Scary

Obama promises to remake the world…

This is strange but does this guy sound more and more like the Anti-Christ?

-RedVirginia

This Is a Waste of Time

The GOP is going after CafePress for using the Republican logos on their T-Shirts.

It’s good to see that the RNC is using it’s time wisely when they are down in national polling.

-TJ

We’re Back!

The travel season is over and we are here through election day!  It is exciting to get back into writing the blog again and we are looking forward to moving forward.  We’re glad to be back!

-RedVirginia

-BarryAUH20

-TJ

Abolish the FDA!

A recent article by The Washington Times reminded me of a debate that we do not here often anymore. That is should the FDA remain? This article blasts the government on it’s ethics and uses of drugs on veterans after they get back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a bit from it:

“In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.”

This is the same government and appointed bureaucrats we allow to approve our drugs. The reason is to protect us from the private enterprise using profits to sell bad drugs. When it is obvious to most economists that the private enterprise has no incentives to sell faulty or damaging drugs because it would hurt their reputation and put them out of business. What happens to the FDA or the VA when they screw up like this? Nothing, if anything increase funding because the solution to the problem is always we didn’t try hard enough.

So why not let someone who has something to loose test and try our medicines? What instead happens is it allows the private businesses to run less trials because they know the government will do it. The FDA then can act as a buffer and take some of the blame for the drug. Not to mention that the FDA itself holds drugs off the market while people could be benefiting from it.

Here are a few interesting things from the book Lost Rights by James Bovard

“The FDA sometimes manipulates test results, or forces drug companies to use weaker doses of drug in tests of medication for Alzheimer’s disease, the FDA slashed the dosage-and then scored the treatment as ineffective because only 41 percent off the Alzheimer’s sufferers tested responded positively to the lower dosage.”

“Sam Kazman estimates that 8,000 to 15,000 people died during the FDA’s review of misoprostol (a drug that reduces gastric ulcers among arthritis sufferers who rely on asprin) and that 22,000 people may have died while the FDA dallied before approving streptokinase (a drug that dissolves clots in heart attack victims). Kazman concludes, “If a drug that has just been approved by FDA will start saving lives tomorrow, how many people died yesterday waiting for the agency to act?”

Be a good Conservative call for an end to the FDA.

~Barry AUH2O

Please Keep in Your Prayers

The other night, Americans For Prosperity-VA State Director Ben Marchi and Shawn Pattison (AFP-VA volunteer and a friend of mine) were on their way to a Town Hall meeting in Leesburg, VA when their car went off the road and was involved in a serious car accident. Ben is doing fine but Shawn is currently undergoing surgery for damaged vertebrae. Please keep Shawn in your prayers as we need this foot soldier for the movement back in the saddle soon.

-RedVirginia

Stem Cell Debate, it’s not scientific…

Often when Democrats and Republicans get in a debate over stem cells, they argue about the science behind it. This from Time Magazine and it lays out the bullet points of each side of the debate:

“(Typical Republican side) Religious conservatives argue that using those stem cells means deriving benefit from the destruction of human embryos–fertilized eggs in the early stages of development–in their eyes no less a crime than abortion…

(Typical Democratic side) The extracted stem cells potentially can be made to grow into any cell in the human body, making them an extraordinary resource in the fight against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and other diseases.”

I will be the first one in line to say that this doesn’t matter. The debate forgets one major part, Government funding or no government funding that, as Shakespeare would put it, is the question. Lets ask the question, why do we government (publicly) fund things? We fund social security because we believe people will not make the right decisions at judging how old they will live to. We fund defense because people will try to free ride off of other people. We fund judges and policemen because we do not want them to be bias or there to be not enough of them. The basic point is government funds where there is a lack of private investment. Where does stem cells fall into these points?

The idea behind stem cells are that it will cure diseases like the ones listed above. Why wouldn’t private enterprises invest in stem cells? I would think all the money that would be granted to them from finding the cure would be outrageous. The current money that is spend researching these diseases would be shifted to other places, so why wouldn’t a private company invest in stem cells? They could make billions.

Let’s take a look at some of the possible profit that these companies could get for finding a cure:

• Parkinson’s:The National Institutes of Health projects that it will spend $81.5 million on Parkinson’s research in fiscal year 2000. (CNN)
• Alzheimer’s: In the next decade, says the report, government costs to treat Alzheimer’s patients are expected to rise to $82.3 billion. (USA Today)
• Diabetes: “Considering it now costs the federal government $80 billion to take care of people with diabetes, these costs will pale in comparison when there are 138 percent more Americans with diabetes in 2025,” said Sean Clements, associate director of media relations for Novo Nordisk. (Washington Bureau)

These numbers are just a ball park of money that would be saved. Not to mention money spent on diabetes supplies. The Parkinson’s number is only research and doesn’t include costs to hospitals and patients. The numbers for Alzheimer’s and Diabetes is only the cost to the government in care. This does not include private costs and supplies or public/private research.

Message to the Democrats: if it is as effective and profitable as you say it is then it will not need public funding. Does Apple needed funding for the iPhone?

Message to the Republicans: if you truly are against stem cells morally, then let the government fund it. It will begin to look like public education, social security, public healthcare, the post office, and current public funding for AIDs. It will fail miserably.

Message to Americans: if you want the most effective and best use for stem cells, let the market dictate it. If there truly are cures to these diseases by stem cells then it will succeed and make/save plenty of money. If they find out that this is actually the wrong way to go then it will fail and investment will be shifted. If the government gets a hold of this, like AID’s, they will never let it go no matter how many failed drugs they come up with.

Just remember one thing: as government holds onto the publically popular scientific innovation, like AID’s drugs, Ethanol, and Stem Cells, if they begin to fail you are denying other areas of research those billions of dollars. There could be a cure to cancer right around the corner but public funding distracts the scientists towards AID’s research.

~Barry AUH2O

A Protection from Tyranny

The gun control debate has been raging once again due to the tragedies at the campus of Virginia Tech. One side believes that guns kill people and the other side believes guns protect people from killing people. The debate is often wrapped in emotions full of people who have been victims and people who have kept themselves from being victims. Republicans also tap into the hunter’s vote because they believe that the hunters have the right to hunt. The family’s of people who die from automobile accidents are just as upset, but I do not hear a call for a ban of automobiles.

The biggest part of the debate that is often forgotten is the title of this post, “A Protection from Tyranny.” We, as Americans, take pride in our “Checks and Balances” system of government. What we often forget is that there is another check and that is revolution. We checked Great Britain’s power by over throwing them in the 1700’s. Our right to bear arms is sprouted in the revolution, when we used arms to protect ourselves. This had nothing to do with shooting a buglar, only allowing the government to have arms, or even to hunt. As a matter of fact, I am sure the American Revolution would have gone very differently if we allowed Great Britain to only have arms.

Whenever this argument is faced to a pro-gun control person they often say things like, “Well, I do not think that would happen in our country.” My question is why wouldn’t it? It hasn’t even been 300 years since the American Revolution, which in human history is a blip. What has the rest of history been full of? This:

Because the government has a monopoly on violence and this happened within those 300 years! As it has been more efficient for people to do things due to technology, it has allowed government to be more efficient. But being efficient at tyranny isn’t a good thing.

This is from the November 9th 1938 New York Times, “The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been ‘disarmed’ with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.”

But American is the land of the free, right? So this won’t happen to us. The Constitution is suppose to protect us from the government and instead we have belittled it to words like militia doesn’t mean guns and that militias are no longer needed.

America is the land of the free but that hasn’t stopped our government from growing. This is from our country less than 100 years ago, from most historian’s favorite President FDR:

I don’t want to hunt, or even care if I am able to stop a guy from stealing my television. I want to stop the government from bringing tyranny to the populous and murdering my family and friends.

~Barry AUH2O

Fiscal Stimulus brought to you by: Fiscal Morons

For a long time, Conservatives have came up to me all excited about the fiscal stimulus plan. They say “We love tax breaks, and we are getting more of our money back.” Wrong. The idea that you can fiscally stimulate the economy is old and proven wrong by great people like Milton Friedman. It is a shame that our federal government is 60 years behind the curve. This is the usual idea coming from The New Yorker:

“Keynes’s ideas were only halfheartedly tried during the New Deal. But after huge military spending on the Second World War—arguably the biggest fiscal-stimulus program in history—helped bring an end to the Depression, fiscal stimulus became a key policy weapon”

What actually happens, this from an interview with Milton Friedman:

“Japan has introduced fiscal stimulus five times in the past seven or eight years and each time it's been a failure and that's not a surprise. Fiscal stimulus is not stimulating in and of itself, in my opinion. I think the Keynesian view is wrong on that issue. Fiscal stimulus has generally been accompanied by monetary expansion and then monetary expansion has been stimulating. However, in the Japanese experiments of the last five or seven years, fiscal stimulus has been accompanied by a restrictive monetary policy rather than an expansive monetary policy and the result has been that you've had continued recession or depression.“

I do not completely agree with Mr. Friedman that monetary expansionism is a healthy increase for our economy but it goes to show you a fiscal stimulus can and will do nothing. One of the main reasons is because where do you get the money? You either borrow it or you print it. Maybe if you had a budget surplus, you could give some of that back. We do not have that. If you print it then it doesn’t make a difference. If everyone woke up with a million dollars in their pocket, no one would be richer. Everyone in this situation gets hurt and the rich gets hurt even more because they aren’t getting a cent. If we are borrowing the money then we will eventually have to tax in order to get that back. You can even think that they would have to issue bonds, which in turn cause investors to invest their money into those bonds instead of something else.

You cannot continue to spend money and run a budget deficit. The problem is the government does not know how to stop spending money. This is the problem on both sides, but can you blame them? We have no Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and they are spending money that isn’t theirs.

I honestly do not know what the solution to the ear-marking problem is or how you can stop the federal government from spending too much money, but getting excited about a fiscal stimulus plan is moronic. It is a political ploy to get you excited and vote for them. In fact, it is often like when you get your tax rebate check. You should not be excited, you should be mad. That money was yours and you paid it to the IRS and it is rightfully yours to be given back. I am unsure but I do not even think they pay you interest for that money. You could have invested that money and gotten a return on it but no Uncle Sam has it and then you get all excited when he gives you it back.

Next time, you cross a homeless person take change out of the cup and then put it back the next day and see if he is all excited about it…

~Barry AUH2O

What happened to Tax Reform?

During the Republican debate in Dearborn, Michigan on October 9th 2007, John McCain was asked if he thought that tax system was fair and this was his answer “Sure it’s fair. The bulk of the taxes are paid by wealthy people. Should we reform our tax code? Absolutely we should fix our tax code, and we should fix it immediately.” He has said in other statements that what he means is to make it more simple. So my questions is as the title says “What happened to Tax Reform?”

No, I am not talking about making it more simple. That is like saying let’s put it in larger font. You are doing something but you forgot the real problem. The real problem is the structure of the income tax. I assume that John McCain has been hearing that tax cuts are only for the wealthy too long that he is beginning to agree. Even though it is a problem that we need to create private businesses to just to pay taxes, that is like spilling milk and saying the problem is that the milk is wet. The problem is that you spilled it! We need to change how and why we are taxed now.

There are three kinds of taxes: progressive, regressive, and proportional.

What we currently have is a progressive system, where the more money you make the more taxes you pay. When it comes to economic incentives this discourages those to work hard. It is a reward system imagine you tell your kids that the more they clean their room the less you will pay them. Go to McDonald’s and tell them better the food the less you are going to pay.  How about something more simple. Tell the guy who works in your factory that if he makes 100 widgets he gets 20% of the profits, when he makes the next 100 he gets 10% of the profits, and when he makes the next 50 he gets 5% of the profits. Only the tax system could justify such incentives, through force.

In Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto he said “In the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable: a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” I personally would rather subscribe to Economist’s Gregory Mankiw’s view, “If policy makers’ primary goal is … economic prosperity for all, they should avoid focusing on the politics of envy.”

What is the purpose of a progressive tax? Most people say to raise money for the government but some how we did it for 137 years before that. The real purpose of a progressive tax is to redistribute income from the rich to the poor. Conservatives should be against this for this and the discouraging of work reason. When did someone have the right to take money from someone else who worked hard for it?

What do we need? That leaves regressive and proportional. Regressive is where the poor is taxed more and less as they get more rich. This would create an incentive for people to work harder and move their way up. Almost a reward system for working harder. If the numbers were low this would not be a bad idea, but no one would ever agree with it.

That leaves a proportional tax which is a tax that is uniform to everyone. This to me shows that your point of this tax is one thing and one thing only; to fund the government. This Conservatives should rally behind. It allows you to work as hard or a little as you want. It doesn’t penalize people who are on the margin. It’s purpose isn’t to expand social welfare programs.

Aren’t Conservatives against social welfare programs? Well maybe if the government income system wasn’t set up for these, we could get somewhere with reducing and eliminating them.

~Barry AUH2O

The New Conservative Senate

Yesterday Virginians got a good look at the new and more conservative State Senate.  Who would have thought that Senate Republicans would be more conservative now than before when they held the majority.  With the loss of several RINOs, Senate Republicans have now shifted right to join the ranks of Cuccinelli and Obenshain!  Heres what went down yesterday*:

                       Senate Caboose Bill (SB 29)

o       Within the bill is a provision rededicating $24 million in lottery money from education to the general fund.  Rededicating this money would require a 4/5 vote because the provision is mandated by the state constitution.

o       In a party line vote the bill was defeated, with 21-19, falling well short of the 4/5 margin, which was ruled as the necessary votes needed for passage by Lt. Governor Bill Bolling

o       The Democratic Senators in a party line vote, voted to overturn Lt. Governor Bolling’s ruling, placing Virginia families second to partisan games.  The caboose passed with a vote of 21-19.

Senate Budget Bill (SB 30)

o       The same basic process happened with SB 30 that happened with SB 29.  The Republican Senate voted to kill the bill based on the 4/5 requirement mandated by the state constitution.  Once again the Democratic Senators placed partisan games ahead of Virginia families and stole money from education to spend on pet projects

o       Senator Mark Obenshain offered an amendment to the bill which have rededicated general fund dollars to the transportation trust fund for the next fiscal year.

§         Before this vote, Senator Dick Saslaw, made a floor speech during which he stated, “I would prefer to use money for mental health, schools and school construction than it be used for transportation.”

·        What Saslaw fails to mention is that his campaign website features a four issue priority Education, Fiscal Responsibility, Public Safety and Transportation.

o       http://richardsaslaw.campaignoffice.com/index.asp?Type=B_LIST&SEC={99CDEC6D-2900-48FE-A434-BA6F2558A733}

§         Senator Obenshain’s amendment, which would have dedicated necessary transportation funds to transportation, failed in a party line vote 21-19.  Instead of taking funds from pet projects such as a NEW General Assembly Building, these senators put their own wants ahead of millions of Virginians being stuck in gridlock.

§         As all of you know Transportation is without question the number one issue in Northern Virginia.  Saslaw’s district is exclusively part of Fairfax County.

*Information provided by Virginia Club for Growth:  www.virginiaclubforgrowth.org

Back From Mourning

I have now recovered enough from Mitt Romney suspending his campaign that I will return to RedVirginia.

There are a couple of things that need to be said. Mitt Romney won the CPAC straw poll even with 80% of ballots being cast after he announced his campaign suspension. Second, I will not be supporting John McCain. I will be remaining neutral in the race and will also be quick to point out where McCain has made mistakes.

SUPER TUESDAY

LIVE RESULTS HERE:

PRIMARIES:

Alabama:

Arizona: W – McCain

Arkansas: W – Huckabee

California: W – McCain

Connecticut:

Delaware:

Georgia:

Illinois: W – McCain

Massachusetts: W – Romney

Missouri: W – McCain

New Jersey: W – McCain

New York: W – McCain

Oklahoma: W – McCain

Tennessee: W -

Utah: W – Romney

CAUCUSES:

Alaska: W – Romney

Colorado: W – Romney

Idaho: W – Romney

Kansas:

Minnesota: W – Romney

Montana: W – Romney

New Mexico:

North Dakota: W – Romney

West Virginia: W – Mike Huckabee

WINS:

Mitt Romney:

Ron Paul:

John McCain:

Mike Huckabee: 1