The Nanny State, a poem

 by Joe Doakes, via SITD

Some parents aren’t competent to pick their own children’s lunch menus
So their kids are fat
And develop health problems
Which the parents can’t afford to pay to treat
And which society isn’t willing to leave untreated
Because children shouldn’t suffer for their parents incompetence
So we treat the children
And we pay for it
And it costs a lot
Which runs up the deficit
Which we should prevent
By reducing spending on sick kids
By reducing the number of fat kids
By stopping kids from getting fat
By picking their lunch menus for them
Using union public employee lunch menu pickers
Who receive wages and health insurance benefits
Which cost a lot
Which runs up the deficit
Until the money runs out
And society collapses
So we go back to letting parents set their own kids’ lunch menus
And some kids get fat
And they develop health problems
But their parents can’t afford to pay for treatment
Because society has collapsed
Because we ran up the deficit
By hiring union public employee lunch menu pickers
Instead of letting parents pick their kids lunch menus
And letting children suffer because for their parents incompetence
The way they’ll have to suffer
When society has collapsed

Presented without comment

Job growth? What job growth?

Tony Hernandez for MN CD4

Speech! Speech! Speech!

I guess I can tolerate this Call Me Maybe cover

Nice!

The moral case for free enterprise

Cause I can...for now

Obamacare explained in four minutes

I'm not sure who this guy is, but I think I like him:



Sounds about right to me!

Biased

If you hadn’t heard, I have a political opinion.  It falls decidedly right of center, and I am not shy about showing how and why I think.

There are many people that call themselves moderates, or centrists.  They may not deviate as far as I do from center, but they have issues that will pull them one way or the other.

There are other people that are decidedly leftist. They are just as far from the center to the left as I am to the right.

Everyone falls into one of these categories.  EVERYONE.  There is not one single person on the planet earth that is completely devoid of opinion.

Why is this important?

Because knowing where a person falls on the political spectrum helps other people relate to that person, and helps them know if any opinions they may espouse are being influenced by anything.

Fully embracing, fully owning,  your biases is not a bad thing, because what you believe informs everything you do.

I think that is why so many people are pulling away from the mainstream media, or MSM.

Ask any journalist on one of the major networks, and they will tell you they are being completely subjective, and their political believes don’t inform how they report.  The obvious slant in their reporting is just a figment of your imagination, they’d tell you.

But if they were to just admit they have political opinion, I think more people would flock back to them.  As an example, I look at Fox News.  Fox News fully embraces the fact that it’s reporters and commentators have opinions, and look how many people watch it.  It’s not even that it’s only conservatives, either.   Because the viewers know how the political opinions fall, they can use that to color how they hear the news, and know how a particular piece may be skewed.

In short: tell us your biases, major news networks, we’ll still like you, I promise!

Julia? I'd rather be Emily...

No, They Can't

A book review

John Stossel has written another book.  I have enjoyed his previous books immensely, and have been looking forward to reading this one.

Mr. Stossel is a journalist, formerly of ABC’s 20/20. I remember watching 20/20 when I was a kid, solely for his “Give Me A Break” segments.  Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the views he espoused were, and are many of the same views I hold dear to this day.  He, along with Larry Elder, shaped my understanding a great deal, and lead me to believe that small ‘l’ libertarianism(H/T Mitch Berg) is the political philosophy that is most beneficial to the largest number of people. 

The libertarian philosophy is one that states individual freedom is better than government interference almost every time. 

What Mr. Stossel has done in his book, No, They Can’t, is taken thoughts and ideas most people think make intuitive sense, and systematically dismantles them, one by one.

Examples include:

“A new stadium will act as a giant jobs program.”  Spoiler: no, it won’t.  John Stossel takes this example, and rips it to shreds with the classic broken window fallacy, among others.

“Government makes life fairer.”  Oh, there’s that fair word again!  Another handy dismemberment here as well.

“Without government, there would be no reliable safety standards.”  Don’t mind me, I’ll just be laughing in the corner.

As I was reading through the book, I really enjoyed it.  Most of his points were not new to me, but the arguments against the items were great.  Sometimes I have a hard time verbalizing my dissent of a particular idea, and I got a lot of good thoughts from this book.

The only issue I had with this book is sometimes Mr. Stossel assumes you know and understand at least a little about the philosophy behind his points.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it lets him go more in depth on topics that need more discourse.  However, that does take the beginner out of the equation, which is a problem.  Preaching to the choir is a great thing, giving us more ammunition against the people that truly don’t get it, but a person that is just dipping their toes into the water of libertarianism may be a bit confused.

All of that to say, if you have a basic understanding of the topics at hand, you will really enjoy this book.  I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to see government shrink, and wants to be able to hold their own in a political discussion or otherwise.

5/5 Looney lefties

Equal vs. fair, and why it matters.

“That’s not FAIR!”  A common childhood refrain, said by many a sibling, older and younger, around the world.

When we are children, we want things to be ‘fair,’ but what we really mean is we want things to be EQUAL.  Same amount of candy, of computer or TV time, same curfew, same same same.

And having things be equal is a very childish thing to want.  If a child doesn’t deserve things to be ‘equal,’ then they shouldn’t be.

A naughty child shouldn’t get the same amounts of treats as a good child.  A child that has homework that needs to be finished should get more computer time than a child that only wants to play games.  A child that has a new episode of their favorite show on should get to watch the TV over a child who’s shows are in reruns.  A child that has earned their parent’s trust should be able to stay out later than a wild child who gets in trouble all the time.

And the cries of ‘Not fair!” abound when this is the case.  But is it not fair, or not equal?

Obama's America

LIST COURTESY FREE REPUBLIC


Only in Obama’s new America can:

1. Politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.

2. People claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black and only 12% of the population is black.

3. Could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4. We have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5. We make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.

6. The people who believe in balancing the federal budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7. You vote without any Identification, but need an ID to cash a check, buy alcohol or cigarettes, gain access to government buildings etc.

8. Politicians demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

Advertise products

9. Could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, and still spend over a trillion dollars more than it took in every year since a President has been in office and still have the nerve to complain that the government still doesn’t have enough money.

10. The rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

11. The President whose party constantly champions the separation of church and state, and therefore protests against such things as manger scenes in public, only in that America could that president then sign a law forcing churches to pay for things which are totally against their teachings, such as birth control.

12. A President whose core constituency used the phrase “Keep the government out of my uterus” in the pro-choice debate now sign a law that forces tax payers to pay for the government to implant birth control devices in those same uterus’.

13.We have a government that purposefully kills job creating enterprises such as the Keystone pipeline, then demagogues the issue by calling on those from the other party to "play fair" and extend unemployment benefits beyond 99 weeks.

14. We have politicians claim that extending unemployment benefits, stimulate job creation.

15. The President bemoan the fact that he too is wealthy and that his taxes should be raised and yet he takes every deduction he possibly can on his tax return.

A Rant

*Ahem*

Using your own biases and misconceptions of what another person believes to denounce their way of living, or thinking, or doing, not only is it terribly off-putting to those whom you are speaking to, but it make you look stupid too.

I’m looking at you, Suburgatory.

Even the biggest pro-gun NRA member is not going to keep live guns as decoration in a baby’s nursery.  The biggest carnivore you know isn’t going to dance around with pride extolling the new interior decorator that gave said baby’s room an ‘endangered species’ motif, and go on about how many dead animal adorn the walls.

In short, your ignorance is showing, please meet some actual conservatives at your earliest convenience.

Presented without comment

Things I don’t understand: Affirmative action

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the discrimination laws, and how I don’t get them.  This week, I’d like to talk about the other side of the same coin, affirmative action.

I say it’s the other side of the same coin because affirmative action is working toward the same goal as the discrimination laws, but from the opposite side.

Now, the idea behind them seems good in concept:  get more minorities into different positions, and accepted as students into different schools.

The thing I don’t understand is why any minority would want to use it. 

As a woman, I am theoretically in minority status, according to a lot of the politicians I hear, thought that doesn’t make sense to me either, considering women make up something like 51% of the population(someone needs to learn the definition of minority, I think), so I feel I can talk of this with somewhat of an authority.

Now, imagine you are black, or Indian, or a woman.  You’ve heard the school, or job, or government position you are applying for uses affirmative action hiring practices.  After you send in your application, you interview, and are accepted to whatever it was you applied to.  Now, even if it’s not always on your mind, it may niggle at the back, ‘Am I only here because of my minority status?”

I remember when I was looking for a job, and one of the companies I interviewed with straight out said: “Yes, we are interested in you because you are a woman.”  That was incredibly hurtful to me.  They weren’t looking at me because of my experience, or my education, or even my excellent penmanship.  They wanted to interview me because I was a woman.  I didn’t end up getting that job, but mostly because I bombed the interview after that.  I think that was the only interview I EVER bombed.

To think of this from another perspective, what would an outside person think of the minority that got in?   

Sure, many wouldn’t think anything of it, but I’m sure there would be several that think, “Oh, they’re not here on merit, they’re here based on skin color.”

Honestly, if it were up to me, all interview processes would be blind.  The best qualified would get the job, and that would be it.

Another metaphor: Groceries

Imagine you have a monthly plan you pay into, one that lets you go into the grocery store, chose your food, and only pay $10 at checkout.

Would you plan a food budget, make sure you are getting the best deals, only get what you need, not just what you want?

Or would you not plan at all, throwing meals together wily-nilly, going to the grocery store several times a week because you just had to have that one specific item?  Would you choose the fancier items, regardless of the fact that they are exactly the same as the more generic brands?  Would you fill your cart with junk food, and things that taste good, instead of food that is FOOD, and good for you to boot?

Now, you have no idea what anything even costs, because what is the point of the grocery store putting prices up if they don’t matter for anyone anyway? Why would the grocery store bother stocking the lower cost items, if everyone is going to get the name brand items anyway? 

And who would stop the grocery store owner from colluding with their supplier, having the supplier jack up the cost of goods so the grocery store owner can charge the plan more money?  And when that happens, guess what happens to your monthly pay in?  It goes up, because your plan’s costs have risen, and you had NO CLUE, because you have no idea what groceries cost.

And there would be much wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and there would be calls to the government: “Why aren’t you stopping our grocery plan pay-ins from increasing?  Everyone needs food, and I can’t afford this anymore!”

And the government would step in, and force the plans to lower their premiums, but uh-oh.  The plans aren’t sustainable long term with the decreased revenue, so they would slowly start to go out of business.  And the government would have to step in, because people have to eat, you know.  And they would run the grocery plans on the tax payer’s dime, the plans that weren’t sustainable as evidenced by the multitudes of shuttered plans.

And then where would we end up, all because you wanted cheaper groceries.

Wow, that one kinda got away from me, was only supposed to be about insurance, and somehow morphed into unsustainable debt.  Though I suppose the topics are forever intertwined now anyway, so it works.