Considerettes

Back on July 23rd, L. Brent Bozell wrote an opinion piece in which he considers Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch “Bias Exhibit A”, but he’s not accusing Larry of bias. When Klayman was pounding on the Clinton administration, the nation media labelled him conservative, did not taken seriously, dismissed or ignored him, and the merits of his lawsuits were never examined. Now that he’s suing Dick Cheney over Haliburton, he’s no longer conservative (just a “watchdog”), escorted to the front of the list on the 6 o’clock news (with Peter Jennings only now actually uttering the words “Judicial Watch”), and being covered in-depth like he’s never been covered before.

Now please, can anyone look me straight in the eye and say the press isn’t biased? Did one lawsuit really transform Klayman from a crackpot legal counsel for the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to honored and respected vox populi? The answer is, of course, no. Larry didn’t change. Anchors Tom, Dan and Peter didn’t either. They are biased, and they’re showing their true colors in the way they have and are reporting on Judicial Watch.

The Cato Insitute put forth a number of good ideas on government reform in light of the Enron/Global Crossing/WorldCom/etc.etc. debacles, and given the reaction of so many congressmen and pundits on boths sides of the aisle. If they’re really concerned about pensions, those glass-house-living politicians need to first examine their own state of affairs before throwing rocks (via legislation) at the CEOs of the country. Fact is, right now they’re far, far worse off than Ken Lay ever was. The problem is still that government is way too big. All the good intentioned programs out there have served to make it completely unmanagable. More programs and more legislation are not the answer. That’s what got us there in the first place.

The Constitutional limitations on federal government are still the best ideas yet. The solution is still smaller government.

One more reason against big government: Coming up with new ways to fund it. Four states are facing shortfalls in their budget, and instead of cutting spending or raising taxes, they’re looking at gambling. These states are following the classic path of the addict. They have a habit (throwing money at everything in sight), they can’t cut back on their habit or pay for it any longer, so they’re adding a new vice to pay for the old vice.

Don’t get me started on lotteries. When the issue was being debated on Georgia, I told some friends on a computer bulletin board system at the time that it would become another slush fund for politicians to spend any way they please, and the educational “lockbox” would be raided at will. I was ridiculed for allegedly posessing some sort of crystal ball. It passed, and about a year afterwards when south Georgia was having flooding problems, Gov. Zell Miller said that some of the relief payments would come from “excess lottery money”. Excess? I got back on the BBS and announced to all that the educational needs had been fully met now in Georgia. No room was without a computer, no student had to pay for college, and school buildings were finally up to snuff with no trailers outside anymore. I was met, of course, with virtual silence. As honorable as the flood relief usage may have been, how many other non-disclosed uses was the money being put out for? It was a slush fund, plain and simple.

And how honorable is it to pass what amounts to a regressive tax, one that hits the poor the hardest? They’re the one studies show buy the most tickets, urged on by TV & magazine ads, hoping to get out of their current condition. Politicians can’t claim ignorance on this issue, but they still do because they can’t resist the money.

This is where big government leads, among a myriad other places we don’t want to go.

I’ll be on vacation for 10 days, so you may not see much posted here in the interim. Never know, though! 🙂

For some, it takes a longer time to consider things than others. Ten years after Dan Quayle spoke out against the glorification of the single-parent-by-choice situation on the TV series “Murphy Brown” (and getting castigated by the cast and Hollywood in general over it), “Murphy Brown” herself, Candice Bergen, now says that “…his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.” She waits a decade to agree with him? If there was ever a case for discrimination against conservatives in Hollywood, this has to be it. “Free thinkers”? Don’t think so. You have to toe the liberal line, suppress what you really believe, until such time as it’s no longer on the radar and the press (who positively trumpted this “clash” from the rooftops) can be safely counted on to virtually ignore this revalation. Now, Candice is in no danger of being mistaken for a conservative, by any stretch of the imagination. She’s left-wing with the best of them. But one tiny little agreement with a conservative had to be hidden for so long, and one simply has to wonder what the climate in Hollywood must be like to require that.

So everything’s nice between them now, eh? Nope. Later in this micro-article, Bergen, when asked if she’d put Quayle on her new interview show, rejected the idea saying, “I just thought it was better to take the high road there.” Basically, she admits he was right, and she’ll never forgive him for it. Sorry Candy, but when you decide to take that road, you’ll find Danny’s been there, and has a 10-year headstart on you.

See also my essay “Television: Who’s Pushing Your Buttons?”, which discusses liberal inconsistancies in the whole television influence debate.

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has a good, in-depth analysis of what it is exactly that has failed, given the current corporate & economic situation we find ourselves in. Lots of folks are asking “Has capitalism failed?” Rep. Paul says “No”, because in order for it to fail, you have to have it first. He then answers the obvious questions, “then what is capitalism, and what have we actually had all these years?” His discussion wasn’t entirely over my head, although I felt myself dip below the surface slightly on occasion. Nonetheless, it’s a very good article, especially where it compares today’s reaction to our situation with the reaction in the 1930s when the Great Depression kicked in.

I’ve been on vacation for a week. Pardon the lack o’ posts.

On July 6th, Newsday.com published a column by “The God Squad”, the self-imposed name of the pair of religion commentators Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman, exposed the problem of the Pledge ruling. See, it’s not just a religious thing, it’s an accountability thing. The founding fathers knew that what government gave, government could take away, and they (rightly) believed that our rights ultimately came from God, not government. And if you think it’s just Christians that believe that, well, they’ll set you straight on that count, too.

Once again, according to Democrats, all the evils of the world began the day Bush was inaugurated. First they acted as if all bin Laden intelligence began coming in from the time W took the oath of office, to try and deflect anything from The Man Without A Legacy. Now Al Gore is implying that corporate shenanigans began only after a Republican plopped himself in the chair in the Oval Office. In a New York Daily News article, Gore claims, “You see now what it means to have an administration that’s that committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful, and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick.” Is that why W didn’t move to bail out Enron? All his alleged commitment to fighting and working for Ken Lay was manifest in his not bailing them out of their own problems? Golly, I missed that subtlety.

Gore continued, “What we see now is a lack of confidence in our national economic policy, in the integrity of our accounting system, in the way government is being run.” Ah, so then these corporate execs lacked confidence in national policy and the way government under Bush was being run–the same Bush, mind you, allegedly “committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful”. So now Al’s saying that these CEO’s were both assuming they’d have the White House working for them, and at the same time lacking confidence in that same administration. And this caused them to hide billions of dollars! Of course! This seeming contradiction in motivations was the source of their greed! And see, it’s not their fault, it’s Bush’s, of course. Under some other administration, where lying was commonplace and the biggest corporate mergers in history took place, this never happened. Man oh man, Al’s blamed everything but tax cuts.

But wait…he does manage to work them in. He insists that these private companies “are not telling the truth about their future liabilities so they can shovel money out to executives at the top. That is exactly what the Bush-Cheney tax plan will do. They are misleading the country about the extent of the liabilities they are putting on us … on you.” See, tax cuts, giving every single taxpayer more of their own money back, is exactly like hiding billions in the Caymen Islands. (Truth be told, it’s spending, coming from both sides of the Congressional aisle, that are causing far, far more future liabilities than the tax cuts ever will. Al, of course, never talks about that.)

Expect to hear more of this nonsense as Election Day draws nearer. Al’s speech featured both internal contradictions and absurd comparisons. That will be the Democrat platform.

This nation was concieved “under God”. Virtually every one of the founding fathers gave God (and in many cases, the God of the Christian Bible specifically) the credit for bringing this nation into existance. Many of the decisions made in the creation of the United States were done with the idea that God made it possible, God’s law was over any law made by man, and therefore that the government and the nation should be “under God”.

The phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance acknowledges that, plain and simple, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court notwithstanding. All these hypothetical questions like “would you think the same thing if the phrase was ‘under Allah'” utterly miss the point. When the 13 original colonies became the United States of America, guided by men who were guided by a Higher Power, they became one nation under God. “One nation under Vishnu” has no meaning, because that religion did not play a role in the founding of this country.

“One nation under God” is not a prayer, it’s an historical fact. One more fact about the religious nature of our country that liberal educators seek to expunge from history.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school vouchers, with the 5-4 majority saying that if parents have the true choice, then it doesn’t constitute entangling religion with government.

The minority on the court said that the voucher system does not treat religion neutrally. Pure nonsense. If the voucher system had specifically singled out religious schools as ineligible for voucher money, that would have been the non-neutral stance. As it stands, the Cleveland voucher system lets religious schools play on a level playing field with secular schools. Some complain that the majority of the voucher money goes to Catholic schools and so this is de facto sponsorship of Christianity. This is essentially “blaming” the Catholics for making better schools. We’ve got the Darwinian public schools and the Christian private schools (Catholic, Protestant, etc.) among others. If you want to start a school with a neo-pagan world view, I have news for you. This is still America, and you are still free to do what you think is right. But if nobody comes, don’t blame the Catholics.

The Post’s contention that the decision “continued a trend of the court in recent years to ease the path toward state support of religion” is liberal bias at its subtlest. They deliberately confuse the church/state issue with the freedom of religion issue. The state is not supporting religion, it’s supporting the parents (directly, in the Cleveland case, where the parents physically get the vouchers, not the schools). I also wonder how all those allegedly “pro-choice” liberals are against parental choice. Always make sure you know what choices they deem you worthy of making.

See also: A House of Straw, my essay on why school vouchers are better for everyone. Or better yet, let me keep my own money and do with it as I please. Then the Supreme Court wouldn’t have to get involved.