Out of the Asylum

Legislator n - A person who goes to the capital of his country to increase his own
Ambrose Bierce
"The Devils Dictionary"

Does anyone remember a time when the Commonwealth of Kentucky was not crying for more funds? Good times and bad, state government offers the tin cup to its citizens. Always the threat is that education, roads, police and parks will have to do without. Always the same solution is asserted, higher taxes. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Enter Governor Steve Beshear, calling for an emergency session of the legislature to deal with a $450-million budgeted shortfall. Beshear declares taxes must increase or schools, roads and public safety will vanish. Rubbish! Budgets can be reduced. The nation is in deep recession, perhaps heading for depression. The states are only the nation in miniature. Each has its own economy determined at least partially by actions they may control. For instance, Michigan, a high tax, heavily regulated, closed shop is in actual depression now while low tax, right-to-work states like Tennessee and South Carolina are performing well, even in these troublesome times.

Raising taxes into a depressed economy is the equivalent in golf of hitting your first shot into the lake with a 7-iron, using the same club for your third and fifth shot and then selecting it for your seventh. Experience has proven a 7-iron is not the right choice and will result only in further penalty. Likewise, history plainly shows that raising tax rates decreases rather than increases receipts and produces an additional penalty in statewide job and income loss. That being the technical reason for not pushing exactions higher, the moral one is of even greater clarity. For a bloated bureaucracy to impose additional financial burden on its populous when the latter is already in financial extremis is the utmost in public knavery. A government must exist for its people, not the other way around.

Clearly, the Commonwealth must adjust its budget downward cutting those services less important to its populace rather than those most dear. If Beshear really seeks to promote growth in public receipts as well as improving the lot of his constituents, he will propose eliminating the state income tax and intangible property tax along with opening the shop floor. Investment and jobs will then flow into Kentucky and as surely as night follows day, those projects lost to tightening today will be redeemed tomorrow, with more besides. If not, Senate President David Williams must steadfastly stand in the gap against even higher taxes. It is said that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the practice of the insane. It is time Kentucky government stood up and walked out of the asylum.

From The Pen of Abaddon

“I have never seen a Kentuckian without a gun, a pack of cards and a bottle of whiskey”
General Andrew Jackson

The Reaper comes quickly
Anon.

“The politician is the lowest form of life on earth. The Democrat is the lowest politician”
General George S. Patton

From The Pen of Abaddon

Accuse - to affirm another's guilt or unworth; most often as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.

Ambrose Bierce
THE DEVILS DICTIONARY

Back Up and Look Around vol 1

It is very awkward to decry giving tax money to those making so little they pay no tax while at the same time feverishly doling it out to those so rich they can avoid paying any at all.

Were George W. Bush not leaving office in less than 90 days the disgracefully dishonest bill of goods he and Uncle Hank sold the nation would warrant sure impeachment.

An officer at a large regional bank granted over $3billion from TARP laughed derisivly when it was suggested the bank would now be opening the credit windows. "That money wasn't given to loan - it was given so we could buy other banks"

The stock market is off nearly 1500 points since The Messiah's election. All you "middle class" geniuses who voted for change have so far had your 401k's changed by a negative 16%. You earned it.

Doctrines of Fairness and Freedom

Our Founders constructed a number of strong redoubts against the onslaught of tyranny. Strictly limiting and delineating the powers of the federal government, separation of powers among the three branches, the right of the citizenry to keep and bear arms, habeus corpus, the sanctity of private property and perhaps the strongest of all bulwarks, unfettered political speech.

Freedom of speech was first abridged in 1798 when a federalist congress under President John Adams sought to criminalize political dissent in the Aliens and Sedition Acts. Quickly Kentucky and Virginia announced their intention and asserted their right to nullify these acts within their bounds and a smattering of secessionist rumblings were heard throughout New England A chastened congress soon repealed the nefarious enactions and the nascent union was saved. Lincoln in the 1860's aside from revoking habeus corpus, imprisoned opposition journalists and closed newspapers critical of his continuing prosecution of the War Between The States. Woodrow Wilson the first categorically fascist western leader imposed strict and abusive restrictions on speech during WWI and Sen. Joseph McCarthy is infamous for demanding censorship of ideas in the 1950's. So repudiated and reviled was McCarthy [particularly from the left] that one might have thought free speech safely established till the end of time.

Time, it seems, has come today. Holding a virtual monopoly on the post-Watergate print media and seeing the mainstream television networks become little more than Democrat house organs, the left [ironically] began in the 1990's to try and fetter the expression of opposition opinion. After several abortive tries and with the help of putative Republican John McCain the effort bore fruit as The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act. Claiming to reduce the corrosive effect of money on the electoral process the act restricts the amount of cash a candidate may receive from a lone donor thus constraining the degree to which individuals rich or poor, might express political ideas and opinions. The self-serving act also limits criticism of incumbent candidates 60 days before an election and by force of operation dramatically increases the power of the friendly press. In a decision that will puzzle legal scholars for as long as the republic exists, the Supreme Court found this bluntly oppressive act constitutional. One locus of free speech so far remains unencumbered, talk radio.

Rising on the broad back of Rush Limbaugh in the 1980's and resurrecting AM radio frequencies and stations, talk radio overwhelmingly conservative in opinion, became outrageously popular. It seemed to have addressed a glaring need in the body politic - an outlet for political expression by Mr. and Mrs. Everyman. The success of talk radio represents a magnificent achievement of three of America's signature attributes, grass roots democracy, free markets and the free dissemination of ideas. The phenomenon however poses a problem to the progressives in our midst. Liberal thought, not only under represented on the air suffers constant and cogent attack from conservative hosts like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. The distribution of ideas having atomized among millions of everyday people is now being harnessed by well prepared and popular hosts. This outcome seems a certain disaster to many on the left.

The talk radio revolution was made possible when the Federal Communications Commission responding to its own finding that its order "had the net effect of reducing rather than enhancing the discussion of controversial issues of public importance" [emphasis mine] repealed the 1949 Fairness Doctrine that required over air media outlets to offer equal time for all viewpoints. Progressives made the proper response in 2004 launching the Air America Radio Network featuring liberal talk, phone calls and opinion. By the end of 2006 Air America was in bankruptcy. It remains on the air today though having only 66 affiliates as compared to the nearly 1000 of Limbaugh's EIB Network. Two factors are responsible for the failure of Air America. In the first instance the mainstream print and TV media more than adequately distribute liberal ideas which tends to reduce the felt need for an additional outlet in AM radio. Secondly and more importantly, it seems as if the appetite for progressive talk among the general population is nearly non-existent. To the liberal mind the market forces that have suffocated Air America have made a demonstrable minority of those persons who enjoy left leaning chatter. They have been locked out by corporate greed and power. The progressive movement is at its heart opposed to the winner-loser results of free enterprise. It is not difficult at all to see that it views this situation as unfair.

Recognizing conservative talk radio as not only unfair but a clear and present danger to recently established political hegemony the freshly minted Democrat regime is wasting little time in executing a plan to eliminate the threat, perhaps forever. The brand new Office of The President Elect announced yesterday that former FCC commissioner and Fairness Doctrine devotee Henry Rivera will head up a committee to select the new FCC Chairman who will, in his turn likely support reinstating the doctrine. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who only days ago referred to conservative talk shows as "pornography" and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will head up what must become a particularly autocratic congressional campaign that will attempt to memorialize the FCC regulation in permanent federal law.

The silencing of opposition speech whether from the right, left or center is for a democracy, nothing less than a death wish. From the very beginning of our nation such actions have been opposed by patriots of all stripes and at one time or another by all political factions. It matters not in this controversy, whose ox is getting gored. Liberty itself is in the dock. Now is the time for all good men from every walk of life and the four corners of the political compass to unite behind the banner of freedom, rise up as one and slay this awful dragon that seeks, in the interest of the most base partisanship, to destroy the foundations of our very existence as a free and self-determining people.

God Bless The Commonwealth

"The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home" never sounded so good as it did yesterday. As the nation marched hands-over-eyes into the darkness of marxism Kentucky became a shining beacon of hope. A true land of the free and brave. My Kentucky brothers and sisters not only returned stalwart Senator Mitch McConnell to Washington to bear the torch of freedom and stand against repression but also rejected overwhelmingly the The Prairie Socialist and his call to serfdom.

The nation is lost. With every catastrophe though comes an opportunity. This election proves a great majority of Kentuckians still cherish independence, the rights of property and individual responsibility. Let this great majority unite now behind a new banner, a banner of growth and abundance. Let this great majority demand of our legislature the repeal of the state tax on incomes, on Kentucky businesses, and the union shop. Let us announce to the world that as those who embrace socialism stagnate and decline we in Kentucky will create a rennaissance of prosperity. Put the call out to industry that King Coal furnishes Kentucky the lowest electricity costs in America and that inside our borders we will tolerate no caps, trades or carbon taxes that reduce this advantage or oppress our citizens. We have shown that we will not follow like lemmings over the cliff of collectivism. Let us now invite all those in North America who long to be free to come and join us as we reclaim the Spirit of 1776.

The Republic Is Lost

As the landslide begins to take shape, one thing is painfully clear. America is no longer America. What has happened tonight is not something that has happened. It is a choice made, the willful act of the American people. Let us not be terrified at an Obama presidency. Let us be terrified at what we have become. I can no longer look at my countrymen in the same light knowing that over half of them have chosen serfdom. America has abandoned principle for pottage and taken a flight from reason unimaginable only a few years ago. I am embarrassed to be numbered among them and fearful of other travesties to which they might subscribe. It was once said a divine Providence watched benevolently over drunkards, fools and the United States. Tonight Providence turns away. The Republic is lost.

Time of the Season Final: My Vote

I often answer: “Why bother” when asked for whom I plan to vote. When George W. Bush and the Republican Congress failed to honor the trust they were given I renounced the pathetic poseurs and vowed to support them no more. With Republicans holding both houses of Congress and the Presidency, those of us who participated in the Reagan Revolution watched helplessly as our hopes for fair tax, a roster of strong new judges and a muscular foreign policy morphed into pork barrels, gangs of 14 and nation building. Why waste time and effort voting electing GOP candidates who upon taking office become republocrats. Voting Democrat of course is expressing a death wish.

By the response of my interlocutor, you might have thought I had just announced my intent to fly the Second Flag of The Confederacy! “Why, you mustn’t give up your right to vote!” they wail, “It’s your duty to vote.”Thousands of good Americans have given their lives so you can vote” “You can’t dishonor their sacrifice.” And of course: “Well if you don’t vote, don’t complain about what happens.”

By definition my right to vote is exclusively mine and confers an equal right not to vote. Thus in not voting I am exercising my voting right. Further, a right as any literate citizen understands is never a duty. The watchful hens of The League of Women Voters, I offer dreamed up voting as duty believing that more voters begets better government. Anyone vaguely familiar with the quality of the American electorate knows what a misguided notion that is. I shudder at every third person I encounter wearing one of those I Voted stickers!

Not thousands, no not even one person died for my right to vote for John McCain, Barack Obama, Bob Barr or Ralph Nader. If asked to do so I suspect one would punch you in the nose. For every courageous American soldier, seaman or marine who died to protect his voting right, ten-thousand or more did so for their buddies, families, girlfriends or just for pride of duty. A great majority I imagine, if told they were enduring the filth, privation and danger of war in faraway places for my right to choose between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, would have dropped their rifles and walked on in.

Sometime in the last century, American civics teachers began mistakenly to equate democracy with freedom. Politicians of all stripes quickly took up the call as a way of convincing people they are free even while enslaving them. The Bill of Rights was a response to the fears of our Founders that the majority of self-serving dolts would impose its oppressive will on the poor lot in the minority. I do not trust the mob. Give me a monarch and nobles who leave managing my life and property to me over an elected congregation of knaves and blackguards intent on taking my property and becoming my keeper.

The prospect of President Barack Obama leading a leftist, Democrat congress though is just too frightening to ignore. I will thus please the hooray for democracy crowd tomorrow by going to the polls and voting - not for John McCain but against Obama and the Democrats.