Spending Just Got Personal

Do you feel like the federal government spends too much, and that it affects your personal budget? You are in the supermajority of people.

BankruptingAmerica.org put together a video exposing their latest findings:

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit

What About Norway?

Socialists and communists often point to Norway as the ideal situation.

Of course, Norwegians don’t understand why they do. The look up to other countries with lower taxes and more freedom.

Hat Tip: Big Government

Waiting for ‘Superman’

I haven’t seen Waiting for Superman, but I intend to do so as soon as I can.

From what I understand, it started as a project to investigate why people were so busy trying to get into the few charter schools across the country. What the filmmaker, Davis Guggenheim, the director of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, ends up showing is that only in the free market can kids get the top education they deserve. It is the teacher’s unions who artificially suppress the schools and keep the kids in sub-par education with no way out.

I’ve known for a very long time that the only way to truly fix our education system is to take our schools away from the teachers, state legislatures, and congress and put the parents in charge.

Parents don’t have to be very smart to demand that schools perform for their children. No one, no teacher nor politician, can claim any more compassion or empathy or a desire to succeed for the child than that child’s parent.

If we want to reform our schools in Washington State, the easiest way would be to simply stop funding it altogether. Yes, that’s right—leave the parents left to find education for their child, and let them decide how much they will spend their money on education. You can be dang sure that whatever school a parent sends their child to, they will make certain that the teachers, administration, and facilities are at the top level for the budget.

Of course, such a system would inspire countless charitable foundations to either build charity schools or provide scholarships to those who can’t afford the top schools. We know this because this is exactly what happens in the competitive education industry at the college level. No child would be left behind as long as people who cared about the poor and had the means to do something about it existed.

The best part is that all waste in education would disappear almost overnight. Schools would be left to justify every penny they spend, and to make sure they spend their money first and only on those things that actually produce a better education for the children. Otherwise, parents will leave that school and go to schools that do provide a better education for less money.

I don’t think any legislator is going to propose such a bill in the coming years. Instead, we can settle for programs that tend towards that direction, such as charter schools, tax subsidies for education spending (individuals or foundations), and vouchers.

Of the three, I believe tax subsidies is likely the most probably to pass and the most efficacious. How it would work is that the government would simply allow people to write off money they spend on education from their taxes. This could either be money parents spend on private schools or money that people donate to education foundations or scholarships.

This would increase the spending on education from the private sector, and allow private schools to compete on equal footing with the public schools.

Over time, more and more people would choose to spend their money on education rather than taxes, and more and more children would be able to attend private schools. The best part is that since the people get to decide how to spend the money, they get to use it to keep the quality of education high.

Under such a system, the teacher’s union would lose all political power. They would be left simply doing what a union is supposed to do—ensure fair contracts for their teachers.

And especially, under such a system, the people will grow to realize that they have always had the power to deliver a superior education to every child, and government is not necessary to deliver it.

It hardly makes sense to entrust the same organization that wages war, writes our laws, and punishes criminals to set our education policy.

President Obama Imitates Beck, Gets it All Wrong

President Obama is apparently a closet fan of Glenn Beck. (Remember, Clinton used to secretly listen to Rush Limbaugh.) He breaks out a folksy talking guy in front of a white board to explain the tax cuts he is proposing.

Except it doesn’t work.

First, the guys accent makes him sound either like a hick from the hills or a thugs from the mafia. I guess to the elite in Washington DC everyone’s accent sounds the same to them. Glenn Beck’s and Sarah Palin’s accents, however, reflect real people that live in the real world, far away from Washington DC.

Second, he draws circles that are supposed to represent something or other. I guess the bigger circles mean you get more tax cuts. The funny thing is, President Obama doesn’t have any tax cuts on the table. The House has already voted to recess, meaning nothing will happen until after the election. Guess who voted to go and who voted to stay? The democrats led the charge to leave all the unfinished business until after the elections, while the republicans and many sane democrats tried to keep the house in session so they could, you know, vote on whether to extend the Bush Tax Cuts.

This reminds me of when President Obama talked about “his” health care proposal, when he never proposed a thing. I guess “his” tax cuts are exactly the same kind of smoke and mirrors.

Finally, the spokesperson argues that tax cuts on the rich have never worked. Oddly, he doesn’t say what they would work for. If you’re goal is to bring everyone into equality in poverty, then of course tax cuts on the rich won’t work. After all, whenever you allow rich people to keep their money, everyone gets a lot richer.

But if your goal is to help regular people find jobs and move up the social ladder, then tax cuts on the rich is a very powerful tool to do so. Combined with limited government spending and regulation, and you’ll see the middle class explode into the upper class, and the lower class following hot on their heels.

It’s called trickle-down economics, and it works whenever it is tried.

Folks, don’t let the democrats fool you. They have no tax cut plans, and intend to raise taxes on everyone. They already have. Only the Republicans are offering a plan to not only reduce the tax burden but also cut spending across the board.

On the Tea Party’s Future Victory

As Senate Republicans (save Sen. DeMint) line up to squelch the Tea Party movement, and as the democratic establishment lines up to torch anyone who appears to be any sort of leader in the movement, it has become apparent that the Tea Party has something, something big, and something that will change America.

Christine O’Donnell has been viciously attacked, the way only a leftist could attack a woman. However, rising above it all, she has shown that not only do the attacks not work, but they seem to be helping. Her campaign is taking the bold step of ignoring the attacks, refusing to provide more fuel for the attacks, and to simply talk about her opponent. When your opponent is a lying marxist who breaks his campaign promises to limit tax increases by passing the largest tax increase in history, it’s rather easy to attack and win.

Sarah Palin, another woman who is all-too-familiar with the left’s misogyny, has also risen above the hate and spite. She leads a national movement that is sweeping away RINOs and replacing them with strong conservative republicans, people who promise to not repeat the mistakes of ’94 by enforcing the terms of the constitution, particularly Article 1, Section 8. The Republican Party has been forced to follow her lead, issuing a proclamation that the party pledges to actually live up to the founding documents.

I don’t know about you, but when I first heard this, I thought, “Of course. Can they do any less?” My gut reaction was that it wasn’t worded strongly enough and it didn’t go far enough. Looking back now, this is truly historical. When is the last time a party has ever pledge to actually obey the terms in the constitution? In a day and age when the constitution is considered quaint and outdated, where is the political party that would actually promise to go into government to cut it into little pieces and feed the pieces that are corrupt to the dogs?

Here we are. The republican party is promising it. The campaign platform of Coolidge, Goldwater, and Reagan are mainstream now, and should the republicans sweep congress, a platform that has received the people’s mandate.

What is beautiful about this movement is that it is like the hydra that Hercules battled in ancient legends. Cut off one head, and ten will sprout in its place. The Tea Party makes it even more difficult since there are so few heads and the head are barely attached to the body to begin with.

The Tea Party is going to take a large chunk of power come November. Hopefully, the people who gain that power will remember history’s lessons and use it to cut the power of the federal government. Not left or right, we’re taking more or less, and the Tea Party shouts “less!”

One day, very soon, everybody will be a member of the Tea Party, both republicans and democrats. Maybe, one day, very soon, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party will make pledges to reduce the size of government and keep it within the scope of the federal constitution. The debate won’t be whether or not to limit government, but how quickly to cut it back and in which ways.

When that day arises, we, the people, will have shown the world that the most powerful government in the history of the world is still subservient to the people who live there. We will have shown the world that never can any government ever truly escape the reach of the people, provided the tenets of the constitution are at least loosely followed at all times.

That will be a glorious day indeed.

I Don’t Want to Push the Government to the Right

I don’t want to push the government to the right; I want to push it off a cliff.

Leftists, progressives, socialists, and communists (but I repeat myself) see the possibilities in government as right versus left. They are, as they always are, short-sighted and narrow-minded, so I shall try to enlighten them.

In their mine, on the left, you have government acting like a kind mother who doles out sweets to children who behave well and makes ugly faces at those who are not nice to the people around them. All the toys are shared, everyone eats the same snacks at snack time, carefully measured to be the same, and all is well as long as no one disobeys mother.

In their mind, on the right, they see a government with Hitler at the head, stomping out anyone who dares think an independent thought, or who dares do anything akin to kindness among his neighbors. If you don’t agree, this Hitler will make you agree, and if you still don’t agree, well, he has his ways, you see!

I don’t see the options that way. Certainly, those are two possibilities, both of which I don’t like. I see a third option, the same option libertarians and actual anarchists see (not the communist-anarchists who can’t seem to understand why that’s an oxymoron.)

That is, I see a government that is so puny and insignificant, that it is neither a doting mother or a dangerous Hitler. I see a government so limited and so constrained, that the only thing it can do is punish those criminals which have so obviously committed a crime that the community demands justice be done, and which can only prosecute those wars which are so obviously wars that the people demand blood be shed.

That kind of government was the government written in our constitution. If we simply enforce the limits of that document, we will have that kind of government.

When government is that way, it doesn’t matter whether the government is run by Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler. Either way, they can do nothing except those things which the people specifically permit.

That’s why I don’t want a government on the right or on the left. I simply want less of all of the above, significantly less.

Stop the Serial Job-Killers

Read more at RedState.

Unelect Murray, pass I-1082, and defeat I-1098 so we can create jobs in this state.

Greenhouse Effect, Explained

A Swedish scientist explains the 33° C “Greenhouse Effect” as a result of gravity plus the specific heat of the atmosphere. Thus, if you want to change the net “Greenhouse Effect”, you need to change gravity (impossible) or the specific heat of the atmosphere (extremely difficult). (link)

The core of his argument is this: When you calculate the temperature of a certain piece of air, you need to consider the pressure of that piece of air. As you move up, the pressure decreases according to gravity, while the makeup of the air doesn’t really change much. (Modifying the content of a gas doesn’t change the specific heat of the gas all that much—all gasses are roughly similar to each other.)

The 33° C temperature difference between the air at the ground and the upper layer of the earth is thus accounted for.

In other words, there is no measurable “Greenhouse Effect”: All the temperature gradient is explained simply with gravity.

Folks, go ahead and fill the atmosphere with CO2. The plants love it, and it isn’t harmful, even at high concentrations. The very fact that CO2 is the by-product of the burning of natural gas and oil means that by doing so, we are actually helping people in poor parts of the world grow more crops and have more natural resources, such as wood and animals, to build up their economies with.

Other gasses that are a byproduct of burning fossil fuels are dangerous, but we have the technology to limit them.

On Free Speech and Burning Korans

Earlier, I wrote about a church in Florida that wanted to burn a Koran.

Today, a group of Muslims in North America issued a proclamation declaring that people have a right to insult Islam, either by drawing derogatory pictures of Mohammed or burning Korans, and while that is offensive, what is more offensive are those who confess Islam yet preach violence against those who insult Islam. (link)

This is an important step. Muslims who agree with this proclamation should share it with their fellow muslims.

We must remember that there are two elements out there, barely related to one another.

On the one hand, we have a very large group of devout muslims who want nothing more than to live in peace and be left alone. These are our friends and we should welcome them and protect their right to practice their religion with our very lives.

On the other hand, we have a large group of devout muslims who want nothing more than to kill and murder in the name of Allah. (Interestingly, the do not distinguish between Kuffir and Muslim who disagree with them, except that they pursue Muslims who disagree with them more vigorously.) These are our enemies, and we should hunt them down and kill them no matter where they are in the world until they realize that the sanctity of life is more important than the practice of religion. If we allow them to continue to exist, our lives will forever be in jeopardy at their whim.

It is interesting to note that the one group is helping us in our war with the other. The one group, in fact, does not consider themselves separate from us at all, except in religion, but call themselves American or Canadian.

If Fox News is Destructive, Why Don’t You Throw Them in Jail?

President Obama declared that Fox News is “destructive”.

OK, Mr. President, if they are destructive, why don’t you throw them in jail and bring them before a judge for a trial? After all, they are harming other people, right?

Or do you expect your supporters to simply beat up Fox News personnel in the streets and burn down their studios?

What country do we live in anyway?

Folks, this president is out of control. It’s time we started impeachment hearings. I never thought I’d see the day when our president would assault a private citizen’s right to speak freely against the government. Now that we are at that day, it’s time we send a message to our government through our congress: we will not tolerate any government that assaults our rights and liberties!

Let Obama burn on the ash-heap of history, and let him be remembered as the worst president we ever had.