ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER BLOG

I have started reading the blog associated with the Orange County Register newspaper recently. Like a lot of newspaper blogs it is more conservative than the paper it is associated with. With less managerial censorship hanging over their heads, even journalists can be surprisingly down-to-earth sometimes. I reproduce below a few recent excerpts that I liked. The headings are mine:

Health Fascists

"The American Lung Association, one of those mammoth, anti-freedom charities, now is pushing to ban smoking in your own apartment. The ALA "will roll out plans today to make smoke-free complexes more widespread." The article notes that apartment complexes already are offering more non-smoking areas. So why the campaign? Because these sorts of health campaigns always end up with legislation mandating no-smoking areas, then total smoking bans. Indeed, an L.A. councilman is sponsoring legislation to mandate non-smoking apartments. Pretty soon, tobacco is going to be as illegal as crack cocaine".

A good summary of FDR

"Today marks the 60th anniversary of one of the world's worst tyrants: Franklin "D. for Dictator" Roosevelt." Elected on a 1932 platform that promised to end the Great Depression with cuts in taxes, tariffs, government programs, and regulations, he did the opposite -- and extended and deepened the Great Depression. In 1935, he imposed on America a German- (as in Third Reich by way of Bismarck) retirement scheme, Socialist Security, which to this day has plagued young famlies with strangulating taxes and soon will go broke. In World War II, Franklin "D. for Dictator" allied closely with his good friend, Josef Stalin, affectionately dubbing him "Uncle Joe," to defeat Uncle Joe's own former close ally, Hitler. At the Yalta conference, FDR "gave" Uncle Joe Eastern Europe -- enslaving those people until the Berlin Wall fell.

Unions destroy business again

It's not just taxpayers who are footing the bill for out-of-control union pensions, but car buyers. Today's Wall Street Journal had an excellent column by Holman Jenkins Jr. on why GM cars are so awful and show no sign of getting better (except for Cadillac). Outdated engines, old-style transmissions, horrible styling, dreadful performance -- that summarizes GM. Only Caddy got a huge new infusion of dollars to allow it to compete with other companies. GM, according to Jenkins, dropped its plans for the new Zeta platform because it has to spend the bulk of its money paying up for pension deals that are busting the bank. GM isn't a car company, argues Jenkins, but a social welfare agency dedicated to providing benefits to retired union workers. And GM's market share fades away. A well deserved fate. Unfortunately, in the public sector, the taxpayer rather than the shareholder has to pay up to deal with monumental overpayments to government workers. Note that San Diego is facing bankruptcy because of pension deals, and city attorney Aguirre last week called for new taxes.

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ELSEWHERE

Blue Staters want to cut a tax that hits them: "Miracles happen, even to liberals, and the latest proof is their discovery of the horrors of the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. They've finally found a stealthy, soak-the-rich tax increase they don't like--and, better yet on this annual tax-payment day, their revelation may make tax reform possible. As our readers understand all too well, the AMT is a kind of IRS surprise double jeopardy. Claim too many deductions against a high income under the regular tax code, and the AMT sweeps you into its maw.... the AMT is biting hardest in the most liberal, high-tax states. That's because the AMT doesn't allow deductions for state and local taxes the way the regular code does. So middle-class taxpayers in New York, California and other states with high income-tax rates are getting hit sooner than people in, say, Florida or Wyoming. It is the ultimate blue-state tax. This helps to explain why people who normally thrill to higher tax rates are suddenly up in arms. Liberal newspapers are now denouncing the AMT as a "tax increase" and blaming the White House for not doing more to stop it. "The AMT needs to be fixed," moans Senator Barbara Boxer's spokesman, in what has to be a tax-reform first. "We need to address the AMT, which is trickling down to catch more and more middle-class families in New York," says Empire State Senator Chuck Schumer, another Saul on the road to Tarrytown".

Statement by a 1950s tax commissioner: "The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds. The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men. The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die."

A good article on the socialist origins of the income tax here

There is an interesting summary of the current big corruption scandal in Canadian politics here which foresees a new Canadian election soon. It looks like Canadian voters will be offered a choice between corrupt Liberals and pro-American Conservatives. Given the childish envies of many Canadians, it seems possible that they will choose corruption. By contrast, Australians feel perfectly confident of their own identity and culture and so envy no-one.

Moronic Leftist Senator: "President George W. Bush traveled April 5 to Parkersburg, West Virginia to visit the so-called Social Security Trust Fund: a filing cabinet filled with paper. "There is no trust fund - just IOUs," backed by no economic assets whatsoever, Bush noted. Senator Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) called the president's remarks misleading. In a conference call with journalists, Corzine said: "U.S. Treasury securities have the ability to be paid under any circumstances based on the ability of the government to print money." While Corzine's press secretary denies this comment was a concrete proposal, at this writing, the senator proudly highlights this quote on the front page of his website. So, as Corzine sees it, come 2041, when the federal government's plunging tax revenues will cover only 70 percent of its exploding pension obligations, Washington will trigger Treasury Department printing presses to finance Social Security checks. Inflating the currency is a dreadful idea that has landed much of Latin America in massive trouble. Like a latter-day Evita Peron, Corzine smiles upon the Argentine economic model: skyrocketing prices, a currency as disposable as Kleenex, and rising social chaos. Democrats have said many silly things in their crusade to scuttle President Bush's personal retirement accounts, but this must be the stupidest. And to think that Jon Corzine once ran Goldman Sachs! Corzine's statement has left economists aghast".

My latest quote on MARXWORDS shows Marx managing to denigrate Jews and blacks all at once.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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