Author Archives: "Archives"
To Avoid Misunderstandings
Quote of the Day: “We did not see (as a result of brain scans of partisan loyalists) any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning. What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts. None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones . . . The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.”
:::— Drew Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory University
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Subject: To avoid partisan misunderstandings
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We want to be clear. DownsizeDC.org is, by law, non-partisan. But the managers of DownsizeDC.org go one step further. We are philosophically and tempermentally ANTI-partisan. We believe political parties are a problem, not a solution.
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Likewise, we’re skeptical of politicians. Any person who thinks he or she is qualified to make decisions for others, and to coerce others to abide by those decisions, is automatically suspect in our eyes. Politicians, almost by definition, are people who feel qualified to use government coercion to manage other people’s lives.
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We disagree with them. They aren’t qualified. No one is.
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In our view the best a politician can do is work to limit the use of government power. These boundaries are required by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Sadly, most politicians are too impressed with themselves to limit themselves in such a way.
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This fact motivates us to be both anti-partisan and anti-politician.
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Where most people look to parties and politicians for solutions, we
What Cokie Said
Quotes of the Day:
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“I would ask the Democratic leadership to guarantee that such a bill will not be brought to the floor of the House unless there have been public hearings in the appropriate committees, the entire text has been available online for the American people to review for at least one week, and it includes no special-interest earmarks.” — House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
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“I think the notion of a stimulus package online for a week before its voted on is just delightful. I mean, these bills are normally written in the dead of night with all kinds of things getting in them. … Any big bill, I mean nobody usually knows what’s in it at all when they’re voting on it. That would be real change.” — Cokie Roberts, “This Week” roundtable on ABC, January 4, 2009 (-8:35 mark)
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Subject: What Cokie Said
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Two weeks ago Congressional Democrats wanted to pass an “economic stimulus” bill in time for President Obama to sign it on his first day in office. But now that the stimulus proposals are being criticized from all sides, Democrats are hoping to get something passed by the mid-February recess.
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Meanwhile, Republican leaders are insisting on hearings and a real debate about the bill. They’re also demanding that the bill be posted on-line for seven days before the vote.
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They got it from you.
What We Accomplished
Quote of the Day: “The political spirit is the great force in throwing the love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.” — John Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838-1923), Source: On Compromise, 1874
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Subject: What we accomplished in 2008
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We raised and spent roughly $168,000. We used this money to . . .
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Research and write 212 Dispatch messages. These messages had a massive educational impact. The total known circulation of these messages was 4,480,457, plus a huge unknown number of Dispatches that Downsizers forwarded to other people. Downsizers also used our Tell-a-friend system to alert more than 26,000 people about Downsize DC campaigns.
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All of these messages, taken together, not only had a large educational impact, but also recruited 8,754 newly registered Downsizers over the course of the year. This increase in the size of our Downsize DC Army enabled us to pound Congress with
How to Stimulate the Economy
Quote of the Day: “The permanent income hypothesis (PIH) is a theory of consumption that was developed by the American economist Milton Friedman. In its simplest form, PIH states that the choices made by consumers regarding their consumption patterns are determined not by current income but by their longer-term income expectations.” — from Wikipedia
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Subject: How to stimulate the economy
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The President-elect wants the proposed stimulus bill to be 40% tax cuts. That’s good. But he wants those cuts to be one-time reductions. That’s bad.
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The politicians want to prop up businesses by stimulating consumer spending. One-time tax cuts will not accomplish this.
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Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for
The New President’s Promises
Quote of the Day: “When a government takes over a people’s economic life it becomes absolute, and when it has become absolute it destroys the arts, the minds, the liberties and the meaning of the people it governs.” — Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959) Source: The Guaranteed Life http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Maxwell.Anderson.Quote.981D
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Subject: The New President’s Promises
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Politicians make promises. The President-elect made a lot of them. Chris Edwards at the Cato Institue has provided a helpful summary of some of them.
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We want to draw attention to these . . .
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* Eliminate “ineffective government programs.”
:::* Expose corporate welfare.
:::* Enforce tougher new standards on the Office of Management and Budget’s current “PART” program, which grades program effectiveness.
:::* “Enforc[e] standards when programs continually fail” by ”cutting program budgets or eliminating programs entirely” or other reforms.
:::* “Eliminate government programs that are not performing” by means of a “line-by-line” budget review.
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These are pretty good promises. We applaud them. We’d like to help the President-elect keep them. Were he to do so, it would mark change. Other Presidents, from both parties, have made similar promises. They have not kept them.
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We vote for change.
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To cause change by keeping these promises the President-elect will need not only the will to do so, but also help from Congress. This is where we can assist him. Let’s be helpful.
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The President-elect faces a target rich environment in terms of keeping these promises. There are too many examples of
Ted Kennedy’s Deathbed Legacy
Quote of the Day: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”
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Subject: Plotting to Socialize Medicine
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A swift attack is coming. “We need to be on the offense,” said the soon to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle. He claims they learned, from the Clinton failure, how to pass socialized healthcare.
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President-elect Obama believes that his health care gimmicks should be part of his economic recovery schemes. While you and I were decking the halls, and kissing our sweethearts under the mistletoe, he was stealthily advancing his agenda.
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During the last half of December the Obama transition team held house meetings across the country. They took the feedback from these socialist trysts, then posted it at their interactive site, Change.gov. The Obama administration is conspiring to hit the ground running in January, using the claim that these meetings represent public support to compel Congress to act . . .
Starting off the new year
Quote of the Day: “He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” — Charles Peguy (1873-1914) French poet, essayist and editor
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Subject: Starting off the new year
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We’re back. Happy New Year.
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We’re going to start off slowly today, giving ourselves and all of you a chance to ease back into the swing of things. But we did want to tell you that . . .
Good News!
Subject: Good news!
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We’re ending this year with very good news. We’re only $2,009 away from having all of our 2009 operating expenses covered. Actually, the number was $2,016 but I threw in $7 to make it $2,009 for 2009. It kind of has a ring to it, doesn’t it?
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If we can raise this last little amount then we’ll be in a position to deploy, in 2009, eight to ten times the resources for direct outreach marketing that we’ve had in the previous four years combined!
A Plan For Peace
Quote of the Day: “The search of an etymological dictionary reveals that the words ‘peace,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘love,’ and ‘friend,’ share some common origins. Perhaps they implicitly understood what we, in our overly-politicized world, can no longer grasp, namely, that ‘friends’ express ‘love’ for one another by respecting one another’s ‘freedom,’ and that a world so constituted enjoys ‘peace.'” – Butler Shaffer, When the World Went Bankrupt
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Subject: Peace to People of Goodwill
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This is the Christmas season. Carols fill the air, singing of peace on Earth, and of angels who brought glad tidings of great joy to all people.
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Peace is not the interest of Big Government. Big Government heralds bad news. This issue of good news is so important to me that my personal emails include the following quote beneath my signature:
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“Big government harms you, hurts your family, damages your industry, and destroys your community — it even kills people. We must Downsize DC for Human Progress.”
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It is normally the duty of beauty pageant contestants to say they want to work for world peace. But peace is not an empty platitude. Peace is actually a serious, noble calling. And it can only come by reducing the size, the scope, the power, and the expense of Big Government.
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Big Government is a blunt force tool of coercion — nothing more.
Babka on the Radio: Thursday, 2:30pm
Downsize DC President Jim Babka will appear on Waking Up Orwell, a radio show airing on the KOOP, 91.7 FM in Austin TX on Thursday, December 18 at 2:30 pm Central. He will be joined by Lowell Rogers, a longshoreman who opposes the Transportation Worker Identification Credential or TWIC card.
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More details can be found here.
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If you’re not in the Austin area, you can listen via the Internet by going to KOOP.org and clicking the “Listen Live” button.