DLGWGTW: November 19, 2017

In the spirit of “don’t let good writing go to waste,” this is a roundup of some of my recent social media comments. I’m one of those people who likes to take my free education to a number of left-leaning social media sites, so my readers may not see this. 

Again, this looks like a two-part piece for tonight and Tuesday night.

You had to know there would be Democrat spin to counter with the GOP tax plan. It wasn’t just the Harris townhall. So I had a question for Steny Hoyer:

Maybe you can answer this question. The Bush tax cuts went into effect 2001 and 2003, and Reagan’s in 1983. Just how did tax cuts cause deficits when income tax revenue rose from $288.9 billion in 1983 to $445.7 billion in 1989 and $793.7 billion in 2003 to $1,163.4 billion in 2007 (before the Pelosi-Reid recession hit)?

There was plenty of money there, Too bad there were a lot of greedy hands that wanted to spend it.

A day later, Steny modified his propaganda offensive to point out the Republican opposition (based on the removal of state and local income tax deductions.) So some wag suggested we go back to the IRS code of 1956, marginal rates and all (when the top marginal rate was 90%.) So I said:

Okay, do I get the spending from 1956 too? You may have yourself a deal.

I reminded another it’s about the tax rates:

This is why you work to lower your state and local tax rates, too. Why should the rest of the country subsidize their spendthrift ways?

In that same vein, to another comment:

I would bet what Steny is leaving out is that (Rep. Peter) King’s constituents simply don’t want to lose the state/local tax deduction or have the mortgage interest limits reduced. It’s an issue somewhat unique to that area (high taxes + high home prices.)

As for the claim the GOP plan won’t help taxpayers like me:

Nope. Did the back of the envelope calculations – we stay in the 25% bracket and the increased standard deduction is just about a wash for losing the three individual exemptions. Where we will gain is the increased child tax credit, especially since they jump the phase out past our income level. It’s not a ton but it is more in OUR pockets since we don’t itemize. (And if we did the child tax credit would still help.)

My favorite, though, was the guy who blamed Steny for losing the Democrat majority.

“Why did you give (the House majority) to the Tea Party?”

Maybe because they earned it? “The people who stayed home and didn’t vote” didn’t exist anymore so than they did in the 2006 midterm since turnout was slightly higher as a percentage of voters (41.8 to 41.3, per the United States Election Project.)

It was the people motivated to come out that did the Democrats in.

A few days later, Steny came out with some pollaganda that needed to be addressed:

Well, if you ask the question that way you can expect that answer. How about asking them what they think of their own tax cut?

So when someone sniveled that they liked their taxes just fine but didn’t want tax cuts for millionaires because “the lost dollars will start a downward spiral of the economy,” well, you know I had to do some edumacashun.

I personally don’t care if millionaires get more tax cuts or not. Why should you? See, this is a teachable moment because your last statement tells me you have completely bought the notion that the government has first claim to our money, which is false – they do not perform the labor or create the value implicit in it, we do. There is no such thing as a “lost dollar” to them but there is to you and me.

He didn’t even like the fact the economy added a lot of jobs because wages went down a penny.

You say the same thing EVERY TIME. It’s like a broken record. And even the New York Times is admitting the wage loss is an anomaly. So what do you really have here besides a batch of hot air?

Once again, someone asserted that I’ll “have to learn the hard way.” Ma’am, I think I’ll do the educating here.

Okay, let’s go through this one point at a time.

“a giant giveaway to Corporations” – per the WSJ, about 2/3 of this package goes to corporations. Yes, $1 trillion may seem like a lot but it’s spread over 10 years – and in a $20 trillion economy $100 billion a year is a drop in the bucket. Of course, that’s a static analysis which doesn’t account for gains in GDP thanks to new investment, higher dividends, and so forth.

By the way, companies that “raise executive pay and buy back shares of stock to raise prices” find they lose market share over time to those that invest more wisely. And to be quite frank, the companies earned it in the first place – the government did nothing but put its hand out and maybe was even in cahoots with the company.

The naysayers also seem to assume that this package will “cost” the government the full $1.5 trillion over the decade, when it’s been properly referred to as “up to.” It could be 1.3, 1.0 or maybe even a wash. Do yourself a favor and look up income tax revenues in the periods after large tax cuts – you may be shocked to learn something new.

If a higher debt actually led to higher interest rates, we should have had Carteresque interest rates throughout both Bush 43 and (especially) Obama. But we did not.

This package will significantly limit deductions, but the question is: how many middle-class people itemize? If you don’t itemize deductions, which are often pegged to only apply if they add up to a significant percentage of income, then the changes which affect you most will be the expanded brackets at the lower end, the larger standard deduction, and the increased child tax credit.

“It likely cuts public services. It raises the specter of cutting Medicare and Medicaid.” Speculation at best. Besides, many of the functions the federal government has usurped for itself should properly be done by the states.

“The very rich will pay less taxes…” Well, wait a second – I thought we were eliminating all these deductions. The high-end rate is still the same, but they lose out with the mortgage interest and second home changes, among other things. Not that it truly matters anyway, since the so-called “1%” pay a share of the tax bill that is almost double their share of income. As I have often told Steny and now tell you, the class envy card is not accepted at my establishment. On principle alone the government should not be entitled to anyone’s estate just because they achieved their heavenly reward.

If the rich own 40% of the stock market, that means the rest of us own the other 60%. I don’t begrudge wise investors their success.

Now I will concede the point that the rich “don’t spend nearly as large a percentage of their income, as the middle class, and poor” to the extent that they don’t spend the same percentage on necessities: i.e. they eat, drive, heat their home, etc. But I argue they do spend a significant portion of their income as the drivers who bring prices on certain items down for the rest of us, which is a less tangible benefit. They also donate the large sums of money to charity that we can’t. (My wife’s employer is a beneficiary – a local philanthropist donated $1 million toward their renovation and expansion. I know I couldn’t do that.)

“It’s a dumb and backwards plan, written by people who either, don’t know what they are doing, or know it, but are prepared to lie about it.”

Or you could be swallowing the lies. I just know what I have seen, and the most prosperity I recall under a president is when Reagan was in office. Second was Bill Clinton when Newt Gingrich ran the House.

The one constant is that we were always told Republicans do tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s funny because I’m nowhere near wealthy but my taxes went down, too, and I put the money to good use.

Let this be a lesson to those who read here.

I quit picking on Steny for a bit, but I had an observation on someone else’s writing:

It’s been almost a year since Donald Trump was elected as President by enough voters in enough states to win the Electoral College. (This said to satisfy those on the Left who whine about Hillary winning the popular vote overall.)

But something I noticed right away upon his election was a change in economic outlook among the average Joes of the country, and it’s something I am sensitive to. I was laid off from a great job in December of 2008 basically because of pessimism over how Barack Obama would handle the economy, seeing that we were in the depths of the Great Recession (or as I call it, the Pelosi-Reid recession.)

Eight years and a few months later, the good Lord blessed me with a return to that same great job because of optimism over how Donald Trump would fix a stagnant economy.

So I submit this as evidence of my suspicions.

I have also found out that even Andy Harris isn’t immune to people who don’t know about the benefits of tax cuts or limited government. They comment on his site, too. For example, the people who think killing the estate tax is a bad idea got this:

Why? It’s a tiny percentage of federal revenues but can be devastating to family businesses and farms.

Yet people try to give me left-wing claptrap that it’s a “myth” the estate tax threatens family businesses and farms, So I find an example of one that would be only to be told it’s a biased source. Fun little game they play.

So I found a really unimpeachable source:

If you can’t refute the evidence, question the source?

But you’re missing the point: the government has NO right to the money just because the person died. If my neighbor had an estate of $5.48 million and got to pass all of his along yet mine was $5.5 million and my heirs had to fork over 40% to the government, how is that right in your eyes? I consider that arbitrary and capricious.

Nor do I stand for communist principles, to wit:

“Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.”

That comes straight from the Marxists themselves. Deny that.

Then someone tried to say that trickle-down economics didn’t work and the tax cuts in Kansas were proof. I pointed out there were extenuating circumstances:

First of all, the issue in Kansas wasn’t the tax cuts – it was the state’s lack of willingness to curtail its spending to match, along with some issues with low prices in the commodity markets they depend on that eroded tax revenue even further. This is a good explanation.

Similarly, what increased the federal deficit during the aughts was a lack of willingness to cut spending to match tax income (as it has been for every year this century, including some real doozies of deficits under the last President, But back then deficits didn’t matter.)

But given the fact that this district voted handily for our Congressman and for President Trump, by extension it would be logical for Andy to vote for a tax plan the President supports.

And if you don’t agree that tax cuts create an economic boom, let me ask you: are you working for yourself or are you working for an allowance from the government? I don’t see Uncle Sam doing the work for which I show up at 7 and work until 5 most days. I earned the money and I want to keep more of it.

(A good question for Rep. Andy Harris, M.D. – is the reason we don’t adopt the FairTax a worry about lack of revenue or worry about lack of control of our behavior through the tax code?)

And again, I got the charge of biased source because Koch brothers or something like that. I can play that game too.

The contributor is actually a member of the Tax Policy Center, which is more left-leaning. And note that it was a court order demanding increased education spending that caused their budgetary problems for the year.

I think the truth is probably somewhere closer to the KPI version of events (since they are actually on the ground in Kansas) as opposed to a Beltway-based Forbes contributor. Actually, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the role of government, too.

This will be enough for tonight. Stay tuned on Tuesday for more.

DLGWGTW: September 24, 2017

In the spirit of “don’t let good writing go to waste,” this is a roundup of some of my recent social media comments that I’m going to make a regular Sunday evening feature. (Maybe not every week but more often than not.)`I’m one of those people who likes to take my free education to a number of left-leaning social media sites, so my readers may not see this.

Health care was in the news a lot lately, and social media was no exception. Here’s what I responded to a typical liberal scare tactic from Senator Ben Cardin:

That would be more like the way it should be…states could tailor their programs to the desires of their citizens. I love how loaded and extreme the headline writer made this sound.

Remember, health care is NOT a right, but life is.

Then when some liberal tried to go all Article 1, Section 8 on me (hey, at least he’s read the Constitution) I had to make sure he understood something:

Nope, “general welfare” does not equal health care. Try again.

So when his pal Steny Hoyer jumped in I had to revise and expand my remarks:

Yes, because letting an incompetent federal bureaucracy run health care is working SO well. It’s funny – your post came up right after Senator Ben Cardin‘s caterwauling about the same subject on my page. I smell a Facebook conspiracy.

And again I had a few people tell me their mistaken belief that health care is a right. That’s all right, I have plenty of time to set them straight:

Again, the idea is to bring this down to a state level, although ideally we would work our way back to fee-for-service and insurance to cover catastrophic events. Who said a state could not step in for preventive care if they wished? Better them than Uncle Sam.

Now you can call me a troll but if you are familiar with the website Shareblue, it purports to the the “Breitbart of the Left.” Problem is, their hacks aren’t even readable sometimes and they distort stories five times worse than Breitbart ever dreamed of. Here’s a case in point and my response.

David Brock created a fake news site designed to confuse millions of voters so that the party could win elections in multiple states. Oh wait, that’s you guys.

Basically I have to ask: you’re surprised Republicans have a news outlet to control their narrative? I’m sure if these reporters wanted to dig a little more they’d find the Democrats have the same. Otherwise I wouldn’t get all these e-mails from the DNC telling me the sky is falling.

I’m not really a reporter, but let me tell you about the site whose Facebook page you are now gracing, or more specifically its sponsor Media Matters for America.

*****

“Because MMFA is a non-profit organization, it is not required to disclose its donors, and it does not do so. However, some donors have self-disclosed, while others, such as foundations and labor unions, must make certain filings that discloses their funding of Media Matters and other similar groups.

MMfA’s funders range from labor unions to progressive foundations to liberal billionaires. From fiscal year 2009 to 2012, the National Education Association (NEA) has contributed $400,000 ($100,000 per year) to Media Matters. MMfA has received an additional $185,000 from other labor organizations since 2005, making labor unions some of the largest known contributors to Media Matters. MMfA has directly quoted these labor groups and has defended them against “attacks” from reporters and media personalities. MMfA did not disclose these donations in its reporting on labor unions.

MMfA has received nearly $30 million from foundations since it started. The Tides Foundation is the largest contributors to MMfA and MMAN, giving nearly $4.4 million. There are undoubtedly close ties between the organizations besides financial support. MMfA frequently reports on the critics of Tides, but fails to mention that the foundation is MMfA’s largest donor. The line between Tides and MMfA is so blurry that even donors appear to be confused. In 2003, prior to the official launch of MMfA, the Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation even designated a $100,000 contribution to ‘Tides Foundation – Media Matters for America.’

Billionaire George Soros donated $1 million to Media Maters in October 2010. According to the New York Times, Soros donated the money to help MMfA respond to the ‘incendiary rhetoric’ of Fox News Channel commentators.”

(source)

And if this doesn’t describe Shareblue to a T then I don’t know what does:

“The news content analysis of Media Matters is a complete sham. Such examinations of political news traditionally focus on detecting journalistic bias, but MMfA’s approach is to try to stamp out views with which its left-wing content analysts disagree. That isn’t hard to do if you can think creatively and tolerate mind-numbing hairsplitting. Media Matters will typically isolate a small facet of a media story that can be twisted in such a way that suggests that the reporter or commentator is a liar or hypocrite. That tidbit is then used to suggest that everything the original source says must be false and deserving of censure.”

(source)

So there you have it: two named sources, verifiable if you copy and paste the link and remove the space I added.

I take news with a grain of salt until I consider the source and its motivation. My motivation? To get to what’s really true, and where you’re at isn’t it.

Via the local Republican Club I found out even Governor Larry Hogan jumped on that bandwagon. My free advice to the governor:

The electorate that voted him in was by and large also the one that wanted Obamacare repealed. But it’s up to Larry Hogan – if he wants to get 55-60% in the areas where he needs to come close to 70% (like the Eastern Shore) just keep moving left of center. The Democrats across the bridge will be happy to vote for the real thing this time.

The “progressive” (read: regressive) group Our Maryland also wanted to note Maryland could lose money under a GOP plan. So guess what I told them?

Think twice about taking “free” money from Uncle Sugar next time.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”

They also want to blame Trump for Maryland having revenue short of expectations, so I gave then my side of the story:

Perhaps if Maryland becomes more than a one-industry state (that being the federal government) these people may have more confidence.

Since I got my old job back in the Trump era (one that I lost just after Obama was elected) I feel pretty good about the economy,

Obviously that didn’t sit well with them, so they asked for “details before (we) accept your Obama bashing – so I complied.

About my job? I was flat-out told by my employer that he was worried about keeping his doors open under Obama. But he managed to survive and business has picked up enough to bring me back part-time at first and now full-time. Maybe I’m an outlier but the change in administration did bring a more positive outlook for businesses.

Then I added:

And it’s funny – those people who pointed to the stock market as evidence of Obama’s success are quiet now under Trump despite the fact the indices are 20% or so higher since January.

And the poor lady who tried to tell me Baltimore is teeming with industry and my “Beltway bias” was showing. I took about two minutes to find the proof she was all wet.

The statistics beg to differ.

I know, it’s not as obvious. But Baltimore City had a total average employment of 69,141 in the government sector in the first quarter of this year compared to 21,137 that produced goods. I had to explain this to someone else.

The premise provided by (the lady who commented) was that Baltimore had “way more industry than government.” As you can see by the stats, the reverse is true if you consider non-service jobs as “industry” – which I do. (Also notice that education is lumped with healthcare as a service job when most education jobs are public-sector. I think they should count in the government category.)

Yet they were still arguing with me as late as today about my blaming my layoff on the incoming Obama administration and crediting my return to Trump.

Consumer confidence was already rising pre-election and surged in the runup to Trump taking office. Confident consumers lead to confident investors, which is where we come in (I work for an architectural firm, and that was an industry battered by the Great Recession.)

And then:

Seeing that I’ve had over two decades in the field and my industry isn’t one that’s “affected by automation and digitization” you may want to try again.

And I did not bring up Obamacare because no one really knew what it looked like at the time. It was just a sense that the economy was going to rebound very slowly, if at all. Having seen some of what O’Malley did over the previous two years and how it affected our local economy, people were bearish on prospects.

And you may want to ask our friend who was laid off in 2009 (above) why he blames his situation on Bush? He was out of office after January.

Also at Our Maryland, I had this reaction to a reaction to a WaPo story (behind a paywall, of course) about Rep. Jamie Raskin (who was a far-left loony of a state senator based on monoblogue Accountability results) and his fear that Cassidy-Graham would pass. This is how the respondent wrote it, verbatim: “The Koch Brothers want it so badly – and they aren’t going to give anymore money to the Republicans until they repeal Obamacare and cut corporate taxes BIG TIME. That’s what it’s always about – follow the money.”

So I had to correct the record, again:

That would work for me. And even if you assumed a 50% cut in corporate tax rates would bring in half that revenue – which, as we know, isn’t true because lowering tax rates generally acts as a spur for economic activity – the federal hit would be less than $250 billion (out of a $4 trillion budget.)

In this case, the Koch brothers support smart economic policy.

Naturally, that was met with the pithy, “Oh Michael Swartz, if you think you are going to benefit from the giant corporations getting tax cuts….. Sad.” (It’s funny how the Left has allocated a standard Trump response, isn’t it?) But the answer is yes.

I certainly will. Ask yourself: who pays corporate taxes, the business or the end user/consumer?

To expand on this concept, this is part of a fundamental argument about who does more good with money from corporate profits: the government which redistributes it willy-nilly to address their priorities after taking a hefty cut, or a corporation that rewards its stockholders with dividends, invests in expansion (thus needing more employees, which benefits the community), or – even if the CEO is a greedy SOB – spreading the wealth around via purchases. Even if he buys a yacht, someone has to build it.

Turning to local politics, I made a comment about candidate recruitment.

The hard part is finding candidates who want to go through the process. And don’t forget the school board, which will be “nonpartisan” but will almost certainly have a union-backed (read: Democrat) slate.

And finally, I had this reaction to fellow writer Jen Kuznicki‘s video. Like a lot of conservative writers, writing’s not her paying gig – her “real job” is being a seamstress.

You could sit in front of a computer and draw all day like I do in Salisbury, Maryland. Glad to see an American who makes things and adds value to raw material.

But if you thought yours was boring, there’s a reason I don’t do mine. To most watching paint dry would be preferable.

Look, all I do is put lines on a computer screen. It’s the end product that’s important – for the past few weeks it’s been for a proposed local hotel. The part that’s important is knowing where to put the lines.

Similarly, in good writing sometimes it’s best to know when to stop, so here you are. I already have a couple threads lined up for next time, one of which involves a candidate for Congress.

“The Kochs don’t have Michael Swartz.” So what do they have?

The Democrats send me the silliest e-mails sometimes.

Today they are whining that “The Koch Brothers plan to spend nearly $900 million to buy the 2016 election.” After I laughed, my first question to them was, “so?”

I saw the news pieces about this yesterday (here’s one) and it rolled off my back like water off a duck. Listen, I know there are people who will spend a lot of money on politics simply because they can, and as it turns out the Koch brothers are perhaps the leading conservative/libertarian donors. The Democrats don’t have a cow about the hundreds of millions bundlers and grifters on their side plunk down on the races; suffice to say that both sides do this.

But $889 million is a lot of money – heck, I’d be happy to see 1/100 of 1% of that come my way. And the great thing about the Koch brothers is that they wish to limit government, not expand it and try to cut themselves a slice of the pie.

Ever since the Citizens United decision, the liberals have cried that we need to get money out of politics. This wasn’t altruism at work, though – since most of the media outlets favor Democrats, conservatives not being able to pay for advertising and speech at election time gave the Left an advantage. That’s not to say spending more money always leads to a positive electoral result – if it did, we would be in the early days of the Brown administration, for example – but oftentimes the funding is better for incumbents and they tend to win re-election at a significant rate. Taking that advantage away helps to level the playing field.

Of course, I can see my liberal friends all worked up over someone like the Koch brothers, who are just very successful businessmen spending their money on politics. It’s better than yet another palatial mansion or a fleet of private jets, right? But compare that amount to the overall budget of just one county in Maryland – granted, it’s the largest one at a population of about one million – and $889 million is chump change. In the grand scheme of things, spread out over multiple states, it’s not a great deal of money in comparison.

So I’m glad the Democrats are whining. I don’t think there should be a limit in campaign spending because to do so would be counterproductive. My campaign spending may be miniscule in comparison to the Koch brothers, but between Kim and I we have just as many votes and that’s the key.

Reliable bogeymen

You know the other side has nothing in their bag of ideas when you see this recycled old chestnut of an appeal for cash:

This from the side with a President who regularly finds millionaires willing to fork over big bucks to get their slice of the government pie.

But I presume these guys are counting the Americans for Prosperity as part of the “hundreds of millions of dollars,” which is funny because while reports attempt to spin the news that the Koch brothers are raising up to $290 million to spend, it’s not like Democratic backers like Tom Steyer and the venerable George Soros are standing still.

Yet what do all these participants stand for? In the case of Soros, he’s donated millions over the years to reliably left-wing causes and opined after the 2010 election wipeout that Barack Obama didn’t fight hard enough for cherished progressive causes. Instead:

While Soros’s comment gave some attendees the impression that he’d cheer a primary challenge to the president, the point, sources say, was different. Rather, it is time to shuffle funds into a progressive infrastructure that will take on the tasks that the president can’t or won’t take on.

“People are determined to help build a progressive infrastructure and make sure it is there not just in the months ahead but one that will last in the long term,” said Anna Burger, the retired treasury secretary of SEIU. “Instead of being pushed over by this election it has empowered people to stand up in a bigger way.”

“There was frustration,” said one Democratic operative who attended the meetings. The main concern was about messaging. I think they are frustrated that the president isn’t being more direct. But I did not get the sense that anyone’s commitment to the progressive movement was wavering… The general consensus is that support has to move beyond being about one person and more about a movement. I don’t know if we’ve moved beyond there.”

One of those “movement” ventures is an outside-government arm to match conservatives in the 2012 elections. For several weeks, discussions have been led by Media Matters for America founder David Brock about the need to create a group that will run advertisements, conduct opposition research and perform rapid response functions. (Emphasis mine.)

As an example of this concept, just look at the movement to increase the minimum wage. I don’t think the SEIU is doing this by themselves.

In Steyer’s case, he’s out pushing for the extinction of fossil fuels, despite being a major benefactor from them over the years. (This would be a fun debate to watch.) Imagine the increase in costs and decrease in living standards a wholesale overnight embrace of renewables would cause. Until we can make the sun shine and the wind blow steadily 24 hours a day, we have a problem. (In terms of naturally occurring energy gathering, it would seem hydroelectric would be the best choice, but that’s also climate-dependent: a drought would dry up supply.)

So consider what the Koch brothers have helped to create: the Cato Institute, a libertarian, small-government think tank and Americans for Prosperity (who would be against prosperity?) They also built up the family business and became billionaires in the process – isn’t that the American Dream writ large? (They also support other causes, as this tongue-in-cheek post notes.)

If the Democrats have to use the Koch brothers – who built a successful life for themselves with a minimum of government assistance and would like others to follow in their footsteps – as an example of evil because they support Republicans, we know they have nothing.

Real firepower

I think I’ve trod down this road before, but a post Sunday by DaTechGuy (aka Peter Ingemi) brought the name Jimmie Bise back out. And the points he made echo the points I made when I wrote my piece in early 2012 and the thoughts Bise had back in 2009. So I wouldn’t call this a tragedy – because Bise is still very much alive – but more like a case of lessons not being learned.

Yesterday I wrote at length about a piece in the Baltimore Sun which was repeated by a fairly liberal blogger who happened to be a statehouse reporter for decades. I don’t know who else, if anyone, wrote about this report but considering the paucity of Maryland-based conservative outlets it’s pretty likely I was the only one. (I checked a few and indeed I seemed to be the only one paying attention; then again, it fit in with my interests.)

And when I say paucity of conservative outlets I think it’s safe to say that our combined efforts – and by “our” I’m including the dozen or so regularly updated conservative sites in Maryland, including this one – might reach an audience perhaps 1/10 of what the Sun draws for its print edition daily (about 170,000 readers). Note that doesn’t count their online services, which probably draw another 100,000 or so per diem.

So what if some conservative bought the Baltimore Sun? This isn’t completely far-fetched, since there was some interest in the Sun‘s parent company from the Koch brothers, but the likelihood of the owners selling to overt conservatives is slim.

That leaves the internet, which is the venue of choice for most of those whom we want to reach anyway.

It’s helpful for this exercise to remember that a person is only allowed to donate a maximum of $10,000 to Maryland candidates this election cycle, with $4,000 the maximum to a particular candidate. If you figure even $1,000 per person donated to the ten most conservative members of the General Assembly (or conservative challengers) that’s going to give you 10 members of the body out of 188, assuming they were all elected – and in the state’s current political climate that’s one hell of a crapshoot. If you want to build a conservative movement in Maryland, you have to do better and begin with spreading the message among the populace.

I know Bise talked about running a national news agency on $500,000 a year, but if you took even half that money and spread it around the twelve or so top conservative sites in the state we could build a tremendous online following. We could work day after day pounding home the proper message, pointing out the frequent hypocrisy of the liberal state regime, and figuring out new ways to reach the desired audience. It would be an investment repaid eventually in better opportunities for all who live and work in Maryland.

As it stands, we in the conservative blogosphere along with a handful of talk radio hosts around the state probably feel like the 300 Spartans desperately fighting our own Battle of Thermopylae against the hordes who would tax and spend Maryland into oblivion, driving away the productive and leaving only the parasites who feed off the government and those producers unlucky enough to be still stuck here.

And it’s not just Maryland, either. Most of the northeastern part of the country, the West Coast, and pockets of the Midwest suffer the same problems our state endures. Certainly there’s a conservative movement crying out for help in those areas, with the thought that changing hearts and minds make winning elections down the road much easier.

People tell me that we may as well give up on Maryland, but I cede no ground. It doesn’t take a majority to “get it” to instill change, just a majority of those who vote. If we don’t have the conservatives in Maryland ready to not just dash to the polls the moment they’re open but also grab their like-minded friends and neighbors to do the same, we’ll be in for yet another four-year cycle of misery. And contrary to popular belief, our misery doesn’t love company – our special brand of misery drives company away.

We can do much, much better, with a little help. (Why not rattle my tip jar? My annual server fee is coming due soon.)

Removing ‘Citizens United’?

I was actually looking for something else, but sometimes that’s how one stumbles across interesting tales from the other side of the political spectrum. So it is with a group, recently formed in Salisbury, called Move to Amend – Salisbury.

To give you a taste of their political views, this is from their Facebook page:

We are starting a local affiliate of Move to Amend, which is an organization that since 2009 has been challenging the corporate takeover of our democracy (via unlimited campaign contributions or “buying” of candidates) via ballot initiatives, citizens referendums, and the like. The ultimate goal is an Amendment to our Constitution which overturns the Supreme Court decision Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. In case you are unfamiliar with that case, the long and short of it is that since 2010, there are no protections keeping corporate money out of politics. For this reason politicians will increasingly pander to the will of corporations, who are driven by profit motive, and will not weigh the concerns of actual People as heavily. The Amendment we are proposing will define “We the People” as Human Beings only.

This issue is a cornerstone for many issues that affect our democracy. We know that the debate on climate change is limited because both Republican and Democratic candidates receive millions in funding from fossil fuel companies such as the Koch Brothers. We know that the debate on healthcare is limited because both parties are financed by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The parameters for the debate about sustainable farming are determined by chemical fertilizer companies and genetical (sic) modification companies like Monsanto. The interests of the People for healthy, sustainable, just futures cannot be served alongside the short term money interests of these gigantic amoral entities. Our political leaders must be accountable to Human people, and individual votes, not to boards of directors and multi-million dollar bribes.

Did you know the Koch Brothers are a fossil fuel company and Monsanto is a genetical modifier? Me neither. I thought they said corporations weren’t people. But there’s one thing I’d be curious about, and that’s whether they feel the same way about unions extracting dues from their members for political use.

The Move to Amend movement is one of those national organizations which has a series of local affiliates, of which Salisbury’s is new enough to not be listed yet. Of course, they’d like to see corporate money eliminated from politics and don’t equate money with free speech, so my question to them is: what is free speech then?

Their local goals are a bit more modest, though:

The idea is that with a handful of supporters we will attend a City Council meeting and make a presentation about passing a municipal resolution, similar to those already passed in 137 other cities nationwide. These resolutions all add to the critical mass needed to put a new Constitutional Amendment before the American People for a vote… on whether or not to overturn Citizens United and once more return democracy to the People, not Corporations.

I’m sorely tempted to attend their meeting on Thursday night just to see how far they get with their goals, and also remind them the American people don’t vote on Constitutional amendments. We are still a republic, not a democracy or tyranny by Executive Order – at least not quite yet:

The second meeting of Move to Amend’s agenda will include: (1) hearing from the study group members who committed to learning about Constitutional issues relating to the passing of an amendment, and also from the study group members who committed to researching ways to “blunt” the impact of Citizens United (short of the proposed Amendment itself). (2) We will vote on the exact language of our proposed ballot initiative. (3) We will mobilize to get the ballot initiative on the ballot!

Of course, given the makeup of our City Council I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the ballot and the half-asleep Salisbury electorate which bothers to show up might be dumb enough to pass it – that is, unless they do their homework.

But let’s go back to why Citizens United went to court in the first place:

At issue are sections of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) that imposed a blackout period before elections on television advertisements that mentioned the name of a federal candidate — electioneering communications…the United States Supreme Court, in Federal Election Commission vs. Wisconsin Right to Life, ruled that groups could not be prohibited from running genuine issue ads, during the blackout period, but the FEC has insisted that such groups must still put disclaimers on the ads and file reports about the ads, including naming their contributors. Citizens United is challenging these disclosure requirements, arguing the ads for the film, Hillary: The Movie, is a commercial ad, exempted in recent FEC rulemaking, and that disclosure requirements cannot be applied to such ads consistent with the First Amendment.

It was not because of the whole “corporations are people” red herring, but to contest the ill-advised McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws which turned out to benefit the very entrenched power brokers Move to Amend claims to be against. Moreover, it matters not who contributes to an election because the people have the final say.

Yet having the freedom to contribute to a political campaign is, to me, an expression of free speech. It’s the same typical leftwing cadre in Salisbury which has its panties in a wad about this subject, and Move to Amend is just another effort at corporation-bashing and stifling speech they don’t agree with on their part.