Interesting Gallup poll on Big Government

This is what makes me nuts. 
I'm talking.....insane. 
Chewing on the table legs. 
Shit it my hat, pull it down to my ears, and call myself Hillary Clinton. 
Sit out on the front porch with a jar of peanut butter and spend a day trying to spread it exactly 3/16ths of an inch thick. 
That kind of crazy.  Crazier than a rodeo goat or a shithouse rat. 

Let me tell you how absolutely, totally nuts this make me....

I had a great-uncle who was a bit too close to his mom, and when she passed away, he spent all of his time out at the cemetery.  He was in his early twenties. 
One day he took a break from hanging out at the graveyard and sat down and played the piano for a few minutes.  He was cranking along pretty well and then played a horrible discordant whonking racket, and went catatonic. 

He didn't say another word to another person for about 50 years.  He died in Whitfield, the Mississippi asylum for the insane. 

That's how crazy this makes me. 

Here's Gallup:

Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000. Big government has always topped big business and big labor, including in the initial asking in 1965, but just 35% named it at that time.

Here's a chart showing the people who are waking up the fluctuations in distrust of government power.

Ok, which two parties grow the government?  That would be the Republicans and the Democrats. 

 

Check out the debt levels.  We really are going to have to pay this money back to somebody. 

Do you see how the debt level goes down when there's a Republican president vs. a Democrat president? 
Do you see how the debt level goes down when there's a Republican congress vs. a Democrat congress? 

I don't either. 

So why, oh why, do people keep voting for those teams of clowns?  This makes me insane.  I have a piano in my bedroom, and am starting to play the old gospel hymn "I Surrender All", but with nothing but tritones in the left hand. 

The Libertarian Party awaits. 
72% of you no longer trust the government. 
We'll kill it for you if the cognitive dissonance doesn't kill me first. 

.


 

Are there any major problems not caused by government?

Gallup periodically surveys Americans about the worst problems facing the nation.  They divide the questions between economic and social issues. 

Here are the top economic concerns. 

Let's start at the top.  What caused our current economic doldrums?  Was it the policies of Bush or Obama?  Or does it go all the way back to Alexander Freakin' Hamilton wanting a strong central bank?  For today's purposes, let's say that the economic slump was caused by government. 

Number two on the list is our staggering debt level.  Which organization caused the Federal debt?  Starbucks?  The Koch brothers?  Wal-Mart?  Fox News?  Nope.  The government. 

Number three is unemployment and jobs.  If there were no minimum wage, all labor markets would clear.  There would be something for everyone to do, with the exception of the handicapped, disabled, and Keynesian economists.  Prices for everything would drop.  It happens that way with every other commodity, and labor is no exception. 

Number four.  Lack of money?  Hell, Ben Bernanke is print another 65 billion dollars every month !! There's plenty of money!!  Perhaps those surveyed meant that money their money is now worth less and less, a problem caused by the Federal Reserve.  Or maybe they intended to say that they don't have enough money to buy certain things whose prices have skyrocketed.  Same crime, same perpetrator. 

Taxes?  That problem isn't caused by the Lions Club. 

Wage issues are usually a personal problem, not a problem necessarily caused by Washington.  There is no alternative universe where low-skilled labor is valued as much as high-skilled labor.  However, the Teleprompter Jesus and his disciples are now lobbying for a minimum wage increase that will price even more low-skilled labor out of the market.  That will make "wage issues" even more of a problem caused by government.  I know that if Obama works hard enough, he can eventually make this worse.   

There is a significant gap between the rich and poor, and it will continue to grow.  100 years ago, most of your customers, my customers, Bill Gates' customers and my readers lived within a few miles of you, me and Bill Gates.  We now reach the world.  If you're the best at what you do, the world is your oyster.  (I'm not the best, but Gates is, and you might be.)  However, there is another group of the wealthy that prospers because of theft.  15 of the 22 wealthiest counties in the US are those surrounding Washington D.C.   

Corporate corruption is not a problem caused by government.  However, government spends a fortune regulating corporations, policing the stock market, and such.  I can't think of a single episode where, say, the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in ahead of time and prevented a Lehman Brothers or Bernie Madoff debacle. 

The others aren't enough of a concern to justify comment.  But I have to sound off on the "trade deficit".  For the 10,000th time, the trade deficit is a bogus number.  If we buy cars from Japan, we give them dollars.  They use these dollars to buy wheat.  When Japan buys wheat from the USA, they give us yen.  We use those yen to purchase cars.  It is balanced.  Nobody's ledger is in a deficit.  (There is something called the "current accounts deficit" which occurs when your politicians concern themselves with producing voters instead of goods and services.  Different problem.) 

Here are our top social concerns:

IMHO, the only two categories on this list that aren't caused by Uncle Sam are "Ethical/Moral Decline" and "Lack Of Respect For Each Other". 

Let's look at those two a little closer - moral decline and lack of respect.  Imagine a grocery store that short-changes its customers.  One where the meat goes rancid within two days of sale.  Dream up a grocery store that routinely pays employees for only 39 hours of a 45-hour week.  How long would that grocery store be in business? 

It would close within a few months.  No government intervention would be necessary.  Word gets out.  You have to respect your customers, your vendors, your employees - those who purchase your merchandise, provide your merchandise, and those whose labor your trade for.  Otherwise, you will go under.  That's how and why our various moral and ethical systems have evolved. 

Next, imagine a president who routinely lies about his policies and his intentions. 

Would you purchase anything this man is selling? 

Very few other people would buy his crap either. 

Fox News has published a different survey suggesting that "dysfunctional government" is the number one concern in the nation. 
I don't know how this is possible.
It seems that our biggest problems are caused when our government functions perfectly and can get things done.   

Why Are We Going To Bomb Syria?

The New York Times has felt a disturbance in The Force

From Nate Silver, writing in The New York Holy Times:

Libertarianism has been touted as the wave of America’s political future for many years, generally with more enthusiasm than evidence. But there are some tangible signs that Americans’ attitudes are in fact moving in that direction.
Since 1993, CNN has regularly asked a pair of questions that touch on libertarian views of the economy and society:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?
Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

A libertarian, someone who believes that the government is best when it governs least, would typically choose the first view in the first question and the second view in the second.
In the polls, the responses to both questions had been fairly steady for many years. The economic question has showed little long-term trend, although tolerance for governmental intervention rose following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The social libertarian viewpoint — that government should not favor any particular set of values — has gained a couple of percentage points since the 1990s but not more than that.
But in CNN’s latest version of the poll, conducted earlier this month, the libertarian response to both questions reached all-time highs. Some 63 percent of respondents said government was doing too much — up from 61 percent in 2010 and 52 percent in 2008 — while 50 percent said government should not favor any particular set of values, up from 44 percent in 2010 and 41 percent in 2008. (It was the first time that answer won a plurality in CNN’s poll.)



Whether people are as libertarian-minded in practice as they might believe themselves to be when they answer survey questions is another matter. Still, there have been visible shifts in public opinion on a number of issues, ranging from increasing tolerance for same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization on the one hand, to the skepticism over stimulus packages and the health-care overhaul on the other hand, that can be interpreted as a move toward more libertarian views.
The Tea Party movement also has some lineage in libertarian thinking. Although polls suggest that many people who participate in the Tea Party movement have quite socially conservative views, the movement spends little time emphasizing those positions, as compared with economic issues.

May this trend continue !!!

The Libertarian Moment

From Reason magazine's Hit & Run department. The Washington Post didn't mention this particular finding in their initial story about their own poll results, mostly because the Post is a company newspaper in the ultimate company town:

All hail The Libertarian Moment. From an ABC News/Washington Post poll of a 1,083 American adults taken over January 12-15:

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, would you say you favor
smaller government with fewer services, or larger government with
more services?”

Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with
fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger
government with more services.

More here, via Instapundit and CNS.

Full poll results here. Question is No. 40, and you have to go back to 2002 for a higher number.

Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie on The Libertarian Moment.

Forty four percent of the electorate will self-identify as Libertarian (if you give them enough hints)

I don't see any way to condense what the Cato institute has to say here, so I'm going to scrape the entire post. Gentlemen, my apologies.

In today’s Washington Post, William Kristol exults:

The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public’s conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.

Gallup often asks people how they describe themselves. But sometimes they classify people according to the values they express. And when they do that, they find a healthy percentage of libertarians, as well as an unfortunate number of big-government “populists.”

For more than a dozen years now, the Gallup Poll has been using two questions to categorize respondents by ideology:

• Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

• Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

Combining the responses to those two questions, Gallup found the ideological breakdown of the public shown below. With these two broad questions, Gallup consistently finds about 20 percent of respondents to be libertarian. The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.

And note here: If you tell people that “libertarian” means “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” 44 percent will accept the label.

That's right, 44%. Forty four percent. Combine that with this little nugget from the New York Times. Here's Jonathan Weisman:

Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy after a mild upswing of attitudes in September. But Republicans haven't been able to profit politically from the economic gloom, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The survey found a country in a decidedly negative mood, nearly a year after the election of President Barack Obama. For the first time during the Obama presidency, a majority of Americans sees the country as being on the wrong track.

This is possibly caused by the memory of Presidents named Bush and Reagan setting spending records until they were upstaged by a President named Obama. One day the electorate will figure out that Republicans don't want to change the direction of the national vehicle, they just want to drive it and choose which gas stations and restaurants to support.

One day, the electorate is going to figure out that Democrats invented "don't ask, don't tell", they are partially responsible for us having 20% of the world's prison population (with only 5% of the world's population to pull from) with their insane War On Drugs, and that the Democrats' economic policies keep more minorities in poverty than anything the Klan could've invented.

The Libertarian Party - One day soon, we're going to march on Washington and demand.....Nothing ! !

Hillary Clinton, Under The Radar

Almost every poll was wrong. Barack Obama was supposed to walk away with the New Hampshire primary. Hillary Clinton won it.

(Disclaimer - Now that Joseph Biden has pulled out of the race, if I had to vote for a Democrat, and I'm talking with a gun to my head, I'd go for Obama.)

I've only seen the polls this screwy in one other state: Louisiana.

Arch-racist and former Klan leader David Duke ran for several Louisiana ofices in the early 1990's. He was, and is, crazier than a rodeo goat. The polling was always off when Duke was in a race - the general theory being that people were ashamed to admit Duke support to a pollster. Therefore Duke always did better in the elections than anticipated.

Duke sometimes said that his support flew under the radar (i.e. couldn't be tracked).

The collected wisdom on yesterday's polling debacle is that Obama's numbers were accurate, and with a very slight surge. But Hillary had an even bigger surge among the undecideds.

I don't buy it.

What does this have to do with David Duke?

Is it possible that the support was always there for Hillary Clinton, but among people whose Political Correctness levels won't allow them to admit they don't support an African-American candidate? Not even in an exit poll, much less in a pre-election survey?

I'm not trying to imply that any of Clinton's supporters are racist. But I do believe that the polling vs. the election results prove that a lot of Clinton supporters don't want to be perceived as racist either.

Political Correctness - 1
Truth - O