Less Government = More Help

I am aware of numerous similar responses undertaken by people from many communities across the State of Texas to help their neighbors in a time of crisis.  I don't know the name of the author of the account below, but it does point up what happens to a successful effort to help when the Federal Government arrives to "help."  The Federal Government needs to get out of the helping business and let the good people of our various States take care of business.  Pappy

What makes Texas Special?

"You would never see this on the news.......

Here are some stories you won’t hear about the Tricounty fire in Montgomery, Grimes, and Waller County Labor Day week, 2011. Although Kenna promises to write a book.

My neighbor across the road has a sister named Kenna. Labor Day, when she saw the huge column of smoke over our homes, she left a birthday party at my neighbor’s house to meet with her friend Tara at the Baseball complex in Magnolia. She called the owner of the complex and got permission to use the warehouse there as a staging area for donations for the fire fighting effort.

They put a notice out on facebook that they were going to be taking donations on their facebook pages. That night as they were setting up tables and organizing, News 2 Houston came by and saw the activity, investigated and left with the phone numbers and a list of suggested donations.

The facebook notice propagated faster than the fire. By dawn they had 20 volunteers, bins, forklifts, and donations were pouring in. I stopped by with my pitiful little bags of nasal wash and eye wash, and was amazed. There must have been 20 trucks in the lot, offloading cases of water, pallets of Gatorade , and people lined up out the door with sacks of beef jerky, baby wipes, underwear, socks, and you name it. School buses and trailers from many counties around were there offloading supplies, students froming living chains to pass stuff into the bins for transport to the command center and staging areas. If the firefighters had requested it, it was there. What do you give the guy out there fighting the fire that might engulf your home? Anything he or she wants. Including chewing tobacco and cigarettes.

Kenna moved on to the Unified Command Post at Magnolia West High school . She looked at what the fire fighters needed, and she made calls and set it up.

Mattress Mac donated 150 beds. Two class rooms turned into barracks kept quiet and dark for rest. The CEO of HEB donated 2 semi trailers full of supplies, and sent a mobile commercial kitchen at no charge to feed all the workers, but especially our firefighters, 3 hot meals a day. An impromptu commissary was set up, anything the firefighters had requested available at no charge.

As exhausted firefighters (most of them from local VFDs with no training or experience battling wildfires) and workers came into the school after long hours of hard labor, dehydrated, hungry, covered with soot and ash, they got what they needed. They were directed through the commissary, where they got soap, eye wash and nasal spray, candy, clean socks and underwear, and then were sent off to the school locker rooms for a shower. HEB then fed them a hot meal and they got 8 hours sleep in a barracks, then another hot meal, another pass through the commissary for supplies to carry with them out to lines, including gloves, safety glasses, dust masks and snacks, and back they went.

One of the imported crew from California came into Unified Command and asked where the FEMA Powerbars and water were. He was escorted to the commissary and started through the system. He was flabbergasted. He said FEMA never did it like this. Kenna replied, "Well, this is the way we do it in Texas.”

Fire fighting equipment needed repair? The auto shop at the High School ran 24/7 with local mechanics volunteering, students, and the firefighters fixing the equipment.  Down one side of the school, the water tankers lined up at the fire hydrants and filled with water. Down the other side there was a steady parade of gasoline tankers filling trucks, bulldozers, tankers, cans, chain saws, and vehicles.

Mind you, all of this was set up by 2 Moms, Kenna and Tara, with a staff of 20 simple volunteers, most of them women who had sons, daughters, husbands, and friends on the fire lines. Someone always knew someone who could get what they needed- beds, mechanics, food, space. Local people using local connections to mobilize local resources made this happen. No government aid. No Trained Expert.

At one point the fire was less than a mile from the school, and everyone but hose volunteers were evacuated. The fire was turned.

The Red Cross came in, looked at what they were doing, and quietly went away to set up a fire victim relief center nearby. They said they couldn’t do it any better.

(Blogger's note:  Enter FEMA stage right.)

FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go, that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They stayed. FEMA threw a wall eyed fit about chewing tobacco and cigarettes being available in the commissary area. Kenna told them the firefighters had requested it, and it was staying. It stayed. FEMA got very nasty and kept asking what organization these volunteers belonged to- and all the volunteers told them “Our community”. FEMA didn’t like that and demanded they make up a name for themselves. One mother remarked “They got me at my boiling point!” and suddenly the group was “212 Degrees”. FEMA’s contribution? They came in the next day with red shirts embroidered with “212 Degrees”, insisting the volunteers had to be identified, never realizing it was a slap in their face. Your tax dollars at work- labeling volunteers with useless shirts and getting in the way.

The upshot? A fire that the experts from California (for whom we are so grateful there are no words) said would take 2-3 weeks to get under control was 100% contained in 8 days. There was so much equipment and supplies donated, 3 container trucks are loaded with the excess to go and set up a similar relief center for the fire fighters in Bastrop. The local relief agencies have asked people to stop bringing in donations of clothing, food, household items, and pretty much everything else because they only have 60 displaced households to care for, and there is enough to supply hundreds. Again, excess is going to be shipped to Bastrop , where there are 1500 displaced households. Wish we could send Kenna, too, but she has to go back to her regular job.

These are a few stories my neighbor shared poolside with me tonight, Tues Sept 13, 2011. "

Who creates jobs?

To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of
this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the
economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges.
However, the good news is this: The economy doesn't pose a threat to
your job.

What does threaten your job however, is the changing political
landscape in this country. Of course, as your employer, I am forbidden
to tell you whom to vote for - it is against the law to discriminate
based on political affiliation, race, creed, religion, etc.

Please vote for who you think will serve your interests the best.
However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help
you decide what is in your best interest. First, while it is easy to
spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to
understand that for every business owner there is a back story.

This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see
and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You saw my big
home at last year's Christmas party. I'm sure all these flashy icons
of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life. However,
what you don't see is the back story.

I started this company 12 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300
square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living space was
converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into
building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent
went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a
defective transmission. I didn't have time to date. Often times, I
stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and
partying. In fact, I was married to my business -- hard work,
discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a
modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy
cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes.
Instead of hitting Nordstrom's for the latest hot fashion item, I was
trolling through the Goodwill store extracting any clothing item that
didn't look like it was birthed in the 70's.

My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I,
however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business
--- with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to
afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9 am, mentally check
in at about noon, and then leave at 5 pm, I don't. There is no "off"
button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a
weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I
eat, ****, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is
no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this
business is attached to me like a 1 day old baby.

You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden -- the nice house,
the Mercedes, the vacations... You never realize the back story and
the sacrifices I've made. Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the
guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to
bail out all the people who didn't.

The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to
the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life
for. Yes, business ownership has its benefits but the price I've paid
is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the cost of running
this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold
of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don't pay
enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and
use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment
taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these
taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him.
Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes
with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to
the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my
"stimulus" check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the
guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over
2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single
mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her
next welfare check?

Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of
this country. The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your
paycheck you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should
you? That's nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard
work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what
many of you don't understand ... to stimulate the economy you need to
stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to
me that I didn't need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of
depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have
spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic
growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in
the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't
defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to
life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the
heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must
stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington
believe the mud of America are the essential drivers of the American
economic engine.

Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change
you can keep. So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple. If
any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be
swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then
plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your
child's future. Frankly, it isn't my problem anymore. Then, I will
close this company down, move to another country, and retire.

You see, I'm done. I'm done with a country that penalizes the
productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to
provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

While tax cuts to 95% of America sounds great on paper, don't forget
the back story: If there is no job, there is no income to tax. A tax
cut on zero dollars is zero. So, when you make decision to vote, ask
yourself, who understands the economics of business ownership and who
doesn't? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those
questions and you should know who might be the one capable of saving
your job. While the media wants to tell you "It's the economy Stupid"
I'm telling you it isn't.

If you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will
be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this
country, steamrolled the Constitution, and will have changed its
landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me in the South
Caribbean sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry
about.

Signed, Your boss,

Michael A. Crowley, PE
Crowley, Crisp & Associates, Inc.
Professional Engineers
1906 South Main Street, Suite 122
Wake Forest, NC 27587
Phone: 919.562.8860 x22
Fax: 919.562.8872

This picture depicts Service Unions.  These are people whose salaries and benefit packages are taken from tax revenues and not from for profit businesses.

Why won't anyone look?

Have you ever wondered why no one, not even high ranking Republicans, will delve into Obama's past and credentials?  Well I ask myself the question daily.  Here is a piece by someone who tried to provide first hand accounts of Obama at Occidental College to all he thought might have an interest and was summarily rejected.

By John Drew

What would you do if you knew that the top Democrat running for president was lying about his past? 
That is the question I was faced with in 2008.  I had met the young Barack Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College, and I knew that his commitment to socialism was deep, genuine, and longstanding.  See my earlier article on American Thinker.
I had been a leader of the Marxist students at Occidental College myself, starting in 1976 when I founded the precursor of the Democrat Socialist Alliance on campus.  The young Obama I knew was a Marxist socialist who would have been quite comfortable with Communist party members like his Hawaii mentor Frank Marshall Davis, retired domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers, or active socialist politicians like Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer.
The Obama I knew was nothing like the lifelong pragmatic centrist that he was pretending to be in the 2008 presidential campaign.  When I talked politics with the young Obama, he expressed a profound commitment to bringing about a socialist economic system in the U.S. -- completely divorced from the profit motive -- which would occur, in his lifetime, through a potentially violent, Communist-style revolution.  In this context, I saw my report on young Obama as a key piece of evidence suggesting a profound continuity in his belief system.
Although I was surprised by Barack Obama's insistence on his mainstream ideological credentials, I was shocked that my attempts to spread the news about young Obama's Marxism failed to gain any media traction with reporters, activists, or campaign staffs during the 2008 presidential campaign. 
Once I saw the significance of my face-to-face observations on the young Obama, I went out of my way to get my story on record with the Orange County Register.  I tried to contact, among others, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, the folks behind the Swiftboat ads, and the McCain campaign.
I thought I would get a phone call back from Fox News -- someone, somewhere -- and I still do not understand why no one seemed to catch on to the urgency of the situation.  I understand that I did not have audio tape of young Obama.  I did not have any photos or home movies.  Nevertheless, I was extremely active in the leftist politics and counter-cultural milieu of Occidental College in the 1970s. 
As a younger man, I had earned a Ph.D. in political science from Cornell, which, I would think, gave me some credibility in measuring young Obama's ideological convictions.  I quickly saw that other people who had known the young Obama were featured in various news articles.  It seemed to me that I should have been just another interview for any journalist, producer, or campaign consultant interested in checking out my story and testing my credibility against the facts.
In frustration, I was also posting what I knew on The Caucus Blog site at the New York Times.  My expectation was that someone from the Times would call me and follow up on the leads I was sending out.  Here is a sample of what I was doing in October 2008 to get the word out about Obama's Marxist ideology.
I even thought of scheduling my own press conference on the campus of Occidental College through their campus Republican club.  Internally, I was conflicted by the urgency of what I knew and the sense that it was best for the story to break out in a manner supportive of the McCain campaign. 
What shocked me about my experience in the summer of 2008 is that I thought my experience as a Williams College political science professor, my small business owner status, and my visibility in the Orange County community would allow my message to immediately go to the very top of the McCain campaign.  I thought my story would be welcomed by Fox News. 
Since then, things have slowly gotten better.  My story on the young Marxist Obama has appeared in Michael Savage's Trickle-Up Poverty, Paul Kengor's Dupes, Stanley Kurtz's Radical-In-Chief, and Jack Cashill's Deconstructing Obama.
Nevertheless, I think there is something broken in our media and campaign system.  I do not think most independents or conservatives understand, or fully appreciate, the tremendous advantages the left derives from having the mainstream media serve as the fully paid, completely sympathetic, Dan Rather-level opposition research team of the Democratic Party.  It is a system that methodically ignores damaging information about flawed candidates like Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Anthony Weiner, while elevating minor errors among Republicans to the status of Watergate investigations. 
If Republicans are going to win in 2012, I think they need to make some changes so that they are more friendly to the whistle-blowers bringing them bad news about the Obama administration.  Personally, I would like to see Republicans create new ways to collect negative news stories on liberals by 1) including web pages requesting opposition research from leakers; 2) establishing guidelines for leakers that help them give campaign decision-makers the confidence to pursue appropriate leads; and 3) instituting feedback mechanisms so leakers have some minimal assurance that they have been heard by top campaign managers and that their information has been discarded for technical or strategic reasons and not simply because it was overlooked by a careless staff member.
I think recognition of this problem should be the first step in taking systematic action to prevent flawed Democrat candidates from winning office.  In the meantime, I predict that we will see more examples of media failure as the left dominates the muckraking journalism profession while the right seems too dependent on a small handful of seemingly obscure, overworked journalists and -- as my case illustrates -- unconnected and often baffled citizen activists.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a blogger at David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog.  Dr. Drew earned his Ph.D. from Cornell and has taught political science and economics at Williams College.  Today, Dr. Drew makes his living as an author, trainer, and consultant in the field of non-profit grant writing, fundraising, and program evaluation.  To book Dr. Drew for your event, please go here.

Was Rick Perry Wrong?

Why not judge for yourselves with a little review of Social Security.  It sounded so good in the beginning.

History Lesson on Your Social Security Card

 Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what's what and it doesn't matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. 

Facts are Facts. 

Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and
Card were not to be used for identification purposes. Since nearly everyone in the
United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the
Message, NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION, was removed.

An old Social Security card with the "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" message.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social
Security (FICA) Program. He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be
completely voluntary,

No longer voluntary

2.) That the participants would only have to pay
1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,

Now  it's 7.65%
on the first $90,000

3.) That the money the participants elected to put
into the program would be deductible from
their income for tax purposes each year,

No longer tax deductible

4.) That the money of the participants would put into the
independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security
Retirement Program, and no other government program.

Under Johnson the money was moved to
The General Fund and Spent

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed
As income.

Under Clinton & Gore
Up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are
now receiving a Social Security check every month --
We are now finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of
the money we paid to the Federal government to 'put into the trust fund.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ----

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the
independent 'Trust Fund' and put it into the
general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically
Controlled House and Senate.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax
Deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -----

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social
Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gorecasting the
'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the
Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Q: Which Political Party decided to start
giving annuity payments to immigrants?

AND MY FAVORITE:

A: That's right!

Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.
Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65,
began to receive Social Security payments
even though they never paid a dime into it!

------------ -- ------------ --------- ----- ------------ --------- ---------

Then, after violating the original contract (FICA),
The Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want
To take your Social Security away!

Has Social Security become a Ponzi Scheme?

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.  - William J. H. Boetcker

The NEW jobs plan.

"O.K. Congress, “No games, no politics, no delays.”  Barack Hussein Obama


Let me interpret that for you.  "I'm going to shove this down your throats just like all the other plans I've proposed.  Take my health care bill, please, take my health care bill.  Nancy told you not to read it and now you know why.  It is filled with hidden billion dollar funding clauses and who knows what else.  Well, this NEW jobs plan is just like all my other plans.  Spend, spend, spend.  Who cares if we are bankrupt and don't have the money,  We'll just print more.  So what if your job only lasts for a year.  That'll be a year you wouldn't have otherwise and should carry me through the next election.  Who will get these jobs you ask?  Well, it is the people who put me in office and the people who blindly line up to cheer exciting things like 'Four more years' ad nauseum."  Pappy's Paraphrase


   "Surrounded by police officers, firefighters, teachers, construction workers and others he said would be helped by the $447 billion package, the president said the only thing that would block its passage would be lawmakers deciding it wasn’t good politics to work with him. “We can’t afford these same political games, not now,” Obama said."  Chicago Sun Times


Who are these people who would follow the Pied Piper to Tophet?  They are the people who helped bring this unknown into the White House.  They are the people who were told how to vote and who to vote for. They are the largely under educated masses so prevalent in the Democrat Party.  The Democrat Party has become the party of endowment.  Therefore those who depend on the benevolence of the "Nanny" government for their sustenance are the largest supporters. Who are they?  Here is a partial list.  Those who live outside the accepted standards of civil and moral behavior,  Labor Union leadership with their complicit members who regardless of their own moral convictions must vote as they are told or be sanctioned, Trial lawyers who don't want any limits on their ridiculous judgements and exorbitant fees, Academics whose tenured jobs are subsidized by government grants, Artists whose work could not and would not stand on its own without support, Politicians who couldn't survive in the real world, and of course those who have through generations of laying the blame for their failure to succeed at any door step but their own depend on the government to support them;  These are the Democrats.

 Every time the president needs a crowd, he goes to an area where there is a goodly number of union members who can be marshaled under a threat of job loss or physical injury and stands in front of chanting hundreds.  The complicit media clones do whatever is necessary to spew their slanted messages about the events under the heading of "News".  


Perry is right.  Social Security cannot survive.  He isn't making this up.  Do the math.  The program has been plundered by a variety of unscrupulous politicians and it cannot sustain itself.  It is like a magicians act using smoke and mirrors to deflect your attention from what is really happening.  I put money in, but I'll never get any money out.  All the bull about payroll tax reductions are just political double talk.  Tax the rich, spread the wealth around, tax the huge corporations, all great rhetoric for those who are deluded.  Who pays those taxes?  ALL CONSUMERS DO.  Do you think for one minute that people who have become rich building businesses and corporations pay their taxes and don't pass the cost to those who buy their goods and services?  They couldn't stay in business if they did.  THOSE OF US WHO PAY TAXES PAY FOR ALL THE TAXES.  Somewhere around 50% of our population pay no taxes.  What does that mean?  IT MEANS THAT YOUR SHARE THEN BECOMES DOUBLE.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  We must cut spending now and we must make the cuts sacrificial.  Throwing more money into the mix will do exactly what the previous two attempts did; provide a huge war chest for Democrat politicians, and open the door for a continuation of the fraud and criminality in government.


The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.  - H. L. Mencken

           AMERICA

Out of revolution,

the grip of monarch’s rule.

Driven by freedom.

Necessity.

Founded on values

from God’s holy book,

the glue that binds,

in trust,

its varied masses.

America

Through fire of war,

without,

within,

was forged in strength

a strong republic.

America

And though the vision dims

in her prosperity,

she rises to the challenge

when tyrants seek

to quell her voice.

America

Blessed by God,

we must hold those

values close

that bound

our loose knit colonies

in their infancy.

America

Dennis Price

Why is this so hard?

I want you to look at something I just read in the Bloomberg Business Week.

"The White House says President Barack Obama's proposed Jobs Act could create 141,500 jobs in Texas.

The breakdown released Friday says the American Jobs Act would support 64,100 construction jobs, 39,500 teaching and first responder positions and provide job training for 37,900 people.

The president unveiled the plan Thursday night. It would also cut the payroll tax for 390,000 Texas companies and spend $8 billion on projects and workers within the state.

Obama said the costs would be covered by deficit reduction legislation that would be announced later.

The proposal met with immediate disdain from Gov. Rick Perry, who is also running for president. Perry said Obama's proposal "offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs." Perry said the answer was to cut spending, not spend more."

Does it bother anyone else but me that politicians who have control over our tax dollars can't seem to line up the funds they have (or don't have) with their proposed spending plans?  They always present some convoluted figure from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that is derived from a nebulous formula based on projected savings (that never happen), double reporting of income, and a waive of the magic government wand to explain how this is not going to put us further into the crapper.  "...deficit reduction legislation that would be announced later."   I would like to know in detail what happened to the billions already spent (line by line) in the previous efforts to spur the economy.  Why won't our elected representatives get this information and shout it everyday from the highest mountains?

I don't care what the government does in force feeding funds into a dead horse's mouth, the horse is not going to get up and run.  Get off that stinking carcass and mount up on a live one.  How would you like to get one of those made up jobs financed for a year?  After the funds are gone, so are the jobs.  The so called boost lasts no longer than the funds.  Oh, and in case you forgot, we don't have the funds to spend in the first place.  Why is this so hard to understand?  The government cannot create jobs that are self sustaining.  Only private business can create the kinds of jobs that will spur and sustain our economy.

Essential Liberty

"Little by little, inch by inch, drop by drop, governments both in America and in Europe began taking more and more from people, diminishing the incentive of those on both sides of the transaction -- the taker and the giver. In America, nearly half of wage earners pay not one single dime in federal income taxes. Many of them trudge down to the local polling place or vote via absentee ballot -- and vote themselves a raise. The Founding Fathers conceived a brilliant document to restrain the federal government and allow maximum freedom for the people to make their own way. It leaves people the power to make their own decisions and to deal with the consequences. Almost before the ink dried, Congress tried to circumvent the Constitution. James Madison, the fourth U.S. president and the 'Father of the Constitution,' warned against using the document -- especially the 'general welfare' clause -- to dispense money, no matter how well-intended or deserved: 'With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.' ... As governments take more away from their producing citizens and give it to their nonproducers, growth stagnates and opportunities dry up." --columnist Larry Elder

Essential Liberty

"Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us." --columnist John F. Di Leo


"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." --James Madison

What? That's your plan?

I guess if you possess less than an average helping of intelligence, or you are a product of the "No Child Left Behind" education system, you might be able to see something positive in the president's speech to Congress.

If, however, you are capable of critical thinking, you can't possibly be impressed with what you saw and heard last night.  I could elaborate, but I was sent a very succinct piece that does the job for me.

What's It Going To Take To Get You Into This Jobs Plan Today?
by Jim Geraghty

 As Tim Williams put it, "Obama's schtick is so tired and recycled, it's hard to come up with fresh smart-aleck comments."

I didn't think this was the worst speech Obama gave. It's not even that all of the ideas in it are all that terrible. It's just that they're reheated leftovers, reruns, small-ball initiatives that are likely to be as effective as every other stimulus program that repaves sidewalks or funds research on exotic ants. We're a $14 trillion economy that makes everything from timber to jumbo jets to firearms to smart-phone apps to Hollywood movies to every food product under the sun. The notion that some grab bag of tax credits and federal grants is going to kick-start a hiring binge to put 14 million Americans back to work or that the economy is one tax credit for hiring veterans away from recovery is laughable.

The recession we've endured for the past three years is far from normal, and yet we keep getting the normal Keynesian responses. I realize I'm about to offer blasphemies and shockers on par with Rick Perry's Ponzi-scheme comparison, but what if Obama was wrong last night, and a big issue is that some of the people of this country do not, in fact, work hard to meet their responsibilities? What if decades of a lousy education system have left us with a workforce that has too many members with no really useful skills for a globalized economy? What if way too many college students majored in liberal arts and are entering the workforce looking for jobs that will never exist? What if the massive housing bubble got Americans to condition themselves to work in an economy that's never coming back? (How many realtors are unemployed right now?) What if we have good workers who can't move to take new jobs because they're underwater on their mortgages and can't sell their house?

Back in January, Chrystia Freeland wrote in The Atlantic:

I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he's nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. "We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world," he told me. "So if you're going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.

It does sound harsh. But there's an unnerving, honest question in there: How many Americans can argue that we indisputably provide the best value as an employee compared to any other group of workers in the world? Are we still the smartest? Are we still the hardest-working? Are we still the most innovative?

Instead, last night we were assured that "tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires" were preventing us from "put[ting] teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs." Sigh. As Michael Barone scored it, "Straw men took a terrible beating from the president."

A lot of people liked this succinct Yuval Levin assessment: "Spend $450 billion dollars now, it will create jobs, and I'll tell you how I'm going to pay for it a week from Monday. If you disagree, you want to expose kids to mercury. That about sums up the Obama years."

It sounds as if Obama hit John Tabin's last nerve:

"[T]he millions of Americans who are watching right now: they don't care about politics," said President Obama near the beginning of his speech before Congress tonight. Nice little delusion, but people who don't care about politics weren't watching. And the speech wasn't for them, anyway. This was a sop to the disillusioned liberals who complain in op-eds and blog posts that Obama just needs to get more aggressive in pushing for policies that they imagine will reinvigorate the economy. Politically, it was a move to rally a base that is rather depressed at the moment, and it might work somewhat. But the spectacle of demanding an audience from Congress for such a speech was utterly absurd.

The AP fact checker more or less stomped on one of Obama's key points:

Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act, but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional super-committee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near-term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future -- the "out years," in legislative jargon -- but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use.

Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due. Today's Congress cannot bind a later one for future spending. A future Congress could simply reverse it. . . .

There is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.

Finally, note that Patrick Ruffini boasts that he skipped Obama's speech, deeming it "irrelevant."

A simple lesson for liberals.

Hey Ahab!  How about aiming for the Whale?

An Economics Lesson Even a Liberal Can Grasp

By Herbert E. Meyer

The more President Obama calls for a second stimulus spending spree to create those jobs the first spending spree failed to create, the more he sounds like the grocer in that old joke about the lady who wants her money back because the dietetic ice cream the grocer talked her into buying hasn't helped her lose weight. The grocer thinks for a moment and says, "Eat more of it."

Since the president and his advisers haven't got a clue about how our economy works -- which isn't surprising, since these people have less practical business experience than any kid with a lemonade stand -- here's an economics lesson so short and simple even a liberal can grasp it:

The key point to understand is that an economy is a kind of operating system. This means that if you want the economy to "do" something -- such as create more jobs -- you have to go about it the way the operating system is designed to work. Otherwise you cannot possibly succeed.

Think of it this way: our cell phones have operating systems built into them. There's no Republican way to make a phone call with your iPhone, and no Democratic way to do it. There's no conservative approach to checking your email with a BlackBerry or an Android, and no liberal approach to doing it. You just do it the way your cell phone's operating system requires.

It's the same with an economy. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of economic operating systems: a free-market economy and a command economy. In a free-market economy, the government sets the rules and enforces them, but otherwise stays out of the way and allows individuals and businesses to call the shots. In a command economy, the government's role is so large that it not only sets and enforces the rules, but also calls the shots.

Because each country -- unlike each cell phone owner -- designs its own economic operating system, no two economies are precisely the same. So our country's free market is somewhat different from Canada's, which itself isn't quite the same as Germany's, Poland's, France's, Australia's, and so forth. Still, in all free-market economies, the government makes and enforces the rules, and then gets out of the way. Likewise with command economies: left-wing communist economies differ somewhat from right-wing fascist economies, but once again, the similarities are more important than the differences. In all command economies, you do what the government tells you to do, or you get your brains kicked in.

Entrepreneurs Create Jobs

In a free-market economy like ours, it's the entrepreneurs who create jobs. They do this by starting new businesses, and by expanding businesses that are already up and running. If you want to create more jobs, you create an environment in which entrepreneurs will thrive. They'll take it from there, because creating jobs by starting and expanding businesses is what thriving entrepreneurs do.

Think of it this way: if you want more milk, create an environment in which cows will thrive. And just as it makes no sense to say you want more milk but oppose cows because they're smelly, dirty, and leave their droppings all over the place -- it makes no sense to say you want more jobs but oppose entrepreneurs because when they succeed they often wind up with more money than the rest of us. You cannot have it both ways.

Entrepreneurs thrive when they are confident about the future. Every time an entrepreneur makes a decision to start a new business, or to expand his business by launching a new product or service, he or she is putting his own money -- and his employees' futures -- on the line. So an entrepreneur wants to know what taxes he's going to pay in the years ahead. He wants to know what his costs will be for high-priced expenses such as his employees' health care. He wants some certainty that the regulations in place when he launches that new product or service won't change six months later and destroy his investment overnight. And an entrepreneur wants some confidence that the overall economy will be sufficiently robust to provide customers who'll buy that new product or service and by doing so enable the entrepreneur to earn back his investment and make some profit besides.

Why did the world's largest and most powerful economy create zero jobs in August? It's because our country's entrepreneurs lack confidence in the future. They cannot calculate what taxes they'll pay, they cannot calculate their costs for health care, they have no idea what new regulations may suddenly appear that will cripple their investments, and they don't believe the customers they'll need to buy their products and services will be there.

Most of all -- and this is anecdotal rather than statistical -- many of our country's entrepreneurs have come to believe that the president and his liberal allies in Congress are out to get them -- that their ultimate objective is to turn our free-market economy into a command economy.

Our CEOs Have Had Enough

Let me give you one example to illustrate this point: in the course of my lecture business I meet a great many owners of small- and medium-sized companies -- precisely the men and women we depend upon to create jobs for all the rest of us. One evening, when my lecture to a group of these entrepreneurs had ended and we were all having a drink in the hotel bar, the CEO of a rock-solid manufacturing company said something that stopped the conversation cold: "I'll be damned before I start hiring people now, just in time to send the unemployment rate plunging so it re-elects the president next year. In a second term, this guy'll kill my business." There was a dead silence, and then every other business owner at the table nodded in agreement.

The point isn't whether these CEOs are right or wrong. The point is that this is what they've come to believe, and their actions will be based upon their perceptions. For all of us who depend on our country's entrepreneurs to create jobs -- which is to say, for all of us without safe government jobs -- this is more than depressing. It's terrifying.

Let's go back to the observation that an economy, like a cell phone, has an operating system built into it. Imagine that you have a new cell phone, and you ask me how to make a call. I tell you to punch in a phone number, then rub the phone against your leg and fling it against the wall. Did your call go through? No? Okay, I say, now try it again -- but this time fling your phone harder. Your call still didn't go through? Would you like to try it a third time? Or have you finally figured out that I have no idea what I'm talking about; that if you keep listening to me you're going to break your phone; that it's time to settle down, read the operator's manual, and do it the way your cell phone's operating system is designed to work?

The good news is that our economy is more resilient than our cell phones. It can take a lot of abuse and still be made to work if only we start doing things the right way. The bad news is that if we keep doing things to create jobs that make absolutely no sense and cannot possibly work, at some point even the world's most powerful and dynamic economy will be broken beyond repair.

And that's a lesson in economics even a liberal can understand.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is the author of two eBooks, How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty.