Monthly Archives: September 2010

This is why we hate politicians

Posted on by
3

I know for a fact that there are good politicians out there; well-meaning people who have to deal with much frustration being surrounded by idiots. However, it seems that when you put them all in a group, the outcome is less than favorable. Tonight, Canadian Members of Parliament gathered to vote on whether or not they liked the content of an article written by Maclean’s, a private magazine, calling the province of Quebec “corrupt.”

MPs took the unprecedented step Wednesday night of unanimously denouncing articles published by the country’s national news magazine, Maclean’s.Maclean’s had published a controversial cover story pronouncing Quebec the “most corrupt province in Canada.” The accompanying article traced a series of scandals in that province from the Duplessis era in the 1950s through to the Liberal sponsorship scandal and the present-day Bastarache Commission hearings into allegations that politicians improperly influenced the appointment of judges.

But the suggestion that all of Quebec was the “most corrupt province” was too much, apparently, for MPs from all parties, who unanimously supported the motion from Bloc Quebecois MP Pierre Paquette “that this House, while recognizing the importance of vigorous debate on subjects of public interest, expresses its profound sadness at the prejudice displayed and the stereotypes employed by Maclean’s Magazine to denigrate the Quebec nation, its history and its institutions.”

One M.P., Andre Arthur, an independent from Quebec actually stood out against this motion on the grounds that “Parliament has no business to criticize the work of reporters.” Arthur has a bit of a reputation of being a trouble maker, but he’s the only Member of Parliament to approach this motion (put forth by a Marxist separatist) from the right angle: no one cares whether or not the content of the article is objectionable, the question at hand is whether or not government should hold massive votes to express their disapproval of something written in a private publication.

First off, the article in Maclean’s was accurate: Quebec’s provincial administrations and politicians at other levels have a substantially murkier track record when it comes to corruption than the rest of Canada does. Even if that weren’t the case, however, I don’t really see the advantage to the government of passing motions condemning the work of reporters. To Maclean’s, this is a gift from above as the audience of this particular story has now grown exponentially, but this is unnecessary government meddling to the extreme.

My request to our readers: call your M.P.’s office asking them why it’s the business of government to condemn the writing of individual reporters. Email me or leave their responses (or lack thereof) in the comments section!

Really, Mr. President?

Posted on by
1

Hoping to re-engage his base of “the young, the Left and the thoughtless,” President Obama told attendees at a rally of university students to stick with him because “change is gonna come.” If “change is gonna come” what has the last 2 years been? You can run against the status quo when you have no record and chose the path of political least resistance, as Obama did in 2008. However, when your party controls both houses of the Congress and you are the president you can’t run against the existing state of affairs – you created them.

Obama’s real problem is that change has come. His change has put the country on the brink. The debt is growing at an unsustainable rate. Official unemployment has remained stagnant at nearly 10%, real unemployment has remained closer to 20%. Students, who put so much (false) hope in Obama, have been hit the hardest. The unemployment rate for Americans age 16-19 is 26.3%. For Americans 20-24 years of age 14.9% are out of a job. Obama’s change has come, and it is wiping out the American economy.

The Democrat axis of Obama-Pelosi-Reid have been defined by dishonesty, corruption and radicalism. The president has repeatedly raised taxes on people making under $200,000 and has had a revolving door for lobbyists to serve in the administration. At the same time, the House Democrtas are mired in corruption, while legislation has been passed by ignoring and abusing the Constitution in the dead of night. That legislation has been far-reaching and detrimental to the country. The $787,000,000,000 Stimulus bill has had one measurable result: it added $787 to the national debt. Obamacare is a gargantuan unfunded entitlement boondoggle that was rammed through Congress and signed into law by the President, irrespective of the overwhelming opposition voiced by the American people. All the while, President Obama has shunned America’s allies while coddling the world’s most odious regimes. The Obama administration is in the process of allowing the Hitler of the Middle East to acquire nuclear weapons, the most devastating foreign policy blunder in American history. The Democrat regime has most assuredly brought change – and that change been an unmitigated disaster.

But now the President is pledging that if Democrats are reelected then finally, “change is gonna come.” By reelecting the people that created this mess the President plans to “change” the country even more. The country cannot survive any more of the “change” that the President is selling. Thankfully, change “is gonna come” this November – and it had better say ‘NO!’ to every “change” the President tries to impose.

Strictly Right Radio with Ezra Levant

Posted on by

On this episode of Strictly Right, Ari and Andrew chat about Obama’s sinking poll numbers, ice cream at Gitmo, media bias and a great interview with bestselling author Ezra Levant.

You can purchase Ezra’s book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands here.

You can listen to this episode online here or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Follow @AndrewLawton and @AriMFine on Twitter!

Social Security has Already Been Privatized – and it Works

Posted on by
1

This past August President Obama dedicated his weekly radio address to commemorating the creation of Social Security by President Roosevelt, and demonizing legitimate questions surrounding its solvency.

The President claimed that privatizing Social Security was a gamble that was destined for failure. His party has successfully convinced millions of people that fiscally responsible people want to take grandma’s retirement money and ‘put it all on red.’ This talking point was used against George W. Bush, and is being used non-stop in this election cycle. The only problem is that reality once again contradicts the Democrats.

When Franklin Roosevelt initiated Social Security the tax rate was 2% (1% payed by employees, 1% payed by employers). That rate has shot up 600% to 12.4%. There is talk of raising that rate in an effort to keep the program solvent. In 1950 there were 16 workers supporting every retiree. By 2005 that ratio had fallen to 3:1. This year it was announced that Social Security had dipped into the red, with the program paying out more than it took in. Dire warnings have been ignored and derided as scare tactics. The problem has been kicked down the road, and is now part of the entitlement tsunami set to sink the country.

The original Social Security Act allowed for counties to opt out of the government program. Seeing the writing on the wall, Galveston County, Texas opted out of the program in 1981. Galveston voters passed the opt-out provision by a 3-1 margin. Their solution should be the model that Social Security is remodeled after.

The system goes as follows:

Our plan, put together by financial experts, was a “banking model” rather than an “investment model.” To eliminate the risks of the up-and-down stock market, workers’ contributions were put into conservative fixed-rate guaranteed annuities, rather than fluctuating stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Our results have been impressive: We’ve averaged an annual rate of return of about 6.5 percent over 24 years. And we’ve provided substantially better benefits in all three Social Security categories: retirement, survivorship and disability.

The results:

Upon retirement after 30 years, and assuming a 5 percent rate of return – more conservative than Galveston workers have earned – all workers would do better for the same contribution as Social Security:

  • Workers making $17,000 a year are expected to receive about 50 percent more per month on our alternative plan than on Social Security – $1,036 instead of $683. [See the Figure.]
  • Workers making $26,000 a year will make almost double Social Security’s return – $1,500 instead of $853.
  • Workers making $51,000 a year will get $3,103 instead of $1,368.
  • Workers making $75,000 or more will nearly triple Social Security – $4,540 instead of $1,645.
  • Galveston County’s survivorship benefits pay four times a worker’s annual salary – a minimum of $75,000 to a maximum $215,000 – versus Social Security, which forces widows to wait until age 60 to qualify for benefits, or provides 75 percent of a worker’s salary for school-age children.

In Galveston, if the worker dies before retirement, the survivors receive not only the full survivorship but get generous accidental death benefits, too. Galveston County’s disability benefit also pays more: 60 percent of an individual’s salary, better than Social Security’s.

Two government studies of the Galveston Plan – by the Government Accountability Office and the Social Security Administration – claim that low-wage workers do better under Social Security. However, these studies assumed a low 4 percent return, which is the minimum rate of return on annuities guaranteed by the insurance companies. The actual returns have been substantially higher.

Even in 2010, after the stock-market meltdown of 2008, the Galveston plan is light years ahead of Social Security. At this point it is undeniable that the Galveston plan is superior to the existing Social Security program. However, that fact was obvious from the outset. Seeing the success of Galveston, Brazoria and Matagorda counties followed suit, adopting plans similar to the Galveston one. What stopped this wave of reform? Seeing the success of these plans and fearing that the entire country would opt-out of Social Security, in 1983 the Congress passed a law closing the opt-out loophole, thereby forcing hundreds of millions of Americans to remain dependent on the world’s largest ponzi scheme.

It is obvious that the current model for Social Security is a failure. Taxes can continue to go up, payments can be cut and the programs can be used as a wealth redistribution program only for so long. As Margaret Thatcher said “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The socialists are fast approaching that day. The solution is out there, and it has been tested and proven for over 30 years. If the Democrats really cared about retirees and the American people they would support adopting a plan similar to the Galveston plan. However, that would entail a devolution of their power back to the states, and ultimately the people – so don’t expect them too see the light too soon. Instead, as Ronald Reagan advised, make sure they feel the heat this November – and beyond.

To read more about the Galveston plan click here.

Pathetic New York Times at it Again

Posted on by
Reply

The latest Real Clear Politics polling average has the Republican Party leading on the generic ballot by 3.7%. Some polls have the GOP up by as much as 10%. With the likelihood of the GOP taking over at least one, if not two houses of Congress this November increasing daily, what is the leftist media to do? Once again, the New York Times is taking the lead on the left, going back to their bread and butter – publishing unsubstantiated rumors and innuendo in an effort to tarnish their enemies’ credibility.

A few weeks ago the Times went after the top ranking House Republican, John Boehner, in a coordinated attack with the White House (detailed on Strictly Right 54). In an article entitled ‘A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists,’ the paper attempted to paint Boehner as a corporate stooge and an elitist. Turns out painting a man who has 11 siblings and worked weekends throughout his childhood to help his family get by was not such an effective line of attack. So, here comes round 2. You have to give the Times credit for their sticktoitiveness. They definitely adheres to the axiom ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.’ The New York Post is reporting that the Times is planning on publishing a story claiming that… John Boehner is having an affair:

The heat is on Republican leader John Boehner.

Liberal media outlets are trying to smear the highest-ranking Republican in the House just weeks before the midterm elections with a deal-breaking scandal before he has a chance to take the speaker’s chair from Nancy Pelosi.

A blogger from liberal Web site The Daily Kos pierced through Boehner’s security detail at yesterday’s unveiling of his leadership policy “Pledge to America” to ask if he was sleeping with a lobbyist from the Printing Industries of America.

The congressman ignored the pesky blogger with a flip camera and kept moving to his fleet of black Suburbans.

The lobbyist who was named in the confrontation and then was contacted by he Daily Kos blogger Lisbeth Lyons denied the accusations. “As you can imagine, I was stunned by such a question,” Lyons said. “I found it to be highly insulting, particularly as a female political professional, as well as unfounded. Beyond that, I have no further comment on the matter.”

Insiders on Capitol Hill are buzzing about an upcoming New York Times exposé that will detail an alleged Boehner affair. Sources say the Times is looking for the right time to drop the story in October to sway the election, similar to how the Times reported during the 2008 presidential campaign on an alleged John McCain affair that supposedly had taken place many years before and that was flatly denied by the woman in question.

“Catching Boehner with a mistress is the only way to destroy him politically before the election,” a source said.

A rep for Boehner’s office said, “This is bull[bleep]. The American people oppose Washington Democrats’ job killing, so their desperate liberal allies are resorting to outright lies. It’s low, and it’s dirty.”

As the Post story mentions, in February of 2008, when Obama was promising to lower sea levels (now he can’t even promise to lower the unemployment rate), the Times ran a hit piece on John McCain. The Times piece used unnamed sources to insinuate that Senator McCain was romantically involved with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The accusations proved to be fallacious, generally the case when you rely exclusively on unnamed sources. This was of course written at the same time that the Times blacklisted any stories about John Edwards, who has since admitted to repeatedly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife – and recording the evidence of his adultery on video for posterity. And what did the very same New York Times have to say about infidelity when it involved a known pervert having an affair with a girl the age of his daughter?

Unfortunately, we seem to be creating a standard of ”truthful” self-disclosure for all would-be leaders that is neither socially desirable nor psychically possible. We’re trying to make hard and fast rules about intimate truth-telling, and they are absurd — even poisonous. Few people grow up without making some mistakes.

In fact, that same article, entitled ‘when the truth hurts’ claimed that telling the truth is evil: “Making a similar point, a European friend often berates me. ”You Americans are so naive. You think that it’s such a noble thing to tell the truth.” In her mind, the person demanding truth is a soldier at the door.” Got it? Demanding the truth makes you a Nazi in Bill Clinton’s case, according to the ‘newspaper of record.’

When it comes to Democrats the New York Times wont cover, denies and justifies infidelity. When it’s a Republican the ‘paper of record’ goes into full slime mode. The latest attack on John Boehner is a desperate effort by a deeply partisan, and increasingly irrelevant fossil. The Times has staked out its position with the smear merchants of the radical Left. Their openness and flagrant bias is no longer deniable.

What George Soros Doesn't Want You To Know

Posted on by
4

One of the things that any figure in politics has dealt with is worrying about things from their past propping up. These skeletons can be anything from cheating on a spouse to cheating on your taxes; stealing from your company, or stealing lunch money from your classmates. In the case of billionare George Soros, his skeletons involve working with the Nazis when they took over Hungary in 1944.

As Ari and I mentioned on the last episode of Strictly Right Radio, Soros is suing Canadian author, lawyer and freedom fighter Ezra Levant over a passage in a column that Levant wrote for the Sun Media Chain in response to one of George Soros’ organizations trying to thwart a Canadian media outlet, Sun TV News from starting up in Canada. The passage that Soros found most objectionable was most likely this one:

When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.

To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.

First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours.

Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.

By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.

Pretty harsh words, huh? That would be horrible if Levant made that stuff up. Fortunately, he was just taking this bit of Soros’ past from stuff Georgie boy himself said in an interview on 60 Minutes in 1998. When pressed further, he even offered up this gem, “I had no sense of guilt.”

What Soros’ goons have to gain from wanting to stop a politically incorrect news network from forming in Canada is beyond me. Avaaz.org has been a known shell organization for various liberal causes, with no reason to be in Canada. I wonder if thwarting conservative efforts abroad is just to counter the boredom that Soros is facing with no Nazis to collaborate with.