My New Friends

I have been invited by Modern Conservative to start a movement promoting Conservative artists.
Hopefully the project will lead to new and exciting things for both of us. In the mean time, here is my introductory post at Modern Conservative.
I plan to write articles for them regularly, commenting on what it is like to be an artist who is neither Liberal, nor afraid to say so. I'll be posting about my art and politics in general, as well as my experiences in the worlds of art and politics. Hopefully, you will look forward to seeing links to those articles here.
The goal is to network with and help promote other artists and raise awareness for our work. I hope you will wish us luck, and pass us on to your friends. This is a very flattering and exciting opportunity for me.I look forward to helping them build a base of Conservative artists as well as reach out to the Conservative community to make them aware that they can find art from their perspective.

This made me smile...

So I decided to pass it on.
http://americantruckersatwar.com/2009/01/18/dear-american-liberals-leftists-social-progressives-socialists/

The Federal Government should institute this system on a national level

I just read a good article addressing the issue of welfare abuse. Because I have long felt this is an important issue that needs to be addressed, I have decided to post a link to the article with my response.
Too many people are afraid to say that a person should work for a living instead of turning to the government for a handout. Too many people think the rich owe them something or have cheated them in some way. I understand that bad things happen and people run on hard times. I grew up poor and still remember how it feels. I'm better off now than I was as a child, but I intend to do the best that I can for myself and my family.
The thought of accepting what the government would give me rather than work hard is absurd. Also, the government is the last place someone should go for help.Family, charities, and churches should be the first step. You should know the person who is helping you and appreciate their willingness to help you. Taking money from a vague entity like the government, which takes that money from someone else, is stealing. The person who earned that money has no idea how it is spent.They are not given the courtesy of deciding if you merit the help.
Link: National Summary Article Verifying need when dispensing welfare
My Response: I just wanted to congratulate you for having the nerve to address this issue, particularly in a time when it is in vogue to be a ward of the government. I have long wondered why the government makes it so easy to get a check and literally pays people to stay home and have children. The answer, of course, is buying votes. I find it sad that people would rather accept what they are given by the government than work for what they could have. That is no quality of life by my standards. As a Libertarian political artist (www.machinepolitick.com), I know how hard it is to stand up to the accepted ideas of your peers. Good luck and good work. The article was very well written and stands as a great example of a very important issue.

The Read the Bills Act

As you can see from my sidebar, I support the Read the Bills Act sponsored by DownsizeDC.org. The basic idea behind the proposal is that Congress should read a bill before they sign it. What a novel idea. This would have the benefit of making sure each Representative is aware of what they are voting for, as well as making them fully responsible for that vote.I find it highly unacceptable that bills are passing and Congressmen are claiming to be unaware of their contents. If they don't have time to read the bill, it's either too big or they aren't qualified for their job.
The RTBA would also eliminate 'log-rolling', which is the popular practice of lumping a bunch of bills together for expediency. This way, Congressmen feel the need to vote for a package containing pork or bad legislation because they don't want to kill the provisions of which they approve.
In the interest of brevity and accuracy, I will direct you to the following link: DownsizeDC's Read the Bills Act

Ayn Rand Quotes

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge Ayn Rand fan. If you want a little perspective into my personality, read some of her work. If you're new to Rand, I suggest Anthem and We the Living first. My all time favorite, of course, is Atlas Shrugged, but no self-respecting artist would go through life without reading the Fountainhead.

That being said, I decided to follow up yesterday's EFCA post with a couple of quotes from Ayn Rand pertaining to Unions and government intervention in business.

Needless to say, I am wanting now, more than ever to have that meeting with John Galt. I probably flatter myself that my leaving society would have all that much impact on the world, but one can dream. I'd certainly like a little vacation from the current level of government sponsored insanity and generalized buffoonery.

Quotes:

Unions and trade associations are not directed against employers or the public but against the best among their own members…This is one of the most obvious demonstrations of the fact that collectivism does not aim at any kind of “justice” or “fair play”, or protection of the weak [man] against an actual infringement of his rights by the strong for the sake of the weak – stopping ability for the sake of incompetence – not just robbing the production of the able, but stopping him from producing – not raising the weak in any way whatever, but simply forcing the strong down to the level of the moron. (Of course, if you do that, you destroy the world – weak and strong both and the weak do not profit by this – not even for the moment).

…Man will not produce if all the essential elements involved are not under his rational control, i.e., if they are not understandable to him, and therefore, predictable, so that he can set his purpose and plan of action, his end and means accordingly…If his productive activity has to depend upon the arbitrary decision/whim of some human agency, against whom he has no recourse and no chance (such as the government) – he will not produce.

Employee Free Choice Act

It has been a long time since the days when a Union performed the task of protecting the workers. The proposals by the 110th Congress of S.1041 and H.R.800, better known as the Employee Free Choice Act, are indicative of the Unions interest in their own power over the rights and interests of their employees. There was a time when one could argue the need for Unions to protect the worker to some extent, but no longer. With the advances in education and technology currently available to the American workforce, it is absurd to contend that people are trapped in jobs with unfair or unsafe working conditions. Anyone is free to get an education and a better job if they are unable to negotiate a better work environment with their current employer. There are sufficient laws in place to protect employee rights, including the right to organize in a Union.
The Employee Free Choice Act, like all bills that have such beneficent sounding names, is an attack on the rights of the individual. The intent of the bill is not to increase employee protection in the workplace, but to give more power over the company to the Union. By eliminating the privacy of employees when casting a ballot, through card check, the Union is given power to intimidate employees who choose not to join. This helps the Union, not the employees of the company.
All provisions called for under the EFCA regarding employees’ rights to organize are already provided by existing law. What the Unions are hoping no one will notice is that the new bill does three things:
1. It eliminates the secret ballot
2. It gives the Union the leverage of direct government intervention (in addition to that already in place) if their terms are not met to their satisfaction
3. It eliminates the rights of the minority of workers who choose not to join the Union by forcing Union demands upon the company without benefit of contracts
The opinion of the majority should not eliminate the rights of the minority. That is why the United States is a Constitutional Republic. All of its citizens maintain their rights under a rule of law and a government answerable to a system of checks and balances. To allow the loudest or strongest among us to take advantage of the power of government to bully the individual, we pave the way to anarchy and the destruction of the principles of the Founding Fathers.
An employer should not be forced to follow rules that are detrimental to the operation of their company, simply because a majority of employees feel disenfranchised. Those employees are free to find better jobs at any time. The job belongs to the employer, not the employee. Running a company out of business by imposing demands that are impossible to meet and unfair to employees who are content with their jobs only accomplishes the end of making everyone there unemployed. That doesn’t seem in the best interest of the worker to me.

*Because this article is my opinion I am giving the following references as documentation in support of my point. A simple Google search gives all sources available. However, please not that the Union sites and many of the sites giving summaries of the bills do not give the full text of the bill and are therefore misleading. I recommend reading the bills in full to eliminate any confusion on the issue.

Excerpt:
The automakers also suffered from the UAW's ability to kill the company at any time via a work stoppage. Management caved in to demands it had to know it had no hope of ever being able to meet absent a cartel position restricting foreign competition. I love the UAW members complaining that they were promised these retirement benefits. Yes, they were, and the promise came under their threat of beating up people who broke the picket line to keep the company in business while they striked -- a promise given under threat of violence. The best managers aren't going to be drawn to that sort of environment. The anti-trust laws made GM avoid making cars that were TOO good because then it would gain too much market share and come under scrutiny. And later, they relied on tariffs to protect them from foreign competition since domestic competition (as in fundamentally changing the way things were done) was squelched.
Full Article:
Too Big to Fail and the Problem of Bigness Thursday, January 1, 2009, 2:51 pm, by joconnor

Excerpt:
The Employee "Free Choice" Act takes away a worker's fundamental right to a private ballot in union organizing elections. Big union bosses would bypass free and fair union elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board for a "card check" system where they could intimidate and coerce workers to sign cards authorizing the formation of a union. Under this bill, once the union has obtained a mere majority of workers signing authorization cards, a union is immediately recognized with no further discussion or debate and no secret ballot election. In contrast to a private ballot election, a card check system allows the union and employer alike to see where you stood.
The private ballot is the cornerstone of American democracy. Only when a vote is private -- free of the intimidation or coercion that open public "voting" would invite -- can the people's voice truly be heard.
The Employee "Free" Choice Act would rip apart a sacred American right in favor of an unfair and coercive card check process. That's why EFCA should really be called the Employee Forced Choice Act.
The danger of the Employee Forced Choice Act extends well beyond a denial of workers' democratic rights. EFCA would dramatically change the nature of the American workplace, inserting Washington bureaucrats into the most basic decisions about your job or your business.
Full Article:
Exposing EFCA, from the Workforce Fairness Institute


Information and fliers for distribution

Definitions of EFCA: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1041&tab=summary
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-800&tab=summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Free_Choice_Act


Definition of Card Check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check

Human Events Article addressing Pelosi's newest power-grab

This new breach of power by the Democrats in Congress is likely a sign of the direction they intend to take the country. Being in the majority, is apparantly insufficient to them. Now they intend to change the rules and extend some of their terms as well. It's not looking so good for our future with this kind of thing going on.
The full article is from Human Events. The link for the entire piece is at the bottom of the excerpt included here.

Pelosi Erases Gingrich's Long-Standing Fairness Rules
by Connie Hair
01/05/2009


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.Pelosi’s rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”In reaction, the House Republican leadership is sending a letter today to Pelosi to object to changes to House Rules this week that would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills, amendments to Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. These procedural abuses, as outlined in the below letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, would also include the repeal of six-year limit for committee chairmen and other House Rules reform measures enacted in 1995 as part of the Contract with America.
The full text of the article is at this link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30143

The Fairness Doctrine Looms on the Horizon Part 2

I was recently asked to look into the Fairness Doctrine by a friend of mine on Digg. The result is the two posts I have written for my blog, this being the second. I will also include links at the end for all the articles I had time to read. Clearly, I have a bias against the Fairness Doctrine. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you stop reading now.
I have no doubt Obama considers The Fairness Doctrine a priority. I know he will pass it if it gets through Congress. All Americans should be concerned about this. As a Conservative* political artist and blogger, I have alot to worry about from the Fairness Doctrine. Some of the same people supporting this are also calling for regulation of the internet. It is looking pretty scary.
It takes alot of work on things like this before I even start a painting. Now that I am trying to get into the habit of blogging, I have even less time. If you're interested in seeing my work, the site is: http://www.machinepolitick.com/. You will understand pretty quickly how the Fairness Doctrine will affect me if it extends to the internet. More importantly, it is yet another attack on the Constitution and our civil liberties.
There are some people out there screaming about the Fairness Doctrine and its repercussions. I fear that there are not enough of us, and no one else is listening. We are just a bunch of bigoted wing nuts after all.
I'm glad some people understand that America was not founded on Socialist principles. I was starting to wonder. Now we have to figure out how to educate the masses before we are silenced. I used to think all this Orwellian Big-Brother talk was a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. Now I am not so sure. Clearly, our government no longer cares what we think. McCain-Feingold was passed under the premise of making politics more transparent. We all know it really keeps the big guys in office and shuts up the rest of us. Then the bailout was passed with an overwhelming outcry against it by the people because government knows best and we’re supposed to think they’re looking out for our best interests.
Sorry, I tend to digress and address multiple subjects in a rant. Please bear with me.
I have a question concerning the Fairness Doctrine: Why is it that people who talk so much about freedom of expression and conservative war mongers always support use of government suppression? Things like the Fairness Doctrine are the first step of a repressive government to control the people. Our government has already betrayed us and the Constitution with McCain Feingold, the Patriot Act, the bailouts, etc. We need to take a stand now, while we still can. Make your voices heard people.
There are plenty of communist and socialist countries in the world. It's time for these people to move there, and let the rest of us restore America to the free country it used to be. But wait, Communism doesn't work. Maybe their true objective is to be in charge so they can enjoy the spoils of our labor. We all know when the wealth gets spread around everyone ends up poor because the government sucks up most of the goodies.

* (Note: by Conservative, I do not mean Republican. If you must label me use Libertarian or Objectivist, they are better fits. I may decide to do a self-description at some point in the future. Clearly, I also need to write an article on the real meaning of the word Conservative.)

That’s it for now. Here are some articles you can read:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27566&page=4&viewID=668648
http://www.google.com/search?q=democrats+fairness+
http://www.thomas.gov/home/gpoxmlc109/h3302_ih.xml
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=110-h20071018-47&bill=h110-2905 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-2905 http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27566#continueA http://www.google.com/search?q=democrats+fairness+doctrine&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a