The Unintended Consequences Of Getting What You Want: Part 2

First, let me apologize for not writing as frequently as I'd planned. Life has had an annoying habit of getting in the way lately, as well as some of the fire being burned out of me due to some infighting with people I thought were friends and fellow conservatives - turns out they were neither. Go figure...

Every once in a while, however, along comes a story that just deserves to get ridiculed, and this is one of them.

The socialist utopia formerly known as the state of California has proposed a new tax. That's not all that shocking, I admit, until you learn just what they're going to tax - fuel efficient cars. They won't be taxing the cars themselves, per se. After all, who would buy the ugly Prius if it got taxed more than that much nicer looking - and almost as fuel efficient - Corolla sitting next to it in the dealership's lot? The government would never do anything quite so........gauche... Would they?

Not when they can tax how many miles you drive every year, they wouldn't. That's right, folks - California State Senator, Mark Desaulnier (a democrat), has proposed a tax....on the miles Californians drive...in their more fuel efficient cars, hybrids, or just plain electric cars...that the environmentalists and the government pushed so hard for people to drive...

Why? Well, as in all things having to do with economics, liberals aren't as smart as they profess themselves to be. See, even with California's ridiculously huge gas tax of almost $0.53 a gallon (but it's the greedy oil companies that are price gouging you, don't ya know?), because hybrids and their ilk are becoming more prevalent and using less gas, the state isn't getting as much revenue from their huge tax. Yes, liberals, that's right - if you tax something that people use, they tend to use less of it, which leads to less tax revenue - which in Liberal-Land apparently means new and/or higher taxes are needed.

Well, we certainly can't ask the government to do with less, can we?

It's difficult to understand how - in a state with roughly 30 million registered vehicles - slightly less than one million of these cars could affect their bottom line so much that a new tax is needed.

Liberals never cease to amaze, do they? Their answers to everything they deem problematic always seem to be one of three options, with very little variation:

Option 1: We just haven't spent enough money on that problem/issue. Let's create yet another government agency to do the same things that this "failed" agency couldn't get done. We need to raise taxes.

Option 2: The government hasn't even tried to fix this problem/issue, so we need to create a new government agency to look into creating a different new government agency that can look into the possibility of thinking about launching a study that might bring about the probability that pondering the possible solutions to this problem/issue would actually solve this problem/issue. We need to raise taxes.

Option 3: We need to raise taxes...

On second thought, they really only have the one option, don't they? ~ Hunter

Are You Ready For The Department Of Parental Suitability?

In addition to the pages I help run, I belong to a few private Facebook groups for conservatives. They're groups for conservatives to get together, share ideas, gather facts, and just generally have fun making fun of the socialist morons we call "liberals."


(As an aside, I absolutely LOATHE using that word for them. Allowing them to claim they're standing for freedom puts true liberals - you know, the conservatives that stand with the Founders and Framers - at an immense disadvantage. We need to reclaim that word.)


The reason I bring up the groups is because late into the night a couple of days ago, I was engaged in a debate with a fellow conservative in the comment thread of this story, which is the Chicks On The Right commentary about this story.


The subject of our debate was this conservative's insistence upon setting standards for becoming - and remaining - a parent as a way to keep people off, or remove them from, government assistance programs. He didn't just insist upon standards, though; he wants to set up a government bureaucracy - a "Department of Parental Suitability," if you will - in order to administer his "objective test" for prospective and current parents.


Yes... You did read that correctly.


I have often said that conservatives need to bring the fight to liberals using the same tactics liberals use. That means flooding liberal pages with conservatives, but instead of using "what ifs" or feelings, we need to use the facts that most conservatives usually have on hand. Overwhelm them. Get down and dirty, call the names like they do to us, It's long past time to adjust our fighting style to match theirs. I did NOT mean to use the same WEAPONS.


According to this conservative's grand plan, the idea is to establish some sort of "objective test" to determine whether one is suitable to become a parent. The criteria includes your financial situation (salary, savings, home ownership, etc.), drinking and smoking habits, marital situation. Practically every aspect of your life will be laid bare before some faceless, "objective" government worker. Sounds a little Nazi-esque to me.


Basically, his proposal means that you have to earn a certain amount, lose the right to do as you please within the law, and accede to the demands of others in how you live your life. When he made this proposal, I literally had to check to make sure right and left hadn't changed places when I wasn't looking. Fortunately, King DingleBarry was making some patently ridiculous statement at the time and Ronaldus Magnus was still credited with ushering in the single longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the world, so I figured it out pretty quickly.


My immediate response, along with several other people in the group, was to tell him that to invite more government intrusion into our lives runs counter to everything conservatives believe, and that using his "remove people from the government dole" excuse wasn't sufficient reason to expand the government into areas it was never designed to go. Good intentions aren't enough to ensure the system won't be abused.


How long before a Lois Lerner wannabe decides to start asking, "How conservative are you" to determine suitability for parenting? Think that can't happen? I'm fairly certain that the conservative groups that filed for their tax exempt status didn't think it could happen to them, either. Can you say "unintended consequences?"


The bottom line is that doing "good" at the point of a gun - which is what government is - isn't really doing good at all. It's just doing less bad. Our position as conservatives should always be on the side of less government, as the Founders intended. When modern liberal ideas start creeping into conservatism, we might as well switch sides. It is ridiculous to invite the government deeper into our lives, especially under the guise of "doing good." It's never worked before. All one need do is review the welfare system. The poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged in the fifty-plus years since LBJ declared his "War on Poverty."


While I agree with the overall premise that the breakdown of the nuclear family is one of the central reasons for the "need" for welfare, but in true liberal fashion, welfare is a major cause of that family breakdown. I submit, however, that being single should not be a disqualifier to becoming, or remaining, a parent. I was a single father, with custody for seven years before meeting my now-wife. On top of that, I was dirt poor (another disqualifier under his proposal). I challenge anyone to find a more respectful, better adjusted child than my son. No, my situation wasn't ideal for raising a child, but it clearly worked. I've also known two parent households, in what would be ideal conditions according to the "objective test," that aren't worth a damn. The point is this: parenting situations are not static, nor is one situation identical to another.


As I said earlier, good intentions aren't enough of a safeguard against further government interference in our lives. There isn't a single government program that has stayed within its initial parameters. Ever. Why would this one be any different?


If we don't guard against this kind of thinking, we're essentially no different than those we profess to be fighting against, and this nation really will be lost. FOREVER. ~ Hunter

"Divergent" - A Glimpse Into Our Future?

Anyone wanting to get a glimpse into the future of our nation needs to see the movie "Divergent."

Set in a post-apocalyptic near-future, what occurs in the movie is very close to what will happen if we keep allowing liberals and political correctness to put people into various groups by defining people as they see fit.

Liberals see America as groups of people to set against other groups. "Your group is doing bad because this group over here is [insert today's buzzword here], which means your group needs [insert pet cause here] from us." They need to keep people as separate as possible. Keeping people in little "boxes," constantly at odds with one another, tends to accomplish that rather well, doesn't it?

By contrast, what conservatives see in groups of people is the miracle that is America. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating - America is a nation defined less by the people inhabiting it than the ideas and ideals that brought forth its existence. A legal immigrant to this country, having just taken the oath to the Constitution, is considered just as American as someone who was born here. Nowhere else on earth is such a thing possible.

Conservatives see Americans as, well, Americans. No one individual is better or worse than any other in terms of class, or accident of birth.

We need to teach people, and perhaps relearn ourselves, to stop letting others define who we are and let our actions define us, before it's too late to avoid the type of society depicted in "Divergent." ~ Hunter

The Unintended Consequences Of Getting What You Wanted

Well, well, well - what have we here?  It seems that people are just a tad dissatisfied with a raise in their "minimum" wage.

For those who don't know, a small town of roughly 27,000 people, located in Washington state, raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour starting on the 1st of January this year. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Who wouldn't want to make that much per hour as they're just starting their working life, or a new job? Well, people should be careful what they wish for sometimes, as often they get far more than they bargained, and that's not always a good thing.

A number of people are now complaining about being the recipients of such a large raise. Why would anyone complain about making $15/hr., you ask? In a terrible (not really) turn of events, the beneficiaries of the raise are now, by virtue of making more money, being asked to pay for things that they used to get for free. They've also lost out on discounts due to their higher pay. Absolutely horrifying, isn't it?

Some workers are losing out on overtime, some have lost benefits like their 401K, one has even complained that she's now expected to pay for her own parking now.  *GASP*

This is a classic case of unintended consequences, and it proves what conservatives posit when taxes on corporations are raised, or businesses are mandated to pay higher wages - the business then goes on to tighten its "belt" to keep the profit margin it needs to make providing whatever services and/or goods it sells actually worth providing.

It's a simple concept, really - if a business lays out more money via wages, taxes, or other increases, such as a price hike from a supplier, it necessarily passes those increases on to the consumer.  In the case of Sea-Tac businesses, it seems a good portion of that ridiculous minimum wage increase is getting put on the backs of the workers who were supposed to benefit from it.

Funny how that works, isn't it?  Be careful what you ask for; you might just get it, and maybe some things you didn't ask for as well. ~ Hunter