24thstate.com

Why Would You Give Money To A Political Party?

2008-08-07T19:32:51-05:00

I regularly get mailings from the RNC asking me for money. They pretend it's an official Census document, where they ask asinine questions like, "Do you think the Republican in the House should fight the tax and spend Democrats on growing government? Yes, No, Maybe."

If you were trying to irritate me, you couldn't do a better job, and yet this is standard practice from political consultants who lack imagination, marketing experience, and any creativity. That may sound harsh, but what else can you say about someone who begs for money but pretends they are sending you an official "Census" document?" They either consider the voters to be complete idiots, easily fooled, or they have so little confidence in pitching a message, they fall back on direct mail practices that would have you fired in any commercial endeavor.

A lot has been said about the Republican falling behind in the online arena, but in at least one area, they are way ahead. Do you people get the ridiculous messages from Howard Dean, the Democratic party, and politicians like Kay Barnes? I don't know who is stupid enough to donate online from the tripe Dean and his cohorts send out on a weekly basis, but most of that money seems to go into paying political consultants to send out more pleas to save the planet from your horrible, horrible political opponents.

This is why I don't give money to political parties. If they knew how to ask for it, they'd have a better shot at it, but what do you expect? You can make a lot more marketing commercial products than you can working for a politician.

Incidentally, the lack of originality in direct mailings has been noticed and capitalized by progressive millionaires who funnel large amounts of cash into the 501c's to affect local and state races. Using real money, they are having an impact in Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, and other states. It's a growth industry, but only if you're a true believer with cash to spend. For those of us with only a vote, it's another example of the dilution of democracy by the rich. The rich left, that is.

24thState.com Endorses Sarah Steelman

2008-07-30T02:34:28-05:00

I love that title. 24thstate doesn't endorse anyone - I do. So I guess I'm endorsing Sarah Steelman for Republican candidate for governor. I wouldn't have guessed it when Hulshof started his run. My take on it was an easy win over Nixon. Hulshof was a known quantity, had access to cash, and his entrance pushed out other candidates.

The more I watch the battle between Steelman and Hulshof, the more I like Steelman. Hulshof's campaign is a bit smarmy. You can tell he's been in Washington too long. He's probably great friends with Kit Bond and Roy Blunt, our powerful, pork-happy senator and congressman. Well, I say enough. Steelman may not be most polished pol out there, but I like her in the latest commercials. I don't like it when someone calls my money taxpayers money. We have a giant surplus, and the only one I trust not to spend it is Steelman.

Check out her tax and spending platform

Increase personal exemption deduction for Missouri taxpayers from $2,100 per person / $4,200 per married couple to $2,625 per person / $5,250 per married couple.
Increase the dependent exemption deduction from $1,200 to $2,100 per dependent.
Enact comprehensive property tax reform and relief to require tax rates to be rolled back when assessments increase; increase the property tax credit for seniors; and require assessment notices to be mailed in April, not November.
Form the Missouri Tax Code Review Commission to examine Missouri’s entire system of taxation. Recommendations will be made to the Governor on how to reform the tax system to provide more relief to families and businesses, and stimulate the economy.
Enact a constitutional amendment to prohibit judges from raising taxes from the bench.
Eliminate the job-killing earnings tax levied by the City of St. Louis and the City of Kansas City.
Use the line item veto to prevent Washington style pork-barrel spending.

Hey, that's pretty much what I'm looking for. Hulshof, on the other hand, was one of the Republican legislators who refused to sign the House pledge to uphold a veto of earmark-laden spending. The comment at the time was that Hulshof wanted to think each vote through, and not sign a pledge ahead of time.

Add in the fact that the Post-Dispatch weighed in for Hulshof, and it's a done deal. Now, I'm well aware that Hulshof has the best chance to keep Nixon from winning, but there's something about Sarah that I like. She reminds me of what I liked about Claire McCaskill (who I still haven't voted for, but may in the future).

So there you have it.

Huffington Post Readers Want You Dead

2008-07-19T13:06:21-05:00

One of the problems of treating global warming as a cultist religion is that the people who believe in it start acting like cultists. The suicidal kind.

It's pretty simple. If you believe that the earth is undergoing catastrophic climate change caused by humans, then you're ultimately led down the path to believe that the only way to fix the problem is to kill off all the humans. I know it sounds crazy, but it doesn't take much to go from "We're killing the planet" to "Time to kill off the polluters."

Examples A-D are at the Huffington Post where responses to a story on Antarctic storms by Todd Carmichael led many commenters to wish for the death of the majority of the human race.

1. "It is very sad that we treat out planet as a large garbage can and as a giant resource to exploit. But unfortunately for us I believe that Mother Nature will put a stop to it by stopping humans in some way. Wether it be a virus, or extreme weather, or the collapse of the food chain, or even infertility like what happened in the movie "Children of Men" , we are in for a really rough future."

2. All right, this is going to sound horrible, but I think humanity's best chance is a plague or some other massive depopulator. "Humanity" has still not acted on what is likely a mortal threat to its environment (sort of belies the "sapiens" part of homo sapiens). Hell, 28% of Americans still support Bush

3. Brutal but true.

Hopefully population reduction will be sorted out randomly by unforeseeably severe natural impacts.... otherwise it will ultimately be implemented by the racist, classist , sexist MFs who've got things to this horrific state in the first place, and you can bet they won't be excising themselves.

4. The consolation is that there will be more room to live in once our food supplies erode, because we'll be eating each other.

All I can say is...it's about time nature flexed her muscles a bit and put us in our place.

The scary part? Reading through the comments, I saw no responses saying that the killing of billions of human beings was a bad idea.

This of course is the natural progression of couching policy disagreements in terms of crisis management. If someone denies global warming, they're as bad as the holocaust. Meat is Murder. Driving a Hummer is tantamount to killing baby penguins. Bush Administration officials should be tried like the Nazis. If you can't stop people from acting against your wishes, the only way to change them is to threaten them with violence. If threats don't work, well, maybe they weren't threats. You thought the Inquisition was bad? Wait until Al Gore is named the Grand Inquisitor of Global Warming.

Jacob Turk's Election Video

2008-07-03T10:17:19-05:00

Can YouTube make a difference? Jacob Turk, running for Congress against Emanuel Cleaver in Missouri's 5th District, puts out a great video of why he's running.

It's pretty simple. The more that people watch this, the more they're likely to vote for someone like Jacob. Politicians like to keep it simple, and incumbents know the less they speak, the better chance they have of being elected. Turk's approach is honest, straightforward, and exactly what the average citizen wants to hear.

The media outlets in Kansas City aren't going to help Jacob get elected. They're not interested in giving challengers press time. And Cleaver's campaign is so neurotic, they actually called the Mayor's office to make sure that no video of the Turk for Congress billboard made it on the evening news.

No, really. Cleaver's office called the Mayor of Kansas City to find out what television stations might have recorded a billboard, presumably to warn the stations not to air any footage.

It's real simple. Congress has a 12% approval rating, but no one is ready to throw the bums out. We elect career politicians and then complain when they take perks like special deals on mortgages. If we continue to send corrupt people to Washington, we deserve what we get. I'd urge you to take a look at Jacob Turk. I'd urge the Missouri media to give all challengers, both Democrat and Republican, media time and exposure. No Congressman won with less than 60% of the vote in Missouri in 2006. It's about time we remind the politicians that they need to earn the right to serve.

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Big Bad John

2008-06-26T11:12:14-05:00

I lived in Texas seven years, and while some may see this ad as way over the top, it's effective. It's for Senator John Cornyn - (R-TX)

That's from the Johnny Cash song, Big Bad John.

hattip: Robert Bluey

Barack Obama Doesn't Understand High Gas Prices

2008-06-25T18:09:52-05:00

Obama's podcast on high gas prices in May 2006 is eye-opening. The man has no engineers around him formulating policy. It seems his entire energy policy is based on E85 stations and higher taxes on oil companies.

The first place to start is with cars. We've got to build cars that use less gasoline. The auto industry hasn't been asked to raise fuel-economy standards in seventeen years and frankly, lately Republicans and Democrats seem to have stopped asking. Today, we've got no choice. Starting in 2008, we should raise CAFE standards (that's the fuel-efficiency standards on cars) a modest 3 percent a year. If we did that over the next 12 years, by 2020 passenger vehicles would average 40 miles per gallon, light trucks would average 32 miles per gallon. That's not a dramatic increase; it's easily achievable through existing technology and it can be done without compromising passenger safety.

Barack is supposed to be some kind of super genius (all Democratic presidential candidates supposedly are), but he really needs to think through the math on this last statement. A 3% change every year is a 42.5% change over 12 years. That's not modest, it's extraordinary. If it could be done, the car companies would have done it by now. There are only a few ways you can improve CAFE Standards.

1) Make the Cars Smaller
2) Make the engine Smaller
3) Make the Car Lighter
4) Improve the engine
5) Improve the Design.

The low hanging fruit is the design. It's one of the reasons that cars all look the same now. Aerodynamic principles really only work in a few ways, which means everything looks alike. And the benefits are small. Most of have been taken. So 1) All cars and trucks now look alike, and you didn't improve much.

Making the Car Smaller, Lighter, or the engine smaller is all possible, but it drastically affects the performance and safety of the car. Small, light cars are more dangerous (to the driver) then heavy powerful ones. If you want to do this, you have to be prepared to tell the American car-buyer that they no longer have choice, but instead have to drive tiny, slow cars. If that's what you want to do, fine, but let's not pretend that magic CAFE changes will let us keep what we have with no pain.

And that leaves engine improvements. We have electric cars and we have hybrids and we have ethanol and biodiesel.

First, let's start with Electric cars. Electric cars are great for reducing air pollution. They're horrible for greenhouse gases, because it's less efficient to make electricity (burning oil or coal) then it is to burn gas directly. You lose a lot of power making electricity and transmitting it across lines and into batteries.

What about Ethanol? Let's go back to Barack:

We should just replace the use of oil altogether as America's fuel of choice. This doesn't mean singing the praises of ethanol, and hoping that it finds its way into our fuel supply on its own. It means taking some serious steps now to put a national bio-fuel infrastructure into place. Already some cars on the road have flexible fuel tanks necessary for them to run on E85, which is a cheaper, cleaner blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. But millions upon millions of cars still don't have these tanks. So its time for auto-makers to install those tanks in every single car that they make and the government can help cover this small cost which currently runs at just around $100 per car.

Ethanol and Biodiesel are red herrings. Oil and Coal are great at producing energy for two reasons. One, they're lumped together in one spot. You put a derrick in the ground, or you cut pieces of a mountain out, and you have all the coal and oil you can gather. If coal were spread out an inch thick over the entire state of New York, it would be very difficult to mine. Two, oil and coal are concentrated energy. They're organic material that has been compressed.

Biofuels? Well, burn a quart of oil and a quart of ethanol and see which burns hotter and faster. Ethanol is less powerful, which means you need more of it, and the ethanol is a product of corn, which means that you have to process it, losing a lot of the mass. If you replaced all of the oil in the US with ethanol, you'd be knee deep in corn stalks from Bangor to San Diego. We don't have enough corn to do it, and we don't have enough other organic material. What we do have is a way to enrich farm lobbies and farm conglomerates, while pretending to do a good job.

Here's the sad fact. We use oil because it works. It's the best substance we have, and anyone who tells you different either doesn't care about the consequences, or refuses to look at the problem with clear eyes. Yes, we may have a breakthough in energy conversion in the future, but mandating change in the hopes of a miracle happening is a fool's game. If Barack is wrong, and we don't find the magic energy beans, we've actually wrecked the economy.

Try this one. If you are an engineering super genius, and you could create a replicable clean engine that could be mass produced, wouldn't you be hard at work on it? The designer would be the richest man in the world, and be hailed as a savior for generations. So why hasn't it happened?

Because it's hard to do, and no number of laws passed are going to alter the fundamental laws of physics anytime soon.

Hybrids: Snap Quiz: If you want to reduce environmental impact, which should you buy, a Prius, or a Hummer? You know the Hummer is better for Gaia, right? Here's the problem with hybrids. All of their advantage comes from when they are stopped. Gas is still more efficient for powering a car on the highway, but if you're ready to slow down, coast down hills, and accelerate slowly, then a hybrid is for you. The new SUV Hybrids are definitely interesting, but they're already on the market. Why do you need a new law?

A final bit of hypocrisy? Premium cars. CAFE standards don't restrict the building of cars. They impose a fee for not meeting those standards. What this means is that Detroit and Foreign Car Makers build premium cars that don't meet CAFE standards, but charge more for them. This is one of the reasons big, expensive imports cost more, but if you're already wealthy, it doesn't bother you to pay $10,000 more.

Which means that small, light, less powerful cars that all look the same would be driven by the poorest people, while rich people still bought whatever they wanted. Poor and middle class families with more than two kids, or a dog, or friends, or hockey equipment, couldn't afford premium cars, which means they make do with less. But the rich liberal who voted for Obama? No difference.

The presidency is a serious business. Obama's free ride from the media in the primary is about to end, and it's a good thing. It's time the grown-ups start taking a look at what Senator Obama is really offering, and begin imagining what his presidency is like. There's a reason we don't elect people two years removed from the Illinois state senate to the most important office in the land.

Energy Policy is just one of those reasons.

Harvard Should Buy A Wing For The University Of Iowa

2008-06-16T10:03:46-05:00

I'm watching the flooding in Iowa, and it's just terrible that the University of Iowa is flooded. I live not far from one of the flooded areas that hit Missouri in 1993, and while you recover, it takes a lot of work to do so.

I'm sure the federal and state government will step in, but I'd like to see more.

Specifically, I'd like to see a gesture of goodwill from universities that currently hold multi-billion dollar endowments. Harvard, for example, is sitting on about $34 billion. That's about equal to what Microsoft used to have. If they are making just 5%, they're pulling in a cool $1.7 billion if no one ever gives another penny. Surely they can donate a small percentage of their accrued interest to a worthy cause/

One - it's the right thing to do. If higher education is important, then a university can easily find justification to spend money helping other schools in their times of distress. It takes a narrow mind to assume that endowment money can only be spent on a school, and not the bigger society as a whole.

Two - Congress is starting to eye these huge, tax-free endowments, and there's a lot of bad will in the country towards elitist schools which seem increasingly out of touch. What better PR gesture than an act of goodwill in buying a building in flyover country? Think about it. The Harvard Building of Law and Politics. Of course, the money would have to be given without preconditions - we wouldn't want to create a precedent where donors get to lay out conditions for their money {cough, cough}.

It's a great idea, and a very liberal one, as I get to feel good about coming up with a solution where someone else uses their money to solve a problem, but I get to take credit for it. So spread it far and wide, and take part in the good feelings of helping the students of the state of Iowa.

It's also cool to see a blog pop up with information for volunteers.

Photo from Daphonz at Flickr.

Democratic Activists Fear The Brown Note

2008-06-15T21:51:22-05:00

Waitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminute...

I didn't quite believe this when I saw it it. It seems the wackos who plan on protesting the Democratic convention in Colorado are worried that the authorities are going to employ new crowd control tactics popularized by...South Park.

That's right. South Park had an episode called Worldwide Recorder Concert, where Cartman discovers the "Brown Note," a musical note that makes human beings release their bowels when they hear it. The note is mythical, but it made for an amusing premise for a cartoon.

The Tinfoil Hat Brigade thinks its real, and is "preparing" for its deployment (quick, buy Huggies stock!) for the DNC in Denver. I was in Los Angeles during the 2000 convention. It struck me as strange that a Democratic town would clean out all of the crack whores, drug dealers, and homeless that normally infested downtown so they couldn't be filmed by national news desks, but then again, it was nice to see clean streets with no rats for at least a couple of months.

That convention was memorable for me because Porky Pig was arrested. Not the real Porky Pig, but a PETA protestor who drove a truck full of manure up to the Wilshire Grand and dumped it on the sidewalk. They photographed him on the front page of the LA Times, a great picture if there ever was one.

Of course, my normal thoughts about protestors is a mixture of disgust and loathing. That feeling is shared by most people who actually meet a payroll. Who has time to take to the streets? People who don't have to work for a living (or those who get paid to take to the streets).

24thstate's Foreign Envoy

2008-06-13T15:13:28-05:00

24thstate has invited me to provide the perspective of a Missourian abroad. Currently "abroad" means California, though soon enough "abroad" will mean Florida, and quite possibly China in the near future.

What is the point of providing a Missouri-perspective within the United States? Well, everything is in the name. The United States are just that: states united. In an era where the federal government takes on the characteristics of the Blob, it is important to remind ourselves that each state develops its own culture and character, and these differences are truly what makes our country unique within the world. Consider each state a laboratory where various experiments are being conducted on the best way to live within a democracy. I am part of the experiment known as Missouri, and as such, I can provide a unique perspective on happenings outside of the 24thstate.

A couple of observations come to mind immediately:

1) Political descriptions (liberal, conservative, etc.) mean very different things in different states. The national media can often be confusing when it comes to politics, and it is for this reason. A Colorado-conservative may often disagree with his counter-part in Florida, and both would be very confused by their brother in California (a rare-breed that can be likened to a chameleon).

2) Missouri has elected the President in every election (other than Eisenhower's second term) for the last hundred years or so. We are often considered a "fly-over" state by our fellow Americans, but we clearly have our finger on the pulse of this country. Let us hope we continue this trend in the near future.

I look forward to providing observations of the outside world to the 24thstate. For reasons that may become subtly clear in future posts, I wish to remain anonymous. So think of me as your very own Marco Polo venturing into strange and exotic lands.

I'm A Big Environmentalist, But I'd Drill In Alaska

2008-06-13T00:35:09-05:00

Some anecdotal evidence - today i got my hair cut, and was talking with the woman cutting my hair. We complained about high gas prices. I told her that we don't drill in the US, and haven't built a refinery in 30 years. She hadn't heard that, and wanted something done that would actually lower prices.

I went to Schnuck's and purchased some flowers for the wife - they've doubled in price in the last year, and have gone up 25% in the last 3 months. I pointed this out to a woman behind the meat counter, and said it was probably the cost of gas. Without being prompted she said, "I'm a big environmentalist, and even I say it's time to drill in Alaska."

I often try to draw people into discussions like this when I'm out. My goal is to simply find out how informed the average Missouri citizen is. If you're careful, you can get into a discussion of healthcare, the economy, the war, and guns, crime, and taxes without getting someone overexcited and reflexively Democrat or Republican.

What I'm seeing everywhere, from people of all types, in many separate areas, is a focus on gas prices. And they want someone to so something about it. This holds true even in Missouri, where we have the cheapest gas at $3.82 a gallon.

Enter Roy Blunt, who seems to be thriving in the minority. He pulled a chart the other day comparing the energy plans of the Republicans with that of the Democrats.

Energy security is a winning issue, and it isn't just about gas prices. The public has been lied to about rich oil men in the White House. It's time that the average person start hearing that Democratic power brokers whose campaigns are flush from cash from environmental groups have actively been blocking drilling, refinery expansion, nuclear power, and even alternative energy sources like wind farms because they don't want more energy. These radical environmental groups want us poorer, because they think that humans are a cancer on the planet. The question, is how far the rest of the country will go along with that interpretation. There's a difference between recycling and not wasting water, and agreeing to cut carbon emissions by 80%. There's a difference between wanting better gas mileage and clean air, and deliberate policies to drive the price up gas up to $5 A gallon. How many Americans know that Al Gore said that $5 gas is the solution to our energy habit? Now that Al and the rest of the far left Democrats have had their way, are they happy? Shouldn't Al Gore be out there congratulating the American people on successfully implementing his ideas? Of course not. The only way rabid leftists get into power is to lie about their intentions, and then use the courts, executive orders, and bureaucracy to get their way. $4 gas and $5 diesel. It's what the Democratic leadership wants. Do you?