Senator Coburn recently remarked that the recent order by Obama, ordering all employers to offer health insurance that covers birth control, sterilizations and abortion pills, regardless of any religious objections….is not that big a deal:

“This is blown out of proportion,” he said. “It is an important point in terms of religious liberty, but it’s a consequence of having too big of a government.”

I don’t agree that it’s blown out of proportion but I do agree on the reasons why no one should be surprised.

This was what ObamaCare was about in the first place. To place every American under the power of the federal government. To rule every aspect of your life. It’s just another power grab by the federal government, and this Administration, at the expense of the States and the individual.

Daniel Henninger:

The Catholic Church has stumbled into the central battle of the 2012 presidential campaign: What are the limits to Barack Obama’s transformative presidency? The Catholic left has just learned one answer: When Mr. Obama says, “Everyone plays by the same set of rules,” it means they conform to his rules. What else could it mean?

This battle is to repeal ObamaCare, plain and simple.

Oh wait, Romney is going to be our nominee…

Nevermind.

Exit quote:

“We are all familiar with an individual mandate that was authorized by the U.S. Congress and notoriously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court: the affirmative duty of persons of Japanese descent to report to a Civil Control Station. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1943). The distinction between mere prohibition and command played a large role in the internment cases. . . . Korematsu is a perfectly fine precedent: it has never been overruled. Moreover, it is the feds’ best and only precedent. So why don’t they cite it?”

There is no way anyone can argue that the ObamaCare waiver process isn’t benefiting Obama’s crony’s and supporters:

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

So it looks like most of the liberals who support Obama don’t want anything to do with ObamaCare.

Shocker!

So lets ask a few questions. If ObamaCare is so awesome, is so helpful and affordable, why are so many businesses, state and local governments, and labor unions seeking exemptions from it? And why did Obama grant the exemptions.

But with the newly released report from the Department of Health and Human Services revealing such a heavy tilting of waivers toward Big Labor, the Obama Administration’s move will give further ammunition to Republican presidential candidates like Gov. Mitt Romney who have labeled Mr. Obama a “crony capitalist.”

Hopefully the Supreme Court will issue us all waivers later this year

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t know what it’s like in other states, but here in California, we have over 750 new laws (last year saw 725) with an estimate of 40,000 new laws across the nation going into effect this year.

How many of these new laws are actually “necessary”? Will actually improve the human condition more than harm?

One of the more controversial pieces of legislation signed by Governor Brown is the California Dream Act:

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) said his legislation recognizes the value of young people who graduate from high school in California regardless of where they were born.

“It’s important for California and the future of our economy to take advantage of the investment we have made in these young men and women,” Cedillo said.

The second part signed back in October, it basically increases allowances already on the books, giving eligibility to apply for financial aid and merit-based scholarships to illegal immigrants attending public colleges and universities.

Supporters of the Dream Act also want illegal immigrants to be eligible for drivers licenses as well.

The illegal immigration debate aside….this also comes at a time when California is broke:

According to a legislative analysis, the bill would cost the state up to $40 million per year. Colleges and universities don’t track the immigration status of students, but higher education officials have said that there are about 3,600 students who are undocumented or who have other residency issues in the California State University system, and as many as 642 in the University of California system and 34,000 enrolled in community colleges.

LA Times:

Brown was also criticized for signing a law requiring public schools to include the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in history lessons and instructional material, although new textbooks for lower grades are not planned for three years.

I have no issue with people’s sexual orientation. But why make a fuss over whether a historical person is gay or straight? Why must sexual identity be significance? What I deplore is that history books will conflate a historical figure’s contributions to society and make more out of him than is warranted, simply because he fulfills the need of special interest groups to feel validated through a misguided sense of equal representation.

Then there’s the ban on open-carry- one of those laws that I think are a waste of ink:

“Law-abiding citizens will start openly carrying unloaded long guns in public because their basic and fundamental civil right to self-defense, as enumerated in the 2nd Amendment, is clearly being infringed upon,” said Yih-Chau Chang, a spokesman for the firearms advocacy group Responsible Citizens of California.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) said he introduced the measure in response to law enforcement officials who felt that public safety was jeopardized by gun owners wearing firearms on their hips at coffee shops and other public venues as they called attention to a right to bear arms.

Meanwhile, obtaining a concealed-carry permit remains difficult in the state of California.

There’s the high-speed rail system being built and touted:

as with many of his other green funding priorities (like Solyndra) this is another money pit. The San Jose Mercury News has more:

Though California’s high-speed train faces an intensifying backlash over its $99 billion price tag, political leaders from Washington to Sacramento justify the cost by touting another huge number: 1 million jobs the rail line is supposed to create.

But like so many of the promises made to voters who approved the bullet train, those job estimates appear too good to be true.

A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.

“They have a really hard sales pitch with the real numbers, so they’ve fudged the numbers,” said state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, a Chico-area Republican who is introducing legislation to send the rail line back to voters. “C’mon, a million people working on a 520-mile railroad? I practically laughed out loud when (I heard that).”

One million people — more than the combined workforce of San Jose and San Francisco — would have to cram shoulder-to-shoulder just to fit along the rail line between San Francisco and Anaheim.

The idea of a bullet train sounds great. But if this were anything but a boondoggle you’d have private firms lining up to build one. There’s just no way this is worth $100 billion dollars.

Will it eventually pay for itself? I dunno…maybe, if the car-loving California public actually uses it. But I am not optimistic that this is a wise gamble or smart investment of money California doesn’t have (Did I already mention California is broke?).

Food stamps:

eliminates the requirement that food stamp recipients be fingerprinted to prevent fraud. Another law calls for state agencies to promote more enrollment in the federal food stamp program.

Sexual orientation:

encourages state university systems to collect data on students’ sexual orientation and encourages the legislative analyst to use it to recommend improvements in the quality of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

There’s the new law that expands no texting and hands-on talking on the phone to include any distractions:

According to the Los Angeles Times, text messaging and handheld cell phone use are not the only distracted driving behaviors that will be on law enforcement officers’ radar this weekend.They will also be keeping an eye out for people who are eating, putting on makeup, or reading magazines while operating a motor vehicle.

“Multi-tasking may be a fine way to get things done when your not driving, but combine driving with another activity that requires your attention and the need for you to take one hand off the steering wheel, and you’ve created a deadly situation that can destroy lives,” said Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney Howard.

Other activities that can prove distracting when driving:
• Watching a movie or downloaded television program on a portable electronic device
• Shaving
• Brushing your teeth
• Feeding a child
• Playing with a pet
• Reading a book
• Changing one’s clothes
• Adjusting an MP3 player, CD player, or the radio
• Inputting information into a navigation system

This just seems very broad. Anything you do while in the car, from conversing with someone riding shotgun to reading a street sign/billboard, watching a pretty skirt gliding down the sidewalk, to blowing your nose could all be interpreted as a driver being distracted. What will a CHP officer base his judgment on? How will this play out in court if contested?

Another new traffic law is use of booster seats for children:

IN THE BACK SEAT OF A VEHICLE until they are at least 8 YEARS OLD or 4′ 9″ in height.

What I’m unclear on is what if a kid turns 9 but is still under 4’9″? Does he stay in the booster seat? So then, shouldn’t any person, regardless of age, if he is under 4’9″, to be consistent with safety standard? Why is age then a criteria?

Any comments regarding new laws in your state?

Hasta La Vista Kim Baby!

Kim Jung Il’s life: a soliloquy in lunacy and madness.

Often the sages admonish
Oh Death, be not so proud
A tender soul’s last wish
The welfare of others be allowed

Death unkind, strikes indiscriminate
History records with only a wretched few
Death comes not soon enough to elate
The drop of his miserable carcass in its tomb

This could well be a scripted scene from a remake of Orwell’s 1984:

This is a more realistic response.

The world awaits the apparent madness of the heir apparent and the ubiquitous and fawning attention by our State Department to insure adequate supplies for the country and an effortless transition of power from one totalitarian despot to another, like when we aided Kim and his transition of ultimate Nepotism.

From the pen of Hitchens, 2005:

One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell’s 1984was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint. (“Hmmm … good book. Let’s see if we can make it work.”)

Actually, North Korea is rather worse than Orwell’s dystopia. There would be no way, in the capital city of Pyongyang, to wander off and get lost in the slums, let alone to rent an off-the-record love nest in a room over a shop. Everybody in the city has to be at home and in bed by curfew time, when all the lights go off (if they haven’t already failed). A recent nighttime photograph of the Korean peninsula from outer space shows something that no “free-world” propaganda could invent: a blaze of electric light all over the southern half, stopping exactly at the demilitarized zone and becoming an area of darkness in the north.

Kim, Rest In Hell, you evil bastard!

Who among us has not yet known fear?
up close heard the mighty grizzly roar
a child, trembling in the dark with tears
For our Fear itself has history and lore

Many of us fear the night
and stay so near the light
Fear stalks us in different ways
Master fear or cower all your days

Fear is real or created
Thus evil can be elated
Using fears to manipulate
Satan’s key to Hell’s gate

Skook 09

Irrational fear is one of our most dangerous enemies. H1N1 is an irrational fear, every year the seasonal flu kills 40,000 people with challenged immune systems and H1N1 is a more benign flu than the seasonal flu; yet, because of the Obama administration’s irresponsible hype over this flu, an unrealistic fear became a form of national hysteria.

I once saw irrational fear consume a friend, years ago; his name was Johnny or Barb Wire Johnny. He was one of the best horsemen, I’ve ever known. Johnny lived in the bush country of Northern British Columbia; he was an outfitter, trapper, and horse trainer. A small man with long black flowing hair, black locks of hair that the most beautiful women in the world can only dream about.

With a gentle heart and calm steady hands he could make the best ranch horses, mountain horses, pack horses, and driving horses I have ever seen. For all his abilities, Johnny had his personal demons; like many in the North he was part native and possessed a weakness for alcohol, a common affliction in the North Country.

Johnny also had a taste for high venison; most of us ate moose and moose hardly ever spoils, but Johnny liked to hang his venison until it started to spoil. It caused him to have a permanent case of dysentery and Johnny never quite made the connection.

Like many of the old timers, Johnny wore moose hide moccasins and leggins, in the winter he also wore a union suit beneath his moose hide clothes. That’s a pair of woolen long johns with a two button flap in the back for life’s necessaries.

Unfortunately, Johnny might be overtaken by his dietary problems at any moment, so he liked to stuff straw or hay in the back door of his union suit, just in case. Moose hide stretches and Johnny was always stretching his leather leggins from riding horses and stuffing the hind end with straw. It was funny to watch a little man with an oversized and sagging butt walking away, but I never said anything.

I was Johnny’s connection to the outside world, I brought the whiskey, horses for training, and cash paying hunters. I lived on a ranch with a phone, an asset that is considered a real advantage for a business man. There was usually at least a dozen people listening to every conversation, but it was a phone. I helped him with the hooves, shoes, and teeth, and he taught me of the mystical world of man and horse or the science of turning two critters into one, many of the same lessons I use in my business to this day.

Johnny struggled for a long time trying to make spurs out of barb wire that would work with moccasins, no matter what he did he couldn’t get them to stay in place. Eventually, I made a pair of spurs in the forge that would work for tiny moccasin’ed feet, he was so grateful it was touching. Little did he know, I would use his knowledge and techniques to build a business that would take me all over the world.

On a cold October day, I was bringing in a couple of hunters from the States along with several green colts for Johnny to train, when darkness overtook us. Traveling in the dark is risky business, it’s easy to lose an eye or run a snag through yourself or your horse, so we made camp about twelve miles from Johnny’s cabin. The temperature dropped to 30 below, and the hunters suffered from the cold; but I didn’t want the hunters to ride in the dark, there are just too many accidents waiting to happen.

We rode into the yard in the grey light of a snowy morning and heard screaming like someone was torturing Johnny in the cabin. I drew my rifle from the scabbard and jumped off my horse and hit the ground on the run. The cabin door was latched from the inside, I kicked it open while listening to Johnny screaming in agony. I stepped into Johnny’s cabin expecting to put rounds through one or more bad guys.

Johnny saw me and yelled, “Shoot him Skook! Shoot him!”

I surveyed the scene in front of me, propped my rifle against the cabin wall, drew my knife and walked towards Johnny‘s bunk.

During the night the fire had gone out and Johnny’s moisture laden breath froze his beautiful black locks to the iron bedstead. While trapped by ice and his own hair, Johnny let his imagination run away with him, he dreamed or envisioned the devil holding him down by the hair; consequently, he promised to give up drinking when he saw his departed mother praying for him over the tongue of the wagon if only she could help him out of this fix.

I drew my knife through Johnny’s hair next to the iron rail, he jumped up and ran outside to collapse on the ice and snow in front of the two hunters who were still on their horses and probably thought they had ridden into an asylum.

I walked outside, knelt down and consoled Johnny, who was in his sweat soaked union suit and barefoot. “Skook, Skook you are the bravest man in the world. You threw down your rifle and took on the devil with your knife. There has never been a braver man than you.”

I smiled, all I had to do is let Johnny carry on with his delusion and I would be a legend in the Omineca Peace Region for a hundred years. I told him the truth, “No Johnny, the devil wasn’t in the cabin. Your hair was frozen to the iron rail on your bed.”

Johnny looked at me as if I were crazy. “I, I saw my mother on the tongue of the wagon praying for me.”

I shook my head, “No Johnny, it’s impossible to see your mother on the tongue of the wagon from your bed, that was your imagination.”

Johnny was slowly regaining his grasp of reality. “I swore if I could get loose from the devil, I would give up whiskey, but the devil didn’t really have me.”

“No Johnny, the devil wasn’t there,” I told him.

“Then I don’t have to give up drinking!”

I could see an advantage disappearing, I tried another direction, “It depends on how you look at it Johnny.”

Suddenly with an inner calm, Johnny asked, “Did you bring the whiskey?”

I couldn’t lie, “yes, I have whiskey.”

“Good, I need a drink, you talk to those hunters while I get ready and then we will take them out for a hunt.”

Johnny’s hysteria is not much different from the hysteria over H1N1 or the Global Warming Hoax; Johnny was duped by his own imagination and was on the verge of believing anything during his delusion, especially if I had taken sadistic pleasure in perpetuating the delusion.

Americans are proving to be a gullible people, following the pied piper-like images of Al Gore and Obama. Their delusion and vivid imagination is being used to ensnare them into the belief that the government will save them from destruction and death, if only they will trust the good intentions of the Socialist State or Obama’s omnipotence. Thus our lemming like public is being duped by the Obama administration.

A basic difference between me and the Obama administration is that I didn’t want to use a delusion to advance my agenda.

Epilogue: This article was written and published in ’09; since then, many of us have forgotten this attempt by Obama to seize control. It failed, thank goodness, but we should not forget these pathetic attempts of leadership and the acquisition of control. Don’t think for a minute we would not have heard how Obama, had saved us from a terrible disaster, if the vaccine would have been ready, and not to mention the tidy little profit for the select drug company. Incompetence in government can work to our advantage occasionally.

Occupy Wall Street my ass:

Since Obama has been President the percentage of Democrats who say Big Government is more of a threat to this country has risen 16% to 48%. Percentage of Democrats who view Big Business as the biggest threat? 44%.

Americans’ concerns about the threat of big government continue to dwarf those about big business and big labor, and by an even larger margin now than in March 2009. The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession. Relatively few name big labor as the greatest threat.

But hey, let’s Occupy Wall Street!

This part of the poll has been getting a lot of play all day today:

Yup, dead last…and the honesty and integrity of our elected leaders?

I wonder who Obama will blame next for this turn of events?

I’m thinking Bush again.

For much of the last three years, I, like so many others who were so despondent after the election of 2008, assumed that the election of 2012 was finally going to provide the American people with a real choice of philosophies.

On the one side you have President Obama and the progressive / fascist utopia. (Fascist in the economic sense – where private property remains, but government dictates its usage – rather than the Nazi anti-Semitic / nationalist sense.) This utopia is where government plays the role of caretaker of the nation, where government tells citizens what they can and can’t do with their property, what they must buy and where they must invest, where unions have the power to coerce both government officials and private corporations that pay their members salaries.

On the other side the Tea Party was going to make sure that for the first time in 30 years a conservative nominee would be the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The platform would include radically smaller government, less intrusive government, and lower taxes coupled with a less complicated tax code – maybe even the Fair Tax – and a strict adherence to the 10th Amendment. Life was indeed going to be good again and prosperity would soon come roaring back.

Given the failure of everything progressive, from welfare to education to the USSR to practically the entire European continent, Americans would finally be given the choice between continuing down that well trod path to failure and a going down that forgotten path of economic liberty that was the foundation of American prosperity since the revolution.

Somehow, somewhere along the road leading to that fateful, Solomanic fork in the road, something went wrong. Not on the left. No, President Obama has indeed been as progressive as most of us feared, and in some cases far worse. Actually, the problem is on the right. Where many of us were hoping that the standard-bearer of the GOP would be a clean, if not perfect, conservative, increasingly it looks as if the nominee is going to be someone other than that.

In the one corner we have Mitt Romney who to this day refuses to renounce Romneycare, the Massachusetts disaster that spawned Obamacare. He also was an early supporter of cap and trade, was gullible on global warming, opposes a flat tax or the Fair Tax and shares an unhealthy affinity with Barack Obama for class warfare.

In the other corner we have Newt Gingrich, the guy who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi and told us to pressure our leaders to combat climate change. Although he finally admitted that was one of the stupidest things he ever did, there are other candidates for that title. He trashed Paul Ryan’s less than radical tax plan as “conservative social engineering”, supported the individual mandate in healthcare and now wants to harness local boards to determine which illegal immigrants should be allowed to pursue a “Path to legality”. I have to wonder how effective that might be in sanctuary cities around the country like San Francisco, Austin and Denver. As if all of that were not enough, after taking almost $2 million from Fannie & Freddie and praising their work and the GSE model itself, he now wants us to believe that the only thing he did for the money was tell them their businesses were going to fail. Really?

There are of course others in the race and they too are imperfect, but at least with Perry and Bachman you know they are true conservatives mostly dedicated to a smaller government. Unfortunately for the two of them, their campaigns barely register a pulse when it comes to the polls.

At the end of the day one has to ask, what happened to the Tea Party revolution? How is it possible that the two men leading the race for the 2012 GOP nomination are big government, crony capitalist chameleons who are far less inclined to upend the Washington applecart than work with the people driving it? Why are not the leading GOP candidates shouting from the rafters that they will radically slash government spending and regulation, that they will champion a flat tax and that they will impose a strict adherence to the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment?

Despite the best efforts of the media and the Democrats to paint the Tea Partiers as racist rubes and the Occupy Wall Streeters as noble sophisticates put upon by the evil capitalist system, the American people recognize the truth. The fact that the PR field is so heavily tilted towards OWS, yet citizens still have a more favorable view of the Tea Party, tells you everything the GOP needs to know about the coming election. If they would simply run a candidate who proudly articulates basic conservative principles, the next election would result in the country being freed from the tightening progressive noose around its neck. Without such a candidate, with just another standard-bearer Americans can’t distinguish from the big government GOP they’ve come to know, Barack Obama may indeed triumph.

With Gingrich and Romney sitting in the pole positions, I find myself pulling for a brokered convention that results in an opening for someone other than Frick and Frack to take the nomination. Someone like Sarah Palin, or even the forgetful but conservative Rick Perry. Sure that’s an unlikely scenario, but at this point the traditional route has brought us two paper tiger conservatives leading the pack. The Tea Partiers and the country deserve an opportunity to make a clear choice between progressivism and conservatism. Let’s hope that somehow the GOP can figure out how to give that to them. Otherwise it may be another four years of hoping for change.

Liberalism Run Amuck

A seven year old boy takes the John Wayne image of manhood seriously, and is now in big trouble.

A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.

A seven year old boy was being choked and robbed of his gloves, when he kicked his attacker in the nuts. Thus he ended the assault and prevented the theft.

The school system now claims that the response was an example of sexual assault and they are conducting an investigation.

The mother of first grader, Tasha Lynch:

“He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment.”

Mark Curran the perpetrator, said his attacker had been bullying him all week on the bus.

His mother says the boy reported to her:

“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,’”

“He couldn’t breathe. He was trying to defend himself, I don’t find that sexual harassment. I find that defending himself.”

Ms Lynch says she received a phone call informing her that the incident will be treated as sexual harassment because of inappropriate touching.

“Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment.”

She is expected to attend a disciplinary hearing at the school on Monday.

Boston Public School System is investigating the incident, but refuses to comment.

The Boston Public School System may decide that girls can no longer kick rapists in the nuts or else they will face disciplinary action for improper touching and sexual harassment. So don’t teach your kids to defend themselves or send them to martial arts schools; let them be beat, robbed, and raped by someone who is disadvantaged, it is the Liberal Way, and remember to vote Democrat

Two weeks ago the Supreme Court agreed to decide the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

In a surprising act of courage, the Court agreed to decide the divisive case in the midst of what will certainly be one of the most viscerally contentious elections in a century. To their credit, when they could have easily kicked the can down the road and waited until after the election to take the case, they did not. Not only did they accept the case, but they allotted an unprecedented 5 ½ hours of oral argument for it. They fully recognize that their decision will have significant political implications. Not in the sense that it will sway voters one way or another (which it will certainly do) but in that it gives voters the opportunity to take into account the consequences of their 2008 votes when they walk into the booth in November.

However the Court decides, the consequences of that election will be laid bare. It’s not often that voters get such a clear, definitive beginning, middle and potentially end of such a consequential piece of legislation – at least from a legal perspective – within one election cycle.

The central question in the case is a relatively straightforward one: Does the federal government, under the Commerce Clause, have the power to force Americans to purchase health insurance?

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3

(Congress shall have Power) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

The foundation for the administration’s argument that it does indeed have that power lay in a case handed down by the Supreme Court in 1942, Wickard v. Filburn. That case gave the stamp of approval to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which allowed the federal government to regulate economic activity:

In 1940 an Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn grew more wheat than the government allotment allowed. They fined him. He sued, stating that his wheat was for his own use on his farm and therefore was beyond Congressional reach. In a legal gerrymander that would put any politician to shame, the Court decided that as Filburn’s exceeding his quotas would result in him buying less wheat in the local markets, which in turn led to less wheat traded in those markets, he was impacting interstate commerce; therefore Congress did indeed have the power to limit his production.

Twisting Fillburn’s already tortured logic, the Obama administration has decided that now it can force all Americans to purchase healthcare. The why is that society has to pick up the tab when uninsured people go to the emergency room. The how is where Filburn comes in. By virtue of the fact that the money people spend on healthcare for the uninsured (through higher taxes and higher insurance premiums) cannot be spent to purchase goods and services they might otherwise purchase, healthcare therefore impacts interstate commerce. As such, Congress has the power to regulate healthcare and can compel people to purchase health insurance.

That is the logic the Democrats used as they force fed Obamacare down the throats of the American people.

If this logic is acceptable, the question becomes, is there literally anything the government cannot do? For example, perhaps a future Congress might want to ban premarital sex? What? No way! Really? How? Here’s how: The United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year capturing, trying and keeping criminals locked up. Seventy percent of prisoners come from households without fathers. Given that the single biggest contributor of kids growing up without a father is out of wedlock births, the most straightforward way to ameliorate that problem is simply banning premarital sex. As the progeny of premarital sex drive expenses in the criminal justice system, which in turn reduces the amount that can be spent on airline tickets or pencils or hotel rooms, or bingo games, Congress can legislate it.

I just finished reading An American Life, the autobiography of Ronald Reagan. The book was given to me by my oldest daughter, and I enjoyed it very much.

What do Ronald Reagan’s autobiography and FDR have in common? After reading this, see if you agree with me.

At the end of page 66 and on page 67 of the (hardcover) book, Ronald Reagan is remembering FDR’s 1932 presidential campaign. Reagan says,

“With his alphabet soup of federal agencies, FDR in many ways set in motion the forces that later sought to create big government and bring a form of veiled socialism to America. But I think that many people forgot Roosevelt ran for president on a platform dedicated to reducing waste and fat in government. He called for cutting federal spending by twenty-five percent, eliminating useless boards and commissions and returning to state and communities powers that had been wrongfully seized by the federal government. If he had not been distracted by war, I think he would have resisted the relentless expansion of the federal government that followed him. One of his sons, Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., often told me that his father had said many times his welfare and relief programs during the Depression were meant only as emergency, stopgap measures to cope with a crisis, not the seeds of what others later tried to turn into a permanent welfare state. Government giveaway programs, FDR said, ‘destroy the human spirit,’ and he was right. As smart as he was, though, I suspect even FDR didn’t realize that once you created a bureaucracy, it look on a life of its own. It was almost impossible to close down a bureaucracy once it has been created.”   [emphasis mine]  

Based on what Ronald Reagan (who voted for FDR four times) said, it sounds to me like FDR is just the opposite of what Democrats say or remember. And Democrats like to cite FDR’s policies even today. So what follows can be considered a very brief fiscal history of the FDR administration.

When Roosevelt took office in March, 1933, the breadlines, bankruptcies, and bank failures of the Great Depression mandated unconventional politics. He responded immediately. The dominant faction in Roosevelt’s first Administration traced the origins of the Depression to basic structural flaws in the nation’s economy. According to “Brains-Truster” Rexford Guy Tugwell, an economist from Columbia University, a laissez-faire regime of “competition and conflict” was responsible for the crisis and only “coordination and control,” meaning centralized planning, could correct matters. FDR’s central planning economy was imposed on the United States, with almost every part of the market under the supervision, control, and regulation of the federal government. An increasing number of Americans became directly and indirectly dependent upon the Washington for their employment and income. The era of big government had arrived in the United States.

Sound familiar? Central planning is just what President Barack Obama is currently trying to ram down our throats. Obama is crafting his own laws of politics by issuing executive orders, saying “We Can’t Wait” for Congress.

FDR believed in the desirability of balanced budgets. During the presidential campaign of 1932, he pledged to balance the federal budget at a lower level of spending. Roosevelt qualified his commitment with a significant rider: The budget to be balanced included only “ordinary” government expenditures. “Extraordinary” outlays, needed to cope with fallouts from the economic emergency, could be treated separately. In the first two fiscal years for which his Administration was responsible, Roosevelt presided over record-setting peacetime deficits. But with the aid of creative bookkeeping about the categories to which expenditures were assigned, his Treasury’s arithmetic could nonetheless show an “ordinary” budget with a modest surplus. FDR’s Administrations had consistently run deficits. But he had regarded them as politically embarrassing, and had held that they were the result of unusual economic circumstances, not his policy preference.

Some advisers near FDR, including Harry Hopkins, Marriner Eccles, and Henry Wallace, had accepted the recent theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who argued that technically advanced economies would need permanent budget deficits or other measures (such as redistribution of income away from the wealthy) to stimulate consumption of goods and to maintain full employment. It was the reduction of federal spending that these advisers viewed as the cause of the recession. Deficit spending continued throughout WWII, when the economy expanded rapidly and employment reached full capacity. The acceptance by FDR’s Administration of what became known as Keynesianism established the precedent of using deficit spending as a vehicle for promoting economic recovery in times of national fiscal crisis.

Again, does this sound familiar? This is just what Obama wants to do: run up huge deficits and redistribute wealth through taxation.

Several of FDR’s measures have become bureaucracies and permanent fixtures. Several programs introduced by FDR remain active today, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

But that’s just my opinion.

Crossposted at RWNO, my personal web site.