Americans' self-indulgence hurts us

The question that President Obama ought to be asking — that we all should be asking — is this: How big a government do we want? Without anyone much noticing, our national government is on the verge of a permanent expansion that would endure long after the present economic crisis has (presumably) passed and that would exceed anything ever experienced in peacetime. This expansion may not be good for us, but we are not contemplating the adverse consequences or how we might minimize them.

We face an unprecedented collision between Americans' desire for more government services and their almost equal unwillingness to be taxed. The conflict is obscured and deferred by today's depressed economy, which has given license to all manner of emergency programs, but its dimensions cannot be doubted. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office ("The Long-Term Budget Outlook") makes that crystal clear. The easiest way to measure the size of government is to compare the federal budget to the overall economy, or gross domestic product (GDP). The CBO's estimates are daunting.

For the past half-century, federal spending has averaged about 20 percent of GDP, federal taxes about 18 percent of GDP and the budget deficit 2 percent of GDP. The CBO's projection for 2020 — which assumes the economy has returned to "full employment" — puts spending at 26 percent of GDP, taxes at a bit less than 19 percent of GDP and a deficit above 7 percent of GDP. Future spending and deficit figures continue to grow.

What this means is that balancing the budget in 2020 would require a tax increase of almost 50 percent from the last half-century's average.

Jesus, a Jewish person of Jewish race and religion and practice created WINE OUT OF WATER!

Not the other way around.

You are supposed to enjoy yourself and each other, make better things out of what you have, and not make water out of wine.

Democrats are too busy dragging everything toward hell instead of reaching up

American Women’s Self-Indulgence, primarily. (Or, as Ann Coulter puts it, “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president.”

John Lott: “...Even after accounting for a range of other factors — such as industrialization, urbanization, education and income — the impact of granting of women’s suffrage on per-capita state government expenditures and revenue was startling. Per capita state government spending after accounting for inflation had been flat or falling during the 10 years before women began voting. But state governments started expanding the first year after women voted and continued growing until within 11 years real per capita spending had more than doubled. The increase in government spending and revenue started immediately after women started voting.

Yet, as suggestive as these facts are, we must still consider whether women’s suffrage itself caused the growth in government, or did the government expand due to some political or social change that accompanied women’s suffrage?

Fortunately, there was a unique aspect of women’s suffrage that allows us to answer this question: Of the 19 states that had not passed women’s suffrage before the approval of the 19th Amendment, nine approved the amendment, while the other 12 had suffrage imposed on them. If some unknown factor caused both a desire for larger government and women’s suffrage, then government should have only grown in states that voluntarily adopted suffrage. This, however, is not the case: After approving women’s suffrage, a similar growth in government was seen in both groups of states.

Women’s suffrage also explains much of the federal government’s growth from the 1920s to the 1960s. In the 45 years after the adoption of suffrage, as women’s voting rates gradually increased until finally reaching the same level as men’s, the size of state and federal governments expanded as women became an increasingly important part of the electorate.”

(http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/WashTimesWomensSuff112707.html)

don’t tell me that, if men did what they were supposed to do and followed God, women wouldn’t have a problem

Instead we have men getting drunk, men getting boyfriends, men having affairs, men gambling, men beating on women and children, going to Argentina instead of running their states, sticking their wienies everywhere instead of running their countries, quitting their jobs so they don’t have to pay child support, wrecking cars, not paying the bills, refusing to work, forming unions so they don’t have to work........need I go on?

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