Archive for April 2012
The Government as a Creator of Jobs? When Did that Happen? Like, A Long Time Ago, Dude.
Posted on: April 29, 2012
One of the things you hear about a lot in campaign ads these days is the debate about which candidate will create more jobs while in office or who has the best record of creating jobs or who will do the most to preserve jobs, with the latter being a rather disconcerting note that you typically hear during a recession.
It occurs to me that it is not really the privy of the government to create jobs but to provide services and perhaps one of the reasons there are so many unemployed people in The US is that some time ago I presume it became part of the political landscape, probably in a campaign ad, that politicians were supposed to create jobs.
Perhaps if candidates focused on doing their own jobs such as providing services, seeing to it that the roads didn’t look like the surface of the moon, that the water was clean, and that other municipal, state, and federal governmental responsibilities were addressed, perhaps if the candidates focused on those primary tasks and stayed out of the supposed job creation debate we’d all be better off. Not that government couldn’t do a fine job of creating jobs, but maybe it is time to try something new, or old rather, if ye gets me drift. Maybe the government should stay out of the job creation business altogether.
But the reality is that government has been one of the largest employers for over a hundred years, the largest if you combine all levels of government. In a way, the government is very good at creating jobs, gubment jobs, that is.
The problem is that not everyone wants a government job. Furthermore, employers are usually good at creating jobs they are familiar with. For example, a manufacturer of automobiles would probably create jobs in that industry and those that support it. A baker will create jobs in his or her bakery. Government creates “government jobs” because that is what government knows how to do.
The problem with candidates talking about how many jobs they are creating is that government doesn’t create private sector jobs. Government creates government jobs. And there is a common notion throughout most of America today that government is just too big. More government jobs means bigger government. So, again, maybe it’s not such a good idea for candidates to tout how many jobs they are creating because there is a good chance those jobs will be government jobs.
Indeed, government can create the right atmosphere for private sector expansion, but that is hard for the government to do historically without sacrificing something else, such as taxing the middle class even more to provide tax breaks to corporations. Since the middle class is the bread and butter of America when it comes to taxes, eventually that strategy fails as well as the middle class breaks underneath the yoke of excessive taxation, while the giant corporation puts the small business out of business, the small business being the primary employer of the middle classes, the small business not receiving the specialized and favorable tax schemes offered to corporations, and eventually you will have only corporations and the poor, something the “99 Percenters” claim is happening right now.
Instead, as I said before, perhaps candidates should laud their record on making sure you don’t need a vehicle with a military suspension to navigate the potholes in the roads on the way to work or that the water is clean, concentrate on lowering taxes for all (which usually generates higher tax revenues due to its stimulative effect), and stay out of the jobs creating business for the most part except for public works projects, bridges, roads, infrastructure and the like. If candidates would concentrate on that type of thing, on what was traditionally the scope of governments at most levels in the first place, maybe the populace would be much happier with politicians and their favorability numbers would go up a notch or two on the favorability scale.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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An Addendum to: Republicans Are Missing the Point on Abortion and Birth Control
Posted on: April 29, 2012
Twice now I’ve written on Republicans and how their position against abortion and birth control is diametrically opposed to that of a “True Conservative.”
I concluded that if Republicans were truly for smaller government they would not argue against abortion and birth control because a single woman more often that not is unable to raise a child on her own from birth. Consequently she often falls back on government support which by definition means larger government. Therefor if you make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion or to use birth control then she will have to have the child whether she can afford to raise it on her own or not and the public will end up financing her indiscretions.
I add that I am the only one who has publicly taken that stance on the matter from the very beginning.
I wanted to add that following the Roe v. Wade decision which determined that an abortion should be legal under the right to privacy clause, crime went down significantly over the following years. In other words, the legalization of abortion also had a definite effect on decreasing crime in The United States.
So, if Republicans who claim to be true conservatives want to see smaller government they would not work so hard to see abortion made illegal once again and birth control difficult to obtain. It is as simple as that.
I ask, what person in their right mind would want to increase crime in The United States and increase the size of government making it more expensive? Because that is exactly what will happen if you outlaw abortion again. The Republican position on the matter is untenable.
We see commercials now on television stating the obvious, that “an abortion stops a beating heart.” There are billboards up from time to time showing aborted fetuses. And anti-abortionists seem to think that people, women in particular don’t agonize over their decision to have an abortion. Perhaps the anti-abortion crowd funding would be better spent on teaching teenagers and young adults the risks of having sex, such as GETTING PREGNANT!
Sometimes I wonder. People are going to have sex. When people have sex, women often get pregnant. That’s how that works. Should we outlaw sex?
The Republicans have a lot of positions I agree with but if they maintain their stance as a party against abortion they are not by definition “True Conservatives.”
Because there is just one thing Republicans seem to forget about time and time again about men and women, they forget about human behavior.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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- In: Sales Taxes | Taxes
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I have heard recently, many times for some reason, the comment that The United States is like ancient Rome and that The U.S. is in a period of decline similar to that of Rome after its great age. I disagree with that sentiment but have an explanation as to why, as in the sense of revenue appropriation. Though, I believe any such decline is due to something else primarily if it is indeed the case that The United States is in a period of decline, which I do not qualify or quantify here.
So, I said to myself that the statement about ancient Rome sounds true perhaps in a way. But what is the reason?
I thought about that and it occurred to me that the case of the decline of The United States is probably different than that of ancient Rome.
If the statement that The United States is in a period of decline similar to that which ancient Rome once suffered, then it is due to the point in the history of The United States where tax policy which was once used to accumulate revenue for the sake of funding certain types of activities and to support public projects, any decline is due to a change from that type of tax policy to tax policy that merely generates revenue on a grand scale merely for the sake of generating revenue, resulting in the general overtaxation of the populace as the government becomes more adept at creating such pervasive tax policy, something ancient Rome suffered from as well.
See Income Taxes: Serial Killer of American Small Business https://williamthien.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/income-taxes-serial-killer-of-american-small-business/
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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In July of 2010 I added an essay to this site titled “Who is really behind The Sexual Revolution? What it is…” I conclude in the essay that the most recent and significant moment in the feminist drive for equality occurred as a result of a corporate desire to see the woman leave the house. Why? So American corporations could sell more products, gasoline, cars, auto insurance, to name a few of the more profitable products to be sold to women now going in to work instead of staying at home.
I will add that this argument is not designed nor has it ever been designed to center on which of the sexes is “better,” men or women, just to observe that men and women are different, which means logically that they are not equal. Books have been written on the matter with cute, pandering titles naming the different sexes after different planets and all sorts of animals have been assigned sexual characteristics, but nobody really has ever had the intestinal fortitude to approach the matter as is being done here in the present.
With that said, something occurred to me earlier today as well that you probably don’t hear much about and that is that the government has a serious desire as well to see women leave the house. The government has by design been instrumental in the redefinition/destruction of the American family. The government has done so for a reason, twice the income taxes. Now, the government can collect income taxes from two workers in every household instead of one. The feminist movement was bolstered during the sixties and seventies heavily by the government because the government was desirous of more income taxes.
Nothing wrong with women wanting to go to work, to get out of the house. In fact, from my perspective there are many benefits. But let’s not get confused about the true motivations of all of the other interested parties in seeing to the organized redefinition/destruction of the American family and the adherence to a falsehood almost to the point of brainwashing the American public about equality between the sexes.
Men and women are different. Different means different, different does not mean equal. Therefore men and women are not equal. Why is it so important to note that? I think the impression that society has of women has fallen dramatically since the feminist movement’s latest significant strides of the sixties and seventies. Crime against women is up, way up since the sixties and seventies at tremendous cost to the taxpayer. I hear people addressing women in all disrespectful manners publicly now in comparison to before. Birth defects are up, way up, also at great cost to the taxpayer (Something I hope to get a chance to comment on in a later essay). Mental defects among adolescents are up, way up. Childhood poverty is up. Childhood obesity is up. Clearly there are significantly negative and costly social aspects to the public equalization of the sexes as the feminists have cast off family bonds in a social, lock-stop, all included movement, granting and consequently surrendering to corporations and the government more control of the family.
I add that I am not responsible for any of this, thank goodness.
So, we know that it’s profitable for business and government to ensure the sexes are perceived as equal. As an aside, during the sixties it was believed, or suggested, that the feminist movement was the result of communist efforts. This in my opinion couldn’t be further from the truth as communists benefited very little from the feminist movement. No, it was profiteers and the government that profited the most from the feminist movement, outside of the realm of the feminists themselves.
Finally, I’m not trying to throw the timeline in reverse on the subject of sexual equality, I’m just examining the true motivations of interested parties other than the feminists themselves so we can get a bearing on what can be done to improve the negative social ramifications that have resulted from that part of the feminist movement that isn’t really “the feminist movement.”
To do that, we need to examine the feminist movement for what it really is.
The feminist movement is not just purely a sexual revolution in its entirety, it’s a business plan, too, and it’s a revenue device.
For your convenience here is a link to the first essay on the matter https://williamthien.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/who-is-really-behind-the-sexual-revolution-what-it-is/
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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Into the Pit!
Posted on: April 13, 2012
Being that we are embroiled in a bitter recall election in Wisconsin, and I mean bittttttt-terrrrrrrr and somewhat unfair in my opinion, and we all have to sit there and listen to this massive line of misrepresentations and falsehoods arriving from multiple camps that nobody has the time or resources to sift through in any meaningful way and the media no longer seems to do a good job of it, why?, because they are advertising the lies on their networks and in their newspapers and profiting from it heavily, I ask, “What is more civilized, to let them broker the lies in perpetuity on our time or simply throw them into a pit and let them work it out?” So we can get on with it, that is. You know, as a country. Because whatever this is that is going on here, it’s definitely not civilized.
It seems to me more than anything now that politics is designed to keep you riveted to it at all times, that if you don’t pay attention, somehow politics in America is going to suddenly collapse and take the country with it. It’s a clever form of media programming, a politics reality show, spinning like a cheap gyroscope, and the candidates are the unwitting players where the media rigs the team votes by revealing nasty little tidbits of information about people the media fears and often the best candidates for the country get voted off the continent. And if you ask me, that’s uncivilized in a democracy. The pit would be more civilized, the pit as a metaphor, that is. Just a metaphor, of course. The candidates could try to climb out of the pit and they could latch onto the tubes and wires coming out of the television cameras, yanking and tugging at the television cameras and crews, dragging them down into the pit with them, strangling the television crews with the rat’s nest of cables, lash their mouths shut, and smash their skulls with the cameras and the props. Wow, wouldn’t that make for good politics? It sure would be sensational tv. The candidates in the pit could smear sand into the television crews’ bloodied, powdered faces, make nooses out of the tv cables and toss the cables up around the steel girders across the pit, lynching the worst of the media from the girders, and then the candidates could punch and kick the dangling, twitching bodies, you know, just like they do to the candidates, in a way that is, metaphorically speaking, of course, just like they do with the candidates that they don’t like because the media seems to fear them for some reason and that’s why they brought out that nasty little revelation about the candidate in the media kangaroo court of campaign ad spending. Woops. Did I say that? WTF happened to Campaign Finance Reform?
So, perhaps we should simply throw them into a pit. They might say I should be in there with them then too since it was my idea. Lovely.
But no, that wouldn’t be fair, some might say because there are female candidates. Some would say, good female candidates, too. And on some accounts, I might be inclined to agree. And it wouldn’t be right to have the women in the pit, too, now would it? Well, why not? I don’t know, I just don’t think it would be a good idea. OK? Well I for one think that’s just plain wrong. Which one are you for again? I for one. Right.
One thing is for sure. Politics isn’t going to let America get on with it anymore. It’s just not. That’s clear.
We are going to have to do something about that.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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This week has been particularly distasteful with the Primary Election here, not so much because of the choices on the ballot, because I have had to answer the telephone now at least twenty times and have avoided just as many calls from politicos of some type or capacity, campaign staffers or Superpacs.
Most of the calls are Robocalls but now since the Primary is over that behavior seems to have tailed off quite a bit. Now I am getting calls from campaign staffers, real people, not robots, asking no less, how I am going to vote? I’d like to vote for you, I offer sometimes, but not if you keep this up. You see, I tell them, this is the sixth call already this evening. Understand?
Recently I wrote a piece titled “Down with Robocalls.” But it occurs to me that when the law was created prohibiting merchants from calling you at home and a list was created so sales people could not call you at home (which they still do, by the way, even if you put your number on the list), the politicians who wrote the law left something very important out, that the politicians themselves shouldn’t be able to call you, either.
In fact, you have to ask yourself what is worse, some poor sap in an office somewhere calling and trying to sell you siding for your house (which is never fun) or a call from a politician who wants to know your position on late-term abortions or something equally disturbing? Really! At this hour? Over dinner?
How was it that the politicians failed to include themselves on the “Do Not Call List?” They failed in the same way they failed when they failed to determine that money isn’t speech when the most recent campaign finance law was created. It wasn’t a mistake. That was a crucial issue which was deliberately neglected. It had to have been. The campaign finance law was supposed to make the situation better. Is it? Do I have to ask? It’s far worse. It was no mistake that Campaign Finance didn’t deal with the “money is speech” issue. What politician in his right “political mind” would cut off that type of funding anyway? Really? Think about it.
Again, it is a clear indication that America’s political establishment demonstrates a complete and utter disregard for the sanctity AND security of the American home when its own needs are at hand, regardless of party, by clogging up home and personal lines of communication with what often amounts to nothing more than political nonsense surveys developed at the behest of some pollster.
Furthermore, it’s an indication that our political class has lost course and is spending too much time on its own desires and not that of the citizenry.
All of the calling needs to stop, Robocalls, vote tallies, you name it. It’s outrageous and maybe even a scandal waiting to happen.
It’s time for politicians to adhere to the “Do Not Call List” like everyone else. Do you think they will write that into the law?
Your guess is as good as any. But I’d bet your intuition is even better.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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Down with Robocalls!
Posted on: April 3, 2012
The thing about Robocalls is that there is nobody on the other end to which you can ask to stop calling you, it’s a robot!
This evening I received a barrage of Robocalls, at least eight, maybe ten. I don’t know how many really because I didn’t answer all of them. The robots were calling due to the primary here tomorrow, and during most of the Robocalls I had to wait several seconds until they activated their script. I’d hang up after one and minutes later I received another. I had several calls from Wisconsin, one from Illinois, one from Mississippi, and a number from “Private Number” or “Caller I.D. Unavailable” listings. Since I was waiting for another call from a “real person,” these calls from the robots were particularly aggravating because I could have simply turned the ringer off had I not been expecting an important call. What’s worse, it’s bad enough when a human is spewing bs at you, but when a robot is doing it, it is particularly egregious.
Many of the calls are not even from the candidates’ campaigns, and when I received calls from unlisted numbers, I had to ask, is this the competitor doing this just to aggravate me, knowing we are all sick of the calls? All you would have to do is record one call from one candidate and then use unlisted numbers and call their constituency umpteen times and by the time election day rolls around, their constituency would be voting for the competition simply due to the overwhelming onslaught of obnoxious calls. So the idea really is not functional.
Finally, it’s not even the candidates anymore, it’s Superpacs and other interested parties that are calling supposedly on behalf of the candidates. Sure. So you don’t even know who is who.
What happened with Campaign Finance Reform, a bi-partisan production? What a mess! One can’t keep up with normal life anymore, one can’t escape all the taxes and fees and traffic tickets and now they are in your home reaching for more money, or for “your support.”
Finally, and most disturbingly, the number of Robocalls and the breath of time over which they have been disseminated, nay perpetrated, demonstrates a complete and utter disregard for the sanctity AND security of the American home by our political establishment, regardless of party, and it needs to stop.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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William Thien 
Conservatism vs. Republicanism
Posted by: William Thien on: April 4, 2012
Is there a time coming in America’s Political History whereby conservatives are going to distance themselves from Republicans? Republicans going all the way back to Ronald Reagan have definitely given conservatives enough reason.
One of the pillars of conservatism is individual liberty. When the Supreme Court recently ruled that someone jailed for not paying a traffic ticket could be strip searched, and not just strip searched but cavity searched, I had to conclude that when everyone becomes aware of that fact, it will be a watershed moment in the history of The Republican Party, a watershed in that Conservatives are going to get in their boats and float away from The Republican Party. Why? Because the Supremes who reached said ruling were nominated predominantly by Republicans.
But that is just the latest intrusion upon individual liberty brought by Republicans. Going back to Ronald Reagan, who is known for re-invigorating the “War on Drugs,” as if the drugs themselves were massing on our borders with no help from humans, going back to Reagan, Republicans have been hacking away at individual liberties.
When Reagan re-fueled the drug war along came all kinds of search and seizure authority which until then was considered unconstitutional such as search of autos during traffic stops with no probable cause, more invasive searches of persons, personal effects, personal records, you name it, all without warrant, all in the name of The War on Drugs.
Then, when the WTC attacks occurred, along came new and more pervasive electronic searches, additional powers of intrusion, all in the name of The War on Terror and The Patriot Act, all under another Republican, George Bush Jr., necessary, perhaps, but definitely another landslide in the Republican led erosion of personal liberty in The United States. And of course none of this is without the support of Congress and The Senate comprised of both parties, which must essentially sanctify such legislation and authority. But it is under the leadership of Republican Presidents that we see the implementation of the most pervasive intrusions.
Some conservatives that I know are looking for alternatives to Republicanism as a form of conservatism.
True conservatives are fed up with Republicans in that regard and it may be time for Republicans to consider what they have done before they do more damage and find themselves squatting in prison intake and being told to cough in the shakedown of individual freedom for which they seem to have so much disregard.
Copyright © William Thien 2012
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