If you are too busy to vote on Tuesday, here are some more urgent things you might want to do with your time:
Tour the State Capitol while it still looks nice (and the public restrooms are still supplied with toilet paper). If Scott Walker gets to author the state budget, building maintenance will likely suffer.
Renew your driver's license. Again, Walker's budgets will likely include more furloughs for state employees and a reduction in services.
Make that doctor's appointment you've been putting off. If Ron Johnson has his way, fewer Americans will have access to affordable health care.
Visit a state park. If Milwaukee County's parks are any indication, Walker will slash the budget for trail grooming and other park maintenance.
Carry your side-arm (peacefully) in a public place. Have you not noticed that gun rights have actually been expanded over the past two years? Expect a roll-back with law-and-order Republicans in charge.
Step up your job hunt. All those jobs that Ron Johnson plans to create will be in China.
One Down, More to Go
7 hours ago
13 comments:
Oh, no...I'm voting. If I were a Liberal, I'd vote early and often. But since I'm not, I'll vote for Johnson and Walker and Sensenbrenner and anyone else I can find who will actually listen to what I have to say. As opposed to Feingold who told us he was smarter and knew what was good for us better than we.
OTOH, knowing you are in Madison-ish, if you are in the district in which David Olson is running, you may care to check him out. While he is not Liberal, he espouses some things you may like...and some you certainly won't. But I've never met a more honest and moral person. He lives what he believes. I know this because he used to work for me.
Deekaman- 99% of Democrats DO give the others a bad name.
Jill- About those Republican socialists: They are "the other wing of the same party". They share the same goals and will enjoy the same consequences as their marxist buddies.
The Tea Party folks are taking over the dead hulk of the GOP, to toss out the rotting gasbags and replace them with Americans. The numbers aren't there yet, so you'll see the Old Guard RINOs fighting against the Americans for the next two years of legislative bickering, providing the space needed by a bitter President hell bent on fulfilling the dreams of his father: The destruction of America.
Interesting times.
Umm, ok. Nice hyperbole. You forgot how old people will be thrown into the streets and babies will die because they lack pre-natal care and that the evil GOP will stop the WIC program.
Dan,
If you feel that strongly, the USE YOUR OWN MONEY to do whatever you'd like. Now I see the hypocrisy. You want my money, because you are unwilling to give up more/all of your money.
By this flawed scheme: My money is being stolen, so I cannot provide care for my own family (children and elders) because I am forced at gun point to give money to overlords who redistribute the wealth in never ending programs to create permanent dependency classes.
We constituted this government to protect our Liberty and protect our Property, not to eat out our substance and interfere with our businesses and families.
So the choice has become clear to this generation: Inalienable Individual Rights and the Freedom to take care of our loved ones --OR-- Be robbed and raped by tyrants at gun point.
I say again: You are free to do what you want with your money. But stop preying upon others, and using force to rob them.
Taking our money at gun point? That's not working out for us.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
- Frederic Bastiat
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
- Thomas Jefferson
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."
- Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”
- John Locke
"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
- Thomas Paine
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1) Tyrants force redistribution of wealth and erect a police state.
2) Americans choose Liberty.
3) Every student of history knows what comes next.
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Communism is incompatible with Western Civilization. It really is that simple.
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Sofa, do you consider the Scandinavian countries to be communist? Norway in particular seems to be a pretty successful, civilized western nation.
Umm, sofa, you may want to re-read what I wrote.
Dan- Geography suggested that your comment was a reply to mine, rather than directed toward the original article. Re-read both and see how that mistake was possible. Sorry for the confusion.
Please strike out "Dan," in the address line of my subsequent comment, and insert "Jill,".
Norway:
Norway should be relatively wealthy because it has a huge amount of oil relative to its population. Living off the 'oil money' meant they got disconected from economic realities. Beside the oil money, they are an 'open trading country', deriving significant benefits from Western capitalism, technology, and finance. They have been riding our coat-tails.
Recent PR about Norway's economy did not withstand scrutiny. A week later they are admitting they are in deep economic trouble: "The slowdown in global economic activity has tipped Norway into recession, despite the country's deep oil reserves and strong budget position."
http://gawker.com/5261044/norway-which-proved-last-week-that-socialism-beats-recessions-is-now-in-a-recession
Socialism is fine, until you run out of other people's oil money...
Since 2005, Norway has been governed by the 'Red-Green Coalition', comprised of the Labour Party the Socialist Left and the Centre Party. The enlightened Norwegians politics revolves about how much to steal from one another at gun point: The 'Socialist Left' platform is (a) Private property must be abolished, (b) Capitalist property must be confiscated and handed over to society.
Socialism consists of stealing property and labour.
It may look like it's working, but it's a scheme built on 'free money' flowing in from outside.
How could it be different in Norway?
SWEDEN
Free trade reigned in Sweden from roughly 1846 until the Social Democrats were elected in 1932. After 1932, Sweden was helped by its neutrality in World War Two. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Sweden’s major cities were not bombed flat. The Social Democrats, then, had a great deal of wealth produced by capitalism and undamaged by war to share as political spoils.
(from David Dieteman, at http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman33.html)
According to a Swiss federal government statistical comparison of Switzerland and Sweden, the percentage of Swedish unmarried pregnancies in 1996 was 54% percent – roughly equal to the black community in the United States. The reason for this high rate of unwed pregnancies is apparent in both cases, and it is not illegal drugs: the state gives incentives to unwed mothers in the form of social benefits, with predictable results. Why go through the hassle of getting married or staying married when a government check means that such a decision has no practical consequences for your life? Over the long-term, a 54% illegitimacy rate can only undermine Swedish society.
Worst of all, the Swedes have not always acted benevolently, as reported on page A1 of the August 29, 1997, Washington Post:
From 1934 to 1974, 62,000 Swedes were sterilized as part of a national program grounded in the science of racial biology and carried out by officials who believed they were helping to build a progressive, enlightened welfare state...In some cases, couples judged to be inferior parents were sterilized, as were their children when they became teenagers.
Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish Minister of Health and Social Affairs, told the Post that "there was nothing secret about the sterilization program. It was carried out in the light of public debate at a time when Swedes believed they were creating a society that would be the envy of the world." The Swedish Institute for Racial Biology, founded in 1922, was the first national institute of the kind. The Swedes were also the first to sterilize the mentally ill, beginning in 1934.
One woman, aged 72 at the time of the Post article, was sterilized "because she couldn’t read a blackboard because she did not have eyeglasses and was deemed to be retarded."
The Post also reports that Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper which ran a multi-part documentary of the sterilization program, contended that the ruling party at the time – the Social Democrats – "accepted the policy as an essential part of their overall philosophy." This claims is supported by the fact that, as noted above, the Social Democrats came to power in Sweden in 1932. In other words, they waited a mere two years before embarking on a program of eugenics. This would appear to make the eugenics program a high priority for the Social Democrats, as Dagens Nyheter contended.
The Irish Times of August 30, 1997, meanwhile, reports that "90 per cent of [those sterilizied] were women," and that "the practice, which predated and outlived Nazi Germany, started as an attempt to weed out perceived genetic weaknesses, mental or physical defectsand ended as a method of social control." According to Professor Gunnar Broberg, "Young girls were told they would be set free from [mental] homes and prisons ‘if we are allowed to make you calmer.’"
...
Unfortunately, sterilizations are just the tip of the iceberg. As the Irish Times and Agence-France Presse reported on April 7, 1998, a Swedish Television documentary reveals that Sweden lobotomized perhaps 4500 "undesirables" ...
(read the whole thing)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman33.html
(continued)
(continued)
Beside the "Big Brother" type dominance of the government, what more can we say about Sweden?
Swedens socialism benefitted from intact industries and economy when most of Europe was in rubble in the 1940's. In 1950, with its industry intact and crucial iron and timber resources at hand, Sweden became the third-wealthiest economy, only behind the United States and the Soviet Union.
(from the Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jun/16/20070616-080932-5740r/)
"...between 1952 and 1972 Social Democratic leaders Tage Erlander and Olof Palme built a welfare state of social programs that promised economic and political equality for all. New types of taxes such as the VAT (value-added tax) along with substantial increases with existing taxes such as for income and property funded the highest proportion of government spending in the industrialized world."
...
In 2006, the Social Democrats were stunned when they were voted out of power.
(from the Washington Times, again)
"The tide that brought victory to Mr. Reinfeldt's coalition (Christian Democrats, Folk Party and Center Party) represents a flood of Swedish desire, particularly from those younger than 40, to embark on a new economic course. Privatization, tax reduction and deregulation are all part of the program to bring Sweden into the global economy of the 21st century."
...
"To Sweden's credit, some of its economic reforms have already surpassed the United States. Its social security is partially privatized, the inheritance tax is eliminated, and most people no longer pay any primary residential property tax."
...
"Despite direct investments, more than 80 percent of new jobs come from small businesses, not the traditional corporations."
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The young people wanted to be free. And now capitalism and respect for property is growing small businesses. Isn't economic Liberty (capitalism) great!?!
So, in sofa's universe, the Swedes and Norwegians are living in totalitarian, socialist dystopias. They must be too ignorant to realize how miserable they are.
No apologies that complex question required more than a flippant one liner about feelings, or calling someone crazy.
The data repudiated feelings and mythology. Ad hominem attacks ("in sofa's universe") merely concede an inability to counter data and reasoning.
Norway and Sweden socialism is indefensible, given the facts.
***
And in my universe, November 2 was a good first step to defeating communism. About 100 million Americans agree.
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