From a commenter at Belmont Club » The Empty Sandwich:

"Over the past 20 years the special interest coalitions have progressively discredited the traditional idea that factions were a bad thing. That is now a quaint idea superseded by the notion that there is nothing special interest lobbying cannot solve. A compliant media has convinced the public that to every problem there is an agency and a rule for every purpose under heaven.
The media has learned to craft “compassion trap” stories in which heart-rending problems can be fixed by yet another government bureaucracy whose creation only the cruel could refuse to fund. A powerful coalition of the media and special interests has written the narrative of modern times. Together they have created a “ratchet” and the wheel winds only one way.
In consequence, learning how to manipulate the system became the key modern skill. Governance became a one sided contest between the part-time public and professional activists, who wanted to work the system to rule others and made it their full-time occupation. As the saying goes, “be at the table or be on the menu”. The consequence is that almost everyone who actually does something productive is on the menu for those who do nothing but redistribute the wealth."

I'll admit voting for Obama... in the primary. I didn't like Hillary, mainly her voice was so ingratiating. Yes, that was the extent of my knowledge of politics. Prior to 2008, I mostly voted Democrat, being mostly politically agnostic. By the time of the general election, I had wised up a bit and decided to stay home. Strangely enough it was largely my bleeding heart liberal sister's posting nonsensical crap on Facebook that forced me to start doing my own research into politics. Particularly the Walker episode when I found The American Spectator and other sites and realized my own personal views were mostly conservative, not liberal. Surprise, surprise!

This comment appeared in response to an article on The American Spectator blog: The American Spectator : The Moral Case Against Serfdom

Mr. Moore, I am not sure where the statistic you quote regarding welfare spending increasing the GDP by "$1.50" keeps coming from. That $1.00 to start with has been taken from hard working, tax paying citizens, and redistributed to whomever. It might be true that if the welfare user goes to the store to purchase groceries with his/her food stamps, and may inevitable buy something else with cash, then some money re-enters the economy along with the aforementioned redistributed tax money (welfare, but chances are they are using there cash entitlement to pay for the cash item as well, which is really money taken from taxpayers.) Would it not be better for the taxpayer to have that cash to start with and invest or purchase what they wish to? --- Ronsch

My answer:
You started off well but then fell into the trap laid by leftists, that just spending money somehow contributes to the economy. Taking money away from one person and giving it to another to spend, is the same as taking it out of one local economy and giving it to another... net effect on the overall economy, zero. Only by creating income that does not take from another person's income do we create a larger overall economy. Investors do that. Business owners, large or small do that by investing in their own economies and those of suppliers, customers, and employees. Unless value is added to the exchange, nothing is created. For example a carpenter could buy some lumber and resell it to a homeowner, and only add the value delivery to the value of the goods. But if he builds a house, he adds the value of the house to the economy of the homeowner, to his employees, and suppliers. There is also the benefits to the town in increased tax revenue, to neighbors in value of property, etc.

Jack Kimball, a tea party favorite, has won the GOP state chairman seat in a 222 to 199 win. Name recognition and backing from the new speaker of the state House of Representatives, William O’Brien, and majority leader, D.J. Bettencourt, as well as other conservative groups, are credited for Kimball's win.

“The tea party represents a new energy in the party … Can the party establishment hold its own against that?”

“Jack brings tremendous energy to the Chairman’s post. Firmly committed to the conservative principles for which we stand, he understands the nuts and bolts of grassroots organizing.”

"Ron Paul explains why the U.S. government's self-destructive foreign policy is bi-partisan and presents his ideas for saving the sinking, debt-ridden ship that America has become in recent decades."

"As to the right of the people to think, let him who denies it, deny, at the same time, their right to breathe. They can no more avoid thinking than breathing. God formed them to do both; and though statesmen often act as if they wished to oppose the will of the Deity, yet happily they want the power. And since man must think, is it possible to prevent them from thinking of the government? upon the right conduct of which depend their liberty, their property, and their lives. It is their duty to watch over the possessors of power, lest they should be prevented, by the encroaching nature of power, from leaving to their posterity that freedom which they inherited; a natural right, preserved from the oppressor’s infringement by the blood of their virtuous ancestors.

But such is the effect of political artifice, under the management of court sycophants, that the middle ranks of people are taught to believe, that they ought not to trouble themselves with affairs of state. They are taught to think that a certain set of men come into the world like demigods, possessed of right, power, and intellectual abilities, to rule the earth, as God rules the universe, without control. They are taught to believe, that free inquiry and manly remonstrance are the sin of sedition. They are taught to believe, that they are to labour by the sweat of their brow to get money for the taxes; and when they have paid them, to go to work again for more, to pay the next demand without a murmur. Their children may starve; they may be obliged to shut out the light of heaven, and the common air which the beasts on the waste enjoy; they may be prevented from purchasing the means of artificial light in the absence of natural; they may be disabled from procuring a draught of wholesome and refreshing beverage after the day’s labour which has raised the money to pay the tax; they may not be able to buy the materials for cleanliness of their persons, when defiled by the same labour; yet they must acquiesce in total silence. They must read no obnoxious papers or pamphlets, and they must not utter a complaint, at the house where they are compelled to go for refreshment, which the tax prevents them from enjoying at home with their little ones. Yet they have nothing to do with public affairs; and if they show the least tendency to inquiry or opposition, they suffer a double punishment, first from their lordly landlord and employer; and secondly, from prosecution for turbulence and sedition.

The legal punishments attending the expression of discontent, by any overt-act, are so severe, and the ill-grounded terrors of them so artfully disseminated, that rather than incur the least danger, they submit in silence to the hardest oppression.

Even the middle ranks are terrified into a tame and silent acquiescence. They learn to consider politics as a dangerous subject, not to be touched without hazard of liberty or life. They shrink therefore from the subject. They will neither read nor converse upon it. They pay their contribution to a war, and take a minister’s word that it is just and necessary. Better part with a little money patiently, since part with it we must, say they, than by daring to investigate the causes or conduct of public measures, risk a prison or a gibbet." - Vicesimus Knox (1795)


Online Library of Liberty - Week of 18 January, 2011

It seems that some of those documents reveal the utter untruthfulness of a core claim of Iraq War opponents, namely that "We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

On the surface this might sound to some people like a good idea... and certainly the idea of ISP's alerting you when there is a bot on your machine is good. But involving FEDGOV?

FEDGOV and social programs is like the old saying from some chip company... 'Bet ya can't eat just one!'