Recently in Socialism Category

Bret Stephens addresses members of the graduating Class of 2012, exposing them to some hard truths they haven't had to face until now. One of most salient points is something that will stand them in good stead, assuming they're willing to listen: "But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!"

Bret brings up a number of problems with our existing college and university system today, that being they are less about preparing students to face the real world and more about students "getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree." What's worse is that many of these students put them and/or their families deep into debt, yet they won't be able to find jobs that will pay them anywhere what it is they owe.

Some of those commenting to Bret's piece miss the point, trying to make it seem that he's saying the only worthwhile degrees are in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine), but that's not what he's saying at all. Instead he's warning students who get degrees in Womyn's Studies, Urban Graffiti, or Transgendered Native American Studies shouldn't expect to be snapped up by corporate America when there are more than enough graduates with degrees in Business Administration, Statistics, Finance, Graphic Arts, Culinary Arts, and an almost endless list of other BA and BS degrees that are far more applicable to the real world.

What's even worse for many of these still unprepared grads is that is that a lot of their contemporaries who didn't go to college are doing far better than they can ever hope to do. This is particularly true of those who went into the trades. They don't have huge student loans to pay off. They started earning their way years earlier than their college-bound friends. And in many ways they've grown up while their friends lived an extended adolescence in college.

On a slightly different thread, one commenter fell into a semantic trap, claiming students are being taught how to think. He went on to claim that they're being brainwashed into being good little progressive puppets. But what he really meant was that they're being taught what to think, which is entirely different.

Being taught how to think, meaning being taught critical thinking skills, is something we need more of in our educational system. If one can think critically, then they can reason from available facts and their own experiences rather than being spoon fed radical and, in the end, socially destructive ideologies masquerading as knowledge and wisdom. Unfortunately we aren't seeing much in the way of critical thinking being taught in our schools any more, and it shows. (This is particularly true in many of our liberal arts colleges.)

Could it be that the lack of critical thinking skills and the abundance of money through loan programs has caused this rampant problem of students studying majors that don't prepare them for life in the real world? I don't know, but it's something worth pondering.

The WP Dad forwarded this to me, an e-mail he wrote to the pastor of our local church. To say my father and the pastor do not see eye to eye politically would not be an untruth by any means. However it is illustrative of the chasm that can exist between friends, at least when it comes to politics.

I cannot say with any certainty how much history the pastor has studied, remembers, or understands. But it appears to me that he does have blind spots when it comes to the actions of those who do not hold freedom dear and would prefer to run things, even if it means killing millions in order to enforce their will.

This e-mail has not been changed other than some formatting and corrections made to some typos.

I apologize for labeling Pres Obama as a Fascist. I should have done that only after presenting arguments that satisfy me that he deserves the label. I have listed below a variety of reasons I have for believing he is a socialist and will become a Fascist.

1. The President's major political asset is his charisma. Polls show that more often than not voters disapprove of his policies, yet he has a high personal approval rating. His accomplishments are meager other than getting elected. Even there his foray into local Chicago politics succeeded because his opponents for the nomination were mistakenly omitted from the ballot.

2. His cabinet appointments have been disappointing. I think that Eric Holder's major accomplishment has been to shield the President. Prior to his appointment his only noted achievement was to obtain a pardon for a major donor who had fled the country after conviction. He slipped the pardon into the list of Pres. Clinton's last day pardons as if it had been vetted and approved in the normal manner by the justice department. His appointee to the Energy Department, as late as two weeks ago was that it was necessary to drive up fossil fuel costs to make green energy more attractive.

3. Assistant Cabinet members require approval from the Senate. Rather than follow the Constitutional requirement, The Pres. appointed numerous Czars who became de facto Assistants without approval. We got ideologues who were avowed communists or revolutionaries.

4. Under Pres. Obama's stewardship, the nation is being reshaped into a secular society. There has been an increasing effort to drive religion from our society. Witness eliminating prayer from our schools, removal of any religious overtones (like the Ten Commandments) from public buildings. Morality is officially suspect, to be replaced by legality and regulation. Each year we add multiple thousands of pages of regulations to control behavior and Congress feels they have accomplished nothing if they haven't passed batches of laws. Is all of this to replace what was once accepted as morals and ethics.

It is documented that those that call themselves liberals do far less charitable work and give far less to charity. I suppose if Government is responsible for the welfare of every individual, then I have met my obligation to my fellow man if I simply pay my taxes That looks to me as an inducement to accept socialism. Socialism always fails because as Margret Thatcher said, "Eventually you run out of other people's money." When Socialism fails the most common result is despotism.

5. Charismatic leaders tend to have cadres of militant supporters. Cuba and Venezuela, Castro and Chavez have co-opted their armies. Mussolini, Hitler and Lenin/Stalin had Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, and Red Shirts. Pres. Obama has Purple Shirted goons. How else would you identify the mobs of union members who descended on Wisconsin in an attempt to over throw the duly elected Governor. They claim that the Tea Party is violent and racist. Not as violent as the Purple Shirts.

6. Pres. Obama and his administration have diligently worked to expand their natural base. We are reaching a point where too great a portion of the voting populace either work for or are married to someone working for a government. Their unions negotiate for improved pay and perks. On the other side of the bargaining table are the unborn generations who will have to pay the wages and perks "someday".

Another huge constituency are the poor. If we are in danger of running out of poor people we simply change the threshold. Of course we have always had a very mobile society. Thomas Sowell had a very revealing essay about mobility. Many of those who are poor were wealthy less than a decade ago. Many recent graduates from high schools and universities are poor until they get work and earn promotions. Many of the wealthy are recipients of one time windfalls and they won't be wealthy ten years from now.

Once you start subsidizing poverty you get more poverty. Much of what we give the poor is not counted as income - food stamps, rent subsidies, unemployment is counted. I've often wondered how many of those who collected unemployment for the full ninety-nine weeks had a working spouse and the unemployment benefit amounts to wages for staying home and being a house husband/wife.

7. The stimulus package was going to 'kick start' projects that were 'shovel ready', but a very large portion of the money went to state and local governments to cover their shortfalls. Instead of shrinking payrolls, these government employees were shielded while productive workers in private employment were laid off or downsized. In particular the stimulus money went to Unions, specifically the teacher's and autoworkers unions. In the case of both Chrysler and GM the bond holders who were legally entitled to protection got cents on the dollar and were not allowed to reorganize the companies. I don't understand why there weren't lawsuits. By the way, it is my contention that the UAW created the Asian and European invasion of our market. Every increase in productivity went to overpaid employees and never to the consumer. Eventually prices for domestic cars were so high that they created a spacious umbrella for competitors to emerge.

There was a time when our technology improvements helped us to protect our markets. The unions couldn't organize the Asian companies, but technology is easily exported. It was thought that the Asian workers were not capable of utilizing our technology, but in reality the 'worker bees' were better educated and better motivated than our domestic scholars.

8. The President has been decrying the Do Nothing Congress, but it is the Democrat controlled Senate that is doing nothing. Pres. Obama is complaining that the days of cooperation and compromise have gone away. In those good old days there was a fair consensus about where the country should go and the compromise was about the best way to get there. Today, there are two opposing ideas about where to go. One side says a democratic capitalist society has served us well and the opposing side says the wave of the future is European style socialism. Compromise is seen by both sides as surrender. Progress will hinge on the will of the people. Even if Pres. Obama is reelected, I'm betting that the Tea party will control both houses.

9. Education has been in decline for decades. The only country that spends more per pupil is Switzerland, but the U.S. has continually slipped in the hard sciences. I believe the Universities have become the home of Lenin's 'useful fools' Government subsidized Universities and tuition increases matched the subsidies. Government began to guarantee student loans and in response to fairness dicta Universities began admitting unqualified student and the dumbing down curricula. Lots of students took gut courses and many flunked out. When these ungraduated student began reneging on the loans, government made student loans ineligible for bankruptcy. One drag on the housing industry has been the large numbers of graduates who owe so much that they are not able to get mortgages. They move in with Mom and Dad, don't get married but they do have children. The government subsidizes unwed mothers.

We castigate greedy Wall Street, but Wall Street can't hold a candle to institutes of higher learning. Too many classes are taught by itinerant instructors that move from campus to campus teaching for meager wages without benefits, while professors retire handsomely. There was a recent article by a retired Sociology professor that recounted his perceptions. There are excessive classrooms and laboratories because neither students nor professors want to start work before 9:00 or work after 3:00, The facilities are less than 50% utilized. Administration used to account for about 20% of payroll and today it is closer to 50%. Part of the reason for this is the excessive regulations impose by government.

Colleges aren't the only culprits. Public schools are also overloaded with administrators. My speculation is that teachers who fail in the class room can't be fired, so to protect the students the under-performing teacher become part of the administration.

In the meantime 'shop' has virtually disappeared from high schools. We now have VoTech. Let me tell you of a recent family experience. One of my grandsons had perception problem that made book learning very difficult, but he was good with mechanical tasks, particularly small engines. He was denied access to a Vocational school because the classes he wanted were over-subscribed by college bound kids that wanted easy courses to improve their GPA. Naturally we now have a shortage of skilled mechanics, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. My son has a neighbor that drives his high school kids around Concord and points out the best houses. He tells them that is where my plumber lives...

Goodness gracious. That certainly enough and I really want to go to bed. I have to add, I am slightly optimistic about the future. Life is going to be difficult for a while but the nation will survive even if Obama is reelected.

Indeed.

Yeah, this pretty well sums up my thought about this issue:

Every so often someone comes along in our life that deserves a righteous fisking, and so it is with a fellow by the name of James Veverka of Tilton, New Hampshire.

Mister Veverka shows up regularly in the Letters section of our local newspapers, and in particular the Laconia (NH) Daily Sun.

For the most part I ignore Mister Veverka's leftist rants as almost everything he writes is right out of the left's talking point templates. I doubt he's had an original thought of his own in years. But it was one of his latest rants about the GOP in the March 17th edition of the Sun that goaded me into deconstructing yet another of his emotion-filled unthinking rants.

Let's get started, shall we?

Some things to consider.

First, religious liberties do not trump equality under the law. If one wants to be a religious fanatic, a bigot, a sexist, or a homophobe , they can do it in their own home, church, or private affiliation. People have used religious beliefs to support wars, cruel and unusual punishments, beating children, religious oppression, slavery, miscegenation laws, segregation, anti-semitism, anti-suffrage, polygamy, homophobia, and its all a failed Medieval argument.

Ooh, I love this guy! He trashes the First Amendment as if it means nothing because he's been told it does not trump "equality under the law" and then builds a strawman argument about why anyone who believes they should not be forced to go against their religious beliefs about the sanctity of life due to an unconstitutional governmental edict is automatically a religious fanatic who wants to return us to Medieval dogma and the auto de fe. How far would he take this? Would he demand Christian Scientists abandon their faith and beliefs in the power of prayer to heal and force them to support his "beliefs" against their will? (After all, Mister Veverka's deep religious faith in the power of an oppressive government to make sure everyone is equal is no different than the very religions he besmirches.)

Basically, Mister Veverka, you have libeled and slandered those of faith who have no designs to create a theological dictatorship. They just don't want to be told by an overreaching government that they must pay for medicines and medical procedures they see as no different than murder. After reading a number of your diatribes over the past few years, it has become quite evident that you have a deep seated hatred of religion or those who profess to religious belief. Who is the intolerant one here, Mister Veverka?

Let's move on.

For a bunch of tea bags who are concerned with abortion and welfare, they sure haven't thought this one out in the slightest. If one wants fewer abortions and less welfare families, family planning, sexual health care, sex education, and contraception are the only answers. Making contraception unavailable and abortion illegal is as about an intelligent a solution as the drug war is for drug use or banning guns is to end violent crime.

Here, right off the bat, he aims a sexual slur against Tea Party supporters, implying they are homosexuals. (Who's the homophobe, Mister Veverka?)

His statement also shows he is woefully ignorant about the Tea Party and what it stands for, and from earlier rants he's written, it's clear he doesn't want to. He'd rather stay within his own narrowly defined 'reality' so he can convince himself he's the only one who knows "The Truth!" If he even bothered to find out what it's all about he'd know that for the most part the Tea Party isn't interested in social issues he brings up. They just want the government to stop spending money it doesn't have on things we know don't work or is a waste of taxpayer dollars, stop passing laws and imposing regulations that do far more harm to the American public than any of the things Mister Veverka has accused the the GOP of trying to do, and for the government to stop its increasing meddling in our lives and our businesses.

If he wants fewer people on welfare, it isn't the GOP or the Tea Party (they aren't the same thing) that have trapped millions in poverty or want them to remain there. It is the government, and particularly the Democrats, starting with LBJ and his "Great Society". More people on welfare means more control by the government, something the Democrats love because it gives them a captive constituency.

He brings up that the only answers to this problem are "family planning, sexual health care, sex education, and contraception." He assumes these are the only solutions to the welfare problem. But the best way to get people off of welfare is to make it harder for them to get on it and easier for them to get jobs. But most of the programs created over the past 50 years and the rules and regulations handed down by the government have done just the opposite. And who created most of those programs and have been heavy handed in creating economy killing regulations? Hint: It's not the GOP.

To Be Continued...

I've covered the decline of Detroit more than once, covering the various reasons for its precipitous fall from grace.

It's decline continues as the Democrat policymakers continue their experiment to create a socialist utopia. Too bad it's been failing and in such a spectacular fashion that it's impossible to hide. No amount of dissembling and sleight-of-hand can point observers away from the obvious: Detroit is dying and it's the fault of the Progressives who have been running the city for decades.

They have implemented just about every socialist program, regressive 'redistributionist" tax, and punitive business regulation on their wish list upon the city and its residents and the results are clear to see: Detroit has gone from the richest city in the US (per capita) to the second poorest. (Only Cleveland beat them out for that honor.) Detroit can stand as an example of what the rest of the nation will look like if Obama and the rest of the Progressives get their way. The socialist experiment has failed and no amount of window dressing can change that, no matter how hard the MSM tries.

As bad as the real estate bubble and subsequent meltdown was here in the US, the bubble in China is worse and the meltdown will be far more spectacular. Unlike the one in the US, the Chinese meltdown includes entire cities built in anticipation of demands for housing, manufacturing, and consumer spending. It is this last that shows just how badly the Chinese government has overestimated the demand, particularly in light of the highly inflated prices for housing.

One other difference - while shopping malls in the US have been struggling remain open as retailers either fail or decide to move to another location (sometimes to the web), many new malls in China never had the retailers to begin with. One mall, called the South China Mall (also known as the Great Mall of China), was supposed to be the biggest retail mall in the world, with over 1500 shops under one roof. Instead it sits virtually empty, with few operating shops and even fewer customers.

To see how bad it is, an Australian news crew visited one of the new cities. Thousands of apartments sit empty, as do many of the retails shops.



Billions of dollars spent on ghost cities where very few live. This is what happens when the government decides what the demand will be rather than letting the private sector figure it out and build only what they can sell.

Over at Ace of Spades is a list of the things the Left fears should Obama lose the election come next November. Are their fears unfounded? In some areas, yes. But for the most part they are right to fear that much of the damage done by the Congressional Democrats since 2007 and President Obama since 2009 will be undone should Obama lose in November. When you come right down to it, the upcoming elections are about the wholesale damage perpetrated by the Left's minions over the past 6 years. Will the American people allow the ongoing dismantling of a great nation all in the name of some vague sense of "fairness"? And just who defines what is fair? (Of course the Left believe they are the only arbiters of fairness, even though many I have debated with really have no idea what 'fair' really is.)

The problem is that many on the Left don't see the actions that have damaged the economy as bad. They only see it as 'fair'. (I'm still waiting for someone on the Left to show me where it says life is supposed to be fair. So far, they haven't, nor do I expect them to.) Through observation over the years I have come to see that the Left's ideology is both economically and morally bankrupt. Never mind history's lesson showing it to also to be a murderous ideology, in the end.

There are plenty of examples of the fairness of socialism going back over 400 years to show just how bad their ideology can make it. One of their first forays into 'fairness': the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts.

During the initial years of the colony, the Pilgrims tried a social experiment, one that predated Marx by almost 300 years, that experiment being "From each according to his ability. To each according to his need." The results? Famine. Everyone wanted from the common larder, but no one wanted to work to fill it. In the end the colonists abandoned the experiment as a failure and from that point on the colony thrived.

Did the Left learn from that experiment? No, of course not. They've tried that experiment again and again (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Venezuela, etc.) with the results being the same: economic and social collapse, and in some cases, mass murder. Such failures haven't dissuaded them from trying to pull that here. I have little doubt their reasoning is something along the lines of "But we'll do it better this time because we're better than the others were!" They've become a living example of Einstein's axiom about insanity.

So now we come back to present day and the Left's push to drive America in a direction of oft proven failure. Again we return to the so-called fairness doctrine as an excuse to justify large scale theft and interference in our day to day lives. Where does this call for fairness derive?

I figure it goes back to the egalitarian movements that drove things like the French Revolution. An egalitarian society sounds like a great thing, in theory. But in practice, such societies tend to be anything but, usually devolving to the lowest common denominator - mob rule. The French Republic after the Revolution didn't earn the sobriquet "Reign of Terror" for nothing. Of those that did not devolve into mob rule, it was a totalitarian government that drove everyone to be equal - equally poor, equally miserable, and equally terrified of their government. I doubt that was the dream of the egalitarians, but that's what their dream ended up being - a nightmare.

The problem with such egalitarian ideals comes down to this: they are based upon two concepts that are poor at best and base at worst, those being human emotion and a false understanding of human nature. Let's take a look at both of these to see where the Left got it wrong and continues to do so.

The first of these two, emotion, is the most troublesome. While a sense of fairness may be an admirable thing and something to which we can aspire, it should not be something based upon envy or greed. Unfortunately the Left's sense of fairness is derived from that very source. All you have to do is listen to their rhetoric in regards to fairness and I think you'll find it has nothing to with actual fairness and everything to do with envy. Oh, they won't admit to it, but when you think about it it makes sense. It all comes down to "Hey, that guy/girl/person has something I don't and can't afford right now! That's not fair! We/I should take it away from them because they don't deserve it!" But if they earned the money to pay for it then why shouldn't they be allowed to have whatever it is? Again, envy comes into play, this time in regards to the money earned to pay for whatever it is. Why should one person make more for their job than someone else for their job? Never mind that one job may be worth far more than another, may create more goods, services, or jobs than another. It just doesn't seem fair. But it is. Too bad far too many of the Left are incapable of seeing this.

The second of the concepts that lead the Left astray is their decision to ignore human nature. Or perhaps I should say their decision to ignore it as it happens to be rather than as they wish it to be. Of the two, the second is based upon pure fantasy. It seems one of the biggest fantasies that endure on the Left is that you can change human nature with enough education, indoctrination, or terror. It's been tried in a number of places, but has never yielded the expected results. The USSR tried for over 5 generations to create the New Soviet Man, a human with none of the ideological weaknesses attributed to capitalists. They wanted someone that would put the needs of The State (or The Good Of The People) ahead of those of their own, ahead of those of their own families. But that way lies slavery, where the individual is merely a replaceable cog in the machinery of state, without free will, to be sacrificed at whim and without a thought to their own welfare. But that goes against millions of years of existence, against millions of years of human nature. You can't overturn something so basic to human existence with education, indoctrination, or terror. Human nature wins out in the end. And in the end that's why Leftist 'paradises' have collapsed and disappeared into history. We're watching that happen now in Venezuela, a once prosperous nation turned into a land of want, broken down infrastructure, and the inability to even feed itself, all done in the name of 'fairness'. And this is what the Left wants to do here?

Thanks, but no thanks.

After weeks of hullabaloo about the various OWS protests across the nation, it appears the whole thing was much ado about nothing.

Between unfocused or contradictory messages, hypocrisy, mob violence, rape, murder, theft, drug overdoses, totalitarian 'councils' confiscating donated money, and just plain foolishness, the Occupy Wall Street protesters have proven one thing to the public at large: they're spoiled children filling the role of useful idiots, showing the worst side of society, not the best as they have claimed.

What have they accomplished other than showing the rest of the country that they're mean-spirited wackos with little understanding of history, economics, or human nature?

It shows in hundreds of different ways, with one of the overriding themes I noticed being "We want you to pay for our stuff even though we could pay for it ourselves, but we don't want the rest of you freeloaders to take our stuff that someone else paid for!" This theme has recurred at more than one protest location, with the protesters not recognizing the hypocrisy of their demands.

Some want to replace capitalism with socialism, even though the socialism they're promoting has never lived up to the promises made and usually end up creating nothing but poverty, misery, and terror. It isn't until countless lives are sacrificed that the socialist utopias implode.

Some seem to think that anarchy is the answer, but all that ever leads to is destruction, lawlessness, and in the end, tyranny.

They claim they represent the 99%, but 99% of what? 99% of the spoiled privileged children of the 1%? 99% of the clueless drones feeling entitled to what others have earned through hard work? They sure as hell don't represent 99% of the American people.

In the end, OWS has been about nothing but selfishness, greed, and a sense of entitlement. In other words, a world class FAIL.

I find it interesting that President Obama sincerely believes that those of us Americans still working have gotten lazy.

WTF?

I don't know about you, but all three of us here at The Manse are working our butts off. Deb is working at the local veteran's home and going to nursing school. BeezleBub is going to school, taking part in some extracurricular activities, and working at the farm. Me, I'm working, working, and..umm...working.

What it comes down to is that he doesn't think we're working hard enough to support his socialist agenda. This requires people to give selflessly by working harder to support those who can't work and more specifically, those who won't work.

When productivity from those of us starts falling off it's somehow our fault. Never mind that all he's done is given those of us still working more than enough incentive to not work nearly as hard as we have in the past. After all, why should we? All he's going to do is take it away from us.

How do we know this? Because he's said as much during the beginning of his still ongoing presidential campaign. (Remember Joe the Plumber?)

It must be remembered that socialism is based upon two principles: envy, and the belief in altruism.

Of the first, it is envy by those who actually produce little or nothing who have been told that those actually producing the wealth are somehow beholden to them. It usually takes the form of class warfare egged on by the very people who see themselves above all of that. (They aren't.)

The Left sells the idea that the best way to make sure everyone has what they need is to take it away from those who actually provide it. The problem is that eventually the providers will decide it's no longer worth it to do so and they'll stop doing it. Then who benefits? Obviously, no one.

Second, socialist believe big time in altruism, that human condition where individuals put aside their own wants and needs for the benefits of others. There's a problem with this belief: no one can be altruistic all the time because by nature humans are altruistic only now and then, and then only under very specific and limited conditions for a very limited amount of time. Once their 'altruism' starts hurting them and their families it fades away. If we need any proof of that all we need to do is look at the two biggest experiments in socialism to see how well the belief in altruism fared: the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

Both tried it for generations. Both failed to live up to the ideal. One utterly collapsed when their socialist economy collapsed like the house of cards that it was. The other one gave up on the idea when they watched what happened to their neighbor and decided they didn't want to suffer the same fate. They backed away from the socialist 'ideal' and embraced a limited form of capitalism, and so were saved (at least for now).

But now we have a president who has been working very hard to take us towards an ideology that has failed by appealing to ideals that have been proven to be false, and in the end, deadly. And he baits those who actually provide jobs, goods, and services by telling them they aren't working hard enough?

What a putz.

It is said the truly smart will learn from the harsh lessons of others' failures. I can say that one member of the WP clan is that smart, that being the youngest of the WP sisters. (As she says, she made her own mistakes while growing up that our parents never found out about.)

It would be great if the political class presently ruling the US was as smart as my youngest sister. Unfortunately they are not.

They see the economic meltdown occurring in the Euro-zone, yet refuse to learn the lessons countries like Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain are teaching us, the primary one being that eventually you will run out of other people's money to fund all the wonderful social programs that have been used to bribe the electorate.

Italy is the latest to teeter on the brink of insolvency, and should it go over the edge it is quite likely it will pull the rest of the Euro-zone with it. Greece's default damaged the European economy yet it has only a fraction of the GDP of Italy. Should Italy default Europe will take an additional $2 trillion hit it cannot afford. Is it any wonder Germany is considering abandoning the Euro and going back to the mark? Can anyone deny that this problem has been driving the British public to demand a referendum about whether or not to remain in the EU? At least those two countries see the problem and realize they'll have to bankrupt themselves in a doomed effort to prop up economic policies from Brussels.

But too many of our own politicians at the state and federal level, regardless of party, seem oblivious to the fact that unless we make some drastic changes in how our federal government taxes and spends we will be headed down the same path. Labor leaders ignore the fact that neither businesses or taxpayers are a bottomless source of funds, shortchanging their own members by making promises no one can keep.

Should the US fail to put its financial/economic house in order, and right quick, it will pull the world economy down with it into a depression unlike any we've seen before.

I saw this the other day but waited until I had a chance to show it to a friend who, like the fellow in this video, grew up in the old Soviet Union. His opinion of the people advocating the elimination of capitalism and replacing it with socialism: "Useful idiots, just as Lenin and Stalin labeled them!"


As my friend pointed out, these people are insane. Because they have allowed themselves to be brainwashed about the so-called "evils of capitalism" and are no longer capable of thinking for themselves, they should be put away into an asylum. When I asked why he thought them insane, he said this:

You would agree that Albert Einstein was a brilliant man, yes? He said that insanity is doing the same thing again and again, hoping the results would be different this time. What these folks want has been proven not to work, time and time again. It has killed millions upon millions of people. Yet these crazy people want to do it again. See? Insanity!

What these folks don't realize is many of those socialist paradises only lasted as long as they did because of capitalism, not in spite of it. Without funds from the capitalist countries and the thriving underground capitalist economies operating in those socialist worker's paradises, they would have collapsed far sooner than they did. Why do they think China has abandoned socialist economics and embraced capitalism? It's simple: socialism doesn't work, and the Chinese knew it.

If these useful idiots want to try living in a socialist society, there are still enough around for them to go to to give it a try. I suggest Venezuela or Cuba, two bastions of socialist paradises.

Venezuela, a country with the wealth of abundant oil, has devolved into a poverty-stricken socialist dictatorship where infrastructure has broken down. The only ones benefiting from Chavez's socialist ideologies are his cronies. Everyone else there has suffered, seeing their livelihoods destroyed all in the name of socialism.

Cuba is an economic basket case and has been since Castro took over. It became even worse once the Soviet Union collapsed because there were no more socialist subsidies flowing from the always almost empty socialist coffers (usually filled by way of aid from capitalist countries).

Socialism is an ideology of envy and greed, as history has proven more than once. Many claim it is an egalitarian ideal, but the only thing shared equally in those egalitarian socialist societies is misery and terror. Some of the more radical socialists say that unless everyone can have X, Y, or Z, then no one should have X, Y, or Z. The problem with that is that it is an unrealistic vision because no one will ever have anything new, except misery and terror. (Actually, I must correct myself. Only the ruling elite will be able to have X, Y, and Z. Everyone else is screwed.)

If nothing else the Occupy Wall Street protests are showcasing the radical beliefs of these fringe lunatics and showing them to be the insane purveyors of unrealistic and totalitarian ideologies.

The Jawa Report has a handy dandy checklist comparing the Tea Party folks to the #Occupy folks. Again, it's no surprise the OWS folks come out on the short end of this one.

There are also a couple of related links at the bottom of the list you should check out.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Is it possible the Occupy Wall Street protests might succeed where indoctrination has failed?

While the OWS protests are obstensively supposed to show "the people" the evils of capitalism, it is having an unexpected side effect. It's teaching the OWS protesters the evils of socialism up close and personal, by way of Ayn Rand.

Not surprisingly, Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for thieves and con-men. As one organizer complains, "Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment."

Then there are the bums. Originally, from what I can tell, street people were actively recruited by the Occupiers as a way of adding to their somewhat anemic numbers. But the naïve young hippies who make up the bulk of the movement are quickly discovering what the rest of us, with the benefit of actual life experience, already know about "the homeless."

Over at Occupy Boston, a protester complains, "It's turning into us against them. They come in here and they're looking at it as a way of getting a free meal and a place to crash, which is totally fine, but they don't bring anything to the table at all." Another report concludes with a similar sentiment.

"We have compassion toward everyone. However, we have certain rules and guidelines," said Lauren Digioia, 26, a member of the sanitation committee. "If you're going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back," Digioia said. "There's a lot of takers here and they feel entitled."

These kids had better watch out. If they start thinking that like this, pretty soon they might find themselves at a Tea Party rally.

"There's a lot of takers here and they feel entitled." Gee, that sounds familiar. Could it be because the very ones complaining about the takers are themselves takers of a higher order? What hypocrites. They're finding out that the socialist/marxist creed of "From each according to his ability. To each according to his need," does nothing but create a large amount of 'needy' while diminishing the number filling the needs. It's right out of Atlas Shrugged, where the takers (looters) take more and more while creating a huge disincentive for those producing what is taken to keep working. At some point the producers end up becoming nothing more than slaves to the takers, as Rand outlined in her novel.

It seems the OWS protesters are "dominated by 20-year-old white middle-class college boys ." What the hell do these college boys know of real life and how economies actually work? From what they're showing the world, not much. But they're sure as heck learning the hard way that nothing free is actually free. Someone else has to pay for it. This time around, it's them.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

I saw this by way of Instapundit. It reveals some harsh truths the #OWS folks won't admit to, but something We The 53% understand completely.

We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that. For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply...will he? and will they?"

So if the OWS folks get their way and kill off Wall Street and the corporations, what they'll get in return is an economic collapse that will make the Great Depression look like a minor market correction in comparison. But what do you expect from economically illiterate and spoiled children who feel entitled to what the rest of us earned?

Taking a look at many of the protesters involved with #OWS, you realize most of them are quite young, generally college age. This is quite telling as in the past it has been the so-called 'enlightened' youth that have led protests and revolutions. But in this case their cause célèbre is not one of justice or rights or racial harmony. Instead it's borne of a belief in entitlement to things of which they have not earned. In other words, they want someone else to pay for the things they want.

Bill Whittle does a pretty good job of explaining what it is the protesters want: More. He also tells them what it is they need: To grow up.

As the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests continue, the media still tries to paint them as something entirely grass roots despite the fact that many of them are anything but grassroots. As Bruce Kesler put it, they are nothing more than "Potemkin" protests.

[Occupy Wall Street] is a big media promoted event, one that fits its liberal-left memes, organized by radical "community organizers", funded and added manpower from government-union thugs (just look at the size of the OWC (sic) bouncers).

--snip--

As Glenn Reynolds comments about major media coverage of OWC protests, "When lefties want to make the Tea Party fit their preconceptions, they have to make things up. When righties want to exercise their preconceptions about the Occupy movement, on the other hand, they just have to take a picture."

The contrast is telling. As Mary Grabar notes from her observations of the Occupy Atlanta protests:

As I watched the ragtag group file in, escorted by police, I remembered a Tea Party rally in front of the state capitol in downtown Atlanta, only a few blocks away. There the police and state troopers were omnipresent amidst a group of suburbanites occupying flag-adorned lawn chairs on the sidewalk and listening to speeches about politically legitimate efforts in overturning health care legislation and enforcing immigration laws. Complaints from the podium were specifically about government actions, like taking over the private company, General Motors.

Back then, amidst the flags and bunting, the police were omnipresent, with prison vehicles at the ready and parked along the streets that were the pathway to the prearranged site. Police were omnipresent as the Pledge of Allegiance was recited. They were quite visible as the National Anthem and America the Beautiful were sung, and as prayers for our country were sent up to heaven.

The police stood around, looking relaxed.

The Tea Partiers never blocked a street, and left quietly down the sidewalks after their allotted time, leaving no traces, picking up trash that may have been dropped inadvertently.

The Tea Party never occupied public land illegally. They assembled peacefully with permits arranged beforehand. Yet the media repeatedly characterized them as "angry," "extremist," and "racist."

Tea Party protestors didn't defecate on police cars, didn't disrespect men and women in uniform, didn't try to foment confrontations with police, didn't turn public parks into pig sties, and they didn't use the restroom facilities of local businesses as if they were nothing more than public restrooms.

At least Tea Party protestors abide by the law (for the most part). If they don't like a law they'll try to change it as the Founders intended, by using the ballot box rather than ignoring it as if it didn't apply to them. Tea Party supporters understand where the money comes from to pay for all the "free stuff" many the OWS folks are demanding. A majority of Tea Party supporters are part of the 53% who actually pay income taxes. Most of the young OWS protestors are not. That they believe they are entitled to receive that "free stuff" the rest of us pay for shows us they've been cheated, either by parents that indulged them far too much or schools that filled their heads with that nonsense. And when reality finally slaps them up side their heads it's somehow the fault of the people who make it possible for them to live their indigent lifestyle and they demand that they be "given" jobs they really don't want (because then they'd actually have to work) or aren't qualified to perform.

And so it goes.

By way of Instapundit comes this from Professor Jacobsen in response the rather vague Occupy Wall Street protests.

The silent majority.

The ones who pay the bills, and the taxes, and the tuitions, and the pensions, and the benefits, for the people who falsely claim to be the 99%.

The ones who did not graduate from the school of perpetual expectations and handouts.

The ones who falsely have been called terrorists and extremists and racists because they dared to object to trying the same socialist policies here that have failed everywhere they have been tried before.

The ones who showed up at the polls in 2010.

The ones who will show up at the polls in 2012:

#OccupyWhiteHouse2012

Looking at the photos of those protesting, I am struck by how many of them are obviously college age. If I had to guess, few if any of them have ever had to do a hard day's work in their lives. Yet somehow they feel qualified to judge those of us who've never had it easy, who work hard every day to make ends meet, and actually made it possible for them to be free from want.

While the media has been playing up the OccupyWallStreet protests across the nation, the video, pictures, and press releases have been showing that most of the folks joining the protests are absolutely clueless about what it is they're protesting for/against, or the irony of their protests.

Let's hope they never wise up.

It was just before lunch when I received a phone call from my wife, Deb. She was taking a lunch break from her microbiology class at the local college when she called.

You may ask "What was so important that she had to call DCE during lunch?"

I can tell you on three words: She. Was. Livid.

During the morning lecture her professor, in the midst of talking about microbiology, went off on a tangent. That in itself isn't all that remarkable. It happens from time to time. But this time was different.

The 'tangent' in this case was a political diatribe that lasted quite some time. All the professor did was spout vitriol and vile slanders on Republicans, praise the all-knowing and caring Democrats, demonized anybody who disagreed with Leftist ideology, and so on. Some of the other students were overtly agreeing with the professor, but others were uncomfortable as the diatribe continued. As the vitriol continued, Deb started getting mad.

I have to explain that while Deb is fiscally conservative, she has her liberal side (and by liberal I mean a classic liberal, not a "government-knows-best" liberal). I guess that makes her libertarian.

Did what the professor was saying piss her off? No, not really. As she told me the professor did have a few valid points (though very few). So what was it that was pissing her off? Simply this:

She had paid good money that we could not easily afford to take a microbiology class she needed in her quest to become an RN. She hadn't paid that money to be subjected to a leftist political diatribe that belonged in a Marxist Political Science 102 lecture.

She called me again a couple of hours later, telling me that she'd gone to her adviser to complain about what had happened in the class. At that point her adviser started spouting off as well. Needless to say, that pissed off my wife even more.

So what has she learned from this episode in her college career?

Institutions of higher learning are not about education, but political indoctrination.

So endith the lesson.

A number of bloggers have covered the controversy over the University of Wisconsin - Stout in regards to Professor James Miller and his First Amendment rights to free speech on campus. Apparently the campus police chief doesn't believe in them. Neither does the interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The U of W has beclowned itself on this matter and I'm not going to belabor the asininity of the powers-that-be at that fine institution of..ahem...learning. Instead, I am going to address the continuing destruction of our colleges and universities and the concomitant higher education bubble that is about to burst. Or rather, I am going to let Penn and Teller do it for me. After all, I have work to do and money to make so that someday I too can retire a year or so before my employer involuntarily "retires" my ass me because they believe I'm too damn old to do the job anymore. So sit back, relax, and enjoy their expose (in three parts).

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:


That basically covers it.

I particularly liked the part when they talk to the supposedly smartest man in academia, Noam Chomsky. All he did for me is prove that he's a clueless, out-of-touch putz. (Frankly, the smartest man in academia is probably Stephen Hawking, at least in my opinion.)

If this wasn't taking place in Massachusetts I'd be more surprised.

We've all been hearing about Elizabeth Warren's beliefs and opinions about such things as the constitutionally defined limits on government, taxes, spending, and now, such fundamentals as private property rights. In a nutshell, she's against them. She believes that no individual creates businesses and jobs, that it's all The State. I'm sorry, but the state is too stupid and too corrupt to create anything other than more stupidity and corruption.

"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for," Warren says. But the flip side of that equation is that it's the need for markets and goods that helped get the roads built in the first place. It's that need which makes cities and towns, more than public servants do.

The government cannot make towns and cities, China and North Korea have proven that with ghost towns. It is those factories and market that make them.

And the public benefits from having goods and jobs, much more than it does from people like Warren. That is and has always been the black hole in the left's argument. Warren treats the factory as a net benefit for the factory owner-- when it's actually a net benefit for everyone.

She gets cause and effect backwards. Roads won't be built unless there's a reason for them.

Her Marxist colors are showing. I'm expecting her to start talking about the proletariat of the workers and how capitalism is a disease and how it's necessary for the workers to rise up against the bosses.

Little does she realize (or even care) that it's been tried before and it has never worked. It's even been tried here and failed. Does the UAW versus the Big Three provide enough of an example of how not to let "the workers" run the show? ("Workers" in this context refers to the union bosses who work very hard to maintain mediocrity among the rank and file union workers while demanding ever increasing wages and benefits far above what the workers are worth.) I'm not sure shouting her philosophy from the rooftops is going to be a winning strategy in her efforts to wrest away the Senate seat now held by Scott Brown.

We'll see how that's all going to work out for her. It seems the People's Republic of Massachusetts isn't as blue as it used to be, indicated by Scott Brown's election to the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy, and the growing failure of RomneyCare as it takes up even bigger chunks of the state budget while returning less and less care.