Promising candidate from Florida

This is an interesting candidate who apparently is running away from the Democrat Party in Florida while running for Congress from a southern Florida district.

Tax and fiscal policies -- how they intersect

 Jonathan Chiat, a reliable liberal shilll for higher taxes and more government,  and Nick Gillespie, libertarian editor of Reason Magazine, engage in a debate below that is at the crux of the political dilemma we face in this country at this time.  Liberals want to tax the high income producers in the economy much more and have a larger "benevolent" government redistribute this wealth in order to have a more "fair" society, or whatever, while the conservatives want to lower taxes and keep government out of the picture as much as possible, in order foster a dynamic entrepreneurially driven economy that produces wealth and jobs aplenty.  Who's right and who's wrong in this argument?  From my perspective the conservative view, or in this case libertarian, prevails.  Not only does big government stifle innovation with all the rules and regulations it imposes to control business, but it also saps individual initiative and personal responsibility which are character building traits necessary for survival.  Socialism has failed all around the world where ever it has been tried, and failed miserably at that.  Why do certain types, like Jonathan Chiat, Barack Obama, et al keep wanting to come back to this failed models is an enigma to most people who have real world experience in business.  Below is the crux of this argument as it appears in Gillespie's blog::

Even more Chait:

Inflation, population growth, and a growing economy all impact the value of a given dollar sum of taxation of spending. Pointing out that the nominal size of government is growing is a nice tactic to use for the Rush Limbaugh audience. Any remotely serious economist looks at revenue and spending as a proportion of the economy.

Hey, I want to be remotely serious too! There's no question that looking at revenue and outlays as a percentage of GDP is an important measure, which is one of the reasons why I do it all the time, such as in this post. Here's how revenue as a percentage of GDP fared in the '00s (and I'm including 2001 as a sop to Chait):

2001	10286.2	19.36	a
2002	10642.3	17.42	a
2003	11142.1	16.00	a
2004	11867.8	15.84	a
2005	12638.4	17.04	a
2006	13398.9	17.97	a
2007	14077.6	18.24	a
2008	14441.4	17.48	a
2009	14258.2	14.76	a

That comes to an average of about 17 percent, a point lower than that the post-war historical average of about 18 percent.

And what about spending as percentage of GDP over the same period?

2001	10286.2	18.11	a
2002	10642.3	18.90	a
2003	11142.1	19.39	a
2004	11867.8	19.32	a
2005	12638.4	19.56	a
2006	13398.9	19.82	a
2007	14077.6	19.38	a
2008	14441.4	20.65	a
2009	14258.2	24.67	a

Average federal spending was about 20 percent, or about 3 percentage points higher than revenue.When you look at these figures, it becomes pretty obvious where the deficits come from: From spending more money than the amount coming in.

To the right is a graph that spells out the mismatch. Do you need to be a remotely serious economist to get the picture? And as AOL News' John Merline points out in the story accompanying that graph, good luck goosing revenue higher than 18 percent. It happens from time to time (in fact, it did so under Bill Clinton, who also increased total spending a relatively measly 11 percent over eight years), but it is the exception to the rule.

But more importantly - and directly to Chait's churlish dismissal that year-over-year amounts don't count for shit - I want to make the point that simply discussing amounts as percentages of GDP misses a huge amount of information. There is absolutely no reason to assume that government revenue or spending can or should stay equal as a percentage of GDP forever and ever. Various defense hawks argue, for instance, that defense spending should always be 4 percent of the federal budget. Why? Because they say so. That's as unconvincing an argument as saying that if you make $10,000 a year and food is 20 percent of your budget, it should still be 20 percent of your budget when you make $100,000. There is an exhaustible limit of how much a family or a country should spend on various goods and services. Is there any reason why Medicare should always be a set percentage of the budget? Or education? Or AmeriCorps? Or abstinence-only sex ed programs? Or anything? The short answer is no, of course not. Unless, of course, you're trying to bias the discussion toward the status quo.

Chait winds up with:

There's just a lot of vaguely anti-government, anti-Obama hand-waving, culminating in the conclusion that we should stop blaming the Bush tax cuts for contributing to the deficit. It's a telling portrait of how your tertiary anti-government type goes about deciding to sign up for Team Tax Cuts.

I am not sure if being called a "tertiary anti-government type" is more or less of an insult than being called a "conservative dupe." Given that in the past I've been called everything from an "apologist for stupefaction" to "a gay Elvis impersonator" to "the free-market Fonzie" to "a dishonest whore for the wealthy" (this last treat coming from an emailer who had just glossed Chait's post), I take insults and compliments where I find them.

Sure, I'm anti-Obama. Every bit as much as I was anti-Bush. But that's really neither here nor there when it comes to looking at how Bush spent our way to the poorhouse. It's Bush's spending policies - recall that he increased inflation-adjusted outlays by 104 percent! - that were his major contribution to deficits, not his tax cuts. While I'm not a member of "Team Tax Cuts" (whatever that is), I do like the idea of people keeping more of their own money.

After all, it is their money and I'm betting they can put it to better use than Tim Geithner or Hank Paulson. Or Gen. Petraeus for that matter. I'm foolish enough to think that government can and should live within its means, which does qualify as a tertiary position since neither the Democrats nor the Republicans (or their handmaiden journalists) seem to agree.

What"s with Obama and the Declaration of Independence

Recently, in a speech before a Latino advocacy group in Washington, Obama quoted from the Declaration of Independence saying :"...all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights...".  But what does the Declaration actually say here: "'...all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights..."'.  Big difference, no?  It most certainly is a big difference for if these rights are not endowed by our Creator, just exactly who does endow these rights.  Most certainly Obama left those words out because he does not believe these unalienable rights come from the Creator but from the government,  a standard Liberal position and the very reason libs do not take the promises of the Declaration and the Constitution seriously.  It is bedrock belief of Liberals that man makes up these rights and man disposes them, it is a core belief and allows them to continually find new rights, such as abortion rights, single sex marriage rights, the right to a good paying job, the right to a comfortable home, and the right to health care paid for by someone else, among a few of their positions that have bankrupted this country and all the other developed countries in the world.  Given their druthers, libs would scrap the Constitution and fob off on the people whatever they, in their infinite wisdom, thought was appropriate at any given point in time.  Not the way the Founding Fathers envisioned America was to be governed and certainly not the way these founders saw the freedoms of the individuals were to be protected.  In this one speech, Obama has shown us exactly what he and his lib friends believe, and has told those of us who believe in the principles laid out in the Declaration and Constitution why we must get these people out of power and out of our lives once and for all.  This is a matter of great urgency which it appears more and more people have come to recognize.  This speech is here and the relevant comment occurs about the 22d minute point, near the end of an otherwise typically boring demagogic speech by a typical lib sucking up to one of the typical "identity politics" mindless constituent groups they depend on for votes.  Finally, here's another link to a commentary on this issue.  It appears our very own Constitutional Law professor President has a rather narrow view of the rights of American citizens.

Added:  The following is from an article in the WSJ by Ronald Pestritto, a professor at Hillsdale College.  It seems clear from this passage that Obama is squarely in the Wilsonian progressive camp at the very least, in keeping, by the way, with many academics.

Other leading progressives such as Frank J. Goodnow, the president of Johns Hopkins University, noted approvingly (in a 1916 lecture) that in Europe, unlike in America, the rights an individual possesses "are, it is believed, conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action."

Fine art online -- NYT website

This is the online NYT website for purchasing prints of various paintings on many different subjects.

Kangen water

Here is a site that challenges the claims of Kangen water enthusiasts as well as the apparently dozens of other water mystics out there whose machines, et al, provide a transformation of water into a cure-all product.  What's interesting here is that the author of this site, a chemist, is unaware of the book Dr. Jhon, now deceased since 2004, wrote about the subject of hexagonal structure (the essence of the Kangen water claims) and it's curative effects.  Having read the book myself, it is clear that Dr Jhon has reservations about the "science" at least in the sense it's not yet proven, but still comes down hard on the side of the studies to date (meaning I suppose as of his death in 2004) that seem to indicate curative effects for the hexagonally structured water.  Also it appears that Kangen water is now being used in clinics and hospitals, at least in Asian countries, because of it's antibacterial properties, or such.  All in all there is more to learn about the value of the water as a curative or preventive curative before pluncking down mega bucks for the machine that makes it. However, on the evidence and facts so far available, it would appear there is definitely something to the beneficial "claims" of the proponents of this water.  There may be no way to know for sure until long term controlled studies are conducted on those who use the water on a daily basis for many years.  In the meantime if the use of Kangen water does nothing more than to make people understand the value of drinking more water than they do currently, that is in and of itself a likely benefit to general well-being, it being generally agreed most people do not drink enough water than they should.

Balancing the budget

In this post from the Powerline boys the fault lines in the argument about how to get control of the budget are on display.  It is obvious that the dems want balance the budget by raising taxes on everyone, especially the wealthy, while the repubs want to cut spending.  Nothing will happen until the repubs get control of the spending machine in the Congress.

Ground Zero Mosque

There is much discussion about whether Imam Rauf and his co-sponsors of the GZM are sincere, moderate and well meaning muslims or sympathizers with the Islamists in Iran and elsewhere who want to bring down the West and establish a new caliphate here in the USA.  Here is evidence that every pro Rauf liberal should study and take to heart. While the Imam comes off as an urbane, sophisticated, nuanced promoter of world peace and harmony, a little digging like that done in this post suggests otherwise.  One is struck by the similarity between the communist and Islamist approach to politics and establishing their hegemony.  Both movements condone lying and deception as a legitimate means to the end of establishing their way of life and power.  In the Muslim tradition this is called al-Taqiyya.