Once again, we have the federal government stepping in to help people who have no skills that are marketable in our society? What terrible lives these former employees of Ocean Logistics must have lived. I mean to be so incompetent and so completely unskilled that no one other than Ocean Logistics had menial positions for them to fill? Are we seriously to believe that these employees have no skills that anyone would want to pay them for? How utterly sad. How utterly pathetic. And how even more pathetic that they had to turn to Big Brother to help them get the skills they themselves were too lazy to acquire on their own in preparation for the inevitability of the modern marketplace where people are often required to change jobs.

Or maybe this was just a convenient excuse for Big Brother to throw a pittance their way. You know, to help them remember come November that Obama loves them? We have trillions of dollars in debt and here we are paying for things people need to be doing themselves.

The grant amounts to $6,275 each for what should be on these workers themselves to take care of. It is not the job of government to retrain people because they themselves never took an ounce of initiative and have never developed marketable skills that allow them to find work. I bet all of you non-”special” workers out there could use $6,275 in additional aide, but no – government passed you by.

Just another nearly $1 million dollars that could have been saved. Add it all up, and I know I say it a lot but it is true, and you start talking about real money here!

Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.

The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants — many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.

New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.

Of course there are only three ways to solve this problem.

The first “solution” is to raise taxes to put more funds into the programs.  But with most Americans already paying at least 20% and up to 65% or more in taxes (total once you include all hidden taxes due to government regulations) is that really an option?  No, its not.  And we all know that the “poor” will never want to kick in their fair share and instead demand more from the “rich”.

The second solution is to means test applicants, rejecting some who do not need the benefits.  As pointed out in this article by FOX News, many of these “disabled” people are perfectly capable of working.  Why should they be so special that when they lose their jobs they get additional benefits than normal unemployed people?  Answer: they shouldn’t.

The third solution is to just get rid of the program.  There really is not any Constitutional justification for the federal government paying disabled workers benefits.  So why are we doing it?

Well, we are doing it because at some point in the distant past, some moron promised people that the government would make such payments.  And the people believed said moron.  Now the people think they are entitled to these payments at the expense of the taxpayers.

Boy, we could get things around here in order really quick if we would just follow the Constitution wouldn’t we?  Yep, we sure would.  The “problem”, so-called, is that too many people who are on the dole would kick and scream about setting things right.

One of these non-conservative things that conservatives seem often to hold dear are farm subsidies. Of course there is no constitutional authority for such programs. But still I am told often as a matter of fact by “conservative” people that these subsidies are needed and that farmers cannot live without them. According to the standard line these subsidies provide price stability for consumers and prevent our food supply from becoming beholden to foreign suppliers. They want to believe the laws of economics can be violated at will on the issue of paying farmers bonuses for acting the way the government wants them to act or subsidize said farmers to compensate them for the harsh effects of silly and senseless regulations previously passed by government and which are eating away at their normal profits.

Farm subsidies are a major taboo for some conservatives. Much like ending Welfare is taboo for liberals. Those that defend either however simply are not thinking rationally.

Farm subsidies go mostly to only certain crops and activities and mostly to a very select few “farmers” which tend to be huge corporate entities. Not that there is anything wrong with corporate farms mind you. Although some people have an irrational fear of them. Now, these farm subsides include, from highest to lowest in 2010: corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, sorghum, livestock, tobacco (something government claims to hate and get rid of), peanuts, barley, the dairy industry, sunflowers, canola, oat, wool, flax and “trees”[1]. There are also huge payments made to programs for disaster relief and conservation as well as wetlands preservation.

Recently one of my conservative friends, who like many conservatives needs to research their arguments in support of silly programs like farm subsidies better, recently ranted and raved about how without farm subsidies we would be outsourcing our produce to China. He said that if I thought it was bad now, with strawberries overflowing on our store shelves from Mexico, wait until we stopped subsidizing farmers.

Of course my IBD (Internal Bunk Detector) went off immediately. I tried to point out, without the exact numbers at hand, how this was simply wrong knowing full well that the last time I looked at strawberries at my local grocer they were all from California. He however, continued to disagree. Nope, Mexican strawberries, he said, were a real threat and overwhelming us. On top of this recent exchange, I get emails every week from “conservatives” defending farm subsidies and that “90% of our strawberries come from Mexico.” I don’t know where this claim comes from. A simple web search resulted in no rambling conspiracy theories on the topic. But it has apparently been engrained deeply into the brains of some people none-the-less.

So I decided to go and do the research for all of you out there specifically with regards to strawberries because I hear this particular fruit come up a lot in the discussion of this insane topic of farm subsidies. I decided to write this article to put the issue to rest. Please note, I went right to the USDA’s website to get the following information. This is not made up. This is actual data with no emotions clouding it. See all footnotes included.

In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, the United States produced 2,801.3 million pounds of strawberries [2]. This is both fresh and processed versions of the fruit. It is a total. Also in 2009 the United States imported 357.46 million pounds of the fruit [3], [4]. Of those total imports 307.39 million pounds came from Mexico [4].

So what does this mean? Well, it means that when you account for all the total strawberry supply in the United States (what we produce ourselves and what we import) the percentage of those strawberries which are Mexican strawberries is just 9.7%. That “90% of our strawberries come from Mexico” claim is actually so far off it is not even funny. In fact, it is just about 90% (86% to be exact) of our imports only which come from Mexico.

Yeah, a little omission there in the argument! Seems to me there is not some big crisis of Mexican strawberries overrunning American markets.

In fact the United States is the world’s largest producer of strawberries [5]. Mexico is a distant, very distant, like Tim Pawlenty in the Ames straw poll distant, third.

Now, here is another dirty little secret that conservatives who bring up the dreaded Mexican strawberry crisis as the reason why farm subsidies should be continued will not like one bit. Are you ready? Strawberry growers in the United States do not receive farm subsidies [6]. Not only that, they are not eligible for bailouts and disaster recovery money either. This is all as of last year.

Go ahead. Pick your jaw up off the floor all you conservatives that support farm subsidies as the only way farmers in the United States can compete with cheap food from foreign countries.

The strawberry market is actually proof that you do not need farm subsidies to compete.

Oops! Never mind! Right? Truth; the other white meat.

[1] http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2010
[2] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/95003/table01.xls
[3] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/95003/table14.xls
[4] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/95003/table15.xls
[5] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/95003/table16.xls
[6] http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/95003/table20.xls
[7] http://digitaljournal.com/article/289823

To all of you out there who are banking on getting nice checks every month from Washington DC or having your health care paid for in your old age, I have one suggestion for you. Start making alternate plans now.

And if, unfortunately, you are currently receiving such a benefit? For you I have a warning. Start kissing up to your children. Because you might need them sooner than you think to help you make ends meet. And if you did not take your own retirement planning seriously you may be moving in with one of them in the near future.

Right now every American worker has their paychecks garnished. This garnishment is going to pay for the benefits of senior citizens in America who are certain they are entitled to that money because one, they paid into the system and two, politicians have promised it to them.

But the problem is the same for seniors, those near retirement and foolish politicians who keep making promises of future retirement benefits. This problem is how to convince workers, generally younger Americans, to keep paying into a system that is quickly headed towards insolvency and which they will not themselves ever hope to benefit from.

The scam was simple in that if you paid into Social Security and Medicare when you were in your 20’s you would have checks sent your way in your 60’s. Now however it is not looking like if you are in your 20’s that you will ever see a dime of what you pay in.

In 2009, the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees pegged the arrival of insolvency for Social Security in the year 2037[1]. As a 39 year old, hard working American myself that would have me at just hitting the age of 65 when this happens. Think I will see anything in my pocket with this prediction? I certainly do not count on it. All my money which government took from my paychecks, essentially at the point of a gun, will be spent and long gone to have helped some current retiree buy a nice condo in Florida and trinkets for their grandchildren.

It gets worse. In 2010 Social Security officially began paying out more in benefits than it brought in [2]. Just an FYI, back in 2005 it was predicted that this ominous benchmark was not supposed to be reached until 2017 [3]. In a mere five years that point of revenues falling behind expenditures moved up a horrifying six years.

See a pattern here? If you do not, let me help you out and clean the fog off your rose-colored glasses. The government keeps telling us that everything is ok when it comes to Social Security. But every prediction they make about how much is left in the coffers and how much time we have until all Hell breaks loose keeps getting accelerated. The point at which old people will start marching in the streets and hitting police officers with their canes comes closer and closer to the present all the time.

These politicians stand at the podium and tell us one thing. But behind closed doors they know the truth is something else. They just hope that you will not notice. Considering however that this is the United States of America in the 21st century and not the Soviet Union in the 1960’s, the truth has a tendency to get leaked out every now and again.

Oh, and then there is Medicare. I hope you are in good health all you seniors! Because while Social Security may last another twenty to thirty years, Medicare’s fund for hospitalization care is slated to be depleted by 2017 [4]. In case you need a little reality check, this is just six years from now.

Now, think about all this from the perspective of someone like myself or someone that is even younger. Exactly what incentive do we have to continue paying thousands of dollars every year in taxes to specifically cover programs that we will never benefit from? I am not even addressing the whole, obvious, unconstitutionality of these programs of course. I am just talking about this from a logical and financial standpoint as one who is looking out for my own, rational self interest.

How long until people 40 years of age and younger say enough? How long until people 40 years of age and younger realize en masse that if they were allowed to keep those hundreds of dollars every month right now going to pay benefits to seniors that they could be investing that money themselves and providing for their own quite comfortable retirements? And what will they do once they awaken to such a reality? Oh, there will be a push to end these sorts of wealth redistribution schemes quicker than a laxative laced cupcake can clear out Grandpa Frank’s colon.

Thank God you put your faith in the federal government right seniors?

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/29/board-of-trustees-personal-finance-retirement-saving-social-security.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/economy/25social.html
[3] http://www.michigandaily.com/content/social-security-insolvent-2017-trustees-say
[4] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124212734686110365.html

My conscious also compels me to not force anyone else to help my fellow man in a particular manner simply because I see it as correct.

Liberals, having no conscious, do not see things in this way and insist on being allowed to command others how to help as they deem necessary.

Right now the wind-energy industry is lobbying hard to get subsidies which have sustained it renewed. For all the bluster about how great this alternative source of energy is, apparently it is not very economically feasible and has become yet another government boondoggle along the lines of the whole ethanol industry.

Just perusing the articles of the past couple days we see that those making their living off wind-energy are really concerned about not getting their hands into the precious government cookie jar. At DesmoinesRegister.com, there is an article called “Wind industry pleas for subsidy”.

The article bemoans how these subsidies are keeping the industry afloat and how the loss of the subsidy, ostensively because of evil people soon to take over the House of Representatives, would cost jobs. Yes, it is the same old government creates jobs song and dance that we have heard many times before. Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, is quoted in the article as laying the ground work for the complaint as to what will happen if those dastardly Republicans do not give them their money. “No one will want to have another series of people, a group of people in unemployment lines, in the renewable sector,” she said.

Hey Denise, sweetheart, why not find a way to actually make money instead of trying the same old complaints about how without government you cannot succeed? This article also points out how wind installations dropped from 10 gigawatts in 2009 to 5.5 gigawatts this year despite the subsidy. But, miraculously if the subsidies are renewed that number will jump to “seven to eight gigawatts in 2011” or so Ms. Bode’s group claims. Again, you cannot increase installation capacity on your own why exactly? Possibly some sort of economic laws which, try as you might, cannot be violated?

Then there is this article in the Dallas Morning News which was the long, unwieldy title of “Wind industry says 3,000 Texas jobs could be lost if key subsidy isn’t renewed“. Apparently the federal government, so the article reports, has had to dump 1.3 billion dollars into Texas wind-energy companies in the past two years. And only with that huge government bailout has this business been able to sustain itself and keep on going. Bemoans Denise Bode some more in this article that there are some 20,000 jobs nationwide hang in the balance if the subsidies are not renewed. 3,000 of those workers, we are told, will be in Texas alone.

Sniff. I – I don’t know what to say. How can we be so cruel as to not send tax payer dollars to businesses that have such a pathetic business model that they cannot survive without government aid? How can we be so callous as to send thousands of workers to the unemployment lines and food kitchens even though they are obviously not producing something their fellow man wants? How can we not, just this one more time, say that even though there is no authority in the Constitution for this sort of spending we have to still spend it because so many people will suffer and not be able to suckle at the teat of government?

Ok, I was being quite facetious with all that bellyaching in the last paragraph. But these are the excuses people like Denise Boyd and others, who are making their own living off of convincing government to give up some of our tax dollars to them, are basically trying to craft. Because without those subsidies and if the wind-energy industry goes the way the free market obviously wants to make it go they would have to actually find something productive to do with their lives rather than being leaches.

No industry should be subsidized by the federal government. Enough is enough. The hot air of the alternative power industry must be allowed to blow over. Succeed or fail by your own merits and stop, for the love of God, looking for a government handout because you have not figured out how to do the former.

This leads up to a climatic, impassioned but ultimately ignorant speech by John “Bluto” Blutarsky in which he tries to rally the Deltas to go out with a bang.  During that speech is when he utters the iconic phrase of stupidity, which sums up so neatly why the Deltas were being expelled, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  Hell no!”  Bluto then charges out of the Fraternity House and half-heartedly the rest of the members eventually follow.  They then proceed to wreak havoc during the College’s annual homecoming parade destroying property and committing mischief.

This scene resembles remarkably well the way liberals act in real life and nothing illustrates this better than the recent case of McDonald v. Chicago where the onerous gun ban imposed by the City of Chicago was successfully challenged and struck down by the United States Supreme Court.  The reason the city of Chicago lost the case is obvious to anyone more interested in the truth and who has not spent their time seeking out debauchery while partying on the tax payer’s dime.  Mayor Richard Daley however is not such a person.

The City of Chicago lost the case because despite years of liberals who are unkind to liberty trying desperately to rewrite the meaning of the Second Amendment to our Federal Constitution into some non-individual right and only a right of the state, they were unsuccessful.  In defiance of the case’s outcome Mayor Richard “Bluto” Daley essentially stood up and made his own ignorant proclamation that this was not over.  He has promised a new gun law which will be, by his own admission, a burdensome mishmash regulations designed to allow gun ownership but only after applicants have jumped though a myriad of hoops and paid some hefty fees to the coffers.  What he will ultimately try to establish is a way to skirt the rights and privileges of Chicago residents by allowing them to technically own guns but to make doing so so difficult that so that few, if any, will be able to meet all the requirements he will set forth.

This is not unusual for the political left to act this way.  Their entire philosophy is that anything they want, regardless of its legitimacy, will be the law and if they don’t get their way it will be Hell on Earth until they get it.  Only laws that they like when upheld are, “settled law,” and beyond challenge.  Laws they do not like when upheld must be gotten around at all costs setting up another challenge and another loss for them and another new and innovative way to try and get around the ruling.

Now liberals, when I talk about how they act this way, usually come back with a response similar to, “Well, you conservatives do the same thing!”  They will talk about how we have fought against court decisions like Roe v. Wade or even continued to fight against Campaign Finance Reform even after the Supreme Court upheld most of the law as a-ok despite rejecting parts of it.  But just like the Delta’s who wallow in ignorance, so to do liberals that try this argument.

The difference between conservatives who fight against court rulings like Roe v. Wade and liberals who fight against rulings like those in McDonald v. Chicago is that rulings like Roe v. Wade ignore the Constitution and basic inalienable rights of all mankind.  On the other hand rulings like McDonald v. Chicago embrace these basic things.  When a conservative argues against Roe v. Wade it is from the stand point that our Constitution specifically states that all persons are entitled to the right to life and that that life may not be taken without due process of law.  Of course liberals, who ignore basic biology, argue that the human fetus is not human life so aborting (i.e. murdering) them is just a fine thing to do.  But what I find is that when I lock eyes with these sad sacks who think this and when I run down the biological definition of life with them and show how from the moment an egg is fertilized inside the mother’s womb that “lump of cells” is indeed human life one of two things happens.  Either they start yelling wildly calling me everything from a NAZI to a woman hater trying to filibuster the rest of the conversation or they start to quickly look for a way to simply escape the conversation all together and stop listening to the truth.

Summary: Conservatives argue for the Constitution and the inalienable rights of all persons when they stand up against rulings like Roe v. Wade.

Now compare that to liberals who argue that it ok for the government to either outright prohibit law abiding citizens from owning guns or making it so difficult for them to own guns that they might as well just have banned them in the first place.  This approach violates the clear meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution which specifically states that the people, not the states, and not the federal government, have the right to keep and bear arms.

Summary: Liberals who take this stance are arguing against the Constitution and the inalienable rights of all persons when they stand up against rulings like McDonald v. Chicago.

Now of course liberals hate it when I point things out like this because their image of themselves is as that of a champion of the rights of the people.  But time and again, when you actually look at what they defend as right you see that they are doing just the exact opposite.  Chicago has, for years, had restrictive gun laws meant to keep crime down.  Yet in 2009, at the height of these policies, 36 Chicago Public School students had been murdered during the current school year as of May 13^th of that year.  The City had the grand distinction under the gun ban that liberals love so much and tout as such a great thing as having the highest youth homicide rate in the nation.  So obviously the gun ban is not operating as intended.  Now of course liberals like Mayor Bluto … I mean Daley … will tell us that the murder rate would be even higher if not for their gun bans.  That is always their claim which is to make some nebulous statement about how things would be worse if not for their tyrannical leadership and which makes them, in their own minds, seem competent.

Of course there is still rampant gun related crime in Chicago despite the now shot down, pun intended, gun ban which proves the old axiom that criminals do not obey laws and that the only thing that laws like the Chicago gun ban did was infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.  But it is not such logic that the liberals are concerned with.  They are just concerning with wreaking havoc and they will do and say anything that comes to their minds in order to get people to rally to their side.  Yes, they will even rail about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor if they have to and if they think that people would follow them into battle against those stuffy old coots who actually think the Constitution and inalienable rights are important.

=====================================

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the <a href=”http://www.examiner.com/x-35438-Pittsburgh-Conservative-Examiner”>Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner</a> for Examiner.com.  He is also the owner of The Right Things – Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com

This is, if you ask me, like praising Hitler because he built great roads (albeit with slave labor) or giving Mussolini a pat on the back for making the trains run on time. And it shows a serious problem that is rampant within the conservative movement and even some of the more popular right wing radio hosts who have not had enough good things to say about Mr. Bunning as of late. But just like with Scott Brown where too many in the American Center, often misrepresented as the American Right, could not praise him fast enough simply because of his pledge to be the 41st vote against Obamacare they ignore the truth behind the mask. Scott Brown, I warned, would not be a paragon of virtue day in and day out that Americans could be proud of and I was lambasted for it by those blinded by his pledge on a single issue. I was, of course, proven right about him being a typical north east Republican when he voted in favor of the mislabeled “jobs bill” which was nothing more than a hodgepodge of unconstitutional acts and federal spending. Gee, I have not heard too much from the diehard Scott Brown supporters since that little event and the facade being dropped. The least all of you could do is apologize and admit I was right.

Granted Mr. Brown will no doubt be more in the mold of Mitt Romney than Olympia Snowe but he is still a left leaning, government solution seeking Republican.

Senator Bunning is the same way. He is being praised for his stance but the reasons behind his stance are not entirely good. Sure he wants to pay for programs as we go along which is virtuous. But it is not virtuous to pay for unconstitutional programs and violate the limited powers delegated to our Congress in any manner; pay-as-you-go or otherwise.

You might as well be saying that Stalin was great because he helped beat back the NAZIs. But in doing so you overlook how hideous he was towards his own people and how he quashed their liberty to cement his power.

Praise Senator Bunning if you like. But he is nothing more than, at best, a moderate socialist which you are trying to wrap up in conservative clothing.