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.
I think his family is more into benevolent Feudalism (the modern term for that is pretty much Socialism with the royals replaced by a new, less benevolent, royalty)
Am I the only person who has little interest in US involvement in the middle east? They are all tribal lunatics and barbarians (except Israel which is basically a European transplant), like most of Africa too.Nobody gave me the job of running them.
Boring topics, I know. Boring only in part because those who write about them tend to be pure Materialists, assuming that money and bourgeois comforts are all that matter in life. I always find that strange from Lefties, but Lefties do love and envy money more than I do. As I have observed before, Maine Guides, NYC would-be actors, adjunct faculty, organic farmers, grad students, carpentry apprentices, etc. all are below the poverty level. They neither need nor want any sympathy.
I see no virtue in economic equalizing. It never worked anywhere, and efforts to impose it by force generally end up with plutocratic, privileged bureaucrats and a nation of serfs serving the State. Why ‘inequality’ can be ‘beautiful’. Furthermore, many people do not base their life choices on money but instead on things more important to them.
Poverty in the US? Let's define it first. The US has an extensive safety net able to contain the unfortunate, the feckless, the mentally-ill, the temporarily out of work, etc., etc. We even go overboard with disability, providing for people who could easily do something useful in the world but are working the system. Nobody in the US goes without food, shelter, and a big screen TV if they want those things. Notable also is that US poverty stats do not include any government charity or private charity contributions. Of course, family always helps out first, and that is ignored too.
Still, poverty will never go away as long as it is defined as the lowest x% of US income. I am still awaiting the official study which can tell me exactly who "the poor" are in America, and whether they care. NYT: How poor are the poor?
If the whole focus of your life is on getting everybody else to agree with you on every detail of your politics and adopt your plans for a perfect society, then you’re setting yourself up to be at war with most of the human race most of the time.
The American legal philosopher Joel Feinberg attacked Mill by saying that we feel offence like a wound. You only have to think about the hurt from slights that have stayed with you longer than the pain from a broken bone to see the truth in his argument. Societies and individuals feel disgust, revulsion, shock, shame and embarrassment when they hear views that don’t physically harm them, Feinberg said in the 1980s. They can and should replace Mill’s “harm principle” with his “offence principle”—that the law can stop speech that causes serious offense.
Feinberg’s mild authoritarianism buttressed the illiberal version of liberalism that flourishes to this day. It supports the laws against “hate speech” which may not be so hateful it provokes its audience to violence, but is still grossly offensive. It provides the philosophical justification for the incessant Twitter storms and media fits about “gaffes”, “misspeaks”, or to use a modern phrase that reeks of the Victorian drawing-room, “inappropriate language”.
Go into the modern university and you won’t hear much about Mill or Milton or the millions around the world who have had to learn the hard way why freedom of speech matters. Instead, you will be fed philosophers far less rigorous than Feinberg.
The totalitarian impulse is omnipresent, and must be resisted at all times. The "offence principle," however, is nothing but a self-ridiculing bullying tactic which deserves mockery rather that resistance. If you equate offense with a wound, you live on the wrong planet. I am offended by people and things continuously, and that's normal life. But this is not really about emotional wounds - it's a bullying tactic and rarely if ever genuine. Not that that matters anyway.
One of my proposals is for kids to learn stuff anyway they can, with degrees issued by degree-offering institutions following oral and written examinations.
You can tell quickly whether a person knows their stuff in an oral exam. You can ramp up your questions to determine the limits of their knowledge and thinking. If some kids need to be spoon-fed their education, so be it. There's been enough of this overly-costly "college experience" nonsense.
You can almost do that today, but you still have to pay. One of the brightest fellows I know got his BS in Physics from a highly-prestigious university in three years without ever going to class, while playing drums in a touring rock band. Picked up the syllabi, and showed up for exams.
His “Imagine” speech seemed calculated to ridicule every Leftist shibboleth with predictable effect. The Left lost no time characterizing him as a Christian bigot, a patriarchal supremacist, an uneducated, crazy, anti-poor, anti-abortion “uppity loudmouth” besides being that supreme abomination, a White Latino. If there’s some sacred cow in the Leftist canon Ted Cruz has left undefiled, he will soon enough defile it. That’s the plan.
Hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, have you heard the news, folks? Have you heard the news? Some guy who has only been a senator for a short time, some guy without any real executive experience, some guy whose biggest qualification is he went to Harvard Law School, some guy with a foreign name and mixed ethnic background, some guy who has questions about his birth certificate, have you heard this guy's running for president? Isn't that crazy? And the Democrats are telling us this guy is not qualified, that he's dumb, that he's stupid, that he's incendiary, and that he doesn't have it right on global warming.
Why would any on-campus crime be handled any differently than an off-campus crime? Colleges today find themselves in a funny spot. Are they in loco parentis, or not? Do they enforce morals, or not? Do they have codes of behavior, or not? They certainly seem to have absurd speech codes. In any event, I would take them out of the criminal justice business.
Why the Ethanol Mandate Is Terrible Policy - Politicians of both parties may bow before Big Corn, but the biofuel requirement is an unmanageable economic distortion.
Connecticut remains the most heavily-taxed state in the US (and the wealthiest, per capita), with supposedly the most government services (or maybe just the most costly) and almost the highest-paid government employees (after California): Connecticut Residents Work 6 Weeks Longer Than Louisianans to Pay Taxes
We often wonder what is gained by contributing all of this money, but in a Blue State you are at their mercy so you just try not to think about it. With all its dying cities filled with government-dependents, its liberal gentry, and the union power, you're screwed.
The higher they raise them, the faster they drive away the people who can pay them. It's a shame, because it's a wonderful little state with plenty of history, recreation, rural beauty, schools and universities, educated people, social life, every kind of church, seaside, rivers, real seasons, etc.
Recently mandated “positive interventions” have only exacerbated discipline problems in the largely minority Santa Ana public school district, where middle-school kids now regularly smoke pot in bathrooms — some even in class — and attack staff — spitting on teachers, pelting them with eggs, even threatening to stab them, according to the Orange County Register
I recently read that there are only 1 million Americans with net worth of $5-25 million, and only 142,000 Americans with over $25 million in net worth. There are so many millionaires in NYC, you would think it's normal and end up with a distorted view of life.
All inequality statistics could be solved by confiscating all of these wealthy assets. However, it would not even put a dent in American's debt to China. Another problem is that those people would go out and do it again, so best just to take their money and houses and stuff and then kill them, and kill their kids too just to be on the safe side. Kill the kulaks.
Maybe better just to confiscate the wealth of old people who lack the energy to make money again. Hey - there's a policy to campaign on.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, Sperry observes, recently announced a similar, more “holistic” policy that, according to him, deals with the “root causes” of bad behavior and will provide “a safe learning environment.”
In Syracuse, New York, where the school district adopted “restorative justice” anti-discipline practices, Sperry reports that student behavior has worsened, with more fighting among teens, increased verbal abuse of teachers, and more student time spent walking around the halls.
The "root cause" of that teen violence is human nature, untamed.
I want to remind readers that the "morning link" post is a group effort by Maggie's Farmers, readers, friends, and others who suggest links. As is clear from our posts, we do not try to do the news but sometimes we just have to. Generally speaking, we post things of interest to us and things and viewpoints likely to be overlooked by the dogmatic part of the MSM. That's the idea, anyway.
Please feel free to submit ideas, but don't feel hurt if we don't use them. There is only so much time and space.
Hopeful news. Visiting Egypt is on my bucket list - not just to see the monuments, but to see the country. They had a golden age long ago, but the peasants there never had one and still do not.
I am not sure whether there is any dishonor or crime the Clintons could commit which would dampen their popularity. It's a puzzle to me. The Bonny and Clyde of American politics, I guess.
I read somewhere today that she had been fired from the legal team of the Watergate Commission and called a liar by her boss. But of course everything is just political smears or it's "old news."
Of course, none of this necessarily discredits her policy ideas, but I do not know what they are either.
Just about everything we thought we knew about the evils of cholesterol and fats has turned out to be wrong. The doctors, the nutritionists, the dietitians, the heart societies, the experts at Health Canada, the food pyramid that hung on the wall in school – the entire health and medical establishment, in fact, have been perpetuating a big fat fraud.
Did
economic incentives destroy lower-income families? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/did-economic-incentives-destroy-lower-income-families.html#sthash.p1Uw1TKv.dpuf
Some thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Clinton below the fold so as not to overburden our front page with annoying Clinton links -
It's an issue of character. We all know not to look for high character in those inclined towards careers in politics but, policies aside, I think the Left can do better than these grifters and con artists. Even their "marriage" is a fraud, and so is the Clinton Foundation.
I think even the MSM press is weary of them and their endless BS. I am, anyway. Rejected once; why try again?
And I'll ask once again, How does one accumulate a $200 million bank account and a $2 billion slush fund in "a life devoted to public service"? Perhaps that trick can be listed as one of her major life accomplishments. I am impressed by that.
She is the "I went to Wellesley, and I married a sociopathic redneck politician" candidate. Wow.
From one of our links below:
Clinton's political career was launched based on the record and relationships of her husband. She has no accomplishments to speak of from either her time in the Senate or as Secretary of State. But her personal network has put her in the position as the overwhelming frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
In the liberal ghetto of Ann Arbor, several University of Michigan administrators recently gathered for a passionate brainstorm. The head of student affairs declared he was simply “going to die” if he heard about one more so-called micro-aggression on campus. When a colleague told him he was “acting crazy” for being so sensitive, he was shipped off to a mandatory session for freshmen where he learned about white privilege and determined that he would never say anything potentially controversial again. And with that, the Inclusive Language Campaign was born.
Academics often defend tenure, despite its many negative consequences, on grounds that it allows academic freedom for independent minds. Yet there are few places in America with more taboos and intellectual intolerance than academic campuses.
Massive Underground City 
John F. Nash Jr. and Louis Nirenberg 
Will Your Kids Go to College, or to the University of Everywhere?
It must be Spring - it snowed all night again.
It's Spring, with snow coming today, 1 below zero F in Rumford, Maine, and the migrating
I want to remind readers that the "morning link" post is a group effort by Maggie's Farmers, readers, friends, and others who suggest links. As is clear from our posts, we do not try to do the news but sometimes we just have to. Generally speaking, we post things of interest to us and things and viewpoints likely to be overlooked by the dogmatic part of the MSM. That's the idea, anyway.
Document theft and destruction nothing new for Hillary Clinton
Some thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Clinton below the fold so as not to overburden our front page with annoying Clinton links -
An amusing book, and still accurate: