Mitch is on the cover of National Review

Dumezich running for Senate

Just got this e-mail:

We now have confirmation of 3 US Senate Candidates who will be attending this event: Dan Dumezich, Marlin Stutzman, and Will Weaver. This will be a great opportunity to meet several candidates while showing your support for our locally elected State officials.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Openhouse Campaign Kickoff for Senator Landske and State Rep Soliday

Special Guest: SOS Candidate Charlie White

3-5pm

VIP reception- 2pm

Home of John and Janet Curley

10810 Bridgewater Ct.

Double Tree Lake Estates, Winfield

$25/person, $35/couple, $100 VIP reception, $250 sponsor

For more information contact John Curley at curley5222@aol.com

Gary gets to screw taxpayers for one more year

The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance has spoken. The City of Gary gets to screw taxpayers for one more year.

Actually, the compromise that they came up with is pretty interesting.

First of all, they applied the tax caps in full to Gary taxpayers on the portion of their bills going to Gary schools, the sanitary district, and Lake County.

They let the City itself charge more than the caps. For example, homesteads will pay 2% of their assessed value in taxes to the city instead of 1.5% that everyone else gets this year.

I guess that this is making the best of a bad situation. The only saving grace for taxpayers is that this is a one year adjustment, and they get the full tax cap next year.

I made a bet with a buddy that Gary will be under 50k population in the next Census. This compromise just gives people more reason to leave (if they can).

Considering that in '06, before the subprime crisis hit, 25% of all Gary real estate was abandoned, I think that I'm a lock to win this bet.

The new CAFE standards will kill you

Obama does it again. Shortly after taking over GM and Chrysler, he announces that CAFE standards will be raised to 39 mpg, and done 4 years earlier than originally planned. And he's got the major automakers, foreign and domestic, on board with him.

Now, there's only one car sold in America that currently meets that fuel economy standard. It's the Toyota Pruis, a small hybrid.

As we saw recently thanks to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, small cars are much less safe that large cars when in accidents with larger cars. For example, when the car that the Prius is based on, the Toyota Yaris, was crashed into a Toyota Camry, one of the doors flew open and the passenger compartment was breached.

The only way that these CAFE standards can be met is if the automakers sell a lot more small cars, most likely hybrids like the Prius. Small cars are much less safe than large cars, SUVs, or trucks.

How many people need to die so that liberals can feel like they're doing something about global warming?

And that doesn't even get into cost. A Yaris costs $15k. A Prius costs $25k. Do the math. I hope you like your 10 year old Ford Explorer, because you're not going to be able to afford to replace it with something new. How are you going to get by when it is a 25 year old Explorer? How does keeping people in old cars helping to lower emissions of greenhouse gases?

Catastrophic Health Care is the solution to our problems, but we won't embrace it...

...because insurace companies "don't care about us".

This guy is a financial reporter for Forbes. He has a catastrophic insurance plan with a healthcare savings account. And he hates it.

His complaints?

1) The insurance company doesn't pay for checkups and "preventative care" that allegedly save money over the long term.

2) This is evidence that the insurance company "just doesn't care".

Keep in mind that this is an obviously intelligent individual who works in the financial reporting business!

WTF? Do people really not know what catastropic insurance is and how it works?

I think that scrapping our system of tax free employer provided comprehensive health insurace and a move to consurmer based, after tax, catastrophic insurance is the answer to all of our health care problems (cost and coverage). But that's only if people are rational about what health care is and how best to provide it.

But if people are irrational, and think that health care is whatever their doctor says it is, and that they should have anything they and their doctor want, and not have to pay out of pocket for it, and that this is evidence that the company "cares", then there really is no solution to our healthcare problems.

Last thoughts on Obama and Notre Dame and my church

You guys know that I sit behind Cal Bellamy at church every week. My kids kick the back of his pew. I shake his hand every week.

Bellamy gave thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last year. I think that it is safe to say that the man voted for Obama, not McCain.

So here we have an elder of the church (he is very involved) who supports abortionists.

And on the day that Obama addressed Notre Dame... nothing is said from the pulpit about it. Not one word.

It's fucking outrageous. The church is enabling abortion by remaining silent and not calling out and challenging the sinners among us to repent.

In all fairness, I don't expect my priest to be checking parish records against opensecrets.org. But come on! It isn't like Bellamy's liberalism isn't well known.

I think that there's a lot of priests who put their liberalism ahead of their duty. They're fellow travelers with Bellamy, and Obama for that matter. They agree with Obama on most things, so why not give the man a pass on his abortion stance?

4000 abortions per day, that's why. That's a hell of a lot more needless suffering than anything liberalism could possibly alleviate.

Everything that needs to be said about Obama and Notre Dame

Here.

It was precisely the message President Obama wanted to send: How bad can he be on abortion if Notre Dame is willing to honor him?

We cannot blame the president for this one. During his campaign for president, Mr. Obama spoke honestly about the aggressive pro-choice agenda he intended to pursue -- as he assured Planned Parenthood, he was "about playing offense," not defense -- and his actions have been consistent with that pledge. If only our nation's premier Catholic university were as forthright in advancing its principles as Mr. Obama has been for his.

In a letter to Notre Dame's Class of 2009, the university's president, the Rev. John Jenkins, stated that the honors for Mr. Obama do not indicate any "ambiguity" about Notre Dame's commitment to Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life. The reality is that it was this ambiguity that the White House was counting on; this ambiguity that was furthered by the adoring reaction to Mr. Obama's visit; and this ambiguity that disheartens those working for an America that respects the dignity of life inside the womb.

Notre Dame cannot have honored Obama, abortionist in chief that he is, without muddling the message that voting for someone who supports abortion rights is a sin.

Notre Dame and its supporters embarrass Catholicism

I'm not a ND alum, but I am a practicing Catholic. I'm particularly disturbed by ND alum appologists and other nominally Catholic supporters of Obama's visit.

Look, there doesn't need to be a debate about abortion at ND. ND needs to start teaching the Catholic Church's position on abortion, and more focefully, because there are evidently thousands of alums who don't understand it.

It is particularly disturbing to see comparisons made between abortion and capital punishment. The Church says that abortion is always wrong. It allows that capital punishment COULD BE permissible, but in this day and age that it should not be used (evidently other forms of punishment are sufficient).

Obama's speech was his typical "Can't we all get along" BS. Yeah Barry, I'll compromise my position when I see any evidence that you've compromised yours. As usual, Obama's speech is "Just Words".

Do state tax hikes raise revenue

This article says no.

Raising income and sales taxes just ensures that people move to and shop in places with lower tax rates.

In these days of internet shoping, raising the sales tax is especially stupid.

Indiana used to be a very low tax state. We were in the top 10 lowest taxes states as recently as '02. Since then, the sales tax has been raised twice.

We need to get back to that. Focus on cutting the sales tax and local income taxes, and keep the property tax cap as well. Get us back into the top 10, and attract the people and businesses that are fleeing high tax Michigan, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Why not go a step further and try to eliminate the sales tax, or income tax, or both? New Hampshire doesn't have either. Why can't we?

More reasons why public employee unions are undemocratic and should be banned

Here.

One of the things I like most about Mitch Daniels, besides that he talks smack about Baby Boomers, is that he stopped collective bargaining with state employees, effectively kicking the unions out of Indianapolis.

Obama's health care announcement frightening in its fascism

Obama's press conference with the 6 health care lobbying groups, announcing that they'll "work together" to bring health care costs down was downright frightening in its fascism.

First of all, there were no specifics, just vague generalizations. Yet the media was in full propaganda mode, making it seem like the savings of 1.5% per year are a done deal.

That the media is such a bunch of lap dogs for Obama is what is so frightening.

How exactly are we going to achieve these savings? No one knows, and the ideas that Obama throws around (standardizing forms, digitizing medical records, more preventive care, etc.) have been shown to RAISE costs, not lower them. In particular, preventive medicine does not save money. You spend so much money giving everyone routine tests, it simply swamps any savings from finding disease early.

What is more frightening than the media propaganda is that Obama got the lobbying organizations for doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, and medical device makers to sign on. That these companies want to "compromise" rather than fight is a blow to those against socialized medicine.

One element of fascism was that the governments created industry cartels in order to control the economy. It's hard not to see the parallels between that and what happened yesterday.

The biggest beef that I have with any of this is that, if we're worried about health care costs, Medicare and Medicaid are where the money is. Not coincidentally, they're also totally controlled by the government. Obama should start there with cost controls. If he is successful there, maybe I'd be inclined to let him mess with private sector health insurance. Otherwise, hands off.

Mitch Daniels: my new favorite politician

I make no bones about my... indifference to Mitch Daniels. He doesn't speak my language the way that Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin do.

Well, that's all in the past. Mitch Daniels is my new favorite politician.

Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, delivering the commencement address at Butler U. on Saturday:

We Boomers were the children that the Second World War was fought for. Parents who had endured both war and the Great Depression devoted themselves sacrificially to ensuring us a better life than they had. We were pampered in ways no children in human history would recognize. With minor exceptions, we have lived in blissfully fortunate times. The numbers of us who perished in plagues, in famine, or in combat were tiny in comparison to previous generations of Americans, to say nothing of humanity elsewhere.

All our lives, it's been all about us. We were the "Me Generation." We wore t-shirts that said "If it feels good, do it." The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric "Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today." As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish. Our current Baby Boomer President has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about..himself.

As a generation, we did tend to live for today. We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans. Year after year, regardless which party we picked to lead the country, we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you and your children will be paying off your entire working lives. Far more burdensome to you mathematically, we voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health care benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing.

In sum, our parents scrimped and saved to provide us a better living standard than theirs; we borrowed and splurged and will leave you a staggering pile of bills to pay. It's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us.

In Christopher Buckley's recent satiric novel Boomsday, the young heroine launches a national grassroots movement around the proposal that Boomers should be paid to "transition", a euphemism for suicide, at age 75, to alleviate this burden. That struck me as a little extreme; surely 85 would do the trick. Buckley meant his book for laughs, of course, but you'll find nothing funny about the tab when it comes due.

Our irresponsibility went well beyond the financial realm. Our parents formed families and kept them intact even through difficulty "for the sake of the kids." To us, parental happiness came first; we often divorced at the first unpleasantness, and increasingly just gave birth to children without the nuisance of marriage. "Commitment" cramps one's style, don't you know. Total bummer.

A defining book of our generation was Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which chronicled the exploits of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, practitioners of the drug-taking '60s counterculture in its purest form. On the last page of the book, in a pseudo-intellectual, LSD-induced haze, Kesey chants over and over the phrase "We blew it."

In that statement, if in no other way, Kesey and his kind were prophetic.

Environmentalism is religion

Maybe it's the Obama presidency, but there's a LOT of magazine and newspaper coverage of "green" issues. For example, the latest issue of Make magazine is about "sustainability", and I picked up a Chicago magazine that features the best backyard gardens, which touted the greeness of growing your own food.

I've notices that a lot of the green coverage is about "what can you do to lower your carbon footprint", or similar claptrap. They go on to offer almost meaningless ways to lessen energy or materials usage.

For example, one article wanted you to lower your water usage by using low flow fixtures.

The reality is that replacing perfectly good fixtures with low flow ones is false economy. It takes energy to make the new fixtures. It will be years before you get any payback on that.

But doing so makes you feel better about yourself. There is some existentail satisfaction from making the changes.

This is not unlike saying the Rosary or some other prayer. Thus, I think that, for a lot of people, environmentalism is filling a void in atheists souls. They don't have the internal satisfaction that comes with being a believer in a higher power. In the past, they filled that void with socialism or communism (which were VERY religion-like). Now they fill it with environmentalism.

In the aggregate, my energy usage is almost meaningless. CO2 levels are where they are because of past fossil fuel usage, and even if we all stopped emitting any CO2, it would take decades for CO2 levels to come down. So what's the point of being green?

It's the existential satisfaction. It's not logical, it's spiritual.

More Republican hand wringing

Dan Gernstein keeps piling on.

Dick Cheyney responds to GOP critics.

This is also really good.

My position is evolving almost daily. Where I'm at right now is that the economy is rapidly recovering, showing that the stimulus is not needed (little of the money has been spent yet, right?).

Obama is overreaching with his manhandling of Chrysler and GM, as well as the banks.

So, it looks like "The Party of No" is not a bad position to be in. No bailouts. No stimulus. Let the economy naturally recover.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this is where the public is. Clearly, people did not like Bush's hands off, aloof persona, and are simply eating Obama's very high profile up. Obama is always on the TV, always talking about this or that. This is sharp contrast to Bush, who almost was never on TV.

Personally, I like Bush's style much more than Obama's. Obama is like Bill Clinton, and by the end of Clinton's term, I was sick and tired of seeing his face every day. I'm sure I'm going to feel the same thing about Obama very soon.

So, why do people want to see Obama so much? Have the American people become so infantalized that they need to feel like Obama is looking out for them? Even when, in reality, he's not, and they're the ones that need to be looking out for themselves?