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.
The brief article is here. Politicians like Keynes because he encourages them to give money to their supporters. The economics might not add up, but the politics does.
The inability of any party seriously to retrench is surely the consequence of the growth of central government, which is now so deeply imbricated in the economy that it is often difficult to distinguish the public from the private. There are many companies – and very large ones too – that are at least as dependent on the government as any single welfare mother: and therefore so are their employees, managers and shareholders. It is not just welfare mothers, therefore, who will vote for the continuation or extension of dependence on government spending, but many of the most prosperous. When the government in Britain finally gave up on its project of the unification of all health care records in a single IT system, after having spent up to $20,000,000,000 on it, there was nothing to show for it except many IT millionaires. Unsurprisingly they were not against the government expenditure that was the foundation of their wealth.
The government is now so big that when it sneezes the whole economy catches cold. That is why, in matters of economics, we are all fascists now.
From Daniel Hannan: The World of English Freedoms - It's no accident that the English-speaking nations are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights, writes Daniel Hannan. A quote:
Wasn't the American) republic founded in a violent rejection of the British Empire? Didn't Paul Revere rouse a nation with his cry of "the British are coming"?
Actually, no. That would have been a remarkably odd thing to yell at a Massachusetts population that had never considered itself anything other than British (what the plucky Boston silversmith actually shouted was "The regulars are coming out!"). The American Founders were arguing not for the rejection but for the assertion of what they took to be their birthright as Englishmen. They were revolutionaries in the 18th-century sense of the word, whereby a revolution was understood to be a complete turn of the wheel: a setting upright of that which had been placed on its head.
Don't hold your breath. Their jobs are far too important to let truth get in the way of what they want to do for us. A sordid business, closely related to and affiliated with prostitution of every sort. A sorry bunch of losers in life, even when they win elections and get rich in the process.
Everybody knows that politicians lie and manipulate routinely, which is why most people view them as a necessary evil despite their endless claims of being our moral and intellectual superiors. It must be interesting to be in a sales job in which the product is insulated from either performance results or meaningful competition.
Today’s Democrats argue that, some deceptive language aside, President Obama had every right to implement his view of medical care for America, as well as other things, because he was elected twice having promised something of the sort. But, in 1974, Republicans could have argued that Nixon had been elected twice, the second time by the largest margin in US history, specifically to undo the 1960s. In fact, Nixon’s lies about what he knew of his subordinates’ misdeeds were entirely irrelevant to the purpose for which he had been elected. Why should the Republican constituencies who had worked so hard have given up on the Nixon Administration? Why did Barry Goldwater, Mr. conservative himself, go to the White House to tell Nixon he had to resign?
The government thinks you’re stupid, or at least ignorant.
This isn’t just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It’s simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren’t equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, the federal government’s portfolio could have easily fit in a file folder: maintain an army and navy, a few federal courts, the post office, the patent office, and maybe a dozen or two other pretty obvious things.
Now, the file folder of things the federal government does is much bigger.
Read the entire brief post. It is in the government's interest to keep us all ignorant, poor, weak, and unresourceful serfs on the government plantation. That is not American, it's European or worse. Even "colonial." If your taxes approach 40%, you are a serf of the State. Feudalism endures and the bank accounts of the mandarins grow fat.
Typically, serfs in England owed 30-50% of their production to the Lord, who in turn owed some fraction of that, plus soldiers when needed, to the King.
A "rape culture" in America? I don't think so. For starters, it's a felony and I'd guess 100% of Americans think it should be. The letter-writer is right, of course.
I can't think of a better day than today to have a Biblical post about government. Zerohedge, of course, does the legwork.
No, it's not a post with Biblical quotes are references. In some ways, it's just another listicle, but more informative and thoughtful than your standard "10 reasons why...".
Middle class families are forced to watch as food is taken from the mouths of their children and given to others, in an elaborate political scheme to breed dependence and ensure a loyal voting base. If we’re OK with that, why shouldn’t we be OK with what happened at a few Walmarts this past weekend? Sure, YOU can’t walk into your local supermarket and take things off the shelves, but YOU aren’t entitled. Only certain people are entitled, and the government decides who those people are. Don’t you get it?
also
I’d like to at least believe that our tolerance for Welfare stems from some sort of charitable feeling. That still wouldn’t make it right, but it would make it perhaps more palatable. Yet, I know this isn’t the case. I believe strongly in giving to the poor, and my wife and I do just that. Anyone who wants to GIVE, and GIVE FREELY, is more than able to do so. It doesn’t, therefore, make sense to support the Nanny State simply because you wish to help the poor. You could help the poor without the government, and you know it.
On the contrary, I think most of us submit to and accept Entitlements because we lack the moral or mental energy to oppose them.
Here is a brief litany of obvious truths that have been resisted in the public discourse of black America over the last thirty years: a group is no stronger than its individuals; when individuals transform themselves they transform the group; the freer the individual, the stronger the group; social responsibility begins in individual responsibility. Add to this an indisputable fact that has also been unmentionable: that American greatness has a lot to do with a culturally ingrained individualism, with the respect and freedom historically granted individuals to pursue their happiness--this despite many egregious lapses and an outright commitment to the oppression of black individuals for centuries. And there is one last obvious but unassimilated fact: ethnic groups that have asked a lot from their individuals have done exceptionally well in America even while enduring discrimination.
I received, from the president's emailing spambot, this unsolicited email which explains why the government is shut down. A quick read tells me exactly how poorly informed this man is.
He uses the purchase of a house as the basis of negotiation, and compares the current shutdown to a potential buyer threatening to burn down the house being negotiated. This is not only extreme, but wrong. Clearly, he's never negotiated the purchase of a home.
A better comparison is to picture the potential buyer saying "I don't like the price you're asking, because there is an oil tank buried in the back and it may start seeping and destroying the ground soon. I would prefer that you have that tank removed. In the meantime, I'm willing to buy the house at this significantly reduced price." At that point, Harry Reid (the seller) replies, "No you don't have the right to ask to remove that tank and the alternative offer you've made is not under consideration. I choose to no longer speak with you. Come back when you're realistic with a 'clean offer' on the house and just forget about getting rid of that tank. I've grown to love that tank, and you should too. I'd rather see the whole thing fall apart than speak with you."
And then he blames the potential buyer for the end of negotiations, when clearly he is the person at fault.
President Obama Explains the Shutdown
Yesterday, eight days into the Republican government shutdown, President Obama spoke from the White House about the need for Republicans in Congress to stop threatening another recession just to sabotage Obamacare, stop demanding ransom just for doing their jobs, and just vote to reopen the government. He talked about the toll this shutdown is already taking on our country and the economy, and warned against the dire consequences of a default if Congress doesn’t act to prevent an economic shutdown.
Keeping the government running and paying the nation’s bills aren’t bargaining chips or a matter of negotiation – they’re a fundamental part of Congress’s job. Here’s how the President put it yesterday:
"If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house, you don't get to say, 'Well, let's talk about the price I'm going to pay, and if you don't give the price then I'm going to burn down your house.' That's not how negotiations work.... In the same way, members of Congress -- and the House Republicans in particular -- don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America is paying its bills."
As the President has made clear -- and the press has reported -- the government could be reopened, today, with the votes of reasonable Republicans and Democrats if Tea Party Republicans would allow a simple yes-or-no vote on a Senate-passed compromise bill to fund the United States government. It’s time for Congress to just vote and end this government shutdown now.
"We have reached a point of diminishing returns in our public life. Hardly anything actually needs doing. We may in fact be past that point; not only does nothing much need doing, but we’d benefit if much of what has been done were to be undone. What useful work can I do with Windows 8 that I couldn’t do with XP?
Politicians make a living—a very grand living indeed at the higher levels—by saying there are things wrong that need fixing. Are there, though?"
Apparently, Anthony Weiner doesn't realize this. What's he eating, anyway?
I'm adding this after the fact, since Dr. Mercury made a comment which is germaine, but not wholly correct and I feel the need to address. While the commentator mentions a "racial epithet", the entire video, if you have the chance to view it, begins with the antagonist saying " married to an Arab." He then calls Weiner disgusting and a scumbag, which are epithets, but not racial. The first comment is not an epithet, even if it was used in a derogatory fashion, but sensibilities on issues like this vary. For the record, when I saw this on TV in the morning, I was laughing at the whole thing, as was Charlie Rose. Weiner is a public figure, and his wife is too, and they are open to any criticism which comes their way and have to accept that as part of their choice of profession. Sometimes it's ugly and uncomfortable, but even when it is, Weiner's reaction was over the top and damages an already heavily damaged public persona. As a public figure, voters do get to judge him in whatever way they choose.
Obama believes attacking Syria will send a message. He's correct, it will, but the message will not be what he thinks. Rather than a forceful show of strength, the world will view it in these terms:
there they go again, doing something they would never want done to them, and demonstrating that they alone think they can decide what deaths constitute a moral obscenity and what constitute mere unfortunate collateral damage.
The Syrian situation exists purely because the Obama foreign policy has been weak. As a result, it has fostered situations which allow tyrannical leaders to be overthrown, with tacit approval of the US government, without any support or plan for providing material support afterward.
Each of these situations has become chaotic - which is precisely what should have been expected, since the region in question has never been completely stable and any hint of stability had previously been provided by despotic regimes. When these despotic regimes have faced a populace encouraged to stand up, they have fallen (as expected), and reverted to anarchy.
Obama is faced with a situation which he didn't plan for, but should have. Increased anarchy in a region he hoped he'd guide gently toward democracy. He has learned you can't reason with mobs or tyrants. And now he's learned what every other leader in the world knows - if you want to deal with tyrants, you have to do so from a position of strength.
But he has squandered our strength.
Now he needs to regain it and lacks the ability to do so. He is hoping a show of military force will help. He is wrong. He can only make things worse now. Best to back off, disengage, and let the chips fall where they may.
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."
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.
A reader provided a snippet of this the other day. A longer quote, from the 1889 Brit political essay entitled "Socialism and Legislation" in The Westminster Review, Vol 125.
First, then, let us see how he would bestow increased powers and new functions upon municipal and other local authorities, with the view of increasing the enjoyment and raising the morals of the people. He points to the fact, as we have seen, that these authorities have already given to the people parks and art galleries and museums out of the pockets of the wealthy. Why, we may well ask, are they to stop there?
Personally, we may care very little for fossils and may care a great deal for Shakespeare and the opera bouffe. It is a considerable check upon my indulgence in these intellectual pastimes that I have to pay for them out of my own pocket; but why, we should like to know, should the man who wants to look at fossils, or some modern genre picture, be gratified at the public expense, while another has to pay for his seat in the theatre? If the persons who have the levying of the taxes are not to pay them, but are to benefit by the money when it is paid, we see no limit to the amount of recreation and enjoyment which may be provided by means of taxation for the poor of this country—except the bottom of the purse of the rich man. No doubt we all desire to see the lives of the poor enhanced in the way Mr. Chamberlain indicates, and no one desires it more than the poor man himself, and we can understand that having amusement provided at the public cost is a taste which grows by what it feeds on.
It is said that a man who had been shipwrecked, who had lived upon the hardest of boots and shoes and upon a very exposed raft, for we do not know how many weeks, and who was ultimately rescued, was brought to London, and introduced to some feeling journalist who, when he had got his story out of the man, asked him if he could do anything for him. Whereupon the man, who had nothing in the world, for he had, as we said earlier, eaten his boots, asked for “an order for the play.” We expect to hear a good many more demands made, following Mr. Chamberlain’s lead, for recreation at the expense of the rich. That the national resources which are necessary “to put the poor to work” should be frittered away in attempting to raise by indulgence, by amusement, by recreation, the lives of those whose first necessity is discipline, is, we think, a very questionable proposal.
That a statesman, with a due sense of his responsibility, should so far mislead the people by promises which can only, in the long run, lead to disappointment, is a bad sign of our times. Surely he must know that if the people once taste the sweets of plunder, if they begin to enjoy the unearned increment, there will be larger demands made, and that the only end to those demands will be the end of that useful milk-cow, the capitalist class. Having recreation at the expense of another can only be a temporary, a very temporary, expedient. In the first place the wealth of this country is not, by any means, so great as to enable the whole of the inhabitants to enjoy life in the way suggested, and even if it were, a time would very soon come when the person who supplied the recreation would have no more to “pay the piper” with, and then, we fear, the dancing must cease, or go on without music. But will it last even so long?
An American candidate said “Capital is sensitive; it shrinks from the very appearance of danger.” We think that it is shrinking in this country, and if capital goes beyond the seas, if it is taken to other and safer countries, we shall have the poor of this country dancing to quite other tunes than those which are being composed by their over-sanguine guides for their delectation. We shall have the poor of this country condemned to misery and starvation. They themselves cannot see this, but it behoves those who would constitute themselves the leaders of the people to take heed lest they mislead them into such ” sloughs of despond.”
When I was first asked to write for Maggie's, I promised Doc Mercury I would outline my thoughts on Libertarianism and why I switched from the Republican Party. He was curious why I thought it was a preferred political stance.In light of the current Rand Paul/Chris Christie 'debate', and my own procrastination, now is as good a time as any to post my opinion.
We choose political views based on our perception of human nature.If you believe humans act primarily in their own self-interest, Libertarianism might be for you.You shouldn’t consider it if you feel you can tell others what to do, or if you think the state knows better and should tell them how to live.For me, it was a question of consistency and honesty with myself.All political views have limited degrees of consistency, and we often rationalize specific situations which seem to compromise our essential principles.This even happens with Libertarians, though I believe it occurs to a lesser degree than most political parties.
