Constant Conservative

You may have heard of a few folks getting together in Washington, DC today to celebrate the anniversary of a famous speech by Martin Luther King. Some of the headliners were Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Dan Riehl has good overview of the reactions by those who, by their actions and their words, seem to not want all of us to be judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skins:

Think Progress attempts to sterilize today of any emotion. No surprise, it is always and only about politics to the Left, even when they are winning: Political Rally Or Not? We Report, You Decide.

Crooks and Liars pretends to sleep through it. But I gather they’re too frightened for much sleep, otherwise, they wouldn’t attempt to cover themselves with the race card: Snoring Honor: Beck’s big rally just a long-winded and boring sermon. And boy, was the crowd white.

Bob Herbert at the New York Times is mortified that the dream King offered to all of America might slip a blacks and progressives only grasp that has turned it more into a nightmare, than a dream. He doesn’t want it to actually become America’s dream, as King intended. It does too much to empower Herbert’s politics for him to want that. Today, Herbert’s dream, stolen from King, has nothing to do with equality. It’s been twisted into a superficial and often ugly means of gaining and holding onto political power.

There is more, so be sure to go read all of Dan’s coverage.

I cannot and do not speak for others who were at the rally today, but for myself I would like to say that I am not calling for anyone to forget the history of our country. We ought not to forget the historic ill-treatment of blacks any more than we should forget any other terrible events. But we must both understand it in context (the things we’ve gotten right as a nation) as well as do our best to move past the constant flagellation of those who would continue to draw blood from us to pay a debt that is infinitely un-payable by humans.

Please understand that I do not mean to belittle the suffering of any by the following statements, but would like to note that there has been more than enough injustice in this world.

From what I gather, my ancestors on one side of the family were Huguenots. Members of the family and others of like mind were royally abused during the time of the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre (which lasted far more than a day). Many members of the Huguenots who were able fled to Germany to avoid further violence against their persons and properties. Their timely departure is part of the reason I am here today.

I’m certain that in any group of people, we could find the descendants of those who have been grievously wronged by reason of their religion, their ethnicity, their language, their–pick any dimension of humanity that you wish. Again, this is not to diminish in any regard the injustices done to any group by any other group.

We have all learned that this life does not see the redress of all grievances, nor the resolution of all injustices. If someone takes a life–and loses his life as a result–has the debt been paid? Judicially, yes. In real terms? No. We cannot un-ring the bell.

At the same time, we have also learned that if we only and always dwell on what was done to us or our parents or our grandparents, or whomever–that we will never, never be free of the burden of bitterness which must accompany such thinking.

To live our lives always in the shadow of past is to waste the present and to discount the future.

Most of us in this part of the woods either dealt with flooding this spring-summer or we helped someone who was. Then, there is this “lucky” family (or families–the article does not say):

In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978.

Extraordinary as the damage may be, even more extraordinary is that an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever.

The home’s value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000.

It’s no surprise that the insurer faces huge financial problems.

The insurer? The federal government.

[...]

“If this were a private insurer, it would be bankrupt,” said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry think tank.

Please, read the entire article and consider whatever legal actions you might be able to personally take to ensure that this type of financial insanity does not continue.

You thought you had the right of privacy on your own property? You might want to reconsider your thinking:

Law enforcement officers may secretly place a GPS device on a person’s car without seeking a warrant from a judge, according to a recent federal appeals court ruling in California.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached a GPS to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of growing marijuana, according to court papers.

When Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was the GPS data, including the longitude and latitude of where the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed. Prosecutors asserted the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations where agents discovered marijuana being grown, court documents show.

Here’s the key bit of background:

But [Pineda-Moreno] appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person’s driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

Before we get to my thoughts, let’s get something else out of the way. Does it seem, on the surface, that the individual was doing some bad (illegal) stuff and should pay for it? Absolutely. Is his appeal an attempt to find anything which will free him, and thereby entirely self-serving? Undoubtedly.

All of that aside, the point would seem to be a  valid one. If you cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy on your own property, then where could you? It does seem very likely that this appeal will be making its way to the Supreme Court. When it does, one would hope that the justices would understand that one of the reasons we have a rule of law (rather than the rule of rulers) is that the rulers–including law enforcement–are restrained from doing anything they wish without regard to the life, liberty and property of the citizens.

Not only do we still at least provide lip service to the legal foundation of “innocent until proven guilty” but we have traditionally (and I believe, correctly) erred on the side of the accused. That is why juries must find things “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That is why, until recently, you and I understood that no one would be putting a policeman by proxy on the bumper of a vehicle (private property) that was parked on our own driveway (private property) without benefit of a duly sworn and delivered warrant. (update: figured that such a warrant, unlike an arrest warrant, would not be delivered).

In closing, here are a few words from Kozinski:

One of the dissenting judges in Pineda-Moreno’s case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, said the defendant’s driveway was private and that the decision would allow police to use tactics he called “creepy” and “underhanded.”

“The vast majority of the 60 million people living in the Ninth Circuit will see their privacy materially diminished by the panel’s ruling,” Kozinksi wrote in his dissent.

The well-known creator of Dilbert has a few thoughts about his desire to be green:

The greenest home is the one you don’t build. If you really want to save the Earth, move in with another family and share a house that’s already built. Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don’t want. Don’t brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.

I prefer a more pragmatic definition of green. I think of it as living the life you want, with as much Earth-wise efficiency as your time and budget reasonably allow. Now back to our story.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. Language warning for repetition of old-fashioned expletive in affirmative statements of greenness.

If you are a new school named after Robert Kennedy, the construction price would be about $137,000 per pupil:

Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.

That, my readers, is some absolutely prime wastage of education dollars. Don’t be concerned, though, it’s all been approved by the taxpayers, so that makes everything kosher.

Brilliant movie director reads from horrendous script:

James Cameron, director of the eco-tinged smash film Avatar, on Sunday called global warming skeptics “swine” at a renewable energy conference in Aspen, Colo., according to a news report.

“I think they’re swine,” he said at the American Renewable Energy Day Summit, the Aspen Times reported.

On a related note, we had BLTs for supper: we were all out of mutton.

A nicely-done interview with the Hoover Institution and Thomas Sowell:

Via PowerLine

Takeaway? “It’s not over ’til it’s over.” However, things just don’t look that good right now.

Well done. Here’s a brief (2-minute) video that juxtaposes Reagan’s statements on government, freedom and the like with statements by Obama, Frank, Pelosi, Stark and others.

I realize that retirement age is not 65 for everyone, but that’s the number that comes most quickly to mind with reference to Social Security. As of this last week, Social Security had been around for 75 years.

There are those who are still telling us that Social Security is not only alive but doing very well:

South Dakota AARP Director Sarah Jennings says the program is doing fine.
“There’s no crises here, it’s something we can always strengthen, the program and we’ll need to do that,” Jennings said.
Jennings says even with more baby boomers joining the system, the program is doing fine. She says officials prepared for that surge.
“If nothing is done to the program, no changes are made at all, to strengthen it, social security can pay out full benefits until the year 2037,” Jennings said.

Right. And my grandmother will be brought back to life by the same power that is secretly funding Social Security. If Social Security now pays out more than it takes in, it is hard to see how everything is rosy:

Social Security is officially in the red.  The New York Times reports that the system will pay out more than it takes in this year.  Explains the Times:

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

CATO goes on to say the following:

The crisis is now, since the vaunted “trust fund” is filled with non-recourse government bonds–essentially worthless pieces of paper.  There’s no there there when it comes to financing future benefits.  Either payments have to come down or taxes have to go up, unless we adopt real reform centered around personal accounts.  And the latter course seems ever more distant after Congress voted to expand federal control over every Americans’ health care.

Exactly. The trust fund is neither trustworthy nor a fund, if one might put it in simple terms. The federal government has borrowed Social Security collected monies over the years while promising to pay it back. The bonds which have ended up in the trust fund instead of the money cannot be sold. I believe the correct term is that they are non-marketable securities.

What happens if you hold non-marketable securities from an entity which can’t pay its own bills? You take a fiscal bath. That is precisely what will happen to Social Security–barring tax increases. Now that benefits exceed taxes, the money to pay the benefits will need to come from cashing in some of those bonds. The only way the federal government can pay those bonds at present (given the massive deficit spending) is to increase taxes or to print more money, which leads to monetary devaluation–which tends to particularly damage those on fixed incomes.

Social Security has been promised to many people. That promise ought to be kept. We need to, however, learn from our mistakes and quit making the promise to more people.

This 5-minute video is well done, if a painful reminder of many who have been damaged by those who claim to be their best hope.

I realize that that title it about as boring as it gets, but since it accurately reflects the topic at hand, it will have to do. Perhaps if I were able to get a government grant for some lessons in writing article titles I could improve . . . hmm. Anyway, you may have heard a bit from John Boehner recently about special interests. Here is part of his press release:

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement after Democratic Leaders indicated they would call the House back into session to pass billions in additional ‘stimulus’ spending paid for with a job-killing tax hike on U.S. job creators:

“The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending – especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests. This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents – who are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ – instead of scampering back to Washington to push through more special interest bailouts and job-killing tax hikes.

Some folks with Organizing for America took this and made the determination, since this bill (which Herseth Sandlin is now supporting) would set aside monies for education expenses, among others, that Boehner was calling out teachers as “special interests.” Here’s a video response from a trio of those offended persons:

The idea that we should not be spending money on special interests has a long and storied history in these United States. In fact, Joseph Story had this to say about Congress and proper usage of its spending power:

The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent.

Perhaps it we had stuck to this relatively simple (albeit old-fashioned) approach to disbursement of our tax dollars, we would have have groups such as teachers complaining that they are not special interests. Then again, we are so far from this standard that I greatly doubt we’ll ever return–but then, I’m more pessimistic as the day wanes toward night.

Back to the teachers for a moment. If they are not special interests why not? Do they not desire specific and particular positive economic treatment by the government by reason of their inclusion in the group? The rest of the nation is reeling from economic woes and the teacher’s unions wish to ensure that none of their members are let go or fired or furloughed or otherwise removed from employment? If that’s not the very definition of a special interest group then I confess to not being ‘specially interested in knowing what other group might fit that definition.

I realize that he’s a representative from California, but does no one out there understand that if what Pete Stark says is true, then we really do not have a constitutional republic anymore? Video follows: