We opt for more instead of better. Better is better than more.
Quotes
If we’re to take the “collective right” explanation on its face, then the Second Amendment created a right that the states are powerless to execute, that the Federal government has no duty to provide, and that would be useless and oxymoronic if the latter did so anyway. If one spends five minutes thinking about the “collective right” theory, it quickly becomes apparent that the individual right is the only one that can possibly function appropriately, and is thus the only right that the amendment was ever intended to protect. To put it bluntly, the “collective right” approach makes no sense.
–Daniel Payne, Sorry, But Owning A Gun Is An Individual Right
Apparently, increasing the minimum wage was not important for American workers during the first five years of Obama’s presidency — least of all his first two years, when Democrats controlled Congress and could have passed anything. (And did!)
No. The minimum wage did not become a pressing concern until an election year in which the public’s hatred of Obamacare is expected to be the central issue.
[…]
The minimum wage is the perfect Democratic issue. It will screw the very people it claims to help, while making Democrats look like saviors of the working class, either by getting them a higher wage or providing them with generous government benefits when they lose their jobs because of the mandatory wage hike.
American workers are suffering as a direct result of the Democrats’ policies on immigration. Republicans might want to point that out.
Since the late 1960s, the Democrats have been dumping about a million low-skilled immigrants on the country every year, driving down wages, especially at the lower end of the spectrum.
According to Harvard economist Jorge Borjas, our immigration policies have reduced American wages by $402 billion a year — while increasing profits for employers by $437 billion a year. (That’s minus what they have to pay to the government in taxes to support their out-of-work former employees. Of course, we’re all forced to share that tax burden.)
–Ann Coulter, Raise the minimum wage to $14 an hour using this one weird trick!
Ann can be visceral and caustic and turn people off, but she hits it out of the park with this one.
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
–Joyce Carol Oates
Even if what you’re working on doesn’t go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you’re doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot.
Cormac McCarthy (via mikeschreiber)
[I]t is appropriate that we recall the first thanksgiving, celebrated in the autumn of 1621. After surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrims planted and harvested a bountiful crop. After the harvest they gathered their families together and joined in celebration and prayer with the Native Americans who had taught them so much. Clearly our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well being of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well. In this spirit, Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. Long before there was a government welfare program, this spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character. Americans have always understood that, truly, one must give in order to receive. This should be a day of giving as well as a day of thanks. … Let us recommit ourselves to that devotion to God and family that has played such an important role in making this a great Nation, and which will be needed as a source of strength if we are to remain a great people.
–Ronald Reagan
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
–James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792
I … place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. … Taxation follows that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Plumer, 1816
No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.
–George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 1793
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. … This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy. … Interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans – a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
–Senator Barack Obama, March 2006