Forced Redistribution Majority of Federal Spending, Deficit

As you listen to commentators talking about “excessive” military spending and the federal budget deficit, this is your friendly periodic reminder that all U. S. military spending amounts to only 16% of federal spending, while forced redistribution represents 59% of federal spending.  In dollar terms, forced redistribution is now the majority of what the federal government does; the federal government is literally a huge forced-redistribution operation with a smaller national-defense side project.

Don’t take my word for it; these numbers are according to the CBPP, which even the left agrees is of the left.

Glass Half Full

From today’s e-mail newsletter from NRO’s Jim Geraghty:

From the way conservatives talk, one would never know that Republicans have 54 U.S. Senate seats, 246 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (a majority that the party could easily hold for the next decade), 31 governors, and 68 out of 98 partisan state legislatures. Republicans control the governorship and both houses in 23 states; Democrats control only seven.

Abortions have dropped 12 percent nationwide since 2010 and are down in almost every state. The divorce rate declined significantly in the past generation and is staying down, while the marriage rate is up a bit. Slate concedes, “Most Americans have given up on achieving meaningful gun control in their lifetimes or in their grandchildren’s lifetimes.”

Government’s Interest in Stopping Nazis > Interest in Validating Couples

Ed Morrissey makes a good point (“Religion: The new Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”) about the government’s new definition of marriage:  As a country, we allowed Quakers and other religious objectors to opt out of military service, even in World War II.  The protection extends to non-religious objectors as well.  If the government doesn’t force people to act against their principles for national defense and saving the world from Nazis—the most “compelling interest” the government can have—why on earth should it force people to participate (whether by baking cakes, issuing the licenses, or otherwise) in same-sex marriages?

Obergefell Supporters: Decision Was Poorly Reasoned, Will Create Backlash

Two contributors at The Volokh Conspiracy, both of whom support Obergefell’s redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, nevertheless argue that it was a poor decision that will have unintended consequences.

Ilya Somin: “A great decision on same-sex marriage – but based on dubious reasoning”

The Big Charter, in Brief

Happy 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta!

‘the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it, but what it costs those who receive it.’

Great line.  From George Will’s column this week:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a lifelong New Deal liberal and accomplished social scientist, warned that “the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it, but what it costs those who receive it.”

(The apt headline and subtitle NRO gives it on the main page are “The Perils of Dependency: It’s changing our national character.”)

See also Mark Steyn and even FDR on the welfare state.

Four Reasons to Vote Today

See below

1: Obamacare

While we work toward electing a better chief executive in 2016, now is a great time to start building a Republican majority in the Senate, both to take such steps as they can in 2015 and to pass a full repeal and replacement of Obamacare in 2017.

National Review has a timely editorial on the subject: “Obamacare: Unpopular as Ever”

2014 Conservative and Tea Party Voter Guides, Ohio and Cincinnati

(Looking for a different year’s voter guide?  Click here.)

(Looking for 2014 Conservative and Tea Party Voter Guides, U.S. House and Senate, All States?  Click here.)

(See also the case for voting for Republicans in the general election.)

Cincinnati area:

• List of “Judges Supported by Hamilton County Liberty Groups” (according to the Ohio Liberty Coalition)

• Endorsements from Cincinnati Right to Life PAC

• Thoughts on Hamilton County tax levies from Liberty Alliance Cincinnati (“dedicated to the principles of constitutionally limited government, free enterprise and fiscal responsibility”)

• Endorsements for Hamilton County from Citizens for Community Values (about CCV Action, about CCV)

• (Wondering what 2014 Cincinnati Issue 11 is about?)

Statewide:

• Endorsements from the Ohio Citizens PAC (“Supporting fiscally responsible, Constitutionally conservative candidates”)

2014 Conservative and Tea Party Voter Guides, U.S. House and Senate, All States

(Looking for a different year’s voter guide?  Click here.)

(Looking for 2014 Conservative and Tea Party Voter Guides, Ohio and Cincinnati?  Click here.)

(See also the case for voting for Republicans in the general election.)

About candidates or current races:

• Endorsements (map, press releases) from Tea Party Express (“Restore Liberty — Honor the Constitution”)

• Candidate endorsements and congressional scorecards from the Family Research Council (“Our vision is a culture in which human life is valued, families flourish, and religious liberty thrives.”)

Liberty Defined, Briefly

A reader recently asked how I would define liberty.  Great question!

I claim no special expertise, but here is how I would outline the topic:  By “liberty” in a broad sense, I mean to comprehend at least three main categories: life, liberty in a narrower sense, and property.  (These three categories are probably not exhaustive, but that may depend on how narrowly you construe them.  They may also not be perfectly separable—if you think about them enough, they may inevitably blur into each other.  I think they are nevertheless useful categories.)

(See also rights to life, liberty, and property in our state constitutions.)

Amazon Health Care or BMV Health Care?

No doubt he’s not the first to make such comparisons, but they bear repeating:  Wintery Knight asks, Do you want your health care to be more like using Amazon.com, or like the Bureau of Motor Vehicles?

Oh, and apparently the latest “best estimate” from the government’s own Congressional Budget Office is that Obamacare will make 11 million people lose their employer-provided health insurance, or possibly up to 20 million.

Recall that President Obama, in trying to sell Obamacare, explicitly promised (July 28th, 2009, AARP “tele-town hall”),

‘When conservatives contemplate what a liberal means by “functional,” we say “bring on the dysfunction, baby!”’

I ran across this while doing Internet searches and reading up on the American Progressive movement, and thought it was pretty well put:

When a liberal says our government is “dysfunctional,” what he invariably means is that it does not vigorously churn out the sorts of egalitarian, freedom-destroying legislation that will propel us (even more quickly) in the direction Europe has already traveled.  When conservatives contemplate what a liberal means by “functional,” we say “bring on the dysfunction, baby!”  The American system’s separation of powers, checks and balances, bicameralism, federalism, and pluralism routinely result in the government’s utter failure to get anything done.  Thank goodness.  While there are important things that need doing, nearly all of them fall in the category of “undoings”—undoing the achievements of all that “functional” government liberals love, which have made us less wealthy and less free.

Government Workers: Government Workers Don’t Work as Hard

Via COAST and the Washington Examiner, according to a Rasmussen poll, even government workers admit (46-32) that government workers don’t work as hard as the rest of us.  (The original Rasmussen report is apparently here, but full article available only with subscription.)

Note that federal-government employees are also paid a lot better for their lackluster work.

Spending Ceiling

Here’s an idea for structural reform (though not structural in the same sense as, say, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment), prompted by the discussion generated by a past post: a spending ceiling.

The idea is simple:  Congress would enact a limit on the annual federal budget, similar to the total limit on national debt (the “debt ceiling”).  Any time Congress wants to spend more money than it did the previous year (or rather, more than the existing statutory limit), it has to pass a law (duly agreed by both houses and signed by the president) raising the spending limit.  

Breaking News: Light Bulbs Ambiguously Not Banned Yet

This just in:  In a spending-bill deal finally worked out last night between congressional Republicans and Democrats, the light-bulb ban will still not be repealed (yet), but the government will be prohibited from using any money to enforce it.  See news story from Bloomberg (longer), Newsmax, or the Chicago Tribune (shorter).  

What’s Wrong with the Welfare State

Eternity Matters discusses (with illustrations) why the welfare state is bad, not just in any particular execution of the idea, but intrinsically.  It’s short; read it—if not to believe and understand the world better, then at least to understand conservatives’ point of view a little bit better.

Obama vs. the Economy in a Nutshell

Via Grand Rants I find an “infographic” from Ace of Spades (full-size version here) entitled “The Obama Presidency: By the Numbers”.

It presents some promises and other things President Obama and others in his administration said a few years ago, juxtaposed with various numbers (e.g., the unemployment rate) showing how things have turned out so far.  It’s very succinct and easy to read.  

Planned Freeloading, Theft

Rarely is a liberal this explicit about it:

America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working. 

Structural Reform: What Do You Think?

As I’ve discussed before, no matter how you measure it, government is big, and getting bigger all the time.  Comparatively speaking, Democrats are certainly the party of higher taxes, more spending, a greater regulatory burden, and more “entitlements”, but the government only ever seems to get bigger, under Democrats or Republicans. 

More Government, Less Liberty

A man named Jeremy Hill, in rural Idaho, saw three grizzly bears come onto his property.  Hill’s children were playing outside, and the bears seemed to want to eat some of the family’s pigs.  So he shot and killed one of the bears.  (The other two ran away.)  It’s a straightforward, perfectly legitimate case of self-defense, defense of others, and defense of property, right?