Category → Government Of the People…
Allen West – Our Hero
Congressman Allen West gives an excellent interview on America, Barack Hussein Obama, and foreign policy
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=235491
Political Correctness …Not Your Grandfather’s Values
How Political Correctness Is Breaking Western Civilization
© Josh First
August 11, 2011
Recent orgies of violence in America and England demonstrate the sickness of the politics of victimization and entitlement, and how it corrodes our basic institutions of civilization. Amplifying it have been law enforcement failures in both nations that reveal how decades of moral relativism and coddling of criminals has destroyed the rule of law, which is at the core of western civilization.
It has been eight months of infuriatingly shocking photos, videos, 911 calls, but limited reporting in the mainstream press, about anti-white beatings, flash mobs, and race riots across England and America. From Michael Chambers in western Pennsylvania, to Chrissy Polis in Maryland, to families attending the Wisconsin State Fair, to shoppers and business people caught on the streets of Philadelphia and Chicago, to people lounging in public parks in Milwaukee, to stores in Las Vegas, St. Paul, Kansas City, and New York, to bystanders, homeowners and shop owners in London, Tottenham, Manchester, and other British cities, groups of “wilding” young blacks have openly targeted whites, Hispanics, and Asians for savage beatings and robbery. Mostly, these are sadistic beatings of defenseless individuals, with laughing and taunts by the kids as they run down another hapless victim. Robbery seems to be a byproduct of the supine victim’s inability to hold on to their scattered personal belongings. In a scene that you could not create in a horror movie, except maybe the purposefully demented A Clockwork Orange, at one picnic pilfered food was wolfed down while the beatings continued, providing the kids with sustenance for their hard work.
“I heard laughing as they were beating everybody up. They were eating chips like it was a picnic,” said 22-year-old Shaina Perry, one of several picnicking Caucasians badly hurt in the assault at Wisconsin’s Kilbourn Reservoir Park, according to the July 6th Journal Sentinel.
Three years ago, Harrisburg had its own bout with teen pack violence, with victims being badly beaten on the street for the sheer fun of it all. I had my own run-in with one of the roving youth groups, in my Uptown neighborhood. That Saturday afternoon my dad and I were walking on the Front Street River Walk, and after being cornered by the group and then escaping, I was hit in the leg with a rock as the kids followed us and then milled about in front of our home. We witnessed our neighbors go through the same thing the year before. It’s scary. What is also scary is that I was carrying a pistol, and I would have been within my rights to use it.
What has caused this insanity is the insanity of decades of failed social policies that lock generation after generation of poor blacks into mental ghettos. Victim identity and victimization ideology is rampant, with supposed leaders like the reverends Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Jesse Jackson all reinforcing grievances, separatism, radicalism, and militant action to recoup long-standing demands for reparations and social paybacks. The message that has been instilled by these reverends, and even by more mainstream academics like Cornel West, and now evidently refined to a perfected mindset and action, is that blacks are universally victims and universally owed something by anybody who isn’t black.
The success of the drug culture and the failure of the family haven’t helped, either.
But that isn’t the whole of it. Law enforcement, which is supposed to keep civilization civilized, has fallen down on the job. Here are some examples of how poor leadership has resulted in a muted law enforcement culture in the wake of these terrible events.
On August 10, 2011, after days of unimpeded thuggery and wholesale destruction across the streets of Britain, and howls of protest by taxpayers and burned-out homeowners over limp police action, Theresa May, Britain’s Home Secretary, told the British media “The way we police is by consent.” Video of the British police’s pathetic, timid attempts at consent-based crowd control are available on-line.
I have asked several people to tell me what Ms. May means by her statement, and no one can come up with an explanation that makes sense. Does she mean “Consent by the lawbreaker,” because that’s how it appears. She sure doesn’t mean that British police will enforce the law any time this week. Her police stood by and watched from mere feet away as hoodlums looted, burned, and beat people, not to mention the unrequited attacks on the police, themselves. Repeated empty threats of using water cannons and rubber bullets seemed to actually encourage the rioters.
Here in America, we were treated to a local police analysis of the Wisconsin State Fair mobs, as of August 10th, that went something like “We aren’t sure, we don’t know, we can’t say.” Despite overwhelming evidence of the racism inherent in the mob attacks, the police have been afraid to call it what it is. But if it were white kids running around beating the heck out of blacks, we all know that the police would call it racism and start filing hate crimes charges left and right.
Whether it is fear of the uncomfortable or a politically correct double standard, if trained law enforcement personnel and their political leaders will not explicitly identify a problem and try to fix it, then the problem will grow worse. None of us want to contemplate what that “worse” means in this context.
That is why Philadelphia’s Mayor, Michael Nutter, is now so important. In a widely played speech from last Sunday, he has opened a door into a subject that has been taboo among decision makers for too long. Joining Bill Cosby, Larry Elder, and other black leaders who have previously demanded accountability and responsibility among black youth, Nutter authoritatively scolded the wilding young people and their parents from his church’s pulpit. While criticizing their violence and sloppy physical appearances, his one line hit the nail on the head: “Parents, get your act together….You need to get hold of your kids before we [the criminal justice system] have to.”
Amen, brother, because if you don’t turn things around at the family level, with help from plain speaking black leaders, then it appears that western civilization is headed towards its demise. No one else here has the strength of character to turn the ship around.
Copyright Josh First, originally published at and licensed to www.rockthecapital.com
It’s Official: Britannica Gives Up and Dies
Islamic leaders establish “Shariah Zones” in London, where women, gays, Hindus, Jews, and Christians are stripped of their rights under British law, and morally relative multiculturalism reigns supreme.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/146482
Abandoning the Helm, Here & Afar: How Hypocrisy Has Ended the Moral Claim
Abandoning the Helm, Here & Afar:
How Hypocrisy Has Ended the Moral Claim
© Josh First
July 31, 2011
Time was, for people in need only the local churches helped them. Every frontier town had a church, and its doors were always open to the needy. In a frontier society, the needy are ever-present. Over time, America grew, and seeking America’s promise, the needy increasingly arrived, and the model expanded. Are you hungry, do you need clothes? A local religious group was there to help you or your family. Bethesda Mission, Hebrew Free Loan Association, a myriad of Catholic charities, all served increasingly robust communities and then whole populations of American immigrants from across Europe. Immigrant aid societies flourished, most aimed at their own ethnic or linguistic group.
That model of bare-bones, volunteer-driven organizations advancing and increasingly advocating for the rights, needs, and interests of everyday shlmiel citizens is a uniquely American development. It is something to be proud of. That safety net for newcomers released their potential, increased the opportunity that awaited them, and enhanced their ability to become integrated, productive Americans.
Over decades, mirror image organizations evolved out of more refined social expectations, like human dignity and individual rights, wildlife habitat, environmental protection, and consumer protection. Out of this distinctly private and mostly religiously-based effort came public commissions, bureaucracies, laws, and then government mandates, with increasingly complex goals and symmetrically mixed results. Public health offices aimed at cholera, orphans, and clean water were useful; Prohibition spawned the Mob.
Beating Jim Crow in the South began in the late 1950s, and infused other movements. Responding to the Cold War, international causes became popular in the 1960s, spawning Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others.
Increasing public and private financial resources, and increased economic and individual opportunities across America created more defined political jockeying between these safety net groups. Many eventually morphed into highly tuned political machines with sophisticated interest groups, grassroots armies, funders, political backers, friendly media outlets, and crafted messages, many arriving at their final destination and recognizable form in the 1960s and 1970s. Those two decades are also recognizable as the turning point in American public political activism. Gun control, animal rights and welfare, gay rights, etc., all followed, and the laundry list is now long and well known. The political lines are now well drawn in the sand.
What impelled and set the original “founding” interest groups above, apart, and beyond their original surrounding circumstances was a powerful, convening clarion call that coalesced universal conscience: The moral claim.
The moral claim was based on a distinct and publicly recognizable difference between what was common practice at the time, on the one hand, and what was obviously needed to elevate and fairly improve the human condition, on the other hand. The moral claim was a non-partisan standard that appealed to nearly everyone, rallying and focusing fair-minded citizens from across religious, economic, racial and regional boundaries.
One of the most famous examples of the moral claim is King’s I Have a Dream speech. Dead people in coffins have been widely documented to sit up and cry when it’s replayed in their presence, because it is undeniably powerful medicine for a nation designed for freedoms it hadn’t yet delivered.
Similarly, when the Cuyahoga River actually caught on fire, advocates for environmental quality had one hell of a moral claim, and legitimately aimed at ending a long tradition of egregious pollution that privatized profits and socialized the costs. Three decades later, River Keeper was shutting down the last industrial pipes bleeding privately conjured PCBs and other chartreuse-colored ooze into the Hudson River’s very public waters.
But times change, and thankfully, the vast majority of the moral claims have been settled (more on this later, obviously). The problem is that the well-oiled machines that got those moral claims over the goal line are still running on high octane, and they have to keep going, or die. So they stay in the groove that worked for them, well worn over decades, and the growing differences between their goals, methods, and reality is now making hypocrites out of many of these the now-former bearers of the now-former moral claim. Hypocrites do not make good standard bearers.
For example, here in Pennsylvania this past January, purported environmental activists (self-appointed keepers of the green moral claim) banged drums and shouted into bull horns, doing everything possible to disrupt Governor Tom Corbett’s inaugural speech, occurring three hundred feet away. What was the issue that impelled them into their most moral rage? Why, it was the very most moral issue of natural gas drilling. And not just any gas drilling, but hydrofracturing deep gas wells. You’d think from their behavior that gas drilling is a moral issue found directly in the Constitution and the Bible, or that terrible crimes are occurring.
But it’s not a moral issue. Gas drilling is an every-day issue like plastics or peanut butter, arising from modern social needs, demands, and industrial processes that environmental activists themselves help perpetuate in their individual daily lives. It is subject to scientific analysis, assessments of risk-benefit tradeoffs, and regulations, both sufficient and insufficient. It is not a matter of principle.
But once Tom Corbett became governor, within his first two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, as a matter of fact, the activists turned gas drilling into an artificially manufactured issue of principle. Invoking the moral claim, protestors complained that the new Corbett administration, in office for exactly two minutes and thirty eight seconds, was environmentally immoral.
Uhhh, where were these folks during the eight-year tenure of the immediate past governor, Ed Rendell? You know, the same governor who handed out gas drilling and hydrofracking permits like they were potato chips, for years before Corbett was even a candidate? Rendell got a free pass from these purported keepers of the flame, apparently because he was of a political party that the activists otherwise generally concur with. Holding Corbett accountable for something he hasn’t yet done, while giving a free pass to Rendell who done a lot, makes them partisan, makes the gas drilling issue partisan, employs a double standard, makes the activists hypocrites, which terminates their moral claim.
Looking farther abroad, international human rights groups were once the only lifeline of political prisoners in Soviet, Socialist, and authoritarian gulags around the world. Today, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch disproportionately criticize democratic countries where press freedoms, free movement, and economic comforts make it easy to get access to friendly advocates and information, like Israel and America. And they ignore egregious violations among the harder targets, like Saudi Arabia’s all-encompassing barbarism and summary executions, China’s crushing occupation of Tibet, Iran and Syria’s mass executions of peaceful protestors, and Turkey’s ongoing genocide against the Kurds.
Saudi Arabia, that epitome of cruelty, barbarism, discrimination, lacking basic human freedoms and rights, in fact, has recently become the actual benefactor of Human Rights Watch, and thereby bought off the group. Getting access to authoritarian countries is hard, and if the masters of all things human rights play hardball with authoritarian regimes, they get tossed out. So they withhold full criticism, and instead criticize the enemies of the worst brutes, just to keep the machine running. And they take the brutes’ money, too.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and other supposed watchdog groups, are now such giant hypocrites that their misdeeds have spawned watchdog groups to hold them, the self-appointed human rights organizations, accountable to their own purported standards. Groups like NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org) and UN Watch (www.unwatch.org), which is “tasked with measuring the UN by the yardstick of its own charter,” are playing backup to maintaining the moral claim, and not allowing it to be watered down in the name of convenient politics.
Internationally, certain pet issues predominate, monopolizing press exposure and the supposed moral claim. Despite a nearly two-to-one ratio of Jewish refugees from Jerusalem, Hebron, and Arab and Muslim countries, versus the number of Arab refugees from Israel in the same time period, today we hear only, hypocritically, about the Arabs. Compensating Jewish refugees, whose farms, homes, religious sites, and businesses remain under Arab colonialist occupation, is not a vogue subject. It’s still not vogue in Poland, either, by the way, another mass event held at the same time.
Similarly, Turkey’s still-smoldering genocide against the Armenians, its ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, its brutal occupation of Cyprus complete with an Islamic Apartheid wall, and its officialization of Islamic imperialism all get no media juice. Being a NATO member has its benefits, I suppose, but where oh where is the moral claim? Hypocrites all, the Human Rights Watches of the world. They are focused on tiny, democratic Israel.
In conclusion, if someone abdicates their self-appointed role and abandons the helm, which had been based on a universal standard, and instead becomes a hypocrite, then their moral claim has been badly cheapened or lost. Since the beginning of modern social activism, based on the early faith-based model, public deference was automatically given to those who made the moral claim, who rallied us around a universal conscience. No longer. We are in the beginning of a historic shift of moral authority away from the partisan establishment grievance groups and back into the hands of wired up, dialed-in citizens, whose blogs aggregate and focus public wrath on the official failure du jure. Tunisia one day, British Petroleum the next. Shifting and diffusing power back into the public venue is an inevitable and necessary cog in the evolution of social activism. Who knows what beautiful things will come out of it? Thankfully, hypocrisy won’t be one of those things, because it doesn’t pass the public’s sniff test.
Originally published by and licensed to www.rockthecapital.com
Love Sick, or Sick Love?
Love sick, or sick love?
© Josh First
July 21, 2010
Love is powerful, beautiful, a token of the highest commitment. And it can be dangerous when it makes us act dangerously or like we oughtta be committed to a looney bin. Love can be a powerful drug, is the 1970s aphorism, and as many of us learned in the 1970s, drugs are bad, because while they may feel euphoric for an hour, they also cause a loss of self control and resulting damage that lasts for years. Among kids, the casualties of lovesickness are typically minor, while lovesick adults can inflict real damage.
When I was a high school teen, I fell madly in love with a girl named Mardy. Love sick, I followed her around like a puppy, gave her some silver jewelry despite not getting back the same intense vibe, and forgave her every indiscretion, including when she broke up with me. Heartbroken but sick with love, I cluelessly figured she’d come around and we’d be blissfully married forever (thirty years later we now share photos of our families and joke about our own teenagers). I was blinded by love, and that blindness caused me to act against my own interests.
Love that so badly warps your judgment that your native, most elementary powers of reason and empathy become suspended is not beautiful. It unnecessarily puts you and others around you in harm’s way. For the seemingly insignificant trade-off of a few drops of happy-rainbows-sunshine-smiley faces dopamine in our brain, the love sick adults among us enter into or create situations that can or will result in our bodies pumping massive amounts of adrenaline as fear and anger course our veins. That’s not love sick, but a twisted, sick love. And mental sickness is to be avoided.
What I’m really talking about here are a lot of adult owners of large dogs.
What’s up with those folks with large dogs off their leash, roaming free, or walking or running up to people and barking, growling, gingerly sniffing us as if to bite, etc.?
Do the owners of these dogs really not realize that their sick love for their pet causes them to suspend their good judgment, unnecessarily put people at risk, and treat people in ways they themselves don’t like being treated? Following are two personal examples of how the sick love of pets has caused hard feelings, hard words, and close calls with enormous, potentially life-altering consequences. If these aren’t sufficient, there are plenty of press reports from around Harrisburg and the nation demonstrating this bad trend.
Last week, I walked to pick up my son from summer day camp. His drop-off\pick-up location is a couple of blocks from my home, and unless rain is pouring or time is short, walking there is a pleasant afternoon jaunt, usually with my wife. Next to the drop-off\pick-up location are some homes with a long metal fence running between them, along their common boundaries. As we were leaving with our sweaty, red-faced boy, with other little camper kids milling about all around us, a big German shepherd dog in an adjacent yard came roaring up to the fence, barking ferociously, hackles flaring, white spit flying, fangs bared. Three little boys on our side weren’t scared, but rather intrigued, and two of them went to put their hands through the fence to touch the dog. Ahhh, innocence in the face of danger. Leaping back towards the kids, I shooed them away while their counselor came and corralled them to another area.
When those little hands approached the big-enough holes in the chain link, the German shepherd turned its head and put its muzzle right up to the fence, still barking convulsively, ready to bite whatever came through. It was a moment that could have turned out badly. Can’t we just imagine the severe life-long damage to those inquisitive little hands from the impressively toothsome bite of an animal tough enough to serve as a four-legged cop?
No sooner had I shooed away the kids, than the dog’s owner appeared in the place of the dog, a woman in shorts and an orangy tank top, mid-fifties, arms crossed, staring, and old enough to know better to not do what came next.
“You talking about my dog?,” she asked. “Don’t you talk about my dog,” she demanded, before I could respond.
To which I responded, “You mean your big, ferocious dog that scared us?”
To which she responded, “There’s no way he’s going to climb that tall fence and bite you…and you have a problem…and you don’t talk about my dog that way…and I never…and…and…and… etc.” On and on she went, firing up her sense of indignation. She had a lot to say. She said a lot in volume, in an angry tone.
She was upset that we were frightened by her vicious dog, and she had launched into her own ironic harangue, a form of loud, aggressive human barking, yelling not-nice words, trying to engage me or any other adult nearby in a shouting match. Meanwhile, I was 100 feet away already. The lady had lost, suspended, or traded away her common sense. Her sick love for a dangerous, unpredictable animal had made her behave in a sick way, and place other people, little tiny kids, at risk.
Another related story from recent times, reported in the Patriot News, described a dad walking with his two small kids in their Uptown Harrisburg neighborhood on a Saturday morning when they were suddenly attacked by two unleashed, unprovoked pitbulls owned by an adult. In seconds the dogs were on the kids, and the dad tried to knock them back with his hands and feet. With his four-year-old son’s neck the repeated target of the larger dog’s gaping maw, and a second or two to stop the attack or watch his boy die, the dad pulled a gun and fired on instinct (he had a concealed carry permit). Several rapid shots later, fired within a foot of the struggling boy, the wounded dog limped off and its frightened companion joined it in retreat. Without the gun, the kids would have been dead or disfigured. Few enough legal, normal, people carry guns, and under typical conditions this story would usually have ended much differently, with great sorrow and loss. Thank God I was carrying my pistol that morning.
How did this attack happen? It happened because another man’s twisted idea of “love” for his dogs precluded him from “unfairly shackling” them with leashes and limiting their movements. Gosh, he just loves his dogs and wants them to run freely, go free happy dog; wheee. His reasoning must have been that he likes to move freely, and that, therefore, his dogs must, too, and it’s unfair to have them feel unhappy if he doesn’t like to be unhappy. Act on impulse, folks, do what you want, it’s the new American way. Even if other people are put at great risk. The dogs’ owner cared more for his dogs than he did for innocent humans; he cared less about the basic safety needs of humans than he cared about his dogs’ sense of mobility. His judgment had become warped by his shallow, sickly sweet, sappy feelings for his dogs.
And let’s not pretend that shallow sentimentalism is uncommon. Thanks to Liberalism, shallow sentimentalism appears to be a huge force in America, as well as the driving cause behind animal welfare activism and many regular dog owners’ defense of their animals’ indefensible behavior. Their anthropomorphism is the dominant feature of owning a potentially dangerous, animated, unpredictable animal, but hey, they enjoy spoiling Fido. Sure, pets in general and dogs in particular serve positive roles, etc. I know it well, because I grew up with large utilitarian dogs, as my parents sought for many years to protect a rare strain of Alaskan Malamute, and all our neighboring farms employed dogs as sentinels, too. I like dogs. But the benefits of pets and dogs are not the issue at hand, and the fact that many dog owners will still try to defend their own pet from these concerns is sure proof of just how sick this sick pet love has become. The dog owners don’t listen, they ignore leash laws and signs, they pretend that every person walking on the same sidewalk won’t mind being sniffed, licked, or touched by their mutt.
Every beach, park, or forest trail I walk on, I am almost guaranteed an encounter with a large, free-ranging dog or two, running out just ahead of their owners. “Awwww, my liddle sweet poochy poo would neeeever hurt anyone,” goes the typical canned line from these sickly sweet sentimentalists as their dogs bark at you, nose around your crotch, or cautiously sniff your leg during your otherwise serene walk. Sappy sentimentalism is not prevalent in these encounters, but rather, it is overpoweringly common among owners of large dogs. Nevertheless, dog bites in public venues remain common.
What psychologists would say, or do say about this childish escapism masquerading as love among otherwise functioning adults, normal people don’t know and they don’t care. Despite plenty of reported dog attacks in the press, and plenty of laws on the books to prevent dog attacks, lots of owners of large dogs continue to ignore or flout them and place everyone else around them at risk. It’s as selfish a behavior as can be found, and it has become a hallmark of modern America. Folks, you are not a dog, and your dog is not a person. Please help make the public venue safer by leashing, controlling, and muzzling your large dog.
Because begging and cajoling dog owners to be responsible citizens hasn’t worked (and we haven’t even raised the issue of many owners failing to clean up dog poop), here’s a list of recommended improvements to established laws that will shape the kind of public environment we deserve:
1) Criminalize any and all unsolicited touching of a human by a dog in public. No, dude, you would not want me to walk up and sniff, lick, or touch your wife while she’s walking down the sidewalk, and surprise, guess what, my wife is really unhappy that your dog did that to her. No harm, you say? Well, actually, your subjective opinion aside, it’s battery and emotional distress, and you would react differently if it were my pet tarantula that I decided to let walk on your neck just ‘cause I wanted to. It’s simple: Dogs and their owners have no right to intrude into people’s lives in public. Humans have the right-of-way.
2) Increase the size and legibility of dog licenses so they can be easily identified.
3) Increase fines for unlicensed dogs sufficient to make it impossible for dog owners to ignore licenses.
4) Zero tolerance for violent dogs. Any dog that, unprovoked, attacks a human in the public venue, and possibly in private, shall be immediately seized and euthanized, with the public bill paid by the dog’s owner.
There’s lots of other ways to get a better handle on this problem, but I’m an advocate for limited, common-sense laws. Let’s get these suggestions implemented first, and hopefully they’ll be so effective that the news will change from dog bites man to man bites dog, a rare and newsworthy occurrence, indeed.
Originally published by and licensed to www.rockthecapital.com, Copyright Josh First.
When Texting While Driving Becomes Manslaughter
Allison was a young, smart, beautiful, productive American
Trees for Harrisburg City, A Community Effort
Harrisburg is a historic, award-winning “All-America City” often noted for its majestic trees throughout its neighborhoods. Trees naturally die with age, and it was that slow but steady attrition that has had me and many of my neighbors re-planting trees and talking in recent years about how bare some of the blocks along Second Street look, in particular. Now, it appears that the city is going to take a big, exciting step forward on this issue. In a city that is going through acrimonious debate about its precarious financial situation (Act 47 takeover by the state, or a sad declaration of bankruptcy that nevertheless gives city leaders and citizens more control), good news is hard to come by and therefore all the more enjoyed by everyone. We need a breath of fresh air here, and it can’t come too soon. Stay tuned.
Josh
PA-17th Cong. District Update
Many supporters of my 2009-2010 Republican campaign for the PA-17th Congressional District are asking what my plans are. Will I run for Congress again?
My answer is that I’d like to run again, but it depends on what the PA-17th looks like after redistricting. That process is happening now and several reports have the district as we have known it divided up into several different pieces. Harrisburg, where I reside, may end up in Congressman Platts’s district, while Dauphin County is further divided among other current members of Congress.
Until the proposed plan is unveiled, I can’t give a complete answer. In 2010 our election results were an impressive 24%, out of four candidates, on just $11,000. Our amazing volunteers, like Carl Fox, made that difference.
So please check back here soon. I hope to have an answer shortly. And thank you for all your encouragement and support!
Wishing you a glorious Independence Day holiday,
Josh
California Pulls a High Tech ‘Yosemite Sam’ Move
Yosemite Sam is, or was, a colorful rootin’ tootin’ California cowboy created by Warner Brothers Cartoons. Based on the ’49er image of a rough ‘n ready gunslinger, Yosemite Sam occasionally shot himself in the foot while Bugs Bunny casually outwitted him. Testing brains versus brawn, these classic cartoons lampooned trigger happy meat heads and, as always, elevated the higher valued brain power of the waskilly rabbit (rascally rabbit, as pronounced by another trigger happy meat head, Elmer Fudd). Using that proven Hollywood method of powerful if subliminal suggestion, the cartoons’ message was clear to impressionable little kids and meat heads alike: Use your head, you’ll do better.
Fast forward 70 years to the home of Yosemite, the supposedly golden state of California. Yesterday, that Liberal-laden welfare state signed into law a new tax on Internet sales. Because interstate commerce is constitutionally protected above individual states’ financial interests, taxes on Internet sales aren’t really legal or legit. Most consumers take some risk when they purchase online, and the absence of state taxes (a huge 8.75% in California), is an overall small but relatively large reward for taking that risk. Returning items by mail costs buyers money, and not paying sales tax offsets those costs.
Well, here we are, many decades after California became one of America’s premier economies, and the elected officials of that once-great state have decided to return to the 1700s way of doing business rather than embrace technology, mobile consumers, and the blurring of boundaries everywhere (like they enjoy the blurred boundary between California and Mexico, a blur long sought and much enjoyed by Liberals everywhere). Rather than leveraging technology to work for California, in this instance, California Democrats choose to take the one-dimensional approach to gathering revenue. Taxing Internet sales was projected to gather about $200 million annually, but with amazon.com and other big Internet sellers immediately ending their high-tech advertising relationships there, the state is now projected to lose about $135 million in taxes paid by the owners of those advertising businesses. And because many of those owners have said that they will now relocate to a nearby state without Internet sales tax, California loses those tax payers as well as the creative brain power that those entrepreneurs brought to the state.
Like all mis-named “progressives,” Liberals are ultimately interested in just one thing, and that is power. Like Yosemite Sam of old, the California Democrats behind this foolish move understand power alone, and by golly, they will exercise power simply because they can. For the simple sake of having it and demonstrating to all around that they have it. But like Yosemite Sam, California has shot itself in the foot. The net result of their Internet tax appears to be just about a complete wash, with the added loss of yet more smart working people from the state.
Like their ideological counterparts in North Korea and China and Russia, California’s Democrats are most satisfied to exercise power for power’s sake, regardless of the collateral damage. Shooting themselves in the foot never felt so good, except for the entrepreneurs and remaining taxpayer left behind in the growing exodus of brain power leaving that Statist state.
Hopefully, my own home state of Pennsylvania, also long a haven for high taxes and unfavorable business conditions, will find a way to take advantage of the Yosemite Sams now running California government, and funnel their loss into Pennsylvania and make it our gain.
Are Liberals the new conservatives?
After years of disproven Liberal theories and beliefs about specific policies (the effectiveness of gun control) and assumptions (all wars are bad wars), I was wondering if Liberals showed any sign of change. Talking with Liberal friends, debating politics on FaceBook, the conclusion is that Liberals are the new conservatives, in the sense that conservatives were asserted to be unwilling to change, or accept necessary change, back in the 1970s. Conventional wisdom was that conservatives were stodgy, stuck in their ways. But measured by that yard stick, it’s Liberals today who are unwilling to accept that their ideas are disproven and that change is good. Stay tuned for more on this subject.
Josh