How the Government Stole Christmas

Forget the Grinch -- it's the government that's stealing Christmas.

So reports Americans for Tax Reform, a non-profit group that works for lower taxes and smaller government.

The holidays are supposed to be a season for giving and spending time with loved ones. However, Uncle Sam has forced taxpayers to add him and his greedy local and state relatives to their gift list. Of an identified $10.72 billion of holiday spending, an incredible 43.36 percent is due to government taxes, fees, and other costs.

If you are one of the 93 percent of holiday revelers traveling this season, you will pay $69.65 in gas taxes for the average $152.47 round-trip excursion -- 45.68 percent of the cost of the trip. Taking a rental is another convenient option, but 38.77 percent of your car's rental cost is due to taxation, particularly from state and local governments.

Choose to fly to visit friends and family and 42.47 percent of your trip is made up of government costs. If you retreat from your in-laws to a hotel, remember that 39.39 percent of the cost of your stay is funneled back to the government. For Christmas 2011, the government will stuff its stocking with $3.79 billion in traveling taxes.

Holiday revelers enjoy an estimated $992 million in alcoholic beverages to celebrate the season. Savor your next mug of eggnog, because 56.31 percent of the price is taxes. Government guzzles 44.33 percent of your seasonal beer and drives up the price of your glass of wine at Christmas dinner by 32.77 percent. Sipping a soft drink won't let you escape frosty government fees -- 27.98 percent, or $61 million in taxes, is attached to the cost of soda.

When Santa comes down the chimney this year, he'll have to save room in his sack for Uncle Sam's gifts. Government gets $21 billion of a cumulative $69.1 billion spent on presents, consuming nearly a third of Christmas gift-giving.

All told, the government collects $25.9 billion in new revenues over the holiday season.

And still more is ahead. Not even Christmas trees are safe. The government has proposed a new 15 cent tax on each Christmas tree sold -- which would mean government would make up 31.19 percent of the price of an average 40 dollar Christmas tree. Public outcry led to the tax being delayed -- for the moment. But look for that little Christmas present in your stocking in the near future.

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by Liberator Online editor James W. Harris.

In Which I Explain Who Really Screwed Okie State and Stanford...

Fans of Okie State and Stanford are upset because Alabama and LSU, both from the SEC, will play for the National Championship, even though they have the same record as 'Bama.

Three years ago the commissioner of the SEC proposed a "Plus Two" playoff for the National Championship. If that format were in effect this year, Stanford would be playing LSU, and Okie State would be playing 'Bama, for a crack at the Championship game. Unfortunately the (now) PAC 12, (then)Big 12, and (still, inexplicably) Big 10 combined to block the proposal.

Stanford is from the PAC 12, while Okie State plays in what is left of the Big 12. Uh oh!

A "Stimulus" Primer

It's a slow day in the small town of Pumphandle and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

(Stay with this..... and pay attention)

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.

The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel Owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town now thinks that they are out of debt and there is a false atmosphere of optimism and glee.

And that, my friends, is how a "stimulus package" works! Makes you kinda feel warm and fuzzy all over huh??

This and That...

Twice in the last three days I have received a phone call from “Newt 2012”.  I answered both determined to give whoever was at the other end a hard time, but neither time was anyone or anything there.  Which is, actually, consistent with both Newt and his campaign.

Fast fact:  If we taxed the top 1% at a rate of 100% - that is, if we took every penny they earned year in and year out – the revenue provided would cover only ten percent of the deficit.  Not the debt, mind you, but just ten percent of the annual deficit.  It’s high time some folks began occupying reality.

I don’t care what anyone says, JoePa was thrown under the bus.  He received, according to his grand jury testimony, a report that did not graphically describe the incident involved, and yet reported it to his superior, who was ultimately responsible (Sandusky had not worked for Joe for a number of years).  After firing Joe, the Board of Trustees announced they would conduct an investigation.  Wouldn’t it have been better to conduct the investigation first, and then act on the findings?

Why is everyone surprised and upset by the failure of the “Super Committee”.  It was an extra-constitutional copout from the beginning, just as are the automatic cuts that its failure sets in motion.  As for the major drivers of our budget woes: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Prescription Drug panderthon, all remain untouched and, in all likelihood, untouchable.

The Euro and its unfathomable derivative, the European Union, never had a snowball’s chance, and without radical change will not survive.  Imagine a union of the U.S., Mexico, and Honduras, with a common currency.  Greece, Portugal, and southern Italy are reasonable equivalents to Honduras and Mexico, and Germany is no U.S. economically.

Finally – I have been reading Arguably, a massive collection of Christopher Hitchens’ essays, and I feel miserably inferior.  I’ve read the Greek philosophers, Romantic poets, Enlightenment thinkers, Classical authors, and more.  But Hitchens has obviously not only read at least ten times more than I, he has clearly memorized every damned word of everything he ever read, then somehow developed the ability to express his knowledge and opinions in a way and with such force that no other mortal can. He is simply the greatest essayist writing today, and we cannot afford to lose him.

Does America need more Steve Jobs, or more Goverment?

In 1989, merely 22 years ago, Apple introduced its Macintosh Portable.  It came with a 16Mhz CPU, 1 Meg of RAM, and a 10 inch black and white active matrix LCD.  The price, $7,300, was affordable by only the best off of Americans.

Today, even though the dollar is worth only about half of what it was then, you can buy a laptop 1000 time more powerful, for a price 10% of that of that old Mac, making reliable, high speed computing available to almost everyone.

How is this possible?  It wasn’t achieved by government edict, nor through the wisdom of some central planning board.  Rather it happened because of the type of competition found only in free markets.

Think about that for a moment.   Then think how much cheaper, better, and more available healthcare, or perhaps education, might be if government had kept its hands off of them.  

The Crux of the Problem...

The brouhaha de jour this week apparently will be the upcoming vote in the United Nations (official motto: We don't do a damned thing other than squander your money and throw lavish parties) on the resolution out of Durban III to admit Palestine as a full member of that body.

I believe Palestinians have every bit as much right to have a home state as Israelis or anyone else, but this resolution is wrought with worms.  The principle problem is that it sets the border between the new state and Israel as the pre-1967 border, and compounds the mistake by naming east Jerusalem as the new nation's capital.

Now there are certainly reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue, but to me the overriding question is: Shouldn't borders be settled through negotiation between the disputing parties?  Hasn't the age of fiat in settling international disagreements gone the way of the buggy whip and, say, colonialism?

Unfortunately, the settlement of any Israeli-Palestinian question is not about politics, nor ever the right of each to be secure within their agreed-upon borders.  No, that would be way too easy.

The real issue is perfectly demonstrated by a full page ad that appeared in this morning's Dallas Morning News, and, I assume, a dozen or more other major papers across the country.  That ad was sponsored by an organization revealingly named "The Jerusalem Prayer Team" (JPT), and lists among its arguments for opposing Durban III (remember, I've already provided a compelling argument against it as it stands), Genesis 12.3:  "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you."

Wow!  How do you argue with logic like that?  It is so convincing it takes your breath away, not to mention your mind.  It does though serve to point out the real problem in the Muddled East, namely Religion.

Christopher Hitchens famously said the "Religion poisons everything", and in both the conflict at hand and the mindless ad referenced above that statement is indisputable. What we have, if you peel the onion to its digestible core, is two pre-rational, animal-sacrificing desert tribes locked in mortal combat over whose god promised them what and when.

These claims originate from peoples who didn't know the earth was an orb, nor what caused lightening or disease.  Yet today they hold much of the world poised on the edge of war, perhaps even nuclear war, over what can only be logically considered bat-shit crazy foundational dreams.

Hopefully the JPT will stick to prayer as opposed to any real effort to interfere, thus nullifying their expenditures and historical revisionism. And hopefully too the two parties to the dispute at hand will learn that the only way to achieve peace and a real future for their peoples is to conscientiously strive for a fair and permanent settlement of a conflict that has already endured far too long, and one arrived at without further reference to invisible friends and their non-existent promises.

IS IT JUST ME, OR…

“Irene claims 40 lives”,  and “Hurricane responsible for 40 deaths” are just two of the headlines I’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours.  Wow, one thinks, that must have been a real killer storm.

But it wasn’t, really.  It was nowhere near Katrina’s blow to New Orleans  nor Andrew’s destruction of South Florida.  Andrew struck the area south of Miami with 165 mph winds, Irene never reached 90 mph except for a few gusts.

Irene was a bit more than your average thunder storm to be sure, but a killer hurricane?  Let’s review a few of the deaths blamed on the unfortunate lady, and you tell me if the storm was at fault or if it was merely a case of the shallow end of the gene pool being culled: 

• In Bristol, CT 46-year-old Shane Seaver died after he and another man went canoeing down a flooded street and the canoe capsized. Seaver's body washed ashore late Sunday in Plainville. 
•  In Hockessin, DE  police found the bodies of two men who had sent a text message to a friend saying they were running through Irene during the height of the storm.
• In Volusia County, FL  55-year-old Frederick Fernandez died Saturday off New Smyrna Beach after he was tossed off his (surf) board by massive waves caused by Irene.
• In Flagler County, 55-year-old tourist James Palmer of New Jersey died Saturday in rough surf. 
• 68-year-old Joseph Rocco of East Islip drowned while windsurfing in Bellport Bay.  (Really?  Windsurfing in a freaking hurricane?) 
• A man died after his inflatable boat capsized on the Croton River. 
• Katherine Morales Cruz, 15, of Manassas Park, Va., died Saturday in a two-car collision at an intersection where Hurricane Irene had knocked out power to the traffic lights. (Is stop, look, yield suspended during a hurricane?) 
• Jose Manuel Farabia Corona, 21, of Dover died in a Pitt County traffic accident after his SUV went off a road and twice slammed into trees Saturday as Irene's began to make landfall. (I wonder if they bothered to do a blood alcohol level.) 
• Deputies recovered the body of Melton Robinson Jr., who had been missing since jumping into the Cape Fear River as storms reached North Carolina. (Ditto Mr. Corona above.) 
• A 58-year-old Harrisburg man was killed Sunday when a tree toppled onto his tent.  (Is camping in a hurricane that much different from sleeping on a railroad track?) 
• A body recovered from the Deerfield River is believed to be that of a woman who fell in while watching flooding in Wilmington. 
• 57-year-old William P. Washington of King William County was killed when a tree fell on him as he was cutting another tree Saturday night. (Just had to give that new chainsaw a tryout, huh?)

So there you have it folks. I do not mean to poke fun at anyone’s early demise, but to claim that any of these idiots was killed by a hurricane is comparable to blaming gravity for the death of someone jumping off the roof of a twenty story building.  

My name is John Shuey and I approve this message.

Reagan at his best...

The only way out...

You might have missed this, but with the recent increase of the Federal government "debt ceiling", our government's borrowing now exceeds our nation's GDP.  That's right, our government is now in a hole deeper than the value of all the goods and services the U.S. economy produces in a full year.

The last time our debt was more than GDP?

The late 1940s.  Recovery happened swiftly then, which should give us hope.  There is a way out.

But remember: It was not World War II that brought us out of the Great Depression, the end of the war did.

And remember further: Most of the big names in economics -- by then, Keynesians all -- had predicted a huge economicdownturn as government spending plummeted and wartime regulations (chiefly wage and price controls) hit the dustbin.

It was a very bad prediction, because the economy soon took off.

Why? Less government spending, less regulation, far less involvement in the economy.

In short.  More freedom.

News from Heathensville - Part 1A

A few hours ago I mentioned the letter that Christopher Hitchens wrote to those attending the American Atheist Convention.  Hitch was supposed to be here, but his health has deteriorated to the point that he couldn't make the trip.  Instead he wrote this letter, which I now share with you because it really is to all those fighting the good fight for truth and reason in this 21st century:

Dear fellow-unbelievers,

    Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency. 

      That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools. But in the past few years, there have been heartening signs of a genuine and spontaneous resistance to this sinister nonsense: a resistance which repudiates the right of bullies and tyrants to make the absurd claim that they have god on their side. To have had a small part in this resistance has been the greatest honor of my lifetime: the pattern and original of all dictatorship is the surrender of reason to absolutism and the abandonment of critical, objective inquiry. The cheap name for this lethal delusion is religion, and we must learn new ways of combating it in the public sphere, just as we have learned to free ourselves of it in private. 

    Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations. 

       As the heirs of a secular revolution, American atheists have a special responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution that patrols the boundary between Church and State. This, too, is an honor and a privilege. Believe me when I say that I am present with you, even if not corporeally (and only metaphorically in spirit...) Resolve to build up Mr Jefferson's wall of separation. And don't keep the faith.

Sincerely

Christopher Hitchens

News from Heathensville - Part 1

Son JMS and I are in the midst of the American Atheist Convention here in dreary downtown Des Moines, IA.  And so far it has been interesting.

In addition to rubbing elbows with the likes of PZ Myers, Lawrence Kraus, and Andy Thompson, (Oh, and Greta Christina for those of you who appreciate her writing), we have been privy to some interesting news.

The Atheist/Freethought/Humanist/Secular movement is combining on some exciting, in your face projects:

1. For July 4, banners promoting Atheism, to whit reading "Godless America",will be flown over major sporting and other events in every state in the nation where atheism/agnosticism is "the fastest growing religious segment" according to recent polls. For those of you who might be unaware -- that would be all fifty states.  Ought to be a hoot.  And
2. In the spring of 2012, every non-theist organization in the country is sponsoring, and AA hosting, a Reason Rally in Washington, DC, which is predicted to be the largest gathering of non-believers in the history of the world.  Among others, Richard Dawkins has committed to attend.  The FSM willing, I'll be there.

Well, gotta get back to the show, I'll report more later  --  including on Christopher Hitchens couching and compelling letter to the convention.

John Galt's Speech in just 964 Words...

.
"For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?

"Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.

"We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

"I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.

"You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's impossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.

"And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?

"Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

"You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.

"Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.

"To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.

"If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.

"The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:  I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."

From: http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm;  Edited by: Daryl J. Sroufe