The economic ignoramus here takes a stab at the realpolitik of the debt ceiling, I have to admit she’s 100% correct about the politics;
“…schools and other government agencies facing budget cuts tend to immediately slash something high-profile and politically popular. That’s how you get them to reverse the budget cuts.”
via How to Deal With the Debt Ceiling – Megan McArdle – Business – The Atlantic.
There, I Fixed It
On vacation this week in my former home state of Pennsylvania, I passed a billboard on I-95 south at 322 (undoubtedly paid for by the taxpayers of said state) touting the “Chairman’s Selection” by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. It slickly presented typical bucolic wine-business images of grapes, vines, barrels, etc, all to give the casual viewer the idea that a state wine monopoly is just great, look, we even have special selections of wines by our Chairman. I am sure this was by the merest coincidence a mile or three from the massive privately-owned wine store just across the border in Delaware, a state whose residents presumably live their lives bereft of the wonderful wine selections made by the chairman of their neighboring state’s liquor monopoly.
I couldn’t find the billboard online (Joe?) but in the spirit of trying to help all those folksy bureaucrats in Harrisburg to successfully put across their message, I corrected the PALCB’s “Chairman’s Selection” logo. You’re welcome!
Here’s one someone did earlier;
Wine Revolution For The People
(PHOTOS: PLCB, wikipedia, me, Empty Bottles)
Whatever your stand on the health-care legislation at the center of this article, this open revolt by libertarian members against local and state Republican parties should be applauded and encouraged;
Not your average Republican power broker
Sarah Anderson is peculiar. For one thing, she’s a Republican. At 22, that makes her a statistical anomaly, even in El Paso County.
She spent her formative years reading a series of books that explain the free-market theory to teens. She will gleefully argue the superiority of the market-based Austrian School economic model of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises over the Keynesian mixed-economy version. On her Facebook page, she describes her political views as “a beautiful blend of Anarcho-Capitalism and Minarchism.”
Another thing: Anderson is a born campaigner. Home-schooled, with college on hold, she says she’s worked on more than 60 campaigns over the past seven years. She started at age 9, after pleading with her mother, by volunteering at county headquarters while Bill Owens was running for governor. Six years later, she went door-to-door for Douglas Bruce, then a party hero who wanted a seat on the county commission. From 2004 to 2007, she worked at the state Capitol for legislators including Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs.
This past February, at the meeting of the county GOP’s central committee, she was elected party secretary in a decisive victory over party stalwart Holly Williams, wife of County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams. Anderson says her speech — referencing work done for Lambert, former state Sen. Dave Schultheis, U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck and plenty more — clinched it.
“Let’s not just say we want youth in the party,” she told the crowd. “Let’s put experienced youth in leadership.”
Feisty, ambitious, intelligent and pretty, Anderson’s exactly the kind of person that the aging GOP is eager to draw into the fold. Except that, as she happily offers, “My beliefs aren’t popular with the majority of the powerholders of the Republican Party.”
One from a band with ‘cookie monster’ vocals and an R-rated name, (and playing in Philly at the First Unitarian Church this Sunday 6/26) but joyous, soaring guitar and melody – “The Other Shoe”;
The other from 2004 – Jessica Grassia of Toronto’s Golden Dogs sparkles on what could be the New Jersey State Anthem; “Construction Worker”
It is still a disgrace that in America, in 2011, fundamental human rights still depend on the electoral whims of politicians.
Recognizing in art the unreality of fiat money
“Bank notes, like artworks, are objects that have no inherent worth beyond what society agrees to invest them with, and in using them as his medium, Feldmann raises questions about notions of value in art.”
Of course, it devolves into vaguely anti-capitalist cant after that, but when was the last time you saw a critique of the Fed in a museum?
I am DEFINITELY going to catch this one.
(Image from the Guggenheim)
Food For Votes, or a Prank?
I was in Portland OR recently, and noticed a goodly number of homeless people / panhandlers as you do in smaller and Southern cities these days, the bigger ones having run them all off.
So I was interested (but not surprised) to read of Portland’s city fathers (and mothers) taking state and federally-stolen tax dollars to build a palatial, $50-odd-million complex to “serve” them;
“Straddling Portland’s Chinatown and the Pearl District, a neighborhood of reclaimed warehouse spaces, the eight-story Homeless Service Center cost $46.9 million in city, county and federal stimulus funds to construct. It will contain 130 studio apartment-style permanent residences, 90 shelter beds, and offices for 50 staff members. Complimentary GED classes, haircuts and art therapy will be on offer.
…It’s a noble mission. The trouble is there are no time limits for those living in the center’s studio apartment units. The job training, GED courses and writing classes that the center will offer will be entirely optional. The center’s taxpayer-funded yoga sessions and nutrition classes, meanwhile, will be available to anybody who shows up.”
Yep, definitely no subsidization of social pathology going on THERE, for votes.
In the same week, the august leaders of Orlando, FL highlight a different lovely aspect of statism; jailing people who on their own (and not through a multimillion-dollar contract) are attempting to actually help homeless people directly, as if the helpers were feeding pigeons;
“On May 25, Orlando Food Not Bombs illegally fed a large group of homeless people, the police report states. The group on its website called for members to show up that day and defy the city ordinance, according to the report. “They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people,” said Coleman, who was not present. “For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable.”
And why not? After all, didn’t Jesus say you can only feed the hungry when Caesar’s minions decreed it allowable? Didn’t Thomas Jefferson say “Give me liberty, but only between two and five on alternate Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays? No?
Statists, it turns out, don’t seem to know what to do about the homeless; to use them to buy (with your money) certain votes by coddling them, or to buy others (also with your money) by crushing them.
All you really need to know is that they know the homeless are not human, and are thus vote fodder.
It seems, in the 21st century, “Love thy neighbor” no longer meets the bare minimum required by law.
Hard to know what to make of this sudden elite “epiphany” on the futility of criminalizing the consumption of certain disapproved substances by adults. After all, it has been articulated for years by many principled, patriotic, sane, thoughtful, credible people, notably recently by Ron Paul (to wild applause, in SOUTH CAROLINA). Is it a global tax-grab to save the world’s nations from their self-inflicted mortal financial wounds, or a reacharound to soften us up for something even worse?
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « May | Jul » | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | ||
What The World Needs Now Is Default
Remember, the game of the big commercial banks, central banks, and the IMF and World Bank is to get control of the entire world economy so as to do 2 simple things; 1) Run all commerce and trade through their books so they can profit off of every transaction by every single person on earth, regardless of the economy, and; 2) To juice economies around the world( by issuing bonds to governments, and inflation by central banks and fractional-reserve commercial banks) to increase the flows from which they skim. It is why, for instance, “conservative” governors have been elected in the US to try to balance state budgets – not to help the poor state taxpayer, but to keep the bonding party going. That is why ALL levels of government must DEFAULT.