One down; one to go …

I’m sure John Boehner is a good and decent man, but it was time for him to go. Voters gave Republicans an historic majority in the House on the promise that they would then have the numbers to push back on Obama and the Democrats by exercising the power of the purse.    

Boehner accomplished quite a bit, in fairness to him, but not enough. So he’s resigning.

Now it’s time for Mitch McConnell to do the same. Again, voters gave Republicans what they asked for – a majority in the Senate – and it hasn’t changed a thing. McConnell says there’s nothing he can do unless he can get a super majority.

That’s not going to cut it.  When the Democrats controlled the Senate under Harry Reid they didn’t have a super majority but they were able to run roughshod over the minority Republicans and block whatever House and Senate Republicans proposed. Harry even enacted the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules on confirmations to a simple majority vote.

Today, Republicans are in charge of the Senate. McConnell isn’t willing to follow Reid’s lead. He could change the rules to minimize the need for a super majority to get anything passed.  But he won’t – instead, he tries to make this into a principled stand based on upholding tradition. 

It’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Principles are all fine and good if everyone adheres to these. But if one side is willing to break the traditional rules, the other side can’t just continue to play by those outdated rules. They’ll be slaughtered needlessly much as sending horse cavalry against armored tanks.  

The rules of warfare and the rules of politics have changed.

Senate Democrats changed the rules; Senate Republicans need to consider doing the same.

Republicans can’t wait for the trifecta – holding the House, Senate and White House. That may never happen; voters are reluctant to put all those in the hands of one party.  Even if Republicans do beat historic trends there’s no indication current Republican leadership would be willing to exercise the power that would give them. 

I suspect there would always be some reason why Republicans would still fold when faced with an organized Democrat opposition fully comfortable with using House and Senate rules to their advantage when possible, or bypassing those rules when necessary. Republicans need to realize they are in a very real battle with Democrats who believe the ends justify the means, and who are willing to do whatever is required – regardless of tradition – to get what they want. 

As Marco Rubio stated, it’s time for a new generation of Republicans to assume leadership. 

For better or worse, that’s what’s happening. The Republican establishment is crumbling, hammered by conservatives on one side and on the other by a Republican base that feels cheated. It's understandable that they'd feel this way.  

There’s a reason why three political outsiders are leading among Republican candidates for President.  The base is fed up with excuses from career politicians like Boehner and McConnell. It’s had its fill of Democrat-lite nice-guy candidates like McCain and Romney who ultimately go down in flames.

The base wants Republicans willing to fight for what they want – smaller and less intrusive government, reduced spending, border security, and a strong defense. The base wants Republican leaders prepared to wage war against the Democrats when needed, to compromise only when necessary, and to change the course the country’s now on. 

They aren’t getting that from the current Republican establishment. 

The danger for the party is similar to that faced by Democrats in late 60s and early 70s.  Back then, the ultra-liberal anti-war wing of the Democrat party took over party leadership and drove the party into the ground, alienating moderate and conservative Democrat voters, and costing Democrats elections. 

The same can happen to the Republican party if it allows its far-right elements to make contentious social issues like gay marriage and immigration the cornerstone of the party. They need to stick to the knitting – running an efficient, financially stable, and safe country – and govern from a position of strength, not timidity.   

In the short term, Republicans will take some losses. But in the longer term anger at government in general among voters will continue to grow and support will start to move toward those interested in returning government to the people and not to bureaucrats. 

The political establishment is doomed. The Republican establishment will take the first bullet.  But the Democrat establishment won’t be far behind.  

Confessions of a small-business owner …

Politicians love to point to how they’re helping small businesses. 

That’s usually a bunch of crap.

Let me rephrase that: It’s always a bunch of crap. 

After running a really small business for about 30 years now, I can’t think of a single instance when the Federal, state or local government has helped me with anything. Every time I think there’s something that might benefit me and my company, I don’t qualify because I either pay my employees too well, won’t hire people I don’t want, or buy equipment I don’t need.  

I don’t think I’m alone in this. 

There’s this enduring mythology about small businesses – the man or woman who tires of the corporate rat race and creates a thriving business from scratch while giving back to the community. Often they’ve developed a service no one knew was needed, and probably still isn’t, or they successfully converted a hobby into a money maker. 

The media loves this corny crap, especially if it’s a middle-aged divorced woman, or a convicted felon or illegal immigrant, who turned their life around as they turn a profit.

Honestly, I want to puke every time the local paper does a puff piece about someone with a sheet-changing service for college students, paints portraits on bowling pins, knits yarmulkes for dogs, sells ads on toilet-seat liners, or some other micro-niche business.  

It’s always the same story: annual sales are almost $10K and after a few more years they expect to be breakeven.  And it’s all because they followed their dream and had passion.

I’m pretty certain most other small business owners like me read that and roll our eyes.  Geez, is that all we have to do – follow our dreams and have passion?  Is that all there is to it?  And wow, a whole $10K in annual sales … imagine that; just think what you can do with $10K.  Sure, you could make that at Mickey Ds or driving for Uber, but now you’re your own boss. Woo-hoo!   

Why are we so dismissive of feel-good stories like those?  It’s because the writers have no clue what it’s like to run a real small business. They don’t understand that most small businesses that make it are short on cute and long on boring. Media writers work for someone else and probably always will.  So they – like many people – think the crowning achievement of the American Dream is to start with nothing but a neat idea and perseverance and end up building an empire.   

Trust me: for every Pet Rock there are a million failures.   

I’m reminded of something Robin Williams once said: He said he started at the bottom and clawed his way to the middle. That’s far more likely for a small business, if it manages to stay afloat long enough. And that’s a mighty big “if” since most new small businesses fail in the first three years.

Very, very few small businesses make their owners rich. The overwhelming number of small businesses end up making their owners broke. Most small business owners end up financially worse off than if they’d worked for someone else instead.

A lot of the time it’s the owner’s fault – they bought into the “dream and passion” spiel instead of doing their homework. You’ll find that often with franchise buyers and startups.

Other times they are just at the wrong place at the wrong time, got terrible advice, or didn’t realize how much they’d hate being their own boss.

The latter is more common than you imagine. In my younger years I acquired several publishing companies from people who grew to hate being their own boss. They were certainly smart enough to run the companies; they just didn’t enjoy it and wanted out. 

I was too young to understand fully why they felt that way. Granted, their businesses didn’t turn out to be the cash cows they’d hoped for.  And not everybody who is a killer salesperson for someone else makes a great business manager. 

But I think what really turned them off was how down in the weeds running a really small business can be.  When you’re accustomed to working in a big corporation, you don’t have to pay attention to a lot of the small stuff. Somebody else takes care of it. 

In your own business you suddenly discover that there are no more elves working behind the scenes.  Nobody else is automatically restocking the paper cups in the break room, making sure you don’t run out of toner or copy paper, or getting a broken toilet fixed.  

You are now solely responsible for everything and everyone.   

People always tell me it must be nice to own your own business. And how great it must be to be your own boss.  Must be all rainbows and unicorns.   

That’s because they’ve never owned their own business and been their own boss. You may think your boss is an idiot and anybody could do his or her job better. Until you try it yourself. You may discover that you’ve traded one idiot boss for another even worse. You. 

And that’s not all of it. 

Owning a small business is like being sentenced to be everybody’s daddy. 

Almost everyone who works for you thinks of you that way. Their paycheck is their allowance. Their jobs are their household chores. When they have some financial crisis and need money fast, they come to you. When they have some personal crisis they come to you as well and burden you with whatever disaster they now face – whether that’s a sick dog, car repairs, an abusive spouse, marital infidelity, a drug-abusing family member, personal bankruptcy, or anything else.

Their problem instantly becomes your problem. You’re the daddy. 

My wife and I never had children. But through my business we’ve always had kids. 

The only difference is that they don’t live with us and have all finished college.  But I am responsible for giving them money, and they’re all still on my insurance.

So what about the freedom you have as a business owner?  Another myth.  When you own a really small business you have far less freedom.   

You can’t just come and go as you please. You have to set a good example. That sucks.   

If you’ve got the brains God gave a gopher you know your employees follow your lead, good or bad. So if you usually breeze in at 10 and knock off at 3 after a two-hour lunch, don’t be surprised if your employees show up late and duck out early. If you spend your day on personal phone calls, so will they.  If you take smoke breaks every 30 minutes, they’ll be right by your side. 

Your parents may have said: “don’t do as I do; do as I say do” and got away with it because you were their kid. But the same rule doesn’t apply in small business.  Any bad work habits or questionable personal traits you have will be eventually be replicated by your employees.  It’s hard enough to keep them from developing bad work habits entirely on their own; every time you screw up they’ll notice and add that to their “to-do” list. 

Your employees also believe you are rich. They assume you are making a fortune in your business because – well, you own it. They have no idea how often you may have stopped paying yourself to make sure you had enough cash on hand to pay them.  If they knew some of them would panic, but a surprising number wouldn’t care. Money magically appears in their bank account every couple of weeks.  That’s all they understand. 

Despite what small-business employees think, most owners aren't making anywhere near what they think they are.  The same employees don’t understand that owning a small business doesn’t automatically mean you can buy yourself a new car whenever you like. You can’t pass your vacation expenses – much less your household bills – through the company. You can’t pull cash out the company whenever you like, or entertain all your pals at company expense.       

Well, you can, but you won’t be in business very long. Plus, you’re just begging for an IRS audit, which, no matter how squeaky clean you are will cost you in accountant or lawyer fees and time. 

One reason I've survived this long is because I treat my business like a business and not a credit card. Not everybody has that kind of restraint. I've also been lucky at times.   

So the next time someone says they’re thinking about starting their own business and being their own boss, wish them good luck. 

They’ll need it.  I say that from experience. 

Planned Parenthood ...

Social conservatives in Congress want to make defunding Planned Parenthood a defining moment. They are willing to shut the government down over it. 

For the record, Planned Parenthood gets about $540 million a year in government funds – by far its largest source of income. It can’t use any of that money to provide abortions because of the Hyde Amendment, a point its supporters often make. It does provide abortions, ostensibly funded from other sources, nonetheless, which keeps it in the crosshairs of the pro-life movement.   

The pro-life movement has wanted for years to put Planned Parenthood out of business. Pro-life advocates have picketed Planned Parenthood facilities, pro-life legislators have tried to pass laws making it almost impossible for it to operate, and conservative Republicans have long used the funding of Planned Parenthood as a red meat campaign issue. 

Planned Parenthood has survived all this through wide support from women’s groups, pro-choice groups, and from liberal and well as many moderate legislators in both parties.  Public opinion about Planned Parenthood remained favorable.     

Recently, hidden-camera videos from a pro-life group may have dramatically changed public opinion about what Planned Parenthood does, and how it operates.  

The videos show Planned Parenthood officials talking about how they selectively harvest and sell tissue from aborted fetuses for maximum profit.  Other videos of former employees disclosing details and images of that process are even more disturbing.  

Like many Americans, I am appalled by all of this.  Still, however horrific, what Planned Parenthood is doing is legal; morally and ethically questionable, for sure, but legal. 

As ghastly as they are, the videos have reinvigorated the pro-life movement. It’s made the single largest provider of abortions in the country appear to be run by heartless monsters who see the unborn not as humans, but as a cash crop. Conservative Republicans – especially those campaigning for President – are demonizing Planned Parenthood on a regular basis.

In fairness, Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of routine women’s health services such as screenings for cervical cancer, mammograms, and contraception counseling. The “funding” it receives from the Federal government is mostly in the form of reimbursements for providing these services.  So it’s not as if taxpayers are giving Planned Parenthood a subsidy of more than half a billion dollars; we’re paying it for services the same way we’d pay a hospital or clinic or family doctor through Medicare, Medicaid and the like.   

Abortion services constitute about 3% of its income and taxpayers aren’t funding any of those. Defunding Planned Parenthood means cutting it off from reimbursement for other services it provides and has no impact on its abortion services. It’s pure theatre to appeal to the evangelical and pro-life segments of the population; it’s a politically calculated gambit. 

That said, I believe we should defund Planned Parenthood, for a host of other reasons, not one of which has to do with its role as an abortion provider. 

Abortion – however you feel about it personally – is legal in the country. Under current law as well what Planned Parenthood is doing with aborted fetuses may disgust you, but is not illegal as long as they get informed consent from the mother, which it appears they do. 

No, my opposition to Planned Parenthood is more fundamental: The government should not be funding groups like Planned Parenthood in the first place.

There are better, more effective ways of providing the same services to low-income women than through a politically compromised entity like Planned Parenthood. Community health clinics provide the same low or no-cost services and far outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities.     

Planned Parenthood is just another bloated politically privileged special interest group that depends on friendly politicians – mainly Democrats – to keep the money coming.  As such, it contributes millions to political campaigns.

One report has it spending almost $12 million on recent Presidential campaigns.   

It’s not spending this kind of money without a purpose in mind.  And it’s certainly not because it simply believes in a healthy democracy; its leaders have an agenda and an infrastructure to feed – they need to keep the money rolling in. 

And they do a good job of that. 

There was a time when there weren’t that many providers of free or affordable women’s health services. Planned Parenthood filled the gap. But now with ObamaCare a much broader range of health services for women are covered within the regular medical establishment, including preventative screenings and contraception, at no cost to both the poor and the not-so-poor. 

So what’s the reason for Planned Parenthood anymore? Isn’t it now just another generic service provider since its primary reason for being -- at least the one it likes to herald online, in print and everywhere else – has gone away?   

Or is its real reason for being to be – as it states on its annual report – the leading advocate for ensuring a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion?

If that’s the case, it’s a lobbyist. And lobbyists should get no money from taxpayers, especially if they are simply going to turn around and use those taxpayer dollars to lobby for more.     

However, I suspect Planned Parenthood uses its pro-abortion stance mainly as a fund-raising tool, since abortions are such a minor – and declining – part of its business. The number of abortions in the U.S. has declined dramatically since the early 1990s for a wide range of reasons, not the least of which is greater use of contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies. 

Abortion’s clearly not a growth industry. In fact, some say the rate of abortions is now at its lowest point since 1973. As much as the religious right and politicians like Cruz, Santorum, and others would like to keep abortion first and foremost as a campaign wedge issue, it’s actually an issue that’s going away largely on its own.    

There’s another good reason to defund Planned Parenthood.  Its founder – Margaret Sanger. 

Sanger believed and wrote about the positive aspect of eugenics. She endorsed negative eugenics, which, as one article about her reports, “aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.“

In other words, selective breeding to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”

Hmmm.  Where have we heard ideas like that before?

Okay, if we are to topple statues of long-dead politicians for their beliefs, and punish organizations today for something their founders stated long, long ago, surely we should defund an organization that had its roots in such hateful ideas. 

Remember the overreaction to Black Lives Matter and the attacks on the Confederate flag and anyone who supported the Confederacy now deemed racist?    

Now think about what the patron saint of Planned Parenthood believed. 

Apparently to her, all lives didn't matter; just the ones she approved of.

Some might say her vision lives on in the organization she founded.  

The college tuition scam …

Much has been made in recent years about how the cost of going to college has exploded, at a rate far outpacing inflation or any other reputable index.

Meanwhile, enrollments are down especially at private colleges and universities.  Many of these are seeing enrollment drops of up to 9% or more from previous years. 

So how can these be increasing the cost to attend dramatically at the same time they are scrambling to fill seats?  Surely smart people in academia realize there’s a link between supply and demand.

If anything, you would expect them to be cutting prices or adding more value to fill those seats.  That’s Marketing 101, right? 

They are smarter than you imagine.  I’ll explain.   

Rising college tuitions have been blamed on soaring salaries for professors, instructors and administrative staff; the seemingly endless construction of ever more extravagant facilities; and the reluctance of any responsible body to rein in profligate spending.

That’s only part of the story.

I think much of the increase comes from colleges and universities taking advantage of students’ ready access to ever increasing student loans and the gullibility of parents and students who don’t recognize they’re being scammed.

Easy money often makes for poor decisions. So does falling prey to practices that would normally bring the wrath of the FTC for deceptive marketing but are ignored for some reason in academia.

I’m talking about a widespread tuition scam intended to make parents and students think they are getting a super deal on a great school when they aren’t.

If you want to move more product – in this case seats – you have a sale. That’s what’s quietly going on across the country in a lot of private colleges and universities. Only it’s not really a sale; they are pumping the tuition cost so their deep discounts seem too good to resist. 

Think about it this way:  If you saw a dress shirt priced at $10 you’d think it was cheaply made and low quality.  But put an SRP of $85 on the very same shirt, mark it down to the same $10 and you’d think it’s a hell of a bargain.

The problem is, if you normally sell it for $10 and jump it to $85 just for the sale, you’ll probably hear from consumer fraud agencies. But not if you’re a college or university.    

Villanova – a very well-respected private Catholic university near me – has a posted tuition price of $47,000 a year.  Yet with all the grants, merit awards and student employment opportunities available the average award total to qualifying students is $37,600 a year.  

So now you’re looking at less than $10,000 annual tuition – still high, but it looks like an almost 80%-off sale to the parents of prospective students. What a deal. 

In this specific case, for a school the caliber of Villanova it actually is.

You’re getting a school that’s nationally known with a good reputation at a price that’s half the cost of a school that practically no one other than past graduates ever heard of.    

Seriously, Villanova’s half the price of a lesser school? You bet. 

I know of one tiny college not far from here that posts annual tuition and fees of over $40,000.  It has less than 2,200 undergrads and is not known for anything in particular. It’s not a bad school as tiny liberal arts schools go, but otherwise unremarkable. 

Everyone I know who attended this school got a whopping big scholarship that cut their tuition by more than half.  I know their parents thought they got a super deal and bragged about how much they saved.  But I would wager that only someone from Nigeria or Uzbekistan who stumbles across this school ever pays the full rate.

I looked it up.  About 98% of the school’s undergrads get financial aid, averaging almost $20,000 a year, by this school’s own published stats.  So – on average – the actual market-clearing price paid is closer to $20,000 a year, not $40,000. A perpetual 50%-off sale. 

Still, way too much for a school almost nobody’s ever heard of.  But maybe I missed something. Maybe it’s an exclusive school; maybe it’s hard to get in.   

Folks, this is not an exclusive school by any measure – about 72% of those who apply for admission are accepted. That’s really high.  For comparison, the University of Florida only accepts 47% of its applicants, and those applicants have higher SAT and ACT scores on average.  But its posted in-state annual tuition is only about $6,300.  (Snowbirds beware: out-of-state tuition at UF is about $28,000.)

So what’s the better deal?  Let’s see: you can go to a big state university like UF for about $6,300 or less; a smaller well-regarded school like Villanova for a bit more; or pay through the nose for a tiny little school in the middle of nowhere with no national reputation.     

First, asking $40,000 or more a year for tuition at some of these little schools is ludicrous. Cutting it to $20,000 doesn’t make it any less so.  Unless you’re sending your kid off to a big-name private college or an Ivy League school with top-flight faculty it’s preposterous.       

If you want to know how some kids graduate with hundreds of thousands in student loans and others closer to the average of $29,000 (which, BTW, is the real average student loan debt on graduation), this is a major clue.  At the “discounted” price of $20,000 a year for tuition alone at some of these tiny unremarkable colleges, it’s easy to see how someone could run up a $100,000 + student debt after four years when they add in books and room and board. 

A college education can still pay substantial benefits over time. And a degree from some places can have a much higher value than others, particularly when someone is just entering the job market.  For example, Wharton graduates will automatically get more attention from recruiters and potential employers than b-school grads from schools they never heard of.  As much as I’d like to believe UF’s business school grads are top tier, I’m also realistic enough to know a UF business degree just won’t have the curb appeal of one from Wharton either.   

So choice of schools can sometimes justify a higher tuition. But over inflated tuition alone doesn’t make a school necessarily better or even in the same league.  It can also be a foolish extravagance to indulge the whims of an 18 year old who views college as a rite of passage instead of a serious investment in their future.

Especially when you’re fooled by the sticker price into thinking you’re getting a much better deal than you really are. 

Huckabee …

Honestly, I’ve never liked him, whether that’s on TV or on his soapbox, which tend to be the same thing more often than not.    

Some people can mix show biz with politics and do okay. He can’t. Mixing religion and show biz is just dreadful; it may work for a certain crowd hooked on televangelists and their weekly magic shows but misses the mark by a mile for the rest of us.     

I thought his show on Fox was lame. Strapping on his bass and playing with real musicians was embarrassing to watch.  I found his attempts at humorous skits painful. His interviews with his former-sinner-of-the-week-now-miraculously-redeemed guests always seemed like 700-Club reruns on the PTL network. There’s only so much of this anyone can take.   

Thank God that’s over. 

I think at the heart of it, however, I dislike Huckabee the most for using Christianity and the Old Testament of the Bible as weapons against those with whom he disagrees.

This is intellectually and theologically dishonest. It’s picking and choosing from the Old Testament to find the parts that support your position, while ignoring the New Testament entirely.  As a Baptist preacher, Huckabee knows the difference – one features a vengeful God who condones stoning adulterers and murdering nonbelievers; the other features a more compassionate God that sends Jesus to carry a message of compassion and infinite forgiveness.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Sound familiar? 

As someone raised in Methodist and later Baptist churches as a child I was taught that religion is intensely personal and to respect the beliefs of others. I was taught that God is all forgiving. I was also taught that humans could never truly understand God’s will, any more than we could really understand the infinite. God’s plan was God’s plan; to assume we could fathom what God intended for all of us, until the end of time, would be the most profound form of arrogance.    

I learned over time not to take the Bible literally. Instead, it was a book of stories to give us clues. The most important takeaways from the Bible and my faith were simple: 

We are never alone in this world.

We’re not perfect nor expected to be; nor should we expect others to be. 

We have free will to do good or evil – the choice is always our own.

We all eventually have to account for the choices we make.

But God, not man, will make that final call.

Maybe that’s why I dislike Huckabee so much. He thinks he’s entitled to make those calls, or at least he wants everyone to believe he should be.  He quotes the Old Testament to imply that homosexuality is an abomination to God and that God always intended marriage to be between a man and a woman, for example.

If I remember correctly, there are lots of abominations to God in the Old Testament, including one by Onan who spilled his "seed" on the ground rather than impregnate his brother's widow, for which God "slew" him. So I'm not sure anyone today wants to use the Old Testament as the complete guide for how to live your life.     

To me he’s a self-righteous blowhard left over from the days of Elmer-Gantry-like tent revivalists. Instead of a tent, he has media clips. He wants to whip up the crowd with a false narrative about secular boogeymen coming to take away their right to worship as they wish as part of a nefarious grand plan to remove God and Christian values from our culture.  

If that were all he’s about, I wouldn’t care. He’d be just another right-wing fundamentalist – a modern day Father Coughlin focused on atheists and sinners instead of Jews and Communists. 

But he wants to be so much more than that: he wants to be President.

God protect us.  Seriously. 

I know a lot of people see him as a jovial fat guy who used to be a Baptist preacher. I don’t.  

I see him as a demagogue milking the public’s fears about a society seemingly spinning out of control morally and ethically.  I put him in the same category as Rick Santorum – constantly carping about what’s wrong with our society but having no clear plan for fixing anything.  Or maybe a Donald Trump without the show-biz presence.    

What brought all this up?  Well yesterday I saw him at a rally for Kim Davis – the Kentucky official who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples – and he was in his glory.

He attacked the Supreme Court for exceeding their authority by making law, which they didn’t.  He claimed the First Amendment gave people like Davis the right to refuse to enforce laws on personal religious grounds, which it doesn’t. 

After saying he’d be willing to go to jail in place of Davis, he also said this:  "I'm tired of watching people being just harassed because they believe something of their faith, and we cannot criminalize the Christian faith or anybody's faith in this country.”

Nobody is suggesting anything of the sort.  But of course, that’s Huckabee. 

Picking the wrong battle …

An elected official in Kentucky – Kim Davis – took an oath to uphold the law. She then decided she wouldn’t when it came to issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

She claimed it violated her religious beliefs. 

Even if that’s true, it’s irrelevant.  She violated her oath of office. She swore to uphold the laws of Kentucky and the United States and she didn’t. 

Now, however you feel about same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is legal in the United States. That means same-sex couples can marry.  That also means, of course, that they are entitled to get a marriage license first. 

That applies to everywhere in the United States, including Kentucky. 

Right now she’s in jail on contempt of court charges because a judge ordered her to obey the law and she refused.  Some Republicans, like Huckabee, are claiming she’s a prisoner of conscience. Huck’s drawing comparisons to Dr. King who was jailed in Birmingham for holding civil rights protests without a permit.

Huckabee sees a parallel.  He conflates Dr. King’s opposition to unjust laws restricting blacks’ access to the same schools and facilities as whites, with this official’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  It’s nonsense.     

Those of us of a certain age who lived through the civil-rights movement of the 50s and 60s understand that Dr. King was trying to expand the rights of individuals to be treated as equals in our society.  The Kentucky official is doing the opposite.

Yes, both broke the law. Yes, both framed their arguments on moral grounds. But Dr. King wasn’t an elected official sworn to uphold the law; she was.

This is the wrong battle for social conservatives. Some, like Huckabee, are saying this proves there’s a war on religious values in general and on Christianity in particular. They point to the Bible to support their premise that same-sex marriage is contrary to God’s will.  Huckabee has even said that it’s time to stop the “criminalization of Christianity.”

This will accomplish absolutely nothing.  Except, of course, to reinforce the view many Americans have of social conservatives as religious fanatics hell-bent on imposing their own brand of morality on others.  There’s merit in insuring that religious liberties are preserved, but like past rulings that knocked down segregation and miscegenation laws, personal religious beliefs alone don’t supersede the law.    

It’s the wrong battle for Republicans, too.  If Republicans claim to be outraged over Obama’s disregard for his oath of office and picking and choosing which laws to enforce based solely on his personal beliefs, then they should be equally outraged over Kim Davis’ actions. 

The rule of law is the rule of law; you either believe in it or you don’t. There are no squishy areas. If you don’t like a law, there are procedures you must follow to change the law.  If you don’t like something in the Constitution, there are procedures to change that also.

If you decide not to follow the law, you must be prepared to face the consequences.

Kim Davis is not a martyr.  She violated her oath of office. 

If she was morally opposed to following the law then she should have resigned her office.  That would have been the honorable and principled thing to do. 

Well of course the system is rigged …

Bernie Sanders has been saying this.  So has Elizabeth Warren, Obama, and others.

I agree with them. The system is rigged. Has been for a long, long time.

Liberal Democrats claim it’s rigged to benefit the rich and powerful. Because it’s always good to have a victim, they like to add:  “at the expense of the poor and middle class.”

However, like much of what they say, that’s only half true.  And hypocritical, for sure.  Many of their revered liberal “lions” are rich and powerful themselves and got that way by working the system or by using every tax loophole available to protect vast inherited fortunes.

Do you think the current Kennedys – like Caroline, who got to be ambassador to Japan simply because she’s a Kennedy – made their fortunes by babysitting, mowing lawns or painting houses?  Do you think a dim-witted sniveling weasel like Harry Reid went from being an amateur boxer to now a multi-millionaire on pure intellect alone?  What about Hillary, who parlayed $100,000 into millions overnight on her first futures trade? 

It takes big ones to grandstand against a rigged system that’s payed off big time for you. 

But before you think it’s only the Democrats, think again. Republicans are no better. They rig the system for the same reasons as Democrats.   

While claims that the system’s rigged at the expense of the poor and middle class may make for good stump speeches, these ignore why the system’s rigged in the first place.

The system is rigged for no other reason than to keep things exactly as they are – the poor comfortably poor and compliant; the middle class increasingly dependent and docile; and the rich comfortably protected from the poor and middle class.    

Politicians in both parties have rigged the system shamelessly to these ends. 

The poor get just about everything they need to make poverty not only less painful, but also more respectable.  Between the subsidies and expansion of entitlements, most “poor” families can now enjoy what used to be a middle-class lifestyle. In some cases, they’re actually better off than their middle-class counterparts when it comes to healthcare and phone and internet services.  And with credit-card-like EBT cards good at ATMs, there’s no embarrassment being on the dole. 

The middle class has been made docile by Federal tax credits for just about everything. With all the available exemptions and credits, hardly anyone pays any Federal income tax. When they see how much they could have to pay, and then see how little they finally have to pay – or how much they’ll get back in many cases – they think it’s a great deal. The idea that the Feds are merely sending back some of their own money never seems to register. 

Meanwhile, despite all the vilification of the rich by some, the rich are enabled to stay rich. Artfully crafted parts of the tax code protect them and their assets. And who crafted these loopholes?  Why, Republicans and Democrats together.

Despite the rhetoric about the rich not paying their fair share, the rich and near rich foot the bills for just about everything already. The poor and lower middle class pay the least and get the most benefit in return. You’ll never hear anyone in the political establishment admit this but it’s true.

In reality, a relatively tiny fraction of the population pays the overwhelmingly majority of what the Feds get in personal income taxes.  Almost half the population pays little or no Federal income tax at all because of various credits and offsets – some actually get “refunds” greatly in excess  of whatever, if any, Federal income tax they paid. And it’s all completely legal. 

So, far from being rigged exclusively to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, the system’s actually rigged for the benefit of the poor and middle class, at the expense of the rich.