I have been thinking long and hard about one persons repeated comments regarding the failure of the GOP in WA State. It makes me wonder what exactly is it about liberalism that has drawn such a disproportionate number of people to it in this area. My bias tells me liberalism for the masses is fairly easy, that rarely do the words of any individual liberal require any action. However we know for a fact that there have been plenty liberal policies enacted that would be considered actions. I then wondered, which of them (of those that easily spill from my head full of useless knowledge) have been successful and/or successful without the collateral damage of unintended consequences. Truth be told, I'm having a bit of trouble making, or even starting, a list.

Welfare and the Great Society: FAILURE
The Great Society was the brainchild of liberal LBJ and welfare blossomed under it. I will be the first to admit that the desire to help the less fortunate is an admirable goal, one we should all aspire to... personally. We all know that the government forced "charity" (there's an oxymoron!) of welfare has been a resounding failure. We have proof of that in the failure of inner city families; What was meant to be a helping hand to get people back on their financial feet ended up being a reason to never get off the dole: free money with no strings. Given a choice, would the average person rather work and receive a paycheck, or NOT work and receive a paycheck? The very IDEA of welfare is inconsistent with promoting a working people. True, it was under Clinton we finally enacted welfare reform, but it was a GOP Congress that gave him no choice but to sign it into law. Medicare and Social Security today have to be considered failures as well. Dependence upon them has led untold numbers of normally self-reliant people to abandon personal responsibility because the government was 'going to take care of them in their senior years'. I heard just today that within 11 years, Medicare will be financially unsustainable. Social Security is not facing problems of that immediacy, but with the boomer generation rapidly hitting 65 and financially unprepared for retirement, it too will eventually sink under the weight of promises without substance.

Abortion: FAILURE
A liberal court decided that women had a right to legal abortion. It was presented as necessary to prevent deaths in back street alleys. I suppose that could have been a legitimate fear. In the late 60's it was still shameful and scorned to be an unwed mother and some of those without the courage to face the consequences of their behavior suffered in their choice of an illegal abortion. The number of "coat hanger abortions" were so few, by the way, that it was a ridiculous basis for abortion in the first place. Liberals complain about right-wing terrorist fear mongering but the back-alley abortion is the left-wing version of that, not to mention the fact that, a threat like that one is one that those women knowingly and intelligently assumed. If I jump out of an airplane, I run a risk. It's not a risk I have to take - but I take it anyway. The same exact thing goes for a back-alley abortion seeker. However "noble" the purported reasons for legally ending the life of a child in the womb, the fact remains as a policy it is an unmitigated and epic failure. True, American women are no longer dying from coat hanger sepsis, but they still die. They die from dirty legal abortion clinics; they die from money hungry, profit driven uncaring abortionists, they die from breast cancer so clearly linked to abortion and too often they die at their own hands from the devastating mental effects of abortion that are routinely denied or ignored. Furthermore, 40+ million American have never been born. Given that Roe became law 35 years ago, and that abortions have been declining in the last 10 years, it's fair to assume that a great percentage of those 40+million would be productive tax paying citizens today. If only 25% of those dead Americans had been alive to vote in 2000 and 2004, would the political results that liberals have been loudly lamenting been changed? We'll never know. In my mind, the sheer fact and acceptance of the commonness of abortion has created a culture of selfishness and moral decay. Where are the standards of dress and behavior that in the past kept our lives civil? Their loss can be traced to Roe. Where are the standards of respect for each other, in conversation, in art, in opinions, in day-to-day dealing with our neighbors? Their loss can be traced to Roe. We see young female children emulating whores; we see young males aspiring to be gangsters and dressing like inmates; we see the loss of innocence and wide eyed wonder, we see selfishness as the norm and vulgarity as our new language, we see the lives of human being equated with those of a rat, dog and pig ... all can be traced to the Pyrrhic victory of Roe. Many men are eschewing dating women in an abortion-culture because look at what it's turned them into. In a world of "sex without consequence" - we breed sluts. The advent of high school, college age, post-college and middle-age women "hooking up" bears that out.

Women's lib: FAILURE
Ah yes, 'women can have it all' they told us. Earn the bacon, bring home the bacon and then make a gourmet meal with it! OOPS! It turns out that women can, do and should earn what their male counterparts do... but at what cost? Yes, record numbers of women have climbed to the top of their fields with deserved financial reward and public laud. BUT, too many of those same women have realized they sacrificed the time to have children and/or sacrificed the children they did manage to have to the salaried attention of others. All to often we are hearing successful female titans begin their comments with the words "If I had to do it over again...". They are realizing they have lost the milestones of their children, that their fame and money does not bring the warmth of a memory. They are finding their children are strangers more attached to others than to those who bore them. We read story after story about how limiting day care is for the young and we have devolved so far that busy moms who believe the promise of "having it all" are watching their children being abused on the nanny cam they themselves installed. Thankfully, recent trends show the latest generation of intelligent young women are realizing the depth of their choices and are choosing to value their children over their careers, valuing the traditions of mommy and home that they themselves sorely missed.

Sex Education: FAILURE
For more than thirty years proponents of comprehensive sex education have argued that giving sexual information to young children and adolescents will reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. In that effort billions have been spent yet teenage pregnancies and abortions rise. Just this past week we heard a horrendous statistic. The Center for Disease Control released the results of a new study: among those who admitted to having sex, roughly 3 million girls are carriers of STDs. Some are life threatening. The grim reality is that 1 in 4 girls have an STD. Young women are mistakenly believing they can remain virgins by only participating in oral sex. Condoms are not preventing disease, they are insidiously encouraging sexual behavior before children are mentally or emotionally prepared for it. While the number of teen pregnancy has decreased of late, the numbers are still horrifying. In fact, the dirtiest little secret is the great disparity between teen PREGNANCY rates and teen BIRTH rates. "Comprehensive" sex education fails to convey the harmful social, psychological, and physical consequences of pre-marital sex. In addition to eliminating the parents from the discussion, it does not allow for the fact that children mature at very different levels and that PARENTS are the best arbiters of their children's readiness for the information. Furthermore, our schools can't manage to teach Johnny and Janey to read or write, and despite the fact that they are "mastering" condoms they're still spreading disease and getting knocked up.

Department of Education (as a Cabinet position): FAILURE
We have to consider this a liberal idea because it was enacted under Jimmy Carter. True, the US has had a Department of Education since 1867, but it wasn't until Carter that the federal government became intrusive in education. Prior to Carter the goal was to help states establish school systems. From my own experience growing up before the debacle of Carter, I know this to be true. I was raised in a small suburban city south of Cleveland. We had our own city government and our own school system run by a local school board with mandate from the citizens. We had outstanding test scores; we rarely lacked for anything substantial and I believe it was because our school was solely self-governed by the folks whose children used it. Since Carters interference unions have become the norm and the authority; the taxpayers are spending more and more money and in return the taxpayers have less voice... thanks to the unions. We all know schools are failing; we all know the stories about teachers that can't be fired and top heavy bureaucracies. We all know about Johnny mastering diversity and condoms while unable to read or write a coherent sentence. We all know colleges have to demand remedial classes before allowing incoming freshman into freshman level classes. We all have heard the complaints about passing students upwards, teaching to the "tests" and intrusions on familial decisions by school officials. I believe we can agree that the liberal idea of a national school system is a FAILURE.

Affirmative Action: FAILURE
"Meritocracy vs. diversity." Affirmative Action is insulting to minorities: they are basically being told, "You can't do it without our help." The repeal of affirmative action policies in California has shown that the practice of giving someone an advantage because of an immutable characteristic hurts them in the long run. Students admitted into college based solely on their race dropped out before graduation at monumental rates because they were simply incapable of keeping up with work outside their educational preparedness. Since the repeal, since schools have been forced to admit based on the level of competence, success rates have soared for EVERY minority. In today's schools competition has become a dirty word. Affirmative action is a policy that pits kids against each other in all the wrong ways. Instead of being challenged and prepared to compete in the real world "minority kids learn early on that they will never get the credit they deserve for working hard and trying to succeed on their own." At the same time, other children resent the preferred treatment that their minority classmates receive, and end up resenting them.... Although I will admit that our oldest child, a white male, has exactly the opposite thoughts on affirmative action. He thought it was great... for him! The affirmative action students sitting in college classes with him made whatever he did look golden when they were compared side by side.

Minimum Wage: FAILURE
Decades of research confirm Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker's observation: "A higher minimum will further reduce the employment opportunities of workers with few skills." In 2003, Washington, Oregon and Alaska were in the top 5 of the highest unemployment... and had the highest rates of (job killing) minimum wage. "Research out of Michigan State University found that increases in the minimum wage attract more highly skilled applicants to traditionally low-skill jobs. The study's author, Dr. David Neumark, concluded: "[I]ncreases in the minimum wage . . . raise the probability that more-skilled teenagers leave school and displace lower-skilled workers from their jobs." Employers prefer to hire talented young people over less-skilled adults to offset the increased labor costs brought on by a minimum wage hike." "Another study, from the University of Wisconsin, revealed that this displacement of adults by teenagers following a minimum wage increase was especially pronounced among women on welfare. "Mothers on welfare in states that raised their minimum wage left welfare for work 20 percent less than welfare recipients in states where the minimum wage was not raised," the study's author, Dr. Peter Brandon, found. The teenagers who are competing with these women usually live with working parents and their need for employment is arguably not as great." On top of that, it hurts employers. When you arbitrarily create or raise minimum wage, employers have to adapt to accommodate it. This means either cutting profits or cutting services/quality of service. Which do you think they cut first? When the employer has to pay everyone a dollar more, they might realize that they don't need as many employees. Fire one or two, and you offset the costs of the wage raise.

Environmentalism: FAILURE
Grab a recycle bin and save mommy earth so humans and animals can enjoy her for many, many generations. Gosh, it sounds like a warm fuzzy idea, doesn't it? Unfortunately that warm fuzzy idea has put people out of jobs (loggers for owls) rendered private property unusable by its owners (swamp...er, "wetland" and anti-growth restrictions) and is today steadily raising the cost of housing, cars and food ... as well as maiming and killing drivers and their passengers. Let's look at ethanol. It is heralded as our savior from big bad ugly oil. The truth is that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than ethanol itself saves. Furthermore, our farmers have learned they can get FREE MONEY (aka, subsidies) by growing for the inefficient ethanol rather than food. Have you checked the cost of eggs lately? Shocked? Blame ethanol. Ditto the cost of a box of cereal, a pound of beef, a gallon of milk. Concerned about starvation in Sudan... or of the American poor? Then blame ethanol. It turns out 'smart cars" aren't so smart either. The "life expectancy" is quite short, all that plastic is left over and those fuel-cell batteries are terrible for the "environment" when it's time to discard them (ditto for those swirly-twirly light bulbs!). I laughed when I read that a Hummer is actually MORE environmentally responsible than the ugly gutless little hybrid things. "When you take into consideration the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of the hybrid energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer. Through a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust", when the total combined energy taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle, the Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven. The American General Hummer offers a considerable savings of $1.95 per mile to put on the road. One of the biggest factors is the expected lifespan of each vehicle. The expected lifetime is 100,000 miles for the Prius - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid whereas the Hummer has an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. This means that the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it and a lower cost means lower environmental impact resulting in less damage to the environment." Furthermore, all those cars downsized for "efficiency" are little more than mobile death traps. Statistic after statistic shows your family is safer in great big metal vehicles.

Nuclear Power, "No Nukes!": FAILURE
The liberal failure here is that they still think it's 1986. They completely fail to understand, or even acknowledge, the reality that is 20+ years of nuclear technology evolution. You know, they did tests once for nuclear transports. They hit one of the containers of nuclear waste with a SPEEDING TRAIN - it didn't leak. They soaked it in burning jet fuel for HOURS - it didn't leak. They whine about Chernobyl but refuse to acknowledge that it was Russian technology... very OLD Russian technology, which did not include cooling nuclear material with water. France has solved its energy problems with clean, safe, profitable nuclear power. France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this. FRANCE!

Sub Prime Mortgages: FAILURE
"The sub-prime mortgage collapse is another tale of unintended consequences. The crisis has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a Carter-era law that purported to prevent 'redlining' --denying mortgages to black borrowers--by pressuring banks to make home loans in 'low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.' Under the act, banks were to be graded on their attentiveness to the 'credit needs' of 'predominantly minority neighborhoods.'...[T]o earn high ratings, banks were forced to make increasingly risky loans to borrowers who wouldn't qualify for a mortgage under normal standards of creditworthiness. The CRA, made even more stringent during the Clinton administration, trapped lenders in a Catch-22. 'If they comply,' wrote Loyola College economist Thomas DiLorenzo, 'they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don't comply, they face financial penalties... which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars.' Banks nationwide thus ended up making more and more 'sub-prime' loans and agreeing to dangerously lax underwriting standards--no down payment, no verification of income, interest-only payment plans, weak credit history. If they tried to compensate for the higher risks they were taking by charging higher interest rates, they were accused of unfairly steering borrowers into 'predatory' loans they couldn't afford. Trapped in a no-win situation entirely of the government's making, lenders could only hope that home prices would continue to rise, staving off the inevitable collapse. But once the housing bubble burst, there was no escape. Mortgage lenders have been bankrupted, thousands of sub-prime homeowners have been foreclosed on, and countless would-be borrowers can no longer get credit. The financial fallout has hurt investors around the world. And all of it thanks to the government, which was sure it understood the credit industry better than the free market did, and confidently created the conditions that made disaster unavoidable." (--Jeff Jacoby)

Smoking Bans: FAILURE
While I personally appreciate and would choose a smoke-free environment, this is a failure because of the outrageous intrusion into private business. Customers and prospective employees could CHOOSE to not patronize establishments that made them miserable. While smoking bans are "protecting" those poor hapless indecisive people they are sacrificing and harming business owners who are closing shop in record numbers. It's a failure, because liberals assume you're too stupid not to willingly and knowingly walk into a place that you don't want to go. Further, they call it a "health measure." But it's not. It's a sin law. Look up the statistics on second hand smoke, see how many people have been "injured" by it. The numbers are SO few it's laughable. Even CDC reports state that the risk is so minimal that it's ridiculous. If you walk into, or choose to work in, a place filled with smoke - you have NOBODY to blame but yourself. Nobody is holding you down forcing smoke in your lungs. The shameful part is that while they scorn smokers they greedily grab the taxes. Vegas tried a smoking ban. Their ban forbids it in places that serve food. Many places decided- "We just won't serve food; Go somewhere else".

Motor-voter: FAILURE
... Unless it really doesn't matter whether one is legally qualified to vote.

Punitive Corporate taxes: FAILURE
... Unless you prefer that companies not grow, not need to employ more people who then spend and pay taxes. A new study from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, shows that most American states tax job providers at a higher rate than any other country in the developed world. This is startling news for America's businesses and workers," said Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge, the study's author. "Tax competition for jobs and investment is fierce, and the U.S. continues to fall further and further behind. Our states should be the world's leaders in many things, but high taxation should not be one of them. The high federal corporate tax rate is literally crushing states' competitive abilities. That means fewer jobs for American workers." American companies simply cannot compete on a "level playing field" with the burden of onerous taxes.

Unions: FAILURE
... You only need to look at the devastation of the American auto industry to see how union benefits extortion has devastated their ability to keep up with payments to current and past employees.

Gun control: FAILURE
... Washington DC has strictest gun control in the country with the highest murder and crime rate. "Guns are like condoms. Better to have one and not need it, than need one and not have it." "Gun Free Zones" are easy targets for anyone with a legally or illegally obtained gun. Virginia Tech comes to mind. Without a gun, you are completely dependant on mommy government bailing you out of trouble (ie, 9/11, Katrina, assorted riots)

United Nations: FAILURE
... For America. Without a doubt America is the greatest financial contributor to the United Nations and without fail the United Nations continues to take our money while denigrating our hospitality, our way of life, our generosity, our freedoms.

Title IX: FAILURE
The goal was to bring equality between men's programs and women's programs. The problem is the women won't cooperate by actually joining programs; the result is men lost, fans lost, schools lost.

Income Redistribution: FAILURE.
When you take the earnings of those that work for them and give them to those that don't, you have destroyed the incentive to continue to work. The hardworking try to fill a bucket that has a hole - because the "needy" never end. "Suddenly people realize that it's better to be stupid and inept, than to be talented and hardworking - because you all get paid the same, no matter how hard or how little you work."

No-Fault Divorce: FAILURE
Man's cynicism towards marriage, given community property and child support laws.

Political Correctness: FAILURE
Groupthink. Walk on eggshells, never say what you think/mean, sacrifice your integrity to "fit in."

One liberal program that makes me roar with laughter at its unintended consequences coming home to roost today is the SUPER-DELEGATES. Super delegate status was designed and implemented by the Democrat party to alleviate intra-party fighting, keep the nomination process in the hands of the party elite and by God, it took its place in the party bylaws! Today's democratic presidential primary debacle perfectly illustrates the ugly unintended consequences. As has been said ad infinitum in the posts, if the super-delegates determine the candidate the democrats are ultimately saying to their primary voters "YOU DON'T MATTER". If Obama wins the primary race but the Clinton camp sways the supers, those same supers will then have to eventually face their own constituents. They are in a no-win situation! It's a perfect storm for the chaos we conservatives are enjoying watching. It's downright satisfying to say the liberal idea of super-delegates is a FAILURE.