I just sent this to a friend on Facebook, after she said she almost defriended me over my political posts
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I love how liberals are so quick to get mad at anyone on the
other side of the aisle. Very few conservatives would have such a visceral and
angry response at anything that a liberal would post. Most conservatives do not
even contemplate eliminating liberals as friends simply because of their
political persuasion.
As for what Romney said, he essentially and completely
echoed what the Obama campaign has also said. The Obama campaign spent a great
deal of money putting together the "Julia" campaign, showing how much
everyone can depend on the government, and celebrating that as the goal of
Obama's presidency. Obama sold that dependency as a good thing. In the ad was a
woman who could easily have stood on her own, without government handouts--whether
it is 9$ per month birth control or education loans which have had the massive side-effect
of driving up tuitions to the point where you *have* to take out massive loans
to get through college. Stepping through Obama's glorious vision:
3 years old: Head Start has proven in studies to be useless (except
as babysitting); students in Head Start show no advantage within a year or two
of starting school. We spend close to 10 billion on this useless program every year.
So much for using science as a basis for public policy. The science and
research on this is clear: Head Start may be a nice sentiment, but it is, in
reality, useless.
17 years old: Race to the Top institutes a national
curriculum (in violation of at least two federal laws, by the way,) which will
inevitably (in my opinion) lead to lowest possible standards--the adaptation of
the Common Core actually forced California and Massachusetts to *lower* their
standards. As a government and political initiative, the Common Core will be
written by the most politically powerful constituents. I'll give you a hint: that
won't be parents and students.
18 years old: As for Pell grants, I saw a statistic just
yesterday that estimated that only about 40% of recipients actually get a
degree—The Pell grant program costs about 30-40 billion a year. Again, nice
sentiment, bad in reality.
22 years old: Many colleges, faced with the massive
increases in coverage demanded by Obamacare are eliminating their insurance
requirements and cancelling their previously-offered policies, as the costs
have risen (North Carolina said the costs to the students would rise 51%, from $920
for 2 semesters pre-Obamacare to $1410 post-Obamacare). Most college kids only
need catastrophic coverage—such as that which would have covered
"Julia's" surgery. Instead, Obamacare has demanded that even 19 year
olds get comprehensive, first-dollar heath "insurance", and that they
be charged at the "community rate"—in other words, they will be
charged massively more than it costs to actually pay for their health care, in
order for them—mostly still un- or under-employed young adults—to contribute to
the health costs of older, usually wealthier people.
23 years old: I have no objection to equal pay for equal
work, but the Ledbetter act wasn't actually addressing that. It was addressing
the issue of how much time could elapse between the offence and a lawsuit. As
for women being paid less, that's old thinking. In urban areas today, young
women are out-earning their male counterparts. When you control for education,
for job choices, and for time spent in the workforce, women are paid about the
same as men. On the other hand, men receive fewer college degrees, fewer Master
degrees, and fewer PhD's than women, and men are more likely to be in jail. Men
are often discussed in the media these days as "unnecessary" to modern
society, and half the commercials on TV use the stupid-guy idea to sell
products. Who is in need of protection these days?
25 years old: Federal student loans are being likened to
indentured servitude, as 50+ year olds find themselves still paying off their
loans. Many students are snookered into taking out massive loans with little
hope of actually being able to repay them. The balance between college costs
and the benefits are increasingly tipping against college. Much of this is directly
caused by the availability of student loans. Colleges hook students with
promises of a brilliant future, don't bother to spell out the costs and the
fact that student loans are not dismissible in bankruptcy court, and pocket
massive amounts of money—essentially directly from the government. As long as
the government pays, and the student doesn't see the true cost for years, the
schools can go on hiking up their tuitions year after year after year. Luckily,
more students are becoming aware that they are being defrauded and are looking
at low-cost alternatives or forgoing college—and more often grad school. Law
school applications tanked this year.
27 years old: Birth control costs $9 a month, and if shared
with your partner, this goes down to $4.50. As for preventative care, as a
young women, right out of college, these costs would be minimal, and should be
paid by everyone who can afford them out of pocket. Why send your money off to
an insurance company, who then take their cut, just to send it back to the
health provider. Much more efficient—and it should be cheaper—to pay the
provider directly. (There is no such thing as a free lunch, what you pay in
premiums pays your bills.)
31 years old: Part of the decision to have a child is making
sure you understand the costs. If you can't afford to have the kid, you
shouldn't have it in the first place. This I know from personal experience. I
would love, love, love to have a kid, but I have never even been close to being
able to afford one.
37 years old: Over the last several decades spending on
education has skyrocketed. There has been no increase *AT ALL* in actual
student outcomes. Money does not equal results. Increasingly, education money
is going to pay the pensions of retired teachers, and not into educating kids. Out
here in Los Angeles, LAUSD has been on a building binge, putting up lots of spanking
new, beautiful schools—the problem is: enrollment is actually dropping rapidly,
and the old schools are half-empty. Literally billions of dollars is being
spent on schools we don't need. Throwing money at education has never actually
improved anything.
42 years old: The SBA should be abolished! If you have a
good business idea, private money would be very happy to invest in it—putting their
own money on the line. The SBA goes in when private money passes—in other
words, when the investment is a less-good idea. Since they are only gambling
with our money, and not their own, the SBA doesn't care if they are making bad
investments.
65 years old: Medicare has been around for decades, and
prescription drug coverage was George W's program. As for Medicare, it should—like
all other government programs—be means tested. The wealthy should not take one
penny away from anyone with less money than themselves, *ever*.
67 years old: The majority of young adults are more likely
to believe in UFO's than in Social Security, and they are right to do so. Social
Security is already spending more money than it takes in, and in a couple
years, there will only be two workers paying for each Social Security recipient—there
is no trust fund, no lock box, that money was spent long ago. If the system is
not dramatically changed—and, again, means tested—it will not exist when we are
ready to retire. You can not continue to spend more than you have and expect to
keep it up. What can't go on forever, won't.
That's the "Life of Julia" and the Democrats
vision for America—willing
dependency at every step, instead of independent agency.
The fundamental problem Republicans have been dealing with
for years--as have Democrats, only from the other side--is what to do when the
clients of government outnumber the people who pay the bills. This is
disastrous. When people who pay the bills are outnumbered and outvoted by
people who spend the money, deficits and a Greek-style crashed economy is
inevitable--it may take time to build up to the crash, but the crash will *always*
happen. (I believe we are only a handful of years away from that very crash.) This
has always been inherent in any democratic system, and has been warned about by
political thinkers for centuries, if not millennia.
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