That's Your Solution?

The Philosophy of Liberty

Whether or not you watched the previously posted video, I think you'll find this one is both educational and enlightening. It does a fantastic job of presenting the reality of life. I caution you, watching this is not a passive endeavor. It's not a cartoon, it's an education. Ponder it. Mull it over. Let it sink in.

Me is Mine, You is Yours

What I think is so significant about this song is that it makes it clear that we're really no different now then when mankind first "signed" the social contract. This being the case, why in the world have we allowed ourselves to drift so far away from it?

My thanks to Purely Politics for making me aware of this video.

There is Only Zul

I recently have been shopping online for a breakfast nook. One of the websites I visited offered live online chat with one of their representatives. I had a few questions, so I figured I'd give it a try. But I was also feeling a bit frisky and wondered just how much I might get away with. Here is the transcript of the conversation.

The World of Financial Make-Believe

Last week while listening to NPR on my car radio was the first time I heard the word "deflation" used in conversation regarding our current economy. I was completely flabbergasted by the very notion of it. Since then, I've heard the word used several times in various media sources. According to these sources, deflation is a very real concern of the present administration and of many economists.

A simple, cursory analysis of this idea by the casual observer clearly demonstrates a fundamental problem: That is, just how completely out of touch our government and economic minds truly are with the people they are supposed to be serving.

Deflation? Are you kidding me? I find this assessment utterly repugnant. If they can really claim that the prices of goods and services are falling, then I've got to ask what reality they're living in, because it's clearly not mine. All across the board, my family's cost of living has skyrocketed. Here are just a few examples.

• I posted here some time ago that the Bank of America credit card I've had for over 15 years lerched up from a reasonable 6.9% interest rate to over 13% for no other reason than to help BoA attempt to recoup money lost on other people who had defaulted on their credit debt. (See my post, "An Open Letter Sent to Bank of Amerika", April 2009.)


• My health insurance jumped $70 per month in the middle of the of the contract year. Each year, when your company renegotiates health insurance costs, they invariably go up. However, this time, even after the annual increase, the insurance company increased our premiums by $70 right in the middle of the contract!


• Food prices have skyrocketed. This spring, watermellons, a big favorite at the manor, were selling for as high as $9 a piece. (Not pesos, dollars.) Even now that they are in season, they are still seen for over $5 each.


• The Commonwealth of Massachusetts increased its sales tax from 5% to 6.5% on virtually everything.


• Gasoline prices, though stable lately, saw an enormous surge in prices since the beginning of this recession. Gasoline prices, when adjusted for inflation and in 2010 dollars are 21% higher than the historical average of $2.39 a gallon. Essentially, gas prices are 50 cents per gallon higher than what one would historically expect.

This last one is the one that angers me more than most. Gasoline is the prime mover in our economy. Nothing gets to stores without having been moved by trucks. Food. Clothes. Building materials. Everything you've purchased from a store in the last week was delivered to that store by truck. That means every increase in gasoline prices not only costs you at the pump, it is passed along to you in every item you buy in the form of increased prices.

Do the "experts" know what they're talking about when they say that deflation is a very real risk facing the country? I'm sure they think they do. I'm sure they did their math correctly when they punched in all those little numbers and counted all those little beans. But where they fail is that they don't live in reality. They live in "an economy."

You and I don't live in an economy. We live in our homes. Homes we have to pay to heat (and cool). Homes in which we have to feed and cloth our families. Forgive my provincial attitude, but I don't give a damn about the global economy. I care about what what problems come up my driveway. That's where reality begins and ends.

No doubt you're now thinking that I don't have a clear grasp on the interconnectedness of things. Of job markets and trade deficits. Of supply and demand. Please be assured that I do. But countries and governments and, yes, economies, are made up of individual building blocks. Those building blocks are called families. And it is there where the health and well-being of our country is made or broken.

There is a voice out there coming from the Left that says Americans pay too little for gasoline. That Europeans pay far more for gasoline and that in order to bring societal policies about that they prefer, that to "change the American people", we need to dramatically increase the price of gasoline.

Let me explain to you right now that anyone who advocates that sort of foolishness is no friend of the American people. This is going to be a surprise to many on the far Left, but this country wasn't founded as a service to those in power. This country, and my family, are not some sort social experiment for public administrators, politicians, and policy wonks. It was founded for those of us who work hard and who want to live without the constant intervention of the government. Nor do I exist as simply a link in a chain that connects large corporation to their profits.

If by scaling back my spending, by making due, and by doing my best to drive down the prices of goods and services I negatively impact the government and our financial infrastructure, then tough. I don't exist for their benefit. And I'm not asking them to exist for mine. Me and my family come first, and I expect you and yours do as well.

Taking Out the Trash

You're an American. You live and work in a place where more and more you find yourself and your daily life affected by people who are in the country illegally. These people, criminals, you find are not only here illegally, but a great many of them are involved in other illegal activities. So you act. You press for laws to be enforced, and when they are not, you push for new laws. Lo and behold, you get them.

Now, given the fact that the criminals that you're attempting to deal with are foreigners, namely Hispanics, you are pretty sure that the Politically Correct/Leftist Extremists are going to come after you and try to put a stop to your actions. And they do.

But what you may not expect is that this resistance comes in the form of your own Federal Government -- the very same Federal Government that is charged with doing the work that you now find yourself having to do. The very same Federal Government that has very similar laws on the books that REQUIRES them to do the work that you're now doing... the work that they are trying to prevent you from doing.

Can someone explain to me how the Federal Government is attacking a law as being unconstitutional when the law was intentionally written to mirror the Federal Law that is in place? On what basis is this law "unconstitutional"?

Justice Department Attorney Edwin Kneedler argued that the law would "burden the federal agency that responds to immigation-status inquiries."

I guess that's lawyer talk for "it would make them get off their fat asses and do what they are supposed to be doing in the first place."

Let me quote the Associated Press article from 8am today:

"Opponents say the law will lead to racial profiling and trample on the rights of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Arizona."

What? Wait, stop. What was that?

What was what?

Say that again.

What? The racial profiling part?

No. The part about illegal immigrants.

Oh, "trample on the rights of illegal --"

Stop! Right there. That part.

You heard it: The rights of illegal immigrants.

Read this aloud with me. The Federal Government is suing the state of Arizona and preventing it from protecting its citizens and economy because it wants to protect the rights of criminals.


It's time to take the trash out. The next time there's an election in your area, remember this. There is a large faction of people in our country who are in elected office for their own personal gain and couldn't care less for the best interests of their country. John Kerry comes to mind. He called illegal aliens in Massachusetts his "constituents."

I'm fit to be tied right now.

When Will Atlas Shrug?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-07/aspen-ideas-festival-obama-loses-support-of-nations-elite/?cid=bs:featured2


Even the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of the country's brightest lights, isn't Obama country anymore. Lloyd Grove on the president's waning support among the intelligentsia.

You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival—which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.

In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obama’s natural base.

Apparently not so much.

“The real problem we have are some of the worst economic
policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Mort Zuckerman

Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his departing budget director, Peter Orszag, can expect heavy weather when they land in Aspen later this week to make their case to this civic-minded clique of wealthy skeptics.

“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.