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Editor's
Opinion Editorial
From
our July 2010 edition of Senior Beacon: Here's
A Beaut Observations
From The Cave
Here's
A Beaut
When GWB was president (I know, I know... he’s
responsible for all that’s bad in the nation from now unto
eternity) he decided to keep the U.S. out of the U.N. Human Rights
Council. That body is forever filled with the worst human-rights
violators including Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia. So, when BHO
became president he had the U.S. join the Council and picked up 22
percent of the tab for said Council (our tax dollars at work once
again - what’s he care. It’s not his money...... that could be
used for Social Security maybe).
Now Libya has been elected with about 80 percent
of the U.N. membership voting for their acceptance. Some other
wonders elected recently included Angola and Malaysia. I wonder why
Iran is not included in this group? Oh yes, that’s right, Iran is
part of a U. N. special panel on women’s rights!
The latest tally by U.N. watchperson Anne
Bayefsky shows the number of free countries on the Human Rights
Council at less than 50 percent!
But the point of all this besides the obvious is
to let you all know what our BHO hand-picked ambassador to the U.N.,
Susan Rice, has to say on the matter: (regretting the election of
some unnamed countries on the council) "I’m not going to sit
here and name names. I don’t think it’s particularly
constructive at this point."
In my estimation I think the same can be said about the U.N.
Human Rights Council and in fact, the United Nations itself.
Observations
From The Cave
Our Secretary of State, one Hillary Rodham
Clinton, said recently while speaking of taxes and Brazil: "The
rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing
the kind of employment issues" that the United States is. She
continued, "whether it’s individual, corporate, or
whatever.... Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western
hemisphere and guess what - they’re growing like crazy!" Poor
Hillary. She certainly was/is qualified to be our President in this
era.
Here’s the facts Ms. Rodham Clinton: Brazil’s
aggregate tax burden, at 24 percent of GDP, is slightly lower than
the U.S. tax burden. Brazil’s top personal income-tax rate is 27.5
percent; the top U.S. rate is 35 percent, soon to be raised to your
husband’s 39.5 percent in 2011.
Thank goodness she didn’t try to elaborate on
how raising taxes on the rich will produce jobs in the private
sector or anywhere else in our society for that matter. How do these
people get to these places of influence? Perhaps the next item will
help explain.
Public school test scores in Washington, D.C. are
still well below national averages but per-pupil costs are among the
nation’s highest as are student obesity rates. Remember the old
adage about fat, dumb and happy? I know, I know, there I go again
but adages are steeped in experience. If children are not given the
proper tools to think with a clear understanding of the facts and at
least taught the ability to think for themselves in a critical way
then we have failed them and we will be held accountable to a higher
authority in the long run and in the short run we’ll be forever
anchored down by the same political class that has been able to take
advantage of our lack of critical thinking in the first place.
Making people lazy, a byproduct of the lack of
critical thinking, leads to obesity. No, you say. Well, think about
it. If you don’t have the initiative to critically think you are
prone to sitting around on your duff during down time. You get
bored. You play electronic games, watch television, text from your
expensive phones (how do poor people get money for such stuff?) and
you eat! So we have talked about two of the three components of the
adage. Now let’s talk about happy.
These same school kids in Washington are now receiving an upgrade
in condoms. The kids were complaining that the free condoms they
were getting were of poor quality and too small (a common theme of
any young adolescent male). So now they are receiving really cool
condoms from Troj-ens AND in attractive gold wrappers to boot!
"We thought making condoms available was a good thing, but we
never asked the kids what they wanted," said the chairman of
the D.C. health committee (just has to be a by-product of some elite
school somewhere). So now we have the thrid component of the adage;
happy! Now I ask you dear
reader, what has happened to our values? Oh, and don’t forget, one
of the first things BHO did in his first weeks in office was to do
away with school choice in Washington, D.C. Given the historic
make-up of the D.C schools in ethnicity and socio-econmic terms, can
someone point out to me how our "leaders" are
"helping the downtrodden and disadvantaged?"
You know that politicians "bring home the
pork." But researchers at Harvard Business school no less,
working with decades’ worth of data, have said: Earmarked spending
targeted at a specific state increases by about 40 percent when one
of the state’s senators becomes chairman of one of the major
committees, like appropriations, and by about 20 percent when one of
its representatives heads such a committee in the House. But here’s
a surprise twist: The economy chokes on all that pork. Instead of
thriving, local businesses retrench. "The firms significantly
cut physical and R & D spending, reduce employment and
experience lower sales," says Prof. Joshua Coval in and
interview with Working Knowledge. "The results show that
up throughout the past 40 years, in large and small states, in large
and small firms, and the most pronounced in geographically
concentrated firms and within the industries that are the target of
the (federal) spending.
The paper is titled "Do Powerful Politicians
Cause Corporate Downsizing?" The researchers posit that
"crowding out" occurs where the government projects
supplant the private and competition for highly skilled labor and
other resoucres are detrimental.
Big Government is detrimental to the well-being
of America. You don’t need a paper in a magazine to understand
that. It’s called common sense.
Godspeed.
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