Taxes

There are some simple truths to the matter of taxes:

1. Fewer people are paying an ever greater share of the tax burden collected by the federal government. More and more are getting "services" or income from those fewer people without being directly taxed on income themselves.

2. The progressive tax scheme came straight out of the Communist Manifesto. That, and other teachings of Karl Marx, led to mass slaughter and squalor in the 20th Century.

3. You have more rights if you are suspected of serial murder and hiding the bodies under your flower beds in your backyard, than if you are suspected of tax evasion by the IRS.

4. Even if you are among the 47% who pay no federal income tax, you are still taxed through the gills through such means as taxes on the company you buy your food from, sales taxes, fuel and energy taxes, and anon. Rich or poor, we are all being robbed.

5. Yes, taxation and wealth redistribution are theft! If you're walking down the street and you had a beggar a $5 bill, you're virtuous. If, however, I hold a gun at your head, take your wallet, and hand it to that very same beggar you are NOT virtuous. You are a victim of armed robbery. This is exactly what the IRS is all about, since you will be faced with armed officers trying to arrest you (violence against you as an individual) should you disagree with any of the government's plans for your property -- that is, your money.

6. Capital gains taxes are punishments for success. The investments that result in capital gains create jobs and more wealth. Taxing such gains only discourages investment and job creation, impoverishing us all.

7. Your money, from whatever source, is the symbol of your labor. As such, it is your property. Neither I nor the government have any right to any of your money beyond what the Constitution allows the federal government to do. Were the Tenth Amendment to be enforced, fully 80% of the federal budget (probably much more nowadays) would be illegal and have to be returned to the people from whom it was confiscated.

8. A low, flat tax, with payments due from every taxpayer every month like a phone bill, would solve any number of ills facing America today: folks would see right away just how much the government was taking and start voting for lower tax rates, resources spent on accounting will go to more productive uses, the economy would flourish and jobs created, and the federal government would have far less power than it has today. All of these things would be better than what we have today.

9. The tax code, as it has become since FDR, is not to raise money, but to engineer society. This flies in the face of American ideals of Liberty. It is an attempt to control the very lives, thoughts and choices of every American who should otherwise be free.

10. Tax cheats aren't all bad! I mean, the Left loves Tim Geitner, Charley Rangel, David Dinkins, etc. Of course, for Republicans, it would be career ender. But for Democrats? Just like sex scandals, cheating on your taxes can be a resume enhancer.

Copyright April 19th, 2010

Constitution? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Constitution!

First of all, let me wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! I don't do the "Happy Holidays" nonsense, since the message of Christmas is "peace on earth, good will toward men". Therefore, it is a message for everyone, Christian or otherwise. So, again, Merry Christmas, everyone!

Do you remember all those civil liberties we lost to the tyrannical Bush Administration, thanks to the fear of terrorism and the Patriot Act? Remember all those people who had their library records ransacked by the FBI? The law abiding citizens whose phone calls were monitored by the Terrorist Surveillance Program?

Neither do I. Probably, because the accusations of "shredding the Constitution" were just the political posturings of a Left that was still deranged over their failed attempt to steal the 2000 election.

Normally, I don't get too exercised about government actions. Oh, sure! Each time a law is passed, that's just a little more of our precious Liberty dying on the vine. But it's one thing when it is done by our elected legislators and it involves our own institutions and bureaucracies. At least then we still had some representation in the matter. It's still wrong, but we were complicit.

But what if a foreign law enforcement agency were given a more free hand to operate in the United States than our own domestic police agencies? What if that foreign law enforcement agency answered to a foreign court that America has yet to recognize? What if said agency were immune to any attempt to seize its property or examine its archives? And what if this were done, not by a vote of our elected representatives, but through an executive order by the President?

This is precisely what The Messiah, President Barack H. Obama did on Dec. 17th, 2009 with Executive Order Number 13524. Apparently, this wasn't newsworthy, as News Busters found no mention of this travesty anywhere in the New York Times or the AP. You can read for yourselves the facts here and here.

First, let me give you a little history.

The US belongs to the International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL. Back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12425. This granted INTERPOL many of the privileges and and courtesies afforded diplomats and certain international organizations, as covered by the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288). However, recognizing that INTERPOL is a police agency, Reagan wisely made certain exceptions to the immunities and privileges granted to the international police.

Firstly, IINTERPOL was not granted to immunity from seizure of property. This would enable an American, wrongly accused by INTERPOL, to get satisfaction through legal suits. This is the sort of check and balance that helps keep our own domestic police from becoming oppressive.

Secondly, unlike other international organizations and diplomats, INTERPOL was made subject to the Freedom of Information Act, yet another check and balance against abuse of power by police.

What these two exceptions do, in essence, is subjugate INTERPOL to the same Constitutional restrictions that domestic police agencies have to work within. You, as an American, had the very same rights when under the investigation of INTERPOL, as you would have by the FBI or a local sheriff. And, should those rights be violated, you would have the legal right to investigate any possible wrong-doing and to seek redress.

It was bad enough when the priapic President Bill Clinton issued EO 12971. That gem amended EO 12425 to allow INTERPOL to be exempt from "the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes". Only the government's revenue stream was hurt there. Besides, I'm in favor of tax cuts, even the elimination of taxes, on everyone. So, if INTERPOL got a tax break, more power to them!

Saint Barack, however, violated his oath to protect and defend the Constitution with his EO 13524. But more on that later.

Recall what was written in Dopenhagen a couple of days ago. The original goal of the Copenhagen climate summit was a treaty that would establish a world government with the power to tax and to enforce its decisions, thereby destroying capitalism as we know it, all without the benefit of elected officials. Saint Barack was all about signing that treaty. He flew into a blizzard (See the Gore Effect ) to try to bring this New World Order Obamanation about.

Thankfully, negotiations went down in flames and all The Messiah was left with was an "accord" that was non-binding and had no teeth, but still promises billions to the governments of Third World nations to keep their people living in squalor.

Ah! But the Statists never quit and they never tire. Now, The Messiah, Saint Barack, has elevated INTERPOL, a foreign police agency, above the FBI. Indeed, INTERPOL has risen above even the Constitution itself!

You read that right, Folks! If INTERPOL comes knocking on your door, you have no right to demand a warrant. If wrongly accused, you have no right to seek redress, or even investigate their files for evidence that you were wronged. Nor are domestic police agencies any guarantee that INTERPOL plays by the rules. If you lived any amount of time in New York, you know how diplomats are above the law.

Some of you, mainly those on the Left, will say, "What's the big deal? He's the President and he has the right to issue executive orders! Every president does it! Besides, they give out diplomatic immunity, why not for INTERPOL?"

All of that may be true, except diplomats and most other international organizations are not police agencies. Diplomats can't search your premises, can't arrest you, can't bring charges against you to the International Criminal Court. The United States has not joined the ICC, by the way, since many of its provisions violate American sovereignty.

Did you know that INTERPOL has its American offices headquartered in the Justice Department in Washington, DC? Does this now mean that the Justice Department now has an inviolable stash to hide documents from the American people, immune to FOIA requests?

Be aware, ladies and gentlemen! The Left is committed to destroying the United States as a representative republic. It has been working toward this end since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We see this in the constant violations of the Constitution in such things as domestic spending, gun control, progressive taxes, the expanded powers of bureaucracy, climate treaties, even such simple semantic mechanisms such as substituting the word "republic" with "democracy".

The ultimate goal is the destruction of capitalism and the American way of life and the subjugation of the American people under a world government run by the very same Third World bureaucrats who brought you the Oil-for-Food scam and brothels and rape run by the "UN Peacekeepers" in Africa. All of this to be run by a few, well-connected elites like Maurice Strong and Al Gore, the Grand Prelate of the Church of Gore.

The time has come, my Friends, to look at just what was meant by "Yes We Can".

We had better before it's too late.

Copyright Dec. 24th, 2009

Obamacare Gives Me Agita!

Only government employees can come up with a product that will cost more, that practically no one likes, and requires two or three thousand pages to describe, which no one of them has read. Oh, and it all has to be done by Christmas or the nasty bits of the Book of Revelations might come about a little early.

I'm talking healthcare reform here, Folks! What was the undoing of the Clinton Administration with Hillarycare now stands a good chance of passing the Senate in the next couple of days -- "a Christmas present for the people", the all-but-embalmed Nancy Pelosi calls it.

Thanks, Nan! But I'll take coal, thank you very much!

Not one Republican senator will vote for this monstrosity. Hey, they even have to buy the votes of Democrats! No one really wants this, except, of course, for the Cloward-Piven elitists of academia, The Messiah Obama, and folks who just don't understand economics.

But we're going full speed ahead with this nightmare, all so Saint Barrak can cross healthcare off his list of promises. Folks! We are so screwed!

First, let's look at the stuff the Left doesn't like about the proposals as they currently stand:

1. It doesn't quite cover all the people that it promises. I know! The 55 million quote of people uninsured is a complete fabrication (subtract illegal aliens; folks who are just between jobs and soon to be covered again; people who choose not to buy insurance and the total is just a couple of million) but we were promised that all those millions of "uninsured" would get coverage. Saint Obama is falling a bit short here.
   
   
2. It looks like there will be restrictions on taxpayer funded abortions. Abortion, you see, is not just a right. It's an entitlement, you male chauvinist, sexist pig! What good is the right to abortion if you can't get the taxpayer to pay for it? This sentiment is best illustrated by Montag's Immutable Law of Nature Number Eight.
   
   
3. It seems that, among the horse trading needed to get all the Democrats on board, someone left out the public option. Ah, but you Progressives won't have to worry about that for long. Just wait for the conference. That's when all your favorite stuff will be put back in under the cover of night.
   
   
4. It doesn't punish the insurance companies enough. After all, how can we have Universal Healthcare if there are still private companies providing insurance?

Yes We Can! Er... kinda'... sort of... well, almost. Hey Lefties! Buyer's remorse setting in yet?

Oh, yes! The Left is quite bitter about this Marxist attempt to conquer one sixth of the nation's economy. You can tell when, even though it's their own senators holding up the "reforms", they still attack the Republicans, whom they had already decided not to include in their machinations. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), had this to say about the GOP:

"Voting 'no' and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.

They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one."

Can anyone recall the Democrats being courteous and non-destructive during the previous administration? As I recall, they even blamed George Bush for the No Child Left Behind Act, and that was written by Ted Kennedy (who, by the way, has just reached about five months sober!)

Sure, there is disquiet on The Messiah's Left flank, but there is an awful lot to dislike from the perspective of a Conservative:

1. Taxes, taxes, and, oh yeah! More taxes! These all start in the very first year of enactment, while the actual programs don't begin until 2014. There are also cuts in Medicare funding, which will make coverage for the elderly more expensive. And the added expense for business, particularly small business, is just what we need with unemployment surpassing 10% in a recession. We might have healthcare, but we won't have jobs!
   
   
2. While the words "death panels" might not actually appear in either the House or the Senate versions of the bill, we're still looking at unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats deciding such things as what insurance we must buy, what treatments will or will not be available, and which patients will be able to actually access such treatments. Many times, these decisions will be based upon the age of the patient, his "lifestyle" (Want to bet that smokers will get the same treatment as, say, promiscuous gays?), previous health conditions, likely number of "meaningful" years of life (to be decided by said bureaucrats) and so on and so forth.
   
   
3. Despite the fact that, at least so far, the public option doesn't seem to be in play, let's not forget the fact every social program we have today was supposed to be far more limited than they actually became. The current healthcare reform plans are merely the point of the wedge that will drive all private healthcare providers and insurers out of business and supplant them with top/down, command-and-control, full tilt Marxist hegemony over yet another big part of America's withering private sector.

OK! Enough about what the Left and I are against. What am I for? What do I propose to solve our healthcare woes?

Well, considering that almost every poll shows that 80% or more of Americans are actually quite satisfied with their healthcare coverage, perhaps we are trying to solve a "problem" that doesn't quite exist. I wouldn't be the first time. Just consider "Dopenhagen". Sometimes, our political class just needs the courage and the wisdom to simply do nothing.

But, if we really think we need to meddle, let's take a page from the Cato Institute:

1. Let individuals control their health care dollars, and free them to choose from a wide variety of health plans and providers.

2. Move away from a health care system dominated by employer-provided health insurance. Health insurance should be personal and portable, controlled by individuals themselves rather than government or an employer. Employment-based insurance hides much of the true cost of health care to consumers, thereby encouraging over-consumption. It also limits consumer choice, since employers get final say over what type of insurance a worker will receive. It means people who don’t receive insurance through work are put at a significant and costly disadvantage. And, of course, it means that if you lose your job, you are likely to end up uninsured as well.

3. Changing from employer to individual insurance requires changing the tax treatment of health insurance. The current system excludes the value of employer-provided insurance from a worker’s taxable income. However, a worker purchasing health insurance on their own must do so with after-tax dollars. This provides a significant tilt towards employer-provided insurance, which should be reversed.Workers should receive a standard deduction, a tax credit, or, better still, large Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for the purchase of health insurance, regardless of whether they receive it through their job or purchase it on their own.

4. We need to increase competition among both insurers and health providers. People should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines. One study estimated that that adjustment alone could cover 17 million uninsured Americans without costing taxpayers a dime.

5. We also need to rethink medical licensing laws to encourage greater competition among providers. Nurse practitioners, physician assistants, midwives, and other non-physician practitioners should have far greater ability to treat patients. Doctors and other health professionals should be able to take their licenses from state to state. We should also be encouraging innovations in delivery such as medical clinics in retail outlets.

6. Congress should give Medicare enrollees a voucher, let them choose any health plan on the market, and let them keep the savings if they choose an economical plan. Medicare could even give larger vouchers to the poor and sick to ensure they could afford coverage.

7. The expansion of “health status insurance” would protect many of those with preexisting conditions. States may also wish to experiment with high risk pools to ensure coverage for those with high cost medical conditions.

We don't really need a government run healthcare system. They never worked well where they were tried. Of course, should you want government to fund healthcare, there is a way that is also quite free market. This was proposed 15 years ago, again by the Cato Institute:

1. Take all the money we spend on Medicare/Medicaid right now and give each adult American citizen (I know! How exclusionary of me! ) a voucher that can only be deposited in special accounts for this purpose. These accounts will accrue interest, but disbursements can only be made to insurance providers or medical providers. Smaller vouchers will be given to parents for each child, so family coverage becomes available.
   
   
2. Require every recipient of said vouchers to purchase catastrophic health insurance with high deductibles. Such policies will be for major illnesses and such and should have quite low premiums for the vast majority of people.
   
   
3. Each American then pays for routine healthcare expenses from the amount in his healthcare savings account. Again, the checks drawn from this account can only go to insurance or medical providers.
   
   
4. Each year, whatever is left over in the account rolls over to the next year, giving the recipient more each year, provided he spends it wisely.
   
   
5. At the end of ten years, the recipient can choose to keep the excess money in the account or pocket it for his own uses.

The beauty of this idea is that it gets the government out of the medical coverage business

( Medicare/Medicaid ) while putting the consumer in charge of the actual expenditures. At the same time, medical providers are forced to compete for customers as they never had to under our current system or under Obamacare. This will keep prices much lower and encourage innovation. Meanwhile, the consumer has incentive to avoid unnecessary medical procedures and to keep an eye on possible fraud -- fraud to which Medicare/Medicaid and, ultimately Obamacare, are all too susceptible.

Ah! The free market! It works every time it's tried!

It's just a shame that our governing class just can't seem to let go of all that power.

Copyright Dec. 22, 2009

DOPENHAGEN

Yup!  You read that right, my Friends!

"Dopenhagen" is the only way to spell that fiasco!  The only folks who have anything to cheer about are those of us on the Right.  The Left are almost apoplectic about the abysmal failure of the United Nations to achieve the stated goals of the the grand conclave in Denmark.

And what were those goals?  Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley  has already said it best.  But, in a nutshell, allow me to state those goals in my own words:

1. The establishment of a world government with no provisions for elections, legislatures, or any other form of representative governance.
   
   
2. The transfer of vast sums of money and property from the developed world ( read that as "the United States") to the Third World in order to satisfy our "climate debt".  Ostensibly, these are a form of reparations for the "destruction of the environment" due to our profligate burning of fossil fuels.
   
   
3. Enforcement of these nefarious provisions, without any sort of popular representation or ballots, thereby condemning the Western World to poverty and squalor through the ruining of our economy.  Incidentally, this will also condemn the Third World to abject poverty, since it will, in effect, be turned into a massive and expensive welfare client.  Students of history should be aware of the failure of welfare states to improve anyone's state in life.
   
   

Thankfully, the Copenhagen Conference failed to achieve those stated goals.  They accomplished neither a binding treaty nor even an agreement.  What they came up with was merely an "Accord".  Totally non-binding, it is nothing more than a further statement of desired goals, with none of the Marxist trappings the UN was hoping for.

This silver lining isn't without its cloud, however.  It still provides for vast sums of money and property to be spent on the Third World.  The Copenhagen Accord is still a failure, albeit a very expensive failure.

Now, lest anyone doubt that the goals of the Copenhagen Conference were, indeed, Marxist and totalitarian, please take note of three very well-received speakers at the festivities:  Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Robert Mugabe.  Jonah Goldberg, in today's New York Post, can give you all the details.  One national-socialist dictator after another blamed capitalism in general, and the US in particular, for all the ills of the world -- real and imagined.

Mr. Goldberg even mentioned this delicious irony from the redoubtable Hugo Chavez:

In a typical stemwinder, he belched: "Capitalism is a destructive model that is eradicating life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species."

I don't know how to say "chutzpah" in Spanish, but you've got to hand it to the leader of the world's No. 5 supplier of oil for bemoaning the system that keeps his regime afloat by buying his product.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/wackos_pollute_the_eco_debate_bfMN07qTS6UVqTQUapwnoM#ixzz0aBKhYbQh

 And just how well-received were these tin pot dictators?  Warm applause and exuberant standing ovations.  This, according Lord Monckton, from even members of the developed world, industrial nations who should know better than to sway towards socialism.  And we have far too many of them.

The Messiah, President Barrak Obama, braving a blizzard of snow -- uh, I mean Global Warming,  flew in to Copenhagen toward the end to try to salvage the negotiations.  With much media fanfare, he angrily exhorted China, India, Brazil and South Africa to drop their intransigent demands that they be allowed to burn as much fossil fuel as they want.

Claiming victory in his negotiations (some of which he had to crash, as he wasn't even invited) Saint Barrak promised billions of aid to the Third World and folded to the Group of Four in their demands that they be allowed to burn fossil fuel.

Immediately following this stellar example of diplomacy, The Messiah flew back to Washington, DC, to avoid the worst of today's blizzard that is blanketing the East Coast.

Let's ignore, for today, the delicious irony of The Gore Effect.  What we need to focus on is the reaction of the Left.  It is most instructive:

• The UK Guardian reports on the almost universal reaction that the summit was an abject failure, quoting almost exclusively Left leaning NGO's and environmental groups.
  
  
• The EuroNews web site reports that the Sudan is far from happy, quoting the African delegate, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping:  

“[The Accord] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact. It is a solution based on the values which, in our opinion, channelled six million people in Europe to the (Nazi) furnaces.”

•  The UK Telegraph reports the talks resulted in "a meltdown".
  
  
• SFGate's Thin Green Line blog said the accord was a " 'sham' and a 'greenwash' at best".
  
  
• GMANews.TV tells of Green protests at the summit against the Accord, quoting Bill McKibben, of 350.org:  "I don't know why we bothered to go and elect Obama."  At YouTube, you can see a video of these protests, complete with chants of "Yes We Can!  No They Won't!"

These are but a few of the reactions from the Left.  On the Right, however, that breeze you feel is a collective sigh of relief that global government and the enforced and totalitarian impoverishment of all the world has, for now at least, been averted.

But don't ever think that these crypto-Marxists are going to go away.  They'll be back and we'll have to be ready for them!

Copyright December 19th, 2009

 

Climategate and The Church of Gore

I've been too long, not writing... I know! But I've been busy with my music and acting careers. However, I have been keeping up with current events.

The most interesting, in my mind, has been the eruption of Climategate. It seems that either a hacker or an insider whistleblower released thousands of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The various documents (you can read them here) show the most important proponents of Manmade Global Warming (also known as the Dogma of the Church of Gore) to be obsessed with showing manmade warming regardless of the data, denying skeptics of The Dogma peer review or inclusion in the IPCC reports, trying to prevent their data from being disseminated through the Freedom of Information Act, and other unseemly and unscientific behavior.

Now, I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories, as these newly liberated documents seem to demonstrate. It is precisely because there was a leak that leads me to discount most, if not all, conspiracy theories. After all, someone will eventually screw the whole thing up and blow the secrecy of the conspiracy apart.

That said, I'd like to offer a second hypothesis to explain why so many scientists, politicians and bureaucrats seem to be true devotes of The Church of Gore. I wrote the following in Scientific American, in response to an article entitled Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense. Among other points, the author whitewashed the Climategate scandal as much ado about nothing and relegated the skeptics to the fever swamps of conspiracy theories. It is with that weak attempt at shoring up the crumbling edifice of The Church of Gore in mind that I wrote the following explanation of how we can have what appears to be a conspiracy, and yet have no conspiracy at all:

Well, it took SciA long enough to get to the Climategate story!

Unfortunately, it only resulted in a child plugging his ears and yelling, "La, La, La! I can't hear you!"

I won't claim there has been a Warmist conspiracy. However, one can't deny that there has been, shall we say, a confluence of agendae. It works like this:

1. Scientists, by and large, depend on government financing.
   
   
2. Governments, by their very nature, strive to increase their power over the people that they govern.
   
   
3. Bureaucrats are the primary mechanism of government. Generally they are immune to the checks and balances that elected officals are face with. Even dictators are hemmed in by "the will of the people" at some point. Bureaucrats, too, have an insatiable appetite for power. And they are the ones holding he purse strings.
   
   
4. Government, by its very nature, will be more predisposed to funding research that will further its ambitions to power than research that does not.
   
   
5. Scientists, therefore, have a financail stake in the sort of research they pursue. Dissent is quietly "defunded" and a "consensus" appears.
   
   

If there is any doubt of my observations, one needs merely to consider the proposed "solutions" to the "problem" of AGW/ACC:

1. Strict control over the people regarding their energy usage, the types of cars they drive, mass transit plans, etc.
   
   
2. Carbon taxes, which will ensure that economic activity will be sharply curtailed.
   
   
3. A "world government", which makes interaction between the government and the governed even more tenuous than it is today.
   
   
4. "Wealth redistribution", not only from the developed world to the Third World, but from industry to the new, burgeoning class of "Carbon Billionaires", like Al Gore. This will also have the undesirable effect of turning the Third World into backwards welfare clients, with no hope of joining modernity and freedom.

Sorry, Mr. Rennie. Your claims that there is no "cospiracy" do nothing to address the fact that there are agendae which dovetail together quite nicely. Further, the emails make clear that this problem is worldwide, not limited to the Hadley/CRU. Indeed, it goes right up to the UN and its hopes of becoming the government of the world.

Time to face facts, my Friend! Your appeals to authority are nothing short of totalitarian.

Copyright December 2nd, 2009

The Fascists of the Left

So, what does Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg think about Roe v. Wade? In her own words:

"Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

Yes, Folks! You read that right. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg once believed that abortion on demand was legalized to rid ourselves of undesirable people. In an interview to be published in the Sunday New York Times Magazine she, in fact, expands upon this theme:

"...Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the Court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.”

This is absolutely stunning! A veritable demi-goddess of the American Left has actually come out and stated unequivocally that the original intent for Roe v. Wade was to actually pay poor and other undesirable women to kill their babies, thereby reducing the populations of those "that we don’t want to have too many of."

Of course, anyone familiar with Montag's World would know that this was the original intention of Planned Parenthood, as evidenced by the writings of its founder, Margaret Sanger. For the full details, please see Real Racism and its Lethal Consequences. Reading the writings of Ms. Sanger and her compatriot, Lothrop Stoddard, one cannot escape the conclusion that Justice Ginsberg really wasn't all that far from the mark.

There really are no two ways about it: Planned Parenthood and Justice Ginsberg are all about ridding the world of the minderwertig -- German for "shoddy" or "inferior" or those "that we don't want to have too many of."

And what was the McRae decision that Justice Ginsberg lamented? This decision upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid funding for abortion. So, what she has a problem with is that folks who have fundamental moral and ethical difficulties with abortion don't have to pay for the abortions for poor women -- women among those "that we don't want to have too many of".

Yes, you see, those morally priggish Pro-Lifers who don't want to be a party to wholesale slaughter have made abortion available only to the wealthy! Basically, what Justice Ginsberg is saying is that, despite your moral or ethical qualms about abortion, you should still have to pay for it.

The modern Left is all about choice, you know. So long as that choice is the death of innocents. They don't believe in choice when it comes to smoking, guns, driving your car, managing your own land, what "charity" you want your taxes to go to, what radio show to listen to, how much carbon you consume, etc.

It is even getting to the point where if you merely disagree with a Liberal you are engaging in "hate speech"

• Global warming skeptics are called "deniers", as if disagreeing with a questionable prediction was tantamount to defending the Reiche.
  
  
• The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, an example of misleading advertising, would make the sermons of conservative preachers criminal, while offering protection to all types of sexual deviancies listed by the American Psychiatric Association. Democrats in Congress flatly refused to omit pedophiles from the protections of the bill. Indeed, Attorney General Eric Holder testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that ministers, priests, soldiers and most other Americans would get no such protections. What is being legislated is speech and thought.
  
  
• Although there is no formal effort to reinstate the much maligned Fairness Doctrine in its original form, there is a big push to empower local activist groups, almost exclusively on the Left, to implement "community standards" and encourage "diversity in ownership". In true Orwellian fashion, these innocuous sounding policies would force radio stations to give up their most profitable and popular programming: Conservative talk radio. In short, we have censorship without ever using the word.
  
  

What is truly ironic about all of this is that it is the Left that keeps accusing Conservatives of fascism. Truth be told, their policy ideas are far more in tune with fascism than anything from the Right. And can you imagine the breathless outrage and gnashing of the teeth were Justice Ginsberg a Conservative? I can just imagine Keith Olberman's head exploding!

Apparently, though, even Eugenics is part of their agenda! Could the American Left be indulging in projection?

copyright July 11, 2009 by Gregory Indelicato

Promises, Promises!

Remember, back in the 2008 presidential campaign? Back when the AP "fact checked" GOP predictions that Saint Obama would raise taxes? Of course, the Saintly One was promising to raise taxes on only the wealthiest of Americans, promising that 95% of taxpayers will see either a decline in taxes or that they will remain the same.

Naturally, one month after inauguration, President Obama kept that promise by signing into law a 62-cent-a-pack cigarette tax. Now, my math may not be all that good, but surely more than 5% of the American population are smokers impacted by that tax hike. In fact, I went and checked for myself. According to Web MD, smokers account for just under 20% of America's population.

Apparently, my pocket calculator is defective, because I just subtracted 20% from 100% and I didn't come up with 95%. Maybe the Justice Department should look into this matter!

But it's not just the taxes on cigarettes that gives one pause. Let's look at some other policy matters that the Blessed Barack is pursuing:

The Stimulus Packages:

Now, I know many folks will say that these didn't involve tax hikes. Perhaps not directly. However, with "Obamanomics" needing to print money in amounts that would deforest major land masses, the devaluation of the dollar and the unnatural tightening of the money supply as cash goes into favored industries and institutions will put a major hurt on the average taxpayer. We're talking about job creation, economic displacements caused by government intrusion into the market place, and recessions and depressions.

Any economist worth his salt will tell you, for instance, that FDR's policies (which President Obama has doubled down on with a vengence) prolonged rather than cured the Great Depression. Indeed, we were told that passage of his monstrous stimulus package was needed to hold unemployment at 8%. Now that we're closing in on 10% and higher, his people are out telling us we need another stimulus.

Can we get off the ride now?

Health Care:

President Obama is promising health care coverage to every American, citing the "travesty" of 43 to 47 million people with no coverage. Forget that this touted figure is bogus --subtract illegal aliens, folks who got coverage within a year of losing it, folks who choose not to buy insurance, and factor in the fact that it is a matter of law that all folks who seek medical attention get it. You just have to ask the obvious question: How does he expect to pay for it? The fact is, you and I, rich or poor, small business or large -- all of us are on the hook for the tab. Sure, Saint Barak has promised the average family would save $2,500 a year in insurance costs.

But is that likely, or even plausible? Last month, the Washington Post reported that "Obama conveyed his concern over early pronouncements by the Congressional Budget Office that a bill drafted by the Senate health committee would cover just 16 million additional people at a cost of $1 trillion". That's a lot more than the $60 to $65 billion a year promised during the campaign. And what about the 24 to 28 million who don't get covered?

Take a look at what the intent, if not the actual claims by proponents, of the various schemes that are bandied about. The Heritage Foundation noted: "Less than 24 hours after Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner questioned the veracity of President Obama’s persistent claim that, under his health care proposals, “if you like your insurance package you can keep it”, the White House has begun to walk the President’s claim back." Basically, government-run health care will inevitably drive the private sector out of the insurance business.

So, what do people think about their present coverage? According to Fox News, a Kaiser Foundation survey found that "89 percent of Americans were satisfied with their own personal medical care". If that's the case, then why do we need to nationalize yet another industry?

Then there's the question of rationing. I hate to break this to you Leftists out there, but the only way to contain costs to even unrealistic levels is to ration your health care. Sure, I know! Insurance companies deny coverage for one reason or another, thus a form of rationing. But then, you can ply your business with another insurance company or pay for the denied treatment out of your own pocket. But where do you turn when it is the federal government that is the insurance company, and your private company was driven out of the business?

So what would getting a needed procedure that is banned by the up and coming health care czars be worth to you? Isn't the denial by bureaucrats of certain medical procedures a sort of tax?

The Climate Change Bill:

If you know my stuff, you know I don't buy into the whole Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) nonsense. Besides, this essay is about taxes. Which brings us to our next topic: the Climate Change Bill.

Essentially, in what is euphemistically called "Cap And Trade", the government would set limits on how much CO2 a given business can release into the atmosphere. If said business exceeds this arbitrary amount, it will be fined. However, should another business actually admit less CO2 than the first, that first business can buy "carbon credits" from the second, allowing the first to emit more CO2. Every few years, the government will reduce the permissible levels of CO2 emissions until we reach a Green Nirvana of no AGW.

This bureaucratic nightmare is touted by the Left as a "free market solution". But it is nothing of the sort. Once again, the free market is distorted by government meddling to solve a problem that exists only in the fevered imaginations of the Eco-Marxists. All that would be created is yet another bloated bureaucracy strangling the host (see Montag's First Immutable Law of Nature) and solving nothing. Meanwhile, idiots like Algore get rich trading in carbon credits while wandering the globe in their private jets and massive motorcades.

But we were talking taxes, weren't we? You see, buying these carbon credits and paying the fines for violating the limits are all taxes. Oh, not directly on you, the taxpayer, but on the companies you buy goods and services from, on the companies you work for. These added costs will ultimately be passed to the consumer. Employees will find fewer job opportunities among affected businesses. The only job growth will be in the government, in the bureaucracy that will be created to police this monstrosity.

Should this become law, you can expect a doubling or tripling of energy costs. You'll find that, even though GM and Chrysler got a bailout, you still can't afford to drive. We'll see Jimmy Carter's idea of energy independence, as we all turn down the thermostat and button up our sweaters. And, naturally, as the old joke goes: "the poor, women and minorities will be hardest hit."

Yep! We were promised that 95% of us wouldn't see a tax hike at all under President Obama. So let me ask you, Obamaniacs: How's that working out for you?

Copyright July 10th, 2009 by Gregory Indelicato

If War Is Not the Answer, What Was the Question?

This essay was written to the Comments section of New Scientist Magazine at this link: "Winning The Ultimate Battle"

War is not the answer? Well, doesn't that depend on the question?

No one really wants war, yet sometimes it is necessary. How else can someone like Hitler be contained?

In fact, I maintain that the modern peace movement has probably killed millions of people more than all the wars of the 20th Century. Consider the 100 million or more killed under Communist regimes like the Soviet Union, China under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot, or Cuba under the Castros. The peace movement effectively disarmed truly enlightened societies and prevented them from removing these murderous governments.

Furthermore, America has been drawn into wars almost every time it has been perceived to be weak. World War II is a classic example. The combined pressures of the Depression and FDR's military cuts left us vulnerable to both Nazi and Japanese aggression. A large, well-trained and equipped military is the single best guarantor against aggression and, thus, war.

A world government might actually be worse than a world with war. As things stand now, many people can actually "vote with their feet" and leave nations that are not conducive to a free and peaceful life. True, many dictatorships make that extremely difficult, but alternatives still exist. Were we to have a world government, where would dissidents go? Everywhere would be under the jurisdiction of that government. Without the competition of other forms of government, that world government would stagnate and become even more corrupt than the individual governments we now have.

Just because our present ways of doing things aren't perfect, doesn't mean that we can improve things with wholesale change. One must always keep in mind that old maxim:

Be careful what you wish for -- you might just get it!

Copyright June 9, 2009 Gregory Indelicato

UN HUMAN WRONGS COUCIL

It might come as no surprise that, here at Montag's World, we take a dim view of the United Nations. Despite the glowing and benign intentions expressed by the founders of this institution, the best that can be said about it is that it has become a debating forum for corrupt, third-rate, anti-Semitic, Third World bureaucrats.

Worse, it is totally incapable of seeing how corrupt, inept and ineffective it is. Despite, for instance, the absolute corruption of the UN Oil For Food program, Secretary General Koffi Annan was allowed to continue in his post. The UN is incapable of stopping any war or human rights violations, nor can it even recognize genocide, as exhibited by their fecklessness toward the Sudan and Darfur.

While siding with America's enemies at every turn, they insist upon destroying our own sovereignty. Yet they rely on our largess for their anti-American, anti- Liberty programs.

Perhaps the best solution to the problem I've heard involved moving the UN, approximately 500 feet to the East. Of course, that's mere humor and satire, since that would put the UN smack in the middle of the East River. But it does illustrate the frustration and anger that this world body engenders in many Americans.

Many Americans, that is, that are not members of the Left.

This may be something of a continuation of a theme from yesterday's column. For what we will examine today is the new UN Human Rights Council and its official in charged with investigating Israel, Prof. Richard Falk, of Princeton University.

It is perhaps laughable, if it weren't so despicable, that the United Nations has formed this council (see the story at NPR) to review all 192 member states of the UN regarding their human rights records. However, the first nation they plan on investigating is Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. If that weren't bad enough, they unanimously chose Prof. Falk to lead the investigation.

So, who is Prof. Richard Falk? Why is he such a wrong choice for a study of the Israeli-Palestinian situation?

Prof. Richard Falk is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus at Princeton University, Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a member of the World Federalist Institute, an organization dedicated to forming a world government and abolishing nation states.

In short, Prof. Falk is an extreme Leftist.

That the UN Human Rights Council selected him to a six year term investigating Israeli behavior vis a vis the Palestinians is curious, to say the least. According to the BBC, he is on record "drawing the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity, because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza."

Hello! Israel is under daily attack by Muslims, and they are guilty of atrocities? Is this at all a point of concern to the Left? Probably not.

Nor is Prof. Falk backing down from his comments. The BBC further elucidates with another quote:

"If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison."

Apparently, Prof. Falk wasn't paying attention to the UN and its failure to condemn China and the Sudan.

To say that Prof. Falk is anti-Israel would be to vastly understate the case. The man has no willingness to at all consider the simple fact that Israel was the first free nation in the Middle East, that Palestinians in Israel have more freedom and Liberty than in any other Arab nation.

But then, Prof. Falk seems to be incapable of understanding that Islamo-fascists are really out to kill Americans and bring the Global Caliphate to fruition. The New York Sun reports that he is also calling for a UN investigation into the role of American neo-cons in the 9/11 attacks.

That's right, folks! Richard Falk is also one of those 911Truth.org maniacs. These are those poor, deluded souls who think that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were really inside jobs, perpetrated by the Bush administration at the urging of the neo-cons, for the express purpose of invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

Please note that Liberals always use the word "neo-cons" as a euphemism for "Jews". Just as they engage in projection when claiming Conservatives are bigots (see Real Racism and its Lethal Consequences in yesterday's Montag's World) the tag, "neo-cons" is a code word. In this way, they can deflect any accusations of anti-Semitism.

Not only did Prof. Falk write the forward for David Ray Griffin's 2004 conspiracy theory book, The New Pearl Harbor, he actively sought to find a publisher for the book.

On March 24th, 2008, Prof. Falk, in an interview with radio host Kevin Barrett, said the following:

"It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official inves-igation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess."

He doesn't think he can answer the question of whether Americans made 9/11 happen? This, my Friends, is nothing short of wading in the fever swamps of paranoia. Why is this man allowed to walk about among us without adult supervision?

Kevin Barrett isn't much better, by the way. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth. Naturally, he speaks well of the demented professor saying, "I would put him on a list of scholars who are sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement."

As can be seen from this YouTube clip, Mr. Barrett honestly believes that Islamo-fascists had nothing to do with 9/11, and that there is no reason to believe that other terrorist attacks around the world were by Muslims.

Of course, from my personal experience of graduates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I'm not really surprised. This is the most extreme of the most extreme Left in America. If Mr. Barrett was a professor there, and he was, that would go a long way to explain my radically Liberal friends who graduated from that school.

Getting back to the subject, though, here we have a man, who is obviously opposed to Israel and its right to defend itself from aggression, who has long been involved in anti-American causes, who actually contributes to the mental miasma known as 911Truth. And the United Nations appoints him to study Israeli violations of human rights?

Folks, the facts are clear. The United States has no business being in the United Nations. If they want to meet in New York, then let them pay the rent that the real estate actually deserves. While those Third World bureaucrats are at it, maybe they can also pay their parking tickets.

The UN has, without a doubt, long ago passed its use-by date. Time for America to get out and start leading the Free World!

Copyright April 10th, 2008

REAL RACISM AND ITS LETHAL CONSEQUENCES

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
--Margaret Sanger

With the arrival of the first post-racial candidate, Saint Obama, America seems to have embarked upon yet another "conversation" about race. Of course, the Sainted One wasn't talking about that until we found out what a racist loon his pastor and his grandmother, at least by Obama's reckoning, are.


Still, the call is out to bring Americans together and to try to bury this ugly spectre from our sordid past. Or, at least, that's what the Left is claiming. Truth be told, they would never voluntarily let go of racsim and the power it bestows.


It's remarkable how little attention is paid to the intimate connections between the Left and the Democrats and things like eugenics, segregation, Jim Crow, and slavery. Trent Lott says some nice things about a nonagenarian who once was a segregationist, and he finds himself pilloried. Meanwhile, no one says boo about Robert Byrd, a grand wizard from the Ku Klux Klan, who never renounced his allegiance to that sorry organization.


But this isn't about the pernicious double standards of the day. This about institutional racism and the attempt to breed away black Americans. This campaign was spearheaded by that champion of progressive ideals, the feminists' uber feminist, that stalwart pioneer of women's reproductive rights, Margaret Sanger.


Recent discoveries, thanks to an undercover investigation, have shown shown that, as recently as 2006, Planned Parenthood offices in several states, were eager to accept donations from actors who portrayed themselves as bigots. They said that they wanted their donations to go to only aborting black babies. The worst criticism of these remarks came from an administrator at Planned Parenthood, Lisa Hutton, who smirked and said, "Whatever!" Other officials were even less upset. You can see the video made about this investigation here.


In 2004, World Net Daily reported that several black male employees of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles had filed racial and gender discrimination suits against the organization. It seems that white women were harassing and firing the black men. An attorney for two of the claimants said it's "unfortunate to find out that PPLA, as a chief promoter of 'tolerance and diversity' is engaging in what appears to be a most primitive form of hate against its own employees."


Is it surprising? Well, if you really believe that Planned Parenthood is all about "tolerance and diversity", I find that not only surprising, but disturbing as well.

Planned Parenthood is America's largest provider of abortions. That they also provide for other women's health needs is beside the point. It is a statistical fact that most Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority and urban neighborhoods.


It is probably not surprising that the Almanac of Policy Issues finds that "The abortion ratio for black women (503 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (167 per 1,000 live births)." That is a stunning figure, given that the Infoplease.com almanac puts the total percentage of the American black population at 12.7% as of 2002.


For an organization as involved with "tolerance and diversity", this is especially telling. Of course, if anyone was at all familiar with the history of Planned Parenthood, its parent (for lack of a better word) organization (The American Birth Control League) and its founder, Margaret Sanger, there would be no surprise at all.


Margaret Sanger was one of eleven children, born of a devout Roman Catholic mother and a socialist activist father. After an unhappy marriage, she began working on birth control issues, ultimately founding the American Birth Control League in New York City with Lothrop Stoddard and C.C. Little. While Little's career seems to be benign, the same cannot be said for Sanger and Stoddard, both of whom were outspoken proponents of eugenics, the process of improving the human race by weeding out the "lesser" breeds.


Sanger often spoke out against the unbridled reproduction of the poor, the mentally and physically deficient and the insane. Of course, she was also including blacks and Jews in that list of deficient gene donors. Of blacks she said: "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Of birth control, she said its purpose was "to create a race of thoroughbreds."


Sounds rather Klan-ish, doesn't it? Of course, throughout her career, Margaret Sanger was a speaker much in demand at chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, although she herself thought they were rather dullards. Still, they supported her plans to "purify" the race.


In 1939, Sanger founded the Negro Project, garnering support from many of the black churches of the day, despite the sub rosa element of eugenics and the elimination the blacks. Said Sanger about getting black doctors and clergymen on board with the Negro Project:

"I note that you doubt it worthwhile to employ a full-time Negro physician. It seems to me from my experience ... that, while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table, which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and ... knowledge, which ... will have far-reaching results among the colored people

"The minister's work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

Lovely sentiments, no? If you think dear Margaret was beyond the pale, you should get a load of Lothrop Stoddard. This guy's writings were avidly read (and tragically implemented) by Adolph Hitler. Eventually, they became the basis for the philosophy of Pan-Aryanism, which has since been embraced by the White Supremacist movement.


These are the philosophical underpinnings of Planned Parenthood: racism, ethnic purity, white supremacy, forced sterilizations, sneaking their murderous schemes under the noses of the very same black intellectuals that they used as their cover.


And their efforts continue to this day, as evidenced by the opening of this essay. It's hardly surprising that the eugenicists were closely allied with the socialists, the conservationists, indeed, every group that, today, would be called Left wing.

Consider issues beyond birth control and abortion. Al Gore and his Global Warmists would deny modernization to the Third World "to avoid the catastrophe" that industrialization would bring to the world, thereby oppressing blacks and other minorities to squalor, starvation, disease and death. Consider that America's drug laws were largely supported with such racist headlines as "Nine out of Ten Rapes Against White Women in the South are the Direct Result of the Coke Crazed Negro Mind". Consider that, the minimum wage was originally touted as a way "to keep the brown and the Chinese people out of our jobs". Look at affirmative action, which tells minorities that they can't possibly make it in this world without white Liberals to give them extra perks.


Yes, the list just goes on and on. But that's just point. When Liberals call Republicans in general, and Conservatives in particular, racist, they are engaging in the most base projection. They are looking at us, seeing themselves, and blaming it on us.


Yup! The Democratic Party and the Left! The Once, Present, and Future Home of Racism in America!


Copyright April 9th, 2008