Choosing The Right Lane To Travel

In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

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73% of New Jobs Created in Last 5 Months Are in Government By Terence P. Jeffrey

Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data BLS released today, the total number of people employed had climbed to 143,262,000, an overall increase of 847,000 in the six months since June. In the same five-month period since June, the number of people employed by government increased by 621,000 to 20,559,000. These 621,000 new government jobs created in the last five months equal 73.3 percent of the 847,000 new jobs created overall. So much for smaller government!

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GOP Infighting, Tea Party 'Purges' Break Out over Fiscal Cliff  By: REUTERS

Republicans in the U.S. Congress attacked each other on Tuesday over their leadership's "fiscal cliff" offer to Democratic President Barack Obama as a group of governors visited the White House to voice concern about the impact on the states of the year-end tax-and-spending deadline. In only a matter of hours on Tuesday, conservatives from all around Washington blasted Boehner's plan:

• Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolinian with a following among small-government conservatives, lashed out at House Speaker John Boehner, saying his $2.2 trillion deficit plan would cost jobs and mushroom the debt.
• Two first-term Republican Tea Party stalwarts - Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan - were removed by party leadership from the powerful budget committee in what Huelskamp called "a vindictive move."
• A top House conservative, Jim Jordan of Ohio, was scheduled to unveil his own fiscal cliff plan on Tuesday but has backed off in the wake of Boehner's offer to President Obama.
• "The president's proposal and Speaker Boehner's counteroffer fail to seriously deal with the reality of the problems facing the nation," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group partially backed by billionaires David and Charles Koch. "Conservatives are looking for a leader to fight against tax increases, to push back against wasteful government spending, and address the fiscal challenges in a bold way. Sadly, this plan leaves conservatives wanting."
• The influential Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, called it "utterly unacceptable."

"[T]he Republican counteroffer, to the extent it can be interpreted from the hazy details now available, is a dud," Alison Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and J.D. Foster, a senior fellow, wrote in a statement.

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House GOP Propose $4.6 Trillion in Cuts to Obama

House Republicans, rejecting President Barack Obama’s demand for tax rate increases, offered a $4.6 trillion deficit reduction plan today that doesn't raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. The proposal is based on a framework from a year ago outlined by Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, one of President Obama's debt commission chairs, and includes an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits, likely to age 67. "What we're putting forth is a credible plan that deserves consideration by the White House," Boehner told reporters.

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"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison, Essay on Property, 1792

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Rand Paul: We Should Let Dems Raise Taxes And Then Let Them Own It

SEN. RAND PAUL: I have yet another thought on how we can fix this. Why don’t we let the Democrats pass whatever they want? If they are the party of higher taxes, all the Republicans vote present and let the Democrats raise taxes as high as they want to raise them, let Democrats in the Senate raise taxes, let the president sign it and then make them own the tax increase. And when the economy stalls, when the economy sputters, when people lose their jobs, they know which party to blame, the party of high taxes. Let’s don’t be the party of just almost as high taxes. LARRY KUDLOW, CNBC: Some people have called that the doomsday scenario. Others have said, ‘Look, it’s a strategic retreat on the Republicans’ behalf.’ Would you vote present for that in the Senate if that came up? RAND PAUL: Yes, I don’t think we have to in the Senate. In the House, they have to because the Democrats don’t have the majority. In the Senate, I’m happy not to filibuster it, and I will announce tonight on your show that I will work with Harry Reid to let him pass his big old tax hike with a simple majority if that’s what Harry Reid wants, because then they will become the party of high taxes and they can own it.

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Medicare Reform: The Great Default By Gary North

Why will there be no Medicare reform until the government is at the edge of default? Because those calling for Medicare reform are so utterly boring that no one, especially in Congress, will pay any attention. One well-meaning reformer wrote an article for MarketWatch, a mainstream, Keyensian site. She tried her best to make her multiple reforms coherent. She failed. I have been writing  professionally since 1967. I can spot MEGO articles within a few lines. What is MEGO? My Eyes Glaze Over. Here is a sample. One way to inject competition into Medicare is premium support, an idea dating back to the 1997 National  Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, chaired by two retired members of Congress, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Senator John Breaux (D-LA). Thomas and Breaux have retired from Congress, but the Medicare Commission’s premium support idea is now found in the House 2013 budget. Read it here on page 96 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget Fiscal Year 2013. This is utterly hopeless. This was introduced by this assessment: percentages out to 2080. No one in Congress cares about anything that takes place beyond the next election. The Office of the Actuary of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has estimated that without the projected Medicare spending cuts under the Affordable Care Act — cuts that may never, if history is any guide, occur — Medicare expenditures as a percent of GDP would grow from 3.7% today to 7.7% in 2050, to 10% in 2080. With the cuts, Medicare spending would be 6.7% of GDP in 2080. This is a classic blah, blah, blah article. It fills space. There is no sense of urgency. There is no suggestion of a single unified reform. It is all “a little of this, possibly a little of that, one of these days, Real Soon Now.” Policy conclusion in Congress: “Kick the can.” Until there is an imminent crisis with identifiable constituencies, Congress will ignore the problem. It can get away with this. “Why poke your stick into a hornet’s nest?” There is no political solution other than default. We will know this long before 2050.

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“Political Games” From Whom?

The White House has effectively conceded that the President’s “plan” (note the sarcastic scare quotes) for avoiding the fiscal cliff cannot even pass the US Senate, which is controlled by Democrats. “We don’t have 60 votes in the Senate,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, adding the White House was “very confident” that Democrats support the principles outlined in Obama’s plan . . ..Please. Not only does the Obama plan not have the sixty votes required to overcome a filibuster, it doesn’t even have the fifty-one votes it would need to pass (note that Senator McConnell promised a floor vote, meaning that Republicans would agree to a straight up-or-down vote). And the Democrats’ refusal to vote on it reveals just how unpopular it is — if Democrats thought the President’s plan would be popular in anything besides the vaguest outlines (what passes in Washington for “principle”), the Democrats would quickly vote on it and force the Republicans to sustain an unpopular filibuster. The truth is that even the Democrats don’t support it — and they don’t want to be on the record one way or the other.  Read more.

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Unions storm Michigan capitol to protest right-to-work law

A right-to-work law is being debated in Michigan. It’s the kind of “debate” that involves lots of intimidation, and a dash of violence, from union operatives. USA Today reports: Police arrested several protesters and sprayed mace into the crowd in the state Capitol on Thursday as lawmakers discussed right-to-work legislation that would make Michigan the nation’s 24th right-to-work state. The protesters were arrested as they tried to rush the Senate floor, said Michigan State Police Inspector Gene Adamczyk. “When several of the individuals rushed the troopers, they used chemical munitions to disperse the crowd,” he said. “It would be a lot worse if someone gets hurt and I failed to act.” I don’t know how rushing the Capitol contributes to a rational debate about important issues, but then again, I’m one of those old-fashioned types who thinks monopolies are bad, including when they’re held by corporations that sell labor to other corporations. Read more.

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"It is not necessary to enumerate the many advantages, that arise from this custom of early marriages. They comprehend all the society can receive from this source; from the preservation, and increase of the human race. Everything useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage." --Samuel Williams, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794

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Bob Woodward: ‘Who is Barack Obama?’ By: Emily Schultheis

Washington Post reporter and author Bob Woodward said Wednesday morning that the fiscal cliff talks are like the movie “Groundhog Day.” “It’s Groundhog Day: The question is, who’s playing Bill Murray?” he told POLITICO’s Mike Allen at Playbook Breakfast Wednesday morning. “It’s such a repetition: It’s the same players, at the same seats, at the same table.” He said that it’s still too early to tell how the negotiations between President Barack Obama and Congress — specifically, House Speaker John Boehner — will turn out. “I think anyone who thinks they know is wrong,” he said. Woodward also spoke about his impressions of Obama, calling the president a figure surrounded by “mystery.” When asked what he’d most like to know about Obama, Woodward said he knows the president keeps a diary and that he’d like to read it. “What’s driving him? Who is Barack Obama?” he said. “A description of that inner life will be something if it’s candid.” Woodward said that, especially compared to former President George W. Bush, Obama keeps his thoughts and intentions more to himself. “There wasn’t a lot of mystery about how Bush felt: He was a gut player and, as he said, it was his job to put some calcium in the spine,” he said. “But I think Obama is a little bit more of an uncertain figure, and quite frankly, I think when he writes his own autobiography about his time as president, and there is more excavation of all this, we’re going to discover that he’s working it out as he plays the game.” Woodward also wondered how Obama truly felt about his 2012 Republican rival — Mitt Romney. “What does Obama think of Mitt Romney — what does he really think? I think he feels that Romney is incompetent because he didn’t run a better campaign.” As for the brinksmanship currently going on with Congress, Woodward criticized the fiscal cliff process as a “giant mistake.” “It’s no way to govern,” he said. “It is a giant mistake to have all of this in a pool of ambiguity … it truly is a stalemate.” The veteran Washington journalist added that regardless of what happens with the negotiations, Obama will ultimately take responsibility for any resulting economic fallout. “This is the Obama era, it is [the president’s] economy,” he said. “Speaker Boehner’s an important player and this is significant, but it is Obama’s job to lead and define — so if there negative consequences here, particularly in the economy, it is going to be, ‘In the Obama era, things didn’t get fixed.’” Woodward also spoke about how covering the presidency has become more difficult since he began reporting. ”I think it’s more difficult because the message managers are better, they have staffs and they work at it aggressively,” he said. “And I’m older and I have less energy,” he joked.

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Howard Dean: "The Truth Is Everybody Needs To Pay More Taxes, Not Just The Rich"

HOWARD DEAN: The only problem is -- and this is initially going to seem like heresy from a progressive is -- the truth is everybody needs to pay more taxes, not just the rich. And it's a good start. But we're not going to get out of this deficit problem unless we raise taxes across the board, to go back to what Bill Clinton had and his taxes. And if we don't do that, the problem is the pressure is going to be on spending even more.

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If U.S. hikes taxes, high-income Californians might pay almost 52 percent by Erika Johnsen

Whether it’s because we end up going over the fiscal cliff or because Republicans agree to President Obama’s plan of not extending the Bush tax cuts on America’s wealthiest earners, the possibility of an effective tax hike means that higher-income Californians may be in for a whopping aggregate marginal tax rate. The super-liberal state already succeeded in approving their own rate hike with Proposition 30 in the November election, and combined with the potential federal raises, they could be looking at a top bracket with a marginal income tax rate of just under 52 percent:

Gerald Prante, an economics professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia, and Austin John, a Lynchburg economics student, calculated marginal tax rates — the highest rates on the highest levels of income — for all 50 states. They combined state, federal and, where applicable, local income taxes, plus payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare and included the deductibility of some taxes.

Proposition 30 added three percentage points to the marginal state income tax rate for California’s highest-income taxpayers, bringing it to 13.3 percent. That action raised California over other high-tax jurisdictions to a marginal rate of 51.9 percent, slightly higher than New York City’s level. Hawaii was the only other place with a calculated rate above 50 percent.

…Ouch. We already knew that California was headed for a fall, but here’s yet another problem with top-down government and specifically with President Obama’s proposals to hike taxes across-the-board on those he deems wealthy, i.e. families making more than $250k/year. As Joel Kotkin writes for Forbes, it’s kind of odd that blue states voted so overwhelmingly against their own self-interest in reelecting Barack Obama, because the tax hikes he campaigned on will come down disproportionately hard on the economies of blue states. The demographics and costs of living in different geographic regions suggests that being rich means very different things to different regions:

Any move to raise taxes on the rich — defined as households making over $250,000 annually — strikes directly at the economies of these states, which depend heavily on the earnings of high-income professionals, entrepreneurs and technical workers. In fact, when you examine which states, and metropolitan areas, have the highest concentrations of such people, it turns out they are overwhelmingly located in the bluest states and regions. …

The people whose wallets will be drained in the new war on “the rich” are high-earning, but hardly plutocratic professionals like engineers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners and the like. …

What would a big tax increase on the “rich” mean to the poor and working classes in these areas? To be sure, they may gain via taxpayer-funded transfer payments, but it’s doubtful that higher taxes will make their prospects for escaping poverty much brighter. For the most part, the economies of the key blue regions are very dependent on the earnings of the mass affluent class, and their spending is critical to overall growth. Singling out the affluent may also reduce the discretionary spending that drives employment in the personal services sector, retail and in such key fields as construction.

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Conservatives Rip Asner Cartoon That Demonizes Rich By: Stephen Feller

Political commentators on both sides of the aisle are taking Ed Asner to task after he narrated an eight-minute animated video that potrays the wealthy urinating on the poor. Pundits have denounced the video, claiming it steps over the the boundaries of political debate into the offensive, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "The California Federation of Teachers are taking class warfare now to the extreme. The group put together a cartoon, it posted it on their website demonizing wealthy Americans for their success. And they got a little help from left wing radical Hollywood actor Ed Asner as he narrates this disgusting hit piece," Sean Hannity said. “There’s really no overstating how dumb this is,” said pundit Tucker Carlson. “The idea that there are any California teachers currently in classrooms in charge of children who agree with that, is horrifying.”Daily Beast columnist Kirsten Powers has also come out saying she found the video offensive. “It was too much demonizing for my taste . . . to turn this into a ‘rich people are urinating on poor people’ kind of thing — it goes too far,” she said. “Tax The Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale” claims that the wealthy have ripped off the middle class and bought off politicians to protect their financial interests. The video, funded by and posted to the website of the California Federation of Teachers, goes on to claim that the 2008 economic crash was the fault of the rich.

Posted to the CFT website Tuesday, the video includes images of voter suppression, tax evasion, and sky-high piles of money literally crushing schools, police stations, libraries, and supposedly-middle class homes. “In 20 years, rich people doubled their share of the land’s income. Schools, public safety, roads, parks libraries, public transportation all went into decline. The rich people didn’t care,” Asner says while narrating the cartoon. “They bought their own teachers, police, garbage collectors, and transportation.” One part of the video drawing particular ire includes a “rich person” urinating on poor people as an explanation for trickle-down economics, explaining it away as one day being beneficial for everybody.

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New York Times Wakes Up, Admits U.S. Weapons Went to Islamists

It’s hard for most people to deny what’s right in front of them. That hasn’t kept the New York Times from trying. Months after all us “wingnut conservatives” realized the Obama Administration was arming Islamists in North Africa and the Middle East, the New York Times has finally run a story about U.S. weapons being sent to Libyan fighters and winding up in Islamist hands. Don’t get too excited, though. It doesn’t mean the NYT has finally returned to the old-fashioned notion of journalism, asking questions and being the public’s government watchdog. The NYT only goes so far as to admit that the Administration “secretly” approved giving arms to Libyans in Qatar and then became “worried” that some weapons were being put in Islamist hands by the Qataris. The article blames the Qataris and a lack of CIA personnel overseeing the program for the “wrong” people being armed.

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America Was Better Off Before We Became “Non-Judgemental” by David L. Goetsch

When I was a youngster, Americans had some definite ideas about right and wrong, and did not hesitate to express or enforce those ideas.  But people who were adults in the 1950s when I was a kid would be considered “judgmental” in today’s socially-antiseptic, politically-correct environment. As is well known to anyone who has the temerity to simply speak the truth about the unacceptable behavior they observe around them, there is no greater faux pas in contemporary American society than to be judgmental.  Heaven forbid that someone question the behavior or choices of another individual, no matter how personally or socially destructive that individual’s behavior or choices might be. In fact, being “judgmental” has become so outré that even people who have never so much as entered a church like to quote the Scriptural admonition from Matthew 7:1: “Judge not lest you be judged.”  Of course, if people who like to use this quote would actually take the time to study its meaning they would learn that Matthew never said we weren’t to discern between right and wrong.  Rather, he was telling us that we should not judge others by one standard and ourselves by another.  In fact, the very next line (Matthew 7:2) makes this proper interpretation clear when it says: “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged…”  In other words, do not condemn me for breaking rules that you regularly break yourself. One of the easiest ways to verify our contemporary commitment to being non-judgmental is to simply observe the language we use in everyday conversation.  We have sanitized the English language in ways meant to ensure that nothing we say might be perceived as being judgmental.  Walter Williams wrote an enlightening column on how Americans distort the English language to disguise social deviancy.  In that article, Professor Williams wrote: “Much of today’s language usage demonstrates a desire to be nonjudgmental.  People used to shack up; now they cohabit or are living partners.  Few young women of yesteryear would have felt comfortable to publicly declare they sleep around. (Of course, now they testify to the fact before Congressional committees and are rewarded with phone calls from the President of the United States who offers to pick up the tab for their birth control pills at public expense). Unmarried women used to give birth to bastards; later this was upgraded to an illegitimate birth or a nonmarital birth.  In many instances, unwed mothers proudly hold baby showers celebrating their illegitimate offspring—and the man, if known, who sired the baby is referred to as my baby’s daddy…”

           

Williams goes on to say that “To be judgmental about modern codes of conduct is to risk being labeled a prude, a racist, a sexist or a homophobe.  People ignore the fact that to accept another’s right to engage in certain peaceable, voluntary behavior doesn’t require moral acceptance or sanction.”  In other words, just because people have a right to live immoral lives does not mean that the rest of us have to give them our approval and blessing.

We now speak of “gays” rather than homosexuals.  We call an abominable practice “choice” instead of abortion.  We speak of “at-risk” teens instead of juvenile delinquents.  In short, we have sanitized the English language to the point that it can no longer be used to distinguish between right and wrong.  If something is wrong, we should be honest enough to say it is wrong.  If the facts hurt the feelings of those who are engaging in behavior that is personally or socially destructive, so be it.  Where is it written that thou shalt not hurt another’s feelings by telling the truth?  If the people in question are not doing something they themselves know is wrong, their feelings would not be hurt in the first place.  Frankly, I think things were better in the days when Americans still had the good sense to be judgmental.

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Hey Co-Dependent Dork: True Men Are Independent by Doug Giles

Having covered competition in my last column I will turn my guns to the second classic characteristic men will naturally exhibit … if they escape the aggressive societal softening of the metrosexual emasculators, namely … independence.  Traditionally, men have prized their autonomy more than Justin Bieber does his gale-force-wind-proof hair gel and diamond stud earrings.   Men, at least those who have not been morphed into obedient stooges of contemporary society, do not like to be confined, corralled, curbed, interfered with, or domesticated by anyone. Y’know it is right for a man while he is a boy to be dependent upon mummy, petted and cajoled, flattered and fattened, by mother’s you-can-do-no-wrong-honey loving touch.  But come on, America, somehow we have developed today a race of Nancy-boys, absolute caricatures of the classic male image, who have extended their mommy’s breast feeding, culture’s coddling and government’s hand holding into their 30′s and beyond!  Unfortunately, in the home, in the church, and with our government, thanks to the societal deconstructionists, we have created an extended womb with an umbilical cord of enormous proportions that can sucker and baby men all the way up until their mid-life crises.  Historically, this co-dependent wet womb which is presently afforded chronologically mature males past adolescence has utterly weakened whatever society in which it has been allowed to fester. Naturally, men were the pillars of the public, being responsible to God, to family, to church and to their culture as providers and protectors of family and friends.  It was the man who steered the family unit and civilization with firmness, directing them with rules and principles, being dependable, loving and just.  In ancient times the father was not a mere sperm donor who lived at Hooters, but a community elder, a moderator and a servant leader who created edicts and ordered kingdoms.

One bigger-than-Dallas-sized sign that America could be headed down the toilet is how today’s puss man avoids responsibility and accountability and is allowed to blame low blood sugar, his inner child, the environment or the freaky yellow wall paper on his delivery room wall as the reason why he hasn’t “gotten with it.” If we want to improve our nation, then we have got to resist the current culture of man hatred, wherever and whenever we find it, whether that means not going to movies with an emasculating message, or shouting “that’s bullshit” when we hear and see this stuff on TV or in the classroom, or, more positively, developing old school ways of creating environments conducive to raising warriors and wild men. Whatever peaceful form this resistance takes, it is a must that we verbally wail our disapproval of this incessant dissing of men. Look, our times demand strong men.  It is up to us middle-aged old boys to preserve and perpetuate the grand testosterone fog God created us to live in for the next generation of young warriors.

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Are Scientists Capable of Stupidity? By David Coppedge

Scientists are only people, and most people do or say dumb things sometimes.  You can decide how to classify these “scientific” ideas. Overhyped Martian claims of the past:  While the world eagerly awaits NASA announcing “something big” about Mars next week, Clara Moskowitz reminds us on Space.com that there were at least five overhyped claims in the past: (1) the canals on Mars, (2) flowing water on Mars, (3) the face on Mars, (4) microbes in a Martian meteorite, and (5) claims of possible life from Vikings 1 and 2.  Many of these were taken very seriously by renowned scientists of the day. Alien Breck:  A long time ago in a beauty salon far, far away: We may be able to detect aliens by their hairspray, Charles Q. Choi announced on Space.com: “Alien hairspray may help us find E.T.”  Presumably space babes would wish to keep their locks in place with chloroflurocarbons, which astronomers might detect in a planetary atmosphere.  That’s probably enough said, except to note that NASA considered this story newsworthy enough to give it good press on their Astrobiology Magazine website. Organized ignorance:  When you don’t know what you are talking about, does it help to organize your ignorance?  Apparently Claudio Maccone thinks so.  Astrobiology Magazine said the he took another look at the Drake Equation for calculating how many aliens inhabit the galaxy…. Astrobiology Magazine said Maccone took another look at the Drake Equation for calculating how many aliens inhabit the galaxy.

But the Drake equation must not be evaluated only by the numerical values it produces. Some say the Drake equation is a way to organize our ignorance. By exposing the extraterrestrial intelligence hypothesis mathematically, we limit the real possibilities to each term and approach the final answer: how many alien civilizations are there?