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To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	1/17/2011 12:18:52 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Americans Want Spending Cuts, Not More Taxes Katrina Trinko The Corner The overwhelming majority of Americans prefer spending cuts to tax hikes, according to a new CBS poll. The poll found that 77 percent of Americans favor spending cuts, 9 percent favor tax increases, and 9 percent prefer a mixture of spending cuts and tax increases. Popular programs for cutting included Social Security for the wealthy (supported by 63 percent), local probjects (58 percent), reducing farm subsidies (55 percent), and reducing defense spending (52 percent). .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	1/19/2011 8:55:07 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Budget Crisis Rhetoric Thomas Sowell Government budget crises can be painful, but the political rhetoric accompanying these crises can also be fascinating and revealing. Perhaps the most famous American budget crisis was New York City's, back during the 1970s. When President Gerald Ford was unwilling to bail them out, the famous headline in the New York Daily News read, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." President Ford caved and bailed them out, after all. The rhetoric worked. That is why so many other cities and states— not to mention the federal government— have continued on with irresponsible spending, and are now facing new budget crises, with no end in sight. What would have happened if President Ford had stuck to his guns and not set the dangerous precedent of bailing out local irresponsibility with the taxpayers' money? New York would have gone bankrupt. But millions of individuals and organizations go bankrupt without dropping dead. Bankruptcy conveys the plain facts that political rhetoric tries to conceal. It tells people who depended on the bankrupt government that they can no longer depend on that bankrupt government. It tells the voters who elected that bankrupt government, with its big spending promises, that they made a bad mistake that they would be wise to avoid making again in the future. Legally, bankruptcy wipes out commitments made to public sector unions, whose extravagant pay and pension contracts are bleeding municipal and state governments dry. Is putting an end to political irresponsibility and legalized union racketeering dropping dead? Politics being what it is, we are sure to hear all sorts of doomsday rhetoric at the thought of cutbacks in government spending. The poor will be starving in the streets, to hear the politicians and the media tell it. But the amount of money it would take to keep the poor from starving in the streets is chump change compared to how much it would take to keep on feeding unions, subsidized businesses and other special interests who are robbing the taxpayers blind. Letting armies of government employees retire in their fifties, to live for decades on pensions larger than they were making when they were working, costs a lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the streets. Pouring the taxpayers' money down a thousand bottomless pits of public and private boondoggles costs a lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the streets. Bankruptcy says: "We just don't have the money." End of discussion. Bailouts say: "Give the taxpayers a little rhetoric, and a little smoke and mirrors with the book-keeping, and we can keep the party rolling." One of the political games that is played during a budget crisis is to cut back on essential services like police departments and fire departments, in order to blackmail the public into accepting higher tax rates. Often, a lot more money could be saved by getting rid of runaway pension contracts with public sector unions. Bankruptcy can do that. Bailouts cannot. What the public needs are current policemen and current firemen, not retired policemen and retired firemen, much less bureaucrats retired on inflated pensions. The political temptation to create extravagant pensions is always there, not only at state and local levels, or at the federal level, but in countries around the world. Why? Because pensions are benefits that can be promised for the future, without raising the money to pay for them. Politicians get the votes of those to whom pensions are promised, without losing the votes of taxpayers— and they leave it up to future government officials to figure out what to do when the money is just not there. It is a sure-fire guarantee of political irresponsibility. All of this works politically only so long as the voting public accepts budget crisis rhetoric at face value, without bothering to stop and think about what it means and implies. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com. .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	1/26/2011 2:51:47 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Many of the people we honor today are people who are skilled in the rhetoric of grievances and promises of new "rights" at someone else's expense. But is that what is going to make a better America? New Heroes vs. Old Thomas Sowell When I mention that my family used kerosene lamps when I was a small child in the South during the 1930s, that is usually taken as a sign of our poverty, though I never thought of us as poor at the time. What is ironic is that kerosene lamps were a luxury of the rich in the 19th century, before John D. Rockefeller came along. At the high price of kerosene at that time, an ordinary working man could not afford to stay up at night, burning this expensive fuel for hours at a time. Rockefeller did not begin his life as rich, by any means. He made a fortune by revolutionizing the petroleum industry. Although we still measure petroleum in barrels, it is actually shipped in railroad tank cars, in ocean-going tankers and in tanker trucks. That is a legacy of John D. Rockefeller, who saw that shipping oil in barrels was not as economical as shipping whole railroad tank cars full of oil, eliminating all the labor that had to go into shipping the same amount of oil in numerous individual barrels. That was just one of his cost-cutting innovations. If there was a better way to extract, process and ship petroleum products— or more products that could be made from petroleum— Rockefeller was on top of it. Before he came along, gasoline was considered a useless by-product that petroleum refineries often simply dumped into the nearest river. But Rockefeller decided to use it as a fuel in the refining process, which made it valuable, even before automobiles came along. Today, we tend to think of John D. Rockefeller as just one of those famous rich people. But Rockefeller didn't just "happen to have money." How he got rich is the real story— and it is a story whose implications reach far beyond that one particular individual. Before Rockefeller's innovations reduced the price of kerosene to a fraction of what it had once been, there wasn't a lot for poor people to do when nightfall came, other than go to bed. But the advent of cheap kerosene added hours of light and activity to each day for people with low or moderate incomes. It was much the same story with the advent of the automobile, which gave millions of people more range in space, as kerosene (and, later, electricity) gave them more range in terms of hours of daily activity. Here again, automobiles and electric lights were truly luxuries of the rich when they began. Only after ways were developed to cut their costs drastically were such things brought within the reach of ordinary Americans. Henry Ford's mass production methods cut in half the cost of producing the famous Model T Ford in just five years. People who had once lived their entire lives within a narrow radius of a relatively few miles could now go see places they never knew about before. The automobile expanded their horizons. People today who complain about the automobile's pollution have no idea how much more pollution there was before the automobile came along. In New York City, for example, the 40,000 horses that were the backbone of the city's transportation, before the automobile, produced 400 tons of manure per working day, along with 20,000 gallons of urine. At one time, people like Rockefeller, Edison, Ford and the Wright brothers were regarded as heroes, for having opened vast new possibilities for other human beings. The fact that they got rich doing it was an incidental part of the story. We still have people revolutionizing our lives. Just think of the computer and the pharmaceutical drugs that have not only lengthened our lives but made them more healthful, so that being 80 years old today is like being 60 years old in times past. But today we seldom even know the names of those who have made these monumental contributions to human well-being. All we know is that some people have gotten "rich" and that this is to be regarded as some sort of grievance. Many of the people we honor today are people who are skilled in the rhetoric of grievances and promises of new "rights" at someone else's expense. But is that what is going to make a better America? To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com. .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	1/26/2011 10:59:53 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

H/T to Brumar89: 7 Non-Political Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives People who don't follow politics tend to believe that conservatives and liberals are just flip sides of the same coin. In other words, conservatives are pro-life, pro-gun, and fiscally conservative while liberals are pro-choice, anti-gun, and want to tax and spend, but otherwise, there are no real differences. However, if you follow politics closely, you'll find that there's a gulf as wide as the ocean between the average politically active conservative and the average politically active liberal. We don't just have political differences; we view the world through very different eyes. Of course, I don't want to oversell this because as Americans, conservatives and liberals are more alike than different. There also tend to be differences between people who are heavily politically involved and those who aren't. This column focuses on those of us who are more politically active, as opposed to people who don’t pay much attention to politics. I'd also add that in every category, you'll find exceptions that prove the rule. Moreover, sometimes you'll find both conservatives and liberals engaging in the same behavior, although one side tends to do it much more than the other. All that being said, after spending a decade blogging, here are just a few of the genuine differences that have become apparent over the years. 1) Conservatives are more patriotic than liberals: Conservatives tend to focus on the positive things about America, while liberals focus on the negative. If the first thoughts that came to your mind when you thought of America were “slavery,” "imperialism," and "unfairly using too much of the world's resources," you probably wouldn't like America very much either. Conservatives, on the other hand, look at the fact that we saved the world in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, take pride in the fact that we have contributed so much to the planet, and believe America has had a tremendous positive impact on history. The conservative view produces love of country. The other view produces a deep seated dislike of our nation. 2) It's socially acceptable for liberals to lie about conservatives: Whether you're talking about theNew York Times, The Washington Post, or the Daily Kos, it's considered to be perfectly acceptable to lie about conservatives. That's because, as Charles Krauthammer once said, To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. If you think your opponents are evil, you tend to be okay with using tactics that you would describe as "evil" under other circumstances to fight them. If you're up against people you compare to Nazis, it’s easy to tell yourself that lying to beat them isn’t so bad. If you're in a dispute with people who you believe are just too stupid to understand what's going on, you feel compelled to try to explain yourself a little better. 3) Conservatives are results-oriented. Liberals are not: If you understand one thing about liberals, understand this: Liberalism is nothing more than "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues." That's why they don't care very much about whether the programs they advocate work or not. Proposing programs isn't really about what will help the most people to liberals; it's about making them feel good about themselves. On the other hand, conservatives are results-oriented, which is why they tend to be so down on the government, which is inevitably slower, more expensive, and less effective than the private sector at pretty much everything. 4) Conservatives care about the Constitution. Liberals don't: Conservatives believe that we need to try to interpret the Constitution in the way that the Founders intended it to be read and if we want to change it, then we need to pass a Constitutional Amendment. Liberals believe in a "living Constitution," which is functionally no different than believing in no Constitution at all. If you believe in a "living Constitution," you think it is okay to do whatever you want for political reasons and then come up with a legal justification afterwards, which you'll then call "constitutional law." 5) Liberals are much more misogynistic than conservatives: If you're a prominent conservative woman, you will be deluged with rape threats, death threats, attacks on your family, attacks on your looks, and offers to give you a good screwing as a public service. In other words, what you've seen with Sarah Palin is actually the same thing that happens to most prominent conservative women, but on a larger scale. That's not to say that liberal women don't get some of the same treatment, but it's several orders of magnitude worse for women on the Right. That's largely because liberals claim the "feminist" mantle and so, if they're feminists, then obviously they can't be "anti-woman" no matter what they actually say, right? Even worse, most of the actual feminist women on the Left tend to either participate in the abuse or, alternately, turn a blind eye to it as long as it's aimed at conservative women. 6) Conservatives are happier people than liberals: Despite all the claims you hear that conservatives are angry, cruel, and mean, conservatives are much happier people than liberals. This is something that has been consistently proven in studies and, let's face it -- anyone who knows a lot of liberals and conservatives will tell you that it's not a surprise. Conservatives love the country they live in, they're more likely to be Christian, and they take responsibility for their own lives instead of griping that the world is terribly unfair. If you want to be a happy person, you're more likely to be a happy conservative than a happy liberal. 7) Conservatives are better Christians than liberals: Certainly there are debates about social conservatism and Christianity on the conservative side of the fence, but Christian conservatism is considered to be a honorable and important part of the Republican base. People are going to hate to hear this, despite the fact it's absolutely true, but Christianity and liberalism have become largely incompatible. That's because there are so many liberals who are implacably hostile to Christianity that liberal Christians are left with one of two unpalatable choices. Either they can water their Christian beliefs down into thin gruel so as to be compatible with liberalism or liberal Christians can choose to be cringing dogs and keep their mouths shut while their beliefs are regularly insulted, demeaned, and attacked by their fellow liberals. Neither option should be acceptable to someone who has a strong Christian faith. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	3/13/2011 7:03:44 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama will condemn death threats against Wisconsin GOP tomorrow? Monday? By: Mark Tapscott BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL 03/12/11 3:19 PM After Jared Loughner shot and killed six people in his attempt to assassinate Rep. Gabby Gifford, D-AZ, President Obama spoke eloquently and forcefully against violent political rhetoric and the need for political opponents to remember they are opponents, not enemies. With that in mind, we're sure the chief executive will soon condemn the multiple death threats that have been delivered to Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican majorities in the Wisconsin state senate and house. Doug Ross has a selection of the most disturbing threats that have been made public. .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	3/17/2011 6:51:42 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Aid targeted for countries that ‘don’t like us’ Justification sought for U.S. cash By Seth McLaughlin The Washington Times Seeking to shut off federal aid going to foreign countries that “don’t like us,” a Texas Republican congressman said Wednesday that lawmakers should vote separately on funding for every foreign nation receiving taxpayer money. With foreign aid a major sticking point in the budget battles raging on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ted Poe proposed new House rules to hold country-by-country votes, saying it would end the current system where overall foreign aid levels are decided essentially in one fell swoop. He said splitting each country’s funding into its own bill will make members of Congress think more carefully about which countries deserve money, while adding transparency and accountability to the process. “It changes House rules so members are able to vote on each country one at a time,” he said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that explored U.S. foreign assistance. “For every dollar handed out, we can ask, ‘How does this further the interest of the United States? If a country can justify that it is critical to U.S. interests, then it will pass. If not, then it won’t.” After the November election, the push to reduce spending on foreign aid has gained steam on Capitol Hill. Many of the same tea party-backed lawmakers who helped Republicans seize control of the House are pressuring leaders to cut spending more than they’ve offered, and are skeptical of foreign aid and programs, which they suggest are often riddled with waste and fraud. Democrats have fought back, saying foreign-aid spending saves money over the long haul. On Wednesday, they pointed to testimony from Gen. David H. Petreaus, who told lawmakers that funding the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will be key to the successful transition from combat to civilian forces after troops begin to leave Afghanistan, as is scheduled later this year. “This category is really a national security funding issue, not just an issue of foreign assistance or some other element,” Gen. Petreaus told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Foreign assistance totaled $39.4 billion in 2010, or about 1 percent of the total federal spending. It was the highest level of U.S. foreign assistance since 1985, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). USAID and the State Department, as the primary administrators of U.S. foreign assistance, doled out $10.38 billion in security-related assistance; $10.93 billion for health, education, and social welfare programs; $3.64 billion for governance programs; $5.21 billion for economic growth activities; and $4.98 billion in humanitarian assistance. Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and Haiti were the top recipients. Mr. Poe offered his rules-change legislation a day after House lawmakers passed a three-week spending bill Monday that cut $4.6 billion from 2010 spending and rescinded another $1.4 billion in unspent money from prior years. The Senate is expected to pass the proposal and the White House has expressed support for the deal, which would delay a government shutdown by three weeks. But the short-term agreement didn’t brighten the mood in Washington, where the growing frustration between lawmakers over federal spending spilled over into floor speeches and committee hearings. Members traded rhetorical bombs and blame for running up deficits and the national debt, which jumped to $14.23 trillion on Tuesday. Rep. Donald A. Manzullo aimed some of his frustration at USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, demanding to know why the agency had awarded a New York City-based company a $100,000 grant to develop a fuel-cell-powered “E-Bike.” “Why is the U.S. taxpayer buying a solar-powered bicycle? How is that going to help out the world?” the Illinois Republican barked, interrupting Mr. Shah’s explanation that the grants were designed to provide seed money for businesses to develop new technologies. “Don’t use the word investment, use the word spent or paid! … This is a waste of taxpayer dollars and the sooner you guys wake up and understand that, the better off you are going to be in taking limited resources and using them for a better purpose.” The exchange came during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing where Mr. Shah and Daniel Y. Yohannes of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) testified about President Obama’s 2012 budget request to raise funding for the State Department, USAID and other international programs from $49.3 billion to $50.9 billion. The two men said the spending proposals offered by Republicans would be “devastating” to their efforts abroad. Under the House proposal for this fiscal year, USAID would lose $120.9 million and MCC would lose $315 million compared with 2010, according to data from the House Appropriations Committee. Democrats on the panel defended the president’s plan, saying the upfront investment helps avoid steeper costs over the long haul. “The truth is that addressing hunger, disease and human misery abroad is a cost-effective way of making America safer at home,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman, California Democrat and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Poe floated his proposal at the end of the hearing, pointing out that Venezuela, Cuba, China and Russia are receiving some foreign assistance. “Most of these countries don’t even like us,” he told his colleagues. “The time has come for these countries to stand or fall on their own” with individual votes. .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	3/17/2011 8:10:38 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

A Case Study In Liberal Hypocrisy Posted by John Power Line On Monday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce began its consideration of the Upton-Imhofe bill, which would bar the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions. Upton-Imhofe is critical to any effort to restore our economy, so the Democrats are against it. Ranking Democrat Henry Waxman went on a hysterical rant against the legislation: <<< This is dangerous legislation. Climate change is real; it is caused by pollution; and it is a serious threat to our health and welfare. We need to confront these realities, not put our head in the sand like an ostrich. >>> We have written about this issue many times. Climate change is "real" only in the sense that the climate is always changing. That has been true for millions of years. Climate change is not caused by pollution; history proves that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not control worldwide temperatures. Nor is global warming a serious threat to our health and welfare. Humanity has consistently thrived during warmer periods and suffered during colder ones. The Dark Ages were dark largely because they were cold. Waxman continued: <<< Yet instead of promoting a clean energy future, we are pursuing this partisan bill that benefits no one except big polluters like Koch Industries. >>> I suppose Waxman thought he was punching his liberal ticket by mouthing the Democratic Party talking point du jour. Evidently he didn't get the memo, and hadn't heard that the Left has backed off on its daily attacks on Koch because those attacks were so over-the-top and so factually deficient that they made laughingstocks of the lefties who asserted them. But here's the point: imposing more pollution regulations doesn't hurt "polluters." (Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is a natural substance that is essential to life on earth.) It hurts consumers. If all owners of refineries, power plants and factories have to spend money to install carbon-capture technologies, it is a wash as far as they are concerned. The regulation increases the cost of producing energy or other goods, and that cost is passed on to the consumer. Hot Air cites a study from Waxman's state, California, that documents the almost unbelievable cost of regulation. To the extent that heightened regulation impacts competition between companies, it helps big companies--like Koch Industries--and disadvantages small ones. Is is possible that Henry Waxman doesn't understand that imposing new carbon dioxide regulations would hurt consumers, not Koch Industries? No. Even Henry Waxman is not that stupid. As usual, the Democrats are counting on ignorance. But there are, in fact, some companies that would benefit from the imposition of CO2 regulations on power plants, refineries and so on. Those companies are the ones that peddle inefficient forms of energy that cannot compete with fossil fuels absent government subsidies. Those subsidies come in two forms. The government can give money and tax breaks to inefficient energy producers like solar and wind, and it has indeed done that. However, those subsidies are relatively transparent and controversial. The second way in which government can help producers of inefficient energy is, therefore, actually better: it can make energy produced with fossil fuels more expensive by imposing needless regulations. And that is exactly what "green"--i.e., inefficient--energy producers lobby for. Which brings us to Thomas F. Steyer. The New York Times' "Green Blog" hyped Mr. Steyer as "the anti-Koch" in a puff piece: <<< For years, Mr. Steyer, a billionaire San Francisco hedge fund manager, assiduously maintained a low profile while becoming a major donor to Democratic candidates. That changed in 2010 when he led the successful fight to defeat Proposition 23, a California ballot measure backed by two Texas oil companies and a company controlled by Charles G. and David H. Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers and bankrollers of conservative causes. >>> Note the subtle distinction: the Koch brothers are "secretive," while Steyer "maintained a low profile." <<< Proposition 23 would have effectively derailed the state's landmark global warming law, which would have been a big setback for California's blooming green technology industry. Mr. Steyer, the founder of Farallon Capital Management, is the main financial backer of Greener Capital, a venture firm that invests in renewable energy start-ups. Now Mr. Steyer appears to be itching to take on the Koch brothers and their supporters as Republican lawmakers seek to limit the United States Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. "As an investor who one might say is insanely obsessed with energy and its generation and use around the world, it seems crazy to me we would roll back science-based clean air standards because there are skillful political operatives and wealthy political donors who really want to get rid of E.P.A. regulations," he said in a speech Monday evening at the Cleantech Forum conference in San Francisco. "That seems nuts to me." >>> I'm sure it does seem "nuts" to Mr. Steyer, since he has lots of money at stake. As an investor who has placed a big bet on non-fossil energy, he has an obvious personal interest in the government imposing regulations that make his competitors--producers of fossil fuel energy--more expensive. In fact, without such government action, the "green" projects in which he has invested are likely worthless. But there's more: Thomas Steyer is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress, a "Democratic insider think tank started by former Clinton administration official John Podesta" that is often viewed as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration. The Center for American Progress owns the web site Think Progress, which has been the main source of attacks on Koch Industries. So, if you are looking for financial self-interest, let's connect the dots: Thomas Steyer is desperately trying to influence the federal government to impose irrational costs on industries that produce energy from fossil fuels, so that his own hedge fund investments in inefficient ("green") energy will be worth more money. The insane attacks that Think Progress, controlled by Steyer and his friends, have launched against Koch Industries are part of this business strategy. Steyer knows which politicians will enrich him by imposing needless costs on fossil fuel-derived energy, and he contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. This is on top of the undisclosed amounts that he contributes to his mouthpieces at Think Progress and other left-wing activists. Click to enlarge: There is nothing illegal about this; businessmen are allowed to lobby, contribute to politicians, and support astroturf campaigns to protect their investments. But it is the height of hypocrisy for Steyer and his minions at Think Progress to attack companies like Koch Industries, who represent the interests of consumers, while disguising the fact that they are the ones who actually have skin in the game, and are trying to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. .

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	4/5/2011 9:16:18 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Political Statistics Thomas Sowell When someone gives you a check and the bank informs you that there are insufficient funds, who do you get mad at? In your own life, you get mad at the guy who gave you a check that bounced, not at the bank. But, in politics, you get mad at whoever tells you that there is no money. One of the secrets of the growth of the welfare state is that politicians get a lot of mileage out of making promises, without setting aside enough money to fulfill those promises. When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits, without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big-time, for the country, as deficits skyrocket. Anyone who says that we don't have the money to pay what was promised is accused of trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare or Obamacare— or whatever other unfunded promises have been made. It is like blaming the bank for saying that the check bounced. It is the same story at the state level as in Washington. The lavish pensions promised to members of public sector unions cannot continue to be paid because the money is just not there. But who are the unions mad at? Those who say that the money is not there. How far short are the states? It varies from one state to another. It also varies with how large a rate of return the state gets on its investments with the inadequate amount of money that has been set aside to cover its promised pensions. A front page story on the March 28th issue of Investor's Business Daily showed plainly, with bar graphs, how big Florida's shortfall is under various rates of return on that state's investments. Florida's own estimate of its pension fund's shortfall is based on assuming that they will receive a rate of return of 7.75 percent. But what if it turns out that they don't get that high a return? A 6 percent rate of return would more than triple the size of Florida's unfunded liability for its employees' pension. The actual rate of return that Florida has received over the past decade has been only 2.6 percent. In other words, by simply assuming a far higher future rate of return on their investments than they have received in the past, Florida politicians can deceive the public as to how deep a hole the state's finances are in. Political games like this are not confined to Florida. State budgets and federal budgets are not records of facts. They are projections based on assumptions. Just by manipulating a few assumptions, politicians can create a scenario that bears no resemblance to reality. The "savings" to be made by instituting Obamacare is a product of this kind of manipulation of assumptions. Even when the people who turn out the budget projections do an honest job, they are working with the assumptions given to them by the politicians. The fact that the end results carry the imprimatur of the Congressional Budget Office— or of some comparable state agency or reputable private accounting firm— means absolutely nothing. When Florida arbitrarily assumes that it is going to get a future rate of return on its pension fund investment that is roughly three times what its past returns have been, that is the same nonsense as when the feds assume that Congress will cut half a billion dollars out of Medicare to finance ObamaCare. We would probably be better off if there were no Congressional Budget Office to lend its credibility to data based on hopelessly unrealistic assumptions fed to them by politicians. One of the reasons why a federal "balanced budget" amendment is unlikely to do what many of its advocates claim is that a budget is just a plan for the future. It does not have to bear any resemblance to the realities of either the past or the future. We do not need reassurances that do not reassure, whether these reassurances are in numbers or in words. No small part of the reason for the economic collapse we have been through is that federally designated rating agencies reassured investors that many mortgage-backed securities were safe, when they were not. Not only investors, but the whole economy, would have been better off without these reassurances. "Caveat emptor" would be better advice for both investors and voters. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	4/15/2011 3:40:15 AM
From: Sully-	3 Recommendations Respond to of 35834

H/T to Tim Fowler: The indispensable freedom of association by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe April 10, 2011 BRAD ASKS ANGELINA FOR A DATE, but she doesn't want to go out with him. Should she be legally free to turn him down? I take it for granted that no one in America thinks the law ought to interfere with Angelina's freedom to say no. Whether she agrees to date Brad or not is a matter of complete indifference to the government. That's true regardless of her reason. She can reject Brad's suit because he's handicapped, or because he's Christian, or because he isn't tattooed. She can discriminate on the basis of race, religion, age, national origin, or table manners. When it comes to friendship and romance, freedom of association -- which by definition includes the freedom not to associate -- is absolute. Freedom of association is a core human right, and not just when it comes to dating. It would be unthinkable for the government to meddle in our choice of sports team to root for, house of worship to pray in, or neighborhood to move to. You are free to join a gay men's choir because you like being with gays, or to avoid gay pride parades because you don't like being with gays. You can volunteer for a political campaign, attend a cocktail party, go to the beach -- or not -- and your reasons may be admirable (the candidate's record of public service) or not so admirable (the candidate's skin color). The choice is yours. Other people may disapprove of what you choose or why you chose it, but the law gives them no authority to stop you. Freedom of association should be valued as highly in our economic life as it is in our social life. When it comes to choices made by consumers, tenants, and employees, it usually is. The government cannot make you buy from a store you don't want to shop in -- and it doesn't matter whether your reason for avoiding it is that the prices are too high, the goods aren't American-made, or the owner is a Jew. The same is true for employees who don't want to work for an employer, or a tenant who declines to rent from a landlord. They are free to say no, and the law doesn't inquire into their motives. That liberty should be a two-way street, but it isn't. Employers, for example, have nothing like unabridged freedom of association when it comes to hiring. You don't have to work for a woman if you don't want to, but a lawsuit awaits any employer who tries to exercise the same freedom. Federal and state laws ban discrimination on a wide array of grounds, and efforts to enlarge the list are never-ending. US Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia introduced legislation last month making it illegal to discriminate against job applicants who are currently unemployed. A state legislator in Texas is pushing a bill that would outlaw discrimination against creationists. In Massachusetts, Maryland, and other states, transgender and transsexual activists want lenders, employers, and landlords barred from discriminating on the basis of "gender identity." It's easy to understand the desire to protect individuals from being discriminated against unjustly. But are lawmakers truly equipped to decide which kinds of discrimination are reasonable and which aren't? Does Big Brother know better than the business owner whose bottom line is at stake whether a given applicant is right for a given job? If the government won't second-guess Angelina's decision not to date Brad or buy from Brad, why should it infringe on her prerogative not to hire Brad or rent to Brad? Free and competitive markets aren't thought of as promoting tolerance and reducing bigotry, yet they do so far more effectively than ever-more-detailed civil rights regulations. Writing in the 1730s, Voltaire famously described the London Stock Exchange as a place "where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts." Gary Becker earned the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics in part for demonstrating that discrimination is economically detrimental -- free markets penalize an employer who discriminates for reasons unrelated to ability and productivity. Freedom of association is indispensable to making a free society work. No culture is without unfairness. But where men and women are unfettered in their freedom to form or avoid relationships with others -- socially and economically -- tolerance and cooperation increase, and ugly prejudice recedes. (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe). jeffjacoby.com

To: Sully- who wrote (35616)	5/5/2011 4:10:50 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

One thing the students would like to tell Bush's critics - like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 911 disparaged Bush for lingering almost 10 minutes with the students after getting word that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center - is that they think the President did the right thing. The Students with Bush on 9/11: The Interrupted Reading Time By TIM PADGETT – Wed May 4, 12:15 pm ET There has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla. Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong - and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble - with no less than the Commander in Chief - but he wasn't sure why. "In a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?" (See pictures of people celebrating Osama bin Laden's death.) Similar fears started running through Mariah Williams' head. "I don't remember the story we were reading - was it about pigs?" says Williams, 16. "But I'll always remember watching his face turn red. He got really serious all of a sudden. But I was clueless. I was just 7. I'm just glad he didn't get up and leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused." Chantal Guerrero, 16, agrees. Even today, she's grateful that Bush regained his composure and stayed with the students until The Pet Goat was finished. "I think the President was trying to keep us from finding out," says Guerrero, "so we all wouldn't freak out." Even if that didn't happen, it's apparent that the sharing of that terrifying Tuesday with Bush has affected those students in the decade since - and, they say, it made the news of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S. commandos on May 1 all the more meaningful. Dubrocq, now a junior at Riverview High School in Sarasota, doubts that he would be a student in the rigorous international-baccalaureate program if he hadn't been with the President as one of history's most infamous global events unfolded. "Because of that," he says, "I came to realize as I grew up that the world is a much bigger place and that there are differing opinions about us out there, not all of them good."(See pictures of the evolution of Ground Zero.) Guerrero, today a junior at the Sarasota Military Academy, believes the experience "has since given us all a better understanding of the situation, sort of made us take it all more seriously. At that age, I couldn't understand how anyone could take innocent lives that way. And I still of course can't. But today I can problem-solve it all a lot better, maybe better than other kids because I was kind of part of it." Williams, also a junior at the military academy, says those moments spent with Bush conferred on the kids a sort of historical authority as they grew up. "Today, when we talk about 9/11 in class and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that day, I can tell them they're wrong," she says, "because I was there." (Watch TIME's video of the celebration at Ground Zero after Osama bin Laden's death.) One thing the students would like to tell Bush's critics - like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 911 disparaged Bush for lingering almost 10 minutes with the students after getting word that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center - is that they think the President did the right thing. "I think he was trying to keep everybody calm, starting with us," says Guerrero. Dubrocq agrees: "I think he was trying to protect us." Booker Principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, who died in 2007, later insisted, "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?" When the children's story was done, Bush left for the school's library, where he discussed the New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania nightmare with aides, reporters and another group of students waiting for him. Back in the classroom, Daniels brought in a television and turned on the first bewildering images of the Twin Towers in flames and smoke. At that point the kids started connecting the dots. "It was pretty scary," says Williams, "and I remember thinking, So that's why the President looked so mad." (See pictures of the evolution of Ground Zero.) Dubrocq got mad himself. "But I had to wait a few years before I could digest what had really happened and why they attacked us," he says. "I of course grew up to have nothing but contempt for Osama bin Laden." Yet he adds the episode "motivated me to get a better handle on the world and to want to help improve the world." It also made Dubrocq, who wants to study international business, more aware of his own multinational roots - he's French and Cuban on his father's side and Spanish and Mexican on his mother's. Not surprisingly, he also wants to learn other languages, like Chinese and, in an echo of his 9/11 memories, perhaps even Arabic. Williams says she also hated Bin Laden more as she grew up and gained a better appreciation of how fanatics had changed her world on 9/11. "All that just because he wanted to control everybody in the world, control how we think and what we do," she says. Williams doesn't plan to pursue a military career - she wants to be a veterinarian - but the military academy student was impressed by the Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Bin Laden: "I was shocked - I thought after 10 years they'd never find him. But what the SEALs did, it, like, gives me even more respect for that kind of training." (See "The Accused 9/11 Plotters: What Happened to Them?") Guerrero, in fact, may as well be part of that training. She also plans a civilian life - she hopes to study art and musical theater - but she's a Junior ROTC member and part of her school's state champion Raiders team, which competes against other academies in contests like rope bridge races, map navigation and marksmanship. In other words, the same sort of skills the SEAL commandos have to master. She admits to feeling an added rush when she woke up to Monday morning's news: the SEALs operation, she says, "was very, very cool." More than cool, Guerrero says, it was also "so reassuring, after a whole decade of being scared about these things." Most of all, it "brought back a flood of memories" of their tragic morning with a President - memories that prove kids can carry a lot heavier stuff in those plastic backpacks than adults often realize. .