Category: Current Posts

This week the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments about the Constitutionality of the Health Care law known as “ObamaCare”. The main liberal assertion, articulated better by Justice Ginsburg than by the Obama Administration lawyer, is that, since it costs us all money when uninsured people get health care services, the government should be able to FORCE everyone to buy health insurance.

If all else fails, use force.

Big government liberals have no compunctions whatever about using the Guns of Government to force people to behave the way they think they should. But that is, by definition, antithetical to freedom.

Justice Kennedy, who is the moderate, swing vote on the court, said of the mandate that forces everyone to buy insurance: “This fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the government.” I guess that’s what the President meant when he said he would “fundamentally transform” America.

It is becoming increasingly plain that the love of freedom hangs by a slender thread in America. More and more people hear “Freedom” and cheer, but they are thinking “Freedom From Responsibility”.

At the end of the day, that’s what the Health Care debate is about. Those in favor of ObamaCare believe that they shouldn’t be responsible for paying for their health care services. Someone else, their employer, the insurance company, the government, the “one-percenters”, anybody else, should pay for their health care, just not them.

That’s what the Occupy Wall Street “movement” is about, too. They demonstrate against the unfairness of Capitalism, when in reality, nothing is more fair than a meritocracy, where you get and keep what you earn. But you can’t just coast in a meritocracy. You have to get up every morning and boogie.

But it’s sooo haaard!

Yep. It takes hard work to be successful in a free market. Freedom means shouldering responsibility and that IS hard. It would be so much easier to coast through life with someone else paying the bills, making sure I didn’t scrape my elbows on the sharp rocks as I float down the lazy river.

But the price of such freedom from responsibility is slavery. The children of Israel told Moses they were better off back in slavery in Egypt than in the desert where life was hard. Many slaves stayed on their plantations after Emancipation because they didn’t know how to live in freedom. Even some criminals who are released from prison commit new crimes in order to return to prison where they don’t have to earn three squares a day and they are told every move to make.

And if we desire freedom from the difficulties of living a responsible life, the government will gladly make our lives easier. All we have to do is surrender our freedom.

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Growing up, I was a fan of the Peanuts comic strip. It was always a joy to see Snoopy aboard his Sopwith Camel, Schroeder channeling Beethoven or Linus quoting Kirkegaard.

It was also Linus who annually lamented the failure of the Great Pumpkin to appear: “How Can We Fail When We’re So Sincere?”

I had reason to think of Linus again after an interesting exchange  with some Chevy Volt enthusiasts after my “Chevy Volt: RIP” post, which was my feeble attempt at humor after GM suspended for six weeks production on the high profile “green” car. Linus’ lament seems like an apt metaphor for the whole green energy mania (see “Solyndra”).

Via Twitter, the first question was “Have you driven a Volt?”

I had to answer that the question totally missed the point of my blog, in which I stated that I’m in favor of the development of alternative energy sources, but they must be practical, cheap, and plentiful. In other words, the Free Market must be allowed to decide.

Of course the Central Planners who currently reside in the government consider the Free Market to be an obstacle to be overcome, rather than the path to success for any endeavor.

For the life of me I can’t understand why the Central Planners (liberals, leftists, socialists, communists, fascists, et al) insist on going against nature. As I said in a post a long time ago (actually a “pre-blog” essay) “Natural Capitalism”, Capitalism is natural because it works WITH human nature. Central Planning is unnatural because it works at cross purposes with human nature.

I’m reminded of Saul of Tarsus and his Damascus Road vision in which the Lord says to him, “Why do you kick against the goad?”, referring to an oxen bound to a wagon but which stubbornly continues getting stuck by the sharp stick rather than go with the flow.

My point about the Volt was that if it’s really better, it won’t need government subsidies and artificially increased gas prices in order to succeed. But the fact is, the economics don’t work. Hybrid cars are getting about 50 miles per gallon. But my six-cylinder Toyota Avalon, the biggest car they make, gets 26 in the city and 30-33 on the highway! Hybrids need to do a LOT better than they currently do.

And in practical tests the Volt has only been able to go 25 miles without a charge. Plus, since the sticker is north of $40,000, only the true believers — who make more than $170,000 — are buying them.

In other words, you need more than Sincerity.

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According to New York Senator Charles Schumer, the fact that the Saudi Arabians are increasing oil production is good news, because that will lower gasoline prices in the United States.

Huh?

This in an article in The Hill, during the same week that President Barack Obama has been out NOT campaigning, giving scoffing speeches about those who criticize him for not encouraging domestic drilling to moderate the price of fuel. In fact, Obama said those who believe that increasing drilling can lower gasoline prices are like “Flat Earthers”.

So let me get this straight: according to the Democrats, increased drilling in Saudi Arabia will lower gasoline prices the US, but producing more oil in the US will not?

How does that work exactly?

Well at least we have algae.

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In spite of how it might appear sometimes (previous post), I’m not at all opposed to developing alternate energy sources. Yes I wrote a novel (“Backlash“) that follows a fictional Big Oil company executive who is the heroine (!) of the book. But that doesn’t mean I’m all-in for oil as the only fuel source for transportation.

There’s also natural gas.

But beyond that, nothing has come to the fore as a PRACTICAL alternative to the gasoline-powered, internal combustion engine.

Yet.

At some point, an alternative to fossil fuel might emerge, but before it can be considered a practical alternative, it will have to prove that it can be reliable, cheap, and plentiful, since the energy needs of the world are expanding each and every day.

President Obama has made alternative fuels a centerpiece of his administration from day one, but there are wasted tax payer dollars and  idled factories all over the landscape, because he, like most liberals, idealistically assume that people will embrace these technologies out of altruism, pocketing their doubts rather than consulting their checkbooks.

Solar-panel maker Solyndra was the first of several companies which took tax-payer money, then promptly folded. This week, General Motors announced it was “temporarily” suspending production on the plug-in hybrid Volt, which Obama had trumpeted as THE answer to energy independence.

But the car costs $40,000+ which even a $7,500 tax credit couldn’t make palatable enough for many people to buy them. GM had planned to build 60,000 this year, but that meant they needed to sell 5,000 per month. So far, they’ve sold less than 1,700. So they wisely pulled the plug.

But even worse is the Fisker Karma, another plug-in hybrid which got half a billion dollars in Federal money but promptly closed its American plant and is manufactured in Europe, which must really fry the United Auto Workers’ calamari.  The Karma is a really cool looking car, which has a sticker price north of $100,000, so it’s just for “one percenters”, but it has had “mechanical” problems, including simply not starting on a Consumer Reports test track (DOHHH!). About 500 have sold.

Of course the point that the Obama Administration Energy Department, which made the loans to Solyndra, GM and Fisker, fails to emphasize is that 48% of electrical power is generated in coal plants, so a hybrid electric car is still at minimum 75% fossil-fuel powered.

Henry Ford didn’t get Federal loans or subsidies when he was pioneering the internal-combustion engine in this country, but he succeeded because he was able to produce a product that was better and cheaper. The automobile had its detractors in the beginning (“It’ll never last”). The Model T produced a mere 20 horsepower, but think of the problems of hitching 20 horses to a wagon (that’s a LOT of methane “exhaust”!). The “auto-mobile” was much more efficient.

So something more efficient and cheaper than the gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine will probably come along, and when it does it will be enthusiastically embraced, IF it is better, cheaper and more efficient.

The vaunted wind and solar power industries combined so far produce less than one percent of the electrical power required in the USA, so it’s probably a little early to be putting all our eggs in those baskets.

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My friend Terry Freeman found this word:

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Is that what we have become?

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As gas prices continue to edge up past $3.60 per gallon, President Obama went to Florida and made a scoffing speech about energy, in which he insisted that more oil was being produced during his administration and we should just shut up about the current price of gasoline.

Of course, the decisions that made the higher oil production levels today were made during the George W. Bush administration(!)

The president sneered about Newt Gingrich’s promise to reduce gas prices to $2.50 per gallon by opening drilling in the gulf, on Federal lands and in ANWR. “Drill… Drill… Drill…is all they can say”– I’m paraphrasing what the President said — but I say, “Duh, Duh Duh!”

What could be more obvious than the fact that increasing supply, or even threatening to drill where we aren’t currently allowed to, would bring down the price of crude immediately, as OPEC would panic? As it is OPEC has little reason to moderate the price of crude oil.

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“All your S’s look like F’s”, said Ben Franklin to Tom Jefferson in a classic Stan Freberg radio skit (YouTube) about the writing of the Declaration of Independence, concerning Jefferson’s flourishing Colonial penmanship.

Interestingly, “the Pursuit of Happiness”, part of the most memorable phrase of the Declaration, was, in earlier discussions the Right to Property (Life, Liberty and Property).

The change to “Pursuit of Happiness” was innocent enough and, taken as intended, is a good practical expression of liberty: the right to pursue your own path to fulfillment and happiness without interference from meddling potentates, thought police and bureaucrats.

Leftist Liberals, however, have used the phrase as a double edged sword to deny us our God-given rights. On the one hand they downplay the “Pursuit”, which indicates correctly that finding happiness is a lifelong task and the end goal may at times allude us. But the Declaration maintains that we should be left to our own devices in finding that happiness.

In addition to downplaying “Pursuit” they treat happiness as if it is itself a Right, which is not what the Declaration says. We have a right to PURSUE, not a right to BE HAPPY. Believing in a right to be happy leads liberals to force all kinds of government programs and taxes on us in the name of making everyone equally happy. But those very programs and the taxation necessary to administer them reduces the liberty that is required for us to “pursue” our own happiness.

“Follow Your Bliss” is a favorite phrase of Liberals, but how can one follow one’s bliss when Liberals are telling you what food you can eat, what light bulbs you can buy, what cars you can buy and what fuel you can put into those cars, what health insurance you can have and what must be in the policy, how much of your money you should be allowed to keep, whether you must join a union in order to support your family, and on and on.

And on and on and on …ad nauseam.

But if that was not enough, on the other hand, Leftists simultaneously try to take away the right to Property. Of course the extremity of Leftism, Communism, has as its entire premise that nothing belongs to the individual but everything belongs to the state and is doled out as the state (in its infinite wisdom) deems proper. Shades of Fascism/Liberalism/Progressivism this side of the Communist extreme always try to one degree or another to deny individuals the right to own property.

Liberals are convinced that they know better than we do how to spend our money and that they are justified in taking as much as possible from us in taxes to expend on their pet programs. They also know better than we how to use our real property, so they use environmental law to prevent us from putting our land to certain uses if they deem our land to be a “wetland” or whatever. In fact, they know how better than we how to live in our own bodies, hence ObamaCare that purports to care for our physical existence from cradle to grave. Their condescension knows no bounds.

Perhaps we who believe in “The Pursuit of Happiness” need to take a break and pursue Liberals for a while, driving them back into the dark, depressing holes from which they originated.

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I’m relatively new to Twitter, so I’m still learning the ropes, but it’s fun to see how fast information can flow in the Twittersphere. Today I was stopped by something David Limbaugh “tweeted”: “Why can’t the media say to Obama: You mean 2 tell us you’re not even going 2 try to get the deficit and debt under control in a second term?”

The budget President Obama released this week is apparently a curious document, which virtually no one expects to pass, if it gets the opportunity for a vote in Congress at all. One surprising thing, to which Limbaugh was alluding, is that it makes no pretense of spending reduction to reduce the deficit or the debt. The conventional wisdom has been that the upcoming presidential election is all about the economy. If so, why this budget?

I see two possibilities (but there could be more). First it could be that Obama is such a died-in-the-wool socialist that he just can’t help himself and the only course open to him ideologically is the path to total statism, with the government running everything, collecting all the money and paying all the people who are the government’s employees and subjects (read serfs), even though such naked socialism could cause him to lose reelection. That does seem to be his vision for us, the humble peasants in Obama’s America.

The other possibility is just slightly different, with the result being the same: descent into statism and a gray existence in a socialist “utopia”. The difference with the second possibility is that Obama knows full well that this course isn’t going to be popular with large numbers of people, but they are outnumbered by the people who will embrace free contraception, free abortions, free antibiotics, free… well most everything. Not enough people are appalled by deficits north of a trillion dollars as far as the eye can see to defeat him in November.

Perhaps, as Obama has watched the Republican primaries with the innumerable debates, he believes that no candidate can effectively make a free market capitalist argument that is a match for good-old, red-meat class envy and that, since a”1-percenter” like Romney is the favorite stereotype that Hollywood and the Mainstream Media loves to pillory everyday, he won’t present much of a challenge.

At a time when 15% of Americans are on food stamps and 18% get some type of government check, NOT COUNTING government employees, and almost half of the population pays no income tax at all, voices calling for reductions in spending and promoting personal responsibility are drowned out by the clueless, raw-throated Occupiers, who have no idea how an economy works or how wealth is created. They have been convinced that they should be able to take whatever they want.

To Leftists, large numbers on the government dole is a victory. To me it is a scandal. In this the greatest country the world has ever seen, do we really believe that 15% of the population cannot even feed themselves without government assistance?

Also this week, we saw escalating violence in Greece. Is that where we will be in five years; or two, as the money runs out? The alarming deficits are only part of the story. Obviously, the interest rates the government pays on the money it borrows will go up as the government finds it more and more difficult to pay the money back and its credit rating is downgraded. As it is, 40% of each dollar the government receives already has to go to paying interest on the debt.

If the interest rate doubles…

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The Obama Administration seriously “stepped in it” recently with its mandate that employers pay for insurance that includes free contraception, the “morning after pill” and tubal ligation. They seemed genuinely surprised that Catholic institutions objected. Then they brushed it off as inconsequential. Surely the Catholics would listen to reason and change their minds if they thought about it a little, right?

It is difficult to exaggerate the tone deafness this showed on the part of administration officials like spokesman Jay Carney, who dismissed a question in a press conference last week, saying the issue was not a Constitutional question at all but a “Women’s Health Issue”, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who though raised Catholic, likewise continued to insist there was only a Women’s Health concern.

By the way, if contraception and abortion are about Women’s Health, does that mean that pregnancy is a disease? But I digress.

It’s easy for the evangelistic Left to assume that everyone knows and agrees that contraception and abortion are good and logical solutions to vexing problems and to fail to see the problems posed by those “solutions” themselves. They are flippant and impatient with deeply held religious belief and seem to say people should just “get over it”.

But even though Protestants (including me) don’t forbid contraception, they are as alarmed as Catholics that the government under Obama takes such a cavalier attitude toward the tenets of Christianity, THE major religion of the United States. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with saying America is a “Christian Nation” but if you just look at the numbers, it is.

So why would Obama (who is a Christian! No, REALLY) be so very oblivious to the strongly held beliefs of Christians? Why would he and others in the administration be so easily blindsided this close to the election?

The ham-handed management of the issue continued during Obama’s “accommodation” today, which essentially continues to force Catholic institutions to pay for insurance that includes contraception, etc., but just not to say they are, which adds deceit to the other problems for the Church.

This led many to say “Since when is abiding by the First Amendment an ‘Accommodation’?”

Honoring Freedom of Religion means not just honoring the tenets of the majority (that’d be Roman Catholics), but of minorities as well. Christians, Jews and Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and hillbilly snake handlers, no matter who or how many, no matter how tin-hat crazy secular elitists might think they are, their freedom from government interference and coercion is guaranteed in our Constitution. And there’s a reason that Religious Freedom is in the FIRST Amendment. Losing it means losing freedom in your own head and heart.

I grew up Seventh-day Adventist. They believe God wants them to worship, not on Sunday like most Christians, but on Saturday, which they interpret to be the Sabbath of the 10 Commandments. I’m no longer a part of that communion, and it might be easy for those who do not see things their way to say the SDA’s should just “get over it” and join the rest of the world. But that’s not how faith works. Because tenets of faith are not ultimately provable, no person or government should be able to force another to violate their beliefs. The Obama administration brushed off 22 percent of the US population because the True Believers on the Left thought it was silly to be against contraception.

Obviously, not all Catholics abstain from birth control, but that’s not the point. The Church’s teaching is clear and should be protected from clueless, crusading politicians.

And just how clueless is the Obama administration? Two of the four Republicans still in the race for nomination are Catholic. The TV spots pretty much write themselves.

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Last week, President Obama attended the National Prayer Breakfast and, naturally made a statement about faith.  No problem, right? It was a Prayer Breakfast, after all.  But you have to look at what he said.

He was talking about raising taxes on the rich (what else?) and clinched it by saying that was in line with Jesus’ teaching that “unto whom much is given, much is required”, quoting the Gospel of Luke.

What Liberals always conveniently forget is that there is a MAJOR difference between freewill contributions to Christian charities motivated by a grateful heart for God’s blessings and money being taken from your paycheck before you receive it, with the implied threat of harassment, audit, confiscation of property and eventual imprisonment by armed treasury agents.

I’m sure the latter is exactly what Jesus was talking about.

Unfortunately, President Obama’s entire philosophy concerning taxes is based on things that are anathema to Christianity: he regularly puts on display his envy, jealousy and covetousness when he talks about “the rich”. True Christianity rejoices in good fortune for others AND voluntarily gives to benefit those less fortunate.

Any comparison of the giving records of Republican and Democrat politicians shows that Republicans give many multiples to charity what Democrats give. Mitt Romney’s tax returns showing that he gave $7 million to charity are just the latest confirmation of that.  Republicans give their own money. Democrats express their generosity by forcefully taking “Other People’s Money” (see my previous post).

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