Republican Control Of North Carolina Congress

In 2010, Republicans took control of both the North Carolina Senate and the North Carolina House for the first time since 1898.  That’s more than 100 years.

And guess what happens when taxes are reigned in while spending is cut:

Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina’s revenue collections are still ahead of projections set when legislators drew up the state government budget this year.

The General Assembly’s top economist told lawmakers Tuesday the state’s coffers have taken in $115 million above the roughly $6 billion expected through Oct. 31, the first four months of the fiscal year.

The presentation by Barry Boardman to a legislative oversight committee said the amount of taxes withheld from worker paychecks is improving and corporate income tax collections are above targeted levels.

The revenue surplus was about $150 million through September.

The fact that we have a spending problem can only be denied if you are a die hard Statist or a liar.

Occupy Raleigh Protesters Arrested

Apparently the protesters aren’t aware that private property is, you know, private:

Raleigh, N.C. — Six members of the local anti-Wall Street “Occupy” movement were arrested Friday afternoon after staging a protest at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh.

Mall police arrested the protesters around 2:45 p.m. when the group began to demonstrate in the mall’s food court, Sughrue said.

I can’t help but feel dismayed by this.  Somewhere, at some point, some school failed these people.

Cain To Endorse Gingrich

The nomination is now down to two, Newt or Mitt, and I don’t think it’ll be close.  It’s a primary, and voters trend to the to the left or right,depending on which party we’re talking about.  I don’t see the Republicans moving to the middle and selecting Mitt.

However, who is a candidate better able to beat Barack?  I’m not sure.  Mitt actually steals Obama’s votes.  But Gingrich will garner more support from Republicans, especially Republican insiders.

Either way, Obama loses.  He’s simply lost too many big time Democrat businessmen, his youth vote has grown up and a second term would only be the second time we’ve had a black President, not the first.

Anyway, it should surprise no one that Herman Cain is supporting Newt Gingrich:

Fox 5 Atlanta reported Sunday that businessman Herman Cain would endorse GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday.

Herman Cain Suspends His Campaign

Some time ago I predicted that Perry wouldn’t matter and Cain would fade.  I had no idea how right I would be.

Bachmann is and has been done for a long time.  Santorum has a Google problem.  Paul is too old.

This race is now between Mitt and Newt.

Either one, for different reasons, will beat Obama.

This Is How Occupy Raleigh Rolls

Okay, so, I like to engage in debate.  Most especially I enjoy debating people that I tend to disagree with.  I suspect that this has to do with the fact that there is little to gain in debating someone you actually see eye to eye with.  This creates a condition where I only really interact with people who are not necessarily open to my point of view.

However, most of the time, I stress most, I engage with people who “put it out there”.  That is, I’ll engage people through this media.  Blogs, chat rooms or even Facebook.  I typically don’t engage friends, I try not to at least, family, or co-workers. Each to their own in their own daily lives.

So, when I see Occupy Raleigh, a group of people who have banded together to make a point, I might wanna engage them.  I might wanna challenge their facts, their assumptions and their solutions and conclusions.  This becomes more true as they take advantage of public largess and organize in a public manner.

They protest daily.  They have created a blog.  They have a Facebook page.

They encourage dialogue and discourse.

But those are just words.  You see, the Occupy Raleigh movement i n specific, and I suspect the type of individual involved in general, suffers dissent not at all.  They will do everything, EVERYTHING, to suppress your voice, your opinion and your viewpoint unless it conforms to their ideology.  The tolerant Left is a massively repressive regime when it comes to dissent.

They march in protest of CEO speaking at Universities here in Raleigh.  They claim they are denied freedom of expression when they are yanked out of the room.  But when it is THEIR forum, THEIR stage, and anyone tries to speak out against the mob, they shut you down.

I have long avoided confronting the Occupy Raleigh folks.  Some have come here and I try to make my case; I stay away from their forums.  However, the other night I decided to create a Facebook presence for Pino.  I don’t mind these freaks knowing who I am, but I don’t wanna expose my Facebook community to these guys if I can help it.  And I posted a ling on their wall.

It was deleted within 20 minutes.

Then I commented one of their posts.  Nothing untoward, same tone I use here.

I was called a troll.

Later I defended my position and let well enough alone.

Tonight, I got an email telling me that they had replied to my post.  I went to Facebook and they had deleted all of my comments and I’m now unable to post comments.

The left image is from my personal page, the right image from my Pino page.

If you dissent, you will be silenced.

This people, is how the Left rolls.  It’s how they’ve ALWAYS rolled.  They claim tolerance and compassion and understanding, but when those same qualities are demanded of them, they balk and and refuse.  They censor, the repress, the silence and they are brutal in the totality of it.

These people don’t represent the 99%.  They don’t wanna hear open and honest debate.  They aren’t about new ideas.  These people are Marxists.  They are Stateists.  These people are hard core Liberal actors bent on changing the way in which America was created.  They don’t like risk and reward.  They don’t appreciate Individual Liberty.

These organizations are damage.  And reasonable people route around damage.

The Fruits of Liberty

I suspect that a child, with loving parents, will grow to be a confident young adult.  Certainly the variances of life will come to play, but love begets love.

Of course it does.

Individual Liberty, when left alone to flourish, is wonderful thing to behold:

 

Incentives: II

The other day I asked if we could incent people to cross a reasonably busy freeway by growing the financial reward for doing so?  For example, line 1000 people up on an interstate highway and place $5 on the other side.  Some number of people, maybe zero, will try to cross to claim that $5.

Now make it $500.  More people will try to cross for $500 than will try for $5.

We all agree.  We get it.

In short, we know that incentives matter.

Go back to the scenario.  Suppose that the financial reward for crossing the freeway became large enough that a relatively significant number of people made the attempt.  And one of them was struck by a car and perished as a result.

Who is to blame?

  1. The driver of the car?
  2. The the individual creating the incentive?
  3. The individual who attempted to cross the freeway?

Wherein Pino Was Corrected

Last night I was talking to a more Liberal friend of mine.  Both lovers of things political and dedicated to the “Ought”, we often discuss the on goings of the world, the nation and all things political.  During our discussion the topic of privatization came up.  Typical “battle lines” were drawn.  Me with my, “There is precious little the government can do well” and his “It is the role of the government”.

Well, he asked me to demonstrate one thing that the private sector does better than the government.  My answer, deliver packages, things like the mail.  Companies like FedEx and UPS do it better and they do it while making a profit.  Further, to make my point, I claimed that there is nothing that says these things have to be done by the government.  They are not specifically called out in the Constitution.

He said, “Ahhh, yes.  The Post Office IS called for specifically in the Constitution”.

I checked.

He was right.  I was wrong.

Section. 8.

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Clause 4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

Clause 6: To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

The Constitution DOES call for the Government to establish a Post Office.

However, even as I’m writing this, it occurs to me that the requirement is that the government establishes these post offices.  I wonder if people think that the government must actually RUN them with government employees?

For example, the same clause calls for the government to post roads.  But not all roads are government run, owned or managed.  We have roads that are in private hands.

Anyway, the point is I didn’t know that Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 called out the Post Office.

Huh.

Incentives

Assume:

  1. 1000 people on the North side of an East-West freeway.
  2. Someone on the South side of that same freeway with money to give away to anyone who crosses the freeway.
  3. An amount of traffic that would allow a pedestrian the chance of crossing with a reasonable danger level of being struck by a car.

Do we all agree that more people will cross the freeway as the amount of money on the other side increases?

 

Occupy Raleigh

The Occupy Movement gathers strength amongst it’s supporters from the fact that they claim to represent the 99%.  That means that they feel 99% of American’s are being fairly depicted by these people’s actions.  That somehow, the words and ideas and thoughts and thesis of this movement is embraced by the 99% of American’s that are not the richest 1%.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Much of us not in the top 1% realize what it means to succeed in America, what it takes to make a life that is better than the one given to you as a child.  It requires risk, sacrifice and hard work.  It means that things we might otherwise hold dear to us will have to be passed by or delayed in order to achieve the goal.

And sometimes that doesn’t work out.  For some, it means that a life is spent in futile frustration agonizing over business ideas that never took hold.  For others it might mean a life of unrealized potential; an otherwise qualified corporate President is relegated to a life of middle management due to circumstances. And, in some cases, it means that decisions that are made are wrong.  Or if not wrong, less right.

But in aggregate, the fact that Americans all, poorest to the richest, have the best life ever afforded any group of people belonging to a nation in the history of the world is proof enough that Capitalism is the greatest anti-poverty program going.

But that isn’t enough.  For some, they have to make the papers, the news, the limelight.  They have to scream out that the world just isn’t fair and that somehow, of course, it’s not their fault.

And that’s where the Occupy Movement comes in:

RALEIGH — Protesters from the occupy movement disrupted a speech at N.C. State University Wednesday afternoon by the head of Wells Fargo Bank, but the program resumed after police escorted about a dozen protesters from the building.

There were no arrests during or following the outburst that occurred about 4:45 p.m..

John G. Stumpf, the president and CEO of Wells Fargo, was on campus as part of an executive lecture series sponsored by NCSU’s Poole College of Management.

His remarks were disrupted when protesters scattered amongst the audience of about 400 stood and started speaking. One woman protester began a speech and the others repeated and amplified her words.

The protesters said, “John Stumpf, we won’t take your home, but we will take a moment of your time. Your leadership has led to the death of the American dream. Wells Fargo is guilty of widespread predatory lending and holds over $5.7 billion in student debt.”

I suspect that John G. Stumpf has created more jobs in his singular life that the number of jobs that will be created in aggregate of the Occupiers escorted from that room.  Further, the benefit to society by having Wells Fargo around is lost on many, if not all, of those Occupiers.

Proof?

They hold it against this man that his bank holds $5.7 billion in student debt.

I ask you, how willing would YOU be to borrow money to some kid to get a degree in Eastern European Social Studies with a focus on Slovakian history?