In Praise of Income Inequality

Opinion: The most unequal place in America - CNN.com:

I grew up "lower middle class" and ended up "high middle or lower "rich"".  I've seen friends and relatives make the same transition and I've seen some go the other way. It is pretty easy to go from up to down ... I would not be at all surprised to see it happen to me. A bit of government confiscation, a stock market crash, sickness, etc. It always has and always be a lot easier to lose it than to make it.

The only perfectly "equal" place is one where everyone by law has ZERO. The old USSR came close. Of course the top 5% or so were MUCH more equal than the rest -- the Politburo the party chiefs, etc. ... but heh, they were "servants of the people" wink wink.

The other option is where America is fast heading ... and most third world nations already are. The vast bulk of the people lose their will to work and lose any sense that they could ever "get ahead" ... as what is encouraged by this article and the BO administration and my family as a youth. "The system is rigged, you don't have a chance, you have to have connections, it is all the big guys, etc".

Once the idea of upward mobility is destroyed, the culture becomes one of envy. "We need to take more of what the other guy has". So those that have been successful and those that have not given up on work hide out ... their assets are in metals, guns, land, equipment, offshore, etc. The net productivity of the financial and capability assets of the people drops precipitously and even worse, because the successful are hiding out, the models that prove that success is possible are at least nearly invisible.

The higher the standard of living possible the greater the income inequality! Guys worth 10's of billions really skew it, as do many people in the 10's of millions range.

It is interesting to note the "dream" of the person in this column. Not a newer trailer that didn't leak, not a car newer than her Taurus, but a giant home with servant quarters where she did no work at all! Unrealistic dreams are just one more way to fail to face reality and make better decisions day by day.

The article is founded on the absolute lie that somehow the folks that are wealthier are causing her to be poorer. The OPPOSITE is true ... go to other nations with far less wealthy, and the Taurus, the trailer with the leak goes away and she lives without power, toilet and clean water.

BUT they have lower income inequality!!!

Lovely, income equality or inequality is NOT a "basic good" ... in fact, it is essentially NOISE ... their are great countries with more income equality and there are great countries with less! By and large, more liberty means a higher standard of overall living, greater wealth of the nation AND greater income inequality.

Less liberty, lower general standard of living (compared to what would have been had with more liberty), less wealthy, and less inequality.

Give me Liberty and Income Inequality!

I loved the joke that went around about running a Democrat Home on Halloween ... take 1/2 the candy from the kids that came to the door and take it to kids that were too lazy to go out and trick or treat!


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I'm Adopted

Lutheran Hour Ministries :: Daily Devotions:

One can sign up to get these every day. For some of us geeky modern Christians, it is a good way to make sure that there is at least a tiny bit of something spiritual in our day, even sitting on a loading tractor in IA.

In the eternal sense, being adopted is far better than being a naturally born child of earthy parents!

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The GLOBAL Wealth Confiscation Plan!, MUST READ!!

The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation - Forbes:

That this is not front page news in nearly every global media outlet should be a VERY strong lesson of exactly how Russia, Germany and China slipped into tyranny.

Note three takeaways. First, IMF economists know there are not enough rich people to fund today’s governments even if 100 percent of the assets of the 1 percent were expropriated. That means that all households with positive net wealth—everyone with retirement savings or home equity—would have their assets plundered under the IMF’s formulation.

Second, such a repudiation of private property will not pay off Western governments’ debts or fund budgets going forward. It will merely “restore debt sustainability,” allowing free-spending sovereigns to keep tapping the bond markets until the next crisis comes along—for which stronger measures will be required, of course.

Third, should politicians fail to muster the courage to engage in this kind of wholesale robbery, the only alternative scenario the IMF posits is public debt repudiation and hyperinflation. Structural reform proposals for the Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs that are bankrupting us are nowhere to be seen.

Got that??? The ONLY listed alternatives were confiscation of assets from EVERYONE with positive net worth, AND the ONLY alternatives where hyperinflation and debt repudiation!!! (so much for the "safety" of holding government bonds!!

This is the IMF being reported on in Forbes folks. This is not some gold bug newsletter.

BTW, it you did or can make it to 55 prior to leaving the employer that you built your 401K with, it strongly appears that it is completely open withdrawal at current tax rates right off the bat ... no penalties, no "5 substantially equal payments".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2012/05/09/did-you-know-you-can-access-your-401k-penalty-free-at-age-55/

The last quote from the report in the linked article is very much worth reading to the bottom for!

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But I Thought They Hated Us BEFORE BO?

Merkel: US spying has shattered allies' trust - Businessweek:

I could have SWORN that it was W that the Europeans hated, and that when BO was elected they were ECSTATIC! In fact, I seem to remember he won a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE just for getting elected!

Wazup wid dis? Did they forget that he is THE ONE??? I mean, God is omnipresent and can hear their calls. I thought they felt that his Supreme Odiferousness, BO was similar in nature???

In my view he is The ZERO ... but then being "off by one" is a common programmer problem, and it appears that B ZEROCARE may well be a good example of A LOT of programming errors!

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Rudeness, Progressive, Authoritarian

Sources: Word of alleged rude GOP comment came from WH deputy chief of staff – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs:

Wow, someone in Washington was RUDE! oops ... guess really not, false alarm! If someone was imagined to have ween "rude" to W? The nice thing is that we don't really have to wonder do we? While I was out looking a bit for specific quotes, I ran into this.

From Salon no less!

As this post demonstrates, long before Barack Obama achieved any significance on the political scene, I considered blind leader loyalty one of the worst toxins in our political culture: it’s the very antithesis of what a healthy political system requires (and what a healthy mind would produce). One of the reasons I’ve written so much about the complete reversal of progressives on these issues (from pretending to be horrified by them when done under Bush to tolerating them or even supporting them when done by Obama) is precisely because it’s so remarkable to see these authoritarian follower traits manifest so vibrantly in the very same political movement — sophisticated, independent-minded, reality-based progressives — that believes it is above that, and that only primitive conservatives are plagued by such follower-mindlessness.

The problem here is that "progressives" believe they are "smarter" because they belong to the dominant elite political party / class. "Authoritarian follower traits". Note how insidious ... the pour soul writing that column sees the danger, but doesn't understand that left is CONTROL and right is CHAOS. He still buys the formulation that the left created at WWII with "grand theft label" as they usurped "liberal" for their own use and labelled the far left control National Socialist (Nazi) Hitler government "right wing". A travesty of Orwellian naming!

When our labels no longer attach to the concepts that formed them ... eg. "liberal" root "LIBerty!" becomes detached from it's root and used in place of "statism, totalitarianism, authoritarian", is it any wonder that the Sheeple become confused? 

The quote from Thomas Paine that was added to that column is right on: 

UPDATE II [Thurs.]: Here is what Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, had to say about all of this: 

[I]t is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
As is true for so many things, Paine grasped the crux of the matter and expressed it as well as it can be expressed.

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23 down, 13 Up Verizon Tether

$30 a month Verizon 2GB data plan, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0, Acer Chromebook sitting out 5mi W of Humbolt IA in a tractor ... 23MB down, 13MB up. Not too shabby!

The Reality of Hopelessness

Barack Obama’s Era of Hopelessness | Power Line:

BO's 2nd autobiography was titled "The Audacity of Hope". Only certifiable narcissists write TWO autobiographies prior to age 50, but maybe our next potentate will have written even more than that ... Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had extremely high opinions of themselves as well.

So the Age of Obama has brought the percentage who think America’s best days are still ahead down from 45% to 31%, while the number who think our best days are gone has risen from 37% to 52%. Great work, Barry. This is your true legacy: hopelessness.

The MSM is WILD about negative polls when a Republican is in the WH ... when W was in we seemed to get the "right track / wrong track" and "W's poll numbers fall", etc with great regularity.

So people think that the US has very little future. Duh! We are over 17T in debt, have over 60T in unfunded liabilities. Our economy is anemic, our people have no sense that productive work is positive, and our population is just a bunch of drug addled aging geezers.

Bend over and kiss your "B(ack) Orifice" goodbye!


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The Illusion of No Limits

There's no actual debt ceiling right now | The Daily Caller:

There is no debt limit between now and February. BO can borrow and send money to his cronies with abandon.

The idea of "no limits" is a fundamental difference in human thinking. The conservative / constrained / "tragic" vision / world view is that man dies, man is limited and not perfectible, "progress" often isn't, and "new and improved" often isn't.

The liberal / unconstrained / utopian vision / world view is that man is infinitely perfectible. All problems, even death will be solved as time moves on through infinite "progress".

If you read this blog regularly, you are very likely "constrained". All Christians are constrained, because they believe that man is fallen and needs a savior as well as that God's laws are eternal so are "curbs" to mans greed, sloth, lust, covetousness, hubris, etc

 I cover the EXCELLENT book "A Conflict of Visions" on this subject by Sowell here.

It is also covered in significant scientific detail in "The Righteous Mind".

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Settled Politics

A Teachable Moment - NYTimes.com:

 "This means that the still-ongoing intra-conservative debate over the shutdown’s wisdom is not, I’m sorry, the kind of case where reasonable people can differ on the merits and have good-faith arguments and ultimately agree to disagree. There was no argument for the shutdown itself that a person unblindered by political fantasies should be obliged to respect, no plausible alternative world in which it could have led to any outcome besides self-inflicted political damage followed by legislative defeat, and no epitaph that should be written for its instigators’ planning and execution except: “These guys deserved to lose.”"

Got that? Since this is NOT the kind of thing where "reasonable people" can have another viewpoint, it is like Global Warming. You MUST agree with our position or you are by definition INSANE (the more direct statement of "not reasonable")! It is only because of the current good graces of our ever benevolent left wing that even though we are 100% surveilled, they don't in fact lock up the insane opposition?

Having a budget worked though both houses and signed by the president? Insane!

Having checks and balances where people that vote in the opposite party into the House assuming that the House has "the power of the purse"? INSANE ... bring the King a clean resolution so he can spend as he sees fit. He need not deign to negotiate with the lowly House!

Running trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see? REASONABLE ... why anyone would have to be insane to think otherwise!

Converting 1/4 of the US economy to a government directed system that is cronyized in the true "Chicago Way" with graft, exceptions, subsidies, etc for political friends, and mandates, penalties and fees for political enemies on a purely executive whim basis. VERY REASONABLE! Why this law passed by one vote in the Senate because it was part of the "budget" ... which was never passed. Get over it, it is INSANE to question the power of his supreme odiferousness BO!

Ah yes, the one must get their mind right!


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Your Spirit or Your Body?

Finally! The Republican Fever Is Broken - The Daily Beast:

There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises—the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy—in which the villain, Bane, taunts the Caped Crusader before crippling him. “I was wondering what would break first,” he says, “your spirit, or your body!”

The left is feeling really good, they are identifying with Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises". Short of Lucifer himself, a pretty good pick for those intent on gaining all power and destroying those that dare to think for themselves.

"It's a complete capitulation by the Republicans". Oh joy of joys.

We don't need no stinkin budget, we can spend spend spend with impunity forever! They are fools to ever challenge our great BO! Let him reign as potentate forever. Let us grind the idiocy of "checks and balances" under our boots!

The parallel with "The Dark Knight Rises" is a little eerie ... Bane complains that nobody respected him until he put on a mask and became violent. Similarly, the Democrat party slow march to total control and wiping out those with other views really kicked into high gear when BO decided to ignore the constitution on budgets, use  IRS to do his bidding and put everyone under surveillance "just in case".

Will  the "Dark Knight" of the spirit of conservatism rise again? My view is that it is not likely until at least a couple generations of destruction have passed.

She is right, the forces of Bane are triumphant! Maybe I've got the "B" in BO wrong? Excuse me while I fail to cheer. It is kind of cool, BO being "the spirit" of the body.

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Conservatism Needs to Give Up

Fareed Zakaria: Conservatism needs to lighten up - The Washington Post:

I think this column covers the current dominant party/cultural view really well ... except a number of them would add "or else" at least under their breaths.

Things have been gong GREAT ... look at all the "progress" we have made! All these stupid conservatives have been trying to slow us down since William Buckley, but we keep winning everything and things are FINE! What is more they are going to STAY FINE ... we are like ... well, er, "Switzerland".

It is great to see him call out Reagan as some sort of an idiot for opposing Medicare, which is a major element in our 60+ TRILLION in unfunded liabilities along with FICA, but REALLY ironic to see him include the end of the USSR as one of the accomplishments of the left. Somehow I suspect he would have been just as quick to point out what an idiot Reagan was at the point of the "ash heap of history" speech. Being a "Party Member" allows one to think that way.

In the current US you can go to jail for an ever increasing pile of "hate speech" or have the IRS or NSA investigate you because you are on the "wrong list".  Remember, the maker of the anti Islam video that was the BO administrations original lie about the Benghazi attack is still in prison. Lefties will of course say "oh, that is on OTHER charges". Remember, TOTALITARIANISM is called that because ALL aspects of your life are under government control ... your health, your work, your income, your retirement, your speech, etc Breaking "laws" in any of those areas is enough to incarcerate you ... even installing a toilet that flushes too much water is crime in today's US.

But to Fareed, all of this is fine. I wonder when the last person was jailed in the US for anti-Christian hate speech? There is no problem losing your job in the US today for being too open about being against gay "marriage". You can be jailed in a number of US cites (DC, New York, Chicago), for even carrying ammunition, or as a legal firearm owner passing though with your weapon "not properly secured" (often meaning unloaded gun in locked case. Unloaded magazines in locked case, and ammunition in yet another locked case. This is in a country where "The right to keep and bear arms will not be infringed" is supposedly the law if the land.

I could keep going on and on, but what we have here is a fundamentally different view of what America is and was. There is a great book on the topic of Tipping Points ("The Tipping Point") but other than provide more detail, we all know about "the straw that broke the camels back".

There is no bold red line between liberty and tyranny that will be recognizable to all ... or even most. There were a great many defenders of the Soviet way of operation in the US at least right up to the day that the wall fell. College students ran around with Mao's "Little Red Book" in the 60's and 70's while millions were being slaughtered. Hitler was loved by the bulk of the German people.

Reading Fareed makes it clear that for significant parts of our society, we are not "near a tipping point", we are OVER it ... badly.

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Go Ahead, Make My Day

Memo to GOP: If Obama Won’t Compromise, Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling | Power Line:

In one of my favorite Dirty Harry scenes, the bad guy has his gun pointed at the temple of the innocent waitress and is staring at the business end of a .44 mag with a very relaxed but focused looking Harry Callahan on the trigger. In 5 short words Harry makes it clear that the only question here is 2 deaths or none, but Harry is completely fine with 2.

The linked column makes a good case for the Republicans making BO the same offer as Harry makes relative to the Debt Ceiling. It is long, as things must be in more complicated world, but I'll do the very short summary here and it is worth the read especially if you don't believe me.

No doubt you have heard that not raising the Debt Ceiling is UNTHINKABLE! Remember when Sequestration was unthinkable ... irresponsible, economy killing, etc, etc? Well we have been living under the horror of Sequestration since March 1! In the tradition of Democrat chutzpah very similar to Slick Willie crowing about "a balanced budget" after getting full political hay out of evil Republican cuts IN THE RATE OF GROWTH in federal spending, BO has been shamelessly crowing about the deficit being "under 4% of GDP" ... which it would not be without the "unthinkable" sequestration "cuts" in the rate of spending growth.

1. "Default" is an absolute LIE! The US still takes in plenty of money to service the debt! If BO is petulant enough to graduate from putting up "Barrycades" on uncontrolled monuments to purposely engineering a US government default, then there is no real reason to believe he would not start nuking US cities for "spite" ... give those "bitterly clinging" red state yahoos what BO sees as "justice". 
2. We have no budget. We haven't had one for 4 years. This is al, immoral, stupid and a whole lot of other negative adjectives. The fact that less than 20% of American people (likely FAR less) have a clue about this whole mess shows that we can no longer self-govern. We have completely lost any semblance of truth based mass media, and the bulk of the population is so brainwashed by the combination of left leaning education and swimming in the MSM sewer that they are unable to function as citizens. 
3.  Given the above, a "Cap" is the best that can be achieved. We are hemorrhaging red ink at a rate that were the other party in the WH would be a national scandal / outcry if the level that would be make Watergate, Vietnam and the OJ trial seems like small stories!

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"Dumb" Americans

Opinion: America's problem -- we're too dumb - CNN.com:

Since "dumb" really means "unable to speak",  my rule is that anyone calling anyone else dumb (unless they can't speak) should probably not be speaking themselves.

Some thoughts:

• American's INTELLIGENCE is AVERAGE ... just like every other nation. 
• Our problem is that we don't really do "education" anymore ... we do childcare, indoctrination, self esteem improvement and stifle independent thought (as you can guess, 90% of my teachers hated me!) 
• Our founders, nor any actual student of humanity would ever suggest anything like a real democracy, which we keep slouching toward. Half if the population us BELOW average, and by following the kind of excuse for education that we have been for 60+ years ... left wing liberal union non-competitive democrat indoctrination, rather than actual LIBERAL education ... meaning multiple sided, grounded in REAL history rather than "victim oriented" history ... that "average" is dropping all the time. 
• A REPUBLIC is supposed to let some proper "elite" rise to the top and run the country as "statesmen" rather than "special interest organizers". Sure, the "elite" get elected, but the assumption is that they would be oriented to STEWARDSHIP of the culture, society and history of the people and nation. Our "elite" are those that do an especially good job of soaking up the propaganda ... of which the column author clearly qualifies. We need a TRUE LIBERAL elite ... which means strong education in classics, history, religion, philosophy, business ... essentially Western Culture with a major in American culture. 
• I thought we DIDN'T want to be "exceptional" in the old positive sense? In order to be at the top in these kinds of rankings we would have to have people motivated to think that competition and working hard were GOOD things, not "exploitation". We are totally reaping what we have sowed and now this columnist is complaining? Why, I'd bet dollars to donuts that he is NOT in favor of "exceptionalism". Try to be mediocre, and you usually end up lousy. 
• His solution is to start the indoctrination earlier??? Hello?? This is the old blood letting logic ... if things are looking bad with the amount we are doing, let's do more!

Americans may well now be poorly educated and confused, but it is mostly BECAUSE of our education and media system, and the LAST thing we need is to double down on that disaster!

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Donkeys Hate RINOs?

George Will: Susan Collins’s fiscal compromise leaves Democrats exposed - The Washington Post:

Usually RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) like Susan Collins are the toast of Democrat and MSM Washington. "How reasonable", "How moderate" ... oh, if ONLY the evil Neanderthal  "Tea Party" sorts could be so brilliant and urbane.

Oops ... the Democrat extremism seems to be showing !

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Lies, Truth, Shutdown, Sowell

Thomas Sowell: Who Shut Down the Government?:

I just love and respect this guy to the max!

He does a GREAT job of stating what is FACT and what is OPINION. This exactly what we need if we are ever going to return to the greatness that was once America!

Just read it!

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