The Los Angeles chapter of Liberty on the Rocks will host its second event at Santa Monica’s Finn McCool’s on February 25th, from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
This event is for political junkies, wallflowers and dilettantes.
Please RSVP via our Facebook account.
Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Taxpayer Ballot on Fiscal Responsibility
This afternoon I received a very interesting survey that I initially mistook to be from the United States Federal Government. On the contrary, the survey is a joint effort of The Heritage Foundation and Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) office. As a recipient of the survey, I am to “represent taxpayer opinion” in my area “on the reckless spending in Washington that threatens to destroy our economic security.” So, no pressure.
According to an introductory letter, the survey was meant to serve as a “”wake-up call” to political leaders that they cannot ignore their responsibility to manage [our] tax dollars effectively… ESPECIALLY now that President Barack Obama, Big Labor, and the tax-and-spend special interests are pushing harder than ever for bigger government and more spending.”
Upset you weren’t one of the Heritage’s chosen representatives? Upset that you were, and dislike the questions as much as I? Wondering how to respond? Fear not! I’ve painstakingly typed up each question, and added a little commentary just for kicks.
(Official responses were limited to “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided”.)
1. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, annual federal spending has more than quintupled since 1965 and has more than doubled since 1980. In general, do you think that the Federal Government is spending too much money?
Cool. So they start you off with a softball. Even Alec Baldwin could probably agree that we’re spending too much (at least in sentiment).
2. Are you concerned that unchecked spending is getting worse now that liberals like President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are in power?
Name dropping. Automatic demerit.
3. The number of pork projects in the federal budget skyrocketed from under 1,600 in 1997 to more than 10,000 in 2009. Cost to taxpayers: $19 billion in 2009. So far this year Congress has approved some 10,000 earmarks–everything from bike paths to textile research. Does this level of pork-barrel spending meet your definition of fiscal responsibility?
Wait. Spending for 2009…who set that? Hint: it wasn’t that wily President Barack Obama….please don’t tell me you need another hint. No? Good. Mission Accomplished.
4. Thanks to pork projects and Big Government budgets, the federal government spent more than $33,000 per household–up more than $13,000 since 2001. Does this level of spending meet your definition of fiscal responsibility?
Hold the phone. What year of spending is up $13,000? 2009? 2010? At any rate, the statement proceeding the question is poorly worded (probably because the question is misleading…to where, I’m not sure).
5. Are you concerned that this wasteful government spending threatens our ability to reform and modernize truly important programs such as Social Security and Medicare?
(My initial response to this question was way too snarky, even for me. I just haven’t come up with a suitable substitute. Yet.)
6. To finance their spending hikes, Congress is piling up enormous deficits. The federal government is already facing a $1.8 trillion budget deficit. Do you believe such a large deficit is fiscally irresponsible?
Hmm…deficits are tricky.
7. Congress recently earmarked $4.5 million for research on how to use wood. Since 1985, taxpayers have forked over almost $100 million for this research. Do you approve of this use of your tax dollars?
No. But I can think of many other spending items I disapprove of more.
8. Recent spending bills approved by the liberals in Congress included $1.7 million for swine odor research and another $1.9 million for a landfill gas utilization plant. Do you approve of this use of your tax dollars?
Redundant question, redundant answer. See #7. Also, what “recent” spending bills have been approved by “conservatives”? Oh, right. (Say, that’s a familiar face. Ryan…Ryan…why does that ring a bell?)
9. Do you agree with Heritage and Rep. Paul Ryan that Congress should be required to vote on specific earmarks that are placed into the federal budget, and that sponsors of an earmark should have to defend the merits of their spending proposals?
“Specific earmarks.” I love a good loophole.
10Â Heritage is working to highlight specific proposals for stopping the waste of your tax dollars, and to target specific pork projects that should be eliminated. Does this plan meet your definition of fiscal responsibility?
So some pork is good for you, just not all pork? Which begs the question: whose pork?
11. Heritage is emphasizing the need to end taxpayer-funded corporate welfare that subsidizes CEOs and large corporations at the expense of families, seniors and workers. Eliminating corporate welfare should save taxpayers some $60 billion each year. Does this plan meet your definition of fiscal responsibility?
I think this might actually be the most insulting question, yet (”families, seniors and workers”…oh my). Why not ask about an end to corporatism, period?
12. Heritage is highlighting the costly repetition in the federal budget, which features 342 separate economic development programs, 130 programs serving the disabled and 130 programs targeting at-risk youth. The Heritage plan to consolidate these programs would save taxpayers billions and do a better job of solving the problems these programs are supposed to address. Does such a plan meet your definition of fiscal responsibility?
Well? Does it?!
Anyway, that’s the survey. How would you have responded?
Hopefully some time next week, I’ll do a quick run-down of some of the great things Heritage has done during its existence; for the time being, though, this exercise in civic duty was a disappointment.
[Shades of the survey can be found in this article from March of 2009. --Ed. Note]
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We’re the TSA…
…here to save you from confused passengers and toddlers.
From the good folks at ReasonTV. Happy Friday, everyone!
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Free labor, free men, free land–since when?
In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, Hoover Institute research fellow Michael Petrilli argues that the Republican party is due for a critical rebranding and change of heart when it comes to how it views predominantly progressive platforms. Why? For the simple reason that the American electorate is becoming increasingly more educated, and educated voters tend to attach themselves to issues on their way to racking up degrees.
“A more enlightened approach,” Petrilli scolds Repubs, “would be to go after college-educated voters, to make the GOP safe for smarties again.”
But a rebooted wooing of the electorate can only happen if GOP leadership itself rekindles its interest in any number of its founding principles (an embrace of high tariffs aside), and then applies them to progressive issues.
Petrilli is correct when he posits the following:
There’s no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.
Unfortunately, that paragraph begins with this line:
“What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion.”
This is a silly thing to say. Not even (elected) Republicans view big government with great suspicion anymore. Recent attempts at halting odious legislation have been painfully childish, and there has been very little to celebrate about the party for many years now.
Additionally (and something Petrilli neglects to address), if the Republicans are to become worthy of receiving independent and libertarian votes, they must resist playing the morality card. The party may have been established by anti-slavery activists, but its moral battles since have hardly had the same national urgency. Instead, over the past few decades, the GOP has gladly courted the affections of the (once) “moral majority”, instigated the asinine and costly war against drugs, and as late as 2008 nominated a God-fearing woman for the office of vice president chiefly because she appealed to that most holy of American ideals (or maybe it’s just a swagger?):Â if I can do it–gee whiz! so can you!
Regrettably, the current crop of Republican politicians lacks fidelity to the values they repeatedly shill to the American public, making them traitors and hypocrites–hardly the trustworthy and culturally responsive party that Petrilli tacitly implies exists (or at the very least, could).
So what’s in store for the GOP in this fresh, tabula Bush rasa decade? Petrilli argues that recent victories in Virginia and New Jersey are indicators of good things (two middling wins pass for a success-streak, these days) to come if Republicans continue to advocate sound economic policy, instead of melding their minds, campaigns, and legislation to the non-progressive, anti-intellectual crowd (which is ironic, considering how much that sector of voters esteems our founding generation, apparently unaware that the Founders themselves were the original elite “East Coast intellectuals”). This is a fair assessment, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Instead, Republican leaders should start adhering to their initial platform (extremely big-tentish, if you think about it) and resist the urge to lure hopeful, young, idealistic, Whole Foods-loving-small-government-embracing intellectual voters until their own house has been rid of platform-perversion. An issue-centric electorate shouldn’t be anathema to the Republican party; however, the party has managed to make itself anathema to the political process on the whole, so why should we give them our votes in good faith?
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Hollywood’s historian
Howard Zinn’s History Channel produced documentary, The People Speak, has come and gone; in its wake, I have been fumbling around with the appropriate words to express both my discouragement and my delight that this piece of revisionist history–revisionist in the sense that historical background, as Zinn describes it, is markedly flawed by neglecting to provide any reasonable, factual context for the idea of America, let alone its founding and subsequent existence–consumed two hours of HC time that would have otherwise been devoted to more important matters. Like Nostradamus’ alleged prescience regarding the Anti-Christ, who really was Jack the Ripper? (Francis Tumblety, says the latest HC piece), and the ever-lost Atlantis.
First, my delight: people care about history. There is interest–perhaps not abundant, but at least substantial– in knowing the story of our species. Hollywood figures, who like to attach themselves to causes, invested their time and talents in it. This is (not to sound too Peggy Noonish) good. As a nation, our best creatives should care about knowing who we are and where we came from, and why our republic works the way it does, for they are especially equipped to spread gospel.
But Zinn’s is an incomplete gospel, at best, and a false one at worst. And it begins with some slick sophistry: Zinn’s real ”people”–his very own “real America” if you will–are not the Washingtons and the Nathaniel Greens, the Jeffersons or the Madisons, or the many who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their honor to secure this nation from the hands of the greatest imperial power of its time. Zinn’s America seems to be comprised of malcontents (some supremely justified) and radicals, evangelicals of a decidedly un-natural rights and natural law persuasion.
The way Zinn sees things, all life comes down to one thing: the have and the have-nots. And certainly there is some truth to that historical thesis. But where Zinn succeeds in drawing apathy for “the average Joe”, he does a great disservice to our nation’s history by neglecting to celebrate the triumph that is our republican form of government, rooted in the successes (and mindful of the failures) of the best Western Civilization has to offer. I pity Zinn for his disregard, and apparent contempt, for Rome and Greece, Edmund Burke, John Locke, The Federalist Papers, Washington’s Second Farewell Address, and the many other pillars of truth, justice, and liberty on which our grand nation was founded upon.
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Meeting adjourned
A big thank you to everyone who attended our first event, and special thanks to the guys at Prometheus for showing us their DIY Democracy (pending) iPhone app! For those of you in attendance, please don’t hesitate to email (or take to the comments section) me (hubbard@libertyontherocks.org) with any suggestions you have on how to make our chapter better and more accessible.
For those unable to attend, we hope to see you at our sometime-in-December event!
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And the wall came tumbling down
I had wanted to post something about the fall of the Berlin Wall in a timely fashion. My intentions, though, as they are wont, remained just that. The clock struck midnight–twice–and there was no post to be had.
However, as I prepare for our first event, I’ve reflected on the historical events that inspired me to start the first (of hopefully many) LA chapter of Liberty on the Rocks. For me, nothing compares to that awesome triumph. (The Gulf War, the Clinton years, 9/11, the Bush Administration, all register on a different level.)
The picture shown is that of West Berliners hacking through the Wall, helping destroy the Communist subjugation of their brethren in the East. Certainly, the Eastern side of the Wall was similarly attacked, as many rushed to leave–or at the very least, take a peak at the other side. But it is a bizarre thing to hear East Berliners speak as though they weren’t so sure about the whole affair. Like caged animals, they didn’t quite grasp that the hinge upon which their entrapment relied was being sprung. In West Berlin, you could rent a hammer and have a go at the Wall. For many in the East, it remained 1961.
Perhaps the strange dichotomy of West/East psyche was best described by everyone’s (okay, mine) favorite French oracle, Alexis de Tocqueville, who in the final pages of his Democracy in America, had the following to say about the two ideologies that would contend for the hearts and minds of those living in the 20th Century:
There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.
Both have grown in obscurity, and while the world’s attention was occupied elsewhere, they have suddenly taken their place among the leading nations, making the world take note of their birth and of their greatness almost at the same instant.
All other peoples seem to have nearly reached their natural limits and to need nothing but to preserve them; but these two are growing. All the others have halted or advanced only through great exertions; they alone march easily and quickly forward along a path whose end no eye can yet see.
The American fights against natural obstacles; the Russian is at grips with men. The former combats the wilderness and barbarism; the latter, civilization with all its arms. America’s conquests are made with the plowshare, Russia’s with the sword.
To attain their aims, the former relies on personal interest and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.
The latter in a sense concentrates the whole power of society in one man.
One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude.
Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
In politics, it’s easy to be distracted by scandal, policy debate, elections… more scandal…that we lose sight of why we even bother to care in the first place. But at the end of the day, what motivates our political opinions and activism has everything to do with our worldview. What do we fight for, and why do we let certain issues consume us? What does it say about humanity that an entire century came down to two fantastically distinct interpretations of life?
Liberty on the Rocks is about recognizing truth. It’s about connecting individuals with a passion for liberty and freedom to local organizations that tirelessly work for those two things to prevail in the human heart. In the spirit of November 9, 1989, we hope you will join us.
Further Reading
I highly recommend that you drop by Gaper’s Block for a great interview with someone who experienced life in Communist Poland, and immigrated to America.
Events
Visit the Wende Museum’s Wall Project in Culver City until November 14th for a look at the largest section of the Wall to ever leave Berlin.
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Join us for our first event!
On Wednesday, November 11th, the Los Angeles chapter of Liberty on the Rocks will host its first event. We are proud to announce that Matt Harrison of The Prometheus Institute will be our first guest speaker. If you’re interested in sharing a few drinks (or even a meal) with other Liberty lovers, or are curious to hear what we’re all about, we hope you’ll join us.
Where: Hudson House; 514 North Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach
Time: 7:30
RSVP via Email: hubbard@libertyontherocks.org
Also, be sure to “friend” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
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Honor thy father
Thought for the day:
Have we really lost confidence in our ability to govern ourselves through the ballot box? What fools our fathers were if this be true.–Daniel Hannan, MEP
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Hulu goes PPV in 2010
Correction: Looks like the NewsCorp official spoke too soon. Also, with our first correction, we have officially joined the blogosphere.
