Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day–Right Democrat

Posted on by

Despite the increasing presence of Democrats such as Brian Schweitzer, Russ Feingold, Jim Webb, and Bill Richardson who are embracing our Second Amendment rights, it seems that gun policy for the Democratic Party is still being dictated by the likes of the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center instead of by Democrats themselves.

Isn’t it time our party found its own voice on gun legislation?

Doesn’t our party deserve better than to be snared by the pitfalls of the past?

Standing at that podium, Obama could have made one small change to his acceptance speech without compromising his own core values: “Don’t tell me we can’t guarantee the right of law-abiding Americans to own AK-47s while keeping them out of the hands of criminals.” A small change in wording, true, but one that would have added a new dimension of clarity to Obama’s gun policy.

 

Right Democrat
August 31, 2008
Tester says Obama is no threat to gun rights
[As a libertarian with a focus on the right to keep and bear arms I wish the Democrats would see the light and stop being so divisive on this issue so I could move on to other issues. It’s a specific enumerated right and gun restrictions don’t reduce crime so why do they keep trying to further infringe on our rights? The cynical see it as a desire for power and a need to remove guns from society to achieve their goals. I’m not sure what to think about their motivation but I do know Barack the Savior Obama uses weasel words on the gun issue and cannot be trusted.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis Hennigan

Posted on by

The lines are being more clearly drawn on the gun issue. One day after Senator Obama made it clear that he thinks assault weapons should be banned in a remarkable portion of his speech, here Senator McCain selects someone who is not only proud to be endorsed by [the NRA], an opponent of that ban, but apparently is pretty enthusiastic about the guns themselves.


Dennis Hennigan
Legal Director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Newsweek: On the Hunt–Sarah Palin, a moose-hunting, lifetime NRA member guns for D.C.
[You got that right Dennis. So what this means is this election is going to have a significant component that is about the right to keep and bear arms. The contest in November will be about those that recognize a specific enumerated right and those that want to infringe upon it. It will be between the Brady bunch, the Violence Policy Center, and a handful of lesser known (and knowledgeable) groups composed of a few 10s of thousands of members versus the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, and dozens of other pro freedom organizations with several million members. Not everyone agrees with me but I think it’s game over man, game over. There is still work to be done in the trenches until November but some of the generals are going to be planning for a Sarah Palin/Bobby Jindal ticket in 2012.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Al Gore

Posted on by

Take it from me, if it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq, we would have pursued bin Laden until we captured him. We would not be facing a self-inflicted economic crisis; we would be fighting for middle-income families. We would not be showing contempt for the Constitution; we’d be protecting the rights of every American regardless of race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation. And we would not be denying the climate crisis; we’d be solving it.


Al Gore
August 28, 2008
[Notice he doesn’t say anything about protecting the rights of gun owners so one has to wonder why he doesn’t think his idea of registering all gun owners, support for the so called “assault weapon” ban, and restricting the right of free association at gun shows didn’t show contempt for the Constitution. Would registering all homosexuals and outlawing gay bars not meet his threshold for “showing contempt for the Constitution”?–Joe]

Public Education; Views from the elephant in your living room

Posted on by

I attend an invitation-only forum of a few dozen people, many of whom it turns out are educators.  Someone started a thread on how to improve education (Joe, you know where this is going).  The discussion was proceeding as you might expect– this person with experience was discussing details of education with another experienced person.  Someone suggested that compulsory attendance was a bad idea– that if a kid doesn’t want to be there, he can be a disruption, etc.. So I took the bait and posted a response.  Here it is, with some minor edits;



You’re on the right track. Make attendance optional. The next step would be to make funding optional too, as in; if I choose not to send my kid to a “public” school, I don’t have to pay a cent for it– I can instead pay some other school. If I choose the grocery store on the West side of town, I don’t have to still give 120 dollars a week to the grocery store on the East side. If the East side store wants my 120 dollars per week, they’ll have to do a better job of serving my wants and needs, so as to entice me back. Hence the store which better serves the wants and needs of the community gets the “funding”.  Further, we don’t have to fight with one another over how to best run “our grocery store”.

I point out to all here that we are not discussing the details of how Microsoft, Linksys, Apple, or Maxtor should be forced by the legislature to operate, yet we are using computers that only a few years ago would have been the subject of science fiction. We’re not debating the policies of Wal Mart to figure out how the state can get them to sell at low prices and still make enough money to be self-sustaining, or Addidas shoes, or Coca-Cola Bottling Company, etc.. It’s not as if we need to have legislators deciding how these companies should be run at all– if one of them starts to do a poor job, there will be ten others to take its place. Besides, how many legislators have successfully run a school, or a software company, or a microchip manufacturing plant, or a bottling plant?


Poorly-run government programs go on and on and on for generations, sucking up more and more resources. In the case of schools, whole generations are getting ill-educated and it just keeps perpetuating itself.  Poorly-run businesses, on the other hand, fail, and pretty quickly, and then they are gone. Then someone else buys their assets and starts something better, all with zero participation from idiots in Congress, zero participation from the county commissioners, zero involvement from the loons in city council, and at zero cost to the taxpayer and zero coercion.


This is what was once known as a “Free Market”, which is a system that has proven itself superior in every measureable way for many generations, though in this enlightened age, no one believes a bit of it.

Today, we all know perfectly well that if the government didn’t provide shoes for our children, no child would have shoes unless they were lucky enough to be born into a rich family. So anyone who opposes full, compulsory, free shoes, is anti-shoe, or a shoephobe, and obviously hates both kids and shoemakers! These people are known as “conservatives” or “neo-cons” etc., and are absolutely terrible, evil people, who want all poor kids to go barefoot so their rich buddies can make even more money and won’t have to pay their fair share in taxes.

Therefore, we should be discussing what our state and federal legislators are going to do to provide shoes (and computers and software) to all kids. We all know that that is why this country was founded and our constitution written– so everyone would have everything they need, provided by the state, so they can all be healthy and happy, and think the right thoughts, and feel warm and fuzzy, and never have to be upset or uncomfortable or have to work too hard.


The post, by design, is rather incongruous with the rest of the thread, yet, I thought, to the very heart of the matter (two toddlers are concentrating on their game of catch at the edge of a cliff and you want to change the whole subject by striking up a discussion on subjects as ethereal and unrelated as situational awareness and the law of gravity?  Dude!  We’re playing catch here?).


It’s all been said before of course, by others more eloquent than I, but they are elephants in other people’s living rooms.  This is your living room.


I expected at least someone to respond, but nothing.  They went right on, discussing the details of how this or that tweak would make things better in education.  Hello; this is the elephant in your living room speaking.  Socialism doesn’t work.  It leads to stagnation and decay every time its tried.  It may look great on paper but it starts with the ignorance of how people actually interact in real life, and everything it tries to accomplish is founded on that ignorance.


And then there is the pesky little issue of rights (the right to choose where your education dollars go, for instance) but how dare I bring that up.  We’re discussing public education here, after all.

Spying on the enemy

Posted on by

I know I’m late to the party. I’ve been very busy with preparing for Blackwater/Para/Todd and Caleb and then I had problems with my blog that took way too long to fix (and I’m still not totally where I want to be yet).

Here is some of what others have been saying about the Mary McFate (or Mary Lou Sapone) story as broken by Mother Jones. I haven’t begun to read all 100+ blog posts–maybe only a tenth of that. But there are some things I’m not seeing that I think should be addressed.

First, the legality issue. I’m not a lawyer but my expectation is that unless she signed some sort of non-disclosure contract it’s going to be hard to make anything stick on the legal front. Expect non-disclosures to be SOP for high level positions in the anti-gun groups in the near future.

Second, the ethical issue. I’m all for playing by the rules. Anyone who knows me well will know this in the extreme. When other people are walking across the street without a light they will find me standing on the corner. When everyone else is going 10 or 15 MPH over the speed limit I’ll be going the speed limit or maybe up to 5 MPH over. That doesn’t mean I won’t push the envelope. I have a very strong tendency to follow the rules to the letter. But when that “letter” has a loophole there is also a very good chance I will try to exploit it. But I nearly always follow the rules and get very annoyed, even angry, when others don’t. Barb says it’s because I have a mild case of Asperbergers. I say it’s because I’m rational, honest, and despise cheats.

In a battle such as the one over the specific, enumerated, right to keep and bear arms the anti-gun groups have a very long history of underhanded activities. I remember before I purchased my first gun (1994) I did a bunch of research on gun control, the Second Amendment, and related stuff. I got on the mailing list for Handgun Control Inc. (now The Brady Campaign). One of their propaganda flyers said that in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1875) it was spelled out explicitly, “This is not a right granted by the Constitution.” I was shocked and had to look it up to make sure. Yup. It did say that. But there was a gotcha HCI didn’t put in their propaganda. The very next sentence in that opinion said, “Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” Hence it was not a simple oversight on the part of some incompetent HCI flunky. They could not have missed the very next sentence or the previous paragraphs where similar things are said about the First Amendment. This opinion is very clear that these are not rights granted by the Bill of Rights. They are preexisting rights that even the repeal of the 2nd (or 1st) Amendment could not nullify. The anti-gun people do this sort of thing constantly and sometimes every single point they make is a lie even when the facts are easily available. They do not fear being caught in a lie. It costs us far more in time, money, and precious words to fight their lies than it does for them to make the lie.

This isn’t just some sort of nit-picky Aspergers thing about something that happened nearly 15 years ago. It was just that is when I realized with absolute certainty which was the side of evil, who must be defeated, and the rules by which the game was played.

This is not to say that I think our side should be sloppy with the truth. We don’t need to. They do. What it does mean is that I have zero, perhaps even negative, qualms about doing “underhanded” or sneaky things to defeat them. They chose the playing field when they set out to destroy a specifically guaranteed civil right. They not only chose to do evil they additionally chose to use underhanded tactics in their propaganda and on the battlefield. By their actions they have declared the rules they play this game by. If we play entirely by our set of rules we may still win but how many millions of people will be denied their civil rights and how many tens of thousands will killed and injured because they were unable to exercise that right or believed a gun would more likely harm an innocent than a predator? What price are you willing to pay for “playing fair”? In some exceedingly dark projections of the future we may actually be fighting for the fate of humanity with the George Orwell’s vision given to us in 1984 as the downside of losing this fight. When the boots of a tyrannical government are smashing the face of humanity forever what satisfaction will you have for having played by your ethics rather than those that were very clear in their agenda and the rules they played by? That may not be the result of losing but that is what you are risking. Hence I agree with Sebastian when he said, “Given that, is there really any tactic that’s too sleazy and too underhanded to use in order to defeat them?”

The worst thing Mary did was getting caught. For that she, or whoever was responsible for outing her, should be quietly and behind the scenes, scolded.

Third, the benefits of having a spy. A lot of people have claimed there wasn’t all that much we could have gotten from a spy so the benefits weren’t worth risks of bad PR from possibly getting caught. Others have said advance knowledge of legislation agendas and allocation of resources for fighting initiatives could be very useful. I fully agree with this latter line of thinking but I don’t think it goes far enough in explaining what the potential benefits are. I fully agree that getting caught is bad but the benefits might well have been fantastic.

Aside from getting a magazine once a month (which I seldom read) and a few carefully worded emails with the occasional wheelbarrows full of cash (thanks Ashley!) I don’t have any deep source of from information inside the NRA. But from being “part of the U.S. intelligence community” for a while I do know a little about intelligence gathering and how it can be of benefit. The following is entirely speculation and is not in any way based on information the NRA actually received.

Example 1: Suppose the bad guys plan an initiative to ban “assault weapons”. Going in cold with the dry words of the initiative they find they can only get about half of the signatures they need to get on the ballot. Their resources are limited and they want to conserve their money for the fight once they are actually on the ballot. They can’t spend a lot of money for the signature gathers for months then fight in the media for the actual votes.

But they have done polls and found videos of unshaved men firing full auto while dressed in camouflage followed by scenes of Columbine and other school shootings yields 80% support for their initiative. They can get the required signatures in a remarkable short time if the propaganda is done correctly. They decide to coordinate the release of their video with their friends in the media with the announcement of the initiative in the two months before the deadline to turn in the signatures. The paid signatures gathers are contracted for and everything is in place for a political Blitzkrieg. If they keep things quiet the good guys won’t have time to form a coherent defense before the signatures have been gathered. Hence the bad guys can save their resources for the battle of votes on Election Day.

If the good guys have advance knowledge they will be able do their own polls (which could take weeks) with lots of different sound bites and find a couple one liners that cut that 80% support down to 40%. They prepare their own set of videos that can be hit the mass media as paid ads in only a few days after the bad guys go public. They bad guys aren’t prepared for a fight at this stage and don’t get the signatures needed. The good guys had to pay some money up front but they stopped the bad guy at the signature stage rather than to fight it out at the ballot box and can spend their resources on the defeat of the politicians who showed their colors and came out in support of the ballot initiative.

Or the good guys could come out with their own offensive that upsets the plans of the bad guys. They may know they cannot win but if they start pushing for a youth shooting program in the schools subsidized by the state you can be sure the bad guys will devote resources to that and maybe put the “assault weapon” ban on the back burner.

Example 2: Suppose the initiative did make it on the ballot and the good guys have to win. They can draw upon reserves allocated for national issues if needed but that would weaken plans for actual gains at the higher level. It’s getting down to election day and the good guys are currently ahead in the polls (private and/or public). Barring some last minute surprise from the bad guys they don’t need to use those reserves. If they know a surprise is coming and what that surprise is they can not only have done the polls they can have the countering ads ready for release on the same day the “surprise” hits the street. If they know the bad guys don’t have any money left and are running on empty they can send the reserves home and concentrate on making gains at the national level rather than winning a fight that was already won.

Example 3: Suppose the bad guys are having some internal problems. Maybe one of their key leaders has health problems and doesn’t really want to step aside for someone else. Maybe their finances are in poor shape (only the 501(c)(3)/charities orgs and publically traded corps have to make public disclosure of their finances, not the private political organizations). Or maybe they lost their building lease and have to move. Not only are time and money spent in the finding a new building and the actually moving but their phone numbers will have to change in the process. Or maybe some key personal are moving on to higher paying jobs in a different field and replacements need to be hired and trained.

Having knowledge of these troubles may mean the good guys can time a critical amendment to some legislation when the opposition is least able to put up resistance.

The bottom line is that yes we know, in general terms, what the bad guys are going to do and we can figure things out very quickly once they do go public. We may have larger war chests and more committed voters but that may not amount to anything if those resources can’t be deployed in the most effective manner. Having weeks or months advance knowledge can give us the opportunity to deploy after giving careful thought and parsimoniously allocating them thus yielding fantastic benefits. The benefit of having a spy is all in the timing. Time is a dimension that many people don’t take into account when going into a fight. They look at numbers like dollars, votes, tanks, ships, bomb yields, weapon accuracy, magazine capacity, penetration depth in gelatin and the caliber of their carry gun. But it doesn’t matter in the slightest that you carry a .45 with three spare magazines and can put ten rounds under a quarter at 25 yards if you opponent puts a .22LR bullet from his zip gun into your eyeball from three feet away before you get a chance to draw.

Knowledge gives us time and this can be more important than almost anything else.

Thank you Mary and whoever else might be out there, unknown and under appreciated; yielding results that surpass the benefits we get from highly compensated executives enjoying fame and wealth. I consider you a fallen hero.

Quote of the day–Robert Levy

Posted on by

Thankfully, the Supreme Court has reminded city officials that the Constitution is more than a guidebook to be cast aside whenever it is inconvenient. If the city attempts to circumvent the Court’s opinion, then Congress, under Article I, section 8, of the Constitution can and should exercise its plenary power over all legislative matters in the nation’s capital. Home rule, arising out of authority delegated by Congress to the D.C. government, is not a license to violate the Constitution.


Robert Levy
July 14, 2008
District of Columbia v. Heller: What’s Next?
[And Congress is doing just that. I would rather the city officials responsible were to spend in some time in prison for violating 18 USC 242 as part of the “change” needed in Washington but we can’t always get everything we want.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Martin Pitt

Posted on by

POLITICIAN: From the Greek `poly’ (“many”) and the French `tete’ (“head” or “face,” as in `tete-a-tete’: head to head or face to face). Hence `polytetien’, a person of two or more faces.


Martin Pitt
[Does this remind you of anyone? Yeah, me too. It reminds me of all successful politicians.–Joe]

Queen of Smackdown Wields Her Bat

Posted on by

Her baseball bat of truth, that is.  This is simply rich.  And timeless.



Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents — but Heaven forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo.


But there’s so much more.  RTWT and enjoy.

Quote of the day–Diane Feinstein

Posted on by

If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in, I would have done it.

Diane Feinstein
February 5, 1995
CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes
[Don’t forget this. She and many other Democrats have been very consistent on this. This is one of their core principles. All they lack is the votes to do it.–Joe]

An Oil Change You Can Believe In

Posted on by

My wife asked me to make an appointment to get her car in for an oil change.  I replied;



You have an appointment for your car first thing Monday morning.  I can bring it in, or you can, as you wish.


Hmm—now there’s a “Change” for which we can “Hope”.  Call the Obama campaign headquarters.  Better yet, call Jiffy Lube headquarters and tell them you have a great new ad slogan:


We “Hope” we can “Change”…your oil.


– or –


Do you “Hope” for a “Change”?  Well, get over to Jiffy Lube today!!  We can do “An Oil Change You Can Believe In”.


I think they should do it and try to get sued by the Obama campaign.  It would make them extremely famous and get them another million customers overnight.


I should have added;


“Don’t just “Hope” your car is OK–  “Change” your oil at (pick a company) today.”

No philosophical foundation

Posted on by

I highly recommend Ayn Rand’s collection of essays, Philosophy: Who Needs It?


I was reminded of her work by this discussion in the Washington Post:



I think both party’s leaders would be wise to do away with platforms altogether.


It’s the logical conclusion of a society that lacks an understanding of the need for philosophy. Political candidates of the same party can be on opposite sides of the same issue and they see nothing odd about it. There are no principles to guide them. They believe whatever they want to believe regardless of it’s validity. People support and even celebrate “diversity of opinion” for views that are obviously false.


Do you think I exaggerate? Remember this quote?



No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence.


Ann Landers


Something needs to change in order for there to be hope for our future. And Obama is not the solution. It’s him and those like him that are the problem.

Speaking of drilling for oil

Posted on by

The other day Lyle posted “We Can’t Drill Ourself Out of This Problem”.


Today I was poking around in my quote collection and ran across this:



Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?  You’re crazy.


Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.


Apparently the “progressives” still haven’t caught up with the capitalists of 150 years ago.

Racking up the victories

Posted on by

With the Heller decision we successfully landed on the beach and are now advancing.


The Apex of the Triangle of Death reports on the latest victory in Morton Grove Illinois where they surrendered without firing a shot.

‘We Can’t Drill Our Way Out of This Problem’

Posted on by

We’ve all heard it.  That’s the current mantra of the Left, and if there’s anything we have for certain all heard a thousand times, it’s a Leftist mantra.


There are two camps on this issue.  In one camp, the people suck it right up, fully accept it, and repeat it any time the discussion comes up.


The other camp is incredulous.  “How could anyone be so stupid..” they might ask, “..to believe we can’t drill for more oil, increase the future supply, send a message to the market that lots more oil is on the way, and thereby bring down the price?”


That’s a perfectly sensible question.  To say that we can’t drill our way out of an impending oil shortage is of course exactly like saying you can’t eat your way out of hunger, you can’t warm your way out of hypothermia, and you can’t drink your way out of thirst.


It’s just plain incomprehensible that anyone would make such a claim, so why do the Leftists keep saying it?  They seem all to understand it, and they all seem to embrace it, so what’s going on?


The problem, as always, is in the use of the language.  We are assuming that by “this problem” the Left means, “the combination of high demand and restricted supply that results in a high price”.  We’ve been wrong about this the whole time, however.  What the Left means by “this problem” is actually, “human success” particularly “American success”.  Translated properly into Left-Speak then, the phrase, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem” make perfect sense.  It would read something like, “We can’t drill our way out of American success” which is of course perfectly true and obvious.  We could drill and pump and drill and pump, and still we’d be a vibrant, successful, creative and productive nation.  For the Left, that outcome would of course be insufferable.


Now you understand.


Carry on.

How Gun Control Lost

Posted on by

Steve Chapman appears to have all his facts correct but overlooks what I think are the most important points. Yes, all the gun control laws failed to make people safer. Yes, shall issue concealed carry laws did no harm. Yes, legal scholars concluded the NRA was right all along. But that isn’t what made the difference. Facts and reason have never been the most significant factors in politics.

 

What made the difference was the gun grabbers getting their asses handed to them in elections. It started with the 1994 national election a month and a half after the so called “assault weapon ban” was passed and was sealed when Al Gore lost his home state in the 2000 election. From there it was still a fierce battle but astute observers on both sides could see, baring some major upset, who was going to win. September 11, 2001 came and both sides tried to take advantage of the event. Gun owners came out on top. The next major event, hurricane Katrina, proved such a disaster for the gun grabbers that there was no doubt which side had the momentum.

 

Another significant factor was the militia movement in the mid 1990s. It faded away in the late 90s when the ballot box appeared to be having the desired results. The politicians realized gun owners were preparing for war and dialed down their hate filled rhetoric. If the soap box and ballot box didn’t work the cartridge box was being readied for use. They heard the whispers from the gun ranges, gun shows and any other place where gun owners gathered. The shout of defiance had changed even though Heston still used the old one. And the new one was not said from the podium with the television cameras running. It was a deep growl which could only be heard if you were standing close enough. But the politicians got the gist of it anyway, “You can have my gun when you reanimate Your Cold. Dead. Hands.”

Speak softer, I can’t hear you

Posted on by

When I was little, got upset about something and was presenting my case with “the volume set to 11” my great Uncle Walt used to tell me, “Speak softer, I can’t hear your” and I would have to repeat myself without all the “enthusiasm” of my first explanation. His advice was good. But some members of congress are turning that sage wisdom against us. 10s of thousands of us had comments in favor of being able to defend ourselves with the best available tools in the National Parks and rather than listening to what was said they want to “get more input”.


The real story is the anti-gun bigots in congress are trying to delay the allowing of firearms in National Parks until their is a new administration in the White House. The Apex of the Triangle of Death has the details and what to do about it.

I’m quoted in World Net Daily

Posted on by

As Jed points out (and I had noticed a few minutes earlier via a Google News Alert) World Net Daily quoted me when reporting about the ACLU getting ripped apart by comments on their own blog regarding their stand in regards to the Heller decision.


Cool! I was proud of that rant but I didn’t expect any big names to pick it up. I should have put a link in the comment I guess. No traffic from WND is being directed here.

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

Posted on by

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.


Milton Friedman
[Gun control, laws against recreational drugs, welfare, socialized medicine, and rent control are just the examples that come to mind in the first few seconds.–Joe]

A billion? (the Cost of Statism)

Posted on by

My father in law sends me all sorts of chain mail.  My response follows at the bottom, but for the intro, here’s the chain letter:


Subject: A Billion?


How many zeros in a billion?


The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.


A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it’s releases.



A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.


(Actually, that’s 1.5 billion, but that’s not the point)


B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.


C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.


D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.


E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government is spending it.
 
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let’s take a look at New Orleans …
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.



Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting number…What does it mean?


A. Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.


B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.


C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.


Washington, D. C
 
 HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??


Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax


STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?


Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.


We had absolutely no national debt, we had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.


What happened?  Can you spell ‘politicians’?


And I still have to press ‘1’ for English.


I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times


What the heck happened?
 
For my money it is called greed.


———————————————-


My response:



They left out special, punitive state and federal taxes on guns and ammunition, which account for a large portion of the cost of the product.


The list of taxes does not address the many and various requirements and restrictions on businesses.  One small example out of thousands is; a window was broken in our Clarkston, WA store during a robbery.  Had it been in Moscow, we could have called one of several glass shops and had it replaced the same day.  Because this happened in Washington, there is a tempered safety glass requirement for storefronts that increased the cost of the window by several hundred dollars (wanna bet some legislator’s cousin owns a safety glass business?).  But that wasn’t the main expense created by the law.  Far and away the biggest expense was that we had to wait several weeks for the window, meaning we had no storefront for that amount of time– just boards.


That cost, and thousands like it, never figure into the costs with which we are saddled by local, state and fed restrictions. 


Add things like minimum wage laws, which outlaw many entry-level jobs outright.  Add laws requiring handicapped access, which can amount to 100s of thousands of dollars for a small business, even if they have no handicapped customers.  The list of such requirements and restrictions would take more than your e-mail in-box could hold, and these all amount to increased cost of doing business.  Often, the reporting and compliance requirements necessitate the hiring of extra employees– people doing jobs for the government, paid by the business owner, producing nothing.  Ever see a WA state sales tax report?  Every city and county can have its own tax rate.  Since our music store does business in two states, and in many cities throughout WA state, we have a huge tax report for WA State (Idaho’s is about the size of a post card).  As a very small business, the WA reporting requirement costs us and our customers at least as much as the actual tax money paid.


And did I mention that property taxes and utilities prices are higher for businesses than for a residence?  How many people know that unless they’re in business?


Now add to the list of costs; the number of businesses that couldn’t bear these burdens, and just gave up and quit.  Then add the number of businesses that started up in other states because they had more freedom there (this is known as “brain drain” and it happens in all socialist societies– the creative and the productive want the hell out of there).


But that’s just the beginning.  Add the untold thousands of creative people who never went into business because the hurdles were just a little bit too much to bother with (business being a stressful and risky proposition in the best of situations) and/or they knew the “safety net” would take care of them anyway, or they could get a government job with full benefits.


And so the monster grows– fewer people paying taxes to support an ever-growing government sector.  Three trillion dollars annually and growing fast (it’s gone up almost 50% during this current “conservative” administration).  Divide 3 trillion by the total U.S. population, boys and girls, if your calculator can handle that many digits.


Many of these costs are impossible to measure.  They don’t show up on the spreadsheets or in the statistics, but I submit that they account for the greatest percentage of the total cost of socialist/statist systems.  But then, some would (and often do) applaud anything that shackles the creative, productive human mind and forces it to either serve their purposes, or just give up.  Everyone knows the score– business (peaceable, voluntary exchange) is greedy and deserves to be punished, whereas “public servants” are altogether selfless and benevolent, right?

Quote of the day–Chris Cox

Posted on by

We look forward to showing him ‘bitter’. Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment. Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories. I can assure him he’s wrong on both.


Chris Cox
NRA chief lobbyist.
July 1, 2008
NRA Plans $40M Campaign Blitz
[Even us a red-necked knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, can see Obama is the enemy of gun owners. Cox and company are just getting the facts out.–Joe]