Minnesota's Repeal of Useless Laws Is a Model for Washington

This news should make your Monday more enjoyable:


Minnesota "unsession" dumps 1175 obsolete, silly laws. (This link looks hinky in my browser)


Although it was done at the state level, it shows that out there, somewhere, lies common sense.

We could use more of this. A lot more.

(h/t to Instapundit)

Mark Oxner's Taxation Facts Label

Via DaTechGuy, here's Mark Oxners's plan to inform the public about taxes.

Oxner is proposing a tax label, similar to the nutritional label on food, showing how much you're paying in taxes for a specific product.

When I’m elected to Congress, I’ll work with my colleagues to draft and introduce the Truth in Taxation Act. The Truth in Taxation Act will task a non-partisan agency (such as the Government Accounting Office) to calculate the entire federal tax burden that makes up the price of individual products. The legislation will then require that information to be printed upon the labels of those products or on sales receipts. 

In exactly the same way that federal law now requires certain products to provide nutrition information, we should require those same products to be labeled with taxation information.

That way, taxpayers can see how much they pay in taxes every time they go to the store. It will make them mad. Every bill they receive – from utilities to carpet cleaning – will make then even madder.

 This is yet another reason to vote for Oxner.

I like a snarky politician.

Surprise! Obama's Popularity Dips Below 40%

It's 0:6.30. What does the 0 stand for? Oh, my goodness, it's early (with apologies to Good Morning Viet Nam).

Instead of bringing the DOOM! on the economy on this Monday morning, I thought I'd let you guys know something that's becoming glaringly obvious to the nation: President Obama's popularity has officially sunk below 40%.

And while America's economy burns, he fiddles. Actually, Obama is trying to devise a strategy for him to pin the blame on Republicans in general and the Tea Party in specific. And he has help from Time magazine (h/t Ace). Recall, a certain Boy predicted this earlier, although it wasn't that hard to do. Scapegoating, it's not just for breakfast anymore.

The Blogfather, Glenn Reynolds, brings up another point I made recently about psychological inconsistency. I'll let him 'splain it to you, Lucy:

SO THE OTHER DAY I HAD A STORY ABOUT THE FBI TREATING “PREPPERS” AS POTENTIAL TERRORISTS, and then when I was in the car yesterday I heard a PSA from the Department of Homeland Security pitching . . . disaster preparedness via its Ready.gov site. So if you do what Homeland Security recommends, the FBI will wonder if you’re a terrorist. Sweet.




This isn’t really that surprising — one part of the government telling you to do things that another part of the government regards with suspicion. Each department has its own agenda, and its connection to any sort of overall strategy is largely coincidental. Treat them with the deference that this fact deserves . . . .

It's bad enough when individuals can't cope, but it's a bit more when that malady becomes typical of an entire government. You're damned if you do, well, pretty much either one.

OK, Backwardians, enjoy your day.

Did the Tea Party Score a Victory in the Budget Battle?

It appears as though there’s finally a debt deal in Washington, although I can’t say for sure at this point. There’s only one way to tell, given the sclerotic nature of rhetoric that spills forth from career politicians: if both sides are grumbling, that means we have a deal.

Yay! I think.

What is clear is that the issue of an ever-growing federal government is finally being brought to the nations’ attention. Maybe some of our friends who don’t normally pay attention to these things will start to notice that Washington long ago outgrew its britches and now plays a much larger part in our economy than it was ever intended to by the Founders. And for those that don’t, when they suddenly discover they can’t buy such innocuous items as 100-watt light bulbs in the stores starting next year, that might help them understand this whole government-has-become-way-too-big thingy.

Or so I hope.

Anyway, it appears as though the Tea Party made its presence felt on Capitol Hill and embarked on its quest to reduce the size and intrusion of the federal government. And no one felt it more than Speaker of the House, John Boehner. He submitted plan after plan and members of the Tea Party refused to back his capitulation to the big spenders up there.

Understand what the word “compromise” means in today’s political environment: radical, far-left Progressives (but I repeat myself) propose ever-increasing ways for the government to control our lives through legislation, and Republicans just try to slow it down with counter-proposals that still increase the size, scope and intrusion of Washington. That’s some compromise, huh?

For a quick review on how the right and the left view this deal, here are a couple of links. First, there’s this from Mark Thiessen at the Washington Post, “How the Tea Party “hobbits” won the debt fight.” And here’s the leftist view from Yahoo News, "How the Tea Party won the Deal.” Note that you will be dumber for having read that one, filled as it is with such stupidity as this,

Given how much the Bush tax cuts have contributed to the deficit (and how little they’ve spurred economic growth), it’s mind-boggling that they’ve apparently escaped this deficit-reduction deal unscathed.

And this nonsense,

Obama, like FDR, had a reasonably successful first two years: a stimulus package that while too small for the circumstances was still large by historical standards and a health care bill that while subpar in myriad ways still far exceeded the efforts of other recent Democratic presidents.

If by successful, you mean strangling the economy by growing government by over 30% and passing laws at a pace not seen since the Great Society days of the Johnson administration, then by all means Obama has been a success for big government advocates. For the rest of us, not so much.

I’m proud of the Tea Partiers for standing on principle. The midterms elections last November were just the start of what I hope will be a conservative revolution in Washington. I’d like to see such careerists as Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and others of their ilk removed from office. Along with them, I’d also like to see Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and John McCain primaried and replaced with true fiscal conservatives who will actually think about the effects of their actions upon their fellow citizens.

That’s a lot, I know, but I think it can be done. After all, who had even heard of Marco Rubio and Col. Alan West two years ago? I keep up with these things and I had never heard of them.

Hope springs eternal. And this budget battle only serves to make it bubble even more.

And while I’m on the subject, I’d like to put to rest those of us on the right who think that we need a third party in the 2012 Presidential election. This is a supremely bad idea, one that saddled us with somebody named Bill Clinton thanks to Ross Perot’s third party candidacy. Although he didn’t wreak havoc on our economy, he would have had he been elected at any point in time other than right after the Great Ronaldus Magnus. There’s no doubt that he benefitted more from the policies and subsequent economic boom of the Reagan years more than any other leftist president.

And make sure, Bill Clinton was, and is, a radical leftist. Remember the photo of him signing a bill while both Cloward and Piven looked on? If that doesn’t give you pause, knowing today their strategy for collapsing our government and economy through wildly irresponsible spending is in full, I don’t know what would.

This fight over the budget is a small victory to be sure, but it has established a precedent in Washington. We’re no longer talking about how much government will grow, we’re not talking about cuts in the rate of increase of government (which is how those on the left define the word). We’re talking about real live cuts, cuts that you and I have made in our family’s budget, where there is a real reduction in spending.

Naturally we want more. I look forward to the day when we hear politicians start speaking of something called “baseline budgeting.” This radical concept (or radical in Washington, at least) starts the budget from zero, not last year’s budget. This small change is grand in scope. What it means is that each department is examined for what it really needs, not what is has received in the past.

We’ll know we’ve made the kind of true progress towards sanity in government when that day arrives. It’s coming, and it’s coming because no one is able to escape the results of not doing it.

It’s like that old saying, “You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the results of ignoring reality.” And career politicians have been ignoring reality for way too long.

How Wonderful! You Are Subsidizing George Soros’ Propaganda Machine

Genius.

That’s what it is.

Pure Evil Genius.

I posted this a while back, warning you about the George Soros Propaganda Machine.

Imagine for a moment that you’re bombarded with information.


Now imagine all that information is incorrect.


Imagine further that it’s all designed to make you think a certain way, and therefore, vote a certain way. It’s possible for you to cast a vote for a candidate who, once in office, would begin to work against your best interests and those of the country.

I can now add one more item to that “imaginary” list.

Imagine that you’re helping to subsidize it with your own money.

Imagine no more, gentle reader. You really are paying your own money to be misinformed and propagandized.

Where else could a Nazi sympathizer and rabid anti-American billionaire like George Soros erect a media empire aided by the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance bill and Hillary Clinton to get Americans to pay for their own downfall?

Is this a great country or what?

I’m not the only one to notice this. The Washington Post has this article about Soros’s Media Matters “war on Fox.”

David Brock, the conservative turned liberal advocate, has recently garnered a considerable amount of press coverage for his attacks on Fox News for, among many other things, allegedly taking over leadership of the Republican Party. What the news coverage has ignored is his use of tax-free funds for his organization, Media Matters for America (MMA), for these attacks — a form of government support for activities that clearly do not merit tax-exempt status and that as a result infringe on Fox News’ First Amendment rights.


MMA was originally established as an Internal Revenue Service Section 501(c)(3) organization, that is, an organization that can receive tax-deductible contributions to engage in educational activities. The more precise purpose was to counter alleged media bias and so to “identify occurrences of excessive bias in the American media, educate the public as to their existence, and to work with members of the media to reduce them.”


MMA’s activities should disallow its tax-exempt status in two fundamental ways. First, IRS rulings make clear that attacks on individuals, statement of positions that are unsupported by facts and use of inflammatory language and other distortions will cost an organization its tax-free status. Second, in declaring “guerrilla warfare” on Fox as the “leader” and “mouthpiece” of the Republican Party and in developing a sophisticated Democratic-leaning media training boot camp, MMA has transformed itself into an aggressive advocate for Democratic and progressive causes and thus produced a second deviation from exempt educational activities.

Oh, and about that “bias” thingy…

MMA’s role as a Democratic training camp parallels exactly the operations of the American Campaign Academy (ACA), which was denied tax-exempt status by the IRS in 1989. ACA operated a school of intensive training for people planning to be campaign professionals. The facts showed, however, that most of the program’s graduates were Republicans, as were the officials who ran it and the funders who donated to it, and it was based on materials developed by the Republican National Committee.

Hmm, I wonder if this will get the scrutiny it deserves in front of a Congressional investigative committee?

Don’t you?

“Hidden Tax” Forces Companies to Hire Fewer Americans

All right, everybody sing together, in C, a one and a two…

One of these things is caused by the other,

Both of these things just don’t belong.

(Apologies to Big Bird)

There are two seemingly unrelated stories on the economy today. One points out that large, multinational companies are hiring fewer Americans while hiring more foreign workers. The other highlights the staggering costs of regulatory compliance for American companies: nearly $2Trillion dollars.

I used the Sesame Street song for the benefit of the Obama administration, given the overall intellectual weight of their arguments when it comes to our economy.

To me, the fact that one of these is the result of the other is glaringly clear. So clear in fact, that I’m having a rough time trying to explain it. I could just as easily type “Well, DUH” and finish my post right there.

But since Washington is overrun with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who is firmly convinced that the 111th Congress was doing good things by passing more legislation than any other congress in history, I feel the overwhelming need to explain this to them in small words and short sentences.

She was very, very proud of her accomplishments, as she herself says, “We’re very, very proud of the work that was done by this Congress,” the California Democrat said. “We came here to do a job and we got much of it done.”

Yeppers, if that job was to drag America down under the weight of new and costly laws. If that’s what you intended to do, Nan, then you have every right to feel proud. The rest of us, not so much.

Nancy, you don’t seem to understand how this works. If you realize that every new law that Congress passes reduces our freedom, then, in order to maintain and protect our freedom, you should be reluctant to pass laws. You plainly don’t realize that simple truth. We are free unless and until a law is passed that specifically prohibits a certain action. That’s the foundation that our Founders based our government upon; one simple principle that was once considered popular knowledge for anyone entering politics.

It was standard operating procedure in Washington for a while. Those in power used it sparingly and with great caution. They understood that a small and weak domestic government was essential for the freedom of the people. They operated from the premise that they would not interfere with the daily lives of Americans who were perfectly capable of carrying on their affairs in a mature manner, particularly when it came to business.

But something happened along the way, and this simple, unsaid principle was discarded by unprincipled people who wanted to become career politicians. As surely as a moth is drawn to a flame, American politics gradually started to attract the power-hungry. Such is the attraction, as Plato noted, "Those who seek power are not worthy of that power."

Why? "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

So, in the act of seeking power comes the recognition of the lack of moral and intellectual principles of the power-seeker. Hence the need to be very cautious in choosing our “leaders.”

But I digress.

The previous Congress pursued their agenda with great zeal. There was a 19% increase in proposed rules between 2009 and 2010. And while “only” 217 bills were passed, those laws mushroom into thousands of new rules and regulations that have the power of law. In many instances, these regulations force changes upon the procedures that businesses use daily, costing money to comply with them. If you’re in business, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know.

So it should come as no surprise that increased rules and regulations stifle businesses and the creation of wealth. We have entered regulatory lands that our predecessors once feared to tread, and we are paying the price. If we continue down this path of increasing federal intervention, then our new normal will indeed be one of high unemployment, increasing debt, and a national malaise that can only be remedied by a thorough cleansing of the left-wing incumbents in Washington who think their sole purpose in life is to create more government.

We’ve reached the tipping point: as our government grows in size, complexity, cost and intrusiveness, our economy suffers as a direct result.

Today’s post was brought to you by the letter “S.”

As in “screwed.”

Showdown in Wisconsin: The People vs. the Teachers Unions

If you didn’t see it already on the news, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has introduced a bill that will finally release the stranglehold that the state teachers union currently has on the budget. After years of ever-increasing demands from public sector unions, many states are finding themselves at the breaking point. Their budgets are overdrawn due in large part to the outrageous amounts of money these unions have demanded and gotten. In fact, most state’s public sector union members receive benefits and pay that would make a mobster blush.

This just happens to tie in with a commenter’s remarks from the other day. I’m so proud that I got a comment here on the Internet’s best-kept secret, I have to share it:

I find it interesting that most rural/republican districts spout a rhetoric that doesn't match the reality when it comes to smaller government and fiscal self-sufficiency. Across the country I see that these are the districts that receive quite a disproportionate amount of money from the government compared to what they put in. While the liberal "welfare" bastions of urban areas foot there bill.

I know I’m carbon-dating myself when I say this, but there was a time when local tax money was put towards things like road and bridge repair, or infrastructure maintenance as it’s now called. Today, a disproportionate amount of this money is going to pay the for the very comfortable benefits for public sector union workers, many of whom don’t even contribute to their health care insurance like private sector workers do. That’s why local governments are forced to look to Washington for help, even with all the strings that come along with it.

In short, we’re slowly coming to the realization that public sector unions are bleeding the nation of tax dollars. It’s about time we started fighting back.

And if you think that the unions won’t mobilize to try to stop this common sense move by the officials who were elected to do so, you must be at work.

They’re protesting today at the state capitol. They’ve even enlisted students to march and called in sick all across the state so they could be seen protesting.



As you can see and hear, the students don’t have the slightest idea why they’re marching, they’re such good useful idiots. If one of those were my child, I’d yank them back home and file charges against the teacher for kidnapping so fast their head would spin. If parents need a permission slip to take their own child off campus, how did the teachers get them to the protests?

Was it a field trip to teach them about ecology?

Maybe it was a civics lesson. Hmm, how about teaching the kids that unions take the members’ dues and support overwhelmingly far-left Democrat candidates, many times against the member’s wishes and political beliefs. It’s no secret that the Democrat Party depends heavily on contributions from these unions. They contributed a great deal of money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, which may explain why he chose to insert himself into the fray in Wisconsin by saying this,

“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain, generally seems like more of an assault on unions. I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends.”

Yeah, Mr. President, they’re our friends, friends who are emptying our bank accounts. Just like all my friends do.

If you’d like a bit of insight into what passes for the thought process of a public sector union worker, here’s a little taste…

While visiting a state agency in Springfield recently I had the opportunity to engage a nice, professional looking, college educated, 30ish worker in conversation. What started with my making pleasant conversation while waiting for a transaction to complete, asking how long he/she had worked there and what was his/her previous job, quickly turned into an astonishing conversation to me, although the employee thought his/her thoughts were completely normal.

…When I asked what the person's previous job had been, the person answered that he/she had been with another state agency previously and applied for this position when it came open. "Do you like it better here," I asked. "Oh yes, much better. I wanted to move here because the union is better at this agency."…

…The person then told how much he/she mistrusted "management" and didn't think "management" ought to be able to approve days off. I asked if he/she really thought managers are always that bad.
"Absolutely. The workers need protection from management. If we don't have protection, you know, these people are just going to tell us to do things we shouldn't have to do and fire people. We need protection."

"Do you really think other people you work with or all managers are that bad?" I asked.

"Absolutely, you have to have protection. The managers are all going to take advantage of you if you don't have the union. You know these legislators, the ones who say their gonna just cut budgets so everyone loses their job, we have to have the union protection from them. They just want to fire everyone."…

…"You know our state is literally bankrupt. We have massive deficits. Don't you think the people have a right to elect new people to cut government to the level we can afford to pay for?"

"No way."

Then the big one. The question and answer that chilled me.

I asked, "Well, you know those legislators are the representatives of the people. The people elected them to vote for the policies they want for our government. So our boss is really the people, who we work for. That's who the legislators represent. Don't you think the people should be respected who fund us through paying taxes and make decisions through the vote?"

"No way. I don't have any respect for the people. The people are the worst of all. No, they shouldn't be able to make that decision. They should just pay the taxes if we need more. They don't know what we do. They have no business telling us what to do."

Emphasis mine.

Read the whole thing.

Here's another reminder, just in case you're still not ready for a drink...




Courtesy of Mikes America.


Behold your tax dollars at work.

Many thanks to the Morons over at Ace of Spades.