It’s Wednesday, February 15th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, we were struck by this bit of political satire….

….and how it relates to the 2012 presidential race.  This contest isn’t about the current economy, dismal though it is, despite all the efforts of Team Tick-Tock to misrepresent the facts.  It’s about the future; our future….and all the generations which will follow.

Consider this snippet from a commentary by Brian Carney in Tuesday’s WSJ; then tell us what nation and people are the subject of Carney’s critique:

….For years, _______ has been living beyond its means, engaged in a kind of accidental experiment in Keynesianism on steroids: Overpaid public employees helped lift the income of the entire country for years, their paychecks covered by money borrowed cheaply from abroad….

This borrowed money, which also went to support the incomes of those on unemployment or state pensions, drove up demand without increasing productivity or production in _______. Rather, it had something of the opposite effect by driving up wages across the economy and creating an illusory sort of prosperity….

….Politically, _______’s problem is that the population still doesn’t understand the extent to which economic activity in recent years was driven by the government spending borrowed money. At the time, the borrowing was largely invisible because the average ________ didn’t bear the cost—and until late ____ the government was covering up the extent of its borrowing. But now the end of the party is all too visible and painful.

The _________ burning down shops and breaking windows feel they’re having something taken away from them. But they have the wrong baseline. The reality is that for years they enjoyed a prosperity they borrowed rather than earned. The come-down from that was never going to be easy….

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204795304577221100541160824.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

The photo and story detail the latest lawlessness in Greece; but we’ll understand if you thought they described events a little closer to home….because the events fit America TO A “T”!  And absent a major course correction….and that right soon….this is what’s coming to town, city, county, state and country near you.

The signs are there; all one need do is look:

Panetta: Military Cuts a Test for Pols

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will defend his department’s slimmed-down budget plan in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, and will argue senators need to prove they are serious about reducing the deficit.

We could eliminate the Pentagon entirely (which Tick-Tock’s well on his way to doing) and barely halve The Obamao’s 2012 budget deficit, let alone reduce the ballooning national debt by a dime.  

Case in point, courtesy of Bill Meisen….

Obama budget includes money for timber counties

President Obama’s new budget proposal includes money to get timber counties in Oregon and across the West through one more year. The Oregonian reported Monday that the administration’s decision to back $328 million for timber counties lends support for budget battles ahead in Congress as Oregon’s congressional members try to keep the aid alive.

The aid goes to counties where timber sales and the revenue they generated for local government have fallen off in the past two decades. With uncertainty about the future of the aid, some counties are writing budgets with sharp reductions for law enforcement and other services. (Ah!  The old….

….”sharp reductions for law enforcement” ploy!)

Since 2000 the act has paid out $3 billion to 700 counties in 41 states. Oregon has gotten the most, followed by California, Washington state and Idaho.

As Mr. Meisen, domiciled in Portland, Oregon so accurately observes….

“This article doesn’t tell you one very important fact; why timber revenues are down.  Is there a lack of trees?  Are there no buyers for timber?  No, trees are plentiful and plenty of buyers exist both domestically and abroad.  The problem is state and federal governments have restricted loggers ability to harvest the timber.

The people up here want a paycheck, not a handout. We want the lumber mills to reopen and the the supporting industries to get back on their feet. We want to reap the benefits from the tax revenues such economic activity generates.

I go hunting in some of the most pristine forests in the Cascades. One of my favorite areas has a sign at the entrance on a logging road I use to hike in on; it says, “Logged in 1886, 1922 and 1968”. It could easily be logged again.

Today, Oregon logs about 1% of sustainable yield. You are probably familiar with how sustainable yield works but here it is in a nutshell. Let’s assume I have have a thousand acres of trees and it takes 50 years for a tree to grow to maturity. Under this scenario, my sustainable yield is 20 acres. I could log 20 acres every year forever and never run out of logs to harvest.

This is the responsible way to manage the forests. Yet today forests are being managed through catastrophic wildfires and other random acts of nature. A few years ago we had a large windstorm along the coast in which thousands of trees were blown over. Loggers offered to remove the downed trees for free; some even offered to pay for the right to collect them. Their offers were all declined. That timber was left to rot on the ground and today most hiking trails, logging roads and game trails are impassable due to the fallen debris.

Now, with the timber now worthless, the state is paying firms to clear these same roads and trails to access campgrounds and scenic areas.

Today, areas known for rugged indivualists are reduced to begging for one more year of their federal fix. That’s the soft bigotry created by the welfare state. You eliminate the desire for someone to improve their own condition through their own enterprise.

Well said, Bill….well said!

In a related item, Thomas Sowell details….

The ‘Progressive’ Legacy

Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago.

Many (We’d suggest most, if not all!) of the trends, problems and disasters of our time are a legacy of that era. We can only imagine how many future generations will be paying the price — and not just in money — for the bright ideas and clever rhetoric of our current administration.

The two giants of the Progressive era — Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson — clashed a century ago, in the three-way election of 1912. With the Republican vote split between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt’s newly created Progressive Party, Woodrow Wilson was elected president, so that the Democrats’ version of Progressivism became dominant for eight years.

What Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had in common, and what attracts some of today’s Republicans and Democrats, respectively, who claim to be following in their footsteps, was a vision of an expanded role of the federal government in the economy and a reduced role for the Constitution of the United States.

Like other Progressives, Theodore Roosevelt was a critic and foe of big business. In this he was not inhibited by any knowledge of economics, and his own business ventures lost money. Rhetoric was TR’s strong suit. He denounced “the mighty industrial overlords” and “the tyranny of mere wealth.” (Sound at all familiar?)

Just what specifically this “tyranny” consisted of was not spelled out. This was indeed an era of the rise of businesses to unprecedented size in industry after industry — and of prices falling rapidly, as a result of economies of scale that cut production costs and allowed larger profits to be made from lower prices that attracted more customers.

It was easy to stir up hysteria over a rapidly changing economic landscape and the rise of new businessmen like John D. Rockefeller to wealth and prominence. They were called “robber barons,” but those who put this label on them failed to specify just who they robbed.

Like other Progressives, TR wanted an income tax to siphon off some of the earnings of the rich. Since the Constitution of the United States forbad such a tax, to the Progressives that simply meant that the Constitution should be changed. After the 16th Amendment was passed, a very low income-tax rate was levied, as an entering wedge for rates that rapidly escalated up to 73 percent on the highest incomes during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

One of the criticisms of the Constitution by the Progressives, and one still heard today, is that the Constitution is so hard to amend that judges have to loosen its restrictions on the power of the federal government by judicial reinterpretations. Judicial activism is one of the enduring legacies of the Progressive era.

In reality, the Constitution was amended four times in eight years during the Progressive era. But facts carried no more weight with crusading Progressives then than they do today.

Theodore Roosevelt interpreted the Constitution to mean that the President of the United States could exercise any powers not explicitly forbidden to him. This stood the 10th Amendment on its head, for that Amendment explicitly gave the federal government only the powers specifically spelled out, and reserved all other powers to the states or to the people.

Woodrow Wilson attacked the Constitution in his writings as an academic before he became president. Once in power, his administration so restricted freedom of speech that this led to landmark Supreme Court decisions restoring that fundamental right.

Whatever the vision or rhetoric of the Progressive era, its practice was a never-ending expansion of the arbitrary powers of the federal government. The problems they created so discredited Progressives that they started calling themselves “liberals” — and after they discredited themselves again, they went back to calling themselves “Progressives,” now that people no longer remembered how Progressives had discredited themselves before.

Barack Obama’s rhetoric of “change” is in fact a restoration of discredited ideas that originated a hundred years ago.

On the Lighter Side….

Turning to the Entertainment Section, we learn Tony Bennett should stick to singing….because every other time he opens his mouth he resembles the music industries version of Jimmy Carter:

Why did Tony Bennett link Whitney Houston’s death to illegal drugs?

Tony Bennett, the iconic singer who has been very candid about his own battles with addiction, used the death of Whitney Houston and two other performers who met with tragic ends, to promote his pro-legalization stance on drugs over the weekend.

At a pre-Grammys party on Saturday Bennett told the crowd at the Beverly Hills Hilton, the same hotel where Houston’s body was found and was still being examined, that less stringent drug laws would have saved Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and finally Whitney Houston.

“I’d like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs,” he said. “So they have to get it from a doctor, not just some gangsters that just sell it under the table.”

Uh….Tony….Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning.  And….uh,….Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston got the drugs that killed them FROM their doctor.

Go join Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins and Robert Redford over in the corner for another drink of Hussein-flavored Kool-Aid.

Finally, we’ll call it a day with the Otter & Boone Memorial “Only WE Can Do That To Our Pledges” segment, wherein we are introduced to one Kelly S. Ballentine, a….

Pennsylvania judge charged over dismissing her own traffic tickets

A judge in Lancaster, Pa., was removed from the bench and charged with numerous criminal offenses Monday after allegedly dismissing her own traffic tickets. District Judge Kelly S. Ballentine, 43, is accused of dismissing three tickets issued to her — including one for an expired registration on her BMW — in 2010 and 2011, state Attorney General Linda Kelly said in a statement. The other two citations related to parking violations in front of her home.

Ballentine had failed to pay the tickets and ignored the summonses issued subsequently. She then accessed the court’s computers and dismissed the summonses, court documents said.

Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Ballentine appears unconnected to another, better-known, far more successful con artist of similar name:

Besides, who does Ballentine think she is?!?  She was elected to the Lancaster County bench….not Congress!

Magoo