by Greg Krehbiel on 3 February 2012
That is apparently the lesson from the Komen story.
If you choose to give to a leftist cause, you have to keep doing it forever. If you ever stop giving to a leftist cause, the intolerant left will demagogue and cry and moan and say things about your questionable parentage until you repent in dust and ashes and do as your masters bid.
1 comment :: What do you think? :: 2012-02-03 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 3 February 2012
Saw this quote on the First Things blog today.
All of us are aware of the de-signification of everyday life that stands out as one of the apparent hallmarks of modernity.
It reminds me of Chance or the Dance by Thomas Howard, which is an excellent book that everybody ought to read.
To boil down Howard’s book to three sentences, there are two competing views.
In the first, everything signifies everything, we’re just not smart enough to see all the connections.
In the second, nothing signifies anything, it’s just happenstance.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-02-03 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 1 February 2012
HT Hispanic Pundit.
See The Optimal Capital Gains Tax Rate is Below Ten Percent
Obviously raising revenue isn’t our only goal in setting tax rates. If it were, we’d be taxing a lot more people.
But when we’re talking about the top 1%, is the goal (1) to get more money in the government coffers, (2) to keep them from becoming super-rich, (3) to satisfy our envy, (4) to be “fair,” or … what, exactly?
9 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-02-01 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 1 February 2012
This is an interesting article.
In this country, we regard the use of official power to oppress or intimidate private citizens as a despicable abuse of authority and entirely alien to our system of a government of laws.
But maybe only if you’re a Republican.
11 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-02-01 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 1 February 2012
My position on global warming is …
• the global temperature rises and falls for reasons we don’t fully understand,
• given that, it’s wrong to attribute any given change to human action, and
• it’s very unlikely that anything we could really do would change things much.
I take no position on which direction things are headed (warmer, cooler, or steady), and I think people who make such predictions are relying on models that are almost certainly not accurate.
With that introduction, I think this is an interesting article.
I realize that another article might come out tomorrow saying the exact opposite. I also realize that other climate scientists will angrily denounce what this article says.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-02-01 :: Greg Krehbiel
by John Krehbiel on 31 January 2012
You can agree or disagree. I really don’t care. But it’s not just me.
12 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-31 :: John Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 31 January 2012
I am getting very tired of living in one of the most liberal states in the country. The folks in Annapolis are spending lunatics, and I don’t want to support their wacky agenda with my tax dollars.
Unfortunately, moving out of Maryland isn’t a live option, for several reasons. So maybe I need to get involved in local politics. (Not really. I don’t think I would like it.)
We have a transportation fund, supported by a gasoline tax, that’s supposed to pay for roads and mass transit. Of course liberals don’t like to do fundamental functions of government like building roads because of concern over the environmental impact.
On top of the normal excess of spending in Annapolis, the economic problems have made things worse. The federal government has cut its transportation funding, threatens to cut more in the future, and O’Malley has raided the Maryland transportation fund to pay for other things.
Now they have to replenish that money. I’m not sure exactly why, since they probably aren’t going to build the roads we need anyway. But they want to increase the gasoline tax to refill the transportation coffers so that sometime down the road they can raid that fund to do something else.
O’Malley has proposed an absolutely absurd 6 percent tax on gasoline. See O’Malley’s gas-tax gambit
Some people promote gasoline taxes as a way to get people to use public transportation. Okay. I find that mildly annoying, but it’s not a completely unreasonable thing — if you have a good public transportation system.
I take public transportation now. (The MARC and the D.C. Metro.) But for most other things, there aren’t reasonable options.
It always seems to me that liberals are trying to ruin something today in hopes that it will build something better tomorrow.
For example, Obama wants to get rid of coal and replace it with solar, or wind, or whatever. I’m 100% behind the concept, but he’s approaching it entirely wrong. None of the replacement technologies exist at the scale required. Nor are they likely to in the near future. So it’s reckless and stupid to destroy the thing that works today in hopes of some untested thing we hope might work tomorrow.
I suspect O’Malley will trot out some similar justification for this gasoline tax. E.g., we need to increase the gasoline tax to wean ourselves off fossil fuels and make the world a lovely place where it rains rose petals and daisies.
One other thing. A gasoline tax is extremely regressive. I thought Democrats were supposed to try to help the poor.
5 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-31 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 30 January 2012
Catholics have been an important Democratic constituency for years, mostly because of the historic relationship between the church and the working class, who benefited greatly from the unions.
Democrats have been losing the Catholic vote because of abortion, and Obama’s moves on health care — specifically, not allowing a conscience exemption on abortion and contraception — are making it even worse.
See Crackup of the Catholic Left.
10 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-30 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 30 January 2012
Ron Paul made a short comment is one of the recent debates that the increasing disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the country is a consequence of currency manipulation. Does anybody know the theory behind this?
Here’s something that seems to take that view. The basic message is that “fiat money” (not tax rates) is the cause of the income disparity in the country.
12 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-30 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 28 January 2012
Obama is trying to make a political issue out of a comment from Warren Buffett that his secretary pays a higher percent tax than he does.
Does Buffett actually know this? Does Obama? Has anybody seen the returns? What about the whole “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts” thing?
It’s probably a safe bet that they have not, and that they’re just making this up.
Along these lines, see this post.
And where is the mainstream media in all this? (Answer: sitting in Obama’s lap, of course.)
The whole story is very fishy.
10 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-01-28 :: Greg Krehbiel
