We often hear the reason we need the census, especially in its invasive modern form, is to figure out how best to spend government money for necessary social infrastructure. But the census bureau itself, a relatively modest institution for a federal agency, has gone significantly over budget. "Auditors also found the Census Bureau provided training to some 15,000 workers who either worked not at all or less than a single day -- at a total cost of $5.5 million." This is peanuts compared to the stimulus-bailout-corporatist-warfare state we now live under, and yet to tout the census as necessary to determine reasonable uses of tax dollars strikes me as absurd, or at least quite ironic. After all, if we want to consider more reasonable uses of tax dollars, why not just cut from those areas that most obviously do little to help average Americans—overseas militarism and foreign aid, Wall Street and corporate subsidies and the like? Every government program is advertised as necessary for fiscal responsibility, no matter how much it costs.
Ryan Grim over at The Huffington Post reports on Nancy Pelosi's recent statements concerning health care, including an acknowledgement that "[n]obody wants to vote for the Senate bill."
So the third option is to write the rule so that the passage of the reconciliation package deems the Senate bill to also have passed, a parliamentary maneuver she said the Senate parliamentarian had said was acceptable.
It's a technical distinction and Democrats hope that it's deep enough in the weeds that average voters will focus instead on the substance of the legislation instead of the confusing process. Asked if she had firmly decided to pursue the third option, she answered, "I like the third one better."...
More interesting statements from the Speaker appear near the end of the piece.
Once the bill is passed, she said, she is ready to defend it against "the same forces that were aligned against Medicare."
"We've been a piñata for six months," she said. "We have to take it to the American people and say this is the choice that you have."
And be sure to keep those calls, emails, and faxes going this week. Your representatives need to hear loud and clear that it's time for legitimate, constitutional reform, not the cementing of the status quo we're being sold as "change."
Posted by Matt Hawes on 03/15/10 Last updated 03/15/10
On Thursday, February 18, 2010, historian and author Tom Woods spoke on "When All Else Fails: Nullification and State Resistance to Federal Tyranny" as part of Campaign for Liberty's activities at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Writer and radio host Jack Hunter ("The Southern Avenger") introduced Tom.
For those of you unfamiliar with Wendell Berry, he is an "American man of letters", academic, cultural and economic critic, farmer and prolific author.
The son of a tobacco farmer, Berry has written some of the best novels, short stories, poems, and essays from his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky for more than 40 years.
Berry's nonfiction is a dialog about the life he values. The good life, according to Berry, includes sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of good food, husbandry, good work, local economics, the miracle of life, fidelity, frugality, reverence, and the interconnectedness of life.
As Berry states in his letter, The Failure of War (1999), "In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to “the enemy” the damage that it does. These wars damage the world. We know enough by now to know that you cannot damage a part of the world without damaging all of it. Modern war has not only made it impossible to kill “combatants” without killing “noncombatants,” it has made it impossible to damage your enemy without damaging yourself."
Bill Kauffman, in a speech only he could give, brings a few of Berry's characters to life in a profound critique of empire and a robust defense of home.
This is an excellent speech that has an exceptional message. I encourage you to listen to it and perhaps share it with your friends, family, or neighbors; they may not think the same about war afterward.
We'll have to see what Dodd unveils later today, but it looks to be exactly what we expected.
Via The New York Times:
The legislation would create a consumer protection agency within the Federal Reserve to write rules governing mortgages, credit cards and other financial products, said the people, who insisted on anonymity because the details were still in flux....
The bill would also reshape the regulatory role of the Fed. It would be entrusted for the first time with oversight of all of the largest and most interconnected financial companies, even if they are not banks....
Everyone’s heard the advertisement that claims, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." While that’s questionable, one thing that is not questionable is that what happens in the Texas education battle will not just stay in Texas.
What your kids learn about historical figures like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein most likely depends on what happens in Texas in the next two days.
Texas is in the process of adopting its social studies standards, which only happens every ten years. The standards cover U.S. Government, American History, World History, and more, and they affect how students in grades K – 12 see America, its founding principles, and its heroes for the next decade.
More than that, because Texas is one of the largest consumers of textbooks in the nation, publishers use these curriculum standards for textbooks that are distributed in nearly every state in the union. Thus, what happens in Texas will impact the nation.
The Washington Examiner details a few of the proposed changes being made to history and economics textbooks in Texas. For instance:
Question the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government
Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state
Present Republican political philosophies and figures in a more positive light, including Joe McCarthy
Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word "capitalism" from the text
Refer to the United States form of government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic republic"
Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln
Cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term "separation between church and state")
Consistently defeated proposals to include more Latino figures as role models, though they failed to eliminate mention of Thurgood Marshall from the textbooks (he was the first black Supreme Court Justice and instrumental in the 1954 decision, Brown-v-Board of Education)
Banned the children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" because they thought the author had also written a book on Marxism
The only real truth in history is that it has been interpreted since the words, "This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos..." This is why I can't help but be uncomfortable with this news.
Even if we acknowledge that there is a "liberal bias" in history/economic education, or sympathise with the school board's cause, is creating a statewide mandated curriculum the answer? I personally would argue no.
Isn't it just as insidious for people who profess to be "conservative" and for limited government to use the power of the state to "indoctrinate" children into their belief structure?
There isn't a one size fits all solution to our education problem, be it liberal, conservative, religious or secular. Education, like almost all issues, is something best dealt with within the smallest of political units, namely the family.
Posted by Andrew Ward on 03/15/10 Last updated 03/15/10
After years of being on life support, the government's decades-old insurance-turned retirement program is once again running into demographic and economic reality. The Associated Press reports that for the first time since the last Congressional overhaul in the 1980s, Social Security is projected to pay out more in benefits than it brings in through taxation by nearly $29 billion.
Don't let guys like former Enron-adviser Paul Krugman tell you that there's a magical "trust fund" out there that will buy us some time. The so-called "trust fund" is little more than approximately $2.5 trillion dollars of IOUs from the Treasury. This intergovernmental debt is the product of years of a spend-thrift government automatically depriving the program's reserves to pay for other things (e.g. war, bailouts). Yes, this does mean that the "balanced budgets" of the 90s were a farce.
Now, with the shortfall in revenue and the baby boomer generation eagerly moving toward retirement, you can expect the some level of benefits to be cut, the end of the payroll cap, a rise of the official "retirement age," and an increase of taxes to cover the shortfall in revenue. Oh, and monetary inflation.
An aside: Back in 2005 there was a rather positive push by the Bush administration to reform this so-called "third rail" of politics. The national youth group that I was a part of lobbied to grant individuals (especially the youth and poor persons) the ability to set aside a percentage of our payroll taxes into personal accounts, where workers would be allowed to invest in the stock market. Sure, this solution wasn't the least bit ideal, and maybe last year's the stock market crash would have embarrassed the program, but big points were made in our efforts: the monopoly system is not stable, we need choices, we need out of this enormous Ponzi Scheme.
The potential picks also suggest that the president wants the Fed to do more to restrict actions by banks that could endanger consumers, regardless of what consumer protection responsibilities the Fed ends up with in financial reform legislation now under consideration. The central bank failed to protect consumers from dangerous borrowing practices during the last economic boom, though it has taken more aggressive steps in the past three years....
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
—Thomas Jefferson
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