Big Govt Can't Save Us (From Ourselves)
Culture 9:18 AM
by Nick Stone of Drawnlines Politics.
Is a good mom one who holds her child’s hand and invariably stops them from running out into traffic? Or is a good mom one that engrains in their child the responsibility to look left, right, and left again before ever taking a step into danger?
The everpresent helicopter mom in the first example may appear the safe choice to a weary onlooker, but only the example set by the second mom recognizes the basic reality that she can’t watch her baby’s every move. Baby number two has a much higher probability of success. Baby number one, dependent on mom, will someday be a hood ornament.
Helicopter mom is in essence the liberal. Responsibility mom is the conservative. Helicopter mom relies on regulating what her child does, and limiting him from exposure to danger. She means only the best, wants only to protect her youngster. Responsibility mom relies on teaching her child to think for himself, to take responsibility for himself, and to make a wise decision even when she's not there to guide him.
Liberals think it’s someone’s responsibility to save us from ourselves. They think they’re doing everybody a favor by making choices for them and taking away big, bad consequences. Consequences – you know those things we learn about when we’re becoming adults? The Democratic Party knows that it can’t win elections if grown-ups go to the polls, so lucky you – they took away your need to ever grow up. They’ll make all life decisions for you! You need juuuuuuuuust enough freedom to make the choices they’d want you to make. That way, you still feel like you get to participate. You know, like when you invite your mother out for ice cream and neglect to tell her that she’ll be eating it that day at Shady Pines retirement village.
Plainly put, liberals are the undeclared enemies of freedom. No, really.
Liberals don’t trust you to choose for yourself where to put your retirement savings like in an Individual Retirement Account. No, trust Uncle Sam. Social Security is much much more solvent and secure! Don’t bother with a 401k they say; you need a company pension. Those are sure to last and much more dependable indeed! Just ask any auto worker or airline employee about the vast benefits and sure footing of government-controlled retirement accounts.
They don’t believe in ending the lives of murderors. But those pesky babies that grow in your belly as a result of your irresponsible behavior? Yank ‘em out! They’re now a choice, not a life! Oh, and if you do “decide” to carry your child to term, you mustn’t expect the right to send them to a good school. No, parents cannot be trusted with that decision. I asked a dear liberal friend of mine one evening why parents shouldn’t have the right to send their children to whichever school they wished. I asked him “So what if they abandon all of the failing schools? Isn’t that the point?” “No, No he replied – the problem is that they’ll all overcrowd the ‘A’ schools and then nobody will have a good education.” Astonished by his conclusion, I froze and asked finally, “so why don’t you see that’s exactly what the president wants to do to my healthcare?” They don’t want us to have a choice on that either.
Examples are everywhere that government “protecting us” through interference has resulted in deeper, larger problems than we started with. The unintended consequences are boundless.
Tax and Spend hurts America:
Entitlement spending has nearly bankrupted our country. Our nation collects roughly 2.3 trillion dollars or about 19% GDP from all revenue sources in a year (after Obama's first year tax hikes already in place). Our total liability for outlays? 65 trillion dollars, a 30-to-1 leverage. That would be considered unsustainable for any bank. Ben Bernanke recently told the WSJ that as little as 5 to 1 is likely acceptable to reduce risk of defaults. It’s a Ponzi Scheme of epic proportions to kid ourselves that we can fund these liabilities. The Left’s solution? Easy. More tax increases!
“No,” you may say. “They only want to raise taxes on the rich that make over $250,000 a year.” Well that sounds nice. Aside from being a stupid move to take money away from the natural job creators and wealth redistributors, “the rich” simply don’t have it to give. They already pay the overwhelming majority of our revenue. That’s a fact. But taxing every penny of income from the so-called rich would not fill our budget deficit, not even for one year.
So in addition to highly visible income taxes, Democrats have proposed new subtle taxes at every level. They want higher sales taxes on purchases of all sorts, higher bed and car taxes on tourists, new soda and juice taxes, taxes on carbon dioxide (as in, literally every breath you take) and higher electricity and gas taxes. Then they want a brand new transaction tax on “wall street fat cats”. That means YOU if you have a 401k or an IRA or ever buy or trade any stocks, bonds, options, commodities, currency or futures. They also want to impose a new “value added tax” which literally imposes escalating taxes on a product every time it changes hands. This would, according to the Wall Street Journal , “apply to most everything consumed by everybody.” No bother. As long as you never work, shop, travel, eat, drink, breathe, drive, retire, manufacture or consume products, see a doctor, or use any electricity or water, you’ll be absolutely free from additional tax burdens! Hooray!
Federal Bureaucracy & Unintended Consequences:
Uncle Sam wants to be your doctor. If that thought isn’t scary enough by itself, let’s consider how great he has done in other areas he manages.
We all know that Medicare and Social Security are completely bankrupt and unsustainable. They are the go-to examples of government waste, fraud, and abuse. They are the essence of what is wrong with entitlements. They are the pork of all pork. They are the epitome of Washington making big power plays just to buy votes. They are intervention of the worst sorts, the unkeepable promises of all unkept promises.
The Community Reinvestment Act, genius program of Jimmy Carter, forced banks to loan mortgage money to people who couldn’t afford to buy houses. Shockingly, many of these people eventually went into default, starting a chain reaction that eventually took down the entire housing industry. With it came the mortgage industry as foreclosures spread to previously solvent loans. The resulting bank failures dominoed into the first negative balance of the FDIC since the Savings and Loan Crisis (also a disaster of government intervention, but another topic for another day). In short, FDIC is bankrupt. How are they going to fix it? According to feds, they’ll raise rates on the few solvent banks across America. Presto!
The list of government intervention in our lives resulting in disaster is easy to compile and obvious to note. Take your pick: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The Veteran’s Administration? Health and Human Services? Homeland Security? The Intelligence Agencies? Food and Drug Administration? Dept of Education? Abysmal failure everywhere! USA Today recently investigated schools and determined that school lunches are 5 times worse quality than fast food (in terms of actual food quality, not necessarily nutritional value). In other words, your child would be 5 times healthier eating a happy meal than the muck they’re served by the Dept of Education. But put down those Big Macs, they tell us. They don’t say stop shipping your kids to school.
Bottom line:
Big government liberals (and that’s what they are, let’s call them by name) count on you to always need helicopter mom. They know that if you learn to look both ways, you won’t instinctively want to grasp their hand. They won’t be able to complain about the speed of the drivers at the next town council meeting, and they won’t be able to bamboozle you into thinking that you know best what’s good for yourself. They need you to always stay in the nest. Once you flap your wings, they’re out of a job.
From just a few months of clipping only articles that really jumped off the page at me, I gathered these goodies:
“The Carter Ricochet Effect” (Carter interferes in Iran, Israel, Egypt, disaster ensues & Obama parallel)
“Obama and the Liberal Paradigm” (class warfare sends liberals off the cliff)
“White House Appears to Miscalculate Stimulus Jobs” (spent $1,229,687.50 per job created or saved)
“Obama Union Rules” (administration changes 75 years of labor policy, forces unionization)
“The Banking System is Still Broken” (new fed regulation makes banks lend to fewer businesses, oops!)
Barrons- “Economic Steroids Are Toxic, Too” (the terrible consequences of stimulus programs)
“How the US Government Rations Health Care” (Medicare & VA deny costs by denying claims, delaying care)
“Prohibition: A Cautionary Tale” (unintended consequences of banning, restricting behavior)
“The Dangers of a Value-Added Tax” (new sales tax on consumers could stealthily and dramatically grow federal government)
“The US Isn’t as Free as It Used to Be” (US falls fast on economic freedom world ranking)
“To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid” (how US aid is propping up corruption and bad policy in the third world)
"65 Trillion - US Obligations Exceed GDP of Entire World" (our unfunded liabilities are out of control and growing fast)
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
For videos and archives visit our homepage
Check out our new Election Center!
Is a good mom one who holds her child’s hand and invariably stops them from running out into traffic? Or is a good mom one that engrains in their child the responsibility to look left, right, and left again before ever taking a step into danger?
Helicopter mom is in essence the liberal. Responsibility mom is the conservative. Helicopter mom relies on regulating what her child does, and limiting him from exposure to danger. She means only the best, wants only to protect her youngster. Responsibility mom relies on teaching her child to think for himself, to take responsibility for himself, and to make a wise decision even when she's not there to guide him.
Liberals think it’s someone’s responsibility to save us from ourselves. They think they’re doing everybody a favor by making choices for them and taking away big, bad consequences. Consequences – you know those things we learn about when we’re becoming adults? The Democratic Party knows that it can’t win elections if grown-ups go to the polls, so lucky you – they took away your need to ever grow up. They’ll make all life decisions for you! You need juuuuuuuuust enough freedom to make the choices they’d want you to make. That way, you still feel like you get to participate. You know, like when you invite your mother out for ice cream and neglect to tell her that she’ll be eating it that day at Shady Pines retirement village.
Plainly put, liberals are the undeclared enemies of freedom. No, really.
Liberals don’t trust you to choose for yourself where to put your retirement savings like in an Individual Retirement Account. No, trust Uncle Sam. Social Security is much much more solvent and secure! Don’t bother with a 401k they say; you need a company pension. Those are sure to last and much more dependable indeed! Just ask any auto worker or airline employee about the vast benefits and sure footing of government-controlled retirement accounts.
They don’t believe in ending the lives of murderors. But those pesky babies that grow in your belly as a result of your irresponsible behavior? Yank ‘em out! They’re now a choice, not a life! Oh, and if you do “decide” to carry your child to term, you mustn’t expect the right to send them to a good school. No, parents cannot be trusted with that decision. I asked a dear liberal friend of mine one evening why parents shouldn’t have the right to send their children to whichever school they wished. I asked him “So what if they abandon all of the failing schools? Isn’t that the point?” “No, No he replied – the problem is that they’ll all overcrowd the ‘A’ schools and then nobody will have a good education.” Astonished by his conclusion, I froze and asked finally, “so why don’t you see that’s exactly what the president wants to do to my healthcare?” They don’t want us to have a choice on that either.
Examples are everywhere that government “protecting us” through interference has resulted in deeper, larger problems than we started with. The unintended consequences are boundless.
Tax and Spend hurts America:
Entitlement spending has nearly bankrupted our country. Our nation collects roughly 2.3 trillion dollars or about 19% GDP from all revenue sources in a year (after Obama's first year tax hikes already in place). Our total liability for outlays? 65 trillion dollars, a 30-to-1 leverage. That would be considered unsustainable for any bank. Ben Bernanke recently told the WSJ that as little as 5 to 1 is likely acceptable to reduce risk of defaults. It’s a Ponzi Scheme of epic proportions to kid ourselves that we can fund these liabilities. The Left’s solution? Easy. More tax increases!
“No,” you may say. “They only want to raise taxes on the rich that make over $250,000 a year.” Well that sounds nice. Aside from being a stupid move to take money away from the natural job creators and wealth redistributors, “the rich” simply don’t have it to give. They already pay the overwhelming majority of our revenue. That’s a fact. But taxing every penny of income from the so-called rich would not fill our budget deficit, not even for one year.
So in addition to highly visible income taxes, Democrats have proposed new subtle taxes at every level. They want higher sales taxes on purchases of all sorts, higher bed and car taxes on tourists, new soda and juice taxes, taxes on carbon dioxide (as in, literally every breath you take) and higher electricity and gas taxes. Then they want a brand new transaction tax on “wall street fat cats”. That means YOU if you have a 401k or an IRA or ever buy or trade any stocks, bonds, options, commodities, currency or futures. They also want to impose a new “value added tax” which literally imposes escalating taxes on a product every time it changes hands. This would, according to the Wall Street Journal , “apply to most everything consumed by everybody.” No bother. As long as you never work, shop, travel, eat, drink, breathe, drive, retire, manufacture or consume products, see a doctor, or use any electricity or water, you’ll be absolutely free from additional tax burdens! Hooray!
Federal Bureaucracy & Unintended Consequences:
Uncle Sam wants to be your doctor. If that thought isn’t scary enough by itself, let’s consider how great he has done in other areas he manages.
We all know that Medicare and Social Security are completely bankrupt and unsustainable. They are the go-to examples of government waste, fraud, and abuse. They are the essence of what is wrong with entitlements. They are the pork of all pork. They are the epitome of Washington making big power plays just to buy votes. They are intervention of the worst sorts, the unkeepable promises of all unkept promises.
The Community Reinvestment Act, genius program of Jimmy Carter, forced banks to loan mortgage money to people who couldn’t afford to buy houses. Shockingly, many of these people eventually went into default, starting a chain reaction that eventually took down the entire housing industry. With it came the mortgage industry as foreclosures spread to previously solvent loans. The resulting bank failures dominoed into the first negative balance of the FDIC since the Savings and Loan Crisis (also a disaster of government intervention, but another topic for another day). In short, FDIC is bankrupt. How are they going to fix it? According to feds, they’ll raise rates on the few solvent banks across America. Presto!
The list of government intervention in our lives resulting in disaster is easy to compile and obvious to note. Take your pick: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The Veteran’s Administration? Health and Human Services? Homeland Security? The Intelligence Agencies? Food and Drug Administration? Dept of Education? Abysmal failure everywhere! USA Today recently investigated schools and determined that school lunches are 5 times worse quality than fast food (in terms of actual food quality, not necessarily nutritional value). In other words, your child would be 5 times healthier eating a happy meal than the muck they’re served by the Dept of Education. But put down those Big Macs, they tell us. They don’t say stop shipping your kids to school.
Bottom line:
Big government liberals (and that’s what they are, let’s call them by name) count on you to always need helicopter mom. They know that if you learn to look both ways, you won’t instinctively want to grasp their hand. They won’t be able to complain about the speed of the drivers at the next town council meeting, and they won’t be able to bamboozle you into thinking that you know best what’s good for yourself. They need you to always stay in the nest. Once you flap your wings, they’re out of a job.
From just a few months of clipping only articles that really jumped off the page at me, I gathered these goodies:
“The Carter Ricochet Effect” (Carter interferes in Iran, Israel, Egypt, disaster ensues & Obama parallel)
“Obama and the Liberal Paradigm” (class warfare sends liberals off the cliff)
“White House Appears to Miscalculate Stimulus Jobs” (spent $1,229,687.50 per job created or saved)
“Obama Union Rules” (administration changes 75 years of labor policy, forces unionization)
“The Banking System is Still Broken” (new fed regulation makes banks lend to fewer businesses, oops!)
Barrons- “Economic Steroids Are Toxic, Too” (the terrible consequences of stimulus programs)
“How the US Government Rations Health Care” (Medicare & VA deny costs by denying claims, delaying care)
“Prohibition: A Cautionary Tale” (unintended consequences of banning, restricting behavior)
“The Dangers of a Value-Added Tax” (new sales tax on consumers could stealthily and dramatically grow federal government)
“The US Isn’t as Free as It Used to Be” (US falls fast on economic freedom world ranking)
“To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid” (how US aid is propping up corruption and bad policy in the third world)
"65 Trillion - US Obligations Exceed GDP of Entire World" (our unfunded liabilities are out of control and growing fast)
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
For videos and archives visit our homepage
Check out our new Election Center!
Posted by Nick Stone
on 9:18 AM.
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