Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Archive for the ‘Bureacracy’ Category

Thank God we bought our much-needed used minivan before this program was announced!   We were able to pay cash - $3,000 – to a family who’s kids were grown and out of the house, so we didn’t end up with payments we couldn’t afford.  If we had waited just a couple of months later, the seller would probably have traded it in for a $7000 government credit at the dealership instead of selling it to us at a price we could afford.   It would have been destroyed by the dealer (mandatory), and right now we would be stuck with all the other struggling families who are unable to find a used minivan within their price range. 

From Hot Air:

With home prices falling, fewer people employed, and every economic indicator on the dashboard flashing red, deflation has started to become a big enough worry that the Fed has adjusted its monetary policy to account for it.  There are no such worries in the used-car industry, however.  Prices have jumped 10% overall and in some cases as much as a third for used cars, thanks not to demand as much as a restricted supply after the government destroyed billions of dollars in assets as part of its Cash for Clunkers program last year (via Instapundit):

Car buyers on average paid $1,800 more for a used vehicle in July than they paid a year ago at this time, according to Edmunds.com data. That’s a 10.3 percent increase, bringing the average cost of a 3-year-old vehicle to $19,248. The price of a Cadillac Escalade spiked nearly 36 percent. “A lack of confidence in the economy is driving more people to used cars, putting upward pricing pressure on a limited supply of vehicles,” said Joe Spina, a senior analyst for Edmunds. …

Spina said that at this time last year, a troubled economy had consumers buying less- expensive fuel-efficient vehicles and trading in “gas guzzlers” through Cash for Clunkers (more formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System). “Now, those who need trucks and large SUVs are buying them and in many cases are turning to used vehicles as a way to save money,” he said. ”Prices are high because this demand comes at a time when inventory is low as a result of the current shortage of lease returns and trade-ins for vehicles of this type.” And, he said, while prices are indeed very high now, last year’s prices were low, making the gains even more dramatic.

In other words, there was real and rational demand for the cars that the Obama administration sent to the grinders.  That demand hasn’t stopped, even if tainted with political incorrectness.  The top four vehicles for price increases in Edmunds’ used-car tracking are all high-end, larger cars or SUV:

• Cadillac Escalade – 35.6% increase
• Chevy Suburban – +34.2%
• Dodge Grand Caravan – +34%
• BMW X5 – +33%

As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them.  The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new.   By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction.  Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money.

In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families.  Nice work.

Used Car Prices Up As Much as 30%

Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car

Dave Ramsey’s Thoughts On “Cash For Clunkers”

Cash for Clunkers Hurt The Poor

This was originally published in 1979.  We are much further down this road now, and are moving at a faster pace.

Why did Rome decline and fall? In my belief, Rome fell because of a fundamental change in ideas on the part of the Roman people—ideas which relate primarily to personal responsibility and the source of personal income. In the early days of greatness, Romans regarded themselves as their chief source of income. By that I mean each individual looked to himself—what he could acquire voluntarily in the marketplace—as the source of his livelihood. Rome’s decline began when the people discovered another source of income: the political process—the State.

When Romans abandoned self-responsibility and self-reliance, and began to vote themselves benefits, to use government to rob Peter and pay Paul, to put their hands into other people’s pockets, to envy and covet the productive and their wealth, their fate was sealed. As Dr. Howard E. Kershner puts it, “When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare.” The legalized plunder of the Roman Welfare State was undoubtedly sanctioned by people who wished to do good. But as Henry David Thoreau wrote, “If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house to do me good, I would run for my life.” Another person coined the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Nothing but evil can come from a society bent upon coercion, the confiscation of property, and the degradation of the productive.

Someone once remarked that the Welfare State is so named because, in it, the politicians get well and you pay the fare! There is much truth in that statement. In Rome, the emperors were buying support with the people’s own money. After all, government can give only what it first takes. The emperors, in dishing out all these goodies, were in a position to manipulate public opinion. Alexander Hamilton observed, “Control of a man’s subsistence is control of a man’s will.” Few people will bite the hand that feeds them!

Civil wars and conflict of all sorts increased as faction fought against faction to get control of the huge State apparatus and all its public loot. Mass corruption, a huge bureaucracy, high taxes and burdensome regulations were the order of the day. Business enterprise was called upon to support the growing body of public parasites.

In time, the State became the prime source of income for most people. The high taxes needed to finance the State drove business into bankruptcy and then nationalization. Whole sectors of the economy came under government control in this manner. Priests and intellectuals extolled the virtues of the almighty emperor, the Provider of all things. The interests of the individual were considered a distant second to the interests of the emperor and his legions.

Rome also suffered from the bane of all welfare states, inflation. The massive demands on the government to spend for this and that created pressures for the creation of new money. The Roman coin, the denarius, was cheapened and debased by one emperor after another to pay for the expensive programs. Once 94% silver, the denarius, by 268 A.D., was little more than a piece of junk containing only .02% silver. Flooding the economy with all this new and cheapened money had predictable results: prices skyrocketed, savings were eroded, and the people became angry and frustrated. Businessmen were often blamed for the rising prices even as government continued its spendthrift ways.

Read more at the Freeman

Rome and the Great Depression

When Will the U.S. Go the Way of Rome?

If there is one generalization that can be accurately asserted about Barack Hussein Obama and generations of Marxists before him, it is that they are and always have been, universally, hypocrites. They preach classist sermons to the masses, the foundational fodder upon which their failed socialist regimes are constructed, all while living lavish lifestyles characterized by elitism and overly conspicuous consumption.

This generalization holds not just for Western socialists, but also for their Soviet-era mentors, of which I am a first-hand witness.

Shortly after the Demo’s 2008 “October Surprise,” that politically fortuitous collapse of the U.S. securities markets which Obama rode into office, one of his condemnations of corporate execs was for “flying around the nation on private jets” while their companies were sinking into bankruptcy.

At the time, Obama had just stepped off the most expensive luxury jet in the world, Air Force One, which costs far more to operate and maintain for every minute of flight than the largest of corporate jets cost for hours, or even days, of flight. Just like his socialist mentors, Obama was oblivious to even a hint of the hypocrisy.

Since then, he has logged many, many more hours on Air Force One, in transit to more luxurious vacation destinations and elite political confabs than any nouveau riche lucky lottery winner has in first class seats to Vegas — and all while our nation is sinking into bankruptcy.

Obama is just the latest of the Socialist Bourgeoisie political aristocracy to occupy the White House, the archetype being Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who built on the statist foundation laid by Woodrow Wilson, and did more to undermine liberty than any president in history, with the possible exception of Abe Lincoln — until Obama. (I suspect Rahm Emanuel plagiarized Obama’s rule number one, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” from FDR.)

According to Marxist doctrine, manifest in Obama’s classist rhetoric, the bourgeoisie are defined as the dominant ruling-class who control the means of production in a capitalist economy and abuse the proletariat to produce their wealth.

However, what Marx didn’t have was the benefit of observing a mature free enterprise system in operation under a constitutional democratic republic from which strong and healthy middle class economies arise. So strong is the middle class in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, that modern Socialists now use the term “bourgeoisie” to pejoratively depict middle class consumerism.

Read more at the Patriot Post

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

We the Serfs

View on YouTube – Part 1

View on YouTube – Part 2

View on YouTube – Part 3

View on YouTube – Part 4

View on YouTube – Part 5

View on YouTube – Part 6

Attacks on Freedom

The Original Tea Party

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The Civil War and Gilded Age

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Progressivism

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FDR’s State And LBJ’s Society

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Big Gov’t and Tea Parties

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The Constitution and Freedom

Woodrow Wilson and the roots of Progressivism

Barack Obama and “The Second Bill of Rights”

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

We the Serfs

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

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“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced –a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.“   – From ICLEI‘s “Agenda 21“, signed by G.H. Bush, 1992

One reason that Portland is so hell-bent on pursuing unsustainable “sustainability” projects is that they’ve signed an ICLEI agreement to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80%, making themselves accountable to an international body of radical environmentalists who don’t have to live with the results at the local level.

Agenda 21 and the United Nations

Freedom Advocates explains the danger:

Right now, in your town and neighborhood, policies are being implemented that will ultimately eliminate your freedoms and destroy your way of life. You need to know what’s going on to stop this process. Many town officials are selling us out to global regional development with help from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI): Local Governments for Sustainability. ICLEI is used as one of the mechanisms to undo the political recognition of unalienable rights.

ICLEI uses the false premise and outright lies of anthropogenic* global warming to change our way of life, for the worse!

ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability promotes Local Action 21, Local Agenda 21 and other United Nations programmes implemented through local town councils, planners, mayors and local governments.

Why should you care?

Social engineering and behavior modification are some of the true objectives being implemented under the guise of environmental and climate protection. This is accomplished by exploiting people’s desire to maintain a healthy and lasting environment in the name of “sustainability.” Here is an example of how ICLEI changes behavior, jut like another organization called “Fostering Sustainable Behavior”.

It is also ICLEI’s job to implement United Nation’s policies that restructure our representative form of government through global and regional development (< click and then view slide show). Policies and programs take control from our representative government and put it into the hands of regional, non-elected boards.  This allows elected officials to shirk their responsibilities. It turns us into a soviet system that is based on Regionalism.  It facilitates both communism and fascism. Representative government with defined limits is the basis of a free and just society.

Cool Mayors Fire-up Hot Debate

ICLEI methods include infiltrating local government. Organization representatives seek to be hired into local planning departments or they provide “toolkits” to staff. Too many elected officials such as Cool Mayors allow ICLEI to influence policy changes through the use of funding incentives and rewards. While some of these policies sound good on the surface, they result in consequences such as:

• High-density housing scams
• Traffic congestion
• Open space where access is not allowed
• Government “partnering” with favored private businesses and non-profit agencies, using your tax money
• Undermining Constitutional administration of government
• Managed control over your life
• Mismanagement of public utilities
• Prohibitions on natural resource management leading to increased fire hazards, lack of water, and private property restrictions,
• Increased taxes, fees, regulations and restrictions

Is ICLEI running your town or coming to a town near you?

Are your elected officials being lured into enacting ridiculous rules and regulations in exchange for funding?  Do your elected officials know that there are long term consequences to their irresponsible actions?

Currently there are more than 550 communities in North America paying membership dues to ICLEI.  Upon becoming a member of ICLEI, members become governed by ICLEI Charter. If your community is one of these, you are paying for the loss of your unalienable rights.

Has your town, city or county signed on with ICLEI?  Find out here.

Patriot and AFP activist Roxanne Ross wrote an editorial on page 7 of the August edition of the Northwest Connection about how the ICLEI agenda threatens Multnomah county.

ICLEI is behind national schemes, as well:

How Obama is Locking Up Our Land

And now: The stealth Obama ocean grab

David Horowitz on Democrats’ Shadow Cabinet and the Green Communists

Global Warming Alarmism is a Grave Threat to our Liberty

Environmentalism: The New Communism

Every day from Jan 1st until today, hard-working Americans have been slaving to pay taxes to support our local, state and federal governments. Everything from today until Dec 31st is ours. That’s 231 days for government, 134 for us. There is something very, VERY wrong with this picture!

Whether by design or incompetence, the Cloward-Piven Strategy lives. Named after two leftist professors at Columbia University, the scheme calls for overwhelming government obligations to the point of collapse, therefore providing an excuse for a radical government takeover of the whole economy. Three news stories yesterday show the Cloward-Piven day of reckoning is creeping perilously closer.

First came word that new jobless claims last week jumped above half a million, a number so large that one economist said “it looks like the economy ran into a wall.” Second came a Congressional Budget Office estimate that this year’s federal deficit will be well above $1.3 trillion for a second straight year and remain above $1 trillion next year as well – causing as much debt in three years as government built up in the previous 219.

Third came the announcement by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) that yesterday was the 2010 “Cost of Government Day,” which is “the day on which the average American has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels.” Just two years ago, Cost of Government Day fell an astonishing 34 days earlier. This year, the average American worked 231 days just to support government, which consumes 63.41 percent of national income.

Read more at the Washington Times

When Will the U.S. Go the Way of Rome?

Happy “Cost of Government Day!”

Obama’s agenda: Overwhelm the system

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” ~ Ronald Reagan

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Here come the food police – literally!

When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn’t know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat’s milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)

But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn’t the least bit tongue-tied. “She started back-talking to them,” recalls Palmer. “She said, ‘If you take my computer again, I can’t do my homework.’ This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven’t gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids.”

As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents — from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture — took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
 
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.

What’s behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years — food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public. (For more on what’s behind the raids, see this new post.)

Read more at Grist

S510 Vote Delayed, But Not Defeated

Food freedom under attack

The FDA vs Raw Milk and the Constitution

Delia Lopez: Our government has gone Gestapo

The Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association endorses Delia Lopez for Congress

“We the people” are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States– the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.

At the time when it was written, however, the Constitution was a radical departure from the autocratic governments of the 18th century. Since it was something so new and different, the reasons for the Constitution’s provisions were spelled out in “The Federalist,” a book written by three of the writers of the Constitution, as a sort of instruction guide to a new product.

The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge– to this day– to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.

The Constitution of the United States is the biggest single obstacle to the carrying out of such rampaging presumptions, so it is not surprising that those with such presumptions have led the way in denigrating, undermining and evading the Constitution.

Read more of Part I at the Patriot Post

Dismantling America: Part II

Dismantling America: Part III

Dismantling America: Part IV

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and author of Dismantling America, discusses, with Hoover research fellow Peter Robinson, why he believes America is collapsing.

View on YouTube: Part 1

Thomas Sowell discusses same-sex marriage and judges who legislate from the bench.

View on YouTube: Part 2

American Collapse: Chapter 3
Thomas Sowell says a loss of personal responsibility is at the heart of the decline of American society.

Libertarian Economist Thomas Sowell on Property Rights

View on Breitbart.tv

The Kennedy Center management has told Glenn Beck that he can’t include an opening prayer during his scheduled event next week in Washington DC.

So these idiots actually claim that the 1st Amendment means that Christians can’t freely exercise their right to pray public property funded by their tax dollars, but Muslims can build a Victory Mosque just steps away from the hallowed ground where thousands were killed in the name of their religion?

To understand what the 1st Amendment REALLY means in regards to religious freedom, just take a look at excerpts of some of the Supreme Court decisions for the first 200 years of our nation’s history.

Glenn Beck to Rent Kennedy Center for ‘Restoring Honor’

Restoring Honor Rally – 8.28.10 – Washington, DC

On July 21, when President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, he promised: “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.” How long will this Obama promise last? Well, The New York Times reports today that  “the Obama administration on Wednesday pumped $3 billion into programs intended to stop the unemployed from losing their homes,” including a program announced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that “will draw on $1 billion authorized by the new financial overhaul law.” That’s right. The Dodd-Frank “no more taxpayer-funded bailouts forever” bill is not even a month old, and already President Obama is using it to turn your tax dollars into yet another bailout.

Faced with the utter failure of its TARP funded mortgage bailout, the Obama administration is now turning to the left’s old stand-in for housing market interference: the government-sponsored entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae is now working with the National Council of State Housing Agencies to let people buy houses with little or no down payment just like the GSEs did at the height of the housing bubble. And last week, Freddie Mac was also promoting no-down payment loans, this time through an array of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs. All this despite the fact that last week Fannie Mae announced it lost $1.2 billion in the second quarter of this year, and this week Freddie Mac announced a $4.71 billion loss. Both companies were also forced to ask for more Obama bailout cash, including $1.5 billion of your tax dollars for Fannie and another $1.8 billion for Freddie.

No wonder the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill did nothing about Fannie and Freddie; the Obama administration had every intention of continuing to use them to prop up the housing market. These programs will do nothing but delay the inevitable housing market correction. Instead of letting the market sort out what these homes are really worth, the Obama administration is only prolonging economic hardship by making it harder for new home buyers to afford a moderately priced home and making it harder for those who need to move for work to sell their current homes.

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Obama seizing control of Wall Street

Financial Reform Bill: Big Brother’s Bureaucratic Absolutism

Gov’t pushing risky lending again?

The Dodd-Frank Assault on Economic Recovery

Bailout Bonanza: Why Dodd’s “Reform” Bill Makes the Problem Worse

Dodd Bill is Just the Beginning of ‘Too Big to Fail’

Making the Housing Crisis Worse

How Government Caused The Mortgage Crisis

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Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

It’s time to approve school choice

Good grief! This is what Obama calls “sacrifice”? A ruling class living high on the backs of taxpaying serfs?

At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.

Read more at USA Today

Reality gap: U.S. struggles, D.C. booms

Private pay shrinks to historic lows as gov’t payouts rise

Way to buy off your voter blocks with taxpayer money!

President Barack Obama signed into law legislation providing $26 billion in aid to cash-strapped state governments amid fears the U.S. economy is stalling just months before this year’s midterm elections.

The House, taking a one-day break from the campaign trail, returned to Washington today to approve the measure 247-161 before lawmakers adjourned once again for their August recess.

The bill, designed to prevent thousands of layoffs of teachers and other public service employees, cleared the Senate last week after a pair of Republicans joined Democrats in breaking a filibuster.

Representative Mike Castle of Delaware, who is running for the Senate, and Joseph Cao of New Orleans were the only Republicans to support the bill. Three Democrats opposed the plan. Twenty-five lawmakers didn’t vote.

The bill became the latest flashpoint in an election year debate over jobs, the economy and the deficit. Republicans, who have attacked federal spending as one of their top election issues, called the legislation a costly bailout of government employees, a key Democratic constituency. Democrats, who have struggled to realize their jobs agenda, said the bill would keep teachers in the classroom and police on the beat while still cutting the deficit.

Read more at Bloomberg

Let us all now bail out the states?

The Next Big Crisis: State Bankruptcies

The Income Tax and Government Spending

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