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.
Every comment I have read or heard about this terrible incident is ignorant beyond belief.
In fact, all too ignorant and stupid for me to respond to. This time, I have neither the time nor the inclination. It's tragic, unavoidable. There is no perfect safety from either nature or from human nature, and any perfect safety would be a living death.
I am strongly opposed to death taxes of any sort. Those monies have already been taxed, and they belong to your estate which is really just a legal extension of you. You could have spent your assets when alive, but chose to conserve them. Saving is supposed to be a virtue.
(I am also opposed to gift taxes which limit how much one can give to a family member, or anyone else, without a tax penalty, but that's another topic.)
I do understand that the greedy government wants any money it can get, from any source, and I also understand that estate planning for the wealthy employs thousands of attorneys and accountants who might otherwise have little to do.
What's wrong with the idea that, over time and over generations, there would be the freedom for families to accumulate assets for the benefit of their present and future kin? The more, the better. Financial independence to some degree can be either a blessing or a curse, but, contra Teddy Roosevelt, that's not government's proper concern. I have seen family businesses, farms, and family vacation places destroyed by estate taxes, and it seems wrong to me.
Here are my poll questions - assuming you and spouse have died:
1. Do you want to leave any assets to your kids, grandkids, relatives, friends, or do you want to die broke?
2. What % of your estate would you wish to give to charities?
3. If you have one prosperous kid and two middle class or poor kids, would you write your will differently for them?
The Kochs are needed to counterbalance Soros. If you want to do character assassination, Soros is a Jewish Nazi collaborator, a market manipulator, and a convicted felon. How's that for starters?
Official
Policy: Male Federal Workers Can Use Women's Restrooms, Locker Rooms -
See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/official-policy-male-federal-workers-can-use-womens-restrooms-locker#sthash.FjcOgjgH.dpufKoch: I'm Fighting to Restore a Free Society - Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination.The Kochs are needed to counterbalance Soros
I think Frank Gehry's stuff is terrible, narcissistic, and annoying, but he is an interesting showman - and his stuff sells. He shoulda been a sculptor or something.
As we have pointed out here, there is far more white poverty than black poverty in the US. It's not about skin tone.
Truth is, poverty is not a unitary phenomenon, and it's not all a problem. There are hundreds of sorts of poverty: poverty by life-style choice, poverty by location choice, poverty by bad luck, poverty by illness, mental illness, and addiction, poverty by personality traits or weak character, poverty from long-term unemployment, temporary poverty, poverty from being in grad school, poverty from being improvident, new immigrant poverty, poverty from having been in jail, poverty from being embedded in a poverty culture, poverty from trying to live on Social Security, poverty from being a single parent (a life-style choice, I suppose), fraudulent poverty from cash businesses and illegal activities, and so forth. It's not all a collective "societal problem."
Why don't the pundits talk about that? They never do. Even Charles Murray doesn't. I'd like to see a statistical break-down, but it doesn't exist. Worse yet, poverty stats fail to include government or charitable benefits so I am skeptical about all of it.
America offers great freebies even for those for whom poverty is a life-style choice because we do not let people starve in the streets, without shelter. Need a cell phone? We even have Obamaphones. America is a great country in which to be poor.
Lawns are not natural, and they are a pain in the ass. However, they are needed for kid play, croquet, and summer cocktail parties. They can also look gracious and neat, when healthy and when surrounded by good plantings.They are really just one sort of garden, or part of a garden.Grassy garden paths are fine things.
Around here, most years you can overseed a thin lawn area in April (although the best time is early Fall). When I overseed an area in Spring, I follow it by raking in a thin top-dressing of my own concoction - a mix of sand, compost, rotted manure, a little peat moss.
What about crabgrass prevention? Crabgrass preventers need to be put down around the time the Forsythias bloom, or slightly before that. The problem is that it cannot be used when seeding a lawn - it will prevent germination of your grass seed. That's why overseeding is best done in the Fall.
What exactly is Crabgrass? It's an annual grass, Digitaria. It's not native to the US. It likes dry and compacted soil where it feels free to smother your lawn grass. Irrigated lawns tend not to grow much crabgrass, but lawn irrigation is for the 1%. Grasses are meant to go dormant in mid-summer.
What about lawn aeration? Heavily-used lawns (by people, dogs, wheelbarrows, lawn-mowers, etc) benefit from it annually. In Spring, you can do it after the third mowing. Not good to do it in mid-summer when the soil is too dry and the plugging tines cannot penetrate. I always go over an area a few times, not just once. It's a good work-out. Those plugs disintegrate quickly.
Heavy towable aerators are made for pastures, sports fields, and golf courses. Some do plugging, some do slicing, but I think deep plugging is best. 3" is the bare minimum because healthy grass roots are deeper than that.
A side-benefit of lawn aeration (and top-dressing) is earthworms. Earthworms cannot live in compacted soil, but they can happily aerate a soft and healthy turf themselves during all of the warm months. Besides aeration, they need food: your top dressing, grass clippings and mower-chopped leaves.
Who's been getting rich in the US? It's not the 1%, it's not even the 0.1% - it's the 0.01%
Do we all really hate and envy those star athletes, pop stars, movie stars, TV stars, inventors, successful entrepreneurs, and captains of industry? I sometimes envy their talents, skills, and money, but I sure don't hate them.
I agree with that. (I also believe that not all poverty is via 'culture of poverty.' There are a thousand sorts of poverty, including genteel poverty.) Dr. X summarizes that debate:
Is racism fundamentally causing the problems that afflict large swathes of urban black America or does an independently self-sustaining culture itself account for the afflictions? I think many people all too readily take one position or the other, feeling certain about it. I don't see things as quite that tidy. Jonathan Chait and Ta-Nehisi Coates have been hashing this out in a series of posts. Begin here with Coates, then a reaction from Chait, response from Coates, then Chait answers.
The United States passed its first sugar tariff in 1789, before Rhode Island got around to ratifying the Constitution. We’ve had some major public-policy changes over the years — abolishing slavery, women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, gay marriage here and there — but the sugar tariff stays and stays, the economic version of drug-resistant syphilis. It is a matter of pure political power: The sugar producers believe that the price that Americans are willing to pay for sugar is not the right price — which is to say, it’s a lower price than the one they would prefer — and so we pay more thanks to the cowardice of Congress and the predictable victory of the producers’ concentrated benefits over the consumers’ dispersed costs. As Willi Schlamm said, the problem with capitalism is capitalists, a motto that should be engraved in marble above the entrance to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I agree that it is unfair and market-distorting - just like 1000 other government "favors."My view is that I want the Feds to have less money, less power, and less control.
A friend took that pic of a gamer at a gamer convention in Boston last week.
Rare Stradivarius 