Don't Be A Billy: Don't Vote For Bernie!

I have five dollars. You have five dollars. Fred has five dollars.

Billy?

Billy doesn't have five dollars. Billy says that it is unfair that we each have five dollars, and that he has none.

Billy joins with Sue and Tom and Lisa and hundreds of thousands more. They talk about the immorality of disproportionate wealth. They talk about how those who are "the haves" are besting the system and using it to their advantage to keep others from having their own five dollars.

With sufficient numbers, Billy and his political following form a political alliance, call it a party. They pass a law requiring everyone to contribute a "fairness" assessment. The purpose of the "fairness" assessment is to provide those who have been locked out of opportunity with a ready pool of cash.

The effect of the "fairness" assessment is that Fred, you, and I question why we worked hard, scrimped, saved, did without, deferred gratifications, etc., and we decide to reduce our labors and efforts. After all, thousands and thousands have joined together and made our actions seem most unseemly, perhaps immoral.

The "fairness" assessment cannot keep pace with the outflow of cash that was committed to by those that adopted it. They march on the printing operation where the money is actually printed. They seized the presses and begin a 24/7 operation creating additional dollars that do not reflect the product of a "fairness" assessment.

What a wonderful new world! If only we could have realized this sooner.

A problem develops.

There are SOOOOOOOOOOO many dollars on the market now, everyone is buying more and demand goes up. As demand rises, the price rises. Higher prices demand more money. More money means re-evaluating the "fairness" assessment. Maybe one should be attached to the the value of estates when people die? Maybe one should be attached to interest earned on savings and investment? Maybe one should be attached to the earnings of corporations?

With "fairness" assessments imposed on savings, there is a perverse incentive and people stop saving, but they do keep spending and spending creates demand and demand justifies increases in prices and increases in prices requires additional printing of dollars, whether funded by "fairness" assessments or whether covered by a new invention devised by the Billy Party. They came up with the idea of using IOUs to provide value for the dollars. They'll just promise to be able to pay the thousands, millions, billions, and trillions of accumulated promises to pay that the newly minted dollars represent.

Soon, the price of milk is $8.00, the price of a loaf of bread is $ 5.00.  The price of toilet paper? Well. Actually. Since no one can afford to purchase trees to make pulp to make paper no one has seen toilet paper in months.

The Billy Party begins to distrust its own members. It sees greed in their eyes, their constant hectoring for more, more, more, while doing less, less, less. So the Billy Party imposes a framework of controls:

• Wages are fixed at set rates by the Billy Party.
• Prices are fixed at set rates by the Billy Party.
• The Billy Party orders farmers to produce X gallons of raw milk each day.
• The Billy Party orders bakers to produce Y loaves of bread each day.
• The Billy Party orders toilet paper manufacturers to produce Z rolls of toilet paper each day.

The result?

The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party water their milk down 3 parts water to 1 part milk to make it last and to make it affordable.

The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party think of white bread as a luxury, nearly a dessert in character. A child that wants the crust peeled off is forced to watch as parents and siblings eat their piece of bread to teach them not to be picky.

The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party wipe their asses with their hands, and they aren't even Arabs, because ordered toilet paper manufacturers to make toilet paper will not force trees to grow, to chop themselves down, to be ground into pulp, to be shipped to the nation ruled by the Billy Party, and to be milled into toilet paper.

No one shakes hands with the people living in the Nation ruled by the Billy Party.

And it all started with Billy claiming it was unfair that three others had five dollars that he didn't have!

The moral of the story:

Venezuela is a festering cesspool that proves the vapidity of socialism. If you are voting for Bernie Sanders​ U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders​ We Want Bernie Sanders​, you ought to go live in Venezuela so you can look into the future you want to create here in America.

Fat vs Bloated, Democrat vs Socialist

For a long time, I thought I might be fat.

Several things contributed to that impression. I get sweatier than other folks even in cool weather. I buy clothing in the big and tall section. Occasionally, folks will say things like, "wouldn't you prefer a smaller portion?" And, of course, when I visit the doctor, and they have me stand on the scale, that really doesn't help.

As it turns out, however, I may not be fat.

True, my abdomen may be more expansive than others. That expansiveness may not be fat. According to a commercial on the radio this morning, I may simply be bloated. Apparently, the difference between being fat and being bloated is hard to determine simply by appearances. The advertiser explained that their probiotic supplement will clear my gut of sludge, resulting in a new and slimmer me, if my problem is bloating.

It turns out that it is often difficult to distinguish between things as seemingly similar as are being fat and being bloated.

For example, earlier this summer, Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was unable to state the difference between Democrats and Socialists. With my newly enlightened understanding of the apparent problem of confusing being fat with being bloated, Wasserman Schultz's difficulty gets my sympathy.

As I thought about it, really, it is difficult to say what are the differences between Socialist Party and Democratic Party platforms:

Democrats and Socialists tolerate private property so long as no one disputes that private property and private interests are subject to public direction and control. 

Democrats and Socialists distrust appeals to individuality, to the rights of persons over the rights of collectives. 

Democrats and Socialists punish effort and success through progressive schemes of taxation. 

Democrats and Socialists never met a problem that could not be used as an excuse to enlarge government: government programs, government spending, government payrolls.

Still, because it is hard to tell the difference between the two, particularly if you are one or the other, I am thinking that perhaps there is a way to get to the bottom of things.

If you think you might be suffering from DSCD (Democrat v. Socialist Confusion Disorder) there is now a treatment that will free you from your problem.

The treatment is pro-libertica. It consists of a regular program of de-governmentization. Taken regularly, your dependence on the idea of government as a solution will decrease and decrease. Eventually, you will discover that, with enough pro-libertica, it won't matter if you were fat, bloated, Democrat, or Socialist, you will just enjoy, finally, being free.

Obama Golfs While the Ship of State Founders ... Shades of the Exxon Valdez

A piece of economic news analysis crossed the wires today and it caught my eye. Terrence Jeffries, on the CNSNews site reveals the abyssmal economics of President Obama. It turns out that, during the period since such statistics have been kept by the federal government, President Obama has the lowest average 1st quarter (Jan-Mar) growth in Gross Domestic Product annually of any President. Worse, that dismal performance is literally just that dismal even if the very first quarter of Obama's first term is omitted in calculating his numbers. Here's a salient portion of Jeffries' post:

Even if you leave out the first quarter of 2009—when the recession that started in December 2007 was still ongoing--President Barack Obama has presided over the lowest average first-quarter GDP growth of any president who has served since 1947, which is the earliest year for which the Bureau of Economic Analysis has calculated quarterly GDP growth. 

The analysis is tough on Obama's leadership in tough economic times. When the 2009 first quarter is omitted, GDP is a measly 0.4%. If we go hard, and include the very first quarter of the Obama years, the picture is worse, with a negative average, -0.43%:

In the seven first quarters during Obama’s presidency, it has declined by an average of -0.43 percent. And if you leave out the first quarter of 2009 and look only at the first quarters of the six years since the recession ended, it has averaged only 0.4 percent.

Read it and remember:  Obama has lowest average first quarter (Jan-Mar) Gross Domestic Product of any President SINCE RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT.

Ask yourself, how can hope and change look so hopeless and unchanging?

Is it because merely "hoping" and merely talking about "change" has nothing to do with having the skill sets necessary to bring about change and to create conditions in which we each can do those things with our lives, our skills, our possessions, to convert hopes into realities? Is it that Obama was a flash in the pan, that there was potential and now we are witnessing the eight year demise of it?

No, Obama was never a "flash in the pan."

That epithet belongs to the cases in which a fleck of gold flashes in sunlight as a miner is engaged in a search for gold. After the era of gold rushes, "flash in the pan" came to represent folks that briefly offered potential but subsequently couldn't deliver substance. Redskins fans may remember Heath Shuler. Heath was one of our many "flashes in the pan."

But Obama brings not even a single glimmer of gold to the enormous undertaking of the Presidency. He never did. Obama answers the question, "what would have happened if ________________ were elected to the Presidency?"  Simply fill that blank in with the name of any number of rabble rousers (that's an oldster's way of saying, "community organizer").

For example, in the early 20th Century, Eugene Debs was the heart and soul of the IWW (International Workers of the World) and of the Socialist Party. Debs ran for president the way I play the lottery, more often than is wise and with no chance of winning. In his best run ever, Debs gained a total of 5 percent of the popular vote and no electoral college votes. His last run, in 1920, was from a jail cell.

Like Obama, Debs really was a "community organizer." He organized labor communities, he advocated labor rights, he -- unlike Obama -- left an accessible record of writings preceding his efforts to gain the presidency. His written and spoken oratory is often compared to evangelists for his zeal. Unlike Obama, those who knew him also clarified that his fiery speaking belied a kindliness and compassion in his personal relations.

But what would America have looked like had Debs been elected President? I think history and the judgment of 55 million Americans is telling us just exactly what a country led by a community organizer resembles.

It resembles a Gross Domestic Product that cannot be called lackluster, only because it is worse than that.

It resembles nearly 100 million men and women permanently despairing of finding work, leaving the work force, and by doing so, allowing the community organizer in chief to tout an unemployment number artificially lowered by the exclusion of those who just aren't looking any more.

It resembles nearly 50 million Americans drawing SNAP benefits, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, because their two and three part time jobs in the Obamacare wrecked employment field won't bring home the bacon. No literally, even bacon, which is still often selling at four or five dollars a package, even though the packages are now 12 ounces instead of a pound!

It resembles nothing like the Utopian benevolent society claimed to be the hope and the change we need. It resembles Baltimores. It resembles Fergusons. It resembles no place you want to be, and no place you'd want to raise your family, or risk your labor and investment.