Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s long been surmised that the Liberals dislike and distrust America and Americans. For last couple of decades they’ve developed an quasi-exilic philosophy when it comes to the nation they live within and people they reside among. It has always seemed that they seek government intervention because of their belief that Americans are inherently wrong or evil and that they can’t ever be trusted to do the right thing unless they are forced to do so.

Now we have some strong evidence that our surmisation was not too far off base.

A tax cut is non-targeted. If you put a tax cut into the hands of either a business of an individual today, there is no guarantee they’re gonna invest their money. There’s no guarantee they’re gonna invest their money in the United States. They’re free to go to invest anywhere that they want, if they choose to invest… The fact is, none of those people are guaranteed to invest that money in any of the new projects that we are… So government, yes government, has the ability to make a decision that the private sector won’t necessarily make today.

— Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)
Testimony Before the US Senate

Senator John Kerry, the Liberals poster boy now that John Edwards disgraced himself, eloquently summed up the Liberals’ view of Americans. They don’t trust us and believe that they’re right not to do so since we might not invest our money in their projects.

The Liberals – so perfectly personified by Sen. Kerry – find it impossible to believe that Americans would invest their money even remotely wisely, or even within the US it seems. They certainly seem sure that Americans would invest their money in the projects that the Liberals are developing and championing. In their minds, we must all be forced to fund their efforts – for the good of the nation of course.

One doesn’t have to wonder too much about why they feel this distrust towards Americans. The Liberals aren’t stupid; they know that many or most of those programs that they want wouldn’t receive voluntary investment because they don’t work. If people are allowed to retain the freedom to use their money as they see fit, most of the things that Kerry and the Liberals want to do would die off due to lack of funding. That is because capitalism and a free market only invests in projects that offer some chance of a return, whether it be monetary or ephemeral.

Make no bones about it; it’s Americans’ freedom that these Liberals despise. They do not believe that Americans can be trusted with their own freedom or money.

Liberal politicians and their followers rant about “failed policies and theories of the past,” but they seem to have no qualms about demanding that Americans accept, condone, and endorse policies and theories based upon State Socialism, which is a political-economic model that was proved to be a failure by both the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) and China’s (PRC) adoption of capitalistic economics.

It’s really no wonder that Sen. Kerry and the Liberals distrust Americans; they and us have very different views of America.

RSS Feed Changes

Due to Google acquiring Feedburner, I ended up migrating the RSS Feed for Reflections From A Murky Pond to the new feedburner.google.com system. If you were subscribed to the original feed, you’ll need to resubscribe to the new feed in order to keep getting updates in your reader.

Representatives John Conyers (D-MI) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) have once again introduced a Slavery Reparations bill into the US House of Representatives. In this incarnation, the foolishness is called House Resolution 40 (H.R. 40): Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.

Time and again a subset of Blacks in America demand hand-outs from America for the oppression that their ancestors – some of them at least – suffered, and time and again the Black Democrats that they elect to the US House of Representatives try to get those hand-outs for them.

They’re lookin’ for a handout
To get somethin’ free
Lookin’ for a handout
From you and me
And with the consent
Of the president
They’re gonna get their way

It’s probably best just to laugh this off as another rendition of the same old political posturing that America has seen from these sorts year after year and year since the 1960s. But, just because we’re laughing and not getting too worked up over these attempts as racialist extortion, doesn’t mean that we should ignore them and not keep tabs on these people.

Individuals like John Conyers and Bobby Scott bear watching, as do their co-conspirators, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) , and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL). They’re all cut from the same bitter, racist, White-hating, opportunistic cloth. They’re all looking for hand-out from the government and from the rest of us.

So get a bit of a chuckle out of their antics; it’s far better than getting angry at them as some have done. Anger just fuels their egos and incites them to keep doing things like H.R. 40. Laughter is best defense against their sort of thinly disguised thugs. But keep a weather eye on them, especially with our Liberal Congress…

There are a lot of people on the Left who reside within America who demand that we negotiate with Iran. Would someone care to explain to me why America should lower itself to talk with a government who does this:

Unknown Iranian Executions

Strangely the same group of people who want America to negotiate with a government who does this as a normal course of business under Shari’a law heaps derision upon Israel for defending itself against Hamas.

Sort of makes a thinking person wonder where their loyalties lie…

When one is attempting to do something that is beyond or outside of one’s ability to do, the responsible individual ask for- and listens to the opinions of the relevant Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Sadly, President Obama and his Liberal Democrats either foolishly think they’re competent to draft a Stimulus package, or have an agenda that has little or nothing to do with stimulating the American economy.

When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the agency charged with reporting economic data to Congress as well as commenting on budget proposals, files a report that describes the proposed economic stimulus legislation as being both irretrievably flawed and counterproductive to improving the US economy responsible an wise politicians and rethink what they’re attempting to do for – or to – America.

From the CBO’s Director, Douglas W. Elmendorf’s own blog:

In a letter sent today to Senators Grassley and Gregg, CBO analyzed the macroeconomic effects of an initial Senate version of the stimulus legislation (the Inouye-Baucus amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 1, which is the House stimulus bill). CBO estimates that the Senate legislation would raise output by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2009; by between 1.2 percent and 3.6 percent by the fourth quarter of 2010; and by between 0.4 percent and 1.2 percent by the fourth quarter of 2011. CBO estimates that the legislation would raise employment by 0.9 million to 2.5 million at the end of 2009; 1.3 million to 3.9 million at the end of 2010; and 0.6 million to 1.9 million at the end of 2011.

Those estimated effects are slightly greater than those of H.R. 1 (as introduced) in 2009 and 2010 (particularly in 2009), but lower in 2011, because more of the overall rise in spending and fall in revenues occurs in the first two years under the Senate legislation.

Most of the budgetary effects of the Senate legislation would occur over the next few years. Even if the fiscal stimulus persisted, however, the short-run effects on output that operate by increasing demand for goods and services would eventually fade away. In the long run, the economy produces close to its potential output on average, and that potential level is determined by the stock of productive capital, the supply of labor, and productivity. Short-run stimulative policies can affect long-run output by influencing those three factors, although such effects would generally be smaller than the short-run impact of those policies on demand.

In contrast to its positive near-term macroeconomic effects, the Senate legislation would reduce output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals. The principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in government debt.  To the extent that people hold their wealth in the form of government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased government debt would tend to “crowd out” private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy.

The negative effect of crowding out could be offset somewhat by a positive long-term effect on the economy of some provsions—such as funding for infrastructure spending, education programs, and investment incentives, which might increase economic output in the long run. CBO estimated that such provisions account for roughly one-quarter of the legislation’s budgetary cost. Including the effects of both crowding out of private investment (which would reduce output in the long run) and possibly productive government investment (which could increase output), CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net.

I think it safe to say that America can be assured that President Obama and Senate Democrats will either completely ignore that CBO Director’s warning, or flat-out deny it’s relevance or accuracy. I don’t believe that these Liberals are interested stimulating the American economy as much as they’re interested in funding various Liberal causes and sneaking Obama’s agenda through Congress without proper review and voting.