Pieces of Liberty

The Vacationing Board- Brave New Welfare

2010-04-20T20:43:00.004-06:00

Feeding my drudgereport.com addiction, I was checking the site for updates and saw this article and thought surely, this is a spoof, a joke, a satire story you’d see in the Onion, but from what I can glean, it seems like the European Union is serious. The Ottawa Citizen headline reads “Vacationing a human right, EU Chief Says." I kept thinking this can’t be a real news story, it just can’t.

The EU proudly boasts travel as a universal human right and proposes to subsidize travel throughout the EU with taxpayer money. Daddy Warbucks, I mean, the EU (entitlement union) is proposing this as a compassionate strategy to increase the quality of life for those who go without vacations due to financial hardship or have an inability to read maps or just like to stay home. The EU says the motivation behind this is to promote cultural appreciation, and increase the quality of life of its people. As an added bonus it will also prop up the tourism industry.
It reads as follows, "taxpayers footing some of the vacation bill for seniors, youths between the ages of 18 and 25, disabled people, and families facing 'difficult social, financial or personal' circumstances." So I say to myself- well, today was hard, I think I'm having a personal hardship, time for a government-sponsored road trip! Don't kids 18-25 need a job instead of a holiday and then they can pay as they go?

Would a workaholic desk jockey who slaves in his cubicle day in and day out without time off be a human rights violation?? How do the refugees in Darfur feel about that? Is the EU going to force you to take vacation? Is tourism going to be the only productivity coming out of the EU? Should we short the euro now or later? Perhaps the EU will devolve into its former nomadic culture and become a vast wasteland of vagabonds who are now free to indulge their wanderlust.

I’m still flabbergasted at the whole concept of the EU granting its people the right to be a tourist, not just basic welfare programs, but now holidays. It gives the phrase, tourist trap, a whole new meaning. My question is - when do the announcements of new human rights stop? Why don’t they keep going and grant each person an Italian villa for a holiday escape. How about vouchers for activities, such as gondola rides, tourist trinkets, postcards, a per diem per se. Basically it sounds like an all-expense paid trip to get out of town. The article continues that they advise the northern Europeans to travel to southern Europe and vice versa. What if they want to go to Vegas or Dubai? Wouldn’t the EU be infringing their on their right to play tourist if they restrict travel only to certain approved areas? What the EU giveth, the EU taketh away.

How do you think this all got started? When a governing body starts granting rights to services, like health care and vacations and a laundry list of things are rolled out to entice a citizen to comply with a government’s rules to play along, one becomes an automaton to be controlled. Instead of a short-lived video game, the government’s game is for keeps.

Rules for Radicals, anyone?

2009-09-30T22:05:00.003-06:00

After being on the waiting list for awhile, I checked out Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky from the Denver Public Library. Even after a few pages into it, I felt Alinsky held a dim and grim view of life in the free world. In his view, the only way to achieve the so-called ruse of the American Dream is not to pursue and work hard for it, but to take it from others.

Some notable and telling quotes:

Page 61-under the Ego subheading

"The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The leader is driven by the desire for power, while the organizer is driven by the desire to create. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach - to create, to be a 'great creator,' to play God."

So a community organizer is on par with playing God- is that what I'm hearing?

The ego section ends on page 61 with this gem.

"Ego must be all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego."

These quotes speak to the influence that Saul Alinksy's philosophy had on a young Barack Obama. This strategy has been successful in getting him elected to the highest office in the U.S. as leader of the free world. Millions of people have been mesmerized by his cult of personality and massive ego and thus easily falling into groupthink. His stage persona has succeeded in getting the masses to forgo their critical thinking skills and ignoring or glossing over the implications of his message.

There is a lot about "change" in this book, but not a lot about hope. I found the tone of this book, in a word, bitter. It pits one side against the other; specifically, the Haves and Have Nots. It is not about the power of persuasion with Alinsky, but about the persuasion of power. The "let's start a revolution" talk is almost juvenile and I can see why it appeals to the uninformed, less-educated, younger generation who have glamorized the hippie protest culture of the sixties. Let's stick it to the man, man.

A couple more quotes: Alinksy comments on power on page 51.

"The corruption of power is not in the power, but in ourselves."

What about that oft used axiom? - "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Page 195
"Corporations must forget their nonsense about 'private sectors.'"

Private sectors organized from free-enterprising individuals to make money is nonsense to the Have Nots in Alinsky's world. Didn't you know you're a victim of the system? I can't help but indulge with the sarcasm as this book emitted lots of groans and eye-rolling.

Page 196 concerning the private sector.
"corporation - predatory drive for profits should be concerning themselves with poverty, disease, crime."

So what's the point? Bottom up prosperity? Can pigs fly? Help others before you help yourself? Don't the flight attendants tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before you assist others? Production precedes consumption anyone?

This book is worth reading and analyzing how Alinsky has influenced the Obama doctrine. Unfortunately, it flies in the face of the abundance of prosperity and concept of freedom known as American Exceptionalism.

Remembering Shrillary: When dissent was patriotic

2009-08-14T16:33:00.004-06:00

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Even Hillary Clinton agrees with that.

It doesn't make me a Nazi or a white supremacist or a militia member to debate and passionately disagree with Obama's administration. When you're fighting statists for your freedom and liberty from an overreaching government dissent is still the highest form of patriotism.

Health Care Plea

2009-07-21T22:11:00.005-06:00

When I was a kid, I never thought I would have to write my congressmen to fight for my humanity in the United States. I sent the following letter to Diana Degette. I don't know if they read these or a staffer just hits delete, delete, delete.

Politics aside- this is my life. Please represent me in this remaining session of Congress and vote NO on the health care bill that Obama is proposing. Please have the courage to stand up for individual choice in health care. I am very satisfied with my current health insurance, Anthem BCBS and health care provider.

I am engaged to be married and we would like to have children. For the sake of my future children, please do not make them wards of the state. I do not want a comparative effectiveness board making cradle to grave choices for me or my family. I am a sovereign being unto myself and I do not want the government overstepping its bounds and interfering with my private property rights. Health care is not a right. Rights are inalienable because the creator has endowed them to me, not because the state bureaucrats have granted them to me. If the state can grant health care a right, they can also take it away or hinder access to it with waiting and rationing availability of treatment.

Yes, there needs to be health care reform, but massive government intervention is not the answer to problems such as covering pre-existing conditions and exorbitant malpractice insurance. Please vote against the government entering into competition with private health care. Please represent ME and vote no on Obama's health care bill.

Liberty in the Books: Finale of the Forgotten Man

2009-06-16T22:51:00.006-06:00

Liberty in the Books just finished their second book since the club's inception last winter; The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. We're gaining popularity as we increased our reading group with some new additions this past meeting.

Fascinated by the Great Depression, I keep coming back to the notion of, "why didn't I learn about this in high school?" Sure I've read Grapes of Wrath, but perhaps it was not in my government school's teaching plans that year to explain the pitiful economic consequences of implementing Keynesian policies via White House directives. Oh wait, fast forward from FDR - I'm learning about it in real time with Obama.

Frankly, I think Obama needs to read this book during his sleepless nights worrying about deficits. It is very enlightening and I don't believe he knows half of the history that Shlaes imparts in The Forgotten Man. The parallels are frightening, right down to the fact that in 1937, Roosevelt's administration debated the Federal Public Health Service a.k.a nationalization of health care, with the American Medical Association. It seems that national health care, complete government command and control over what they do with your body, how it will be treated through a "decision tree" via a comparative effectiveness board, and when you should live and die, has been the dream of leftists for decades. I guess when you are no longer a tax revenue contributor to the federal tax base you are slowly deleted from the system. My sleepless nights are my worries that a government run health system will only grant me supposed coverage and a place in the queue, not quality care.

In the last part of the book, problems with the New Deal snowball and the rhetoric deteriorates. Unintended consequences on the next generation from government expansion, out-of-control spending, and subsequent budget deficits weighed heavily on the mind of FDR's treasury secretary, Morgenthau. Shlaes explains that even Morgenthau was having a hard time explaining the New Deal to his son and coming up with an answer as to what the New Deal had achieved. Morgenthau confided this with FDR and through a slick and deliberate speech to Wall Street assured businessmen of the government's action.

Currently, this resonates with Obama and Geithner soothing Wall Street with their financial regulation siren song to prevent future sector bubbles. The next generation of Americans already have their hands tied to a whopper of a deficit Obama created and for what? How do you explain that to your kids? I don't even have kids, but still.

I think it would be an interesting foray for the author to adopt a visual medium for this book. Similar to The Commanding Heights series to piece together a side-by-side view of FDR's policies and Obama's policies. (There are just too many to enumerate in a blog. I think Shlaes would have to write another book to discuss that.) It would show that history DOES repeat itself when NOT understood, or taken into consideration of what policies are feasible for economic growth, how it affects productive individuals, and what policies increase the quality of life for regular average hard working people, just like the Forgotten Man.

NEXT BOOK CLUB BOOK - HOT OFF THE PRESSES:
The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell

Atlas Shrugged Trivia

2009-06-14T21:46:00.005-06:00

I was out at the Fat Tire Brewery in Fort Collins being introduced to their fabulous beer by the waiter/host dude in the tasting room. He handed out his leaflet for me to circle the beers I wanted and then as a Fat Tire notable, told me to write down a trivia question at the bottom of the leaflet. As a Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, geography bee question buff, I was thinking how I could stump him. But really, why not just go for the big guns.

I wrote at the bottom, "Who is John Galt?" Easy enough I thought, I was just going for some name recognition here. He could spare me an Atlas Shrugged synopsis, I just wanted a reaction of understanding. The host dude was college age and could be a well-read freedom lover OR a stoner hippie just waiting tables till he could play ultimate. Either way, when he came to the table and read my trivia question I knew my hopes had been dashed. His look of bewilderment at the name was disappointing.

I had to tell him that John Galt was a fictional character from a best selling novel titled Atlas Shrugged. Then I encouraged him to read the book so see what I'm talking about because it would probably interest him. And to ask his friends, "who is John Galt." (just to get the ball rolling)

It was a busy place so I couldn't divulge a complete character study of what it means to be John Galt. Hopefully the host dude will read the book.

Liberty in the Books: Round 2 with The Forgotten Man

2009-04-27T23:02:00.000-06:00

The liberty bookworms have converged again at Illegal Grounds Coffeehouse this past April 14 to discuss Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Each time we assemble for Liberty in the Books, at least one coffeehouse patron engages us afterwards and is interested in our discussion. If that’s, you, please join us! Our group is small and cozy with about 8-10 of us gathered around a large table - perfect for bookish dialogue. Meetings are the second Tuesday every month from 7-9PM at Illegal Grounds at 925 E. 17th.

I’ve captured a few highlights from our second discussion of this book. A couple notable parts of chapters 4-6 were particularly effective at eliciting déjà vu moments that are uncannily relevant to today.

May 1930, 1928 economists wrote an open letter to the NY Times urging Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
(Didn’t this just happen with the Cato Institute placing a similar ad responding to “Obama’s needed stimulus spending") Neither letter worked. In both cases, attempts to inform and persuade were ignored at the president’s folly and the public's peril.

Inventing local currencies and bartering were thriving in 1931. The Vallar currency was created by locals for exchange of goods within Salt Lake City. Also, many were getting paid for a day’s work with farm fresh food or trading specialized services. Bypassing the buck, bartering is back in fashion today with couchsurfing, house swaps, and trading other goods or services.

In chapters 5-6, Roosevelt outlines the massive government plans to drive prices up and put people to work in the 1930’s:

NIRA- National Industrial Recovery Act- created the Public Works Administration
NRA- National Recovery Administration- coalesced industry, labor, and government
AAA- Agriculture Adjustment Administration – regulated farming

The consequences from the AAA stood out in my mind as being entirely backward given the fact the people were starving in the Great Depression. Production controls enacted by the AAA meant farmers were getting paid NOT to farm and were told to basically retire their fields. Millions of acres were left bare in an effort to drive up prices. Another sick consequence of production controls was that six million young pigs were killed before they were ready for market, 6 MILLION!

Under the guise of progress it turns out- it’s basically a contest between Roosevelt and Hoover to see who can take the most credit for each massive government project. From Hoover you have the Hoover Dam, which Roosevelt tried and failed to rename the Boulder Dam. Roosevelt then decided to one up him and created the TVA- Tennessee Valley Authority, to nationalize the expansion of the electrical grid to the South.

Bypassing the trite sound bytes of the day, the author expertly shows how the devil was in the details and the masterminds or “braintrusters” were doing the work that wreaked so much havoc prolonging the Great Depression. Without summarizing all the chapters, just read the book and you'll have a new take on history that you didn't get in your public school system.

This book has also been getting some play in the media and will help you decide whether to read the book if you’re still on the fence.

Dennis Miller announced he’s reading The Forgotten Man when he was on the O’Reilly Factor on 4/15/09. Very early on in the video, Miller gives a good explanation of who is “The Forgotten Man.” Then he digresses into a comedic bit railing on Janet Napolitano and comments that the participants of the April 15th teaparties are essentially the Forgotten Man.

Nick Gillespie of Reason also has posted an insightful interview transcript with the author, Amity Shlaes, about this bestselling book.

Book Club Alert: Liberty in the Books

2009-03-17T22:12:00.000-06:00

Starting a brand new book is like embarking on an adventure. This is the case with the new group I’m involved with called Liberty in the Books. It is a book club that meets once a month to discuss the issues and ideas encapsulated in the chosen book. An offshoot of the socializing event and happy hour, Liberty on the Rocks, Liberty in the Books is held at a coffee shop and is conducted in a moderated format that discusses the values of economic policies found in relevant literature. It is founded by Ari Armstrong and Amanda Teresi, who are both active free marketers in Colorado. It is intended to be a layman's discussion to encourage economic education.

This month’s book club meeting at Illegal Grounds served as an introduction to the chosen book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. It is a New York Times Bestseller and when I went to buy it at Barnes and Noble, I reached for the last copy on the shelf.

Right off the bat, this book delves into the presidential history of the era and forays into the character background of Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt and their respective economic policies. This author does a masterful job of creating an easy to read history book, very unlike the dry history texts from high school.

Our discussion turns to the obvious in that history tends to repeat itself in generational intervals and this book already has proven a timely composition to relate to our current state of the nation. Nonetheless, paralleling Shlae’s issues with contemporary occurrences was an uncanny theme to our discussion. What I have written below is a condensed summary of our discussion from Tuesday, March 10, 2009. It proved illuminating and simultaneously frustrating as the issues are not elementary or readily available which explains why so many myths and romanticized notions about the Great Depression abound.

The reference to the title of the book, the Forgotten Man, is from an essay written by William Graham Sumner, available courtesy of a great educational foundation the Liberty Fund. The Forgotten Man is a reference to logical argument and explained as a variable in a simple equation. A+B have decided to join forces to accommodate and help X, however, in that process, the variable of C is present and by forces of proximity is “indentured” to become part of the sum to help X. Sumner wrote about the Forgotten Man, C “the man who paid.” However, the New Deal only focused on the X man, the man dependent on government, and the recipient of C’s forced charity. This book does an excellent job in explaining the convoluted justification of the New Deal while providing skeptical attitudes of the day.

What became a predominant part of our discussion was a clarification of terms, especially deflation. Currently, we are all familiar with inflation and its consequences; the reduction of purchasing power of a dollar. However, deflation means that prices are falling and demand goes down. With the Fed’s money supply factor being injected into the equation, there becomes too much money available, lack of demand for goods, and more saving and not enough circulating. Since prices and wages are intertwined, when one does not counterbalance the other, the result is something must give. What gives are jobs. Hence, companies lay people off when there are people working for the same amount of money, but the prices of their product are too low to support the payroll. Deflation + wage controls = unemployment. Shlaes touched on deflation briefly, almost too briefly. Thus our group discussion ensued over the meaning of this economic indicator. What Shlaes does well is explaining how the combination of deflation along with other economic policies that were a deterrent to business compounded the depression into a massive disaster.

This book club is serving a purpose of reeducating myself and making up for the poor teaching of the subject that I received during my stint in government school, a.k.a. public high school. The only real sense I got of the Great Depression came from reading the Grapes of Wrath when I was a junior in AP English and finding it really depressing and also from learning that my grandmother still hoarded any useful items or goods for the home and kitchen because it was a habit that carried from the Depression generation; everything was to be saved and nothing was to go to waste as it could be used for something. From desperation comes improvisation, I guess.

If you’ve read this far, I encourage you to check this blog again soon for our next discussion recap and also pick up your copy of Shlaes’ Forgotten Man. Insofar as the third chapter, the Forgotten Man has been an illuminating book and I've already learned a lot of history This book does a supreme job of reliving the ugly facts of the Great Depression as it is a period of history I would rather not repeat.

Interview like it's a first date

2009-02-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

The nuances that weave throughout an interview are very similar to that of a first date....an awkward first date....a first date with no chance for blossoming romance. Which leads me to the question of why I don't just get up and leave in the middle of it. Why not? Then we can both get back to work on what we really want to do....something or someone else.

Having an interview a week with no promising leads of rewarding employment reminds me of going on dates with guys I had met off match.com and trying a new one on a weekly basis and hoping for substance and a spark. You ask each other questions, are overly polite, and prepare to say the right thing that is attractive to the prospect with absolutely no assurance of reciprocity. As a girl who has gone on countless dates, meaning I've truly lost count after 5o, I had the whole charade down pat. It could be choreographed in a decision tree. Even though I am finally in a solid relationship, my dating routine has reared its ugly head in job interviewing. The torment of going on a great interview and not hearing anything for weeks is maddening, impolite, and a sign of poor HR. If they were obviously impressed by my qualifications and personality during the interview, but fail to follow-up, I start losing a little respect in the hiring process.

I'm left with that lingering subtext, "The employer is just not that into me." Seriously, I've read the book, I'm going to go see the movie adaptation, "He's just not that into you," and it is a true statement of life. It is about those women who dwell and wait by the phone and rehash wishy-washy dates hoping to find solace that he will call, but the book illuminates them to their delusion. Hanging all your hopes and dreams on one potential date or interview is irrational. Not playing by the rules inherent in the nature of the beast is like showing up to the profootball game without any pads on or waiting for the bus at some other place besides the bus stop, or eating a jumbo hot dog and then going on the tilt-o-whirl. Synergy and effortless success? More like lack of undersanding and preparation.

Try playing the lottery and expecting to win big time after buying one ticket. This is why some compare the lottery as an additional tax for those uneducated in statistical probability. However, as an aside, I am glad that some do play the lottery because there is a sign on my favorite bike trail along Cherry Creek that says this trail system was paid for with Colorado lottery dollars, therefore lottery players are useful to me!

Heretofore, I need to move on from unresponsive interviews.

Back to the job search.........

1984

2009-01-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to assess your status: either things are getting better or things are getting worse. Being unemployed gives you lots of time to think about these things. I was about hitting rock bottom today when I suddenly got a phone call and soon thereafter, things began to improve. I now have an upcoming interview which is a sign of potential change in my status.

Another one of my favorite unemployed pastimes is reading books. I've gone hog wild at the library and am voraciously reading great literature while discarding the books that don't pique my interest. One such book that caught my attention is the famed 1984 by George Orwell. I've always heard about it and understood the reference to Big Brother and the subsequent vacuous reality show on CBS, but never consumed the book.

Upon reading the book from the point of view of Winston, the main character, I could tell things for him were going to get a lot worse. I was enthralled at reading about his life in this acutely described negative utopia. The more I read, the more I couldn't put it down. How the author could imagine this plot, and how despicable and disgusting humans could be without their human nature was disturbing. The dehumanizing of men in this book was atrocious I just wondered how much worse it could get. I was pretty impressed by how extreme Orwell took this dystopian scenario.

I tagged a couple quotes for their sound bytes. Ingsoc was their philosophy which "translated into death worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of Self." This self-sacrifice lead society into a kind of death worship that was rather morbid and unsustainable. It made me think of abortion on demand. Orwell goes on to say that destroying the family unit is how the dedication to the State is accomplished.

"We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future, there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated." Cue the automaton.

The intense buy in and robotic obedience from so many of the party members to Big Brother caused any outsider to question his sanity if millions of people loved the State. The consensus of a majority silenced skeptics and critics into underground communication. Once they were exposed as being skeptics, they were tortured until they caved and until they relinquished their individualism. The afterword by Erich Fromm illuminates this point by suggesting, "how can millions be wrong" and following it with, "how can a minority of one be right."

Elucidating the true definition of a word is another point this book chose to pinpoint.
Doublethink is what you must understand to be true in your mind when knowing that there is an obvious contradiction.
"War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is Strength" is the state mantra.

"This peculiar linking-together of opposites" is how the oceanic society contends to shape people to the irrational devotion to the State. Words lose their meaning, right and wrong is diminished and the only acceptable solution is whatever the State says it is. Another distinctive layer is the Thought Police. Forget thinking for yourself. The State will do it for you. If you don't let them do it for you, they will torture you till you submit to their mind control. Poor Winston in Room 101.

Combine this with the rewriting and deletion of history and distant memories and actual people were vaporized. "Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past." Winston's job is to eradicate parts of the past to make the historical ledgers equal the State's assessment. It plays to the notion that perception is reality. So if the State were to write history to announce that there was a 400% increase in boot laces, yet everyone around you is barefoot due to a lack of boot laces, you were insane. This distortion of reality is a subversive tactic to undermine people's grip on reality.

1984 is an amazing piece of literature that is a must for any reader looking to diversify his reading repertoire. At times it was hard to comprehend the depth of human distortion that Orwell had conjured up in this scenario. From the analysis I've read, Orwell wrote this book as a symbolic warning to the nightmarish future that was not out of reach in a post-nuclear society.

In addition to my usual beach full of salt, my skepticism of groupthink, aggressive marketing campaigns, theories backed only by consensus, and irrational devotion to State figureheads has dramatically increased. Once again, it goes back to my favorite slogan of the Gadsen Flag, "Don't Tread On Me."

2 Months and 1 Day

2009-01-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

The day Barack Obama was named the President Elect was the day I lost my job -a double whammy of bad news. I had been joking with my manager the day before about how I might just quit my job and go on Obama's adverstised welfare plan of getting to be kept by my fellow brother, not knowing my job was in true jeopardy. My conservative manager had once laughed at my satirical comment, but because he knew he had to lay me off, his eyes bugged out at the dramatic irony. The words "be careful what you wish for" were all too telling. Because that is exactly what happened as I was called into his office and given my figurative pink slip. I truly thought he was kidding. As imminent unemployment was a new reality for me, I signed up for unemployment insurance. I'm not too keen on the idea of receiving money from the government. The unemployment office emphaisizes that their insurance is not welfare, but a temporary means to manage your way through to the next job. I am just hoping to recoup the amount I paid in taxes last year. This is the mindset I have as an unemployed free-market thinker.

Earlier that week before the layoff, I was thinking of the duration that I would stay in the job, already looking forward to the future, but I soon realized on election day I wouldn't be deciding that. Management got to decide that and let me go due to lack of funds. So some things you get to decide, some things soon become out of your control before you know it.

The week after I lost my job, I got very sick. I had a terrible cold and was just miserable. Being unemployed does alter your routine, because now you have to create a new routine at home to stick to. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed having some time off, but I have started to feel like a slacker and a slug. I'm not on vacation. I have had two interviews and one phone interview so far and would like to get a job.

It has been two months and one day since I got laid off. I'm still unemployed and trying to figure out what my next step is. Starting this blog is just a piece of liberty for me to express the frustration of being unemployed when I didn't plan on it.