Quote of the Day–11/15/2012

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.

Cicero, 55 BC 


[So, what’s changed in the last 2067 years that some how makes this republic exempt?

My mom emailed this to me after the previous post on the budget.

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance."

She added the comment we have learned nothing in the last 2067 years.  She’s right.  Those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it.  The problem is though is you have a large segment of the population getting free stuff from the government.  They don’t want that to stop until every last drop is sucked out.

Get ready folks because the fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t exactly a fun ride.  -B  ]

Who Needs A Budget?

Apparently Congress doesn’t need one says Patty Murray…

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) confirmed Thursday that she will seek the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee next year but told The Hill that she cannot commit to doing a budget.

This opens up the possibility that Senate Democrats will avoiding passing a budget resolution for the fourth year in a row.

Why doesn’t everyone just give up operating within a budget.  Since government doesn’t need to, why should I?  Hell the government can increase their debt limit too!  The credit agencies should just allow me to borrow as much money as I want.  If it isn’t a problem for the government why is it a problem if I do it?

Seriously, someone answer the question.  How is it OK for the government to keep writing check, using my name I might add for part of the bill, but they don’t need to have a budge to live within.  Not only do they not have a budget, but when they run out of money they just borrow more.

Most people I know are tightening their belts.  It appears Washington has decided to go Robb Allen and ditch the pants and belt.  Obviously they missed the part where Robb doesn’t do debt which is why he doesn’t need a belt.

Typical of Government…

Spend money in droves to solve a problem when they could be making money instead.  What am I talking about?

Killing seven members of a wolf pack that repeatedly attacked a Northeast Washington rancher’s cattle cost about $76,500, according to preliminary state figures.

You cannot obtain wolf tags within the state of Washington.  Not even depredation tags which would allow the wolves to be taken as they’re a problem to live stock.  Think about that for a second, instead of allowing the public to hunt, control, and otherwise reign in this problem, the state spends almost a half million dollars a year on the problem.

The best part is they aren’t even really maintaining the status quo, overall they’re loosing and the problem is getting worse.

Idaho finally got the right idea and made tags dirt cheap because odds are you won’t see a wolf, they’re too damn smart, but if you do see one, shoot the bastard!  As usual animal rights activists I’m sure will end up in an uproar because they live in places like LA or Seattle where they don’t get to experience the problem first hand.  If we could relocate the wolves so the animal lovers could live with the problem I’d be in full support.

As an FYI my buddies who went elk hunting in Idaho this year informed me the hunts were a total bust.  Why?  Wolf tracks were on the tail of any elk tracks they found.  The packs are out of control and decimating wildlife.  Remember though, according to the animal rights folks, all will work itself out.  Never mind there is no other predator to hunt the wolf, I guess their solution is the extinction of the elk and deer herds.

Lets not forget increasing the state deficit in Washington by having to pay farmers for damaged stock and then the state trying to hunt them down.  Know what’s easier?  Hunters will pay you for the opportunity.  Hell I would go out of my way a few times to go wolf hunting.

Interesting…

President Barack Obama isn’t talking about it and neither is Mitt Romney. But come January, 163 million workers can expect to feel the pinch of a big tax increase regardless of who wins the election.

I’ve heard about this for a while and it’s certainly not news that taxes will be increasing come January.  What is interesting though is that number, 163 million workers.  Otherwise known as 51% of the population.  It is also well-known that 47% of the population are exempted from paying taxes.  Often many of them actually make money from the government.

We often hear about the 53% percent who pay taxes and the 47% who live off the government dime.  What is even more entertaining is that often when there are tax cuts we hear wailing about how it only benefits the rich.  See this analogy if you’re unsure what I’m talking about.  While now we have a tax increase that only affects those now paying taxes.  Those who are getting handouts will continue to do so without an increase in what they owe.

You would think with a tax increase you would see more people overall having to pay taxes, this outcome is something I find quite interesting.

Adventures in Venture Capitalism

It’s been known for a while that green-energy is suspect and has serious issues.  Yet our fearless leader has shoved more money at failed projects that most could comprehend.  If this man ran a venture capitalist firm his clients would have left long ago because he was driving them to be broke.

What exactly am I talking about, well here’s a list of companies that have failed that received funding from Obama.

  1. Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($69 million)*
  5. AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)
  6. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  7. SunPower ($1.5 billion)
  8. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  9. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  10. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  11. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  12. National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
  13. Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
  14. Abound Solar ($374 million)*
  15. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  16. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)
  17. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  18. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
  19. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  20. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  21. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  22. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  23. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  24. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  25. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  26. Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
  27. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  28. LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*
  29. UniSolar ($100 million)*
  30. Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*
  31. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  32. Vestas ($50 million)
  33. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)
  34. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  35. Navistar ($10 million)
  36. Satcon ($3 million)*

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

Total waste?  $8.108 Billion dollars.  Yes that’s billion with a B.  People keep insisting that to fix the budget problem we need to make massive cuts to the big pieces of the pie.  What people don’t seem to understand is that the biggest pieces are all the small tiny pieces added together.

Look at all that money that’s been wasted.  Debt that has now been laid upon our children and working class.  For what?  So that some donors to the Obama administration can go buy a new vacation house?  So that some leftist can feel good about his view on the environment and forcing others to pay for his moral views?

Seriously, why is anyone even thinking about continuing to vote for a man who so willingly and blatantly has been robbing the American public blind.  Not only is he robbing them but selling your children into slavery.  There is no such thing as a free lunch yet everyone seems to think they’re getting one.

That stimulus so heavily lobbied for has $80 billion in politically tied energy projects.  Yet we see how those projects actually worked, not to mention how it actually delayed existing projects.  Over 1900 investigations have begun to look into waste, further costs to the American tax payer.

To put this into even greater perspective, 10% of the funding for energy projects provided by the stimulus is nothing but waste.  That’s to a cost $25.82 per every man, woman and child, just in waste.  If you just count the tax payers, it’s an extra $70.81 in cost.  If you don’t believe me, do the math yourself.  Here’s where I got the numbers for population and taxpayers.  To take it further we have another 6 trillion in debt overall, that comes out to be another $51,000 dollars for every man, woman, and child.  The overall debt burden in this country is enough for most people to buy a house, again, every man, woman, and child, even babies.

Lets look at the issue in another way focusing on spending during 2012 overall:

Under Obama, for every $7 we’ve had, we’ve spent nearly $11 (or, to be more exact, $10.95).  That’s like a family that makes $70,000 a year — and is already knee-deep in debt — blowing nearly $110,000 a year.

Joe also put it really well a while ago before we ended up even further in this hole:

If your family income were $50,000 then:

Now that has brought the spending problem into a better perspective, let me ask, why is the out of control spending and economy not at the fore front of the presidential race?  I hope all of you who continue to not see a problem with this reckless spending and endless growth of government are happy selling your soul and children’s soul into slavery.  Because you honestly have no business writing checks your ass can’t cash and putting your kids name or my name on it.  Period.

Quote of the Day – Stephen Moore (10/17/2012)

For well more than one of every three Americans, April 15th isn’t tax payment day, it’s payday from Uncle Sam.

Stephen Moore – Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
October 9th, 2012


[It is deeply disturbing that 40% of income earners didn’t pay income taxes but instead received payments.  I keep hearing people use the term “fair share” and well as I used all so often lately:

What is fair about one group of people paying out taxes while another group collects a part of them for themselves?  Fair would be a flat tax, hell a flat income tax would even be a better start than what we have now. -B]

Ear Worm Wednesday – 10/3/2012

Trapt-Stand Up

When a bunch of us finally stand up, it’s going to be ugly, nasty, and at a minimum it will look like Atlas shrugging.  I’m tired of supporting people like this (just watch the video below, it’s got a response tied to it I fully agree with).

So if the government will buy me a phone, why am I working to pay for my own phone and service? Seriously where do we draw the line?  I am staring at the fact that my tax burden is about to increase by enough that I’ll be making the same I did last year after Uncle Sam is done with me.

You read that right, I get promoted and a raise and my Uncle Sam comes along and say’s, “You don’t need that, this woman over here needs an ‘Obama Phone’.”  All I have to say is vote out the incumbents; every last one of the corrupt little turds, even if you don’t think they’re a problem.

Pardon me while I go off and do something else before this becomes a full-fledged rant.

Good for this small business owner!

A Virginia business owner refused a Vice President Joe Biden campaign visit at his three month old bakery on Wednesday because of President Barack Obama’s recent “you didn’t build that” comments.

If I lived within a day’s driving distance round trip I would be patronizing your establishment as soon as possible.  Instead I hope that some of my friends who live in Virginia can pay you a visit in my stead. I applaud you for standing up for yourself and not taking the cowards way out for cheap press and letting your convictions slide.

Though I will say you’re probably getting considerably more press and coverage by telling them no, than you would have by accepting their patronage.

Now some have claimed that Obama was merely talking about infrastructure, except lets look at exactly what he said (emphasis mine):

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said last month. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.”

If I have a business, I didn’t build that.  Someone else made that happen.  In the words of Samuel L. Jackson:

He said, plain as day, “if I have a business I didn’t build that, someone else did”.  But lets humor them for a second and say it just applied to “infrastructure”.

It wasn’t the government that built the roads, no, it was small independent contractors, aka small businesses that built that.  They were paid from money collected by the federal government.  That money was collected from businesses and their employees.  They made that money by selling goods and services to other people.  So really small businesses through inter-cooperation built roads and infrastructure with the government getting involved to take a cut of the costs.

So maybe what Obama was actually talking about was money.  You see government prints the money and since it’s no longer standardized on anything they can print as much as they want.  So it was the government that built a fiat currency to use to buy all this stuff and in the end screw businesses by devaluing the currency used for transactions.  That is the only way that “If you have a business, you didn’t build that” can possibly make any sense.  That statement can only hold true if you say that government is the creator and founder of using money in exchange for goods and services.  Except you need not only use cash, you can barter or use precious metals in transactions as well.

The bottom line is the President let us look under the veil on that one.  Under that veil we saw what many of us already knew, a hard-core socialist that wants to drive private independent businesses into the ground and have a central government-run it all.  Because in that case no one would build that, it would all be “owned” by the government.  No thanks Mr. President, keep the change.