The most obvious lesson is that politicians can’t be trusted with additional powers. The first income tax had a top tax rate of just 7 percent and the entire tax code was 400 pages long. Now we have a top tax rate of 39.6 percent (even higher if you include additional levies for Medicare and Obamacare) and the tax code has become a 72,000-page monstrosity.
But the main lesson I want to discuss today is that giving politicians a new source of money inevitably leads to much higher spending.
Since OMB only provides aggregate spending data for the 1789-1849 and 1850-190 periods, which would mean completely flat lines on my chart, I took some wild guesses about how much was spent during the War of 1812 and the Civil War in order to make the chart look a bit more realistic.
But that’s not very important. What I want people to notice is that we enjoyed a very tiny federal government for much of our nation’s history. Federal spending would jump during wars, but then it would quickly shrink back to a very modest level – averaging at most 3 percent of economic output.
So what’s the lesson to learn from this data? Well, you’ll notice that the normal pattern of government shrinking back to its proper size after a war came to an end once the income tax was adopted.
In the pre-income tax days, the federal government had to rely on tariffs and excise taxes, and those revenues were incapable of generating much revenue for the government, both because of political resistance (tariffs were quite unpopular in agricultural states) and Laffer Curve reasons (high tariffs and excise taxes led to smuggling and noncompliance).
But once the politicians had a new source of revenue, they couldn’t resist the temptation to grab more money. And then we got a ratchet effect, with government growing during wartime, but then never shrinking back to its pre-war level once hostilities ended (Robert Higgs wrote a book about this unfortunate phenomenon). …
Here’s a chart I prepared for a study published when I was at the Heritage Foundation. You’ll notice from 1960-1970 that the overall burden of government spending in Europe was not that different than it was in the United States.
That’s about the time, however, that the European governments began to impose value-added taxes.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I’m not claiming, by the way, that the VAT is the only reason why the burden of government spending expanded in Europe. The Europeans also impose harsher payroll taxes and higher energy taxes. And their income taxes tend to be much more onerous for middle-income households.
So ask yourself a simple question: If we allow politicians in Washington to impose a VAT on top of the income tax, do you think they’ll use the money to expand the size and scope of government?
A comment on Mitchell’s blog makes an even more interesting point:
Blame the income tax on the prohibitionists. Previously, alcohol taxes were the largest domestic tax and the second largest overall source of federal revenue. The income tax was a necessary prerequisite to Prohibition.
It’s not clear to me what makes Christie Hefner, former CEO of Playboy Enterprises, qualified to have an opinion on this subject, but MSNBC thought so (from Daily Caller):
On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the Center for American Progress’ Christie Hefner said that Chicago’s sky-high murder rate could be blamed — at least in part — on climate change.
“Yes, last year we hit a record number of murders from guns [in Chicago],” Hefner, the former chairwoman and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises, said. “And this year we are already outpacing last year’s numbers. Now, there are contributing factors that are not under anybody’s control and may seem odd, but it is factually true. One of them is actually the weather. There is a dramatic increase in gun violence when it is warmer. And we are having this climate change effect that is driving that.”
The average high temperature July, the hottest month in both Chicago and the much-safer New York City, is the same for both cities at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Scarborough took a moment to sardonically thank Hefner for that statement on behalf of conservative bloggers.
“Christie, can I just stop you and say conservative bloggers across America, thank you for saying that climate change is responsible for the rising murder rates in Chicago,” Scarborough said. “You have just made a lot of people in their basements of their mothers’ homes very happy.”
(For the record: I have never lived in my mother’s basement.)
It’s unclear, though widely claimed, that crime rates increase in the summer. Apparently they do in Chicago. (By the way, Wednesday’s Chicago high was 48; today’s is predicted to be 16, which doesn’t seem like high-crime weather, but never mind.) Hefner must not be on TV very often, or perhaps she’s gotten bad media training (which would be ironic, wouldn’t it?), since she was unable to introduce any, or anyone’s, evidence to even begin to support her bizarre theory. And because she’s a lefty, she obviously can’t be bothered to consider the connection between Chicago’s famously tough gun laws and Chicago’s famously high crime rate.
Hefner cannot even get the theory she’s espousing correct. The global warming — oops, global climate change — types claim that a warming planet means not necessarily universally warmer weather, but more extreme weather. Since, as noted, Chicago and New York have the same average July high (as do a lot of places in this country), perhaps she neglected to mention that since it didn’t fit into her goofball theory.
Even the beginning of her theory fails. Follow Joe Bastardi on Facebook or Twitter, and you will discover the inconvenient truth that the planet is not warming.
The solid and dashed lines are predictions of global temperatures. The squared and dotted lines are the actual temperatures. Notice which direction those are going, and have been going since approximately 2004.
Or read Mike Smith, who acts like an actual scientist in evaluating whether global warming is taking place, as opposed to the hysterical scientists who go to Algore and Hefner for affirmation these days.
One wonders if Hefner feels a bit guilty for her own role in (allegedly human-caused) global warming. Those who read Playboy beyond the photos read many photo features espousing conspicuous-consumption lifestyles, which, you know, used energy, which overheated the planet, blah, blah, blah.
I won’t even bother to ponder whether Hefner — who is old enough to be her stepmother’s mother — feels guilty for her father’s magazine’s work in objectifying women and coarsening the culture by demonizing such bourgeois pastimes as marriage, family and church to the point where an average of a murder per day would be an improvement from Chicago’s current murder rate.
“With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option,” he states.
Clarke tells residents personal safety isn’t a spectator sport, and “I need you in the game.”
“You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back, but are you prepared?”
Clarke suggests listeners take a firearm safety course and learn how to handle a firearm “so you can defend yourself until we get there.”
Suffice to say Clarke has upset many politicians in Milwaukee County. My source in Milwaukee reports that this is in part an issue between Milwaukee County government (the county executive and county board) and Clarke, who is, safe to say, considerably more conservative than both. Twice-failed gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, isn’t a fan of Clarke either. (There is little love lost as well between Barrett’s police chief, Ed Flynn, and Clarke. Flynn is one of the police chiefs who favors gun control; Clarke does not.)
Clarke’s specific issue with Milwaukee County government is that the county is trying to cut the Sheriff’s Department budget through, for instance, getting Milwaukee police to patrol Milwaukee County parks within the city. County boards and county sheriffs have an interesting legal relationship in this state — on the one hand, the county board sets the county budget, including the Sheriff’s Department, but (according to another sheriff I know) if a sheriff’s department exceeds its budget, the county has to make up that shortfall.
Some Milwaukee County police aren’t thrilled with Clarke either:
The Greenfield Police Dept. posted the following statement on its Facebook page:
-No Greenfield officers have been laid off or furloughed.
-Violent crime is down overall and in Greenfield
-Our response time to violent crime is less than two minutes
-The decision to arm yourself with a firearm is a very personal and private decision that should not be driven by fear that our officers will not respond to your calls for help.
To which came this Facebook comment:
By the time you realize you have an intruder in your home you don’t always have even two minutes to wait for the police. Your family could be dead by then. I am a responsible, law-abiding citizen and I don’t want anyone taking away my right to defend my family. I have four children and a husband that I love dearly. If some psycho is pointing a gun at them, I want to have a gun to point back and use if necessary.
Okay, but the only layoffs and furloughs are in Milwaukee County Sheriffs Department, the “we” he mentions. Unlike other sheriff departments around the state, Clarke’s department doesn’t respond to 911 calls for home invasions. Local police departments are responsible for those calls. Clarke’s department is responsible for responding to calls in county parks, on the freeways, and running the county jail. …
This is about Clarke’s complaints about his budget, and he’s pandering to gun rights advocates to support him. Clarke is playing them for suckers and unfortunately a lot of them are falling for it.
Conservatives should be angry at Clarke for using taxpayer money for blatant political dishonesty instead of praising him for supporting gun owners. He may be right that you’re better off being prepared to defend yourself instead of waiting for law enforcement to arrive, but it has nothing to do with the layoffs and furloughs to his department.
To that, a comment:
The Milwaukee city police department has issued 3 furlough days to 1500+ officers to be scheduled in 2013 … 4500 manpower days or 12 fewer officers on the street every day.
Getting folks to think about and take an active role in their own defense is not a radical viewpoint. It’s a highly relevant discussion to have in our current political environment where the Democrat-controlled federal government is both brainstorming new ways and dusting off tired old ideas aimed not at preventing another Sandy Hook, but incrementally moving us towards a disarmed society.
Is there an aspect to this that serves Clarke’s politics? Perhaps, but given the fact that what he is saying is true, what’s wrong with that? He is an elected official and PSA’s are nothing new. Considering the apparent fact that well-informed people like you didn’t know about MPD’s 2013 furloughs tells me that Clarke’s PSA informing them of that reality is doing a service to the public. Barrett/Flynn would prefer to keep their constituents disarmed and in the dark.
Barrett has an odd relationship with his police officers and firefighters. He proposed Fire Department cutbacks that the firefighters opposed. He criticized the public employee collective bargaining reforms because they excluded police and firefighters. It makes you wonder (not for the first time) how smart a politician Barrett is, because voters haven’t exactly been sympathetic to emergency services cuts anywhere since 9/11. (Bill Clinton figured that out before 9/11; you may recall his 100,000-police-officer initiative while he was president. Clinton figured out that voters want even Democrats to be tough on crime.)
If Clarke is on one side and Barrett and the Milwaukee County Board the other, I’m on Clarke’s side. Barrett’s record as mayor remains largely accomplishment-free, as was the case during Recallarama Part Deux. I also have no respect for politicians — or, for that matter, police management — who espouse denying us our constitutional rights, even in the name of crime control.
Today, the number of people ‘packin in their purse, their pants or in their pockets is large: Why else would we be called Green Bay Packers? Our famous chant of, “GO PACK GO!“is part civic pride – and part public service announcement: a not-so-gentle reminder that all law-abiding citizens should go Pack; go get ready! …
Wisconsin’s new Conceal/Carry Law is helping people pack; more citizens than ever are ‘packin, or planning to. Last year, 151,577 Packers applied for a conceal and carry permit (138,000 have been approved so far). Last year, 106,448 hand guns were sold in Wisconsin – a 124% increase from the 47,373 sold in 2007. Those numbers – which will continue to grow as politicians continue to chip away at the Second Amendment – are on top of an already well-armed citizenry. (MOST, however, probably won’t apply for a conceal/carry permit.)
Our citizens are also good shots, and educated about gun usage. Hunter Safety Courses are in the High Schools. Rifle and pistol ranges flourish up here; gun clubs in every community are like surrogate Community Halls where many people regularly meet, and greet, and eat… but it’s not all social: They DO get down to the business end of a Gun Club –they practice shooting their guns.
The uncomfortable truth is that police are not necessarily able to respond within seconds to any call, even violent calls, if something else is going on. People who live in college towns know that people of capacity diminished by ingestion of regulated beverages have been known to show up where they’re neither expected nor wanted. Ultimately, your safety and your family’s safety is up to you, not anyone else.
Question 46 in the wide-ranging survey of more than 1,000 registered voters asks if there is a gun in the household. Overall, 52 percent of the respondents said yes, someone in their home owned a gun. That number included 65 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of conservatives, 38 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of liberals.
But on to Question 47, addressed to those with a gun in their home: “If the government passed a law to take your guns, would you give up your guns or defy the law and keep your guns?”
The response: 65 percent reported they would “defy the law.” That includes 70 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of conservatives, 52 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of liberals.
Mitchell adds:
These results don’t tell us why people would defy the government, but the poll I conducted suggests that a plurality of Americans support the Second Amendment because they want the ability to resist tyranny.
I’m also happy to see that most Americans understand that gun bans are a very ineffective way of fighting crime. Heck, they realize that we need more guns in the hands of law-abiding people.
Political trends come and go in response to events. Gun control was the rage during the Clinton administration, but over the past decade or so it became an obsolete cause. After the horrific crimes in Newtown and Aurora, though, it’s staging a comeback.
One thing hasn’t changed: The agenda includes mostly measures that will have little or no effect on the problems they are supposed to address. They are Potemkin remedies — presentable facades with empty space behind them. …
In the category of “useless” is the ban on “assault weapons,” which has been tried before with no evident effect. The administration is fond of demonizing a style of firearm that the gun industry likes to glamorize.
What they are talking about, though, are ordinary rifles tricked out and blinged up to resemble something else: military arms designed for the battlefield. The “weapons of war” Obama wants to ban do nothing that other, legal weapons won’t do just as quickly and just as destructively.
Most criminals have no need of them. In 2011, reports The New York Times, 6,220 people were killed with handguns — compared to 323 by rifles of any kind, including “assault weapons.”
In the “probably useless” realm is a ban on ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, which was part of the 1994 assault weapons ban. A mass shooter can overcome the restriction by carrying multiple magazines or multiple guns — as many of them do anyway. The notion that an attacker can be subdued when he stops to reload works better in movies than in real life, where it is virtually unknown. …
In the category of “possibly helpful” is a new rule requiring private gun sales to include a federal background check — as purchases from licensed dealers already do. That change, which would cover some 40 percent of all gun transactions, holds the potential of preventing convicted felons from getting guns by stopping them at the point of sale.
But don’t expect too much. Supporters point to research indicating that 80 percent of criminals bought their guns privately. But as a rule, the people who sell guns to criminals are criminals, who do not make a fetish of complying with federal regulations. Most if not all of this commerce will continue.
The chief effect will be on law-abiding people who are accustomed to buying guns from friends and fellow enthusiasts. Maybe the added cost and trouble will pay off by disarming some career crooks and homicidal maniacs.
But maybe not. Among those who would not have been impeded are Adam Lanza, James Holmes and Jared Loughner, whose weapons were bought from licensed dealers.
Same with Wade Michael Page, who killed six people at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee. Jacob Tyler Roberts, who killed two people on a spree in an Oregon shopping mall, wouldn’t have been affected, since he got his gun by stealing it.
The mistakes Obama is making are familiar ones: exploiting misconceptions about guns, exaggerating the value of symbolic actions and presuming that new laws will foil incorrigible lawbreakers. The assault weapons ban was irrelevant to fighting crime before, which is no reason it can’t be irrelevant again.
Just before noon Jan. 14, Mitch Daniels ceased to be governor of Indiana. By 2 p.m. he was in West Lafayette conducting a meeting as the soon-to-be president of Purdue University. A true Hoosier calls that a promotion. But his elevated new stage is a smaller one. And as national Republicans contemplate the second half of the Obama era, they wonder what might have been. …
Even his strongest critics don’t deny that “big stuff” has been achieved. Daniels was arguably the most ambitious, effective conservative governor in America. He managed to ride a recession that bucked other leaders — balancing a series of budgets without increasing taxes. He left Indiana with a $500 million yearly surplus and $2 billion in reserves while awarding taxpayers a substantial refund on his way out the door. During eight years in office, he shed 6,800 state government jobs — 19 percent of the total — while improving public services. He passed legislation ending mandatory union dues. He created the largest school-choice program for low-income parents in the country. He privatized a toll road and the state lottery and busted cable monopolies.
In the process, Daniels demonstrated two paradoxes of conservative governance. First, it often requires a strong executive to encourage limited government. Margaret Thatcher, for example, used executive power to break up existing arrangements favorable to calcified liberalism. Daniels came into office promising a “freight train of change” directed at state bureaucracies that had grown comfortable in dysfunction and mediocrity.
Second, Daniels demonstrated that a smaller, more focused government can restore the reputation of government. Grasping, ineffective bureaucracies cultivate public disdain. Daniels is a man of libertarian leanings who improved the public standing of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Revenue by making them more efficient and responsive. …
Daniels’s parting observations on the state of the Republican Party are broadly consistent with those of a rising generation of conservative reformers. On immigration, the GOP needs an approach “that embraces those who are here, not castigates them.” He remains an advocate for a “truce” on social issues — “leaving aside some irreconcilable debates to focus on a few priorities, such as the fiscal crisis” — and notes that most Republicans have implicitly adopted this approach already. And he believes Republicans should be speaking more directly to “people seeking to rise. To young people. To poor people. I never went to a GOP dinner without saying: ‘We should be proud of the success of people in this room. But we really need to do something for people who would like to come to dinners like this someday.’ ”
Daniels is just the sort of leader most needed in a Republican revival: an upbeat, tolerant, conviction politician. A surprisingly effective, RV-cruising populist. And the most compelling GOP critic of the red menace. “I stubbornly adhere to the view,” he told me, “that Americans can be talked to like adults about the deficit problem. They can be told the pure arithmetical facts of life — the injustice that current policies are doing to the poor, the young and minorities.”
Five o’clock having arrived on Inauguration Day, Fox News Business brings us a prospective list of presidential mixed drinks:
The Willard InterContinental Washington’s Round Robin Bar is serving up cocktails fit for a commander in chief. In addition to their inauguration-inspired specialty drinks, the bar has a drink named after and honoring each leader of the United States — based on research of their drink of choice.
Round Robin bartender and history buff Jim Hewes, who has been at the Willard since 1986, has crafted an impressive menu that goes from the George Washington (Madeira wine) to the Barack Obama (a tequila with blue curacao and fresh lime juice). …
If he couldn’t nail down how a president whet his whistle while in office, Hewes says he considered the tastes of the times, what was socially acceptable and what was available during that era when creating the drink.
“They drank socially all day long,” Hewes says of the presidents.
I do not know if Obama drinks the drink named for himself. (He is apparently a tequila drinker at least.) If he does drink that drink, that demonstrates his gross lack of judgment and misjudgment that is his (mis)administration. Blue drinks? That’s something you should stop drinking when you leave college.
As for Obama’s predecessors, here are the drinks named for the presidents of my lifetime, plus one:
42. William J. Clinton – Tanqueray Gin and Tonic: A standard on the Washington cocktail circuit
41. George H. Bush – Absolut Vodka Martini: Always politically correct, with or without garnish.
40. Ronald Reagan – California Sparkling Wine: Introduced to Washingtonians at his first Inaugural
39. Jimmy Carter – Alcohol Free White Wine: served, much to the dismay of the fourth estate, throughout his four years in the White House.
38. Gerald R. Ford – Glenfiddich Whisky, over ice, served in the spirit of bipartisanship. Gerry also favored Budweiser “longnecks” in the bottle
37. Richard M. Nixon – Bacardi Rum and Coke: Dick would relish mixing and stirring, for his guests aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia.
36. Lyndon B. Johnson – Cutty Sark and Branch Water: A post war favorite of “Cactus Jack” Garner and Sam Rayburns’ most famous protégé.
35. John F. Kennedy – Beefeater Martini up with olives served regally in the White House to those in the good graces of America’s “Camelot”.
Clinton drinks Tanqueray? One more of the few points in his favor. (Another: His old El Camino.) Ford is assigned whiskey, but a book chronicling his post-White House years listed him as a gin and tonic drinker.
This is no one’s idea of an adult drink, but PT 109, the book about Kennedy in the World War II Navy, lists South Pacific sailors’ drink of availability as pineapple juice and distilled torpedo fluid.
Before JFK …
33. Harry S. Truman – Maker’s Mark and Soda: An aficionado of Kentucky’s finest, both he and Bess enjoyed this long-drink while playing poker at the White House.
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt – Plymouth Gin Martini: “oh… so cool, so clean, so awfully civilized!” Often scolded by Eleanor for his penchant for the highball, this elegant elixir was served at the most important political party in D.C. — the cocktail party.
So FDR and I have two things in common — gin-drinking and (once upon a time in my case) being our Episcopal church’s senior warden, which FDR was while president.
30. Herbert Hoover – Long Island Iced Tea: Prohibition conscious imbibers relished this enticing tall drink, which contained everything on the bar except “the kitchen sink.”
A Long Island Ice Tea — rum, gin, vodka, triple sec, sour mixer and cola in Wisconsin college towns — doesn’t seem very presidential, does it? Drink enough of them, though, and you’ll forget what the economy’s doing.
28. Warren G. Harding – Seven and Seven: Popular highball among the “Ohio Gang” especially when served at Speaker “Nicky” Longworth’s poker games. …
26. Theodore Roosevelt – Ward 8: Politically-charged concoction, brought to D.C. by “Big Stick” Republicans from New York.
Supposedly, however, the Ward 8 — whiskey, lemon juice, orange juice and grenadine — was invented not in Noo Yawk, but in Bahstan. And it seems to me that TR should be associated with something from Cuba — say, a Cuba Libre. Roosevelt also once claimed “I have never drunk a cocktail or a highball in my life,” admitting only to drinking white wine, whiskey or brandy “under the advice of a physician,” and very occasionally mint juleps.
25. William McKinley – Gin Rickey: Lime infused long drink made popular at the Chicago Exposition.
24. Grover Cleveland – Sazarac Cocktail: New Orleans sensation, which swept the nation in the 1880’s.
A Sazarac, by the way, is rye whiskey, bitters, a sugar cube or simple syrup, and absinthe. This apparently was before N’awlins bars invented the Hurricane.
23. Benjamin Harrison – Ramos Gin Fizz: Popularized a block from the White House after construction of the first ‘soda fountain’ at the Willard Hotel. …
A Ramos Gin Fizz is gin, lemon juice, lime juice, an egg white, sugar, cream, orange flower water and soda water. Apparently you can’t drink more than one or two because it takes so long to make. Also apparently raw egg whites were more popular in Harrison’s day than now.
19. Rutherford B. Hayes – Orange Blossum: Washington’s pressmen spiked the oranges with gin
at the tea totalling Hayes inaugural in 1877.
18. Ulysses S. Grant – Roman Punch: It was so cold in D.C. that this fruit and Champagne refresher froze solid in the bowl.
The drink froze? Not enough alcohol, U.S.
17. Andrew Johnson – Brandy Toddy: Johnson relied on this potion to cure “various, vicarious, vapors” known to afflict residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
16. Abraham Lincoln – Apple Cider: Although known to have acquired a taste for corn whiskey in his earlier years, fresh pressed apple juice would revive his constitution. …
10. John Tyler – Southern Style Mint Julep: Henry Clay mentored our 10th Chief Executive in the fine art of building this compromisingly elegant elixir. …
7. Andrew Jackson – Rye Whiskey straight: A two- finger pour of Tennessee’s Democratic, frontier finest.
6. John Quincy Adams – Hot Buttered Rum: a New England toddy with the spiced flavor of the West Indies.
5. James Monroe – Sherry Cobbler: This cool long drink is often called America’s first cocktail, popularized during the Revolution. …
2. John Adams – Bitter Sling Cocktail: made with a mix of rum and brandy, two of New England’s finest distilled products.
This list is interesting because a number of these drinks are a bit effete by the standards of (1) alcohol and (2) water or soda.
Three presidents were known to be teetotalers — Hayes (but the press fixed that for inauguration), Calvin Coolidge (for whom cranberry juice and soda was listed) and George W. Bush (a Diet Pepsi drinker). Carter supposedly wasn’t a teetotaler; perhaps he decided to stick it to the media by serving non-alcoholic wine.
How do we know there has never been a president from Wisconsin? Because the brandy old fashioned sweet is nowhere on this list. I have never ordered one outside of Wisconsin, and I never will, because I assume no bartender outside the state line is able to make one.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, we are suffering from a very American malady: Post-Traumatic Stupidity Syndrome.
Folks in the throes of PTSS are so traumatized by a tragic event that they immediately demand something – ANYTHING – be done to prevent it from ever occurring again. Even if the chances of it happening are one in a million. Even if the “preventative measures” proposed are wacky, wasteful, ridiculous – or worse.
On my blog, Free-Range Kids, I asked readers to tell me what their districts were doing in reaction to the Newtown shooting and thus I heard about lots of schools reviewing their lockdown drills – which makes sense, like reviewing a fire or tornado drill. But then I also heard from readers whose school administrators seem to have lost their minds.
One school, for instance, proceeded with its first grade Christmas concert…except that all the parents attending had to hand in their car keys to the office before entering the auditorium.
Because guns don’t kill people … people with car keys kill people?
At another school, this one just about as far away from Newtown, Connecticut, as possible – Anchorage, Alaska – the kiddie Christmas concert also was allowed to go on, but this year all the attendees had to sign in. …
Other schools around the country have posted cops outside, sometimes in cars. But if those cops are really ready for mayhem, shouldn’t they at least be on their feet? Meantime, a school district in rural Iowa announced on its Facebook page that from now on the doors to every school in the area would be locked. If a particular school does not have a buzzer system in place (because we’re talking rural Iowa!), well then visitors, volunteers and parents must make a phone call to the school’s office and wait for the secretary to come open the door.
Another reader wrote that her child’s school now requires all students to wear their identification tags. (Because…why?) But my favorite post-traumatic stupidity involves a day care center that has asked all parents from now on to slam the door on other parents behind them. As the director explained in a note home: “One of the biggest concerns at this center is how often parents ‘piggyback’ on the parent in front of them, thus bypassing the need to enter the security code.”
Expect a fellow parent to hold the door open for you just because you’re standing there with a baby in one arm and a briefcase in the other? No way! This is a safecommunity, and a safe community treats all people, even the ones cradling their own children, as potential psycho-killers!
And so it goes, after Sandy Hook. Distrust. Panic. Terror. This feeling of being besieged on all sides used to be considered paranoia.
Doing the wrong thing(s) is worse than doing nothing.
On Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day, my favorite Martin Luther King quotes that Barack Obama is too dense to understand:
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable … Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values — that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
I suppose some genius writers out there will have columns or blogs out today comparing King and Obama. Unlike many writers, I do not put words in the mouths of the dead, so I’m not going to claim what King might have thought about our first mixed-race president. You can read the aforementioned quotes and ask whether our affirmative-action president has fulfilled, or is a good example of, any of them. (Particularly the last one.)
I am not watching the inauguration today. I work for a living, so unlike the government employees who have today off, I have productive things to do. Over the past four years, my respect for government generally, the federal government more specifically and the presidency specifically has dropped like a rock.
And how about that inauguration excitement? What excitement? (From Breitbart)
Just days before his second inauguration, however, a new poll from The Hill finds that the public is much more pessimistic about the next four years.
Just 18% of voters believe that Obama’s first term exceeded their expectations. 80% feel the first term fell below or simply met their expectations. 60% of Americans do not feel they will make economic gains in the next four years of Obama’s presidency.
A good deal of the voters’ pessimism is likely due to the fact that Obama spends most of his time on issues that aren’t relevant to their lives. 39% of voters say Obama should focus his energy on reviving the economy. 38% believe he should focus on dealing with the deficit and the national debt. Those thinking his priority should be immigration, gun violence or other issues are in the single digits. …
Obama won reelection by a narrow, but solid, margin. According to exit polls, however, his victory was due more to personal feelings about him rather than his policies. His policy agenda has not captured the attention of the public.
Nor has Obama’s swaying between incompetence and malevolence, given the Nov. 6 election results. As we should have figured out in the past four years, but undoubtedly will find out the next four years, elections have consequences.
The children who stood with President Obama Wednesday had the benefit of armed security, unlike the schools they’ll return to. Their schools remain in zones that are gun-free, except for predators, as at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. They’ll have no armed guards or teachers allowed to carry concealed protection, and none of Obama’s 23 legislative proposals and executive actions will provide them.
One item proposes funding for 1,000 more “school resource officers” — counselors that will somehow thwart gun violence. But there was no proposal to ban gun-free zones that make children and others targets, or to have armed guards at schools like Sandy Hook, or one to give the teachers who gave their lives protecting students the right to have had a concealed weapon. …
The call for universal background checks, including at all gun shows, ignores that the guns Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook were legally purchased and registered by his mother. A recent Department of Justice study found only 0.7% of guns were purchased at gun shows and only 20% of guns used in crimes were purchased anywhere.
Renewing a ban on certain “assault” weapons because they look scarier than others is nonsensical. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who has admitted carrying a concealed weapon when she felt her life was in danger, now proposes renewing the failed 1994 assault weapons ban.
That ban, which did nothing to prevent Columbine, was largely based on a weapon’s cosmetic appearance, not on its capability for carnage. An “assault weapon” with a carrying handle, a thumbhole stock or a pistol grip is just as lethal as one without, except it would be banned and the same gun without these cosmetic features would not be. And these are not machine guns; one trigger-pull releases one bullet, just like a handgun.
Similarly, limiting the size of gun magazines is not effective, since a predator who has already decided to break the law and kill will either disregard that law as well or simply carry more clips.
It’s hard to see how limiting an ammo clip to 10 rounds, or seven as New York has done, would accomplish anything. Just ask the Atlanta mother who hid with her twin children in her attic after shooting a single intruder five times before fleeing to safety.
Would any of the president’s proposals have prevented what he termed the “workplace violence” that occurred at Ft. Hood, Texas, when unarmed soldiers were gunned down by Maj. Nidal Hassan?
The president overstepped his bounds, however, in directing the Centers for Disease Control to study gun control. Congress has taken steps to deny the CDC funds for this purpose — the unfortunately imprecise statutory language is that the CDC may not “advocate or promote gun control” — primarily because the agency has proven itself unable to address this topic in an unbiased fashion. If the president wants to spend federal dollars on these studies, he should go through Congress. Anyway, the administration does not seem interested in learning from the research we already have. Serious research reviews by the National Academy of Sciences and the CDC itself have failed to find evidence that gun control reduces crime — despite the massive amount of work that has been done. (And in case anyone in the administration is unclear on this point, gun ownership is not a disease.)
President Obama also called for restoring the assault-weapons ban and capping magazine size at ten rounds. As we have explained previously, these measures are not useful if the goal is to reduce crime: President Obama can call assault rifles “weapons designed for the theater of war” all he wants, but in fact they are semiautomatic guns, functionally indistinguishable from hunting rifles. High-capacity magazines, meanwhile, are of dubious benefit to someone intent on harming innocents: They require less frequent reloading, but are more likely to jam, and at any rate changing magazines is not difficult even for the untrained.
In addition, the president backed mandatory background checks on gun sales between private individuals; under current law, checks are required only for sales conducted through licensed dealers. In theory, a comprehensive background-check system could be helpful — but in practice, any attempt to implement such a system would probably be cumbersome and unworkable, and the president did not offer specifics. It would be wrong to make gun sales difficult and expensive, or to spend massive amounts of money on a project with dubious benefits.
All in all, the president’s agenda seems better designed for the polls than for public safety.
The Obama premise is that this country is too many guns. When your premise is incorrect, so is the rest of your argument.
The evidence — and there is plenty of it — points to the very opposite, that cutting access to guns mainly disarms law-abiding citizens, making criminals’ lives easier. Guns let potential victims defend themselves when the police aren’t there.
First, let’s just be clear that lots of nations, including “civilized” ones, suffer from both higher overall murder and gun murder rates. Indeed, we are very far from the top.
In 2011, the U.S. murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000 people, the gun murder rate was 3.1.
Much of Eastern Europe; most of Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa; all but one South American nation; and all of Central America and Mexico suffer even higher murder rates than we do. For example, despite very strict gun control, Russia’s and Brazil’s homicide rates over the last decade averaged about four to five times higher than ours.
Indeed, if you are going to look across all nations and not just a select few, what you find is that the nations with the strictest gun control tend to have higher murder rates. …
The seemingly most obvious way to stop criminals from getting guns is simply to ban them.
So what happened in the countries that banned either handguns or all guns?
It did not go well: In every single place that we have data for, murder rates went up. Chicago and D.C. provided spectacular failures within the U.S.
But this has been true worldwide. The U.K., Ireland and Jamaica, despite being island nations that can’t blame a neighbor for supplying guns, have suffered more murders after gun control was passed.
It’s unsurprisingly ironic that politicians who have armed guards to protect themselves — Obama, U.S. senators, big-city mayors and big-city police chiefs — want to take away your right to protect your own family. Obama’s executive orders and his proposed legislation — are the first step to doing just that.
Police response is not instantaneous. (And the larger the city you live in, or the more spread out the rural area you live in, the slower police response is.) By the time the police get to your home, you or your family could already be dead or injured from someone with evil intent. This is why we have not just the Second Amendment, but the castle doctrine. As the police say, better to be judged by 12 than carried out by six.
As for point one:
American history and civics are not taught much in school these days. But the Second Amendment, part of the Constitution that President Obama routinely ignores, was written not so people could shoot deer, but so they can protect themselves from the government tyrants who would eviscerate their freedoms.
It was written so good guys with guns could protect themselves, their families and their children from the bad guys with guns.
How ignorant do you have to be to believe that the Second Amendment has anything to do with hunting? The Founding Fathers fought against their government, which, according to the laws of Great Britain, was duly elected and authorized to do whatever Great Britain wanted in America. Yes, the Founding Fathers fought against their own government, with guns. Hence the Second Amendment, to preserve our ability to own, yes, guns.
Infringement of Second Amendment rights are not the only constitutional rights in danger, as Charles Hurt points out:
The lists of people who are deemed too mentally unstable to own a gun.
A principled liberal would be horrified at the notion that the government is going to keep giant lists of people who are criminals or who are deemed crazy or dangerous. And even more breathtaking is that these lists will be used to determine the degree of freedom those individuals will be granted by the government.
Do you remember the liberal outrage over the huge government list to keep people deemed dangerous from flying on airplanes? Ted Kennedy is turning over in his grave.
“The Second Amendment is non-negotiable. The right to bear arms is a right, despite President Obama’s disdain for the Second Amendment and the Constitution’s limits on his power. Congress must stand firm for the entirety of the Constitution – even if, but particularly so, when President Obama seeks to ignore his obligation to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Taking away the rights and abilities of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves is yet another display of the Obama Administration’s consolidation of power.”
U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman (R–Texas):
“Gun bans and anti-gun laws have always lead to one thing – more gun violence. We owe it to innocent people to make this country as safe as possible. Sadly, in President Obama’s announcement every tragedy he mentioned was either in a state that aggressively restricts the right to keep and bear arms or was in a location that banned guns completely.
“The White House has indicated they are willing to use Executive Orders to infringe upon the God-given right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment from government intrusion. President Obama announced the specifics of his anti-gun sneak attack today, though he refuses to answer questions regarding his own illegal transfer of weapons to Mexican drug lords.
“Among the Executive Orders issued are tracking of your firearms, which creates a de facto national gun registry, and a White House demand for laws regulating the private transfer of firearms. In other words, if you give your son his first hunting rifle, you may face a prison sentence if you fail to get approval from the government.
“Those proposals, along with others floated by the White House as presidential decrees, are cutting attacks on your right as a peaceable person to keep and bear arms for your defense. The ability to defend one from aggressors is a basic human right.”
Stockman has brought up the I word:
“Impeachment is not something to be taken lightly. It is a grave and serious undertaking that should only be initiated in a sober and serious manner. It should be reserved only for most egregious of trespasses by the President. I would consider using Executive Orders to engage in attacks on a constitutionally-protected right and violating his sworn oath of office to be such a trespass. The President cannot issue executive orders depriving the people of full access to an enumerated constitutional right.”
Because people vote with their feet, consider two facts — gun sales are at post-Christmas record levels at gun stores, and the National Rifle Association has added 250,000 new members.
… because the world has one day left, reports FrontPageMag:
Forget the Mayans, they were a bunch of chumps who wore their headgear inside out. It takes a scientist to nail down the real date when the world ends.
January 17, 2013.
James Hansen, the man who looked at Venus and decided that it was once just like Earth before the Venusians built too many smokestacks and ruined it all, gave a very timely warning back on January 17, 2009. …
And sadly, while the EPA did courageously attempt to regulate water as a pollutant and killed a bunch of coal plants, shale oil took off and all the good work was undone. …
Pack your bags. Bundle up your cats, dogs, penguins and cleaning robots into the SUV and drive north into the ice gloriously blasting pollution in your wake while tossing soda cans out the window because it no longer matters… the world is doomed.
And isn’t that liberating?
So the end of the world was not in May 2011, and it wasn’t in December. it’s tomorrow? I guess I won’t make the kids do their homework or, in our second son’s case, finish his Pinewood Derby car for tomorrow night’s race.
Breaking news: No, it’s not tomorrow, it’s …
But like every false prophet, James Hansen, who reads the future of earth in Venus, has found a new date for doomsday. It’s the date when Canada unleashes the terrible fury of its tar sands.
In the spring of 2012, Hansen warned, “If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.”
Game over indeed and we’re not just talking hockey season here. “If we were to fully exploit this new oil source,” James Hansen proclaimed, while waving a megaphone in the middle of an abandoned shopping mall. “Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction.”
Not to be outdone, Hansen has apparently figured out that if you use the word “market,” you get a few more people’s attention:
“We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.”
“The heaviest energy users” would include, by the way, those who have to commute to work, farmers who have to take their crops and livestock to market (which means higher food prices), businesses that have to get their products from factory to store (which means higher prices), business’ suppliers who have to get their raw materials from their factory to their customers’ facilities … get the picture yet?
What news media treats Hansen seriously?
See the lower right corner of the screen: Current TV, sold by hypocrite Al Gore to Al Jazeera, funded by fossil fuels.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 