Sunday, February 26, 2012

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?

Today we purchased for $1.00 each three novelty figures made of plastic with a photovoltaic cell that when exposed to sunlight cause the toys to waggle their parts. So we have a ladybug, butterfly and a bee happily moving their wings and sitting on leaves that are constantly in motion. Three for $3.00.

I thought I would like to send them to my grandchildren in Australia. But wait - with packing, postage and customs requirement it would cost about $5.00 to send a $1.00 toy! Maybe more...
How is it possible that the toy was designed in the U.S, plastics were shipped to China, the place of manufacture, other parts were made in China , a high tech photovoltaic cell was added, the product was shipped back to the U.S. wholesaler and then distributed to the Dollar Tree store where I purchased it? Deep question. Everyone along the process made a profit and I still was able to plunk down a single dollar bill. Isn’t Capitalism wonderful!

Yet, to send the “dancing insect” through government channels and wrapped in government red tape as a gift to someone else would cost $5.00 ( or more). Is not the wasted dead hand of government ugly to behold?

Thursday, February 23, 2012

APOLOGY AND CONTEMPT

On Thursday, February 23rd, United States President Barrack Obama continued a week of apology toward Muslim extremists rioting and killing Americans in Afghanistan. It appears that some Korans containing messages between Islamist terrorists in custody in Afghanistan were seized and inadvertently sent to the incinerator. Since then, an escalation of apologies has rippled through the Obama administration. First the local commander apologized, then the Army high command apologized, then the Secretary of State apologized and finally Barrack Obama, Commander- in- Chief and President of the United States apologized.. Enough already! Of course, Islamist terrorists always riot and kill because their sensitivities and religion have been ‘dissed’ by America.

Note, we have continual groveling for an ‘inadvertent’ error by low level troops. But, at the same time Barrack Obama, President of the United States, deliberately provoked a fight with the Catholic Church by declaring that he and his Health and Human Services Director have the right to overrule Catholic Doctrine and beliefs whenever they conflict with his socialist agenda to remake America. No apology has been given to Catholics by Obama, yet his graciousness will give them 12 months to bring 2000 year old Catholic old doctrine into alignment with his edict.

Who is more important in Barrack Obama’s world view? Islamists or Catholics? By the way, don’t forget he is coming for you and your religious beliefs once he has the ‘pesky’ Catholics under control.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Awaiting the Avalanche

J. Ronnie Davis: In a sense, public opinion is like one of those mountain snow accumulations…. As snow builds up, the likelihood that the whole drift will come crashing down the mountain steadily increases. Finally, as the ultimate snowflake falls on top of the drift, the weight is now too much too be borne, and the whole drift comes down. Major changes in public opinion tend to take the same form. A very large number of books, articles, and lectures which appear to have no great effect nevertheless prepare the way. Eventually a critical mass is reached and what appears to be an overnight change of opinion occurs.

IS THE AVALANCHE HAPPENING HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Envisioning a Post-Campus America. “I can see all sorts of factors that might combine to preserve the status quo, from signaling and status and networking, to the desire of college students for a four-year debt-financed semi-vacation.

AUTO INDUSTRY HAD IT HAPPEN: On the other hand, disruption never looks inevitable until it suddenly is–if you’d told someone in 1955 that GM was going to have its lunch eaten by some Japanese upstart, they would have laughed until the tears came. So it’s interesting and maybe even useful to contemplate what the college system would look like if this sort of distance learning becomes the norm.”

WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN: The bloated liberal socialist welfare state. Please, please soon!

Monday, February 13, 2012

WILFUL BLINDNESS

Somehow in the 1980s we redefined in our schools colonialism, slavery, and imperialism as exclusively European, rather than merely human pathologies — as if the Arab world did not match or trump the European slave trade, as if the Ottomans had no empire before the Europeans in the Mediterranean, as if Persians, Japanese, and Chinese had not sought to conquer, enslave, and exploit their weaker neighbors.
We seem to have forgotten that what is admirable in the U.S. is not just the result of the vast American landscape, a natural selection of the more audacious and risk-taking immigrants, frontier life, and the resulting rugged individualism, but because the Founders were nursed on the European Enlightenment, Christianity was imported from Europe, and Anglo-Saxon law was built upon in a new continent. We live in such a strange age of lies: to say the above is considered heresy, but to live our daily lives on political or economic premises other than the above is synonymous with chaos and misery. So we live two lives: the counterfeit one that we declaim loudly in a politically correct fashion, and the real one we live by but do not dare articulate.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

TAXATION IS THEFT

So the very existence of taxation – any taxation – opens the door wider to those who wish to use the state to butt further into other people’s business. It’s true that we can marshal theories and arguments about the analytical primacy of the private; the analytical (and in some cases also temporal) primacy of private property; and the analytical (and also sometimes temporal) primacy of social order.

But the fact remains that there is no method of taxation that avoids significant arbitrariness in its application and consequences. (“If X is taxed, why not tax Y, too?!”) It’s this arbitrariness – which is practically inseparable from the fiat that is legislation – that opens the door wider to those who claim, in one breath, not to wish to mind other people’s private business but, in a second breath, insist that much of what looks to non-”Progressives” as private is, alas, really public and, therefore, the business of us all.

The second reaction is one that I heard on the radio yesterday. It’s a reaction by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to the brouhaha over Obamacare’s confrontation with the Catholic church over health-insurance to cover contraception.

Here’s what Ms. Gillibrand said (in a tone of extraordinary self-righteousness): “The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss. What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

The twisted logic underlying Ms. Gillibrand’s worldview is stunning. First she wants to collectivize health-care funding. Second, she then expresses indignance that express orders by the state on how private parties spend their funds are resisted by those private parties. And third, she parades her indignance as being a defense of private spheres of actions that ought not be intruded into by outsiders!

As Reuvain Borchardt (quoted here with his permission and original emphases) wrote to me by e-mail in response to Ms. Gillibrand furtherance of twistocracy: “Am I missing something, or is this woman an idiot? First the gov’t forces employers to provide insurance; then, when employers don’t wanna provide a service they morally oppose, the gov’t says HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE WITH PRIVATE DECISIONS! I never thought I’d be shocked by something a politician said, but frankly, Gillibrand deserves to be impeached immediately, for failing CIRCULAR LOGIC 101

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

It Never Crossed My Mind
Getting Rich in ‘Public Service’

If what is legal becomes the norm rather than what is moral, we are all going to be very poor. The names of these people should be on the front page of the Washington Post every day until election day and their constituents should vote them out of office regardless of what they have “accomplished” with other people’s money.
This isn’t just pork. It’s special pork. I don’t know what to call it. Maybe the other other white meat.
From the Washington Post:
A U.S. senator from Alabama directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to renovate downtown Tuscaloosa near his own commercial office building. A congressman from Georgia secured $6.3 million in taxpayer funds to replenish the beach about 900 feet from his island vacation cottage. A representative from Michigan earmarked $486,000 to add a bike lane to a bridge within walking distance of her home.
Thirty-three members of Congress have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.
The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.
...........
Two years later, Hastings himself sought an earmark for a project near property he was selling to his brother. In 2009, he secured $750,000 toward the planning of a new bridge that will replace an outdated railroad underpass in Pasco, Wash.
As Congress required, Hastings certified that he and his wife had “no financial interest” in the earmark. Hastings noted on his Web site that the project would “improve the safety of motorists and pedestrians, while improving freight mobility and response times for emergency services.”
He said nothing, however, about its proximity to Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, the janitorial supply company that Hastings owned and ran until he was elected. His brother now operates the company. County records show Hastings and his wife still own the land and a 7,000-square-foot building. The overpass, as planned, will start about three blocks away.
Hastings does not list the business property on his financial disclosure form. His press secretary said debts owed by immediate family members — spouses, parents, children or siblings — do not have to be reported.
“After winning election in 1994, the Congressman acted to remove himself from the business as he took office and made an agreement with his brother for him to purchase it over time,” wrote Erin Daly, Hastings’s press secretary.
City officials said replacing the underpass is one of their top priorities.
In an interview, Hastings said the location of his property had no bearing on his support for the project.
“It never crossed my mind,” he said. “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.”

Government, and ‘Public Servants’, love you and have only your best interests at heart [Laugh Line].

Friday, February 03, 2012

WHY REPUBLICANS HATE THE TEA PARTY

“Across America, state Republican parties and legislators are pursuing the opponents they most despise with renewed vigor.

You would think that the targets of these efforts are President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officeholders who are hell-bent on turning America into a financially broken, post-constitutional, Washington-controlled playground safe only for crony capitalists and regulators gone wild. You would be wrong.

In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Utah, to name just four, state GOP establishments are laboring mightily to marginalize the millions of constitutional conservatives whose activist energy (but not their outlook) dates back to the beginnings of the Tea Party movement three years ago. By their behavior, it’s clear that those who run many state parties and quite a few incumbent moderate Republican lawmakers are more threatened than pleased at the results of the 2010 elections, when the GOP took back the U.S. House and significantly improved its representation in statehouses and state legislatures. Oh, they’re happy with the majorities they have, and want to pick up control of the U.S. Senate this time around. They just don’t like many of the people who won the races which gave them those majorities, would rather not see any more interlopers come in and try to upset the status quo, and are targeting several newbies for political extinction.”

AND NOW TO OHIO:
“.............because the state’s party apparatus has surely taken notes on how to fend off status quo disrupters from Kevin DeWine and Ohio’s establishment Republicans. Having more than one candidate besides Welch will virtually guarantee the others’ defeat. Readers will see why shortly.

In 2010, DeWine, chairman of the Buckeye State’s Republican Party (or, as I prefer to call it, ORPINO, the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only), successfully fended off Tea Party-supported primary insurgents in two statewide races. At the same time, he orchestrated a campaign to protect State Central Committee supporters from Tea Party challengers which was so dishonest that it might make even Team Obama blush. It included largely false claims in flyers and ads that ORPINO’s favored candidates had “Tea Party Values,” and dispatching poll watchers throughout the state on Election Day to hand out slate cards supporting the establishment’s statewide ticket and individual Central Committee members.

Because of ORPINO’s extraordinary related primary spending spree, Kevin’s coffers were apparently so low that according to House Majority Leader Bill Batchelder, DeWine asked potential donors to steer their money to the party instead of to individual candidates. On top of that:

A source close to (now-governor John) Kasich said that DeWine, a month before the 2010 elections, asked donors not to give to Kasich, and instead to give to the candidacies of Republicans Jon Husted and Dave Yost, who were running for secretary of state and auditor, respectively.

Everyone knew that Kasich was in a tightening race against incumbent Governor Ted Strickland. Kasich won by only 2% of the vote.

This sordid saga has led me and many others in Ohio to believe that DeWine wouldn’t mind if the generally Tea Party-sympathetic Kasich becomes so damaged that he decides not to run for reelection in 2014, clearing the way for ORPINO golden boy Husted. That Husted lived illegally outside of his district when he was a state rep and state senator (my opinion, and sadly not that of the courts) and did a complete about-face on the need to require voter identification at the polls once he was safely elected (now he thinks that voter-ID is a really bad idea) seem not to matter. Husted is currently attempting to visit all 88 Ohio counties because he claims it will help him perform better in his current position. Sure, John.

Some people I have spoken to believe that it was naive of Kasich to expect that DeWine would become constructive after giving in to a purge of most of his staff after the 2010 elections. Really? When was the last time Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz openly and bitterly criticized the Obama administration? Unfortunately, DeWine hasn’t mellowed a bit, and the two are openly feuding. Kasich is attempting to run an opposition Central Committee slate in this year’s primary which I fear is destined to suffer the same fate as the attempt two years ago. Just in case my prediction is wrong, DeWine is trying to rewrite the Central Committee qualification rules at the last minute to prevent insurgent winners who haven’t voted in the last three statewide primaries from being seated.

A state party chairman who is at serious loggerheads with his governor should recognize the need to step aside in favor of someone who will cooperate. Kevin DeWine won’t do that. Unless something changes, and quickly, the center-right atmosphere in this most important of swing states in next month’s primary and the fall general election will be quite acrid.

This leads to potentially the biggest problem of them all, which is that the GOP establishment and its pundit class constitute the sorest of sore losers. They have expected genuine conservatives to swallow their pride for decades and vote for moderate squishes who were in some ways barely better than their Democratic brethren (e.g., John McCain, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford nationally, as well as more state and local candidates than one can hope to count). But as was the case in 1980 with Ronald Reagan, it appears that there is no establishment desire to reciprocate and provide meaningful resources to the winners if their people lose, starting with Mitt Romney and his acolytes at the national level and moving on down from there — even if it leads to Barack Obama’s reelection.”

Please, people. Say it isn’t so.