Texas terrifies the left
If ever there was a load of crap on toast, it can be found today in Michael Lind’s atrocious piece in Salon.
He calls it “Southern Poverty Pimps”. I see a more apt name to be “Southern Cliches R Us”.
It is probably one of the more absurd attempts to make the economic success in Texas look bad that I’ve seen in quite some time. You would almost feel it was something Paul Krugman would hack out. One of my bets, concerning all the negative stereotypes Lind uses, is he’s rarely if ever been in the South.
For instance:
Needless to say, private sector unions that pool worker bargaining power are anathema to today’s suave metropolitan successors to the slave-owning plantocracy. The whole point of the Southern model of economic development is to create a non-union region from Virginia to Texas, to which companies can be induced to move from states with unionized workforces. Besides, unions engage in collective bargaining, in violation of the Southern ideal of employer-worker relations, in which the master gives orders and the fearful worker obeys without question.
Of course the fact that in the great North unions are losing members like water through a sieve would never see the light of day in a Lind expose, one assumes. That would run contradictory to his whole premise that the South has just shifted from racial slavery to economic slavery. No mention of the thousands upon thousands fleeing the horrible economic conditions of Blue states, no mention of Detroit, no mention of the rust belt. No mention of the urban blight found in Blue states or their failing economies.
You see, if the “Southern model”, aka the Red State Model” is allowed to exist, if it isn’t demonized and condemned, if all stops aren’t pulled out to include the usual racial and ethnic accusations the left loves to fling around, well, it might make people think that the Red States are on to something.
Of course, we already know they are, don’t we?
And so does Texas. You see, Texas’ success terrifies them.
Thus Lind’s pitiful attempt to use the divisive language of which the left is so fond. It couldn’t be that people actually are fine with their wages and tired of unions who take their money and really don’t produce much of anything but fat-cat union officials could it?
Heavens no.
It’s all about “economic slavery”.
~McQ
Assault gun ban: Not that science and facts will stop the left from pushing for it
Science and facts dont stand a chance against myth and ideology:
Justice Department researchers have concluded that an assault weapons ban is “unlikely to have an effect on gun violence,” but President Obama has not accepted their report as his administration’s official position.
“Since assault weapons are not a major contributor to US gun homicide and the existing stock of guns is large, an assault weapon ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence,” the DOJ’s National Institute for Justice explains in a January 4 report obtained by the National Rifle Association. “If coupled with a gun buyback and no exemptions then it could be effective.” That idea is also undermined by the acknowledgement that “a complete elimination of assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides.”
The research in that report didn’t stop Obama denouncing “weapons of war” during his State of the Union speech on February 12.
We’ve pointed out any number of times that deaths by rifle, any sort of rifle, are less than 500 a year. Less that blunt objects – clubs, baseball bats, etc.
But that’s not going to stop these people. Facts are inconvenient truths, to borrow from the biggest myth maker of all – Al Gore.
There’s a reason for the desire for this ban. It’s a foot in the door. And, once they declare it’s not enough, the precedent is already set. As I mentioned on the podcast, the left is into incrementalism. They will incrementally sneak up on every freedom we have left. And, if they have their way, take them away. In the name of “safety” and “security”. And you know what Ben Franklin said about that.
~McQ
Benghazi – the most “transparent” administration ever
No attempt to actually be transparent and, apparently, feeling no need to pretend otherwise:
Sen. Richard Burr, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the CIA has “flatly refused” to give some Benghazi-related documents to the committee, which is conducting an investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the State Department and CIA personnel and facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Sen. Burr made the assertion last week at the confirmation hearing for John Brennan, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to be director of the CIA. Brennan currently serves as the president’s counterterrorism adviser.
“Mr. Brennan, as you know, the committee’s conducting a thorough inquiry into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya,” Sen. Burr said. “In the course of this investigation, the CIA has repeatedly delayed and in some cases flatly refused to provide documents to this committee.”
None of the other members of the committee contradicted Burr’s assertion.
Of course not. That’s because it is a fact.
Not that the administration much cares. It has found that “flatly refusing” works. “What does it matter now?” is the new attitude.
And that’s despite the usual promises:
At the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks, Gen. David Petraeus was director of the CIA. When Petraeus appeared at his confirmation hearing in the Senate intelligence committee on June 23, 2011, Chairman Dianne Feinstein asked him a set of questions that the committee routinely asks those nominated to run the CIA. At John Brennan’s confirmation hearing on Feb. 7, Feinstein asked Brennan exactly the same questions.
Feinstein asked Petreaus, “Do you agree to provide documents or any other materials requested by the committee in order for it to carry out its oversight and legislative responsibilities?”
“Yes, I do,” said Petreaus.
“Will you ensure that the CIA and its officials provide such materials to the committee when requested?” asked Feinstein.
“I will,” said Petreaus.
“Do you agree to inform and fully brief to the fullest extent possible all members of this committee of intelligence activities and covert actions rather than only the chairman and vice chairman?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes, I do,” said Petraeus.
And later:
Last week, John Brennan was equally direct in answering these questions.
Feinstein asked Brennan, “Do you agree to provide documents or any other materials requested by the committee in order for it to carry out its oversight and legislative responsibilities?”
“Yes, all documents that come under my authority as director of CIA, I absolutely will,” said Brennan.
“Will you ensure that the CIA and its officials provide such materials to the committee when requested?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes,” said Brennan.
“Do you agree to inform and fully brief to the fullest extent possible all members of this committee of intelligence activities and covert actions rather than only the chairman and vice chairman?” asked Feinstein.
“Yes, I will endeavor to do that,” said Brennan.
Later in the same hearing, however, when Burr asked Brennan about the documents Burr said the CIA was refusing to give to the committee, Brennan qualified his answer—leaving open the possibility that as CIA director there may be occasions when he would decline to provide documents to the committee.
And the circus continues. Love the line, he ‘qualified his answer’. He shored up his lie is more like it.
Given the last election, though, we’ve got the very government we deserve. Inept, unqualified, mordant, bickering party members whose first allegiance isn’t to their country, but instead to their party. Why anyone would trust them with running a dog kennel much less a national government is beyond me. But we have.
Behold the result.
~McQ
Speaking of the lies we were fed …
By the likes of Krugman and the Democrats, here’s a little more proof:
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies offered via the health law’s exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast.
The CBO’s new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That’s an increase of nearly 29%.
29% and they’re not even off the ground yet. Anyone have any doubt whatsoever that this is likely a lowball estimate at this point? Are we aware of the trend we always see when “costs” are discussed by governments and political parties?
Note too that they play games with the CBO (which is limited to forecasting 10 years out and also hasn’t been very accurate about much of anything – see debt forecasts over the last decade).
The politicians mostly fabricate whatever they think is palatable to the gullible public, sell them with the CBO’s false data and then, when it is found out that it was all bollocks, they say, ‘oh well, too late now, it’s the law”.
Well here’s my feeling about that. If the “law” doesn’t live up to their hype – if it ends up being massively more than they claimed (you know like 29%) then there’s a fairly simple rule that should be followed.
It – the law – should be automatically repealed.
~McQ
The left’s false moral equivalency concerning guns
Leave it to former White House Chief of Staff and current Mayor of Chicago Rham Emanuel to provide us with the example. George Will tells the sorry story:
Politics becomes amusing when liberalism becomes theatrical with high-minded gestures. Chicago’s government, which is not normally known for elevated thinking, is feeling so morally upright and financially flush that it proposes to rise above the banal business of maximizing the value of its employees’ and retirees’ pension fund assets. Although seven funds have cumulative unfunded liabilities of $25 billion, Chicago will sacrifice the growth of those assets to the striking of a political pose so pure it is untainted by practicality.
Emulating New York and California, two deep-blue states with mammoth unfunded pension liabilities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has hectored a $5 billion pension fund into divesting its holdings in companies that manufacture firearms. Now he is urging two large banks to deny financing to such companies “that profit from gun violence.” TD Bank provides a $60 million credit line to Smith & Wesson, and Bank of America provides a $25 million line to Sturm, Ruger & Co.
Chicago’s current and retired public employees might wish the city had invested more in both companies. Barack Obama, for whom Emanuel was chief of staff, has become a potent gun salesman because of suspicions that he wants to make gun ownership more difficult. Since he was inaugurated four years ago, there have been 65 million requests for background checks of gun purchasers. Four years ago, the price of Smith & Wesson stock was $2.45. Last week it was $8.76, up 258 percent. Four years ago, the price of Sturm Ruger stock was $6.46. Last week it was $51.09, up 691 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that even before “a $1.2 billion balloon payment for pensions comes due” in 2015, “Chicago’s pension funds, which are projected to run dry by the end of the decade, are scraping the bottoms of their barrels.”
So we have the Mayor of Chicago using, well, Chicago style “politics”, to make a “moral statement” that likely few of his citizens agree with and hurting an already failing retirement system by demanding stocks that are doing well be dropped. We call that “moral preening” and, of course, it’s no skin off his back – he’s not the one losing the money – retirees are. Screw serving the public welfare – his job. He’s all about hurting the public welfare to make a private moral statement.
As for the false moral equivalency? Here you go:
Nevertheless, liberals are feeling good about themselves — the usual point of liberalism — because New York state’s public pension fund and California’s fund for teachers have, the New York Times says, “frozen or divested” gun holdings, and Calpers, the fund for other California public employees, may join this gesture jamboree this month. All this is being compared to the use of divestment to pressure South Africa to dismantle apartheid in the 1980s.
Guns are as evil as “apartheid” and thus should be dealt with the same way. Because everyone knows that owning a gun is precisely the same as being an oppressive racist using the power of government to enforce your racism. Or moralism.
Never mind the fact that:
Guns are legal products in America, legally sold under federal, state and local regulations. Most of the guns sold to Americans are made by Americans. Americans have a right — a constitutional right — to own guns, and 47 percent of U.S. households exercise that portion of the Bill of Rights by possessing at least one firearm.
The left, as it usually does, is going to demonize an industry just as they have the fossile fuel industry. Amusingly, that too is one of the left’s “apartheid divestment” moves.
Moral grandstanding, however, offers steady work, and the Chronicle of Higher Education reports a new front in “the battle against climate change”: “Student groups at almost 200 colleges and universities are calling on boards of trustees to divest their colleges’ holdings in large fossil-fuel companies.” Of course, not one share of those companies’ stock will go unsold because academia is so righteous. Others will profit handsomely from such holdings and from being complicit in supplying what the world needs. Fossil fuels, the basis of modern life, supply 82 percent of U.S. energy, and it is projected that they will supply 78 percent of the global increase in energy demand between 2009 and 2035, by which time the number of cars and trucks on the planet will have doubled to 1.7 billion.
Of course, that’s not a problem for fossile fuel companies because their stocks aren’t going to go without a buyer. Institutional investors who actually are interested in helping build wealth in a portfolio will snap them up. What will suffer? University endowment funds, that’s what. Most people would call that sort of moral preening a “self-inflicted wound”. It won’t change a thing, it’s moral relativisim at its worst and someone else will be happy to take the dividend income those boobs are foregoing.
Next up?
Institutions of higher education will, presumably, warn donors that their endowments will be wielded in support of the political agenda du jour, which might include divesting from any company having anything to do with corn, source of the sweetener in many of the sodas that make some people fat and New York’s mayor cranky. Or anything to do with red meat, sugar, salt, trans fats, chickens not lovingly raised . . . .
~McQ
Speaking plainly about force
One of the most useful things I’ve learned about communication is the importance of stating things plainly and concretely.* But thinking about that lesson frequently makes politics maddening.
Euphemisms are the health of politics. If a government really wants to get away with murder, even secrecy can be less useful than making that particular murder sound unremarkable, justifiable, sensible, or even dutiful.
For your Saturday afternoon entertainment …
Every “ban” creates and “opportunity”. This is not as farfetched as one might imagine, given ObamaCare (or the desire to “ban” guns):
~McQ
And this person votes …
Really, no words from me needed:
Chicago safer than anywhere? C-section babies? And that old inconvenient Constitution and stuff. Yes indeed, let’s all go for this more “modern” way of living, okay?
You’d almost think it was a parody but it isn’t. Just a “proud Democrat”.
So much for an informed (and semi-intelligent) electorate (and yeah, some Republicans don’t get off much easier – just ask a few running for office about rape).
~McQ
Union membership continues to decline
Yup, it is on a downward spiral. When actually given a choice (you know, the thing the left claims everyone should have?), many people opt out:
Government figures released Wednesday showed union membership declined from 11.8 percent to 11.3 percent of the workforce, another blow to a labor movement already stretched thin by battles in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and other states to curb bargaining rights and weaken union clout.
Overall membership fell by about 400,000 workers to 14.4 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than half the loss, about 234,000, came from government workers, including teachers, firefighters and public administrators.
Funny that. We talk about monopolies, but monopolies don’t work when government doesn’t prop them up, and, as pointed out, when government withdraws its sanction and force, when real choice is allowed, people will opt out.
And, of course, it’s not just the government sector where unions are losing members:
But unions also saw losses in the private sector even as the economy created 1.8 million new jobs in 2012. That membership rate fell from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent, a troubling sign for the future of organized labor, as job growth generally has taken place at nonunion companies.
Unions are an anachronism … they just won’t admit it yet. And, for the next 4 years at least, they’re still going to have political power because of who is in the White House.
But as more and more states become right to work, and the jobless see employers migrating to those states, I think the “market” will take care of itself – if the government will let it.
~McQ
Americans downbeat about America’s future
Ok, they’re downbeat according to Gallup:
So what? I mean, this is what I don’t get. The American public just re-elected possibly the worst and most incompetent president in my lifetime (what the hell do you have to do to get fired?), they refuse to make their leaders face up to the realities of the fiscal situation, they give away freedoms like some universities give away condoms and suddenly they’re “downbeat” about America’s future?
WTH?
They should be downbeat – they as much as anyone have generated the culture that has produced these politicians that they continue to reward with reelection term after term. If you don’t make those who represent you do what they should be doing, if you continue to reward their kicking the can down the road with re-election, why in the hell should they do anything? Especially when those who try “die”, politically speaking.
And, of course, you have the compliant press who has no compunction anymore about pursuing an agenda that supports the premise that there is a free lunch and the rich should pay for it.
I’m fed up.
Can you tell?
~McQ