what if?

Zelda Kaplan, a philanthropist and energetic - if geriatric -Manhattan nightlife fixture, known for her African print dresses and oversize sunglasses died Wednesday after collapsing at Fashion Week on Wednesday. She was 95.

Kaplan fainted in the front row of the Joanna Mastroianni runway show as the models began walking, just moments after she had posed for photogs wearing a festive red skirt suit.

She was carried out by security and rushed to the hospital where she died.

Zelda was no relation (pity).  But, she went out just as I hope I might.  She was doing what she loved, right in the thick of things - then gone.   Of course, we don't get to choose.  Yet, just in case someone up there  is listening - sounds good to me!

Millions of dead people are registered to vote.  Many are registered in more than one state.  So - why do Democrats still reject voter ID - even when it is provided at no cost to anyone who cannot afford it?

We know why.  It's so they can cheat and win elections that they might otherwise lose.

The Justice Department blocked South Carolina's new photo ID law. And NAACP President Benjamin Jealous attacked the reforms as "the greatest assault on voting rights ... since the dawn of Jim Crow."

Democrats make two bogus arguments. First, that ballot fraud isn't "widespread" enough to merit the new requirement, as though there's such a thing as a tolerable level of fraud. Second, that picture ID laws would suppress voter turnout among minorities.

In fact, states with picture ID laws go out of their way to make sure everyone who needs an ID can get one. Plus, turnout in Indiana and Georgia swelled after their laws went into effect, and the Supreme Court already ruled that picture ID laws don't infringe on anyone's right to vote.

Given this, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Democrats count on exploiting an inept and tattered registration system to help them win close elections. If that isn't the case, they should prove it by backing a reform that would do much to protect the sanctity of the ballot box.

Recently, Mitt Romney made the claim that he is "severely conservative."  Many of us chuckled (or was it wincing?) at this kind of locution.

But Romney's most recent tough competition is, as Gene Healy puts it, "severely wrong."

A recent Time magazine symposium asked leading thinkers on the Right, "What Is Conservatism?" Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist offered this answer: "Conservatives ask only one thing of the government. They wish to be left alone."

Tell that to Santorum, whose agenda rests on meddling with other people, sometimes with laws, sometimes with aircraft carrier groups.

"This idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do," Santorum complained to NPR in 2006, "that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues ... that is not how traditional conservatives view the world."

The only people I want "involved in my bedroom" are me and whomever I happen to invite in there with me.  If there are others who want Santorum to dictate their bedroom behavior, then they are fine to have him "get involved."  But for me - and many others, I would guess - we just wish to be left alone.

He’s intent on killing this program. Remember when he tried to kill it slowly back in 2009, promising to fund it until the current participants graduated high school and then to pull the plug? We’re talking about something like $20 million in a budget of $3.8 trillion and somehow he can’t scrape together the money for scholarships for poor kids to go to private school. When you can’t get a few crumbs from a multitrillion-dollar pie, there must be a very, very important reason.

Instead, the President's pet programs are ones like this:

The White House intends to boost government subsidies for wealthy buyers of the Chevy Volt and other new-technology vehicles — to $10,000 per buyer.

That mammoth subsidy would cost taxpayers $100 million each year if it is approved by Congress, presuming only 10,000 new-technology autos are sold each year…

The new subsidy level represents a 33 percent jump from the current $7,500 government payout for each Volt buyer, even though the Volt’s buyers are already among the wealthiest Americans. It will be offered to buyers of any new-technology autos, including battery-powered autos and cars powered by natural gas, said a White House official.

If these are really liberal values, then please - please do not ever think that I am a liberal. 

Why is it that when it comes to choice, sometimes it seems as if abortion is the only aspect of life in which liberals want to allow us to have a choice!?

Case in point.....

Opponents of allowing younger workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes through personal accounts have long pointed to the supposed riskiness of private investment. The volatility of private capital markets over the past several years, and especially recent declines in the stock market, have seemed to bolster their argument. However, private capital investment remains remarkably safe over the long term. Despite recent declines in the stock market, a worker who had invested privately over the past 40 years would have still earned an average yearly return of 6.85 percent investing in the S&P 500, 3.46 percent from corporate bonds, and 2.44 percent from government bonds. If workers who retired in 2011 had been allowed to invest the employee half of the Social Security payroll tax over their working lifetime, they would retire with more income than if they relied on Social Security. Indeed, even in the worst-case scenario—a low-wage worker who invested entirely in bonds—the benefits from private investment would equal those from traditional Social Security.

Leave the current system in place, if you wish, for those who don't want to "take the risk."  Why, however, can't everyone else have the opportunity to fund a far more substantial retirement?

Ray has given up.

During a drive between the Mon Valley towns of McKeesport and Elizabeth, a man named Ray was overheard calling into a local radio station to talk about the subject of the hour: November's presidential election.

The first thing he said is that he is a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Pressed by the talk-show host, he said he would not vote for Obama this time.

The rest of Ray's answer was not unique or remarkable: Yes, he is a union member. Yes, he wanted Obama to succeed. And, yes, he is very disappointed after giving the president more than enough chances to prove he can lead.

Ray said he had finally given up.

Let's hope that there are Rays of Hope throughout the nation.

Yes, it is about equality.

Are taxes in the U.S. a heavier burden on middle class and poor people than in other nations?  Do the wealthy get sweetheart deals?

No. 

In fact, the U.S. has a highly progressive tax system.

Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.)

Do not, however, expect liberal writers like Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman to apologize.  Instead, they specialize in name calling to deflate the arguments (rooted in fact) of those with whom they disagree.

Perhaps I would, too, if I attempted to argue for false conclusions like they do.

In my most recent post, I talked about our language has changed and how classic liberalism has been bastardized.  Here, another viewpoint on similar issues.

Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.

Podesta has proposed what amounts to a national, more ideological variant of what in Obama’s home state is known as “The Chicago Way.†Under that system, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune explains, “citizens, even Republicans, are expected to take what big government gives them. If the political boss suggests that you purchase some expensive wrought-iron fence to decorate your corporate headquarters, and the guy selling insurance to the wrought-iron boys is the boss’ little brother, you write the check.†But the American clerisy isn’t merely a bunch of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic lifers, and the United States isn’t one-party Chicago. The clerisy are more like an ideological vanguard, one based largely in academe and the media as well as part of the high-tech community.

Their authoritarian progressivism—at odds with the democratic, pluralistic traditions within liberalism—tends to evoke science, however contested, to justify its authority. The progressives themselves are, in Daniel Bell’s telling phrase, “the priests of the machine.†Their views are fairly uniform and can be seen in “progressive legal theory,†which displaces the seeming plain meaning of the Constitution with constructions derived from the perceived needs of a changing political environment. Belief in affirmative action, environmental justice, health-care reform, and redistribution from the middle class to the poor all find foundation there. More important still is a radical environmental agenda fervently committed to the idea that climate change has a human origin—a kind of secular notion of original sin.

Please.  Those who know "what is best for us" are surely allowed to preach.  They ought not, however, be able to dictate our lives.

And, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, be sure that there are politicians from your party who are, so to speak, bringing home the bacon.  As it turns out, however, they're not bringing it home for the U.S. or even for their constituents.  Essentially, the bacon is going into their own pantry.

What am I ranting about?  This.

If what is legal becomes the norm rather than what is moral, we are all going to be very poor. The names of these people should be on the front page of the Washington Post every day until election day and their constituents should vote them out of office regardless of what they have “accomplished†with other people’s money.

This isn’t just pork. It’s special pork. I don’t know what to call it. Maybe the other other white meat.

From the Washington Post:

Nearly 90 city employees were suspended Monday and face potential firing and prosecution for receiving unemployment benefits while holding their city jobs, District officials said.

In addition, about 40 former city workers cashed unemployment checks they were not entitled to and also face sanctions. In all, the city estimates it has paid out as much as $800,000 in unemployment benefits to working city employees since 2009.

It's where the money is.

A challenging list of questions for President Obama and those who support his notions of what is "fair" - and what is not - in our nation.

Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?

Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?

Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?

And so forth and so on.  I recommend that you read the Whole Thing.

I want granite.

Although I'm a Realtor and I know that many, many of my buyers want granite, too, I must say this.  People; it's just a countertop.  Yes, it can be beautiful and strong and hard wearing.  Still.  You can't have a chat with it.  You can't pour your heart out to it.  You can't fall in love with it.

Ooops.  I guess if you read the article, you can indeed fall in love with granite.  Is our national obsession with having Granite In The Kitchen symptomatic of something deeper?

You tell me.

Why can a dog touch a disabled child in ways that no one and nothing else can?  An amazing story of pain and connection.

Chancer doesn’t know that Iyal is cognitively impaired. What he knows is that Iyal is his boy. Chancer loves Iyal in a perfect way, with an unconditional love beyond what even the family can offer him. Chancer never feels disappointed in Iyal or embarrassed by Iyal. Beyond cognitive ability or disability, beyond predictions of a bright future or a dismal one, on a field of grass and hard-packed dirt, between the playground and the baseball diamond, you can see them sometimes, the two of them, running, laughing their heads off, sharing a moment of enormous happiness, just a boy and his dog.

Nature is one of our greatest gifts.  From clean air to lush plantings to sparkling lakes, rivers and oceans - I love it all and I want it protected.  Nevertheless, some among us take "protecting the environment" to such heights that the goal is actually lost.  We cannot sacrifice common sense.  We must take human needs and wants into account.

I'm afraid someone did none of the above in Florida schools recently....

Students at a high school in Boca Raton, Florida, must step over rivers of urine and endure the stench of rancid waste after a plan to bring ‘green’ waterless urinals into bathrooms backfired.

School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms.

But with no water moving through the school’s copper pipes to flush the urine into the sewer system, the waste produced noxious gases that ate through the metal, leaving leaky pipes that allowed urine to drip into walls and flow onto floors.

‘It was pretty disgusting,’ school board chairman Frank Barbieri told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

‘The girls had to step over a river of urine. I could smell it as soon as I walked into the hallway.’

Now, the school district, which was hoping to save $100 a year in water costs for each waterless urinal, must pay $500,000 to repair the damage and replace the appliances with the traditional flush variety in four high schools.

We've all heard the phrase "You are what you eat."  Now, however, researchers are wondering if you are what brown fat you have.

And then get sick.

In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire.

Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says.

“It’s an F-U,†a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit.

"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."

– F. A. Hayek

But opportunity.

A good column at the New York Times pointing out what really matters to people.

While Americans are hearing more and more about class conflict, there is little indication that they are increasingly divided along these lines. People don’t necessarily want to take money from the wealthy; they just want a better chance to get rich themselves. They care about policies that give everyone a fair shot — a distinction that candidates in both parties should understand as they head into the 2012 campaigns.

The issue here is not about class envy. Rather, it’s a perception that government policies are skewed toward helping the already wealthy and powerful. While a December Gallup poll found few respondents wanting the government to attempt to reduce the income gap between rich and poor, 70 percent said it was important for the government to increase opportunities for people to get ahead. What the public wants is not a war on the rich but more policies that promote opportunity.

Do "regular folks" begrudge those at the top for their wealth?  No.  They recognize that in a free society, people with different talents putting forth disparate efforts will reap rewards (or not) in a distinct manner.

Nevertheless, they do want some equity in opportunity to succeed.  That is where our government should focus:  opening up opportunities for as many as possible and stomping out "crony capitalism."