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Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

“Eurocrats, however, have insisted on taking Italy and Greece’s problems and making them everyone else’s”

The post from where the above came from is about the European Euro mess – first Greece, now Portugal and Italy are on the brink (with Ireland having already taken its fiscal medicine).  In all cases, the pols there did what the Dems (and Repubs to a bit lesser degree) have done for decades – used other peoples money to achieve fame, notoriety, and votes. 

Thanks to the "Euro Union" where the currency is one but the political (and fiscal) outlooks are multiples, Germany’s taxpayers have already shelled out billions of euros to rescue the idea of the euro being a uniter (the Greeks merely being the stage on which the Eurocrats are pontificating "we are one – we MUST stay as one or bad things will happen" even as that ‘bad thing’ is already in process).  But I digress.  Look at that line again:

Eurocrats, however, have insisted on taking Italy and Greece’s problems and making them everyone else’s

The thought that immediately ran through my mind was "But doesn’t the Left ALWAYS do that – gather the lemmings together?"

Not every problem has a solution (even though the Left believes there is – or at least, the Political Class does; at a minimum, the Political Class or thinks it has to "do something" about a problem).  Neither does every problem needs everyone’s attention.  Let me pile on – not every problem requires we to be in "all for one mode".

WHY does the Left believe that every problem (for when there really is a problem) can only be solved with everyone’s action?  Why does the Left believe that making a probelm everyone elses problem will actually involve / get everyone active about it?

The second thought was:

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Notable Quote – Donald Boudreaux

Like too many western aid experts, Samuel Loewenberg misses the fundamental reason famines still ravage developing countries (“The Famine Next Time,” Nov. 27).The reason isn’t drought.  Yuma, Arizona, gets vanishingly little rainfall, yet denizens of that city aren’t ever threatened with starvation. Nor is the reason a lack of Well-Researched Plans designed and implemented by … Read more

A Classic! Sowell & Friedman vs Francis Fox Piven

I had never seen this clip before, so this was fun to watch.  Coming from free market economist Milton Freidman’s PBS Free to Choose series, this featured one of my favorite political pundit / economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell who argues the points as a conservative black commentator when white socialist Dr. Francis Fox Piven (she of the "collapse the system" theory that nearly bankrupted the City of New York) decided to espouse that the black civil rights movement was about equal outcomes.

She fares not well at all:

In this clip from the 1980 Free To Choose, socialist Frances Fox Piven tangles with Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Sowell, in particular, is incisive with his discussion of "process" versus aspiration — concluding that whatever the purported social goals, liberty suffers.

Sowell is right; just as the TEA Party, Conservatives, and Libertarians lament that Big Government under Obama is on a tear to pick economic winners and losers, the Democrat use of Identity Politics actions is also used to pick political winners and losers.

In both cases, Sowell rightly points out, as in the economic sphere, when Government tries to "give" something to one set of people, it must necessarily take something away from others in the area of results, with the result in the diminution of Freedom from the "donor" group in some fashion.  Progressives have no problem with this problem – they are blinded to the ‘side effects’ or collateral damage sustained by others that are not the focus of the direct actions.

Or, as in a practical example using the current Occupy Wall Street movement (versus the 1980s topic of affirmative action), while the "open" desired result is the "re-empowerment" of the 99%, the tearing down of the 1% is the actual aim at the second layer, with the ultimate destruction of capitalism at the next deeper layer.  In this example, the economic freedom to choose and act of the 1% would be curtailed for the freedom of the 99% (a badly worded sentence, but given the lack of conciseness of what the OWSers want, who knows?).  The problem, which OWSers confirm, is that they cannot distinguish which of the 1% have legitimately earned their wealth vs those that have used crony capitalism to illegitimately taken their wealth. 

So, in the grand tradition of Democrats, Socialists, and Communists,…

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What can we learn from the European financial crisis?

Another video from the Center for Freedom & Prosperity Foundation Economics 101 series that talks about why Big Government is less than optimal: Higher taxes do not lower deficits Just say NO to a VAT Big Govt cripples human capital Tipping point: when moochers outnumber the producers (wagon riders vs wagon pullers)  

Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman speaking from the past to the Occupy Wall Street of now

Freedom and Liberty – that’s why we write here at GraniteGrok.  The radical concepts that the individual was sovereign, that our Rights that stem from natural law and from God to each and every person, was the gift given to us from the intellectual firepower of the Framers of the Declaration and Constitution, and the actual firepower used against what was the most powerful nation in the world at the time.

Yet, since the Progressive era starting in the late 1800’s, those concepts have been under attack – that Security and Stability should be the guiding foundations of society, with non-partisan technocrats providing the expertise to bring us to political utopia.  And without the State to "guide" us, we can never obtain that "Heaven on Earth" of equal outcomes and being the best that they know we can be.

Milton Friedman, a Nobel winning economist, knew well that a free people making their own decisions based on their own self-interest (and for that of their families) and a free market (with voluntary transactions that tell the market which direction to take, based on the combined decisions of those freely made purchases and sales) could do more to achieve that than the top-down command structure that purports to "be for the 99%".  From Carpe Diem (via Cafe Hayek), these three videos speak volumes:

Redistribution of Wealth:

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Thanksgiving – Wherein US Senator Jeanne Shaheen joins in the perfidy of the New York Times regarding Freedom of Religion

Maybe, somebody ought to read this to our US Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, as she seems to has misplaced its importance:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That would be the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the clueless (or graduates of the Government school system); from the US Constitution, by the way, and not the Human Secularist one.   Why is this important, and why should Sen. Shaheen at least be embarrassed?

On a day that historically that has been reserved for the Nation to give thanks to God by President Lincoln for His bounty, a bedrock idea of this county, the New York Times (the Bible of Liberalism according to its editor, Jill Abramson, who said "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion…" ) sees fit to further the process of denying those of faith their Freedom ensconced in the  Constitution simply because it is in the tank for Obamacare.

And US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) goes along for their disingenuous  ride as the NYT continues to prop up Obamacare, tosses the importance of religious tenets of faith minded people over away in washing religion from the public square, and continuing their "precedence march" of State’s importance over citizens in determining what is ethical:

The Battle Over Birth Control

In August, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, announced new rules that included contraceptives for women in the package of preventive health care services that all insurers must cover without a deductible or co-payment beginning next year.
Related

The policy follows the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. It will help drive down the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion by making birth control more accessible.

It was distressing but came as no surprise that the new rules prompted protests from Roman Catholic bishops and other church leaders. What is surprising, and even more distressing, is that the White House is considering caving to their call for an expansive exemption that would cover employees of hospitals, universities, charitable organizations and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and benefit from public money.

What they don’t go into detail (knowing it destroys their narrative) is that in proclaiming "for the public good" is in direct opposition to the freedom to religious belief.  What is it when one is forced to believe something that otherwise they would not voluntarily by the State?

Yes, Tyranny.  Not any surprise, that’s what Big Government brings ("The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen"):

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#OccupyFail – oopsies! “Occupy Black Friday” a bust?

All day long, I’ve been seeing stories where Occupy Wall Streeters from all over decided to participate in "Occupy Black Friday" in attempts to : dissuade consumers from making voluntary decisions to spend their money to get the most bang for the buck (which often means Big Box stores) and swear off consumerism ("“I think … Read more

NM Gov. Gary Johnson (R-NM) to jump to the Libertarian Party for Prez?

Politico is reporting that Gary is thinking from bolting from the Republican Primary and going to the Libertarian ticket: The former Republican governor, excluded from all but two debates this year, tells the Santa Fe New Mexican that he could seek the Libertarian Party nomination for the general election: But in an interview Wednesday, he … Read more

It always comes down to morality, doesn’t it?

A snippet caught my eye over at Powerline (emphasis mine):

So let’s revisit the original for a moment, and note the media propensity for glorifying whatever self-assertion reckless youth decides to throw up at the moment.  Back in 1969, Time magazine chirped that Woodstock

may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age. . . [T]he revolution it preaches, implicitly or explicitly, is essentially moral; it is the proclamation of a new set of values. . .  With a surprising ease and a cool sense of authority, the children of plenty have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted.  The pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work.  To do one’s own thing is a greater duty than to be a useful citizen.  Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth.  Now that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject materialism.

Yet, that "different ethical standard" was never different (there is hardly ever anything new under the sun) nor is it ethical.  What was, at that time, the mantra of "do what feels good as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else" is nothing more than a thinly veiled gauze of hedonism.  The hippies back in the ’60s, following the "turn on, tune in, and drop out", thought this was the new that would usher in a new society, with Woodstock as the iconic event pointing to the "fact" that this could happen.

Then Altamont happened, showing that reality can really gum up the works of any planned or "scientific" utopian nirvana.

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Friday Humor – “I’ll go tell him”

It’s been a while, but time to resurrect this once common feature.  H/T to ‘Grok reader Bill the Truck Driver for sending a few snippets poking fun at my ancestral lineage! Six retired Irishmen were playing poker in O’Leary’s apartment when Paddy Murphy loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest, and drops dead … Read more

Friday Humor Bonus – TSA version

This has been going around lately, but given that this is one of the busiest travel times of the year…. (H/T: Bill)

Budget Cutting – So simple, a Game Show Host can do it!

With the collapse of the "SuperDufus Committee", one can only conclude that Congress needs a revamping.  No, I am not throwing in with former Obama flunky Peter Orzag or N.C. Governor Bev Perdue who both say we need less democracy. Rather, it really is working as the Founders designed it to be – messy, disorganized, … Read more

Well, the Democrats weren’t the only ones with Lefty Thanksgiving talking points:

Sorry for the lack of posting the last couple of days – yours truly’s laptop caught quite the virus and rendered itself inoperable for a while; I shall try to make up for missing Thanksgiving postings!

This was one of those posts that I missed putting up on time!  Thanksgiving can be a contentious time at the table – Mom was never happy with me during the holidays. I remember growing up and through my college years when we all went over one of the aunt or uncles’ homes – and given that she had been one of 8, there were a TON of people around (easily 50 – 100 folks at such a gathering).  It always seemed that I was having an argument with one of my Uncles during those times – a stalwart Democrat for the sole reason that FDR’s policies had allowed him to get through college.  Sure, he allowed, there were a lot of problems other than that, and the longer than necessary Depression probably was FDR’s fault, and that Dems had failings since, but he’d always pull the level for the Dems.

I always got "that look" from Mom – she hated it when I merely smiled back.

Steve had it right on the Dems with their cheat sheets but they weren’t the only ones pushing their supporters to push their agenda.  Welcome to the Turkey table (like it or not!), the talking points of the unborn baby killers.

I’m betting that our senior US Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, is in full agreement with these talking points.  After all, even after the democratically elected Executive Council (who the people of NH changed from a Democrat majority to a Republican supermajority) voted to not fund PPNE, she had the Feds go around that decision and fund PPNE directly.

Really, Jeanne?  Do you have so little regard of the peoples’ votes?  Oh, that’s right – Progressives believe that people are just too stupid to govern and decide for themselves.

After all, you did such a bangup job of "straightening up" our healthcare insurance marketplace here in NH, you chased all but 2 large companies out of the state…

But I digress – back PP’s talking points:

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Doodlings from Occupy NH – Why shouldn’t I be able to defend myself?

I think you can tell by now that I’ve been spending a lot of time over at Occupy NH.  In talking with some of the big "L" Libertarians that have shown up, they have had the mantra of "why should only Statist values and theory be discussed and become the mainstay of the OWS movement, at least here in NH?"  Well, in watching and then debating at Occupy Manchester, it became clear that this was the right thing to do.  Hey, they said "we’re inclusive!", so I "went Alinsky" to have them honor their own rule book in their own online forum.  Thus, they have to listen to the Right side of each and every discussion and idea – just the Grokster way of taking the fight to the other side! We do not outsource our responsibility to defend our beliefs to others!

And with advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, there are plenty of opportunities to get in there and defend Conservative beliefs (instead of what seems to be the Republican pacifist derring-do of just walking away).  Conservatives ought to be out there and never ever letting the other side get to speak up alone and capture the discussion, the debating points, or mindshare.  After all, the Left is fully invested in this movement, so we should be that counterbalance force (even if just to show up) on each and every issue.

Anyways, one of the longest running discussions has been "The Great Gun Debate" about whether or not guns should be allowed at their meetings or protests (among other tangential discussions). No, this is not just an OWS discussion; but in many ways I am seeing many in OWS as a proxies for the Hard Left / Liberals / Progressives / Socialists, so there is much to blog about (the following has been lightly edited to be a tad more bloggish): 

But I suppose to maintain a shred of a link to the original topic, what might happen is the destruction of the current system, will be the diminution of the sense of Rule of Law and/or "Law and Order" – and being a Conservative with some small "L" libertarian leanings, that distresses me mightily.

Thus, I disagree with Progressives that seem to wish us all to outsource our self-responsibilities to others, especially on the topic of self-defense. I have read the back and forth and I maintain that it is MY responsibility to keep ME safe, all other things being equal. No, that does not mean that I flaunt or brandish what I may or may not have with me at any particular time, but I do believe that the Founders gave us a foundation based on (for the time period) two RADICAL ideas:

  • Our Rights came from out Creator and not given to us by other men
  • We are Individuals, Sovereign unto ourselves and that we need to positively give our consent to be governed.

These philosophical pillars are both RADICALLY different from all other forms of governance that had been tried in the past and for that time period in which our Declaration and Constitution were written and ratified. If I hold that to be true, as was pointed out earlier, I should not deviate from that foundation, else I leave myself open to hypocrisy. Government should be viewed as the outgrowth from, and for the protection of, our Individual Liberties. It is never meant to be an institution that merely "takes care of us" – for that should be a demeaning and degrading thought to all adults to be treated like children. And while I can see much thrown my way for that line, let me respond first to some of what has already been written and that might become clearer in meaning.

Back to point on Guns and self-responsibility:

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Free Markets, Not Redistribution, Is Best Way to Reduce Poverty

Another installment from the Center for Freedom & Prosperity Foundation Economics 101 series; this one is that driving poverty away does not come from enforced charity but from Free Markets: A primer: who is poor, who is defining poverty, what causes poverty, and what is an answer to break govt dependency?

Political Object Lesson Day? Bad behavior gets you stuff from scared politicians

From the LA Times:

Los Angeles officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters a package of incentives that includes downtown office space and farmland in an attempt to persuade them to abandon their camp outside of City Hall, according to several demonstrators who have been in negotiations with the city.

The details of the proposal were revealed Monday during the demonstration’s nightly general assembly meeting by Jim Lafferty, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who has been advocating on behalf of the protest since it began seven weeks ago.

Lafferty said city officials have offered protesters a $1-a-year lease on a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall. He said officials also promised land elsewhere for protesters who wish to farm, as well as additional housing for the contingent of homeless people who joined the camp.

Expensive real estate to be offered there, Mayor!  It again shows the lack of a spine from our elected politicians.  Here you have protesters who have ignored the Rule of Law, tossed aside multiple ordinances as unimportant to follow (that would get me tossed into the hoosegow), taken away a public space from the actual public, inflated crime statisitics, public masturbation, drug usage, public sex, and more, have cowered the local government.

Or given them cover (take your pick).  OWS LA have acted like bullies, using the cover of "we are the 99%" to put a stake in the ground.  On a national TEA Party email list I’m on came this about the above news:

I’m working on a story about this and thought you all might like to see it as well. The idiot occupiers using taxpayer funded parks and sidewalks is one thing… but getting an entire 10,000 square foot office space to wage war against taxpayers, in a taxpayer funded facility?

Unbelievable indeed.

No, not unbelievable, as my response was:

 

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From the NH GOP – “Your Help is Stopping Obama’s Occupy N.H. Effort” Oh, please!

#NHGOPFail

I got an email from the NH GOP today IMPLORING me to send money:

Tomorrow we can send that message to the President when he visits Manchester, but we need your help now.  Stop Obama from occupying New Hampshire in 2012 by donating $100, $50 or $25 today!

No way, Chairman MacDonald (I REALLY wanted to start this sentence with an 8 letter word starting with "B", but refrained out of respect for TMEW).  I haven’t seen (or heard of) ONE thing that the Republican Party here in NH do about the philosophical implications of Occupy Wall Street ("OWS") – certainly I have not seen or heard of any official boots on the ground or in the media to defend Republican ideas over their ideas, even as the Dems have embraced them (and are also using OWS for their fundraising).  Further, the NH GOP establishment spit in the eye of the movement that tried to rejuvenate the Constitutional spirits of the nation and NH, the TEA Party; WHY would I want to help you with $$ after that?  When the Party can’t get off its collective butts and engage the OWSers and debate Republican ideals publicly and loudly? 

I wrote this post before I got the email and wrote this :

"(instead of what seems to be the Republican pacifist derring-do of just walking away)"

MacDonald’s email wasn’t just walking away – it was walking away AND pan-handling for dimes like the OWSers and the Dems that have endorsed them.

Limp.

NH GOP Email after the jump.  BTW, is getting a goal of a mere $2,500 going to REALLY send a message to Obama?  REALLY?  You had a week and you can’t raise a measly $2,500?  Even the NH TEA Partiers can raise that in a week…

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Doodlings from Occupy NH – Isn’t that, plainly asked, stealing?

Ah yes, another edition from venturing into Occupy philosophy!  One of the more hard core folks had enumerated a number of things that Occupiers should be doing and to which I have already replied (here, here, and here).  Here were a couple of more of his tactics for how to overthrow our present American society:

6. Stop paying your credit card bills. Debt makes us all slaves to the interests of the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

7. When your home is foreclosed on, refuse to leave.

Credit card debt – agree, getting oneself into debt is a rather bad thing for one’s quality of life. You hate answering the phone, you can’t buy the things you want (or that you think you need), and none of your friends understand why you aren’t going out partying with them anymore. But let me get this straight:

  1. You voluntarily agreed to the terms of the credit card company; you signed and they sent you a card.
  2. In exchange for your voluntary agreement to their terms, they agreed to pay your vendor in advance for the stuff that you have bought (be they goods or services). They did so based on your word, your integrity, and your promise to adhere to a contract which you willingly signed. They completed their part of the agreement.
  3. You went and actually purchased stuff.
  4. Again, you voluntarily promised to pay the credit card company back for the funds they put out in advance. You also voluntarily promised to pay them the cost of the use of their money (interest).

Now, bluntly put, you are actively saying that you have no problem in not paying them back? In fact, you have broken your promise and have voluntarily decided to defraud those that have spent their money on your behalf. In actuality, "they" have not spent "their" money, they have spent their shareholders’ monies. Now, you may say that they are merely just big companies, but many 99% individuals, like Granny across town, also own their shares – you are stealing from them. Are you saying that it is justifiable to do so simply to better your own financial well being?

What about the stuff you bought?

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They’rrre Baaack – the Patriotic Millionaires!

Update: on from my line below: we refuse to do anything unless we get all the lemmings lined up at the cliff. Well, it seems that the Occupy folks have decided that you WILL be a lemming, or face the consequences: At about 5:09 p.m., the female student was approached by a man at “the … Read more

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