Muppet Welfare

WTF is this garbage? I love Muppets and I know that they can survive without being Welfare Queens. Look at the non-Sesame Street Muppets, (Fozzie Bear, The Swedish Chef, Miss Piggy, et. al. and INCLUDING one who is ALSO a Sesame Street Muppet - Kermit the Frog!); they've made it in the free market without having to go on the dole (at least until Jim Henson sold them to the über-welfare parasite known as the Walt Disney Company).

And, as for the Sesame Street Muppets other than Kermit - they've had some considerable success in the private sector in the form of merchandising - does "Tickle-Me-Elmo" ring a bell? If Sesame Street had to make it on commercial TV, it could. Yes it might have to accept commercials for sugary cereals and fast food thus causing obesity, diabetes, and toothlessness, since any child who sees commercials for such products will demand to eat them every day for every meal until they wind up in diabetic comas, and their parents will be powerless to stop them. But most children will wind up discovering such things and be drawn in by their irresistible lure anyway. So the possibility of junk food being endorsed by Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch (who I believe eats garbage from the garbage can he lives in) shouldn't make that much of a difference. Or if it did, I'm sure the creators of Sesame Street could secure an arrangement that their program could only be sponsored by their own merchandise. But then they couldn't shill for having our tax dollars support programs like Masterpiece Theatre and operas. Fine programs, of course, but ones which are mostly watched by people with more money than God, and who are to cheap to shell out a few bucks for cable channels or DVDs that offer the same type of entertainment, and sometimes even the exact same shows.

I'm down with Brown

Of course I mean Charlie Brown, he's one of my heroes. Cleveland Brown (not to be confused with The Cleveland Browns) is pretty cool too. Leroy Brown had a seemingly glamorous thug lifestyle though he did kind of turn out to be a loser when confronting the "jealous man."

But what about Scott Brown? Well, I thought this comment I posted about him to Feminist Critics was worth re-posting here:

I didn’t notice this thread before today. I know this discussion is mostly irrelevant now, but I will say I’m glad Brown won. From what I know about him he doesn’t seem like an ultra-right wing fanatic who would restrict personal freedom on either religious or nationalistic grounds, at least not any more so than the Democrats do. I am not in love with the Republicans but he does bring some balance to the current overwhelming leftist Democrat domination of Washington. In recent times some our best years have been under divided governments (Reagan with the Democrat congress throughout his term from 1981 to 1989 and Clinton with the Republican congress from 1994 to 2001). When the two parties clash they somewhat keep each other’s runaway spending and attacks on civil liberties in check. Not ideal, but the best we can hope for until there is a viable third party.

And if Coakley is anywhere near the man-hater she is portrayed to be here, then even if I was a socialist I would still be glad that Brown won. He won’t have much effect on policy until and unless more Republicans are elected this November, while Coakley might well have gotten her misandric agenda passed into federal law almost immediately.

Edit: I originally included this line in my first paragraph of lame, but for me irresistible, jokes about the name Brown: "And then there was FEMA director Michael Brown, who sure did do a heck of a (shitty) job!" Thinking it over that wasn't fair since FEMA would, does and always did, suck no matter who heads it. Also, Hurricane Katrina was only a federal matter because of gross incompetence of the state government of Louisiana and the local government of New Orleans. Mississippi was hit hard by the hurricane too but did not have nearly the same level of humanitarian disaster.

Foreign Aid Petition

I received an e-mail asking to sign a petition to "Reform U.S. Foreign Aid." I had to think about this a little while. Normally, I don't think it is a good idea to try to "improve" something that, for the most part, I'd like to see eliminated. But, after looking at the text of the bill, as well as various commentaries on it, I decided that its calls for accountability, transparency, and streamlining bureaucracy are positive enough to outweigh any problems it might have. So, I signed the petition, while attaching this message:

I would prefer to see all foreign aid eventually phased out. I would like to see assistance to allied governments come in the form of loans or favors that can be reciprocated rather than grants. Charity, where it is needed, should come from voluntary private donations, not taxpayer money. But, seeing as how foreign aid is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, this does seem like a step in the right direction.

Let the Tea Bagging Continue

KIA, in responding to Becky C.'s post put it best:

If you were like me and real-world committments prevented you from attending the tea parties live, you can send an electronic teabag here:

http://teaparty.gop.com/

Nevermind the hypocrisy of the GOP now, go ahead and teabag the current leadership. It's never too late to try to make a difference.

I couldn't agree more. I know that the Republicans under Bush outdid what the Democrats had done in wasteful spending up until that time. I know that the Republicans under McCain would likely do the same. And I'm far from convinced that GOP politicians have learned anything from last election.

If the GOP is giving us a forum, though, to express outrage about taxes and spending I am not against using it. Just as if the Dems gave a forum to protest loss of civil liberties under a Republican administration, I'd use that, even though Dems are not much better, and arguably worse than the Repubs on that score.

I don't care who Fox News praises and the other networks ridicule or vice-versa. It's about the message, not the messengers. So I sent my postcard and you can too. It's a little late for tax day of this year but really, really early for next year! (And it would be great if the spirit of protest could be maintained year round).

We Need More Eighteenth Century Men

Thomas Frank in his column this week in The Wall Street Journal Eighteenth-Century Man made a good point about the ridiculousness of fat-cat politicians who pretend to be down-home folks while they spew faux-populist rhetoric. However, he failed to prove that the main subject of this column, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, fit this category. In fact, he conceded that "Mr. Sanford's democratic idealism may be for real, but ... with ideals this bad, you don't need hypocrisy to go wrong." And what are those horrible, horrible ideals? Opposing deficit spending, seeking better ways for people to invest their Social Security money, and above all, refusing federal government handouts.

Now, I know that in times like these deficits "don't matter." We are all Keynesians, socialists, or whatever term will fly to justify the "temporary" increase in government spending to get us out of the latest emergency. Fine. Let's get all we need from "the rich," and who cares if those labeled rich for the purpose of soaking them at tax time may be anything but. Is there really no way to cut a $3.55 trillion budget? Is raising concerns about deficit spending really such a bad thing? I thought that one of the causes of the current economic crisis was people spending beyond their means - whether they were private individuals, corporate executives, or even those most virtuous of virtuous people - government officials.

How about Mr. Frank's take on Social Security? Well he does score some cheap points by saying:

Business, on the other hand, is an institution with almost magical powers of beneficence: were we to entrust our retirement savings to "conventional investments" instead of government, Mr. Sanford wrote in 2000, we could expect returns of 8% a year. (And that's why the Dow stands well above 20,000 today.)

Very good, except that an investment purely in the stock market has historically yielded close to 10% per year since 1926. So the 8% return implies a balance between stocks, bonds, and money market instruments as financial advisers have always recommended. With such a combination there will be fewer years with a loss and those years that do have a loss will be less severe. Even taking into account the really bad years like 1931 and 2008, long term investments in the markets almost always beat the below 3% returns offered by Social Security. Plus, markets do tend to go up shortly after their worst crashes (one of the best years in the market was 1933). After Social Security collapses we can look forward to the government printing more worthless bills. Of course, I can't blame anyone who can't trust the markets. But I can say that the money you send to the government for Social Security would be much better invested in gold coins, canned goods, bottled water (or water purification tablets), farmland, livestock, guns, ammo, etc. than to finance government waste.

Finally, there is Mr. Frank's smug dismissal of Mr. Sanford's refusal to be a welfare queen:

Worst of all, his stand against the stimulus, while self-denying in the Sanford tradition, was taken against the loud protests of less Spartan citizens. Mr. Sanford's desire to strike his bold moral pose took priority over his state's need for relief.

Loud protests of less Spartan citizens? How many citizens protested against the stimulus package in the first place? Quite a few I know protested against the first round of Federal Bailouts (with letters to congresspeople - those protests were not very loud, I guess that's the problem). The point is, there will almost always be loud protesters on all sides of a controversial issue and if government officials never did anything because there were protesters opposed to it governments would never get anything done (which would be a good thing, but only officials of all ideological stripes paid heed to their protesters equally). In any case, in this era when it seems that every public figure, whether in government or private industry, has an outstretched hand saying "gimme, gimme, gimme!' does it not seem right to condemn the one who says "I don't need your charity." After all his "less Spartan citizens" can move to any of at least a dozen other states whose governors are begging Uncle Sam for bailouts like dogs begging their masters for treats, and whose legislators have already spent twice the bailout they hope to get.

It is true, Mark Sanford may not be the responsible citizen legislator he pretends to be. But it almost seems that Thomas Frank wishes he wasn't. Mr. Frank and his ilk can accept sleazy, lying politicians. What they can't accept is principled opposition to big and ever-expanding government.