What looks like job growth isn't really

What’s driving American job growth? Wall St. Journal reports that in progressive states, it’s government, social assistance and healthcare. Only a Democrat blue state resident could think that is healthy.  Pay Wall, but it's easily confirmed by checking the Bureau of Labor statistics.

"Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 216,000 in December. Job growth averaged 225,000 per month in 2023, compared with the average monthly gain of 399,000 in 2022. In December, employment continued to trend up in government, health care, social assistance, and construction, while transportation and warehousing lost jobs." Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Summary, December 2023

On being a conservative in 2021

When I left the liberal left (i.e., the Democrat party) in 2000 I only knew about the one issue that mattered most to me: abortion. Democrats supported it, wanted it, lusted after it, used my tax money to support it, and campaigned on it. So I left the left--the party that said they cared about the workers and the little guys, but lied about it for years.

At the time, I didn't know much about Republicans except what I'd been told by academics and the media. They were bad I was told. I had to find out about "conservative" ideas and values on my own, because Republicans were sort of . . . spineless, and weak, and weren't good at selling their ideas. So here's what I'd like to see from Republicans--perhaps the impossible dream.

Attitudes/sentiments/beliefs for Conservatism

Family (I include pro-life protections in this)
Faith (freedom of religion for all faiths)
Fair (opportunities for all)
Patriotism (respect and honor for the country's history, values, laws)
Security (strong, but not corrupt or bloated, military)
Free markets (as little gov't interference as possible)
Safety net (for the unborn, the weakest, the elderly)
Practical, prudent policies (no more 2000 page bills no one reads)
Fiscally wise, low taxes (capitalism, but not oligarchs like Bezos owning Washington Post or Big Tech controlling the presidency)
Separation of the 3 branches of government as intended
Merit, intelligence, ambition and ability rewarded
Natural and built environment protected, but not worshipped
Local control where possible, national direction where necessary

and I'll add more as I think (or sleep) on it.

Where is the divide between liberal and conservative?

What is the dividing line between liberal and conservative?  Government.  The bigger the better for liberals, smaller and only as much as necessary for conservatives. At least that's in the speeches, both have contributed to our own bloated government. And as in many issues, some go farther to left to extreme statism like the USSR or Nazi Germany, and some farther to the right to libertarianism or anarchy, the absence of government like Haiti with no services, no army, no infrastructure.

It’s not that abortion didn’t happen before 1973 when it was legalized nationally, but now it’s government protected and supported with tax money.  Now it’s in the platform of one major party. Now many churches support it, unthinkable when I was growing up. Now it takes the lives of many blacks, females and disabled, people expendable unless old enough to vote as a block.

There's also a religious divide. 92% of Congress say they are Christians compared to only 73% of American adults.  That probably reflects the average age difference. Conservatives are more likely to be Evangelical Christians than members of Mainline denominations, and see life as sacred, even if born into poverty or difficult circumstances. At the 50% mark, half to the right, and 39% to the left with 11% uncommitted, eight denominations are Evangelical and two are Mainline.  Of the "nones" 26% are Republican, 26% uncommitted, and 49% Democrat. So you can be a liberal in good standing with no religion at all, but might have some push back on that if you are a Conservative. (Pew Research)

It’s not that families didn’t suffer from divorce and children weren’t left with no father before 1964, but now Uncle Sam brings home the bacon and women are told they can do it all--with enough government and no dad at home. Conservatives are more likely to believe that men matter. It is liberals seem to have a war against men, pushing the LGBTQ agenda and advocating for the cis-gender. The income gap is also viewed as a liberal/conservative issue--conservative economics seems aware that it depends on the number of earners in a household, with over twice as many earners in the top income quintile households (1.98) than earners per household in the lowest-income households (0.41). Two is more than 4/10th, but we're in the age of dumbed down math also encouraged more by liberals than conservatives.

It’s not that both liberals and conservatives don’t claim the rights to our constitution.  Liberals want a plastic, expanding and growing constitution. Something modern for times of crisis and dysfunction. Conservatives want the one on which our country was founded. Conservatives are much more likely to quote the founders; liberals think that could be racist since a few owned slaves, and prefer some ideological progeny of Karl Marx or Saul Alinsky. (The great lie.)

Both liberals and conservatives acknowledge we have three branches of government for checks and balances, but liberals want a weak Congress with its power shifted to the Executive or to the Judicial.  Congress, after all, represents the people through the ballot, and they can’t be as easily controlled from a central location like Washington, DC. It’s disorganized and partisan, as it was designed to be. Conservatives press for a stronger Congress, which has the power of the purse, and that‘s just unthinkable in the White House which sees all tax money as its own.  And that’s the case whether a Bush or an Obama is living there.

Liberals want higher taxes to support a stronger central government.  Conservatives claim to want more power residing in the corporate world, with more profit going to investors, not to the government directly, but they want to control politicians through their own lobbyists. Both the left and right, liberals and conservatives, accuse the other of being fat cats, made rich on corporate influence and lobbies. Of the top ten in Congress, eight are Democrats, although in looking over the entire list, no one is poor, and after doing their “public service” both liberals and conservatives enter think tanks, corporate boards and lobbyist groups.  John Boehner, recently one of the most powerful men in Congress, is now representing Big Tobacco interests. Also, I've never heard of the wealthiest Democrat, so perhaps he doesn't show up much. (List of current members of Congress by Wealth)

Did sequestration matter?

“While the sequester is an imperfect mechanism to reduce spending, as the brunt of the cuts falls disproportionally on defense, it only amounts to a 2.5 percent reduction in spending over 10 years. This hardly lives up to the President’s warnings that the cuts would be “harmful” to the economy and would decimate government services. As you can see, the U.S. has a long way to go to rein in its growing spending.”

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/12/27/money-pictures-top-5-charts-2013/

Did you notice that the sequester and the government shut down actually helped the third quarter?

When the state makes adults children

So much in this excellent article, "The audacity of the state," about the nanny state, or the paternal state, or the savior state, both in Canada and the U.S., that I can't find just one or two excerpts, but here's a good one:

"Replaced by a kaleidoscope of transient sexual and psychological configurations, which serve chiefly to make children of adults and adults of children, the declining family is ceding enormous tracts of social and legal territory to the state. At law, parent-child relationships are losing their a priori status and privilege. Crafty fools ask foolish fools, “What harm does same-sex marriage do to your marriage, or to your family?” The truthful answer is: Same-sex marriage makes us all chattels of the state, because the state, in presuming to define the substance rather than the accidents of marriage, has made marriage itself a state artifact."

Crafty fools asking foolish fools. . . that's good. The author compares his province's (Québec) interference in the family to that in the U.S.

" . . in the land of Obama and [Rev.] Wright, though its history and habits are different. To be sure, there is a much stronger tradition there of resistance to the overweening state, but the forces of the state are also far greater. In America, Christians will require the courage of Dorothy Cotton’s hero, Martin Luther King, Jr., if they are to repair the pillars of freedom that have sustained such damage, and to roll back the impressive gains that have lately been made by the savior state. In America, too, the churches will need to renew their pedagogical mission and to fight for freedom of education. The natural family will need somehow to reclaim, if it can, the rights it is losing."

Yesterday at Panera's I noticed a banner that should hang in every church: Refresh
Restart
Renew

If you’re headed for a cliff

you’ve got to change direction says our President.

"Our public policy definitely needs a change in direction. But the Obama Administration’s budget is not a change in direction. Instead, it is a foot on the accelerator taking us off that cliff . . . The only sharp break President Obama takes away from President Bush is the amount of money he takes from the American people. President Bush reduced taxes by approximately $2 trillion; President Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.4 trillion. Yet even after taking $1.4 trillion more out of the private sector, Obama’s budget still would double the public debt level to $15.4 trillion. Between 2008 and 2013, the budget will add $5.7 trillion ($48,000 per U.S. household) in new government debt. The annual interest on this debt would nearly equal the entire U.S. defense budget by 2019.

Read the entire entry here.

3625

Less Federal money for housing assistance

That's the story today in the Columbus Dispatch. Licking, Fairfield, and Pickaway Counties are closing their Section 8 housing lists. The paper says the federal funding has dropped. I'm guessing there's more to this story than meets the eye. So I took a look at the law at the HUD site. The formula for FMR (Fair Market Rents) was changed during the Clinton administration--it was too complex for anyone but a government bureaucrat to understand, like what percentage of the people live in a census tract, but I was able to read the date. However, I'm just guessing it has more than a bit to do with what's happening to real estate in those counties. During the last real estate boom, they were hot, hot, hot. Unbelieveable housing development going on with easy access to Columbus via free-ways. I'm thinking some pretty cheap houses and acreage was bought up by developers, and now low income owner occupied housing has been replaced with middle income and upper middle income neighborhoods. Every exit of the free-way has many restaurants, Krogers, Target, Wal-Mart, auto parts, video stores, etc. Every community is trying to pass bond issues for new schools. All these areas need infrastructure--roads, police, fire, water systems, parks, etc. Are rents higher than before? You betcha! It's called progress.

The federal government got in the housing assistance business during the Depression. People were desperate. My parents took in borders to make ends meet and they had jobs. What was unemployment then? 20-30%? Do you think the Congress of the 1930s intended to make this assistance permanent? (Actually, since gov't programs don't ever go away or get smaller, they probably did.) Today, you feel you are borderline poor if you don't have cable, a cell phone, 2 TVs and 2 cars. Maybe sending tax money to Washington so they can send a smidgen back for housing vouchers to live in wealthy counties with an unemployment rate of about 4.5% isn't such a terrific idea.

Can I hear an Amen?

3580 To report abuse

Have you ever thought of picking up the phone when you see this statement on a government publication: "To report fraud, waste, and abuse in Federal programs call. . ." Each year about this time when we get our tax returns from our accountant and will pay her $400 so we can pay the government more of our pension this phrase sticks in my mind (don't bother to tell me to buy brand x tax software or do it myself--she's actually worth every penny, but charges a higher hourly rate than architects). I just can't think of a single Federal or state program where there isn't fraud and waste. Can you? Katrina rebuilding is probably the most pitiful and worst example, but it has just shown us how bad things are when federal money is mismanaged at the local and state level and the people reelect the clowns stealing our tax money. I'm grateful (I think) that we have the GAO to report on such things but when it takes 100-150 pages to report it and no one in Congress does anything, or they pass a new regulation which requires more taxes and more paper, and more review and reports by GAO, I do sometimes think it is part of the problem abuse.

3531 Horses slaughtered for human consumption

When I was working in the veterinary medicine library in the 90s, I often read the trade newspapers for horse owners. The op-ed and health articles often cautioned readers/owners about selling their "retired" horse to someone they didn't know, because chances were good they would be slaughtered for meat to be sent to Asia and Europe. Over 100,000 American horses were killed in 2006 in the three remaining foreign-owned US slaughterhouses and shipped abroad to Europe and Japan for human consumption. He might come along with a story that he wanted a gentle, older horse for his granddaughter, but that wasn't the fate that awaited the pet of a gullible owner. Amy's story about rescuing Beau and my memory of the efforts being made by horse owners well over 10 years ago to stop this practice caused me to stop at this House Bill, H.R. 503 (report 109-642), to amend the Horse Protection Act, passed last September to "TO PROHIBIT THE SHIPPING, TRANSPORTING, MOVING, DELIVERING, RECEIVING, POSSESSING, PURCHASING, SELLING, OR DONATION OF HORSES AND OTHER EQUINES TO BE SLAUGHTERED FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES." Scroll down to read the amendments, which apparently were defeated, including the one that allowed Native Americans to do what other Americans could not. If I read this correctly, it would be against the law for an owner to sell or donate his horse for this purpose. This is now being reintroduced to the new Congress. (I'll get out of the saddle here because I don't understand how bills work their way through Congress to become law. Wrong version of the bill sent to the Senate.)

According to this website, Illinois is one of the few states where horse slaughter for human consumption is still done.

As much as I hate to see horse slaughter for human consumption, I would hate to see the laws become so restrictive, that disposing of an animal became difficult, and therefore would lead to abuse such as poor health care, food, or being sold to bad people just to get if off your hands. Also, if species-specific legislation outlawing slaughter for human consumption works with horses, you can bet pigs, cattle and chicken supporters will be watching very closely. How to compost a horse.

Citizens Against Government Waste

was founded following the lead of President Ronald Reagan in establishing the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, or the "Grace Commission," after Chairman J. Peter Grace, in 1982. In its more than 20 years of existence, CAGW has grown to include more than one million members who have helped reduce government spending by three-quarters of a billion dollars. The work of CAGW has also identified as much as $200 billion in unrealized one-year savings and more than $1.6 trillion in five-year savings. (Ohio Piglet Book)

Whichever party is in power, is the big offender, so for 2006 it was the Republicans. "The 2006 Congressional Pig Book is the latest installment of Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) 16-year exposé of pork-barrel spending. This year’s list includes: $13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C."

Some states have their own Piglet Book. Here is Ohio's for 2006, "The book Columbus doesn't want you to read." Congratulations to Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Florida and Georgia for being the states that are the least greedy in bringing home the federal pork. Alaska is number one, and Hawaii number two.

3388 Common sense consumption, pt. 1

We'd better develop a taste for it, because the lefties, greenies and tree huggers are hooking up with socialized medicine and Democrats for more regulations and laws about food.

If only solvent white people were obese, we'd be safe from the food police. But unfortunately for all of us, non-white and poor individuals are more obese than wealthier and Euro-gened folks. I'm a retired WASP (Irish-German-English 9th generation American) with a decent pension, two homes and investments. No one cares if I'm fat (and I'm not).

Even Asians, who can skew our academic and educational achievement graphs and statistics, pack on the pounds by the second or third generation of living in the USA. It's world wide, and it is primarily economic, but because Europe is about a decade behind us in weight gain, and there are fewer fast food restaurants and less marketing to children there, we're told these are the reasons. (We've been in Germany, Austria, Finland, Estonia and Russia in the last two years, and I can assure you they are gaining on us even without a McDonald's on every corner.) I'll tell you what I think the reasons for USA obesity are in pt. 2.

Just keep this in mind. Lawyers are salivating. Sociologists and anthropologists are rubbing their hands with glee waiting for the grant money. Foundation CEOs, people with zero regulation and accountability, see a steady income stream--if only they can get on the obesity bandwagon. And the medical community--looking at 20 million of us with diabetes--to say nothing of stroke and heart problems--well, you're giving them a very nice lifestyle. And Congress is gearing up. Hear the distant parade music? Folks, all we have to do to stop the biggest invasion of our wallets and privacy in the history of this country, is eat less and move more--shed those pounds you wrote about in your New Year's resolutions. Don't let the government take your French fries and Twinkies. Be pro-active!!!! Dump them on your own.

Source of irritation: JAMA 297:1:87 (January 3, 2007)