One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
G. K. Chesterton
Image of the Day
One Word: Privatization
Rand Paul's Pragmatic Libertarianism
Obama Stereotypes the Center-Right Response to the War on Poverty
Obama has the intellectually dishonest tendency to caricature the views of the center-right in an extreme way--he pretends that hie is the only reasonable, nonpartisan; his opposition is basically little more than the calculus of the Koch brothers and/or Fox News Channel, the gullible talk radio useful idiots for the 1%. I'll take the lead from last Thursday's O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo;
President Obama: I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leaches, don't want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction. ((EDIT)) If you watch FOX news on a regular basis, it's a constant menu -- they will find folks who make me mad.))O'Reilly does his usual thing defending his own past comments on poverty and showing how some "progressive" columnist hack at the Gray Lady basically accepted some biased left-wing website account of O'Reilly's position instead of directly reviewing the readily available original commentaries.
The reader can review O'Reilly's response via the above link. I'm more interested in addressing Obama's deceptive and disingenuous comments directly.
I'm not going to write a detailed response here, but will outline a few points:
- First, morally hazardous government policies do affect behaviors. We don't blame for poor for taking advantage of various guarantees, "free" services or subsidies. But as this blog has pointed out, many of these handouts don't resolve the core issues but promote a feeling of entitlement and encourage undue dependency on the State. Like public education which has also consumed trillions in expenditures, these programs showed some encouraging results, but these were merely an extension of trends previously observed in the private sector. More importantly, these programs have some bad unintended consequences, including an unstable family structure in many urban centers. The only true winners of this "war on poverty" are the self-serving bureaucrats "managing" the programs.
- Poverty has been more humanely and effectively addressed by the private sector, consistent with the principle of Subsidiarity, not some ineffectual centrally-controlled bureaucracy.
- Government policies aggravate associated problems, e.g., occupational licensing barriers to employment, minimum wage policies, employer healthcare mandates, etc., not to mention stiff takeaways on benefits if and when one does become gainfully employed.
Do I think that the unemployed/poor are lazy? Not necessarily. I know I struggled when I had to leave academia, and it took about 4 years and multiple relocations (I hate moving) to regain the compensation I was making in academia. In fact, in terms of academia, I didn't get offers from the schools I preferred, which I felt were a better fit.
Facebook Corner
(National Review). "Amtrak took care of Amtrak’s priorities, just like every other government agency. But Amtrak’s priorities are not its customers’ priorities."
Scrap AmTrak and let Japan build us a maglev
Oh, my God! Another "progressive" who believes in leftist propaganda. Let the economic truth from Cato Institute enlighten you:
"Probably no country in the world is better suited to high-speed rail than Japan. From Greater Tokyo, one of the world's largest and densest metropolitan areas, rail lines travel to chains of other large, dense cities typically located 25 to 50 miles apart....Although nationalized, JNR was not subsidized and had earned a profit, or at least broken even, every year until it began building high-speed rail lines....With one exception, all lines built since the first one [Tokyo-Osaka] have lost money....Total automobile travel surpassed rail travel in 1977 and has kept on growing. Between 1965 and 2005, per capita driving increased by more than 900 percent, while per capita rail travel increased only 19 percent...And the average Japanese person travels about 1,950 miles per year by train, which is definitely more than people in any other country. But only about 20 percent of those rail miles are by high-speed rail"
Japan has an aging population and, if possihle, an even worse, unsustainable publc debt problem. Japan's political whores are just as bad as America's--every politician wants to bring home the bacon at the expense of the taxpayer--a high-speed rail depot next to you.
Repugs do not want to fund anything that helps working class Americans and they have been short changing Amtrak for decades. NEVER EVER vote for a Repuglican, EVER!
Don't vote for the "put it on my grandkid's account" populist Dem-agogue political whores EVER! Central planning has historically failed, and only corrupt economically-illiterate politicians can push chronic money-losing operations like government rails and post offices, with money stolen from taxpayers to subsidize consumers.
Political Cartoon
 |
| Courtesy of Lisa Benson via Townhall |
Cat Stevens, "The First Cut is the Deepest". Cat converted to Islam in late 1977 and took on the name Yusuf Islam. I mean no disrespect to the talented songwriter, but I'll use the name he went by at the time of the performance, and I will include a sampler of the most recent phase of his career since the mid-90s. I'm a big fan of the artist--he is one of the few solo artists I've purchased nearly all his original hit albums (I have a large collection of greatest hit collections); I respect his right to choose and live his faith and to express his political opinions. I'll also cover some tracks that didn't necessarily chart, such as the one below, which I think has been covered in hit performances by Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow (among others).
