Xeno's Paradox: 02/01/2009

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Good Advice, If You Can Just TAKE It...

If you've been reading my blog - which seems wildly unlikely - then you've no doubt seen me rant repeatedly about the evils of socialism.

Some of you may be wondering why, if you have glanced at my blog but not really READ it.

Especially since the media, our elected officials, and our entire government seem to be some sort of intentional cabal dedicated to driving us off a cliff, away from freedom and into a police state as quickly as they can.

Leave aside my personal experience with formerly socialist countries; leave aside the track record of socialism as a system promoting terror, oppression, and mass murder on an unprecedented scale; leave aside these inconvenient details.

I want you instead to look to the warnings of a man who is a former head of the KGB, the U.S.S.R.'s Committee for State Security. (Komitjet Gosudarstvjennoj Bjezopasnosti.) A man who has lived in and under communism and socialism all his life, birth to death; a man risen to great power under that system, a man whose intimate knowledge of that system surpasses that of anyone in this country a thousandfold; I want you to hear the words of a man in possibly the greatest position of authority to discuss socialism of anyone in the entire world.

I want you to listen to the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake.

True, the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.

That's right.

THE PRESIDENT OF FUCKING RUSSIA IS WARNING US NOT TO TRY SOCIALISM.

Is anyone but me listening?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

[+/-]

Failurenomics

If you've been reading my blog, you've already read a good bit about the legislation and the policies that have led us to the financial situation in which we currently find ourselves.

If not, well...

...A word of advice, or three. Don't bother to comment here trying to argue that "it was Bush!" because those policies and laws go back as far as the 1930's, and President Bush wasn't even born yet when the first of them were passed or put into effect. Try reading history, or if you can't be bothered, scroll through my blog archives.

Right.

So, let's begin.

The current "stimulus" bill passed the House of Representatives, despite UNANIMOUS Republican opposition.

Why? "I won."

Sorry, chief, "I won" won't cover it.

It then went to the Senate, where it was amended from 248 pages - the House final form - to OVER A THOUSAND PAGES (1071,) a form then passed by the Senate Democrats (without even reading it) with the help of three Republican Senators: Arlen Specter, who is SO lucky I don't live in his voting district, and both Senators from Maine, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins.

That version went to the House, which received it at 11 PM Thursday and - again without even reading it - the House Democrats passed, again with unanimous Republican opposition.

Now it sits on President Obama's desk, awaiting his signature, despite the objections of the American people.

It is loaded with "tax cuts," aimed directly at people who already pay no taxes, thus affecting the economy in no way at all.

It contains a thousand pages of pork; $787 billion in spending on a laundry list of liberal dream projects, virtually none of which, despite all the "shovel-ready" rhetoric, will even see a dime this year. Welfare reform is out the window, though; bring on the dole.

That's right, the huge majority of the money won't get spent until 2010. That's unquestionably the way to stimulate the economy, alright; wait until next year, then give millions to the NEA to support sidewalk performance art.

After all, if we were allowed to keep our own money, why, horror of horrors! We might spend it on whatever WE want!

The agenda being more important by far than doing the right thing, what has happened here is that liberal policies - for once totally without the cover of "bipartisanship" - have created for us a situation in which the federal government's total financial obligations are greater than the Gross Domestic Product of Planet Earth.

Read that last bit again, more carefully this time.

As of the day President Obama signs this stimulus bill, the total debt obligations of the United States Federal Government are greater than the total economic output of the entire planet combined.

Never mind the gradually accumulating evidence that the current recession was triggered by intentional economic sabotage by persons as yet unknown.

Never mind the fact that the policy seeds of this situation have been sown - by both parties - through 75 years of unConstitutional government legislation.

What's really happened here is that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Biden, and the Democrats of the House and Senate have shown the world, openly and once and for all, that their leadership is a lie; their claims of "change" are "meet new boss, same as old boss;" their policies are failures; their ideas are corrupt; and anyone looking to them for "hope" has been openly, horribly betrayed.

The Treasury Secretary SO IMPORTANT we had to overlook his casual dismissal of years of lawbreaking as "a mistake," overlook his tax fraud, and confirm him for the post because he was the only person smart enough to save us, presented a "plan" so devoid of good ideas that he was laughed at openly by lawmakers and journalists alike, a "plan" so good the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 400 points on hearing it.

The President asked for - and thanks to Congress, got - unprecedented power, with practically no oversight; a stimulus bill whose cost remains to be determined, that Congress didn't even read; and has thus far failed to positively affect, well, anything, really.

In order to pay for the stimulus bill, as well as the rest of our incredibly mounting debt, the plan at this point is to simply print more money, thus debasing the currency - just as with Carter in the 1970s, the last time a Democrat President had a largely Democrat Congress to work with. This is not an accident.

This is failurenomics.

IF this country survives to the next election, we cannot afford, ever again, to allow these individuals - President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Senator Tom Daschle, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Representative Maxine Waters, Representative Barney Franks, Representative Charles Rangel, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator Edward Kennedy - if not all their entire party, at LEAST these individuals, a place in our government, ever again.

These people are NOT trying to save you. They are trying to destroy our country.

And because of their adherence to failurenomics, they are succeeding.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

[+/-]

It's Official...

Saturday, February 07, 2009

[+/-]

A Note, Driven By Pure Anger And Frustration

OK!

Time for a math class, followed by some politics!

Time and again just recently, I have seen emails making the rounds purporting to present "alternatives" to the government "stimulus" plans. Too often, so-called "conservative" commentators make similar prognostications; they usually take the form of, "well, if you divided the latest stimulus bill out and gave a check to every American, it would come to (some fictitious large number) apiece! That would be better!"

Yeah.

First, see, you have to be able to do math. These plans all report huge sums of money in individual checks, enough to pay off mortgages and school loans, buy new cars, that kind of thing; usually followed up by some variation of "now THAT would be a stimulus!"

The problem is that those huge sums of money are entirely fictitious, and based on the notion that you won't actually DO the math yourself.

So.

Glen Beck is responsible for the latest version of this; claims that the current stimulus bill will divide out to $17K per person in the USA.

NO.

NO IT WILL NOT.

It will divide into less than $3, 000, as a matter of fact; in order for 305, 000, 000 people to get $17, 000 apiece, you'd need to be dividing up $5.2 TRILLION, or higher than the entire federal budget for last year. Want to check me? It's easy; go to the Windows calculator, type in 305, 000, 000, and multiply it by 17, 000. What do you get?

Look at the number of zeroes; it sure as hell isn't any $819 billion, that's GODdamn sure.

So, the basic math behind these plans are sadly lacking. I mean, $3k is a nice piece, but you're not paying off your mortgage with it, you know? But that's not the only problem with this.

The other, more serious problem, is that anyone proposing these things either is a "yellow dog" conservative - someone who will vote for a yellow dog if it's a registered Republican - or someone calling themselves a conservative without really understanding the moral principles behind conservatism.

Why do I say this, considering some of the well-known "conservative" commentators who have espoused such programs?

Simple.

That money does not belong to you.

It sure as hell does not belong to me.

It belongs to the people who actually paid the taxes. Since I - and many of you - will be getting either all, or most, of our tax withholdings back this year, NOT A PENNY of that money belongs to me, or you.

So.

When you're talking about taking money from someone, and giving it to someone else, you're talking about communism. Wealth redistribution - "economic justice" as they call it - is a core tenet of communism, and something near and dear to the hearts of nearly every member of today's liberal leadership.

And if you're supporting something that is a core tenet of communism, advocating theft from someone, governmental abrogation of property rights, you are NOT a conservative.

Which is why, for all their babble, people like Neil Boortz and Glen Beck are not conservatives.

They can mouth talking points, but at their core, they don't understand the basic moral principles behind conservatism. You do not have a right to things that belong to other people. That's not an opinion; it's a basic moral principle.

The government does not have the right to take away the ownership of private property. That's not an opinion; it's a basic moral principle.

The government does not have a right to redistribute wealth. That's not an opinion; it's a basic moral principle.

The government CANNOT have a right to take away your ability to feed yourself or your family through your own efforts. That's not an opinion; it's a basic moral principle.

And if you, or a commentator, doesn't understand that, then you're not a conservative. Not REALLY. You may want a smaller government, but you don't understand WHY.

You might think about that.

Because if the only reason you're voting conservative is because you've always voted that way, maybe you need to re-think things.

And if you've always voted liberal, and you DO understand those basic moral principles, maybe YOU need to rethink things.