Category Archives: morality

Democracy the Chicago Way

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Or maybe the Detroit way.  Whatever.  Via Power Line:

This short video is an example of the union reaction to the democratic process outcome in Michigan last week.

Then President Barack Obama, the Chicago community “organizer,” had this to say about the violence through his press spokesman Jay Carney:

[T]the president believes in debate that’s civil.

And he refused to elaborate.  This is reminiscent of the speech candidate Obama made in 2008 tossed off on the role of racism in politics—an empty, vapid speech, with the subject never to be addressed again.  With all the Progressive cries of racism whenever Obama or his policies are criticized.

As Power Line put it,

Remember the good old days when Sarah Palin’s producing a flyer that had sights on Congressional districts was unacceptably violent?  Now, punching someone in the face is just fine.

There’s Secession and There’s Secession

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There are petitions on the White House’s Web site, signed by a sufficient number of petitioners to require a response from the White House, advocating secession from the union by various states.  These are being carefully ignored, but that’s a different story.

In Wisconsin, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Wisconsin, decamping for motels in Illinois.  They remained in their state of rebellion for weeks, paralyzing Wisconsin’s government, attempting to destroy the democratic process they hated so much.

In Indiana, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Indiana, also decamping for motels in Illinois.  They remained in their state of rebellion for weeks, paralyzing Indiana’s government, attempting to destroy the democratic process they hated so much.

Now, in Michigan, when the democratic process went against Democrats, those Democrats seceded from Michigan, this time relocating nearby.  That these Democrats’ rebellion failed so quickly (but not for lack of effort) was only because Michigan’s laws made the Michigan Democrats’ secession toothless.  There were sufficient majorities (and no need for supermajorities) in both houses of the state’s government from non-Democratic Party representatives and senators to form a quorum in each house, and neither the Michigan government nor Michigan citizens’ continued access to democracy were harmed materially by the Democrats’ rebellion.

The state citizens’ petitions to secede from the union were never serious efforts to depart; they were protests of an overweening federal government, gestures only.

The Democrats’ secessions from those three state governments were not gestures.  They were conducted for the avowed purpose of bringing down those democratically elected governments so Democrats could impose their minority will on the majority; so Democrats could override the will of the citizens as implemented by their elected representatives to their governments.  What the Democrats could not achieve through the democratic process they attempted to force into being by force of rebellion.

“Elections have consequences.”  But those consequences are acceptable only when they serve Progressive ends.  That’s the face of Progressivism and the Democratic Party today: rather than abide by a democratic election result, secede and try to prevent government from functioning.

Of Jobs Reports

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The latest Jobs report came out last week, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%.  We haven’t been this well off in years.  Or have we?  James Pethokoukis, writing for AEIDeas, took a closer look.

First, a graph that’s been run in several places before, repeated in Pethokoukis’ article, and here:

You remember this.  It compares President Barack Obama’s…claims…about the unemployment rate under his Recovery Plan vs his projection of unemployment absent his plan with the actual unemployment rate.  The data in the latest Jobs report add to this [emphasis in the original].

The two-tenths drop in the unemployment rate was because people gave up looking for work. The labor force participation rate fell to 63.6% from 63.8% in October.  If it had just held steady since then, the unemployment rate would be back over 8%.  Indeed, if the LFP rate was just where it was in November 2011, the unemployment rate would be 8.3%.  Some 542,000 Americans left the labor force just last month.

If labor force participation was at its January 2009 level, the unemployment rate would be a whopping 10.7%.  Now, some of the drop in the LFP is due to demographic reasons, primarily the aging of the US population.  But even taking that into account would give you a much higher unemployment rate than 7.7%.  If you go by the pre-recession CBO forecast of the 2012 LFP rate, the unemployment rate would be 10.4%.

In November, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 4 cents to $23.63.  Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen by 1.7%.  Unfortunately, inflation—as measured by the consumer price index—has risen by 2.2% over the past year, meaning average hourly earnings have fallen by 0.5% in real terms.

And

The number of long-term unemployed remains at a sky-high 40.1%, the same as in August.

As the next graph illustrates.

Yet the Progressives in DC think this is proper.

Spending

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Here‘s an interesting table, from The Motley Fool.

A couple of notes.  Spending in 2012, the fourth year of the Age of Obama, relative to our nation’s total economic output, our GDP, is up 18%.  The government spends nearly a quarter of our total economic production, production that by the government’s usurpation we in the private sector cannot use for our own ends.

Defense spending is down more than 17% from its long term average.  Even so, President Barack Obama is bent on gutting our defense capability by another half-trillion dollars, starting next month.  Never mind that al-Qaeda is resurgent across northern Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia.  Never mind that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakout.  Never mind that Russia and the People’s Republic of China both are increasing their own military spending and that the PRC, especially, is becoming increasingly aggressive militarily with their growing capability.

Welfare spending is nearly 9% of our GDP, up nearly two-thirds from a skosh over 5%.  Yet Obama wants to increase welfare spending even further.  I’ve written here about the trap that is welfare; one can only speculate about Obama’s motives for this.

Gimme

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Collis P Huntington, President of the Southern Pacific Railroad (among others) is reputed to have said

Whatever is not nailed down is mine.  What I can pry loose is not nailed down.

Via Spirit of Enterprise comes this AEIDeas article of charts illustrating the attitude from a different perspective.  Below, some of those charts.

The rate of entitlement growth per capita has been nearly twice as fast as per capita income growth for the last fifty years

Note: Derived by author on the basis of data on official transfers, price changes, and population change. Sources: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Dept. of Labor, US Census International Data Base

And

In the 1960s, the federal government spent $2 on governing for each $1 it spent on entitlement transfers. Today that ratio has completely flipped:

Sources: Derived from: Federal government entitlement transfers: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Budget Outlays: White House Fiscal Year 2012 Historical Tables

And

Here’s where the money goes:

Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer price index

And

As the Welfare State has expanded, Americans are working less.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, One Screen database, Labor Force Statistics, Series “LNU01300001”, “LNS12300001”

And there’s this from The Daily Caller:

After accounting for federal taxes, the median hourly wage drops to between $21.50 and $23.45, depending on a household’s deductions and filing status.  State and local taxes further reduce the median household’s hourly earnings. By contrast, welfare benefits are not taxed.

Now it’s the culture of dependency which the Progressives have created that is making the demand.  And President Barack Obama is prying ever more loose, actively abetted by an increasingly pliant Republican Party.