Dan Popp
Poppouri
By Dan Popp
If government can create jobs, why do welfare programs exist?
The latest cowardly and incompetent attack by al Qaeda, on Christmas Day 2009, surely brought some clarity to hundreds of people. How could you vote for a guy who can't bear to say either "war" or "terrorism," and who grants Constitutional rights to our enemies, when the new defining moment of your life is, "These maggots tried to kill me."
...Or "my daughter" or "my uncle."
I'm in favor of smaller government as a general principle, but there is one new federal agency I'd like to see: a Song Oversight Board. If you wanted to remake a classic recording, you'd have to submit an application to the SOB. And I'd appoint Simon Cowell as SOB chairman. The agency's guiding policy would be: If it's a good song we should leave it alone, and if it's a bad song we certainly don't want to hear it again. Getting approval to remake a song would be an expensive and lengthy process (though naturally not as arduous as getting FDA approval for a life-saving drug). The red tape would discourage most "artists" from even musing about another remake of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This strikes me as an excellent use of the soul-crushing inefficiency of bureaucracy.
No one can be a true Christian without the True.
I'd be more likely to believe that scientists can predict the temperature over the whole planet a hundred years from now, if they could give me a reliable forecast for my little speck on the map a hundred hours from now.
The most inconvenient truth of all is that the proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming already had a solution — Global Marxism — before they found the problem to go with it.
Like the ads say, "All investment involves risk." But when the government gambles with your grandchildren's earnings it is paving a worry-free superhighway to Utopia. When someone suggests that you could invest your own money, this is ridiculed as a "risky scheme."
If nothing but an all-powerful government can save America, is that America worth saving?
The sentence, "Christians have a duty to pay taxes" is half right. In our republic the people are not just citizens, but citizen-rulers. As citizens we have a duty to pay taxes, and as rulers we have a duty to ensure that all taxes are just.
One of the things Donkeycare is supposed to fix, is that under the current "broken" system some people pay less than their fair share for health care, subsidized by others who have to pay more.
And everyone in Washington is simply appalled by that.
When a politician calls for "common-sense regulation," isn't he admitting that all the regulations he and his counterparts have imposed so far, are nonsense?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to think that people are the problem, and government is the solution.
For those who still don't believe that a state lottery is a stupidity tax, I have it on good authority that each week, a fair number of Ohioans ask to play a game called "Responsibly."
If I take $20 out of your pocket and make you wash my car to get it back, you probably won't thank me for "creating a job" for you. So what changes if I take the money out of your neighbor's pocket?
Leftists justify government coercion by saying that voluntary giving won't cover all needs. Meanwhile some of these compassionate folks want to tax your previously tax-deductible donations, so you'll have less money to give. Doesn't this seem like calling someone "lame" while you're sawing off his legs?
And aren't needs potentially infinite? If our goal is to meet all human needs, we will surely drain productive citizens dry and still be awash in "needs."
It strikes me that we shouldn't call them "Leftists;" they are really "upside-downists." Some of them are so topsy-turvy they want government to kill those it should be protecting, and to protect those it should be killing.
The pumps at my usual gas station have a sticker that reads, "Please pre-pay in advance."
Speaking of time travel, our current Congress has become so arrogant it thinks it can rule the future. If we did write unrepealable laws like the Medes and Persians, we would probably think long and hard before enacting any new legislation. I doubt that we'd see a Christmas Eve emergency vote on a huge bill no one had read if we couldn't even tweak it later.
If you know any Medo-Persians, please ask them how that no-repeal thing worked out.
What comes after "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," is not a period.
Today I was eating lunch at a fast-food place when I realized that a little smile had crept onto my face. It wasn't the food; they were playing normal muzak, not Christmas muzak.
In all sincerity, but also to irk a certain employee of mine at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I wish you and yours a very blessed — and profitable — New Year.
© Dan Popp
December 30, 2009
If government can create jobs, why do welfare programs exist?
The latest cowardly and incompetent attack by al Qaeda, on Christmas Day 2009, surely brought some clarity to hundreds of people. How could you vote for a guy who can't bear to say either "war" or "terrorism," and who grants Constitutional rights to our enemies, when the new defining moment of your life is, "These maggots tried to kill me."
...Or "my daughter" or "my uncle."
I'm in favor of smaller government as a general principle, but there is one new federal agency I'd like to see: a Song Oversight Board. If you wanted to remake a classic recording, you'd have to submit an application to the SOB. And I'd appoint Simon Cowell as SOB chairman. The agency's guiding policy would be: If it's a good song we should leave it alone, and if it's a bad song we certainly don't want to hear it again. Getting approval to remake a song would be an expensive and lengthy process (though naturally not as arduous as getting FDA approval for a life-saving drug). The red tape would discourage most "artists" from even musing about another remake of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This strikes me as an excellent use of the soul-crushing inefficiency of bureaucracy.
No one can be a true Christian without the True.
I'd be more likely to believe that scientists can predict the temperature over the whole planet a hundred years from now, if they could give me a reliable forecast for my little speck on the map a hundred hours from now.
The most inconvenient truth of all is that the proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming already had a solution — Global Marxism — before they found the problem to go with it.
Like the ads say, "All investment involves risk." But when the government gambles with your grandchildren's earnings it is paving a worry-free superhighway to Utopia. When someone suggests that you could invest your own money, this is ridiculed as a "risky scheme."
If nothing but an all-powerful government can save America, is that America worth saving?
The sentence, "Christians have a duty to pay taxes" is half right. In our republic the people are not just citizens, but citizen-rulers. As citizens we have a duty to pay taxes, and as rulers we have a duty to ensure that all taxes are just.
One of the things Donkeycare is supposed to fix, is that under the current "broken" system some people pay less than their fair share for health care, subsidized by others who have to pay more.
And everyone in Washington is simply appalled by that.
When a politician calls for "common-sense regulation," isn't he admitting that all the regulations he and his counterparts have imposed so far, are nonsense?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to think that people are the problem, and government is the solution.
For those who still don't believe that a state lottery is a stupidity tax, I have it on good authority that each week, a fair number of Ohioans ask to play a game called "Responsibly."
If I take $20 out of your pocket and make you wash my car to get it back, you probably won't thank me for "creating a job" for you. So what changes if I take the money out of your neighbor's pocket?
Leftists justify government coercion by saying that voluntary giving won't cover all needs. Meanwhile some of these compassionate folks want to tax your previously tax-deductible donations, so you'll have less money to give. Doesn't this seem like calling someone "lame" while you're sawing off his legs?
And aren't needs potentially infinite? If our goal is to meet all human needs, we will surely drain productive citizens dry and still be awash in "needs."
It strikes me that we shouldn't call them "Leftists;" they are really "upside-downists." Some of them are so topsy-turvy they want government to kill those it should be protecting, and to protect those it should be killing.
The pumps at my usual gas station have a sticker that reads, "Please pre-pay in advance."
Speaking of time travel, our current Congress has become so arrogant it thinks it can rule the future. If we did write unrepealable laws like the Medes and Persians, we would probably think long and hard before enacting any new legislation. I doubt that we'd see a Christmas Eve emergency vote on a huge bill no one had read if we couldn't even tweak it later.
If you know any Medo-Persians, please ask them how that no-repeal thing worked out.
What comes after "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," is not a period.
Today I was eating lunch at a fast-food place when I realized that a little smile had crept onto my face. It wasn't the food; they were playing normal muzak, not Christmas muzak.
In all sincerity, but also to irk a certain employee of mine at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I wish you and yours a very blessed — and profitable — New Year.
© Dan Popp
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
