Below is a growing list of posts we consider important here at Off-the-cliff.com.
- We propose a plain-English Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
- To Our Liberal Friends and Members of Our Families
- An amazingly wonderful SNL video
- How Republicans should stand
- Calling on FoxNews – do the right thing
- stories about Obama’s newspuppies
- Finally – The other news media find a spine! – huge!
- You owe the American people an apology Mr. President
- Is there a RINO in the house (warning to Republicans)
- Roll call on evil (vote these abysmal representatives out in 2010!)
- The President and the War
- The President and the War, Part 2
- The President and the War, Part 3
More to come…
One of the more amazing stories we’ve read regarding the President’s current “thinking” can be found in an AP article called Obama admits health care overhaul may die on the Hill. Two items struck us:
1 – ‘”I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision,” Obama said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser.’
Note how this contrasts with his previous combativeness: “Hit ‘em twice as hard.” You’re finding out Mr. President that the phrase “Don’t tread on me” has a real meaning. You and that evil Witch of the West, Pelosi can’t “hit” the American people as though we’re children to be put in our places. You work for us – not the other way around.
2 – “I think we should be very deliberate, take our time. We’re going to be moving a jobs package forward over the next several weeks; that’s the thing that’s most urgent right now in the minds of Americans all across the country.”
If you had thought this way back in March of last year; had you called for a truly civil discussion – and not tried to ram the health care boondoggle that we all came to know and hate down our collective (not collectivist) throats, the tea party movement and the awakened sleeping giant at the town hall meetings might never have happened.
One of us had a sit-down with a local director for her U.S. Senator. As this director took notes based on what she was saying, she could see the director nodding his head in agreement. Things like: you can’t insult the intelligence of the people paying the bills. We’re not astroturf, Mr. President. We’re not Nazis, and for the Wicked Witch of the West to call us that, and for you to not tell her to knock it off – well that spoke volumes. Treat us with the respect you want to have visited upon you, Mr. President, and we can have a real discussion/debate. If you can’t manage that, we’re going to hit you twice as hard come November.
- Off-the-cliff.com
There is a scene depicting military ineptitude near the beginning of George Lucas’ film, The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire is about to do battle with the rebels on the ice planet Hoth. One of his minions tells Darth Vader that the element of surprise has been lost. In frustration and as a display of sheer stupidity, Darth Vader then uses the Dark Side of the Force to kill his current Admiral and then tells the guy standing next to him to fix everything, calling him by his new designation, “Admiral.”
In a development we hope is not a parallel to this, we find a story where field commanders in Afghanistan are being “disciplined” when there are failures on the battlefield. The story then reports, “In response to the recent reprimands, some military officials have argued that casualties are inevitable in war and that a culture of excessive investigations could make officers risk-averse.”
This sounds like politically motivated, cover your a– behavior to us.
We would not be shocked to find out that this is a response to some Obama minion trying to be Darth Vader. We would like to understand the military value of doing what seems to be analogous to a football game and disciplining the quarterback because the defense he went up against was better prepared than he or his team imagined.
Are the higher-ups now requiring some degree of clairvoyance on the part of their field commanders? Do the field commanders have all the resources they need such that an expectation that there will be no battlefield failures is reasonable (seems doubtful to us)? Is it more likely that Obama has made a number of inept people his “Admirals,” and that they are simply following an Ayn Randian pattern of jackals so effectively story-told in Empire Strikes Back?
Again – we don’t know. We can only hope that for once in his miserable little life, Obama is not screwing yet another thing up.
- Off-the-cliff.com
America
Failing
Day 380
We are – all of us at O-t-c – so tired of Democrats and the Obama Administration. They bore us to tears. The only reason we follow anything they do is because it’s consequential.
Not once have we heard them say anything remotely interesting, let alone intellectually stimulating. But what can one expect of people who skate through life, rising to the top of the heap through extortion, political correctness, and bullying instead of brains and fair competition? Is there any such thing as a smart Democrat anymore? Really – is there?
Take Chrysler and GM. Please. Take them. Put them out of their misery – put them out of our misery. Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary, said that people should stop driving their Toyotas. Tell us how that’s not a conflict of interest. Yeah – we know that LaHood says he’s a Republican, but really – he’s not. He’s a RINO. He really should follow Arlen Specter’s lead and become a Democrat outright. After all, does anyone believe the deception anymore? Just be the jerk you really are, Mr. LaHood and some of us might at least be able to respect that.
Yeah – we know he tried to walk back what he said. But not really. Not in a way that had any impact.
And what he did was so abysmally amateurish and transparent: he wanted people to look at Taxpayer Motors in a more favorable light.
Well, Mr. LaHood – it backfired. At least in these quarters. We now look at Taxpayer Motors in an even worse light than we did before, though we didn’t believe it to be possible.
We can’t think of a single thing – not one damned thing – that this President has done that we like. We’re not going to belabor it anymore. Suffice to say that we’re bored to tears with his and the Democrat rhetoric. We are bored to tears with their efforts to play the race cards, their efforts to propagandize our children, to propagandize us. We’re bored to tears with their insults. We’re bored beyond yawning at their efforts to try to sneak things past us like little kids looking “to see if Mommy and Daddy are looking” as they try to sneak their hands in the cookie jars. It’s cute in a little kid. It’s just unbelievably shallow, trivial, and bo-o-o-oring coming from adults.
We wish we could get a dispensation from God to move November to come after February this year. This would put the Democrats out of our misery.
Boycott the Messiah!
- Off-the-cliff.com
So the President and most every other politicians and political wonk seems to be willing to use a phrase we consider stupid-from-the-jump.
“Jobs bill.”
We think that anyone who supports “jobs” legislation, needs to have an economics lesson. The way we see it, governments cannot create private sector jobs – period. All they can do is create the conditions that will run a billiards style bank shot, aiming for the legislation to ultimately result in new positions opening up.
Create the conditions. What conditions? Conditions that make business owners and managers say, “Gosh darn it! There’s demand for what I’m selling and I have no way to meet all that demand with my current staff. I’d better find one or more people to help us meet this demand, or I am leaving money on the table.”
If a business can make enough profit off of the next hiree to make the burden of that employee worthwhile, most employers will go and hire him or her. But can anyone – ANYONE – give us a business reason why it should hire someone if it won’t result in greater profits for that company? If one of us owns a business, and we’re going to lose money because hiring someone costs us more than we’ll make in sales, we’d be idiots to make the hire – unless there’s some other factor that doesn’t relate to immediate profits. (For example, we might hire someone who is so good at what he or she does, that we don’t want the competition to snap him or her up. So we might not have an immediate need, but we might want to take a small cut in profits to prevent our competitor from beating us in the marketplace – especially in the short term.) Ultimately, though, it still comes down to profits, and if we’re losing more than we’re taking in, we can’t just print money to pay our bills. So the business either has to lean up or go out of business altogether.
This seems so abysmally obvious, that we consider it political malfeasance to discuss “jobs” bills. What needs to be discussed are “business conditions bills.” Governments CAN set up conditions that make it worthwhile for a business to consider expansion. Reducing taxes on businesses would be one way. It’s no substitute for increased demand, but it at least gives businesses some breathing room. Incentives to hire rather than to move out of country with offshore hiring is another good idea. But this, too, is just a stopgap since other countries will likely compete as well. At some point, someone is going to have to cry uncle and lose the competition.
So what can the Federal government do?
#1 – It can recognize that businesses are the source for all private sector jobs. This recognition should come with the further acknowledgment that business owners do not exist in order to provide jobs. They exist to make the owners profits (that they can personally use in their private lives for any legal purpose they want) and that most business owners recognize that profits come from meeting customers’ demand. All feel-good efforts go contrary to these simple facts and are doomed to fail.
#2 – It can recognize that there are certain PUBLIC SECTOR activities that are in the legitimate province of the Federal government, create large programs to fulfill the objectives, and hire citizens to do the work. These citizens will earn money from all taxpayers as compensation for the very real and worthwhile services that they provide to the American people (building an interstate freeway system, for example, or a network of hydro-electric dams, or space missions, etc.). The people in these government programs will then have money to spend. This will increase demand, thus increasing the need for private sector positions to meet the increased demand.
#3 – In parallel with #2, the Federal government can contract out parts of the public projects to private contractors. These private contractors (businesses) will have to hire people who are paid with taxpayer dollars. But they will go out into the private sector and buy goods and services, thereby increasing demand and generating the need for more private hires. Note: anyone who works on a government job, whether a government worker or a someone working for a government contractor is being paid by We the Taxpayers. It may be worthwhile and good, but it needs to be recognized and accounted for as what it is.
#4 – The government can provide incentives and partnerships for innovation. How does Apple generate demand for its products? It comes out with new, innovative products that people want. The better they do this, the greater the demand for their products and services. The greater the demand, the greater the need to hire more people (jobs). If the government will just get out of the way and say something like, “Create a new product that results in you needing to open up for new hires, and make these jobs USA jobs, you, the entrepreneur will get a good size tax cut. More money stays with the company; easier to make a profit; incentives to innovate; success means more hires, and so on – a positive cycle.
We at O-t-c are not economists, but we believe that these minimalist steps can do a great deal toward healing our economy. We’d like to see people begin discussing things in terms of business conditions – and stop all the blather about “jobs.” Talking about jobs is like talking about the sound not coming out of your speakers. You want to create sound. But you can’t get the sound unless you supply a signal. Business is the signal. Jobs are the sound.
- Off-the-cliff.com