Colorado Democrats intend to eliminate the electoral college in Colorado. [Read more…]
Denver Tea Party
Approximately 5000 people had their cup of tea at the state house in Denver on tax day, and their message to limit spending was heard loud and clear by the Colorado House in session inside the capital building who were, coincidentally, debating the state budget. I did not see a single disruptive demonstrator, nor did I hear any angry conversations. People had a great time; it was a party atmosphere with a serious side. There was no evidence of overriding organization, of Fox News’ involvement, or of any commercial posters or signs of the sort you see at a political party rally.
Videos of speeches:
Gunny Bob
Jon Caldara
Mike Coffman
Tom Lucero
Mike Kopp
Lenina Close
IBD: The Tea Party System
The following pictures are higher density than I usually post so they can be enlarged to read the various signs. Click on them to enlarge. [Read more…]
drink deep
corruption of the curriculum
School curriculum corrupted by politics
“The school curriculum has been corrupted by political interference, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas. The traditional subject areas have been hi-jacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the government’s social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students.
more Delingpole
“One of the things that has always puzzled me about Greens, as no doubt it has puzzled you, is how people who are supposedly dedicated to all the nice things in life–nature, animals, trees–can yet be so astonishingly vicious, nasty, bullying, and downright fascistic in their policies. It’s what makes them such a dangerous political movement. At least with the Nazis you knew where you stood: they were never in it for the peace, love, and harmony. Nor were the Stalinists; nor were the Maoists; nor are the Islamofascists. It’s much easier to take a stand against a cause whose values are quite clearly inimical to your own. Much harder when they’re whispering gently in your ear idyllic visions of a brighter, cleaner, more natural future where the lion shall lie down with the lamb and those Truffula trees will blossom once more.”
Welcome to Obamaland
James Delingpole
From: Welcome to Obamaland
“I could go on but it’s too depressing. I cite them merely to give you a taste of the smorgasbord of scuzzballs, incompetents, timeservers, Communists, class warriors, eco-loons, single-issue rabble-rousers, malcontents, and losers who always rise to the surface during a left-liberal administration.
You’ve seen some of these types in action before. The John Murthas and the Chuck Schumers. The James Carvilles and the Al Sharptons. The Barney Franks and the Henry Waxmans. And it’s bearable when there’s not too many of them. Almost amusing even because they can act as bogeymen: the whacko villains who you just love to hate.
Where it becomes a problem–as you’re about to discover, if you haven’t already–is when your ruling administration consists of nothing but these people. No longer do they qualify as light relief. They become your daily nightmare.”
Elco Dem Reorg
Elbert County Democrats
Mission Statement
The new Elbert County Democratic Party is building toward the future with the fresh ideas, energy, and commitment needed to help build our local economy, make our county a more desirable place in which to live and work.With Bill Ritter as our Governor and a Democratic majority in Colorado State Legislature, the Elbert County Democrats are poised to work in harmony with the State Party to provide the leadership that Elbert County needs to overcome the current financial and social woes that have resulted from over a decade of single party rule in Kiowa.Elbert County Democrats are determined to establish a positive presence in the local government and the county’s social fabric. The Democrats are committed to providing new solutions to helping Elbert County grow and simultaneously preserving our rural tradition. The Elbert County Democrats resolve to offer county residents a richer alternative to the local Republican Party by means of effectiveness and transparency.
Grades:
A+ for good intentions.
F if they use tax money and government regulation to accomplish them.
Act I
(click to enlarge)
May we have an Intermission now? I need a couple drinks before Act II starts.
politics by any means
Paula Koch at October 8th Planning Commission meeting
“As a citizen I just needed to get on the record, I am tired of paying for the legal fees that have been incurred by the BOCC not following the vision of the master plan and the regulations of this county.”
“[I] would love to see this continued until after new commissioners take office.”
Over the years Ms. Koch’s liberalism has become a familiar fixture in Elbert County politics. As a promoter of regulatory planning, she’s been appointed to a Planning Commission of like-minded regulators.
Conversion of the Elbert County Master Plan to a regulatory document has been effected without a vote of the people and Ms. Koch helped by her encouragement of preventing the last BOCC from adjudicating the question.
The Planning Commission needed an appointment of an individual with a higher regard for private property rights than Ms. Koch has shown. It is unfortunate that Commissioner Schwab passed up an opportunity to appoint someone who would defend all property rights, not just the rights of property holders who have a no-growth prejudice.
Death Tax
Colorado Ranchers Pray for Death of ‘Death Tax’
Farmers also can use conservation easements. They donate land to a qualifying tax-exempt or governmental organization and agree to keep it as open space or use it for agriculture, said Durst.
Adding up all exemptions, Durst projects that less than 1 percent of farms will be subject to the estate tax in 2009.
It’s interesting how Ron Durst, senior economist for the Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, and the Associated Press consider donating your land to the government to be a tax exemption. Let me get this straight, if the government takes a portion of your wealth, that’s taxation, but if you give the government all of your wealth, then it’s a tax exemption.
I guess so, but only because you’ll have nothing left to tax.
Putin throws Obama under the bus
“Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence is another possible mistake.
True, the state’s increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.
The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.
Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.
And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.”
The following text is a transcript of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Porkulus Rex
Read it and weep.
change that defies belief
Surreal Spending
The House is poised to take a final vote on the compromise $800-billion spending bill on, appropriately, Friday the 13th, with the Senate likely to follow soon after.
In my 36 years in Washington, I have never seen such a surreal environment, with hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed taxpayer money being spent without committee hearings or even meaningful public debate over the thousands of new and expanded programs the bill funds. [Read more…]
division in the name of diversity
The Left’s obsessions with race, economic class, gender, sexual preference, national origin, handicap status, and political action, guarantee that there will be nothing bipartisan, post-partisan, or unifying, about their majority governance of America. It is absurd to expect unification from people who think about little else than what divides us. From their elite perch on high they see redistribution of wealth from one American to another as an equalizing force that sets right the unjust and immoral hierarchy of different economic outcomes. The facts that the world values and rewards people differently, that people have different productive capacities, and that the Left’s arbitrary uncoupling of productive capacity from financial reward actually creates more division, all seem to escape them. Maybe after they turn productive Americans into another minority group they will see the wreckage their policies have always caused. Fortunately, notwithstanding the dictates from our new Leftist government, Americans will continue to order themselves, value themselves, and think for themselves. At the rate things change these days, it won’t take long before the futility of Obamanomics becomes apparent even to the Left.
Misunderstanding Rush Limbaugh
[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]
Today the Los Angeles Times devoted a portion of its front page and more than a thousand words to Rush Limbaugh, and like most liberal media organs that have examined what we might call the Limbaugh phenomenon, they fail in their effort to help readers understand it. This is a failure that might have been avoided had the writers merely listened to his program.
The article quotes Rich Bond, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The question is,” Bond says, “are we going to have an all-white-man litmus test under the Republican Party? Or is there room for diverse opinion on environmental issues, on the issue of right to life, the issue of taxes and spending?”
Thus the article advances the notion that Limbaugh’s views are retrograde, that today’s Republicans should somehow reach accommodation with those who advocate for increased government regulation on environmental issues, increased taxes and government spending, and, worst of all, abortion on demand.
Rubbish. As anyone who listens to Limbaugh’s program with any regularity can attest, he is not the least bit interested in finding accommodation with policies that are corrosive to freedom at best and immoral at worst. He has no interest in expanding the Republican Party by making it more like the Democrat Party. Rather, he seeks to expand it by persuading his listeners of the superiority of conservative principles, which, far from being “all-white” as Bond claims, are unbound by race or ethnicity. Limbaugh may find that this task grows easier as Americans come to realize the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress will not be delivering the peace and prosperity they so lavishly promised.
–Jack Dunphy
Update: Readers here on Patterico may not be familiar with my writing for National Review Online and Pajamas Media, but as I once explained on NRO (here and here), I was once a squishy-headed liberal, the kind of person who, had the Internet been around in those medieval times, would have written the sort of snarky, conservatives-are-evil comments that surely will soon be appended to this post. Needless to say, I’m not any longer, and I grateful to Mr. Limbaugh for his contributions to my education.
Obama goes to the bully pulpit
Barack Obama Washington Post Editorial
re: “…the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action…”
It’s not enough that the Democrats have control of the House, control of the Senate, control of the Presidency, and a liberal majority on the Supreme Court?
When did a limp-wristed majority afraid to act on its’ own beliefs become “partisan gridlock?” You can’t blame Republicans for the Democrats’ lack of courage to support their own convictions.
And elevating Republicans’ reasonable disagreement with socialist programs to the virtual level of a thought crime is frankly Orwellian. If socialist programs had ever accomplished what they set out to do, anywhere, anytime in history that they have been tried, Republicans would probably sign on. But we’ve been down this road of failed big government responses to economic crisis, and many people who lived through the Great Depression are still alive to attest to those socialist failures. The way to stimulate our economy is to get government off our backs and allow people to keep the fruits of their labors.
The stimulus plan the President brought out of the House is built on False Dilemmas, ineffective solutions, poor returns on the dollar, and arbitrary market dislocations. It benefits one class – the government bureaucrat class. Everyone else loses.
Great. The American people get the government they deserve. And the government they got is Democrats who don’t need Republicans to pass their stimulus plan. What they need is to grow a pair, men and women alike, and pass their plans in the light of day as THEIR plans, and be judged by THEIR plans’ results as Democrats. And if they can’t muster the testosterone to be held accountable for their own plans, they have no one to blame but themselves.
And Republicans need to grow some pairs too. Conservative philosophy is worth standing on. They must hold the line and not agree to another dollar of spending or taxation. It would be a big mistake for them to try to blend in with Democrats at this juncture. Look what happened the last time a Republican tried to pass himself off as a Democrat – the McCain campaign lost definitively. Tax and spend is a guaranteed loser for a Republican.
Democrats don’t need bi-partisan support to enact their plans, and each time they ask for it, Republicans should lock their mouths shut and throw away the key. The change Republicans need in Washington is to quit the spending spree that went on under President Bush, learn when to keep their mouths shut, and start acting conservatively.
Also See: Alyssa Lappen on Stimulus Plan
Also See: The Fierce Urgency of Pork
Stealth Care
Stealth Reform, by Grace Marie-Turner
Congressional leaders are arguing over whether they’ll get a comprehensive health reform bill passed this year or next. But, in fact, major health reform is speeding through Congress in two bills that are on the fast track to enactment — SCHIP and the economic stimulus bill.
Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to children in families well into middle-income ranges passed the Senate yesterday and will likely be signed into law by President Obama early next week. In some states, children in families earning $100,000 or more would be eligible for taxpayer-supported insurance, as would adults already receiving it, clearly changing the mission of the program.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked, “Is the real intent of this legislation to replace the private health care system with a government-run health care system?” The response from Senate Democratic whip Richard Durbin (D-IL) was that he didn’t want to “trap people into private health insurance.” Heaven forbid!
Nine Senate Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats in favor of the SCHIP expansion; 40 Republicans crossed over and joined nearly all Democrats in passing the nearly-identical House version of the bill last week.
Nonetheless, the partisanship in the debate was evident: Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was “disgusted” by the way Democratic leaders handled the debate. “It does not bode well for cooperative work in the coming months,” he told The Washington Post.
But the real game-changing health provisions are in the economic stimulus bill, where millions of Americans would be added to Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health programs — without committee hearings or virtually any debate.
Here are some, but by no means all, of the health reform provisions in this gargantuan economic spending bill: [Read more…]
Orders
I’m reading Samuel Huntington’s, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996. It seemed like an appropriate subject to engage at this time of rapid reorientation of power structures within America. On the strong possibility that any comment I might have on such a grand subject would involve inserting one or both feet in my mouth, I will take my time with this subject. Meanwhile, check out Kissinger’s recent essay, The chance for a new world order.
Obama’s Inaugural Address
Barak Obama’s Inaugural Address
I liked the speech. I liked that he brought in so many fundamental American values and images. I like that he kept his goals, for the most part, above the level of entrenched partisan solutions. It was a good start.
The biggest obstacle to Obama’s “post-partisan” vision will be the hard left. Reaching out to Republicans will be easy because half of them are liberals already, and the other half will respond to reason. The hard left, however, will be difficult to bring into a bipartisan coalition. Convincing them of the value of American institutions such as the market, or the value of individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and investment, or the end of victimization and racial thinking, will be sea-change challenges that the hard left will fight tooth and nail.
the content of its’ character
Presidential elections consistently reveal the near 50/50 split in American political sentiment between the left and the right. In the RMN today, Mike Rosen described the audience split between conservative Fox News and the rest of the liberal networks at 2 million for Fox News and 25 million for the rest. This split is 7% to 93%.
Let’s assume that politically slanted journalism is persuasive, if only because the thousands of journalists and journalism students desperately need it to be so. And let’s assume that the average intelligence of people is uniform across the political spectrum.
It is fair to conclude that the 93% of the media that is liberal is as effective as the 7% of the media that is conservative. In other words, conservative media is approximately 13 times more persuasive than liberal media.
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more truthful than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times better written than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more logical than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more realistic than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media can predict the future 13 times more accurately than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media has 13 times less propaganda than liberal media?
Whatever the reason, and it’s probably a combination of things, when measured by effect, conservative media has 13 times more influence.
It would be interesting to look at comparative advertising rates between liberal and conservative media to see if they support this theory. Since conservative media is, minute for minute, much more influential than liberal media, one would expect its’ advertising rates to be significantly higher.
bureaucracy
West Elbert County Sun, 1/8/09
- “Extensive sampling at the ranges and elsewhere on the property have shown a level of contamination that is much less than we anticipated, and except for the bullet impact backstops, much less than we have ever seen at shooting ranges.”
- “None of the lab-confirmed samples have triggered the level of concern we established with the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment, 1100 ppm lead in soil, nor even the department’s default level of 400 ppm. Therefore 40+ years of shooting by the Boy Scouts has not generated a significant hazardous condition, as one might otherwise expect.”
- “Jeffrie Hermann, executive director of the BSA Denver Area council, noted that the BSA has incurred more than $600,000 in expenses to date on this special use permit application[.] ” Note: This does not include costs for shooting range relocations and the indefinite future costs of regulatory compliance.
Case SU-08-0032, Special Use Review Permit, Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch Shooting Facility
Complainants have succeeded in diverting hundreds of thousands of present and future charitable dollars that could have benefited the Scouts, into county, state and federal regulatory industries, and accomplished nothing.
If the scouts ever need shooters to come out and fire off a few rounds in the direction of the complainants when the winds are just right for maximum sound effect, I’m available.
“There cannot be any doubt that this bureaucratic system is essentially antiliberal, undemocratic, and un-American, that it is contrary to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution, and that it is a replica of the totalitarian methods of Stalin and Hitler. It is imbued with a fanatical hostility to free enterprise and private property. It paralyzes the conduct of business and lowers the productivity of labor. By heedless spending it squanders the nation’s wealth. It is inefficient and wasteful. Although it styles what it does as planning, it has no definite plans and aims. It lacks unity and uniformity; the various bureaus and agencies work at cross-purposes. The outcome is a disintegration of the whole social apparatus of production and distribution. Poverty and distress are bound to follow.”
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!
Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.”
Bureaucracy, Von Mises.