STRIKING OUT ON TAXES

Not born with a silver spoon athletically, the only opening for me was traditional:  Practice and hope for improvement.  There was no immediate gratification; throughout 4th grade I was still in the top 5% on striking out.  Occasionally, my father came home from work in time to throw strikes for me to swing at.  I was an intentional spastic: The harder I tried the worse I got.

What I learned was that the pleasure from trying increased faster than the skill.     I acquired confidence that I could have fun. Then the baseball started taking off on its own. If the rules had been changed to protect me from a period of unhappiness, natural athletes(4th grader’s dream)  would have lost confidence and I would have not learned a lessons that boosted mine. 

What is really lost when a society grows small and takes from the gifted fair credit for their home runs ?  Confidence.  Confidence in order, predictability, and fairness of the system encourages the gifted to excel and the rest of us to aspire and develop.

Handicaps may work in golf because you’re playing against the course.  Do handicaps work in life?  If government gave half the citizens a charitable handicap by requiring only the most productive to pay taxes would that undermine confidence or deter motivation?

Societies grow small when confidence declines. Governments cannot create level playing fields by making gifted play up hill and giving less gifted a down-hill run without undermining confidence. Without confidence no one invests and positive forms of deferred gratification (planning, practicing, and perfecting) decline.

After the 4th grade don’t throw a kid floaters or you’ll undermine his respect. Never, vote for a politician that promises to change rules to distribute handicaps.

David Griffith

Concerned Costal Voter

The Sea Ranch,CA

NO ALTERNATIVE

Now that I write letters to the ICO, my “otherness” apparently kindles a desire among some of my liberal friends to convert me to the rightness of their position. This is nothing new, but their arguments have become a bit more subtle, and to quote the Bard, “too clever by half.” Recently at a wonderful dinner, a person of the Left looked at me with evangelical fervor and said something like, “We’re too divided as a country. We should just get along and not be writing divisive things.” 

Not seeing any other “letter writers” at the table, I responded to the concerned Liberal that our government was designed to allow differing views. The framers of our Constitution specifically sought to ensure that all sides would be heard. The response was, essentially, “But we can’t get anything done. We can’t get our problems solved.” 

“But that’s what elections are for,” I said, “that’s how we settle things in this country.” To my great dismay I heard, “But elections aren’t working. We need to do something else.”

“Okay,” I said with my usual control (i.e., no spittle was spewing from my mouth), “what would you recommend - - a dictatorship, Communism, Socialism?” I got no response, but the “elections aren’t working” phrase stuck with me. I’ve recently read several dreamy paeans from the Left  extolling the “efficiency” of the Chinese. Even President Obama stated (jokingly, I hope) that if we followed China’s system, he could quickly solve our problems. Are some on the Left advocating silencing dissent to “get things done?”

Certainly elections don’t always work for your positions or your Party, but what’s the alternative? The answer is there’s nothing outside our democratic system that is worth considering. And if people don’t know that at this point in history, then God help us all.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA

FDR REDUX

Many of us were taught in school that FDR’s New Deal brought the country out of the Great Depression by using massive government spending to create jobs. This “truism” has been a mainstay of the media for generations, but the “truism” isn’t true. Roosevelt’s economic programs failed so miserably that by May 1939 unemployment stood at 20.7%! Secretary of Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, lamented, “after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started . . . .”  (Sound familiar?)

The seamier (fascistic) side of the New Deal was epitomized by such actions as federal National Recovery Act hooligans kicking down doors and arresting tailors whose only crimes were to work overtime and charge a few cents less to sew pants than the government allowed. Businesses drowned in wave after wave of stultifying red tape, and reams of regulations strangled incentives to hire and expand. (Sound familiar again?) New Dealer bureaucrats implemented dozens of hare-brained schemes, such as paying farmers not to plant crops, or destroying crops and livestock to raise prices. Many believe such nefarious actions prolonged and worsened the Depression.

Seventy years later, New Deal advocates once again control our government. In 2009 President Obama pushed a trillion dollar stimulus bill through a majority Democrat Congress. The bill was based on two premises: (1) it would ensure the unemployment rate would not exceed 8%, and (2) thousands of “shovel ready” jobs would immediately put Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure. Neither happened. In early 2010 ObamaCare was rammed through a filibuster-proof Democrat Congress with promises of more jobs and lower health costs. How has that worked out?

“New Dealism,” now repackaged as “Hope and Change,” remains a failed economic policy. The American people rejected it in November 2010 and will resoundingly reject its advocates in 2012.