Monthly Archives: September 2015

Bad Tactics

Posted on by
Reply

On the subject of removing Federal funding from Planned Parenthood, there’s no shortage of bad tactics floating about.

The conservative (note: small “c” conservative) wing of the Republican Party want to shut down the Federal government until they get the President to sign a defunding bill, whether in stand-alone or as part of the Federal budget. Never mind that they have no plan whatsoever for selling the shutdown to the public, they want to have their toddler’s temper tantrum.

On the other side of the question, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) seems excessively timid even to try.

The way you make a law in this country (is) the Congress has to pass it, and the president has to sign it.

The president’s made it very clear he’s not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood—so that’s another issue that awaits a new president hopefully with a different point of view.

It may be true that it’ll take a different President to sign a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood. One important step on the path to getting a different President is for Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and force President Barack Obama to veto it. And then use that plain, immoral obstruction to get a decent President elected.

One wing of the Republican Party needs badly to grow up. Another wing of the Republican Party needs just as badly to grow some backbone.

Price Supports

Posted on by
Reply

It seems there’s a glut of milk (among other farm produce) in the European markets, and milk prices are falling.

Milk producers want EU governments to prop up prices by giving more money to farmers who voluntarily cut production.

Social Democrat countries like France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy actually think this is a good idea.

What those good folks carefully decline to discuss, though, is their rationale for requiring consumers to pay artificially higher prices, instead of letting market forces take those prices to an equilibrium empirically agreed between the farmers and the consumers—without government as intervening middleman.

Oh, wait….

Donald Trump and Buyable Politicians

Posted on by
Reply

Donald Trump openly boasts that he donates to politicians so he can exact favors from them after they reach office.

After all, he got his BFF and rented woman, Hillary Clinton, to dance at his wedding as a result of a “donation.” Or so he says.

There’s an actual fact, though, that contradicts his boast.

It seems Trump wanted to build one of his casinos in Florida in conjunction with the Seminoles. The casino, though, would have expanded the range of gambling beyond the bingo that Florida law then allowed. To get support for changing the law, Trump did then-gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush a solid, hosting a fund-raiser in Trump Tower for Bush’s campaign benefit, and he donated 50 stacks of his own money to the campaign.

Once elected,

Bush maintained his hardline stance against gambling in the state, delivering a death blow to Trump’s hopes of building out a multi-million dollar casino endeavor with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and prompting him to abandon those plans.

Bush said,

I am opposed to casino gambling in this state, and I am opposed whether it is on Indian property or otherwise…. The people have spoken, and I support their position[.]

The people had spoken three times, in fact, rejecting three separate referendums on the matter.

Maybe this explains Trump’s slavering animosity toward Bush.

Hmm….

More Big Government

Posted on by
Reply

And more interference from that Big Government.

President Barack Obama has signed is going to sign—and do his usual bragging about signing—an Executive Order requiring all government contractors to give their employees paid sick leave.

On top of that,

The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.

Neither Obama nor Labor Secretary Thomas Perez produced any data to support their bald claim because they don’t have any. Their position is based solely on the arrogance of “We’re Big Government. We Know Best.”

There is, too, that Democratic Party ethos. Perez said

The Republican Party is out of step with similar conservative governments around the world.

Yeah. Someone else is doing it; therefore, it’s the right thing to do. The rightness or wrongness of the thing isn’t at all inherent in the thing. Popularity creates right. I’ll ignore the fact that Perez’ “around the world” is Europe, and that there aren’t any conservative governments in Europe.

It’s certainly true that paid sick leave has merit. However, the decision about paid sick leave is best left in the hands of the employer and his employees and prospective employees. What other countries, what other domestic companies are doing, has nothing to do with it.

It’s not at all true that every good idea must be turned into a government edict that everyone must follow. Including when the costs of this or that good idea will vary from time to time, situation to situation, company to company, industry to industry.

Especially since Americans are fully capable of acting on their own choices. We’re not as stupid as Big Government assumes us to be.

Values and Mottoes

Posted on by
Reply

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is at it again.

It seems the Childress, TX, Chief of Police has committed the evil crime of putting the nation’s motto, In God We Trust, on the town’s police cars.

This is some sort of affront to constitutionally mandated freedom of religion, according to the FRFF—whose name gives away the game: freedom from religion, not freedom of religion. I suppose the US as a whole is an affront to freedom, what with that motto, and all.

Gary Parsons, Lee County, VA, sheriff, who did the same thing with his department’s cars, is on the right track.

It’s not only a symbol of moral values but also a symbol of patriotism[.]

Especially that first part: the motto and its presence on cop cars is an espousal of morality, not of religion.

Therein lies FRFF’s dishonesty and hypocrisy. Rather than that particular set of moral values, FRFF is seeking to impose its own moral values on all of us. It’s also seeking to impose its own religion—the religion of atheism—on all of us.