I dream of living in ... a World Without Dictators! I'm a Libertarian Paternalist in Slovakia - Freedom with Responsibility - 10% of income into your own Pension; Tax Loans for education, health, housing; now supporting Employment Maximizing Companies!

Support Tax Cuts

small-l libertarian Friedman truly did support all tax cuts. 

Which politician has actually been cutting ANY gov't programs?   

The sad reality is that once a program (of 'free' money) gets started, it becomes popular and hard to cut.

Tax cuts, like all money, go for two purposes, investment and consumption.  Rich folk invest more -- investment leads to more and higher paying jobs, and more mortgage money available.  Non-rich folk consume more.
Gov't folk mostly consume ('entitlement'), but often do invest in infrastructure (tho New Orleans/ LA failed for many years).

Consumption now is good, now.  Investment now is good for the future, increased production, increased consumption.

Bush failed to lead his Rep Congress towards any big spending cuts, but when facing a recession the gov't wasn't going to do spending cuts anyway, and shouldn't.  The anti-recession tax cuts were good, so McCain was a bit wrong.  The lack of spending cuts was bad -- and McCain and all Congress failed to suggest any in any Budget I heard of.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/25/08 02:44 | link | comments
democracy

Yes to Huckabee

This Libertarian Paternalist is about to vote for Huckabee in the CA primary. 

He is quite pro-life, a proud church going Christian, and an anti-elitist.

I suspect McCain will win the Rep nomination, but Romney will become the anti-McCain for the rich Rep Establishment.  Rudy will drop after Florida, but most of his support is split to McCain & Romney.

Huckabee should stay mostly positive, especially against other candidates (tho not Club for Growth), and be more on message.  His "God's word" about the Constitution was maybe a small gaffe, but in fact everybody wants their own morality to be written into the Constitution.  The problem was handling the spin after. 

In fact, any of the three of McCain, Romney, or Huck have excellent chances to win against a pro-defeat Dem, as Iraq becomes a success.

If Huck takes a few #2 spots on Super Tuesday, he should schedule a trip to Iraq to see it first hand, talk to the troops, and get recharged with real stories of improvement there -- and how Victory for Democracy in Iraq is the best hope in the long term for Peace in the Middle East.

McCain - Huckabee in 2008 wins if Iraq is looking  good.  Reps lose if Iraq fails.  Or McCain-Lieberman.  I like John, too; and even Mitt is OK. 

Christians who feel under cultural pressure from the anti-life (culture of death) elites should be voting Huckabee to create more space in the Republican Party for cultural Christians.
(inspired by Joe at evangelicaloutpost)

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/25/08 02:18 | link | comments
democracy, christianity

Be Not Afraid -- the economy is OK

Be Not Afraid.  I'm reading about doom and gloom at Crunchy Conservative, and I don't think it's so bad.

First, the Iraq war was necessary ... (1) to end the threat of nukes in the hands of Saddam (done), and (2) to create a Muslim - Arab democracy to demonstrate to the Muslim world that it is possible (in process, will be in much better shape by Nov.)

In fact, (2) is being done so well thanks to Rumsfeld's little footprint and the corrupt Iraqis waking up to their own responsibility to defend themselves faster than the corrupt S. Vietnamese did.  Only 4000 Americans dead.  I'd say that's a "B" for Bush (<2500 an A, <5000 B, <10000 C -- have you seen any others quantify it?).

But the corrupt elected Dems and corrupt elected Reps are having trouble solving the corruption problem: using gov't office & power for their own benefit.  Of course, it is because they follow the example of corrupt voters, who vote in favor of using gov't power to pay for goodies they want, especially SS/Medicare.

Corruption is using gov't / Other People's Money for your own benefit, just the corruption of most "issue" voters.

Means testing entitlements will be coming, but the USA remains in fine shape, even as the real rate of poverty in the world has come down hugely in the last 50 years, thanks to the US led Free Trade & relatively free investment.

The dot.com boom-bust is now being followed by a US mortgage boom-bust, and the in-process world reaction, but it might not even meet the earlier definition of a recession: two or more consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE GDP growth.  Instead, the gloomers are changing the definition to be a "slowdown" in growth.

5% unemployment? That's probably the long-term full employment rate, and the 4.7% was overemployment unsustainably funded by "safe" real estate asset over-appreciation.

Peak oil hasn't yet been seen, but that high price, far more than any gov't program, is the signal for (admittedly slower than desired) market forces to develop innovative alternatives to increasingly expensive oil.  Oil that the world will NEVER run out of, but will rise in price with demand until that technological alternative, or alternatives, come on-line. YES to more nuclear power -- like France has-- as well as solar, wind, and coal & coal conversion.

The Fed knows how to avoid a depression: lower interest rates.  Which they've done, down to 4%, but there's room for more lowering if needed.

On the moral side, support for Andrew style pleasure sex and consumer sex and children as a consumable item is a slow rot inside of Christian/ Western society -- led by Liberal Fascists (PC thought police).

Vote for proud Christians to get Christianity and Morality and individual responsibility back into the Public Square.  None of the Presidential candidates will "save" America, but discussions of the solutions will help real people make behavior changes to help save themselves.  And America needs less saving than any other OECD country.  Or Russia.  Or China (with some 20 million "surplus" teenage men, more than teenage women).

Yes, fear Iran getting a nuke, and Tel Aviv going mushroom (or Moscow or Mumbai or Miami).  But that's about it for real fear.  The rest is mostly infotainment fear-mongering.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/24/08 04:14 | link | comments
economics, christianity

Writers socialism

Neo posts about writers and socialism.

Great post, great comments — tho I’d have expected somebody else to note Robert Nozick’s

Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism

There is also the historical, fairy tale myth issue of the “just underdog”. In most stories, including Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, the hero is the underdog. With American supremacy, there is no “imagology” for the problems of the strongest, best, but still imperfect leading country.

There’s even something sort of End of History like about the whole world feeling that America can’t be beaten. But its imperfections seem to mean it deserves to be somehow punished…

(These are more current thoughts than the 20s & 30s silly delusional socialism junk.)

Christianity, and its sins of fornication & adultery, is also a focus of ire because fidelity is against freedom and the feelings of the moment.

I just read a Brooklyn Arden leftist post about how Barack Obama can heal America and bring us together again — with no mention of the pro-life / pro-abortion culture war.

America will stay divided until the pro-abortion folk have, thru generational success at population limitation, become a consistently losing voter block.

The sexual promiscuity is part of the core disfunctional desire to pretend that fantasy is real. Real happiness can only come thru sexual faithfulness.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/14/08 02:17 | link | comments

Somebody else supports Barack

From Normblog, I was directed to another blog, Brooklyn Arden, by somebody supporting Barack Obama,

Good article, tho I still disagree.  On Iraq and the war, there is no mention of what opposition to the war in Iraq means -- accepting Saddam as preferable.

There are other issues to look at.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/14/08 01:24 | link | comments

Fred or Huck? -- and Global Warming?

Right now I'm leaning toward Huckabee, despite the fact that Fred Thompson is a fine candidate.

I'm reading Crunchy Con (again), and there's a lot of good posts and comments.

Even on Global Warming, Crazy Weather. 
Where I think:

When are the "Global Warming" alarmists, like Al Gore, going to call for a 50 cent a gal. tax?

Until they do, they're blowing smoke.  In fact, while we DO do know that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere (quick quiz: how much is CO2 now?
a) 80% or more b) 50% c) 20% d) 1%  e) less than 1%?), we do NOT know that "Warming" is actually happening.

See "Climate Change" become the new issue, which is more correct.  Maybe we're heading towards an ice age.  Maybe the deserts will get water, and the tropics will get drought.  We don't know.  It won't be "sudden" for a new stability.

I support increasing gas taxes for climate, and national security reasons -- and to lower the income taxes on the rich, so that they can (and will) hire more poor people.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/14/08 00:54 | link | comments
democracy

Happy New Year - Freedom will win in Iraq

Whether Freedom, and Democracy, leads to Christian-liberal human rights, I'm not yet so sure.  I hope so.

But it's pretty clear that the Iraqis would prefer peace and capitalism to terrorism and Sharia; at least a large majority.

So this is enough of Happy New Year

Oh, Bill Whittle has a great long post on agility in war.

Posted by: TomGrey at 01/08/08 03:55 | link | comments
iraq, military