Category Archives: Politics

UPDATED: Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions

Democrats, Education, Government, Labor, Political Economy, Politics, Private Property

The following is excerpted from “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” my new WND.COM column:

“For evidence of the power of the teachers unions acting out on the streets of Madison, Wis., look no further than your property taxes. Almost 50 percent of mine are garnished for ‘Local School Support.’ ‘Port, Fire, Hospital, Library’ constitute a miniscule 5 percent of the property-tax bill. Law enforcement is not even itemized. Other states confiscate even higher percentages from their propertied taxpayers in the service of government-employed teachers.

Yes, do use the term ‘government unions,’ won’t you, as ‘public sector’ or ‘public servants’ implies, incorrectly, that these people serve the public. Besides, have you seen these slackers? In his path-breaking book, ‘The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education,’ Peter Brimelow left us with a lasting mental image of our children’s over-sated role models, attending one of the National Education Association’s annual meetings. The same apparition is everywhere apparent in Madison, as teachers ‘wobble and waddle through the teeming crowds of [supporters] … thighs like tree trunks, bellies billowing, jowls jiggling.’

Over and above the property tax – the federal income tax claims from those who pay it more monies for the educational oink sector. Whether the taxpayer has children in the system or doesn’t, whether he chooses to homeschool his offspring or pays for a private school, whether he approves of the job government pedagogues are doing or doesn’t – he has to pay them, even go into hock for them.

To compound it all, America has a most progressive tax code. According to USA Today, the number of Americans who owe no federal income taxes, and do not share in the cost of government, stood at 47 percent in 2009, and is increasing. What has come to pass John C. Calhoun predicted in ‘A Disquisition on Government,’ where he described the devolution of a democracy in which all private property is, eventually, subjected to the vagaries of majority rule. …”

The complete column, “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” is now on WND.COM.

Befriend me on Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/IlanaMercer

UPDATE (Feb. 26): Tom DiLorenzo points out the power of the monopoly that is the government union:

The enormous power of government-employee unions effectively transfers the power to tax from voters to the unions. Because government-employee unions can so easily force elected officials to raise taxes to meet their “demands,” it is they, not the voters, who control the rate of taxation within a political jurisdiction. They are the beneficiaries of a particular form of taxation without representation (not that taxation with representation is much better). This is why some states have laws prohibiting strikes by government-employee unions. (The unions often strike anyway.)
Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The “solution” to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics.
As taxpayers in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and many other states are realizing, the future has arrived. The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. They must either raise taxes dramatically to fund these liabilities, as some have already done, or drastically cut back or eliminate government-employee pensions.

UPDATED: Have Sexual Abuse Will Travel

Celebrity, Politics, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Republicans, Sex

The therapeutic creed is often used to coerce people into conformity. A central tenet of that creed is the idea that any trauma suffered will fester unless excavated, in public, if at all possible; on Oprah if you belong to the gilded elites. Research does not support the idea that beavering at—and broadcasting—past pain; picking at those scars and digging in them wounds, makes for a better adjusted individual. Still, an individual will pay a cruel price if he dares to challenge this convention.

Of course, there is nothing heroic about sharing the intimate details of your life. This state of affairs is the norm in a society that abhors boundaries between what is private and what is public, and encourages a state of flux between these spheres. If anything, hero status is granted to the conformist who lives by the precepts of pop-psychology, and manages a showy demonstration of therapeutic ‘self-knowledge.’

Thus, Sen. Scott Brown, a liberal, Massachusetts Republican, made a smart move by coming out with his torrid tale of childhood sexual abuse.

The silent and steely type is out. A country run by women (some of them with the Chromosome Y) wants its men to let it all hang out. Or at least to be a metrosexual like Barack Obama (who, to his credit, is more discreet than Scott). Brown’s “book,” grandiosely titled “Against All Odds,” might even be an attempt, like that of Republican Tim Pawlenty’s, to grease the skids for a presidential run.

Excellent strategy. Ask Oprah; she knows a thing or two about helping to elect a president.

UPDATE: On FAcebook, Michael Barnett expresses surprise that there is a “market for this stuff. Why do people want to hear about other people’s sexual abuse? I sure don’t.” I replied: “Michael, you are not yet a properly ‘evolved’ man. You haven’t got good ’emotional intelligence.'”

Befriend me on Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/IlanaMercer

UPDATED: Boob Attacks Bachmann

Intelligence, John McCain, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Politics, Pop-Culture, Republicans, The Zeitgeist

Meghan McCain has issued another of her sub-intelligent messages, which is being lapped up by the most fertile seedbed for mind-sapping stupidity: MSNBC. “Michele Bachmann … is no better than a poor man’s Sarah Palin,” she told Lawrence O’Donnell in her most grating of Valley-Girl inflections. “I take none of this seriously,” McCain declared grandiosely about Bachmann’s Tea Party address.

Meghan McCain is a licentious, self-adoring, dense liberal. Yet nothing she does, including to plaster a grotesque image of her exposed appendages on Twitter, gets her laughed off the prominent platform she’s been accorded thanks to her famous father and her mother’s money. It is clear that Meghan is not working with much—and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot. The real disgrace here is that no conservative with clout has dared to eviscerate this cow.

If David Frum, a neoconservative with some sway, had any self-respect, he would have refused to dignify the host O’Donnell’s request that he address the bitchy substance-less attack McCain launched against her betters, in this case Michele Bachmann.

Bill O’Reilly, similarly, was quite serious about discussing “Ms. McCain’s” pronouncement with Laura Igraham, who played along peacefully. What is she afraid of?

Read the mild response of Breitbart’s Big Government correspondent.

What is Ann Coulter waiting for? I call on Ms. Coulter to dispatch this ding-dong forthwith with a few masterful syllogisms mixed with a sobering reality check or two. She’d be doing us all a mitzvah.

UPDATE (Jan. 30): To the funny letter below: I’ve heard the gangsta in the White House mention “Snookie,” so she must be a cultural icon as worthless as the others BHO entertains there—the president has even complimented one of the Kardashian hos for her performance.
I’m pleased to report I’ve hear the name “Snookie” mentioned, but have not bothered to find out who she/he is.

UPDATED: An Ass With Ears

Barack Obama, China, Economy, Education, Energy, Politics

OBAMA IS. You can coast to the presidency absent any understanding of economics. The rise of China Obama put down, in his pep-talk to the nation, to the child-rearing methods of the Tiger moms (http://barelyablog.com/?p=33597). Sinophobia notwithstanding (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=584), as American society is increasingly silhouetted by the State, China is undergoning considerable economic restructuring and market reforms, the consequence of which is a 300 million strong Chinese middle class, and poverty levels that have receded from “53 percent in 1981 to 8 percent in 2001. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70 percent of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” The Chinese financial system is duly being liberalized—banking is diversifying and stock markets are developing. Protections for private property rights are being strengthened as well.

Obama thinks that a nascent China owes its increasing economic strength not to this liberalization, but to the fact that they “started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science,” and that the government is “investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer,” he added.

The truth is that the US is in the red and getting redder, not China.

***

The central planner-in-chief also denounced his subsidies to the oil industry—he did a lot of denouncing of policies he had either put in place, or could have repealed—while, in the same breath, recommending that we “invest in tomorrow’s energy.”

In other words, state planning is a “subsidy” when it is applied to “bad” energy, but an “investment” when applied to the “good” energy source.

The Goods on Gas for Asses: The more efficient the source of energy, the less waste and pollution are involved in its conversion into energy. Think of the totality of the production process! The fewer resources expended in bringing a fuel to market, the cleaner and cheaper is the process.

Oil is the second most efficient, cheapest source of energy, Obama’s wish is our demise. For ordinary folks, the biomass-based economy means life without the basics.

UPDATE (Jan. 27): In reply to Bob’s comment: Neither do I hold China to be a capitalist society, if you read the article I cited. But neither do I think the US is capitalistic any longer; we just pretend we are. My comments spoke to a trend: China is growing because it is liberalizing its economy; we are shrinking because we are centralizing ours.