GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Taking your money at gunpoint

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You pay taxes because the government forces you to. The only differences between taxation and robbery are:

  1. The government makes it legal (when they do it).
  2. The government has more window-dressing or layers of deception. For example, they’ll say that you pay taxes voluntarily. (Which is deception, because they will jail you and/or your banker if you don’t pay; and shoot you if you resist jail.)

In Seminole County, FL, they just got a little more honest. Seminole County tax collector will allow employees to carry guns.

Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg told the Orlando Sentinel that according to Florida law, he and his employees are considered “revenue officers” and are exempt from the state’s ban on the open carrying of firearms while performing their duties…

He said 15 to 20 employees will be allowed to carry firearms. Greenberg said no one will be forced to carry a weapon, adding that he “can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to.”

The citizens, by contrast, can’t carry guns. So now the tax collectors are armed, and the citizens aren’t. (Whereas before, they met on slightly more equal terms and had to bring the police in for any physical disputes.) Roman empire, here we come!

State budget crises

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These seem to be popping up. For decades, State public pensions have been under-funded and overly-generous. The bill is coming due. Bloomberg has a map:

Gray means nothing good. California, for example, has under-funded its pensions by $1 trillion – or $93,000 per household – which is worse than Illinois.

The big crisis of the moment is Illinois. They have not enacted a budget in 3 years, have $15 billion in unpaid bills, and a court just ordered them to make some large Medicaid payments they had been skipping. In consequence, the Democrat legislature has passed tax hikes – that the Republican governor has vowed to veto, at least for now.

Other states in crisis are

  • Connecticut, where the Democrat governor has signed an executive order to take control of State spending (and do service cuts) after the Democrat legislature couldn’t pass a budget.
  • Maine, where the Republican governor is threatening a government shutdown (and state of emergency) rather than accept another Democrat tax hike.

All of these States face downgrades of their bond ratings.

As to California: it already has some of the nation’s highest tax rates (13% top income, 7-10% sales taxes). With typical “progressive” insanity, CA is spinning on whether to do single-payer health care – a $400B idea that it can’t afford even today, and still less after California’s inevitable pension crisis hits.

OMG!

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On a fun note…Milo had a Coming Out Conservative event in New York.

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I’m sure GP readers can relate to idea that nowadays, it is MUCH harder to come out as conservative than as gay.

Making America Great Again

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Yesterday afternoon’s big news, of course, is President Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

Trump cited putting the “well being” of Americans first as a motivating factor behind his decision. He said, “This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund, which is costing the United States a vast fortune.”

…Compliance with the accord could have cost the U.S. “as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates,” said Trump.

…Trump then pointed to a portion of the Paris Climate Agreement that he said allows China to increase their emissions for 13 years…adding that India made it’s participation in the Paris Accord “contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.”

The Paris Agreement also essentially blocks U.S. development of clean coal, said Trump. He then said he was going to try to make it to the opening of a new mine in two weeks and noted “Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places.”

…which voted for Trump in the election. Hmm, why?

Trump again pointed to China and India, saying that each country is allowed to add massive numbers of coal plants under the Paris Agreement.

“In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries,” he said. “This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”

I’ll be honest, I may be weak on the accord’s details. But I got the essence: It’s an orgy of left-wing, quasi-religious virtue-signalling that greatly damages the U.S. economy and sovereignty (because we entered it officially in 2016) while boosting globalist bureaucrats with U.S. money.

Reducing CO2 emissions is, of course, its stated reason for being; and not a very good reason. Even under the U.N.’s own (incorrect) climate models, the accord will do little to reduce actual CO2 emissions or future Global Warming projections. That makes it almost the definition of a bad deal: Big pain for small gain.

But it’s even worse because the U.N.’s climate models are broken and greatly overstate the danger of Global Warming. Thus, no matter how you slice it, the stated purpose (CO2) isn’t the real purpose. On the level of CO2, the accord accomplishes only a little toward solving an over-hyped, politically-constructed problem.

The real purpose is to be seen in the accord’s real effects: promoting globalism, U.N. bureaucracy, and the Left’s religions of Environmentalism and Statism, over and against human prosperity, human freedom (the ability to choose fossil fuels and/or products that rely on them, especially cars) and national sovereignty. And making the U.S. pay money for other countries.

As I survey the news this morning, I see the right people’s heads exploding and I gotta be honest: It feels good. Thank you, President Trump!

UPDATES:

  • From the comments, PMSNBC’s Chris Hayes has been tweeting “THE AGREEMENT QUITE LITERALLY IMPOSES NOTHING!!!” – to which people reply, “Then why is backing out such a big deal?”
  • Brouhaha over the withdrawal, as such. First: U.S. participation was never ratified by the Senate. And people justify that by saying “It’s an agreement, not a treaty.” Fine. Which then makes it 100% voluntary for each participating nation. Right?

    The brouhaha is in Article 28, which says basically that countries must give a 3+ year notice before their withdrawal can become effective. Thus, provided that we give a crap about Article 28, the U.S. can’t effectively withdraw until 2020.

    But remember: “It’s an agreement, not a treaty.” Thus, participation in Article 28 itself is inherently voluntary. Hopefully, Trump has canceled our participation in Article 28 – along with the rest.

  • Lots of good stuff at Breitbart.
  • Click here for Trump’s full speech.

He will propose spending cuts?

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A few weeks ago, I took a dim view of President Trump’s tax proposal:

The true level of taxation is the government’s spending level. All spending must be paid for, one way or another. There are 3 possibilities.

1. Overt taxes.
2. Borrowing. This is a covert tax, a tax on the future (when either the debt must be repudiated, or more and more government revenues must be diverted to servicing it).
3. Money-printing. Another hidden tax, this time on the real value (the purchasing power) of everyone’s wages and savings. Also known as “inflation”.

So really, it isn’t a tax cut unless it’s a spending cut also. Trump wants to cut the overt taxes. So, what? Without spending cuts, it’s only a corresponding increase in the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

I gotta give credit where it’s due. It looks like Trump is going to propose spending cuts?

More details from President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal are trickling out via a flurry of overnight reports from The Washington Post, Associated Press and Bloomberg News…

The budget will slash $1.7 trillion in spending on entitlement programs, according to Bloomberg.
Trump’s budget will include a massive nearly $200 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the modern version of food stamps, over the next 10 years – what amounts to a 25% reduction, according to The Washington Post.
The food stamp cuts are part of a broader $274 billion welfare-reform effort, according to a report by The Associated Press.
The budget calls for about $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid for fiscal year 2018, WaPo reported.
The budget is also expected to propose major domestic discretionary spending cuts – an earlier version of the budget called for $54 billion in such cuts next year alone.

Whether the Republicans in Congress will tolerate any cuts, is another matter.

Note that these cuts are hardly draconian. OK, the numbers sound large. But only because:

  1. some of the numbers are totals across many fiscal years, and
  2. the government IS large. Spending and promises (entitlements) skyrocketed under Bush 43 and Obama.

But the Controlled Media is sure to make them sound like the Entropic Heat Death of the Universe.

Why socialism always puts bad people in charge

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In Monday night’s Venezuela post, our wise commenters said:

socialism doesn’t work because it is an unjust economic system. the people in power take things from people that work…

The wrong people will ALWAYS be in charge, because for socialism to work you have to have completely altruistic people in charge…

Yes. Except, it’s even worse than that 😉 The biggest problems with socialism are:

  1. It wrecks the Price Mechanism. Even if you had truly altruistic people in charge, such an economy still can’t function.
  2. Only bad-or-stupid people want a wrecked price mechanism. Thus, only bad-or-stupid people advocate socialism. And the bad people know how to shepherd the stupid people; thus, the bad people always end up in charge.

By Price Mechanism, I mean free markets discovering and signalling the prices of things. To review how that works:

  • All goods and services must be rationed, by one means or another.
    • because human needs are infinite
    • whereas human time (used to produce goods and services) is not
  • Markets ration things by having people pay a market price for the available supply.
    • If something is in short supply, those who have the highest “score” in terms of being both able and willing to pay, will get it.
    • “Willing” as in, free will / the person’s choice.
  • The market price moves up and down, accomplishing two big things as it does so.
    1. It coordinates people’s consumption activities. (Those who are unwilling or unable to pay for a thing at its current price, look for substitutes.)
    2. It coordinates people’s production activities. (As a thing’s price moves higher, it induces people to produce more of it.)
  • The coordination is spontaneous and responsive to changing conditions, because it is voluntary.
  • If you interfere with the price mechanism, you interfere with (or even block) that coordination.

OK, so the price mechanism is objectively great. It induces voluntary coordination among vast numbers of people – thus enabling the Division of Labor. Who would want to mess with that?

The answer is: People who gain by interactions that are not voluntary. People such as moochers, thieves, thugs, politicians and bureaucrats. People who lack the ability or willingness to produce. People who hope to live by altering or preventing market outcomes. People who think they can plan and control others better than those others can. People who are willing to gain by keeping others down.

In short: People who gain by dictatorship. Arrogant people who enjoy using force on others to prevent the peaceful activities and outcomes that people would otherwise create on their own.

That’s the nature of socialism. It’s not a noble ideal. It’s a curse, an evil. Like the Mafia, it’s always led by bad people because it *is* bad, in its nature. It can never be desired by people who are both good-hearted and knowledgeable. Therefore, it can never be led by them. And, even if it were somehow, it still wouldn’t function – because of the wrecked price mechanism.

This feeds into how the term “socialism” is defined.

  • An old, strict definition is: public ownership of the means of production.
  • But people today use the word with a much broader meaning: Any system where a governing authority intervenes in markets, preventing the market price mechanism from operating.

The socialist planners always proclaim their good intentions. And they always make things worse. And it’s not an accident or a failure to apply socialism; it’s inherent in socialism.

Wrecking the price mechanism kills spontaneous, voluntary coordination; and that’s the point of the thing. It’s why stupid-or-bad people love socialism. They WANT to control others and prevent market outcomes. It’s not a proverbial “unforeseen consequence”; it’s the point.

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The Venezuela Diet

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Via HotAir, where John Sexton notes:

There’s nothing funny about the situation in Venezuela, but there is something funny about the socialists who cheered for the country and are just beginning to realize it might be an authoritarian hellhole.

Reminder: Government health care is sub-DMV health care

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Talk to a leftie and you will often hear how wonderful Canadian health care is. “Why can’t we be like them?” Crowder did an expose of Canadian health care in 2009 that is still relevant:

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Here’s the summary. Canadians pay huge taxes for “free”, “universal” health care. It makes people wait, and wait, and wait. Many people either give up altogether (and their condition gets worse), or go to a private clinic.

That’s how they reduce patients to a manageable number. Economics 101 teaches us that all goods must be rationed by one means or another, and “waiting” for people to quit the queue is how they ration Canada’s public health care.

From Crowder’s anecdotes it seems that Canadians, if they don’t quit, will wait usually about four times as long as Americans. For example, last year I went to an emergency room on a Sunday afternoon. It took 20 minutes to get the triage nurse’s attention, then another hour to see a doctor. In Crowder’s video, they visit a Canadian emergency room on a Sunday. It takes them about an hour and a half to see the triage nurse, and then 5+ hours to see a doctor (except they quit at the 4-hour mark).

Likewise, an acquaintance of mine recently needed a cancer surgery. He got it in weeks; in Canada it would have taken months. This is what Bernie and Hillary want to bring us to.

Stefan Molyneux on “Climate Change”

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I find Molyneux’s video-enlarged, ranting bald head a bit creepy. But his content is often brilliant. I recently listened to this one from 2015.

Molyneux proposes the following thought experiment:

  1. Suppose stockbrokers (or bankers or politicians or oil company CEOs – whomever you view as corruptible) are in charge of calculating some important measure of the world.
  2. Let’s call it the Economy Rate (ER). It could go up or down. The stockbrokers fudge and massage the ER data, as they see fit.
  3. First, the stockbrokers say “The ER is so important! and it’s going DOWN! That’s bad! Give us tens of billions of taxpayer money, and we’ll watch it and figure out what to do.”
  4. But over the years, the ER rises. The stockbrokers say “The ER is so important! and it’s going UP! That’s bad! Give us tens of billions of taxpayer money, and we’ll watch it and figure out what to do.”
  5. But then the ER stops going up. The stockbrokers say “The ER is so important! and it could go UP OR DOWN! With unpredictable pauses! That’s bad! Give us tens of billions of taxpayer money, and we’ll watch it and figure out what to do.”

At what point do you begin to see that the stockbrokers are taking you, in a racket?

  • Point 1 is climate scientists – who are a huge, publicly-funded industry. Each scientist profits (as wage/salary payments, benefits, etc.) from the grants she receives.
  • Point 2 is the world average temperature, which climate scientists derive from data that they themselves fudge and massage.
  • Point 3 is the 1970s, when climate scientists gave alarming predictions of a New Ice Age.
  • Point 4 is the 1980s to the 2000s, when their monster was Global Warming. The famous “hockey stick” upward graph.
  • Point 5 is recent years, when the “hockey stick” graph failed and they switched it to Climate Change – in whatever direction.

Do you believe that climate scientists are less corruptible than stockbrokers (or bankers or politicians or oil company CEOs)? That they’re somehow more objective and noble?

I don’t. You who do (lefties) have a RELIGIOUS FAITH in climate scientists, that you’re not admitting. And it’s exactly what climate scientists want you to have.

Your delusional, gullible faith is how they keep their tens of billions of taxpayer dollars coming. And of course they would have a “consensus” that they are objective and noble and deserve it and should be listened to and those dollars should keep coming. Of course they would.

Happy Earth Day!

Now we know what Trump is

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A lot has happened in the last few weeks, to let us know what kind of president Trump is going to be.

He isn’t the new Hitler. And he isn’t the new Ronald Reagan. He’s Obama-Lite, or roughly what President Obama would have been if were saner and more authentically masculine and pro-American. (Like Obama, President Trump often talks about his own good intentions/hopes as if they were accomplishments.
They aren’t.) “The Swamp” and/or Deep State will stay in business for quite awhile yet. I suspect that Trump has cut some sort of deal with several of its important factions.

That still makes him 100 times better than Hillary.

Hillary would have done none of the above. On his own, Trump is not all that hot. But when compared to Hillary, he still is.