Maggie's Farm

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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Monday, November 4. 2019

Monday morning links

Traversing the Landscape of Transgender Politics


 New York's Place as America's Fine-Dining Mecca in Jeopardy As City Bans Foie Gras


Ban everything except pot 


 OLD WHITE GODS, NOT YET DEAD: Why Architectural Elites Love Ugly Buildings.


 Nearly 40% of 2019 farm income will come from federal aid and insurance


 "California," argues Victor Davis Hanson, is "becoming pre-modern"


 California Governor Threatens To Take Over Energy Company As Wildfires Rage


Are You A Moral Grandstander?


 Andrew Cuomo: ‘We Didn’t Have Hurricanes’ Before Climate Change


Warren's Wealth Tax 


 Elizabeth Warren Promises IRS Will Have “Super Duper Enforcement” Powers If She Wins


Is she for real? 


 Democrat Front-Runner Crazy Uncle Joe Biden Turns His Back on Audience – Starts Talking to Screens During Major Iowa Event 


That was fake news 


Soros Advocacy Group Spent $72M On Lobbying Since Trump Elected


 Democrats are stealing old ideas from Europe just as Europe abandons them


 The AMERICAN Party: I Am Not “Republican.” I Am Not “Conservative.” I Am Not “Alt Right.” None of These. “I am an AMERICAN.


 Reclaiming Common Sense in the USA


 Birth coach is 'hounded out' of industry charity Doula UK after transgender activists branded her Facebook message claiming only women can have babies 'offensive'


 Where’s the Mysterious Maltese Mifsud and Where Did He and His Associate and Lawyer Stephan Roh Obtain Their Millions?


 Doug Wead: I interviewed the Trump family for two years and THIS is what I found


 Why Obama Got A Nobel Peace Prize For Nothing — And Trump Never Will For Anything

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:50 | Comments (24) | Trackbacks (0)

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The biggest problem with Warren's wealth tax is that wealth isn't money stashed in a mattress, it's money invested in producing more wealth. Taking money from people with a proven track record of producing wealth and turning it over to people with a proven track record of wasteful spending is simply eating the seed corn. That's the inevitable outcome of the socialist drive for "equality", we're all equally poor because those who are best able to plan ahead are punished for doing so.
#1 Jerryskids on 2019-11-04 08:45 (Reply)
They don't mind eating the seed corn as long as it gets them a few good meals (IE Election victories) now.

The future can take care of itself. It doesn't matter they make it harder to do so - they don't care.
#1.1 JLawson on 2019-11-04 09:10 (Reply)
It makes you wonder. Does this wealth tax include 401Ks et al? Do the people in pension funds, and IRAs not realize they are investors, aka Capitalists?
#1.2 Exasperated on 2019-11-04 09:46 (Reply)
That's not even the biggest problem, the way I read it. The biggest problem is that you'll be paying a tax every single year on your unrealized profit, not on income. In other words, in a few years, the cumulative yearly tax on that profit could exceed the value of the profit, the parasite killing the host. It's hard to believe that such a poorly formed idea could make it this far into a presidential election. One of two things must be true: She's either incredibly dense, or she thinks we are. And it ain't me.
#1.3 Aggie on 2019-11-04 10:04 (Reply)
She's not necessarily counting on the readers here to be idiots. She's just counting on 50.1% of the people who vote being idiots.
#1.3.1 BornSouthern on 2019-11-04 10:43 (Reply)
Bingo!

When I was a child my parents worked for a carnival. It was actually great fun, all Summer we traveled around New England and even into Canada and everyday was a carnival. But to my point; I learned that nothing was what it seemed and everything had a false promise followed by loss. Very few people knocked the milk jugs off their box. Almost no one was able to throw the quarter into the glass that promised a prize. And my personal favorite was throwing the hoop over a prize on a square block of wood would almost never result in a win. I could go on and list every carnival game, they were all the same in that it looked like you could win but you couldn't. The BEST games left you feeling that you almost won because then you would immediately play it again.

This what politicians promise you. They are like the barker at the carnival trying to get you into the tent so they could separate you from your money. They promised you everything and gave you nothing. The depend on your inability to do the math or use common sense.

Our elections ARE the carnival and YOU are the suckers.
#1.3.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2019-11-04 12:33 (Reply)
At least the carnival games offered entertainment. I class them with the lottery, which gives pleasure for small amounts of money even though no one in his right mind thinks it's a rational business transaction. Taxes don't entertain once they're actually imposed, though the prospect of imposing taxes on those bad rich people apparently does.
#1.3.1.1.1 Texan99 on 2019-11-04 12:39 (Reply)
Sadly I have met many people who think it's a rational, economic decision. Lack of math skills is a life killer.
#1.3.1.1.1.1 FRP on 2019-11-04 15:37 (Reply)
There's some truth to that. A politician's real job description is figuring out the biggest demographic sectors that they can demonize for extracting money, without alienating enough voters in the process to lose their next election. Warren has a one-song repertoire - 'Eat The Rich'. Obviously she is now rich enough for taxes not to matter much anymore, but not too rich to forgo targeting those who are wealthier. It's funny how all her policy proposals seem to avoid her particular demographic sector. What a coincidence.
#1.3.1.2 Aggie on 2019-11-04 14:13 (Reply)
What do the rich have? Money.
What do the poor have? Votes.
What do Leftists want? Power.

So the Democratic party has become a machine for converting the first two into the third.
#1.4 Another guy named Dan on 2019-11-04 14:25 (Reply)
I plan on writing something this week about my attendance of Dead & Co over 2 nights in NYC.
But I've been very busy these past 3 months at work. Reorganizations are like that.

However, when I saw the Biden story, addressing the crowd behind him, I started laughing at how confused he looked, and how CNN was confused on how to deal with it. Why?

Because, at the Dead show, I was in the crowd behind the stage. It's really the best seat you could ask for, in my opinion.
That said, nobody on stage acknowledged, or played to us, until the END of the second show when they all bowed and waved. In other words, they knew we were there - but knew the big crowd out front was where the reaction was, and where the energy flowed from. So you play to the crowd. We had a big screen to watch what was going on up there (I'm assuming Biden's audience did, too). In reality, while he was showing some level of 'connection' with the audience behind him, it also exhibited how out of touch he is, too.

Unable to comprehend the nature of how media works or covers him, and unable to comprehend how to really play a crowd properly.
#2 Bulldog on 2019-11-04 09:19 (Reply)
Heh.

Glacier National Park Quietly Removes Its “Gone By 2020″ Signs

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-10/glacier-national-park-quietly-removes-its-gone-2020-signs?fbclid=IwAR322xbhizJlWQO174zaoy1c1ENQtil9KESqL5SoKc8beqRdAKtt7KyQutw
#3 feeblemind on 2019-11-04 09:53 (Reply)
re Andrew Cuomo: ‘We Didn’t Have Hurricanes’ Before Climate Change

Some lies are so over the top they just leave you speechless.

Do even the True Believers agree with such nonsense?

Or maybe they are just trying to change The Narrative, the same way Holocaust deniers are?
#4 feeblemind on 2019-11-04 09:57 (Reply)
For an enlightening read, in Wikipedia look up "New York hurricanes."
#4.1 mudbug on 2019-11-04 10:17 (Reply)
So many stories on wrongheadedness today. America (and the world) will be a much better place when people finally realize that their obnoxious fellow citizens have no right to lay claims to the attention or indulgence of others.
#5 Aggie on 2019-11-04 09:57 (Reply)
Liberal/Conservative : Right/Left
I don't even know what these words mean anymore. I especially object to the conflating of the historical right/left paradigm in Europe with the right/left in the United States. I guess it is only human to fight the last war; maybe that explains why so many ideologues have been unable to move past the archaic vocabulary and obsolete mental maps of the 20th century.
It really weirds me out when they call moderate Trump, a Conservative.
#6 Exasperated on 2019-11-04 10:04 (Reply)
That isn't as crazy as linking Nazis to the right and communists to the left and then insisting that liberals are in the moderate middle.
#6.1 indyjonesouthere on 2019-11-04 11:42 (Reply)
That isn't as crazy as linking Nazis to the right and communists to the left and then insisting that liberals are in the moderate middle. = I especially object to the conflating of the historical right/left paradigm in Europe with the right/left in the United States.

Yes, that was my point.
#6.1.1 Exasperated on 2019-11-04 12:31 (Reply)
Re: Architectural elites

This reminds me of what my mother, who traveled quite extensively, said many years ago about visiting Russia, "There were many beautiful old buildings and a lot of ugly new ones." The more I look around, the more I realize that that should be said of most places. There is no comparison between buildings built a hundred years ago and those built since. For example, look at the Louvre and then I. M. Pei's pyramid.
#7 mudbug on 2019-11-04 10:12 (Reply)
Same problem in Kosice, Slovakia - a beautiful main street (Hlavna), heavily "baroquisized", has been defaced by the insertion of some butt-ugly modern cement structures. And all the suburbs - and some of the nearer area - have the Soviet-era apartment structures which have no architectural merit.
#7.1 Frances on 2019-11-04 19:10 (Reply)
I must be incredibly ignorant. I already thought the IRS had super duper enforcement powers?
#8 B. Hammer on 2019-11-04 11:12 (Reply)
No, Hammer. The IRS currently has only SUPER enforcement powers. For example, it can haul you in to an audit and compel you to provide your private papers. Thus it is not held by the Fourth Amendment. It can also compel you to testify against yourself as Al Capone found out. Thus it is not held by the Fifth Amendment. But that is pretty much all it can do. Well, except, they can take a portion of your wages, drain your checking account, or padlock your business if they say you're behind in your payments. But not much more than that.

Warren envisions giving them SUPER DUPER enforcement powers. Presumably, those might include taking your money without due process... Wait, they can already do that... Maybe Warren means that the IRS won't bother itself with niceties like requiring you to fill out forms and prove your income but rather decide how much it wants and just take it.
#8.1 mudbug on 2019-11-04 11:37 (Reply)
I think you are on to the super duper part: they will confiscate your entire pay, and then decide if you get any back. Plus, they will decide your future earnings, and go ahead and confiscate for that. Welcome to Venezuela! The amazing thing is that people actually think these are good ideas that will work! Ideas that will make everyone prosperous.

Dear Lord, please help save us! Please give me the words to dissuade people from voting for such ridiculousness; from the enslavement that comes with such ideas.
#8.1.1 B. Hammer on 2019-11-04 12:27 (Reply)
A very short piece I remember from Kindergarten.

SJWs would howl with outrage if they read/heard it:

INJUN SUMMER
by John T. McCutcheon
Chicago Tribune
September 30, 1907

http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Chicago/InjunSummer/
#9 feeblemind on 2019-11-04 14:25 (Reply)

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