what if?

Charles Koch Speaks Out

Some people seem to believe that the Koch brothers are evil personified.  Call me crazy - but - all this makes a lot of sense to me.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers—not governments—to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

Recent studies show that the poorest 10% of the population living in countries with the greatest economic freedom have 10 times the per capita income of the poorest citizens in countries with the least economic freedom. In other words, society as a whole benefits from greater economic freedom.

Even though it affects our business, as a matter of principle our company has been outspoken in defense of economic freedom. This country would be much better off if every company would do the same. Instead, we see far too many businesses that paint their tails white and run with the antelope.

I am confident that businesses like ours will hire more people and invest in more equipment when our country's financial future looks more promising. Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.

Of Truck Drivers and Teachers

Victor Davis Hanson examines the life of a teacher - and other professions.

My purpose in relating the divide is not to suggest that the brutality of farming bears much resemblance to the private-sector office or that a university professorship is at all comparable to the much more arduous duties of an inner-city middle- or high-school teacher. But all that said, I think that we forget how fortunate teachers are in the 21st century, in terms of compensation, hours spent at work, and the general absence of physical danger, at least in comparison to the lineman, the garbage collector, or the interstate trucker. I have met hundreds of teachers who have had only one steady job: teaching. I have seldom met a land-leveler, company field man, or tractor mechanic who had not worked at a half-dozen jobs over his career — and rarely by choice.

A Step Toward Anarchy

If you do not follow the rules of our nation when you lose, the consequences will be poor.  Nolan Finley of the Detroit News explains.

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.



The Round-Up

Since I first learned how to read - I have loved to read.  Thus, the Internet is a blessing - and a curse - for me.  Virtually unlimited offerings are available to keep my brain occupied day and night; that is the blessing and the curse!  Frequently, I will find something that I wish to post on the blog.  But, I won't have the time to do it as I am reading.  Then, I'll email the particular item to myself, with plans to blog later.

Oddly enough, however, it is often the items that are most intriguing, important and deep that get this treatment.  As a result, my in-box begins to gain more and more emails with issues and columns I really wanted to share - yet do not. 

So.... this morning I am going to list them, with little commentary.  Just know that I think reading them is worth your while.  A blessing or a curse?  You decide :)

The Big 4-0

My beautiful, talented, exceptionally smart and charming niece recently turned 40.  Jenny had her birthday blast with 40-something buddies a couple of weeks ago.  Today was our turn.  Fun lunch, talking - and of course, a few photos.

 
 
 
I'm so lucky to have her.  Hope I am around for her big 5-0, 6-0 - and so forth!  Happy birthday, Jen! 

The Silence of the Press

Is deafening.

Over the past several days, the liberal demonstrations in Wisconsin (bolstered by the national Democratic Party and President Obama's Organizing for America group) have included signs just as inflammatory as the ones that bothered the networks during the health care debate, including several showing Governor Scott Walker as Adolph Hitler. Others have likened Walker to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ("Scott Stalin") and recently deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak ("Walker = Mubarak").

Another protest sign drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker's head, with the caption "Don't Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker" — an obvious parallel to a Facebook map posted by Sarah Palin last year, although that much-criticized graphic placed the target sights on maps of congressional districts, not any politician's face.

Yet none of these signs in the hands of liberal protesters have drawn the slightest complaint from network journalists. MRC analysts examined all 53 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories, segments and anchor briefs on the Wisconsin protests from Thursday, February 17 (when they first drew major national coverage) through Monday, February 21. While eight of the 53 stories (15%) visually displayed one or more of the signs described above, none elicited a single remark from the network correspondents.

Instead, network journalists actually suggested the "Walker = Mubarak" theme of some of the more inflammatory signs. On Sunday's This Week, for example, ABC's Christiane Amanpour linked Wisconsin to the uprisings against oppressive dictatorships: "Populist frustration is boiling over this week, as we've said, not just in the Middle East, but in the middle of this country as well." So did NBC's Brian Williams on Friday's Nightly News: "From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens' uprisings are changing the world." NBC's on-screen caption: "The Uprising at Home."

When it comes to the Tea Party, network correspondents seem to enjoy playing "civility cop," emphasizing a few radical and inflammatory signs in ways that imply that the entire cause is extreme. Radical and inflammatory signs were easily found at the Wisconsin protests, but the networks uttered not one peep of disapproval — overwhelming evidence of a double standard that should embarrass any network journalist who still purports to be fair and balanced.

The Integrity of Voter ID

Want to cash a check?  Or get on a plane or purchase a cell phone or open a bank account or become a homeowner or buy or receive a number of other products and/or services?  Then you need ID.  Why should our very precious and dear right to vote be any less protected?

According to some on the left, voter ID is wrong.  They maintain that it strips the right of many poor and minorities to be able to vote.  But - is this really the case?  According to the hard data and court cases:  no.

Have a Heart

My good buddy and fellow Realtor Christopher Fountain failed to blog for a few days.  As it turns out, he has a scary but excellent reason for not doing so:  Christopher was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack!!

This real estate market is enough to make even the hardiest of us keel over.  Nevertheless, we are heartened to hear that Chris is home - and - we wish him a very speedy and successful recovery!

Feeling Your Oats

Do you like oatmeal?  I love it!  And - my preference is the grittier the better.  Steel cut, full of fiber and crunchy...  low fat, super inexpensive.  Perfect for any meal of the day, as far as I am concerned.

Of course, companies love to mess with a good thing.  So, we find oatmeal in little packets with mystery ingredients, oatmeal chopped to a pulp so some of its healthy features are destroyed - and - not surprisingly, fast food companies like McDonald's offering one of my favorite grains with a host of artificial additives, sugars and the like.  Thanks - but no thanks.  I'm such a purist, if "quick oats" are my only option, then I opt for something else.

But.

As far as I can determine, no one puts a gun to our heads to force us to go into the drive through and choose Oatmeal With Additives instead of the stuff you can purchase out of a bin in the grocery store.  Thus, this screed from Mark Bittman at the NYTimes seems yet another yowl from the nanny state.

Bridge Advertising!

What a great idea; stimulus taxpayer funded ads against obesity!  I mean, surely there must be some folks out there who don't know it is not wise to be obese - right... right?

So far, the initiative has doled out grants to 31 states and cities, including the District of Columbia. New York City got one of the largest grants– $31.1 million. Of that, $15.5 million was allotted for anti-obesity efforts, or what the Recovery.gov website calls “interventions,” and $15.6 million for anti-smoking campaigns.

Well.  If tens of millions for some hot ads for folks telling 'em to shove less food in their mouths - then how about a few measly millions for telling people about the glories of tournament bridge? :)  Funded by you, of course!

A Tale of Two Rallies

Watch the videos.  They speak for themselves. 

A Simple Question

If some Democrats don't want to show up for work when it becomes unpleasant - then why don't they simply not run for office?

All the News that's Fit to Fabricate

Part I:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews tried Monday to push the liberal media meme that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker exempted police and firefighters from his budget repair plan because their unions endorsed him in last November's election.

"Well one more time you're completely uninformed," replied Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman who then proceeded to tell the facts to the obviously clueless "Hardball" host.

MATTHEWS: You’re telling me that there aren't local affiliates, there aren't local union organizations at the county level, municipal level that didn't endorse your governor candidate when he ran. Are you saying they didn't endorse him, the firefighters and the cops?

GROTHMAN: I can think of two small locals. The vast majority, the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the vast majority of firemen's unions worked against Walker in this campaign and to say otherwise is completely to mislead your listening audience.

Part II:

Contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

Notice he says public sector unions make slightly less than their private counterparts if you rank by level of education. This last bit is critical because it happens to be the only way the numbers come out right. In fact, as I explained here (in regard to the same debate over New Jersey public workers) even the liberal EPI agrees that public sector employees are only behind until you correct for the number of hours they work relative to their private sector counterparts. Yes, it’s true that public school teachers make less on an annual basis than private sector workers with college degrees, it’s also true that teachers only work 9 months a year. If you look at their salary and benefits on an hourly basis, they come out ahead (often well ahead) of private sector employees. Manhattan Institute has a paper on correcting for this difference here.

Paul Krugman isn’t a dumb man. He knows where he is eliding the truth in these columns. He also knows that most of his readers won’t know. He’s obviously counting on their ignorance. As for myself, I’m selling out to the power of Big Taxpayer. Let’s break up the public sector unions, especially the teacher’s unions which do as much harm to our children as they do to our budgets.

Update: Looks like Krugman made a factual error in this column that I overlooked. He wrote:

Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.

Add it to the list of Krugman’s mistakes. Turns out only 4 of 314 police and firefighter unions in WI supported Gov. Walker. The largest statewide unions all supported his opponent. Click over to Newsbusters for proof courtesy of Noel Sheppard. Krugman made a complete hash of this column.

I guess some of these "journalists" truly believe that they can not fact check, spout talking points with no basis in fact, and get away with it.  Well - they have been "getting away with it" for a long time.  Let's hope that this progression begins to wane - big time - from now on.

Fraud for a Cause

Would I break laws for a cause in which I believed?  I think so.  I was too little to get involved in the civil rights battles of the 50's and 60's.  Yet, I can imagine circumstances in which I would have practiced civil disobedience to try to right those wrongs.

Is the battle going on in Madison right now worth doctors committing fraud?  Here's what a professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin thought:

After viewing the videos at my request last night, Dr. Arthur Derse called me up exclaiming, “Holy mackerel! It’s much worse than it looked in the paper. I’m stunned, absolutely stunned.” Dr. Derse is the Director of Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities a the Medical College of Wisconsin. “When all’s said and done, it’s really the profession of medicine that has the black eye in this case,” he says…

They’ve managed to belittle a public trust between physicians, employers and patients. A doctor’s sick note is a serious document. It represents an employer’s desire to verify through a respected, independent, medically qualified third party the fact of an illness and the true need for convalescence. In the videos now circulating online, we witness multiple members of a noted family medicine department trash one of the well-recognized rights and privileges of their profession, with little forethought as to the consequences…

 

The One: Crowley vs Rumsfeld

Candy Crowley of CNN was shocked that Rumsfeld was so ignorant about President Obama's standing throughout the world.  Ms. Crowley thinks that Obama is beloved throughout other nations; Rumsfeld, not so much.

You be the judge.

How Democracy Works

Well, how our form of democracy works.

First, Wisconsin isn’t a democracy — it’s a representative democracy, and the difference isn’t just semantic.  If Wisconsin was a democracy, then every issue would be settled by a state-wide vote, and the legislature wouldn’t exist at all.  Voters elect representatives to form a legislature to debate and then decide these issues, usually based on the professed agendas of the candidates in the campaign season.

In this case, the issue was debated in the campaign, and voters chose Scott Walker as governor by a significant margin in part because he promised to bring spending and unions under control.  The unions made this point clear in their campaign advertising, and still lost not just the race but both chambers of the legislature.  Now that the legislature has been seated, the majority controls the agenda and can send bills to the floor — for the debate that Miller professes to want, followed by a vote.

That’s how representative democracy works.  If the Democrats want a compromise bill, then they need to show up in the legislature to find enough Republicans to vote down Walker’s proposal in favor of an alternative.  If the majority wants Walker’s bill, well, that’s the consequence of losing an election.  If that doesn’t represent the wishes of Wisconsin voters, Democrats can run in the next election on the promise to restore the closed shop and full collective bargaining rights to unions that have run the state for decades, and see how popular that makes them.

As President Obama has said, elections matter.  The voters of Wisconsin spoke - and the laws of that state should be followed.  If those who don't like what their governor and legislature is doing - then next time around, try to get people who will facilitate change into place. 

Of course, nothing wrong whatsoever with protesting in the meantime.  Just that laws should be abided (thus no striking for government workers, and no pretending to be sick and lying about getting medical exemptions for illness when you are not ill!)  Do it properly and be proud - and set a good example for our youth.

Journalism No More

 
Sadly, the once great New York Times has shriveled from its former lofty position.  Today?  In too many cases, barely more than a mouthpiece for progressive causes.  Case in point:

If This Doesn't Outrage You

Nothing will.

The story focuses on Central Falls school in Rhode Island, an educational institute in such a sorry state of affairs that their drop-out rates were staggering and many students didn’t even log enough classroom time to receive a grade. Last year, in an apparent sign of throwing up their hands in despair, the school board took the drastic measure of firing all 88 of Central Falls’ teachers.

Fear not! In charged the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, who not only got all of their jobs back… they landed them a raise. And all of this is taking place in a community which wouldn’t even qualify as “working class” by most standards. The average wages in the Central Falls region are very low. Steve Perry sat down with Supervisor of Schools Frances Gallo to ask her about it.

CNN: So did you wind up paying them more?

Gallo: Yes

CNN: Central Falls is a poor community. Where did you get the money?

Gallo: Through the School Improvement Grant dollars. We had promised that if we secured those dollars, there would be a $3,000 stipend per teacher.

He then questions union representative James Parisi, who also seems to be put off by the pay situation.

CNN: So in this town where the average income is $22,000 the average teacher is now making $76,000. What are the community members paying for?

James Parisi: The highest paid teachers are making about $76,000, which frankly I don’t think is enough for the committed professionals that are in that school district.

CNN: You had a 93% fail rate. That’s undeniable.

JP: And you think that’s caused by teacher’s actions?

CNN: Absolutely.

JP: I don’t think the teachers are responsible.

 

Conservative Atheists

Oxymoron?  Or - do they really exist?

Here are some who claim they are the real deal.

As a child, Razib Khan spent several weeks studying in a Bangladeshi madrasa. Heather Mac Donald once studied literary deconstructionism and clerked for a left-wing judge. In neither case did the education take. They are atheist conservatives — Mr. Khan an apostate to his family’s Islamic faith, Ms. Mac Donald to her left-wing education.

They are part of a small faction on the right: conservatives with no use for religion. Since 2008, they have been contributors to the blog Secular Right, where they argue that conservative values like small government, self-reliance and liberty can be defended without recourse to invisible deities or the religions that exalt them.

And they serve as public proof that an irreligious conservative can exist.

“A lot of religious conservatives say, ‘You can’t be conservative because you don’t believe in God,’ ” said Mr. Khan, 34, who was raised in New York and Oregon but whose grandfather was an imam in Bangladesh. “They say I am logically impossible, and I say, ‘Well I am possible because I am.’

“They assert your nonexistence, and you have to assert your existence.”

Happy Anniversary

 
Jason and Matthew are bridge buddies of mine.  I'm not even sure now exactly how long ago we met - but - I do know I liked both of them immediately.  Though they were newer players, they were very eager to learn and improve their games - which they have done handsomely.  A couple of years ago, they won a flighted national team event!  They play with a number of other partners, yet most often, they do compete with one another.  This is especially remarkable, as they are partners for life - and it is tough playing bridge with the one you love!  Here is a photo of the amazing champs with their winning team.

 
Yesterday was their sixteenth anniversary.  Jason and Matthew hyphenate their last name, are married, and are busy building a new home for themselves.  Matthew is a professor at the U of MN; Jason works in the private sector.  Both are hard working, quite bright, fun, healthy-living advocates - in other words, similar to many of the other younger couples that I know.  They simply both happen to be of the same sex.

As those who read what if? know, I'm a staunch supporter of gay rights.  I must admit, sometimes I find it perplexing that more conservatives don't share my views about gay marriage.  Healthy marriages encourage fidelity, fiscal responsibility and good health.  Shouldn't we want all that for everyone, whether they are gay or straight?

Matthew, Jason and I frequently share columns or news with one another on this topic.  Recently, Matthew sent me something that he himself had written to his state representatives.  I am posting it for two reasons.  The first is that I simply have similar views to those of Matt and Jason.  The second, however, is this.  I think that our state and our nation are in dire straits when it comes to fiscal issues and the size of government.  Matt and Jason, at least on some issues, share my views and might vote for Republicans that are fiscally conservative.  They feel unable, however, to vote for politicians who support policies and laws that are anathema to their life together.

I may not change any minds by posting this.  Nevertheless, I hope you will read my friend's letter, and try a bit to understand why we should all have the right to have a permanent union with the one we love - irrespective of their sex.