Founding Ideals

Recently I received an email whose author was indignant that his social security check is considered an entitlement. The email goes on about how he “earned” his social security and medicare and therefore they aren’t entitlements. Below was the response I penned to the person who forwarded me the email.

I always look at it a little bit differently, as I am one of those that probably won’t collect a single dime from social security, even though I’ve been paying into the system for nearly 30 years.

Imagine what you could do with that money! The 1/2 your ‘employer’ put in could have been part of your salary. Hell even if your employer only gave you 1/2 of his share, that means that every month you would have taken home 10% more money. If you had invested that over your lifetime it would have at least returned 3%. Most of you would be millionaires. Image what you could have done with the money TAKEN from you over a lifetime. Instead of you spending it, your social security tax money kept some bureaucrat paid while they were wasting our money.

The mistake was to give the folks that invented waste & fraud control of a big portion of our retirement! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

The IDEAL of Social Security and Medicare is admirable. You paid a tax (or not) and now your entitled to a government benefit. In practice it just feeds a ravenous government or is used as a political bludgeon to beat anyone that dare ask for an efficient, transparent, & sane government. The problem with ponzi schemes, you eventually run out of someone else’s money. The money you paid in is long gone and the government is fast running out of my money.

Respectfully,
-A Taxpaying Employed Person (An endangered species)

The stereotypical conservative argument for a candidate is one based on ideals, theories, and is usually an intellectual appeal. Appeals to emotion from conservatives usually deal with very specific cultural issues such as abortion. In these pages and across the internet the cultural and the intellectual arguments have been made over and over. I’d like to offer a different argument for supporting the Romney Ryan ticket. Compassion for my fellow Americans and the humility and passion of a leader that understands his limits.

There are a more than 46 million Americans on food stamps (now called SNAP). More than 23 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed. Half of all college graduates have no job after college. Every man, woman, and child in the United States is currently on the hook for $51,585 in national debt. When once calculates the debt per citizen for the huge unfunded liability that we carry, that number jumps to over a million dollar per US taxpayer. Our collective debt continues to grow by the second.

Those number should make you weep. The increase in poverty alone should be a national scandal. Behind these numbers are real people, in real need, and they’ve been ignored in favor of a hyper left wing statist agenda. President Obama makes excuses as more people are forced to rely on government assistance. Instead of programs designed to stimulate jobs the Obama actually spends your tax money to convince people that they shouldn’t be ashamed of using public assistance. The failure of leadership shows a decided LACK of compassion.

Romney understands that if people had a job they wouldn’t have to feel ashamed. He has compassion for their plight.

The breadth and depth of these problems requires serious reform and the ability to work in a deeply divided legislature to come to some consensus. Barrack Obama’s ability to work across the aisle can be summed up in two words “We Won”. He used that phrase to tell Republicans what he thought of their ideas during negotiations for the massive failure none as Obamacare. Instead of jobs and a recovering economy, Obama delivered a massive new entitlement that suppresses job growth and punishes innovators and the working poor.

Romney doesn’t have Obama’s ego that snuffs out any chance of bipartisanship. He has the humility to succeed.

The debt crisis and the looking fiscal cliff loom large on the financial horizon. Cutting the federal government from it’s addiction to cheap credit will be a massive undertaking. The national debt already exceeds the total annual economic output of the entire Untied States. Without judicious action the this generation will not be able to pass on to their children a country better than they found it. Without immediate changes, Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt and leave millions without any safety net or retirement. The Obama plan repackages more of the same failure and seems predicated on his being out of office before it all comes crashing down.

Mitt Romney firmly believes that we have to save the programs we have and put the country on a path to sustained growth so our children are left with a better country than we were. He has a passion for getting the numbers right.

Our country and countrymen have suffered under four years of failed leadership. A leader whose compassion has more to do with his ego than the plight of everyday Americans. A leader whose passion has been his golf game and the trappings of office, not getting the job done for ordinary Americans. It’s time to elect a leader that brings compassion for the American people, a passion for the American ideal, and the humility to work within the system to get the job done. It’s time to elect Mitt Romney.

Click on image for full size cartoon

Has Andrew Breitbart won? The failure to properly vet the president was a rallying cry of Breitbart shortly before his death. On Saturday the über liberal New York Times promised to vet President Obama this election cycle. The Grey Lady, who in prior award winning journalistic fashion reported glowingly on 1930s progressive icon Joseph Stalin, admitted to not doing it’s job during the last election. From the Times Public Editor:

Color us unimpressed. The Obama campaign still routinely thinks that it plays by different rules than everyone else. Especially when it comes to issues of disclosure, asking others to do that which it would not. From blocking the release of White House visitors list  to delaying Freedom Of Information Act requests from conservative groups, the Obama camp makes a mockery of the “most open and ethical administration in history” promise. That’s without getting into Solyndra, hookers for the Secret Service, Fast and Furious, and lots of Crony Capitalism.

Perhaps the only way to get some answers would be to hack his teleprompter. That’s a better plan then relying on outfits like the New York Times to report fairly on the President.

Update: I changed the title to match the article and cartoon. The original title was a play on how unrelated the calls Romney’s taxes are on anything to do with actual transparency. I was being too clever by half  -AG

The next paragraph is offensive. I will write it, pause, and provide some space to allow you to read, and exit the website without reading another offensive word if you so desire. You have been warned.

In the US, blacks are 6 times more likely to be a victim of homicide than whites. 46% of the people arrested and convicted of murder are black, while blacks only make up about 13% of the US population. 86% of white victims were killed by whites, 94% of black victims were killed by blacks. Blacks make up almost 40% of the prison population.

Do you think I’m a racist for mentioning these facts? Do you think that these statistics should not be discussed? If so please STOP and follow this link –> away from the blog

I’ll wait for you to go…..

Still here? Are you sure you want to stick read the rest of this . . . .

Last chance to leave, just follow the link –> Here

Good – we finally got rid of the people that made those stats possible and an entrenched reality for our country. It is impossible to discuss solutions if we are afraid to admit that a problem exists. More importantly if we are unafraid of the truth, then sacred cows that perpetuate problems can be turned into hamburger instead of being kept alive.

The first stat that I’d like to tackle is the last mentioned in our intro, incarceration. The number of black men that are currently behind bars is a national tragedy. There is a single significant factor that explains the difference between white and black incarceration rates. It’s not education, poverty, geography, or even race. That factor is single parenthood.

Think about that fact for a second. It’s stunning. Unlike race hustling lawyers that will use statistics to prove anyone with deep enough pockets is racist, here is a stat that shows that we aren’t a racist society. A stat that shows that a well understood individual choice has a deep and profound impact. The entire black community pays dearly for a 72% unwed mothers rate.

Children of single mothers are more likely to commit suicide, abuse drugs, fail to finish school, and commit crime. Not all children of single parents have these problems, but statistically the risk is much, much higher. The typical MSM response to these facts is to run a feel good story of the successful single mom or dad. They prefer to ignore the facts or change the conversation when it comes to the darker side of single parenthood. The reason these are feel good stories is that they are stories about people beating the odds. If such stories were common they wouldn’t be worthy of mention. The link between single motherhood and crime is long established.

How do we stop or slow single motherhood in our country? Currently our government gives a bonus to poor unwed mothers that have babies. This is done out of concern for the child and is done with the best intentions, but does it really help in the long run? Would it better to withdraw public assistance if a young women gets pregnant because she decided to have a baby she couldn’t support? Should a bonus be paid if a man marries a women he impregnates instead of punishing him? Do we bring back the “scarlet letter”?

Here is where your humble opinionator does something different than most. I don’t have all the answers to those questions. What I do know is that what we are doing now isn’t working. What we know with absolute certainty is that paying unwed mothers who have children is the same as paying unwed mother TO have children. The charity provided that makes having a child out of wedlock possible, also makes it a more viable financial option. More money merely exacerbates the issue by providing stronger incentives. This is a complex problem with no easy answers. My suggestion is that a little bit of tough love is better than a free handout.

Our President and the left in this country like to look at the world through a prism of race and victimhood. Solutions proposed by adherents of this mentality involve racial and gender quotas, or redistribution of wealth to ‘enforce equality’. Facts, fallout, and long term consequences are rarely examined in detail. The result of this attitude are such outlandish policies as denying Asian students admission because too many were good at math and science. Our education system is now so hostile to men that fewer of them complete college. Statistically, all men would qualify for an affirmative action program if the department of justice applied standards uniformly. The ideology that limits opportunity for asians while reducing the percentage of men that obtain higher education is the same ideology that’s driven the cataclysmic rise in illegitimacy.

The black unemployment rate is a shocking statistic. We’ve spent billions and billions on “stimulus” and “training” and have little to show for it. Regardless of the fact that blacks have disproportionately suffered under Obama’s economic policies, nobody thinks those policies are racist. If we had an honest conversation about that failure, perhaps together we could work on more effective solutions. Isn’t that what a leader is supposed to do?

Actions based on left-wing ideology have, perversely, driven up the ills they were intended to reduce. The kind of thinking that limits opportunities for asians with quotas and has made higher education for men less likely, has also led to the boom in single parenthood. The challenge is to deal with the reality of the causes in ways that may seem harsh, but will ultimately be effective. From stay-at-home moms, to single parents, to root causes of many of society’s ills, an honest conversation is hard.