big government (4)



                                   

                                                             All You'll Ever Need to Know 

                                       About Big Government Interference:







     Pythagorean theorem:......................24 words.

 

     Lord's prayer:..................................66 words.

 

     Archimedes' Principle:.....................67 words.
 

     Ten Commandments:........................179 words.

 

     Gettysburg Address:.......................286 words.
 

     Declaration of Independence:..........1,300 words.

 

     US Constitution with all 27 Amendments:........7,818 words.

 

     US Government regulations on sale of cabbage:….......26,911 words.
 
     Obamacare . . . . . . . . . 2,773 PAGES
 
 
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How Has Big Government
Stuck It to Us Lately?
 
Are the following statements True or False? Be careful, some are “tricky.” All false statements are explained below.
 
#1 Barack Obama on the Today Show yesterday announced his suspicion that ATMs and airport shoeshine machines are a big part of the reason that his $787 Billion stimulus failed to prevent America’s unemployment (now at 9.1%) from exceeding his promised 8.0%.
 
#2 The LBJ “War on Poverty” was implemented in 1968 with 13% of Americans rated as “POOR people.” Social welfare payments increased to 500% of former levels (a 400% increase) so that by 1980 13% of Americans were still classified as poor .
 
#3 “Capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to extinction,” according to the prime minister of France.
 
#4 In Sweden where a cradle-to-grave nanny state supplies free health care; free education; welfare programs and unemployment programs covering 76% of their people at some time in their lives; not to mention big retirement packages . . . the enterprise minister and the government refused to bail out the Saab automobile company.
 
#5 Federal government employees are restricted in many ways even when they belong to unions. However, thanks to the U.S. Postal Service unions, the post office despite heading for bankruptcy is not being allowed to stop Saturday delivery a step that would immediately alleviate the problem because of their union’s clout in Washington, D.C. As a temporary band-aid, the post office is issuing a new series of 40 American Union Leaders stamps to raise needed money from philatelists (stamp collectors).
#6 541 clean air, water, and waste programs are found in 28 separate government agencies not including the monstrously redundant EPA.
#7 President Obama’s trademark legislation Obamacare actually created a few more federal agencies in just one law then Franklin Delano Roosevelt created in over a dozen years in office.
#8 In Texas, they have a part-time citizen legislature that works for about six months then goes back to real jobs for about 18 months. Our full-time federal law makers (Congress) have put some 62,000 new regulations on the books since GHW Bush left office in January, 1993. Any doubt why business is having such a nasty time creating new jobs?
#9 In 1956 President Eisenhower and Congress passed a 293- page bill authorizing a federal highway act which created our present interstate highway system. When the act was updated in 1991 it was only 28 pages long but the end result cost one third as much for 3% of the highway mileage.
#10 Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Grace Commission came up with 2,478 separate ways to “get the government off the backs of the American people designed to eliminate the deficits and national debt by 1990 in the face of $10.2 TRillion of inefficiency, stagnation, and smothering of the free market IF they were not acted upon. Virtually none of these was acted upon by the four progressive Democratic congresses and despite creating 21 million jobs, Reagan ran up huge deficits while in office.
#11 President Obama’s ‘Trickle-up Economic” ideas have been derided as “Trickle-up Poverty,” but compared to the utterly socialistic French, we are still led by a capitalism-inspired administration.
#12 It takes the average Estonian less than 12 minutes to fill out their income tax forms thanks to a national FLAT tax of 18%. Since the country escaped the clutches of the old USSR, they’ve been known as the “Baltic Tiger” for their incredible national productivity and “a sort of Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea.” These things will happen when Soviet tanks stop patrolling your streets and communism is left in the dust. Mr. Obama is taken our country in the opposite direction and now wants to create a national police force answerable to him alone.
#13  One of the most succinct criticisms of Barack Obama is that “. . . he doesn’t understand that wealth must first be allowed to be created, before it can be shared.”
 
 
 
Answers: Only the even numbers are true. Here are the explanations for the odd numbered false statements:
 
#1 Actually shoe shine machines were not the guilty party according to Obama, but rather airport ticket kiosks. However, the real fallacy is Obama’s premise about “automation” in general: When bank ATMs rose by 150% over one ten year period, the number of bank tellers increased by 160%. Similarly, virtually all insurance companies and financial companies in the mid- and late-70’s added EDP (electronic data processing) a.k.a. computer departments on the promise of eliminating huge amounts of clerical staffing. When Rajjpuut worked for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas the company’s employment jumped from roughly 340 to 790 in four and a half years with 85% of the newly hired fitting into either the EDP or the clerical job description.
#2 TRUE
#3 Actually, this was many years ago. At the time the statement was made -- a combined statement from presiding leaders of six countries that could then be considered the armpits of the world: Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua -- all of which of kept or flirted with communism or abject near-communist socialism. Six countries that needed capitalism to boost their anemic economies were blaming capitalism for all the ills of the world.
#4 TRUE
#5 Only false because of the Union Leader Stamps unless they decided to create them today.
#6 TRUE
#7   Sorry, not just a “few” more but roughly 9.6 times as many new government agencies were created by Obamacare (one law) as FDR created in all his years in office . . . 384 new federal agencies from Obamacare. That’s why it took 2,770 pages . . . it’s not about providing health care, it’s about controlling every aspect of health care, hospitals and doctors and nurses.
#8 TRUE
#9 The original 1956 bill was the shorter one, 28 pages long. The 1991 bill was 293 pages long. And the final cost was close to the same (in constant dollars taking account of inflation) for only 3% of the mileage. In fairness:  putting four-lane highways through places like Glenwood Canyon in Colorado does take a lot more effort than flat roads over the Great Plains. However, the strictly environmental considerations; as well as those related to mass transit; auto-pollution; seat belt use; motorcycle helmet use; preservation of historic sites; erosion control; billboard regs; women’s issues; Native American issues; disadvantaged individuals’ issues; use of recycled rubber in road bed asphalt; requirements for specific iron and steel; etc. etc. probably accounted for 66% of the total cost.
           #10 TRUE
           #11   President Obama in February 2009 weeks after taking office made his infamous “Trickle-up” speech. A month later French President Sarkozy said, “I was not elected to raise taxes (but) to reconcile France with the workplace and factory.” So even the French have turned their backs on redistribution of wealth as an answer to economic problems.
          #12 TRUE
          #13 Even thought the criticism would suit Barack Obama and 95% of progressive politicians to a “T,” it was actually aimed at the “archaic socialism” of France. Hope you enjoyed the quiz and understand a bit more about the connection between “small minds and big government.”
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 

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Wisconsin Guv Walker First Gets it Right;
Then Screws-up in Battle vs. Unions
 
 
“Collective Bargaining for government employment conflicts with the interests of the nation and the tax-payers.”  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
 
I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I'm maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL - CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government's reason for being. It was in recognition of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety . . . . I must tell those who failed to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.”  President Ronald Wilson Reagan
 
 
Confusion Reigns on All Fronts as Nation Stagnates;
Seethes in Obama-Created Swamp
 
            “. . . She’s the most disgraceful country that ever you have seen,
            They’re hanging men and women there for wearing o’ the green . . .”
 
            The Founding Fathers must be spinning at 300 revolutions per second in their graves right now. And like “dear old 'Oirelan'” in the song The Wearing of the Green, something quite disgraceful is going on in America right now. 
 
Item: Democratic Senators from Indiana and Wisconsin have left the states where they won election and are now roasting weenies and enjoying the Iron Chefs reality TV show in Illinois. This “protest” (which is really a disgusting aberration of their responsibilities as elected representatives of their state) is in its second week.
 
Item:   Spend, spend, spend and spend some more. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is propagating the Democrats message that taxing creates jobs. Trumka, who next to SEIU President Andy Stern is the second-most frequent visitor to the White House and therefore ranks as an Obama-advisor, wants to dramatically raise the federal gas tax so that “a dedicated source of revenue will be created to fund infrastructure permanently.” Of course the unions and Democrats, who claim to be the proponents of the poor and the middle class, have to realize that taxes upon necessities like food and gas are “regressive” . . . that is they harm the middle-class and especially the poor by taking a far greater proportion of their meager disposable incomes for taxation. And then there’s the fact that a tax on gas amounts to a huge inflation as the costs of it will show up in every single item that’s bought or sold in the country. Of course, yes, more union and government jobs would be created at the cost of 2-5 times that many jobs in the private sector. This is an example of the well-known economic gaff called the “Broken Window Fallacy.”
 
 
Item:  the Democrats are now talking about renewing their highly successful, they say, “Cash for Clunkers program which is an example of “The Blessings of Destruction” another gaff that an Econ-101 should never make, much less an elected official.
 
 
 
specifically, Cash for Clunkers created a scarcity of used cars (they were destroyed in huge numbers, remember) and pushed the cost of the average used car in the country up $1,800.  Mr. President, the rich don't buy used cars, so who do you suppose your stupid law hurt?
 
Item: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been thwarted in his attempt to bring his state back from a $3.6 BIllion shortfall and to free all state and county and local governments from the shackles of collective bargaining and may soon have to start laying off government employees to make his budget balance. By the way, there is no “right” to collective bargaining either in the constitution or the laws of nature, no matter how often such a “right” is trumpeted about.
 
 
Item: The just mentioned Governor Scott Walker is, however, playing favorites. No doubt because of the political realities, Governor Walker is not addressing unionized police and unionized fire-fighters in Wisconsin they are exempt under his new bill which otherwise would be an impossibly unpopular move.   A real statesman does the right thing, not the popular or expedient one.  The good governor needs to familiarize himself with the history of the 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Union that resulted in the firing of 11,000 ATC employees who refused to honor the law created by Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter; and who violated their oaths of office. Carter removed the ability of federal workers’ unions to strike or use other collective bargaining against the taxpayers with Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. In Walker’s defense, President Obama who often speaks without knowing anything about his subject: vowed that he would “put on comfortable shoes and march with a picket sign” anywhere where the collective bargaining process was being challenged . . . sounds like it’s been really challenged in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, no need to go to Wisconsin.
 
Item: President Barack Obama has ordered his INjustice Dept. to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. The aim is twofold:  to please his gay supporters cementing their votes in his behalf; and to eventually make gay marriage legal with all the rights of real marriage including adoption. The folks at NAMBLA must be enjoying bouts of orgiastic excitement about now. Who cares about non-voting children after all?
 
 
Item: It’s begun abundantly clear since the revelation of the pathetic Obama budget that in his eyes no single government spending or government interference or government abuse or fraudulent government boondoggle deserves to be cut; apparently no federal government program ever created suffers from fraud, abuse or incompetence and all must be continued into perpetuity with ever-increasing budgets?   The United States’ federal government officially faces a $14.1 TRillion national debt and $112 TRillion in UNfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare, and the federal side of Medicaid; and NOT including all the Welfare programs) and the president and his Progressive buddies on the left side of the aisle cannot understand why the America voters kicked so many of them out of office last November. They are refusing to consider $30 Billion in spending cuts and moving the country closer to a federal government shutdown. ‘Lest you think this is just the Rajjpuut’s interpretation of the economic situation . . . two voice no less far apart on the political continuum than Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton and new TEA Party Senator Rand Paul when asked what constitutes the greatest threat to America’s security gave the same answer: the nation’s DEBT.
 
 
Item: That privileged class known as unionized government workers has become the new elite that President Obama prefers above and beyond all others. It works like this: The government unions use up to 85% of the union dues they collect for the salaries of union officials and for political contributions. 96% of those political contributions go to the campaign funds of Democratic candidates. Those candidates when elected create a bunch of new “goodies” for the unionized government workers whose dues again fund the bloated salaries of union officials and the war chests of the Democratic Party. If, occasionally, they are not successful in electing a lot of Democrats one year, little will be lost between then and the next election and the dues-campaign funds vicious circle continues eternally. And who pays for this vicious circle profitable to progressive Democrats and union leaders alike? The taxpayer, of course.
 
Item: Even without Obamacare, the ridiculous budget submitted by Obama will almost double the National Debt in the next decade: $13.2 TRillion more. The present Republican budget (which is just a preliminary <designed to make up for the fact that the last Pelosi House did not pass a budget> doesn’t include necessary further cuts . . . but IF the present Republican budget extended into the next decade it would result in additional debt of over $10 TRillion dollars. Of course with Obamacare, both budgets would swell by another $2.4 TRillion over the next decade.  When will the voters wise up? When will they understand that government spending programs and entitlement programs are all PONZI SCHEMES? When will they understand that Thomas Jefferson had it right when he said, “That government is best that governs least . . . “?
 
Item: The Obama administration is drawing up a bill that will charge sellers of artificial trees a “tariff” to support a marketing fund for the natural Christmas tree industry to make up for their ever falling share of the holiday tree market. Can one eagerly look forward to the day when the feds will bailout the natural tree promoters?
 
Item: You may not know these facts, but facts they are . . . the United States has discovered and verified the discovery of the biggest oil deposit in the world 88% beneath us and 12% below Canada called the Bakken Fields oil deposit. This makes Saudi Arabia look like energy-paupers. Even without the Bakken deposits (now outlawed for use except those portions under Indian reservations), recent advances in natural gas and oil drilling technology would presumably soon allow the United States to become an exporter of natural gas and IF drilling were maximized, to be virtually free of foreign oil dependence . . . but, of course, that would mean that green energy subsidies would not have any merit. Government studies showing that wind energy is NOT practicable for large scale use; and the Spanish economic study of the results of that nation’s 23-year failed (Unemployment went from 4% to 21%) green energy program have been stifled by the EPA and not reported in the mainstream/ lamestream media. The EPA and Progressive Democrats are attempting to quash reports contrary to their green agenda . . . for example: turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, and rare earth minerals – and huge orders of difficult resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping and monstrous amounts of pollution and carbon dioxide emissions (which the EPA has called “toxic”) at every step of the way.
            Greater wind-turbine development which the Obama administration is describing as a “MUST” would also necessitate greater dependence upon China. Roughly 96% of the world’s rare earth production is centered now in China and Mongolia. Theirs is a very pollution-concentrated process which hopefully we will not emulate seeking rare earths here in the U.S. In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals – and over 15,000,000 tons of waste.  As mentioned earlier, wind turbines do NOT work on a large-scale basis. Why? Because the backup power plants (the wind doesn’t always blow, hence the need for backups) are not only far more INefficient but according to the EPA’s own literature they also generate far more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they were able to run at full capacity. As backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind electricity production.

Ya'll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
 
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“The progressive/Marxist big government mindset is that life is a zero-sum game, so they can’t really understand the creative-cooperative nature of capitalism even if they themselves are involved in some creative-cooperative activity. They treat the world as if everybody’s playing checkers** . . . if somebody wins, somebody else must lose and therefore the best result in their view is a draw; and they will always seek to drag the “wealthy” down to the level of the poor with wealth-redistribution schemes that just impoverish everyone. In America, thanks in part to largely unfettered capitalism, the rising tide of general prosperity has lifted all boats for over two hundred years and continues to lift all boats so that the typical American living under the “poverty line” in 2004 was better off than 88% of the world’s population.” Rajjpuut

Crocodile Tears of the Left

Flood America with Corruption

as the “BIG LIE” Dominates

Part IV: Victim #4, The Rich and the Poor

Loyal readers are advised to skip ahead as we give a brief review. In this blog series, we’ve been exposing the self-described “victimhood” of progressives at the hands of their evil, racist, etc. conservative oppressors and showing you where the real victimhood is:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/04/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment_part_i.thtml

In part I of the series (the link immediately above) the victim was “TRUTH” and among six key areas we hit Rajjpuut documented and exposed this truth:

Using the same Cloward-Piven** strategy that DELIBERATELY created the bankruptcy of New York City earlier between 1967 and 1975 by deliberately overloading the welfare rolls . . . beginning especially after 1992, ACORN, OBAMA, First ACORN PRESIDENT Bill Clinton, and oodles of progressives (98% of them Democrats) DELIBERATELY were pushing the car toward a 500-foot cliff. George W. Bush jumped in and grabbed the steering wheel and hit the brakes. Bush was able to create a controlled-skid and guide the car to rest in a friendly-looking ditch!

The chain of evidence producing that statement is something that every American ought to be aware of, just as every American ought to be aware of the identities of Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward and Frances Piven and be able to articulate what Cloward-Piven strategy is . . . the fact that most Americans are totally ignorant of these things means someone hasn’t been doing their job.

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/05/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment___part_ii.thtml

In Part II of the series we examines the “Fourth Estate” and how their willful actions and inactions and choreographed responses (the scandal known as the “JournOList” which many Americans have not heard of because it’s too embarrassing for the liberal media to reveal that over 400 of its people have been colluding on how stories ought to be presented – to the benefit of the progressive political movement in this country) have sabotaged the nation and freedom and the Constitution. In Rajjpuut’s J-school classes reporting was all about revealing TRUTH in an ‘inverted-pyramid’ of Who? What? Where? Why? and How? That immediately put the most important facts at the top of the story and gradually petered out as less important details were shown. Today the inverted-pyramid has disappeared and unsupported opinion has replaced TRUTH in much of what passes for “NEWS.” Then we looked at how the false victimhood of the progressives (we must “progress” beyond the outdated and flawed U.S. Constitution) has created another real victim: “Responsibility” in the guise of the rising numbers of single-mother-families (a problem obviously created by everybody else’s sexism, according to feminists). As the irresponsible notion of deliberately choosing a single-parent family drags down all of society (see this link).http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/06/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment___part_iii.thtml

Victim #4: The Rich and the Poor

This will be the shortest blog in our ten-part blog-series because despite all the lies progressives might tell you, economics is a very simple area. It’s only when you tell gross lies about economics aimed at furthering the likelihood of socialism or totalitarianism or both that economics gets difficult. If your “economic world system” is a lie (the “school” of Keynesian economics) then you must forever be adding sub-schools that purport to justify and “solve” the big lie in the system. Today there are at least a hundred sub-schools of John Maynard Keynes (all of them telling lies in favor of big government at every turn). In the “Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith revealed the marvelous truth we today call “Classical Economics” that “individual men through creativity, through industry, through communications can create and magnify wealth cooperatively.”

Here is the point where the fearful progressive departs from common sense. In his world there is always an oppressor (the conservative-captitalist) and always a victim (the whole world of progressives themselves) being exploited by the oppressor. Life, in short, is a zero sum game between two people. If the capitalist wins, the laborer must lose. If the capitalist wins the consumer must lose. If the capitalist wins society as a whole must lose. How does the capitalist win? By creating “PROFIT.” Profit is the ultimate “dirty word” to progressives which means they who claim to follow a historically necessary path based upon the lessons of history, don’t understand the simplest lessons of human history because . . . (drum roll, maestro) profit is good, indeed profit is the ultimate good that makes civilization, some degree of comfort, and large amounts of free will possible to mankind.

Another word for profit is “SURPLUS.” When people live hand to mouth existences . . . in that cold gray world . . . there is indeed a greater likelihood of exploitation, exploitation of the criminal over the victim. I barely have enough and you barely have enough, if I hurt you and steal what you’ve got then I have twice as much and you have nothing. However, when we both have a little profit, a bit of surplus, instead of a win-lose proposition, life becomes win-win. I’m a farmer and I trade a little bit of my extra corn (beyond what I need to survive and to feed my animals) to you in exchange for the chair you made, your profit; to your neighbor the smith for the hoe and shovel he made, his surplus or profit beyond survival needs; and to your other neighbor for the wool he’s got, his family’s profit. I have so much corn that I’d almost give it away for the chair, the garden tools and the wool.

Each of the others I trade with feels the same about the furniture, tools, and wool they produce. Each of us feels like we’ve gained by the trades we made and lost virtually nothing. This is the essence of win-win interaction, the essence of capitalism. When money is created, capitalism often becomes broadly expansive, the resulting interactions become sort of complicated, but the essence is the same, men willingly give of their labor and their surplus to interact with other men in cooperative win-win trade. There is no oppressor and no victim. The simplest and best example of unfettered capitalism is found in this brief essay:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

But there often is an oppressor after all; the heavy hand of government is played when power enters the marketplace by force. Whether for taxation or other confiscation, it is government which befuddles the simple win-win formula, simply stated the one lesson for understanding economics is:

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2

But when government enters the marketplace, with taxes, subsidies, willful destruction, payment for zero production or lessened production, etc., etc., ad nauseum they have to justify the “displacement” of normal market forces and normal free-market good this way:

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L3

Here’s the total picture free online, Rajjpuut recommends you make this website a “favorite”:

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/

So what’s really going on when government enters the picture? In a word “theft,” stealing by the powerful (the government) of what the productive have earned. Sometimes it is literally out-and-out direct theft for and by those in power. More commonly at other times they steal from some, pay take “their cut” as well and redistribute the wealth to others so as to win the favor of those others receiving benefits and “earn” their votes and support. Today in America 47% pay no taxes but are rather in complete or partial measure supported by those who do produce and do pay the taxes . . . this is what government has done to us.

The progressive/Marxist big government mindset is that life is a zero-sum game, so they can’t really understand the creative-cooperative nature of capitalism even if they themselves are involved in some creative-cooperative activity. They treat the world as if everybody’s playing checkers . . . if somebody wins, somebody else must lose and therefore the best result in their view is a draw; and they will always seek to drag the “wealthy” down to the level of the poor with wealth-redistribution schemes that just impoverish everyone. In America, thanks in part to largely unfettered capitalism, the rising tide of general prosperity has lifted all boats for over two hundred years and continues to lift all boats so that the typical American living under the “poverty line” in 2004 was better off than 88% of the world’s population. A rising tide of prosperity is the hallmark of capitalism; stagnation and lack of economic growth is the hallmark of government interference.

While government does play a legitimate and necessary role in defending the people and their borders and maintaining order and protecting their god-given liberties . . . government run amuck under progressivism fulfills a totally corrupted role: screwing the rich, screwing the poor and making itself ever bigger, every day . . . .

Next Time: First Crocodile Tears, then Dismemberment Part V

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut
** The truth is, it is ONLY when progressivism moves in to create Big Government, GIBs (government interference boondoggles) and GSB (government spending boondoggles) that surpluses disappear and profit becomes an ugly world and then life gets beastly and miserable and very close to zero-sum.
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