Randall Mead
A Paul-ing Math
May 14, 2012 | 
Author A Paul-ing Math
Figures from http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_vote_count.html
Real Clear Politics
2012 Republican Popular Vote
Romney . . 6,354,712
Santorum . 3,576,171
Gingrich . . 2,525,766
Paul . . . . . 1,544,822
Based on these figures and according to my math there have been 14,001,471 votes cast for these 4 people who ran/are running in the GOP primary this year.
This means Governor Romney has received 45.4% of the popular vote while Dr. Paul has received only 11% of this vote. To put it another way, the “Not Ron Paul” vote has been 89%.
I realize the Ron Paul faithful believe there is some way Paul can win the Republican nomination. Let’s assume he does.
Does that not mean the 11% have somehow usurped power and disenfranchesed the 89%?
Is that the kind of mandate Dr. Paul and his followers espouse? I think in other places that would call that a “coup.”
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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.
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The Milkshake Baseline
I love chocolate milkshakes. Like spending is to the national government, chocolate milkshakes are to me: my reason for being. The thicker the better, throw in some malt or fudge and I’m in heaven. I consumed them wherever and whenever possible. And since a good thing can only be made better by having more and more of it, my selfish pleasure demanded I consume more and more milkshakes. Problem was, it was hard to justify my milkshake consumption to my domestic constituents, my wife and children who are always whining about things like the cost of the shakes and the effect on my version of the national debt, my weight.
So to be fair to all and to pretend I gave a care about my family’s concerns, I adopted a policy I call the milkshake baseline. I got the idea from a place called Citizens Against Government Waste because I was worried a bit about my waist and just got the spelling wrong. I agreed to budget only one milkshake per week, but in exchange for giving up the fights about my additional milkshakes, we agreed I could increase my weekly milkshake consumption by a modest 7% per year. That was way back in 1974 and I must say since then my milkshake baseline has served me well. Sure it was awkward in the second year when I’d stroll into Steak-n-Shake (R) and order 7% of a milkshake, but we got through it. Six years later, in 1980 I was only up to 1½ milkshakes per week so everyone agreed my baseline plan was working well. By 1998, however, I was up to 5 milkshakes per week and some grumbling broke out about my spending and gluttony. I had quintupled my milkshake intake in 24 years and the effect on my weight was showing, as was the ever increasing cost. I heard grumbles about my health but I wasn’t complaining. I had milkshakes!
By 2009 my milkshake intake had doubled since my 1998 level and I was entitled to have 10 milkshakes a week! By now the shakes were so good I was exploring ways of stimulating my shake consumption. My wife and kids, the ingrates, were complaining I’d have to dress in a TARP if I got any more bloated from the shakes. I countered that times were bad and if I cut back on my milkshake consumption the restaurant would have to lay off employees. How cruel would that be?
Now it’s 2011 and things are totally out of hand with my family. They are demanding I give up my 12 milkshakes a week and drink tea instead. They even had an intervention, like on that show on TV, and all my friends jumped me about how bad my “milkshake habit” had become blah, blah, blah. They tricked me into coming to the intervention by calling it a “tea party.” Obviously my family are rubes and hicks and don’t know how I operate. My weight has skyrocketed, however, and I have developed type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. My doctor keeps preaching doom about the end being near. He keeps threatening to “downgrade my rating” whatever that means. But come on, we’re talkin’ milkshakes here. More has to be better.
Isn’t it?
I need to appease my family and doctor. Ten years from now, in 2021, I am already budgeted to be at 24 milkshakes a week, an increase of 12 milkshake from today’s level. I have promised the family and my doctor if they get off my back I will cut 3 of those out-year milkshakes out of my budget! That’s a whopping 25% reduction in my current level of 12 milkshakes. That means in 2021 I will only be consuming 21 milkshakes. How can they complain about a 25% cut in spending!?
Do you think they will fall for it?
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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.
The Weakling Standard
The Weakling Standard
Having backed the President of the United States into a corner, resulting in his near-hysterical rant on national television and having changed the entire tone of the current national debate from tax increases to spending cuts, the leadership of the House of Representatives now seems bent upon snatching humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory. Sadly, this is business as usual for the Republican Leadership. They seem to think fighting to actually defeat one’s enemy or to really uphold the promises one gives to the peasants when running for office, is gauche, tawdry and unworthy of the Patrician ideals which bind the insiders in Washington, DC to one another. And so, rather than crossing the field and accepting the enemy’s sword in surrender, John Boehner and Eric Cantor and their minions in “leadership” instead are poised to sue for peace via Boehner’s flaccid plan to draw a couple of cups of water out of the growth of the tsunami of government spending which promises to wipe us out as the leading economic power of the world. Victory, after all, is the quaint notion of those naive freshmen who actually believe in things like principles and promises.
Despite that lofty rhetoric, my fight today is not with the sell-outs of the establishment wing of the GOP. The old school establishment politicians are a remnant of a dying era. Mr. Boehner apparently forgets the only reason he occupies the office of Speaker is due to the hard work of the freshmen. But that, and the Senate’s Democrat majority and the abomination in the White House will soon be remedied. It is the cheerleaders of mediocrity that I want to talk about today.
First, there’s The Weekly Standard. There are things called “magazines” which consist of stories printed on slick paper and some people, I guess, actually pay good money for these things and some others actually pay better money to advertise their businesses in these periodicals. Weird, I know, but I remember them from youth. My mom always had a pile of them called “Life” and “Look” piled next to our black rotary phone which connected to our party line. The Weekly Standard boasts a lofty circulation of a whopping 60,000 influential insiders each and every week, not counting hits on its web site linked above. By contrast, Rush Limbaugh reaches some 20,000,000 listeners a week, but that doesn’t diminish the status of The Weekly Standard, in its own eyes. This week, The Weekly Standard distinguished itself again as the barker at the carnival of mediocrity when its editor, William Kristol, penned a juvenile screed attacking the real conservatives, the “Tea Party” for their boring, pedestrian refusal to follow the flaccid Boehner plan. In this little rant he called “A Time for Choosing“, Kristol launches into an argument one must usually go to a grade school play ground to hear. “You can’t be my friend if you’re Jimmy’s friend,” Kristol whines in his opening paragraph, as he claims if you don’t support Boehner’s punt-to-win tactic you must be a Nancy Pelosi lover. Deep. He culminates his searing logic with a claim that if we don’t surrender to the enemy now the enemy will defeat us later. Wait, what? People pay to read this? Conservative pay to advertise in this? Time to reevaluate that marketing strategy.
Meanwhile, the Lord of the Flies-level analysis of the real conservatives continues at the mouth-piece of the blue-blooded establishment, the Wall Street Journal with its oh-so-witty Lord of the Rings analogy. Unlike the magazine, the WSJ’s marketing plan is to take 2 day old news, print it on smudgy paper and have a boy throw it on your wet lawn in the morning. After savaging Senator Jim DeMint, the Club for Growth and The Heritage Foundation, the anonymous author of this WSJ hit-piece intoned:
The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.
Seriously? Was it take your kid to work day at the WSJ? Say what you will about Kristol’s piece, at least he had the balls to sign his name to it. I’m looking at you Wall Street Journal. Was your “journalist” too busy hacking cell phones to sign his work? Or just too embarrassed?
And our final cheerleader who needs a little light shined on him is the right honorable Senator John McCain who, read the above WSJ article on the floor of the United States Senate. “Conservative” McCain, who actually knew Gandalf as a young man, later explained on Sean Hannity’s TV show how he was a conservative’s conservative and he was not attacking the tea party movement, which he loved (impish smile here with an almost childish giggle, as if reading dirty jokes to his fellow 5th graders) but was merely explaining the issue. This criticism of real conservatives from a man whose two claims to fame are losing an election to some nobody from Illinois named “Barack” and having been captured for a long time? Well you are still in captivity, Senator McCain. You’ve been captured by the wishy-washy, don’t-make-waves establishment that the tea party movement is here to replace. Somebody needs to take Grandpa back to the home.
Conservatives, John McCain is self-limiting but enemies who pretend to be friends are not so self-limiting. What you have to ask yourself is, why should you pay to buy or subscribe to periodicals which advocate this weakling standard for conservatism?
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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.
It is time for shared sacrifice.
I watched in utter amazement last Friday as the President of the United States of America had a hold-my-breath, stomp-my-feet, hissy fit on national tv because mean old John Boehner wouldn’t go along with the scheme to rip us off for even more taxes. All the cliches in this matter are true but the best one that sums up the issue is “It’s the spending stupid.” We don’t need any further “revenue enhancements” (don’t you just love D.C. euphemisms?) which are a drop in the bucket compared to the run-away spending our profligate national government has been indulging in for the last decade. Yes, it started with President Bush but his growth in spending was truly amateurish compared to that of the current one-term-wonder, Barack H. Obama. To get this country back in black we have to cut spending and cut it to the bone.
As I marveled at Obama’s macabre theatre of the absurd, it dawned on me that about a week ago Obama called on the nation to rally together and make a “shared sacrifice” to confront this crisis. According to an AFP story carried on Breitbart, the President said,
Simply put, it will take a balanced approach, shared sacrifice, and a willingness to make unpopular choices on all our parts.
In that regard I agree with President Obama completely. It is indeed time for shared sacrifice. Where I suspect we differ is on the issue of who should now be doing the sacrificing.
To quote an old Rush Limbaugh saw, “It’s time the poor started paying their fair share!” The problem is not that the so-called “rich” pay too little. It’s that the “poor” pay far too little and receive far too much. But let’s back away from the tired old Marxist tactic of pitting economic classes against one another. “Rich” or “poor”? What do these labels even mean in today’s American society? We have the richest poor in the world. I recall vivividly Dinesh D’Souza’s story about what an Indian friend told him when asked why he wanted so badly to come to America. He replied:
I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat.
See, What’s So Great About America, Townhall.
Meanwhile the rich aren’t even the rich. With each new day we find “rich” being defined down to where about any husband and wife team of school teachers are deemed “the rich” by the Obama regime. So let’s abandon those words in favor of more meaningful terms, such as “producers” and “users.” I define producers as any who, through their wit, skill, enterprise and industry are employed or self-employed in the private sector and contributing to our gross domestic product. These people include the laborers and the thinkers, the professionals, the artisans and the industrialists; the ones who work for what they get and all too often are the ones taxed to pay for what those who don’t produce get through the largess of our very generous government. On the other end of the spectrum are the “users.” As the name implies these people do not produce, but use that which the producers produce. The users live off that taken from the producers. There are some necessary users, such as police, fire and military, and it is not the intent of this article to denigrate their necessary service. I focus instead on the true users: those on the public dole, the lazy, the unmotivated, the incompetent, the under-achievers. They actually enjoy a life-style that would be the envy of the average European middle class. The Heritage Foundation recently published some eye-opening statistics and charts on this very subject, noting:
. . . According to the government’s own survey data, in 2005, the average household defined as poor by the government lived in a house or apartment equipped with air conditioning and cable TV. The family had a car (a third of the poor have two or more cars). For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, a DVD player, and a VCR. . . .
If there were children in the home (especially boys), the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a microwave, refrigerator, and an oven and stove. Other household conveniences included a washer and dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker. . . .
Not bad.
For far too long the producers have been forced to give too much to the users in terms of taxes and in other ways, ($16 trillion) but let’s focus on taxes so we don’t stretch this note to unnecessary length. We are told by the merchants of poverty, the press and the left, that we are selfish and undertaxed and we should be thankful for that. My experience is that Americans in general are not a seflish people and happily give to those truly in need; a hand-up in hard times. And no one begrudges a penny spent on those few who, because of age, or disability, truly cannot work. But we are certainly not undertaxed.
The Tax Foundation recently published a work by Scott Hodge showing of all the industrialized countries the producers in the United States are the most taxed in the world. Hodge, citing figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), printed a table which he explained as follows:
The first column shows that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.
In sum, the top 10% of American producers are taxed at the highest level in the world, in order to pay for some user’s Playstation (R).
Yes, it is time, far past time, for some “shared sacrifice.” It’s time for the users to sacrifice some of their goodies that the rest of has been paying for since LBJ’s unfortunate rise to power. I can hear the left howl now. “You can’t take food out of the mouths of babies!” True, and I don’t want to. Instead, let’s just take away their cell phones.
In January 2010 The Heritage Foundation shined some light on how you producers are giving away free phones and hours to the users, to the tune of a couple of billion dollars.
. . . In 2008, the fund that foots the bill for this program contributed $819 million to subsidize low-income telephone services. The fund is projected to grow to over $1 billion this year. That’s $1 billion of over $800 billion the United States will spend on welfare in 2010. . . .
I realize a mere couple of billion is a drop in the bucket of champagne the users enjoy. But the journey of a trillion dollars begins with but a single greenback. Barack? Harry? Nancy? You sure there’s nothing we can cut??
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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.
Lessons from The Rifleman
Well here it is July 2 and I’m in the office trying to catch up on a few things. As is my want, I have my office TV on in the background, on AMC. I like to have a little noise in the background and I’m sort of waiting for one of the best movies ever made, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the meantime they are running episodes from the old 1960′s Western The Rifleman. This is a classic I remember watching as a kid. Chuck Conners plays Lucas McCain, an independent rancher, who with his Winchester 1892 rifle struggles to make a living, raise his son Mark without a mother, and be a responsible citizen in the old west.
Photo Source
The themes are classic: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong and a father teaching his son the difference by example, and enforcing good and right over evil and wrong with the responsible use of his Winchester, frequently in voluntary support of the community and its Sheriff.
I wasn’t paying close attention because I am trying to work. The episode is called “Seven” and roughly concerns seven escaped criminals who take and terrorize a small town while demanding vengence against Lucas McCain for some offense he paid their leader.
McCain does “the right thing” and all ends well, but there was a little soliloquy at the very end that suddenly grabbed my attention and prompted me to put aside my work for a bit, look up these details and write this little post. Read this:
. . . The next night I was working on the pump…again! Mark was restless. He was still up reading in his schoolbooks. I looked over at him. “It’s way past your bedtime, Mark,” I stated sternly.
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t seem to be tired.” He slowly walked over to me. “Alright if I stay in here and watch for awhile?”
Normally I would have sent him on to bed, but somehow I knew something was bothering that boy, so I simply answered, “Suit yourself,” and waited for him to open up to me.
It didn’t take him long. “Pa, is it possible to loose a town?” he suddenly blurted out.
“Loose a town?” I asked as I looked at him. Then I suddenly realized he was thinking about what happened to those prisoners last night. Mark figured they could’ve taken the town away from us. “They could’ve taken it physically, Mark, but they couldn’t have kept it. Takes more then just guns to hold a town. No son, the time a town or even a country is really lost is when the people who live in it get careless and stop paying attention to how it’s being run.”
Again, Mark surprised me by blurting out, “Oh, you mean like the Roman Empire!” I turned and looked at my child. He never ceased to amaze me!
“You’re up to that already?” I asked a bit shocked. He said Miss. Adams started them on it last week. “Well then you know the value of studying your history. Now, you were a hundred percent right when you said ‘like the Roman Empire.’ By knowing the mistakes people have made hundreds of years ago, we can learn a lesson and profit from not making the same mistakes ourselves.” I thought on that myself as I spoke these words to my son.
“I hope so,” Mark stated. I suddenly turned and stared at my young son. He hoped so? That was an odd response to one of my inspired lectures! I reckon I was putting him to sleep as usual because he suddenly yawned and stated he could go to sleep now. “Goodnight, Pa!”
As he disappeared into the bedroom, I said, “Goodnight, son.” Then I thought about his “I hope so” comment and shook my head.
That boy! Source –> The Rifleman, “Seven.”
It of course hit me that in 1960, writers in Hollywood (in this case, Arthur Browne, Jr.) were allowed to write like this, in marked contrast to the drivel that finds its way into most of what constitutes modern television. But it spoke to our situation today, where our American electorate has almost made it possible to “lose a nation.” The jury is still out on that and hopefully the loss can still be prevented.
But the cause of the loss is still the same as that forsaged by Lucas McCain: the “people who live in it get careless and stop paying attention to how it’s being run.” Yes, fat times breed laziness. We found it easy to pretend to educate our youth in schools that are little more than left-wing indoctrination centers, rather than to teach them ourselves by the example of our lives, like Lucas. We are then surprised that they and a majority of the electorate seem more intrigued by the current antics of Lady Gaga than the role of federalism in our supposedly representative government. We don’t understand when “the people’s” interest in Congress is limited to the vulgarity of one Anthony Weiner. Obama and his regime are not the cause of our dire position as a nation. We, the people, are the cause, because we, like the Roman Empire, have gotten careless, fat and lazy and have stopped paying attention to how it’s run.
There is still time to turn this around. But it requires direct action by we few who still care, who still pay attention, to educate the rest as to the brink upon which we teeter. The only questions left are will we act and will they listen? If not, it is possible to lose this town to the bad guys.
-Randy
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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.
In Defense of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin, once again, is the victim of a vicious smear campaign, this time from the supposed “right.” Self-described deep thinkers from the Republican Party, from George Will to Charles Krauthammer and other ankle-biters who think themselves relevant, are letting it be known to the media that they are so embarrassed to have an ignoramous like Palin associated with their party. Politico seems to be the current center of the “I hate Sarah” club, as discussed recently on Rush Limbaugh. It would be so convenient if she just went away, in all her ignorance. Why, she’s dragging us down as the “party of ideas.” I got news for you George and Charles, et al., if the past of the GOP is based on your lofty ideals, you can keep the Republican Party.
Sarah Palin is the one and only reason I held my nose and voted for the McCain ticket and I suspect if that was true for me it was true for about a million others. She’s the only thing that resurrected his failed, impotent campaign and at the end actually gave him a chance, which he still blew because he wouldn’t take his gloves off against candidate Obama.
Sarah Palin, not John McCain, packed 70,000 people into a campaign event in Florida. That was unprecedented for a VP candidate. Sarah Palin has universal name recognition thanks to the drive-by media who continue to vilify her despite her being Sarah Everywoman, a point the old men at the old media still don’t get.
Sarah Palin’s endorsements delivered numerous high political offices to real conservatives across the nation. They owe her and she has proven her coattails time and time again, except to those who, blinded by irrational hatred, refuse to see it.
Now, all that being said, unless conservatives completely unite behind ONE candidate (and we don’t even know if Palin is running) then Mitt “the inventor of Obamacare” Romney will be the nominee, like it or not and you will vote for him, like it or not, because the utter destruction of the US that will be a second Obama administration is too horrible to think.
People. Maybe your guy early on is Pawlenty, or Jindal, or King. Whatever we think of these conservatives like Palin, there will always, always be one, maybe two, things you don’t like about each one of them. We have to get past that one or two things and look at the 8 or 9 that are in lock step with what we too believe, and stop set our own on fire. The risks are too great otherwise. We need to stop labeling and calling candidates names, like the idiotic “RINO.” [As an aside, we should all like being called "RINOs" because we are conservatives, using and retaking the Republicans as a mere vehicle for our ascention to power. Who wants to be a Republican in fact if the model of that Republican is an Alan Simpson or a Lindsey Graham?] President Reagan noted that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent. We need to embrace this philosophy as we enter the 2012 campaign. Let’s stop point out the moats in our neighbors eyes.
If not, the greatness that was America will be lost forever.
The Illinois Colossus
Emma Lazarus’ famous poem “The New Colossus” is engraved on the tablet in the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands, welcoming the “wretched refuse” of the world to America’s shores since 1886. Today, in the Land of Lincoln, we face our own wave of immigration: Democrat legislators who have fled their constitutionally-mandated responsibilities in Indiana and Wisconsin. This craven group would rather run away from their obligations than allow democracy to work. Elections mean nothing to them, only the fees they collect from their union overlords and their ”victory at all costs” ethos have meaning; the law be damned. Of course, they flock to the most disfunctional State in the union to seek sanctuary: Illinois.
To “honor” this great migration, I have taken some liberties with Ms. Lazarus’ great poem to make it relevant to the current situation.
The Illinois Colossus
“Give me your hiding, your whore,
Your huddled legislators yearning for a union fee,
The wretched Democrats of your bankrupt shore.
Send these, the clueless, SEIU-bossed to me,
I lift my begger’s-cup beside Illinois’ rusty door!”