Category Archives: Political philosophy

THE ESTATE TAX IS COMING BACK

Stealing from the dead when they aren’t looking.

In the weird ways of Washington, the Estate Tax, aka the Death Tax, was stepped down annually from 55% until it reached 45% for 2009. Then on January 1st of this year it dropped in one fell swoop all the way to zero, but for 2010 only. In 2011 the tax goes back to 55% unless Congress acts to change it. You have just 4 ½ months left in which to die tax free.

Senators Kyl (R) and Lincoln (D) have written a proposal to set the new rate at 35% with something like a 5M dollar threshold, all of which you would be able to keep for your heirs before the tax is applied. That sounds reasonable enough, especially to those of us with less than 5M. But wait! By what line of thinking does the government have a right to your money just because you died?

True, it is money you no longer need. Your heirs didn’t earn it, but neither did the government. And we all know that no one feels compassion for a millionaire, dead or alive. Taking your cash when your hand has been stilled is not a government right. It’s an opportunity, that’s what it is…and as we have learned, government never lets an opportunity go to waste. (Or was that a crisis?)

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STATE FUNDING BILL SPENDS 26B ON GOVERNMENT

The Democratic Party is the party of the government, for the government and by the government. The Republican Party is the party of the rest of the people.

Government is the civic worker’s employer. The Republican Party calls for downsizing of government. Downsizing brings job insecurity and lessened opportunity for workers on a government payroll. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, fights for growth and expansion of government. For those employed by government the Democratic Party offers greater job security and an increased measure of opportunity. Thus it is reasonable and natural that the Democratic Party would be the party of the government.

Today’s passage of the 26B dollar State funding bill is a prime example. It was promoted by the Administration as a bill to send money from the Federal government to the State governments for payment of salaries to teachers, police, firemen and first responders, government workers all.

The Republican Party argues for growth in all areas, except government. In the matter of job security, the Republican Party is the party of everyone other than government employees. In that sense, it is the party of the people.

Herein lie the makings of a vicious cycle. The bigger government gets, the more people there are who vote for bigger government. Democracy is a fragile system. This is just one of its vulnerabilities.

Bob B

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VIRGINIA JOINS ARIZONA IN IMMIGRATION FIGHT

VIRGINIA GOVERNOR McDONNELL

Virginia Gov. McDonnell is paving the way for authorizing the VA State Police to check for immigration status when they stop individuals for other reasons. Virginia joins a growing list of States who see the need to step in and act where the Federal government has failed them.

Nine States have filed amicus briefs in Federal Court in support of Arizona in the pending case of the Obama government vs. the State of Arizona. Those States are AL, FL, MI, NE, PA, SC and TX. Five States have gone a step further and have introduced their own legislation in the same vein as Arizona’s. Those States are SC, PA, MI, MN and RI. Others expected to introduce similar legislation soon are FL, TX and UT.

If the first obligation of government is to keep its citizens safe, should not the second obligation be to keep the States United? It is the President’s responsibility to maintain such unity. Obama, however, has brought a bucket of gasoline to put out the fire.

In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky taught that the first goal for a community organizer needs to be acceptance. The second is to agitate. Crisis and controversy are tools to be used to bring an increase of power. Obama is strengthening his position with his core following and shows no concern for the division he is feeding. This is wholly consistent with his Marxist leanings.

Bob B

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TEA PARTY WEAKNESS ON PRIMARY DAY ?

RICK SNYDER

Snyder wins in Michigan, Moran in Kansas. Neither was the Tea Party favorite so much is being made of it as a sign of Tea Party weakness, especially by the Left. The Left is grabbing at straws. All it shows is that the Tea people do not dominate the Republican Party. And that bodes well for the general election.

The role of the Tea Party is to influence the Republican Party, not to introduce sudden radical change. Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party quickly bit the dust. Ralph Nader only succeeded in aiding Republican candidates by splitting the Democratic vote. The Tea people are doing just fine right now, bringing the Republican Party back to Conservatism one steady step at a time.

JERRY MORAN

Snyder is running for Governor of Michigan, home of Detroit and the highest unemployment rate in the country. As an experienced businessman, Snyder was a good choice. Moran is vying for the Kansas Senate seat and his election will be more significant on a national level.

UPDATE: A good example of why the Tea Party should not dominate. Sarah Palin endorsed Brian Murphy over Gov Robert Ehrlich as Republican candidate for the Maryland Senate seat. Here is a comment from Paul Mirengoff at Power Line blog.

The problem is that, in my view (and I’ve lived in Maryland most of my life), Murphy has essentially zero chance of defeating our incumbent liberal governor, Martin O’Malley. By contrast, former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, the overwhelming favorite to secure the Republican nomination, is running even with O’Malley in the polls. Thus, for those of us who wish to avoid a continuation of liberal state governance, Ehrlich is the obvious choice

Bob B

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SPAIN ISSUES ARREST WARRANT FOR U.S. SOLDIERS

The incident involved occurred in 2003, during the Iraq war, when 3 soldiers manned a tank that fired one round into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad after seeing what they thought was gunfire coming from the hotel. Baghdad was still a war zone at the time. Two civilians were killed. They were journalists.

TIME reports:

On the morning of July 29, [2010] Spain’s National Court announced that it has re-issued an international arrest warrant against three U.S. soldiers it implicates in an attack on Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine, where Rodriguez and Couso, along with dozens of other journalists, were based during the Iraq war.

On April 8, 2003, one day before U.S. troops officially captured Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a single incendiary shell on the hotel, killing Couso, a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco television station, and Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk.

The journalists had stationed themselves within a dangerous war zone. War is Hell, and chaos as well. Sadly, very sadly, mistakes happen in every war. Fighting heroes and innocent civilians die from friendly fire. It is a tragedy but not a crime.

Is it not enough that a soldier risk life and limb on behalf of us all? Must he also risk liberty at the whim of some foreign court?

Bob B

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CNN WOULD CENSOR BLOGS

Obama is not the only one with audacity. Wee though I may be, I have the audacity to call myself a member of “the press”, the great public press, the new press, the real press, the open press, the complete press. Freedom of the press applies equally to the New York Times, Huffington Post, Random Thots and the guy next door who started his first blog last Tuesday.

There is beauty, trash, idiocy, and profound thinking available to all, on the internet. There are lies too outrageous for the National Enquirer to publish and truths too enlightening for the New York Times to put in print. It’s there, the good, the bad; and the ugly. It’s all there. It is for the reader to discern and choose the good from the bad, the same as one does when choosing friends and companions. When government is given the power to control what our our eyes may see and what our ears may hear, the end of freedom is at the door.

The founders of this great nation trusted the people of this great nation more than they trusted the government of this great nation. The very first Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom from government control of speech, religion and the press. End of rant.

Why the rant? News anchors Kyra Philips and John Roberts, members of the press no less, are calling for the government, or someone to control the press, that’s why the rant. They don’t want CNN to be censored, of course, only the blogs.

Roberts:

“there’s going to come a point where something’s going to have to be done legally”. [legally = government]

Philips:

“There has to be some point where there’s some accountability. And companies, especially in the media have to stop giving these anonymous bloggers credit,”

Then this idiocy – Roberts first points out that some countries, like Iran, are closed societies where the internet may be their only source of uncensored reporting, then adds:

“But when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be (sic) some checks and balances, not national, but maybe website to website on who comments on things?”

Huh? Because ours is a free and open society we need to control the blogs? Mr. Roberts, as you might put it, ‘there do not have to be’.

Fear not, Congress will never enact a law rescinding freedom of speech.  If however, it ever comes up in a referendum, at least 3 votes would be assured, those of  Roberts, Philips and Rather.

Bob B

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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alana-goodman/2010/07/23/cnn-host-calls-crackdown-bloggers-wake-sherrod-incident-something-s-g

ROOSEVELT REDUX

ROOSEVELT

OBAMA

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) is to liberals what Ronald Reagan is to conservatives, a hero for their cause. Roosevelt was more destructive in his own time than Obama has been in his… thus far. Roosevelt responded to the recession he inherited with a combination of massive spending on new government programs and sweeping controls over private industry, (sound familiar?). His thinking was, government spending would get people back to work, and controls over private industry would end deflation. Rules and regulations over private industry were put in place designed, incredibly, to increase the prices of goods. The President and his advisors saw deflation as one of the causes of continuing recession, not as a result.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were formed. The WPA was created to carry out infrastructure projects (sound familiar?) and the CCC to provide government jobs for young men by performing work of a conservation nature on government owned land. The WPA and CCC were the prime elements of FDR’s stimulus program.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was a government sponsored organization (GSO) structured somewhat like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The RFC was expanded by Roosevelt and served as the money conduit for bailing out failing banks. It was funded with over 5 billion dollars in taxpayer money, equivalent to 84 billion today after adjusting for inflation. According to Wikipedia, “The RFC was bogged down in bureaucracy and failed to disperse much of its funds. It failed to reverse the growth of mass unemployment.” (sound familiar?)

A Farm Board was created for the control of production and prices of crops and livestock. Crop farmers were required by the board to let land lie fallow and paid by the government for crops they were ordered not to produce. Six million young pigs were ordered to be slaughtered at government expense as a measure to reduce the supply and increase the price of bacon and pork. (Instead of pigs, Obama chose used cars).

Roosevelt’s first legislative victory was passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This law gave Washington vast new powers of control over private enterprise, even to the establishment of maximum and minimum wages and prices for various industries. It was the most contentious of all the programs in Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Had it not been for the economic crisis then at hand such sweeping legislation could never have been enacted. (sound familiar?).

It turned out to be a step too far. As a strategy to end the controversy surrounding the NRA, Roosevelt chose to make an example of a Kosher chicken processing firm in Brooklyn, NY by arresting the proprietors who were found guilty of violating the new law and put in jail. The strategy backfired when the proprietors, known as the Schechter brothers, fought back. The issue went to the Supreme Court. The Court decided the National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional. The decision was unanimous. Roosevelt had no choice but to dismantle the NRA.

Today’s closest equivalency to FDR’s NRA is the system of czars, purse strings and intimidation currently being employed to control private industry. The fractured nature of this approach makes it more difficult to defeat. These methods also create greater uncertainty for the business community than when there is a clear cut law around which to plan, even though the law may be an unfavorable one.

FDR was first elected in 1932. Eight years later, as Roosevelt’s second term in office was coming to an end, the unemployment rate stood at 14.6%. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury from 1934-1945, admitted to himself as he wrote in his personal diary that their stimulus spending programs had failed.

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work…  We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started . . . . And an enormous debt to boot!”

Then came the day reputed to live on in infamy, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941. Tanks and planes, guns and ships started rolling off assembly lines running 24 hours a day. Rosie was busy riveting away. Government debt soared but no one cared. The cause was shared by all. The American worker went back to work. FDR, already the only President to win a third term, went on to win a fourth.

Obama is treading the same path taken by FDR, with steps that prolonged a recession and gave us a depression. But take heart dear friends, we survived the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and World War II. We will survive Barack Obama as well.

Bob B

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RUSSIANS KNOW THE FOREST, AMERICANS CAN’T EVEN SEE THE TREES

"HA'PNY"

British half cent (half penny) coin

The other day, my wife and I were leaving a restaurant in a tourist town. As we stepped out the door, a couple was standing on the sidewalk looking at the menu in the window. They asked us what we thought of the food and service. We had just dined there, we should know. Hold that thought.

Pravda became internationally known as the propaganda organ of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s Glasnost gave them an independent, if not totally free, voice. Today’s Pravda is largely free to express the thoughts and minds of the Russian people.

There is a certain form of government we call Communism. The Russians call it Marxism; academics call it Central Planning or Collectivism; the Tea Party calls it Socialism; author Mark Levin, in Liberty and Tyranny calls it Statism. There is not a ha’pny’s difference between them. The Russian people know this form of government very well. They have been dining there for years. Here is what Pravda had to say three months after the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.

American capitalism gone with a whimper
PRAVDA 27.04.2009

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters. First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger than for their constitutional rights.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.          Stanislav Mishin

I know, the author is disdainful, crude and given to overstatement. Even Barney Frank deserves a little more respect. But how is it so many in our land lack the vision to see where we are headed when someone 5000 miles away sees it so clearly? Somehow, I think, Stanislav Mishkin is equally perplexed.

The answer, of course, is that they have already been where we are just now going.

Bob B

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THE FRANK-DODD ACT

The name of the new package of financial regulations is The Frank-Dodd Act. Given what we know about Barney Frank, there must be more than one good joke there, but we have decided to let it be. We are not going to sully this site by saying things like ‘In naming the law, they were wise to use a dash and not an ampersand’.

By the time you read this, the bill may have been signed into law but it will not yet have been written. We say this because much of it is vague, leaving the de facto law up to the regulators to determine. For example, The Act requires each federal agency to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion which is to be responsible for all matters relating to diversity in management, employment and business activities. What does that mean? What is the law? It is not yet written. The law will be, what the agency yet to be formed, says it will be.

The Act establishes a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection with the power to close down a business that the Bureau determines poses a risk to consumers due to some measure of financial instability, instability as determined by the Bureau. In this regard one might say there is no law to observe, no law you must break for the Bureau to be able to close you down.

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works”. Now there’s a profound truth coming straight from a Democrat, the man who wrote the bill, a man who knew whereof he spoke.

This law is to the financial industry, what Obamacare is to the health-care industry – an enormous expansion of government control over a significant section of the American economic system. It is ingenious to the extent that it empowers bureaucracies to govern by rule change without the need for legislative action.

Both The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (all one law known as Obamacare) and the Frank-Dodd Act are major advancements in Obama’s march toward the goal of a grand centrally planned state.

Bob B<!– AddThis Button BEGIN –>

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RACISM RISING UNDER OBAMA

Farrakhan, Shabazz, Bin Laden

When a black President comes from a Black Liberation Theology church, assumes its racism when a white police officer detains a black man in Boston, appoints a black Attorney General who intervenes to discharge a clear-cut case against black members of a black supremacist organization; and when the First Lady gives speeches to a black activist organization urging continuation of the fight against slavery and Jim Crow; when these things happen, people sit up and take notice. Racism is rampant. Thank you Obama.

Few white people realize the depth of ant-Americanism and disdain for whites that is promoted by the New Black Panther organization and its adherents, but Obama knows it very well.

One of the Black Panthers that Attorney General Holder freed from prosecution was the leader of the organization.Malik Shabazz. In this video, taped in 2202, a few short months after 911 , Shabazz praises Bin Laden and cheers him on for the boldness with which he has acted and the success he has had in bringing  Jihad to America. It is a disturbing video to watch, and especially chilling to know that this man has just been protected from prosecution, by our President, over illegal voter intimidation at the polls.

It is vitally important to make it clear that the vast majority of black Americans do not hold to the extreme views of Louis Farrakhan or Malik Shabazz.

Regular readers of Random Thots know I am a great admirer of Martin Luther King. Here are some notable comparisons between the two.

King descended from slaves; Obama did not.

King dreamed of a color blind society; Obama is creating a color aware society.

King lived in the South; Obama lived in the North, as well as in Hawaii and Kenya.

King lived  in the area and in the era when blacks in the South could not eat in white restaurants or quench their thirst at white ‘public’ drinking fountains. Obama did not. He formative years started after the tide had turned, when great progress underway and when King’s dream seemed it might be, miraculously, achievable. Yet it is Barack who appears driven by resentment and King who was able to live beyond it.


The shame of it all is that our first black American President is undoing the work of Martin Luther King and it is all to the detriment of his own black community.

Bob B

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