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Thoughts on the State of the Union Speech

Dustin Siggins — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:34:07 +0000

Some Thoughts on the State of the Union Speech

The transcript of President Obama’s speech can be found here. Any quotes below from the speech are found in the transcript.

1. I missed the first few minutes of the speech. Did he do the traditional shout-out to members of the audience? I thought I saw the two Fort Hood heroes next to First Lady Obama. (According to the transcript, he did not do it in the beginning of the speech, and I don’t remember it happening at any other time.)

2. He wants to help grow America’s economy by raising taxes on those who outsource. On the one hand, he’s rewarding those who stay. However, without other incentives to stay- such as a practical tax structure- he is asking/telling them to stay out of fear, not out of the dynamic opportunities America offers businesses. This is equivalent to punching someone in the nose who leaves, and telling the rest you’ll not punch them in the face. Thus, you are doing them a favor, or so it appears. Unfortunately for America, business leaders generally aren’t stupid, and they will leave the country completely or simply find a way around the laws.

3. He promised to pay more money for education, more money for community banks to lend- the latter, mind you, out of what the big banks and lending institutions have paid back to the taxpayer- to spend money on green initiatives and to balance out the massive spending increases the Democratic Congress has put on this country in the last twelve months. How would he balance these seemingly contradictory proposals? By freezing discretionary spending for three years and “not continu[ing] tax cuts for oil companies, for investment fund managers, and for those making over $250,000 a year.” For fun, let’s see how much he cuts from trial lawyers (huge Democratic supporters) and see how much he raises on those making less than $250,000, as he did last year, breaking a campaign promise. Too, freezing discretionary is to freeze only about 18% of the budget, and he is only targeting $25 billion, a relatively paltry amount. According to MarketWatch, non-military discretionary spending is about $447 billion. Doing the math, we see he is supporting freezing about 1/18th of the discretionary budget, or approximately 5.5%. I am definitely not complaining about the effort, but why is he pretending it’s going to be enough to pay for the new programs and monies he and the Democrats have saddled us with this past year? Perhaps if he were to support real efforts to cut back spending as supported by Senator Coburn (R-OK) and Brian Riedl of The Heritage Foundation, we could begin the long road back to fiscal sanity.

4. He said “health insurance reform” again, not health care reform.

5. He called for the lifting of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. *Big Yawn* While I have yet to see enough evidence to support lifting DADT, it’s right around the 80th issue back on the list. Too, I think he announced his support for lifting it to get the same kind of energy from the base President Bush was looking for when he called for the Federal Amendment banning gay marriage in his 2006 State of the Union speech. Gays are increasingly incensed with the president, so he had to throw them something. After all, they put thousands of hours and millions of dollars towards his election, and he has pretty much ignored them since that happened, except for some of the requisite events to re-ingratiate himself with them. I don’t see, however, DADT being lifted in the next few months, what with re-election the major concern of most Democrats.

6. He supported nuclear power and offshore drilling. Yes, he still wants cap-and-trade (which won’t happen in an already-tough election year for Democrats), but supporting nuclear power and drilling was one of the few bipartisan ideas he offered, and I was both surprised and glad he supports them.

7. Actually, this might be the Lie of the Day: “That’s the leadership we are providing: engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people.” Given that he was ridiculed by France’s Sarkozy for being soft on Iran, ignored the protesters who were dying in Iran for quite some time, did not support the legal coup by the Honduran people and their government and military, snubbed Germany’s Merkel at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, snubbed Britain’s Prime Minister and Queen once each and broke a missile shield contract with Poland, how can he say he is using engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people?

8. I was surprised at the enthusiasm and wide-ranging efforts he talked about. I thought he would be both more mild and more cognizant of the fact that his policies are unpopular and Congress is not going to take political risks right now. Will he convince politicians to be more concerned about the state of the country versus their own survival? I expect Democrats will make some noise in that area, then blame their opponents for not wanting to work together and thus continue this ridiculous and harmful cycle of politics we have in DC.

9. Chuckle of the Day: He wants people to stop campaigning and lead in Washington. Because, you know, he stopped campaigning on November 5, 2009. (As Jonah Goldberg noted today, the president brought back his old campaign manager this week to retool his message. You know, because he’s stopped campaigning.)

10. For all his talk about education, he still has not supported the DC School Voucher program.

11. Last but not least, his “jobs will,” or third stimulus in the last two years, not only won’t do anything positive but will coincide with the current stimulus, only $172 billion of which has been spent. Since we have $600 billion still to utilize, why not use that first before putting more debt on us?

12. Enough with the SOB stories. Please. Use evidence to convince us, not a story about adding 1,200 jobs, because most Americans know at least 1,201 were lost at the same time these 1,200 were brought into play. Please? Treat us like adults, not starry-eyed children. THEN you will be a president we might be able to follow.

*This was originally published at Race42012.com.

Worldwide One-Child Law?

Dustin Siggins — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:34:42 +0000

So this knucklehead up in Canada thinks a planet-wide one-child law is the cure to overpopulation concerns. The author, one Diane Francis, cites China as her example of a country with the right policy on population control to help save the planet and, as a result, humanity.

Before I rip into Francis, a brief history on population growth. In short, there are four stages of population. Stage 1 is pre-urban, Stage 2 is the beginning of industrialization, Stage 3 is modern industrialization and Stage 4 is post-industrialization. As a nation grows wealthier, more educated, more equal between the sexes etc. the population tends to slow. Europe and North America are at Stages 3 and 4, though The United States of America has not quite hit Stage 4 due to our large influx of immigrants. Of course, one of the negatives of this population growth pattern is the “graying” of many nations.

When I first read this piece, I knew I had to be misreading it. Francis couldn’t be saying the world should follow the ethical standards of China. Not the one that is run by a government?that has refused to apologize for the Tiananmen Square massacre 20 years ago. Not the same one that tried to cover up SARS, sterilizes women and forces them to have abortions as part of their one-child policy and arrested many citizens and tried to prevent freedom of speech before and during the 2008 Summer?Olympics. I was also sure she couldn’t have meant the same one that has crushed Tibetans for over half a century and did so again last year.

Alas, I was wrong- Francis was referring to that very China. Francis has ignored the giant elephant in the room, namely China’s atrocious human rights history involved with its “success” story on lowering the size of its population.There are a number of other things Francis missed in her thesis, and I will touch on a few of them below.

First, there are a number of more-ethical-than-China ways to encourage a birth rate that helps population control. One is to create opportunities for widespread wealth. A second is to “[ensure] women’s equality and improving their education, while providing cheap contraception.” (Note: as a practicing Catholic, I do not find contraceptive use ethical; however, it is more ethical than the Chinese approach of forced sterilizations and abortions. Too, I think the other three improvements provide far more opportunity for slowing birth rates.) These opportunities are largely responsible for nations at Stage 4 of population growth patterns.

Another point Francis missed was the utter immorality of forcing abortions worldwide. As Jonah Goldberg put it at The Corner: “But one point does cry out to be made. Imagine if someone wrote an op-ed saying that we need a planetary ban on abortion. Feminists would get their dresses over their heads in outrage about such a naked assault on “reproductive freedom.” But here is a woman in a very prestigious Canadian newspaper arguing, in effect, that every country in the world should force women everywhere to have an abortion if they already have a child. Put aside, for a moment, the pro-life objections to this. Even if you think the unborn are really just a bunch of cells, mere “uterine contents” with no more moral import than fingernail clippings, how on earth can anyone believe in “reproductive freedom” and not be absolutely horrified by the police-state evil of such proposals?”

Thirdly, Francis forgets that over a dozen countries, including Finland and France, have taken giant steps toward energy independence by building nuclear power plants. Combined with Congress allowing more nuclear power plants and domestic drilling in America- the world’s second-largest carbon dioxide emitter- this would be a huge step toward renewable and cleaner energy policy that would reverbrate around the world. It would also create less demand for oil, which is obviously good for the planet. Since Francis is rightfully concerned about the impact of overpopulation on the planet?s resources, perhaps she would agree that eliminating the need for non-renewable resources and lessening the overall impact of humanity on the planet is better than encouraging forced abortions and sterilizations?

A last point- Francis is entirely inefficient with her method of controlling the world’s population. The best way to attack population growth is to have every single one of these fruitcakes voluntarily jump off a bridge. Let’s say just one percent of the Earth’s population agrees with her; that means we’ll get rid of 60 million people with no added effort or government involvement. Next, atomize Tokyo and Beijing- throw in New York, the Yankees are there- and our population won’t have to take decades to see results. In minutes Earth will be a happier, healthier place to live!

The fact is that a planet-wide ban on multiple children would, by its very nature, lead to a worst-case scenario situation of forced abortions, sterilization, government intimidation, a plethora of jailed citizens etc. The world’s one example of this is China, but allow me to extrapolate: let’s say each government takes its responsibility to help the planet seriously. They hire people whose job it is to keep the birth rate at one per couple. Of course, some people won’t follow the law, which means those officials will have only a few choices to prevent multiple births by a mother. The first is to arrest her and her husband for breaking the law- after forcing her to have an abortion, of course, to prevent the extra child’s birth- thereby causing the government to adopt the couple’s first child or find it a new home. The second is to not jail the couple- but to prevent births another way. The solution would be to abort the extra child and sterilize the mother and/or father (though probably the mother, since sterilizing the father would still leave the mother the opportunity to get pregnant from another source). Of course, if all else fails, the government could simply kill the parents and thereby save both the planet’s and the government’s resources, and put the firstborn child up for adoption.

Obviously, Francis does not care for the human species- that is her prerogative. As of now, her opinion is not quite in the mainstream. It’s not even a Google option. Unfortunately, as Goldberg said, her piece was in a “very prestigious Canadian newspaper,” so it’s up to those of us who think this policy is heinous to stop it in its tracks so it does not reach the status of “mainstream.”

By the way, AllahPundit says it more concisely and better than I can.