Tag Archives: morality

Expanding Government Dependency

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Who benefits from government benefits?

This is what we have today:

  • 49.1% of the American population lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.  This is an increase of two-thirds since the end of the Reagan era:
  • 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007 according to a CBO report.  That report also  said that the number of people receiving the benefits, the food stamps, would continue growing until 2014 and would not, in the foreseeable future, revert to anything like the Clinton/Bush era lows.
  • The median number of weeks before someone unemployed leaves the labor force is 21.4.  That’s about five months—a long time.  But then it seems to be final.  Out of work too long, and employers view that person as damaged goods.  Out of work too long, and skills are eroded, and employers are less interested.  That person needs more government benefit payout.

Again, I ask: who benefits from this?  The answer is: follow the money to the source.

Progressives, Terrorists, and Civility

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Brett Kimberlin, the Speedway Bomber, was convicted in 1981 of a week-long bombing spree in Indianapolis, IN, a serial bombing sequence in which eight separate bombs caused extensive property damage, destroyed a police cruiser, and severely maimed a man, which eventually led to the man’s suicide.  Kimberlin spent 17 years in prison for his crimes, including having his parole revoked when, after losing a $1.6 million judgment in favor of the widow of the suicide victim, he refused to pay—not couldn’t pay, refused to pay.

Of course, there is the possibility of redemption and of correcting old ways, of making amends.  But not all are repentant.  Consider that Kimberlin still hasn’t paid the judgment.  Consider the $200 thousand bounty that Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution put on the Chamber of Commerce’s Tom Donohue.  Consider the attacks on Patterico (also via Memorandum, if that link doesn’t work), and on Stacy McCain, and on Michelle Malkin.  While the attacks on Malkin may not have been perpetrated by Kimberlin and his…colleagues…they are of a type.

But, aside from these cowardly attacks from the Left against people whose only crime is that they are conservative and both act and write like it, I also am interested in the Progressive leadership condoning such bullying and potentially criminal behaviors.  Where is the hue and cry about Brett Kimberlin’s activities and those of his ilk?

To be sure, nor conservatives nor Progressives need decry every little wrong, every smearing speech such as Arizona State Senator Linda Lopez’ (D) attempt to lay the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords off on conservatives, that this or that extremist makes.  But surely these ongoing and dangerous attacks, not only against the conservatives, but their families also, warrant an outcry from an honest left.  But the President, his campaign advisors, the DNC leadership, the Progressive leadership in Congress all are silent.  And by their passive silence about these events of which they surely are aware, they actively condone them.

But it’s of a piece with Progressive civility.  This is the civility that has Congressman John Lewis (D, GA) claiming—without substantiation even today—that conservative Tea Partiers called him a nigger, that has Congressman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) dismissing those who protested against Obamacare as not American and Astroturfers, that has DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D, FL), at her protest gathering outside then-candidate Allen West’s campaign headquarters, saying about conservatives and conservative protesters

I don’t see any swastikas or any pictures of the President in black face or burned in effigy here.  The difference between the way we express our First Amendment rights and the way I’ve seen Tea Party extremists—Republican Tea Party extremists—express their right is dramatically different.

And President Obama saying

Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?

All they haven’t done, yet, is to send out their own SWAT teams.

Some Thoughts on Freedom

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The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan; the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl; the University of Notre Dame; and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  The problem, as described on the DC Archdiocese’s new Web site PreserveReligiousFreedom.org, is this:

It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs.

President Obama’s Health and Human Service’s mandate, which is intended to facilitate his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and is the proximate object of the suit, forces religious organizations, against their most fundamental beliefs, to provide access to, or to make access available through their insurance programs, contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures.

These drugs and services, and many of the behaviors that “need” these drugs and services, are held by a host of religions (Catholicism and Baptist congregations are only the most well-known) to be sinful.  It is, then, not only morally wrong for a religious entity holding these beliefs to provide these things, it is impossible for that entity that is true to its beliefs to do so, or to wink at their insurance programs that do so.

Take careful note: this problem is not about whether such things are, in fact, sinful.  This problem is not about whether Catholic women, by regularly going to Mass and then to their neighborhood pharmacy for contraceptives, seemingly give the lie to Catholicism’s position.  (Indeed, the existence of sin is a raison d’être for churches of all types—to help those sinners.)  This problem is not about “free” access to these services. (In fact, they are not free: by the government’s mandate, if the recipient isn’t paying for them, you and I are—whether it violates our religious teachings or not—through higher prices to us to pay for the subsidy.)

No, this problem is about whether government can define for religious entities what is sin.  It is about whether government can dictate to a religious entity what its religious tenets are.  It is about whether government can dictate to a religious entity what its practices in furtherance of its fundamental tenets are.  It is about whether government can dictate to us individually what our beliefs, what our private decisions, must be, and whether we must sin at government’s behest.

As a practical matter, which patients are being “protected” under the Act of that name?  Plainly only those of whom Obama approves.  Certainly not those with beliefs with which he disagrees.

As a matter of freedom, what is being protected by this government diktat?  Certainly not the fundamental freedom of conscience that Christian religions teach.  Certainly not the fundamental freedom of religion—a part of our Creator’s endowment—that is codified in our Constitution.

Two Economies

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We are at a cross-roads in our country and it’s time to force the issue.  We face a generational decision on the kind of economy we want for ourselves—and so the degree of individual freedom we want for ourselves.  We made a choice in the 2010 elections, and it’s time to confirm or repudiate that choice this fall and in the election cycles to come.

There are two basic types of economies available to us: wealth redistribution by government fiat or wealth redistribution by individual choice in a free market.  In this post, I’ll write a little about each type.

Wealth redistribution by government fiat:

When redistribution occurs by fiat, it occurs by taking wealth from some and giving it to others.  I won’t go into the class warfare that this sort of thing can engender, regardless of good intentions.  I’ll write, instead about the outcomes of such redistributions.

This taking of wealth from some necessarily caps the wealth of that some.  Indeed, reducing income inequality often is the explicit goal of this sort of wealth redistribution as that transferred wealth represents “income” to the recipients.

Reducing income inequality, though, ignores a fundamental aspect of human endeavor: we are not endowed with the same degree of talent, of work ethic, of luck.  We do not even have the same desires for what we want out of life.  Thus, income inequality is an inevitable outcome of the application of men to their own efforts and goals.  Capping this—which wealth redistribution necessarily does—in the name of “fairness,” then, prevents those with greater talent or ethic, or even luck, from enjoying to the fullest the fruits of their labors.  By this, it denies those men the equality of opportunity promised them by our social compact.

Worse, this prevents those men even from achieving their fullest potential, because knowing they will have some portion of the results of their efforts taken from them, there is no incentive to excel, to do their best.  Their reach will no longer exceed their grasp.

At least as bad, this also saps the morality of those men: they lose both the incentive and a portion of the means to satisfy their obligation to their fellows.  Government has taken this obligation and the responsibility for its satisfaction away from them and arrogated these to itself.

But what of the recipients of the redistribution: are they not enough better off (the other major purpose of government-forced redistribution) to offset the loss to the successful?  No.  In fact, they’re not any better off at all; they’re worse off.

At this end of the spectrum, incentive to do better is lost: they’ll receive a measure of wealth regardless of their effort.  They lose their sense of obligation to do their best and thereby to not be (or to be as much less of as they can) a burden on the duty (or wealth) of others.  Government as arrogated this responsibility to itself.

These men, also, are denied their promised equal opportunity; they are denied their chance to show the best that is in them—morally as well as economically.

Wealth redistribution by free market individual choice:

The case concerning this is quite straightforward.  First, the answer to an obvious question: how is this redistribution, at all?  The rich get richer, with the seller collecting his price for his good or service, and the poor get poorer for having had to pay those prices.  Actually, not.  That description looks, too narrowly, only at the pecuniary aspect of an exchange of money for a good or service; there is, though, a much broader picture.

Economically, it’s simple.  The desire for those goods and services is demand that stimulates production.  That increased production represents both increased hiring and lower prices.  Those lower prices and higher employment increase demand.  Which generates jobs….  Obviously this won’t go on forever; there will reach a point where the price of labor, which has been increasing as its supply becomes scarcer, makes it uneconomical to continue hiring and producing.  However, that level of full employment is a far higher level of employment than that which obtains in an economy where the wealth passed on to people is as relatively independent of effort as it is in an economy driven by government-forced redistribution.

Thus, wealth is redistributed as a result of the free—voluntary—exchange that exists in a free market.  Those exchanges ultimately create additional jobs, which is increased wealth for all participants.

This voluntary wealth redistribution is short and direct on a personal level, also: rather tautologically, both parties to a (voluntary) transaction are made wealthier by that transaction: each party has obtained something of value to him that he didn’t have before.  After all, if it wasn’t of value, neither party would have been interested in the exchange.  And by completing that exchange, each party now has that thing.

All participants in a régime of free market redistribution are enriched morally, also.  It is in this environment that equality of opportunity is preserved.  It is in this environment that everyone, rich and poor, is able to work to his fullest potential.  It is in this environment that everyone is able to enjoy all of the fruits of his labor.  It is in this environment that everyone retains his moral obligations, the ability to satisfy them (including the obligation of each to help his less fortunate fellows), and by doing so improving themselves.

These men, then, are guaranteed their promised equal opportunity; they are guaranteed their chance to show the best that is in them—morally as well as economically.

YGTBSM

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The answer, it seems, to a poor showing on a test is to lower the test’s passing threshold, and not to lower the teachers who did such a poor job of teaching.  How does this help our children learn?  How does this help our society raise children into capable adults who can help our nation compete in the world?

I do not understand how a fourth-grader comes to be ignorant about camels.  Don’t we teach our children anything, anymore, about the Middle East—a region that has a role in civilization’s beginnings, a role in the evolution of Western civilization, and a very significant role in today’s events?

The matter comes up because only 27% of Florida’s fourth-graders scored a four or better (four is passing), on a one to six scale, on this year’s Florida Department of Education fourth-grader standardized writing exam.

The test question (which, in an idiotic example of today’s substitution of jargon evolution for actual teaching development, is called a “prompt”) at the center of the failure rate  was this:

Suppose you or someone else had a chance to ride a camel.  Imagine what happens on this camel ride.  Write a story about what happens on this camel ride.

How hard is that?

Ann Egitto, a Longwood, FL, Rock Lake Middle School language arts teacher (they taught English in my middle school, and French and Spanish.  “Language Arts” teaches all of these together?  Painting with words?  Is this more cutesy naming in place of actual teaching?), says this about the question [I’m assuming the grammar error is Ms Bisram’s transcription error and not Ms Egitto’s]:

It was just a very poor prompt, when do we see camels in Central Florida….  I couldn’t even write about the camel prompt and I’ve been writing for 40 plus years[.]

Really?  You don’t feel constrained to teach the children entrusted to you for an actual education something about the wider world beyond Central Florida?  Say, Jacksonville, or the Everglades, or Alabama or Georgia?  Perhaps Europe, or Asia?  Maybe the Middle East?

Does this say more about the question’s difficulty, or about teaching skills—and initiative?  And by extension, since I hardly believe she’s unique in this regard, about Florida’s union teachers generally?

Lisa Wright, an Idyllwilde Elementary School teacher, added [again, I’m assuming the grammar error is Ms Bisram’s transcription error]:

A lot fourth graders in my school probably don’t even know what a camel really is[.]

Whose fault is that, Madam?

Ms Egitto continued [sigh]:

I’m teaching my kids about punctuation and grammar every day and the state is just failing us miserably.

Yeah.  It’s somebody else’s fault.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Never mind that the Florida DoE says that the question was extensively reviewed and well-received by about 1,500 students who were selected to take it during a field-testing period.

The point is not whether a fourth-grader is able to write about Middle Eastern transportation.  The point is what we are (not) teaching our children that they’re unable to pick up this sort of useful detail (including, perhaps, sheep, or Mediterranean Grass, or…) in the course of teaching our children about the Middle East.  Or, again I ask, are we not teaching the Middle East?  teaching nothing about Capt Thomas Edward Lawrence helping the Arabs attempt to throw off Turkish, German, and English yokes during WWI (oh, by the way, they used camels on their way across the desert to attack the Germans at Aqaba…).