Extolling the Faults of Minimum Wage Makes Liberals More Dense

I have no idea how many columns I have written exposing the down sides to enacting and constantly increasing the minimum wage; but it has only created more density in the gray matter of Liberals, that is, if in fact, Liberals actually do have some gray matter.

A raise in minimum wage has proven to be a huge albatross around the necks of young workers trying to get a foothold on the ground floor of industry. Just when they are beginning to show signs of improved performance at the entry wage level of employment some dunderheaded politicians who are struggling to make an impression on some of the lesser-learned voters cry poor-mouth and pity for those “lowly paid hard working novice employees”. 

Actually this is a lot akin to the also dunderheaded politicians who cry and bleat about the global temperature’s fluctuations which cause excessive warming, but when these weather gyrations start to cause global cooling these same know-nothings change gears and start calling it “climate change”, comically and foolishly and accidentally getting the term more precise and in agreement with normally intelligent people but they still don’t really know what in the h-e-2-sticks they’re talking about.

But one thing rarely ever changes and that is these trolls of society are always politically Liberal and can’t wait to get started spending your taxpayer monies to worsen any harebrained scheme that strikes their feeble mental acuity regions.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Jerry Brown’s fake surplus

Liberal award-winning economist Paul Krugman and the front pages of the New York Times just crow about the “California miracle” and “California renaissance” that Governor Jerry Brown and the liberal Democrats in control in Sacramento have ushered into the state, by raising taxes to sky high levels, the highest state sales, income, and gas taxes at the pump, to achieve a modest “surplus” of a few billion dollars in the state budget.

Liberals in the national media love this narrative of California getting to a “surplus” because they are so desperate to find success in their job and wealth killing high tax policies.  They seem to ignore that under the same policies, the state maintains the third highest unemployment rate in the nation, and now for the second year in a row according to the Census Bureau, California is the poorest state in the nation.

But setting California’s high poverty and unemployment rates aside, the reality is there is no surplus in the California state budget.  Rather, California is playing a deceptive game with how it presents its finances to the public, because the accounting does not include disclosure of the massive debt obligations to the state’s two public employee pension funds: CalPERS, which is the retirement fund for state employees; and Cal STRS, which is the pension plan for teachers in the state.  As a result of unreasonably generous defined benefits plans, bad investments, and unsound investment revenue forecasts, these pension funds are underfunded by over $100 billion each, and California’s so-called “surplus” of less than $5 billion hardly cracks these looming, monster debt obligations of the state.

If just the CalSTRS obligations were properly included in the state’s annual financial accounting, California would not have a budget surplus, rather, the budget disclosures would reveal a state deeply in debt.  This is because California is legally obligated to fund the pension plan.  For every dollar of pay, the state must contribute 5% of teacher salary to the CalSTRS pension fund, even though the teachers do not work for the state.  Local school districts contribute 8 1/4% of pay, and the teacher employee contributes 8% of pay to the pension fund.  But even with those three sources of funds coming into the pension fund, CalSTRS staff reported last week that the agency’s “net pension liability” is now a whopping $166.9 billion.  This net pension liability greatly exceeds generally accepted levels of pension liabilities for financial health of the fund, because of the generous defined benefit payments the plan will be required to make in future.  As a result of the new calculations, school districts, and the state, will likely be asked to increase their contributions to the plan to reduce the liability to lower levels.  In doing so, local agencies will be forced to cut programs and seek more taxpayer revenue, as well as the state.  Taxpayers will be tapped yet again to pay for bad public employee pension decisions made by liberal Democrats.

It is true that some part of the $166.9 billion “net pension liability” of CalSTRS, if not all of it, should be attributed to California’s books of account.  If California has a legal obligation to fund the CalSTRS pension system, shouldn’t any debt obligations to the system show up on California’s annual financial statements?  Of course they should, and right-thinking members of the Legislature ought to push for more transparency and disclosure of such obligations.  Doing so would of course erase the so-called state “surplus” but it would also offer a more accurate picture of California’s finances, which is not happening under the current rules.

And it is equally clear that public employee defined benefits packages are no longer tolerable financially in California, as liberal Democrats have pushed the benefits so far beyond the reasonable that public institutions, including local governments, are facing drastic reductions in local services and even bankruptcy to keep pace with their expensive pension debt obligations.  Yes, our public employee system needs reform across the board.  But one important reform that needs more discussion, is California stopping the charade of having a “surplus,” and rightfully placing all its own obligations on its public books of account, including public employee pension debt.

James V. Lacy is publisher of California Political Review and author of “Taxifornia: Liberals Laboratory to Bankrupt America,” a Politico.com top seller available at Amazon.com.

Via: California Political Review

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The Four Freedoms: 75 Years of Liberal Betrayal

In the second half of the 2000s liberals did a fine job of blaming Bush for everything that went wrong in the US. His "neo-con" supporters, they asserted, were just as bad.

Now that President Obama and his signature legislation are a twin disaster the same opportunity beckons for conservatives. It's not just Obama, it's the whole liberal project that created this mess. So the road to 2016 involves discrediting Obama, but also the whole liberal ruling class.

A good place to start would be FDR's Four Freedoms, for when the campaign to elect the un-Obama kicks off in 2016 it will be 75 years since Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled his Four Freedoms on January 6, 1941. In case you forgot, the freedoms were:

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Worship

Freedom from Want

Freedom from Fear

Have you ever thought about how the liberals have utterly betrayed the noble sentiments of the Four Freedoms?
Nothing personal here. It's just that all power corrupts, and liberal power corrupts absolutely.

Let us give our liberal friends the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that, then and now, liberals believe what they say they believe in. Even so, for the sake of truth, justice and the American Way, we must look at the liberal record on the Four Freedoms.

Via: American Thinker

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The Perfect Thanksgiving Cards ... to Annoy a Liberal

Your liberal cousin will be too embarrassed to talk about Obamacare at Thanksgiving dinner this year, so why not have some fun and send an e-card from Heritage: http://heritage.org/thanksgiving

Today, we bring you six (funny) Thanksgiving cards to send to friends, family, co-workers, or that really annoying liberal in your life.

Via: The Foundry

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Why the Fear of American Exceptionalism?

Talk of American exceptionalism  enrages some liberals.

For example, it drove Oliver Stone and American University professor Peter  Kuznick to pen a USA Today commentary  saying Washington should have a wall with “the names of all the Vietnamese,  Cambodians, Laotians, and others who died [in the Vietnam War].” That, they  said, would be “a fitting memorial to all the victims of ‘American  exceptionalism’  a perfect tombstone for that most dangerous of American  myths.”

New America Foundation’s Michael Lind, in a 2011 piece titled “The Case  Against ‘American Exceptionalism,’” dismissed the idea as “amusing, if it were not so dangerous.”American“exceptionalists,” he argued, are know-nothing boastful boobs “not allowed to  peep beyond [their] borders, to learn from the successes and mistakes of people  in other countries.” They “thump” The Federalist Papers as if it were the Bible,  trying to “deduce what Hamilton, Madison and Jay might have said about physician  reimbursement rates.”

Oh my. Stuff that straw man before you knock it down, Mr.  Lind.

Mr. Lind and Mr.  Stone miss the point completely. American exceptionalism is not about  nostalgic yahoos railing against “furriners.” Thomas  Jefferson staunchly believed that Americans had an exceptional destiny. His  entire worldview was informed by European philosophy. He took ideas from Swiss  natural law philosopher Emmerich de Vattel to write the Declaration of  Independence, and he was a great admirer of the French philosopher Voltaire.  Is Jefferson a know-nothing rube for  believing in American  exceptionalism?

Those who believe in American  exceptionalism don’t reject foreigners. They recognize what’s unique about our  history: a distinctive confluence of culture, government and economy, and an  ethos of personal responsibility that tamed the economy’s wild horses and  tempered the potentially anarchic tendencies of free people. These, not  government action, gave rise to the wealthiest and most powerful nation on  earth.

Via: The Foundry

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The Hungry and the Well Fed

In William F. Buckley’s mission statement for National Review, written in 1955, he did not mention winning elections. That’s not to say it is unimportant, unneeded, or unwanted. But it was not mentioned. In fact, Buckley wrote, “We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience.”

What was mentioned was standing athwart history yelling stop. Buckley sought to build a National Review that provided commentary on the landscape of American politics and culture, building an intellectual case for conservatism. Today’s National Review is willing occasionally to yell Stop. It did so notably on the proliferation of porn in culture. But on many of the day’s fights, the editorial positions read more like those of the Republican National Committee than the standard bearer of American conservatism.

In 1955, William F. Buckley wrote,

Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

The present editors of National Review, over the last several years, have made it clearer and clearer that they now speak mostly for the well-fed right and not for conservatives hungering for a fight against the leviathan. They have made their peace with the New Deal, moving beyond Buckley. For that matter, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and most of the defunders have largely made their peace with the New Deal. And still National Review is too timid to join the merry band of defunders themselves too timid to approach the parameters under which William F. Buckley started his charge. The editors have conformed to the politics of necessary victories instead of the policy of standing “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Via: Red State

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The Democrats' Freak-Out About ObamaCare Has Begun

Frustrated with the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov, the Democratic coalition is beginning to crack slightly on the Affordable Care Act.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a frequent critic of the health care law, is preparing to introduce legislation that would delay Obamacare's individual mandate by a year. Other Senate Democrats are going to push for an extension of open enrollment in the exchanges. And House Democrats are openly venting their frustrations.

Manchin appeared on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Wednesday night to discuss his plan, and he said there that he'd be open to working with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

"I came here to fix things," Manchin said. "Affordable health care was never meant to be, if you've got insurance now you're going to have to buy insurance that's more costly and not as good. That has to be fixed."

Manchin said he wouldn't attach his name to Rubio's legislation, which would delay the mandate's penalties until six months after the  Government Accountability Office (GAO) certifies that the online exchanges are functional.

Manchin's willingness to look at tweaks to the law is nothing new. He said in September that he would support  a year-long delay in the individual mandate — he just didn't support that being part of negotiations surrounding the federal government shutdown.

In fact, if there were any senator Democrats were worried about breaking off from the caucus during the debates, it was Manchin. He told Bill O'Reilly that he thinks he can get the votes for his plan, but no other Democrats have come out publicly in support.

Via: Fox News

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5 THINGS LOST, 5 THINGS WON BY GOP IN BUDGET/DEBT FIGHT

The House has yet to vote on Republican leaders' proposed bill for ending the government shutdown and the debt ceiling fight. The GOP, having entered aiming to defund Obamacare and reach some agreement on major budget changes, now merely hopes that the Democrat-controlled Senate and the White House will accept the Vitter amendment to remove Obamacare subsidies from Congress, its staff, and political appointees.

The polls have been bad for both parties, and the president as well. But Republicans are receiving more of the blame. Yet there are a few gains the GOP can claim, even while taking some losses. Here are the bad and good:

Via: Breitbart

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Senate leaders scramble to craft budget deal, but will House GOP buy it?

Republican leaders in the House and Senate will face restless rank-and-file members Tuesday morning when they give updates on ongoing negotiations to cobble together a budget plan that would end a two-week-old partial government shutdown and increase the U.S. debt ceiling. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scrambled late Monday to iron out the specifics of an emerging budget proposal after a string of prior plans fizzled.

Reid appeared on the chamber floor Monday night to announce, "We've made tremendous progress -- we are not there yet -- but tremendous progress, and everyone just needs to be patient."

McConnell added, "We've had a good day...I think it's safe to say we've made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the near future."

The House GOP Conference is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. to discuss the tentative framework of the budget proposal with members, many of whom cast a skeptical eye toward the details of the negotiations that were dripping out Monday night. The Senate Republican Conference is scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. to receive an update on negotiations. 

Resistance in the House could scuttle, or at least stall, anything that emerges from the Senate. 

Via: Fox News

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Dana Perino to Juan Williams: ‘Liberals Live in Biggest Media Bubble in History of the Universe’

On Fox News Sunday, Former George W Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino rebutted Fox contributor Juan Williams’ accusation that Republicans live in an ideological echo chamber by accusing Democrats of living in the “biggest mainstream media bubble every created in the history of the universe.”

Perino had argued that the conservative strategy that resulted in the government shutdown had been worthwhile, as it had “shaken upo the status quo.”

That was a bit much for Williams. “I don’t think shaking up the status quo is the goal here,” he said. “The problem is that you get people into office who say, when I’m talking to them, they say ‘I was elected to fight Obamacare, I was sent to Washington to shake up the status quo.’ And I think: you were sent to Washington to govern, to represent the interests of the American people, not some small sector.”

“Right now in the Republican Party, the base of the party is in the south, overwhelmly white, and very, very, very conservative,” Williams continued. “And all they do is live in a very small bubble, including a media bubble, and talk to each other, and they are confirmed.”

“And you don’t think that’s true of Democrats?” Wallace asked.

Perino backed him up. “The Democrats and the liberals live in the biggest mainstream media bubble every created in the history of the universe,” she said. “If you look at Republicans across many of the states, governorsor state legislators, Republicans are actually doing really good work, just nationally they’re taking a hit on their reputation.”

Watch the full clip below, via Fox News:

Via: Mediaite.com

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Liberal heckling sparks stream of one-liners from Ted Cruz

After his recent 21-hour filibuster-style marathon speech on Obamacare, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz found himself heckled over and over again by liberal activists during remarks at a conservative conference in Washington D.C. on Friday.

The constant interrupting by hecklers throughout his speech at the Values Voter Summit led the Republican lawmaker to throw out a number of crowd-pleasing one-liners:

• In response to one heckler, Cruz said: “Thank you, sir, for being here. You know, look, it is a great thing that people can express their First Amendment rights. And I only wish the Obama administration respected First Amendment rights that much.”
• To another heckler, Cruz responded: “Ma’am, thank you for being here. I wish you would participate in the democratic process through speaking respectfully. … It seems that President Obama’s paid political operatives are out in force today. And you know why? Because the men and women in this room scare the living daylights out of them.”
• Interrupted again, Cruz took aim at the president: “You know what? I’m curious. Is anybody left at the Organizing for America headquarters? I’m actually glad that the president’s whole political staff is here instead of actually doing mischief in the country.”

“I will make a request,” Cruz added to loud applause. “If I’m never seen again, please send a search-and-rescue team.”

Via: Daily Caller

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America Will Self-Correct from the Mistake of Obama

I don't expect America to be perfect, and I know America has made some mistakes.  But boy do we know how to correct them.  And we will self-correct from the mistake of electing Obama.

The anti-American naysayers declare that we are all from somewhere else -- the inherent message being that America was stolen and none of us can lay claim to the land.  They say that we invaded what is now America, attacked the Indians, then took their land and livelihoods.  We forced them to live in squalid camps.  Liberals say that we took their dignity.

I admit that the Indians got a bad deal.  A well-meaning group of immigrants left oppression, then came to America and oppressed.  The interlopers got greedy and the Indians paid for it; many with their lives.  We relocated the Indians from their homes and gave them the badlands.  And if America had remained the America run by Democrat Andrew Jackson, who referred to the people whose land he stole as "savages," today I would be outraged.  But today, the Indians have the opportunity to feast, and some are.

The Pequot Indians of Connecticut run the largest casino in America.  The tribe guarantees every person in their nation a college education, and adults are guaranteed a $60K a year job, I'm told.  That's better than the deal you can get from any Liberal, including the king of redistribution himself.

Speaking of Africans, Liberals say that Americans went to Africa, discovered black people, then enslaved them.  Forced blacks to work on plantations as slaves.  Liberals have certainly taken liberties with a common practice of the time, though an abhorrent one.

Via: American Thinker

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Hannity Wins: Liberals Humiliated

Sean Hannity wins. 

Liberals, having spent months predicting his television and radio demise, lose. 

Humiliated. Again.

But this is about more — much more — than Sean Hannity.

The entire episode swirling around Hannity’s future on Fox and talk radio is a reminder not simply of Hannity’s success and the abysmal failure of Hannity-hating enemies. It is in fact yet one more example of what the late William F. Buckley, Jr. referred to as the “hurtling irrationality” of the “liberal mania.” The real question is as easy as it is serious: 

Why are liberals so gullible? 

What does this Hannity dust-up say about the way liberals see everything from their bizarre assertions about Sean Hannity to ObamaCare, Syria policy and beyond? 

And — no small point for media obsessives - what does this say about the strength of the conservative base in the media?

Let’s focus on Hannity first — and yes, by all means, let’s name some names here.

Prime-time Fox TV it is for Sean. Still and again after 17 years, he remains at the top. Just this week these ratings freshly published over at Mediaite demonstrate his ability to beat the competition, repeatedly clobbering the rest of the field wandering around over there on the ratings deserts that are CNN, MSNBC and HLN. 

Via: American Spectator

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