Conservative Values

What’s Wrong With the West?

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Mark Steyn nails it:

…The problem for the Western world is that it has incentivized non-productivity on an industrial scale. For large numbers at the lower end of the spectrum (still quaintly referred to by British reporters as “working class”), the ritual of work — of lifetime employment as a normal feature of life — has been all but bred out by multigenerational dependency. At the upper end of the spectrum, too many of us seem to regard an advanced Western society as the geopolitical version of a lavishly endowed charitable foundation that funds somnolent programming on NPR…

Do read the whole thing.

The TEA Party Keeps Rolling

Mark Noonan36 Comments

And here’s why – from Pajamas Media:

I have been part of the kick off of the Tea Party Express bus tour as it starts its 17 day, 30 city tour, ending in Tampa, Florida on September 12th for the Tea Party Express/CNN debate.  The tour starts in Napa Valley, and then heads east to Reno, NV, then across the nation up to Maine, finally following the eastern seaboard South to Tampa Bay.

On Friday, August 26th, the Napa Tea Partyheld a dinner in celebration of the impending Tea Party Express launch.  Over 400 people attended a night of music, laughter, conversation and cigars (if you were anywhere near me!)  At the table I sat at, I met a gentlemen in his sixties who drills water wells. With his wife by his side, he told me that he has been drilling for near 40 years, and this is the first year – ever – that there is simply no work.  The economy has just stalled his business…

Things our lousy, our country is broken and our leadership incompetent when it isn’t corrupt.  That is why there is a TEA Party – patriotic Americans who want to rescue the nation.  And no matter how much slander and filth is heaped upon it by the DNC/MSM smear machine, it will just keep rolling on.  And this is just a curtain-raiser…in 2012 it will just stride from strength to strength as the people mobilize for a revolutionary change in our government.

Abuse of the Welfare State

Mark Noonan77 Comments

Writ large in Michigan – from Detroit News:

…Here we go again — the cold-harded GOP elitists are balancing the budget on the back of the poor.

More than 11,000 people will see their welfare benefits end on Oct. 1.

What will they do? Well, most haven’t considered working as an option.

The Department of Human Services sent letters to 11,062 welfare recipients, notifying them their checks are coming to an end. Included was a toll-free number people could call for information and assistance.

The hotline got 1,401 calls. Of that number, only eight callers requested help in finding a job.

Many of those being cut off have been on public assistance for 14 years. That’s not a safety net; it’s a hammock…

Except for those actually incapable of work – and, remember, I have an exceptionally high bar for that – all people must work.  I don’t care if its just picking up trash in the city streets, no one should ever be allowed to sit on their rear and collect any sort of government benefit.  Furthermore, in order to ensure that the search for work is diligent, welfare should never pay more 80% of a minimum wage job.  Any job, any where – even those “jobs Americans won’t do” and are thus filled by illegals – should pay more than government assistance.  Welfare should only be just enough to keep body and soul together until the recipient finds a job.

The best estimate that I have found of non-health care, non-Social Security welfare spending by the United States government is in the range of $350 to $500 billion per year (its hard to tell because Uncle Sam – determined to not make it easy for us – doesn’t have a category of spending called “welfare”…you have to dig around for it).  I’ll bet that State and local welfare spending adds at least 25% to that figure (and it is probably higher)…even at the low end, we’re talking more than $400 billion per year spent by government in various transfer payments to people who didn’t pay any “input” taxes (in other words, didn’t pay SS taxes, didn’t pay taxes which fund unemployment, etc).  I’ll bet that three quarters (at least) of that money is going to people who can work, but choose not to.

Add in the waste and fraud in Social Security disability, the number of people who get healthcare on the public dime without putting in anything, the drain caused by illegal immigration, and the money spent on worthless aspects of education (what is that?  Worthwhile education spending:  education spending which results in an engineer, teacher or doctor.  Worthless education:  spending which results in diversity coordinators, corporate bureaucrats and lawyers) and you’re probably getting in to the range of a trillion dollars per year of drain on the economy…money which is spent that has no net, positive benefit.  Money which just goes to leeches.

This has to change – and the welfare reform in Michigan shows why:  some people are so long on the public dime that they simply have no desire to get off it.  They must be forced off – work, or starve.  A complete audit of all recipients of government money must be done…and all able-bodied people with no minor children must be kicked off of government support; those with children must be forced to do at least some work in payment for their welfare; only those absolutely incapable of working (or on a program they directly paid in to over the years) should be allowed to remain.

There is still plenty of work on the low end in the United States…work which doesn’t need even a high school diploma (how many from the backwaters of Mexico and the third world who come here illegally have such?).  It is, often, hard and dirty work…but work is honorable, and all honest work creates personal dignity.  Better to be poor digging a ditch than poor watching daytime television.  Mind you, I’ll go ten thousand extra miles to help out anyone who is working hard and still not able to make ends meet…you put in your 40 hours and you’re still short, you can count on me to either work it through charity or, if need be, enact laws to ensure that you and your family have decent food, housing, clothing and basic health care…but the first step is that 40 hours of work.

We must become a nation of hard work, thrift and careful investment…massive reforms need to be undertaken, and none of them can really be done in isolation.  Big Corporation also needs to feel the hammer; Big government, naturally; all of us have to stand up and do what is right…after generations of coasting on  borrowed money.  The only way we keep our nation is if we work for it.  Period, end of story.  Anyone who says otherwise is simply not understanding the nature of life.

 

The New Yorker Upset That Perry Has Testicles

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Sorry for the crudity, but I really can’t describe this any other way – from The New Yorker via Ann Althouse:

…Perry is the first graduate of Texas A & M to govern Texas. When he was a freshman, in 1968, the student body looked much like him: white, male, determinedly rural. Aggie jokes of the country-bumpkin variety are still standard fare in Texas. (“How many Aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, but he gets three hours of credit.”) At A & M, Perry ran the winning campaign of his friend John Sharp for student-body president. In response, Sharp got his friend elected one of the campus’s five “yell leaders”—male cheerleaders. Perry considered being a yeller the higher office. A typical yell is: “Squads left! Squads right! / Farmers, farmers, we’re all right! / Load, ready, aim, fire, BOOM!” During tense moments in a football game, yellers grab their balls and shout, “Squeeze, Aggies!”…

As one comment noted over at Instapundit put it, the worry here for liberals is that Perry apparently has a pair to squeeze.

If you read the whole article, it is just a crude attempt to paint Governor Perry as some sort of overly masculine cowboy-barbarian…not at all like sweet, gentle, Ivy League-educated George Bush.  To be sure, “Squeeze, Aggies!” is bizarre – but, then again, its Texas.  The bottom line is that they tend to shoot at the people who need to be shot and back up those who deserve help; you really have to be some post-modernist metrosexual to get your nighty in a knot over Texas…so, naturally, liberals are well knotted.

They are deathly afraid of Rick Perry….perhaps even more fearful than they have ever been about Sarah Palin.  The thing about Perry (and Palin and Bachmann and Cain) is that they are just regular folks from the heartland who live and believe like regular Americans.  If they think about the Ruling Class, at all, it is with a mixture of bemusement and contempt.  People like Perry really will go to DC to change things…and not care a whit whether or not the Ruling Class is offended by it.

And it will be one heck of a lot of fun to watch…

Poll Reveals Americans Understand Big Goverment Scam

Mark Noonan38 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of American Adults say the bigger problem with welfare programs in the United States is that too many people get welfare who should not be getting it. Just 18% say the bigger issue is that too many people who should receive welfare do not get it, while another 11% are not sure.

Republicans (91%) and adults not affiliated with either political party (70%) believe much more strongly than Democrats (51%) that the bigger problem with welfare is that too many ineligible people are on it.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all Americans think immigrants who follow the law and enter the United States legally should have to wait three years or more before collecting welfare benefits, including 31% who believe they should wait more than five years. Seventeen percent (17%) think three years is enough, while 11% prefer a five-year waiting period…

What is the scam?  Get as many people as possible hooked on Big Government hand outs, then claim that any proposed cut is a cruel, inhuman cut-off of someone who otherwise will die.  Use these in alternating efforts to continually grow government so that you can get ever richer and more powerful.  For the longest time, this worked…but this poll indicates that more and more people are understanding that massive numbers of people are on the dole who really shouldn’t be.

While I have no way to test my theory – it would take a large staff and a pretty big budget to do it – I firmly assert that at least half of the people receiving government benefits should be kicked off and forced to get back to work.  As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve got a pretty high standard for disability…no one will ever be able to erase from my memory my late colleague who was a wheelchair-bound victim of a horrific genetic disease who couldn’t even use all the fingers of her hands and yet managed to hold down a 40 hour a week job until just a few months before her death.

If she could work, then most people on disability can work.  Period.  End of story.  No, shut up you lazy SOBs with your whines about “stress”…get back to work and get off my wallet.  I’ve got stress, too – a great deal of which stems from having to get up and go to work in the morning while millions of people are on their backside watching daytime television and waiting for their EBT card to be re-filled.  In my view, you’re only excused from working if you can’t work…can’t get out of bed, can’t stand up for more than a few minutes, can’t sit down for more than a few minutes, are blind…missing your legs or arms…something like that (and this is Biblical – In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat – 2 Thessalonians 3:10 – so don’t any of you liberals try to throw Christian charity at me…I know the command to charity; but charity isn’t the act of supporting layabouts who can otherwise support themselves).

A great deal of the reform of America will be re-imposing the requirement of hard work.  Hard, dirty work, at that.  A nation which will not engage in hard work is a nation which will die – it is really just as simple as that.  Each person is required to labor to the limit of the talents God has provided him or her – those who can do much, must do so; those who can do little, must still do at least that…and those who really can do nothing, must be provided with every last thing they need from those of us who can.  But there are no free rides – if you are living off the wealth of others then it must only be because there is no other way for you to live.  A complete review of all those on government aid should be done – excluding only those on social security retirement and military pensions (you get SS because you earned it by working…you get your military pension because you earned it by risking your life over many years for your nation) – everyone on government aid should be forced to justify their dependency.  Tell us why you can’t work – show us your complete incapacity for any work whatsoever.  If that is indeed the case, then you can count on us to provide all you need…but if you can work, at all, then you’d better get to work.

Enough is enough – there really is no free lunch and it is time we called a halt to this liberal nonsense.

Poll: 28% Conservative, 12% Liberal

Mark Noonan35 Comments

From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 28% of Likely Voters say they are both fiscal and social conservatives.  Just 12% say they are liberal in both areas, while 60% are some other combination…

That is about right – and it is why I hold the United States to be a center/right nation.  We can do ok with a center/left President like Clinton, but we can’t at all tolerate someone who is completely leftist, like Obama.  The mistake Obama and his Democrats  made in 2009 was to presume that America have shifted left when what really happened was just a rejection of a particular political party let by a particular President.  A rejection of Bush and the 2008 GOP by no means signaled a shift to the left in America.

But Obama and Co ran with it – and so we got disastrous policies and now an increasingly angered electorate which seems to be building itself up towards a gigantic rejection of all things liberal in 2012.

The really amazing thing is that Obama could have got 80% of what he wanted – and, perhaps, have shifted America a little further to the left than it had ever been before.  All he had to do was call in to his councils people like McCain and Snowe and he would have gotten a lot of things to please his base while also offering some things to his opposition.  But his attitude was “I won, so screw you” to the GOP and conservatism.

Ok, if that’s the way you want it…

More Guns, Less Crime

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found…

An armed population is a free and safe population – also, a more well-mannered population.  This is just natural.  If we’re armed, we can’t just be oppressed at will.  If we’re armed, criminals think twice about committing crimes.  If we’re armed, everyone minds their manners because they’d rather not accidentally insult someone who is carrying a gun.  Neatly stated by John Wayne in The Shootist:

I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.

In the end there are only two types of people who don’t want an armed population – people who just don’t understand freedom and tyrants.

When Britain Had Courage

Mark Noonan60 Comments

We got this:

Now we get a supine population being roughed up by welfare bums.

You know something, I’ve never actually owned a gun.  Always figured that enough of my fellow citizens had them to ensure a general defense against riot.  But now I’m going to buy one.  To all the barbarians out there – you go ahead and start a riot in my town, we’ll have words.

Civilization stands on the edge of destruction – the once-great nation of Britain, which used to boast that it never had and never shall lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, is dying.  This is the left wants for us, too…a disarmed, cowardly and government-dependent serfdom, while barbarians prowl unchecked.  Not for me – my America shall live, even if it requires the shedding of barbarian and patriot blood.

Sen. Toomey to the Debt Committee

Mark Noonan14 Comments

From NRO’s The Corner:

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), who found out this morning that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) had selected him to serve on the congressional “super-committee,” said he “very strongly hopes” the panel can reach an agreement to avoid triggering the fallback measure that includes deep cuts to defense spending. In order for that to happen, Toomey told reporters on a conference call Wednesday, both parties will have to compromise. “If this committee is going to be successful, it absolutely has to have bipartisan support,” he said. “That’s how it was set up. This has to be done in a cooperative fashion.”

The freshman senator and former Club for Growth president said his “guiding principles” on the committee will be “the twin goals of reducing the deficit and continuing to promote economic growth.” To that end, he hopes to reform the tax code in order to broaden the base while lowering rates and growing the economy. “That will also generate more revenue,” he said. “A stronger economy always does.”…

Toomey is an excellent choice and, also, a pledge to the TEA Party and conservatism in general that they have a voice in this committee.  Do read the whole linked article as Toomey lays out an excellent vision of what this committee can and should accomplish.  If good will and public spirit can accomplish anything, then Toomey will do it.

On the other hand, the purpose of the committee – as far as Democrats are concerned – is to cut defense and ratify tax hikes (especially on those “millionaires and billionaires” who make $200,000.00 a year).  Failing that, the Democrats’ hope that a smash up of the committee can be blamed on the Republicans and be used as part of the overall “smear and fear” campaign they are planning for 2012 (very telling is Reid’s selection of Sen. Murray for the committee – she is chair of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee…in other words, the Democrat Senator with the most vested interest in playing pure politics on the committee).  In short, while Toomey wants to do what is right, Democrats want to claw on to power…it’ll make for an interesting battle.

At the end of it, either Toomey’s spirit of patriotic compromise will prevail, or the whole thing will blow up…but if the Republicans on the committee hang tough on core principals (genuine spending reduction and tax reform which doesn’t punish the middle class nor destroy wealth creation), then the blow up will be right in the Democrats’ face.  Fundamentally, the American people are on the side of reasonable compromise to reduce spending and grow the economy…that is what they want, and that is what the GOP must stand for.  If Democrats sabotage it then the people will see right through that…and only if the GOP caves in and goes along will we be blamed for any failure.

We are at a crossroads for our nation – between now and November of 2012 we will decide if we remain a great, free and prosperous nation, or if we are to sink in to decline and eventual destruction.  Each step we take must be informed by a genuinely patriotic desire to do what is best for America…in this, there is a time to fight it out in the trenches, and a time to seek reasonable compromise.  The opening of the debt committee is the time for reasonable compromise.  The Democrats will, I am certain, reject this course…but let them do it, first…then we’ll have the approval of the American people to get down and dirty with them.

The Tea Parties, the Future of Liberty and Liberal Intentional Slander

tiredoflibbs90 Comments

After Barak Obama (the obAMATEUR to realists) became president in January 2009, he signed the infamous “stimulus package”, worth $787 billion, of liberal dream spending with virtually no Republican support (and rightfully so).  As it was rammed through with little reading or debate, we were told that it was “necessary”, “to keep unemployment under 8%”.  Practically overnight as one of its highest priorities, the federal government became the “Home Depot” by weatherizing government buildings and housing projects (excuse me “housing developments”).  Streets and highways with little or no need of repair would be broken up and repaved.  The DOT and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  I saw one of those signs first hand in Washington DC.  It stated that the park on Roosevelt Island would be receiving a generous “grant” to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of “non-indigenous plants”.  To put it simply, local kids would be weeding the island.  This was going to save the economy and the country??

Then there were several “projects” and “studies” also financed by the ARRA.  One project, numbered 1R01AA01658001, titled “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent or Separate Use”.  This grant of $400,000 to a professor at New York State at Buffalo has the following official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of malt liquor, other alcoholic beverages, and Marijuana, all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences including addiction.”  Wow, $400,000 to study something we already knew???  Other such “grants” followed, to ACORN, to the study of porn, to the study of fish migrations and mating habits of certain animals, etc. etc.

The cost of the stimulus was later revised to $862 billion (an underestimate of 10%).  If a private business made such a blunder in outgoing funds it would most likely go out of business.  But I digress…..  As a result of this boondoggle of liberal spending, the TEA Party was born.  It was by accident really that this organization was founded.  Thanks to Rick Santelli on CNBC and his rant against the stimulus package and a particular proposal to for it to also subsidize what he called the “losers mortgages”.  He proposed a ceremonial dumping of  of derivative securities into Lake Michigan.  A few hours later a website popped up with a call for a “Chicago Tea Party” and Santelli’s video rant. The video became viral across the nation.  Average Americans were furious about the massive new spending and the revelations about previous spending on those “studies” and “grants”.  This alone was not the sustaining factor in keeping the TEA Party movement alive but the fact that: Under President Obama, federal spending has been growing at an unprecedented pace.  We are adding $4.8 billion to the national debt everyday.  The long-term viability of Medicare and Social Security isn’t merely uncertain – as so many analysts would have us believe.  In fact their failure is is a sure thing without structural changes.  By adding massive new entitlements with the health care bill we are simply going to go broke faster.

The TEA party gained so much momentum so fast, it was a threat to the liberal establishment.  Immediately pundits, the obAMATEUR friendly media, the Democrats went into full gear with their baseless and usual smear tactics and attacks.

Susan Roesgen of CNN (once an anchor in New Orleans) was going after TEA Party enthusiasts at a Chicago rally, suggesting they were stupid and irrational (no objective reporting there).

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: “The danger of political violence in this country comes overwheminly from one direction – the right, not the left.  The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day – and, quite regurlarly, at TEA Party rallies – is calibrated not to inform but to incite.”

MSNBC’s Ed Shutlz (I KNOW NOTHING!!!): “I believe that the TEA Partiers are misguided.  I think they are racist, for the most part.  I think that they are clinging to their guns and their religion.  And I think in many respects, they are what’s wrong with America.”

Actress Janeane Garofalo: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.  There are nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging readnecks.”

Comedian Bill Maher: “the teabaggers, they’re not a movement, they’re a cult.”

Democratic strategist Stece McMahon: “The reason people walk into schools and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and because of attitudes like this.  The reason people walk onto military bases and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and attitudes like this.  Really, what they’re doing is not that much different that what Osama bin Laden is doing in recruiting people and encouraging them to hate America.”

Chris Mathews claimed that the TEA Partiers are all “monochromatic” and “all white”.  A quick look and amateur and profession videos at rallies quickly proved this talking point wrong.

However, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 14% of voters say the TEA Party is “most in synch” with their values; 20% say TEA Partiers are “most in tune with economic problems Americans are now facing”.

A most interesting poll came from TargetPoint Consulting which interviewed 500 attendees at the April 15, 2010 Tax Rally in DC Here are some of the results:

The TEA Partiers are united on the issues of debt, the growth of government, and health care reform

They are socially conservative on the one hand and libertarian on the other, split roughly down the middle.

They are older, more educated, and more conservative that average voters and they are “distinctly not Democrat”.

This brings us to the present day.  The President’s approval ratings are low and getting lower and Congressional Democrats are the lowest and getting worse.  Members of his party are running away from him (as seen in the November elections with declines of his speaking at their rallies).  Now with the debate on the debt limit, Americans are seeing that the Republicans have presented plans while the Democrats and the President have presented NONE.  The only thing liberal Democrats and their drones can do is continue to attack the GOP and the TEA party candidates who won in November who are doing what their constituents want – lower spending and reduce the size of the budget with has grown over 25% in just two years.  There is no way you can convince anyone that there a no room for cuts.  The liberal drones continue with their attacks of racism.  Andrew Brietbart has offered anyone who can prove racism at a TEA party rally with a cash reward.  With all the amateur and professional videos out there NOT A SINGLE ONE has captured anything close to the looney left’s claims (of course, the left now claims criticizing the Presidents failed policies is racism).

The Democrats are out of new ideas.  They continue to tout the same old ones that have failed time and again – more spending and more taxes.  When the President says we must live within our means he is not talking of cutting spending to match revenues, but raising taxes in hopes of raising revenues to match spending.  His mishandling of this debt limit and lack of leadership is showing among his Twitter followers (losing 30,000) and elsewhere, his support continues to dwindle.

When President Obama spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, he declared that a world order that elevates one country or group of countries over others is bound to fail.  So he’s changing the order.  If his domestic policy priority is the redistribution of wealth, his foreign policy seems to be the redistribution of power.  The TEA Party has members of every race and creed is continuing to gain momentum and returning the conversation to limited government in scope and power.