Happy Fourth of July

Remember, it's not just the day we became free from England. It is the day that we set upon the path towards freedom and democracy for everyone. Celebrate your freedom by protecting it and by reminding your elected officials that in the United States the people are sovereign.

UPDATE: Cassandra at Villainous Company has a good post to read today.

Sarah Palin Was a Public Servant

A certain inexplicable sadness overcame me as I listened to Sarah Palin's resignation speech yesterday. I am not one of her most ardent supporters, but generally regard her favorably. I believe she is a genuine, sincere, and, most of all, good woman, which is why I shudder at the irrational hatred and condescension directed at her and her family for the past nine months. Some would say that politics is a cutthroat business and that if a politician cannot handle every meanness leveled against him or her in the process, no matter how destructive, he or she has no business being in that realm. But the fact is that, contrary to popular belief, most Americans do not want immoral/amoral cutthroat types in positions of power. They want civil people who represent them honestly and who seek to govern with both the interests and input of the populace in mind. In short, they want their elected officials to be public servants. Public servants tell the truth. They do not dishonestly rush massive taxing and spending bills through in the middle of the night without reading them, hoping that their constituents will be too busy or stupid to understand the effects of such bills. They do not look down on the masses as people "who don't know what's good for them," but instead seek to understand the concerns of regular people before implementing policy. In her role as governor, Sarah Palin was a public servant. She may not have been an arrogant Ivy Leaguer or spoken the Queen's English ( though these things do not determine intelligence ), but she knew how democracies, at least this American one, are meant to work, as evidenced in her resignation speech:

We need those who will respect our Constitution where government's supposed to serve from the bottom up, not move toward this top down big government take-over...but rather, will be protectors of individual rights...

Even though I am distraught that nasty people have obstructed Palin's ability to govern so much that she felt she had to leave, I do not believe for a second (in spite of my use of the past tense in this article) that her fight for individual rights and constitutional government is over.

I don't know what she has planned for her future or if she has even figured it out. That is up to her, but, to echo Palin's comments about Trig in her speech, I think that we can say that we need more Sarah Palins in American politics, not fewer. Indeed, we need more serious public servants as opposed to people with a god complex who only refer to themselves as such for political points.

I Hate AP Articles Featured on Yahoo!

This one likewise incurs my gag reflex. How can one write an entire article, supposedly an in-depth analysis of California's dismal economic situation, and fail to even acknowledge how its stringent climate change legislation (and the consequent, though often, hidden taxation) may have possibly played a role?

My favorite part is this where it reads most like a liberal apologetic piece:

Conservatives claim California is a high tax state. In fact, California's taxes are similar to other high-tech, industrial states. According to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office and the Tax Foundation, California has comparatively high sales taxes and rates for corporate income, but very low property taxes. State income taxes are very progressive, with a large proportion of revenue comes from households earning more than $100,000, as well as from taxes on stock options and capital gains. Low-income households, meanwhile, face lower tax rates that in most other states.

California's taxes may be similar to other "high-tech, industrial states," but can you give me specific examples or are they on the brink of disaster as well? The only low taxes I see here are for property and low-income families and that is ignoring the fact that these families are likely paying more taxes indirectly through a higher cost of living.* When taxes are "very progressive" and a state has "comparatively high sales taxes and rates for corporate income," this means that that companies and the leaders in an economy are more limited in how many people they can hire and how cheaply they can (or will) sell their products or services. It goes without saying that global warming legislation only further increases these costs and in the long run hurts a state's population as it saps resources and damns productivity.

Now tell me again why the United States is supposed to emulate California with the cap and trade bill?

The cognitive dissonance in the discussion on California boggles the mind. On the one hand, it (with its green laws) is held up as the model of what the U.S. should be and on the other, it is currently the state with the worst fiscal standing in the union. When will someone, other than conservative talking heads, dare to put the two together?

In addition, read these links posted at Backyard Conservative's place to get another perspective on California's situation than that of the Yahoo! article and also a realistic assessment of what how likely a cap and trade program will be able to even maintain America's current level of prosperity. Think about it. We can go poor seeking to eliminate carbon emissions that may or may not be warming the planet or we can choose prosperity and then know we will have the resources at our disposal to solve any future natural disasters that come our way, be they from global warming or any other phenomenon.

Take your pick.


*By the way, people making more than $100,000, particularly in expensive California, are not rich.

So You Think the Cap and Trade Bill Will Save the World

I like nature and long walks in the woods. I like looking at the vastness of the ocean and rivers without beer bottles and tires floating around in them. That said, I have not bought into the premise of man-made global warming, but that does not mean I am the Anti-Environmentalist. It just means I disagree.

If you sincerely believe in global warming, you have the right to use the democratic process to have your concerns translated into law. But before you begin defending this recent cap and trade bill to the death, I ask you to take a step back and really ask yourself if the contents of this piece of legislation are really going to solve the problem of carbon emissions.

Clive Crook of the Financial Times is a guy who shares your views about reducing carbon emissions, but who nevertheless is forced to admit that this bill will do little of what it is supposed to do. Instead, as he put its, it will form "a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences--and the bottom line for all that is business as usual."

So, in the end, the cap and trade bill will:

• increase corruption,
  
• make it easier for certain rich people to get richer,
• make it harder for everyday people to survive with an increased cost of living,
• bring in more revenue for the government (at least they think it will),
  
• and increase the meddling of the federal government in your personal life.

What the bill won't do:

• what it is supposed to do, which is reduce carbon emissions and prevent global warming.

Methinks this is a "green" bill in that it is all about the money and nothing at all about the environment. Oh yeah, it's also about power.

Think Global Warming Is Beyond Dispute? Think Again.

In spite of efforts to ban honest debate about the reality of man-made global warming, it looks like the UN's so-called consensus is dwindling. What gives? Kimberly A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal believes it's "reality":

The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans.

Indeed, according to Strassel, more than 700 respected scientists openly disagree with the United Nations' official claims, a number that is 13 times greater than the number of scientists who originally signed on to the notion of man-made global warming. And if contrary evidence like that above continues to mount, this number is likely to grow.

Given the global financial crisis and the new evidence debunking the environmental concerns of man-made global warming, Strassel says some politicians are taking "a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon."

I wish our American elected officials would do the same.

I Hated the Cap-and-Tax Bill So Much I Started This Blog

When it comes to politics, I'm normally visibly low-key and subdued. Although my internal self may be enraged by something an entity or representative of our beloved government did or said, I don't ever let it get to the point of screaming at the television or even obnoxiously voicing my opinions to my neighbors and acquaintances. I'm really the kind of guy who would sometimes really like to tell someone what I think, but end up with an elliptical "well..." and a modest grimace to demonstrate that I don't entirely agree.

So yeah, I'm not Mr. Polemic. However, with the imminent passage of the not-much-talked-about-publicly cap and trade bill that just passed in the House this past weekend and will soon go to the Senate, I became incensed. Actually, incensed is an understatement. Everything I have read lately and all of the recent evidence I have seen seems to be eating away at the indisputability of global warming. And right now, in the middle of an economic recession, our elected officials decide they're going to essentially tie a millstone around the neck of the American economy and throw it into the ocean. If global warming doesn't make the waters rise, this empty 1200 page bill sure will. Yep, the cliched sea of humanity will rise up and wash these already washed-up losers out of office. But before this happens, let's see we can get the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 stopped. Well, this is bewildering: I am so incensed that I am actually doing something about it.

Blocking the cap-and-trade (cap-and-tax) bill is both the cause and primary objective of this blog. Help me hold our senators accountable before they can foist another piece of abominable legislation on us while we sleep. As someone who will have to live through the consequences of this bill (unlike the Baby Boomers passing it), I'm still not experienced with stirring the political pot, but I'm hoping that, in this case, word-of-mouth and tough telephone calls to certain political somebodies will suffice. I just hope we're motivated enough to do it.