Whoa! So much has happened!

I had such good intentions when I started this nearly a year ago. Then, life happens.The worst part is that I don't know what all took me away from here. I have a new grandson - my son, Todd, and his wife, Chrysee, gifted us with Chance on October 9th. There was an election. I've been to a few writer's conferences. I worked really hard on my acre of English Country Garden - well, that may be an exaggeration. But, it was wonderful this past summer. I had a Tea Party Shower for Chrysee under the trees and several dinners under the lights out there. It was a good year. we shall see how my good intentions keep me writing in 2011!

Fascination With Sex

Really important things were going on in the world last week: Tea Party controversies, Congressmen saying they don't care about the constitution, flooding, harsh storms, wars...you name it, it was going on. Unbelievably though, the top three web searches were about the sex lives of so-called celebrities.

Anna Paquin, who I only remember as a child who won an Oscar, announced that she is bi-sexual. Now, why in the name of all that is important would this woman ANNOUNCE that? Who cares? Since searches for information about her soared 923% I guess a lot of people do. Again, I must ask why? Isn't being bi-sexual a choice? A personal choice? I read that she is "engaged" to a man. Should we now expect that she will anounce when they have a threesome?

Singer Ricky Martin 'surprised' the world by "coming out". As if the whole world didn't already know it. It was reported that he handled it admirably by posting it on his website and speaking directly to his fans. Apparently more than just fans were curious as searches about him went up drastically, as well. What did people expect to find? Pictures of him and a significant other? Confessions about mechanics? From my perspective, it isn't anyone's business. Why would anyone make it so?

Then Jesse James, Sandra Bullock's infamous hubby, has gone into rehab. The article I read didn't stipulate if if was "sex addiction rehab" ala Tiger Woods or substance abuse rehab. Would you believe that searches for Jesse, Sandra and his mistresses went out the roof? Searches for the women he cheated with? What were they looking for?

Then the aforementioned Tiger Woods hit the headlines yet again by announcing that he intends to play in the Masters, back to the sport that made his name and allowed him the freedom to dally all over the country with women not his wife. I didn't seek out the number  web searches about him however I bet it 'soared', too. His sex scandal is one of the biggest, ever, so his first public outing is cause for celebration and re-hashing of his sexual prowess. I'm sure there are those who wonder if he will display his graduation-from-sex-rehab-diploma for the spectators.

Have we become a nation of voyeurs? How can private sex lives interest anyone? Personally, I could care less what anybody does behind closed doors. It's your bedroom and what you do in it and with whom is your business. Don't misunderstand, I have no aversions to sex - I simply have a real problem with people who feel the need to intrude in areas that should be private. The hypocrisy of "celebrities" complaining that they have no privacy and then making public with whom they have sex, is not wasted on me. Would they not expect to have searches on the internet spike as well as have to endure more stalkings and encounters?

While sex is a big part of being human, it seems to me that our fascination with sex is interfering with subjects that we should be taking more seriously. It terrifies me that some of the people who make the sex-searches will also vote in elections. I would be more comfortable if the individuals had gone to You Tube to watch  Democrat Congressman Phil Hare reveal his disdain for our constitution or examining what went on in Afghanistan.

How did we come to this place? Is it the same media who fails to report the positive actions of conservatives that is creating generations that are fascinated with the sex lives of others? Do they assert that we're supposed to accept that being bi-sexual is a positive attribute thus worshipping the celebrity even more? Are they suggesting that announcing with whom you have sex is cause for buying more recordings? Should we applaud an errant husband for entering rehabilitation in his effort to hold his marriage together? If it is the media and I tend to think that it is, how do we fix it?

California as a warning for America

 

Congressman Tom McClintock offered remarks in Washington , D.C. , on Friday to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pacific Research Institute that clearly illustrate why California is facing such a large fiscal mess. His beginning joke is so funny because it is so true:

"I know that everybody likes to poke fun at California - but I can tell you right now that despite all of its problems, California remains one of the best places in the world to build a successful small business. All you have to do is start with a successful large business."

  

Here is the rest of the speech:

Laugh if you will, but let me remind you that when these policies finish wrecking California, there are still 49 other states we can all move to - and yours is one of them.

I should also warn you of the strange sense of déjà-vu that I have every day on the House floor as I watch the same folly and blunders that wrecked California now being passed with reckless abandon in this Congress.

 

• We passed a "Cash-for-Clunkers" bill the other day - we did that years ago in California .
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• Doubling the entire debt every five years? Been there.
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• Increasing spending at unsustainable rates? Done that.
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• Save-the-Planet-Carbon-Dioxide restrictions? Got the T-Shirt.

 

To understand how these policies can utterly destroy an economy and bankrupt a government, you have to remember the Golden State in its Golden Age.

  

A generation ago, California spent about half what it does today AFTER adjusting for both inflation and population growth. And yet, we had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country. California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one. We produced water and electricity so cheaply that many communities didn't bother to measure the stuff. Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and its diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.

 

One thing - and one thing only - has changed in those years: public policy. The political Left gradually gained dominance over California 's government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.

 

The Census Bureau reports that in the last two years 2/3 of a million more people have moved out of California than have moved into it. Many are leaving for the garden spots of Nevada , Arizona and Texas . Think about that. California is blessed with the most equitable climate in the entire Western Hemisphere; it has the most bountiful resources anywhere in the continental United States; it is poised on the Pacific Rim in a position to dominate world trade for the next century, and yet people are finding a better place to live and work and raise their families in the middle of the Nevada and Arizona and Texas deserts. I submit to you that no conceivable act of God could wreak such devastation as to turn California into a less desirable place to live than the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range . Only Acts of Government can do that. And they have.

  

You can trace the collapse of California's economy to several critical events: the rise of environmental Ludditism beginning in 1974; the abandonment of constitutional checks and balances that once constrained spending and borrowing; and the rise of rule by public employee unions . There are other factors as well: litigation, taxation, illegal immigration - but for the sake of time let me concentrate on the big three.

  

The first was the rise of environmental Ludditism with the election of a radical new-age leftist named Jerry Brown as governor of the state - an election that also produced overwhelming liberal majorities in both legislative houses.

 

Like Obama today, Brown lost little time in pursuing his vision of California - an incoherent combination of pastoral simplicity, European socialism and centralized planning. At the center of this world view was a backward ideology that he called his "era of limits" - the naïve notion that public works were growth inducing and polluting and that stopping the expansion of infrastructure somehow excused government from meeting the needs of an expanding population. Conservation replaced abundance as the chief aim of California 's public works, and public policy was redirected to developing irresistible incentives for the population to concentrate in dense urban cores rather than to settle in suburban communities. Brown infused his vision into every aspect of public policy, and it is a testament to his thoroughness and tenacity that its basic tenets have dominated the direction of California through both Republican and Democratic administrations.

 

He cancelled the state's highway construction program, abandoning many routes in mid-construction. He cancelled long-planned water projects, conveyance facilities and dams. He established the California Energy Commission that blocked approval of any significant new generating capacity. He enacted volumes of environmental regulations that created severe impediments to home and commercial construction, empowering an incipient no-growth movement that began on the most extreme fringe of the environmental cause and quickly spread. This movement reached its zenith with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the enactment of AB 32 and companion legislation in 2006. This measure gives virtually unchecked authority to the California Air Resources Board to force Draconian reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.

 

This has dire implications to entire segments of California 's economy: agriculture, baking, distilling, cargo and passenger transportation, cement production, manufacturing, construction and energy production, to name a few.

 

We, too, were promised an explosion of "green jobs," but exactly the opposite has happened.

 

Up until that bill took effect, California 's unemployment numbers tracked very closely with the national unemployment rate. But since then, California 's unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from the national jobless figures. Today, California 's unemployment rate is more than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since 1941.

  

The second problem is structural: the collapse of the checks and balances and other constitutional and traditional constraints on government spending and borrowing.

 

Let me mention a few of them.

 

The State Supreme Court decision in Serrano v. Priest severed the use of local revenue for local schools and invited the state take-over of public education. AB 8 of 1979 - the legislature's response to Proposition 13 - essentially did the same thing to local governments generally. This means that vast bureaucracies have grown up over the service delivery level, wasting more and more resources while hamstringing teachers in their classrooms, wardens in their prisons and city councils in their towns.

 

Next, constitutional constraints on fiscal excesses began to fall. In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian approved legislation to remove the governor's ability to make mid-year budget corrections without having to return to the legislature. The loss of this provision exposed the state to chronic deficit spending by removing any ability of the governor to rapidly respond to changing economic conditions. In 1989, Deukmejian sponsored Proposition 111 that destroyed the Gann Spending Limit that had held increases in state spending to inflation and population growth. If that limit had remained intact, California would be enjoying a budget surplus today.

The disastrous tax increases by Pete Wilson in 1991 and Arnold Schwarzenegger this year were made possible by this tragic blunder. Finally, we've watched the constitutional budget process that had produced relatively punctual and relatively balanced budgets for nearly 150 years collapse in favor of an extra-constitutional abomination called the big five. That new process, that began under Pete Wilson and has culminated under Arnold Schwarzenegger bypasses the entire legislative deliberative process in favor of an annual deal struck between the governor and legislative leaders behind closed doors and handed to the legislature as a fait accompli. This short-circuits the separation of powers that is designed to discipline fiscal excess and it literally bargains away the line-item veto authority of the governor. It is a process that allows legislative leaders to extract concessions from the executive that would not be possible if the separation of powers were maintained. With the checks against excessive spending broken down, borrowing became the preferred method of public finance. The Constitutional requirement that all taxpayer-supported debt be approved by voters began to erode in the 1930's, when a depression-era Supreme Court decision allowed the state to run a temporary deficit in the event of an economic down-turn - as long as the shortfall was addressed in the following fiscal year. This practice was narrowly construed until the Wilson administration began using it to justify spreading out a single year's budget deficit over several years.

 

During the 1980's, Gov. Deukmejian began employing a legal fiction called a "lease revenue bond," to circumvent constitutionally required voter approval.

 

 

Although Proposition 13 still protects property owners from unsustainable increases in their property taxes, most of the other fiscal constraints are now gone, and California has entered a period of unprecedented public debt to finance an unprecedented expansion of state government.

 

The third factor that also can be traced back to the 1970's was the radical transformation that took place in the nature and power of the state's public employee unions. Until that time, state law prohibited public employee strikes against the public and prohibited collective bargaining or closed shops. During the Jerry Brown era, a series of collective bargaining acts handed to public sector unions all the rights and powers of private sector unions - but without any of the natural constraints on private sector unions. The unions soon brought these newly-won powers to bear to elect hand-picked officials to state and local office. Today, political expenditures by public employee unions exceed all other special interest groups, while they hold compliant majorities in the state legislature and most local agencies.

 

The result has been radically escalating personnel costs and radically deteriorating performance.

The impact on governmental services has been devastating. Despite exploding budgets, service delivery is collapsing. Firing incompetent teachers has become a virtual impossibility, adding to the deterioration of educational quality. Essential services can no longer be performed because labor costs have made it impossible to sustain those services.

 

Today, California is like the shopkeeper who leased out too much space, ordered too much inventory, hired too many people and paid them too much. Every month the shopkeeper covers his shortfalls with borrowing and bookkeeping tricks. Ultimately, he will reach a tipping point where anything he does makes his situation worse. Borrowing costs are eating him alive and he's running out of credit. Raising prices causes his sales to decline. And there's only so much discretionary spending he can cut. That's the state's predicament in a nutshell. California 's borrowing costs now exceed the budget of the entire University of California and it is increasingly likely that it will fail to find lenders when it must borrow billions to pay its bills at the end of this month. Ignoring dire warnings, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators from both parties earlier this year imposed the biggest state tax increase in American history.

 

And I can assure you that the Laffer curve is alive and well. In the first two months after the tax increase took effect, state revenues have plunged 33 percent.

 

Although there are many obsolete, duplicative or low priority programs and expenditures that the state can - and should - do without, there aren't enough of them to come anywhere close to closing California 's deficit.
Sadly, California has reached the terminal stage of a bureaucratic state, where government has become so large and so tangled that it can no longer perform even basic functions.

 

Fortunately, we have a model that we know works. A generation ago, it produced a high quality of public service at a much lower cost. It maximized management flexibility and it required accountability at the service delivery level. It recognized that only when commerce and enterprise flourish can we finance the basic responsibilities of government. Restoring this efficiency will require a governor and a legislature with the political will to wrestle control from the public employee unions, dismantle the enormous bureaucracies that have grown up over the service delivery level, decentralize administration and decision making, contract out services that the private sector can provide more efficiently, rescind the recent tax increases that are costing the state money and roll back the regulatory obstacles to productive enterprise.

 

Alas, we don't have such leaders and even if we did, the systemic reorganization of the state government can't be accomplished overnight. Restructuring the public schools would take at least a year; prisons at least two; and health and welfare three to five years before serious savings could be realized.

 

 

This brings us to the fine point of the matter. What Churchill called history's "terrible, chilling words" are about to be pronounced on California 's failed leadership: "too late."

 

A federal loan guarantee or bailout may be the only way to buy time for the restructuring of California 's bureaucracies to take effect, but the discussion remains academic until and unless the state actually adopts the replacement structures, unburdens its shrinking productive sector and presents a credible plan to redeem the state's crushing debt and looming obligations.

 

Without these actions, federal intervention will only make California 's problems worse by postponing reform, continuing unsustainable spending and piling up still more debt.

 

In short, if California won't help itself, the federal government cannot, should not and must not.

 

And before anyone gets too smug at California 's agony, remember this: Congress is now enacting the same policies at the national level that have caused the collapse of California . So whistle past this cemetery if you must, but remember the medieval epitaph: "Remember man as you walk by, as you are now so once was I; as I am now so you will be."

The good news is there is still time for the nation to avoid California 's fate. If anything, the collapse of California can at least serve as a morality play for the rest of the nation - unfortunately in the form of a Greek tragedy.

 

Baskin-Robbins' 32nd Ice Cream Flavor

I wish I could take credit for this or that I knew to whom to give credit, but neither is possible.

In honor of the 44th President of the United States , Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor:

                     " Barocky Road "

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $100.00 per scoop.

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but after you pay for it, the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you at no charge.

You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you stimulated?

If it wasn't true, it would be pretty funny

As do so many things of interest and that ring true, you can find the link that came to me via email today by clicking on the title of this entry. I think we should all send it to our Congresspeople and Senators, as well as the President. They just don't seem to get it, yet, so we have to keep trying to get their attention. The kool-aid that so many drank seems to have very long-lsting effects. Again, click on the "If it wasn't true, it would be pretty funny".

Obamanomics at its best!

I got this in my e-mail today. With the "Health Care Summit" going on, it seems appropriate to include it here. I haven't checked snopes or ask to see if they think it is as it says it is. That doesn't matter. It is well said and true.


John G. Is 63 years old and owns a small business. He's a life-long Republican and sees his dream of retiring next year has all but evaporated. With the stock market crashing and new taxes coming his way, John assumes now that he will work to his dying day.



John has a granddaughter. Ashley is a recent college grad. She drives a flashy hybrid car, wears all the latest fashions, and loves to go out to nightclubs and restaurants. Ashley campaigned hard for Barack Obama.. After the election she made sure her grandfather (and all other Republican family members) received a big I told-you-so earful on how the world is going to be a much better place now that her party is taking over.
Having lost both roommates, Ashley recently ran short of cash and cannot pay the rent (again) on her 3 bedroom townhouse. Like she has done many times in the past, she e-mailed her grandfather asking for some financial help.

Here is his reply:

Sweetheart, I received your request for assistance.


Ashley, you know I love you dearly and I 'm sympathetic to your financial plight. Unfortunately, times have changed. With the election of President Obama, your grandmother and I have had to set forth a bold new economic plan of our own..."The Ashley Economic Empowerment Plan." Let me explain.


Your grandmother and I are life-long, wage-earning tax payers. We have lived a comfortable life, as you know, but we have never had the fancier things like European vacations, luxury cars, etc. We have worked hard and were looking forward to retiring soon. But the plan has changed. Your president is raising our personal and business taxes significantly. He says it is so he can give our hard earned money to other people. Do you know what this means, Ashley? It means less for us, and we must cut back on many business and personal expenses.


You know the wonderful receptionist who worked in my office for more than 23 years? The one who always gave you candy when you came over to visit? I had to let her go last week. I can't afford to pay her salary and all of the government mandated taxes that go with having employees. Your grandmother will now work 4 days a week to answer phones, take orders and handle the books. We will be closed on Fridays and will lose even more income to the Wal-Mart.


I'm also very sorry to report that your cousin Frank will no longer be working summers in the warehouse. I called him at school this morning. He already knows about it and he's upset because he will have to give up skydiving and his yearly trip to Greenland to survey the polar bears.


That's just the business side of things. Some personal economic effects of Obama's new taxation policies include none other than you. You know very well that over the years your grandmother and I have given you thousands of dollars in cash, tuition assistance, food, housing, clothing, gifts, etc., etc. But by your vote, you have chosen to help others -- not at your expense -- but at our expense.


If you need money now sweetheart, I recommend you call 202-456-1111 . That is the direct phone number for the White House. You can also contact the White House here: http://www/..whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/ .


You yourself told me how foolish it is to vote Republican. You said Mr. Obama is going to be the People's President, and is going to help every American live a better life. Based on everything you've told me, along with all the promises we heard during the campaign, I'm sure Mr. Obama will be happy to transfer some stimulus money into your bank account. Have him call me for the account number which I memorized years ago..


Perhaps you can now understand what I've been saying all my life: those who vote for a president should consider the impact on the nation as a whole, and not be just concerned with what they can get for themselves. What Obama supporters don't seem to realize is all of the money he is redistributing to illegal aliens and non-taxpaying Americans (the so-called "less fortunate") comes from tax-paying families.

 Remember how you told me, "Only the richest of the rich will be affected"? Well guess what, honey? Because we own a business, your grandmother and I are now considered to be the richest of the rich. On paper, it might look that way, but in the real world, we are far from it.


As you said while campaigning for Obama, some people will have to carry more of the burden so all of America can prosper. You understand what that means, right? It means that raising taxes on productive people results in them having less money; less money for everything, including granddaughters.
 I'm sorry, Ashley, but the well has run dry.. The free lunches are over. I have no money to give you now. So, congratulations on your choice for "change." For future reference, I encourage you to try and add up the total value of the gifts and cash you have received from us, just since you went off to college, and compare it to what you expect to get from Mr. Obama over the next 4 (or 8) years. I have not kept track of it, Ashley. It has all truly been the gift of our hearts.


Remember, we love you dearly....but from now on you'll need to call the number mentioned above. Your "Savior" has the money we would have given to you. Just try and get it from him.


Good luck, sweetheart.


Love, Grandpa

It it just SOOO embarassing

I am embarassed for this president. He is un-presidential. He has no clue.

Do you think his handlers keep him in the dark?

He must know that we are tired of him and his foolishmess.

How could he not know?

Is it his arrogance?

What can people across the world think?

Maybe he will get it after the House and Senate change hands in November.

He is almost at the bottom, now.

Sure glad I didn't vote for him!