Whirled News - White House Reveals Economic Plan

The Bush administration reacted boldly to the news that wholesale prices increased by 1.1 percent last month, the second largest increase in 33 years.

“Our economy is not experiencing inflation,” said chief economic spokesperson Buck Uberalles, “Like melting polar ice caps, our temporary economic downtown, and recent violence in Iraq, this is an anomalous spike that people are trying to turn into a crisis for political advantage.”

Uberalles acknowledged that the inflation spike, however temporary, did require government action to alleviate any short-lived suffering.

“Effective immediately,” he announced, “Supermarkets will begin passing out magnifying glasses and tweezers so that families will be able to more efficiently open increasingly downsized items like cereal boxes, candy bars, loaves of bread and milk cartons.”

He also presented optimistic government projections showing that the new packaging will “reduce stress on our nation’s landfills and conserve valuable resources.”

In addition, Uberalles revealed a proposed plan to provide every family with a wheelbarrow to cart armfuls of currency to supermarkets in order to buy a loaf of bread. The plan would be modeled after John McCain’s health care insurance plan, allowing every family who could afford one to buy it at a slight discount.

In response to objections that, like Senator McCain’s health insurance plan, this does nothing for the middle-class and poor, Uberalles pointed out that giving them wheelbarrows would be wasteful since they didn’t have the money anyway.

The Gay Republican #10 - Bitch, I didn't Know This Was A Crack-House

Scratch what I said last time; I’m tired of mowing somebody else’s lawn.

With both interest rates and housing prices falling, I started house-hunting about two weeks ago. Nothing too fancy; and certainly nothing like my dream estates in La Cañada Flintridge, but something manageable, something charming, and something to call my own…

And of course, it has to be in Pasadena.

I actually found one. It is in Pasadena, and it’s totally affordable, but it’s on the northwest side. Which, if you know Pasadena, means that it’s in a less-than-desirable area. However, the actual crossroad that the house is on is reasonably well-maintained. The houses are all bright 1920’s-era cottages that can only be described as “… so cute.” And the roads are lined with mature trees that arch over; filling the air and dusting the streets with buds and leaves. It’s quaint. It’s idyllic. It’s me.

The only catch is that the house that I’m considering is itself an absolute wreck. Seriously; maybe a former crackhouse. It’s a stain.

If the neighborhood is Cindy Crawford’s face, this house would be her mole… if her mole were enormous. And hairy. And had its own mouth from which it shouted expletives at passers-by.

I contacted the realtor, and got pre-approved for financing. My ducks are in a row. But before I made a firm offer, I decided to bring out my uncle Dan, who owns a construction company in Ontario, to see what the house would need, realistically. After spending about 7 minutes on the property, he had a short piece of advice: “They’re still asking way too much for this house. Make a lowball offer, scrape it, and build new.”

The only difficulty with that bit of advice is that a construction loan is a lot harder to get than a conventional mortgage, because you’re asking the bank to finance something that doesn’t exist yet. They want a bigger down payment.

But Dan had another idea: “Go poke around Pasadena City Hall; there’s probably some grant money for first-time buyers or depressed areas or even ‘green’ construction or something.”

I cocked my head, thought for a second, and shot back, “Is it hypocrisy when liberalism benefits ME?”

He just shrugged.

So, feeling like Pat Buchanan signing up for food stamps, I started researching – on the web, at first – what programs might exist to help buy this house. As it turns out, there are indeed several aid programs for homebuyers; some offered by the City of Pasadena, some offered by the State of California, and some even from HUD.

But they’re all for low-income borrowers.

Apparently, the City of Pasadena feels that the way you un-depress a depressed area is to fix it so that the same people who depressed the area in the first place actually own the houses. This makes about as much sense as federalizing all the airport baggage screeners on September 12th, 2001.

“Let’s take the same guy, give him a raise, and put him in a Federal uniform.”
Thanks, George; I feel SO much safer.

Now, while I definitely believe in the “pride of ownership” effect (“People do not destroy that which they own”; a corollary that exposes one of the many fatal flaws of communism), it still doesn’t make sense to me to give houses to people who couldn’t afford to buy even run-down houses sans help, since that probably also means that they won’t be able to afford to maintain them, much less fix them up.

My senior year at SC, I had a macroeconomics class. The professor, of course, was a flaming liberal, so I had gotten used to tolerating an ankle-deep level of bullshit for the sake of a passing grade. But one day, he set out to define an “ideal income tax” structure, and one of the criteria he cited as fact was, “The tax must be progressive.”

(In case you don’t know, “progressive” means that if you have more income, you not only pay more tax, but you pay a greater portion of your income in tax.)

I raised my hand and proceeded to protest.

“How can you just say that, by definition, the ‘flat tax’ idea is bad? That just doesn’t pass the sniff test; plenty of reasonable people think a flat tax is a good idea. How can you, with your piece of chalk, simply dismiss it as a matter of definition?”

(A “flat tax”, by the way, is an arrangement where everybody pays the same percentage of their income in tax.)

I proceeded to argue with him until he changed his “ideal tax” definition from “progressive” to “not regressive” (which would be a tax structure where people with lower income pay a greater percentage of their income in tax).

A partial victory for conservative thought in the hostile territory of academia, perhaps, but nowhere near all that needs to be said on the matter.

Here’s a newsflash: everything priced in dollars and cents is “regressive.” The $8 or whatever that Target charges for a twelve-pack of Charmin Ultra costs you a greater fraction of your income if you make $32,000 per year than if you make $600,000 per year.

Does that mean that Target’s toilet paper pricing unfairly gouges the poor? You could say that, but it would make about as much sense as saying that laws discriminate against criminals.

THAT’S THE POINT.

That may sound cruel, but the free market is tough love. Economic inequality is, in fact, the reason for capitalism’s overall prosperity. It’s a motivator.

If the price of everything were indexed to income, then what would be the incentive to work hard and earn more income? Why not just be unemployed? Then everything would be free!

Or rather, it WOULD be… until everybody realizes that everything is free if you have no money. So everybody stops working, so nothing gets produced, and the “free” stuff dries up. And then everybody’s poor.

*** That’s the promise of socialism: We can all share misery equally. ***

In the opening scenes of the movie “The Skulls”, Joshua Jackson’s character, Lucas McNamara, is being quizzed by a professor on whether America is a class-based society or the meritocracy that we hope it is. He answers, “I believe that it’s both… It’s been my experience that merit is rewarded with wealth, and with wealth comes class.”

Now, I know it’s tough to believe in this era of Paris Hilton, but here’s a fact: wealth correlates with virtue….

Hear me out.

In a very basic sense, if you have a dollar in your pocket, it means that:

1) you worked to earn that dollar, and
2) you had the discipline not to spend it.

And the fact that you don’t have a second dollar means that you either:

1) didn’t work enough to earn that second dollar, or
2) didn’t have the discipline not to spend it.

So it’s not a bad thing that having more money means having more spending power. It’s actually quite good. That’s how the market economy rewards economic virtue.

Ergo, when you create schemes that award money, or goods, or anything to people simply because they don’t have them, you may be acting on the cause of charity, but you have to be careful the extent to which you do it. Because breaking the link between money and purchasing power is a dangerous thing. It perverts the fundamentals of the market economy.

Need an example? How about student financial aid?

Everybody wants an education, right? (It’s almost like health care; we think we all have a “right” to go to college now.) So, for years, the government has been handing out free money to people to go to college largely on the basis that they simply don’t have it and they want it.
Well, if you’ve checked out the nosebleed tuition rates lately, you can see the result of that policy.

Here’s a novel thought: If you’re going to make the liberal argument that the middle class is waning in real terms (which I’m NOT, but if YOU are), look at 40-something middle class American parents, who thought, when their kids were born in 1990, that if they could save a grand or two every year, they could send them to a nice college. Where are they now?

Frantically pouring over thick state and federal student aid documents to see if there’s any way they can get on the same dole that the poor are on.

Lesson: It’s the big-hearted, well-intentioned, check-writing liberalism that wound up putting college outside the reach of those who weren’t:

1) already wealthy, or
2) poor enough to qualify for some government cheese.

This brings me back to my housing situation.

I am NOT bemoaning the lack of some kind of “gay yuppie down payment assistance program” from the City of Pasadena. Because, while it might help me out right now, it would be ill-conceived, undeserved, short-sighted, and unfairly injurious to non-beneficiaries; It would address only one narrow complaint while worsening the broader problem.

In other words, it’s what a liberal would want.


My idea is simply this: Get rid of all these stupid aid programs, and just let the chips fall where they may.

Maybe prices would be more reasonable, and maybe I’d be a homeowner.

Or maybe I still wouldn’t. But if I weren’t, it wouldn’t be because the economically undeserving had been ushered to the front of the line.

Whirled News - Whirled News Ticker Tape

An exhausted and visibly discouraged Mitt Romney withdrew from the Republican presidential race yesterday, announcing that, “We simply ran out of issues on which I could change positions.”

Supporters of Romney made a last-ditch effort to persuade him to remain in the race, pointing out that he could go back over the list and start changing his positions again, but in the end Romney demurred, saying that that would only call into question the principles which his square jaw exemplifies.

“We ran a good campaign,” he told his supporters. “My ever-shifting positions clearly showed that I was the candidate of change. But in the end the Republican voters chose to reject expediently heartless conservatism for rock-hard heartless conservatism, and we must respect their verdict.”

Romney announced that he would take some time off to attend to pressing family issues. “Early in the campaign, in response to a question about why my fighting age sons didn’t enlist to fight in Iraq , I said that they were serving their country by helping me campaign for President,” he said. “Now that I’ve withdrawn from the race, I have to help them find some duffle bags and start packing.”……

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today ended her surprise visit to Afghanistan , returning home with two tons of crushed rubble. Confronting her critics who accused her of looting the country of its most valuable resources in order to build a new road outside her estate, Rice insisted that this was part of the long-promised United States rebuilding effort of the country.

“We have spent the last seven-and-a-half years since we promised to rebuild Afghanistan carefully considering how to best do it,” she said, “And these two tons of crushed rubble represent the beginning of a bold new initiative. We did not want to go about this the way we did in Iraq, by merely shipping two pallets of large denomination bills and passing the money directly out to corrupt officials [this is true]. Instead, under a contract with Halliburton, they will haul out tons of rubble in the next few years, sell it here and do something with some of the money to help rebuild some things over there.”….

Senator John McCain spoke yesterday to a national convention of conservatives, re-establishing his conservative credentials.

“Frankly, it’s a mystery to me how I could have ever been branded a liberal,” he said. “All I ever did remotely liberal was to propose some campaign financing reforms that turned out to be useless, and to propose some really high bars before allowing immigrants to attain legal status instead of arming our border patrol with conventional nuclear weapons. Oh, and I argued ineffectually against some tax cuts for the rich, but I’ve changed my mind on that one. I still believe that abortion should be illegal, that government should get out of the business of helping any poor and disabled who aren’t vets, that we should stay in Iraq for at least a few decades while fighting other wars under the cover of spreading democracy, and that business, not morality, is the engine that drives our country. Calling me a liberal is like calling Rudy Guiliani a liberal or like calling an elephant a flying machine.”

The Gay Republican #3 - Romney's Poll

Like a good American, I voted this Super Duper Tuesday. And like a good Republican, I voted early, by absentee ballot. The forty-one cents that it cost in first class postage was a cheap price to pay not to have to stand in line at a polling place, thinking “This is southern California; I bet I’m the only human in this room with enough brains to assemble a political thought other than ‘Fuck Bush.’”

This article won’t be posted for your consumption, dear reader, until (probably) Thursday, so its contents will hold sway over precisely nobody’s voting decision. But a news graphic in today’s Daily News provided some consolation; it announced that in Los Angeles County there are about 1.9 million registered Democrat voters and about 1.0 million Republicans. Consider as well the fact that the California Republican Party holds a closed primary, meaning that only registered Republicans can vote for the Republican nominee. Add to those two facts a third: the likely audience for this narrative’s venue is young, tattooed, and doesn’t have a 401(k). I think you’ll agree that even if this article had been published on Saturday, its effectiveness as a conservative electoral influence would still roughly equate to the effectiveness of a banner ad for Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on TheHungerSite.com!

(Aside: TheHungerSite.com is a gleaming illustration of the vapidity of liberalism. You go to the site, click a button, and it tells you that you just donated “a cup of food” to feed the hungry.
Really? My mouse click did that? Obviously not, but it makes the clicker feel as though his sheer “caring” made a difference. So you make your non-sacrifice, and you receive a belly full of happy feelings in return. Maybe tomorrow you’ll buy a TerraPass for your car; if you’re simple-minded enough to believe that your mouse-click fed a starving Ethiopian, then you’ll probably also swallow the idea that you can assuage your car-driving eco-guilt for a year by paying somebody on the other side of the planet $60 to reduce his carbon emissions accordingly.)

Rather than dance around it, I’ll just come out with it: I like Mitt Romney….

I have throughout the race. He’s a handsome, intelligent, well-spoken former Governor, who enjoyed fabulous success governing a state where his traditional Mormon roots put him at odds with a very liberal population. He implemented a universal health care system in Massachusetts that precludes (further) government bloat. (It works like car insurance: If you live in Mass, then you must carry health insurance. And if your employer doesn’t provide it and you can’t afford it, then the state will assist in paying for it.) Also, Romney has a track record of enviable business acumen, which would be well put to use helping our nation excel in a global economy.
And as if that’s not enough, he has five HOT sons. Have you seen those boys? Ben, Craig, Josh, Matt, and Tagg.

Gleaming, clean, pure-bred, Latter-Day fetish objects; the whole lot. If you figure that about 10% of the population is gay, then the odds of at least one of those boys being light in the loafers is about 41%. (If you’re scratching your head about where that number came from, stop reading this article immediately and go donate a cup of food at The Hunger Site.)

If Craig Romney ends up being the Mary of the group, I call “dibs!”

Anyway, Mitt Romney is the only viable conservative left in the race, so he’s my guy. I was leaning toward Fred Thompson for a bit, but he’s gone. I think that a Romney-Giuliani ticket would blow away either Hillary or Obama (or both) so that’s what I’m hoping for. At press time (figuratively speaking) the California polls have not closed yet, but Mitt Romney seems to be leading.

Other states however, as I see them on CNN.com right now, aren’t looking so good for Mitt.

The American press (with the glaring exception of right-wing talk radio) is audibly salivating over the possibility of Senator Lockjaw McCain being the Republican nominee. And by the look of things, their odds are improving by the day. My question is this:

What’s his appeal? To the Republican Party base, I mean. What does he offer us?

The Hanoi Hilton thing? Is that it? Enduring enemy torture might earn you a medal of honor, but it’s not the criteria we use to select our leaders.

I get the sense from what little TV news I see that there’s a common sentiment among voters that it’s John McCain’s “turn”. The nomination contest in 2000 was a close one (not really - he withdrew in March of 2000 - but people seem to remember it that way) and it was an ugly one and McCain has paid his dues and now it’s 2008 and it’s McCain’s turn.
This, to me, is the wildest imaginable perversion of electoral fundamentals.

Elections aren’t about the “rights” of the candidates! Elections are about the “rights” of the electorate. John McCain’s “my turn!” claim on the 2008 Republican nomination is about as valid as my claim on Craig Romney’s nipples.

My real problem with McCain though is simply the inverse of my affinity for Mitt Romney. McCain isn’t a conservative. His modus operandi is all pragmatism and no principle. If it’s politically expedient to oppose tax cuts or propose campaign contribution limits or nominate liberal judges, he’ll do it. And the press loves him for it, granting him fawning interviews and referring to him as a “maverick”, which only reinforces his bad behavior. The next time Katie Couric or Christiane Amanpour offer to lionize him for kneeing his Republican base squarely in the groin, he’ll do it again.

Strangely (or perhaps not) the reason McCain seems to be doing so well in the Republican primaries is that non-Republicans are voting for him. McCain has yet to win a majority, or even a plurality, of the conservative base Republican vote in any primary so far, with the shady exception of Florida. Romney gets those votes. McCain gets his support from independents and Democrats who ask for Republican ballots at the polls (see: South Carolina). This is a twist that makes me wonder why any of the state parties – Republican or Democrat – would allow non-members to help pick their nominees. Some think that it’s a clever idea, that sacrificing party self-determination will result in a more moderate candidate who will therefore be more “electable.” I, however, beg to differ. And I offer a counter-intuitive observation: Electability does not win elections.

Exhibit A: John Kerry.

Ronald Reagan defined conservatism as a three-legged stool; the three legs being fiscal policy, foreign policy, and social policy. Mitt Romney may have gone through his evolutions, but he seems to sit solidly on all three legs of the conservative stool. John McCain, on the other hand, seems to occupy all, any, or none, from day to day, depending on his mood (or perhaps his pollsters).

Conservatives – even moderate ones – had better wise up and start seeing through John McCain’s folksy “straight talk” myth, or else we’re all going to wind up having our conservative stool pushed in.

And not in a good way!

Gnooze - Canada Puts U.S. On Torture List