Toward a new right

21 Replies to “Toward a new right”

1. More pol­i­tics

   Steve,

   Here are Encar­ta’s def­i­n­i­tions of con­ser­vatism and lib­er­al­ism. Since they
   obvi­ous­ly have lit­tle to do with either the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat par­ties,
   we should refrain from using these terms. Since it does expe­dite things,
   though, I will prob­a­bly con­tin­ue to use these labels.

   lib·er·al·ism [líbb?r? lìzz?m, líb­br? lìzz?m]
   n
         1.  (pol­i­tics) pro­gres­sive views: a belief in tol­er­ance and grad­ual
   reform in moral, reli­gious, or polit­i­cal mat­ters
         2.  (pol­i­tics) polit­i­cal the­o­ry stress­ing indi­vid­u­al­ism: a polit­i­cal
   ide­ol­o­gy with its begin­nings in west­ern Europe that rejects author­i­tar­i­an
   gov­ern­ment and defends free­dom of speech, asso­ci­a­tion, and reli­gion, and the
   right to own prop­er­ty
         3.  (eco­nom­ics) free-mar­ket eco­nom­ics: an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry in favor of
   free com­pe­ti­tion and min­i­mal gov­ern­ment regulation

   con·ser·va·tism [k?n súrv? tìzz?m]
   n
         1.  reluc­tance to accept change: unwill­ing­ness or slow­ness to accept
   change or new ideas
         2.  right-wing polit­i­cal view­point: a right-of-cen­ter polit­i­cal
   phi­los­o­phy based on a ten­den­cy to sup­port grad­ual rather than abrupt change
   and to pre­serve the sta­tus quo

   How­ev­er, your def­i­n­i­tion (“The mod­el of con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sus lib­er­al boils
   down to peo­ple who want less of what gov­ern­ment does ver­sus peo­ple who want
   more of what gov­ern­ment does.”) does­n’t do jus­tice to the dif­fer­ence,
   either, although it is much clos­er. I believe that the pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ence
   bew­teen Reps and Dems is that the Rs believe the Con­sti­tu­tion is a bind­ing
   legal doc­u­ment that should either be fol­lowed or amend­ed, while Ds believe
   the Con­sti­tu­tion is a guide­line that can be over­rid­den based on cur­rent
   con­di­tions and/or to achieve worth­while results.

   A good exam­ple of this is the Lisa Murkowski/Joe Miller elec­tion in Alas­ka.
   Miller has dropped his oppo­si­tion to seat­ing Murkows­ki but is still pur­su­ing
   in the courts the way the elec­tion was han­dled. I agree with him that they
   ille­gal­ly count­ed bal­lots for her that should have been thrown out, but I
   also feel the law should be changed. Alaskan law states specif­i­cal­ly that
   write-in bal­lots must have the can­di­date’s name writ­ten **exact­ly** as shown
   on the can­di­dates appli­ca­tion form. It can­not be mis­spelled or dif­fer­ent in
   any way. The elec­tion board decid­ed to use “intent” to deter­mine if the
   peo­ple real­ly intend­ed to vote for her. They accept­ed bal­lots list­ed as
   “Markowsky” or “L. Murkows­ki” as well as the cor­rect “Lisa Murkows­ki.” While
   I believe that intent should be used in these cas­es so as not to
   dis­en­fran­chise any vot­er, I under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty of writ­ing a law that
   allows that flex­i­bil­i­ty with­out allow­ing the gross mis­jus­tice per­pe­trat­ed in
   the Cole­man-Franken recount. (By the bye, as a sta­tis­ti­cian my belief is
   that, when an elec­tion is this close, it would be fair­er to flip a coin
   than to do a recount. The errors in any recount will exceed the dif­fer­ence
   in the can­di­date’s tallies.)

   > Almost every con­ser­v­a­tive can quote the Tenth Amend­ment of the Unit­ed
   > States’ Con­sti­tu­tion and use it to rebuff sug­ges­tions that the Fed­er­al
   > Gov­ern­ment take some action that they are opposed to, but how often does
   > one
   > hear that argu­ment fol­lowed by an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment of said action
   > by
   > one or more of the states? Almost nev­er, which caus­es me to ques­tion
   > whether
   > the issue in con­ser­v­a­tives’ minds is real­ly lim­i­ta­tion of the Fed­er­al
   > Gov­ern­ment or if the Tenth Amend­ment is just a con­ve­nient tool in the
   > fight
   > to lim­it all government.

   Are you say­ing that if the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­scribes some­thing from the
   fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, then the states should HAVE to do it? That is not the
   way I read the Con­sti­tu­tion. As I read it, it says sim­ply that the fed­er­al
   gov­ern­ment CANNOT do any­thing unless it is express­ly allowed and that the
   states CAN do any­thing that isn’t express­ly denied. I will con­tin­ue to
   oppose allow­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to do any­thing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al even
   if it is a VERY good idea. (For exam­ple, nam­ing Newt king for life.)

   Con­ser­v­a­tives believe that pol­i­tics should be done at the low­est lev­el of
   gov­ern­ment that can han­dle the task. Lib­er­als gen­er­al­ly believe that only
   the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is capa­ble of know­ing what is best for all of us. As
   I see it, a local select­man has to live with the peo­ple whose lives he
   con­trols, so he is more apt to be respon­sive to their needs and wishes.

   When the feds took over GM, one of the things they did was stream­line the
   deal­er net­work by clos­ing 1/3 of the deal­ers. I don’t know whose idea this
   was or how they came up with it, but it makes no sense at all. These
   deal­er­ships are inde­pen­dent busi­ness­es who BUY cars from GM and sell them.
   It did­n’t cost GM any­thing to keep their busi­ness. They shut down the Chevy
   deal­er­ship in Clare­mont, NH that has been prof­itable under the same fam­i­ly
   own­er­ship since 1952. They are now prof­itable sell­ing Toy­otas. There are no
   near­by Chevy deal­ers. They tried to appeal the deci­sion, but the appeal
   process still was­n’t in place by the time they had arranged to get the
   Toy­ota fran­chise. Then the gov­ern­ment reject­ed them because they were
   already a deal­er for a com­peti­tor. Large bureacra­cies by def­i­n­i­tion are
   inflex­i­ble, inef­fi­cient, and inef­fec­tive. Why should they run any­thing that
   can be han­dled at a low­er lev­el? I think the Found­ing Fathers knew this, and
   that is part­ly why they includ­ed the 10^th Amendment.

   > So the first ques­tion should be, «is this some­thing that should be done?»
   > and the sec­ond ques­tion, «who can most effec­tive­ly make it hap­pen?» If the
   > answer to the sec­ond ques­tion is gov­ern­ment, the next ques­tion ought to
   > be,
   > «at what level?»

   At some point it should also be deter­mined if it is Con­sti­tu­tion­al,
   rea­son­able, etc. And who decides these ques­tions? A large major­i­ty of
   Amer­i­cans opposed Oba­ma’s health care plan, but the politi­cians rammed it
   down our throats any­way. It cost quite a few of them their jobs, but the
   dam­age had been done.

   > If con­ser­v­a­tives’ argu­ment against sin­gle-pay­er health care is that it is
   > uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, why oppose it at the state level?

   Show me where in the Con­sti­tu­tion that that is a task del­e­gat­ed to the
   fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. As for oppos­ing it at the state lev­el, there are lots of
   oth­er argu­ments against social­ized med­i­cine, not the least of which is the
   well-known inef­fi­cien­cy of all gov­ern­ment. And where does it stop? How about
   free food for every­one? Free hous­ing? Free art? Free trans­porta­tion? Free
   legal aide? Free com­put­ers? Free mem­ber­ship at the local gym? A free copy of
   “Atlas Shrugged”?

   > For one thing, such pro­grams will nev­er receive ade­quate fund­ing so long
   > as
   > the wealthy are exclud­ed from the ben­e­fits. Mon­ey is pow­er both in ways
   > that
   > are legit­i­mate and in ways that are cor­rupt, so a thou­sand poor peo­ple
   > com­plain­ing about long lines at the doc­tor will have less sway than a
   > half-dozen rich peo­ple with the same complaints.

   It just does­n’t work that way. In Cana­da rich peo­ple don’t have to wait.
   They spend their own mon­ey and get their health­care in the US.

   The Cana­di­an sys­tem is bank­rupt, both in the finan­cial sense and in the far
   more crit­i­cal sense of doc­tors. Cana­di­an med­ical schools are cheap,
   pri­mar­i­ly in an attempt to cre­ate enough doc­tors, but upon grad­u­at­ing  a
   huge per­can­tage of the new doc­tors flee to the US where they can earn as
   much mon­ey as they want. Cana­da is sim­ply bleed­ing doc­tors when they are
   des­per­ate­ly short of them.

   > Steal­ing from the rich and giv­ing to the poor is moral­ly bank­rupt. But
   > steal­ing from every­one (OK, most­ly the rich) and giv­ing to every­one? I
   > don’t
   > think so, at least not in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy where the peo­ple have
   > tools for hold­ing the deci­sion­mak­ers accountable.

   These tools are pret­ty weak, as is evi­dent if you look at the make­up of our
   Con­gress. The ques­tion many peo­ple have is whether “steal­ing” (tax­ing) the
   rich exclu­sive­ly is either fair or wise, and, if so, at what lev­el. Last
   year 48% of Amer­i­cans paid NO fed­er­al income tax at all. Of the peo­ple who
   actu­al­ly pay tax­es, the top one per­cent paid 33% of the total, the top 7%
   paid 54%. Or stat­ed a dif­fer­ent way, the top 0.5% of ALL Amer­i­cans paid 33%
   of the tax­es. When the Dems tried to increase the tax­es on the wealthy this
   month, I could­n’t believe it. 60% of new jobs come from small busi­ness­es
   that fall into that brack­et, and what this nation needs right now (far more
   than health­care) is job creation.

   I am a strong pro­po­nent of the Fair Tax. In fact, I see that as by far the
   best way to get this nation back on its feet. I don’t believe, how­ev­er, that
   it has a snow­bal­l’s chance of becom­ing law. Too many politi­cians owe too
   much to too many, and they love the pow­er (and pay­backs) from being able to
   cre­ate tax loop­holes and incen­tives for their friends.

   I don’t believe we can deficit spend our way out of this mess. We have to
   jump­start our econ­o­my. We can’t do that by tax­ing and reg­u­lat­ing the life
   out of our busi­ness­es. The Fair Tax would bring most of our off-shore
   man­u­fac­tur­ing and bank­ing jobs right back here and spur for­eign invest­ments
   here. Chi­na would be build­ing plants here.

   > This is why con­ser­v­a­tives hate my pol­i­tics: I’m in favor of schools,
   > parks,
   > roads, libraries, muse­ums, fire and emer­gency ser­vices, police, and health
   > care.

   Huh? Every con­ser­v­a­tive I know is in favor of all those things. They just
   dis­agree with the lib­er­als on imple­men­ta­tion.  It is rather like clean air.
   Absolute­ly every­one believes in clean air. Some of us sim­ply believe that a
   cost/benefit analy­sis must be done. If increas­ing “air puri­ty” from 47% pure
   to 47.00000000000000001% pure costs 17 tril­lion dol­lars and 25 mil­lion jobs,
   con­ser­v­a­tives think that these costs should be con­sid­ered. Lib­er­als think
   oth­er­wise, as indi­cat­ed by their sup­port of Cap and Tax, er, Trade.

   > This makes me a Repub­li­can, or at least it makes me what Repub­li­cans
   > should
   > be.

   At least it makes you a thinker, which every Amer­i­can should be. I tell
   every­one that I don’t care who or what they vote for, but they should at
   least think about the issues. As far as I am con­cerned, the most rad­i­cal
   social­ist who has a ratio­nal (or at least rea­soned) expla­na­tion for his
   beliefs is bet­ter than some­one who votes with me but only votes con­ser­v­a­tive
   because Rush tells him to.

   > Remind me again… which par­ty is the par­ty of busi­ness?
   > How absurd is it to have laws that put the respon­si­bil­i­ty for my health
   > insur­ance on an employ­er? This is a ridicu­lous bur­den on busi­ness and an
   > espe­cial­ly big bur­den on the small­er, entre­pre­neur­ial employ­ers which are
   > this coun­try’s only hope of sur­viv­ing anoth­er decade.

   Oooops. I just addressed this ear­li­er about Oba­ma’s recent­ly and tem­porar­i­ly
   reject­ed tax increase on busi­ness­es. All busi­ness costs– health care,
   tax­es, wages – are actu­al­ly paid by the con­sumer. That is why all busi­ness
   tax­es are regres­sive. Lib­er­als love to tax busi­ness­es. (“Cor­po­ra­tions are
   evil!!!!!”) But all they are doing is regres­sive­ly tax­ing the con­sumers. Who
   do you think Cap & Trade will hurt? Do you think the pow­er com­pa­nies are
   going to eat those huge tax­es? Of course not! We will end up pay­ing
   sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er util­i­ty bills and the pow­er com­pa­nies will end up
   mak­ing more mon­ey because most reg­u­la­to­ry boards tie the util­i­ties’ prof­its
   to a per­cent­age of their gross.

   > We don’t build roads or schools or libraries out of pity for those who

   I sup­port roads, schools, and libraries out of vest­ed self-inter­est. An
   edu­cat­ed pop­u­lace is good for the nation. I am not sure we are get­ting our
   mon­ey’s worth.

   > cit­i­zen­ry. Some­one who says that we should «only help the poor,» should
   > stop
   > call­ing him­self a con­ser­v­a­tive. That’s not what that per­son is. That
   > per­son
   > is some­one who lacks the integri­ty or moral com­mit­ment to the things she
   > claims to espouse.

   > Because of these rifts, both new and old, the Repub­li­can Par­ty is poised
   > to
   > snatch defeat from the jaws of the appar­ent recent vic­to­ry over the
   > Democ­rats. Ulti­mate­ly, Repub­li­cans are still play­ing the Democ­rats’ game.
   > No
   > amount of «com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tive» rhetoric will keep the Democ­rats
   > from
   > very effec­tive­ly tar­ring the Repub­li­cans as mean­ies. The Democ­rats have
   > the
   > moral high ground only because Repub­li­cans are afraid to reframe the
   > con­ver­sa­tion. Amer­i­ca is a deeply moral coun­try and you can’t counter
   > accu­sa­tions of being unchar­i­ta­ble with a les­son in economics.

   Well, Steve, I believe help­ing the poor is char­i­ty, and, yes, I think we
   should do it vol­un­tar­i­ly. Accord­ing to recent stud­ies, Repub­li­cans give far
   more than Democ­rats to char­i­ty, both as a per­cent­age of income and as a
   dol­lar amount. Democ­rats think that every­one should be taxed to sup­port the
   poor, but Repub­li­cans just do it with­out being asked. The fact that
   Democ­rats have been able to tar us as mean­ies stag­gers me. Part of this is
   due to the com­plic­i­ty of the lib­er­al media. I believe that jour­nal­ism is
   dead in Amer­i­ca, per­haps everywhere.

   > The Oba­ma cam­paign was absolute­ly right that Amer­i­ca needs change and
   > needs
   > hope. It isn’t enough to mock the vot­ers who believe in hope and change;
   > the
   > Repub­li­can Par­ty, if it is to sur­vive at all, needs to deliv­er the change
   > that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion promised.

   How are they sup­posed to do that with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate and a Demo­c­ra­t­ic
   Pres­i­dent? I will be sat­is­fied if the next two years don’t dri­ve us fur­ther
   into the abyss. With any luck, the Tea Par­ty activists will dri­ve the rest
   of the “old-boy” politi­cians, both Rs and Ds, out of office. In eight years
   of spend­ing like a Demo­c­rat, GWB raised our debt from 5 tril­lion dol­lars to
   10 tril­lion. In two years Oba­ma has dri­ven it up to 14. I think (hope) the
   US is strong enough to sur­vive this for my life­time if it does­n’t get worse,
   but I don’t see how your gen­er­a­tion and the next can ever recov­er if we
   don’t turn this around soon.

   > Let’s stop mak­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about more ver­sus less gov­ern­ment and
   > fram­ing our­selves in the role of the miser, and start mak­ing the
   > con­ver­sa­tion about gov­ern­ment doing things that are fair, effec­tive,
   > effi­cient, and in ser­vice to all Americans.

   Does that include fair taxation?

   > Let’s encour­age state and local gov­ern­ments to actu­al­ly do some
   > of the things we think the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment should­n’t be doing.

   The states will nev­er be able to take back fed­er­al pro­grams as long as the
   feds are pay­ing for them. The feds won’t allow such a pow­er grab. They have
   to be able to buy their reelec­tions with our money.

   > Let’s have respon­si­ble social progress instead of inac­tion. Let’s stop
   > being the par­ty of naysay­ers and become the par­ty with a bet­ter plan.

   The Rs have offered some excel­lent ideas. The Ds won’t even allow them to be
   brought to com­mit­tee, let alone vot­ed on. Hope­ful­ly, the press might cov­er
   some of the ideas since the Rs will now be able to get them brought up in
   the House. If the Rs don’t deliv­er what the Tea Par­ty sent them to do, their
   heads will roll next elec­tion and I think they know it.

   I am very wor­ried about the future of this nation. We are in trou­ble and the
   pols are wor­ried about “don’t ask, don’t tell” instead of jobs and the
   econ­o­my! Unbe­liev­able! When Oba­ma left for Hawaii he said that his first
   pri­or­i­ty when he got back from vaca­tion would be jobs. It was almost
   ver­ba­tim the same speech he gave last year and the year before at the same
   time. He’d bet­ter per­form. Three strikes and you’re out.

   Dad

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   1. Am I a RINO or a DINO?

      [quote=Dad]

      How­ev­er, your def­i­n­i­tion (“The mod­el of con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sus lib­er­al boils down to peo­ple who want less of what gov­ern­ment does ver­sus peo­ple who want more of what gov­ern­ment does.”) does­n’t do jus­tice to the dif­fer­ence, either, although it is much closer.

      [/quote]

      A large part of my pref­ace was that such gen­er­al­iza­tions are incom­plete to the point of being dam­ag­ing to the fab­ric of repub­li­can (not to be con­fused with GOP) gov­ern­ment itself.

      [quote=Dad]

      I believe that the pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ence bew­teen Reps and Dems is that the Rs believe the Con­sti­tu­tion is a bind­ing legal doc­u­ment that should either be fol­lowed or amend­ed, while Ds believe the Con­sti­tu­tion is a guide­line that can be over­rid­den based on cur­rent con­di­tions and/or to achieve worth­while results.

      [/quote]

      That may be true of the dif­fer­ence between GOP and Dem vot­ers, but among elect­ed offi­cials Repub­li­cans have shown dis­re­gard for the Con­sti­tu­tion equal to the Democrats.

      [quote=Dad]

      A good exam­ple of this is the Lisa Murkowski/Joe Miller elec­tion in Alas­ka. Miller has dropped his oppo­si­tion to seat­ing Murkows­ki but is still pur­su­ing in the courts the way the elec­tion was han­dled. I agree with him that they ille­gal­ly count­ed bal­lots for her that should have been thrown out, but I also feel the law should be changed. Alaskan law states specif­i­cal­ly that write-in bal­lots must have the can­di­date’s name writ­ten **exact­ly** as shown on the can­di­dates appli­ca­tion form. It can­not be mis­spelled or dif­fer­ent in any way. The elec­tion board decid­ed to use “intent” to deter­mine if the peo­ple real­ly intend­ed to vote for her. They accept­ed bal­lots list­ed as “Markowsky” or “L. Murkows­ki” as well as the cor­rect “Lisa Murkows­ki.” While I believe that intent should be used in these cas­es so as not to dis­en­fran­chise any vot­er, I under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty of writ­ing a law that allows that flex­i­bil­i­ty with­out allow­ing the gross mis­jus­tice per­pe­trat­ed in the Cole­man-Franken recount. (By the bye, as a sta­tis­ti­cian my belief is that, when an elec­tion is this close, it would be fair­er to flip a coin than to do a recount. The errors in any recount will exceed the dif­fer­ence in the can­di­date’s tallies.)

      [/quote]

      I’m not sure that this is a good exam­ple, because Alaskan law is not the Con­sti­tu­tion. A very sol­id case could be made that the require­ment to spell the can­di­dates name exact­ly vio­lates vot­ers’ rights under the Vot­ing Rights Act (1965 and amend­ed since) or the Vot­ing Stan­dards and Pro­ce­dures Act. By allow­ing rea­son­able vari­a­tions that are unequiv­o­cal in mean­ing, the elec­tion board can pre­serve the lan­guage of the law on the books. If it were to be thrown out by a high­er court, they would have to define the fuzzy bound­aries of what is «rea­son­able.» 

      And while I don’t believe that the Con­sti­tu­tion is exact­ly a muta­ble doc­u­ment, I do believe that the pur­pose of hav­ing a judi­cia­ry is to intro­duce human inter­pre­ta­tion and be the «rea­son­able eyes» of the law. I believe that laws should be writ­ten strict­ly with­out excep­tions and applied with human care that could very well intro­duce exceptions.

      [quote=Dad]

      Are you say­ing that if the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­scribes some­thing from thefed­er­al gov­ern­ment, then the states should HAVE to do it?

      [/quote]

      Of course not. Just that the ques­tion of whether some­thing should be made law and the ques­tion of whether Con­gress can con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly make it fed­er­al law are very dif­fer­ent ques­tions. Its hyp­o­crit­i­cal (although polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent and per­haps even nec­es­sary) to argue one when mean­ing the oth­er. I’m sug­gest­ing that the con­ver­sa­tion about the role of gov­ern­ment and the con­ver­sa­tion about the role of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment are fre­quent­ly con­flat­ed to the detri­ment of polit­i­cal dia­logue in the Unit­ed States.

      [quote=Dad]

      Con­ser­v­a­tives believe that pol­i­tics should be done at the low­est lev­el of
      gov­ern­ment that can han­dle the task. Lib­er­als gen­er­al­ly believe that only
      the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is capa­ble of know­ing what is best for all of us. As
      I see it, a local select­man has to live with the peo­ple whose lives he
      con­trols, so he is more apt to be respon­sive to their needs and wishes.

      [/quote]

      I agree with the con­ser­v­a­tives that you’re describ­ing, but I dis­agree that this describes most con­ser­v­a­tives. Most peo­ple (of any par­ty) nev­er think about the role of gov­ern­ment being dif­fer­ent for dif­fer­ent lev­els of government.

      [quote=Dad]

      [quote=Splicer]

      So the first ques­tion should be, «is this some­thing that should be done?» and the sec­ond ques­tion, «who can most effec­tive­ly make it hap­pen?» If the answer to the sec­ond ques­tion is gov­ern­ment, the next ques­tion ought to be, «at what level?»

      [/quote]

      At some point it should also be deter­mined if it is Con­sti­tu­tion­al,
      rea­son­able, etc.

      [/quote]

      Rea­son­able is part of the first ques­tion, I think. And Con­sti­tu­tion­al is part of the third question.

      [quote=Dad]

      And who decides these ques­tions? A large major­i­ty of
      Amer­i­cans opposed Oba­ma’s health care plan, but the politi­cians rammed it
      down our throats any­way. It cost quite a few of them their jobs, but the
      dam­age had been done.

      [/quote]

      A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the peo­ple who opposed it believed that it did­n’t go far enough, and for that I blame Pelosi et al rather than Oba­ma for need­ing to get a fil­i­buster-proof «win» rather than a bill that would actu­al­ly do any­one any good.

      We can have anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion about sin­gle-pay­er, but I think most peo­ple who are pay­ing atten­tion would agree that the bill that was passed will do less good (or more harm if you pre­fer) and cost more than a sin­gle pay­er solu­tion would.

      [quote=Dad]

      And where does it stop? How about free food for every­one? Free hous­ing? Free art? Free trans­porta­tion? Free legal aide? Free com­put­ers? Free mem­ber­ship at the local gym? A free copy of “Atlas Shrugged”?

      [/quote]

      You know, we have to take all those things on a case by case basis. As tech­nol­o­gy pro­gress­es, some things that 150 years (or even 15 years) ago were bet­ter done by indi­vid­u­als could be bet­ter done by gov­ern­ment. It’s hard to imag­ine now, but maybe some­day free food for every­one would be a good idea. In any case, I like the idea of a gov­ern­ment-spon­sored soup kitchen avail­able to any cit­i­zen bet­ter than food stamps avail­able only to the poor.

      And free copies of “Atlas Shrugged” should darn well be avail­able at the pub­lic libraries, which ought to be sup­port­ed by the state rather than the fed­er­al lev­el (and I think rather than the local lev­el too, but that’s a prac­ti­cal ques­tion rather than a con­sti­tu­tion­al one).

      [quote=Dad]

      It just does­n’t work that way. In Cana­da rich peo­ple don’t have to wait. They spend their own mon­ey and get their health­care in the US.

      [/quote]

      It does work that way, though the effect may not be as pro­nounced as I’d like to think. Com­pare the qual­i­ty of schools in wealthy neigh­bor­hoods ver­sus the qual­i­ty of schools in poor neigh­bor­hoods. While all our pub­lic schools need improve­ment, the ones in wealthy neigh­bor­hoods are almost always much bet­ter than the ones in poor neighborhoods.

      [quote=Dad]

      These tools are pret­ty weak, as is evi­dent if you look at the make­up of our Con­gress. The ques­tion many peo­ple have is whether “steal­ing” (tax­ing) the rich exclu­sive­ly is either fair or wise, and, if so, at what lev­el. Last year 48% of Amer­i­cans paid NO fed­er­al income tax at all. Of the peo­ple who actu­al­ly pay tax­es, the top one per­cent paid 33% of the total, the top 7% paid 54%. Or stat­ed a dif­fer­ent way, the top 0.5% of ALL Amer­i­cans paid 33% of the tax­es. When the Dems tried to increase the tax­es on the wealthy this month, I could­n’t believe it. 60% of new jobs come from small busi­ness­es that fall into that brack­et, and what this nation needs right now (far more than health­care) is job creation.

      [/quote]

      There are at least three dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions to come from that paragraph.

      First, I’m not so much con­cerned with where the mon­ey comes from (though I agree it is impor­tant) as where the mon­ey goes.

      Sec­ond, there are PLENTY of peo­ple in the bot­tom 50% who pay tax­es, so I’m not sure that it fol­lows that the top one per­cent who pays tax­es is the top 0.5% of everyone.

      Third, I don’t think that it is the tools that are weak but rather the peo­ple using those tools.

      [quote=Dad]

      I am a strong pro­po­nent of the Fair Tax.

      [/quote]

      I am not con­vinced enough to be a strong pro­po­nent, but I think it is a good idea wor­thy of much more atten­tion than it is like­ly to get.

      [quote=Dad]

      I don’t believe we can deficit spend our way out of this mess. 

      [/quote]

      No, but I don’t rule out deficit spend­ing as part of the solu­tion. The text­book eco­nom­ics 101 answer to what to do to stim­u­late the econ­o­my is: low­er tax­es and increase spend­ing. That’s obvi­ous­ly not sus­tain­able, but it should­n’t have to be sus­tain­able. And I would add “…on things that need to be done” to the end of the “increase spend­ing” part. Putting peo­ple to work repair­ing roads and build­ing bridges and so on is good; lin­ing the pock­ets of politi­cians’ friends, not so much.

      [quote=Dad]

      Chi­na would be build­ing plants here.

      [/quote]

      Not in a mil­lion years. Chi­na’s entire econ­o­my is based on infra­struc­ture that was stolen from Euro­pean and Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. Why this coun­try insists on help­ing the com­mu­nists destroy our econ­o­my is beyond me.

      [quote=Dad]

      [quote=Splicer]

      This is why con­ser­v­a­tives hate my pol­i­tics: I’m in favor of schools, parks,
      roads, libraries, muse­ums, fire and emer­gency ser­vices, police, and health care.

      [/quote]

      Huh? Every con­ser­v­a­tive I know is in favor of all those things.

      [/quote]

      Look at the lib­er­tar­i­an plat­form: elim­i­nate the pub­lic school sys­tem, pri­va­tize parks and fire depart­ments… the lib­er­tar­i­ans are cer­tain­ly more tru­ly con­ser­v­a­tives than the GOP is. Also, I believe that a flag­ging econ­o­my is rea­son to invest more heav­i­ly in these things, not less.

      [quote=Dad]

      They just dis­agree with the lib­er­als on imple­men­ta­tion.  It is rather like clean air.
      Absolute­ly every­one believes in clean air. Some of us sim­ply believe that a cost/benefit analy­sis must be done. If increas­ing “air puri­ty” from 47% pure to 47.00000000000000001% pure costs 17 tril­lion dol­lars and 25 mil­lion jobs, con­ser­v­a­tives think that these costs should be considered.

      [/quote]

      This is a clas­sic straw man.

      [quote=Dad]

      Lib­er­als think oth­er­wise, as indi­cat­ed by their sup­port of Cap and Tax, er, Trade.

      [/quote]

      Cap and Trade is an abom­i­na­tion. No argu­ment from me.

      [quote=Dad]

      At least it makes you a thinker, which every Amer­i­can should be. I tell every­one that I don’t care who or what they vote for, but they should at least think about the issues. As far as I am con­cerned, the most rad­i­cal social­ist who has a ratio­nal (or at least rea­soned) expla­na­tion for his beliefs is bet­ter than some­one who votes with me but only votes con­ser­v­a­tive because Rush tells him to.

      [/quote]

      I agree, and thank you for putting me down as a thinker. It’s a com­pli­ment I take seriously.

      [quote=Dad]

      Oooops. I just addressed this ear­li­er about Oba­ma’s recent­ly and tem­porar­i­ly reject­ed tax increase on busi­ness­es. All busi­ness costs– health care, tax­es, wages – are actu­al­ly paid by the con­sumer. That is why all busi­ness tax­es are regres­sive. Lib­er­als love to tax busi­ness­es. (“Cor­po­ra­tions are evil!!!!!”) But all they are doing is regres­sive­ly tax­ing the con­sumers. Who do you think Cap & Trade will hurt? Do you think the pow­er com­pa­nies are going to eat those huge tax­es? Of course not! We will end up pay­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er util­i­ty bills and the pow­er com­pa­nies will end up mak­ing more mon­ey because most reg­u­la­to­ry boards tie the util­i­ties’ prof­its to a per­cent­age of their gross.

      [/quote]

      Right. I think that we’re in agree­ment that the gov­ern­ment man­date on employ­ers to pro­vide health insur­ance is… I’m try­ing to find a word that is more descrip­tive than “bad”.

      [quote=Dad]

      I sup­port roads, schools, and libraries out of vest­ed self-inter­est. An edu­cat­ed pop­u­lace is good for the nation. I am not sure we are get­ting our mon­ey’s worth.

      [/quote]

      Exact­ly!

      [quote=Dad]

      Well, Steve, I believe help­ing the poor is char­i­ty, and, yes, I think we
      should do it voluntarily.

      [/quote]

      Right. I’m say­ing that char­i­ty should not be the job of gov­ern­ment. The job of gov­ern­ment should be help­ing every­one, rich and poor. Roads are for every­one, schools are for every­one, libraries, fire depart­ments, parks, all also for every­one. Gov­ern­ment either should not pro­vide health­care for any­one at all or pro­vide health­care for every­one. We might dis­agree about which one of those choic­es to go with. 🙂

      Also, a dis­tinc­tion: help­ing the poor is not char­i­ty if you’re also help­ing every­one else at the same time. Then it becomes vest­ed self-interest.

      [quote=Dad]

      Accord­ing to recent stud­ies, Repub­li­cans give far more than Democ­rats to char­i­ty, both as a per­cent­age of income and as a dol­lar amount. Democ­rats think that every­one should be taxed to sup­port the poor, but Repub­li­cans just do it with­out being asked. The fact that Democ­rats have been able to tar us as mean­ies stag­gers me. Part of this is due to the com­plic­i­ty of the lib­er­al media. I believe that jour­nal­ism is dead in Amer­i­ca, per­haps everywhere.

      [/quote]

      I believe you, but I’m very inter­est­ed in the source of the «recent stud­ies.» Can you cite some sources?

      [quote=Dad]

      [quote=Splicer]

      The Oba­ma cam­paign was absolute­ly right that Amer­i­ca needs change and needs hope. It isn’t enough to mock the vot­ers who believe in hope and change;  the Repub­li­can Par­ty, if it is to sur­vive at all, needs to deliv­er the change that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion promised.

      [/quote]

      How are they sup­posed to do that with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate and a Demo­c­ra­t­ic President?

      [/quote]

      First of all, by «deliv­er the change that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion promised» I cer­tain­ly did­n’t mean that Repub­li­cans should specif­i­cal­ly car­ry out Oba­ma’s plat­form. But Repub­li­cans won’t sur­vive with­out being con­struc­tive and proac­tive. Right now they’re set­ting them­selves up for a back­lash against the back­lash that got them back in con­trol of the House.

      [quote=Dad] [quote=Splicer]

      Let’s stop mak­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about more ver­sus less gov­ern­ment and fram­ing our­selves in the role of the miser, and start mak­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about gov­ern­ment doing things that are fair, effec­tive, effi­cient, and in ser­vice to all Americans.

      [/quote]

      Does that include fair taxation?

      [/quote]

      Sure. I think I’ve already expressed that I believe where the mon­ey is going to be a big­ger prob­lem than where it is com­ing from, but I don’t mean to deny that where it comes from is a real prob­lem as well.

      [quote=Dad]

      [quote=Splicer]

      Let’s encour­age state and local gov­ern­ments to actu­al­ly do some of the things we think the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment should­n’t be doing.

      [/quote]

      The states will nev­er be able to take back fed­er­al pro­grams as long as the
      feds are pay­ing for them. The feds won’t allow such a pow­er grab. They have
      to be able to buy their reelec­tions with our money.

      [/quote]

      That’s some­thing to fight against.

       

      [quote=Dad]

      The Rs have offered some excel­lent ideas. The Ds won’t even allow them to be brought to com­mit­tee, let alone vot­ed on. Hope­ful­ly, the press might cov­er some of the ideas since the Rs will now be able to get them brought up in the House. If the Rs don’t deliv­er what the Tea Par­ty sent them to do, their  heads will roll next elec­tion and I think they know it.

      [/quote]

      I don’t think they do know it. Judg­ing by the GOP’s rhetoric, it sounds like a return to GWB rather than a return to Eisenhower.

      [quote=Dad]

      I am very wor­ried about the future of this nation. We are in trou­ble and the pols are wor­ried about “don’t ask, don’t tell” instead of jobs and the econ­o­my! Unbelievable!

      [/quote]

      DADT should be a non-issue, but here I’m with the Dems. The GOP hold­ing up what the Joint Chiefs have rec­om­mend­ed and what the Supreme Court has all but said will hap­pen regard­less is uncon­scionable. For that mat­ter, so is hold­ing up the 9/11 first respon­der health­care bill. What I said about «every­one or no one» applies to race, gen­der, income lev­el, social sta­tus… not peo­ple who have risked their lives to serve this coun­try. There is no ques­tion in my mind that we owe those men and women dearly.

      Log in to Reply

      1. DADT

         My issue was not with Con­gress repeal­ing DADT, sim­ply that I felt jobs and the econ­o­my were far more press­ing and should not have tak­en a back seat to an issue that is not on the verge of destroy­ing the nation.

         As for the 9 – 11 first respon­der bill, why should we pay $4.3 bil­lion for the NYC police and fire­fight­ers health care? I don’t know why we paid mil­lions to every vic­tim’s fam­i­ly, either. We did­n’t kill those peo­ple. Bill Al Qaeda!

         Dad

         Log in to Reply

         1. DADT & 9/11

            [quote=Dad]

            My issue was not with Con­gress repeal­ing DADT, sim­ply that I felt jobs and the econ­o­my were far more press­ing and should not have tak­en a back seat to an issue that is not on the verge of destroy­ing the nation.

            [/quote]

            Sure. What I’m say­ing is that repeal­ing DADT should have tak­en about twen­ty min­utes and have been done with a month ago, leav­ing plen­ty of time to address the rest of the agenda.

            [quote=Dad]

            As for the 9 – 11 first respon­der bill, why should we pay $4.3 bil­lion for the NYC police and fire­fight­ers health care? I don’t know why we paid mil­lions to every vic­tim’s fam­i­ly, either. We did­n’t kill those peo­ple. Bill Al Qaeda!

            [/quote]

            Because when they respond­ed to an act of war against our nation they became some­thing more than police and fire­fight­ers are expect­ed to be, even in New York City. Because not all first respon­ders were FDNY or NYPD, and many of those that were FDNY or NYPD were off-duty and came to the scene any­way, and so are inel­i­gi­ble for work­mans comp. When their health fails to the point where they can no longer work they lose med­ical cov­er­age because being on the front line of a mil­i­tary attack was not «job-relat­ed». These peo­ple are dying and can­not sup­port their families.

            You tell me. Was 9/11 a crime against New York City or an act of war against the Unit­ed States? These peo­ple sac­ri­ficed them­selves for the Unit­ed States, not for New York City.

            The day we can col­lect a bill from Al Qae­da, I say we do. But I think we’ll be wait­ing a while for that.

            Log in to Reply

            1. 9 – 11

               I some­how have trou­ble imag­in­ing how 60,000 first respon­ders actu­al­ly got seri­ous health issues from their efforts on 9 – 11, espe­cial­ly off-duty ones inel­i­gi­ble for Work­man’s Comp. If they were fund­ing 500 or 1000 peo­ple, maybe. It looks like anoth­er give­away to me.

               As for the 3000 vic­tims, almost all of them were mid-to-upper class pro­fes­sion­als with life insur­ance of their own. We don’t give mil­lions to the fam­i­lies of sol­diers who die in Iraq or Afghanistan. If they don’t buy their own insur­ance their fam­i­lies are out of luck.

               Lib­er­als call it an act of war only when it suits them. Think Guantanamo.

               Dad

            2. First respon­ders and Guantanamo

               [quote=Dad]

               I some­how have trou­ble imag­in­ing how 60,000 first respon­ders actu­al­ly got seri­ous health issues from their efforts on 9 – 11, espe­cial­ly off-duty ones inel­i­gi­ble for Work­man’s Comp. If they were fund­ing 500 or 1000 peo­ple, maybe. It looks like anoth­er give­away to me.

               [/quote]

               Tox­ic dust, includ­ing air­borne asbestos. All the stuff about asbestos being harm­less does­n’t apply when it’s breathed.

               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_arising_from_the_September_11_attacks

               [quote=Dad]

               As for the 3000 vic­tims, almost all of them were mid-to-upper class pro­fes­sion­als with life insur­ance of their own. We don’t give mil­lions to the fam­i­lies of sol­diers who die in Iraq or Afghanistan. If they don’t buy their own insur­ance their fam­i­lies are out of luck.

               [/quote]

               I’m not dis­put­ing this. I will say that fam­i­lies of sol­diers who die in Iraq or Afghanistan deserve bet­ter than they get. $6,000 and get­ting kicked out of their on-base hous­ing? I don’t know about mil­lions, but we should do bet­ter than that.

               [quote=Dad]

               Lib­er­als call it an act of war only when it suits them. Think Guantanamo.

               [/quote]

               That’s unfair, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Guan­tanamo was set up because the Bush admin­is­tra­tion did­n’t want to treat those detainees as pris­on­ers of war. If they called it war they would have had to observe the terms of the Gene­va conventions.

               So con­ser­v­a­tives call it an act of war only when it suits them. The dif­fer­ence is that when con­ser­v­a­tives avoid call­ing it war peo­ple get waterboarded.

            3. Git­mo

               Ene­my com­bat­ants who are not wear­ing uni­forms relin­quish ALL rights under the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. They become POW’s with no rights what­so­ev­er. The Gene­va Con­ven­tion was set up to pro­tect both civil­ians and sol­diers. It is con­sid­ered unfair to ask a sol­dier to have to deter­mine if a per­son in civvies is a civil­ian or sol­dier before defend­ing him­self from that person.

               Git­mo was set up so Pres­i­dent Bush would­n’t have to respond to lib­er­als demand­ing the pris­on­ers be accord­ed Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

               Dad

2. One thread of the many.…

   Dad wrote:

    

   Accord­ing to recent stud­ies, Repub­li­cans give far more than Democ­rats to char­i­ty, both as a per­cent­age of income and as a dol­lar amount. Democ­rats think that every­one should be taxed to sup­port the poor, but Repub­li­cans just do it with­out being asked. The fact that Democ­rats have been able to tar us as mean­ies stag­gers me. Part of this is due to the com­plic­i­ty of the lib­er­al media. I believe that jour­nal­ism is dead in Amer­i­ca, per­haps everywhere.

    

   Splicer wrote:

   I believe you, but I’m very inter­est­ed in the source of the «recent stud­ies.» Can you cite some sources?

    

   There are a num­ber of stud­ies, but by far the most com­plete study was done in 2006 by Arthur C. Brooks, a pro­fes­sor from Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. Brooks showed that con­ser­v­a­tives not only give more mon­ey to char­i­ty, they vol­un­teer more time and give more blood. In fact, he states that if lib­er­als gave blood at the same rate as con­ser­v­a­tives it would increase the entire blood sup­ply by 45%.  He pub­lished a very read­able book called “Who Real­ly Cares?”  There are links to sev­er­al reviews here: http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/acbrooks/

    

   He has also done a study show­ing that con­ser­v­a­tives are gen­er­al­ly hap­pi­er peo­ple than lib­er­als. Info is also on the above link.

    

   He had an very good inter­view at philanthropy.com here: http://philanthropy.com/article/Who-Gives-More-Democrats-or/49377/

    

   And an inter­est­ing col­umn by an unhap­py lib­er­al NY Times con­trib­u­tor, Nicholas Kristof, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html

    

   Here is a “fair use” quote from an arti­cle by George Wills:

    

   – Although lib­er­al fam­i­lies’ incomes aver­age 6 per­cent high­er than those of con­ser­v­a­tive fam­i­lies, con­ser­v­a­tive-head­ed house­holds give, on aver­age, 30 per­cent more to char­i­ty than the aver­age lib­er­al-head­ed house­hold ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

    

   – Con­ser­v­a­tives also donate more time and give more blood. 

    

   – Res­i­dents of the states that vot­ed for John Ker­ry in 2004 gave small­er per­cent­ages of their incomes to char­i­ty than did res­i­dents of states that vot­ed for George Bush. 

    

   – Bush car­ried 24 of the 25 states where char­i­ta­ble giv­ing was above average. 

    

   – In the 10 red­dest states, in which Bush got more than 60 per­cent majori­ties, the aver­age per­cent­age of per­son­al income donat­ed to char­i­ty was 3.5. Res­i­dents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 per­cent, donat­ed just 1.9 percent.

    

   – Peo­ple who reject the idea that “gov­ern­ment has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to reduce income inequal­i­ty” give an aver­age of four times more than peo­ple who accept that proposition. 

    

   Wills’ entire col­umn is here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html

    

   There are some aston­ish­ing num­bers if you look at com­bined “giv­ing” fac­tors. For exam­ple, a per­son who attends reli­gious ser­vices and does not believe in gov­ern­ment redis­tri­b­u­tion of income will give away 100 times more (half to reli­gious char­i­ties) than a per­son who does not attend reli­gious ser­vices and strong­ly believes in the redis­tri­b­u­tion of income.  That, of course, is a very nar­row sub­set of a sub­set. But there are NO sub­sets of sub­sets show­ing any­thing com­pa­ra­ble the oth­er way

    

   BTW, Amer­i­cans are far more gen­er­ous than Euro­peans, who tend to be even more lib­er­al. Amer­i­cans donate 1.67% of G.N.P.  The British are sec­ond, with 0.73%, while the most lib­er­al coun­try (France) is low­est at 0.14%.

    

   Anoth­er inter­est­ing fact: gays are one of the most gen­er­ous sub­sets, per­haps because they have no heirs to save their mon­ey for.

    

   I know most of these links are arti­cles, not stud­ies, but most of them ref­er­ence some of the stud­ies that serve as the bases (plur­al of basis) for them. Brooks’ book, of course, is com­plete­ly doc­u­ment­ed accord­ing to aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards and his research papers that sup­port the book have been peer reviewed.

    

   Need more, hit Google. You will prob­a­bly want to skip Ann Coul­ter’s arti­cle on the sub­ject this month because it will like­ly set your hair on fire. 🙂 But here is an inter­est­ing quote from it: “In his book ‘Intel­lec­tu­als,’ Paul John­son quotes Pablo Picas­so scoff­ing at the idea that he would give to the needy. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong,’ Picas­so explains, ‘we are social­ists. We don’t pre­tend to be Christians.’”

    

   Dad

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   1. Con­ser­v­a­tives give more blood than lib­er­als? Wow.

      Thanks for those! That’s real­ly inter­est­ing to see.

      In (par­tial) defense of lib­er­als, one of the pat­terns that is hard to ignore is that you can gen­er­al­ly pre­dict whether a coun­ty will be «red» or «blue» by its pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty. It’s my own pet the­o­ry that very lit­tle reg­u­la­tion is need­ed where peo­ple aren’t packed in tight­ly togeth­er. In cities, we embrace gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion to the point where we have tax­pay­er mon­ey pay­ing for lights that instruct us when to cross the street.

      The only rea­son that might be rel­e­vant is because city-dwellers also pay a larg­er por­tion of their income to hous­ing than those who live out­side of met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. City-dwellers earn more but tend to have less dis­pos­able income than non-city-dwellers. This will nat­u­ral­ly skew city-dwellers (who tend toward the left) to dis­pose of a small­er por­tion of their incomes in oth­er ways (includ­ing charity).

      That said, I don’t doubt the basic premise: that the expec­ta­tion that gov­ern­ment will do char­i­ty decreas­es the ten­den­cy toward char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. The blood dona­tion sta­tis­tics are real­ly pow­er­ful that way. Mon­ey (and to some extent avail­able time) may skew demo­graph­i­cal­ly but every­one has rough­ly the same amount of blood.

      It’s fun­ny that I’ve always had the impres­sion that you thought my being a blood donor was a sign of my lib­er­al indoc­tri­na­tion. It’s nice to be corrected.

      [quote=Dad]

      – Peo­ple who reject the idea that “gov­ern­ment has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to reduce income inequal­i­ty” give an aver­age of four times more than peo­ple who accept that proposition.

      [/quote]

      By this met­ric I’m back in the con­ser­v­a­tive camp. I’m in favor of spend­ing on things that ben­e­fit the coun­try as a whole and which are acces­si­ble to all cit­i­zens. Sure, libraries may be more com­mon­ly used by the poor, but the rich can and do use them. Even my stand on health care reflects this. Exclud­ing the peo­ple who pay for the pro­grams from mak­ing use of those pro­grams to me makes the dif­fer­ence between pro­vid­ing infra­struc­ture and redis­trib­ut­ing wealth.

      That Picas­so quote is priceless!

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   2. Ann Coul­ter

      [quote=Dad]

      You will prob­a­bly want to skip Ann Coul­ter’s arti­cle on the sub­ject this month because it will like­ly set your hair on fire. 🙂

      [/quote]

      You did­n’t think I could resist a teas­er like that, did you? I near­ly choked on my gin­ger ale when I read:

      In 2005, Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney gave 77 per­cent of his income to char­i­ty. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something. 

      I gen­er­al­ly do avoid her, though. She’s an intel­lec­tu­al who is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est. I don’t think the truth should have to lie to be heard, so I avoid read­ing what she has to say for fear that she will prej­u­dice me against conservatives.

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      1. Well, that was­n’t the article

         Well, that was­n’t the arti­cle I was refer­ring to. I had­n’t seen that one, but it was cer­tain­ly apro­pos. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the last line: “The only evi­dence we have that Democ­rats love the poor is that they con­sis­tent­ly back poli­cies that will cre­ate more of them.” What was the lie you saw in that article?

         I was refer­ring to the pre­vi­ous arti­cle enti­tled “Scrooge Was A Liberal.”

         Dad

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         1. She’s only gen­er­al­ly dishonest

            I did­n’t see a lie in that arti­cle, at least not to my knowl­edge. What I’ve seen over the years is a pat­tern of dis­tor­tion not unlike what one sees from O’Reil­ly or Olber­mann. I sup­pose that truth isn’t a part of a pun­dit’s job descrip­tion, so per­haps I should­n’t be so hard on them.

            In the side­bar (I assume those are from her Twit­ter feed?) it was out of line to call the BBC writer who par­rot­ed a very com­mon mis­con­cep­tion about the def­i­n­i­tion of immac­u­late conception—conflating immac­u­late con­cep­tion with vir­gin birth—a «moron.» And tak­ing one mur­der case from the news and using it to claim that all mus­lims are more aggres­sive than all Ger­mans? Maybe that was tongue in cheek, but how is any­one sup­posed to know?

            But in that arti­cle I did­n’t see any­thing wrong. It was pep­pered with anec­do­tal evi­dence which illus­trat­ed the sta­tis­tics she cit­ed rather than anec­dotes and spec­u­la­tion offered as evi­dence. One arti­cle that failed to offend me isn’t enough for me to become a reg­u­lar reader.

            I get my news (and most of the opin­ion pieces I read) from the Wall Street Jour­nal. I’m OK with par­ti­san­ship that comes from being wealthy; I main­tain my dis­dain for those who get wealthy off of partisanship.

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            1. Ann, again

               I like Ann Coul­ter the same way I like James Carville. They both are extreme par­ti­sans who can lac­er­ate their oppo­nents twelve times before their tar­gets can get their tongues unsheathed. Are they fair? Of course not. What polit­i­cal pun­dit is? (Or what politi­cian, for that mat­ter?) Are they amus­ing and inter­est­ing? You betcha! I’ve blown out some gin­ger ale, too.

                

               And Ann is much bet­ter looking.….

                

               Dad

3. Lib­er­tar­i­ans

   > Look at the lib­er­tar­i­an plat­form: elim­i­nate the pub­lic school sys­tem, pri­va­tize parks and fire departments…

   That is the the­o­ret­i­cal Lib­er­tar­i­an posi­tion, not the actu­al posi­tion of most Lib­er­tar­i­ans. Most L’s are will­ing to con­cede that some infra­struc­ture is prop­er­ly sup­plied by government.

   Dad

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4. Oba­maCare

   The lat­est CNN poll shows the num­ber of peo­ple opposed to Oba­maCare is still ris­ing, cur­rent­ly at 62%. Anoth­er 11% are opposed because “it does­n’t go far enough.” That is the most dis­liked bill I have ever seen.

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5. One more – the Fair Tax

   If you don’t ful­ly sup­port the Fair Tax, read it again and then tell me why.

   Dad

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   1. Fair tax… oxymoron?

      Is http://www.fairtax.org/ a good resource for infor­ma­tion or do you rec­om­mend others?

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      1. Fair Tax

         I believe that is the “offi­cial” site, but it seems rather clut­tered and unclear. I have not spent much time there. I read “The Fair Tax” by Neal Boortz and John Lin­der, and that was an eye­open­er. I had sev­er­al reser­va­tions before read­ing the book about sev­er­al aspects, such as the pre­bates, but I have seen the light. It is far fair­er than any oth­er way I can imag­ine. As a side ben­e­fit, hav­ing no busi­ness tax­es mean that every com­pa­ny would want to do busi­ness here, bring­ing jobs and man­u­fac­tur­ing stream­ing back. Off­shore com­pa­nies and off­shore bank­ing would disappear.

         It is cur­rent­ly writ­ten to be rev­enue neu­tral with our cur­rent tax code, and the total tax code can be print­ed and car­ried in your jack­et pocket.

         I believe it would turn our econ­o­my around as fast as it could be imple­ment­ed and gen­er­ate so much growth that the tax rate would soon sup­port every­thing that needs to be done in this country.

         The down (????) side is that a lot of tax lawyers, IRS employ­ees, and lob­by­ists would be look­ing for jobs. For­tu­nate­ly for them, jobs should be easy to find in a boom­ing econ­o­my, even for them.

         Dad

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         1. Fair tax prebates

            The pre­bate idea is a lit­tle trou­bling to me because of the poten­tial for fraud. Why not sim­ply exempt cer­tain neces­si­ties? Here in Cal­i­for­nia gro­ceries are not sub­ject to the sales tax.

            Maybe I ought­ta read that book.

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            1. Pre­bates

               They address that on their web­site. Click on About the Fair­Tax, then FAQ.  There is far less area for fraud in the Fair Tax than in any oth­er tax pro­pos­al I’ve seen.

               Dad

6. One per­cent

   The top one per­cent that pays 33% of the total FIT are the tax­pay­ers in the tax brack­et for AGI over $336,550. Although there are some rich peo­ple with untax­able income (John Ker­ry-Heinz, for exam­ple,) I think they are few enough to not mate­ri­al­ly alter my approx­i­ma­tion. As for the 48% who pay no FIT at all, that is based sole­ly on AGI, not gross income. Want a fair­er tax, try the Fair Tax!

   Dad

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