President Obama, always on the campaign trail, is now on the road trying to explain why his class warfare strategy is not class warfare. In his State of the Union address, he once again invoked the “Buffett Rule”, which is little more than a fig leaf to allow Obama to raise taxes. But what about some other “Buffett Rules”?

Spending

What is the Buffett Rule on spending? Does Warren Buffett agree with President Obama that we should spend 150% of what we take in? Did Warren Buffett become one of the richest men on the planet by spending 150% of what he takes in and borrowing the shortfall? I think Buffett’s counsel would be to live within our means; don’t spend more than you take in, but I didn’t hear President Obama invoke the “Oracle of Omaha” when he submitted his budget to the Senate that was voted down 97-0. I didn’t hear Obama mention spending at all other than to say some nonsense about cutting spending by $2 trillion over ten years. At the rate we are going that level of spending “cuts” will mean we are $8 trillion deeper in debt ten years from now rather than $10 trillion. We need to cut $1 trillion in spending next year. So let’s hear what Buffett has to tell Obama about spending.

Investing

Warren Buffett is regarded as a masterful investor. What’s the Buffett Rule on investing? President Obama took credit for saving the auto industry. Really? If that is his idea of a good investment why does the price of GM stock have to rise to $52 before the American people’s investment to break even? GM stock is currently trading around $25. How many people are expecting GM’s stock to double in the near future? Or is it more likely that union contracts will once again, drag GM beneath the waves? My research indicates that Warren Buffett does not hold any GM stock. I wonder why? I do know that Warren Buffett made a very tidy profit by investing in Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile American taxpayers, you know, the ones who are under taxed, bailed out that company and many others. How much did Buffett invest in Solyndra? How much money is Warren Buffett investing in high-speed rail in California? Why should the American people believe that someone who has never held a job in private industry (Obama) is suddenly the smartest venture capitalist in America? How big of a portfolio do the real venture capital firms put in the hands of new hire fresh out of college? But this president takes billions of our tax dollars and squanders them on his pet projects and then lectures us how we need to invest in our future when they go belly up. When is Warren Buffett going to tell him to stop?

The Buffett Rule on Taxes

At the State of the Union address we were introduced to the famous secretary of Warren Buffett. She’s the poor woman who pays a higher tax rate than Mr. Buffett on her income. It is estimated that the poor dear makes between $200,000 and $500,000, otherwise she would not be paying double the tax rate of Buffett. That could put her solidly in the top 1% of earners in the country, if she is at the high-end of that range (the top 1% is earnings above $343,000). So Barack Obama actually lamenting that the top 1% is over taxed? Of course not. It is not about who is paying too much, it is about who is not paying enough.

The problem is spending, plain and simple. There are not enough rich people in America, even if taxed at 100% to close the budget gap. What Obama is doing is class warfare. Let’s get people angry enough at the wealthy so that Obama can then link the wealthy to the Republicans and sneak back into a second term.

If Obama thinks he is playing by the rules, Buffett’s rules, then he should at least play by all of them.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Just when you thought Joe Biden couldn’t get any lower he finds a new bottom to scrape. In an act of desperation to save the sorry state of this administration Joe Biden introduces rape and murder as justification to pass their latest job bill and implies that if you oppose the jobs bill you are in favor of more rape and murder.

First of all, police, firefighters and teachers are not employees of the federal government. They are employees of and paid for by local government. So any money that comes from Washington to help pay their salaries will at some point end and then what? Either the state or locality comes up with the funding to maintain those positions or they have to lay them off. The Republicans accurately called that measure temporary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxxotkX9ZOo

So Biden says increases in crime that have happened in Flint, Michigan, specifically rape and murder will increase if the Republicans continue to oppose this second stimulus package. It is not temporary to the crime victim, Biden says.

Let me provide Vice President Biden some scenarios, not hypothetical, but a true stories.

Sherry Rives, of Bear Creek, North Carolina, emerged from her shower to see a knife-wielding man coming towards her. When he threatened to rape her, she ran into her bedroom and got her 9 mm pistol. The two wrestled for the pistol and Rives was wounded in the thigh. She then gained control of the pistol and shot her tormentor several times, forcing him to flee. She then locked herself in the bathroom and called police. When police arrived, they found the would-be rapist dead with four bullet wounds to the chest. The woman’s father said she kept the pistol in the house for protection and she knew how to use it.– The Herald, Sanford, NC, November 12, 1997

The burglar ransacked 81-year-old Alberta Nicles’ Muskegon, Michigan, home before waking her up and ordering her around the house to search for money. Ending up back in her bedroom, the intruder–a suspected crack addict with a long history of criminal activity–removed the widow’s pajama bottoms and was preparing to rape her when she informed him that she knew where there was some money. Her assailant let her up and followed her to a closet where the woman instead retrieved her late husband’s .38. She turned and shot her tormentor to death. Nicles then went to a neighbor’s home to call police because her own lines had been severed by the intruder prior to his breaking in. “This was not just a random breaking and entering. …He was planning on taking advantage of the vulnerability of an elderly person. …She was clearly acting in self-defense,” Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague said.– The Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, January 2, 1997

A Stockton, California, real estate agent put an end to an attempted rape, after a man posing as a potential home buyer attacked her in a model home. Crumpling to the floor, the realtor drew a .380 from her purse, forcing the man to flee. Pursuing him outside, the woman fired several shots at the man, missing him as he jumped in his car. She halted his escape by shooting out one of his tires and with the help of some nearby construction workers, held the thug for police. The would-be rapist is being investigated in connection with a similar 1993 attack on a female real estate agent. — The Record, Stockton, CA, February 18, 1995

Those of us who defend the Second Amendment have a saying, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” I would like to ask Vice President Joe Biden where in each of the scenarios above the victim, or potential victim, could stop the action, call 911, and then wait patiently with their attacker until the police arrive? I would guess that Vice President Biden would say, gee that’s a tough situation, you should probably submit to the rape so that you are not killed, of which there is no guarantee, and then call 911 as soon as you can afterward.

Joe Biden has been an outspoken supporter of gun control. He doesn’t grasp the fact that police rarely stop crimes, they investigate crimes. It is the deterrent effect of certain punishment that may prevent crimes. What can stop a crime in progress is a citizen with the right to carry a gun. Other than that it is picking up the pieces. So to come full circle in the analogy, by his advocacy of gun control Joe Biden is responsible for more rapes and murders than anyone who votes for this new round of stimulus. I could, once again, say shame on Joe Biden, but what would be the point?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by Dovina is Devine

After negotiating a debt limit deal that included no tax increases, the ink was hardly dry on the paper before President Obama and Harry Reid started talking about what? That’s right, tax increases.

We hear it over and over again that the rich must pay their fair share. It is often parroted by the likes of Warren Buffet and Matt Damon. “I can pay more,” they say. I say, what’s stopping you? The Treasury has an account set up just for folks like you who feel you are not taxed enough. As Buffet has said, “I could give away 99% of my wealth and my family would still want for nothing.” Movie actors like Damon get paid tens of millions for a single film. It’s nice that the “I can’t spend it faster than I make it crowd,” volunteers that we all have to pitch in. But what happens when a sacred progressive program gets in the way?

Take rent control. In New York City, rent control is a sacred progressive program. “We need affordable housing for the middle class or they will be driven out of the city.” Rent control was responsible for many abandoned buildings in the 1970s and 1980s that turned into drug dens or were set ablaze, because landlords couldn’t raise rents to cover their costs so they just walked away. Tax revenue to the city walked with them. But don’t you dare challenge rent control and put those poor people on the street. Meet the defendant in case No. 7666/11, whose landlord claims she is not entitled to rent control on her apartment. Her name is Faye Dunaway. Yes, that Faye Dunaway. Her landlord argues that this is not her primary residence and that she lives, votes, and registers her cars in California. The rent stabilization rules require tenants to live in the apartment they are renting as a primary residence. Her rent for the one-bedroom walk-up is $1,048.72, but if allowed to rise to market rates it would probably be around $2,318 per month. Would Ms. Dunaway be forced to move to Queens if her rent increased?

How about former mayor Ed Koch. While he was given a mansion to live in, as all mayors are during their tenure, in his case twelve years, he never let go of his rent controlled apartment in Greenwich Village. How would he makes ends meet if he had to pay market rent? After all, isn’t that the purpose of the law to help rich white Democrats pocket more dough? Okay it wasn’t fair to single out white Democrats, how about Charlie Rangel? He had four rent controlled apartments. Three of them were adjoining, so he had some of the walls knocked down to make a really swell place. What about the fourth, you ask? Oh, that was for his district Congressional office. Rangel whose salary alone puts him squarely in the top 5% of all earners used to chair the committee that writes the tax laws, but seemed to have a problem remembering such things as income from a villa in the Dominican Republic so he didn’t exactly pay all his taxes. He’s still serving in Congress and not a guest of the IRS in prison. I guess he used the famous Steve Martin defense, “I forgot.”

Perhaps all the little people who the progressives argue need things like rent control would be helped if the rich Democrats would only get out of their apartments.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

The above question could and should be applied to a number of individuals including Attorney General Eric Holder and even President Barack Obama. The subject is a program, run out of the Justice Department, called “Fast and Furious.”

The intent of the program was to allow the illegal purchase of guns that were destined to Mexico with the hope of tracing them to Mexican drug cartels and winning some battles in the war on drugs. What happened was that Washington lost track of the guns once they crossed the border into Mexico until the guns were recovered at crime scenes in the U.S. where some border patrol agents were killed.

The progressives claim that there is widespread illegal gun sales to criminals that must be stopped and here you have a case of Washington and the Obama administration actively promoting such illegal gun sales. How far behind this should we expect new legislation curtailing or banning the sale of firearms? Those who are responsible for this program, whatever its ultimate aim, that resulted in the deaths of US Border Patrol agents should be found and held accountable, no matter how high up in government they may be.

Congressman Darrell Issa of California is leading an investigation and it appears the stonewalling has begun.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHkaRU9EoVM&feature=player_embedded

Where are gun control advocates Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on this subject? Are they too busy tinkering with what American citizens are allowed to own, to bother with the illegal actions of the government they are a part of?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

California is going through what we might all face. The nebulous definition of assault weapons has been tweaked and changed and each time, it has been used as an excuse to confiscate more guns. Who is left unaffected by all of this? Criminals. They don’t care about the law. Our own government is actively working to make us less safe, taking our property, and then failing to defend us against these criminals, because in a free society, they can’t. They have to wait for the criminal to act and when the criminal acts, the police are rarely on the scene. They have to be called and in the mean time the victims own government has actively worked to disarm them and leave them helpless.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LQZI9COOU4&feature=relmfu

How could the laws be vague or uncertain, unless the government’s purpose sinister? They just passed something and said we’ll fill in the blanks later. Well, what are the blanks? Any and all guns; as many as you can confiscate the better. How would this have stopped a Jared Loughner? It wouldn’t.

While we remember those who gave their lives for our freedom this Memorial Day weekend, let us not ignore the efforts of our own government to take away our rights under the Second Amendment.

In the United States Senate, freshman senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, fillibustered that body before a vote on the extention of the Patriot Act. What’s his beef? Doesn’t the Patriot Act protect us from terrorists? Yes, but it also allows the government to collect records of gun ownership and as the following series of videos show, what begins as innocent record keeping, ends up with confiscation. When you think of the 2nd Amendment as a check on the power of the government, doesn’t the government knowing where every gun in America is, defeat that purpose? Here is how it is actually happening in California.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlhIW8X5cRU

You can see it all over pass a ban on a particular type of weapon. Register all weapons to make sure they comply. Tweak the definition to broaden the definition of banned weapons. Run that new definition against the database of regisitered weapons. Go pick up the weapons from the registrants address.

We have to draw a line in the sand.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Have we tired sufficiently of the ruling class on Mount Olympus, er, Capitol Hill? Instead of citizen legislators who go to Washington as a public service, they go to wrap themselves in power and dictate to the rest of us what is good for us, but that we are too dim to know better. Their key objective every two, four, or six years is to get reelected so that they don’t have to return to dwell among the unwashed mortals. Had enough?

Little by little, Washington is chipping away at our constitutional rights and we battle this tug-of-war as hard as we can, but taking away those rights is their full time job, while keeping them is something we do when we are not earning our daily bread. Chief among these power grabs is the right to bear arms. Every time some evil or deranged person wreaks havoc with a gun, the superior minds in Congress pass or attempt to pass laws that curtail the rights of law abiding citizens believing that until we have the kind of gun control that exists in most dictatorships, we will not be safe. But their attacks on law abiding citizens, particularly on what law abiding citizens own, rather than what they do, only serve to make us less safe and more dependent on the government.

Some Disturbing Examples of “Gun Control”

Tuscon — Jared Loughner displayed symptoms of mental instability beginning in the tenth grade, six years before that fateful day. Both Arizona and federal gun control laws prohibit the purchase of a gun by someone who is mentally impaired or a drug user, of which Loughner was both. But in our politically correct society, no one took the necessary steps to bring Loughner in front of a magistrate to have him legally declared mentally impaired. So, when he went to buy a gun, there was no record of his disability. This is not to say that he would not have obtained a gun illegally if he was denied the legal purchase of a gun, but it was not due to a lack of gun control laws.

Virginia Tech – Here is another case of a mentally disturbed person getting a gun despite well known warning signs. Cho Seung-Hui showed signs of mental problems for at least eighteen months before he shot 32 people dead. The head of one department at the school tried to help him but ran into a brick wall because he hadn’t threatened anyone at that time, so he couldn’t be forced into counseling. Gun control laws were there to prevent him from legally buying a gun. They didn’ t work. Those same gun control laws made sure no one else on campus but the police was able to defend themselves. Those gun laws did work and 32 died.

Long Island Railroad Massacre — Colin Ferguson killed six and wounded nineteen on a commuter train carrying passengers home from New York City. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-NY) husband was one of those killed and her son paralyzed. Ferguson bought his gun legally in California seven months before the crime after an FBI background check and a fifteen day waiting period. What different words put on paper would have kept this particular madman from his rampage? He took three agonizingly slow minutes to empty his gun twice before being tackled during his second reload. The average gun fight lasts 3-5 seconds, but this wasn’t a gun fight. New York’s gun control laws made sure of that. This was a massacre.

The Equal Footing

After the Tucson shooting, the aforementioned Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy had another new solution. Don’t allow the sale of ammunition magazines that hold more than ten bullets. Another law was proposed by Long Island Congressman Peter King (R-NY):

“Legislation which would make it a federal crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of any event which is attended by the President, the Vice President, members of the Senate, members of the House of Representatives, Cabinet officials, including the CIA director as well as federal judges,” said King.

Fortunately this bill went nowhere, but let me propose an alternative gun law that would put this on an equal footing.

I propose that any law restricting the right of law abiding citizens to bear arms apply equally to members of Congress. This would mean that since it is illegal in Washington, D.C. to carry a gun, members of Congress should not be allowed to carry a gun, even if they are former law enforcement officers.

If a citizen in a particular Congressman’s district cannot carry a gun, and if they wanted to protect themselves would have to hire a bodyguard with his own money, then the member of Congress would not be allowed access to any taxpayer funded security. The member of Congress could only hire security out of his own salary, not his office budget, not his campaign cash. He should be as defenseless at home, work and in public as the people he represents.

We have to return to the principle that ours is a government of the people. Laws that are good for the people are good for the government. If we are to be disarmed by law, then the lawmakers should be equally disarmed. I can almost see Chuck Schumer grabbing the microphone in front of a rolling TV camera to scoff at such parity. “We would be in danger at any public event. We would not be able to hold town hall meetings!” I have news for you, Senator Schumer, that was the whole point of the 2nd Amendment, that if you took too much power to yourself, you should be afraid of the people.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — The Declaration of Independence

So, is there a libertarian member of Congress who is willing to take this equality proposal and turn it into legislation?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

It was passed in California. It is working its way through the New York state legislature, and it is on the radar for a number of other blue states. It will bring more government intrusion into our lives, curtail our individual liberties, under the myth it will reduce crime. It is called micro-stamping.

What is micro-stamping? It is technology that is added to semi-automatic handguns that would imprint identifying information about the make, model, and serial number on a shell casing before it is ejected from the gun. The theory is that at a crime scene the police would be able to retrieve spent shells and through laboratory analysis, identify the last legal owner of the gun they were fired from. Today, the police rely on ballistic tests to compare the markings on a bullet that was fired with a test firing from the same gun to see if they match. The problem, they say, is to do that they have to recover the gun that was used, but with this new technology the shell casings will have a return address! Voila! Crime solved. Not so fast.

Leave the gun, take the cannolis

You can learn a lot from the movies. For those who are familiar with the Godfather trilogy, those goodfellows knew a thing or to about using a gun in the commission of a crime. When the mob boys did a hit, they typically dropped the gun at the scene so that they would not be caught with it later, and therefore tied back to the hit. A return address is of little use if it only brings you to the other side of the room you are standing in.

Under many guises the government is becoming more Orwellian every day. A couple of villages on Long Island have posted cameras at choke points into and out of the village to photograph cars coming and going, it then checks the license plates against a database to detect suspicious or stolen vehicles. EZPass is a convenience for taking tolls on highways, but information on your whereabouts are also captured in that database. We are constantly being reminded to watch out for identity theft and this new proposal will inscribe information about a legal handgun and toss it on the ground. How much information about you do you want the government to have?

Loss of Liberty

The Constitution recognizes our right to bear arms. But consider this nightmare scenario under micro-stamping. You take your legal handgun down to the firing range to practice your marksmanship as well as your safe gun handling skills. When you are done, you pick up what you can find of your shell casings, but you miss a few. Later on some miscreant rummages around the floor and picks up some of the shell casings you missed. He later goes to visit the girl who just broke up with him to make sure that “if he can’t have her no one will.”

He dispatches her with two shots of the same caliber as your gun. He finds the shell casings from his gun and leaves the ones he picked up at the range from your gun on the floor near where he retrieved his own. The police come to investigate and jackpot, they recover micro-stamped shell casings. They call your house but no one answers because your wife is out and you are working late. Shortly after you get home the cops arrive, but not sure if they are coming up on a killer they arrive ready for the worst. They have a warrant and knock at the door, battering ram at the ready. You open, they rush, slamming you to the floor and handcuffing you. Just then your wife arrives home as the police are searching your house. An officer tells your wife about the murder, and she goes off because of all the late hours she “thought you were working” she accuses you of cheating with the dead girl.

Ballistics later prove that your gun was not the murder weapon, but have fun putting your life back together. The real purpose of this bill is to raise the cost of owning a gun, not just in monetary terms but in social terms as well.

Wishful Thinking

The sales pitch for micro-stamping is to reduce handgun crime. But that is a myth.

• Micro-stamping is not entirely accurate.  Toolmarks Examiners. Firearms examiner George Krivosta, of the Suffolk County, N.Y., crime lab, found that the “vast majority” of “micro-stamped” characters in the alphanumeric serial number couldn’t be read on “any of the expended cartridge cases generated and examined.” –38 AFTE Journal 41, 2006
• Micro-stampings are easily removed. Now who would do that?! Criminals?
• According to the BATFE, 88% of crime guns are acquired through unregulated channels, and the median time between a crime gun’s acquisition and its use in crime is 6.6 years. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, most criminals get guns via theft or the black market.
• If guns are traceable, then it is very likely that there will be an increase in gun thefts. Since micro-stamping will tie a gun to the last legal owner, increases in theft will prevent traceability to the criminal, and make micro-stamping useless.
• Micro-stamping is only good for semi-automatic handguns. Revolvers do not eject spent shells and therefore are not left at the scene. Also, stopping to pick up the spent brass also negates the micro-stamping.

This is just another government power grab. While making it harder and harder for law abiding citizens to defend themselves, the government is protected from any liability for failing to protect you (see Warren v District of Columbia). The only people typically at the scene of the crime are the criminal and the victim. The police usually show up later to investigate the crime after the fact. Therefore what gun “control” laws typically do is to make sure law abiding citizens are defenseless and easier prey for law breakers. Criminals neither care for nor follow gun control laws.

In a free society, laws should be about what we do, not what we own.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Minimal to non-existent; Unlikely; No serious reforms were on the way; Needs to take a close look; Hardly the inspiring rhetoric of Knute Rockne or Winston Churchill. Tim Bishop’s back in his congressional seat starting his fifth term in office and already the group he was meeting with, the Long Island Farm Bureau, was expressing buyer’s remorse.

Some at the meeting questioned whether Mr. Bishop could still effectively represent local farmers in Congress now that he is a minority member of the House of Representatives after Republicans gained control during midterm elections.

In response, Mr. Bishop said that despite the shift in power, he could still provide a voice for farmers on pressing issues.

It’s not like they didn’t see it coming. The only people who did not forecast a Republican takeover of Congress seemed to be sitting around a table with Joe Biden. After voting in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi as she added $5 trillion to the national debt since 2006, people are very nervous about how big the debt has grown and what will happen, particularly if interest rates return to historical levels. At 6%-7% for Treasuries, we may be facing payments of $1 trillion per year in interest alone. Something has to be done and fast. So what kind of leadership is Tim Bishop showing?

“You want to shut down Social Security? Fine. Come with me to a senior citizen center and explain it,” the congressman said.

Really? It that what his constituents pay him $174,000 per year, plus all the trappings of office for? I ain’t gonna tell ‘me, YOU tell ‘em. I know of no instance of anyone saying that shutting down social security is a near term option. There are a number of proposals on the table, including one in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline, but telling seniors, sorry, no more Social Security checks isn’t one of them. It is the same old tired demagoguery of the left. Do you remember the commercials of Republicans pushing grandma down the stairs in a wheelchair? It is purely scare tactics, like the diversion a magician makes to watch over here, so you don’t see what they are really doing over there.

Tim Bishop agrees that something needs to be done, but far be it from him to come up with anything. The Republicans propose cutting $61 billion and Tim Bishop is fighting to put it back. While it is admirable to fight for the jobs at Brookhaven National Labs, we have to be honest. The government has recklessly spent too much money for too long and it has to stop and the reality is some people in government programs are going to lose their jobs. They will have to move to the private sector that should start growing again once this administration stops spending.

He also said Congress needs to take a close look at agricultural subsidies, none of which are enjoyed by Long Island farmers.

Who has been in Congress for the last eight years while farm subsidies have continued and we pay for them? Who is Mr. Bishop representing, his district or Nancy Pelosi? The farmers asked him about the tough EPA regulations affecting the fertilizers and pesticides they use and the congressman had this to say:

Mr. Bishop said the new leadership of congress appeared determined to reign in the EPA in order to bring more balanced regulations on pesticides.

The new leadership would be the Republicans, no? What has been going on the last eight years with Congressman Bishop in Congress?

Perhaps the icing on the cake is Mr. Bishop’s appeal for calm and civility. In talking about immigration and migrant farm workers he had this to say:

“We have allowed anger and emotion and demagoguery to rule the debate on immigration as opposed to fact and reason and trying to be in the real world,” he added of the issue.

This raises two interesting points. First, is that Mr. Bishop just finished running a campaign that was predominantly personal attacks and very little substance, and he cries out for civility. Hypocrisy?  Second, why didn’t Mr. Bishop tell the farmers that they should get American workers instead of immigrants, illegal or otherwise? Isn’t that outsourcing? Isn’t that what he fought so hard for in his campaign? Giving jobs to foreigners when the unemployment rate is so high? Tell the immigrants to go home and tell the people on unemployment to come on down.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? It just points to one more area where Tim Bishop is out of his depth. Spending all one’s time in the ivory towers of academia and then going into government and trying to tell people how the economy works, when he doesn’t understand it himself. Hopefully, with him in the minority we can limit the damage he can do. We don’t have term limits so it is up to the members of the district to retire him.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Candidate Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber, spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody; he also said, I want to give those coming up behind the same chance you had. It sounds altruistic, caring, full of hope. But if Barack Obama turned and looked over his shoulder he might be surprised to see that there are fewer and fewer people coming up from behind. What he might see is the fear of reckoning for one hundred years of progressive policy and programs. Policy and programs that were sold to allay earlier generations’ fears coupled with the promise that the bill was easily paid and a long way off. But the bill collector is now at the door and the next generation is huddled in the corner with no sign of hope and no confidence that Barack Obama will change anything.

Destroying Public Schools

I had an opportunity to watch the documentary Waiting for Superman that chronicles the hopes of five school children desperately trying to get the education they have a right to from the public school system. Their hopes hinged on winning a lottery for a seat in a charter school.

Ponder these two statistics.

1. Fully 70 percent of eighth-graders are not proficient in reading, and most of them will never catch up. To parents, if their child is failing in their early teen years, it means failure for life.
2. Each year, more than 1 million high school seniors fail to graduate. Everyone understands the consequences of education failure, and this number quantifies that failure in black and white – Research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation

Kids fall behind and drop out because the feel they are losing ground, they have no future, they have no hope. It is not necessarily because of individual teachers, but because of the system and the system is welded in place by the teachers’ unions.

One of the key elements is teacher tenure. The concept of tenure started in colleges and universities as a way to protect professors from dismissal for political views or controversial positions. It was that tenure would allow independent research and inquiry without fear and reprisal. It was hard for a professor to get tenure. It required years of teaching and surviving a tough vetting process. Tenure was copied by the teachers unions and in most schools all that it requires is to show up and keep breathing for two to three years to have a job for life.

Michelle Rhee, as superintendent of the Washington DC public schools, tried to offer an alternative. She proposed giving teachers a choice. They could choose to keep tenure and their contract would give them a modest raise. Or, they could forego tenure and be eligible for additional merit pay that could double their salary. The teachers union would not even let the proposal come up for a vote.

So  the first reason we need to redistribute the wealth is that we are rapidly producing an underclass that doesn’t choose not to take care of themselves, but is unable to take care of themselves because the progressive movement and teachers unions care more about keeping incompetent teachers employed and paying union dues ahead of educating the children. It is estimated that 80% of our public schools will fall short of the No Child Left Behind goals targeted for 2014. The Obama administrations answer for this is, naturally, to move the goal posts. The program has changed to Most Children Left Behind the Rest of the World. Billy Joel summed it up in one of his songs No Man’s Land:

 I see these children with their boredom and their vacant stares,

God help us all if we’re to blame for their unanswered prayers.

Minimum Wage

Okay so you can’t graduate high school. Maybe you can get an entry level job and learn the ropes from there. What’s  that you say? What the young adult brings to the table isn’t yet worth $7.25 an hour?  Too bad. That is the least amount of money you can be paid by law. It is called the minimum wage.

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July. – Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3, 2009

In the midst of the most prolonged high level of unemployment since the Great Depression a progressive policy is enhanced that costs 330,000 teen jobs, just as predicted. So first we destroy their education and then we tell them they can’t get a job because they are not skilled enough to earn $7.25. But that’s not all. Local bureaucrats join in the fun.

A 575,000 square foot armory in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx in New York City was given to the city by the National Guard who no longer needed the space. The city tried to find developers for the space and finally succeeded, choosing Related Companies as the developer. The project was to develop retail space and other amenities, create 2200 jobs and invest $300 million in the neighborhood. However, because it came with $17 million in tax breaks to attract a developer it also came with the stipulation that no job could be offered in the space that paid less than $10 per hour plus benefits or $11.50 per hour without benefits. When it was clear that the developer couldn’t get any tenants to bite on the higher minimum wage, the project was killed. The progressives crowed that they stopped a developer who wouldn’t commit to paying a living wage but people in the neighborhood had a different view.

“It’s sitting here and it’s wasting space and a lot of people around here definitely need jobs,” said Joel Bekker, a teacher at Kingsbridge International High School. “We keep talking about raising taxes and paying for the poor, but here’s an opportunity for people to earn their own way.” – New York Post, December 12, 2010

There is another battle I will call the Wal-Mart Wars. Wal-Mart has tried unsuccessfully to open a store in New York City running up against the progressives and the unions every step of the way. Wal-Mart’s tag line is “Save money, live better.”  With all the hubbub about a living wage, you would think that allowing a company that eats, lives, and breaths low prices would be welcomed as a hero to help those living wages go further. But nothing could be further from the truth. Wal-Mart is non-union. Wal-Mart pays low wages but it also touts opportunities for advancement saying that 70% of its managers started out as hourly workers. But that’s not good enough to fit in the progressive mold despite being able to bring jobs to the city and lower prices to the community.

Reason number two for redistribution of wealth is a large number of unemployed, not because they don’t want to work, but because progressives have decided for them the parameters by which they can be hired. You can’t eat, but at least no one’s exploiting you. The progressives have made sure of that.

Crime and Drugs

If you drop out of school uneducated and can’t get a job what do you do? If your morals went the way of your dreams and aspirations you can always turn to crime. Go into the drug business, the money is good while it lasts if you stay one step ahead of the odds. You can walk around flush with cash and if you die young, so what. What else were your prospects?  If you go to jail, at least you get “three hots and a cot,” that is, meals and a bed and free medical care

If a life of crime is not for you, perhaps you can use some drugs as sort of a cheap mini-vacation from your dismal life. That is, of course, until you reach the point where you become addicted to your escape, and then you can check into a new hell hotel.

Reason number three for the distribution of the wealth. If you sign up with the government to redistribute your wealth you may have some level of control over how much that turns out to be. Otherwise you may be negotiating with people who have little regard for your life but a lot of lust for your belongings.

The Forgotten Man

While these and other progressive programs and union initiatives were put in place, who is left with the bill. For those pulling the wagon they are finding it harder because more and more people are riding on the wagon. The forgotten man is handed the bill but has little say in the negotiations. So, should the forgotten man accept this fate or should he fight back?

Education

One of the bargains the forgotten man did agree to was to provide tax dollars in return for a public school system. It benefits all of us if we have an educated work force not predicated on the ability to pay for a private education. But what the forgotten man did not agree to was to provide lifetime employment to teachers without regard to the quality of the education provided to the children in their charge.  

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle awakens knowing it must today run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten. Every morning a lion awakens knowing it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It matters not whether you are a gazelle or a lion, when the sun rises you had better be running. – African proverb

The forgotten man wants the teachers to wake up each morning running, not sauntering to the schoolhouse to put in their time.

Right to Work

Everyone should have a right to work and not have to be forced to join a union to hold a job or be told he can’t work for a wage less than some bureaucrat says is fair. It is called individual responsibility. The employer and employee should be able to negotiate over the terms and conditions of employment freely without government interference.

Crime

One of the striking examples illustrated in the documentary Waiting for Superman, was that for the cost of incarcerating a prisoner for four years, you could pay for twelve years of private school and still have money left over for college. It is not about money. It is about freedom. But freedom has a cost and to the unions that cost is stark. They stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in union dues. Here it is in their own words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwxiRXqH_hQ

Educating our children before giving teachers a comfortable and unchallenged lifetime position is anathema to the teachers unions.

The issue is clear. Either surrender the wealth you have accumulated for your family through your hard work to the progressives, or turn the tide to make our future generations self sufficient and productive. Make no mistake it will be a battle. Are you ready for the fight? If so, let’s get to work.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.