Terrorism or Man Caused Disaster?

Barack Obama has already led America so well that terrorism doesn't exist in the world anymore.  We fought the war on terror and won it.  That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Since terrorism no longer exists and all the world loves us, that thing yesterday in Boston couldn't have been terrorism.  It was probably some crazed, right-wing extremist that the Republicans drove into an insane frenzy with their incendiary rhetoric.  This guy was probably an ignorant, white redneck who was frothing at the mouth over the loss of his assault rifle.

I am really disappointed in the president for one thing though.  He promised to never let this type of thing happen again.  I believe Bill Clinton promised the same thing after the Columbine disaster under his watch.  They just can't seem to keep us safe from the "crazies" no matter what laws are passed to restrict our freedoms.

You know, Israel, Europe, Afghanistan, and Iraq all have mass murders and terrorist attacks fairly frequently.  Funny thing is that they rarely use guns.  I can't remember a single incident that was committed with a gun.  No, they use bombs or occasionally even box cutters and jumbo jetliners.  The terrorist attacks that occur using guns are generally committed in the inner city neighborhoods of the USA.  These acts are committed in defiance of any law that is passed.  After all, murder is against the law regardless of the weapon.  Yes, you might call these acts crime, but I really consider it to be terrorism.  After all, it is intended to terrify anyone that ventures into the wrong neighborhood in one of our large cities.  Those acts of violence, whether committed with guns, knives, or fists, get the intended outcome.  Most people avoid those neighborhoods unless they end up there by accident because their GPS is broken (or maybe it got stolen, because they parked in the wrong neighborhood).

Hey liberals, what law are you going to pass to stop the terrorism we had yesterday?  Should we outlaw any event that brings together large numbers of people in one place?  (Maybe the act was our fault for making such an exciting target for the terrorists.)  Should we randomly search everyone seen walking down the street with a backpack or duffel bag?  How about installing more cameras that use facial recognition software to look for suspected terrorists?  The government could monitor the things we purchase, our telephone conversations, our email, our comings and goings, our friends and associates, our political views, etc. etc.  Then they could pass a law that lets them arrest people who do things that look suspicious.  They could go ahead and do a search of our computers and our homes.  If they think something is up, who needs a warrant?  Just wondering about your motivations is enough probable cause for a search.

This MessAPolitical is a "slippery slope."  We're all going to end up losing freedom, and it might just make us less safe than we are.  The government is coming for anyone that doesn't fall in line, and we may not be able to defend ourselves from the tyranny it is imposing.  Don't forget the constitution.  It's our only line of defense.

We've Got to do Something

The Democrats always have to do something to fix every problem in the world.  You can't be allowed to hurt yourself or someone else or the environment.  After the mass murder in Newtown, CT, Barack Obama said that something has to be done to prevent this from ever happening again.  That is setting us up for sure disappointment.  Unfortunately, I have no doubt that another mass murder will happen again.

In fact, another incident just happened early last week when the guy in Texas attacked a bunch of innocent people with a knife.  So, now what?  Do we pass knife control regulations?  Do we need to register our knives?  Should we outlaw butcher's blocks for the kitchen that hold more than seven knives?  Are convicted felons allowed to own knives?  What about those large assault knives - should they be outlawed completely?

Of course, a lot of people are killed by hammers.  Should those be outlawed?  Sometimes explosives are used to kill people.  Why don't we outlaw dynamite and plastic explosives?  You can rig up a propane tank to make a powerful bomb, so there go the gas grills.  People have been known to run over someone with a car or even get drunk and drive and kill innocent people.  Even women and children get killed this way.  Better get rid of the cars.  Oh yeah, baseball bats and tire irons are used to kill people.  America's pastime is going to be a thing of the past, and I hope you don't have a flat tire.

By the way, murder by any means is against the law.  So, I guess that means we don't have murders committed anymore.  It's against the law for felons to own or carry guns, so I guess they don't carry them anymore.  Armed robbery is against the law, so that never will happen again.  And if we pass a law making it against the law for people to own guns, that will work just great.  No gun related deaths will ever happen again.

Isn't all of this just ridiculous?  The felons will still be able to get a gun without a background check.  You might as well make mental illness against the law.  This stuff will all work just as well.  The president said this is not about politics, but it absolutely is.  If the real goal was to minimize the effects of these type incidents in schools, we would put armed guards in the schools.  The Democrat/Liberal motto is this:  just do something that looks like you care.  Even though it won't work, at least you proved that you cared by doing something.

Furthermore, the politicians wouldn't need armed guards anymore with all of the new gun control regulations preventing gun violence.  If their guards are allowed to protect the politicians and themselves, why can't we protect ourselves and our families?  Concealed carry permits at least make criminals wonder whether they will be attacking or robbing a person that can defend him or herself. 

This MessAPolitico isn't going to make anyone safer except criminals.  Many of the worst cities for gun crime in the USA have the most restrictive gun laws.  Please don't make America as safe as Chicago or Washington.

The Department of Education Budget

Our US federal government spends billions of dollars on the Department of Education.  To be more exact, the FY2011 budget for this department is just under $130 billion dollars.  Yet this department operates no schools, has no pupils or students, and doesn't educate anyone.  Yes, education is primarily a function funded by the state and local governments.

This is the budget showing the FY2011 through FY2016 federal allocations for education:

	FY2012 FEDERAL BUDGET ESTIMATES
	BILLIONS OF $'S
	FY2011	FY2012	FY2013	FY2014	FY2015	FY2016
Total Education	$129.8	$121.1	$118.1	$118.0	$123.4	$128.7
Pre-Primary thru Secondary	$78.2	$49.9	$42.7	$42.6	$42.6	$42.7
Tertiary (Higher Education)	$0.8	$22.3	$27.0	$28.8	$34.5	$40.1
General Science & Basic Research	$14.7	$14.9	$15.7	$14.2	$14.0	$13.8
Research & General Education Aids	$4.0	$3.8	$3.7	$3.7	$3.7	$3.8
Training & Employment	$9.1	$8.7	$8.0	$7.8	$7.7	$7.4
Other Labor Services	$2.2	$2.0	$2.0	$2.0	$2.0	$2.0
Social Services	$20.9	$19.5	$18.9	$18.9	$18.8	$18.9

The Department of Education was originally created in 1867 as means of helping the states create effective school systems.  Over the years, the focus of this department has changed.  Generally, it provides guidance to the public schools regarding current circumstances in the country or the world.  For instance, it was heavily involved in the civil rights movement during the late 1960's and 1970's.  It initially became a cabinet level agency under the administration of President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Currently, schools in the United States are educating around 56 million elementary and secondary school students in 99,000 public and 34,000 private schools.  The Department of Education also provides grants, student loans, and work-study programs to over 15 million students in the nations colleges and universities.

This information comes from the official website of the Department of Education (http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html).  When you read this, it really sounds like they provide about a quarter of the $130 billion in federal funds to private schools.  Do they?  No.  The money is sent to the illustrious public schools only.  The only thing that is sent to the private schools is an endless supply of rules, regulations, and bureaucracy.  That way they can insure that the private schools give your children a fine education.  Without the help of the Department of Education, how would the private schools ever get this important job done??????

Now lets add in the state and local expenditures on education.  That amounts to $850.7 billion for the 2008-2009 school year.  (I don't have numbers for both in the same year.)  That brings the total government expenditure for education to around $980 billion.  That's right, nearly a trillion dollars that is spent on public education.

If we just look at elementary and secondary education, that is:
     $578 billion at the state and local level
    ~$97 billion at the federal level
    ~$675 billion total

As I said before, I don't have the numbers for the state and local budgets in the same year as the federal budget numbers.  However, I do have the numbers published in the U.S. Department of Education, FY2010 Summary of Performance and Financial Information, Washington, D.C., 2010.  It says that the expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools was budgeted at approximately $540 billion for the 2010-2011 school year.  With 49.4 million students in these schools, the expenditure per student was projected to be $10,792.  Yes, the Department of Education's own financial statistics say that we are spending $10,792 per student to provide mediocre educational results.  Does this cover the entire cost per student?  I'm sorry to report that there is more.  This doesn't cover the capital investments required like the cost of building new school buildings.  In fact, the numbers from different sources never seem to agree.  Is that so surprising?  All of this data comes from tens of thousands of schools in thousands of school districts that are supported by local governments, state governments, and the federal government.  Invariably, the data is several years old, and it is presented in a way that requires a degree in accounting and indoctrination in bureaucratic thinking to understand.

So how does that compare to the private school costs.  The Department of Education report cited above says that there are about 5.8 million students in private elementary and secondary schools.  The CATO Institute website reported back in June of 2009 about a study done in Florida.  This study compared the test scores of private school students that were given state scholarships (i.e. vouchers) against the students that were in the public school system.  It turns out that there was little difference between the scores received.  However, there was a big difference in the costs.  The public school education in Florida costs $11,150 per student, whereas the state only paid $3,950 per student to the private schools.  The conclusion was that "public schools are spending nearly three times as much per pupil and have nothing to show for it."

Government schools (or indoctrination centers or teachers' union halls) are nothing but a bureaucratic money pit.  They also are feeding the MessAPolitico that is our kids' education.  The country is suffering financially.  The kids are suffering financially.  It's time for the government to get out of the education business now.

The Department of Education

The federal government doesn't have any schools.  Schools are run by state and local governments.  The schools in my area are county schools.  Several cities in the area have independent school districts that are separate from the county school system.  There are NO federal schools around here.  Are there any around your area?  I didn't think so.

So what business is it of the federal government?  Why do we need a federal department of education?  We don't.  All the federal government does is meddle in our affairs.  They issue "one size fits all" edicts that do nothing but add to the bureaucracy.  Have these rules made education better in the USA?  I keep hearing that we are amongst the lowest performers in the developed world in science and math.  That doesn't make it seem that all those rules and regulations have done much good.  Are schools safer today than they used to be?  Nope.

The school administration loves these inflexible rules.  I'm convinced that they prefer to have zero tolerance policies that require no judgement calls on the part of school personnel.  These administrators are so afraid of offending someone or showing special treatment to one person over another.  If the rule says that there is zero tolerance for students that bring a knife to school, then that student must be given a suspension.  Period.  A butter knife, a hunting knife, or a switchblade are all treated equally.

I once heard a story on the radio about a kid that had braces.  His mother wanted to give him a banana in his lunch box, but it would get stuck in the braces.  If he cut up the banana before eating it, the problem was avoided.  So his mother put a butter knife in the lunch box with the banana.  A teacher saw the butter knife, and the zero tolerance rule was invoked.  He was suspended for a butter knife.  You could have done much more damage with a legal fork than a dull butter knife.  This kid lived in a rural school district, not the inner-city.  Stabbings and knives and weapons weren't a big problem at this school, but the "one size fits all" rule said that the school had to punish this good kid.  This became a blemish on his record.  Somebody might have screamed "discrimination" if he got to bring in a butter knife, when some inner-city kid was suspended for pulling a switchblade on the teacher that told them to be quiet or quit fighting or whatever.

This is just one blatant example of why the government should get the heck out of education.  I mean that the federal, state, county, city, or any other government should get out of education.  It should be privatized.  I'm definitely a supporter of education vouchers.  Then you can choose who will educate your children.  The government indoctrination centers really are dying to get your kids away from you to train them to be good little tree hugging, socialist, anti-religious liberals.

So when we are talking about areas that could be eliminated from the federal bureaucracy, education has to be high on the list.  In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent around $130 billion, and they don't even have any schools.  Let's cut out the money pit and MessAPolitico completely.  Don't just cut 10% or 25% or even 50% of the funding for the department of education.  Completely eliminate it.  Get rid of all the bureaucrats, top to bottom.  Close it down.  Save $130 billion dollars every year, or really, more than that since these budgets go up every year.  I'm betting you won't even notice the difference unless you work there.  If you do notice something, it's more likely to be a positive change than a negative one.

Problems with a Balanced Budget Amendment, or the Law of Unintended Consequences VI

The majority of Americans believe that our federal, state, and local governments should balance their budgets.  That is, the spending should not exceed the tax revenues collected.  However, at the polls last November, big spenders were re-elected.  That includes liberal democrats in the US Senate and, of course, President Obama.  Somehow the electorate doesn't believe that these radical, big spending, liberals are the problem.  Do the people really believe in taking a balanced approach where revenues are increased AND spending is cut?  (By the way, we've had the tax increases for a small number of Americans, but no real spending cuts.)  Do the people really agree that even the extremely small cuts (that aren't really cuts at all) will be devastating to the economic recovery?  Will spending cuts kill the economic recovery?  Does government spending create jobs or even save them?  I don't believe so.

Politicians have been talking about taking steps to balance the budget sometime out in the future.  That would be 3-10 years away.  They are waiting on the economy to outgrow the pace of spending growth, but what if the deficits and government regulations and high cost of energy they have created just won't let our economy get off the ground?  What if the great depression wasn't eased and ended by government spending programs (i.e. Keynesian economics)?  Could it be possible that the great depression would have just been a tough recession if FDR hadn't intervened?  Did all of those trillion dollar pork barrel programs that were promoted by Obama really avert a depression, or did they make this thing much worse than it needed to be?

I personally believe that all of this deficit spending is a huge MessAPolitico.  I also believe that this recession would have been difficult, but it would be over if the government hadn't intervened to protect us from reality.  I would love to have a balanced budget amendment at all levels of our government.  I think that bills passed by lawmakers should be analyzed for cost, and each taxpayer (and potential voter) should be told how much that it will cost them in extra taxes.  If we had to pay for all of that pork, would we be so keen on having politicians spend the money?  I'll bet not.  At least the politicians might try to cut an existing program before starting a new one so that new revenue wouldn't be needed.

If a balanced budget amendment was passed that simply makes an unbalanced budget illegal, would that fix everything?  No.  You see, our lawmakers just can't agree to cut anything.  If an unbalanced budget is illegal and no one will cut spending, then taxes must go up.  That's right, the law would require collecting enough tax revenue to cover the costs.  I know that we tend to think that a balanced budget amendment would force the politicians to reduce spending, but we just might get the unintended consequence of a massive tax increase if a simple amendment passed.

Right now, we borrow about 40 cents of every dollar the federal government spends.  Do you realize that we would need to raise 2/3 more tax revenue to balance the budget without any spending cuts?  Wow!  Let's do the math.  If we collected 100% rather than 60% of the money spent, we would need to collect 100/60 = 1 2/3 times as much.  Can this much tax be collected?  If you believe in the Laffer curve, the answer is definitively no.  If you raise the tax rates by 2/3, will 2/3 more taxes be collected.  No.  The excessive taxes will take too much money out of the economy.  A major recession, commonly called a great, great, great depression, will bring all economic activity to a halt.  There will be no profits to tax, no dividends or capital gains to tax, and a lot less income to tax.

The Cut, Cap, and Balance amendment that was proposed by Congress a couple of years ago would have been a good one.  It limited spending to the revenue collected last year.  That would force spending to be kept in check.

The Congress is proposing to balance the budget over a number of years and by betting on the come, and that strategy is not destined to succeed.  I personally believe that they need to drastically cut with an axe.  Any department that isn't absolutely necessary should be eliminated.  Everything that can be privatized should be privatized.  I think that there are a very few things that must be done by the federal government.  Everything else should be left to the more efficient and responsive private sector economy.  All they need to do is dump 40% of the federal government agencies that are trying to do something that shouldn't be done by government (or maybe shouldn't be done at all).

Finally, we regular people borrow money sometimes.  We get mortgages and car loans and use credit cards.  We eventually pay these loans off.  That's right, we don't just spend more than we earn year in and year out, and continue getting new loans to cover the shortage.  We actually make payments on our loans, and the payments don't come from getting a new credit card and transferring the balance.  Why can't the government ever pay off the national debt?  Why do we not develop budgets and a plan for systematically getting the national debt paid off?  I believe this is another major MessAPolitico.

Maybe we should be talking about a Pay Off the National Debt Amendment.  Could that be the solution?  Yes.  No one believes that it can be done.  I do.  It might take 20 or 30 years, but it can be done.  It all must start with a balanced budget immediately.  It also starts by cutting out everything but the things that absolutely must be done by the federal government.  I believe we could then run budget surpluses of $500M-$700M annually, and that surplus could be used to retire some national debt.  You might fear the effect of huge government spending cuts, but I fear what will happen if we don't do it and do it now!

The Law of Unintended Consequences V

Government intervention is always done with the intent of helping some group of people.  Typically, whatever they do is done to help the poor and down-trodden.  Anyone that opposes liberal initiatives to save the world is labeled a friend of the greedy, rich corporate thieves.  We've had a war on poverty that started under Franklin Roosevelt, but our inept government can't seem to bring that war to an end.  The government MessAPolitico is really adept at spending our money, but inept at solving any problem as intended.

What are some places where our government has "really helped" - not?  Here are some examples.

Medicare and Medicaid were created during the "Great Society" initiative of Lyndon Johnson.  Have you noticed that the cost of medical care in the United States pretty much tracked with the inflation rate of the rest of the economy until the mid-1960's.  What happened then?  Medical costs suddenly outpaced the rest of the economy.  Adding a bunch of money into any segment of the economy creates a lot of demand.  When the demand goes up, prices go up.  Before Medicare and Medicaid were created, poor people received their medical care on a pro bono basis.  The doctors and charity hospitals provided the basic medical care needs of these poor people.  With the new Medicare and Medicaid programs, the doctors and other healthcare providers had no problem charging full price for services that were once provided pro bono.  After all, the money wasn't coming from the poor; it was coming from that rich guy, Uncle Sam.  So the government helped us out by making the price of medical care skyrocket.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took it as a mission to put more people into homes of their own.  How did that work out?  Well, they forced banks to relax their lending standards.  The rules for qualifying for loans were relaxed, giving more people a loan.  The rules requiring significant down payments were relaxed.  With more and more families qualifying for a home loan and other families qualifying for bigger home loans than ever before, the demand for homes was through the roof.  As with the medical care jump in demand or any industry experiencing high demand, the prices increased rapidly.  We had a "perfect storm" in housing (or maybe a "perfect MessAPolitico").  The storm gave us high prices and little of no down payment for far too many homeowners.  This put the banks at extremely high risk.  Too many homeowners had nearly zero equity in their home; if prices dropped just a little, there wasn't enough equity to cover the loan.  Of course, that happened.  The economy took a downturn.  Many of these new homeowners lost their jobs, so they couldn't make the payments.  They had little or no "skin in the game" (equity to lose), so they just turned the keys over to the bank and moved out.  The bank was stuck with a foreclosed property that wasn't worth enough to pay back the loan.  In fact, home prices plummeted.  Now everyone who owned a home lost money in their equity.  If they were upside down on the mortgage, they couldn't sell the home and move if they found a job in another city.  The homeowners either lost their homes or they were trapped in them.  The goal was to get people that couldn't afford homes into a home of their own.  That didn't happen in the end, and some people that had been secure in their homes lost them.  The banks and other lending institutions were suddenly in seriously bad financial shape.  Without the strong banks, lending was curtailed throwing the entire economy into a deep recession -- one that I would say hasn't ended yet.  How's that for unintended consequences.

I will say it again:  the government could screw up a wet dream.  I wish the government would just stop protecting and helping us.  I can't take much more of this MessAPolitico.

What about the Origination Clause in the Constitution?

The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court to stop Obamacare.  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act originated in the Senate.  It was challenged in the supreme court last spring as being in violation of the commerce clause of the constitution.  While the supreme court ruled that the bill was not in violation of the commerce clause, it did so with chief justice John Roberts writing that the fines that were intended to coerce people into buying insurance were actually a tax.  If he had considered the fees to be fines, he would have considered the law unconstitutional, but he clearly stated that they were taxes.  Period.

This seemed to me at the time to be setting the stage for a different challenge - that it violates the origination clause in the constitution.  The constitution states that all budget, spending, and tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives.  Since the PPACA originated in the Senate, it was unconstitutional from the onset.

So why did it take so long to bring this suit?  Chief justice Roberts laid out the road map to successfully kill the president's crowning achievement.  That would be the one that the majority of Americans have claimed that they DO NOT WANT in no uncertain terms, over and over.  (Yea, yea, I know Obama won the election and the Democrats retained control of the Senate.  That just shows how "out of touch" and/or stupid over half of the American populace it.  You know that about half the population has a below average IQ.  For you democrat voters and Obama lovers, that would be an IQ below 100.)

So get on with it Pacific Legal Foundation.  Come on supreme court.  We've got to kill this MessAPolitico before it gets implemented.  That means now.