"Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" - Matt Kibbe

11/29/10

Green Jobs Mythology 101

Even someone spending $80,000 on a solar photovoltaic array to electrify his home could expect to get $74,000 back within five years through federal tax credits, Pennsylvania Sunshine Grants, green power credits sold to utilities, and savings. Without incentives, it could take 40 years to break even at current electric rates.

Now many of those incentives are expiring or running out of money.

Read the rest of the article by Paul Chesser
at SomewhatReasonable.com

Filed by Grant Davies
Editor - Whatwethinkandwhy.blogspot.com

11/24/10

I Left My Foreskin in San Francisco

This is the first in a series of posts featuring the excellent posts of other bloggers from some of the top freedom blogs on the net. The idea originated on the terrific site The Humble Libertarian where I am charged with the responsibility to highlight great posts from the Cato Institute. Those posts will be linked to on the sidebar so they can be enjoyed on that site. The posts found here will be from sites not covered by THL.

 After this first email notification to introduce this new series, people on my personal email list will not receive the heads-up directly from me. That will be reserved for articles I author myself.
The following is from the great new blog Somewhat Reasonable, which is part of the Heartland Institute.

The lead singer of Jefferson Airplane once said, or sang, “San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” That has never been more true.

From the legislature that has brought to us innovative, freedom-loving ideas like (and I wish this didn’t require a bulleted list):

The Happy Meal ban, and
Cell phone radiation warnings on packaging (attempted), and
Soda-free summers, and
Incredibly overbearing smoking ban (no smoking at ATM, movie theater lines, your apartment vents or windows, etc), and
Free needle exchanges for drug addicts, and
Meatless Mondays,

… comes the most nutty idea yet. San Francisco legislators have begun work on a comprehensive ban on circumcision.

Read the rest of Marc Oestreich's article
at Somewhat Reasonable.com 

Marc Oestrich is Heartland’s legislative specialist on education and telecommunications.

Posted by Grant Davies

11/22/10

White Americans Don't Like Black Presidents

Larry Elder
 At least that is what a couple of obese white guys think. And what a certain black guy disputes with facts and figures.

The obese white guys are Rob Reiner and Michael Moore who specialize in video novels and the black guy is Larry Elder the controversial writer and radio talk show host who specializes in saying things other people generally don't have the guts to say. In fact he wrote a wonderful book a few years back titled The Ten Things You Can't Say in America. I recommend it highly.

Larry has a great hobby as well. In his spare time he enjoys refuting all the nonsense that Michael Moore spreads around. (Not as enjoyable as golf, but to each his own I guess.)  To that end  Larry "created, directed and produced his first film, “Michael & Me,” a documentary that examines the history and use of guns in America. It was released in August, 2005." The film repudiates the drivel that Moore dribbles in his own film titled "Bowling For Columbine."

So now we get Moore's assertion while appearing on the goofy TV program "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "White America does not like having a black president."  Maher gave evidence of his regular delusional conclusion when he agreed, "That is the truth." For his part the ever clear thinking Reiner expressed his fear that the Tea Party would choose a new "Hitler" as their leader. Thank goodness we have these two guys around when we need them.

You can read Elder's article, which appeared in the Investors Business Daily as well as on the net on Nov. 19th. and decide for yourself what to think about Moore's assertion but I'm already guessing you didn't buy into the nonsense of the above title.
Read it here.

*quoted from Elders website

11/19/10

The Strange Marriage of Hillary and Huckabee - Video Version

For many years I have claimed to anyone who would listen that Republicans and Democrats were different sides of the same coin. As you might imagine that proclamation didn't exactly endear me to cheerleaders for either of those supposedly different organizations.

To be sure, there are huge differences between their respective approaches to governance, but I have always maintained that those differences were more along the lines of issues, scope and detail than any philosophical quarrel about whether or not government has the solutions to societal problems.

But now that we have been pulled from the most recent wreckage of the American experiment and are lying in the emergency room instead of the morgue, it seems like an excellent time to examine how the crash occurred in the first place and whether it actually made any difference which group was driving when we hit the wall.

And just when I was pondering how to make the case anew to the rescued occupants without using the old coin analogy, along comes this video from the Cato Institute featuring a presentation to a good sized group of college students by David Boaz the executive VP of that think tank. Many of you are familiar with him from videos posted on this blog and many others. He has, in my opinion, a great talent for explaining things in interesting new ways.

His take on the Hillary and Huckabee "marriage" is entertaining and well worth the time it takes to watch it. It's something to do while we are in the waiting room at our rehab centers as the new election cycle begins with the same old names vying to become our chauffeurs on the next leg of the trip. And he is speaking to the right group. The driver of the future is among them somewhere.

11/10/10

New Employment, of a Sort


My good friend Homer sent me an email a few days ago asking why I hadn't written a piece for my blog in the wake of the Republican semi-tsunami on election day a week ago. He explained that he, like myself, had walked to the polls on election day and he was interested to know my opinion about the results.

While I was gratified that he cared what I thought, the truth was that I wasn't quite sure what I thought. Lots of different ideas about what it meant were bouncing around in the void of my brain cavity but nothing profound was emerging from that black hole so I simply kept quiet for a change. It seemed superfluous to add my two cents to the thousands of other opinions that couldn't be avoided in any media, old or new, so I opted to "let it cook" for a while.

In the meantime I received a job offer, which after ten seconds of deep philosophical contemplation, I accepted. The offer had a catch of course, as everything nowadays seems to. Oh it's a real job for sure, but only in the same way as doing the "lock up" routine at church after all the people have gone home for the night is. And the catch is the same, it doesn't pay a red cent.

So it's a new job, of a sort. And even though I could use the money to defray the cost of the cat food we might be eating in a decade or so (due to the lack of a government pension like most of the "Chicago Way" citizens in these parts receive, and a penchant for spending every available nickle on greens fees), the important "pay" is the chance to make my contribution to the freedom movement more valuable and have a much wider audience for my humble essays than this blog provides. I'm happy to have the chance.

I have never met or talked to my new editors personally so I'm not sure what qualifications they perceived me to have other than a razor thin connection to the Cato Institute and a semi-acceptable level of written communication skills. All I know is the people who write for my new "employer", THL (The Humble Libertarian) blog share the same love of liberty as I and the commitment to do something about it.

I have been given the title of  "Regular Columnist" and my responsibility is to submit articles of interest originating from the incredibly intelligent staff of the Cato Institute for THL's new project named Featured Voices. As many of you know, Cato is arguably the  number one free market think tank in the world, and The Humble Libertarian is an up and coming blog which is exploding across the internet. Many of it's readers are younger future leaders and it is my honor to have an opportunity to speak to them through this contemporary medium.

Which brings me back to Homer's request about my thoughts on the recent election, so here is what I think happened:

The "Progressive" agenda was roundly and loudly rejected.
Large numbers of Democrats were dismissed for supporting Obamacare, government takeovers and bailouts, TARP, pretend stimulus, and threatening huge taxes on energy because of the "global warming" fraud.
The people rejected massive new taxes in the scheme to let the so called "Bush Tax Cuts" expire.
The people are also scared stiff of possible coming hyper-inflation due to the federal reserve policy of printing money to finance huge unpayable government debts and new spending.
The people responded negatively to being called names by arrogant government operatives.
The people voted for the only anti-progressive option available to them.

And here is what I think did not happen:

People did not fall in love with Republicans.
People did not suddenly believe Republicans can fix all the problems they helped to create.
People did not think the economy will immediately turn around just because they repudiated Obama's agenda.
People did not believe that Tea Partiers are racists.

So what now?

My opinion is that we should support Republicans for now, but not embrace them unless/until they become small government constitutionalists.
We should prepare for the next round of primary elections very carefully so we can throw every single big government incumbent Republican off the next slate of candidates.
We should support every single Democrat candidate in the next primary who rejects the loony left vision of an American/European socialist form of government which minds everyone's business instead of supporting the old Democratic ideals of defending the rights of "the little guy."

And as far as what the new Republican majority lower house should do:

Read my first "Featured Voices" contribution on that subject at The Humble Libertarian written by David Boaz of the Cato Institute. It is titled "Tea Party Must Insist, GOP Won On Economy, Now Focus on It."

Wish me luck with my new "job", it may be one of the more important ones I've ever tried.

11/1/10

Now or Never? Probably

If freedom loving Americans don't win big this time it means more people want to be taken care of than want to take care of themselves. If so, freedom loses and government control over most of what we can do prevails. It's not a football game folks, it's more like D-day.


And take a freedom lover with you. If you stay home you can't send them home.