We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of them consistently show their desire for a job. But they’re also not stupid. If you pay them more not to work than they can earn by working, many will choose not to work.
While this makes sense for them in the short term, it may actually hurt them over the long term. One of the most important steps toward avoiding or getting out of poverty is a job.Only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, vs. 23.9 percent of adults who don’t work. And, while many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, even starting at a minimum-wage job can be a springboard out of poverty.
Thus, by providing such generous welfare payments, we may actually not be helping recipients.
Avoiding poverty is easy. Get a job. Work hard. Save money. Make friends. Get married before you have kids.
23:23 Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off?
23:24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD.
23:25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, "I have dreamed, I have dreamed!"
23:26 How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back--those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart?
23:27 They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal.
23:28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the LORD.
23:29 Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
When investors and entrepreneurs consider important decisions like where to establish a residence, where to operate a business and, yes, where to die, they compare their options. From a financial point of view, Connecticut turns out not to be a great option.
I love this state, or parts of it anyway. However, it is one of those states, like California, which once were independent-minded and traditionalist Yankee Red, but gradually turned Blue and then finally Dark Blue. They took their prosperity for granted. Farms, inventors, entrepreneurs, booming factories, great private schools, and great universities and colleges; the summer homes of the prosperous of NYC and even Hollywood; a charming coastline great for swimming, sailing, and fishing; old-time Yankee towns and virtues.
Jobs for all. Minimal taxation. A huge middle-class, with more upper-middle than most states had, to spread their money around. Huge Hartford insurance industry. Horses, cattle, fine Connecticut shade tobacco. Old town greens with their Congregational churches. Town Meeting governments where every wise old guy and every crank had his say. The southern half is close to NYC, and the northern half goes to Boston for baseball and football and hockey. Good choices.
Government policies did their damage. State taxes and local property taxes. Unions corrupted urban governments, along with some of the immigrant Mafioso components. Semi-skilled blacks from the rural South moved north in a vast migration for the industrial jobs, jobs which fled this high-tax, heavily-unionized post-War state leaving them with nothing while immigrant Mexicans happily do most of the hard labor and even skilled labor like masonry and construction, and are happy to work in our Dunkin Donuts shops.
For many businesses and many individuals, economics now trump sentimental home-town and home-state attachments.
Probably, like many Californians, government is doing their best to drive me away but it's still home to me. Roots, family, friends, traditions, church, clubs, colleagues. Some of my wealthy friends retire to elite enclaves in Florida for six months plus one day, and spend the rest of their time up here. Not that they really retire, but you know what I mean: they keep working via the internet and phone.
Attorneys and accountants are needed to minimize the damage of the government greed which, unlike private desire for profit, comes to us at gunpoint.
Nothing about Florida holds any charm for me (sorry, Florida readers). It's just how I feel. I have enjoyed visits to the Everglades, and other places in Florida. But not to live. It's just not my subculture.
Now I must be off to a neighborhood cocktail party. Some of the old traditions persist amongst the traditionalist old minority here, where a blazer and tie are still never the wrong attire for a Connecticut Yankee.
Nobody has informed Bridgeport about that yet, but I still hold some hope for that old town if they can starve out the mob, the unions, and etc. "Park City."
The “Cadillac” health plan is a myth - A doctor explains that limiting the scope of
employer-based health care has long been a dream of the establishment
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Never until the mankind making Bird beast and flower Fathering and all humbling darkness Tells with silence the last light breaking And the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead And the synagogue of the ear of corn Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound Or sow my salt seed In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death. I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath With any further Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water Of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other.
Zinn hated the country which made him millions with his 1930s-style propaganda, and which bought his nice summer place on Cape Cod. He even bought the theater there. There is something twisted about people who welcome opportunity for themselves, but hate it for others.
The alienation of citizens from their government is not limited to people whom the government decides to prosecute. Because so many regulations are so unconnected to anything resembling right or wrong, people who want to be law-abiding find themselves picking and choosing the laws that they deem worthy of respect. It is a pernicious process regardless of whether they get caught when they break the rules. People who feel compelled to judge laws on a case-by-case basis have attached provisos to one of their most basic civic loyalties.
Photo is of the Obamacare law. Nobody in America knows all of what's in it, to this day. No doctor or lawyer ever will and, God knows, no politician will ever bother to know: they exempted all national politicians from it. Teams of hundreds of junior staffers wrote that stuff, and put in whatever they felt like.
The detailed regulations to that pile of crap will fill a library, and every hospital, drug company, medical device company, insurance company, doctor, and nursing home in America will be in violation of something. Work for attorneys, for sure, so I guess that's a good thing.
Our government is insane. My personal definition of insanity is not knowing that you are nuts. If you worry about being nuts, you probably aren't.
When, why, and where, did around 50% of Americans get the notion that government was a good thing rather than the necessary but strictly-limited evil which our founders envisioned? What made tough, independent American pioneers into willing children of the State? Is European-style serfdom contagious?
My ancestors escaped serfdom, at great personal risk. I will be loyal to that. I have no gratitude for government "services." I want to be left alone and never "helped." That's American to me.
I've always felt that his singing voice - or rather voices, because he has tried a few over time - never was either pretty or beautiful. At this age, he mostly croaks like a frog. Many or most male folk singers and rock singers are the same. What his voice has is character, expression, remarkable phrasing. I've never heard anybody cover a Dylan song more effectively than he sang it - even songbirds like Joan Baez and Emmylou.
The Band got closest, but even then, not quite the real thing.
I don't think "beautiful" is the point. Expressiveness is the point. I can appreciate Sinatra's polish, Pavarotti's mastery, but it's not them. What's your opinion?
Nobody knows what "higher ed" means anymore. In other words, it means nothing in particular. Employers want to know what you can do for them today to improve their profits. That's simple. It's not what higher ed was designed for in the 1300s and 1500s and 1800s, but it seems applicable today. Practicality.
It's a great loss, but people do need to make a living. Higher ed is not just for the elite and the intelligentsia anymore. Things have changed. Estate taxes, for one thing. The Gentleman's C is a thing of the past.
The term "higher" is obsolete. People like Oprah are today's elite.
But I will keep the play barn that Grandpa built for me when I was 5. It was a rough copy of the barn at the Farm, where Mom had her horses. Someday, perhaps grandkids who will have had less contact with farm work and farm animals, will enjoy it. We have lots of little wooden animals. Maggie's Farm?
I repainted it once. The real one, with a pal. Large barn, with sliding barn doors back and front, wood-paneled tack room, etc White trim. Big job. Lousy pay. Good lead oil paint, of course.
Who remembers tar paper? It is still used sometimes, by those in the know. Good stuff. What is Tyvek?
Don Surber 
An 
Never until the mankind making
With good reason. 
