The ongoing attack on free will

Dr. Helen thinks there's been an increase in the liberal academic push to sell the idea that free will is only an illusion, and it's coming about because of a liberal desire to regulate behavior.

She quotes a recent Time article:

"There may be few things more fundamental to human identity than the belief that people are rational individuals whose behavior is determined by conscious choices. But recently psychologists have compiled an impressive body of research that shows how deeply our decisions and behavior are influenced by unconscious thought, and how greatly those thoughts are swayed by stimuli beyond our immediate comprehension."

Dr Helen:

"Beware of studies that show free will to be more and more of an illusion, for as Glenn (husband Instapundit) says, 'This kind of thing is often pitched as a reason for regulation, since your free will is portrayed as illusory.'

Perhaps the free will of academics who do so many of these studies is really the illusion. Maybe it is they who unconsciously want to give more ammunition to the current administration to proceed with policies that usurp free will and take more and more of our freedoms away. Free will and personal responsibility are the epitome of freedom. Let us not allow them to become extinct."

We have already seen many examples of stifling of free will, an increase in government intimidation, and a deafness to the public desire from the execrable excuse of what currently masquerades as a President and administration. All of this is cheered on by the comfortably numb minions and enablers iof the Tank Team Media and blahgosphere.

It seems that each day that passes brings fresh news of a further encroachment of individual free will, and a further forced bondage to government fiat in defiance of the public's common good sense and concern.

"All in all you're just another brick in The Wall"

Cato:

"It's one thing for a president to encourage all kids to work hard and stay in school – that's a reasonable use of the bully pulpit. It's another thing entirely, however, to have the U.S. Department of Education send detailed instructions to public schools nationwide on how to glorify the president and the presidency, and push them to drive social change. Frighteningly, this is what President Obama has done.

In anticipation of the president's planned September 8 address to students nationwide, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter and detailed 'classroom activities' to schools with all sorts of troubling buzzwords and guidance. In his letter, Duncan asserts that the work of educators is 'critical to…our social progress.' It's a statement that strongly suggests – as many educators have held and continue to hold – that it is the job of public schools to impose values, often collectivist, on students."

Read this other line from Duncan, as quoted here:

"In his letter to principals, Duncan said viewing of the speech is encouraged, not mandatory."

So:

Collectivism in the classroom , as indicated by our nation's Education Czar.

Who the......heck gave him the authority to assign that task?

And then this:

"......viewing of the speech is encouraged, not mandatory"?

Not mandatory? But COULD be, if some Obamanation bureaucratic functionary so decrees?

Nah, there's nothing to worry about in THAT little missive, is there?

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Exposing a traffic scam

In North Carolina, we got rid of the potential for scams like this several years ago.

Excerpt from the Chicago Tribune article, which quotes a revenue hungry local bureaucrat in a rare moment of candor:

"When the very first red-light camera was planted in the suburbs at 25th Avenue and Harrison Street in Bellwood, it instantly became more than just a traffic control device.

It became a cash machine.

That one device generates $60,000 to $70,000 a month in revenue from traffic fines for the western suburb, Bellwood Comptroller Roy McCampbell once declared as he likened the camera to “Lotto or casino type operations.”

'That intersection is a guaranteed amount of money,' McCampbell boasted to an Illinois Municipal League seminar in a 2007 presentation that was recorded and posted on YouTube. '… It just keeps popping.'

The reason is simple: The camera guards an entrance path to the Eisenhower Expressway and snaps away as cars and trucks make rolling right turns on red with astounding frequency.

....In his municipal league talk, McCampbell said he and other Bellwood officials lobbied for the new law. He aid the driving force was the deaths of four people in a July 2005 crash that involved red light running at Mannheim Road and Madison Street.

Bellwood has eight traffic cameras, but none at that intersection.

Let's make sure red light cameras NEVER come back to North Carolina, and let's make sure we stop any kind of talk of implementing this type of outrage before our North Carolina Vast Democrat Culture of Corruption money sucking vampires get their fangs out.

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Here's ANOTHER little hidden gem in 'Cap 'n Trade'

You the homeowner may likely be required to retrofit your home to fit some yet to be determined "green" standards before you sell it.

Noteworthy:

"Even though Congress says the states are responsible for carrying out the retrofits, the EPA and the Department of Energy will establish the guidelines and rules for doing so.

'The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish goals, guidelines, practices, and standards for accomplishing the purpose stated in subsection (c) [the retrofits],' the bill says.

The program would involve a system of certified auditors, inspectors, and raters who inspect homes and businesses using devices such as infrared cameras (which measure how much heat a building is giving off) to measure their energy efficiency.

The results of these energy audits would then be used to determine what retrofits need to be performed. The audits would examine things like water usage, infrared photography, and pressurized testing to determine the efficiency of door and window seals, and indoor air quality.

Those retrofits would be performed by licensed retrofit contractors using government-approved methods and resources including roofing materials that reflect solar energy.

'[B]uilding retrofits conducted pursuant to a REEP program utilize, especially in all air-conditioned buildings, roofing materials with high solar energy reflectance,' the legislation states.

After the retrofitting is complete, the government – state, local, or federal – will come back and re-inspect the house to determine how much energy has been saved and whether the retrofit is up to federal government standards."

One of the commenters nails it:

"Let me guess, just like Obama's executive order regarding Federally funded projects, only Union contractors will be allowed to refit our homes. I think he is deliberately pushing our buttons to such a limit, that when we refuse to let Federal Inspectors into our homes to see if we have adequate insulation, and then he sends in Union Contractors who will overcharge ...obviously it would have to be prevailing rate...."

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The markets have figured out Obamanomics

The rally is over.

The babble, dribble, drool, and spew from the Rocket Scientists has taken its toll once again. And the Incompetent-in-Chief's Obamanation will continue the destruction with the coming economic malfeasance known as Obamacare, Cap 'n Trade, coupled with massive inflation caused by the useless Porkulus.

Related:

"Stop the Madness that's Killing Jobs"

Excerpt:

"Why is this job decline happening? The private sector — the real engine of economic and job growth — won't hire because it's scared of what it sees coming out of Washington.

On the horizon, as far as the eye can see, are higher taxes, uncontrolled spending and layers upon layers of new regulations.

Who would hire new workers faced with that?

Also, the federal government is meddling in the private sector as never before — in essence, nationalizing two of the three major car makers with $200 billion in subsidies and capital infusions, turning our banking system into a fourth branch of government through the $700 billion TARP program, spending $200 billion to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and put them back in the business of lending to people who can't pay their loans — which is how we got into trouble in the first place.

And that's only what's been done in the last half year or so. What really scares private businesses is what's in the pipeline.

• Health insurance reform: Estimates for reforming our medical care range from $1 trillion to $3.6 trillion, with much of the bill footed by businesses. All to take care of 46 million uninsured.

But 10 million of those aren't citizens. And according to former CBO chief June O'Neill, 43% of the total could afford to buy coverage but don't. So the problem is much smaller than people think.

As for current plans to take over our health care system, they'll barely help. According to Congress' own think tank, spending $1 trillion will only remove 16 million from the 46 million uninsured. (likely much more $$ and fewer people newly, not to mention the problem of rationing and lower quality of care for everyone else.)

• Cap and trade: A major reshaping of our nation's energy policy will include massive new taxes, mostly on businesses, and cause our economy to crater. Most depressingly, despite taxing businesses and consumers to the hilt, the Waxman-Markey climate stabilization act will not remove one ounce of carbon from our atmosphere over the next decade.

It's nothing but a huge scam that will bankrupt any business that relies heavily on energy, boosting fuel prices by 22 cents a gallon and socking the average family with an $1,800 a year (more like $4000 yearly, including indirect costs) tax hike."

We haven't even begun to talk about the thuggery, the increased government intrusion into our lives, and the forthcoming erosion and/or elimination of stated and unequivocal Constitutional rights, and the invention of new "progressive" worldview agenda-driven imaginary Constitutional rights.

How bad is it going to get?

Let me ask the real question.

How bad are we going to allow it to get before we take action?

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The honeymoon's long been over....it's time for a divorce

Let's make sure his Dem family gets custody of the failed and abysmal agenda......

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'The Illusion of Government Competency'

Shannon Love , at Chicago Boyz takes three Instapundit posts, and elaborates on a theme many of us (at least those of us who pay attention) have known for quite some time.

Bureaucrats, executives, and policy makers in government have no inherent talents and intelligence that make them or their decisions and policy automatically superior to those same types of people in the public sector. Indeed, a valid argument can be made that the government functionaries are almost always inferior in almost every way.

Noteworthy:

"Leftists like to argue that, by some magical mechanism, real-world politicians make better decisions, especially better economic decisions, than do private actors in the free market. They usually make this argument after either the free market corrects itself naturally or the government interferes. They then simply assert, without any possibility of empirical verification, that the magic government unicorns could have prevented the problem if only they had been given enough power to do as they wished.

Such arguments are clearly ex post facto. Leftists cannot predict market correction any better than anyone else, so clearly they don’t have a predictive model of the relationship between any particular regulation and any particular market correction. More importantly, when they do have the power, they often do nothing to address the causes of the correction. Last year’s financial collapse demonstrates this clearly. "

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Even Dems have doubts about Obamacare

As rightly they should.

They need to help make this massive and dangerous potential disaster disappear.

Noteworthy:

"As details have emerged, business groups that had sounded supportive are suddenly openly critical, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce referring to the Senate health committee blueprint as 'a dangerous proposal' in an e-mail to members.

Insurance companies see an existential threat in Obama’s plan to include an option for government coverage, even though the administration says it is not meant to drive the industry

out of business. But health finance experts believe such a plan would inevitably drain dollars from the private-sector market."

The only reason Business considered supporting this proposal was their anticipation of ridding themselves of company paid benefit employee insurance cost on to the public at large. CFOs and lessoe beancounters alike across the nation were rubbing their hands in glee over the prospects of fattening up the old income statements.

At some point, they woke up to figure out that they were cutting their own throats in the long run. They realized that this Blue Bozos' "reform" of health care would result in the further growth and scope of Obamanation thuggery, plus such action would most certainly put an economic recovery in jeopardy, based up the information contained in the CBO report. And as well we know, it would only be a stepping stone for a complete system of socialized medicine, and the complete elimination of private health insurance.

The evidence of the previous steps in this long-planned implementation of this cherished Libthink agenda item are clear.

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Obamacare: 'Look For The Union Label....'

..and look for the alliance with the community organizers.

Noteworthy:

"But survey results aside, television and newspapers are replete with stories and images of America in a healthcare crisis. Where does the media find all those average Joes demanding a government-run system? I think I found the answer at Obama's health care website.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, past the heart-wrenching tales of health insurance lost, and the frightening predictions of how we're all about to die, or if we're very, very lucky, merely go bankrupt. Check out the video link of HHS Secretary Sebelius at the AFSCME Nurses Association.

To the average nurse, the term "nurses association" brings to mind the American Nurses Association (ANA), or the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN): professional organizations based on a particular nursing specialty, such as the operating room or ER. I'd never heard of the AFSCME Nurses Association. I couldn't think of any nursing acronym that would fit those letters, so I googled them.

It's a union!"

....and:

"Guess who's featured on the Partner Organizations list? That's right -- ACORN!

At the AFSCME Health Care web page is a link to Health Care for America NOW! a 'grassroots' organization. Among their goals:

'We are fighting for a uniquely American solution that gives you a guarantee of coverage and real choice: keep your private insurance plan or join a new public health insurance plan so you are no longer at the mercy of the private insurance industry.'

That reads like it was downloaded from the President's teleprompter. And once again, prominent on the steering committee is ACORN, along with SEIU, AFSCME, and the AFL-CIO.

So what is the unions' goal for American healthcare? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation on March 19th, 2009:

'The Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association on Wednesday announced an agreement under which they will seek to unionize employees at hospitals nationwide and promote expansion of health insurance to all U.S. residents, the New York Times reports. Under the agreement, the unions will focus on efforts to unionize employees of larger hospital systems, where nurses would join CNA and other workers would join SEIU.'

It brings to mind a mental picture of the AXIS powers dividing up the healthcare world, doesn't it? And why not? If the UAW gets to have controlling interest in the American auto industry, why shouldn't AFSCME, SEIU, and ACORN be allowed to run the 14% of GDP currently known as the American healthcare system? Millions and millions and millions of new dues-paying members from countless communities ripe for organizing. All without the hassle of passing card check."

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So what would Obamacare actually look like when implemented?

Geoffrey P. Hunt thinks it might look like our failed bureaucratic public education system.

Noteworthy:

"The government school monopoly, compulsory with mediocre results, unaffordable and ungovernable with beleaguered local taxpayers hopelessly unable to force accountability from teachers' unions co-dependent with democrat party legislators, is a perfect model for Obama to finance and ration health care for the masses....

In a seductive overture to private health plan stalwarts, Obama says the government health care system will not be a mandatory substitute for private health care preferences, only an option.

Of course those who remain in a private system will face double jeopardy -- covering their own private medical costs while suffering higher federal taxes to pay for somebody else's -- in the same manner that private school parents, opting out of horrible local public schools for far better independent alternatives, must pay private school tuition while still shouldering ever escalating property and state income taxes to educate those poor wretches who cannot escape the government's incompetence.

Those who cannot afford private health care, whose employers would rather pay higher taxes instead of underwriting actual medical claims, will also be victimized just as parents with no choice have to send their children to lousy government schools. Want to see what demotivated clock watchers -- doctors and nurses alike -In a government run clinic would look like? Just spend a few hours in a typical public high school faculty lounge.

Want to see what government hospital administrators consumed by micro-management of trivialities would look like? Just spend a few hours at a typical Public School Board or School Committee meeting.

And who would thwart the temptations for the government health care bureaucrats to regulate medical care provided by private institutions who accept federal grants for medical research? Check out the hostility towards home schoolers these days from State Boards of Education .

And given the enthusiasm shown by Congressman Barney Frank and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner alike for government control over compensation of executives running government financed private companies, why wouldn't they have an equally big appetite to regulate pay and benefits for doctors wherever they practice? Tenure for marginal practitioners and those twelve step compensation tables embedded in nearly all teachers' contracts wouldn't be far behind."

Obama: 'Oh, by the way. we're going to cut ANOTHER $313 BILLION from the amount we pay to providers, so that we can have Obamacare'

"And we're going to FURTHER reduce Medicare reimbursements while we're at it. And you will like it, whether you like it, or not"

Key points:

"Mr. Obama prefers to talk about how his plan will cut the cost of health care, but most of those changes he emphasizes are long-term goals aimed at altering the way medicine is practiced. In the short run, he and his congressional allies need to find immediate savings to pay for the subsidies they want to offer the uninsured to buy coverage.

These cuts to government spending aren't expected to reduce the cost of care for people with private health insurance. In fact, some would argue that health-care providers will simply increase rates they charge others to make up for cuts from the government.

In February, the White House outlined cuts to federal health-care spending that wound up totaling $309 billion over 10 years. The administration also proposed $327 billion in tax increases, for a total of $636 billion—what officials called a "down payment" toward the full cost of the health-care package.

Those proposed health care spending reductions included a big hit to health insurance companies, reducing payments made to the Medicare Advantage program."

In addition to all the other horrific implications of the full Obamacare agenda, it's clear that the Obamanation wants to kill off Medicare Advantage. If you're not familiar with that program, it's the privately administered alternative to original Medicare popular with many savings because it offers better coverage, lower premiums (sometimes at no cost to seniors), in many cases including prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Advantage poses a threat to any form of government health care because it is an indication that free market solutions to health care coverage are significantly better than government "solutions", which are less effective and more costly, despite what "progressive" economists and other agenda drumbeaters want you to believe.

Many fixed income seniors find Medicare Advantage to be a blessing, because original Medicare has outrageously high deductibles (Part A, the hospitalization portion's deductible is over $1000 per admission), and the cost of a Medicare Supplement policy, which helps cover these expenses, generally has a much higher premium than the Medicare Advantage programs, and prescription drug plans are an additional cost.

The savings to the beneficiaries who choose Medicare Advantage can be dramatic, but with the stealth plan to eliminate it, these seniors will pay a cruel hidden tax, one that many can't afford.In its place, we get diversion and the "Hope 'n Change" song and dance from the Obamanation and the Obaminator.

Meanwhile, we get more expensive, lower quality health care for all, and a significant portion of our citizens (joining with the other postions of the population) will end up suffering dramatically, all to fulfill a cherished "progressive" worldview social and economic agenda item.

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Education is next on the Obamanation's takeover agenda, after Obamacare is safely institutionalized

You don't think so?

Hide and watch.

Noteworthy:

"Barack Obama is leading the progressive parade, and his wagon is hitched to a team of horses that includes a compliant Democrat Congress, well-funded liberal think tanks, a shill media, and the collective mindset of a progressive movement active since the early 20^th Century.

The Great Depression chaos gave FDR the opportunity to dramatically alter the nation's socio-political landscape. Likewise, the implosion of the credit market in 2008 gave the Obama administration the chaos needed to cram down its progressive initiatives with breathtaking speed."

....and:

"Federal control over 'some kind of equal opportunity educational system' might lead to more equal development of innate skills, but it would need to be supplemented by a redistributive tax system that spreads the wealth to accompany an equalization of skills. A twofer, as it were.

Unless the nation pushes back against the trend, local communities will lose control over their neighborhood schools and a Beltway School Czar will be in our future."

I never thought it possible, but it looks like our "public school system" will turn out to be a turbocharged version of the current Government Schools/Libthink Indoctrination Centers, as we exchange one set of entrenched local bureaucrats with an even more dangerous and egregious federal version.

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How bad is the 'global warming' nonsense?

It's "Worse Than Fiction", particularly in the case of the laughable report from Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum, as properly demolished by Roger Pielke, Jr.

Excerpt:

"But the Annan report deserves even closer scrutiny as an example of the sleight of hand that so often goes with the politics of global warming. Unlike starvation, climate change does not usually kill anyone directly. Instead, the study's authors assume a four-step chain of causation, beginning with increased emissions, moving to climate-change effects, thence to physical changes like melting glaciers and desertification, and finally arriving at human effects like malnutrition and 'risk of instability and armed conflicts.'

This is a heroic set of assumptions, even if you agree that emissions are causing adverse changes in climate. Take the supposedly heightened risk of conflict: The authors suggest that 'inter-clan fighting in Somalia' is a product of climate change. A likelier explanation is the collapse of a functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in the region.

Enter Mr. Pielke, who, we hasten to add, does not speak for us (nor we for him). But given the headlines the Annan report has garnered, his views deserve amplification. Writing in the Prometheus science policy blog, Mr. Pielke calls the report a 'methodological embarrassment' and a 'poster child for how to lie with statistics' that 'does a disservice' to those who take climate change issues seriously."

On the other hand, True Believers are famous for wrongly manipulating statistics to favor their religion, while ignoring and/or misrepresenting statistics that prove they're full of the hot air they claim CO2 produces.

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Wheel of Fortune: 'Scientific Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming' version

They think they're going to solve the puzzle, but the rest of us know that the next spin will bankrupt ALL of us.

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Obama admits the obvious

"We're out of money."

Rick Moran:

"This is a man who hasn't a clue. Yes, we are in a recession and a financial crisis. So your scare tactics that ratcheted up fear in order to get your stim bill, omnibus spending, and FY 2009 budget passed - a total of more than $5 trillion with interest added - are backfiring and you think you can work your way out of it by spending a trillion more on a health insurance boondoggle?

What planet is this guy from? "

Not Krypton, obviously.

And, of course, our current and pending economic disasters can be blamed on anyone or anything but him.

Noteworthy:

" 'Don't blame me,' Obama says. It's those 7 Straw Men who are responsible. "

Such is life under the Obamanation.

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The Cap 'n Trade Bill: Waxman doesn't have a CLUE of what it contains

Yet he barfs up the nonsense about the "scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming" without missing a hurl.



Is there NOTHING that will save us from the sheer lunacy and outright lies of the True Believers?

I guess that's just one more item we'll need to add to the list of things they expect us to "smile and grin at the changes all around....."

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High speed rail in the US? Not very smart thinking

"Public Transportation" is the magic wand that Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" insist will solve our energy problems, clean up the air, and stop "global warming" with but a majestic wave and a few incantations. The most favorite of the many "public transportation" schemes large and small they try to foist on us as "the solution" their magic wand will produce is high speed rail.

For those alternatively clued folks mentioned above, I offer this: It will not do any of the things you insist it will do There is no magic wand that makes high speed rail a solution to any transportation-related problem.

Here's why: They are neither "high speed", nor are they sufficiently energy efficient over other modes of travel, and they're outrageously expensive in total.

Excerpt:

"Americans who have ridden French or Japanese high-speed trains often wonder why such trains won't work here. The problem is, they don't work that well in France or Japan.

France and Japan have each spent roughly (after adjusting for inflation) the same amount of money per capita on high-speed rail as the United States spent on the interstate highway system. Americans use the interstates to travel nearly 4,000 passenger miles and ship more than 2,000 ton-miles of freight per person per year.

By comparison, high-speed rail moves virtually no freight and carries the average resident of Japan less than 400 miles per year, and the average resident of France less than 300 miles per year. It is likely that a few people use them a lot, and most rarely or not at all.

Interstates paid for themselves out of gas taxes, and most Americans use them almost every day. Moderate or high-speed rail would require everyone to subsidize trains that would serve only a small elite.

Which symbolizes the America that Obama wants to rebuild better?"

Saying no to a carbon tax or cap and trade schemes

Legislation in congress regarding "climate change" looksto be bogged down, and apparently will go nowhere this session.

But don't count on this to be any kind of a victory for common sense economic and science. It's a conflict between the hard lefties and the looney toon lefties. regarding how much damage they get to causeour nation, our economy, and our people over a situation that doesn't exist (anthropogenic "global warming"), and can't be controlled (climate change) no matter what Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" worldview wants you to believe.

Noteworthy:

"Penalizing energy production will not speed technological change - especially when the penalties will simply be passed on to consumers who will find their utility bills skyrocketing. Spending more on utility bills will mean less disposable income for the consumer, less savings, less investment, - in short, a smaller, stagnating American economy as Obama's 'green jobs' pipedream crashes on the shoals of technological reality.

There are going to be some long, cold winters ahead."

In other words, the proverbial cold Day in Hell is imminent.

More, from NRO: "Cap and Trade and Tax"
quoting a New York Post article:

"A shocking 22 percent of a typical city apartment dweller's Con Ed electric bill goes to a battery of city, state and federal taxes under a new state rate schedule that kicks in this month, a Post analysis found.People who burn 250 kilowatt hours of electricity per month — what a 750-square-foot apartment might use when air conditioners are turned off — will see their bills jump 4 percent starting this

A big part of that jump is going to a 31 percent boost in Con Ed's property taxes, a 16 percent hike in the company's state and federal income taxes, and a sixfold boost in one of the state's utility taxes, which is rising from 0.33 percent to 2 percent, The Post's analysis shows.

After those levies are toted up in the bill, the city plops some whipped cream onto this tax sundae by imposing 2.35 percent tax on the company's gross receipts that Con Ed passes on to customers.

Then comes the maraschino cherry on top: The whole package is slapped with a 4 percent state sales tax — which in part taxes taxes elsewhere in the bill."

As the article points out, this is all before the Obamanation Hope and Climate Change policy surcharges are added on.

And the worst is yet to come......

We can't say that we never got warned. We were just too stupid as a nation of voters to see through the smoke and mirrors of the Obamarama Crusade.

Now we're stuck with the Obamanation.

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Who loves our current tax code? The bureaucrats and the pandering politicians, of course!

Is there any rational, ordinary, non looney-tooner citizen anywhere who thinks our tax system is OK?

.....which is why we won't get any reform, and is also why your taxes (direct and otherwise) are going soon if the Obamanation is further successful in its continuing wealth redistribution crusade.

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Putting Obama's 'requested budget cuts' in perspective

(hat tip: Right Angles)

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