‘Twilight’ Zone
This horror story by James Pethokoukis ought to scare the living daylights out of you and anyone else who cares about the future of the country soon to be formerly known as the United States of America:
The original purpose of Medicaid was to provide improved healthcare access for poor people, while not turning the safety net into a trap. Under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Medicaid will be greatly expanded beyond what Congress originally intended.
In fact, as these charts show, it has already expanded beyond what Congress surely originally envisioned and, in the process, has created a terrible fiscal problem for the United States. (These charts and graphics come from a briefing today here at AEI, conducted by Gary Alexander, secretary of public welfare for Pennsylvania.)
A few scary factoids:
- In the 1960s, there were 18 workers per Medicaid recipient. Today that number is 2.5.
- The number of Americans on disability has risen 19% faster than jobs created during this recovery.
- There are just 1.2 private sector workers per 1 person on welfare or working for government.
- There are now just 1.65 employed persons in private sector per 1 person on welfare assistance.
There follows a series of charts that are even more terrifying than the factoids, so please read the whole thing. And then think about this: what happens to a nation when the Party of Take becomes bigger than the Party of Give?
Be careful what you wish for
And that’s just Medicaid. Medicare and Social Security are even worse; in fact, their trustees flatly say their trust funds will be exhausted in just a few years — Medicare by 2016, according to one estimate that factors in the double-counting under the deceitful ObamaTax. The national debt will soon be at 100 percent of GDP. And then what?
The American people have been spoilt for a very long time and are unlikely to abandon laziness and childish thinking (hope and change you can believe in) until total economic collapse and mass wealth confiscation deliver a reality slap across their collective foreheads.
Unfortunately even that might not be enough to get people off the fascism/socialism kool-aid.
Destroying America, change your getting…
“Change” they said… but not into what.
Here’s what.
The average voter knew ZERO about Obama in 2008. Anybody who voted for a presidential candidate without having ANY reliable information about that candidate has made a mockery of the responsibilities that go with the right to vote. If you don’t know much about a candidate, then fercryinoutloud, withhold your vote rather than foist such a “pig in a poke” on your fellow citizens!
Do not imagine for a moment Mr. Michael Walsh, and the rest of you ungrateful unruly scurrilous unwashed peasants, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Emperor Barack Hussein Louie Obama, Big Sis, Tiny Tim and all their Royal Czars and Royal Judges and all others of the Clan of the Donkey that America’s unruly unwashed peasants should have freedom and liberty. They would be only too happy to let them have these freedoms and liberties to do what they think best for themselves and their families, but all too often, given their obviously inferior IQ’s, America’s unruly unwashed peasants might be racists, political terrorists, think that Michelle Antoinette takes too many expensive vacations while the unruly unwashed worker bee peasants complain about their bread and cake and baloney sandwiches, or seek medical care when they should just go off someplace and die for the good of the state, and might not contribute to the DNC and might not even vote Democrat, even once, let alone early and often, in the next election, cling to the completely outdated U.S. Constitution, written by a bunch of old racist honkies, might try to sneak an unhealthy Happy Meal on a airplane hidden in their underroos, might listen to the wrong radio stations and read the wrong blogs and then, unruly unwashed peasants, where would we be?
Cheshire Cat, bravo!!! Obviously, you have a brain and it’s in great working order. Loved your comments.
Dear Cheshire Cat
Thank you so much for brightening my afternoon. So true and soooooooooo witty.
Keep em coming.
Our Dear Leader, King Barack Hussein Louie Obama, will be a great Emperor for Life as he is a very highly educated man. He went to University where he was well schooled in bigotry and allegations, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic: ambition, distraction, falsification and derision. Trust him. He knows what he is doing. Just be patient. His economic plan will work perfectly. I have worked it all out mathematically. Let me see now, four million times five million is twelve million, and four billion times six billion is thirteen billion, and four trillion times seven trillion is … … oh my! We shall never get to economic recovery and prosperity at that rate! However, the multiplication table doesn’t really apply. Let’s try geography. Iraq borders Pakistan, the center of the Universe was Iraq but now it’s Afghanistan, America has 57 states, Minnesota is in the tropics because of Global Warming. No, that’s all wrong, but geography doesn’t really apply either, I’m certain! Let’s try religion. The Mossad was behind 9/11, Palestinians are victims, Saudi Arabia is our good friend and Islam is a great religion of peace. No, that’s all wrong too! Maybe if our Dear Leader just starts over and this time he reads the directions then perhaps directly he will be able to direct himself in the right direction.
The challenge to the left can surely be simplified and made palatable to voters:
Ask yourself: What’s the moral basis of the free lunch? And forget about ‘rights’ in a vacuum — what about responsibilities? If we owe you a helping hand, what do you owe us? And what makes the public sector so special?
Re what Roberts has ‘taught’ us: The chief justice wrote the book on the doctrine of duck, cover, waffle and run… and is conclusive proof of the proposition that one man’s dispassionate forensic genius is another man’s horse’s ass. He’s not up to the job. He speaks only for himself, his own form of anarchy. And if We The People say so, he’s gone.
Bravo!
The challenge to the left can surely be simplified and made palatable to voters:
Ask yourself: What’s the moral basis of the free lunch?
==
That easy. It’s exactly what it has been since Karl Marx first wrote these words: “From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.”
It’s difficult for most Americans — myself included — to believe that the great majority of those voters who favor the Democrats’ approach to “social problems” are evil. More, the promulgation of that idea has probably cost the Right as deeply as the notion of a world-girdling, centuries-long Uber-conspiracy has cost the John Birch Society. The problem is that most Americans don’t think about politics or social policy in terms of incentives, which are the keys to understanding the behavior of any dynamic system over time. We need a massive wake-up message about the inherent mutability of human behavior, both private and public, in response to changes in incentives.
With specific application to government:
“We need a massive wake-up message ….”
It’s called “teaching”. It was teachers that put Americans to sleep.
It’s teachers that need to be held accountable.
Ain’t gonna happen. Sleep on, Americans.
You are right. As a retired teacher, I can say that our education system is a joke. Kids don’t learn anything meaningful anymore because the teachers (for the last 30 years) are products of the same failing schools that are now hiring them. Most teachers are liberals and they bring their ideology into the classrooms, not so much in elementary school, but it is a big problem in middle schools and high schools, and especially in our higher learning institutions of indoctrination.
The liberals are always going on and on about pouring more money into education. This is garbage. Put me in a room with students with a map of the world, a blackboard and chalk, pencils and paper, and some anthologies of the classics and I can guarantee that the students will come out more educated than what the public schools produce today.
Also, nobody ever talks about the curriculum. The curricula in our schools are horrible. They are more concerned with teaching kindness, self-esteem, the homosexual lifestyle, and sexual techniques than they are with reading, writing, geography, history, and math. Taxpayers, and parents in particular, need to wake up and demand that schools teach the basics and not indoctrinate our children with marxist/socialist social ideas.
“Put me in a room with students with a map of the world, a blackboard and chalk, pencils and paper, and some anthologies of the classics and I can guarantee that the students will come out more educated than what the public schools produce today.”
As a middle school teacher, I fully know and fully agree, but will add one important factor: give us non-spoiling parents with common sense and administrators/counselors with backbones. The kind of meddling parents who want every sports team member to receive a trophy for merely participating are also the kind of spoiling parents who shackle educators. Chickensh*t administrators enable them.
Bless you both, but as a “spoiling parent”–according to my local system–I want to say I earned the label by asking the school to modify class requirements so that my chronically ill child could get the core of the subject even if he were not able to complete every exercise. Initially the curriculum developer for the system was enthusiastic, but was quashed, in spite of her senior position. My child was given “extra time” to finish assignments instead; until the time he was taking to complete the work was judged to be too long. Well, if you have 180 days worth of work, it’s going to take 180 days to do it, isn’t it?
I don’t know whether the worst of the mess was the teachers who told him privately that they understood his difficulty, but couldn’t buck the administration’s (?) requirements, or that we started asking for the accommodations on the advice of teachers we respected in the same system!
You good teachers need to press “the system” for real reforms and stop just analyzing and allotting blame!
I recently saw a picture of Obama accompanied by a play on “the most interesting man” commercials:
The world’s most arrogant man. Stay ignorant my friends, stay ignorant.
Many Americans’ lack of interest in “watchdogging” our government, those same American’s misguided belief that the Democratic
party is the “nice” party, and an accomplice media have lead to what appears to me to be the inevitable destruction of our freedom.
My last faint hope is that Democrats, Democratic politicians, and Leftist journalists will awaken to the fact that they have helped oligarchs and communists unleash the dogs of Hell on a free society. I pray they would then begin voting their conscience and reporting honestly. (Much like Schindler finally became so sickened by Nazi horrors that he became a God-send savior to the Jews).
I know, fat chance. Otherwise, Obama is deliberately drawing us to civil war, and just as with every other atrocity he’s rammed
down our throats or slipped by us, I am afraid he is well-prepared and is 5 steps ahead of us conservatives. We consistently don’t
expect such chicanery and downright evil until it has happened. Obama and leftists know how to fight dirty, and in general, conservatives don’t. We’d better learn fast.
The “education problem” starts in our university teacher training policies! When in college, I was astonished to see how many truly awful communicators were going to graduate as teachers! “Pass the written tests and you’re in!”
Does a good teacher have to be a person who is considered “interesting”? Yes, yes he does. Does a good teacher HAVE to be a person whom people just naturally want to hear talk? Yes, yes he does. Does a good teacher HAVE to have EXCELLENT communication skills? Yes, yes he does.
People with terrible math skills don’t graduate with degrees in math. Why are lousy communicators awarded education degrees?????
“It’s difficult… to believe that the great majority of those voters who favor the Democrats’ approach to “social problems” are evil.”
The people favoring these approaches fall into two camps: Those who expect to directly benefit from programs paid for by their fellow citizens* (the greedy thieves) and those who feel the need to help others but use the government to force their fellow citizens to help the “needy” instead of providing direct help themselves (the pseudocharitable thieves). Both types of thieves are immoral, though they may not qualify as evil.
*Many of the people not near retirement age who support Medicare and Social Security belong to the greedy thieves group: they benefit directly by not having to support their retired parents.
Yes; the saying is in everybody’s mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honours both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit?
Plato Republic Book VIII
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
The symbiotic relationship of government and the people has become a parasitic relationship. We the people ( hosts )….
Wikihow:How to know if you are in a parasitic relationship; 9 steps.
It about sums it up.
At times I do not know what conservatives will do and am not sure of what can be done. But I do know how the Left thinks when it “blindly” (from a conservative point of view) charges “forward” with policies that deny the “reality principle”, particularly: “One can not get somethng from nothing”. Two Obama-ites that I know, all decked out in the goody goodness feelings of their Christian (tinged) religiosity, have preached the truth (or I have squeezed it out of them). The steps are, schematically, the following:
1) Create an apocalpytic vision of total opposition, i.e., of the good oppressed vs. the evil oppressers.
2) Identify the bearers of of the oppressed good as, for instance, the disappearing middle class or the hungry to be fed or the needy of med. treatment and, then, the bearers of evil as the rich.
3) Establish the nature of the apocalyptic relation between the poor(er) (= anyone earning less than $200,000/yr) and the rich = $200,00/yr plus –>
particularly “millionaires”) as one of causal correlation. In other words being poor(er) is a CAUSAL function of the “rich” becoming affluent. Carried to an extrme means extinction of the good.
4) Find emotionally laden symbols for the good as adherents to Mathew 25 and of evil as adherents to Ayn Rand (who has replaced the devil as a symbol of evil in leftish Christianity). –>> To be used for the apocalyptic transformation of idealities into empirically identifiable political entities, e.g., the ones given above.
5) Clothe the political actors of the apocalpytic drama in the terms of the “Republican Party” and the “Democrat Party” –>> This transforms prosaic political interaction into the cosmic drama of evil vs good.
6) Any resistance by the Republicans to Democrat policies that offend against the “reality principle”, e.g., limiting deficits or opposing more student aid, becomes not an act of normal political difference, rather one of automatically hurling “evil” at the bearers (= Democrats) of salvation for the “poor(er). (Of course, Obama is using this method in the propaganda form of class warfare.)
7) In case the Left should be endangered by reality, the “scientists” of economics, e.g. Krugman, Stiglitz or Reich, are adduced and, in the name of Keynes, they legitimize violating economically the “reality principle”, i.e., augmenting the debt exponentially. (I remember that Krugman once almost orgasmically proclaimed that FDR had saved us spending $30 TRILLION, i.e., adjusted.)
With ideality inflated to apocalyptic dimensions and the reality principle “scientifically” cancelled, the left, encarnated as Obamian Democrats, can, with a sense of being the vanguard of the “good” and a sense of “scientific” Keynsian securtity, proceed to enact as a morality drama policies clearly offensive of the exigencies of reality and then they can place in anathema all resistance by the evil actors, the Republicans or conservatives.
I must demur fundamentally in one point form Walsh’s excellent, though depressing, interpretation. Walsh writes of the “atheist Left”. I think he has fundamentally misread the profoundly religious nature of the Left (not ignoring its atheist tendencies). The Left is a political form of what the Italian theologian Berghesi has called the “religious neo-gnostic nihilism of post-modern Christianity”. I find it to be neither surprising nor accidental that Obama arises out of Islam and specially out of Black Liberation theology. As Catholicism learned in Latin America, Liberation Theology is apocalyptically neo-gnostic in nature. It is, alas, just this postmodern religiosity that inspires the blind fanaticism of the Left and sustains the leftists in their moments of trial and tribulations. Conservatives misjudge the situation if said neo-gnostic religiosity is ignored.
Add to this horror the horrors that Hillary is participating at he UN to rob America of our first and second amendment Constitutional rights…
1.) FIRST AMENDMENT — Sec. State Hillary Clinton is working in conjunction with the Organization of Islamic States (OIC) to legislate that “offensive speech” about Islam is to made a crime – the OIC is a supranational body consisting entirely of totalitarian fascist and terror states known as Islam, using the supranational body, the UN, many members of whom are corrupt, barbarian, and all-out enemies to America, to impose their vile will on The People of the USA.. This monstrous beast of a woman is working to place limits on OUR free speech to speak the truth about the heinous Religion of Peace (TM). We know that we “non-believers” offend Muslims at every turn – unless we’re there to give them money and STFU and even then Muslims hate our guts because that’s what heir vile religion teaches them to do…
2. SECOND AMENDMENT — See the “UN Arms Treaty”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/11/un-arms-treaty-could-put-us-gun-owners-in-foreign-sights-say-critics/
“UNITED NATIONS – A treaty being hammered out this month at the United Nations — with Iran playing a key role — could expose the records of America’s gun owners to foreign governments — and, critics warn, eventually put the Second Amendment on global Trial”
See also Fast and Furious. See Obama’s anti-gun comments recorded on YouTube. See Napolitano and Dep. Homeland Security asserting that armed patriots who fear and loath Leviathan as being the worst terrorist threat to America. See them arrest so called “righting extremists”, a gun group in Michigan, right after retailing the sneaky lies that most Mexican gun violence is due to unregulated American gun sales… Right after asserting that the terrorist threat to America comes, not from Muslims, but from armedmand trained Iraqi and Afghanistan war vets!!! Put the pieces together, this duo of Obama and Clinton are doing end runs around the First and Second Amendments by appealing to a sympathetic crowd of Leftists and perverted religion to crush our INALIENABLE RIGHTS.
These monstrosities must be stopped…
The Radical Left has control of the MSM, Movies & TV. One way to diffuse this power is for the conservatives to be selective in their viewing and shun the sponsors of the more egregious programming. We have the money, stop giving it to our enemies. When the networks start losing viewership, sponsors will either leave or cut back or require changes in programming. CNN & MSNBC are two good examples of soon to be extinct networks unless they change course.
The internet is also a problem with AOLs Huffington Post providing the masses with their version of what is important. Yesterday’s headline on Mitt Romney being booed is a good example. One had to read into the story that it was in front of the NAACP and of course the left out the fact that he was well received considering their virulent opposition to him. Yahoo relies on AP and Comcast of course in NBC. The masses are being herded into a corral and they aren’t aware of it. We must be well-informed and have the courage to speak up and pass along our knowledge when the situation arises. NYT readers never heard of “Fast and Furious” until two weeks ago is a great example.
“CNN & MSNBC are two good examples of soon to be extinct networks unless they change course.”
More likely they are trying to devise ways to work with their cronies in the regulatory agencies to see to it that their conservative competition is effectively regulated out of business than they are thinking about changing their ways. Conservatives may bend. The left never gives up. Never.
What happens when the granaries have been plundered down to the last of the seed corn? You can ask the people of Stockton and Scranton about that. Bankruptcy has a way of resolving the issues one way or another. Nobody eats for free when the food is gone. The “poor” will soon know the real meaning of the term “economic justice,” and about time, too. “He who works not, eats not,” goes the proverb.
America still has abundant natural resources even if they are currently locked down by government fiat. Working Americans know what’s at stake in this election. We face a time of troubles, but it’s nothing a good, healthy dose of liberty can’t cure. We’ll be fine if we can just force the government boot off our necks.
We are either cursed or blessed by our present circumstances. Cities are notorious for their decadence, but the provinces remain strong. I’m betting we will not prove to be the lesser sons of greater men. It’s time to bend our backs and our collective will to the task of restoration. The bigger the odds the greater the glory. We shall prevail because the alternative is to see western civilization tumble into the abyss. Prepare yourselves. We have a republic to save.
We shall prevail because the alternative is to see western civilization tumble into the abyss. Prepare yourselves. We have a republic to save.
That is indeed the case. There exists a real possibility of a partial or even a total civilizational collapse. History is littered with the ruins of such civilizations. Moreover, there are those who would prefer to rule from atop a pile of stinking corpses and rubble as long as it is they who are doing so.
Patriotism, love of liberty, and a solid knowledge of our founding principles and the philosophy behind them have become a matter of surface habit and custom as opposed to something understood and deeply held. Habit and custom are easily manipulated, as the dark, dark history of the twentieth century has shown. Francis Fukuyama, writing in Trust says,
And didn’t the 0bamunist crowd promise us that they were going to “…change our conversation, change our history?” And hasn’t that been the goal of every will to power-driven utopianist monster who seeks to effect the New Man?
Given that the desire for power, to rule over others, seems to be one of our human failings, what makes modern times any different in that respect than, say medieval times? Or the Dark Ages? Or the heyday of ancient Rome? The essence of the idea is that modern times saw the convergence of some uniquely toxic ideas and memes. Taken together, that convergence gave those who are driven by the will to power the environment (in all respects), the ideas and the means to embark on the road to slaughter, ruin and atrocity – and I say that it is slaughter, ruin and atrocity for its own sake – beyond anything the world had seen. And, it continues unabated to this day. Somewhere, everywhere.
That’s only part of the answer. Power’s tough for some to resist. The power to harm others without consequence is more intoxicating than any drug to a particularly evil subset of humanity. The are other convergent factors that have combined to make modernity, for all of our technology and vaunted sophistication, one of the most barbaric episodes in human history. Consider Carroll Quigley’s Pakistani-Peruvian axis in the light of those convergent factors. I’m exploring another ‘axis’ – what I’m calling for now, the Scandinavian-Slavonic axis. Loosely rendered, the Scandinavian-Slavic axis is composed of the following elements. First, the two-class warrior culture of the Vikings, who dominated far more of the post-Roman world than most people realize. The Vikings eventually came to conquer and to dominate the pastoral Slavs of the steppes with their two-class (conqueror and conquered) militaristic culture. The combined nascent culture greatly admired and were dazzled by the power and the relative prosperity of the extant Byzantine culture, who in turn got their notions of totalitarianism from the old Roman Empire.
Byzantine Christianity also took a very different path with respect to its outlook – amounting to a Platonic view of Man and his place in the universe vs the more Aristotelian view that became the default outlook for a lot of the Western world.
The upshot is that the Western Christian outlook – so eloquently summarized by Quigley – never took hold in that part of the world. The outlook that eventually developed was totalitarian in the sense that the state essentially owned its subjects, nihilist in the sense that the world was viewed as an un-knowable and corrupt place and that death was the only respite from an evil existence, and that the core essence of Teutonic tribalism in all of its arrogance, savagery and lack of regard for human life never went away – it merely submerged itself in Teutonic sensibility until it was awakened by the monsters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beaten into submission in WW II, it still exists today.
Also recall that the Byzantine Empire eventually fell to one just as cruel and sadistic in its outlook (if not more so) – Islam.
That severing of the Byzantine connection left us with what I’m calling the Scandinavian-Slavonic axis. It’s funny, isn’t it, what happens to your outlook when you start looking at human history in terms of culture and ideas AND events rather than the conventional “one damn thing after another” event-only approach. Because “one damn thing after another” – a series of empty correlations – is all one can come up with absent an acknowledgment of the roles of culture and outlook – as embodied by those two great currents of human culture, custom and outlook.
Against those currents, we here in America stand very much alone.
Personally, I believe that the First American Republic died sometime ago. The systematic abrogation of the rule of law, the deliberate erosion of the bonds of trust, the open mockery and disdain for virtues that once (and still do to some extent) upheld our uniquely Western and American civilization – these were harbingers of, and are now mileposts along the the road to the demise of the First American Republic. We may be able to establish a Second American Republic, but not without another American Civil War.
So it’s “The Black Hole of ObamaCare”? Oh, wait, that’s probably racist…
Sadly, there is no “Party of Give”; rather, it’s the “Party of Stolen From” because what we’re talking about is “Charitable Stealing”. And the reality is probably closer to “The Party of Locusts” and “The Party of Wheat Stalks”.
“So it’s “The Black Hole of ObamaCare”? Oh, wait, that’s probably racist…”
What’s really racist is that 96% of Blacks still support Hopey Dopey despite disasterous unemployment and economic facts. But that’s an inconvenient truth it would be “racist” and impolite to examine too closely.
Author, former Lefty David Horowitz wrote of this being thee Left’s end game – insolvency – in his 2007 book, ‘Shadow Party: How George Soros, HRC and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party’.
An interesting and quite frightening read.
From then-present day radicals, the-late Cloward and his creepy wife Piven who TRIED to bankrupt New York by loosening the welfare rules and overwhelming the welfare system/ recipients in the 70′s (and nearly succeeding if not for Reagan reigning in the qualifications) whereas a welfare recipient told then-Mayor John Lindsay, “It’s my job to have kids, Mr. Mayor, and your job to take care of them.” – this quote can be found in Horowitz’ aforementioned book and Steven Malanga’s, ‘Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer’.
Obama OBVIOUSLY subscribes to the very same philosophy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nowhere Man – Uhbama had author, self-proclaimed Communist Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, ‘The Mean Season: The Attack of the Welfare State’ rather than the Bible by his bedside.
For Uhbama’s ahem, ‘policies’ insofar are nearly verbatim of that manifesto (and of course the increasing # of those on food stamps, extended unemployment etc.,).
I liken Obama to Jerry Seinfeld’s character when responding to the ‘Elaine’ character from the ‘Seinfeld’ show with her commenting on the ‘Newman’ character/ Jerry’s antithesis with her saying hypothetically there being, ‘..more to Newman’. Whereas Jerry says, ‘No, there’s less’. THAT’S Uhbama.
Our days literally are numbered. They can be measured between today and the election in November. If we do not score a major victory and throw Obama and all of his socialists out of power, we really are finished.
Even if Obama loses and the Democrats only retain the Senate, we are still finished, because Harry Reid would never, EVER, allow a vote on ObamaCare to come up in the Senate. So even if we win the White House and hold the House in Congress, it all means nothing if we don’t get the Senate too. THAT is what’s at stake this fall. If we do NOT get the Senate, Obamacare will still live and will automatically go into effect by 2014, major tax increases and all.
Well, I know where I stand and what I’m going to do about it. I’m going to vote against Obama and do everything in my power to get Republicans elected to everything, especially the Senate. We don’t have much time, but we’re going to need everybody’s help on this. And if we don’t succeed, we WILL be Greece by 2016. We will be broke and then people will know what it really feels like when all of the their precious welfare is taken away from them simply because we can’t afford it anymore, just like in Greece right now. How do you think people will react to that once that happens? Not well, I would imagine. And it would serve them right after putting all of their belief in a liar and a fraud like Obama.
Is it possible for every state that has passed photo voter ID laws to ignore Eric Withholder and go ahead making voters prove they are eligible to vote in Nov? Kinda like he and his Dept. of Injustice are doing with the federal immigration laws, Freedom of Information laws, and the required but non-existent DOJ probe of Holder regarding the contempt of Congress motion.
If not, Obama and his Ship of Fools will steal the election. It will lead to civil war, which the despots are planning for so they can *really* pull out all the stops.
“Even if Obama loses and the Democrats only retain the Senate, we are still finished, because Harry Reid would never, EVER, allow a vote on ObamaCare to come up in the Senate.”
Not if President Romney is willing to use the veto pen early and often. GWB’s failure to “discipline” both his adversaries and his porking “friends” accounts for much of his misfortune. People look to President Reagan as an example of being able to work with Democrats, specifically Tip O’Neill, but in reality the reason he could “work” with them was if they didn’t work with him, they couldn’t get their legislation passed. GWB should have been strong enough to veto every effin’ dime going to an opponent’s district until that opponent stopped opposing him.
This is what happens when lust and envy become virtues while saving and succeeding become crimes.
Well said. You just summed up the 1200-page Atlas Shrugged in one succinct statement!
You got that right my amigo….
“We have a republic to save.”
Do “we”? Author Walsh is making the point that some of us may think so but most of “us” probably believe that we have a republic to milk. Our republic is being destroyed from within and not from the outside. This is the only way America was ever going to be destroyed. A punk from Chicago may very well pull off what the British, the Germans, the Japanese, and the Soviets could not.
There was a very good reason that, at the beginning of the Republic, the franchise was limited to persons of substance who had a stake in the success of our unique experiment in the governing of a free people.
As a Frenchman once noted, the experiment only works so long as the electorate doesn’t decide that it is their interests to vote themselves the public treasure. We now add to that the modern corollary; if there are enough enfranchised drones in the system, they will vote to loot not only the government treasure, but their productive neighbors as well.
If we ever want to return to s system that promotes individual liberty, without a lot of bloodshed, then we will have to re-examine how we award the privilege of the vote, and to whom we award it.
Much of our founder’s thought was aimed at preventing a new tyranny, the tyranny of the majority. Over the last century at least, the Progressives have worked to undermine that concept through an unfortunate amendment to the Constitution ( the 17th), congressional legislation, executive over-reach, and judicial activism.
The progressive left succeeds because they pander to the mobs of takers, who in turn reward their benefactors with votes.
Cut off the source of these destructive politics and you gut the progressive left’s ability to continue the wreck of the Republic.
Not a Frenchman but a Brit, Alexander Tyler. And the end state coming soon is a dictatorship.
was not b dubya referring to de tocqueville?
I was referring to this:
In a quotation attributed to the French author, Alexis de Tocqueville, the dangers of loose fiscal policy were stated as follows: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.”
There is some scholarly disagreement over who said it first. Tyler is one other candidate. Franklin is another.
The truth remains the same, however.
“This is what happens when lust and envy become virtues while saving and succeeding become crimes.” The Obama administration’s motto and chief goal in a nutshell.
Yes, but it appears mainly to be only part of the plan to initiate the Cloward-Piven strategy. It seems to be working rather well.
I have always wondered exactly how Cloward & Piven would reconstruct America once they had achieved the desired chaos; it seems nearly impossible to end up with anything more modern or functional than a banana republic. But with Obama being so very, very intelligent, I may be wrong.
The progressives are running unopposed. They will get everything they want if this continues. I am beginning to think that the weakness of the Republican party of late is some sort of conspiracy. We have got nothing but second string players from them from Bush on.
Republicans need to seriously sit down and see where things are going wrong.
Read “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire”. We are into the “bread and circuses” part right now.
In the October 1994 Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published a book called “The Bell Curve”. It created an intellectual and political firestorm. One of the points in the book concerned the so called “Third World” and the fact that it was growing exponentially larger than the “Industrialized” nations. This would not have been a issue except for the fact that the industrialized nations pay in large part for the third worlds existence. The money from industrialized nations props up infer-structure, provides funding for food, clothing, medical care and other programs that keep people alive in places where their own government can’t or won’t. They find way to get around the corruption, graft and outright criminality that is standard operating procedures in most third world areas. So what happens when there are more of the “takers” than the “givers”? What happens when the ignorant, uneducated, unprincipled overwhelm the builders, the makers, the doers no matter what social/political/ ideological strata they’re in?
Eventually the eco-terrorist get their wish. Humans are erased from the planet allowing the flora and fauna to flourish, unfortunately no one will be alive to experience this. That’s what happens when people who can’t be bothered to provide adequate drinking water and plumbing to ensure the health of their communities become the people in charge. Science fiction becomes science fact because the scientist are all extinct. Just look at who’s in charge at the UN and what they’ve done in the last 20 years. Murray had it right.
My friend: Murray had it right and then he got it wrong, completely wrong. His more recent book, In Our Hands, argues for guaranteed incomes so that wayward fathers have no reason to reneg on their obligations to their children. The problem is that he now argues for a redistribution scheme that makes the state the arbiter of fairness and the enforcer of good behavior. He is no longer a credible spokesperson for either conservatives or libertarians. He is another statist who masquerades as a conservative.
Termites believe in fundamental change too.
Don’t forget the Medicare prescription drug program – brought to you by ‘compassionate conservatives’. Add to that No Child Left Behind and so much more. It’s not just Democrats who are doing this.
So many people in Washington act like it’s still 1965. The greatest generation gave us so much of this spending, along with double digit inflation and zero population growth. Boomers were taught to buy on credit and pay for our goods with inflated dollars. If we saved our money, prices went up and the value of our money went down and, to top it off, we paid income tax on whatever interest we earned.
The demographics of this country need to be accepted by all. People are living longer. There was a time when many people didn’t live long enough to collect one Social Security check. Now we expect to live thirty years in retirement and collect two to three times what we put into SS. Republicans as well as Democrats need to understand that we can’t all live off taxes. That means not just controlling the growth of entitlements but also coming to grips with globalization. People who can’t earn a living can’t pay taxes. That means public sector checks and benefits must shrink as much as those in the private sector have. The good times are over for government as well as for the people.
There is nothing wrong with the principle of safety nets; it is their practice that is so sorely wanting. No just and moral society would willingly abandon the least of its citizens, but no moral govt would turn aid programs into a lifestyle. When govt is advertising to increase food stamp participation, the train hasn’t simply jumped the tracks; it is miles off course, overturned in a ravine, with fuel spilling out and an explosion soon to come.
The only thing bipartisan about DC is growth in govt. For every Dem excess, there is a Repub example, too, and pretending that replacing statist Ds with statist Rs is a solution is fantasy. On substance, the difference between the establishment GOP and its Dem counterparts is non-existent. On style, however, the gap is huge and that, ironically, speaks worse about the right than the left. Liberals make no pretense of being pro-as-big-as-it-can-get govt; conservatives talk about a smaller footprint but keep on spending. The only real difference is what either side spends the money to buy.
The productive are not GIVING anything, it’s being TAKEN.
Better phrase: The party of TAKE versus the party of MAKE (i.e., making things, goods or services).
The “inequality of incomes” follows precisely the inequality of PRODUCTIVITY.
Equating Medicaid to Medicare and Social Security is a lie. Medicaid is a welfare program. People pay into the others for most of their lives. (However, sub-programs of Medicare and Social Security are being peverted into welfare programs as well. But they certainly are not welfare for the people who have had hundreds of thousands of dollars confiscated from their income for decades.)
There are plenty of problems with Medicare and Social Security but the author dosn’t help his point by being disingenuous about the massive differences betweenb the two types of programs.
“The national debt will soon be at 100 percent of GDP. And then what?”
The US reportedly crossed that threshold in December of 2011. We should reach 140% of GDP within five years. We’re talking Greek levels of debt well before the decade’s out. We’re not Greece, of course, but the crisis IS coming.
Sharpshooter, the productivity mantra is BS. American workers are among the most productive in the world hour per hour. Anyway even it was was true, the slack in the system, wage inefficiencies in favor of labor are what drive economic growth. Wages have grown more efficient compensating for automation, outsourcing and the entry of women into the workforce and the predictable happened, all growth became driven by debt.
And to make things worse , we are near a new automation driven crisis. Even if we were to manage trade better in not that many years robots will make goods, load them into warehouses from orders given by computer than unload them at stores with automated checkout.
This means average folks of with average IQ’s and average skills won’t have income to purchase all eh good you can make. And you can forget exports in scale (ala Japan or China) every state that is a market (which is few given demography) is trying to do th same thing. No one wants to pay enough wages to enable anyone to buy the junk they are making
Now more on topic smaller worker/dependent ratio was inevitable. The baby boom, 3 and 4 kid families was unsustainable as most people wanted no more than two anyway. Far to many Conservatives occupy a pre-birth control highly natal mental space and while the pill and too a lesser degree abortion that easy though its not causal, Japan has a much lower birth rate than we do much less abortion and did not have the pill till 1991
Now, since wages are down roughly by half since 1973, getting women to go back to the traditional mother role than enables larger families is impossible.
The “solution” allowing mass immigration simply kicked the can down the road. This increased Democratic hegemony, lowered wages and created a social climate more akin the Balkans or Brazil. The limited ‘one nation under God” post war ideology went away with the entry of non assimilateable aliens entering in mass numbers.
Understand that people are not interchangeable and a good part of our culture went with the ethnic changes , The 75% Non White Texas will not be the mostly White Texas of the past, its already much poorer per capita and only propped up by state aid and oil. Its a lit closer to Mexico with PEMCO than Texas.
Essentially by pushing wages down , allowing free trade and failing to control the borders, the government both left and right created a perfect storm. You’ll get a corrupt 3rd world oligarchy with unrest or socialism. As ye sow so shall ye reap.
First, stop calling them “progressives” because they are hardly following the principles of the Progressive Party founded by Teddy Roosevelt and company. They’ve stolen a “positive” word again.
Next, it’s the nattering little tinkering things that spoil pieces like Medicare and Medicaid, such as requiring that Medicare be the FIRST payer even for those who have health insurance. And the bit-here-and-there “borrowing” from programs like Social Security Insurance or the Post Office to fund other programs.
The old days in New England when local governments could escort paupers and neer-do-wells to their boundaries and kick them over to be someone else’s problem are gone, those people have to be dealt with in our midst–hopefully not in the manner of the National Socialists (Nazis, to you). The bodies of people living and dying under bridges make them everyone’s problem–laissez faire does not work.
I am not a “Democrat” because they are the party of the mobs, and the New Puritans; I am not a Republican because most seem to have confused an economic system (capitalism) with a system of government. We are a representative democracy, a very particular, limited kind of democracy; now who do we choose as representatives? Corporations? seems absurd, considering corporations are responsible only to their shareholders, but if corporations are funding public officials efforts to achieve office then it is corporations that get represented. The very rich are greedy bastards, or we’d still have manufacturing jobs here.
Obama’s promise was that the quarreling would end and that we all would work together, and that as sign of the coming-together again, he would be the first president from an oppressed minority. Some people can’t let that go.
Apologies, I have been busy today and neglected an on topic point.
The reason Social Security exists is to suppress savings and to encourage the psychological conditions to allow for consumerism. It has to be pod for because if we were to get rid of it, the saving rate would create a deflation spiral.
We can’t all save 25% of our income and constantly press for thrift, buying second hand, delaying purchases and all that. This would be healthier for the ecology (we’d use less energy and resources) and probably the family structure but it would end up killing all economic growth and the capitalist system. It also would not guarantee larger families and instead would probably induce Japan style fertility since people do not feel they can afford to have a second child and that the money could be used to buy an annuity or health insurance instead.
Japan, China and to a lesser degree European net exporters only got away with this system because the US economy absorbed all the surplus. For various social reasons these economies cannot consume more and we can’t so it means the system cannot stand
Too many of the owner class have the assumption that people will happily provide them with subsidized workers can consumers which is not the case. You want people to have kids, pay them so they can afford them, they are not going to raise kids in a squalid tenement so someone can have a second Bugatti. Politely they simply not have kids, have fewer kids and so on,. The only exception are people that are either highly religious (hello Sharia law or Theocracy) or stupid with low impulse control. In that case, you’ll pay anyway in terms of crime and punishment and they’ll vote in a welfare state too.
So the choice is simply, pay cash or pay in a bad society. Either way, you’ll pay.
Well … Now it’s clear.
Party of give? Give me a break. The fact is that a huge majority of Republican-leaning states take in more in federal aid than they pay in taxes. Calling Republicans the party of give is a delusion. In reality, they talk a big game but are as big or bigger takers than the Democrats.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1451268
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/26/blog-posting/red-state-socialism-graphic-says-gop-leaning-state/
When George Bush and the Republican congress exploded the size of the federal government, the only reason our taxes didn’t go up is that Republican emphasis on fiscal responsibility only applies when Democrats are in power. When Republicans are in power, everyone grabs from the cookie jar.
Why do people keep saying Social Security is an entitlement or safety net? People have PAID into it, just like any other fund to go toward retirement. It isn’t free..well…maybe for some it is, and there is the problem.
How many hundreds of thousands of kids are recieving SS from infancy on because of a parent’s death? Maybe a parent who never paid into it more than a year, or not at all, yet their kids are getting SS until they graduate? What about eliminating that? (I’m sorry a parent has died, but there are many single parents out there that have been single parents from the start and get no help.) What about NO SS if you have NEVER paid into it?
Here’s a novel one. How about the Gov’t just RETURNING THE MONEY THEY STOLE from SS? Let the politicians, including the President, go without their salaries for how ever long it takes to repay. (Oh boy…will I be investigated now by DC for making that remark?)
I really have no problems with doing something major with Medicaid or Welfare. In the area that I live in, those who really need the help don’t get it, while the women who keep having kids by every guy who crosses their path, or the men who are just too damned lazy to work are living better than the rest of us.
When it used to be “check day” at our county seat (before the cards), you could drive by the Social Services building and see the line of Caddies, Lincolin, sports cars, etc. parked in front of the building. And not old ones either. It was well known, and even joked about about around, although people were only joking because they were so pissed.
But really need temporary help, in a real medical emergency, you’re turned away. I was laid up for 4 years due to an accident, could get no temporary assistance and ended up literally going broke to keep my day to day bills paid. Still can’t work full time..as I can’t sit or stand for more than a short strech at a time, and still can’t get help because I “make too much” on a part time job. This is the same county where the baby makers and lazy SOBs and illegals get whatever they need, as fast as they need it.
BUT, then again, that is New York, through and through. Trying so hard to get of this hell hole of a state.
Medicare…….Just clean it up a bit.
The problem with SS is the disability part.
Does anybody think that 8 million people in the working age population are really disabled? 1 million is closer to the real number and even that might be high. Probably 50% or more of the people collecting disability are simply obese. So much for poverty. Watch the handicapped spots and see how many of the people parking in them have any kind of noticable physical problem. Personally, if I had a disability that didn’t affect my mobility or safety in public parking lots, I wouldn’t use the handicapped spots. But that’s just me.
And disability payments are for life, and they increase every year as well. I’m not sure, but I also think the calculation for the payment is only partially based on what a person has contributed. In other words, if I’m correct, you might work for 10 years, hire one of the thousands of lawyers who specialize in getting disability for people who aren’t disabled, and get a SSI payment that assumes you worked for much longer than 10 years. Of course, once you do that, you can go on Medicare as well, and cut your 4 figure monthly health insurance bill to about $120 or less. And you can also earn about 10K per year and retain disability…I’m sure about the medicare and the 10K parts. The 10K, of course, doesn’t include the under-the-table money people make because stuff fall into their clothes in Walmarts and gets sold on eBay.
It’s a racket put in place to buy votes. Of the 7 million not-disabled disabled people, 6.99 million vote for democrats, which amounts to just under 14 million votes if I’ve done my math correctly
I know a Florida man who gets gov’t disability because…get ready for THIS…he’s an alcoholic & therefore can’t hold a job! This happened when alcoholism was officially declared a disease! Ridiculous!!!!
Savers are punished and drinkers are rewarded. (Couldn’t write this stuff…nobody would believe it!)
Americans with Disabilities Act, 1972. It’s not Obama; it’s the AMA, the APAs that want everyone labeled disabled & a ward of the state. Just ask their Wash., DC, lobbyists.
It’s about time Bain answered all the lies by this administration. It must’ve been hard since they are now dems and bundle for obama. I guess he thought he could get away with saying anything and they would never contradict him!
“Bain Capital: Romney left in Feb. 1999
By DYLAN BYERS |
7/12/12 1:50 PM EDT
Bain Capital sends the following statement, following today’s Boston Globe article reporting that MItt Romney was CEO there until 2002:
Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to run the Olympics and has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure. Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney’s departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period.”
If even .1% of any of these idiotic lies were true there would not be a Booming private insurance, drug, and medical industry. There are some lies, Mikey that are just too big to be true. Case in point, the entire prison population of the USA is bigger that the entire African American population. So how could the Prison pop be predominately black?
You jogged my memory about an old Twilight Zone episode where only one family had constructed a fallout shelter.When the sirens went off the rest of the neighborhood came by looking for shelter and smashed the door in! That was fiction,this is not! This will turn out badly!
Ha, ha, all this emphasis on Social Security, Medicare by people collecting bennies under the auspices of being disabled. & What’s their disability? “Psych-overlay” from being heckled @a book signing.
Anyone whining about Medicare is just another social parasite, w/ the pretense of moral superiority. Shove ‘em on barge; shove it out to sea.
I will tell you what you get. Minimum wage for the public sector. How’s that working for you, suckas?
Great article