Maggie's Farm

Just so you stay in touch: Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy - The MIT professor lays out how the majority
of U.S. policies are opposed to what wide swaths of the public want

What the "people" want is free stuff. Duh. Unless they are honorable and self-respecting people, but that is old-fashioned.

How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies?

A quote:

 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."

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.

Howard Zinn – Hero of Hollywood and the academic left

Sarah Hoyt gets it: Occupied!

I can think of a few good ones, just for starters.

Gunsmith
Cabinetmaker
Oil rigger
Actor
Musician

I'm sure there are hundreds. Add your ideas below.

With good reason. Americans Remain Wary of Washingto.

One quote:

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.

Change is coming to higher ed.

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.

This came in over the transom:

Washington State fulfills two Jewish laws in one shot... and it would have been even more generous to have been reminded about Washington State’s wisdom in overhauling liquor distribution laws…

Two Laws in the Torah were fulfilled on the same day, and it makes good sense that they become laws at the same time.

The two landmark laws just passed in Washington State, concerning Same-Sex Marriage and the (partial) Legalization of Marijuana, passed on the same day as they might have been considered on the same day because they relate, together, to the list of important prescriptions and proscriptions in Leviticus, the Book Concerning the Levites, the Vayikra, the third of the Great Books that make up The One Great Book, whose thirteenth chapter contains, among other edicts concerning social customs and personal mores, this verse, the 13th, which, it seems, hasn’t often, in the last 2,000 or more years in the history of The One Great Book, hasn’t often, we were saying, been interpreted correctly.

It reads,

"If
a man lies with another man,
they should be stoned."

Fannie, Freddie, and the Destructive Dream of the 'Ownership Society' - Unwinding the mortgage giants won't cure Americans of their
desire to own a home, whether they can afford it or not.

What's your opinion?

What Not to Ask on a Job Interview

10 questions not to ask during a job interview

10 Questions Guaranteed to Keep You Unemployed

What not to ask in a job interview

Via an Insty reader.

It is a powerful and discouraging report. Those are not underperforming schools. Those are underperforming kids and underperforming parents in an underperforming subculture. "Underperforming" by bourgeois standards, anyway. Perhaps not by their standards. Free food is fine.

America contains many subcultures without bourgeois expectations or standards. It's a free country. As we always say at Maggie's, do whatever you want with your time and your life, but not on my nickel.

Sometimes I wonder whether requiring "education" does any good. School learning is not a passive procedure. It requires, at the least, both inner and external discipline and, at most, inner desire, curiosity, and motivation.

In the younger years, clearly a positive connection with authority - a "master," a teacher - helps. One wants to please them and not to disappoint their efforts on your behalf. Our schooling is probably more designed for gals than for guys, or also for highly-domesticated or high IQ guys.

Can those things be "inspired," i.e. put into the air so that they are taken in by breathing? I don't know. I can say that, for me, school discipline and parental discipline put me on the road to an independent restless desire for knowledge and thought, but I may have been born with that anyway.

My IQ is probably not dramatically high, but my interests in all things is quite high and I have a temperamental or cultural restlessness which leaves me without a lazy bone in my body. I don't know what "relax" means, and I do not want to find out. My lack of interest in relaxing has served me well and enriched my life. Not mainly financially, but in all ways. I do not even like to sit down.  My Maggie's Farm hobby is an expression of that. Call it ADD if you want.

Even on "vacation" from my day job, I want to either work or learn or eat, but the eating fattens me and drinking makes me lazy, so I minimize them. It's not about virtue. It's the way I developed, and my parents are the same way. "Retirement," endless vacation, is my nightmare.

I would rather pump gas than sit on my ass.

For many, not some, in my view.

I have half-completed a post on the topic. But here's Glenn:  For some, college not worth the debt

From Destiny of Crime:

 Eugenics, I suspect, was in reality a symptom of a growing impatience of intellectuals with the intractability of the human condition, with the fact that that Man was irredeemably imperfect. And this impatience grew because of a decline in the religious understanding of life (it was no coincidence that Chesterton, who saw so easily through the pretensions of eugenics, should have been firmly Christian, while none of his opponents was). In the 1920s sterilization of the unfit would do for humanity what psychopharmacology is now supposed to do: render it happy because perfect. No one with an understanding of Original Sin could believe such a thing – even if Original Sin is not based upon an actual historical truth.

Despite Sweden having backed off a bit from their socialist and statist excesses, its traditions of authoritarianism and paternalism persist.

The government controls higher ed in Sweden, and they do not expect much of their students:  Six Years on Taxpayers’ Money - A graduate student from Sweden compares U.S. and Swedish higher education.

"Don't Buy The Hype, College Education Is Not An Investment"

The article is referring to an expensive Liberal Arts education. However, most American higher ed does not involve the elite and expensive private colleges. Much higher ed is career-oriented at community colleges, for just one example.

Many colleges, even prestigious universities like Cornell, have a multitude of career-oriented colleges. Even Agriculture and Hospitality colleges. You can go to college to learn how to maintain golf courses. Such grads get instant jobs with big future potential.

I have a lot to catch up with after over a week in Wyoming, riding the ranges and the foothills with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Got lost a few times. High prairie. I always carry a compass in the great outdoors. A compass, the sun in the sky, and a pocket knife. A pocket GPS is cheating. Next time, I'll carry one anyway rather than following a fence line to nowhere.

After a few days, I can begin to adjust a bit to Western-style riding. Still, I do find it strange. Loping, galloping - different gaits from our refined Eastern style but at least the saddle has a handle! We saw Pronghorns, some Mulies, a few Golden Eagles and a Prairie Falcon. And lots of cattle, steak on the hoof.

Friends sometimes ask me why I never take photos. I never, ever, take pictures, even at Christmas. My eyes and brain are my camera; my hippocampus is my photo folder. Taking pictures can become a goal in itself, I found long ago, and interferes with fully "being there." So, rightly or wrongly, I quit it.

But on to today's link. I started college as an English Lit major. I liked talking about books. I liked writing essays. After a year or two, I began wondering why I was making my Dad spend money so I could do what I would do anyway in my spare time, so I switched to Chemistry. I love chemistry, but was not smart enough to make a career in it.

Here's the article: Is the English major an endangered species?

The Democratic primary candidates are all vying for who will offer the most freebies to voters.

Blue State politicking. Same old, same old.

For all of his ridiculous flaws, Mayor Mike at least did not expand New York's welfare culture. The next mayor will face intense pressure to reverse two decades of progress.

If you think about it for a while, you have to wonder whether this might require a $5 million government grant to understand the deeper processes at work here. h/t Carpe Diem

A re-post

I love cucumbers from my garden in the summertime. I harvested my first few this weekend.

Is anything more refreshing than a hot cucumber fresh off the vine?

I guess I prefer them as a dominant component, and not as a minor ingredient. Mixing tomato with cucumber is an insult to Mr. Cucumber - except in a Greek tomato, cucumber and feta cheese salad - which is hardly a salad. More like a fine simple  plate of food, with olive oil drizzled over it.

Cucumber sandwich: 2 or three 1/4 to 1/2 inch-thick lengthwise slices of peeled cucumber - try to minimize the seeds. Sprinkle a little salt. Put on bread with some mayo. This version is definitely not a lady's tea sandwich.

Cucumber and onion salad: My Granny made this all the time in the summer. Sometimes with shrimp in it as a light lunch, but I like it plain. I don't think she used the oil, but maybe she did. I make it without oil and with the clear-colored vinegar, sugar to taste, and definitely let it sit in the icebox an hour or so to absorb the flavor.

Cucumber Slaw: This one has sour cream and vinegar

Another cucumber slaw: Better to shred it in the Cuisinart than to grate it, in my opinion.

Cucumber and Radish Slaw: Refreshingly cool, zippy, and unusual.

Yet another cucumber slaw: A favorite. Peel and seed them. Shred in Cuisinart. Always drain shredded cukes in a colander with a bit of salt and some weight on top for 20 minutes before making slaw or it gets too watery. Shred some carrots too. Toss together in a vinaigrette with a little salt and pepper. Really nice with lobster and fish, but also terrific with barbecue.

Cucumber and Dill Salad. A classic, and the only reason to bother growing dill in the garden.

From the article by Lawler. One quote:

 The humanities, in the old view, are about the purposes or ends of being human.  Technology is about the means--money and power--that should be subordinate to those ends.  Instrumental reason, by its very name, should be at the service of properly philosophical and theological reflection. So those with a technical education should be taking orders from those with a fully liberal education, as they have been, in fact, through most of our history.   Jefferson and Lincoln had a deep appreciation of the place of technology in American flourishing.  But they understood the difference between cultivation of the means for the pursuit of happiness and happiness itself.  When Jefferson thought of happiness, we learn from his letters, he gave us two exemplars:  the philosopher Epicurus and his version of the Jesus of the Bible.  And of course "the self-evident truths" could only be genuinely evident to a self who has reflected seriously--with the help of the key books of the West--about who each of us is.

The article is from Mead:

 Of the 33 states granted a waiver (from No Child Left Behind) last year, 27 now have different achievement goals for different groups of students. And the Obama administration fully supports this measure, “as long as the low-performing students are required to make greater rates of progress, so that the gap between struggling students and high-achieving students is cut in half over six years.”

Different performance standards depending on skin tone and eye shape? They have gone insane. With the President being 50/50 white/black, to what standards should he be held? I suppose he should be held to the lower dark standards, because that's his skin tone.