By John Ransom
8/26/2012
Mac wrote: Where is it written and enforced that we no longer have the right to say Merry Christmas? I don't even know George Soros let alone LOVE him! Would stealing money from clients be like Congress robbing OUR social security? Like trying to ruin the US Post Office so their buddies FedEx, etc. can take over? - in Mr. Crony Went to Congress: Subpoena Soros, Buffett, et al.
Dear Mac,
Christian beliefs in the public square are increasingly under attack.
Here’s an example:
The Connecticut Post chose to not put a "Merry Christmas" greeting in print on the front page of the newspaper on Christmas Day. This was very disrespectful to the vast majority of the public who celebrate the day religiously and a poor choice in not honoring our national holiday.
Here’s another:
The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that frequently targets the presence of faith and religion in the public square, is demanding that a nativity scene be removed from public property.
Does the Freedom from Religion Foundation ask women wearing burqas to remove them in the public square, or is it just Freedom from Christianity they seek? Plus it's Freedom of Religion, not Freedom from Religion.
But what do you expect from the party that supports Eric Holder's "lying is a state of mind," and Clinton's "it depends on the what the definition of the word is, is"?
What would liberals be if they couldn't change the definition of words to support their perverted science?
Truthful, that's what. And then the cat would be out of the bag.
As far as robbing from social security, I think you are getting your philosophical lines crossed here. It wasn’t conservatives who did the robbing from taxpayers, it was liberals.
Lastly, I don’t know any one who works at FedEx, yet alone love anyone who does.
But to suggest that the Postal Service’s problems are part of some conspiracy is nonsense.
The causes of the USPS losing money annually are union-inspired practices like the one noted by Time Magazine:
The Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog reports that in 2009, postal workers were paid for 1.2 million hours of standby time, costing a total of $30.9 million. For the first half of 2011, however, the Postal Service has paid $4.3 million for 170,666 hours of standby time.
What, exactly, is standby time? Due to union agreements, postal workers can’t be laid off or reassigned during periods of low mail volume. Even if they’re not needed on the job, postal employees still show up at work (and get paid) for what’s known as standby time—which basically amounts to hanging out in a break room, conference room, or cafeteria for a few hours, perhaps all day. The scene calls to mind The New Yorker story about “rubber rooms” where New York City teachers accused of incompetence or misconduct sit idly for months, sometimes years, doing nothing except showing up to continue collecting paychecks.
Bdogslo wrote: Ransom is misleading. Obama hasn't manipulated anything. Unemployment is one of many economic indicators, all of which appear to be improving. –Obama Unemployment Magic Trick: Indefinitely Detain 4 Million People from Workforce
B-Dog,
I stand by the article.
You may not like it, but I think it’s legitimate to point out that Obama is benefiting from the fact that he’s drawn out this recession. You don’t think his economic folks knew that the survey would show more people qualifying as “long-term discouraged,” thereby deflating unemployment numbers the longer the recession continues?
The real problem, and the one Obama and everyone else ought to be concerned about, is the diminished capacity for output that a long, drawn-out recession is taking on the economy, as noted by my friend and fellow Townhall writer, economist Dan Mitchell. What people should be very concerned about is that 4.4 million people have permanently left the workforce because of the length of the recession. That’s a population number that would qualify as the 26th largest state in the country.
Imagine a state the size of Kentucky or Louisiana not having any jobs. That’s extremely harmful to the long-term future of the country and it will take at least a generation to repair the damage. And Obama praises it as progress?
The point is that the government unemployment number masks what is really going on in the economy. That’s the Obama magic trick, and it always has been.
He makes “investments” in green energy which even the Washington Post says is just graft. He “saves” healthcare by killing healthcare. As long as he continues to use words as a dodge against what he really stands for, people like me will be there calling him out about his real motives.
If you don’t like it, next time trying nominating a president who tells the truth and follows the constitution.
MsAllison wrote: It's adorable the way John Ransom believes this crap of Kantor's. Kantor interviewed the Obamas once, decided that there was tension between them and that might make a juicy book and then spoke to WH staff people to get their opinions and then fabricated a novel in which Mrs. Obama recklessly spends "The Taxpayers' Money" on her personal pleasures. –The Alice-in-Wonderland President
Dear Allison,
Liberals have called me a lot of things, but never have I been called adorable by them.
But thanks, my wife agrees with you 100 percent- on the adorable part.
On the rest of it, she thinks you’re nuts, in a real, clinical and medically certifiable way.
Kantor’s liberal pedigree is impeccable. Columbia, Hahvahd, Slate, New York Times. She’s been covering Obama and Michelle for quite some time.
But what really tells me she is on the mark- besides the fact that everything we learned from her book is consistent with what we see in Obama’s presidency- is that the Obama folks have been out doing the full court press to rebut her.
I never pick on Michelle Obama because I think generally it’s cheap to drag someone’s family into political slugfests. But I’ll make an exception here because Michelle injected herself into the fight.
In response to Kantor’s book Michelle did a puff interview saying that she was tired of being depicted as an angry black woman. Well here’s an idea for you then Michelle: Stop acting like an angry black woman. And Mr. President, if you are truly concerned with the deficit, then stop spending money the country doesn’t have. Or here’s a novel idea: Present a balanced budget…or a budget that will get one (1) vote.
Because we know already that at least part of the book is true that Obama claims is fabricated. Former press secretary Robert Gibbs says that he apologized to Michelle for an incident that the White House says never happened.
It’s like I wrote in the original story: “It only ‘looks’ bad if you get caught, I guess.”
Caught.
Mac 287 wrote: It should have been designed as a political punching bag because today Mom, apple pie and all things are targets for incredible snarky printed sarcasm...and it obviously pays well...bottom line, huh? The Volt is not the point...if its faulty, fix it or get rid of it...or yoo hoo consumer...don't buy it! Obama does not design cars...cheap shot. –GM CEO Burst into Flames at Volt Meeting- Almost
Dear Comrade 287,
So your theory is that mom and apple pie are targets in a right-wing snark conspiracy?
Which side, the right or the left, had rallies where they left the public spaces cleaner than when they started? Which side, the right or the left, left literally tons of garbage in Zucotti Park after breaking the law? Which side, the right or the left, used defecation on a police car as a form of self-expression.
The right loves mom and apple pie. The Chevy Volt is an example of how far from baseball, hot dogs and apple pie America’s best loved brand of cars has strayed.
This quote exemplifies why:
They have a whole other ethos, inspired by Obama: “The Volt’s technology and its recent accolade from Consumer Reports make the Volt a marketing tool for Chevy,” said Alan Batey, vice president for Chevrolet U.S. sales, according to Bloomberg “This vehicle is about more than how many we sell,” Batey said. “This vehicle is a magnet around everything we are trying to do to showcase our brand.”
More than about how many they sell? They are going to reinvent their whole company around the Volt?
Try running any one of Chevy’s iconic music backgrounds like, “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet,” or Bob Seger's “Like a Rock,” or John Mellencamp’s “Our Country” over footage of a Chevy Volt starting a garage fire.
Sorry, the mom and apple pie folks are buying Fords.
That’s why Volts aren’t selling.
Robert4112 wrote: I think the facts are misrepresented in this essay. The engineers who developed the Volt did not ask for a taxpayer bailout. Obama did not design the Volt. Its basic design predated the Obama presidency. – GM CEO Burst into Flames at Volt Meeting- Almost
Dear Comrade 4112,
No, I think the facts are pretty-well represented in the piece.
It was Obama who set as a goal as he was campaigning for president that he would put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015.
The piece wasn’t about the engineers. It was about people like GM CEO Akerson who thinks he can take $50 billion of taxpayer money and then complain that he has to be accountable to the American taxpayers for the results. If you are not prepared, Mr. Akerson to sit before Congress and answer questions patiently about your stewardship of America’s investment in GM without resorting to demagoguery, then you ought to quit. In fact, I think Akerson should be fired for his testimony before Congress.
Let’s be quite clear: 1) Bailout of any company by the federal government is wrong; and 2) It’s even worse when taxpayers will lose over $23.6 billion on the bailout and rising.
Then to top it all off we have to hear from a sycophant like Alan Batey that sales don’t matter.
As far as Obama goes, he’s the one who promised to put a million of these cars on the road. Until his mouth stops writing checks the country can’t cash, expect him to rightly get the lion’s share of the blame.
DonnaRain wrote: Don't you just LOVE how wingnut like Ransom HATE American workers and manufacturing? ESPECIALLY when he and the rest of the hatemongering GOP were completely against the loan given to GM to keep millions of workers employed and innovation alive in the US after the Bush Depression destroyed the American economy. –GM CEO Burst into Flames at Volt Meeting- Almost
Dear Comrade Donna,
I don’t LIKE the WAY you use CAPS.
You’ll be eating those words when 20 years from now the “innovative” autoworkers of America are standing hat in hand once again asking for a bailout because their union screwed the rest of us at the bargaining table.
I love American workers. I hate the people who would use them to further their own narrow partisan purposes.
Far from having a manufacturing boom, manufacturing is lagging under Obama.
From our economists at Political Calculations:
Going by the post-recovery figures, we find that President Obama hasn't been paying much attention to manufacturing, either during the recession or during the recovery, as its share of jobs lost and created has been essentially identical during his three years in office.
Only 1 out of 3 jobs that have been created have been created in supply chain and manufacturing even though those jobs account for 47 percent of all jobs in the US according to Political Calculations.
Lon wrote: The most striking thing about this column, and the comments that follow it, is the degree to which they highlight the lie that what differentiates the right and left is how much government they want. Ransom is outraged that a town is not telling a business where they can and cannot locate. (Oddly he is actually outraged at a nearby city that a town is not telling a business where it can locate, but he tends to have a special level of incoherence). Very few of the conservatives below even blink at the idea that government should interfere with private property rights. Apparently property rights aren't so important to them after all when it is not a matter of helping the poor (which apparently contradicts an absolute property right).- Catholic Nuns Fight Strip Club and City Hall
Dear Comrade Lon,
I’m incoherent? I had to read your comments a dozen times to figure out what your point is and I’m still not positive what you are arguing.
But here goes:
I don’t know how the column differentiates the amount of government either the right or the left is willing to accept. I personally think that normal zoning laws should be sufficient to keep a strip club separated from a convent. Zoning laws have been around for a long time. I’m not arguing that property owners should have the unfettered right to build a nuclear power plant, for example, next to your house. You seem to be arguing that they should be allowed to build one.
But even more, my argument is that liberal haste to build a society free from the influence of the Christian religion has taken us to the point where we don’t even know what’s in our best interest.
I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that the convent stay where it is and the strip club find somewhere else to locate.
Take a drive down the Dan Ryan and the Kennedy Expressway southward. Every once in a while the highway will jog a bit. Every time it does, straight ahead you’ll see a church steeple. That’s because politicians had enough sense when the expressway was built to understand that churches were an important part of the community. But not anymore. Now they just sneer at church. It’s one thing to be corrupt, it’s another thing to be entirely without moral sense, which is what seems to have happened to Democrats from Chicago, including and especially Obama.
My argument with Chicago is really about the Cook County-Illinois politico-crime syndicate that includes Chicago, Cicero, Stone Park. I use the term Chicago loosely in this case because readers are most familiar with it. But the term could apply just as well to Illinois.
From Chicago Mag:
When federal agents arrested Governor Rod Blagojevich two years ago—interrupting what the U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called “a political corruption crime spree”—Robert Grant, head of the FBI’s Chicago office, offered a succinct analysis of the day’s events. “If [Illinois] isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States,” he said, “it is certainly one hell of a competitor.”
The diamond in that pin of corruption however starts in Chicago and spreads outward.
Don’t believe me?
The University of Illinois alumni club is hosting a seminar called 21st Century Chicago and Corruption Today. “A new report shows Illinois to be the third most corrupt state in the nation and Chicago the most corrupt city,” says the teaser. “Join study leader Dick Simpson, UIC political science professor, author, and former Chicago alderman, to discuss recent study findings.”
Simpson is a very liberal Democrat.
About half the people in the administration followed Obama to DC from Chicago. And the amount of sheer corruption shown in the Solyndras, the Lightsquared and Fast and Furious scandals say it was the wrong half.
You and your liberal buddies didn’t select an Arthur when you reconstituted Camelot, but rather a Mordred.
To my conservative friends, if you think this next election isn't important, think again.
FallofU wrote: Never seen any "finance editor" b&^%$ and moan like a little baby as much as you. Why don't you try supplying some facts and figures and show us how the economy is so much worse than it was at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 and prove to us this President has made things worse? Come on John try using your brain instead of the black hole where you're heart supposed to be. You're filled with hate. - Half Time in America; We Need a New Quarterback
Dear Comrade Fall,
You want stats? Fine. Here some stats.
There are fewer people in the labor force now than when Obama became president.
In the end what it means is that wages in the US have been permanently reduced by $208 billion per year and counting so far. That’s about 1.5 percent of GDP just in wages, not counting anything that is actually produced by those workers. When you figure in total output subtracted from GDP from missing workers, the number is closer to 2.1 percent of GDP that’s permanently missing from our economy. That’s about $320 billion.
Even the most optimistic projections for Obama’s millionaires’ tax doesn’t come close to raising that amount.
Over the long-term those little variations of 2 percent more or less in GDP growth make a huge difference in our economy. Over a ten-year period an economy that grows by 2 percent versus an economy that grows by 4 percent is the difference between having a GDP of $18.5 trillion versus a GDP of $22.5 trillion by year ten.
In total over ten years, it means that the economy will miss about $20 trillion worth of GDP in those ten years, and between $3.4-$4 trillion in tax revenues unless we start to follow pro-growth policies that lead to job creation for someone other than major Obama donors.
As far as "b&^%$ and moan like a little baby," I wasn't aware that someone without heart could both b&^%$ and moan.
You have to admit, that takes talent.
Ca7 wrote: It's cute that you would try to paint this as "democrats don't think of unemployment insurance fraud as a crime" when your only specific example of unemployment insurance fraud is one where all the parties involved were actually arrested on fraud charges.- How Stimulating: Unemployment Benefits for Murderers
Dear Comrade 7,
Actually the specific examples (plural) that I included did include one example where someone was arrested on fraud charges- because he was unlucky enough to be incarcerated for murder. Local authorities got involved where the feds likely wouldn’t have. And like the typical progressive, you point to the exception and ignore the rule.
The rule is that $16.5 billion was paid out in fraudulent claims, with less than 5 percent of that money recovered. And under Democrats, unemployment fraud has jumped another 11 percent year-over-year. One would think perhaps someone in the federal government who has the responsibility to administer the program might actually do something about it.
But nope.
“We don’t think this is mostly about fraud—we think it’s a lack of clarity of understanding what eligibility is,” Jane Oates, Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training Administration at the Department of Labor, told the Times.
Tortured words and tortured reasoning for not enforcing the law just leads to more crime and encourages people to steal.
Rob Mitchell wrote: Perfect example of conservative truth distortion. Nowhere in fact is Pelosi advocating for benefits for convicted murderers. I hope they do not pay you to write this stuff.- How Stimulating: Unemployment Benefits for Murderers
Dear Comrade Rob,
Why yes I do get paid to write this stuff. I’m guessing that you are wondering how to tax it. The Stamp Act has already been tried. But hey: Maybe Democrats can bring it back and just call it a fee? Three cheers for King Obama!
Pelosi doesn’t have to advocate for convicted murders to get unemployment. They already collect the benefit according to the example cited above. And why wouldn’t they? The “Clarity of Understanding” training that they’ll make these gang-bangers go through as punishment probably won’t be much of a deterrent to people who make a living breaking the law.
If Pelosi advocated policies that forced us all to live with our doors and windows wide open, I’m guessing crime would go up. And when it did, you wouldn’t just blame the criminals, but rather you’d blame the people who made our property and families unsafe to begin with ala Fancy Nancy.
Twfox wrote: i plug my volt in to charge at night. i drive my volt to work in the morning. i plug my volt into a solar powered charging station (drawing nothing from the "grid") i have just done several of the most patriotic things imaginable---#1 bought American---#2 used American generated power (coal- i live in West Virginia) --- #3 saved American jobs. #4 helped to support a new "green technology"(alternative energy source). Without progressive thinking, the world would still be flat, the earth would still be the center of the universe and polio would still be a killer of children. (i am old enough to remember those days). – Dear GE, GM and Obama: We're Not as Dumb as You
Dear Comrade Fox,
I think you out-foxed yourself. Dr. Seuss you are not.
You forget the most patriotic thing according to vice president Joe Biden and French socialist candidate for president, Francois Hollande: pay more in taxes. But why would you? The Chevy Volt, green technology, and those American “jobs” you talk about are a net drain on our Treasury- that’s tax out-go, not tax in-come.
So whatever perceived patriotism you think you’ve engaged in, it’s not out-weighed by the tax-paying done by everyone else that allows you to be a “patriot.” It’s a Tory kind of patriotism though isn’t it?
From our own Dan Mitchell:
The Socialist favourite in France’s presidential election, Francois Hollande, has said top earners should pay 75% of their income in tax. …Mr Hollande himself renewed his call on Tuesday, saying the 75% rate on people earning more than one million euros a year was “a patriotic act”. …”It is patriotic to agree to pay a supplementary tax to get the country back on its feet.”
Just like Joe Biden.
Good to see however that you all admit that about the only things you progressives support as patriotic are: 1) Spending taxes; and 2) Raising taxes;
and 3) Occasionally killing American citizens without trial when it suits you.
At least you are consistent in your hypocrisy.
That's it for this week,
V/r,
JR
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.
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