socialist.”  What turned up is this great article.

Sullivan starts by saying:

Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.

Sullivan continues:

In five years, Bush has increased it [domestic discretionary spending] 35.1%. And that’s before the costs for Katrina and Rita and the Medicare benefit kick in. Worse, this comes at a time when everyone concedes that we were facing a fiscal crunch before Bush started handing out dollar bills like a drunk at a strip club.

What really struck me is when Sullivan wrote this article, September 2005!  If he was right then, he is surely correct today!  When Bush authorizes the purchase of private bank interests, our brand of capitalism will have taken its last breath.

UPDATE:  Bush said this about 5 hours ago:  “As our nations carry out this plan, we must ensure that the actions of one country do not contradict or undermine the actions of another. In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come through it together.”

Indeed, how horrible it would be if capitalism were to work!  We must asure an end to the free market!

Below is a letter and the names of the Representatives you should send it to.  Please, help stop the socialist bail out bill!

Dear Representative:

I write you today to register my unwavering opposition to the so-called “bail-out” bill.  Previously, you courageously voted to keep this costly and negative bill from destroying the free market system and over-burdening taxpayers.  Now the Senate is back attempting to resurrect this package of institutional socialism.  If the first version of this disastrous bill was not good enough for your vote or approval then this new bill should not garner it either.  This bill would place our nation deeper into debt than the first, impede the ebb and flow of the open market and cost the taxpayers too much.

Please, for the sake of your constituents, all taxpayers and every American do not lend your support to pass this bill.  A vote to pass is tantamount to a vote for socialism in many forms.  We, as a nation, will ride through this current financial hardship if given the time and space to do so.

As a good steward of my family’s finances, as one that did not get in over my head with large debt or abuse credit, I view this bill as an assault on my good name, financial status and years of hard work and toil.

Again, I implore you to again vote to turn back this terrible bill.  I know you will do the right thing.  Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
YOUR NAME

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In a ruling that is sure to rile up liberal elites the German Constitutional Court has stuck down regional smoking bans, finding them unconstitutional. Of particular importance in their decision was the protection of local corner bars who are unable to provide the separate spaces for smokers that larger establishments easily offer. Not only does the decision allow smoking but it also protects the local pub. Talk about German efficiency.

…I’m just venting.

I received my latest mortgage bill and they informed me that my escrow had increased by $135 per month. Some of you who live in high priced housing markets might not see this as a big deal, but $135 represents a 17% increase in my housing expenses. If your monthly mortgage bill were $1,500 per month, that would amount to a $255 per month increase…an additional $3,060 per year…that was NEVER budgeted. The bottom line is that no one budgets a 17% increase in their monthly mortgage payment when they purchase a house.

On top of that, this is not the first increase that we have absorbed. This latest 75% increase in taxes, which precipitated the latest escrow increase was presaged by a 100% increase two years prior. In other words, our taxes have increases in three years by 250%. This would amount to an annualized increase of 51.829% a year.

I have no idea how my elderly neighbor who has lived in her house forever might be able to adjust the government’s late avariciousness, but I can only imagine that it will eat into her ability to stay independent of the government dole (not counting social security). I have said it before; I will say it again: property taxes are immoral. When retired people are thrown out of the houses they’ve owned for a decade, the veneer of legitimacy for property taxes is called severely into question. The plight of the elderly is instructive: We never truly own our property; we only rent it from the government. It is all the worse while we are still attempting to purchase our property from the bank.

What is worse is that in Indiana, as I’ve chronicled, the populace rose up in protest against usurious property taxes last summer. In response, the legislature, at the governor’s behest, voted in a 1% cap on taxes of a property’s assessed value. Nonetheless, that cap does not go into effect for 2 years (in which time the legislature may very well reverse itself as passions subside). Meanwhile, the populace of Indianapolis must spring for an unexpected and unfair increase of its government levy. Now the populace of Indianapolis is silent…only 50 people appeared at the latest protest. We are like frogs who have been inured to the heat of the taxes which have been applied to us. I used to have a friend who would say, when we played Monopoly as kids, “Money is like butter. Put a little heat under it and it melts.” Today I would counter that if that heat is gradual enough, those whose money melts away will never even realize that it’s happening.

But, it is happening nonetheless.

It makes one severely question the propriety of government education given the fact that the schools account for more than half of the property tax levy. Surely the Catholics (or virtually anyone else who is not the government) can do it cheaper. And, all indications are that they would do it better!

UPDATE: Lest anyone take issue with the dollar amount of my taxes which are discernible from the numbers I’ve given, it would be well to give some background. My neighborhood is one which is fully developed. We are not building schools. We are not building roads. I live in an urban area. No one would, in good conscience send their children to the schools here unless they could not afford private schools. One of the attractions when we moved in was that private schools were attainable because the taxes were low. Now that is out of reach. A young family which moves into this neighborhood, unless they are wealthy, would be forced to send their children to the public schools which are ranked among the worst in the nation. Worse, their children would likely be the victims of crime as a result of their attending these schools. The only conceivable outcome in the face of these tax increases are massive degradation of property values and the subsequent flight of those who are able to flee to outlying, more stable, neighborhoods. All of the progess which this neighborhood has experienced in the last 20 years will be erased as a result of tax policy.

If one is inclined to say, “you pay so little,” keep in mind two things. First, property values in Indianapolis are much lower than in other parts of the nation. The average house price in my neighborhood is around $130,000 – and this is not a horrible part of town – indeed, I live in a desirable part of town. If you pay more in taxes, consider what your house is worth. Second, consider how you would feel if your taxes increased by 250% in the space of 3 years, regardless of where you started.

I am not arguing that I am paying more than anyone else. I am not. I feel for Bill who lives in Southern California (and SM who lives in NYC) and often tell him (them) he (they) should move to Indy where taxes are low (although in good conscience I may have to cease those enticements). I specifically chose the neighborhood I did because the tax burden was low. In the interim, my taxes have increased almost four-fold in the course of four years. That is the benchmark against which to measure my pain. Imagine your taxes increasing in like manner and imagine your reaction – that is all I am saying.