New Blog

Part political. Part social commentary. A little inane blathering. A smattering of insight. A whole of of opinion.

Cadence Rolls In

Keeping With Last Nights Post

Looks like my hunch was right. Awoke to this headline. Weekly Jobless Claims Post Surprise Jump, Hit 500,000

Come on, Republicans, no more "all mosque, all the time". It is time to go for the jugular on the economics front.

Obama: Recession Recovery to Take a Few More Years

On the perpetual campaign trail in Washington, today, Obama stated that wary, financially strapped Americans were going to have to wait a few years for economic recovery.

Wow. Did I hear that right? A few years? What happened to the summer of recovery? The green shoots that surely must be full grown trees by now? Has Obama jumped the shark here? I will be the first to admit Americans have short memories but I am guessing most are going to remember that they have been out of work for two years, when the strip malls in their communities were not boarded up and when they could afford the little luxuries that they once took for granted. Just a hunch.

Assuming this is not Obama's "Fonzi moment", why would he say this? What does he know about the economy that we do not know? Perhaps the next job numbers can not be massaged and we are going to breech the 10% unemployment mark? That would be a huge psychological blow to the American people. It would also be an albatross around the necks of Democrats heading into the midterm elections.

July unemployment was at 9.5%, almost a full 4% higher than July 2008. The Labor Department reported first time claims for unemployment benefits jumped to 479,000 last week from 460,000 a week earlier. The median duration of unemployment has jumped to 26 weeks and is growing. This is already the longest recession since the depression.

Obama concluded his appearance accusing the Republican party of offering cynicism and fear. So, projecting another few years of downward economics and declining standard of living is pushing optimism? It may be, because this country will not recover under the Obama administration. It may not survive a second term.

TOTUS (x2) Hits the Gulf Beaches

Doesn't everyone pack a couple of teleprompters for an overnight vacation?

Nobody Likes A Freeloader

You have got to give it to her. If nothing else, the chick has stamina. Hot off the red eye from her Spanish holiday she headed straight to Maryland for a little day trip and impromptu tour of the State House. This is impressive. Travel is exhausting. She is some sort of (un) lean, certainly mean, traveling and eating machine.

According to yesterday's Washington Post : (snip)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/annapolis/2010/08/michelle_obama_daughter_visit.html

The visit was described as a "private tour" and a Washington Post reporter with an office in the State House was told to leave the building as the Obamas arrived. Other reporters were told they could not enter the building once the tour had begun. Several House and Senate staffers who were allowed to remain inside said they were told to turn away down hallways or into offices as the family passed. Outside a crowd of about 50 onlookers were pushed back three times, ultimately across a roadway.

It seems the nomenklatura act may be wearing a little thin with the American people. Today's Rasmussen shows Obama tied with his lowest approval ratings to date.

www.rasmussenreports.com

Obama Approval Index: -22 (Matches all-time low for this president)
Strongly Approve 24%
Strongly Disapprove 46% (Matches highest for this president)
Total Approval 43%

The Obama train wreck gathers steam. This time with Madame Mo at the controls, her highly inflated self image altering her judgement, blissfully unaware of the wreckage in her path.

All aboard, next stop, the Gulf and Martha's Vineyard.

Juan William: Old and White? Need Not Apply.

I see a lot of outrage over this statement in the echo chamber. I think Juan is right. Well, a man ahead of his time, let's put it that way. But don't worry, right wingers and libertarians. It surely won't get worse than this.

We Are the Ones

There is no denying, we are at a pivotal point in, ofcourse, national history but also in our movement to restore the country. As we approach these important elections in November we can expect the ratcheting up of demoralizing and negative spin coming from the leftist favoring media. This is why it is important to remind ourselves and our fellow conservatives, that is precisely what communists do. They try to win via intimidation and overwhelming their opponents.

We are hearing the narrative already. The Tea Party Movement is floundering. We are losing steam. There is in fighting among various components of the movement. The Tea Party Movement is leaderless. Nothing will change with Republicans in charge. We can not possibly gain enough seats to make a difference.

It is easy to fall into their trap. And conservatives do it all too often. Even more important to point out is the idea that we can not allow ourselves to put too much hope in this one election. Conservatives every where are similar. We are not activists by nature. We would simply like to get back to the business of our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Our largest risk is when this election doesn't allow for that, many on our side will be discouraged and shrink from the responsibility we have and in turn, hand the left more power.

We have escaped the nets for a reason. This is our time. This is our moment. We either hold on to everything our forefathers gave us or we lose it all. November is just the begining of a long hard fight. Man up, buck up and hold on to your hats.

Even if a Sex crazed Poodle Wants to Run With the Dogs..

Well, he has gotta piss with the pack. And when the pack is a group of ruthless, power mad, bad men hell bent on world domination, you better hope you can keep up. When you become a liability to the pack, you are own your own. Such is the lesson Al Gore maybe is learning in recent weeks? Tip: if you are a two bit political figure with fading looks, limited intelligence and really, really limited likability factor, perhaps retiring and taking up an adjunct professor gig would have been a better long term plan. Sales pitch man for a really iffy, junk science based scam to pilfer a huge chunk of western wealth that is apt to be exposed is probably not a safe long term plan.

Two more massage therapists have come forward to expose Al's propensity for chakra healing, standing naked in their presence and asking for "additional services". It seems these latest requests were a little more clear than asking for simple chakra releasing. You have to admit, the unravelling of Al Gore is a little suspect.

I have to question the clarity of thought of the person who first said, "We need a pitch man, any ideas? How about failed presidential candidate and clear lunatic Al Gore?" Perhaps there were reasons we can only suspect. He was probably easily malleable, just corruptible enough and he did seem to have some sort of passion for this sort of anti-progress environmentalism. Having written a book on the topic in 1992, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, he had just enough knowledge on the subject to seem somewhat convincing and trainable in the newer areas of the sciences based on mankind destroying the earth.

And it worked for a while. He made a movie, people went and saw it and went to hear him speak. He won some awards. The fact that he was amassing wealth like a prohibition liquor distiller still didn't seem to dissuade most. He was jetting around the world, leaving a carbon wasteland in his tracks and still the awards and accolades kept coming. Last we knew, he was allegedly reaching billionaire status.

Then it all came tumbling down. Leaked emails from the East Anglia University revealed it was all based on faulty and manipulated data. Then emails surfaced showing cover ups were institutionalized to suppress these facts. Climate Gate, though never covered by the old media, put Al Gore's circus side show in jeopardy. He was being met with ridicule and taunts in airports in city after city. For a brief time, he was not making public appearances.

Here we are a few short months later and Chakra Gate emerges. Coincidence? We can only surmise. While I don't doubt he may have engaged in this behavior, you do have to question the timing.

The Ultimate Game

The Ultimate Game is a study performed in the 1970s by Werner Guth. The premise is of the game is simple. There are two players. Player One is given a sum of money and told he must give Player Two an open amount. Player Two can either keep the money and both players keep their sum or reject the offer and both players walk away with nothing.

Ofcourse, the only motivation for Player Two to reject the offer is to punish Player One. It is also in Player Two's best interest to accept whatever sum is offered him, knowing he will receive nothing if he does not. Surprisingly, most offers resulted in about half of them money with cooperation and mutual benefit being the outcome.

Now, what gets really interesting and should help you destroy any argument any Marxist can muster is the results where the game was played with fifteen varying tribal societies. The societies that were most closed off, less engaged in trade and more advanced economic systems were the least generous and rational about the outcome.

Machiguerna (slash and burn) farmers from the Amazon averaged just 15% give away. And nearly all would be recipients rejected the offer.1

Players most integrated in modern markets such as the Orma Nomads from Kenya or the Achuar subsistence gardeners of Ecuador offered up nearly half, similar to their western counter parts.

What can we take from this game? That self interest raises all boats. Trade and commerce based on mutual self interest results in more generosity and the more people have access to these ideas and their results, the more people will prosper and work in cooperation. Self interest was the motivating force in the cases were the people gave more, not altruism.


1. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist-How Prosperity Evolves (New York: Harper Collins, 2010) 87-88

Did You Receive Your Donated Polish Blanket in the 1970s?

I had a political conversation that other day with someone who seemed to think that the youth of this country seemed inclined toward Marxist ideas because they see their own parents unfulfilled by materialism and the chase of material pursuits. I begged to differ. The problem, I explained back, was that we had a youth that knew nothing else. They have only a perspective of relative affluence (typically, the wealthier the more attracted to these ideas the youth can be). It is an issue of perspective. I explained most of the world would sever a limb to come to the this country and "not be satisfied" with all we have.

It's easy to it on your western engineered computer in your ergonomically correct chair with your $5 organic Chai tea in your $45 Abercrombie shorts and fantasize about a Gilligan's Island existence because you have to go to work on Monday morning. There is a reason why a young girl from the Chinese countryside will take a job in a sneaker factory working fourteen hour days and sleeping on a cot in a room with a dozen other Chinese girls working the same job. The fact we are so wealthy we 'measure consumer confidence' while a hundred nations still measure water production, food, and other neccessities is mind boggling when you think about it.

Forget freedom for an instant, assuming we have a contingent of people who have little concern or understanding of freedom. From a purely material perspective, how do you make people understand what it would be like once you cross that line? How do you teach those lessons without all of us having to endure the lessons and hardships in real time that would be the most effective teachers and leave the strongest impressions?

Listening to Alex of the Hyphenated American Blog Link being interviewed on the Jimmy Z show it became obvious to me that we have a valuable resource of American citizens who carry with them the experience and stories of life behind the Iron Curtain and other various utopias around the world. Most of them do not have blogs or the compulsion to tell their stories but as they age we run the risk of losing these stories and real world testimony.

I urge these people to tell their stories. They do not need to be harrowing tales of the Solzhenitsyn variety, sometimes it is the simple stories of day to day life that are the most striking. I have good friends who are immigrants from Poland. They are of the age to remember it all and they are the biggest advocates of freedom one could meet.


A story, Garajnia, the wife of the couple, told one year over Christmas dinner sticks with me. She spoke of the "blanket drives" they were forced to partake in. Polish families were forced to donate blankets for the "poor and disadvantaged" children left on the cold streets the in oppressive capitalist United States.

"Imagine" she said, "here we were, not a pot to piss in, giving away our blankets. Blankets that we often needed. Because, you know, consumer goods were not easy to come by, even if you could afford them."

"Did you believe any of it?", I asked "Did you know we had so much and that it was a complete lie?"

"Yes, we knew, she said but we went along with it anyway. What else could we do?"

People like this are a valuable resource and an underutilized tool in our toolbox. If you know someone like this, urge them to tell their stories, especially to our youth. If you are one of these people, spread the word. Write, lecture, preach and educate. Time is short and patriots are few.

The Most Efficient Destroying Machine

Economic warfare. By far. It has historically been the most effective tool of the tyrant. A type of warfare that has typically been waged against a perceived enemy ginned up by the state. This manufactured hatred gives the state the green light to squash the "enemy" as the protected and threatened segment of the population feels almost obligated to allow it to occur because after all it is in their or the country's defense.

We need to only look back as far as Stalin's war on the kulaks. Kulaks were the higher income earners of the peasant farmers who, many times, had land holdings. They resided in the Ukraine which was the "bread basket" on the former Soviet Union. Because they held land and were independent economically they were not easy converts to the forced collectivization and seizure of their property. Their independence and rebellion was a thorn in Stalin's side and it had to be crushed.

Crushing them was a multifaceted plan. First, they needed to be perceived as the enemy. It is interesting to note that the peasant populations of Russia had little to no ideas of the kulaks as a class until Communist propagandists began the program of implementing the idea into the heads of the people. Ofcourse what was considered a kulak was a moving goal post and could change at the whim of the power holders. Hiring labor, owning any amount of land deemed "abnormally" high at any given time, commercial farming and money lending were just a few of the revolving door of offenses to have one deemed an enemy of the people and a kulak.

Step one, define the enemy. Complete. Fairly easy to do when rousing the common human emotions of envy and greed.

By 1928, the Soviet Union was experiencing food shortages. The solution by 1929 was forced collectivization of the farms. In very short, the land and animal holders rebelled and the state squashed the rebellion. Purge after purge was introduced. The death count has never been able to be calculated. However, the resulting famine and horror undoubtedly led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, as many imprisoned and forcibly relocated and millions of ruined lives as well as a culture and way of life destroyed.

This was economic warfare and famine used to decimate political enemies. People who stood in the way of "hope and change". This is a very abbreviated account and entire books have been written about this engineered famine but the formula is the same the world over. Case in point, the communist regime, Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia who engineered a class of people known as the "New People". Again, a changing cast of characters consisting of sometimes city inhabitants, educated people, businessmen or anyone with foreign contacts. The same formula was used in Mao's China.

It is extremely important to educate ourselves and others about the tactics used by the left historically and to look around us today and look how those very same tactics are being used today. There is nothing new under the sun. The left may be relentless in their pursuits but they can never be accused of being creative or original. They aren't hauling people off to the gulags because they do not have to, the resistance isn't there. But, they are focusing in on and isolating their enemies. And economic warfare is being fully implemented to break the backs of these enemies. The economy isn't recovering, because it isn't supposed to. It might be hard to wrap your head around but if you believe in the individual, have anything to lose and honor American principles and traditions -- you are in the crosshairs.

The Left Can't Lead - Who Knew?

I am reading commentary after commentary of shocked journalists and politicos who are just astounded to find out -- Obama can't lead. He's a flounderer, a staller, a back bencher and an incompetent. Do I inhabit an alternative universe? No one saw this coming?

Obama is a media created myth who is more than likely a puppet for far more sinister forces. Problem is, those sinister forces have a belief system rooted in Marxism also. I do not know if they are any more capable than he. It's easy to destroy things. Much harder to govern and develop functioning systems that keep the people out of the streets with burning pitchforks. Much harder to extinguish that burning fire for freedom that exists in so many human beings.

Most importantly for leftism to exist, even in it's more democratic forms, anywhere in the world it needs, at least, one engine of productivity to cling it's parasitical claws into. We were that engine.

The plans for global governance, carbon taxes, control of free information and pillage and plunder of the American middle class, while reliant on chaos, left out one large factor. Reality. Real live, big problems are building and building. They require a leader who has real executive and leadership experience. One thing is clear, this puppet is lost. The entire Potemkin Village he has built around him in Washington appears to be equally as lost. Deer in the headlights.


The left only operates from a position of strength from the sidelines and armchair quarterbacking. Ginning up class envy and creating divisions is what they do best. Those are skills that are safely practiced from a position of non-leadership and taking on the status quo. That is why leftism, historically, is a revolutionary movement. Beyond the revolution, it falls apart. Then it is either reforms to free market solutions, mass imprisonments, deaths and tree bark soup for dinner or huge segments of underground economies that go, largely, ignored.

To know the future we must remember the past. Obama's decisions are rooted in his leftist ideology. His lack of decisions are because leftism holds no answers for the problems he faces. He is building with a faulty blueprint and old, used unstable foundation in a neighborhood of houses that were built on the same. Problem is, all those houses collapsed some time ago and the left refuses to acknowledge that fact.

Strange Wind Blowing

There is a strange wind blowing, can you feel it? I am reminded of the old, supposedly, Chinese proverb, "may you live in interesting times". There is no mistaking that, the times they are a' changing.

Europe is disintegrating right before our eyes. A fabricated construct of people who do not even necessarily like each other, not only, from country to country but sometimes, even, region to region. In it's ashes we will probably see the emergence of a hard left. The Europeans will never abort communism - they, after all, they invented it. Our notion of "saving" Europe from communism was a seventy year foolish quest, which will now end. They lust for communism, and they will get it sooner than anyone thinks. It is 50 years too late and justly deserved.

North and South Korea are on the brink of war. Nuclear powers, both. Let us not forget we have 28,000 troops on the border of North Korea and we currently have no leadership. None. What happens when Korea goes hot and 28,000 US troops are caught in a crossfire with no leadership or support from Washington?

Oil is leaking into the gulf, Israelis are performing frequent and serious bomb shelter drills with their citizens, The US is on the verge of economic collapse, Japan is even worse off , Venezuela is taking full advantage in South America and I do believe we are nearing the first battle salvos of the war of the Southwest, if they haven't occurred already.


The world is going to hell and Obama is driving us there on the short "green" ethanol fueled bus. Not only that, without getting too much into his psychology, which is an endlessly fascinating subject for me, Obama is giving the impression of someone who is about to unravel.

What does America look like when the dust settles? That is the question that determines the fate, not only, of Americans but of the entire world. America, the concept, is an anomaly, not just in recent history but in human history. Actually, the American 20th century was entirely an abboration in the history of the world. Think about this, at one time we had 80% of the world’s GDP and not even 10% of the world’s population. Americans really have been spoiled like no other people with peace, prosperity and a bubble that allowed a spoiled warped perception to take hold.

All that is ending. We will lose our innocence and ignorance in the next decade. Serious damage is being done to the country.
Most places, you can’t walk outside, or turn on your television and see the damage yet, but it is most certainly taking place. This is a battle to determine which belief system will prevail—individual freedom, or “shared sacrifice”.

They do not call it communism when it comes. Communism starts in meeting halls and in union marches. It won't come with tanks rolling down the streets or midnight raids, that all comes later. Today's communist party consists of about 25 people and a xerox machine. Almost nobody is a formal communist any more. By virtue of leftist infiltration of the educational system going back 70 or more years, people have been taught to believe everything the communists believed in, while laughing at the idea they are communists. Mere use of the label provokes laughter.

This is the international globalist communist revolution the left planned for since it's inception. The chaos all around it is it's oxygen. Freedom is very fragile and Americans, by-and-large, have grown extremely arrogant. Much more prideful than the founders and more than our own grandparents who feared and loathed communism for good reason.

---KMBR

Have Rickshaw Will Travel

Waking up is getting dicey these days. I wake from one Obama Marxist induced nightmare to the next on this oddly unbumpy road to the "total transformation of America". Today I woke to a news report that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood "has announced that federal transportation policies will no longer favor “motorized” transportation, such as cars and trucks, over “non-motorized” transportation, such as walking and bicycling".Link. Yup, as we always knew, they are coming after our cars next. Because what is more symbolic of American liberty than the automobile? That's right, nothing.

How am I going to get the groceries home from Costco on my bike you ask? They have an answer for that also in Totally Transformed America. It comes from the granddaddy of societal transformation and planned sustainable living, the Soviet Union. It is called the CommieBloc™ apartment housing. It will be close to work and near public transportation. And because food will become so prohibitively expensive, you will never really be buying in bulk anyway. Soon you'll be paying $5 for about two ounces of jelly just like the Europeans. You Americans are all too fat anyway and, really, you never did spend enough of your discretionary income on food.

I am thinking of those great societies that bike and walk as a main mode of transportation. Mao's China, North Korea. Folks, this is typical 3rd world and 2nd world mobility. For those of you who haven't watched this youtube I urge you to.

This is Obama's vision for our future. A great Leap Forward to the 19th century.

It's Time To Start Using the C Word

Communist. Use it. I employ it every time, here in Sweden, when asked how I like Barack Obama. People need to see it for what it is. Socialism is just a small pit stop on the long or short road to Communism. Socialism is not an end goal. Given enough time and no one left to keep it in check, it will always lead to hard totalitarianism.

What is happening to Americans today is very foreign to most. People like me having been sounding the alarm bells for years but, even I, sure as I was had my moments of doubt that it was actually happening here and to us. Americans have that certain sense of naivety and optimism. An unyielding belief that "it can't happen here". There is no denying at this dark moment, it is happening.

I can promise you that as you look to the system to correct itself and get us back on course, our system and laws of governance are being dismantled. I read blogs and media outlets speaking under the assumption that the government is still there, still listening to them, still guided by the constitution. That is the voice of the naive and those that still have not grasped the magnitude of what has transpired in this country.

We are losing our country. This is happening. This is not just a bad administration that we have to endure for four years while we go on drinking our Starbuck's and watching American Idol. We have never had a cabal of communists in power and a huge segment of the population that has been ideologically contaminated by methods of subversion. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had a healthy contingent of Americans who understood the basic pillars of our society and were versed in American exceptionalism.

Not so today. We sat back as they infected our schools and popular culture. We watched as they taught our children we were bad, our system was bad, that communism wasn't really that bad. We let them intimidate us when they called us McCarthyites and laughed at us for being stuck in the "cold war mentality". You allowed them into your homes while your children performed energy audits and as the cartoons sunk the messages into their impressionable heads. We allowed it all to happen. Well, because, hey, it can't happen here. The Wall came down, every body is drinking Coke and watching re-runs of Friends.

It all looked so normal. Meanwhile, they were busily infecting and replicating, spreading their diseased way of thinking. Even so, they still do not have all of us, not even most of us. Many of us escaped the nets and many are old enough to not have been exposed to the mindwashing. However, they know they do not need a majority. Through history they've never needed a majority. They know they only need a healthy enough sized group of fellow travelers, true believers and useful idiots. What they rely on is our cowardice and aversion to risk.

It is time for all good American's to once again answer their country's call because I can assure you the communist's in our halls of government woke this morning, looked around , saw no resistance and took that as a sign to press on. The speed at which we fall increases with every achievement of the collectivists. Now is not the time to be sheepish or intimidated. If more and more Americans don’t fully grasp just how desperate our situation is, and rapidly, their complete victory is imminent. We then become just another leftist country to be fitted for one world government shackles.

You Say Freedom, They Hear FREE

We all need to be Francisco d'Anconia now. And we are going to need a few Ragnar Danneskjölds also. Readers of Ayn Rand should understand what that means.

There is just not much else that can be said. Thought, but not said.

Until Socialist Amerika collapses. America, the great experiment, is over.

"Prepare to get schooled in my Austrian Perspective"

Do You Know What a SDR Is?

I did not know until just recently. You should know, if you do not. And I guarantee you, if you believe at all in the pillars of limited government that America was built on, this will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. SDR stands for Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Think of them as a security, similar to a treasury bond.

The value of SDRs is determined by a mixture of international currencies including the Dollar, the Euro, the Yen, and the Pound.
They are not considered currencies at this writing as it is not something you or I could buy and trade. Make no mistake, SDRs are a world currency. Since the economic meltdown began, SDR circulation has increased 100x.

As countries are quietly dropping their dollars, all the while professing their faith in the dollar, they are lapping up these SDRs. As countries are shedding their dollars, who do you think is suspected to be the largest investor in US treasuries? The Federal Reserve. Yes, it appears we are printing money to buy our own debt to keep the dollar on life support.

BUT, at the same time, we are also investing in the SDRs. The U.S. Treasury quintupled its supply of SDRs in August of 2009. Why would we do that? If we were indeed confident that the US dollar was going to be not only the world reserve currency but also in existence, why would we be investing so heavily in SDRs?

To anyone paying attention, it is more apparent by the days that the structure for a world governance is being set up all around us in broad day light. We are now witnessing the planned, pre-positioned fall of the Republic.

1980 Redux?

Yesterday Newsbusters rain an article titled "Dan Rather: Articulate Obama Couldn't Even Sell Watermelons". Link Yeah, that guy. The retired in shame newscaster who was so partisan he actually teared up on television, while reporting, when John Kerry lost. The same guy who had to leave his decades long "journalism" career in shame because he used fabricated documents to to help further that same progressive candidate.

Another article yesterday posted on Yahoo News yesterday, taken from Time, is titled "How Obama is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush". Link Makes one wonder, have we reached he tipping point? Are the liberals getting to the point where they turn on Obama?

Upon further inspection of both articles, it is obvious the liberal media still has no love loss for the Republicans or Bush but they are not puff pieces meant to bolster the anointed one either. Dare I say, they are nearly critical of Obama?

Makes one warm and fuzzy, echoing a time of our last radical Democratic President. The days of the sweater and the gas lines. Twenty one percent interest rates and humiliating foreign incidents. A president, who one minute would be heading out to Camp David to usher in a Peace Accord and micro managing the Whitehouse tennis court the next.

It's 1980 and the left wing in the Democratic Party almost all supported Ted Kenendy in his primary challenge against Carter. It turned into a bitter nasty battle. The party in 1980 left their convention split. Many liberals abstained from the vote by staying home in November, or else voted for the third party, John Anderson. Their anger was palpable. More so than usual.

Bottom line, Carter won the primary and lost to Reagan. The moral of the story, the incumbent never gets thrown over board. The Democrats and their MSM apparatus either go down with the ship, correct course (very unlikely) or fracture. The cracks are beginning to show.

Obama Enlists Emathy Enducers to Flood Talk Radio

The freakshow that is the Obama administration continues to sink to creepier new lows. They have set up a website designed to encourage their followers to flood talk radio with personal stories. They instruct them to tell "personal" stories illustrating how lack of health care coverage has had an impact on the lives of themselves, friends and family. The website gives them appropriate questions to ask and specific talking points.

You can visit the website at Radio Barack Obama . Yeah, they are still using his name as a promotional gimmick. I can guess this is only a selling point with the diehard kool-aid drinkers at this point.

They've broken it down into three easy steps. It is a clear of an admission as we will ever get that, as far as Obama supporters go, keeping it simple is mandatory. These are many of the same people who couldn't maneuver the Palm Beach butterfly ballot and inadvertently voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore in the 2000 election.

The three steps basically tell you, the moonbat, to 1. listen 2. use the approved agit pop supplied by the Obama administration on the website when calling and 3. to report back to the Obama administration what your experience was. There is a bunch of other propaganda for the already seriously deluded, some disclaimer that the website was powered by "hope" and ofcourse, the ever popular, Obama logo.

Creepy. Sad. Pathetic. Desperate. Inappropriate. All adjectives that come to mind.

It brings to light the modus operandi of the Democratic party, though. It's the psychology behind the token victim in every debate or State of the Union address. People prone to emoting hear the tale, see the ad, their mirror neurons fire and they feel empathy. They feel inclined to vote Democrat, support Oprahite policies or, at minimum, become too intimidated to refute them. They want everyone to believe thy are caring people. Hence flooding talk radio with sob stories.

Do those ascribing to leftism have a sort of addiction to the feeling of an empathy induced need to act and then having it satisfied by doing a sort of symbolic act? Is this why they spend time trying to conjure up feelings of empathy for distant people that they can "fix". Is this why they do not seem to give one iota that the cures are so many times worse than the conditions?

That would explain a lot of otherwise difficult-to-understand behavior by the left: (1) the obsession with "caring" and "commitment", (2) the support of candidates and laws that have nothing to do with fixing the "crisis" (3) ritual, symbolic acts that make them feel they have helped the distant people or things (moveon.org meetings), sitting naked in trees in Berkeley (here, the target of empathy is a tree), buying carbon credits (here, the entire earth), voting for a democrat; and (4) the conviction that anyone who does not agree that their symbolic acts are stupid and morally inferior.

Ofcourse, the use of this website to power that addiction to empathy and try and spread it upon the saner faction of the population is just politics as usual. A president afraid of talk radio stooping to new lows of using his less than stable base to do his bidding.

Sycophancy Should Not Be a Resume Enhancer

"What’s really going on, I think, is that the nature of class war has changed. The old virus has mutated. The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes."

Minette Marrin.

I think she is on to something and though this author is British and writing in reference to Britain the same phenomenon is reaching the shores of the United States. As Americans, we reject largely, the idea of nobility. Particularly special status granted by birth right or favor. We, largely, reject the notion of special status by way of unearned and undeserved privilege.

Yet, we can see it and sense it in the halls of our governments, in the schools of our communities and in the offices of our civic leaders. It is exactly the disgust we feel toward such a system that is fueling the tea party movements. Everyday, ordinary Americans, incidentally the people who have made this country the engine of the world, are recognizing that the world of the ivy leaguer and the VIP by name is worse off than the world would be if ran by Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Main Street. They also see that they are the people solely responsible for funding this orgy of incompetence sure to bring about heir own demise. They are funding their own destruction and they want it to stop.

Americans will entertain the notion of nobility only so far. They accept the movie stars and their offspring living lives of opulence. Maybe because of the knowledge that so many have come from nothing and so many never will enter that stratosphere. Maybe, too, because they receive something in return, diversion and entertainment. They also have a sort of schadenfreude when they see through the tabloid windows that all is not perfect in the lives of opulence. On some level, too, exists a knowledge that their wealth and prestige is earned through some control of the consumer. We choose whether to dish out ten bucks for the latest Brad Pitt box office release or to pay $17 for the Miley Cyrus t-shirt.

We also accept our Bill Gates and Steve Jobs model moguls. Largely self made men or women who won the lottery of life through determination, skill, smarts, timing, intuition and luck. People who, in turn, have brought us products or services that have revolutionized our lives for the better. Again, we got something out of the equation. Millions of others road their backs to lesser but still beyond their dreams standards of living.

However, these new elites -- we gain nothing from their self imposed status. They ride our backs to comfort and prestige. They do not create wealth. Rather, they destroy it. They do not elevate citizens or inspire them to higher levels. Rather, they encourage and institute policies that insure the citizen's own permanent mediocrity in the name of equality.

What is worse, they divide people. They pit one group against another against another to keep the ire and attention directed anywhere but at their own ineptitude and their own lack of greatness. Like bulldozers, they make their way through our society destroying and devaluing everything they come into contact with. They rouse the rabble and on the backs of the poor they claim to represent they ride their first class seats and make permanent offices in their ivory towers.

Like a bolshevik street fighter in the early 1900's, I watch as the public grows weary with the gluttony of the political class. Everyday, more would welcome watching this new nobility stripped of their positions of prestige and be forced to survive in a world where sycophancy is not a resume booster. The world most of us choose to live in.

h/t to Samizdata http://www.samizdata.net/blog/

Unity of an Economically Conservative Cause

Ron Paul gets a bad rap with conservatives. Mostly because he has a contingent of staunchly ideological supporters who are as equally malcontented as any leftist you will come across. Reading the rabid responses to Paul's victory in the CPAC poll told the story of the chasm that exists with conservatives today. We can nearly all agree on the things we do not want however we cannot come to a meeting of the minds on just what it is we do want.

Instead of , at least, reveling in the idea that people, particularly young people (it was pointed out on FOX this morning that the CPAC poll was influenced by a large number of people 25 and under) are open to the ideas of limited government, abolishing the Fed and the message of our Founding Fathers, posters on leading conservative message boards are throwing out adjectives such as mentally unstable, nuts, kook and whacko. Hardly inclusive talk that is looking for common ground to secure the leadership position in Washington come 2012.

Ron Paul is as clear a litmus test on limited government as we might get for a long time. He has a pro-freedom resume that is solid. Yet, we are told over and over again that he is not conservative because of his "only respond if attacked foreign policy". When did an interventionist foreign policy agreement become the litmus test for conservatism?

True, Paul does not understand radical Islam and the threat it poses to western civilization. Conservatives do not understand we are not going to save western civilization by fighting half hearted wars in countless foreign countries all while Islam proliferates in the capitals of Europe and American cities. Something has to give.

Ron Paul isn't going to win the GOP nomination, but he's bringing new, young fiscal conservatives to the cause. When they come to that cause rather than the leftist dogma they were steeped in from cradle to grave we need to embrace that hope. Not only American youths either. Young minds from Istanbul to Oslo are listening to his message and are hearing ideas they have never heard before. For all their lives they've been bathed in cheap Social-Democratic rhetoric and all of a sudden they have a man talking something that stirs them.

As conservatives of all stripes, we need to come together on the principles of liberty we can agree on. All the other stuff, we can work out later. We must understand this one salient point of history; no republic ever fell due to invasion or due to being conquered from outside. Every single republic, from the beginning, fell due to internal economic policy failures. It is for that reason alone, that Ron Paul cannot be dismissed, even for his other errors.

At this standing Barack Obama can not beat any single unified candidate in the 2012 general election. His 41% strongly disapprove numbers are largely irreversible. A single unified fiscally sound and conservative candidate is unbeatable. The trick is keeping our marriage of convenience together and not slipping into 1992 Perot style defeat. The times are too serious and the stakes too high.

Help Wanted: President of the United States of America

Coming off the wire from AP today is the announcement that Obama's advisors, in reaction to criticism that he is no longer connecting with the milk cows (that would be us), is reverting back to :

-- More direct rapid response to criticism....

-- More events at which the president speaks directly to the public without the filter of the media...

-- Carefully choreographed interactions with the press. Unlike news conferences that are unscripted and can cover many topics and put reporters in competition with the president for the spotlight, the Obama team is trying to place a premium on its media interactions. (taken from AP article via Fox News Link)

I had to check the calendar. Groundhog Day was a few weeks ago, wasn't it? I was not aware we ever left "campaign mode" so how is it he is retreating back to it? Are we going into "campaign mode" on steroids? It is times like these I am thankful to be out of the country. I rarely have to withstand his appearances.

All this in the same 24 hour news cycle where Al Gore makes his reappearance reaffirming that all things climate are "worse than we thought". It might lead one to conclude that all the leftist indoctrination centers where these folks cut their teeth are only focused on the gaining of power. Things kind of fall apart for them with the actual governing once in power or once things are looking to be going their way. It seems they've only mastered "Down For the Struggle 101" and "Getting the Masses All Hopped Up on Class Envy".

I wish I knew which of his advisors was telling him, "Yeah, we agree with you, it isn't your policies, it's just the fact that the guy who lost his job ten months ago and is losing his house has not really heard your message. Once you can convince him that change is hard and he is just the cannon fodder for this sort of change, he'll get it"

What is telling is that Obama does not perceive himself as doing anything wrong. He thinks he is just saying it wrong. Somehow, he feels, he can convince us. Just like with Iran or jockeying for the Olympics, Obama believes his mere presence solves problems. That is why he feels the need to go to the American people without the filter of the media. Which, incidentally, was exactly what George W. Bush needed to do. It is exactly what Obama does not need to do.

I reckon the American public has seen enough Obama to last them a long good while.

Most of the Americans who do not embrace socialism see him for exactly what he is, an old school radical socialist with the ideals of a 19 year old university student. You have to wonder, does he have one competent advisor to tell him, "Campaign time is over, these are serious times. It is time to lead"?

Hate To Say We Told You So

Ah jeez, no one saw this one coming. The New York Daily News (Link) reported yesterday that Obama is now "agnostic" on possible tax hikes for households making less than $250,000 a year. The poll on the page shows 81% of readers think it is a terrible idea. I wonder how many of them voted for Obama? Perhaps, it is a great idea. We should all share in the misery of Obamonamics equally, especially people who voted for it. Maybe then, a few more eyes will open a more will see just how far down the road to serfdom they are.

To those who voted for Obama and believed he was not going to raise their taxes, point you to the ever reassuring and motivating advice of Michelle Obama on Good Morning America earlier this week, "Change is hard, no one said it was going to be easy." (That's Obamafamilyspeak for "let them eat cake"). Hmmm, maybe that is why the kids are all so fat, so much Obamanomics cake. See youtube video at about 3:14 mark Link

Obama is quoted as saying, "The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table. So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions." Have you ever come across a leftist who had any other solution than raising taxes? Just look to Greece and California, hanging by a thread over the cliff, and the state's only solution in both instances is "raise more taxes". It is like believing the cure to your lung cancer is smoking five packs of Camels a day rather than undergoing surgery and chemotherapy.

No, it is worse than that. It is like just being diagnosed with lung cancer and visiting a ward of people on their death beds who tried the 5 packs of Camels a day treatment and then visiting people who have survived lung cancer by using surgery and chemotherapy and still saying, "You know, I think I am going to go with the Camels route, it's never worked before". It is just that crazy,

Let us contrast agnostic Obama with campaign trail Obama on September 12, 2008 in Dover, New Hampshire: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” How many times did he repeat that? Hundreds, easily.

Obama is finding out what we have known all along. The herd is a bit thin at the 250k and above mark. Oh, and we told you so.

Ich Bin Ein Lemming

Imagine it is about 1924 in the new Soviet Russian Ukraine and for analogy purposes we have the technologies we have today. Imagine again, for analogy purposes, a tractor company airing an ad that shows Ukrainian and Russian citizens being visited by the "collectivization police". (admittedly, this is asking for a lot of poetic license as there would be no advertising, tractors, televisions or disposable income to support such endeavors in the Soviet Union, but bear with me) Images might be shown of people helping the Ukrainian farmers, farming their own plots of land or tending to their livestock. The "collectivization police" would be shown harassing, roughing up and inspecting the people thought to be engaging in these acts. Incidentally, all three of these examples were deemed illegal in the Soviet Ukraine in the mid to late 1930s by Josef Stalin.

The commercial might then show the Kulaks (displaced Ukrainian farmers) living "special settlements" in the wilderness of Siberia or working on the collectivists farms and the "collectivism police" then happily interacting with the rest of the population who were not considered "enemies of the people". The message, subtle, resistance is futile. Just comply.

Looking back, would we have found humor in the prophetic ad? For satire to work there must be an element of truth and this hit right on the nerve. I fully understand the extent to which the green movement wants to go, not to save the environment, but to nourish their pathology. I have talked to "progressives" who would have no problem with a representative of the federal government coming into your home for an “energy” audit. These people and their useful idiot supporters would welcome the Green Police. I have little doubt enough of them would welcome "green" punishments too.

Ofcourse I am writing in reference to the now highly talked about Audi Superbowl ad. It was a great ad. Albeit, a little disturbing coming from a German carmaker though I am sure the concept materialized on 5th Avenue and not the Unter den Linden. It was for all intents and purpose a brilliant ad that more than accomplished it's mission. It has people talking and thinking. I just wish it ended a little differently.

We were left with the final message that depicted tacit acceptance of green fascism. The message: you need to buy a eco friendly car to avoid getting hassled by the government but it doesn't have to be a goofy golf cart. Look, it can be an Audi! A sort of Neville Chamberlain like approach to fascism.

Sign of the Decline

News broke last year informing the residents of Phoenix that we were now living in the kidnapping capital of the country. Though it had reached a small decline in 2009, the Valley of the Sun had reached a 10-year high in 2008 with 359 kidnappings. Authorities were quick to try and relieve fears by insisting most kidnappings were related to the drug cartels. However, the metro are was seeing a sharp increase in abductions for the purpose of child prostitution and what is termed as "express kidnappings". "Express kidnappings" are abductions in which victims are held for a short time and either used to extort money from family members or forced to deduct money from their bank accounts.

I do not know what is more disturbing the idea that it is happening or the idea that we are adding slang language to our lexicon to describe these acts. This is how the decline into the third world happens. Not with a single cataclysmic event but with a slow trickle of rot and ruin. Suddenly, we have all adapted.

I would even venture to say if we go third world, the term third world leaves the lexicon. It just becomes the way things are. For the whole world.

Large healthy middle classes are what provide for stability. A country can handle a certain number of very poor people but not a majority. That means the hard working but not overly educated or especially brilliant guy gets to have a decent enough job that gives him something to care about.

The important class is the middle class. All third world countries have a small wealthy class and a vast poverty class. Mexico for example is one of the world's wealthiest nations. The rich class is small but extremely wealthy and decadent. There is a tiny middle class. The majority are very, very poor. Poverty leads to desperation. All the child labor laws in the world will not stop a hungry, amoral and ambitious sort to sell off a mouth that they can not feed. Or conversely to nab one off the street to make a few thousand dollars.

Often making the Argentine analogy, I think it is important to point out that Argentina was once on the trajectory to be like the United States. European immigrants, often times, were torn between choosing the United States or Argentina. It was the world's tenth wealthiest nation in 1915. That should be where the similarities end.

The decline was not sudden as many would lead you to believe. It was a slow death brought on by decadence of ruling European blood lined elites, welfare statism and the borrowing, spending, printing and debt to pay for those welfare statist promises.

I follow the Surviving in Argentina blog with some degree of regularity and I was disturbed to see his February 5th posting was titled Kidnappings in the USA: How to Prepare for Them. Link. He gives the warning that "how suddenly, things that supposedly didn’t happen anymore, like kidnappings, well they do."

Obama Fatigue, Liberty and Political Transformations-Not Necessarily Related

I am finding myself suffering from Obama fatigue or even just sheer government idiocy fatigue. After watching the State of the Union Address, it appears Obama is poised to continue off the cliff. The only real question remains how many of us he succeeds in taking with him, how much of his agenda can be blunted and what exactly will happen in the 2010 elections. Until then, it is a watching and waiting game. Hoping also. Hoping that enough Americans awake and embrace liberty. But it seems the further one is from true liberty the less they know it's true meaning or can even envision what it would look like in it's practical form.

If liberty were to come, there is even the gamble that many would reject it in it's whole.

Some time ago, I read a piece by Solzhentsyn in which he said many people in this country believed their carefree life would continue on forever, unabated, no matter what they did. It was a keen observation. The way they were raised by parents in a country of unprecedented comfort and wealth that spoiled them. Not only their way of life but an improvement of it was a conditioned expectation. In reality, freedom can not survive irresponsibility.

Socialism and big government foster that irresponsibility. Socialism is an ideology wherein everyone owns each other, but, ultimately, nobody owns themselves. Everyone is owned by a coalition of resentful busibodies, leeches, incompetents, and demagogues. However, the idea of not owning one's self is attractive especially if they are free to engage in vice. Vice is then repackaged as a substitute for freedom.

I would guess it holds true that many conservatives or libertarians can admit to once being more socialist in nature. Growing up in upstate New York I was always intuitively more conservative than nearly anyone I encountered. That being said, the tide all around me was so low, that all things relative, my beliefs were pretty statist, looking back. My first tour of living in Europe cured me of any leftward idealists thoughts I might have. I saw first hand the discrepancy between our lives and what, in reality, was another of the "richest" nations lives. There was no comparison and the backwardness of their societies was palpable.

My abject fear of ever having such a society foisted upon us made me more nationalist, certainly jingoistic. Having the luxury of time I was able to ferret out the differences and feel out the small day to day nuances. For instance, watching as a man refused to move simple box 100 feet because moving boxes was not in his contract was a one day cure-all for any union sympathies I might have had. Also watching my neighbor take a full six weeks off of work for hay fever as he spent his days reading the paper and taking every meal out in his garden was another memorable eye opening observation. Observing human nature as it was, not as I wanted to believe it should be, was key in understanding the failures of collectivism.

As it is, no one talked me out of socialism. Like most, I had children, got a mortgage and saw how confiscatory it was to the typical family. Realistically, it took years to go from "talking point repeating drone" to conservative. Even still my political awareness is evolving. I am still recognizing the places where I accept the premise of an authoritarian big government. The places where, I myself, may reject liberty.

Did Obama Ever Imagine the Tea Party Movement?

A like minded cyber friend asked this question yesterday and I thought it was something we may have never asked ourselves and, yet, for such a simple question it is incredibly key. I do not think he did. I do not think he planned for them, anticipated them, understands them, gets them, knows how to react to them or has a plan to counteract them. Obama has never faced true conservative opposition before. It does not exist in Chicago. Other warring members of the corrupt Democrat machine? Sure, and he knows how to deal with them.

For a man with maybe slightly higher than average intellect and questionable psychological stability, does he have the stuff to face serious or principled opposition? How will he handle the presumptive scenario of sharing power with a tea party influenced senate or house? He came to power in a state with no real Republican presence, let alone a conservative or principled presence. Remember this is a guy who won his senate seat when his primary opponents were all disqualified for one reason or another.

He tells the story now of having gone door to door meeting the folks and getting his message out. Not so much. He was successful in challenging enough signatures on his opponents petitions to have them disqualified. Including the incumbent, Alice Palmer. Essentially he ran unopposed.

From what we have seen this far, this is not a man who makes compromises. Beyond the Alinksy inspired rhetoric and packaging there exists not much else. I doubt he ever imagined more than a small amount of polite hemming and hawing from the "extreme" right wing that he could easily marginalize and paint as voices from extremists.

His bag of tricks are like pebbles to the kevlar vest of the Tea Party Movement. In fact, they have begun to actually strengthen the movement as they are now proving to work against him. His silk tongued vocabulary and a narcissistic ability manipulate had always outwitted those around him in his circles of the politically correct vacuum of academia and in the snake pit of Chicago politics he was used as a tool by others more cunning and ambitious then he. He simply had to modify the shtick to the new circumstances. If one study his history you'll find that the pattern is essentially the same. All pomp, no circumstance.

He is utterly ill-equipped to hash out an effective strategy for the Tea Party Movement. It is why one day he is populist Obama, the next he is lashing out at Fox News, freezing spending and the next he is on vacation or not heard from for a few days. We have watched him richochet from thing to thing, searching for a strategy and hoping if he throws enough crap against the wall something will stick. With his limited patience and experience, he gives none of it enough time to see if it will work.

Watching his speeches in the last few days, his tone seems more erratic and certainly more paranoid. He keeps making references to unnamed "theys". "They'll say this, they'll say that about Obama". What is November going to look like if the mid-term results come out as unfavorably as they many predict?

It is interesting to note, there are precedents in history for this sort of unravelling. In the mid 1960s Soviet Union, after Khrushchev's policies eroded his popularity, he was put on a little "working vacation". Even in our own history, one have to only look back so far as the 1970s to reference a time when the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, took on more and more responsibility as the Nixon lost power, sometimes actually omitting Nixon from policy meetings. It is also widely believed that Kissinger, raised the nation to DEFCON 3 without first getting President Nixon's approval, on the evening the Soviets threatened to send troops to th region.

Realizing the situation is fluid and anything can change, he could prove me wrong and turn this thing around. However if we continue on the trajectory that we are on and the American people still reject Obama's cure all potion of Marxist medicine, all bets are off.

Thank You Massachusetts! Thank You Real America!

'It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well- informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." —Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789.

Let's revel in this moment, bask in the warm glow of the sun that is the significance of this election before returning to the battlefield. No Republican has won a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts since 1972. Thank you obama. I said, as early as September, obama may turn out to be our biggest asset. ( and my prediction holds true.

Actually, a Republican has not held this seat for much longer than even that.

This particular seat has been filled by Democrats since 1953 when JFK was first elected to fill it. When he left to become president, he was succeeded by Benjamin A. Smith, Democrat, who filled the seat from December 27, 1960 – November 6, 1962 until Teddy was elected in 1962. Teddy held the seat continuously from then until he died, at which time he was temporarily replaced by Democrat Paul Kirk.

The obama administration has officially ended a 57 year reign by Democrats in Massachusetts.

Why Barack Won't Moderate

Despite this slap upside the head, I believe we will continue in this direction with the Obama administration. he won't take this as a cue to moderate, to reread the pulse of the nation or to rethink the country and his agenda. He is the agenda.

To change course and moderate, obama would need to demonstrate a trait that he has thus far shown us he is completely devoid of, humility. Or, at bare minimum, he'd have to be able to fake it really well ala Bill Clinton. He shows little aptitude for that sort of ego hampering expediency that Bill Clinton excelled at.

Also, he is a true believer, something of a purist. This is a guy who did not go to great effort to hide who he was. The American people went to great effort to believe he was something different. He has been very open since his first fundraiser in Bill Ayers living room, he wants to "build coalitions of power to bring about redistributive change." These are his words.

Question is, now hobbling on one leg and limping along, how much fight does barack obama have in him? After watching him for twelve long months, I dare say, not much. Ofcourse a lot depends on the people surrounding him but from this vantage obama is an achiever when the achieving is made easy for him.

Ten Year Old Kid Throws Obama Off His Game

Here is Obama at a rally Sunday to bolster support for floundering Massachusetts candidate Martha Coakley. And he was not looking too confidence inspiring or presidential. I do not know if it was that the kid threw off his teleprompter timing or if he was that visibly "deer in the headlights" having to face confrontation but he was clearly off his game. That is the game of demonizing insurance companies, the entire finance industry, pharmaceutical companies, coal companies, Tea Party enthusiasts, townhallers, plumbers and truckers. Whew, the list is getting long.

Even more delicious is the idea that obama could not even fill the venue. That is right. The magic man, a few days before an election of such importance, could not fill a 3000 seat auditorium. Reports are that it was somewhere between half to 3/4 full. Meanwhile the Scott Brown rally in Worchester was filled to capacity of 3000 people with another thousand waiting outside. Even more telling, prominent and even left wing media voices are beginning to show cracks in their unwavering support. It is getting too hard to cover for the failure that he is.

Regardless of the outcome in Massachusetts tomorrow, the Democratic regime have got to be scared witless over this wave of voter backlash. They must know that if this can happen in the bluest of blue states, very few are safe. Lacking in any previous management or leadership experience, one wonders how a narcissist like Obama will deal with a major defeat. Judging for this youtube, not very well.

A Somewhat Close to Anarcho Capitalism Success Story

Ivorian tax-free rebel city flourishes

...Soroland may not be a breakaway zone, but for seven years the inhabitants of this zone have got used to living without government taxes, customs charges and even water and electricity bills...

I have to admit I have a growing curiosity about the ideas of anarcho-capitalism and it's feasibility. Perhaps it grows out of my growing discontent with the state, any state. The idea of anarchy used to bring me images of malcontented youths throwing rocks through Starbuck's windows. Typically, those are socialist anarchists and they do constitute the largest block of anarchist thought.

Anarcho Capitalism is defined as an individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services are provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through compulsory taxation, and money is privately produced in an open market. Because personal and economic activities are regulated by the natural laws of the market through private law rather than through politics, victimless crimes, and crimes against the state are rendered moot.[1]

My interest in AC began after learning more of Taoist thought in ancient China. The Taoists advocated pure freedom from the state, no interference by the state in economy or society. The Taosists were found by a contemporary of Confucius, Lao Tzu. Similarly to the Randian objectivist philosophy, Lao Tzu taught that it was the individual and his happiness was the integral component of a workable and healthy society. He had a healthy distrust of centralized governments and rightfully so as he lived in a time of turbulence, violence and abusive state power.

He was especially critical of the war making ability of the state. " "The people hunger because theft superiors consume an excess in taxation" and, "where armies have been stationed, thorns and brambles grow. After a great war, harsh years of famine are sure to follow."

His basic tenet is familiar to libertarians. Keep government simple and inactive. The antithesis to what we are witnessing in the United States and most of the world today.

It would certainly take a seismic shift in thinking, one perhaps brought about by calamity. Argentina shows a prime example of the state dissolving into anarchy. Areas of Mexico, the favelas in Brazil, many other countries are in the terminal phase of statism. It too idealistic to hope that in the face of government failures we will see more people running from government, instead of running to it for solutions? The example above, coming from Africa of all places, gives one a glimmer of hope.

Double Billing

Obama is said to be making the announcement tomorrow that he plans to charge fees to the "fat cats" in the financial firms to the tune of 120 billion dollars. It is being packaged as a tool aimed at recovering tax dollars from government-rescued financial institutions. In reality, the taxpayer paid for the bailout once and will pay for it a second time when the banks pass those fees on to you.

Businesses do not pay taxes. Banks are businesses. They are tax collectors. Everyone who uses a bank will be paying this. If you are rich, you'll be paying. If you are poor, ditto. Add in onto to all the other hidden taxes and fees you pay.

Obama will five another prime time speech telling us how he really nailed those fat cats in the banks. The financial illiterates among us will think Obama is looking out for them in the misguided belief that Obama is finally giving it to those greedy bankers with their outrageous bonuses. The "I buy a new cell phone and spend $200 a month on lattes" simpletons won’t even notice the new and creative ways that the banks will recoup the revenue: overdraft penalties, ATM charges, etc. And who exactly will that squeeze the most? Clue: It won't be the guy with a couple of homes and a driver.

From just a glance it would just appear that Obama is economically clueless and I am sure he is. At closer scrutiny, his administration knows what they are doing and where these fees will come from. He has a promise to live up to. "If you make less than $250,000 I promise you will not see a tax increase"

He didn't raise your taxes. He stuck it to those greedy bankers. He is just sticking it to greedy Big Pharma. Just sticking it to those evil wall Street Executives or however the villain of the month is. This is how he gets to tax the middle and lower class, by proxy.