Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you

Call me paranoid, but....

We've learned that IRS employees have declined to approve the tax-exempt status of Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations.   Democrats are generally fond of the IRS and taxing and wasting - much more so than Tea Party groups and Libertarians.  Something like 95% of IRS lawyers consider themselves Democrats.

If you're going to have an IRS with lots of power, you gotta be prepared for them to abuse it.  That's what people do with raw, unaccountable power. 

I can't stop shopping with the IRS and start shopping with a competitor, in the way that I fired Long John Silver's seafood restaurants and started eating at Captain D's (after a bad, bad fish sandwich episode). 

The IRS has a monopoly. If I had a choice, I would treat them like Long John Silver's seafood restaurants, and not give the IRS another dime.

This action on the part of the IRS just may have been enough to give the state of Ohio to Obama in the last election.  The IRS was everything it could, legal or illegal to support their candidate.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I can't fire them. 

Call me paranoid, but....

We've recently learned that the NSA has been accumulating records of our calls and emails.  If I had a choice, I'd de-fund the bastards immediately.  They would join Long John Silver's, Wal-Mart's produce department, AT&T's telephones, General Motors, and a host of other companies that I've fired. 

If the NSA wasn't using this phone/email/wiretap info to help Obama, I'll kiss your ass on the courthouse steps and give you 30 minutes beforehand to draw a crowd to witness the event.  I can't fire them either. 

Call me paranoid, but....

I use Google's free Blogger/Blogspot website hosting program for this website.  I've always liked it.  It's free.  Easy to use.  Google puts ads on it and I get some of the revenue anytime you good folks click on the ads.  Google gets money anytime you click on them too.   

I can't prove this, but it seems that the great majority of political sites that use Blogger/Blogspot are either economically conservative, socially conservative, or small-l libertarian.  (Yeah, I know they cater the searches to your track record.)  But it seems that there are a lot more anti-Democrat bloggers than there are pro-Democrat bloggers.  Hell, the Dems already have almost every newspaper in the U.S. except for the Washington Times and maybe the NY Post.  Who needs the drunken ramblings of a Democrat Precinct Captain when you've already got the New York Times??? 

Google supports the Dems in general and Obama in particular. 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Few Silicon Valley companies have ever embraced a political party as passionately as Google has. Its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has been described as a "kind of guru" to President Obama's campaign manager, and Google employees emerged as the No. 2 donor to the Democratic National Committee in the last election.....

....Google's affection for Democrats, especially the president, is long-standing. Schmidt stumped for Obama and joined other company executives in chipping in for the inaugural celebration. Employees and the company's political action committee gave $1.6 million to Democrats in the last presidential election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, but only $300,000 to GOP candidates. In 2008, Google's climate director, Dan Reicher, exhorted an audience at the Democratic National Convention to "get out the vote and let's get Barack Obama elected in November!"

Google has been hassled by the FTC about sending traffic to their own "products" instead of those of competitors.  That's nobody's business but Google's, in my arrogant opinion.  They shoulda told the FTC to go have sexual relations with themselves.   

But....If I were a high-ranking exec at Google, and I wanted to do my part to help The Obamessiah, I'd start by steering readers away from those anti-Obama websites.  Even if it meant steering a few readers away from the pro-Obama sites that I also "owned".  That, too, is nobody' business but Google's.  If you don't like Google, you can fire them with the click of a mouse. 

A LOT of my traffic used to come from Google.  No more. 

I like to think that I've served up high-quality rants in an entertaining manner several times a week since 2007.  I don't think that the quality has gone down.  There's probably been some competition from Facebook, where everyone I know is now a blogger.  And perhaps Google was correct not to keep sending me a ridiculous amount of traffic based on one picture of Macaulay Culkin. 

This is what the daily hits for this site have looked like from the beginning.  (BTW, I'm now grateful for the new search engine called Bing.  They're now sending me almost as much traffic as Google does, and are going to become my desktop's new home page as soon as I finish writing this rant.) 

A lot of you folks have been reading my stuff for a long, long time. 
Did I suddenly descend into drunkenness and become tiresome after December 2010 ? 
Did Google ignore their "Don't Be Evil" mission statement and roll over for the FTC and start spreading their search results around to more competitor sites? 
Or is my paranoia justified, and Google made a conscious decision to de-emphasize its Blogger/Blogspot program, the one that has all those anti-Obama guys typing away in their pajamas? 

What it comes down to is this....  Should I continue typing crap for Google and letting them make money (however small the amount) from my efforts?  Should I fire Google and get my own domain? 

Call me paranoid, but....

It would be a lot easier to decide what to do if those black helicopters that follow me all day didn't keep blowing away my tinfoil hat. 

The IRS, The DOJ, The FDA, and Milton Friedman's Barking Cat

Why are people surprised that the IRS targeted groups that want a smaller IRS? 

Why do almost half of us think that Obama is lying when he says he didn't know that the IRS was targeting groups that want a smaller IRS? 

If you worked for the IRS, and had a great salary, would you want a larger IRS or a smaller IRS?  Would you use your power to intimidate people who wanted a smaller IRS?  Unless your name is Gandhi or Jesus, you would do exactly and precisely what the IRS did.  You would target your enemies. 

Almost half of Americans say President Barack Obama isn’t telling the truth when he says he didn’t know the Internal Revenue Service was giving extra scrutiny to the applications of small government groups seeking tax-exempt status.

.Forty-seven percent of Americans say they don’t believe Obama compared with 40 percent who say he is being truthful, according to a Bloomberg National Poll of 1,002 adults conducted May 31 through June 3.

More than half of political independents -- 53 percent -- say Obama’s explanation that he learned it from media reports is untrue, while 34 percent say they believe him.

Why is this even called a "scandal"?  It's.... what.... large.... powerful.... governments..... do. 

1) They protect themselves and their families. 
2) They protect their organization.
3) Then they look out for you. Maybe.  All other considerations are in a distant 3rd place. 

To expect an honest, selfless system of angelic revenue thieves is to demand what Milton Friedman called a "Barking Cat".  Friedman used the example of the FDA slowing down pharmaceutical advancement, but you can insert FBI, CIA, Tarrant Regional Water District, VA Hospital, or any other government organization that has the power to control others.

Friedman got a letter that began as follows: "In contrast to your opinion, I do not believe that the FDA should be abolished, but I do believe that its power should be" changed in (such and such a way)....

Friedman replied as follows: "What would you think of someone who said, " I would like to have a cat, provided it barked"? Yet your statement that you favor an FDA provided it behaves as you believe desirable is precisely equivalent. The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of governmental agencies once they are established. The way the FDA now behaves, and the adverse consequences are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat. As a natural scientist, you recognize that you cannot assign characteristics at will to chemical and biological entities, cannot demand that cats bark or water burn. Why do you suppose that the situation is different in the "social sciences?"

The error of supposing that the behavior of social organisms can be shaped at will is widespread. It is the fundamental error of most so-called reformers. It explains why they so often believe that the fault lies in the man, not the "system," that the way to solve problems is to "throw the rascals out" and put well-meaning people in charge. It explains why their reforms, when ostensibly achieved, so often go astray.

The harm done by the FDA does not result from defects in the men in charge-unless it be a defect to be human. Most are and have been able, devoted and public-spirited civil servants. What reformers so often fail to recognize is that social, political and economic pressures determine the behavior of the men supposedly in charge of a governmental agency to a far greater extent than they determine its behavior. No doubt there are exceptions, but they are exceedingly rare-about as rare as barking cats.

This is what Big Government organizations do.  They abuse their power.  They look out for themselves.  In economics, it's called "Public Choice".  I understand the theory better than I do the name. 

As James Buchanan artfully defined it, public choice is “politics without romance.” The wishful thinking it displaced presumes that participants in the political sphere aspire to promote the common good. In the conventional “public interest” view, public officials are portrayed as benevolent “public servants” who faithfully carry out the “will of the people.” In tending to the public’s business, voters, politicians, and policymakers are supposed somehow to rise above their own parochial concerns.

Public "servants" look out for themselves before they look out for you.  And cats don't bark. 
Well, Friedman acknowledged that some cats might rarely bark, but only when they think none of their co-workers are watching.