Two of my state legislators in Chester County, PA have differing views on gun laws (LINK). When posed the question, “Should Pennsylvanians be limited to purchasing one firearm per month?”,
Sen. Andy Dinniman (D) said,
I believe certain Pennsylvania communities should have the ability to regulate guns.
And Rep. Curt Shroeder (R) said,
No. Setting a one gun a month limit infringes on an individual’s right to purchase a firearm. I believe this would be in violation of the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions.
In other words, one respects the Constitution and one does not.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in guns on November 26th, 2008
One of my conservative friends has a t-shirt with the famous color coded map of the United States showing which counties went Republican (red) and which went for Democrats (blue). This map is fun to rub in the noses of liberals, but it is not very instructive. Geographically large counties with a sparse population favor Republicans and geographically small counties with dense populations favor Democrats.
Mark Newman from the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan has produced maps that correct for the populations densities (LINK). I have animated some of his maps (below).
Popular Mechanics (LINK) has the top 10 tree houses. This is a long way from the shacks my friends and I banked together with a rock, scrap wood and rusty nails.
I believe in school choice. The government doesn’t know what is best for each individual child. Parent know best. Some parent may not be engaged in their childrens education like we might hope, but on a whole, parents know best.
Everyone has their own situation and should make the choice based on their individual situation. This is exactly what Barack Obama has done (LINK). He has a unique situation and has sent his kids to a private school. The school that the Obama kids will attend is run by Quakers. The Obama’s did not chose this school based on religion, but because of their experience with high profile children. Good for him. He is not 100% in the pocket of the teacher’s union.
All we ask is that we have the same options that the Obamas have. The current system only gives school choice to the rich.
The modern version of slavery is much more gentle then the previous incarnation. It also goes by another name…socialism. Walter Williams discusses it:
Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you that I’m almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.(LINK)
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Free Markets on November 21st, 2008
The average price of gasoline has dropped to under $2 per gallon (LINK). I never thought I would see that again.
Consider this an economic stimulus package. We didn’t have to wait for the government to vote and organize the distribution and you don’t have to worry about making too much money to benefit. Everyone who uses energy will get this stimulus…and not a moment too soon.
This morning was a traffic nightmare caused by several inches of snow. I can’t remember the last time Southeastern Pennsylvania had any significant snow before Thanksgiving. It turning out to be another colder than normal month.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Free Markets on November 21st, 2008
Chester County will be getting a tax increase this year. Our elected official reduced the costs on what they control, but are bound by law to contribute additional money to the county pension plan.
This year, Chester County is required to add over 13 million dollars to the pension. That is an increase of over 5 million dollars from last year. The extra expense is a result of reduced assets in the pension and this shortfall is a direct result of falling stock values.
For the immediate future, the only solution is to raise taxes. The median taxes increase in Chester County is expected to be about $28. Honestly, I have been saving that much every time I fill up my gas tank.
As long as Chester County remains a Republican County, I trust that we can reduce taxes in the near future. The Republicans have served the county well. Chester County is the hottest county in the state. We are one of the fastest growing counties (LINK) and we have the 2nd lowest unemployment rate in Pennslyvania (LINK).
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in PA Politics on November 21st, 2008
The chief liberal here in Pennsylvania now wants to bail out another loser. This time Ed Rendell wants to secure federeal loans to assist Boscov’s. (LINK) The loans will allow Boscov’s to exit bankruptcy so that they can sell the company to Albert Boscov and Edwin Lakin, the son and the son in law of company founder, Solomon Boscov. (LINK) Rendell wants federal money so the Boscov family can buy Boscov’s.
The money that Ed Rendell is seeking is federal community development block grants.
I’m no expert in community development grants, but it seems to me that the community development money was not set aside to help millionaires. They have always been sold to the public as a way to help inner city communities. What these communities need is investment in small businesses…the kind that provide services and create jobs.
I can’t remember a single time that a politician touted his support for Communinty Development grants because it would assure that rich people stay rich…even when their business fails.
Is this ballot clear to you? It is to me. Al Franken’s campaign is arguing that the intent of this voter is unknown. (LINK)
I have no way of determining the validity of this complaint, but if it is true, then this ballot demonstrates what I have come to expect of Democrats in elections. They are only concerned about winning. The integrity of our system is not important to them.
At this point, there is no way to determine how many illegal aliens have already voted for Franken. Those votes will count. In order for Franken to win, he must now discount votes for Norm Coleman. So much for “every vote must be counted”.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Election on November 20th, 2008
I was reading a liberal blogger today who makes the claim that 54% of your income tax goes to defense spending.** It’s not the first time I have seen this statistic.
Here is the real data. According to the non-partisan congressional budget office (LINK)
Total Income tax = 1.1 trillion dollars
(not including Social Security taxes)
Total Defense spending = .5 trillion dollars
If you add a couple of billion of Iraq (dubious), you can see where they get their numbers…but it is deceiving at best.
Defense spending doesn’t come out of income tax. It comes out of all taxes. In 2007, 20% of all tax revenues was generated by other sources such as corporate taxes and estate taxes.
To complicate the matters, the government spent more than they collected. This liberal point of view assumes that all of defense spending is paid for in full by income tax and other government expenses raid the social security funds or are passed on as debt. If you consider this logic, what they are saying here is that government debt is not caused by military spending. The prime source of debt is entitlements. I don’t think they want to argue that case.
Let’s simplify it.
Defense spending in 2007 was 548 billion dollars. The total outlays by the government for the same year was 2.73 trillion dollars. Defense spending was 20% of all government spending…not 54%. There is a huge difference.
What’s more…defense spending is only 4% of GDP. This is less than half of the spending during LBJ’s Great Society when we spent nearly 10% of GDP on Vietnam. If you want to consider peace time, then Jimmy Carter spent a minimum of 4.9% of GDP on the military. Only during Bill Clinton’s terms did we dedicate less of our economy to defense.
In historical terms, we are spending far less on defense then previous generations.
**I won't link to his web site because I don't want to help him gain
traffic. You are just going to have to trust that he and his claim exist.
A contributor to a liberal economic web site complains about the NYC Subways…
Maybe it is because I live on the Upper East side of Manhattan but every morning’s subway ride (the Lexington line) involves pushing and shoving just to get into the subway car….we could avoid the layoffs and the service cutbacks if Congress decides to expand Federal revenue sharing. (LINK)
Federal Revenue sharing means he wants the rest of America to help pay for his ride to work. I pay for the gas (and gas tax) to drive to work every morning on roads that were built with local taxes. There is no doubt that some federal dollars are included along the way, but not much…and you don’t hear me whining for more.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense on November 18th, 2008
We had a deficit before the financial collapse. So how are we going to pay for all these bail out?
Thomas Sowell describes it this way:
When savvy pols want to hand out goodies, but don’t want to take responsibility for raising taxes to pay for them, they can tax people who can’t vote– namely the next generation– by getting the money by selling government bonds that future taxpayers will have to redeem.
I have never been a big fan of “Get out the vote” drives. I don’t want people voting who are clueless to the world around them. I think people should be urged to be good citizen. A good citizen is informed. My guess is that people who are informed want to vote and don’t need a fancy media blitz to get them to the polls.
Watch this video. It appears as if these voters learned all they know about our government by scanning the magazine covers at the grocery store. This is what you can get from uninformed voters.
The blogosphere scores another victory. Again bloggers have done the job the media won’t do.
NASA recently reported that October was the warmest on record. After reviewing the data, Anthony Watts ( his blog, Watts Up With That is linked to from Elephant Owners) reviewed the data and found that the October temperatures from Russia matched the data in September. (LINK) After further review, this error led to further inquiry that discovered persistent questions about the Russian data. Each year, warm temperatures are reported in the Russian winter…but not in the summer. He has theorized that the heat island effect is exaggerated in Russia due to uninsulated steam pipes from thermal power stations.
This is not the first error caught by a blogger. In 2007, Stephen McIntyre discovered and wrote in his Climate Audit blog that there was a Y2K error in NASA temperature data. It was a minor error, but recalculations forced NASA to retract the claim that 1998 was the warmest year on record.
All summer long, we heard from the Democrats that we couldn’t drill out of our energy problem. It would take years for new wells to produce oil. Then the economic crisis hit, a recession looms (or has started) and the global demand for oil caused a drop in gasoline prices like never before.
In response, the Democrats are already going soft on new drilling. John Podesta said last week on FoxNews Sunday that it was a mistake to drill “in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah”.
It is likely that the Democrats will reverse their position on drilling. They won’t call for drilling until the public is outraged…and then they will claim it is too late to do anything about it. This is not leadership. This is a party dragged to extremes by public opinion and environmental interest groups.
Congress could help promote job creation using free market principals by simply allowing for more drilling and reducing regulation that enable clean coal technologies and shale oil…but the oil companies are not a political favorite like the auto companies.
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