Redistributing Knowledge

Thurston County Commissioners Put People Last

2011-04-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

By Scott Roberts

Property Rights Director

Freedom Foundation

Thurston County property owners find themselves pinned down by government crossfire as county regulators continue their assault on private property rights, supposedly in defense of a gopher.

This current encroachment on private property is an effort by government to protect the allegedly threatened Mazama pocket gopher.

For decades, the federal government called this burrowing rodent a “pest” and conducted extensive programs to exterminate it; ironically, the state is now attempting to protect it.

The pocket gopher is resilient and it survived the federal government’s decades-long extermination efforts. But now the state government believes it is threatened. And Thurston County is restricting the use of private property in hopes of saving it.

True to form, these bureaucrats blame the loss and modification of its prairie habitat for this decline in numbers. Translation: Development by humans—instead of 50 years of attempts to eradicate this “pest”— is the cause of its decline.

Panicked by newfound federal concerns about the pocket gopher, Thurston County commissioners and staff use a possible federal listing of the pocket gopher as their excuse to impose new restrictions on landowners.

Many landowners have already experienced life-changing, irreparable harm from the county’s regulations.

Mrs. Baker, a disabled and retired state employee on a fixed income, needs to sell 5 acres so she can pay taxes, medical bills and maintain the rest of her land. But the county told her she would have to first provide over 50 acres of pocket gopher habitat.

Mr. Howell lost the use of 64 percent of his property to create a private gopher reserve—this as government retribution for trying to install a small manufactured home for his son on his own land.

Ms. Bryant fared even worse, losing her house to foreclosure after Thurston County deemed these rodents more important than her right to run a daycare business out of her home.

And Mr. Weaver now has a criminal record for trying to protect his property from a gopher infestation. Five armed Fish and Wildlife agents arrested him earlier this year for trapping the gopher.

Thurston County officials say they must protect prairie habitat in order to save the pocket gopher. They claim less than 1 percent of the remaining prairie is on public lands and use this as another excuse for their misguided regulations on private property.

Yet pocket gopher population numbers fail to support its current state threatened status. A 2005 state government study said that only 2,000-5,000 gophers remain and caused it to become a state threatened species.

Certified biologists have since found 6,500 of the rodents on just two sites, and thousands more gophers have been found elsewhere. These recent field studies are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.

The evidence suggests that pocket gophers are anything but threatened in Thurston County, and contradicts any so-called need for action by bureaucrats and lawmakers at all levels—local, state, or federal – to restrict use of private property.

Thurston County Commissioners have made no attempt to balance reasonable environmental protection with property owner’s rights. Rather, they subscribe to the radical environmentalist’s agenda that accords rights only to animals, and renders private property useless by approving severe regulations.

Thurston County Commissioners continue to ignore field evidence, common sense, and public input. Their ideological beliefs alone guide their policymaking – and these decisions put people last.

It’s time that taxpayers tell the Commissioners to put people first for a change.

Cross posted at www.myfreedomfoundation.com

There is no profit in government

2011-02-22T00:13:00.000-08:00

By Littlefish

I used to argue against unions. I used to consider all unions to be little more than criminal organizations, not because of their actual criminal pasts, but because of the very nature of their stated mission, to extort and coerce. But as I grow older and wiser, I realize there is a time and a place for a union. But what I think a strong and successful union would look like would be more like a PTA than a billion dollar political action committee.

If there is some profitable company, and it is run by a successful but shrewd individual, or board, or whatever the case may be, and the employees are unhappy with their conditions, what would be a natural and beneficial process to correct any perceived injustice? The boss is shrewd, doesn’t really feel like spreading some new windfall around the shop, and of course, we all have the right to be shrewd, everyone has the right to act toward their own goals: just as a boss can be shrewd, so can an employee have demands. Of course, anybody who has managed or owned a business of employees will know that employees always have demands: time off, special shifts, or some other variance in your necessarily planned program that was never agreed to up front, but often comes up none the less during the course of business, and you reasonably try to accommodate even though it is an added labor and expense, which of course isn’t always taken into consideration by the employee when it comes time to talk about an improvement of their conditions in some way, but that is what makes managers managers and employees employees, the ability to see a bigger picture. But I digress.

An employee in a situation in which they have somehow improved profitability of the company through improving productivity would have every right to ask for a larger share of the take. Any one can ask for any thing right? A boss would then weigh the cost/benefit of improving the condition or finding a substitution for the employee. And again, anyone who has managed a company will note, if you have a stellar staff, you don’t consider letting them go lightly. If the cost of replacing the quality of the staff outweighed the cost of the improved condition, then the improvement would likely be granted. Too often of course, employees assume that they ‘deserve’ a raise for many reasons, sometimes just because a period of time has passed. There are several reasons a company may become more profitable without increased worker productivity. Better brand acceptance might be the cause. That doesn’t mean that everyone on production deserves a raise, but the department that elevated the brand image might find themselves in a position of being able to demand better conditions.

A natural balance is constantly at work between the conditions under which a person is willing to work, and the conditions an employer is willing to provide to maintain a workforce at a level of quality required to perform the business at hand. Demand for labor is the major factor deciding which side has the upper hand. The more specialized the skill set, the higher the demand for that labor. The higher value of that skill is represented in a higher salary in many cases, but other ‘conditions’ are included in any salary or benefit negotiation so I will stick with ‘conditions’ as the goal.

A person who works for themselves sets their conditions themselves. What will they get out of bed for? What will they fly out of town for? What will they do every day and what for? The negotiation is made between the person and themselves, they then work under those guidelines as they interact with potential counter parties to achieve or acquire whatever business it is that two parties in any situation may aspire to conduct. The agreed outcome represents the value of the transaction to both parties.

If one of those people were so successful that they needed help doing their business at another level, they would then undertake a second negotiation with other people, to acquire their skills to fulfill the processes of said business. To do this they will need to offer conditions that will attract the needed skills, but still leave room for the vast array of other expenses required to maintain the operation, and also, God willing, provide a little scratch off the top in a strong quarter.

If that new person, the new employee, decides that the boss is taking a little too much scratch off the top, and they have a skill set that is in demand, they can demand more money, or threaten to leave. If there is a large group of employees and they all have a skill set that is in demand, and they collectively decide they want to approach the boss and demand better conditions or threaten to leave, the boss would be posed with an even greater problem. Replacing an entire workforce, or a department, could come with severe expense and delay, possibly a reduction in quality of product and a diminished brand. If the employee’s demands were reasonable, they would likely have to be acceptable. But the boss will know where that line is, and a reasonable group of employees would also know where that line was. No reasonable employee would ask for more than the business could support. Killing the goose isn’t the goal, just getting bigger eggs. That’s why unions should be a common and effective tool for solving short term grievances and maintaining a check on unscrupulous managers in profit driven organizations.

The organized unions of today, with their multi million dollar budgets, and their millions in campaign contributions, and their career union bosses earning many times what their constituents earn and pay in from their paychecks; these are not beneficial to employee interests, not beneficial to employer interests, and not beneficial to the interests of society at large. There is no need for permanent standing unions of paid lobbyists. When there are situations where employees are deserving of a larger share and better conditions, and their labor is in such demand that their demands for improvement are outweighed by the cost of their replacement, those employees would likely take it upon themselves to meet on facebook, over coffee, or in the parking lot, appoint a representative or two, and take their statement to management, prepared to prove their point. That is a useful union.

Employees of companies not only have a right, but a responsibility to stand up for them selves and demand their worth. The economy needs each input to be working and earning at the highest potential, therefore, putting out labor for less then the highest market price is an inefficiency in the system, just as paying someone more than their labor is worth is an inefficiency in the system. Therefore, it is imperative that employees unionize for temporary battles against aloof management until a certain wrong is righted. But after that, the union really has no reason to exist. Unions are only needed when a disparity between the success of the company and the input of the laborers grows beyond the point at which both parties will perform as agreed. If there is no greater profit, there is nothing to ask for. Short term, temporary unions, to fight the good fight against unruly profiteers, to help keep the market honest and competitive, those are unions I could get behind. I believe unions have their place, and when properly applied, a collective voice is an important check on potential greed in our system.

But what about when the operation in question hasn’t experienced any increase in profit? In fact, what if the operation in question never shows a profit? What if profit is not the motive of the operation at all? What if the business at hand is the governance of a population? I’ll agree that a group of employees has the right to re-negotiate with an employer if they feel profit has been made on their backs, but if there is no profit, what exactly is the justification behind demanding improved conditions?

Organized labor is a problem. If anything, they give a bad name to what a true union should be. But even in the private sector, an organized, standing union, is under the gun of competition. Their bargaining power is largely limited by the actual profits in the industries they participate in. State worker’s unions, however, are different. They hold complete monopoly over employment in local and regional governments. Their negotiations are not limited by the profit of the industry they participate in, negotiating with a public employee union is simply an exercise in how much money they can extort from constituents to then coerce government managers through continued political and financial support to continually give-in to their demands of every increasing shares of the pie. The irony? A concept designed to help the working person, unions, suddenly becomes a leach on the working population at large. Working people all over the state pay in, so that a select anointed few can receive benefits and conditions that very few, if any, in the private sector receive for similar work in similar conditions. The union leadership skims a share, and a slice is served in the halls of government to harangue a larger share in the next negotiation cycle. Corruption at its most sublime.

Unions are a check against profiteers, but there are no profits in government, therefore there should be no unionization of government workers. Public servants in all positions should be compensated according to what the next best person would do the job for. And changes in that compensation can only come from one place. If wages in the private sector rose, so then would government income, from increased use of services and increased consumption. Those increased private sector wages would entice public sector employees to leave for private sector work. The government would need to maintain a workforce to perform its basic tasks, so with the increased revenue from a more robust private economy, they could afford to compete with the private sector and maintain a workforce at market rates. If wages begin to slide in the private sector, then the wages of public servants could and should come down. That’s all. Wages should not go up just because. Government operates on a budget, not on cash flow, so only a cost savings in one area of government can afford an increased expenditure in another area, there is no profit margin to share in.

When it comes to government workers, there is no negotiation to be had. There is no greedy boss taking an unfair share, the boss is the people. The cost of running the government should only be as high as absolutely necessary for the safety and sanitation of the population. There is nothing a union can do. There is no money to negotiate for. Any increase in government worker’s salaries that a union might be able to negotiate, comes directly from the taxes paid by those workers, along with the rest of the population. The only winners in that senseless arrangement are the union bosses that, of course, take their salary from the margin. Where are the unions to protect us from unscrupulous union bosses?

Every so often, an industry outlives its usefulness; buggy whips, pay phones. It is time for public employee’s unions to stand up for the working man by walking away and shutting down. Combating the corrupting incentives created by public employee unions is in the best interest of every citizen, even those who belong to unions.

An Open Letter to Governor Gregoire

2010-12-01T11:30:00.001-08:00

A hand delivered letter from Evergreen Freedom Foundation to Gov. Gregoire. They are right when they say, "One courageous governor can change a state's course. Washington needs you to be that governor."

The full text of the letter is below, the summary is here, and the link to the PDF is here.

***
Dear Governor Gregoire,

We fully agree with statements in your November 23 letter to legislative leaders that "we need to make sustainable policy and budget decisions that are reflective of current revenue. We need decisions that meet our immediate need and those that will provide direction for the 2011-13 biennium. There are only seven months left in the biennium, and delay will result in deeper cuts and additional harm."

In the wake of your statements, it is clear that legislative leaders are dragging their feet. The first step to compel action is to disclose the actual fiscal state of the state in a transparent manner that lawmakers and citizens can understand. If legislators do not understand the full extent of the state’s financial problems, they will not respond properly or in a timely manner. The state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is a classic case of being unable to see the forest for the trees. State spending and indebtedness levels, unfunded liabilities and financial trends are extremely difficult to locate. Critical information is buried in footnotes amidst hundreds of pages and less important details.

Therefore, we recommend that your office release a report similar to the one we created that clearly outlines and discloses the financial state of the state. Such a report would include an accurate accounting of total state spending, including the unsustainable tactics used to balance the General Fund—transfers from dedicated accounts, use of one-time federal funds, delaying pension obligations and other tactics resulting in short-term gain and long-term pain for the state budget. The report should also assess and compare state employee salary and benefit increases over time, and outline the long-term pension and retiree health care unfunded liabilities. It would clearly state the solvency problems that exist within certain state funds, such as workers’ compensation, as well as examining the growth rate of state debt.

Financial transparency is a necessary—but not sufficient—step on the road toward budget recovery. As the state’s chief executive, you must also accurately assess the state’s revenues and expenditures. The current budget problem is worse than what you and legislative leaders are describing. In the current biennium, the state will spend $2.34 billion more than the revenue forecast. You are cutting the real deficit in half by using one-time funds from dedicated accounts and the budget stabilization account to pay for ongoing expenses.

The budget fixes outlined in your draft supplemental budget do not address the real shortfall between revenue and spending in the current budget. The accounting gimmicks and funding delays you proposed only push the problem forward to the next budget. These gimmicks include: delaying college need grants until 2012 to save $76 million; using $208 million in federal “edujobs” money to balance the budget, which is a violation of the intended use of these funds; sweeping $51 million from other dedicated funds; and delaying the June K-12 apportionment payment until July to save $240 million.

The 2011-13 budget problem is big enough without these additional pressures. OFM has announced an expected $5.7 billion shortfall for the 2011-13 budget. Though we agree the incoming budget problem is substantial, is the state really planning on increasing spending by 26 percent? The current revenue forecast for 2011-13 is $32.6 billion. A $5.7 billion shortfall would mean the state needs $38.3 billion to keep up with planned spending levels. The current budget is $30.5 billion (before any supplemental cuts). Does the state plan on increasing spending by $7.8 billion in the next biennium? We believe the problem is not so large if you and legislators look at outcomes to determine spending priorities, rather than considering everything in the budget mandatory.

There are some things you can do to change the state’s trajectory and truly transform the budget:

1) Thoroughly examine all state spending, which increased $4.2 billion during the current biennium, despite the 2010 supplemental budget’s dramatic “cuts.” You and legislators tend to focus only on one account—the state’s General Fund—while ignoring total spending and opportunities for reform elsewhere.

2) Call a special session on December 6 and ask legislators to reduce the budget by $2.34 billion to bring state spending in line with actual revenue. This will end the state’s dependence on one-time funds and the savings achieved will carry forward to help with the 2011-13 deficit. Issue an executive order implementing across-the-board cuts to close the deficit effective December 13 if the legislature does not enact similar savings by December 12.

3) Call on agencies to update their Priorities of Government assessments to include prioritization of agency projects: one-third high priority, one-third medium priority and one-third low priority. Then prioritize spending as Governor Locke did within existing revenue.

You requested ideas for transforming the state budget. “Transform” by definition is a revolutionary concept. Along those lines, here are some ideas:

1) Reinstate Initiative 601. Return to the original fiscal growth factor of population + inflation growth. Using personal income as the fiscal growth factor has allowed the legislature to ratchet up spending to unsustainable levels. Restoring the original voter-approved spending limit will restrain lawmakers in the good times, so that the bad times aren’t as painful.

2) Analyze programs on an outcome basis.
a. Change higher education funding from institutionally-based to student-based using a per-credit basis. Pay for degree completion rather than student enrollment.
b. Eliminate Educational Service Districts.
c. Eliminate perverse incentives for learning assistance program and bilingual education by funding success based on outcomes from the program, not on how many students enter the program.
d. For K-12 students, fund the student rather than the institution and allow the dollars to follow them to the public school of their choice. In addition to budget savings, this will dramatically improve educational outcomes.

3) Require teachers and state employees to contribute at least 28 percent of the cost of their health care benefits. Freeze (or cancel) all STEP increases. Repeal the initiatives mandating teacher COLAs and class size reduction funds. The state can no longer afford these benefits and programs, especially when the outcomes are unproven or dubious at best.

4) Eliminate all agencies, boards and commissions that are not core functions of government (i.e. may be handled by the private sector) including ethnic commissions, the state printer, Puget Sound Partnership, the Lottery Commission, etc.

5) Replace the defined-benefit pension system for all new employees with a defined-contribution model. Modify pension benefits for existing employees that are not contractual—for example, annual cost of living raises, retirement ages, etc. Eliminate or reduce retiree health care benefits, which are not a vested right.

6) Determine the actual penalty for failure to maintain federal “maintenance of effort” requirements. Seek a waiver if necessary in order to stop funding these requirements.

7) Put more existing in-house activities up for competitive bid. This would require a change in the so-called civil service reform law passed in 2002. The law bogs down an agency’s ability to contract out with time-consuming requirements. Some examples of activities that could be contracted out include:
a. College dormitories—allow the private sector to build and maintain by charging students rent.
b. State ferries—Privatize them. Or in the meantime, consolidate the ferry unions to reduce costs and collective bargaining hassles.

8) Give some agencies the chance to become charter agencies. As you know because of your sponsorship of a presentation on the idea in 2007, charter agencies are freed from many bureaucratic regulations in order to achieve better outcomes for citizens, such as streamlining the permit process. They agree to be accountable for measurable results on a reduced budget. For example, Iowa’s charter agency program has saved tens of millions of dollars. Why not here? Why not now? Why not under your leadership?

9) Sell surplus state property and apply the proceeds toward the unfunded pension liability.

We have many more budget transforming ideas. Should you need more, don’t hesitate to contact us.

One courageous governor can change a state’s course. Washington needs you to be that governor.

Cordially,

Bob Williams, Founder and Senior Fellow
Amber Gunn, Economic Policy Director

An open letter to the President from an American businessman

2010-11-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

Website here. I'm reprinting the letter in full, but there is more to his original post. Be sure to read the whole thing.

Dear Mr. President,

Mr. President, please allow me to introduce you to America’s small business owners. They reside in every state and town in the country. These men and women are the backbone of the communities where they live. They represent the 20% that do 80%. They are the ones who serve on school boards and hospital boards, coach Little League, lead Boy Scout troops, serve in Indian Guides and volunteer in their churches and synagogues. They pay a disproportionate share of the property taxes that build the public schools and hospitals. They give generously to local charities and United Way, buy the uniforms for the Boys & Girls Club basketball teams and make anonymous gifts to send underprivileged kids to summer camp.

You may not care about the community service and enrichment activities that mark the lives of so many small businesspeople. But did I mention that the 34 million small businesses provide 144 million jobs (75% of the jobs in this country) and generate over half of the private GDP? Since our country is in the midst of a recession that you say is “the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” I assume that the health of the engine that sustains employment might be of some concern to you. However, your proposed tax increases upon the “rich” will land squarely on small businesses like a ton of bricks. You see Mr. President, 66% of those who earn above $250,000 are small businessmen. I understand that you believe that business owners are rich predators who “need to give more,” but have you considered the effect of your policies upon their employees? I respectfully direct you to Boetcker’s warning that “you cannot lift up the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.”

As a businessman facing the prospect of higher taxation, please allow me to personalize the likely effect upon my own small enterprise. First, you must understand that taxes are a direct deduction from my bottom line and capital reserve. Why is this important? Every dollar you subtract from my bottom line is a dollar I cannot use to give raises, increase benefits or add employees. Although this may appeal to your “spread the wealth” instincts, it may not be such good news to my current employees or to job-seeking college graduates. Every dollar you take from my capital reserve is a dollar I cannot invest in new property or equipment. This may satisfy your sense of “shared prosperity,” but will not be as heartwarming to my suppliers or to those hoping to market assets next year. Is this beginning to make any sense to you?

The decision to increase my taxes will of course also reduce my disposable income. This will result in fewer dollars allocated to consumption which, ironically, you say is critical to the economic recovery of the nation. Although you may be delighted that I won’t have as much discretionary money to travel, buy a condo at the beach, or remodel my home, those employed by the airlines, mortgage companies, real estate industry and the construction trades may not be as cheery. And though you may be pleased to see me mowing my own lawn and cleaning my own pool again, it may not bring as much joy to my long-time contractors, Bibiano Ortega and Gina McDaniel.

We have observed your tendency to punish your “enemies” and borne witness to your willingness to use executive power to sanction certain industries. Your unwarranted drilling moratorium that has decimated the oil and gas and service sectors in the Gulf States provides a recent example. This policy has already created more unemployment and inflicted more economic carnage on small businesses in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and the other gulf states than the actual oil spill could have ever done.

Finally, Mr. President, let me assure you that we have nothing in common with your friend Tony Rezko and we bear no resemblance to your benefactor George Soros. After laboring all of my adult life in the private sector, I know a thing or two about real entrepreneurs. First, we were made to innovate and risk capital to support our dreams and visions. But we will only do so when we feel that the rules of the game are fair and predictable. Secondly, we will not put our hard-earned money at risk if we feel that the portion absorbed by taxation is too great. Lastly, when we sense an animus toward us from the highest office in the land that questions our motivations, integrity and patriotism, we begin to take defensive measures, not increase our investments. I hope this letter provides you with a more accurate view of who the real small businessmen in this country are. And I hope it helps you realize the destructive consequences of your policies on the small businessmen you profess to support.

Kyle Stallings is the Managing Partner of a small oil and gas investment company in Midland, Texas and serves on the Governor’s Business Council of Texas.

Two Thoughts on Socio-Economy

2010-11-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

By Littlefish

If one has received a certain amount of compensation for performing a certain procedure, they should not expect more money at a later time for performing the same procedure.

Unless some new element has been invented, or some procedure has been streamlined, or some other proactive benefit to production has been introduced, there is no new value added and therefore no new reason for increased income. Furthermore, without such increases in productivity or invention, there is no reason to expect that some new amount of money has been created to be distributed.

If a group of employees have been performing the same task for a period of time, and the only thing that has changed is the profit margin of the company, the workers that are still performing the same duty as ever were not the cause of the increase in revenue, unless they increased efficiency or procedure in some way. It was more likely a cause of more targeted advertising, better input sourcing, or a shift in consumer need. Employees are hired to perform tasks, a task is only worth as much as any other individual capable of performing that task would charge to perform it, absent any obfuscating government intervention that may make the employee feel as though they deserve more when in fact they are performing the same task as always, and that many other people could also perform.

This is even more true when talking about government jobs. For example, processing licensing applications (for anything, business, autos, etc), managing the office in which such processing happens, or cleaning the room in which the processing occurs, are each the same job today as they were yesterday. There may be more license applications to process, but there are still only eight hours to work with in a day, so, processing, managing, or cleaning will occur for eight hours, and then pick up again tomorrow, no matter how many applications were processed. Why is someone, who’s job it is to file, or manage, or clean at the government level, paid more one year than they were paid the year before? Did the work get harder? Likely, in recent history, because of technological advancements (created by people actually creating wealth in society) have made the jobs less technically and or physically difficult, and logically, this should allow for the positions to pay less, not more. Remember, there is no profit in a government agency, any savings at that level is a savings for every member of society.

Cost of living increases have the same insidious affect on the economy as artificial minimum wages or ‘prevailing wage’ contracts, inflation, inflation that eliminates any perceived gain that a cost of living increase or any upward movement in a false wage such as a minimum wage was supposed to provide. Without value added, there is no value added. That is why milk used to cost a nickel and now costs 5 bucks, while people used to make 70 a week, now likely make 700 a week and are no better off. Why?

People expect increased pay without increased effort or productivity, and there is an entire industry of snake oil salesmen that continually spout off about the evil businessman profiteering off the backs of the lowly working man, never mind that both are trying to raise families.

It seems to be assumed that making more money is some measure of increased value in society. That might be one basic metric of success if there weren’t hundreds of government programs designed to allow people to believe that the same amount of effort should garner ever increasing shares of pseudo wealth. Actual wealth, the kind that spreads throughout society and increases living standards for all, isn’t created by using political strong arm tactics to cause people to be paid more to do the same thing they’ve always done, wealth is created by people inventing, creating efficiency, and generally doing new things that add new value, new products, new systems and new opportunity to society by fulfilling needs in a new or more efficient way.

Along the same lines…

If you think the answer to your problems lies in a government program, I am sorry to say, you are the problem. Until you realize that you are the only path to your own salvation, whether it be financial, physical, spiritual, or in regards to any other possible human consideration; until you realize that you are the only person that can be dependably consulted as to how to actually advance or even maintain your position in life in a comfortable and sustainable way, you will always be part of the problem.

You are not part of some socio-economically oppressed minority, as those who profit from selling you continued plight would have you believe. You are a capable and beautiful individual, who has more than a thousand thoughts on how the world could be a better place, and you have every asset at your disposal to enact those positive changes if you would just get up and ignore the doom salesmen that profit from your plight and take a stand yourself.

Have an idea, and fulfill it. You are needed in society! You have thoughts that no one else has, every one does. If everyone acted on their own dreams, instead of waiting for someone to provide the bare minimum, then we would finally approach true equality. Equality will never be found by having one group of people confiscate wealth from another group of people to distribute to a third group of people, all the while selling themselves as saviors, implying that the ‘saved’ are helpless without them. They are modern day slave masters, nothing more, parading as saints. It’s despicable. Anyone who creates a system that purports to help you, yet only passes out favors, money, food; those people aren’t trying to help you, they are trying to bring meaning to their own lives, whatever the long term cost to your psyche may be.

Unless you can’t walk, talk, or breathe, I suggest you practice this mantra: “I am fine, and I do not need your hand out. You cannot buy my vote with your incessant stealing and gifting. It is shameful that you would suggest I need help, don’t you think I am capable of doing this myself?”

Campaign Events this weekend and early next week! Updated - More events added

2010-10-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Scroll for updates

With ballots coming out this week, we must get out there to impact the voters that will vote right away! That doesn't mean we stop working after this, but we need to make a really concerted effort to influence these early voters before they vote!!

From the Puget Sound Conservative Underground
Tidal-Wave Sign-Wave - Oct. 15, 22, 29

A “get out the vote” effort via campaign sign-waving on I-405 and I-5 overpasses all at the same time during all the remaining Friday afternoon rush hours in October;
Since this election is supposed to be a “tidal wave” win by Republicans, this event will be a “tidal wave” like concentration of sign waving on all of the freeway overpasses stretching from Shoreline to Lynnwood and from Kirkland to Bothell;
Needless to say, we’ll need everyone to participate to pull this off and “wow” the rush hour drivers in liberal King and Snohomish Counties.

RSVP here - http://www.meetup.com/PugetSoundConservativeUnderground/calendar/14990162/

Phone bank while Patty parties with Obama - Oct. 21
On October 21, President Obama is making his 2nd trip to Washington State to campaign for Patty Murray. (In 2008 when running for President, he only visited our state once.) He'll be partying at the U.W. campus with any Puget Sound progressives who are still supporting him. What do you say about the idea that at the same time he and Patty party, we conservatives work at the the Victory Phone Banks to talk to voters about Dino Rossi?
Here's how you can help: http://www.kcgop.org/sitemax/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

From Kirby Wilbur and AFP
Eastside - doordrop initiative guides, anti-income tax literature, and incumbent voting records - Oct. 16
Location #1:
Saturday, Oct. 16th - Meet at the Houghton Park and Ride (405 and NE 70th ), 8-10 AM, to pick up materials
Location #2:
Saturday, Oct. 16th - Meet in Federal Way, the parking lot in front of 32610 Pacific Highway South, 9-noon, to pick up materials

Questions should be directed to Kirby Wilbur at afpwa2010@gmail.com.

From FreedomWorks
Two days of activism to support Dino Rossi - Oct. 18, 19
DAY ONE
1. Morning - Monday, October 18th:
9am-12pm Get out the Vote Training/Activist meet and greet, phone bank with FreedomWorks

Presentation introducing new information and GOTV tools for local organizing
Presentation and discussion about what comes after Election Day and how we Take America Back
Collect GOTV materials for use in your neighborhood as FreedomWorks has created yard signs, bumper stickers and door hangers for our key GOTV efforts
Link you to the new online, at home, phone banking technology, allowing you and your neighbors to be more effective when you work to get out the vote for Dino Rossi

Holiday Inn Express, SeaTac Airport
19621 International Boulevard
SeaTac, WA 98188 MAP
Please RSVP to dspielman@freedomworks.org as soon as possible

2. Afternoon - Monday, October 18th:
1pm Bring Back Boeing Rally (Where did all the jobs go Patty?)
Join us for rally to ask, where did all of the Boeing jobs go, and how can we get them back? Patty Murray will be holding a fundraiser with Bill Clinton simultaneously and we want to change the messaging of that fundraiser. While she claims to have helped Boeing, we all know the real story. We are working very hard to ensure this is not a political/campaign rally, but rather a rally of citizens concerned about a lot of jobs that are now nonexistent.
Flying Heritage Collection Paine Field
3407 109th st SW
Everett, WA 98204
Please RSVP for the rally here: http://tinyurl.com/22uxeaf
Check out ideas for signs and see the kind of message we want to send: http://bit.ly/9v7Xjd

DAY TWO
Tuesday, October 19th:
9am-dark Get out the Vote for Dino Rossi with signs and walking lists, and other materials
Meet at the hotel to get signs followed by campaigning in the surrounding area. If you have a truck or other type of vehicle that can carry a lot of signs, please bring that with you. Also, hammers or sledge hammers to place signs in the ground, as well as comfortable walking shoes! :)
Holiday Inn Express, SeaTac Airport
19621 International Boulevard
SeaTac, WA 98188 MAP
Please RSVP to dspielman@freedomworks.org as soon as possible

From the James Watkins campaign
Phone banking and meet & greets - Oct. 16, 17, 21
Victory Phone Bank in Silverdale
Saturday, October 16, 2010
9330 Silverdale Way NW Suite 202
Silverdale

James Watkins Meet & Greet in Woodinville
Saturday, October 16, 2010 - 3:00pm
Carlson Residence
14724 173rd Ave NE
Woodinville, WA, 98072

James Watkins Meet & Greet in Snohomish
Sunday, October 17, 2010 - 1:30pm
Sutherland residence
6410 - 158th Street SE
Snohomish, WA

Edmonds-Woodway High Candidate Forum
Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 12:15pm
Edmonds-Woodway High School
7600 212th St SW
Edmonds, WA

Update: More events added as they come in

From the Olympia Tea Party

Sign waving during Bill Clinton's visit

We need help constructing 20+ signs for the I-5 Communication Project when Clinton and the Obamas come to town.

I say Communication Project because we intend to reach 1/3 Million motorists in I-5 each of these three days:

Monday Oct 18th - Clinton in Everett (details to follow)
Thursday Oct 21st - Obama in Seattle (7 - 8 AM during morning rush hour)
Monday Oct 25th - Michelle O in Tacoma (details to follow)

The point is to put the damper on Obama's attempt to run up enthusiasm. Putting the damper on their enthusiasm has lots of value because when 1/3 Million people see us up and down I-5 with a single message - well, you get the idea.

This Saturday, Oct 16th
You are invited to my home in Olympia
To help make the signs and plan details

From Noon to about 2 PM
We will have Pizza.
The signs cost about $12 each to construct
We intend that you keep these big (very useful) signs for your group to use
If you can put a few bucks into the hat for the pizza and sign materials we will gladly accept your help.
Reply to this email and let me know if you are coming (so we can plan the pizza).

If you can't make it Saturday but want a sign, let me know and we will figure out a way to get you one or tell you how to construct it.

Messaging for the Bring Back Boeing Rally

2010-10-13T10:21:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us up in Everett for the Bring Back Boeing Rally. Again, this is not so much a campaign rally for Dino or against Patty, rather we are trying to show that it is time for new leadership considering what Boeing (and ultimately our state) has lost over the last few years.

Here are some ideas for signs that go along with that sort of message:

New leadership creates new opportunity
Time 4 new leadership and new opportunities
A better future starts with new leadership
A brighter tomorrow begins with a new direction
Chicago and South Carolina endorse our current leadership.
It is the responsibility of leadership to provide opportunity.
Snohomish County needs Boeing Jobs not Poor leadership!
With new leadership we can bring Boeing back!!!
With new leadership anything is possible
Our current leadership has taken us as far as we can go…
Our leaders have lost Boeing jobs, it’s time they lose there.
It was hard losing all those jobs, and it won’t easy bringing them back but with new leadership anything is
possible.
Our current leadership is out of possibilities.
We need new leadership
We need a brighter future
Boeing 72,200 less jobs.
Any sign with a total amount of Boeing jobs losses and dates
Current representatives please understand we need new leadership
Please understand that we need a new direction
Aerospace workers for a brighter tomorrow
Our leadership has shipped jobs to South Carolina and offices to Chicago. It’s time to send them a care package.
New Leadership = More/New Jobs
New leadership, brighter future
A brighter Future for Boeing depends on New Leadership
The future is only better ….ect
Send our leadership to South Carolina and bring Boeing back!
Our current leaders shipped offices to Chicago. Now ship our leaders out of office.
Our government is broken
Outsource our leadership not jobs.

All the leaves are brown...

2010-10-11T01:24:00.000-07:00

By Littlefish

What an exciting opportunity for voters in California with two extraordinary candidates to vote for this year, and what an exciting opportunity to alter the course of a government that has deteriorated in its ethics and management of our society and economy. Senator Boxer and Governor Brown have been whole heartedly involved in the last 3 decades of debt and deterioration. This year, after all these decades, Californians have the opportunity to replace them with proven managers, proven leaders of the new economy, and both extraordinary women that should give great momentum to the cause of forming dreams of success in young women everywhere.

A lot is said about the money Meg Whitman has spent on this election, but few discuss how impressive it is that she has earned such monies. She knows how to grow business. She knows how to create jobs, create wealth, and create opportunity. Jerry Brown has been milking the tax cow his entire life, it’s the only skill he has, and the tax cow is milked, its over, there is no more free milk. California needs someone who knows how to improve the lot of all Californians, nut just penalize some for the benefit of a few others.

“If we don’t re-dedicate ourselves to education with the same attitude Americans have applied to going to the moon and fighting wars, the results will be profound. We will gradually lose our successful workforce.” – Meg Whitman

“People ask me, how is managing in the New Economy different from managing in the Old Economy? Actually, it's a lot the same. It's about the financial discipline of the bottom line, understanding your customers, segmenting your customers by their needs, and building a world-class management team.” - Meg Whitman

For Senate, Carly Fiorina, besides being a successful business woman, is also a cancer survivor. I find this amazing. She announced her candidacy while she was still mostly bald. That must have been an amazing moment of clarity in her life, facing death, seeing problems that she knew how to solve, and having been blessed with success and the ability to manage large economies, she fought back to health and decided to run for office. Growing her career from secretarial and receptionist positions all the way up to CEO of Hewlitt Packard, this is a person who knows how to grow and manage complex organizations. Barbara Boxer? To quote campaign manager Marty Wilson, “In contrast, Barbara Boxer presented the same ‘solutions’ she has championed for the last 28 years: grow government and raise taxes, killing jobs and mortgaging our children’s future with sky-high debt. The choice between a practical problem solver versus a failed career politician couldn’t be clearer.”

“My mother...taught me about the power of inspiration and courage, and she did it with a strength and a passion that I wish could be bottled.” - Carly Fiorina

“Do not be afraid to make decisions, do not be afraid to make mistakes.” - Carly Fiorina

“But ours was intended to be a citizen government. It is what ‘of, by and for the people’ means. And when our most important issue in California is the creation of jobs, I think it's quite helpful to have someone in the U.S. Senate or in the governor's seat who actually knows where jobs come from.” - Carly Fiorina

We elect representatives to manage the society and economy they preside over, it is clear from the run away debt and the deteriorating conditions, that things are not going well, and have not been going well for some time now. Are the same managers the right answer? After 30 years of debt and deterioration, how exciting to be able to finally change this condition and start working toward a more successful future. The opportunity to vote for Whitman and Fiorina is one of the most empowering opportunities citizens of California have had in decades.

God Bless America

EFF's Informed Voter Guide and a free policy book from the Heartland Institute!

2010-10-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

Informed Voter Guide

Please, please, please take some time to look over the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Informed Voter Guide. It. Is. Awesome. They have done so much research on state legislators' voting records, supreme court candidates' records, and a review of all of the initiatives on the ballot.

The Informed Voter Guide from Evergreen Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

Free policy book
The Heartland Institute is providing free copies of their book called "The Patriot's Toolbox."

So here’s our next big thing: The Patriot’s Toolbox, a 263-page book that consists of eight chapters, each presenting ten principles for free-market reform in clear and precise English. Each chapter originally appeared in the Legislative Principles series, which means they are specially designed and edited to meet the needs of busy elected officials and opinion leaders. No rhetoric, no history lessons, and no long-winded lectures. Just solid facts backed up with bibliographies.

Make sure you get your copy today. Order it here.

Dumping on the Greatest Generation

2010-10-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

How disrespectful or ignorant does one have to be to leave this kind of mess at the WWII memorial in DC? There are no words for this.

The Left's incomplete definition of diversity

2010-10-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

Reading about the "One Nation" march yesterday, watching clips of the speeches, and watching the talking heads discuss it afterward, made me realize the sad state of the word "diversity" among many of those on the left side of the spectrum.

Al Sharpton and just about every other speaker and promoter of the event, including attendees interviewed at the event, sounded like a cd that was skipping. The point they all kept making was, "look at how diverse our crowd is." They continuously spoke about how there were so many different colors of people represented in the crowd. That's nice, but diversity is so much more than skin color - so incredibly much more. I believe that the "professional left" has forgotten that. They seem to think that diversity only means that we look different.

The professional left, time and time again, has shown that diversity of thought and opinion is not so welcome. Case in gruesome point, the 10:10 mini-movie that aired last week. Another example: education theory is rife with examples of groupthink and expectations of "consensus" or ideological litmus tests. As an educator myself, I can tell you right now that "collaborative learning" and "promoting community" are just code words for groupthink. For instance, I listened to a program on NPR last week about solutions to bullying, that by itself is a very worthy topic. However, the two guests, both professors of education, went well beyond solutions to bullying.

The language they used, in combination with many of their ideas, betrayed their fixation on ideological consensus and purity, displaying that their real goal is groupthink. They wanted to make sure that schools prioritized,

...a commitment to kindness, to putting the needs of other people first and a sense that a community – a shared identity – is as important as anything achieved by individuals within the community. [Emphasis mine]

These women want to teach kids that being part of the group - a "shared identity" (what does that even mean??) - is as important as individual achievement. They went so far as to lament the fact that in traditional education, more weight is placed on math, science, and reading, rather than on "collaborative learning" and "kindness." Um... sorry? And you wonder why American children rank 25th in math and science but 1st in self-confidence? This reminds me of a blog entry I accidentally stumbled across the other day, about a Kindergarten class here in Seattle where the teachers used legos to teach socialism and indoctrinate the kids against capitalism. Groupthink!

These women, like many others on the left, talk a great game when it comes to diversity, but just try being a young conservative in a place like Seattle. You learn very quickly that diversity does not mean diversity of thought. It means that someone's pigmentation varies from someone else's. And here I thought we had moved past judging people based on the color of their skin. The reason so many liberal journalists freak out when they see that I have piercings and tattoos, and that I am hispanic is because they have a preconceived notion about how a person that looks like me should think. I look a certain way and therefore I must think a certain way. Black conservative get this all the time. They are called race-traitors, Uncle Tom's, House n*****s, etc. because they have the right look, but they don't fall into line ideologically.

Racism and other beliefs that separate people based on their skin color are all founded in collectivism. You cannot lump all black people together, for any reason, other than a belief in collectivism. Is it a coincidence that socialism and communism are also founded in collectivism?

On the other side are people like me who are considered individualists, who view each person as an individual, regardless of what they look like. When I meet someone, I am never surprised by their beliefs because I don't prejudge them based on their looks. I have a friend who looks like the biggest redneck you've ever seen, and he is a total progressive, almost a socialist. Am I surprised? No, because I don't believe in collectivism and I don't group people based on their looks.

Al Sharpton was so proud of his "diverse" crowd, but I can guarantee that my friend circle is waaaay more diverse than any crowd that Al Sharpton has ever been around because my friends aren't afraid to disagree and challenge each other about their beliefs and ideas. It's what inside that counts, who cares about the packaging?

Which One, Patty Murray?

2010-10-01T16:46:00.001-07:00

Dino knocks it out of the park again with his new TV ad.

Norm Dicks Lies Again - Call his offices!!

2010-10-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Norm Dicks was scheduled to debate challenger Doug Cloud on Monday of this week, but ducked out at the last minute. Apparently Dicks sent a representative to tell the 300 people there that the absent Congressman had to get back to DC to cast super important votes. And in Norm Dicks' world, casting votes in DC apparently means meeting with Boeing employee union members in Everett - a city totally and completely outside of his district.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Incumbents have come up with some unusual strategies to avoid debates in this election.

Take Democrat Norm Dicks, a 34-year veteran of the House from Washington State. You'd think he'd be eager to tout all he has done for his Tacoma district, but this past Monday he pulled out of a debate with his GOP opponent after the local newspaper had announced he would attend. Mr. Dicks' office sent a representative to the debate who told the 300 people in attendance that his boss had to miss the event to cast "several important votes" back in Washington. The only problem is that there were no votes scheduled for Monday or Tuesday of this week. While the debate was going on, Mr. Dicks was actually in Everett, a city outside his district, meeting with a group of unionized Boeing employees.

Doug Cloud, Mr. Dicks' opponent, took full advantage of the Congressman's absence. "I'm drawing a line in the sand and Norm Dicks doesn't want to face that line and the mistakes he's made," he told the audience for the aborted debate.

(H/T: Steve Beren)

The people of Kitsap County have been unrepresented by this buffoon of a man for THIRTY-TWO years. You would think the man could pony up a few minutes of his day to debate his challenger, in front of 300 of his constituents.

What a WUSSY. Kick him out of office Kitsap. The man already has a giant, plush office building (that remains half empty, wasting tax payer dollars of course) named after himself, it's time to retire his drunk ass, pardon my language. (It's a well known "secret" that ol' Dicks is a total drunk.)

One thing you can do now, before you get your ballots, is to call his offices and ask why 1.) he missed a debate with his challenger, 2.) he lied about his whereabouts, and 3.) we should rehire a liar such as himself. Call his office today and call them next week because he needs to be accountable to the people he pretends to represent.

Contact Norm Dicks

Washington DC: 202-225-5916

Tacoma: 253-593-6536

Bremerton: 360-479-4011

Port Angeles: 360-452-3370

***

This just in: Jay Inslee in the 1st Congressional District in WA refuses to debate his challenger too!! From James Watkins' campaign:

Inslee’s Avoidance of Public Debates No Joke

LYNNWOOD—James Watkins, candidate for the 1st congressional district has responded to Jay Inslee’s strange assertion that Watkins diminishes the value of community forums, and he presses Inslee to face the voters in a debate.

Watkins says, “I’ve been enthusiastically attending community forums and other unfiltered events open to the public since January. I’ve only seen Jay at one public candidate event, where he came late, but just in time to answer one question. Community-minded groups inviting all the local candidates to a meeting on behalf of voters is no joke. But for Jay Inslee to substitute this format for a full debate when our future is hanging in the balance is a serious display of bad faith on the part of a ‘people’s representative.’”

Watkins believes this is just another tactic Inslee is using to hide his record from voters.

“I’m sure Inslee would love his allotted six minutes at the next forum to be devoted to discussing the six-minute time slot rather than issues voters are interested in,” says Watkins. “He would much rather do that than explain why he voted for the largest deficit in U.S. history, a pork-laden stimulus plan that created no jobs, and a national energy tax on working families.”

The Watkins campaign has been requesting debates of Inslee since the primary election in August. Inslee refused to debate Watkins until, pressured by the media last week, he made a vague commitment to attend candidate forums which limit the engagement between candidates and one debate late in the election season.

Watkins stands with 1st District voters in supporting good government principles of transparency, independence, and fiscal responsibility. Inslee voted for a budget with a $1.34 trillion deficit and took no significant action as Boeing cut 30,000 jobs.

Watkins is the only candidate that has fostered the creation of new private-sector jobs. At the federal level he cut government spending as an FDIC troubleshooter. For more information on James Watkins, visit www.WatkinsForCongress.com.

Eco-NutBars! Tastes great! Less filling! - Updated

2010-10-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

Scroll for updates.

I LOVE it when people show their true colors. It's so nice to finally see a group be honest about what they really want. (H/T: Geobent)

Ed Morrissey comments:

What makes this fascinating is that the people who produce this dreck have no clue as to just how far removed they have become from normal human sensibilities, or at least they didn’t until the video began provoking the fully-predictable reaction. They have become so wrapped up in Gaia that they seem to have little connection to humanity.

The other, mainly unrelated point that comes to mind is that this represents a reductio ad absurdum of the view from the hard Left about how dissent gets treated by the mainstream American populace, vis-a-vis the Iraq war especially. Can you imagine the reaction had an organization like Move America Forward produced a video like this, where those who didn’t support a robust strategy for the war on terror were blown up by a button-pushing advocate for the strategy? Especially children in a classroom being terrorized by their teacher into compliance with the groupthink?

Apparently the eco-nutbars are upset that AGW skeptics are sharing the video, while the group who produced the film is trying to erase its existence. Of course we are going to share it! People should know how crazy some of the eco-crazies really are, and the power they dream of holding. Now of course, many people who consider themselves environmentalists are also completely disgusted with this video and the ideas behind it - and thank goodness for that - but we all need to realize that there are some sick fanatics behind a portion of the "green" movement so that we can stop them before they do any actual damage.

***

UPDATE:

I want to make sure that it was clear that I explicitly mentioned the fact that many mainstream environmentalists were disgusted with this film. The Guardian newspaper in the UK has an article with comments from various "green" charities discussing the rising backlash against the film - from environmentalists.

However, it's just as interesting to note that some of the reactions from mainstream environmentalist groups show us that they still don't quite get why the film was appalling. Some of them are sorry that people were offended, but don't mention anything about being sorry for the ideas behind the content. Some of them think that it's just darn hard to joke about serious issues, and really, that was the problem. Some of them say they were just trying to be creative about how dangerous climate change is, but that the film "missed its mark."

I find it disturbing that none of the groups said anything about (or at least the Guardian didn't report it if they did) the idea of punishing people for thinking differently (see this morning's post on groupthink). People are disgusted by the visuals of children exploding, yes, for sure. But more than that, most of us are genuinely chilled by the fact that the filmmakers and some of their backers (including the Guardian) don't seem to make the connection between what they see as a critical issue and the notion of freedom of thought. To say that the film missed its mark completely misses the point. The Guardian had this to say:

The film may have been somewhat tasteless, but it was an imaginative attempt to challenge public apathy over climate change.

There is such a disconnect for these people between trying to motivate people to take action on an issue and the message that their film delivered. The film accomplished nothing close to motivating people to care about climate change. The film threatened to kill people who disagree about climate change. The fact that the filmmakers and some (I said some) environmental groups don't get this is worrying. Though, I think the everyday person who is concerned about global warming probably gets it. It's probably the insulated, entrenched activists who live in a groupthink bubble and have lost touch with reality that don't quite understand why this video is so appalling.

Patty Murray loves her some bailouts

2010-09-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

Simmer down, Mr. Temple

2010-09-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

My article at the Daily Caller.

A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS

2010-09-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

(This was written in response to a hugely ignorant comment left here a few days ago.)

By Littlefish

It is important to separate the real issue here. The issue is not about whether or not drawing various religious icons is acceptable or not, the issue is: is it OK to threaten people with death? A religious Icon is important to someone who practices that religion. If one does not practice that religion, the icon is just an image. Whether it is offensive or not is a personal decision.

That is why government is not supposed to interject into religious issues, because it is individual and personal. Death threats, however, are exactly what government is supposed to concern itself with! It is a horrible state of affairs that a US citizen, exercising her right to free speech and working her craft as she is allowed to do, is told by her own government that she needs to go into hiding because they can’t protect her from some criminal that is threatening her life. How about going after the Criminal? The issue is FREE SPEECH. Please see below, I have copied a letter from The American Muslim along with the many signatories of the letter. Clear thinking people agree, this is not a Christian vs. Muslim issue. It is a human rights issue.

A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS

We, the undersigned, unconditionally condemn any intimidation or threats of violence directed against any individual or group exercising the rights of freedom of religion and speech; even when that speech may be perceived as hurtful or reprehensible.

We are concerned and saddened by the recent wave of vitriolic anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment that is being expressed across our nation.

We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims. We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.
We affirm the right of free speech for Molly Norris, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and all others including ourselves.

As Muslims, we must set an example of justice, patience, tolerance, respect, and forgiveness.
The Qur’an enjoins Muslims to: 

* bear witness to Islam through our good example (2:143);  

* restrain anger and pardon people (3:133-134 and 24:22);  

* remain patient in adversity (3186);

 * stand firmly for justice (4:135);  

* not let the hatred of others swerve us from justice (5:8);  

* respect the sanctity of life (5:32);  

* turn away from those who mock Islam (6:68 and 28:55);  

* hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant (7:199);  

* restrain ourselves from rash responses (16:125-128);  

* pass by worthless talk with dignity (25:72); and 

* repel evil with what is better (41:34).

Islam calls for vigorous condemnation of both hateful speech and hateful acts, but always within the boundaries of the law. It is of the utmost importance that we react, not out of reflexive emotion, but with dignity and intelligence, in accordance with both our religious precepts and the laws of our country.

We uphold the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both protect freedom of religion and speech, because both protections are fundamental to defending minorities from the whims of the majority.

We therefore call on all Muslims in the United States, Canada and abroad to refrain from violence. We should see the challenges we face today as an opportunity to sideline the voices of hate—not reward them with further attention—by engaging our communities in constructive dialogue about the true principles of Islam, and the true principles of democracy, both of which stress the importance of freedom of religion and tolerance.

 SIGNATORIES:
Prof. Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair, South Asia Institute, Columbia University Anisa Abd el Fattah, Founder and Chairwoman, National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) Ammar Abdulhamid, Executive Director, Tharwa Foundation  Imam Johari Abdul Malik, Director of Outreach, Dar-Al-Hijrah Islamic Center  Mehnaz M. Afridi, PhD, Adjunct Professor (Judaism, Islam & Genocide Studies) Antioch University  Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, PhD, Director, Minaret of Freedom Foundation Ahrar Ahmad, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Black Hills State University Prof. Akbar S. Ahmed, PhD, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University Osman Ahmed,PhD, President Islamic Society of Essex County, Newark, NJ Prof. Parvez Ahmed, PhD, Fulbright Scholar & Assoc. Prof. University of North Florida  Barbara Al-Bayati, Co-Founder, Orphan Whispers Aman Ali, writer, stand-up-comedian Javed Ali, founder and publisher, Illume magazine Wajahat Ali, playwright, journalist, and producer of “Domestic Crusaders” Sumbul Ali-Karamali, JD, LLM (Islamic Law), author of “The Muslim Next Door” Salam al-Marayati, Pres., Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) Shahed Amanullah, Editor-in-Chief, Altmuslim M. Saud Anwar, Co-Chair, American Muslim Peace Initiative  Abdul Cader Asmal MD, PhD, Past President, Islamic Council of Mew England  Aref Assaf, PhD, President, American Arab Forum Hussam Ayloush, Exec. Director, CAIR Greater Los Angeles Area Hazami Barmada, Pres, American Muslim Interactive Network (AMIN) Victor Ghalib Begg, Senior Advisor, Chairman Emeritus, Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan Farah Brelvi, Board of Directors, ACLU-NC Arsalan Bukhari, Executive Director, CAIR-WA  M. Ali Chaudry, PhD, President, Center for Understanding Islam (CUII)  Kamran Cheikh, Activist, Committee member, Muslims for Peace, Justice & Progress (MPJP), researcher for Deen Research Center (DRC)  Robert D. Crane, JD, author of numerous books Prof Golam Dastagir, PhD, Visiting Research Scholar, New College, University of Toronto, Canada Almoonir Dewji, blogger - “That We May Know Each Other”  Mustafa Stefan Dill, blogger;/PR/social media analyst for Muslim issues; musician  Lamia El-Sadek, political and human rights activitist Mohamed Elsanousi, Director of Communications and Community Outreach for the Islamic Society of N America (ISNA) Mona Eltahawy, journalist Aziz Enhaili, Political analyst, columnist for Tolerance.ca Prof. Mohammad Fadel, PhD Fatemeh Fakhraie, Editor-in-Chief, Muslimah Media Watch Mike Ghouse, President, World Muslim Congress  Iftekhar Hai, President, UMA Interfaith Alliance  Rabia Terri Harris, Coordinator, Muslim Peace Fellowship  Hesham Hassaballa, M.D., author, journalist, blogger - “God, faith, and a pen” Amir Hussain, PhD, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymound University Iftekhar Hussain, Chair, Board of Directors, CAIR-PA Arsalan Iftikhar, author, human rights lawyer, blogger - “The Muslim Guy” Jeffrey Imm, Director, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) Ghazala Irshad, journalist, blogger - “The Floating Lotus” Nakia Jackson, writer  M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy Safi Kaskas, President & CEO Strategic Edge  Prof. Muqtedar Khan, PhD, author of several books, Blogger - “Globalog” Farah Kinani, Journalist, blogger - “Global Voices” Shaikh Ahmad Kutty, Resident Senior Scholar, Islamic Institute of Toronto  Faisal Kutty, Visiting Asst. Prof. of law, Valparaiso University School of Law and Adjunct Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto) M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, writer, blogger - “Crossing the Crescent”  David Liepert, M.D., blogger and author of “Muslim, Christian AND Jew”  Radwan A. Masmoudi, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)  Melissa Matos, President, Al-Ghazali Legal Society, Saint Louis University Shelina Merani, community activist, artist, blogger “Muslim Presence” Melody Moezzi, JD, MPH, writer and attorney Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, author of many books of poetry Ebrahim Moosa, Assoc. Professor of Islamic Studies, Dept. of Religion, Duke University Lt. Col. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, U.S. Army Chaplain  Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, President Sound Vision  Sheila Musaji, Editor, The American Muslim (TAM) Muneeb Nasir, President, Olive Tree Foundation, Editor IQRA Canada Q. Amin Nathari, National Representative, Islam in America Movement (IAM) Aziz H. Poonawalla, PhD, scientist and blogger - “City of Brass” on Beliefnet M.Waheed-uz-Zaman Rana, Imam, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. of Surgery, Saint Louis University  Hasan Zillur Rahim, PhD, journalist Shaykh Ahmed Abdur Rashid, The Circle Group Prof. Hussein Rashid, PhD, blogger - “Religion Dispatches” Shafi Refai, President, United Muslims of America  Muhamed Sacirbey, lawyer, diplomat, writer Louay Safi, PhD, Common Word Fellow, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian Muslim Understanding, Georgetown University Ghulam Abbas Sajan, Director Islamic Ahlul Bayt Assembly of Canada Robert Salaam, blogger - “The American Muslim” Raquel Evita Saraswati, activist, writer, blogger Sarah Sayeed, President of One Blue  Sophia Rose Shafi, MA, MTS, doctoral candidate (Islamic Studies), writer T.O. Shanavas. MD, Vice President, Islamic Research Foundation, author S. Abdallah Schleifer, Distinguished Prof., Dept. of Journalism & Mass Com, American University Cairo  Ricka Shorish, M.S., R.N., volunteer/consultant, Avicenna Community Health Center  Jihad Shoshara, community organizer and activist, Chicago Jafar Siddiqui, blogger - “Penjihad” Prof. Laury Silvers, PhD Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, PhD, Sr. Lecturer, Islamic Studies & African American Religion, University of Florida  Prof. Ibrahim B. Syed, PhD, President of Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc., author Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, Nat’l Director, Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society of N America (ISNA) J.Tayeb, MD, President, CAIR-MI, ISNA founders committee member, Vice chair, HUDA free Clinic, Detroit  Pamela Taylor, Co-founder Muslims for Progressive Values, Panelist for On Faith  Tayyibah Taylor, Editor, Azizah Magazine Dr. Hashim El-Tinay, President, International Peace Quest Institute (IPQI)  Tarik Trad, writer, humorist, photographer, artist and activist  Asma T. Uddin, Attorney, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Editor, Altmuslimah  Wahida Valiante, President, Canadian Islamic Congress and Chair of Islamic History Month Canada  Jason van Boom, Host of “Islam and Authors”, writer  Amina Wadud, PhD, consultant on Islam and gender, visiting scholar Starr King School for the Ministry Danya Wellmon, Co-Founder Women Transcending Boundaries interfaith group Svend White, blogger - “Akram’s Razor”, activist, writer G. Willow Wilson, author of “Butterfly Mosque” and “Air” graphic novel series  Ani Zonneveld, President, Muslims for Progressive Values

18 years is long enough Patty!

2010-09-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

We want our seat back Patty! You can keep the misery!

Real Racism

2010-09-24T09:33:00.001-07:00

It's sad and pathetic. Some people accuse tea partiers of being racist because we are upset with President Obama's policies, and apparently because the President is black, opposing his policies makes us racist - according to some on the Left.

While those accusations are totally false and insulting, real racism and race baiting exists. Case in point: Loretta Sanchez from deep in the heart of Orange County, CA. This story broke a couple of days ago on conservative blogs, and today was picked up by the LA Times, in a surprising show of journalistic integrity.

First, the video:

Second, Ms. Sanchez states that her opponent is "anti-immigrant..."

...pero, quisas, se le olvido, que el senor Tran es un immigrante. Yo creo que Ms. Sanchez, quien nacio en California, es la persona que tiene problema con immigrantes.

(Her opponent, Van Tran, is an immigrant himself. So maybe it's Ms. Sanchez who has a problem with immigrants, or at least those immigrants who hail from countries other than Mexico.)

She also attempts to walk her comments back by saying that "she was referring not to some entire ethnic group invading Hispanic turf but just to those Vietnamese who are supporting Van Tran." Riiiiiigggghhhht.

Oh, the OC Weekly also refers to Tran's supporters as "trannies."

Can you imagine the absolute outrage across the MSM if a Republican candidate had complained about the "Vietnamese trying to steal my seat," or if a newspaper called a Vietnamese candidate's supporters "trannies?" The double standard in the media is so ridiculous at this point that it's no wonder that they and their profits are tanking.

This brings me to our own local candidate with ties to a very racist organization, La Raza: Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, running for reelection to the WA state legislature, position 2, in the 46th district. Ms. Kenney is on the board of the National Council of La Raza. Allow me to translate that for you: The National Council of The Race. How is that acceptable in America today? How is possible to get elected to public office while simultaneously sitting on the board of an organization that calls itself "The Race." (BTW - my friend Beau Gunderson is running against her and would appreciate your help and your vote if you live in the 46th district. Kenney has been in office since 1997, me thinks it's time for CHANGE.)

First, check out how Kenney has voted on issues that really matter to you, such as raising taxes. She is a rubber stamp for the most liberal, tax and spend policies in this state. She has no interest in reforming the budget process or in increasing the prosperity of the residents of our state. No, she would rather sit on the board of a racist organization. In fact, she helped to spend all the money with no concern for the future or for the taxpayers - it is literally her fault our state is in a budget crisis. Last time I wrote about her, I think one of her staff members must have seen the post pop up on their Google news alert because almost immediately someone commented and tried to defend Kenney's involvement with La Raza.

I welcome her staff back to my site with this post, and I say this: As a fellow hispanic, it is shameful to watch people like you Ms. Kenney, and your Orange County counterpart, Ms. Sanchez, race bait in order to maintain your own personal power. You are both blemishes on the identity of Americans who happen to be of hispanic ethnicity. My abuelos would be downright embarrassed by your cheap attempts to turn the people of this country against each other using race to divide. You are both modern day conquistadors - dividing and conquering for your own personal gain. You know, I believe that neither of you are actually racist, rather, I think you would both use racism and race baiting to keep the seat of power that you believe now belongs to you. It's hard to give up those perks, eh?

For those who claim that La Raza is just a sweet, little book club for hispanics, I leave you with these, for a start. (Included in my indictment is MEChA, another militant, racist group that I had personal experience with in college.)

The hate speech of "The Race"

Inside a school for children of "The Race"

La Raza Racism

Do you think that any of these people know that as hispanics, specifically Mexican hispanics, that we are descendants of the Spanish who conquered this land?

How are these different?

2010-09-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

Seattle Weekly cartoonist, Molly Norris, goes into hiding because of threats from radical Muslims; journalists ignore her plight and refuse to report on her story.

Mexican journalists offer a deal to the drug cartels and agree to stop reporting on the drug war so long as the cartels stop killing their journalists.

If only...

2010-09-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Mark Halperin on Sarah Palin:

You are right to complain that she is not offering specific policy proposals and that her inaccessibility to media outlets other than the one that pays her — Fox News — puts her beyond the kind of scrutiny and accountability we have come to expect for our leaders.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ahhh. Ah ha haha.

*Wiping tears from eyes*

Ahem. Where were you when we were trying to get you to scrutinize candidate Obama and his experience, ideas, and worldview? And where are you now that we are trying to hold him accountable? Things we have come to "expect" indeed.

Newsflash: You don't get a do-over

2010-09-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

If you have been following Lisa Murckowscki's sad, sore loser rhetoric regarding her write-in campaign, you have probably noticed statements like these:

Believe you me, the easier path would be to pack it all up and go do something different,” she said. “If I had not heard this call from Alaskans, I would not be deliberating as I am...

It is people from all walks of life, every corner of the state, who are concerned about Alaska’s future and concerned enough to take action on it,” she said. “I’m a public servant. My job by definition is to listen to my constituents. And there was a process in place — a primary election — that’s certainly one way that you listen to your constituents.

Or like these:

Murkowski said Friday that Miller's tally was just 11.9 percent of Alaska registered voters, although state Republican Party Chair Ruedrich called it a Republican primary turnout record.

She said she kept hearing from Alaskans who felt they couldn't vote for either Miller or the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams.

Murkowski said that "to the tens of thousands of you who didn't vote in the primary, I ask you to join us. ... your vote has never, never been more important...

She's hearing from people who feel like they cannot vote for Miller or McAdams? Where were all of these people during the primary? She gives a shout out to the "tens of thousands" who supposedly didn't vote in the primary... but that's their own fault. In American politics you do not get a do-over. I understand that Murrkowskee and her supporters feel jilted. I would too if I had been lazy or cocky enough to stay home during a primary. These people are basically upending our system to suit their own needs. They didn't feel like doing the legwork to get Merkousky through the primaries and so now they are scoffing at the process we all agree to, because losing sucks and they apparently can't handle it. And losing especially sucks when you have no one else to blame but yourself.

Murkousckey - It's time to behave like an adult. You don't get a do-over.

My thoughts on September 11

2010-09-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today, on the anniversary of 9/11, I was lucky enough to participate in one of my favorite activities - flag waving on Freedom Bridge. Freedom Bridge, for those that don't know about it, is the overpass that leads into Fort Lewis, near Camp Murray. A wonderful group of people, known as the Bridge People Regulars, have made a showing every Saturday since 2003, rain or shine or snow or wind, to wave Old Glory and to say thank you to our troops and their families as they drive by.

My family started going in November of 2007 and for a long time we went every Saturday as well. I prioritized it above every other activity I did. At the time I wasn't involved in politics at all. In fact, I guess Freedom Bridge was my first foray into, not necessarily politics because we keep it apolitical and nonpartisan on the bridge, but expression of ideas in a public forum. I stopped going regularly as all of the political and tea party stuff started taking up more and more of my time. So it was such an honor to be back there today to say thanks to our men and women in the military, and to see old friends and smile with them, particularly on a day like today, September 11.

That bridge is possibly the most hopeful place I have ever stood. There is an energy that is palpable, especially when my fellow bridge people are there with me. To stand there, unashamedly, holding an American flag, looking soldiers in the eyes as they drive past, yelling thank you to them, fills my heart with such happiness and love. It's so hard to explain until you've been there. I jokingly call it "patriot crack" because once you start going, you need to get your fix pretty regularly. There's nothing like a jolt of hope and love for your country to brighten your day and to clear away the cynicism that politics inevitably brings into your life.

On the way home, I was thinking about politics and how it relates to the experience of Freedom Bridge on 9/11. It reminded me that although I think my political opponents - liberals, progressives, social democrats, etc. - are totally and completely wrong about policy, they are still Americans. They are not, in any way, shape, or form, similar to the radical Islamic terrorists that perpetrated the attacks on 9/11. And I think that we need reminders of things like that more often, especially as we move into a fierce election season. For all of (what I consider to be) their misguided ideas, liberals are not mass murderers; they're not terrorists; they're not evil. Remembering these seemingly obvious facts lifts a weight off of my shoulders because all of a sudden, I'm not fighting against evil, genocidal, killers; I'm fighting against fellow Americans who have a different idea about the right balance of government vs. free enterprise.

It's good to remember this. I hope that some of the liberals out there had an opportunity for self-reflection today and maybe came to these same conclusions because, honestly, I'm really tired of being called a racist; a bigot; a domestic terrorist wannabe; a cruel person with no heart who wants all poor people to die; a fascist; etc. Can we come to the table and assume the best about each other until facts dictate otherwise? This isn't to say we won't be passionate and that we won't argue. This isn't to say that I won't claim that progressivism is philosophically flawed, or that I believe it leads to great suffering and is inherently unjust - the difference being that I don't believe that people who call themselves progressives are seeking great suffering or injustice. Those are two hugely different concepts. Make sense? (Similarly, this isn't to say that progressives won't throw those same accusations back at me, hopefully with the caveat that they don't actually believe that I want horrible things to happen, even if they think my ideas will lead to bad things.)

It means that I will make an effort to assume that the heart and the character of the people I clash with are basically good. It means that I will not assume they have hate in their heart.

Can the liberals reading this join me in this effort? I hope so, because we need to stand together as one, unified people against radicals who seek to destroy our way of life, and life itself, simply because we don't live like them.

Lastly, I know that I fight for ideas that I believe provide the best framework for individual liberty, prosperity, freedom, hope, and love. I believe that those ideals are timeless human desires that span generations and centuries, and that cannot be snuffed out. There is an eternal fight for freedom, and for the laws and systems that best achieve that freedom. I will tirelessly fight people who hold ideas that I think threaten freedom - it doesn't mean I think those people hate freedom - but I will fight them, goodhearted though they may be, until I cannot fight anymore.

I'm going to repost Doctor Zero's article about the meaning of the American flag. As always, he writes so beautifully about the power of the American flag and how no matter what people do to it, they can never destroy it. Also be sure click on over to Ace of Spades where they've posted tons of video from CNN's coverage of 9/11. Watch it again so that you don't forget what happened. It was really awful. (Understatement of the century.)

In memory of everyone who died on 9/11 and the soldiers who lost their lives in the ensuing battles: May you rest in peace. And to our men and women across the globe who have been injured, or made other sacrifices so that I can sit at home, blogging: my eternal gratitude and love to you all.

To Battle the Unimaginable

By Doctor Zero

An odd little church in Florida touched off a global controversy by threatening to burn a Koran on September 11. They announced the burning had been postponed, but there have already been riots in Indonesia, and injuries in Afghanistan. Naturally, these riots have been accompanied by the burning of American flags. When rage and hatred blaze in the dark corners of the Earth, the symbol of American freedom is usually the first thing to catch fire.

American flags were burned on September 11, 2001 as well. They dissolved into ash while Palestinians danced around them, singing and passing out candy to celebrate the fall of the Twin Towers. They were vaporized in the blasts of superheated jet fuel that ripped through the corridors of those towers, and the Pentagon. They melted on the shoulders of heroic firefighters who ran into a million tons of cascading rubble and never came back.

That grand old American flag has seen her share of abuse. The sight of her riding the winds of dawn, her beauty unspoiled by a night of cannon fire, inspired the poetry which became our national anthem. She was made to march along the Trail of Tears, where brave men died of exhaustion in her shadow. She was carried into battle against her own sons, and drifted sadly over ground soaked with their blood at Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. She greeted the morning of December 7, 1941 above the decks of eighteen doomed ships, warmed by their last gorgeous Hawaiian sunrise. She was burned and spat upon as an insult to the men who carried her honor into the jungles of Vietnam.

And yet, the American flag has never been desecrated.

She is the symbol of a unique nation: born in the defiance of tyranny, baptized in the destruction of slavery, and coming of age when it rescued the world from genocidal evil. Those who destroy our flag earn nothing but our contempt. They abuse their freedom of speech to level such an insult… but if you embrace the freedom to perform only virtuous deeds, you will soon find that what you’re holding isn’t “freedom” at all, as the arbiters of “virtue” lay their heavy hands upon your shoulder.

Anyone who seeks to desecrate the Stars and Stripes, on either foreign or domestic soil, is a fool. The power of that flag is far beyond their reach. It is a flame that warmed the freezing waters of the Delaware, as George Washington and his force of starving yeomen brought defeat to the invincible British army. It was raised above the bloody rocks of Iwo Jima by men who would have acted no differently if they had known half of them would be dead within a matter of weeks, resting beside seven thousand of their brother Marines. Our flag rose again above the rubble of the World Trade Center, in the hands of firemen who spent the day pulling survivors from the burning dust. They wanted to do something for all the people they couldn’t save… a gesture of enduring love, and defiance of the sickening evil that tore them from their loved ones.

The image of those firemen and their flag passed through the lens of photographer Thomas Franklin, and into eternity. The blood of liberty is made from the remembrance of such moments. Franklin would later say, “This was an important shot. It told more than just death and destruction. It said something to me about the strength of the American people and of these firemen having to battle the unimaginable.”

That’s what America is: a never-ending battle against the unimaginable.

No cretin with a cigarette lighter can touch the compassion and courage woven into the cloth those firemen raised above Ground Zero. Burn that flag and prove you are a savage, or a spoiled brat. Spit upon it and soil yourself. Stamp it beneath your feet, and diminish. You might as well try to extinguish the Sun. Instead of protecting your symbols with promises of destruction and murder, think about what makes the American flag untouchable, and be elevated.

No nation has ever loved the whole of mankind as much as the United States of America. Our fallen soldiers lie in every corner of the Earth as proof. Love is patient, and love is kind. We forgive the world its trespasses. On September 11^th, we ask its patience and kindness, as we recall the day unimaginable evil descended upon New York and Washington, and we once more took up the burden of doing battle with it.

Two great videos for your viewing pleasure - and Doug Cloud's campaign kickoff!

2010-09-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of videos I wanted to share today.

Tea Party Across America

Norm Dicks = Money Pit

Doug Cloud is having a campaign kickoff BBQ on Sunday, September 12!

Where: 265 3rd Ave Fi, Fox Island, WA 98333

Time: 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Be sure to visit his website and sign up for his newsletters so you can stay up to date on his campaign to CLEAN HOUSE!!

Happy Friday!

Illinois Counties Splurge on Lobbying: Millions of taxpayer dollars chasing bigger government

2010-09-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

Press release from Sunshine Review

Alexandria, VA— Unbeknownst to most taxpayers, Illinois counties are lavishing millions of public dollars on lobbyists to increase the size and scope of government according to an exclusive analysis by Sunshine Review, an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to transparency.

Because transparency laws frequently do not require disclosure of taxpayer-funded lobbying, Sunshine Review compiled data from Freedom of Information requests for the 10 largest counties in Illinois. The report revealed a whopping $6.2 million in lobbying expenses incurred by the counties between 2005 and 2010. Payments were funneled into 31 individual lobbying contracts and membership in 64 lobbying groups with the express purpose of influencing the Legislature and federal government to increase counties’ revenues—and thus grow the counties’ budgets and powers.

"This practice packs a double whammy for taxpayers who must first pay the lobbyists fees and then pay again in the form of higher taxes for the lobbyists "success" in increasing spending and growing government," said Michael Barnhart, president of Sunshine Review.

The 10 counties splurged $2 million on lobbying the Illinois State Legislature. DuPage County spent the most overall, with a total exceeding $1.8 million, while Will County reported $1.2 million in lobbying payments. Spending by county is as follows:

For more information, visit www.sunshinereview.org.

Contact
Diana Lopez
Senior Editor of Government Lobbying
Dlopez@sunshinereview.org
P: 630-392-1226

Sunshine Review is dedicated to state and local government transparency. The Sunshine Review wiki collects and shares transparency information, and uses a “10-point Transparency Checklist” to evaluate the Web site content of every state and more than 5,000 local governments.

***

Unbelievable, eh? They spend our tax dollars to lobby for bigger, more intrusive government in order to spend an ever-larger portion of our tax dollars. Crazy.

Campaign Promises or Real Reform?

2010-09-09T00:40:00.001-07:00

Cross-posted at State Budget Solutions

Bloomberg Business Week reports that Oregon's Democratic candidate for Governor, John Kitzhaber, is promising to get tough on public employee compensation if he is elected. The Republican candidate, Chris Dudley, is pledging to do the same.

Both candidates are insisting that they will renegotiate with public employee unions in order to rein in spiraling, out-of-control costs, and while both are demurring when it comes to details, Dudley has at least put forth a few specifics about concessions he expects from state workers. A lack of specificity at this stage in the election season is troubling, especially so with Kitzhaber as he is fully supported by the public employee unions. How can taxpayers be sure that Kitzhaber won't betray them in order to satisfy his union base when push comes to shove?

Dudley argues that Kitzhaber's rhetoric and proposals display a "timidity" that will inevitably fall short of real reform. Again, due to his relationship with the unions, for constituents to take Kitzhaber seriously he must lay out concrete specifics about concessions he expects unions to make, and how he plans to reform the system in order to ensure its sustainability and longevity. Dudley should also make more concrete proposals, in addition to the ones he has already announced. Though, there seems to be more cushion around Dudley since he is not backed by the very people with whom he will have to negotiate and fight.

The other reason that a Kitzhaber administration does not seem hopeful to those that are working towards real budget reform (including public employee compensation reform) is this last sentence:

Kitzhaber's budget proposals said that over the next decade the state has to emphasize spending that prevents social ills, such as addiction and crime.

Huh? Oregon has a $577 million predicted shortfall in 2011 (though some estimates put the shortfall at over $1 billion!) and Kitzhaber's budget priorities will be spending that prevents social ills?

Look, Oregon voters need to step up to the plate now, before either of these men are elected, and demand some specifics about budget and pension reform. If voters do not get clear answers and pledges now, it will be that much harder to hold these men accountable after the election. Make them read about reality-based budgeting and ask them to pledge to implement it if elected. Force both candidates to pony up real specifics about how they will fight public sector unions, and how they will protect the taxpayer and the private sector. Ask them if they supported the recent tax increases and if they plan on imposing any more tax increases, or do they support reforming the budget and cutting spending?

These are incredibly important questions to ask both candidates, and do not stop until Dudley and Kitzhaber have answered them one way or another. And if these men refuse to answer the voters, well then, that's an answer unto itself.

No 1st Amendment rights for Conservative college students

2010-09-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

Via Gateway Pundit and Instapundit, an example of hyprocrisy and intolerance as well as a violation of some students' 1st Amendment rights - on a college campus. Are you surprised?

It begins… School officials at Palm Beach State College kicked members of the Young America’s for Freedom off campus after they saw anti-Obama literature at their table.

It was offensive.

Administrators and Campus Police Kick YAF members off campus after seeing anti-Obama literature at their table.

Other college groups were allowed to stay on campus despite not registering for the event.

Amazing. Apparently the film club should also have been kicked out (through the campus police - overzealous much?) as they had not registered to be at the club fair either. However, the film club members are declining to comment on this out of fear of reprisal from the college administration. Are there any lefties out there that will stand up on principle and condemn this? Anyone? Bueller?

If you would like to call this college and ask why they allow their staff to trample on the 1st Amendment rights of the students just because some staff members don't like what the students have to say, then contact the school via the information below. The first name is who I believe is the woman in the video, kicking the kids off campus - they say her name, "Olivia" at one point - and based on Olivia's answer about who the Dean of Student Services is, I was able to figure out which campus they were on, ergo, the second name is that of the Dean.

Remember, keep it civil, but don't let them off the hook.

Olivia J. Morris
Student Activities Coordinator
(561) 868-3310

Morriso@palmbeachstate.edu

Penny McIsaac
Dean of Student Services
(561) 868-3055
Mcisaacp@palmbeachstate.edu

Disrespect, Capitalism, and Honey Bees

2010-09-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

By Littlefish

sanctionedcorruption.blogspot.com

I just had the pleasure of reading some thoughts from a gentleman my sister recently met. He was very forthcoming with his beliefs and I found it quite interesting. I must thank him for helping me distill a thought I have been working on for a long time. He was discussing how mutual respect is what is missing from our society and then extrapolated that to condemn our capitalist system as exploitive and disrespectful, and how true disrespect was assuming that one person has power over another person, and that one person knows better what the other person needs.

I wish I could find the right way, the perfect words to explain the reality. I fully agree, it is very disrespectful to assume that you or anyone else knows better what someone else’s life might need. That is very very true. But I am eternally confused as to why so many people, typically on the left of the political landscape, then take that truth and apply it to capitalism. If you want an example of pure disrespect of people’s individual rights, if you want to see pure narcissistic contempt for people ‘less than’ the elite, if you want to study how through the ages of man, people have been subjugated by those that feel they ‘know better’, the proper place to look is to the left. This current administration is an excellent example, but Wilson and FDR, are even better examples because they were actually successful in their narcissistic attempts to ‘better peoples lives’ in their own image.

Since the times of the Kings and the Kahns till the communists, and in many lands today run by dictatorship, it is precisely the liberal socialist style agenda that claims intellectual superiority over the common man, and subjugates the common man to live under what the elites in power claim to be in the common man’s best interest.

Capitalism has been the only socio-economic system that eliminated the power position of the elites and allowed the common man to take control of his or her own destiny.

It is scary though I suppose, and maybe that is why so many people refuse to see this reality. Once you are responsible for yourself… you are responsible for yourself! Fail? That was all you. But fear of the unknown is what allowed so many centuries of centralized leadership. People shouldn’t focus on how scary it is to fail, but how exuberant of a life one lives when they try, fail and eventually succeed.

The real interesting part about the “capitalism is slavery” argument, is that people seem very confused about history when discussing ‘the new way’ or ‘the old way’. Many people on the left ardently argue that we need to move forward, into a future where we are a perfect socialist system, but they completely ignore that the socialist style system they are trumpeting is older than any government. Collectivist feudalism is no goal, it is actually capitalism that set man free from bondage. Capitalism is actually the new and promising way. We can study hundreds, nay, thousands of years of centralized planning. We have little more than two centuries of capitalism as a social construct to analyze.

That being said, I would like to expand on this concept in a more natural way. Capitalism is not only the most respectful, fair and non-enslaving system to ever exist, it is actually the most natural and organic economic structure ever implemented. The cycles of nature them selves are capitalistic. All elements of nature work to support each other without ever sitting down and discussing how it is going to be structured. It is all entirely voluntary trade, just like capitalism. The bees don’t demand the flowers provide pollen, the flowers and bees have a voluntary relationship. Just like capitalism. Now, if you are just going to skim over that concept and complain about it, instead of considering its weight, I would like to add, yes, the bees themselves do act in a socialized manner, but, and this is a big but, the bees can function that way because they have a single goal. The entire population is focused on just one goal. This is never true of humans. Maybe in times of national unity we have similar notions on a certain subject, but at any given time, there are as many goals as there are people. The only way to allow those people to achieve their goals is to allow them to interact with each other voluntarily. Capitalism.

So interesting to me to hear people discuss capitalism like it is some evil construct, especially by people very interested in the natural course of the world, when capitalism is actually the only natural state of an economy, and the only respectful way for each person to strive to achieve their goals.

Now, I recognize that many will argue and point out the flaws and catastrophies brought about by capitalism. I will have to agree on certain counts, although I will usually point out the subversive socialist government program that skewed the natural playing field and caused a perverse incentive to alter the otherwise natural course of capitalism. But beyond that, it is important to remember, that nature itself is flawed and allows for catastrophy in many ways. It is even part of the natural cleansing process of the earth’s systems to clear away with catasrophy. My point being, no economic system is perfect and will ever protect every single element of the system. The lion must eat. The river must flood. That is not disrespectful or unfair, it is the natural course. What is disrespectful and ‘unfair’ is someone standing up and declaring that they know best when the lion should eat and how deep the river should rise.

Under any socialist style system, like the one we struggle to succeed under here in the United States, there is little that is voluntary. Socialists and the liberals who pretend not to be socialists, don’t believe in voluntary trade, they believe they know better how the exchanges should occur. That, my friend, is disrespectful.

More on the Senate race

2010-08-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to add a couple more thoughts to the discussion. First, to be totally clear, I think Clint is a good guy and I have nothing against him at all. I think it takes a lot of bravery to throw your hat into the ring of fire. I appreciate his efforts and his belief in America, and his passion.

We must remember that the Left did not get to where they are now - and America with them - in one election. It didn't happen overnight. It took decades. I look at the election in November as the first of many, many, many stops on a map, on a path leading back to individual liberty; personal responsibility and self-governance; fiscal restraint and responsibility; Constitutionally limited government; a real free market economy; and prosperity for all. The journey starts this year, it doesn't end. I think that Dino can help get the journey started. Maybe he won't be the right guy in six years, maybe he will be, but it will be up to us to make that decision at that time. For this election, especially considering that Patty Murray is the other option, it makes a lot of sense to support Dino. And PS - not everyone supporting Rossi is some sort of establishment Republican. Many of us, myself included, have a laundry list of complaints about the Republican Party establishment - believe me - but we each have to make a choice, and so I have done that.

Here's the thing.

All politicians represent a compromise of some sort. Had Clint won the primary, I would be endorsing him even though I don't agree with him 100% of the time. The ultimate question for me is which candidate will be a rubber stamp for things like ObamaCare? Answer: Patty Murray. Which candidate doesn't care about my concerns because she doesn't need my vote anyway? Answer: Patty Murray. Which candidate called us teabaggers? Answer: Patty Murray.

Which candidate has promised to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and has promised to cut spending and reform entitlements? Answer: Dino Rossi.

For the first part of our journey, that's a pretty darn good start, don't you think?

Now, can we stop tearing each other down and get back to defeating the Queen of Pork? Please?

I mean, what headline do you want to wake up to on November 3rd?

Police and Fire Fighters and Teachers, oh my!

2010-08-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

By Littlefish

Always, always, always… Police, Fire Fighters, and Teachers. Yep. Those are the things we can’t afford, Police, Fire Fighters and Teachers. They are obviously the biggest waste of taxpayer money to be found. Well, according to the Obama administration’s recent sales pitch. Like Obama says, if the states aren’t bailed out, Police, Fire Fighters and Teachers will have to be fired so fast that your houses will burn down, your property will be vandalized, and your children will be left ignorant in the streets! We must do something now; after all, Police, Fire Fighters, and Teachers will simply have to be cut! It is the only other solution!

Really?

How about, instead, we use a little imagination, head into the forest of government spending, bring out an axe, and start chopping some actual dead wood. Let’s look beyond the words of the politicians to the realities of what they are actually trying to protect. Let’s go ahead and keep the Police, Fire Fighters, and Teachers (if we could get their unions out of the picture, that would go a long way toward affordability of services, but I digress), let’s make sure these pillars of society are well funded and vibrantly staffed.

What then shall we cut? To listen to the current administration, you would think we were already to the bone. Hardly. I’ve never once heard a politician say something like:

“Hello, my name is Nancy, and I already have so many millions of dollars that my family can live happily without an income indefinitely. Ya know, instead of me taxing you guys more and cutting Fire, Police and Education funds, maybe, just maybe, I should cut the millions in tax payer funded entitlements my cohorts and I have written into law for ourselves!”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about limits on wealth, I’m talking about limits on how much politicians can bilk the tax payer for without producing a single thing. Our elected servant’s overspending, over promising, and over paying themselves to do so, must be stopped immediately, and contrary to the current script from the Liar in Chief, we don’t need to cut Fire, Police, and Education to do it, we just need to focus on the ‘over paying themselves’ part. How about some common sense cuts, some of it really basic stuff, like:

1. Any public servant, (except the President of course) when traveling abroad or home to their constituents or across the state for a meeting, anywhere they might fly to, they fly coach. It’s already a rule, it just needs to be enforced and expanded. Or better yet, lets get them on Amtrak or Greyhound. No military transports, no first class. Only the cheapest fare available. Red eye if need be. We are trying to cut spending, right? This won’t solve everything financially, but in the case of politicians, it will give them extra quality time with their constituents, to help them learn of the latest issues facing them. And if coach isn’t safe for them, then they aren’t doing their jobs very well.

Wealthy companies have private jets and limos, their CEO’s use them because they are the bosses. Politicians aren’t the bosses, they are the servants. And the US government is not a wealthy company, it is a broke, penniless non-profit, and its employees need to act like it.

2. Salary caps can be detrimental to social and economic progress when used to constrain private sector wealth accumulation. However, the salaries of elected officials have no link at all to productivity, and therefore can be constrained without concern for a faltering economy, in fact, the more we can constrain their salaries, the better off you’ll be, especially if you work in Fire, Police, or Education, because it seems from their own rhetoric, the current administration is ready to slash the wages of Police, Fire and Education employees at a moments notice, indeed, it seems to be the only idea they have for cutting anything.

Let us remind them, that it is actually their salaries that are the least beneficial to society as a whole, and put them in line with general administrative salaries in the private sector. Or better yet, no politician shall make a yearly salary greater than the median income of their district, or how about, equivalent to the Police, Fire Fighters and Teachers of that district? Just a starting point.

The extension of that of course would be capping any politician’s tax payer funded retirement accounts as well. Maybe a graduated scale based on personal wealth of the politician in question would be more affordable. There is no reason on earth people like John Kerry, with his near Billion dollar fortune needs to suckle the government teat in retirement. He can invest and earn all his own money that he wants, but the golden parachute must go. We have income limits on other tax payer provided funds, like housing and food stamps, why not on politician’s tax payer funded pensions?

3. Eliminate all government motor pools and tax payer provided ground transportation for all politicians and public employees except for the President and Governors, and job specific vehicles like bucket trucks, back hoes, and police cars. Anyone else, from the Senate Majority Leader to the county tax assessor can drive their own cars and write off the mileage like everyone else. Or better yet, bus passes. Let’s get our public servants on public transportation. First of all, selling off all those vehicles should bring in a little seed money.

And while we’re at it, let’s eliminate free parking for public servants. When attending a rally at the capitol, attendees will know, the legislators park free but the constituents pay! No more free parking. If they can’t afford it on their new salary then they can take the bus, like everyone else who can’t afford parking. The garages can then be opened up to for-profit parking enterprises, at least to cover maintenance costs, maybe even fund a Teacher’s job or two.

4. What about Catering? The piles of sandwiches and bottles of water that stack up around government offices can be priced in the millions. Bring a sack lunch, servant! The rest of us do when we have to. No person in their right mind would forego necessary expenses, (rent, insurance, heating, or maybe, police, fire, education) just so they can maintain catered luncheons with their associates. How come legislators don’t have that kind of common sense? Oh yea, it’s not their money, maybe that’s why. And it isn’t so scary to get on TV and beg for higher taxes so you can keep your cupcakes.

5. Travel less. This goes for all government workers and public servants, but, this one is fresh for me because we just watched the Rock Star in Chief completely clog the city of Seattle with closed streets and no fly zones so his dozens of armored support vehicles could race him to the proper street corner to pimp his girl here in Washington. Mr. President, instead of bellowing fires of fear about global warming and painful cuts in public services, all the while gallivanting around the country trying to convince us your plans are working, how about you just teach the public with your actions, not with your unbelievable words. In other words, Mr. President, just get to work, and stop campaigning. Maybe that could save some Police jobs.

How much does it cost to fly that mini-army around the country several times a day? Even without the motorcade, at over $50k per hour, just 12 hours of flight on AF1 is another dozen years of decent salary for some unlucky Fire Fighter. I know that police, fire, and education is a state and local issue, not a federal issue, but President Obama seems adamant that there is some financial difference between state funds and federal funds. Somebody should tell him that all the money comes from the same place, the tax payers.

How about, as you pointed out yourself Mr. President, since the country is so broke that we have to fire our Police, Fire Fighters and Teachers, maybe you could stay home sometimes, in that beautiful house we provide for you, and broadcast your message over the TV. No military transport, no tons of carbon footprint, no small businesses losing business during the day because no one can get to their shop while you cruise 2nd avenue. Ridiculous. Of course, I understand fully the need for heavy armaments around world leaders in a diverse society, which is exactly why less travel is prudent.

I recognize these simple cuts aren’t going to solve our deficit issues alone, but Police, Fire Fighters, and Educators are key factors to a smooth running society. Why would any honest politician suggest cutting those first when there is still so much fat on the bone? Here in Washington State, to overcome our nearly $3 Billion state deficit, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, has put together a list of state specific cuts that could be made, instead of the perennial political trump cards of Police, Fire Fighters and Teachers. Some of these might work in your state, might not. The point is to flush these tax leeches out into the open so we can deal with them plainly.

And remember, the only way to know if a politician is lying, is to check to see if their lips are moving. The next time any elected servant of the public tries to sell some BS about cutting public services, ask them if they mean their own job first? Logically, if a legislator’s job is to manage and delegate funds for public services, and by their own admission public services need to be cut, it is clear that they haven’t been doing their jobs; therefore, which public service jobs need to be cut first is easy to ordain, the politicians themselves.

Thanks for playing.

Littlefish

Tea Party Activists Endorse Dino Rossi

2010-08-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

The following is the text of a letter signed by Tea Party activists from around the state, endorsing Dino Rossi for U.S. Senate in the general election, and urging unity in support of his campaign:

Monday August 23, 2010

Tea Party Activists Endorse Dino Rossi

In the race for U.S. Senate in the state of Washington, the choice is clear. We support Dino Rossi against the incumbent Democrat Patty Murray.

In the primary, some of us voted for Paul Akers or Clint Didier, and some of us voted for Dino Rossi. But we are now all united in supporting the election of Dino Rossi.

Patty Murray has been in office for 18 years - it's way past time for her to receive a pink slip. Dino Rossi offers a sharp contrast to the tax and spend policies supported by Patty Murray. And, in 2010, Patty Murray (who ranks #4 in the Democratic Senate leadership) is more vulnerable than ever.

Dino Rossi is for repealing Obamacare, and replacing it with common-sense proposals "that give power to patients and doctors not government and insurance companies" and that"will actually lower health insurance costs, improve access to a greater variety of health insurance plans, and give people choice in picking their doctors."

Dino Rossi says:

"Our national debt topped $13 trillion this year. If Congress keeps spending your money at this unprecedented pace, our national debt will reach $19.6 trillion by 2015. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of running up our nation's credit card without considering how they're going to pay the bill. Congress is putting our economic future in jeopardy by continuing to spend money they don't have. Washington families have to make tough budget decisions every day to live within their means, and it's time for Congress to do the same."

Dino Rossi has signed the Americans for Tax Reform Taxpayer Protection Pledge, and he has signed the grassroots Contract From America. He has been endorsed by Senator Tom Coburn and Senator Jim DeMint, two of the most fiscally conservative members of the U.S. Senate.

Those of us who supported other candidates in the primary are, of course, disappointed that our favorite candidate did not make it past to the general election. But we unite to support Dino Rossi as absolutely superior in comparison to Patty Murray - even though he may not have been our initial favorite.

None of us (even those of us who supported Dino Rossi in the primary) necessarily agree with him on every issue. After all, we don't necessarily agree with each other on everything either!

In a way, that is the most important point. We are Tea Party activists, advocates of liberty and defenders of the U.S. Constitution. We are committed to repeal of Obamacare, limited government, lower taxes, and reduced spending - but we don't always agree with each other on every issue.

We've united together in Tea Party rallies and townhall protests. We've marched together in the nation's capital. We've worked together to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Now, we join forces to repeal and replace Patty Murray, and to elect Dino Rossi as our next U.S. Senator. We urge you to join us!

(*) personal endorsement only; organization listed for identification purposes only

Keli Carender ("Liberty Belle"), Seattle - RedistributingKnowledge.Blogspot.com; organizer, February 2009 Presidents' Day Porkulus Protest; Seattle Sons and Daughters of Liberty(*)

Jeremy Jasman, Bellingham - State Chair for Washington State Young Republicans(*); President of Whatcom County Young Republicans(*); volunteer organizer for Akers campaign

Dave Kasold, Bothell - King County Tea Party activist; national Tea Party newsletter editor; supported Didier in primary

Dan Michael, Woodinville - volunteer for Coday Senate campaign; organizer, Puget Sound Conservative Underground(*)

Melissa Milam, Kennewick - supported Didier in primary; Tea Party activist

Sally Oljar, Seattle - Co-Coordinator, Seattle Sons and Daughters of Liberty(*); National Coordinator, Tea Party Patriots(*)

Jeff Patton, Shoreline - volunteer for Coday Senate campaign; organizer, Shoreline Caucus(*)

Pat Tarzwell, Shelton - Assistant State Director, ResistNet.com (Patriotic Resistance)(*)

Steve Beren, Seattle - former campaign manager of Coday Senate campaign; Tea Party activist

(*) personal endorsement only; organization listed for identification purposes only

Cross-posted at Red County

***

Adding on a little extra from me, personally. I think it was Mark Levin who wrote (I'm paraphrasing here): If the compromise moves you toward liberty, freedom and prosperity for all, then it's a good compromise. If it moves you away from those goals, it's a bad compromise.

People may feel like Dino isn't perfect, but I most definitely think he will move us in the direction we want to go, whereas a Patty Murray victory will result in another giant step backward away from our goals of liberty and prosperity for all. She's already shown her true colors - a far leftist who has no interest in hearing from those with whom she disagrees. Patty Murray is an ideologue and Dino Rossi is a businessman who will help us get our fiscal house in order.

I sincerely hope that Didier's supporters will see that this "compromise" moves us closer to our goals and that sitting out the election all but assures a Murray win.

Obama's group, OFA, steals my idea - from June 2009

2010-08-09T14:57:00.001-07:00

I guess I should be flattered, right?

My video from June 2009:

My post listing example after example of Obama, OFA and the Democrats calling everyday Americans - who happen to oppose their agenda - "special interests." Excerpt:

Regarding the battle over President Obama’s budget
“And we believe in the power of people to drown out the cynics and entrenched interests in Washington to bring lasting, meaningful change...”
Email from David Plouffe, 2008 campaign manager for Barack Obama
March 13, 2009

“Partisan voices and special interests are showing real resistance to President Obama's call for making the necessary reforms and investments in energy, health care, and education.”
Email from Mitch Stewart, Director, Organizing for America
March 16, 2009

“What you do now will decide what kind of debate they have -- one that's dominated by special interests and partisan voices intent on keeping the status quo, or one that reflects the priorities of citizens like you.”
Email from Mitch Stewart, Director, Organizing for America
March 25, 2009

***

And now, today, OFA send out this email, titled, "I am not a 'special interest:'"

Liberty Belle --

Right now, my job -- along with those of my colleagues -- could be in jeopardy.

I'm a public school teacher in Philadelphia. And, like most states across the country, Pennsylvania is facing some bad budget shortfalls.

Without federal help, a lot of teachers like me -- as well as other public servants like police officers and firefighters -- will lose their jobs. Maybe you know some of these people. Maybe it's you.

Democrats in Congress are trying to do the right thing, proposing emergency assistance for states to preserve more than 100,000 jobs like mine. They're racing back to the Capitol for an emergency session this week to pass this bill and save these jobs.

But Republicans are standing in the way. Minority Leader John Boehner is calling the bill a "payoff" to "special interests" and attacking every Democrat who is fighting for us.

But I'm not a special interest. I'm a teacher.

Can you join me in telling House Democrats that they have our support as they fight for our jobs?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- and the entire Democratic Caucus -- have decided to rush back to Washington to make sure that hundreds of thousands of workers like me will get to keep our jobs. In addition, the bill will actually create even more job growth by closing tax loopholes for companies that ship American jobs overseas.

But the Republicans are going to do everything they can to prevent this aid.

Please stand with me, in support of Democratic leaders who are standing up for folks like me:

http://my.barackobama.com/MyJob

Thank you,

Wendy C.
Teacher
Ambler, Pennsylvania

***

Nothing to see here folks!

Take Action with the Heritage Foundation

2010-07-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

The Heritage Foundation has a new endeavor called Heritage Action for America and it is a great, great place to get involved and get information. It's a place where you can make a difference! I signed up today and strongly suggest that everyone register with them!

Jesse Young for Congress in Washington's 6th District

2010-07-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

As I will be moving back to the 6th district very soon, I felt compelled to voice my opinion about the candidates running, as the winner will be my congressman, and we all know how much Normie and I get along.

My family and I have decided to support Jesse Young in his quest to defeat Norm Dicks and to represent the 6th Congressional District in WA.

All candidates have their stories, that much is true. But it is up to the voters to determine whether those stories are useless rhetorical fluff, or whether the candidate's background gives us a window into understanding his or her view of the world, which is extremely important. For example, does the candidate view individualism negatively and does he or she believe in "the collective?" Or, does the candidate, informed by his or her experiences, view the individual as supreme, voting to uphold those sacred individual rights?

Jesse's story, rather, his life, is one that I believe has prepared him to be a steward of this country at this particular moment in history. With the country heading off of a cliff in terms of spending, debt, and the deficit; with the unprecedented growth and intrusion of the federal government into our lives; with 10% unemployment and small businesses teetering on the edge, desperately trying to survive, we need someone like Jesse in the US Congress.

Why?

Because Jesse wasn't handed a thing. Everything he has accomplished was earned through his own hard work, perseverance, dreams, and tireless efforts. At times during his childhood he was homeless while trying to attend school, but through his own commitment and tenacity he took himself to the University of Notre Dame. He held jobs during high school and all during his college years, sacrificing summers to earn money for school.

Through those tough times, through his work consulting for various industries, and through his role as a husband, father, volunteer, and community member, I believe that Jesse learned the lessons he will need to make the right decisions while in Congress. We need people who know how hard it is to earn money and to take care of a family, but who have the guts to do it themselves, without waiting for Big Brother to build them a comfortable prison. We need someone who is not afraid to look at a budget and to say, "cut," because he's had to do it with his own family's budget.

Lastly, Jesse Young was born the same year that ol' Normie was first elected to Congress. We all know what a swamp and cesspool that Washington DC is, and we all know how it can corrupt even decent people. Norm has been there so long that he is now known as the "King of Pork" (amazingly, another WA elected official, Patty Murray, is known as the "Queen of Pork," go figure) and if he remains in Congress he in line to become the chair of the Appropriations committee. It's time for ol' Normie to retire and let someone with fresh ideas have a chance to govern. Norm Dicks has become the antithesis of the word "Representative." It's time to retire him.

I believe Jesse has the integrity, the vision, the experience, and the fortitude to go to Washington DC and to remain committed to his principles. He believes in the Constitution and free markets, but even more important than that, he believes in the truly exceptional nature of our country. He understands and recognizes the hope and the optimism of America that is inextricably bound to our history as a nation. It is the belief in individual rights so that each child, regardless of color, creed, gender, income (or any other box the left wants us to solely identify with) may dream as big as he or she desires because the possibility that the dream will come true exists in America. It is the American dream, and because Jesse has lived it, he appreciates it, and will defend it for all of us as the next Congressman from Washington's 6th District.

Ballots have been sent out for the primary and Jesse will need every vote to make it to the general election! So when you are voting, VOTE FOR JESSE YOUNG! :)

If you want to learn more about Jesse, go to his website here and please consider volunteering and donating money to his campaign.

The need for affirmative disclosure

2010-07-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

I certainly hope that the one thing we call ALL agree on is that we need better transparency from government at every level. Evergreen Freedom Foundation just uncovered a cesspool of information that 68 different agencies in WA have been hiding. Can we please stand together on these issues of government transparency, left and right, liberal and conservative?

The title of this post refers to affirmative disclosure, which very simply means proactively releasing information. In other words, it means that government agencies put important information out there for citizens to see, without the citizens being forced to ask for it or file a Freedom of Information Act request. Wouldn't it be nice to have real transparency, rather than rhetorical transparency?

Fedzilla Strikes Again

2010-07-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

In honor of the temporary injunction granted to Fedzilla in their attempt to stop Arizona from enforcing existing federal immigration laws that the federal government refuses to enforce - for explicitly stated political reasons - I am posting this excellent speech by a legal immigrant from Tucson, AZ. Keep on keepin' on Arizona. We support you.

More Bureaucracy Anyone?

2010-07-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome to your new health care system. Keep in mind that this is only about one-third of the complexity - they just couldn't fit it all in one graph.

North Carolina's Castle Built on Sand

2010-07-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you cross a current state budget shortfall with increased spending, hundreds of new full-time state employees, dependence on federal money that may never show, and increased debt?

North Carolina's 2010-2011 budget disaster.

Brian Balfour of the LincolnTribune.com highlights some of the most ridiculous and insulting components of the new North Carolina budget, and it ain't pretty.

Total Spending Up Again, Contingency Plan in Place for Federal Funds Not Yet Approved
Ineffective Attempt at Small Business Relief
Lawmakers Pile on More Unauthorized Debt
Setting the Stage for an Even Worse Crisis in 2011-12

Right now there is a projected budget shortfall of about $3 billion and the NC legislature voted to increase spending by 4.8 percent, almost a billion dollars. The budget also adds over 800 new full-time employees to the state payroll, which of course will include their salaries, benefits, and pensions. They are also making a grave mistake by using one-time federal stimulus dollars and not yet existent federal Medicaid dollars to backfill parts of the budget. As if this is not bad enough, their "contingency" budget, in the event the federal funds don't come through, has not been approved yet and relies on even sketchier transfers and gimmicks.

The legislature threw in some almost meaningless tax cuts for small businesses but it's apparently so narrowly focused that the consensus in the business world, a.k.a. the real world, is that it will do little to inspire confidence in business owners to grow their businesses. They also not only increased NC's debt, ignoring the State Treasurer's recommendations, but also raised it without going to the voters even though the state Constitution requires new debt to be approved by the voters.

NC politicians should be ashamed of themselves for acting so irresponsibly with taxpayers' money. They were hired to do a very simple job and they again have turned it into a bloated mess that threatens the economic survival of the people and business owners of North Carolina. Not only did they maliciously neglect their responsibilities to taxpayers, they kicked the can down the road and have succeeded in assuring that next year's budget crisis will be even worse. Unfortunately, North Carolina is not alone in their downward spiral, as other state legislatures and Governors are employing the same gimmicks and tricks for the same reasons: they are spineless cowards.

Note to North Carolina voters: it's time for change. This is a good place to start.

Cross posted at State Budget Solutions

State Budget Crises Won't Just Disappear

2010-07-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Burke on the NAACP

2010-07-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Burke recently wrote an article for Red County on racism and the NAACP. I'm reposting it here, along with video of her speaking at our Tax Day Tea Party on April 15th of this year.

The Racist Hypocrisy of the NAACP
By Jennifer Burke

Racism. The mere word conjures up immediate thoughts of Ku Klux Klan members in white sheets and covered faces lynching a black person simply because of their color. It brings to mind images of “whites only” and “coloreds only” signs on water fountains because one ethnicity was deemed to be dirty and beneath another simply because their skin was darker. It makes one think of discrimination, alienation, and rejection based not on one’s intelligence, talent, or experience, but rather on the color of a person’s skin.

Racism has been a thread in the fabric of our nation for many years; a thread that the Democrat party has had a heavy hand in weaving. From the formation of the KKK to the Jim Crow laws to the modern day enslavement of the black community in the form of welfare programs, the Democrats have had an undeniable hand in the way of racist policies that continue to be at the heart of destruction of the American dream and all that it stands for. Yet, rather than owning up to the reality of the outcome of their objectives, they have chosen instead to practice “revisionist history” in rewriting the reality of their legacy rooted in racism and, instead, labeling the Republican Party as the party full of racists.

If you look at the ethnic breakdown of those who claim one party over another, you can see that the Democrats have done a great job in the art of revisionist history. The black community tends to overwhelming vote Democrat. Delving into the negative impact the party’s policies have had on the black community, one has to wonder why. In my own humble opinion, the answer to this question lies squarely in one name: John F. Kennedy, Jr.

It comes as a surprise to some since I possess such strong conservative principles and proudly state that I am a Conservative Republican, but I also happen to be one who is a black woman. Although I am a native of Texas, I spent a lot of time in a small town in Louisiana when our family visited my grandfather, great aunt, and great uncle. I distinctly remember not only in their households but in my own, pictures of JFK on the wall or sitting on the mantle. The singular act of his introduction of the Civil Rights Act obviously created a strong allegiance of the black community to the Democrat party. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, he went down in history as a martyr for the cause of equal rights and opportunity for all. What the minority communities of today have lost sight of, due again to revisionist history, are the racist statements and traditions that have followed.

What blacks today need to realize and accept is that these are not your father’s Democrats (and frankly, those weren’t so great either with the racist policies inherent within them that I mentioned previously). Let’s not forget, it was Democrat Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia, former Kleagle/Recruiter in the Ku Klux Klan considered disturbingly as “the conscience of the Senate”, who filibustered the Civil Rights legislation. We have been made to believe by Bill Clinton, ridiculously referred to by some as the first black President, that Byrd only joined the Klan to get elected. But, let’s not forget Byrd’s membership in and recruitment for the KKK was during a time when lynchings of blacks were prevalent and the police largely looked the other way. Upon JFK’s death, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. He is reported to have said regarding this bill and its policies, “I’ll have them n*g**rs voting Democrat for the next 200 years.” How prophetic and true those words have unfortunately come to be.

In gaining an understanding of the disconnect between which party’s policies are detrimental and downright destructive, one only has to look at the practice of revisionist history of Democrats and its entourage; the mainstream media and front groups such as the formerly esteemed NAACP.

With real racism in our midst at multiple levels and against various ethnic groups, it is shameful that the NAACP has found it suitable to cry racism against the Tea Party. What are they guilty of? Possessing a basic belief in and support of the very backbone of what has made this nation a beacon so bright that many around the world have longed to be a part of it: limited government, individual responsibility, free markets, and the Constitution.

On July 13, 2010, the NAACP voted in favor of a resolution denouncing the Tea Party as racist. In the words of the NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous, "We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy. What we take issue with is the Tea Party's continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements.” Jealous went on to accuse the tea party of bigotry, homophobia and anti-Semitism calling for leaders to denounce such statements by its members.

Their evidence? Unsubstantiated claims of racist epithets being supposedly hurled at members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Andre Carson (D-Ind.),at a Tea Party protest following the vote on the unconstitutional health care bill. Unsubstantiated claims of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) being spit upon at the same rally. Unsubstantiated claims of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) being met with anti-gay chants at the same rally.

Andrew Breitbart, founder of biggovernment.com and bighollywood.com, offered a $100,000 reward for video or audio evidence to substantiate these claims. To this day, despite heavy press coverage, no evidence has been produced. In fact, each of these claims continues to be spoken of as truth despite clear evidence to prove it. I guess, in spite of the rule of law legal system which the NAACP typically rails against as unfair to black criminals, when it comes to Tea Party members, they are guilty until proven innocent.

What astounds me even more about this false accusation and cry of racism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry against the Tea Party movement by the NAACP is the fact that the NAACP has had not one, but two, of the biggest racist, anti-American, and anti-Semites on this earth as speakers at their conferences. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, the Black Liberation Theology church that the Obama’s attended for over 20 years, was their keynote speaker at a conference in 2008. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American group Nation of Islam, was a speaker in 1997.

Just recently, a video surfaced of a staff member of the Dept. of Agriculture, Shirley Sherrod, speaking at an NAACP group, where she openly admits that she injected race into her position by choosing not to assist a white farmer facing bankruptcy and the loss of his farm as much as she could have. Instead, she took him to a lawyer, “one of his own kind” so that he would at least have something good to say about her. Ms. Sherrod went on to say that she realized it wasn’t all about race, but class warfare in the haves vs. the have nots (as if that is any better). The fact that the NAACP flip-flopped on its original position denouncing her racist statement to then supporting her shows an extreme lack of judgment, ethics, and principles in opposition to racism. It also indicates a disturbing perspective on the part of the organization and its members rooted in a belief system that it is okay to pit Americans against each other. [**]

Despite the NAACP now saying that Ms. Sherrod’s story was taken out of context and that the white farmer’s farm was indeed saved, the fact is, she did infuse race into the equation of her job which should be one that is color-blind. Even more telling is the reaction of members of the NAACP in the audience. The clapping and cheering for her actions is evidence that there is something very wrong with a group who claims to be for equal rights having a history of speakers, and members who applaud them, who stand for exactly the opposite.

For an organization that has attacked as racist a grassroots organization of Americans who simply believe that their freedoms and the Constitution are being trampled upon to have individuals who spew vile, racist statements and obviously believe that racism is okay if it is projected onto individuals who happen to be white is beyond hypocritical. It is shameless.

Racism, counter to what the NAACP would have you believe, is a two way street. The definition according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”. The supposed evidence of their accusation of racism against the Tea Party movement does not remotely adhere to the definition of what racism truly is. The reality is the cry of racism has been a long standing tactic to silence opposition by shame and denigration.

I am a proud Tea Party member who happens to be a black woman. Unlike Hilary Shelton, Senior Vice President for Advocacy for the NAACP who was recently caught on tape lying about his alleged Tea Party experience, I have both attended and spoken at Tea Party rallies. Never once have I felt afraid. Never once have I witnessed pervasive racism. Never once have I heard speakers use language that was racially divisive. I, as my fellow black Conservative tea party participants can also attest, have simply seen a group of people who believe that the integrity of our nation and the foundation upon which it was built is under attack by far left Progressives who have infiltrated the Democrat party and changed the landscape of their agenda for the worse.

I believe in the foundation of this country; the Constitution. I believe that we are a nation based on rule of law, not that of feelings. I believe that we have the right to pursue happiness, but that happiness is not guaranteed. I am for individual liberties, limited government, and real “hope” that lies at its very core in the notion that we all, despite our color or upbringing, can rise up to achieve what we dare to dream and, even more importantly, what we dare to work towards.

Neither I nor my fellow tea party members will be silenced for we believe that the very core of our nation is being attacked and dismantled. The cry against the movement as racist simply serves as an indicator of the power of its existence and the fear it has instilled in Progressives and their organizations. This fear takes root in the fact that we who believe in the foundation upon which this country was built are willing to stand up and fight for it. As one of the rallying cries of the movement that has come to fruition says…..We are not racist. We are not violent. We are just no longer silent!

**Note: follow some of the more recent coverage of the Shirley Sherrod incident here.

Arizona's Constitutional War Powers

2010-07-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

Over at American Thinker. Funny that the US Government neglects the responsibilities explicitly stated in the Constitution (protecting states from invasion), and repeatedly overreaches into areas that are none of its business (health care).

Great article James!

And on that note...

2010-07-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

After briefly discussing some free market health care options, I ran across this video at Hot Air, as well as Ed Morrissey's comments, which fit rather nicely into the conversation, so here you go.

Ed Morrissey:

I wrote about the issue of third-party payers extensively last year, and it will be even more of an issue if Republicans succeed in dismantling ObamaCare. Van den Broek is entirely correct in pointing out that we didn’t have a free-market system for health care as much as we had one for health insurance, and even that wasn’t so free, thanks to endless government mandates at the state and federal level. The entire basis for the health care of most Americans is spending other people’s money through the overuse of comprehensive policies that only make sense in the warped environment of tax policy that doesn’t count health insurance coverage as income.

A quick look at the economics show that most people wouldn’t choose comprehensive coverage if given a rational choice and a level field. In 2007, the average individual comprehensive policy in Minnesota cost $3600 per year, or $300 per month. That would cover two, and perhaps three, clinic visits every month. Most healthy individuals only use a clinic once or twice a year, which means they throw away $3000 per year on coverage they never use. But why would people who get comprehensive coverage for $50 a month through their employer and pay no taxes choose catastrophic insurance instead when the employer doesn’t compensate them for making a wiser choice — and even if they did pay the difference in higher wages, the government would tax it as income?

As painful as it will be, repeal has to be followed by reforming the tax system to get rid of the distortion our current tax policies create in health insurance. We have to make the system more rational in order to get people into realistic and less expensive catastrophic coverage, and let them pay out of pocket for routine care, which will then become much more price competitive and more plentiful as providers shed the overhead costs of dealing with insurers. Repeal is just the first step to real reform, and if we don’t take the next step, we will put ourselves at risk that the next attempt at ObamaCare will not be reversed.

The Gift of Liberty

2010-07-04T12:04:00.001-07:00

I love America. Always have. Always will, regardless of who is at her helm and the direction he or she tries to take us. I love the 4th of July because we celebrate, individually and as a society, our exceptional roots and history. Our founders were the true progressives, seeking to progress beyond feudalism, serfdom, tyranny, authoritarianism, government largesse, monarchies, aristocracies, and empires.

For the first time in history, people came together, thoroughly knowing and understanding the history of the great civilizations that came before them, and why they failed. The founders understood their own history and experiences in the colonies, and they decided to create a nation built on natural law and individual liberty. They built upon the tradition of previous Western civilizations, but they went the necessary step further, by saying that rights did not come from other men, or from government. Rather, individual rights are naturally inherent by the virtue of our existence as human beings, and whether you believe in God or not does not change that fact. Our liberty transcends any man or his laws.

Liberty is more than freedom. Liberty is freedom with responsibility. It means that you are free to pursue your dreams and keep the fruit of your labor, and to pass that fruit on to your children. Above this however, it means governing yourself. It is self-responsibility and self-governance, and the freedom to pursue your dreams is your reward. Liberty doesn't mean anarchy. Liberty isn't the freedom from work or duty. Liberty doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to take care of yourself. Liberty is the single most precious gift you can give another person. It is the freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail and learn, and to try again. The reason so many people try to immigrate to America is because we give them the gift of liberty.

We were, and still are, an anomaly in the history of mankind. Our forefathers laid the foundation in such a way that it allowed for us to grow and combat injustice while still preserving the best parts of our traditions. And if you think about it, any time we have faced down an act of injustice successfully, the result was more liberty to those that had none or had too little. That gift of liberty to black Americans and to women, for example, was inevitable because of the philosophy behind the words written in those founding documents. The founders knew that something like slavery and a Declaration of Independence that claimed that "All men are created equal" could not coexist forever.

I do not believe that many of the recently passed laws by this Congress and this President will result in more liberty, which is why those laws are fundamentally different from the gains we have made in the past against real injustice. Ironically, it is today's "progressives" that seek to take us backwards, to a time when people did not work for themselves, where they were forced to give of themselves to those that ruled over them so that those benevolent rulers could then graciously and generously give rights back to the people.

However, as I said above. America is exceptional, and it is her traditions, her promise, her beacon of hope and light, her burning fire of liberty for which we fight.

Have an incredible 4th of July. Today is 7-4-2010, and today I recommit myself to America and it is here that I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor to ensure that generations of Americans will have the opportunity to enjoy the gift of Liberty.

Meet my friend, and candidate, Beau Gunderson

2010-07-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Do you live the 46th legislative district in WA?

Are you sick of the same ol', same ol' in Olympia?

Would you like a breath of fresh air and new ideas in our state legislature?

If you answered yes to these questions, then I'd like to introduce you to my personal friend Beau Gunderson who is running for State Representative, position 2, in the 46th district. He is a really good guy who would make a far superior member of the legislature than the current incumbent.

He is running against Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, who has been in office in her current position since... 1997. Also, she proudly touts, as an accomplishment, that she is on the board of the National Council of La Raza, a racist organization that actively promotes ideas like "taking back" California and our other border states. As I am Hispanic myself, I find their organization especially offensive, racist, exclusionary, and dangerous. The guy in the video below is part of La Raza, so take a look for yourself. My grandparents, Jesus and Philomena, would be so ashamed of this group, and people like Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney for being a part of it.

Does the 46th district in Seattle really want to be represented by someone who chooses to not only affiliate with, but who actively works for, a racist organization that call themselves, "The Race?"

Her bio also lists her legislative priorities which includes economic development and education. Considering Washington's abysmal education system (despite throwing ever-more money at the problem) and our declining economy and increased unemployment, I'd say she's not really meeting her priorities.

As Beau gets his campaign up and running, I will continue to update you. And please friend him on Facebook and Twitter and let's see if we can get him elected!

"I fought for you"

2010-06-28T10:13:00.001-07:00

If you are in the mood to get a little emotional, watch the video below. It was emailed to me by a friend. Watching it made me realize how grateful I am that Gen. Petraeus is now back in command so that our men and women don't have to fight a war shackled by ridiculous and ineffective rules of engagement. I mean, why even put them in harms way if they can't defend themselves?

MoveOn.org scrubs their "General Betray Us" ad from website - UPDATED - Google scrubs the cache too! Updated again! Correction

2010-06-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

See below for updates

Via Hot Air, the bloggers at Weasel Zippers found that MoveOn.org scrubbed their anti-Petraeus ad, "General Betray Us," from their website now that Obama has chosen Gen. Petraeus to replace Gen. McChrystal.

It was there the last time Google cache took a screen shot of it (June 18th), so it was scrubbed sometime between then and today. If you try the link now(http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.htm) it goes to MoveOn’s default page.

Now, why would they go and do a thing like that?

***

UPDATE: Google has now scrubbed the web cache of the MoveOn.org page!! The screen shot of the web cache that Weasel Zippers linked to now gives you a "your search did not match any documents" screen, whereas yesterday it linked to the web cache of the "Betray Us" ad.

Well, thanks to Ma Libertybelle's diligent research, you can still see the full page ad here and below. Don't forget that Obama declined to vote at all when the question of whether or not to condemn MoveOn.org's ad came up in the Senate. He didn't vote for condemnation, and he didn't vote against it. Kind of like voting present, isn't it?

UPDATE II: Looks like our great mom in tennis shoes voted no on the resolution to condemn the ad, or rather, she voted to support MoveOn.org's condemnation of the man that Obama has now put in charge of Afghanistan. So Patty, are you going to apologize or admit you were wrong?

CORRECTION: The webmaster from Weasel Zippers emailed me to clarify that Google doesn't arbitrarily remove content from its cache, rather, the site owner must specifically request its removal through the Google Webmaster protocol, to start the process. While this makes me feel a little better about Google, it also highlights how desperate MoveOn.org is to erase their ad from history. Thank you to "C" for the correction!

Using the Gulf Spill to Fundraise = Tacky

2010-06-22T12:59:00.001-07:00

Organizing for Obama, oops, I mean America, is doubling down on their attempt to use the Gulf spill to rake in donations. I'm surprised Mr. Hopenchange would actually stoop that low, though not because I think he is above smarmy and tacky tactics, but rather because it's so blatant and obvious. Even his campaign wunderkind David Plouffe apparently doesn't realize this, or just doesn't care.

Organizing for America
Liberty Belle --

The President laid out his vision for a clean-energy future last week. Once again, the pundits were quick to say that it can't be done.

Yes, the oil industry will try to stop us. They'll smear our efforts with every attack they can dream up. They'll run ads against the members of Congress standing with us -- and go even more negative as elections near. That's the way it's always been done.

But we don't settle for what people in Washington believe is possible. This movement has never let conventional wisdom dictate our strategy. With your help, we simply organize from the ground up.

We've set a big goal of getting to $1 million raised by the end of this week for our clean-energy campaign -- and that will require at least 241 donations from Seattle.

Can you donate $25 or more today?

Hahahahhhaaaaahahahahaha. Please. So instead of focusing on THE SPILL, i.e. containment, clean-up, and ultimately plugging the damn hole, OFA and Obama want to raise money to push his legislative agenda. Wow. Leadership schmeadership. It's the Obama Way.

DISCLOSE Act scheduled for a vote tomorrow - Can you make a few calls?

2010-06-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hey all, looks like Queen Nancy is at it again. It appears that a vote on the DISCLOSE Act will be scheduled for tomorrow. Please get calling and faxing today and tell Reps. to vote NO.

A list of Reps. and their phone numbers and fax numbers can be found here.

Buy a t-shirt, support Israel

2010-06-21T23:56:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in buying cool t-shirts and supporting Israel, check out this website!

Nu Campaign. From the website:

Taken from the Israeli slang word ‘NU’ which literally translates as ’C’mon’ and begs a response, our t-shirts empower and engage wearers to take a stand and show their support for the State of Israel!

Through stimulating and artistic design, NU shirts illustrate the ‘human story’ behind major Israeli causes and events. On the inside of the shirt, opposite the heart, the story is printed, so that wearers carry it with them inside and become its ambassadors out on the streets. Proceeds from t-shirts sales are donated toward Israeli non-profit organizations behind the causes.

By wearing NU, not only do you make a significant contribution toward Israel but you join our worldwide community of people that care and support the State of Israel!

Let's see... buying a t-shirt from Nu allows me to a.) wear a cute t-shirt, and b.) support Israel against her genocidal enemies... sounds like a great deal to me!

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

I happen to have the most incredible parents in the world, and I see this more as every day goes by. They both sacrificed so much to give their children a better life and taught us the meaning of honesty and integrity.

Doctor Zero writes today about these gifts, particularly from fathers, and how our world dismisses the importance of fathers far too often.

A good father reveals the nature of honor to his sons and daughters through his conduct. He is loyal to his wife and children, despite the easy temptations offered by the modern world. He works to build a better future for them, rather than waiting for it to be dropped in his lap, or demanding others provide it for him. He rejoices in this task, and his joy is so obvious that his family forgives his occasional moments of weariness or frustration. Through marriage, he has chosen duty over indulgence. He sees the intricate beauty of permanence, when the flickering neon light of passing fancy is more obvious. Honor is one of the many frequencies of love.

The absence of a father is a terrible burden for children, and their mother, to bear. I know, because I’m one of the many children who grew up without my father in the house. It’s a pain that is not always easy to understand. What’s missing is too big to be seen clearly. Generations have grown up listening to the seductive lie that fathers are less than critical. They are portrayed as a dangerous accessory, prone to explosion and meltdown, easily replaced by a wad of cash or a government check. Some men have disgraced themselves by allowing this lie to spread, because it suits their convenience. Some women spread it because they have lost faith in the human race, and believe they armor themselves against an inevitable tragedy.

He is absolutely right, especially in our inner cities and minority communities. It breaks my heart to think of so many kids growing up without their fathers. It infuriates me that liberal policy-makers think an extra $25 added to a welfare check and public housing somehow make up for a missing father.

Doctor Zero also mentions that opponents of freedom continue to spread the lie that fathers are unimportant because fathers teach their children about honor, and "honor sustains liberty."

So happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there, and thank you to my own for teaching me about honor and therefore, teaching me about liberty.

Doctor Zero is quite possibly the most poetic political analyst/blogger out there and he has published a book with a collection of his essays, which you can find here.

NRA sells out to Democrats, sells out free speech - Updated with phone numbers! CALL TODAY

2010-06-16T16:16:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow the House will vote on the DISCLOSE Act which is Pelosi's version of key parts of the Campaign-Finance Reform legislation that the Supreme Court recently ruled unconstitutional. (Because parts of it were unconstitutional... simply put, they violated the free speech rights of citizens that gathered into groups to pool their money, like an environmental activist group or a right-to-life group for example, that might legally be considered a "corporation." It made it much more difficult to make political advertisements, political documentaries, political books, etc. and in particular banned this type of political speech within 30 days of a caucus and 60 days of a general election. For background info, see here and here.)

So now everyone's favorite Speaker of the House, Queen Nancy, is going to try and pass the DISCLOSE Act tomorrow, June 17th, which is similar to the previous law. Of course, if it's coming from San Fran Nan, you know it's got at least a few ugly surprises. From Reason.com:

The DISCLOSE Act’s purpose, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Chris Van Hollen and other “reformers,” is simply to require disclosure of corporate and union political speech after the Supreme Court’s January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that the government could not ban political expenditures by companies, nonprofit groups, and labor unions.

The bill, however, would radically redefine how the FEC regulates political commentary. A section of the DISCLOSE Act would exempt traditional media outlets from coordination regulations, but the exemption does not include bloggers, only “a communication appearing in a news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication…”

Not only to traditional media get a pass, but so do trade unions. Advocacy groups will lose much of their free speech rights - oh, except for those that make deals with the devils. One such group, the National Rifle Association. I know. I was stunned too.

The new agreement would exempt organizations that have over one million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states, and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations, from the disclosure requirements. The NRA, with four million members, would fall into the exempted category and will not oppose the DISCLOSE Act now, according to Democratic sources.

So if you are a small organization that just started up to defend freedom, you are screwed. But if you’ve been collecting a large file of members for decades off the image of Charlton Heston while repeated screwing conservatives, you’ll be safe.

This is just the NRA not wanting competition for itself. If they were really committed to freedom, let alone the second amendment, they should be encouraging more freedom loving, second amendment loving organizations to rise and fight. Instead, they are collaborating with the left to shut out competition.

This is all too familiar. The big guys in town team up with the politicians to work together on "reform" and "regulations" that are supposedly good for us, when actually the desired outcome is to cement the big daddy's place in the industry and politician's place in DC. The WSJ weighs in here.

What can you do?

First, email the NRA, especially if you are a member, and tell them that if they continue to support this ban on our 1st Amendment right that you will join another gun-owner advocacy group.

*Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist at NRA. His address is CCox@NRAHQ.org.

*Please also cc David Keene, NRA Board member, at KeeneD@CarmenGroup.com

Second, call your representative. I will look for a list of Reps. to call and try to post that asap.

PHONE NUMBERS:

(the first number is the phone number, the second number is the fax number)

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Administration 202-225-2801 202-225-5823
Rep. Baron Hill (IN-09), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy 202-225-5315 202-226-6866
Rep. Jim Matheson (UT-02), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications 202-225-3011 (202) 225-5638
Altmire, Jason (PA-04) 202-225-2565 202-226-2274
Baca, Joe (CA-43) 202-225-6161 202-225-8671
Barrow, John (GA-12) 202-225-2823 202-225-3377
Berry, Marion (AR-01) 202-225-4076 202-225-5602
Bishop, Sanford (GA-02) 202-225-3631 202-225-2203
Boren, Dan (OK-02) 202-225-2701 202-225-3038
Boyd, Allen (FL-02) 202-225-5235 202-225-5615
Bright, Bobby (AL-02) 202-225-2901 202-225-8913
Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18) 202-225-6131
Carney, Christopher (PA-10) 202-225-3731
Childers, Travis (MS-01) 202-225-4306 202-225-3549
Cooper, Jim (TN-05) 202-225-4311 202-226-1035
Costa, Jim (CA-20) 202-225-3341 202-225-9308
Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) 202-225-1640 202-225-1641
Dahlkemper, Kathy (PA-03) 202-225-5406 202-225-3103
Davis, Lincoln (TN-04) 202-225-6831 202-226-5172
Donnelly, Joe (IN-02) 202-225-3915 202-225-6798
Gordon, Bart (TN-06) (202) 225-4231
Holden, Tim (PA-17) (202) 225-5546 (202) 226-0996
Kratovil, Jr., Frank (MD-01) (202) 225-5311 (202) 225-0254
McIntyre, Mike (NC-07) (202) 225-2731 (202) 225-5773
Markey, Betsy (CO-04) 202.225.4676 202-225-5870
Marshall, Jim (GA-08) 202-225-6531 202-225-3013
Matheson, Jim (UT-02) (202) 225-3011 (202) 225-5638
Melancon, Charlie (LA-03) (202) 225-4031 (202) 226-3944
Michaud, Mike (ME-02) 202-225-6306 202-225-2943
Minnick, Walt (ID-01) (202) 225-6611 202) 225-3029
Mitchell, Harry (AZ-05) (202) 225-2190 N/A
Moore, Dennis (KS-03) (202) 225-2865 (202) 225-2807
Murphy, Scott (NY-20) (202) 225-5614 (202) 225-1168
Nye, Glenn (VA-02) (202) 225-4215 202) 225-4218
Peterson, Collin (MN-07) (202) 225-2165 202) 225-1593
Salazar, John (CO-03) 202-225-4761 202-226-9669
Scott, David (GA-13) (202) 225-2939 202) 225-4628
Space, Zack (OH-18) (202) 225-6265 (202) 225-3394
Tanner, John (TN-08) (202) 225-4714 (202) 225-1765
Taylor, Gene (MS-04) 202-225-5772 202.225.7074

And as a reminder about how typically sleazy this bill is, check this out:

Facing wide-ranging blowback from an exemption tailored for the National Rifle Association, House Democratic leaders have decided to expand the carve-out from disclosure requirements in a campaign finance measure they are trying to pass this week.

The new standard lowers the membership requirement for outside groups from 1 million members to 500,000. Those groups would still need to have members in 50 states, have existed for 10 years and can accept no more than 15 percent of their funding from corporate or union sources. The broader bill, called the DISCLOSE Act, comes in response to the controversial Supreme Court decision in January that struck down limits on corporate and union spending in elections. The bill would force groups participating in elections to name their top donors, among other changes.

The Wrong Path

2010-06-15T12:28:00.001-07:00

There is a young woman in Venezuela who blogs about what is really happening inside Venezuela under Hugo Chavez' dictatorship, The end of Venezuela as I know it. As you read her posts, you wonder, how could there be any Americans that support him or his government? How is it that our own President stood shoulder to shoulder with Chavez in demonizing Honduras when they followed their Constitution and kicked out a guy who was trying to become a Chavez-like dictator?

I am going to repost one of her posts in particular because it is a fair warning about the path down which many of those in power would like to take us. And, in light of Obama's guaranteed push for Cap-and-Tax tonight in his speech, this is highly relevant. In this post, Julia writes about how miserable life is when the government gets to shut off your water and fines you for using too much electricity.

And if you think that can't happen here, then answer this question: why does Fannie Mae, the mortgage company, own patents on cap-and-trade technology? Why has the Obama administration spent the last few months fighting Freedom of Information Requests aimed at Fannie Mae and their finances, considering they are a root cause of the housing crisis, and we are on the hook for billions of dollars to bail them out?

Think about the crooked liars and the corruption, and the wheeling and dealing that is still happening among those in power as you read Julia's post below.

Misery (written a few weeks ago)

Life is miserable. Not my life, but life in general, as a whole. Even through we try to keep standing, with our heads up; even through we try to be the best in our jobs and return home to comfort our families and our couple, even when we smile and have good moments and joke. I see movies of people having personal struggles, or issues and I realize that I have a perfect life. I have a loving family who would do anything for me, I have a perfect boyfriend for me, I have loyal friends, a career, a full time incredible job, a couple of hobbies; not a lot of money but enough to keep decent standards sometimes. And yet, life is miserable.

That line comes as one breathtaking truth every time I enter a mall and its lights are half on: only the necessary ones for you to walk through the hallways. The rest are of: the lights of the shelves are off; the lights of some areas of the parking line are off.

Whenever I enter a place from the subway to a shop to realize that there is no air conditioner on; where you used to need a sweater, people are now sweating and you can read it in their eyes: the heat is a reminder of how miserable our lives have suddenly become.

Whenever feel guilty every time I turn on the TV or plug any other equipment, or charge my laptop; it is miserable or avoid turning on the lights even at night; because if your electricity bill arrives and you have no lower your watts consume, you will be fined and even have your service cut for 24 hours; you realize that life is miserable.

Life is miserable if the streets look darker than usual in one of the most dangerous cities of the world.

Life is miserable at least twice a week and during this week it was miserable five days of it; because we didn’t have running water and our tank, as a result, is now empty. We were getting used to run every time we noticed we had running water, to take a bath and wash the dishes and, if we were lucky; our clothes.

Now my mom is telling us that we might have to use our clothes more than once and take more baths using pots and saving every drop of water that we can. Tell that to someone like me, a girl like any other, accustomed to the comforts of a middle class life and with very high hygiene standards.

My sister just went out to buy as many bottles of water she can find, big or small because we don’t know when we are going to have current water again.

My days are now hot and dry, and dirty too. Uncomfortable, sad, always asking me how much I can take.

I can’t scream, I can’t complain. There is nothing we can do about it. We are in the middle of dry season and no proper investments were made to go through this season without lacking basic resources.

We are here fighting hard to keep our living standards, but our living standards seem now distant to me. My bathroom looks now like an ornament because nothing of it works without water. And the TV, DVD, lights, microwave, and washing machine are also ornaments because even if we have electricity, we are warned to not use them much. My whole house looks like a reminder of another age, where resources were abundant and we did not have to worry about it. We could have the luxury of worrying about anything else.

You know, today is my second anniversary. I’m remembering my first anniversary and I’m carrying a smile. I was worried about looking beautiful and nothing else. Now I’m filling some pots to take a bath, I feel ashamed because I can’t take a complete bath in the shower to go to my anniversary lunch. Before going to lunch, my boyfriend and I must stop at some supermarket to buy as many water as we can and bring them back home, even if this bothers our initial budget for having a lunch at a good restaurant.

I feel ashamed, sad, and over all miserable; when I should be smiling because I’m going to celebrate the joy of spending two years with the greatest person I have ever met. But no life is perfect if you are missing some drops: some drops of water, some drops of dignity, some drops of respect, some drops of freedom.

No smile is complete, if is surrounded by misery.

Stop Fiddling

2010-06-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

11 men died in that explosion.

June 10 was the day that the President announced his invitation for the family members of the men who died in the rig explosion to meet with him.

Today is June 14.

We all know now that President Obama is not a leader. That much has been made clear to us over the last year and a half. We knew he liked to vote "present" while in the state legislature, and we know he started campaigning for the presidency after an extraordinarily short tenure in the US Senate. In fact, we know he thought he wasn't qualified enough for the position. We know he never held a job of consequence in the real world (academia does not count), he never produced anything, and we know he never ran anything except his campaign for President. (He touted running a presidential campaign as an example of his ability to be President, remember?)

We all know he loves parties. Did I mention he loves parties that raise tons of cash for the Democrats? We all know he loves celebrities, going out for a night on the town, going on vacation, playing golf, playing golf, playing golf, playing golf, and he loves being the super-cool, rock star President.

We all know Obama didn't even want to talk to the CEO of BP. We now know he was aware of the size of the disaster very early on, but made no efforts to convey this or respond to it appropriately. We all know that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal begged for three to five million feet of boom less than one week after the explosion and that he has only received about 800,000 feet as of the last report. We all know that President Obama is also Commander in Chief Obama who has access to the vast resources of the military, including the Army Corps of Engineers (pronounced core, not corpse) and the National Guard. We all know that that the National Guard is good at these types of things and that the military already possesses the organizational structure, chain of command, and resources necessary to combat the oil spill, they just need the orders to do so.

We know that Obama promised to clean up the corruption at the MMS and the department of Interior during his campaign and yet has done nothing about it in his first 18 months because he was solely focused on forcing through the health care bill that the majority of Americans still want repealed. We know that his administration gave BP a safety award in 2009. We know that his M.O. is to blame everyone else when challenges exist. We know Obama has no problem getting into bed with corporations if it furthers his own ideologically driven agenda, contrary to his populist rhetoric.

We know all of this. What we didn't know was that the President had yet to meet with the family members of the deceased rig workers. We hit the eight week mark tomorrow, Tuesday, and Obama is only now just getting around to inviting the family members. I can't imagine many other US Presidents acting so cavalier about an incident of this magnitude.

Hope and change? More like hope that round of "Hey Jude" was worth it champ because America is burning, and we are looking for a leader, for a change.

More photos here.

Quiet on the set!

2010-06-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Cross posted at State Budget Solutions

It is well known that Governor Chris Christie is a tough guy when it comes to budgets, after all he must, in order to put New Jersey's financial house back in to some sort of order. One industry that will feel the pain of some cuts is the entertainment industry. Gov. Christie's budget cuts the twenty percent tax credit for certain production costs associated with film and television, and they are not happy. Yesterday, a protest was held by actors (semi-famous ones!), stunt doubles, producers, and lobbyists to show their discontentment with the budget cuts.

He was flanked by plasma-screen televisions that showed episodes of "Mercy" - NBC's medical drama shot on location in Jersey City. The tax credit's looming expiration led NBC to begin stripping equipment from its Secaucus warehouse and shipping it to New York, which has proposed boosting its incentive to $420 million annually.

O'Leary admitted "Mercy," which was recently canceled, was doomed anyway by low ratings. But the show may get picked up by a cable network, allowing workers to keep their jobs - if a generous tax credit program makes it financially viable, he said.

Ahhhh. So the tax credit is really more of a subsidy for a commodity that no one wants and therefore does not buy (watch). Notice, a "generous" tax credit is necessary to make the show "Mercy" financially viable. No wonder they are bummed about Christie's cuts.

The other gem gleaned from the article is the following:

People think of all the glitz and glamour that the motion picture industry brings," said Angela Miele, a vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents such firms as Disney, Sony and Paramount Pictures. "But what it really brings is lots of jobs. Our member companies operate like all other for-profit businesses and they will go where it is cheapest.

A basic economics lesson brought to you by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Disgusting: Jew-hater of the day, Helen Thomas

2010-06-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

I might have to make this a daily feature if all the of the Jew-hating Americans keep showing their true colors so openly. It's time to call these people out and let them know their hatred is not welcome in the United States of America.

More on why the SEIU stinks

2010-06-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

So apparently SEIU owes Bank of America a whole bunch of money. Hmmm. Their solution? Trespass a Bank of America employee's property and scare the crud out of his kid.

And yet Bank of America is mentioned 5,170 times on SEIU's web site, with most mentions being attacks on the bank and its CEO, Ken Lewis. By comparison, Lehmann Brothers gets 144 mentions on SEIU's website, Goldman Sachs 688 and AIG 144.

Why the Bank of America obsession? Here's a clue: In 2008, the union's total liabilities were $156 million. According to Department of Labor filings, in 2007 the SEIU owed $94,578,779 to ... Bank of America.

Also, why is it that the union leaders have separate pensions from the rank and file union members?

There's also this: SEIU members are being robbed -- not by Wall Street but their own union. In 2005, SEIU's pension plan was only 82 percent properly funded, which, by government standards, officially made it "endangered." It's almost certainly has gotten worse since then.

Maybe that's why SEIU officers have their own fully-funded pension plan separate from the endangered fund for the rank and file. Are SEIU leaders making trouble for the union's biggest creditor to keep people from noticing it is heading for bankruptcy?

"We con the world"

2010-06-04T12:52:00.001-07:00

Awesome.

It is happening people!

2010-06-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Watch the video below and feel the horror that this sort of hateful anti-Jewish sentiment is so openly displayed and ACCEPTED in the United States of America. The set up: a young high school boy shows up to an anti-Israel protest with his Israeli flag. The hateful mob chases him around and yells things like "Allahu Akbar" and "murderer" and so on. Watch it and then think about the question posted below.

So that one girl yells "You killed my people! You killed my people!" (Who at the end also states that Israel has no right to exist.) And the police must separate the rabid crowd from the lone boy, right? When Muslim extremists flew planes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, and over 3,000 civilians were murdered - deliberately mind you - the vast, vast majority of Americans not only didn't protest outside of a Muslim country's embassy, nor did a mob try to attack a high school boy, nor did we cry out "murderer!" to every passing Muslim, but rather, most Americans united and tried hard to reach out to Muslims. As a nation, our President set the tone when he called for love, not hate, and everyone from the President on down made it clear that bigotry toward Muslims was not acceptable.

But now, when Israel tries to defend itself from those same terror elements by simply trying to check the cargo of the flotilla - to ensure it wasn't a weapons transfer to Hamas - and when the Israeli soldiers are viciously attacked by the terror sympathizers on the boat, and when the soldiers defend themselves, NOW it's okay to harrass and intimidate a young Israeli kid? Now it's okay to yell "murderer?" Now it's okay to openly talk about the destruction of Israel and her people? So the question is this: when are we as a society going to hold Muslims to the same standards of tolerance and decency by which we hold ourselves?

For a very good read about "anti-civilization" go here.

Random thoughts this morning

2010-05-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

*The President's much-loved narrative (delivered personally or via OFA emails) about "the people" being "instruments of change" and "beating back the special interests" needs to be challenged. Let's just analyze it for a moment by using Scott Brown's stated reason for voting yes on the Permanent Bailout bill - oh excuse me, the Financial Regulation bill. He said he received 3,000 phone calls from OFA volunteers and it swayed him.

So let me ask you this: who is the most powerful man in the world? That's right, Barack Obama. What group exists solely to push his policies and ideology? That's right, Organizing for America (formerly known as Organizing for Obama and still uses the URL of www.barackobama.com). So when the most powerful man in the world uses the group formed exclusively to push his own agenda organizes 3,000 people out of the over 300 million in the US, exactly how does that constitute a mass uprising of the grassroots?

On the other hand, the Tea Party Movement started with a few random women in different states and eventually grew only by the efforts of each individual who decided to organize their own tea parties, with their own money and time, and with absolutely no connections to anyone with any power. But remember, in the Democrats' twilight zone world that we are all forced to live in, we are the ones that are astroturfed. Reminds me of when Obama's bestie Valerie Jarrett said she was "speaking truth to power." Honey, you ARE the power now, so you better start listening to the truth.

*While we're on the subject of the President and his woefully phony grassroots, let's not forget about public-sector unions and their cadre of extremely powerful and influential, beltway-insider, highly paid team of crooks and gangsters who thuggishly intimidate and threaten 14 year-old children and families in their own homes in order steal more money from the private sector. Just take a look at how public-sector unions broke California.

PS: will Nancy Pelosi shed some tears about the actual violence and threats from the left? Will she and the other ten thousand Democrats and lefty journalists write and speak about their fears of political upheaval now that the unions are the ones actually being violent? Or will they pretend that nothing has happened and continue to make stuff up about the Tea Partiers? I know which one I'm betting on.

Here's an idea: there are millions and millions of unemployed people in the private-sector. Let's fire all of the current public-sector employees who greedily refuse to take pay freezes, pay cuts, or pay a pittance into their own benefit plans, and replace them with the private-sector unemployed! I'm sure these new employees will no doubt be very grateful for the job and won't mind renegotiating the contracts to a sustainable and fiscally responsible level!

*Looks like a Harvard Business School study on the effects of government spending on private enterprise surprised everyone (except those that actually understand basic economics) including the researchers. They found... drum roll please.... that government spending adversely effects the growth of private business and increases unemployment!! Ta da!! Great job Champ. Is Keynesianism dead yet?

*Speaking of wasted dollars we just don't have. This John Stossel episode does a very good job of pointing out how one of the worst possible results of government spending/stimulus spending is that it allows the government to pick winners and losers. Since when did that become okay for all of you progressives out there? You really want to hand the power over to a few people in the government and allow them to dole out the funds, thereby boosting up their personal favorites and letting others crash and burn? This, by the way, is called crony capitalism. In real capitalism the consumers are free to choose who to give their business to, and therefore it is the consumers that choose the winners and losers. And that is what I call, Power to the People.

Life imitating art: Obamaphile desires dictatorship

2010-05-19T17:43:00.001-07:00

In response to this post by Ma LibertyBelle, a few of Woody Allen's defenders crawled out of the woodwork to rationalize away his desire for an Obama dictatorship. One of the most laughable comments was that because Woody Allen is a comedian, we must therefore view everything he says through that lens. Pardon me, but as a person that works closely with many comedians, I can tell you that they are intelligent people that sometimes say serious things about which they feel passionately. But like I said, that was a laughable comment.

However, the following comment was not funny at all, rather, it was an extremely informative look into the mindset of some leftists/progressives/Obamaphiles. I don't usually have time to respond to commenters, or to repost their comments, but I could not let this one pass without calling attention to it.

Secondly, I had a realization many years ago that living in a dictatorship under the ruler who shares all of your values would not feel like a dictatorship. You would be able to live your life as you please because that's they way the dictator requires you to live. Allen's joke about an Obama dictatorship reflects this, just as you might fantasize about a Bush, Cheney, or Ron Paul dictatorship.

Where to even begin with this???!! I don't know whether to be disgusted, saddened, frightened, appalled... The commenter "Dancar" actually wants someone ordering him/her around and thinks it would be quite nice, so long as the dictator shares his/her values. This begs so many questions, including, if you share values with Herr Diktator, why not just run your own life??

What in the world could possibly be going on inside someone's head to think that any type of dictatorship is not just acceptable, but preferable somehow? Are you that lazy? Incompetent? Is it a lack of self-esteem? No ambition? Do you hate yourself? Do you hate others? It defies the fundamental nature of the human being to desire slavery for oneself, and it morphs into the ridiculous when the desire is based on the tenuous, flawed and ludicrous idea that you "share" values with the dictator.

I have never, ever, ever known a Conservative or Libertarian, etc. to EVER desire a dictatorship regardless of who is in power. Never, ever, ever. The notion of voluntarily handing over your rights as an individual, the rights inherent within each human being, to anyone, is wholly antithetical to everything we believe in. I don't care who is in power or what party they belong to, I will never submit to, nor have I ever "fantasized" about, a dictator.

You, Dancar, are one sick puppy, and I sincerely hope that there are not many more people like you out there.

Musings on the 1970 movie The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Woody Allen, 2010

2010-05-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

By Ma LibertyBelle

Recently, Woody Allen was quoted by a Spanish language newspaper to have said it would good if Barack Obama could be a dictator for a few years. The story was carried by several internet sites including Gateway Pundit.

The utter reality-defying, dream-walking, finger-in-the-ears quality of Woody Allen's statement reminded me of an old but amazingly well-done movie entitled, "The Gardens of the Finzi-Continis". The movie is about a very wealthy Italian Jewish family in 1938 when Mussolini's racial laws are beginning to take force. There really was such a family. In an article in the The Jewish Weekly (November 19, 1999), Nora Contini (a family descendent) writes,

Contini is an old Italian Jewish name. The book on which the film was based was written by Giorgio Bassani, a contemporary of my father's. The book, however, is a novel, and like most novels it is a mosaic of fact and fiction. The name is ours, but the story is a blend of many families and many fantasies.

One movie reviewer summarized the story thus:

Like similar ones of his Nazi brethren, (Mussolini's) laws start to clamp down on the rights of people of Jewish lineage. The proscribed list includes no servants, no phone listings, no library privileges, no public schools, and no obituaries. And it goes on and on. As the show opens, however, the law's harshness seems irrelevant to our protagonists. Biking through spectacular scenery, a group of affluent (Jewish) college students is the embodiment of serenity.

Another review says:

Simply stated, THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS is a dream. Not a dream in any conventional sense, but a dream nevertheless. It is set in Italy just before and during the start of World War II. The aristocratic Jewish families in the story live in a dream world believing fascism will leave their plush existence untouched. [Emphasis added]

This seems to be the kind of dream world that Woody Allen and other Hollywood radicals like Sean Penn and Michael Moore inhabit. They embrace dictators like Venzuela's Hugo Chavez and pine for an American Dictator of their very own. Such a Dictator could accomplish SO MUCH GOOD! Of course, THEIR personal wealth, extensive and ostentatious real estate holdings, freedom of unfettered travel, unlimited consumption of energy resources and opulent luxury items, etc., would NOT be touched by any of the American Dictator's policies and actions.

THEY would be part of the In-Crowd. They would be standing at the side of or sitting at the feet of the American Dictator, occasionally whispering observations and tidbits of advice into his ears, patting his back and high-fiving the nationalization of industries, the expropriation of family ranches for redistribution to the landless, the rationing of consumer use of water, electricity, natural gas and gasoline (see the blog of a young woman living in Chavez's Venezuela).

This is the only possible explanation for the idiocies that emerge from the mouths of Woody Allen and radical left Hollywood. Of course, the same must be said about the feminists, the gays and lesbians, the jet set hedonists, the MSM "journalists", left-wing politicians, and even some christian church members who deny the existence of rabid radical islam and excuse any outrage perpetrated by adherents while screaming Allah Akbar!

Based on Woody Allen's personal life choices (such as molesting and then marrying an adopted daughter), one might judge his latest statement as just evidence of his personal mental imbalance...Oh, if it were only this one pathetic little man who is so deluded.

Anti-semitism knocking at the door

2010-05-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

Astounding. Disgusting. Take your pick. The girl in this video is revolting, as only those who hate Jewish people can be.

This was brought to my attention by my mom and by Francine in the comments. I had to repost it. David Horowitz is a hero.

A call for help - asap

2010-05-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who took a two-week class. In that class, she and her group picked a topic, worked together, and presented their topic to the class. This girl and her group chose Net Neutrality as their topic, and as part of their presentation they created a blog and a PowerPoint slideshow. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

What if I told you that this class project was leaked to the super-lefties of the world and that they are FREAKING OUT? You would think that they would have more sense than that, right?

Wrong.

If you can't tell by now, this is a true story. My friend Kristin put together a PowerPoint about Net Neutrality and how to fight it. Someone leaked her class assignment to Think Progress and other civilized and tolerant left-wingers, and they are indeed freaking out. I know you think I am exaggerating, but I am not. They are acting as though they have found the documents that prove JFK was not killed by a lone gunman. Seriously.

They have taken over the Facebook page, the blog, and are dragging Kristin's good name through the mud. She is getting death threats and obscene messages, and it is unacceptable. They are lying through their teeth and frothing at the mouth, asserting that the PowerPoint was financed by some shady uber-coalition of free-market think tanks and activist groups (which they call "corporate") and that Kristin is just a tool for "the man."

I find this to be pretty funny because a conservative activist organization that has millions of contributors and donors as well as a wealthy benefactor, is somehow corporate, but a progressive activist organization that has millions of contributors and donors AND a wealthy benefactor (paging George Soros) is somehow grassroots.

Enough is enough. If you have a few extra minutes today, please consider dropping by the Facebook page and the blog and leaving supportive comments for Kristin, and for the argument against Net Neutrality.

And honestly, I've just been making fun of them because these groups and people have become caricatures of themselves and everyday they seem to fling themselves further and further away from reality.

"No Net Brutality": Facebook page
Blog: http://www.nonetbrutality.com/
Twitter: @nonetbrutality

50 ways to reduce state budget shortfalls

2010-05-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma, Budget Shortfalls, and Paul Simon

50 ways to reduce the budget shortfall

Tom Daxon, a former Okalahoma state auditor, was listening to Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" and was inspired - not to break up with someone - but rather to construct a list of 50 ideas to tackle Oklahoma's budget shortfall. Not surprisingly, many of his ideas could be applied to all state budget shortfalls. He points out that part of the problem in Oklahoma is the heavy reliance on federal money, which is also a major problem in almost every other state.

In 1981, Oklahoma funded 28 percent of state expenditures with federal dollars. By 2009, that had increased to 40 percent and is doubtless higher in the current year due to added federal stimulus money.

The obvious issue here is that the federal government is broke too, so this ever-increasing dependence on federal dollars is only going to make the eventual corrections more painful. It's a shame that politicians do not, or will not, understand this. Daxon's solutions range from requiring public employees to contribute small amounts to their own health care costs (as we in the private sector must) to eliminating funding for the public television station and the Arts Council (suggesting funds come from donations instead) to using private veterinarians to certify that cattle are healthy enough for sale.

He acknowledges that even implementing all 50 ideas will not be enough. Our state governments will have to fundamentally change their understanding of funding and budgeting.

Government budgeting is often referred to as "cutting up the pie," and agencies tend to think of having their own share of that pie. We must relentlessly challenge that mentality. Each agency should get as much as it needs to achieve the goals the governor and legislature set before it-and no more.

He is referring to Reality Based Budgeting, something that Stage Budget Solutions supports fully. Daxon also touches on a possible reason underlying the failure of both state governments and the federal government to operate within realistic budgets, and how we, not the politicians, are really to blame.

Perhaps we ourselves have become overly fond of socialist programs. We travel on government roads and occasionally government trains. We send our kids to government schools and attend government colleges. More of us are getting our health care through government-funded programs and even at government-run facilities from government employees.

Are we getting too comfortable in a potentially destructive relationship?

Daxon is correct in the assertion that most Americans have become accustomed to government providing too many services. This high level of comfortability then breeds a complacency that results in a lack of knowledge and understanding about how those services are provided and how much they cost. The majority of Americans are naturally very concerned with national affairs, but to the detriment of state issues, and specifically state budget issues.

However, that tide can change, and Daxon's list of 50 ways to leave the debt behind is a great place to start.

State Budget Solutions

2010-04-27T11:26:00.001-07:00

I've been blogging recently for a new website/project called State Budget Solutions. In a nutshell, state budgets are in dire straits. I mean dire. And it's about time that we started looking at realistic solutions or we are all in deep you-know-what. We need reality based budgeting and this website/project, as it grows, will be integral to getting that information out to you. Then you can do something about it by contacting your legislators and writing letters to editors, and so on. Bookmark the website and friend us on Facebook and Twitter!

I've cross-posted my latest blog post below.

Tax Hikes in Washington State Now a Reality
Gov. Gregoire breaks her campaign promise
by KELI CARENDER April 26 ,2010

"I won't raise taxes in tough economic times. We're not going to be raising taxes."

Famous last words.

Friday, April 23, 2010 marks the day that Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire signed a new package of tax hikes into law. It also marks the day that she broke her pledge to avoid raising taxes, especially during the recession. Via the AP:

Calling it a "sensible and modest" solution to Washington's historic budget crisis, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Friday approved a revenue package that nets roughly $780 million to avoid deeper cuts in education, health care and human services.

The author neglects to question two very important assertions made by Governor Gregoire. The first is, do Washingtonians really need more taxes in order to avoid cutting education, health care and human services further? According to her, yes. According to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF), no, and not by a long shot. In fact, EFF found mountains of wasteful spending that Governor Gregoire and the Democrats running Olympia refuse to acknowledge, let alone cut.

So while the Governor attempts to frighten Washington residents into accepting multiple tax hikes this year, and most likely again next year, she and other Democrats in Olympia spend money on items like golf resorts. As Amber Gunn of EFF points out:

Today, taxpayers are being told that the choice is between people losing their feet and going homeless, or higher taxes. Is this really the debate we are going to have this session? Then perhaps the governor's budget team could quantify how many feet could be saved with money the state is spending on the $20,000 capitol holiday tree, the $30,000 state poet laureate, the $3 million capital investment in the museum of Flight Space Gallery in Seattle or $511,000 for the Chambers Bay golf resort in Tacoma. Sure, these few waste items won't save the budget, but it does illustrate the dysfunction of a system that puts those priorities above the ones the governor is claiming will have to be cut.

So let us dispense with the myth that cutting government spending automatically means states must make devastating cuts in education, health care, and protective services like police and first responders. Why does the Governor insist on cutting so-called "vital" services when she refuses to cut out the garbage first? If the AP author had done his job correctly, he would have asked that question first.

The second assertion that the author fails to challenge is the idea that the Democrats in Olympia somehow, miraculously, and against all odds, were able to solve a $9 billion deficit without raising taxes.

This year's budget was a tune-up of the main two-year state budget, which lasts through mid-2011. Democrats solved a roughly $9 billion deficit in the two-year budget in 2009 without raising taxes.

This claim is outright laughable. It is also a very real, and very unfortunate problem that plagues governors across the nation. Many of our country's Governors will claim that the state has a deficit of astronomical proportions, but they promise to do everything they can to solve the problem without raising taxes. The only complication here is that those huge deficits are frequently, literally made up. From Bob Williams of EFF:

Legislators of both parties allow bureaucrats to report a budget shortfall as the difference between what the governor wants to spend (not the current budget) vs the revenue forecast. We have not found any state that reports a shortfall as the difference between the current level of spending and the revenue forecast. Thus, most shortfalls are highly inflated.

So in reality, Governor Gregoire wanted to spend $9 billion more than the state was slated to collect in revenue. That is, the revenue that pays for existing and current programs and services. The dishonest and disingenuous part of this political theater is that she tried to make Washingtonians think that they were $9 billion underwater on current expenses, when in fact they are running a roughly $2.8 billion shortfall - due to increased spending, year after year, despite negative revenue forecasts - but that is just another piece of the puzzle.

Therefore, claiming that the Democrats and Gov. Gregoire were able to solve a nonexistent $9 billion deficit is laughable at best, and irresponsible, ignorant, partisan journalism at worst. Keep an eye out for more budget gimmicks and scare tactics as Gov. Gregoire realizes her recent tax hikes will not solve her problem of bloated and ineffective government.

Back in town!

2010-04-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I can't believe I never got to post about our Tax Day Tea Parties! I rushed out of town the very next morning and it's been go-go-go ever since, going out of town a second time in one week. I'm getting married on Saturday as well so you can imagine how busy things are this week. Please forgive me for abandoning the blog.

First item, the Tea Parties!

The Tea Parties were a rousing success, all across the nation, and even in ol' blue Seattle. We had around 1,000 people in downtown Seattle, and about a dozen counter protesters. The counter protesters, by the way, were all white and old. They looked like a bunch of old, burned-out hippies with frazzled hair and they smelled of pot and patchouli. I thought it funny that they had no one else but white people in their group while we have many Tea Party members of all different races and ethnicities. Hmmmm. They must be racists then, obviously.

We had no problems with "infiltrators" and the Seattle Police Department were there to keep the peace, and they were wonderfully helpful. We had one guy right behind the stage who kept yelling "bullsh*t" while our speakers were talking, but we just ignored him and went on. Eventually a friend of mine engaged him in conversation and completely owned him as he had no real basis for his anger and beliefs.

Again, I am always amazed at the friendship, politeness, intelligence, patriotism, and all around niceness of our crowds. We cleaned up after ourselves, we didn't yell at people, we smiled and we had fun!

A big thanks goes out to all of our speakers and volunteers because this event would never, ever have happened without you all. My dad took some video of everyone and as soon as I get it I will update the post with the video.

I just can't say enough about how well it went!

I will say this though: the time for protesting is winding down as campaign season picks up. I will be choosing my candidates in the next couple of weeks and I will be spending much more time on their campaigns than I will on organizing protests. We must be victorious at the ballot box or we will be up a raging creek without a paddle. We will only win in November if each of you finds one or two candidates to support and you give it your all. We all must sacrifice to get good people elected. Please, please make your decisions as soon as possible and COMMIT!

Most of all, please don't give up. I've heard so many nasty things from supposedly decent people who claim to be my friend, and so I know it can be hard to keep going. But that is exactly the reason they are piling on. DO NOT LET THE HATERS WIN. They have no interest in dialogue, they only seek to destroy you, your motivation, your emotions, your energy, and our movement.

It is up to you whether or not they are successful.

Second item, my wedding!

I just wanted to give a brief description as people have been asking about it. We are getting married in a very small, immediate-family-only wedding. I don't need giant production and I certainly don't have the money for one. With the economy the way it is, and the direction in which Obamanomics is taking us all, I didn't want to spend frivolously. You see, unlike the government, I look at my revenue and my expenses and I decide whether or not I can afford something. When I decide that I cannot, I move on and I do not buy it. Duh! That's the same reason we're not honeymooning yet. It's just not in the cards for us right now. Do I wish that we could afford a great, tropical honeymoon? Of course, but we can't, so we have that as a goal to work towards. The important thing is the marriage, not the other stuff surrounding it.

Thanks for all of your kind words and support and forgive me for the lack of posting last week and this week!

Happy Tuesday!

By any other name

2010-04-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

By Littlefish

It is refreshing when something of importance to you, something you have been arguing for years, finally breaches the surface and enters into public discourse. So is the case with Organized Labor. After years of being able to ignore my obscure arguments, they are now front and center in the debate surrounding how to ‘shore up’ the listing, or rather, sinking ships known as State and Local Governments.

It became clear to me that the issue of over-paid, unionized government workers with unsustainable benefit and retirement packages had made it out of the shadow realm of public discourse when even the Los Angeles Times mentioned how “The state's unfunded pension costs totaled $59.5 billion while unfunded healthcare costs were $62.5 billion,” and now we have Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who according to the Wall St Journal “once organized for a teacher's union… and later ran a branch of the American Federation of Government Employees” looking to re-open contract negotiations with city employees in an effort to assuage the city’s financial woes (they’re going broke like the rest of the state). The WSJ also quoted Villaraigosa’s deputy chief of staff, Matt Szabo, as having said: "Unions have priced themselves out of a job." Amazing. Even a liberal can notice the obvious.

But not all liberals are quite that sharp of course, for instance, one of my favorite quotes from Presidente Obama in the last year showed how even the top brass of the liberal / progressive movement are completely willing to ignore the obvious in return for a proper payoff. In his speech to the AFL-CIO convention on September 15, 2009, Presidente Obama raised a rallied cry for his assertion that his stimulus package known as the Recovery Act was “a plan that didn’t include any of the usual Washington earmarks or pork-barrel spending. But what it did include was a guarantee to uphold Davis Bacon and pay prevailing wages.” Really, he said that, I watched him; he said it in almost the same breath, without any hint of sarcasm at all. Uphold Davis Bacon? Not the usual pork? Well I suppose if you want to hide something, in plain sight is your best bet.

Tell me, what is not pork about the Davis Bacon act? Davis Bacon is the only pork I don’t like for breakfast.

Prevailing wage is the term they use to remind people how important unions are to working families, how Unions have fought for the workingman. I must say, there is nothing ‘Prevailing’ about the prevailing wage. Ever wonder why public works projects run into the hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars? Prevailing wage is good start. Couple that with politicians issuing contracts to favored constituents outside of any bidding process, and whammo, your tax dollars at work!

Let me set this up…

According to the Washington State Department of Labor and industries, “Prevailing Wage is defined as the hourly wage, usual benefits and overtime, paid in the largest city in each county, to the majority of workers, laborers, and mechanics. Prevailing wages are established, by the Department of Labor & Industries, for each trade and occupation employed in the performance of public work. They are established separately for each county, and are reflective of local wage conditions.” “Public works projects paid for by public funding must pay prevailing wage rates.” The Department establishes this rate and any employee working on a public works project (from one of the chosen job classifications) must be paid the Prevailing wage for that classification. There are many different Prevailing wages depending of course on the negotiating skill of each union affected, such as plumbers and pipe fitters in King County, WA earn a prevailing wage for public works projects of $66.44 an hour, and drywall tapers on the same project earn $48.79 per hour, and those friendly folks with the STOP/SLOW signs on either end of a road project earn $33.93 and hour, before overtime.

I have no intention to judge anyone’s work or ability or worth in so far as each individual has their own worth and deserves whatever rate of pay they can fetch in an open market, but there is where I come to my point… the open market. To me, prevailing wage means, if the job were open to all comers, what would equally qualified persons be willing to do the job for? Which wage would prevail? I know for a fact that I can get someone to work on the plumbing of my building for $30 and hour, $45 tops. Drywall tapers, $15. If I needed someone to stand and hold a stop sign? Well, fixed posts do that job pretty well in most other applications, but I could be convinced there is a high touch necessary to the turning of the sign and allow that someone may, by performing that task effortlessly and flawlessly, be deserving of, say, minimum wage? With reported unemployment around 10%, I am sure the benefit package alone would make that job easily worth $8 or $9 dollars an hour to someone out of work. People would likely be lining up for the job. So, if the job could be done at a far lower price than is required by law, what exactly is prevailing about Prevailing wage? We have to look at the Act that brought us prevailing wage and the stuff it is made of, Davis Bacon… pork.

The incestuous relationship between Unions and politicians is no secret. That “we the people” allow it to go on is just as bad as a mother that lets her child be continually abused by her stepfather. The first conversation between a Union boss and a politician must have gone something like this: “So then, I’ll make a law that forces people to pony up tax money to pay your workers more than anyone else would pay them, you skim a bunch of money off the top for yourself, ‘contribute’ some of that back to me for my re-election campaign, and then next year I can get us both even more money. Man, we can ride this pyramid scheme right to the top!”

Really, this cuts more to the heart of out of control government spending, the bloated and unfunded pension liabilities that governments face are more about actual government workers, not the false wage rates paid to otherwise private workers that work on government projects, but for me, it proves a necessary point. It is so out-in-the-open-obvious what is going on.

If you take in a protest event at the capitol or anywhere a lot of hype has been boiled up, you are sure to see droves of same shirted union employees, chanting off pre-printed cards, holding pre-printed signs, all in unison to attempt to persuade the officials in their offices to do their bidding. A show of force, “this is how many votes we have, and we all agree. See, we even wear the same shirts and rode in on the same union provided busses because we all agree so much! Tax everyone else more so we can continue our little pyramid scheme please.” These days, we are lucky to have the Tea Partiers, or as they have been so lovingly called, the Tea Baggers! (I love it. Tea Bag the D-bags! Thanks Liberty) who at least show up in their own clothes with their own signs and their own concerns. I say we are lucky to have them because it wasn’t really until they showed up and provided a control sample of what non-unionized people (most of the population) are concerned with, that it became so easy to spot the union/politician pyramid scheme in action.

Many liberal friends of mine will argue that we need government to protect us from evil business, and we need unions to protect us from evil business. So tell me then, if both government and unions are the angels the liberals want them to be, why do government workers need to be unionized? Why should you have to protect government workers from themselves?

Now we see the scam at its root. Unions and Liberal politicians need a secure base of income and votes, and unionizing public employees was, really, a brilliant play. Criminally brilliant. Basically extorting tax payers dollars to pay a selected constituency who supports you financially, and at the same time, driving up costs of projects that those same tax payers fund, pushing the need for even further tax and wage increases.

Fortunately, we have laws in this country to protect the public from extortion. That brings me to how we finally get unions and politicians out of bed with one another, unless of course it’s a jailhouse bunk. It is high time to break up their racket.

The most concise explanation of the RICO act I could find comes from a Professor Hinze of the University of Florida, and he states that the RICO act “enables persons financially injured by a pattern of criminal activity to seek redress through the state or federal courts.” And we, my friends, have been perennially “financially injured” by the racketeering of Unions and Politicians. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Extortion is one of the crimes covered under racketeering.

Unions are extorting politicians for money and votes, politicians are extorting the public for the tax dollars they need to pay off the mob, uh, I mean Unions, and keep themselves in power and the pyramid growing, and honestly, they should all be put in jail. In Jail. Any politician that has ever received campaign contributions from Unions… Jailed. Any union boss that has ever… well… been… should be jailed. Purposefully campaigning to raise taxes to fund a select constituency that is going to support you with the money you raise from taxes to pay them? Racketeering! And the general public is the victim as costs soar out of control.

Attorney Generals across the country need to bring charges under the RICO act against Union bosses and the politicians that accept campaign contributions from them. Any individual union members that renounce the crime syndicate, oops I did it again, I mean Unions that they were a part of can be simply put on probation and charges dropped after a class, and test, on Austrian Economics has been completed, it is the only cure for the Union brainwashing they have endured.

I have no problem with a group of employees meeting together to discuss their grievances with their respective companies, and even standing together as a united front as they approach their boss and request or even demand more favorable pay or conditions, but once you have a paid hierarchy of ‘leaders,’ collecting ‘dues’ (extortion again) in the billions of dollars to fund politicians, and direct them to forge policy that affects the ability of the union to garner even more money and power over their constituents and the non-union public as well, it becomes nothing less than criminal.

You want to save state and local governments? Imprison Union Bosses and the Politicians that feed them, then all union contracts and pension and benefit packages for state and local workers can be thrown out since they were initiated by criminals with criminal intent. Open up the government work force to public hiring, all positions open, anyone can apply for all jobs, and everyone that is currently working for the government can re-apply, but with no guarantee. Then the pension and benefit contracts can finally be renegotiated to sustainable and truly Prevailing levels. Or we can just wait for the states to go bankrupt and everyone in government can lose their job anyway.

New blogger at Redistributing Knowledge!

2010-04-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to introduce "Littlefish," a good friend and an excellent writer and thinker. Littlefish has agreed to start blogging here at Redistributing Knowledge, and I could not be happier!

Welcome!

The Constitution is a BFD

2010-04-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

Looks like Organizing for America is capitalizing on Joe Biden's big mouth. They are selling t-shirts that say, "Health reform is a BFD," (BFD stands for big f---ing deal, fyi), commemorating Vice President Biden's F-bomb.

Profits for thee but not for me, eh OFA?

Well, two can play at this game. (Hint: that's what is awesome about capitalism.)

I believe there will be a demand for those t-shirts (which are kind of cute, I'll admit), but I think that there will be a much larger demand for t-shirts with these designs on them:

Buy yours today at http://redistributingknowledge.spreadshirt.com. Maybe we should buy the Constitution design for this guy.

I won a Sammie!

2010-03-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

My town hall appearance with Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) took first place in this year's Sammie Awards! The award is given by the Sam Adams Alliance and I feel so proud that they chose me. It's a pretty awesome day.

Civil Discourse: You First Mr. President

2010-03-30T09:35:00.001-07:00

Here is the President with Matt Lauer, talking about the current political climate and how leaders in D.C. need to set the tone so that we the people know how to act... or something.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wasn't that nice? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that it only took my President a little more than a whole year to acknowledge the legitimacy of a movement made up by millions of law-abiding, hard-working Americans. I think it's funny that he makes no connection between his own fiscal policy and our discontent, and thinks he can win us over by spending more money on ridiculous programs.

However, I do find it incredibly disingenuous when he pretends that he takes the high road when there is video evidence (you know, kind of like what we are asking for in the case of the alleged racial slur incident) of countless Democrat Party leaders taking the lowest road possible. Pardon me, but maybe he should ask his own party to cool it before he attacks everyone else.

Can we journey down this memory lane together? Yes we can!

#1: Speaker of the House of Representatives and Democrat Goddess, Nancy Pelosi, on how our movement isn't a legitimate movement of "the people."

#2: Queen Nancy on conservative rhetoric inciting violence - though nothing violent had happened and the rhetoric of which she spoke usually entailed encouraging people to stand up against the progressive and socialist-esque agenda of Obama/Pelosi/Reid.

#3: My own congressman calling us "teabaggers" as well as "indecent."

#4: Queen Nancy, yet again, accusing us of being an astroturfed as well as associating us with Nazism. Stay classy Madame Speaker.

#5: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat Party leader, equating opposition to ObamaCare with opposing the end of slavery, giving women the right to vote, and civil rights legislation. Funny, Harry Reid doesn't follow the President's own advice to assume that one's opponents are good people that have good intentions. Nope.

#6: Straight from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a very recent form letter to send to your friends to raise money for Democrats. [Emphasis mine]

This is nuts. At a time when most of America is celebrating historic health care legislation that's been a century in the making, a few narrow-minded tea party nut jobs are trying to tarnish this great achievement.

But if you think these vile two-bit wing-nuts are just gonna slink back into whatever century they crawled out from now that health care reform is the law, think again.

The same uncorked tea party rage that we saw before the health care vote is now being used against the courageous House Democrats who stood strong and made it happen.

In fact, the slimy thugs at the Republican National Committee already raised $1,494,084 in their "Fire Nancy Pelosi" campaign. That's why I'm asking you to help my Democratic friends in the House by contributing to their Million Dollar Match campaign.

Contribute to support Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats before the critical March 31st FEC fundraising deadline and your contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of committed Democrats.
http://dccc.org/fire

This is the first FEC fundraising deadline since the House passed health care reform. And, Republicans and the media are watching closely to see whether we reach our million dollar goal.

We gotta take this fight right to those Republican special interests and right-wing extremists determined to bring back the failed policies of the past.

Contribute to support House Democrats before the critical March 31st FEC fundraising deadline and your contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of committed Democrats.
http://dccc.org/fire

We will not be intimidated by the lies, distortions and hate spewing venom from the mouths of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner and the other Republican gas bags. And, we're not about to back down in the face of the tidal wave of special interest cash pouring into the campaigns of our Republican opponents thanks to the radical decision by the Supreme Court.

The March 31st FEC deadline is a golden opportunity to demonstrate that Democrats are on the march. We already dealt those tea party crazies a big blow by putting health care reform into the history books. Now let's make it a double-punch by beating them on this big fundraising deadline.

Thanks,

James Carville

P.S. Republicans failed to block health care reform. Now, they are unleashing millions of dollars of attack ads on House Democrats who voted for it. Stand with Speaker Pelosi and those courageous pro-health care Democrats. Contribute to support House Democrats before the critical March 31st FEC fundraising deadline and your contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of committed Democrats.
http://dccc.org/fire

Contribute Today:
http://dccc.org/fire

Obama's insinuations that it is only the conservatives and the Republicans that engage in unsavory behavior and rhetoric is an outright lie. He should be embarrassed and ashamed to make such accusations when the leaders of his own party are crude and insulting and apparently don't give a damn about respect or decorum.

Further, his assertion that the Tea Party Movement started with a core of "birthers" is unbelievable. The Tea Party Movement started right here in Seattle because we were sick of federal spending - by Democrats and Republicans - and we weren't going to sit back and take it anymore. I demand an apology from the President for maligning not only millions of people, but the true history of a movement. How dare he rewrite the history of this movement to suit his own political narrative? Mr. President, remember when you believed in speaking truth to power? Well, sorry to inform you, but you are now the power, and the truth is, you're wrong. And most of the time you are very condescending towards those with whom you disagree.

Lastly, just as a reminder to the President, STOP pretending that your opponents had/have no ideas for health care reform. You make a mockery of our system when you LIE about your opponents. It's revolting actually, coming from a man of your stature. So in case you forgot, here are some of the GOP's alternatives to ObamaCare (which you ignored the entire year):

Coercion is Not Health Care Act, HR 2629
Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act, HR 1495
Patients' Choice Act, HR 2520 (Go here or here for the actual text and here for the summary.)
Empowering Patients First, HR 3400
Health Care Freedom Act, S. 1324 (Go here for the actual text and here for a summary.)

When the President starts demanding his own party and leadership treat us with respect, and he actually calls them out by name, then I'll believe that he cares about civility. At that point I'll stop thinking he's a hypocrite on this issue.

Burden of Proof

2010-03-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

Due to time constraints, I haven't had a chance to address the slurs allegedly shouted by tea partiers in D.C. last weekend as the Democrats ran roughshod over the wishes of a majority of Americans. I say allegedly because last time I checked, we live in a country that requires proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, before we convict people. And that burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the accusers, not the accused. Unfortunately, that seems to be yet another part of our Constitution and legal tradition that this administration and Congress want to ignore and violate, aided and abetted by the mainstream media (a.k.a. the Democrat-Media Complex, or the DMC for short).

Who could have guessed?

The DMC's modus operandi is on display in this situation, and predictable as ever. If the accusation fits their narrative of tea partiers and aids in their efforts to smear the Tea Party Movement in such a way as to demonize and marginalize us, then the Democrat-Media Complex will descend upon it with glee and fervor, regardless of having no evidence or proof to support the accusations. Though they won the battle last weekend, they know they moved against the will of the people and that they are definitively acting without the consent of the governed (or taxed for that matter), and therefore, they must use any weapon in their arsenal to stop our momentum.

Below is my response to the accusations. Be sure to read Michelle Malkin's response as well. She covers a lot of ground, with references, including the "hate crime" hoaxes frequently committed by some on the left.

First and foremost:

*I want to see proof that it happened. Already the "spitting" allegation has been downgraded to "he allowed saliva to hit my face." If the situation were reversed, the DMC would be demanding proof too, as well they should. We do no good to anyone or to justice when we don't demand the same level of evidence across the board. Remember, justice is supposed to be blind and when you disregard this ideal for political gain, you corrupt the system and eventually everyone suffers as a result.

The following point is only relevant IF the accusations are true. Again, we have no idea if they are because there is no proof.

*IF it is true that one person out of the millions of Americans who participate in the Tea Party Movement yelled a racial slur at the Congressman, then you must acknowledge that one person represents no one but himself. To paint the entire movement with such a broad brush is true injustice, and the DMC knows it. It is the epitome of intellectual laziness and moral bankruptcy to use the alleged actions of one person to thereby convict millions of innocent people, especially for political gain.

I suppose that by using the DMC's logic, we should be able to assume that all Democrats are KKK sympathizers or former members, a la Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Right?

*IF this happened, then of course the people of the Tea Party Movement reject this person and their behavior. Duh.

Other thoughts:

*Where is the outrage when "hate crimes" are perpetrated against conservatives? Why does the mainstream media turn a blind eye when a black conservative gets called a "ni**er", beat up by SEIU thugs when it is all caught on tape and the man accused is arrested? If the DMC was consistent in its outrage, no matter what party or side of the debate the alleged victim came from, then they would have a lot more credibility when they claim to be the victims.

*My own Congressman, Jim McDermott described me (a conservative) as a teabagger and as an indecent person on the floor of the House of Representatives because I believe in limited government (so that said government does not have the power to oppress the people). But I guess we don't deserve respect or decorum or decency from an elected official in the eyes of the DMC.

*Every tea party group that I know has put out press release after press release condemning racism and racist acts. Does the mainstream media report this? No. They act as though we never address it. So, just to set the record straight, the Tea Party Movement decisively and categorically rejects real racism, and we work for the benefit of ALL Americans. Period. (I say "real" racism because the Democrats accuse us of being racist just for being capitalists.)

*The DMC has been calling us racists for over a year, simply for disagreeing with the Democrats, and particularly for disagreeing with President Obama. The fact that they have incorrectly and unjustly read racism into every single thing we have done and said over the last year shows that they are willing to hurl lies and accusations for any reason at all, so why should we believe the hype this time without proof? The DMC has no regard for real victims of racism, otherwise they wouldn't use the term so carelessly.

In fact, if there is one side that is obsessed with race, it is the left's representatives. During the primaries, Joe Biden said that Obama was the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean;" Harry Reid celebrated that Obama was a "light-skinned African-American" with "no negro dialect;" Chris Matthews forgot that the President was black for an hour; and more recently, Dan Rather said something about President Obama not being able to sell watermelons.

If anyone is obsessed with the color of our President's skin, it certainly isn't my side. I, and my fellow tea partiers, could not care less about the color of someone's skin. MLK Jr. was so right when he said it was about the content of a person's character. And right now, the Democrats are showing their complete and utter lack of it.

Dana Loesch: Now it's our turn

2010-03-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

Another article I must repost here.

The Socialists Won a Battle; Now it's Our Turn
By Dana Loesch

Yesterday was my son’s 9th birthday and for his present, the government jacked his future. As he sat in the floor and happily opened his gifts, Bart Stupak appeared on television and revealed that he’d sold his soul. The joy was sucked from the room, but my son didn’t notice – thank God for innocence. The faces of the adults in the room fell as Stupak held his presser, as Pelosi gained another YES vote for health control.

The scene was an eerie replay for me; eight-and-a-half years ago that same boy sat in his bouncy seat while cooing and kicking his legs as his father and I watched the twin towers crumble to dust on live television. The feeling was the same.

A lot of people ask why I and others do what we do.

The scene I just described is my answer.

Last night the Democrat party died as it drove a spear through the torso of the Constitution and passed legislation that the majority of Americans overwhelmingly opposed. Nancy Pelosi sauntered into the capitol surrounded by fellow socialists, carrying the gavel used in 1965 to pass the now-bankrupt Medicare.

All summer long Americans filled town halls, emailed, called, and faxed their lawmakers, and they were forsaken. They were called Nazis, racists, homophobes; they were threatened, beaten, and called stupid because they disagreed with the minority who feels that the government should run our lives. Our lawmakers unofficially stopped representing us last spring.

Last night, our legislators officially broke the contract with America that is the Constitution. Last night, they ceased to represent us. Last night, a new party was born; the malignant tumor that is the progressive caucus consumed the Democrat party from within and gave birth to the mainstream Socialist Party.

We have lost our right to determine our own care. Our businesses, the engine of our economy, will see an additional annual $52 billion in new taxes levied upon them. The HHS has determined premium caps which will force the cruelty of rationing to curtail costs from the fed to insurers, and down to our medical professionals. The IRS will now oversee health control and determine whether you are compliant:

A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff estimates up to 16,500 new IRS personnel will be needed to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the ‘reconciliation’ bill being taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend, according to Brady.
“When most people think of health care reform they think of more doctors exams, not more IRS exams,” says U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee. “Isn’t the federal government already intruding enough into our lives? We need thousands of new doctors and nurses in America, not thousands more IRS agents.”

Democrats (Socialists) employed the fuzziest of math which the CBO confirmed with a ball-busting report on its true cost.

They rallied that “people have a right to health care,” which no one disputes: people have a right to health care but they do not have a right to another’s living. Socialists employed all sorts of dirty tricks, back room deals (a NASA admin job?), and intimidation. They twisted arms and convinced men of lesser character to compromise on their principles. They ignored their electorate. This legislation rotted in congress since summer because of the massive opposition from the American people.

At one point during last night’s debate, John Boehner was rebuked for giving the Socialists hell when reminded to “show dignity to the House.”

There is no dignity left in a House run by political prostitutes.

Nancy Pelosi, Lynn Woolsey, and other Socialist party members tried to play the sex card and exploit women by saying that they were ill-served in this current system. If they think that I and other strong women are as stupid as those within the Socialist party that ironically defend the likes of Bill Clinton, John Edwards, et al. then they’re bigger tools for the old, white patriarchy than I originally thought.

How dare these women sell out their own sex and presume to speak for all women. How dare these “feminists” devalue women as nothing more than victims so as to win support for a bill that invites the IRS and president-appointed medical board into their wombs and doctors’ exam rooms. My body my choice except when you want people to foot the bill for you, right? I believe Heidi Fleiss was arrested for no lesser action.

The Constitution and a 200-year-old understanding that a republic is governed by its people has been shredded with the passage of this bill. The Socialists are emboldened now; they will next come for our children under the guise of “education reform.” They will then come after our energy via cap-and-tax. They will continue to push and bust through every legal barrier we have of protecting our Founding Father’s intent until that shining city on a hill is a barren wasteland.

They have been crafting this plot for over 50 years.

We just woke up one year ago last month.

The future of our republic depends upon us making up lost time.

We lost this battle, not because we didn’t fight, not because we were silent, but because the Socialists in congress don’t care about us or our will.

This battle. There are many battles in a war. We have faced worse, patriots. We have, many times, faced what appeared to be unwinnable situations.

My grandfather served as a gunner aboard the USS Alabama in the Pacific theater during WWII. He spoke of how demoralized our country was after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and took out our entire Pacific fleet.

I thought about how God delivered the Israelites from Egypt.

I thought about how this country rallied the dawn after 9-11 when I woke up and saw flags hanging from the ticky-tacky houses all up and down my street.

I thought of how Great Britain, rallied by Winston Churchill, fought off the German invasion.
Or how Ulysses S. Grant pressed on after his first lost.

How many men and women have shed blood for this country? How many patriots took to the streets to defend this country blessed by God? Don’t you dare give up, patriots. Don’t you dare make their sacrifices in vain because you’re afraid of battle. Take no prisoners, suffer no fools, never surrender.

What – you thought you get this land scott-free? Liberty is never fully paid off and to be deserving of it one must be willing to fight for it on the battlefield, in the halls of congress, by involving yourselves in your communities. Such a struggle is not a burden, it is a privilege.
How bad do you want liberty? I’ve received several emails from folks who’ve said that they’re ready to move, to leave the country, and give up. I received an email the other day from a woman named Melanie who confessed that she just “doesn’t have time to get involved.” During a conversation about precinct captains with a gentleman at a recent protest, I was told that the commitment “sounds like too much time.”

My reply:

Get out.

Get out of my country any freeloader who possesses such an attitude, you betrayers of conservatism, of liberty. How dare you claim the belief of self-sustenance and individualism while warming your hands by another patriot’s fire, living off the fat of another patriot’s blood, sweat, and tears. As I said on my radio program last week: any one who dares call themselves a patriot and refuses to commit to maintaining their country’s liberty can burn in hades with the socialists who’ve jeopardized our children’s futures.

If you cannot commit several hours per week to maintain the liberty that others afforded you then you by your inaction and silent voice abet those who seek to destroy it.

This is not over. We won the battle of the hearts and minds and still congress trampled over us with an un-Constitutional bill that, for the first time, forces citizens to purchase a product.

We won the battle of persuasion. We’ve won talk radio. We’ve won cable news. We’ve won social media networks. We’ve won the street corners and the community participation and the phone banks and the 11th hour hat tricks. We’re going to win the money battle, next.

We have the Ensuring Liberty PAC, a committee that will give an engine boost and more muscle to the tea party movement by selecting carefully vetted candidates to run these reverse-Elijah Lovejoy legislators out on a rail.

We will plague the Socialists who sold us out, we will end their political careers, we will dog them at their every appearance, their every step, and when they see the yellow of the Gadsen flying uniform in the wind with the American flag they will fear us as a government should fear its people – NOT the other way around.

We will hold every Republican to the fire and so help us if they don’t fight until their last breath to repeal this massive affront to liberty we will burn them in effigy along with the traitors to the Constitution.

We will insert ourselves into every branch and level of public service and devour our party so we will never have to worry about another impotent candidate ascending to power again, so we never again have to worry about being bulldozed by tyrants.

We will bring back the relationship between our churches and temples and the people and fight against the government’s attempt to sever volunteer charity and axe charitable deductions as a way to force more people under its thumb by way of no other options.

We’re going to seek out those small business owners who have spoken up and those who are speaking up, albeit it softly due to fear, and we’re going to bless them with our patronage.

We will modify our strategy and not damage ourselves with an inability to see the forest for the trees or an inability to recognize strategy.We will get off the cutesy little trend of hating the GOP and realizing that while we were drowning in apathy and Paris Hilton, and JLo and whatever mind-numbing vestige of a crumbling society we had people like Michelle Bachmann, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Mike Pence, and more battling the demons of the Socialist party.

And what happened? We, myself included, blamed an entire party for leaving the base to which we failed to tether it. Did we fail to realize that had it not been for some people within the GOP, we would already be far more socialist than that which we’re currently facing? We cannot start a new movement by passing the buck. This situation isn’t the fault of the Socialists, the Republicans, the hippies, Heidi Montag, or anyone else.

I am thankful for grace. Credit is due this party for holding rank during this latest legislative battle.

We are responsible for our own vigilance. Do not betray the essence of the movement by denying this responsibility. Do not leave the lions in the party, whose platform best mirrors our own, out to dry. I will fiercely support those who support my freedoms and you should, too. I will fiercely support the best strategy to win.

Don’t ask me to respect the office any longer. Respect is a two-way street and the office failed to respect the will of the American people. I, you, owe “the office” nothing. “The office” works for us. I’m not a serf that must verbally-fellate the office of the presidency just because some hustler managed to twist the arms of weak-willed sycophants into betraying the people whom they are to serve. Don’t snow job me into thinking I’m less of a patriot because I refuse to honor an administration that obliterated the very definition of liberty last night. Don’t be ironic.

I said last July that this is no time for nancies. This is the dawn of the modern-day sons and daughters of liberty. We must heed the call of action and with courageous steps and humble hearts work against tyranny. We will guard our hearts and we will realize that the only fight worth having is a fight on the right side of God. We will not allow our opposition to have the final defeat of using our frustration to make us as they are.

You need to decide right now: will you fight to preserve liberty? Will you give of your time, your money, your passion so that your future generations will benefit? Will you get behind groups like ELPAC, candidates who can best win the race and most mirror our platform? Will you become an evangelist for liberty?

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams

We may be down, but we are not out: Remember in November

2010-03-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Normally, when two teams compete, and it is a close, close game with both teams playing their hardest and their best, the two teams come together, shake hands and say, "good game" when the game is over.

If this had been a fair fight I would congratulate my opponents on a battle well won. I always do.

However, when the other team cheats, lies, manipulates, twists arms, shreds the Constitution, bribes, steals, pressures, bullies, and ignores the will of the people whom they purport to represent, there can be no congratulations. There can be no handshakes. There certainly can be no "good games."

Gloating and preening after cheating and bullying people into voting a certain way when the American people overwhelmingly demanded a fresh start makes the "winners" wholly unworthy of any sort of victory or support.

Also remember that ObamaPelosi Co. wanted this bill passed by July 2009. They wanted no debate and they wanted it signed into law before the August recess so that politicians would not have to face their constituents. Thus, when the President and Queen Nancy prattle on about "everyone has read the bill," and "this bill has been debated for over a year," remember their disingenuousness. The only reason the American people had even the little debate that we did, was due to the AMERICAN PEOPLE, not due to any dignity or adherance to propriety by Obama or Pelosi or Reid.

Pick your candidates and propel them into office this November. Volunteer for them, give them money, talk about them, wear their t-shirts, poster their faces all over your city, talk to your neighbors, go door-to-door, participate in phone banking for them, hold fundraisers for them...

This was a big battle for sure, but it was hardly the last or deciding battle. We will win the war of ideas because our ideas combine mercy, grace, charity, freedom and liberty together, while their ideas gut liberty and hide cruelty and oppression in a cloak of false compassion. And in the end, we can always ask the question, "How will you pay for this when we all Go Galt?"

I'm reposting an article by Doctor Zero who writes for his own blog as well as writing for Hot Air sometimes. He writes today about the demands freedom makes. Read it, print it out and keep with you for the next six months.

Remember in November.

What Freedom Demands
By Doctor Zero

Tonight, self-appointed wise men in Washington are steamrolling the objections of sixty to seventy percent of the population, and forcing a massive health-care bill down our throats “for our own good.” Presumably the backroom deals, corrupt payoffs, Congressional Budget Office accounting tricks, threats of unconstitutional parliamentary maneuvers, and betrayals of principle are also for our own good. What do you know? Banana republics turn out to be the highest evolution of government – the only form of the State equipped to take proper care of its citizens, by lying to them and trapping them in legislative cages over their howling protests.

Tonight is not the end of the ObamaCare saga, but it does mark the beginning of a slow turn by the American ship of state. It doesn’t have to be a turn to the left. On the contrary, it could be the first overture in a rebirth of our commitment to freedom, and the last gasp of an exhausted statist ideology, long overdue for its disposal in the waste bin of history.

The decision is up to us. Our representatives will fight various legislative battles in the months to come… and then we will speak in November. As the voters of the United States ponder what to say, it would profit us to think long and hard about the freedom Democrats are trying to take from us tonight, and what freedom demands.

Yes, it makes demands. Freedom is not a gift. It is not given to you by the government, in a precise dosage that can be adjusted to match a politician’s diagnosis of what ails the body politic. Your forefathers won an impossible Revolution against an invincible foe to declare the self-evident truth that your rights descend from your Creator. Whether that Creator is a transcendent God, or a random combination of genetic material in the primordial soup, it is a power that existed before the first king assumed his throne, or the first president was elected.

Liberty burns in your imagination, flows through your veins, and rings through your words.

This radiant idea has burned through all the bloody clouds of the last three centuries: you are not clay to be sculpted by the will of another. You are not a racially inferior inconvenience, to be marched into a concentration camp. You aren’t a class enemy to be exiled by dictators. You are not a disposable cog in the machinery of collectivist economics, or a mouth to be starved by the failure of collective agriculture. You are an American, and through a dereliction of their duty as elected representatives, the Democrats have forced you to choose whether you will retain the full measure of the honor and dignity your Constitution asserts for you.

If you choose to obey their demands, it will be the last such choice you make. Your opinion was disregarded on this travesty of a health-care bill. It will not be solicited in the future. Fifteen thousand new IRS agents will ensure that you comply with endless future “adjustments” to socialized insurance, until it mutates into socialist medicine, and bankrupts us along with the crushing weight of other unsustainable entitlements. On that dark day, you will be fighting battles, not making choices.

Like your muscles, heart, and lungs, freedom is a part of you, and it makes demands. You cannot exercise freedom in the absence of responsibility. That means you must accept the challenges of a complex, fast-moving world. You must exercise your influence in that world, and money is the medium of exchange that transforms your labor into your will. You have to demand the best return on your investments, and the best quality for your purchases. This requires education, to gather the information necessary for making wise decisions.

We are currently paying the price for decades of turning away from those demands, and trusting government to insure our quality of life. It’s understandable. The free market is huge and powerful, and it does not pause to adore the millions of individuals passing through it… and occasionally stumbling. We feel overwhelmed by the waves of information crashing around us. In the case of an arcane discipline like medicine, we don’t feel as if we understand it well enough to make informed decisions, and our will is expressed through an insurance system that has already been turned into an incomprehensible mess by government regulation. It would be so easy to let righteous politicians with limitless power and money take care of us, tapping into the vast fortunes of the super-rich for the benefit of all, and transforming health care into a “human right” – which means the little people won’t have to think about it any more.

If you are in thrall to this temptation, consider what you are being asked to surrender. Hidden in ObamaCare’s thousands of pages are countless legislative snares, and subsidies designed to convert your freedom into benefits for favored constituencies. The money drained from our economy into this health-care sinkhole will reduce your freedom – even when it’s money from the wallets of other people. That’s because a collapsing free market will eliminate choices and options you currently take for granted. Mandates that wipe out part-time employment will destroy services your family needs. Jobs shipped overseas to avoid crushing penalties are employment opportunities forever denied to you. Higher taxes on corporations slither down to you as elevated prices on goods you may no longer be able to afford.

A swelling government reduces the size of the private sector… the galaxy in which free Americans burn as stars. Common sense tells you that a nation with a gigantic government is less free. What is the proper name for a system in which the State controls everything, and the private sector is completely gone? Why should free men applaud heavy steps taken in that direction? What about the freedom of Bart Stupak’s constituents, who foolishly trusted him to resist the tyranny of forcing pro-life taxpayers to fund abortions? Today they watched Stupak’s honor shrivel into a meaningless piece of paper, offered by a compulsive liar, whose every commitment comes with an expiration date.

The call of freedom requires you to turn away easy solutions offered by corrupt politicians. It’s not a “solution” anyway – just the gateway to another, heavier imposition on your liberty down the line. If its authors believed otherwise, why would they use tricks and lies to chisel out a “deficit-neutral” ten-year forecast from the Congressional Budget Office? A free man dismisses such deception with contempt, and demands to know what happens in Year Eleven. A free woman looks at a “crisis” in a heavily regulated market and commands government to remove itself to undo the damage it has already caused. What is the final form of a State that is rewarded for its failures with more power? We already know that name, don’t we?

Tonight, the Democrat Party declares war on the American middle class. They are gambling on the forced creation of an entitlement we’ll be too exhausted and weary to reject – no matter how poor its quality, corrupt its inception, or unbearable its cost. We do have one last chance to strike this down. There is no reason any Democrat up for re-election in 2010 or 2012 needs to retain their seats. They don’t own those seats, any more than the Kennedys owned Massachussetts. There’s no reason the Democrats need to exist as a viable political party after 2012. Obama can be their last President.

It would be incredible if the American people could bring about such a transformation of their decadent political class, in these coming elections.

Sometimes freedom demands that you do the incredible to preserve it.

LAST STAND!

2010-03-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

GET CALLING AND FAXING PEOPLE!!!

If you click here you will find a page that contains a Congressional Directory that allows you to browse Representatives and Senators alphabetically, by your zip code, etc. It will give you all of their contact info including district offices and D.C. offices, with phone numbers, email addresses and fax numbers.

*TIP*
My dad has been faxing in the evening and at night and his faxes have been going through! Otherwise, during the day, they are busy. So try sending your faxes TONIGHT!

Also, all those that love liberty will be gathering in Olympia tomorrow, Saturday, starting at 9:00 a.m. and going all day long. It's just been thrown together so if you can get down there, please do it!! I'll post more info as I get it!

Obamafeld

2010-03-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

Brilliant.

Vote in the "Coffee Party" Poll

2010-03-17T01:03:00.000-07:00

Want to tell the "Coffee Party" how you feel about the health care deform bill?

Tell them here. You'll end up signing up for their email list, but then at least you'll know what they and their Open Society Institute brethren are up to! Huzzah!

AMEN!

2010-03-15T19:39:00.001-07:00

Tips for Tea Partiers heading to D.C. on Tuesday

2010-03-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

Some days I have to link twice to the same person because some days that person hits the bullseye so many times that the double-linking is unavoidable.

Ed Morrissey is spot on, again, when he gives tips to Tea Partiers heading to D.C. for the People's Surge tomorrow.

Conservatives have begun melting the phones but calls from non-constituents are being mostly ignored. Show of hands — who’s going tomorrow? And among those of you who are, who’s still so ignorant about the basics of the bill after month upon endless month of Obama speechifying that you need some Democratic backbencher to explain it to you? A few tips if you do find yourself inside some lucky Blue Dog’s office: Be sure to ask (a) what Pelosi’s bribing him with; (b) why, if Democrats are so confident about cost control, they had to rig the estimate on the first decade of costs by delaying the program’s start by five years (in fact, just hand your rep a copy of this); (c) how he/she can be so sure what’s in the bill when they’ll be busy writing it right at that very moment.

One of my favorite things about the guys at Hot Air is that their analytic skills and wit are almost unparalleled. They bring such fresh and cogent ideas to many of the issues we face every day, combined with humor and humility.

Real health care reform + individual liberty = the BEST solution

2010-03-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Ed Morrissey from Hot Air wrote an article about retail health clinics and how they are the model we should be following for health care reform. Please read his whole article and then hope hard that we get the chance to implement the types of reforms that foster freedom, choice, and liberty.