How Much Is Enough? (And Other Problems With Left Wing Policy)

Why can't democrats trust their own constituents to do the right thing?  Their first response to every problem is to institutionalize it with more government, typically as far up the legislative food chain as possible.  That means as far away from you as they can manage, even to the point of giving control to unelected bureaucrats you can't punish, just to keep you from messing with it.  They entrench it in a bureaucracy, make it impossibly inefficient and expensive and then refuse to let anyone touch it ever again, while charging you more and more to maintain it.

The only reason I can think of for that kind of knee jerk behavior is that Democrats use themselves as the template for the rest of us. The left by their very nature must be selfish, insecure, inconsiderate and un-trusting. Only people so un-giving of themselves or simply incapable of volunteering their time and energy would have to mandate volunteerism and "giving" by legalizing the taking of other peoples time or property through mandates.

Taxation is a legalized theft with no limit; Ask Mark Fernald, the current titular class-warfare mouthpiece of the left in New Hampshire, how much property he needs the state to confiscate to end the class warfare he wages?  What are the terms of peace Mark, or are they terms of surrender?  Every month you go on and on with your class warfare but tell us, how long and how much?  At what point is government large enough to solve all the problems you imagine it must confront?

Once we have passed your tax on the well-off, and scared all the job creators away, what then? (do we plan to insist that they wont leave if you make it too expensive for them to live and do business here, or are you going to make it illegal for them to take their wealth and jobs someplace else?) If they leave, and they will because everyone has a breaking point, who then will create the jobs and provide the income for you to tax to keep your promise; to keep the state from having to abandon its bloated "obligation" to students, the old and the mentally ill, and every other victim class that you have conscripted for your war of guilt?

Mark Fernald has no idea.  No democrat does.  Just ask them, how much is enough?  They have no clue.  They cannot answer the question because they don't really care about education, the elderly or the mentally ill.  No democrat does.  They have no plan other than to make you feel guilty, to use guilt to raise taxes, to grow government, and when government fails to paint the rosy picture they promised to blame someone else and insist they can solve it with even more government. (and more taxes.)

That's their entire game plan.  It's all they've got.

But government cannot promise an endless stream of support for more and more--the model is unsustainable.  Just look at states that have tried?  They are falling apart.  Despite what we can plainly see before us, New Hampshire Democrats would rather jump start the failed state class war, lie about the known outcome, and milk the cow to death.  They will promise you something for nothing, but they are only growing the numbers of dependents to be left in the lurch when the cow drops dead, instead of allowing people to struggle just a little to create enough wealth on their own to get by--to embrace their individual rights and responsibilities; to earn property of their own; to care for themselves so that they will have the resources to decide who among the truly needy they can best serve.

But the left-wing/Fernald plan cannot survive in the face of people who learn to care for themselves and their own first, people who do not need to rely on the government.  So his plan is to use class warfare and the pall of left wing guilt to appeal to human weakness; you know you have better things to do, let the government take care of it for you. You won't even have to pay for it.  We'll tax someone else.

This is the entire platform of the New Hampshire democrat party in a nutshell.  You sit back.  We'll take care of it.  You won't even have to pay.  But that never works.  Government never gets smaller with democrats in charge.    It never stops trying to do more.  It never gets less expensive.  And it eventually collapses under its own weight leaving everyone in the lurch.

You can choose to believe it wont happen this time, but you'd be lying to yourself.  The science, the math, the history is unforgiving.  If you engage in class warfare against the wealthy, the investment class, the job creators, they will eventually take their wealth, those taxes, those jobs, and that investment someplace else and leave the democrats and government with the check, which will then be paid for by whomever is left.  If there is no money--and with less investment and jobs and more government mouths to feed there will be less money--that many more will be abandoned by the penniless all caring government of the left.

The only solvent future is a small government that makes it easier for a free and prosperous people, secure in their rights to themselves and their property, to look into their hearts, and do the right thing for their families and their communities.  These are the places people flock to.  These are the communities and states that attract jobs and wealth and every kind of prosperity.

The kind of place Fernald, Sullivan and the NH democrats envision is a slope to dependency, mediocrity, and depravity, and they have no problem guilting you into helping them lead us there, and demagoging any and every effort to return the money and power back to you, the people of the State who earned it.

Ultimately it all comes down to this.  Democrats are incapable of accepting the idea of individual rights and personal property, two things that are intertwined and inseparable. 

Property rights are a foundation of freedom and of prosperity.  If democrats believe you have no individual right to your legally earned and owned property, that you are only entitled to whatever property they do not need to take for the purposes of their ever expanding government, then you have no rights but the ones they allow you to have.  That means you have no rights at all.  No state or nation run this way has ever prospered. 

So ask the democrats, any democrat, to show you one that has?  Ask them how their plan will be different from the failed states of Michigan, or New York, or California? Ask them how they intend to "tax the rich" yet keep them here to invest and create jobs and growth?  Ask them who will create jobs in their absence and how will we pay for them?  Ask them, how much tax money is enough?  Ask them who they will tax when there are no "rich" to tax?

They have no idea.  Ask them anyway.  Be relentless.  They will call you names.  They will change the subject.  They will try to paint you as a racist, sexist, misogynist, ageist, Tea-bagging, anti-Obama, Birther, hater of insert name here.  They will do everything but answer the question.  Keep asking them anyway.  Make them look inside themselves to explain why they do not trust people.  Why do they need someone else to do the right thing for them and how much will we have to pay to relieve their guilt?

Terie 'Billion Dollar Deficit' Norelli Does Not Like The NH Budget

I can't imagine why disgraced former NH house Speaker Terie "Billion Dollar Deficit" Norelli would like the latest State Budget.  It lacks all the qualities she advanced as the most math challenged speaker in State history. 

It was written based on revenue we figured we'd actually have a shot at making, not money we imagined we had to make to cover excessive spending we could never hope to afford.  There is no laundry list of increased taxes and fees in it during a recession.  It does not rely on one time federal money.  No one is using last minute debt to pay for spending we cannot afford, so we can pretend the budget is balanced.  There is a concerted effort live within our means.     No future land sales estimates based on property no one has identified, at prices we could only guess at, are being documented as a "done deal" to hide a 60 million dollar hole in the "balanced budget."

And most heinous of all?  No new post-midnight, last minute taxes; passed on the last day of the session; under the cover of darkness; in violation of the state constitution; that the governor and most of the democrat party would later have to back-off of but whose repeal-under-duress they would actually have the balls to try and run on as proof that they do cut taxes.

All that crap was a staple of the Norelli tenure and the State Government under democrat control.  If we left them to their own devices we'd have a sales and an income tax.  We'd have a soda tax, even higher tobacco taxes, an LLC tax, and taxes on everything else.  This would all be on top of the current pile of taxes because remember--they needed the taxes to pay for more spending, not to replace old taxes.

We don't have any of that with the current legislature or in the current budget, which explains why Terie "Billion Dollar Deficit" Norelli really doesn't like the budget that much.  She actually said it was bad for the people of New Hampshire.

You know what is bad for the people of New Hampshire?  Terie Norelli and the New Hampshire Democrat Party, and don't you forget it

cross posted

A Funding "Solution" For Democrats Concerned about Budget Cuts

Remember all that stuff we didn't have to have in the New Hampshire budget before 2006 when the democrats started piling it up into what has become our Billion dollar budget deficit?  I don't either.  I'm not even sure what they spent it on which is why I am convinced I can do without it.   All this caterwauling is clearly just cover for keeping the bloated bureaucracy alive so they can milk it for union campaign contributions.

But in the spirit of bi-partisanship, I have a suggestion to their so-called problem; call it a solution--literally.

The liberals, the progressives, the Sullivan-Kitchen-table -socialist-medicine,free speech-stomping, balloon fine-view tax--we spent the state into a billion dollar deficit democrats (and co-dependent clergy and union hangers on), should take those programs we didn't need but that you can't seem to stop spending money on, stick them all in a giant jar of urine, and send it all off with a grant request to the National endowment for the arts (NEA). 

No, I don't think it matters whose urine it is, but maybe the SEA can modify the "dues" process to include alternative forms of "support."  Whip up a catchy slogan like "Give a piss for pensions." How about "'Urine' this together." Or even "A trickle here, a trickle there."  Just have fun with it.  And don't forget...It's just a drop in the bucket, and off to Washington wee go.

It's actually a pretty realistic proposal.  The left is already obsessed with genitals and government. And given the way you democrats project revenues whatever you put in there will be a master-work of fantasy fiction.  Call it Art and bang! you get a check.  Then apply that to whatever "program" you feel you can't do without. 

Here's another helpful suggestion.  Get a second job or start a small business and then give all the money to the government to pay for what you want.  Nothing says I'm not a hypocrite like starting your own evil empire (a small business) and then donating every penny to the biggest charity of all--the US government. Or you could form a lobbying group that advocates taking more of peoples hard earned income in the form higher taxes and more of them, and then go down to Washington DC and see how much of the State of New Hampshire you have to prostitute out to the federal government to get some of that back.

Oh wait.  You have one of those already.  It's called the New Hampshire Democrat party.

Higher taxes and more of them, to pander to special interests who want to leech off taxpayers and small business. That's a message that can win in 2012.   O maybe you'd better just drop the TV ad time and start buying quarter barrels of Budweiser instead.  Your going to need a lot of urine. Which leads me to one more point. Just how much more pissed off will you be if we manage to cut taxpayer funding to the NEA?

Cross posted

"Psst! Hey Buddy. Want to Buy A Train?"

The morning Union leader chides New Hampshire Governor John Lynch telling this to the Nashua Telegraph.

“I think rail would be an economic driver for this region. Ultimately, we would realize more money than we could even contemplate at this point.”

The UL goes on to quote a 2008 study pointing out that most of the rail traffic would be diverted from existing use, which makes sense even to environmental wackos--it's why they want rail; to get people out of their cars.  So, as the UL points out, there is no 'New" activity nor more money than we could ever contemplate.

That is exactly right.

Of course these are democrats so you need to translate what the Governor said into real concepts.  What he meant was that if we added commuter rail "there would be more spending than we could even contemplate at this point."

You see spending to a democrat means more taxes, and taxes are more money--into the hands of bureaucrats--than we will ever want to part with.

One other point worth mentioning.  John Lynch is the same guy who signed off on high growth revenue projections during the "worst recession in history" and allowed all the excessive spending it was imagined to pay for.  He was also the guy who allowed all their accounting gimmicks to make the budget look balanced, and...permitted false claims about a surplus to circulate so he could get re-elected when even he had to know we were sitting on a 800 million to one billion dollar structural deficit of his making.

John Lynch is just a guy in a dark alley whispering, "Psst! Hey buddy.  Want to buy a train?"

cross posted

Big Ben, Parliament

Rumor has it Mr. Obama gave a speech yesterday about something. I didn't watch it and with good reason.    Been there, done that.  Two faced, self contradicting, tired, and repetitive.  Put another way, Big Ben, Parliament.

Nothing (new) to see here, just move along.  It's like that family party you go to.  You know the one.  Same people, same food, same conversations. Uncle Joe always nods off.  Aunt Nancy looks like she starched her face then took a box of happy pills.  And Cousin Barry, well he just goes on and on but it's just another skeleton without any substance, or maybe the parts to a skeleton, or better yet the directions to a store where you might find the parts, but no instructions on how to put it together.  (After which we must then find something of substance to attach to that.)  That was Obama's speech.  Like I said; Big Ben, Parliament.

But plenty of other people did take one for the team.  They suffered through it, and they had plenty to say about it.  So for your reading enjoyment and mine, I have curated content from around the internet, about the speech.

Moe Lane- Red State "I am *done* with President Obama"

Democrats: cut the President out of the loop.  His presence in this discussion insults both parties at this point.  Send him off to a permanent round of golf games and trips to various parts of the country:

 Allahpundit- Hot Air

Speaking of being kneecapped, Robert Gates found out only yesterday that one of the big “ideas” in Obama’s framework of an outline of a plan was to squeeze defense for extra savings. 

 And also here:

Beyond the obligatory calls for wringing the fat from defense spending and taxing the inexhaustible rich, which even some big media sources openly acknowledge won’t solve anything, his central idea is to somehow control health-care spending, presumably by performing the Jedi mind trick on doctors coast to coast to get them to lower costs.

Victor Davis Hansen -The Corner

The president gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were necessary — in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and has warned about recklessly voting against raising the debt ceiling in a fashion that he himself had once done, in a larger landscape in which he had once damned attacking Middle East countries in optional wars, Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, intercepts, wiretaps, Predators, and leaving troops in Iraq, and then embraced or expanded all that and more (this list is infinite and includes everything from drilling to campaign financing to earmarks).

John - Powerline

If Obama wants to make a serious debt reduction proposal, it has to be presented in detail, in budgetary form, so that it can be analyzed properly and scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Obama hasn't done that; instead, he purports to shave trillions off the national debt with breathtaking insouciance:

 Bryan Preston - PJ Tattler

Spending reductions in the tax code…that’s what President Obama called the thing that we commonly call “tax cuts” in his speech today.

Clive Crook - The Atlantic

There was no sign of anything worth calling a plan to curb borrowing faster than in the budget. He offered no more than a list of headings under which $4 trillion of deficit reduction (including the $2 trillion already in his budget) might be found--domestic non-security spending, defense, health costs, and tax reform. Fine, sure. But what he said was devoid of detail. He spent more of his time stressing what he would not agree to than describing clear proposals of his own.

...

More words, more contradictions, same old tired rhetoric...and no plan.  Someone else will figure that out.  He's just the idea guy.  But after someone else figures it all out, he'll be back to take the credit.