Month: June 2017

Well they’re at it again! It’s deja-vu!

Who’s at what?

The Democratic legislature in California is at it again – doing their best to figure out how to raise taxes on Californians without going to the ballot box. Last month they slammed through a new gas tax in order to repair roads, etc. because the money (from prior gas taxes) that was allocated for that purpose seemed to have “disappeared”! The new boondoggle in the California legislature (SB 562) is the attempt to push through a bill that would establish a “single payer” health care system in California.

In the interest of clarity, we need to explain that the term, “single payer”. It is another clever attempt by liberals to disguise what is really is. What the term really means is that payments are coming from a single fund, and this single fund is going to be funded by . . . Guess who? – the tax payers!

Okay, in a perfect world, everybody could have “everything” – including free healthcare. However the real world is not a perfect world, and to make matters even worse on the left coast, the politicians in Sacramento only seem to function on an emotional level. They do not think! I sometimes wonder if these Democratic politicians have developed an allergy to logic, as very little logical thinking actually occurs in our State Capital!

So let’s assume that SB 562 passes, how much is it going to cost?

On 5/25/17, SB 562 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 5-2 party line vote, and this was before the cost was known! This sounds like the infamous Pelosi-ism, “you have to pass this bill in order to find out what is in it”!  It would seem common-sense to at least have an estimate of how much something was going to cost before charging ahead full-bore. But then again this is the uber liberal Democratic Senate of California.

The first cost assessment was $400 billion per year! . . . Ouch!!

Even optimistically assuming that half of this annual cost would be covered from other means, this yearly cost would be more than the upcoming total California yearly budget! . . . Ouch!!

So let’s assume that SB 562 passes, how is it going to be paid for?

How is this “extra” approximately $200 billion per year going to be raised? At this moment nobody knows! Will it be hocus-pocus? Is the Democratic legislature going to pass SB 562 without knowing how it is going to be paid for? Come on, they may be Democrats but they are not stupid. They know full well how they anticipate paying for this . . . by raising taxes . . . Ouch!!

Back in 2006 & 2008 a similar bill, SB 840, was passed by the legislature in California, only to be vetoed twice by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the present SB 562 passes through the legislature can we hope for deja-vu?

Can we pin all of our hopes on Governor Jerry Brown acting as The Terminator? . . . Ouch!!

 

 

When my granddaughter, Kate, was 3 years old, she had a bead from an art project stuck up her nose. When my daughter took her to the doctor, he asked Kate how the bead got up her nose, and Kate responded, “It’s not my fault as the bean jumped up into my nose!” She said it with the determination and an accompanying look that only a three year old could have. Was she convinced that the bean actually jumped or was she just making it up to save face? Neither the pediatrician nor Kate’s mom challenged her, as what difference did it make?

When one of my daughters was in 5th grade, her classmate, George, did not have his homework one day. “Where is your homework, George?” the teacher asked. George responded, “It’s not my fault, as my dog ate my homework!” His classmates and the teacher probably believed George’s excuse – the first time he used it. However when he continued to regularly blame the dog, everyone realized that George often just failed to do his homework. The 5th graders did not believe his excuses, and soon they all started to feel sorry for poor George, but then what difference did it really make?

At one of my first jobs the start of the workday was 8am, and for 30 minutes we all worked on a common project. Everyone was expected to show up on time for this session, but my coworker, Dave, was consistently late, and sometimes would not show up till 8:30, when the work was finished. Although the rest of us would have to do his share of the work, initially we thought that it was legit when he said, “It’s not my fault, I had car trouble”, but it really got old, week in and week out. His insistence that he would regularly have car trouble was more than sad. He was a pitiful character that no one soon actually paid much attention to, but what difference did it really make?

When you are three and do not own up to what you did . . . Oh well what can you expect from a three year old! George with his ‘dog ate it’ excuse was sad even for a ten year old, and thirty year old Dave and his car excuses were pitiful.

Who/what are you when you are sixty-nine and still cannot own up to your failures? On 5/31/17, a failed candidate blamed just about everybody and close to everything for losing a recent election. She whined that it was not her fault, but rather blamed her loss on Comey, sexism, Wikileaks, the mainstream media, the electoral college system, the DNC, etc., etc., as well as 1000 Russian agents. Calling her “sad” or “pitiful” would be kind, as this is very close to pathological, but then “what difference does it really make!”

 

On 5/28/17 the trans-Atlantic whining hit a new decibel record amplified by articles in The Washington Post. We had the Chancellor of Germany, as reported by WaPo, lamenting that Europe might have to stand on its own two feet! “[We] really must take our fate into our own hands.” Imagine that!  Cry me a river!

Of course the chancellor, Angela Merkel, was playing to her anti-American audience at a beer hall political rally, and in the days just prior to that she was the beneficiary of her uber liberal cheerleader, Barack Hussein Obama, whispering sweet nothings in her ear! (What the heck was B.O. doing in Europe while President Trump was in the vicinity? –  perhaps a topic for another day!)

Anyway, according to one of the ‘Dueling Banjos’ (WaPo) this was the beginning of a separation that can only be the fore-runner of a nasty upcoming divorce, with ‘untold damage to the US -German union’. Could it be that Merkel needed to appear strong, and similar to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in 2002, was bad-mouthing the U.S. for his /her own political gain.

Again according to WaPo the two world leaders ‘sparred’ on defense, trade, and climate change. Let’s look at these one at a time.

First let’s consider the differences between the two on ‘defense’.

Apparently Merkel was upset about President Trump’s pointed comments about “members of NATO not paying their fair share”, as only five of the twenty-seven members of NATO are paying the amount that they agreed on a number of years ago. Germany is not one of these five – whereas the USA is.

The military budget for Germany for 2020 is 39 billion euros, but it will need to be 65.8 billion euros in order to meet their obligation of 2% of their GDP.

Perhaps she was embarrassed that Germany was called out on their cheating as were most of the member countries in the European Union. Perhaps she was further embarrassed because the military of the European Union is actually on the pathetic side as they have not invested in long-distance transports, satellites, drones, or air-to-air refueling, and during the NATO intervention in Libya they ran out of bullets! In this regard Merkel commented that the days of relying on others was “over to a certain extent”.

Second was the issue of trade.

One of the other things that Merkel was supposedly upset about was President Trump talking about the trade deficit between Germany and the USA, and his alluding to all of the BMWs that are sold in the U.S. There is, in fact, a massive trade deficit for the U.S. with Germany to the tune of over $67 billion per year. This U.S.trade deficit is secondary only to the trade deficit with China. Why was Merkel upset about this? Why would one be upset when the truth about this trade deficit comes out? Why isn’t Germany buying more U.S. products?
And lastly of course is one of the big tenets of Merkel’s liberal religion . . . Climate Change, or better known in its previous life as Global Warming, and the subsequent Paris Climate Accords – agreed to” by the previous administration. The Paris Accords is a treaty, but it was never brought to a vote in the Senate, because B.O. knew that it would not pass a Senate vote. So wallah . . . “It’s not a treaty”! In these Accords there are no significant cutbacks for China or India until 2030, and there are no penalties if the suggested goals are not reached! Whether or not Climate Change is the real deal, how is this treaty beneficial for the U.S.? It almost sounds like the ones who thought that this was good for the U.S. are the same ones who negotiated the recent deal with Iran . . . Oops, they are the same ones!

So to me it appears that WaPo is in a tizzy because President Trump is following through on campaign promises that he made about NATO, U.S. trade deficits, and The Paris Accords. The Washington Post is crying, “Wolf”, when there is no wolf, as President Trump had a very successful European trip. However, no one should be really surprised as The Washington Post often seems to cry, “Wolf” when things seem to be in the best interests of the U.S.