Bobby Jindal is wrong. The Governor of Louisiana has been properly criticizing the Federal government for not allowing Louisiana to follow its own plans to protect its own waters and its own shore lines from the mess created by BP's oil spill.
"The Coast Guard told us yesterday – after weeks of reviewing our plan that they approved a single segment of just two miles to see if the sand boom works. This is another example of too little too late. We expressed this frustration to the President..." wrote Jindal on his official website.
Jindal is wrong for allowing the Federal government to stand in the way of Louisiana, who will be the big loser, if Obama doesn't lose bigger politically speaking. But even political losses pale in comparison to what Louisiana is losing in natural resources, fish, wildlife, wetlands, and the industry of everyone in Louisiana; when the fishing industry comes to a halt, the Louisiana economy will begin to tank. Already the tourism industry including local restaurants that rely solely on tourism during the summer months is almost non-existent.
No, Bobby Jindal is wrong for not telling the Federal government to screw itself, and do what Louisiana knows it has to do. This would not only be the right thing for Louisiana, and for Jindal politically, because he would come out looking like David against Goliath. He would come out smelling like a rose, while the Obama administration would stink like the oil-drenched waters that could eventually ride the current all the way up the Eastern Seaboard after ruining the Florida coast, industries, and tourism.
But Jindal will come out smelling like a rose in the 2012 Presidential race, in which he is certain to be one of the front-runners. All the Republicans will smell better than Obama on the environmental front (let alone on the issues of Iran, the Afghan Presidential election and the Presidency itself, and jobs, jobs, jobs.)
This issue of the Obama administration telling the States what they can and cannot do to protect themselves, including investigating Arizona's new illegal-immigrant law, brings the Tenth Amendment issue closer to the showdown between Federal power and State's rights in the 21st Century.
Jindal might not win the Republican nomination, but he and the other Republicans will have a lot of ammunition to use against Obama and his policy wonks come election time, including this fall during the Congressional elections.
Note: Last month I suspended publication of this blog on a daily basis because of time constraints generated by my other activities. Today, I begin the blog again, on a once-a-week basis. I'm glad to be back. CEC
The field of lobbyists is growing even as President Obama attempts to keep them at bay from the doors of the White House. But there are at least two important considerations aside from the prevention of lobbying Obama's staff.
First, the President's memo requires any written communications with the White House to be published online. This alone could cause the ranks of lobbyists, unregistered and unregulated, to begin all-out efforts to back the registered lobbyists; and because the ban on lobbying only applies to communications with government officials, lobbys could play the game of going directly to Senators and Congressmen and women, making their work that much more difficult.
According to Parade Magazine, Sheila Krunholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a watch-dog group, "says that it is virtually impossible to keep special interests out of the stimulus-funding equation."
There is no reason lobbying should stop at the stimulus package. There are many more trillions of dollars manufactured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve that must be spent. That brings us to our second consideration: the Obama administration has an agenda that encompasses social, infrastructure, and capital reorganization, and will stop at nothing nothing, short of outright illegalities, to get what it wants. It has no need to go to illegal activities because it has the history of American political progressivism behind it. So by banning lobbyists from direct contact with administration officials, it simply doesn't have to listen to them.
Lobbyists could not exist if the Federal government did not overstep its boundaries of operating within the parameters of the Constitution including abiding by the 10 Amendment. This means recognition that under the 10th Amendment it must leave to the States and the People those powers not specified in the Constitution as belonging to it, that it was intituted by the States for the benefit of the States, not the other way around. Federal mandates on States to follow Federal guidlines on issues from the environment to civil rights to spending money it forces the States to accept, are all contrary to the American form of Federalism and republican democracy.
As an example of the social and capital engineering this administration want to dictatorially impose on the nation, we need only to look in one place, though there are dozens more. The place to look is in the field of energy.
From The Motley Fool comes this: "Setting a new tone for the Environmental Protection Agency, administrator Lisa Jackson directed the agency to review 150 to 200 permits for new or expanded surface mines. In letters to the Corps, she voiced particular concern with three proposals -- involving miners like Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE) and Patriot Coal (NYSE: PCX)...
"With virtually all production from underground mines, conversely, CONSOL Energy (NYSE: CNX) appears poised to benefit from the higher prices for Appalachian coal which could result from ongoing permitting delays up on the surface."
The Treehugger only adds to the controversy, reporting that "you may not be aware of the behind the scenes lobbying activity and campaign contributions [by] the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity." On April 23 of this year, The Treehugger reported the contributions made by the ACCE in it's efforts to lobby against surface mining. The two largest reciepients of their funds? Sen. John McCain at $302,4742 and President Barack Obama at $241,870 (all from ACCCE employees).
Demand for electricity is expected to grow by 26% over the next 20 years, according to the Energy Information Administration, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, overseeing electrical-grid operations is predicting shortages if the economy rebounds.
Yet, according to the administration itself, it intends to "Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future."
"Catalyzing" efforts that may not pan out, especially in giant wind farms that only work when the wind blows, is not the same as getting off the backs of those who are currently producing the energy we will need in the immediate future. What do we do when the economy rebounds, the coal industry is either partially shut down, costs the American public enormously larger amounts of money, or both?
These "new jobs" are worthless make-work if they don't pan out soon enough, and the "catalyzing" efforts of spending that much of the taxpayer money to force green policy where capitalists see no profit is criminal. If T. Boone Pickens is so all-fired up about wind-farms, why isn't he putting his own millions where his mouth is? According to Winningreen, Pickens is out to pick your pockets clean.
Again according to the administration website, Obama plans to "Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.' Where will those cars get the necessary cheap electricity if the coal mines are shut down?
And again, the administration will "Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025." How does an administration "ensure" such a thing? It cannot. It can hope for it. It can unilatterally put the public's money where capitalists fear to tread, but only because the progressive nature of Obama's socialism goes so far beyond the bounds of the Constitution that it has become a runaway train going down the mountain side.
And we are only a little more than 100 days into his administration. Obama's intentions are to perform the same sort of progressive socialist magic on the health care industry. In order to get what he wants in the auto industry he refused to allow GM and Chrysler to go backrupt, forced them to beg for money, then fired the Chair of GM and allowed his "auto oversight board" to dictate how things were going to be run.
What happens when the administration does the same thing in health care?
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said the governmental firing of the CEO of General Motors turned him into a "sacrificial lamb". The White House asked Rick Wagoner to step down as a precondition for government aid.
Get used to it. Wagoner was no sacrificial lamb; he was merely the first to fall in the huge government take over of the entire American economic system. It is no longer capitalistic, but it hasn't been for decades. Now it is no longer even the "pretend capitalism", called the "mixed economy", that we have had for decades. Now it is communist.
Communist? Why not socialist? Socialism is when the government controls industry. Communism is when it also owns it. Now the government owns it, and the government is not listening to We, the People.
Why should government listen to We, the People? It has no reason to. It can now do what it wants. But first it had to ignore We, the People, pleading with Congress not to pass the bail out; then pleading not to give money to Detroit; then pleading not to pass the stimulus package; then pleading not to pass the budget that was filled with over 8000 earmarks. We couldn't plead with them not to monetize the deficit by printing $1 trillion out of nothing, because we were not told about it until the last minute.
No, Rick Wagoner was the first, but he will not be the last. The Obama administration now controls the entire American manufacturing and marketing machine, and it intends to set the agenda for the post-capitalist world by determining what products We, the People wish to buy, ought to buy, and can buy.
Do you think this opinion goes too far, that it can't or isn't true? Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said "the market will not solve this", meaning the country's economic mess cannot be fixed the old fashioned way, by the very mechanisms that have worked for the last 400 years.
Geithner said the US needed to target reckless risk-taking with "better, smarter, tougher" regulation. (March 27, before Congress) At that same time he also said, "To address this will require comprehensive reform, not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game."
However, we now have the same administration who actually forced bail out money on banks who didn't need it and said no, and who now find they cannot easily return it, firing the CEO of a major manufacturer.
"The centrepiece of the reform package -- and the only element presented in any great detail -- is a proposal for a new 'super' regulator to provide enhanced oversight of all systemically important firms -- be they banks, brokerage houses, other financial services firms, hedge funds or insurance companies." http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25252187-36418,00.html
But many critics say it won't end there, that in the future any business sector that gets itself into trouble in such a way that would create financial difficulties for other sectors, would come under the "super" regulators clutches.
I have no doubt that is what will happen, because that is the historical story of communism.
The "economic and social consequences" will primarily be against Annex I parties, of which the U.S. is the biggest
"A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body." FOX
According to this document, which I am reading at http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf , its effects are "to limit the scope" under the supervision of the world body as it "7.(a) Considers only those tools, policies and measures that might be taken by Annex I parties for the purpose of effectively addressing climate change;"
On the other hand, who are those "tools, policies and measures" intended to benefit? 7 (c) says they "Focus primarily, but not exclusively, on those consequences that affect non-Annex Parties."
What does this mean? It means what Fox says it mean in the first paragraph above, and that "that industrialized countries will likely have to [ ] implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an 'effective framework' for dealing with global warming."
In its evasive, double-speak/non-speak method of covering up what it really means, the document says in paragraph 13 that the plan "calls for enhanced national/international action on mitigation of climate change, including the consideration of economic and social consequences of response measures."
"Enhanced action" means what---that there is already action that is not satisfactory to the non-Annex I parties? And since the document already says it is focused primarily on those non-Annex I parties, the "consideration of economic and social consequences" will primarily be against Annex I parties.
This is in accord with President Obama's "cap and trade" efforts at controlling carbon emissions. The administration is ready to go into this European summit willing and able to sign an accord that by some accounts will hurt the U.S. worse than the Kyoto treaty would have.
More on this next week, after I have had time to read the document further, and read other reviews. The non-committalistic language could mean anything the U.N. negotiators want it to mean. That is why is so vague. But by the time of the signing in December, it won't be vague at all.
Or, quite possibly it will remain vague so that the "world body" can do as it pleases with the redistribution of the wealth of the world and the means of production. That is its ultimate goal.
President Obama will soon remove job protections for people who disagree with him. The plan is already in motion
The Obama administration, in its effort to reform health care, is bringing to the table the health care workers who, fifteen years ago during the Clinton administration, were opposed to universal health care.
Accordin to the words of a TV reporter, the current administration believes no one can "own the table," as Obama seems to think the opposition did fifteen years ago. They want to bring the opposition to the table to "play nicely this time," said the reporter.
Bringing them to the table to "play nicely" is something I covered in a question I answered in Yahoo Answers. I used the example of "getting along" with people of other ideas, specifically Islamofascists. There are, in fact, Westerners who wonder why we can't get along with them.
I said that if we "played nice" with Islamofascists, it would be compromising our principles, not just things here and there that could be otherwise in order to get along. Islamofascists are taking over the United Kingdom, preventing elected officials from other nations from entering England to talk to the very Parliament who invited that official, who was sent home from the London airport.
I made the point that Islamofascists don't play nice. They cut off the heads of people who disagree with them. I don't want you or anyone "playing nice" with Islamofascists in the United States if it means my mother's head could be cut off because you misjudged the manner in which they "play."
Now it seems the Obama administration is going to do some very heavy arm twisting. They are going to force health care workers opposed to abortion, contraception, and univeral health care to "play nice" and forget what they are opposed to. Obama removes job protections for pro-life doctors and nurses
Did you read that correctly? President Obama will soon remove job protections for people who disagree with him. The plan is already in motion. Already, some doctors and nurses are vowing to go to jail rather than compromise on their principles.
And I have no doubt that under Obama, the Attorney General will go after any health care worker who lives by his own principles. The President is already reported playing dirty with Republicans, trying to split them from their base; it is being reported that the attacks on Rush Limbaugh that call him the "leader of the Republican party" come straight from Chief of Staff Rob Emmanuel, or at least have his blessing.
If the Democrats can push the liberal or centrist conservatives away from the outspoken Limbaugh and his listeners, then they have a better chance of getting those conservatives on their side. This is the way politics is played, but Obama has ulterior motives, namely to move those centrists further left, away from the Limbaughs, Shawn Hannities, Ann Coulters, and Glen Becks for the purposeof twisting their arms.
During the next four years we are going to discover how Mr. Obama does not "play nice." The misnamed " Employee Free Choice Act", or "check card," which Obama not only supports but who was taught his political tactics by ACORN who is now actively working with the unions for this legislation, is not "free choice" for two important reasons:
It is a "majority by one" democracy, which our Founders clearly had no intention of the U.S. becoming. The minority was to be protected from pure majority rule, which is why the Founders created this nation as a "republican" form of democracy. That means we elect people who then decide for us; we don't democratically vote on everything ourselves.
There is no "free choice" when everyone you work with and any union representative can see the ballot you have cast.
"Last year, the House voted for card check legislation, while the Senate defeated it. Price says members knew then that they could claim credit for voting for the bill without having it pass, since President Bush had vowed to veto it. With Barack Obama in the White House, the equation has changed. Obama was a co-sponsor of the bill last year and has said he would sign the law if enacted. In her first public appearance after being confirmed as labor secretary, Hilda Solis told 700 union members and community activists in Miami this week that she plans to work to help pass and then enforce card check legislation." Newsmax.com
As for Obama's end to doctors', nurses', and other health care professionals' right to conscience, "An unnamed official told the Washington Post that the HHS [Health and Human Services] is concerned the rule is written 'so vaguely that some have argued it could limit family planning counseling and even potentially blood transfusions and end-of-life care.'" [emphasis added Catholic News Agency]
As testament to the idea that Obama supports "pure democracy" rather than a "democratic republic," Obama took a cyber-step towards greater transparency and interactive government with a new feature called "Seat at the Table" on his official website.
"We look forward to benefiting from the many more voices that will now be a part of the decision-making process," said John Podesta, who was co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s transition team.
Approximately three-fifths of Americans are Democrats or left-leaning independents. In a pure Obamian democracy, I have no doubt the minority will be given little or not protection from the majority. Writing of an Obama presidency before the election, Free Republic wrote, "it is a prudent thing to expect and plan for the worst, and hope for otherwise."
After all, free Americans can either sit back and watch our newly minted "redistibution-of-wealth" President redistribute not only wealth but political power to the "majority-plus-one" constituancy; it Americans can do the only thing left to them and that is to take it to the streets.
Expect a European "Summer of Discontent" here in the States, even it if doesn't happen in the summer.
Limbaugh put Republicans who work "around the edges" of the president's policies under his heel
Yesterday I wrote that conservatism "is not about principle; it is about "preserving" the status quo from the liberals attempts to rip apart conservative values any further than they already have. Conservative values are not based on objectivity, but rather on the subjectivity that the free market is the best, not that it is right."
This is the reason Rush Limbaugh is said to be driving a wedge in the Republican Party, with about twenty-five percent of Republicans--according to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel--rooting for Limbaugh, and leaders like Mitt Romney distancing themselves from him by not mentioning his name in their own comments of caution.
"'He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party. And he has been up front about what he views, and hasn't stepped back from that, which is he hopes for failure. He said it. And I compliment him for his honesty, but that's their philosophy that is enunciated by Rush Limbaugh. And I think that's the wrong philosophy for America,' Emanuel said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.'
"I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?" [Limabugh] asked. Fox News Politics
Listen to the conservatives and the Republican leaders. Unfortunately, they don't want President Obama to fail, because if he fails, the nation fails, and if the nation fails, the world-wide depression would be politically disastrous--for anyone who thinks his mission is to "restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation."
It would be disastrous politically for people like Romney and Huckabee and any other politician who says he or she does not want this un-Constitutional theft of free enterprise to fail. They are giving the Libertarian Party a big boost as the only free-market party. But that is good, if the Republicans don't think capitalism is morally right.
This is what I mean when I say is not about principle; it is about "preserving" the status quo from the liberals attempts to rip apart conservative values any further than they already have. Conservative values are not based on objectivity, but rather on the subjectivity that the free market is the best, not that it is right.
Limbaugh put Republicans who work "around the edges" of the president's policies under his heel, grinding on them for trying to make those policies work because in doing so they are giving up their beliefs--beliefs which unfortunately are not principles.
If they thought capitalism was right--morally, politically, and economically--they would have seen the warning signs when President Bush told them about it in 2003, and when Congressman Barney Frank said Bush was wrong.
"According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that 'could pose risk to the taxpayers.' He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department 'would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.'
“'These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis,' Frank said to the Times."Business and Media Institute
Not acknowledging that capitalism is morally the only economic system that allows investors the freedom to create wealth will be a disaster for Republicans, if they manage to regain power. They will only seek their own forms and programs of "stimulating" the economy. Most Republicans said over and over that "something has to be done" to save the economy. All but one or two failed to mention free enterprise as the solution. The rest were on board with bail-outs and loans and stimulus packages.
But if the Republican return to power and play the same game as Obama and the Democrats, but with different bail-out/loan programs that eliminate what they called "pork", their programs will only contain what the Dems will then call pork.
The government needs to back off, let businesses fail because that is what businesses are supposed to do when times are bad, and everything will work its self out. That is what capitalism does. It is a self-regulating, self-correcting market, as we found out after President Reagan sat back and watched as:
"an economic tidal wave was moving in on the US Monday morning, October 19, 1987. The Tokyo exchange had experienced a record collapse in prices and panic selling. The Hong Kong exchange was wiped out. The European exchanges experienced the worst single day in their history.
"In the US panic first hit in the Chicago commodities exchange and within five minutes of the opening the markets went into free-fall. It then spread to Wall Street and the NY exchange.
"The Dow-Jones averages fell 508 points. By the time the NY exchange closed up stock market prices had dropped 22.6%, almost double the record losses of the crash of 1929. An astonishing 604.5 million shares had been traded that day more than double that of the crash of 1929. It was the greatest crash in US economic history.
"Black Monday was followed by Terrible Tuesday which was never reported by the US press. On the following Tuesday the world’s financial system came to within one hair’s breadth of extinction. It appeared that by noon that the market had in fact died. All trading in stocks, options, and futures shuddered to halt. For almost one hour the world’s capitalist system had completely collapsed. There were no buyers at any price.
"At this point of maximum crisis the Federal Reserve Board stepped in and flooded the banks with cheap credit. At 12:38 that afternoon the stack market rose from the dead. The resurrection of the market was the result of the deliberate manipulation by a few major firms to save the markets.
"Essentially leading corporations were entering the market after 1pm to buy back their own stocks which they had dumped that morning in order to stabilize the situation. Buying resumed on the market." [condensed from] The Reagan Revolution
The Fed did what it was supposed to do, and within hours the market was correcting itself. There was no rush to "nationalize" banks or insurance companies or mortgage lenders or the stock markets themselves.
There was no appeal to Congress to help with financial aid. It was not necessary then, and it was not necessary last fall when Bernanke and Paulson presented Congress with a three-page spending proposal for $800B.
"The Bush/Paulson/Bernanke 'panic' and 'plan' to hand unlimited funds and power without judicial or congressional oversight was ripped straight from the 'Chicago School's' playbook of inducing a financial panic in developing nations and then moving in to 'reform' the system... As noted here before: [the nation was] told we had only hours til the Apocalypse on Thursday, Sept. 18, [yet] we find the world still working 12 days later."
Before $1 of any of that money had been paid as bail-out, the market was beginning to correct itself. Only after spending the money did the economic system start tanking because "capitalism and individual liberty [were] not its foundation" any longer.
So I want Obama to fail too. Maybe then the capitalists will be allowed to step in repair the damage, and I hope that if that day comes the socialist pigs will be charged with crimes, maybe under the RICO laws for collaborating in dirty business.
"Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines, occupying tens of thousands of acres, to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."
"Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California withsolar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly--around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with thel ife-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.
"There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.
"Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new President. Apparently a booming green economy with millions of new jobs is just around the corner. All we need is the right mix of government "incentives."
"These include a huge (de facto) tax on carbon emissions imposed through a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, as well as huge government subsidies for "renewable," carbon-free sources. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry. This view is a fantasy--one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program. [condensed from the Ayn Rand Institute]
President Obama guarantees "to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies...
"Mr Obama begins by saying that "the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear". "Sea levels," he claims, "are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."
"Delegates from 190 countries met in Poznan, Poland to pave the way for this year's UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change," heard Mr. Obama speak these words.
"Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008's North Atlantic hurricane season "set records", even its own release later admits that it only tied as "the fifth most active" since 1944. NOAA's own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world (see the Watts Up With That? website) shows a steady reduction over the past four years.
"Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.
"Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.
"He talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs". This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity." [condensed from Telegraph.co.uk]
Someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more
The Christian religion demands "sacrifice", obedience to the "commandments" given through a supernatural entity to its adherents, and a "selflessness" which was given the name--by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte--of "altruism."
It is not metaphysically natural for men to operate in a psychological structure-of-mind that commits them to these things. Yet, this is also the structure-of-mind we are being groomed to live by under the Obama administration.
As Michelle O explained, "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." James LewisAmerican Thinker
Sacrifice has become the purview of the government.
First, "sacrifice" must necessarily mean giving up something of greater value for something of lesser value, else it could not be sacrificial. For example, to give a tithing to your church is not a sacrifice if you think the work of the church is worth your money. It is only when you think your money could be used better elsewhere, but you are psychologically coerced by the culture of the church to give your money to them, that this act would be a sacrifice.
If we are expected to sacrifice part of our pie to someone who wants a piece of the pie that is not his/hers, we are expected to acquiesce. We are mandated by the Federal government to be our brother's keeper. This gives us little or no personal fiscal resources with which to protect ourselves. Now we must count on the government to take from our neighbors in order to give to us, after taking from us to give to another neighbor.
Second, commandments are impossible to follow to the letter and in spirit, one-hundred percent of the time. Commandments were made to be broken--so that Christians would have a "cross" of their own to bear. Such "crosses" are called by many names, one of which is the "original sin" of being "only" a human who cannot be perfect, but needs salvation.
In order to follow the commandments one-hundred percent of the time would take sacrifices that mere humans are not prepared to make. To "love thy neighbor as thy self" even when every thing your neighbor believes in and stands for would destroy every thing you believe in and everything you stand for--most certainly is impossible for mere humans to accomplish. Tell me how an American can love Osama bin Laden as he loves himself.
Ask yourself what kind of God would command you to love bin Laden. What God would ask that you altruistically not kill a man who is raping your wife? The New King James Version changed "thou shalt not kill" to "“You shall not murder", yet since the time of King James or before it was "kill." Manslaughter which is killing, however, is not murder. But it is killing. Manslaughter is often accidental, so the only reason the NKJV does not say "You shall not commit manslaughter" is because sometimes it isn't done on purpose; but you still go to prison for it.
What God would "visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children"?
I had a conversation with a group of men a few years ago, and one man who had been a failure all his life at nearly everything he tried, said with an air of resignation that he had "sacrificed his whole life."
At that moment it was not clear just what he meant. Someone who knew him much better than I challenged him.
"You have not!" said the man. "You don't know what it means to sacrifice, or you would have been successful by now."
The first man replied, "You are wrong. It is because I sacrificed that I failed. I sacrificed a good job with a good employer for the whim of starting up my own business when I had no aptitude for business. I sacrificed my marriage for a one-night stand. I sacrificed my health by getting drunk every night before going home, and it put me in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. I sacrificed my college education when I quit because the leftist teaching of the university pissed me off. One liberal philosophy teacher actually said I would grow out of the beliefs I had at the time. The problem is, I never outgrew those beliefs. I believe in them more strongly than I did then. But I sacrificed them, too, by not living up to them."
"Well," said the second man, "that isn't what I meant by 'sacrifice.' I mean you didn't try hard enough by giving up the things that would have made you a success."
"And I still say you're wrong," said the first man. "If I had given up what was necessary to be successful, that wouldn't have been sacrificing anything, it would only have been paying the proper price for the things I valued. Instead, I paid too little, and the sacrifice was getting nothing at all in return for what I did pay.
"The ultimate payment is my failure. All those years that I had a good job, all those years that I had wonderful wife are water under the bridge. I didn't do anything to put them in the bank. I robbed the bank. And now here I sit without any retirement, living from food stamps, taking temporary jobs because with my work history I can't get anything else considering the hard economic times we're in.
"Do you see what I'm saying?" he asked. We could all hear the regret in his voice, the self-judgment, and the recognition that he had finally learned the meaning of the word "sacrifice."
"If I had not done the wrong things, if I had not fallen short of doing what needed to be done at all the important moments in my life, I wouldn't feel as if I just want to cry over spilt milk right now. There wouldn't be any spilt milk. I'd have a refrigerator full of it, instead of a pocket full of food stamps.
"Do you understand me now? I didn't pay enough for the things I wanted. That was the sacrifice--losing the things I had because I didn't want to pay the piper what he was worth. The things I wanted were worth more than I was willing to pay. That is sacrificial. I sacrificed myself by being cheap."div align="justify">If the life you want is more important than love, it's no sacrifice. If living anywhere with the one you love is more important, THAT is no sacrifice.
Sacrifice means to give up what is more valuable for what is less; otherwise the word has no moral meaning.
On this basis I argue that Jesus' death was no "sacrifice" because the saving of souls was more important than one man's life. But there is another aspect: Jesus is believed by many to be God himself incarnate, meaning he knew he couldn't die anyway, so giving up his carnate life on the cross turns out to be a big cosmic joke played on humanity--it was no sacrifice, it was sleight of hand.
Yet, the Catholic church takes this stance:
"On account of the remarkable and unique coincidence of the priest, victim, and acceptor of the sacrifice, a first question arises as to whether Christ was victim and priest according to His Divine or according to His humannature. On the basis of the dogma of the hypostatic union the only answer is: although the God-Man or the Logos Himself was at once both priest and victim, He was both, not according to His Divine nature, but through the function of His humanity." [emphasis added] Catholic Encyclopedia
This means that it is even important for the Church to sacrifice the "dogma of the hypostatic union" of Jesus being God himself--for the lesser value of Jesus being a man.
It means nothing if God was sacrificed. God cannot die. Jesus was said to have been dead for three days before he was bodily taken to heaven. This dogma is necessary to convince us that upon death we no longer must bear the burden of being "just a man," but will, as did Jesus, be ressurected into a union of hypostasis with God. In other words, to achieve this blessed union we must live the sacrifice of being mere mortals first.
It is not a sacrifice to be mortal, to be man, to be animal.
"I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction." Ayn Rand; Anthem [emphasis added]
If your marriage is more important to you than a fling with someone you discover and have a passion for, it is no sacrifice to forego the fling.
Into the boundary
Of each married man
Sweet deceit comes calling
And negativity lands
Cold cold heart
Hard done by you
Some things look better baby
Just passing through
And it's no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It's two hearts living
In two separate worlds
Elton John
The "sweet deceit" of giving up a piece of your pie so that others can have what is yours is the deceit of Christian brotherhood transformed into social policy. So, why does everyone ask if we are willing to sacrifice this or that, for this or that?
With a popular socialist President in office, it is now politically acceptable to ask for things the free market cannot support.
When Julio Osegueda asked President Obama about better McDonald's benefits, he demonstrated two important aspects to the new era we have entered having a far leftist President in office.
(Just because Obama judiciously chose centrists and even Republicans to serve on his cabinet does not mean his left-wing goals are diminished. It simply means he is astute at knowing how to get what he wants, and that is to go at it seemingly more slowly than it would appear--when it appears at all.
(I will explain what I mean about that below. For now, let's get back to Julio, and what his presence and his question means in this political schoolyard, where we are all learning what it means to be in a new world.)
"I've been at the same job, McDonald's, for four and a half years," Julio told the President, "because of the fact that I can't find another job. Now, with the fact that I've been there as long as I've been there, do you have any plan or any idea of making one that has been [sic] there for so long receive any better benefits than they have already received?"
The first important aspect posed by this man's question is the rising tide of popular socialism. What I mean is this: with a popular socialist President in office, it is now politically acceptable to ask for things the free market cannot support, while believing it is your right to have the things that market will not support. The left has always asked for such things; sometimes they have tried to demand them, and sometimes they have gotten what they asked for. Social Security, WIC, income taxes, and a strict limit of one conservative professor at any liberal college are just some of the things the left has been granted.
The price of being the leader in fast-food, where dollar menus are necessary to attract the poorest of customers, does not leave enough in the corporate treasury to raise benefits.
Ahh, but the corporate treasury has billions in it, you say! Look at the latest profit statements by Exon Mobil and WalMart and other leaders in their industry, including McDonalds.
Well, General Motors, Ford, and even Chrysler used to be able to report the same sort of record profits. Most pharmacuticals still do. What were most of these profits used for? Research and development. It now takes hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to get a new drug to market.
But the unions demanded more and more of those profits in wages increases and benefits; the auto makers thought they had to give in, which they did because of government interference through legislation and Federal oversight of union/company negotiations.
Now look at those companies. No, it isn't right when corporate CEOs and COOs and other executives take multi-million dollar payouts after record losses and after taking government bail-out money.
But the fact is, if the government had not screwed up in the first place by interering in the free market place, the economy would be that much freer to grow. With economic growth, new jobs are created. That means that people like Julio can move up the ladder, whether it's the corporate ladder of their present employer, or whether it means moving on to greener pastures. Sam Walton started out at the bottom, too.
Julio is paying the price that Michelle Obama explained: "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."
Julio is a small piece of the pie in an economy where millions are out of work and quickly eating every crumb of government pie crust the Feds can find to give them.
As I explained yesterday, the Depression of 1920/21 was tougher than this one, but America bounced back by the end of 1921 because the government kept their hands off the economy, and left the people in their wisdom to find the means of getting themselves back to work.
The second aspect of living under the "guidance" of a popular leftist President is that all those people who believe they deserve and all those who merely hope for more than their employers are giving them, are now free to stand up and ask if the President will help them--without risking the social backlash of appearing to want a bigger piece of the pie when others don't have any pie at all.
In Europe, that lack of risk has been to the advantage of the left for decades. Anytime they don't get what they want, they take to the streets. Often, they had leftist leaders who supported their demands, more or less, which were met in one form or another, leaving the protesters free to go home and wait for the next thing on their list of demands.
America has entered the European world that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led them out of, with the support of President Ronald Reagan. But as soon as Mrs. Thatcher left office, the socialist democrats (note the lower case descriptions) won power again. The current Prime Minister of Great Britain, which includes Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, is Gordon Blair who hosted The Socialist International (SI) worldwide organisation of social democratic, labour and socialist political parties and its first meeting of its Commission for a Sustainable World Society, November 2008.
Obama is all about "sustainability." [1] Objective observers and conservatives say sustainability is unsubstainable, writing, "sustainability is a means to justify policies pushed by some interest group" or another [2]; and "Additional policies to promote sustainability are unnecessary as resources have become abundant." [3]
Though the new President has judiciously chosen centrists and conservatives for his cabinet, it was for two obvious reasons: 1) he wanted to get his cabinet up and running faster than any previous administration; and 2) this was because he knew his priorities would have to be slipped quietly into place, like Tom Daschele's health plan, outlined in his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, in which he wrote, " Health care system should be run by a board like the Fed," and that it was so important that it should be "slipped" into a spending bill at the last minute so that no debate would be possible.
We are now living in a new "old" world of Marxist ideas that Americans have rejected for decades--except when they were slipped into the national debate like the necessity for "social security" in retirement, or when we were railroaded into things like "income taxes", and now the very un-transparent act of slipping into the "stimulus bill" in the dark of Friday night a plan to put the government in control of all American health services.
The left is talking directly past the free-market economists because the left isn't willing to admit those economists have anything to offer.
President Obama's epistemology is the reverse of the average American.
In simple terms, this means he thinks backward from the way most Americans think. Most Americans right now are thinking something like, "We can't depend on business alone to get us out of this mess; the mess is too big. We need some government help. How much help, and where to put it, is the trillion dollar question."
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, does not think that the government is the economic savior of last resort. He thinks it is the first resort.
"It is absolutely true that we can't depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth," he said Monday in his first press briefing. In other words, he thinks of private enterprise as the back-up to what ever the government thinks it can or ought to do, because "we can't count on government alone." But he would like to; it is the only way to redistribute wealth according to a process that is not free enterprise, which does not "redistribute." It pays wages, instead.
While most people who don't have a full grasp of the power of free enterprise to pull us out of this mess are of the opinion that it takes at least some government help, Obama is saying it is going to take at least some help from private enterprise!
"...the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life," said the President. "It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs." [emphasis added]
Really?
"Despite its brevity, this depression [of 1920-21] was extraordinarily sharp: the U.S. price level declined by over 40% in a single year (Friedman-Schwartz, 1963), and output and employment likewise fell considerably.
"In one crucial respect, [it] was actually more severe than the Great Depression itself: there was a rapid decline in the price level of between forty and fifty percent within the course of a single year. As Friedman and Schwartz (1963) explain, “From their peak in May [1920], wholesale prices declined moderately for a couple of months, and then collapsed. By June 1921, they had fallen to 56 per cent of their level in May 1920. More than three-quarters of the decline took place in the six months from August 1920 to February 1921. This is, by all odds, the sharpest price decline covered by our money series, either before or since that date and perhaps also in the whole history of the United States.” (1963, pp.232-233.) The wholesale price index during the Great Depression took about three years to fall by the same amount." [emphasis added] The Depression of 1920-21
And from another source:
"Prices began to rise [in 1920], and rumors of a buyers' strike spread. After commodity prices peaked in May, they declined rapidly, precipitating an unprecedented cancelation of orders. Money was extremely tight, although the stringency did not become acute until autumn. A noticeable flight of gold from the country caused a marked advance in money rates, and the end of the year saw a 30 percent decline in industrial stocks. Depression—characterized by inactive industries, business failures, and a severe decline in foreign trade—continued throughout 1921. Answers.Com
If this brief depression was perhaps the worst "in the whole history of the United States", how did we get out of it before the end of 1921?
By doing nothing, as far as government intervention was concerned. There were no tax breaks, no stimulus, no lending of money. The government was strictly laissez-fairre about it. Free enterprise and the will of the people to return to work was the saving grace.
President Obama is ignoring not only history, but also ignoring naturalist economics that protect the rights of people to operate in a free market place.
"The second unusual feature of the depression of 1920-21 was the rapid recovery in employment and output, in sync with a swift adjustment of the real wage to its new equilibrium position. Although this is a short time span, there were simply extraordinary movements in macroeconomic variables during this period..."
Using what is called the Bernanke-Carey Model--(yes, Ben Bernanke, who along with Professor Kevin Carey of American University devised a model used by most economists--Google it)--it has been discovered that one of the most striking differences between that brief yet severe depression, the Great Depression, and the economic difficulties of today, is the swift response by needy employees to lower their wage expectations dramatically.
The United Auto Workers had to be put in the position of making concessions which for the UAW were awkward and that could hardly be called "dramatic," before any bail-out money was given to General Motors and to Chrysler.
But something Bernanke wrote in 2000 in a book called Essays on the Great Depression stands out strikingly as a comparison to the crisis of today:
"For many years, economic research on the origins and persistence of the Great Depression bore a striking resemblance to historical research on the causes of the American Civil War. Both sides to the respective debates talked past one another, and little, if any, intellectual progress was made."
Today, the 200+ economists who took out a full page ad in several newpapers a week ago are not being heard by the left who, led by Obama (or perhaps who is leading Obama, who is not an economist but a Constitutional professor and attorney) are going out full force for the idea that "only government" can bring the country out of recession.
The left is talking directly past the free-market economists because the left isn't willing to admit those economists have anything to offer. Instead, they are hell-bent on painting those with philosophical differences as:
people who wish to do "little or nothing at all" and as people who "still [don't] believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis". It implies the left is the only hope for salvation by saying "we have come together around a plan" when in fact the free-market economists do not "come together" on it and would have proposed vastly different plans; and because "as long as I hold this office," said the President, "I will do whatever it takes to put this economy back on track," except by listening to those voices who say that the billions of dollars in what are traditionally labeled "appropriations" belong in appropriation bills, not in a stimulus package.
