The Last Blog Post - "Don't Be Safe"

This is a tough one to write, for emotional, physical, and coordination reasons....
A few months ago, I started having problems driving, walking, and accomplishing basic tasks.  After a quick trip to the ER,I was diagnosed with some nasty brain tumors.
So this is it, folks.....
Starting this website has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.  I't's gotten me politically involved, and has earned me friends and readers all over the world.
Im' gonna try really hard not go get too maudlin or sentimental here....

For the last 20 years or so, I've been responsible for running my company's morning Production Meeting.  I never figured out why I was the one to do it.   Perhaps it's because I'm the guy who hates meetings the most, and I was always able to keep the thing moving along at a decent pace.

Several years ago, some of our owners went to a trade show that featured some presenters from Disney.
The Disney people said that their #1 priority was to "Be Safe".
Well, that's bullshit.
Their #1 priority is to bring happiness to families everywhere" (you can look it up -- it's in their mission statement).
You don't dress a teenager up like Tinkerbell and zipline her from Cindederella's Castle to the top of The Matterhorn every night if your #1 priority is to be safe.
That's what you do if you want to be awesome.
Anyway,because of the report on the Disney speakers,  I got into a rut of saying "Be Safe" at the end of every meeting  It was our Amen,our dismissal, and our Benediction.  .  If I could take a "Do Over" on anything I've done at work in the last few years, it would be to come up with another closing line to use at the end of that meeting.

People once told my father that if he ever started growing and irrigating rice on his farm, it would poison the land.  Because of his decision to go ahead with a new rice  crop instead of cotton and sobybeans, I got to see The Colisseum in Rome.  I got to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Because Darrell Cooper Sr decided to have some "Entrepreneurial Seizures", I've had the glorious privilege of seeing the sun come up twice on the same day while flying over the Great Wall Of China.
So what should I have said for the last 20 years?
How about "Be Wise?"  "Be Cautious"?
I dunno.
But I'm now working with a very short clock, so to speak.  If I fit into the statistical norms, I've got anywhere from 15 to 18 months to be around.   I know that the first time I sat down with my daughter at a Blackjack table and saw her split 10's against a dealer Ace, that she would do just fine.  She was going to be ok.  She was going to terrify me, but she wasn't going to be held back by anything or anybody.
She will never (in TS Eliot
's phrase)  measure out her life with coffee spoons.  She's going to live it up to 11 every chance she gets.
So please don't ever, ever waste another minute of your wonderful life with "being safe"Take risks.
 Destroy your perrectly laid-out shop and put in a Specialty Department. (Hello Ray!!) Get involved in politics and put Mary Kelleher to work disrupting the most corrupt institution in Fort Worth  .Raise Hell.  Find some activists to associate with, and bang some pots and pans together in the street.  WIN the Fort Worth Gay Pride parade  and then wake up the nest morning to staff your booth at a gun rights show.  I promise you that if you ever get brain tumors everyone of of those beautiful people you meet will come see you in the hospital.
And yes, I'm very much aware that I'm one of the few people I know who has had to use a helicopter pilot as a designated driver.
That's part of the package.  (Yeah, there probably is some middle ground between getting drunk enough to see dead people and "Being safe".)
I'm writing this post with a head full of creepy-crawlies, and sorry for the lack of spelling, grammar, and coherence.
But folk, please don't ever, ever, ever waste your time in being too safe.
You know that idea you have of a better way to fix broken windshields?  Do it.  Start that business.  That book you've always wanted to write?  Those earrings you want to start designing to sell online?
Do it now.  Yeah, people might laugh.  Who cares?  There will always be people willing to wait in line to laugh at your ambitions.  Let them be the ones to be safe.
Whether you know it or not, you too, are working with a short clock.
If you can to one thing right now for me or for yourself, don't be safe.
It's been real.
Don't be safe.

Barack is going to Ohio to Increase Our Manufacturing Capacity!!!

You may not have read about it because he wasn't accompanied with his usual wave of unemployment, disaster, debt and racial discord, but Barack recently visited Ohio.

Here's an article that the good folks at Industry Week recently sent me.

President Obama will be in Cleveland, Ohio, today to talk about his plan to strengthen U.S. manufacturing by investing in new technology

.O, God, God almightty help us all...  Most of Barack's "investments" have been in green energy, America's Community Colleges, Solyndra, anti-global warmingscams, infrastructure, canisters of Leprechaun farts, sustainables, and other failed schemes.  

We've got the smallest percentage of our workforce employed than we have in a long, long time, and we're in big trouble. Hillary and Jeb Bush are warming up offstage.  This is sooo...scary.  

H CRAP!!! 

He's got his shirt sleeves rolled up.  that means he's ready to work.  And we all know what happens when he does that...

Manufacturers are adding jobs at the fastest rate in decades with nearly 900,000 new positions created in the last five years. Factory production is up by a third since the recession and factories across the U.S. are experiencing growth not seen since the 90s.

This fool has never even managed a Taco Bell Night Shift....

The new White House and Commerce Department plan looks to take advantage of the latest surge with a series of initiatives including:

Competitions

The Department of Defense is launching a competition for leading manufacturers, universities, and non-profits....

Hey, how would you describe Barack's donor base?  Let's start with universities and non-profits....

 to form a new manufacturing hub focused on revolutionary fibers and textiles technologies. The $75 million federal investment will be matched by more than $75 million of private sector resources.  These private sector resources" are often called "campaign contributions" in the real world.  

Also, there will be $320 million competition to strengthen small manufacturers. Non-profits in 12 states will compete for $158 million in Federal funds matched by $158 million or more in private investment over five years to provide technology and engineering expertise to small manufacturers through the latest round of competitions to strengthen the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)’s network of centers in these states.

Supply Chain Innovation

A new White House and Commerce Department Report describes a dense network of small manufacturers that make up the backbone of America’s supply chains, contributing more than 40% of all manufacturing employment. However, even as their share of U.S. manufacturing employment grows, small firms continue to face stiff challenges in innovation. As the new report finds:

Small manufacturers are playing an increasingly important role in U.S. supply chains and the manufacturing sector overall. Today, small manufacturers employ 42% - or nearly half of all U.S. manufacturing workers - up ten percentage points from their share in the 1980s. 

Dense networks of these small manufacturers are vital to the process of taking a product from concept to market, and the exchange of manufacturing know-how across suppliers is essential for the diffusion of the new product ideas and innovative processes that give U.S. manufacturing its cutting edge.

However, because of the barriers they face, small manufacturers often lag behind their larger peers in adopting critical new technologies. 

Ok, class, raise your hands if you've heard this before....

"Most of our job growth comes from small businesses."  

Heard it before?  

Of course you have.  It's one of those obvious factoids that government gnomes and their media friends love to repeat.  

It's like saying "Most of the growth in forests comes from trees that aren't grown yet."  But they say it like it's brilliant.  Wisdom.  Waaaaay smart. 

For example, a recent survey found that fewer than 60% of small manufacturers were experimenting in any way with 3-D printing, a potentially transformative technology that is especially beneficial for small companies due to its flexibility. In contrast, over 75% of large firms were using the technology.

The White House Supply Chain Innovation Initiative will focus on public-private partnerships and new federal efforts to strengthen U.S. manufacturing overall by closing this gap.

The event will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

God helps us all.  

Barack has come up with another public-private partnership.  

Any time you hear public-private partnership, cover up your wallet, lock your purse in the trunk, and bury the family silver in your back yard.  

The risks are going to be public, and any profits will be privatized.  

I'm sorry for repeating that cliche, but as long as "public-private partnership"is polling well with idiots,Democrats, I've got to repeat it..

Ok, here's my point....

American manufacturing will regain it's place at #1 in the world when we do the following:

1. Reassure investors, manufacturers, and other risk-takers that our government isn't going to confiscate and redistribute any profits.  

2.  Eliminate the risk of hiring someone.  If I hire someone to unload shipping containers, all I want is to have my containers unloaded.  I don't want to take on a dependent.  I don't want to be sued if he's black or brown, and I decide to stop purchasing his labor.  I don't want Nancy Pelosi to dictate what I have to pay him to unload my containers.

4.  And finally, it doesn't matter if I'm getting raw material from Canada, Mexico, Cuba, South Africa, or Kenya, it should all come into the country at the same tariff rate.  We have tens of thousands of government Munchkins earning great salaries slapping tariffs and quota restrictions on imported stuff.  All of those people should be propped against a wall and shot.  

5.  We gotta end our public school system, then bulldoze every public school, plow salt into the ground so nothing can every grow there again, and try something different.  

6.  Imagine interviewing high school graduates day after day after day, who can't read a tape measure, fill out an application, or answer a simple question.  

Shit, folks, it ain't working any more. It was good while it lasted.  End it.  Let's do something different.    

You might not respect the man, but you've got to respect the office

Any time I hear someone say "You might not respect the president, but you have to respect the office," I'm tempted to respond with "You might not respect Prince Charles, but you have to respect the office."
"You might not respect Fidel, but you've got to respect the office of Cuban Dicatator for life."
"You might not have liked Pope Pius XXII, or any other pope, but you gotta respect the office."
"You might not respect Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, pastor of the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but you have to respect the office."
No, I don't.
And you don't have to either.  (While I was looking for a picture to illustrate my point, I came across this little gem....

Wow.
President is just a job.
It's a job that has great fringe benefits and staggering opportunities for graft.
IMHO, we'll all be better off when we stop thinking of elected politicians as "leaders" and think of them as referees, rent-a-cops, and infrastructure maintenance contractors.
Seriously....  "Respect for the office" has led more soldiers to an early death then any other flawed belief system.  It's a holdover cliche from the "divine right of kings" era.
The President Of The USA is someone who put together a coalition of rent-seekers, grievance-mongers, parasites, theocrats and military spending enthusiasts for the purpose of winning a beauty contest called an "election".
All that having been said, you might not respect me, my opinions, or blogging in general, but I'm a blogger and this is my blog.
And you've got to respect the office....

You really aren't that big of a deal

1. The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.  
2. 
   
   
3. The innermost layer of the sun is the core. With a temperature of 15 million kelvins (27 million degrees Fahrenheit)
4. The outermost layer of the sun is the corona. Only visible during eclipses, it is a low density cloud of plasma with higher transparency than the inner layers. The white corona is a million times less bright than the inner layers of the sun, but is many times larger. The corona is hotter than some of the inner layers. Its average temperature is 1 million K (2 million degrees F) but in some places it can reach 3 million K (5 million degrees F). 
5. 
   Temperatures steadily decrease as we move farther away from the core, but after the photosphere they begin to rise again. There are several theories that explain this, but none have been proven.
   
   
   In the corona, above sunspots and areas of complex magnetic field patterns, are solar flares. These sparks of energy sometimes reach the size of the Earth and can last for up to several hours. Their temperature has been recorded at 11 million K (20 million degrees F). The extreme heat produces x rays that create light when they hit the gases of the corona.
6. 
   
   
7. The sun is the source of virtually all heat for our planet.  The earth is insignificant in comparison.  
8. If you want to feel even more insignificant, this guy ran a program to prove that every human alive would fit into one 900-meter ball.  
9. 
   
   
10. And yet if our politicians are to be believed, our failure to give them more control over the energy economy is boiling the planet.  
11. Seriously, people....  It's time to get over yourselves.  It's the sun, and the occasional lack of it.  You aren't that big of a deal.  Go here for more fun details.  
12. 
    
    

The real scandal of Hillary Clinton's email account

When She Whose Name Is Not Spoken (The Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton) was Secretary of State, she was supposed to only use a government email account, and nothing but a government email account.  You know, hackers, spies, terrorists, and the like could possibly hack into her Hildebeast@aol.com emails without anyone being the wiser.
 
Instead, Hillary used a private account.

She was not about to let investigators, oversight committees, or even historians have a look at what she's doing for foreign governments to generate money for the Clinton Foundation (and the $$$'s came rolling in, BTW.)

This is supposed to be a scandal.

But let's look at this from the point of view of a Martian, or someone who has been living under a rock for the last 30 years.  Or just because it would be a new experience, let's really think about this thing....

This is the person who was involved in:

*Whitewater
*Travelgate
*Filegate
*Chinagate
*Vince Foster dying for her sins
*Benghazi
*The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (LOL)
and....
*The Great Cattle Futures Scandal

All of which prompted the late great William Safire to solemnly intone that "Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -- is a congenital liar.

This was in the New York Holy Times, BTW.  

So should this email thing be viewed as a legit scandal, or not?  
I say no.  
The scandal is that Barack Obama wanted to give this lying twit a government email account.  

Global Warming - The Biggest Religion That No One Believes In

I'm not the first person to notice that Climate Change Advocacy is taking on characteristics of a religion.  Go here.

I could've made my own list, but the one at the link works well.

• Original sin: Mankind is responsible for the prophesied disasters, especially those of us who live in suburbs and drive our SUVs to strip malls and chain restaurants.

• The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will raise the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

• Rituals: We must observe Earth Day, and we must recycle.

• Indulgences: Private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

• Prophecy and faith in things unseen: Advocates say we must act now before it is too late.

I would add The Punishment Of Heretics (deniers), and a few more details on the symbolic gestures (green energy, driving a Prius, slapping "green" labels on products), and a lack of falsifiability (Miami could freeze solid, and it would still be a sign of Global Warming).  

Al Gore's Noble Prize co-winner recently said that fighting Climate Change was his religion.  And here's an interesting point of view from some dude at MIT.  

In the meantime, in Fort Worth TX, we're freezing our rear ends off.  Here's a few pics of my truck, my yard, my workplace parking lot, and my drive this morning.  

So here's a New York Holy Times article predicting the end of snow.  

Here's a widely mocked and reprinted piece from about 15 years ago predicting the end of snow in England.  I've lost 5 days of production (out of a possible 9) because of ice and snow.  

And in the meantime, earlier this year, we had got snowfall predicted in all 50 states, yet people STILL believe that the planet has a fever, and giving more money to Obama will lower the temperature.  

Ok, now that I have the preliminary throat-clearing out of the way....

An idiot Democrat Congressman (pardon the redundancy) went on a short-lived witch hunt a few months ago, asking prominent scientists if they had ever doubted the reality of Global Warming.  He wanted to know where they got their funding.  In short, he was trying to intimidate the opposition to his fundraising scam.  

The media are starting to ask similar questions of next year's political candidates.  It's becoming a "gotcha".  To paraphrase the late senator Joe McCarthy, "Do you now, or have you ever doubted the reality of Global Warming?"

Here's how politicians should reply:

"No, I don't believe that my behavior has a significant effect on the weather, or the climate.  I don't believe that anyone on earth behaves as if their travel, energy usage, or diet significantly changes the weather.  And out of curiosity, what is the primary action you take to combat Climate Change?"

Then sit back and listen to the glorious silence.  

Everyone in the news media flies.  The drive.  They generally eat meat.  I daresay that the average newsprint or TV journalist has a carbon footprint that rivals that of a NASCAR driver.  

I started asking this question (mostly in bars) a few months ago, and most people hem and haw, and then talk about how they vote, and which politicians they've given money to.  

Try it sometime.  Ask a Global Warming True Believer what they do to fight Climate Change.  The condensed answer will be "not a damn thing".  

I know very few people who truly believe the major tenets of the religion that they profess, and behave accordingly.  

One of them is this guy.  He carries this sign and pulls this wagon full of Bibles all over west Fort Worth.  Unless it's raining or snowing, he's out there.  He believes that there is a Hell, and unless he can convince you to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you're going there.  He's worried about you.  

He might be batshit crazy, but his actions are truly in line with his beliefs.  I have a lot of respect for that old man.  

I don't believe in Global Warming.  I think it's one of the biggest con games in history.  Therefore, I drive a big ol' Ford F-150.  I eat what I want to eat.  

But if you are a Global Warming True Believer, what's the difference in you and me?  

In Praise Of Mario Cuomo

Go here to enjoy Samizdata's Perry Metzger opening a can of whoop-ass and sprinkling it on the grave of Mario Cuomo.  "I encourage all to mourn his loss in whatever manner they feel appropriate."

Good job, sir. 

 

The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons of Muhammad

12 people were recently killed in a cowardly terrorist attack on the office of the French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo".    These are the cartoons of Muhammad / Mohammad / that supposedly caused the bombing. 

Compared to works like "Piss Christ", or portraits of the Virgin Mary made of elephant manure, they're pretty tame. 

Has it occurred to anyone else that the more tolerant of religious criticism a society becomes, the more religion tends to flourish there? 

For instance, you can go to New York City and see a musical play where a copy of The Book Of Mormon gets shoved up a Mormon missionary's ass.  The Mormon Church is flourishing in the USA. 

Ditto for most other religions. 

Go figure.  Let's hope France responds with increased satire and liberty, and not with calls for censorship disguised as sensitivity. 

A Free Market Prayer For The New Year

Sometime around Christmas I went out to eat with some old-time old-school friends that I hadn't seen for a while.  We chose a Mexican restaurant (and the food was amazing). 

I got a massive amount of burritos, tostadas, rice, beans, chips, queso, and I forget what else for only $10.95.  Everyone else got a similar bounty for their bucks. 

My friends at the table are not religious.  They're not even spiritual.  But one of them said "For this food at this price, I feel like a prayer of some kind is in order." 

All eyes turned in my direction....

Here's what I improvised, or at least my rough memory of it.  It owes more than a little to Leonard Reed's immortal "I, Pencil" essay. 

No heads were bowed.  No eyes were closed.  I wasn't talking to god or gods.  It's just what I wanted people to know, and what I hoped we all felt:

"We're grateful for this food.  For the farmers who grew it, for the cattlemen who fed it, and for the workers who harvested it. 

Let us not forget the factory owners who processed it, none of whom knew that we would be here eating today.  May we always remember to be grateful for the truckers and warehouse workers who handled the shipping and transport, despite them not even knowing our names.

May we never forget the tremendous risk undertaken by anyone who tries to open and run a restaurant.  And we are grateful for the cooks, the wait staff, the bus boys, and the cleaning crew.

All of those hard-working wonderful people accomplished this miracle on our behalf for the price of $10.95 each. 

May we all be free from rent-seekers who would interject themselves, uninvited, into this process.

May everyone involved in our exchanges believe that they have gotten the best of every deal, and may we all live our lives in a way that encourages others to trade their dishes for our dollars."

- Amen

(The last part in italics wasn't in the original prayer.  I just thought of it, and considered it too good to leave out.)  

A couple of questions about Jackie

For those who have been in a media blackout for the last few weeks, Rolling Stone magazine (one of the guiding lights of my adolescence), screwed up and published an unreliable account of a gruesome frat-house rape at the University Of Virginia. 

A young lady named "Jackie" was supposedly gang-raped by seven guys.  For three hours.  During a party.  On a floor covered with shattered glass.  And she refused medical treatment.  And the guy she claims to have gone with might not exist.  And etc., etc., etc.... 

Rolling Stone printed every word of it.  The University prez shut down the entire Greek/Frat system.  No judge, no jury. 

A few media groups are now picking apart the story, but they're concerned about not doing violence to the "larger truth" - that there is a culture of rape in America. 

Horse hockey. 

Considering that Jackie's behavior didn't take place in a vacuum, here are two types of questions that real journalists would be asking:

1)  What classes has "Jackie" been taking?  Victimology 101?  Intro to Grievance Studies?  The Western Canon As A Metaphor For Rape?  Advanced Privilege-Checking?

Has "Jackie" been exposed to classroom instruction that taught her that unless she is oppressed, then she is part of the problem? 

I would love to know.  Considering that a frat house has been vandalized, picketed, shut down and otherwise defamed, and that some guys could've gone to prison, I think we all have a right to know the crap that the University Of Virginia has possibly been pumping into that young lady's head. 

2)  The culture of rape schtick has apparently gone from bug to feature, and I'm wondering what all-female universities do with their evenings (without white straight males to fear, protest against, and warn each other about). 

Does anyone else think that Jackie might have been to one to many of the Rape Culture Seminars?  Did she go to any Take Back The Night marches? 

Did some variety of Victim Envy cause her to do this?  There are no effects without causes, and this fable had some causes. 

***********

It's looking more and more like Jackie made up the entire story.  I'm just curious about why she did it, and I wish that more journalists were. 

 

The group that killed Eric Garner is protesting against the group that killed Eric Garner

Sometime yesterday, Congressional staffers (government employees) walked out on their jobs to the front steps of the House of Representatives to protest the laws (written by themselves) that led to the death (at the hands of other government employees) who were enforcing the will of government employees. Instead of meaningless symbolic gestures, why don't they protest by making it legal to sell "loosies" without a punitive tax that pays their own (government employee) salaries? Lord have mercy, what a pack of doofuses....

 

WE ONLY HAVE 24 MONTHS TO SAVE THE PLANET!!

Go here. 

Trust me, just hit that link.  I'll be here when you get back. 

(As long as you do it within 24 months, or to be exact, within 630 days, or 15,120 hours of December 10th, 2014.)  We'll all be past the tipping point after that. 

Here's the link again.  I know how you folks are about hitting links. 

If we've passed that horrific date (December of 2016) without taking significant action on Climate Change, we will have passed yet another Tipping Point.

It will be too late to recycle.  It will be too late to stop flying, or to continue sorting through our garbage like raccoons.  It will be waaaay to late to send Al Gore's Kleiner-Perkins Investment Group any money for carbon offsets. 

It will be too late to begin stumbling around in the dark all night like a pack of aboriginal tribesmen just recently down from the trees. 

By December something of 2016, it will be too late to tax the carbon emitters who have made your world an unimaginable paradise (if your grandparents could see you now). 

It will be too late to make governments more powerful. 

I hope you've hit that link by now....

Have you had your giggle?  (I love the sound that Tipping Point deadlines make when we go flying past them.) 

This is like the U.N.'s threat that we'll have fifty million climate refugees by 2010. 

It's like Al Gore's fake concern that the polar ice caps will be gone by 2013. 

It will be like all of the other failed climate predictions, and there are a lot of them. 

The climate prediction business (and it's nothing but a business) is much like all the predictions for the return of Christ.  You can be wrong all you want, then just re-arrange the scriptures, come up with a new date, and still not lose very many followers.  And if you drop out altogether, the business will continue without you. 

Sometime after December 2016, the proprietors of the 100 Months And Counting website will look around at the ice caps, the snow, and the rest of the typical wintertime weather, and they'll shut down their Tipping Point Apocalypse website. 

Then they'll move on to the next gimmick and the next marketing/scaremongering stunt, never doubting the righteousness of their cause.  There's a sucker born every minute. 

 

On Firing Drunk Temps

The City Of Fort Worth's Human Relations Commission sent me a letter a few days ago.

It marked the end of a long, tiresome, wasteful process that hit on employment law, civil rights, racism, ageism, skinism, alcoholism, paternalism, bureaucracies, and whether or not I should have the right to purchase the labor of whoever I dang well please. 

It also touches on whether I should be able to stop purchasing someone's labor when it suits me.

I've clipped (and redacted) various parts of the letter so as to protect the guilty. 

Here's the cast of characters:

1)  The Charging Party - an employee that a temp service sent us back in freakin' June.  He showed up around 8:00 a.m., and we sent him back before 9:00 a.m.  (It's not unusual for me to send temps back to Their Mother Ship before their shift has ended, BTW.  We're nice about it, we're apologetic, and we wish them best of luck in all future endeavors.  But there's a good reason that some of those folks don't work for NASA or the Nobel Prize Committee.)  The Charging Party is the guy who sued us for discrimination. 

2)  The Temp Service - many employers now use temp or personnel services to screen their potential employees for 3 months before hiring them.  The temp services generally charge twice what the employee gets paid.  Yeah, twice.  But it's worth it to avoid paying Unemployment Compensation, or risk paying big bucks in an Unlawful Discharge lawsuit.  Some temps don't last but a few days, and there's a huge paperwork cost associated with bringing on a new employee, so after 3 months you have a better idea if the employee will work out or not.  Until three months have passed, the temp employee works for the Temp Service, and not for the facility where he is actually doing work. 

3)  Randy Morales - he doesn't exist. 

4)  The White Trainer who was supposedly drunk - he doesn't exist either, despite your sneaking suspicion that he is me. 

5)  The Respondent - my employer, Jukt Micronics.  The organization that had to respond to, deal with, and be burdened by this mess. 

6)  The Assistant Human Resources Director - the lady who is our Assistant Human Resources Director. 

Another group was kept busy determining our percentages of Black, Latino, Asian and White employees.  Then they had to calculate our ratio of employees older and younger than 54.  Try doing that with 700 people.  More on that later....

That's all you need to know to enjoy the following.    Here's part of the letter. 

Sorry for blacking out a lot of the pertinent case numbers, but I don't want the emissions people, the water inspectors, OSHA, or the noise abatement teams of Fort Worth to start swarming me because I picked on one of their bureaucracies. 

Please note that this process started on June 5th, and we got the resolution letter on December 2nd. 
God help the USA if other nations ever discover free market economics.

I gotta make a correction to that 2nd paragraph.  "The Charging Party" wasn't accused of just drinking on the job.  He was freakin' hammered.  Gapped.  Faced.  Blotto.  Some of our notorious alcoholics, guys who spend their weekends with faint traces of blood in their alcohol, they were asking us to send this guy away. 

At this point, if you've been paying attention, you're wondering why I'm involved in this at all, right?  The guy didn't even work for me !!! 

It seems that if you hire a temp employee, then send him away, he can still claim discrimination against you based on "his Race, Black, and his Age", to use the awkward phrase of the City Of Fort Worth's Human Relations Division.  I didn't know that until June. 

The letter refers to a White man who was drinking but was not disciplined or discharged.  It wasn't me.  Swear to God, it wasn't me. 

Back to the letter....

Ok, here's how this thing went down.  Ordinarily when a temp isn't working out, I just tell him that we don't need his services any more, and that he can clock out and go home.  Then I call the temp service and tell them to never, ever send that guy back to us. 

But when the temp is drunker than the Quality Control department at Jack Daniels?  We call the temp service manager in to deal with it. 

When they're that drunk, we let THEM send the dude home.  The Temp Service Manager came in, told the guy he couldn't work drunk, and sent him home. 

Regarding the last sentence in the letter, the one about Randy Morales....  there is no one in our company named Randy Morales.  We've never had a foreman named Randy Morales.  But if anyone named Randy Morales had been around, he would've smelled alcohol on this guy. 

So it was the trainer who smelled of alcohol, but just in case it was the temp smelled of alcohol it was because of his mouthwash and toothpaste.  Lordy. 

Here's a quick summary. 

The drunk temp demanded that the Personnel Service give him a drug and alcohol test.  They refused.  So he went to JPS (John Peter Smith Hospital) in Fort Worth and asked them to give him an alcohol test. 

John Peter Smith is our county hospital.  They treat a lot of low-income, indigent patients, and do a great job of it. 
But you can go in there with an amputated arm and you will still wait for a long, long time before getting treatment. 
This guy got sent home by the temp service, was denied a drug/alcohol test, drove to JPS, waited long enough for small mammals to evolve, and was still feeling a "Buzz".   It had to be hours and hours later!!

To paraphrase Meg Ryan, "I'll have what he's drinking". 

Here comes the part that should make you angry:

Here's why I hope you're angry. 

1)  Yeah, we hire lots of older people.  And we hire Black, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, El Salvadoran, Laotian, and Mississippi Rednecks.  My shop looks like the United Freakin' Nations.  180 people from...Earth. 
But our office employees had to drop everything else and do some racist nose-counting, just like we were separating the Hutus from the Tutsis, and report our racial makeup to the Fort Worth Freakin' Human Relations Commission. 

2)  The guy doesn't even work for me. 

3)  The process took 6 months. 

4)  We're paying the government to investigate this stuff. 
If you get tired of purchasing burgers from McDonald's and decide to purchase burgers from Wendy's, you don't have to do a verbal warning, a written warning, a 3-day suspension, and then formally terminate McDonald's.  You can just switch.  For reasons that I'll never understand, labor doesn't work that way, and most of us live diminished lives because of it. 

Our employers are expected to withhold and pay our taxes, provide our healthcare, take care of child support payments, our retirement, and our 40 acres and our mule.   Employment Law creates a huge burden for companies, increases the cost of goods without providing a benefit, and creates massive HR Departments which cost a fortune, but that add no value to the products the companies were founded to produce.

Think of how much easier it would be for you to go work someplace else if it weren't so much like changing plantations in 1845.   

5)  Finally, this process, designed to ensure racial fairness, often creates racists. 

Yeah.  It creates racists. 

I employ people from all over the world.  Most of them are awesome, personally and professionally. 

But will I now hesitate to hire someone who is of a different race, or of an advanced age?  Someone who could sue me if it doesn't work out? 

You tell me. 

Oh yeah, here's the end of the letter.  We weren't guilty of anything. 

There are days when I want to resign and turn the whole thing over to Randy Morales. 
 

Selling Loosies vs Stealing Swisher Sweets

About 4 years ago, I advocated something called "The Neighbor In A Cage Test" for new laws. 
In short, would you be willing to put your neighbor in a cage if he refused to obey (or fund) your proposed law?  Because that's exactly what happens when your neighbors don't obey laws, no matter how stupid the laws, no matter how few people voted for them, no matter how corrupt their origins.

We've had two good cases for this in the last few weeks.  Michael Brown and Eric Garner. 

We don't often think of Government this way, but....

1)  Government is force. 
2)  Government also writes laws. 
3)  Government uses force to ensure compliance with all of its laws, including the bad ones.   
4)  If you don't agree to obey the laws, or fund them, you will be locked up....
5)  In a cage. 

Here's how it works in theory.  This is from noted Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter:

On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law…..

The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.

BTW, a "loosie" is a single cigarette.  The New York Police Department had an "opportunity for official violence to get out of hand" (in Professor Carter's words), and supposedly choked Eric Garner to death.

Garner had been selling loosies.  (The rationale for selling these single cigarettes is that retailers have to charge an ungodly tax on packs of cigarettes.  Those who are willing to sell individual cigs usually don't send additional inflated cut to the IRS.  Hence the illegality, even though the tax was already paid by the first purchaser of the "broken" pack.) 

But that's the theoretical part of it.  Here's an interview with a NYC police officer, explaining the difficulty of enforcing bullshit laws:

What do you think about all this? I mean, honestly — that video. Eric Garner looked so scared.
Well, Garner was in bad health, and Pantaleo said it wasn’t a chokehold; he was just trying to take him down so they could arrest him. The thing that nobody hears about in the media is that Garner had been arrested for this before. The store owners, they had been … saying he was taking away their business. These people pay their taxes; they pay for tobacco licenses. They wanted him gone.

Right, but he wasn’t fighting the cops. He was just standing there with his hands up.
Yeah, but he’s a big guy. He could have been holding up his hands, or he could have been threatening them. All I’m saying is that cop needed to arrest him. Once that was decided on, they had to take him in one way or the other, and he didn’t want to go … but maybe there was excessive force used. I won’t say there wasn’t.

So you don’t think this is a race thing?
No, it’s not a race thing. It’s a Ray Kelly thing. (Ray Kelly was a veteran NYC Police Commissioner.)  That man singlehandedly ruined this department. When I came up as a rookie, you were assigned an older cop who had been around and knew what they were doing. We were taught that you catch more flies with honey. Basically, if you let the small things go — like the guy selling loosies or weed or whatever on the corner — then when the big shit happens, like homicide or burglary, those are the same guys who will tell you all about it. If they hate you, they won’t tell you shit.

But this is happening everywhere. I mean, Ferguson — there have been so many of these cases for so long.
All I know is New York City. Nowadays, since Kelly’s Operation Impact, rookies are taught one thing: Write tickets, do searches, make money. They’ll have a quota they have to fill. They’re not supposed to, but they do. They come up not knowing their asses from their elbows. These rookies don’t understand how to let the small stuff go. They'll be on your back for a bag of grass.  So when things happen they overreact.   

There you have it....
The theoretical problem from Yale's Stephen Carter. 
The practical problem from a NYC cop. 
Which leaves the rest of us with a problem. 
Would you be willing to have someone strangled to death for selling loosies?  If not, then don't ask someone else to do your dirty work.

How would that work out?  Where does one draw the line? 

Well, take the case of Michael Brown. 

(If you've been living under a rock, Michael Brown, a black teenager, supposedly did a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store, walked out with some Swisher Sweets, was stopped by a white cop, then something happened that we'll never, ever, ever figure out, and Michael Brown got shot.  Dead.) 

Here's a video supposedly showing some of the last moments of Brown's life.  If you're in a hurry, the last 20 seconds are the key moments. 



Would I be willing to shoot someone to keep Swisher Sweets from being stolen?  I don't know, and I hope I never have to find out. 

Would I be willing to outsource that job? 

I can only answer with a very reluctant.... Yes. 

That's one of the Big 3 legitimate functions of the state.  (Protect the borders, provide a courts system, and protect property rights.)  Even if the property in question is a $40.00 box of cheap cigars. 

But would I willingly pay someone to shoot the people who sell loosies?  Heck no. 

Libertarianism in a nutshell is "Don't hit people and don't take their stuff."  Hitting people (except in defense) and taking their stuff is a job reserved for the state.  Michael Brown took a convenience store's stuff and hit the clerk. 

Eric Garner didn't take anyone's stuff, and it doesn't look like he hit anybody. 

Brown and Garner are both dead. 

Another Libertarian clutch-phrase is "If there is no victim, there was no crime". 

Who was the victim in these two cases?  Brown?  Garner?  The convenience store clerk?  The IRS? 

Please discuss. 

Karl Rove, You Magnificent Bastard !!

For legal, personal, ethical, campaign finance, and ridicule-protection reasons, most 2016 presidential candidates are not yet saying that they are a 2016 presidential candidate. 

But political operatives are already producing attack videos cleverly designed to hurt the other side. 

The actor in this video is a guy named Jason Tobias.  Nobody knows who really did the singing, but it wasn't Tobias.  I don't know who had the idea to produce this thing.  I don't know who gathered the background shots.  Whoever did it was a genius. 

Republicans will be playing this thing at parties and rallies for decades.  Hell, I might start a Libertarian PAC to have it aired during the Super Bowl. 

She Whose Name Is Not Spoken will never, ever recover from this.  This is the dirtiest trick I've ever seen. 

Behold: The redneck, white trash, Ford F-150, bulldozer, soccer mom-country, flies on the baby, ticks on the dog, "Stand With Hillary" campaign video. 

 

The Best Libertarian Movies

One of the things that I like about being a "small l" libertarian and a "large L" Libertarian is the consistency of the belief system. 

It's almost like being Jewish.... an ethnicity and a religion, should one choose both. 

You can be a libertarian without ever voting Libertarian.  It's all the same package.  Mindset and political party, should you choose both. 

Our political platform changes very little, unlike those of the Rethuglicans or the Demoblicans.   Our message boils down to "Don't hit people and don't take their stuff".   Add a sprinkling of "Leave others alone just as you want to be left alone", and you've got it. 

Therefore, it's fairly easy to come up with great lists of libertarian books.  (More on these later.) 

And libertarian music.  (Ditto.) 

Just for grins and giggles sometime, Google the terms "Liberal Books" or "Democrat Books".  You'll come generally come up with volumes of Hero Worship rather than ideology or philosophy.  Hit this for a typical example.  Lots of stuff about Kennedys who you would never leave your daughter alone with. 

The Republican lists are a little better, but are generally laden with the bi-annual offerings of Fox News hosts, or they co-opt authors who could only be described as libertarian. 

I'll post more on the book lists later, though. 

The point of all this is movies.  If you go here, you can see the best Liberty movie list EVER. 

V For Vendetta,
Braveheart
Hunger Games
Thank You For Smoking
Shenandoah
Wag The Dog

And a special category of my own for:

Idiocracy, and
Team America, World Police 

And a few dozen others that reward repeat viewing. 

Good stuff.  Here's the immortal "Chancellor's Speech" from "V For Vendetta", which I've probably posted a dozen times already.  Think of this every time you here a Political Beauty Contest Winner claim that we need a war, a stimulus, a healthcare plan, a retirement system, or increased regulations on something. 

Brilliant.  Go here for the link to all the movies. 
Go here to sign up for Netflix.  Start watching !!

 

On PHF's (Potentially Hazardous Foods)

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving! 
I know that I did....   6 parties/meals/events, and I gained about 5 pounds. 

Now it's time for a rant. 

My employer, Jukt Micronics, threw a Thanksgiving meal/party for the employees in each shop.  Several of the employees brought additional food from home. 

The main course was something called "Carnitas", which Bing defines as "a dish of Mexican cuisine. Carnitas are made by braising or simmering pork meat in oil or preferably lard until tender. The process takes three or four hours and the result is very tender and juicy pork meat, which is then typically served with chopped coriander leaves and diced onion, salsa, guacamole, tortillas, and refried beans."

Heck yes.  These were some authentic old-school Carnitas.  No one was injured. 

Later on in the week, we had a Supervisor's Lunch.  All food was brought from home by the Supervisors or their spouses. 
Everyone who brought something brought enough to feed about 5 other people. 
It was awesome. 
No one was injured. 

A few days later, I went to Gainesville TX, for the legit Thanksgiving meal with my youngest sister, her husband, and his extended family. 
They cooked almost all of the food.  My mother (that's her with the whitish hair and blue sweater in the Supervisor Lunch picture) did the rest.  That's her again, in the next pic, on the far left at my sister's house. 
She has taught me a deep and abiding love of food, groceries, meals, cooking, plants, animals, spices, and anything else that's edible. 
Once again, no one was harmed....

Thanksgiving night, some friends of mine from a local bar threw something that they call "Friendsgiving". 
It was awesome.  100% of the food was prepared by my friends and their families. 
No one was harmed, although I DID overindulge in bourbon, and have sworn off it for several weeks. 

There was one other event centered around a west-side bar....,
And then another friend of mine threw another party Saturday night. 
Both occasions featured plenty of food from homes. 
No one had his stomach pumped.  (That's a total of 6 Thanksgiving parties, in case you're keeping score....)

So what's my point in all this? 

Here's a letter that my shop received several months ago from the Consumer Health Division of the City of Fort Worth.  It's totally unrelated to Thanksgiving.  We got the letter back in April. 
I've hung onto it for occasions when I'm in a bad mood and want to make it worse.

To: The Woodshop Manager

"Spoke with production manager (Blank Blank) and he stated that female employees do sell sandwiches, Barbacoa (that's Messican BQ) and hot dogs."

"Complaint Confirmed.  Warning issued to all 3 employees.  There was no sign of any PHF's onsite (Potentially Hazardous Foods - prepared from home)."

"One employee admitted they sell about 5 burritos a day."

"Explained to each employee that it was illegal of prepare foods @ home and sell them to the public.  If another complaint happens, a citation will be issued to the individuals selling prepared foods."

Signed - Consumer Health Specialist 

Let me rewrite that letter for you, ok? 

To: The Woodshop Manager, who at this point is now my bitch,

It's painfully obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than a few seconds that people are quite capable of making good choices about what to eat, what to buy, and whose cooking they trust.   

However, my job gives me the right, and the responsibility, to hassle people about what foods they sell. 

Tens of millions of people consume PHF's (Potentially Hazardous Foods) prepared from home without giving the City Of Fort Worth's Consumer Health Division a kickback money for a food-handler's permit or a license to sell burritos. 

The quality and safety of the food doesn't improve at all as a result of my job, or the kickbacks licenses and permits. 

But if you complain about this visit, my buddies in other City Hall departments will hassle you about your water runoff quality, your factory's air emissions, your habit of parking in the vacant lot next door that's not zoned for parking, or any of the thousands of other niggling little things we could use to make your life miserable. 

So get out of the burrito and barbacoa business, or give me some money. 

Signed - One Of Your Many Lords And Masters

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving!!
 

The chicken funeral

Here's an interesting protest video. 

These protesters are from Direct Action Everywhere.   In the video, they go into a supermarket, reverently and carefully select a (dead) processed chicken, put it in a little black coffin, and then harangue the other grocery shoppers with rants and speeches that their selections "are not food, they are violence". 

Or something. 

This is the Berkeley (California) wing of Direct Action Everywhere, which should surprise no one.

A quick look at the Direct Action Everywhere Meetup page leads me to believe that they're taking their identity politics too far.  Lordy....

Anyway, here's the video. 

Why am I posting this?  Because if you look in the background at the .15 mark, and again at the 1.49 mark, you can see some wooden orchard bin displays that were made at my shop in Texas !!

Heck YEAH!  We can now say that we built the backdrop for a chicken funeral !!!!

 

Happy Thanksgiving !!!! (Hope you were thankful for a free market.)

“Any man worth his salt would fight for his home but only a damn fool would fight for his boarding house.”
                                                                    -Mark Twain


Here's a story that I first heard in China several years ago, and I'm probably going to re-run this post about it every Thanksgiving until I die.  The best online account I've found is on the World Socialist Website (chuckle chuckle).  It's about some Chinese farmers who got tired of starving. 


On one night in Nov. 1978, 18 villagers of Xiaogang, including (leader) Yan Jinchang, risked their lives to sign secretly an agreement, which divided the then People's Commune-owned farmland into pieces for each family to cultivate.

This was a bold move, as it was seen as "capitalist" and might have led to severe punishment from the government at that time.

Thus, on that secret agreement covered with villagers' seals and red fingerprints, there was a wobbly line saying that "If any word about this is divulged and the team leader is put in prison, other team members shall share the responsibility to bring up his child till he (or she) is 18. "


The original copy of this agreement is now in a museum someplace in China.  It had a huge influence.  Instead of farming the land together, and putting up with slackers, loafers, regulatory parasites and the other inevitable Socialist baggage, this brave group of Chinese farmers decided that each family would be responsible for a certain section of the land. 


That clause about agreeing to care for each others' children was a simple insurance policy.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the farmers agreed to care for the families of those who didn't share their risks.  In other words, you couldn't waltz into the agreement AFTER losing your head of household.  There's not even a hint of Obamacare in this document. 


The facts proved that it's worthwhile to take the adventure. Allocating farmland to each household, also known as "household contract responsibility system", fired the locals' enthusiasm for agriculture production, which had been contained in the outmoded planned economy, and helped poverty-stricken locals out of starvation.


That's just what happened when they agreed to stop the collectivist nonsense.  Think of what could happen if they'd been allowed to own the land, instead of having it allocated to them by their "leaders".   


The grains that a local farmer turned over to the state in the following year almost totaled what he did in past two decades, recalled Yan Hongchang, one of the 18 Xiaogang villagers who initiated the contract system.

Their practice was later supported by Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reform and opening-up drive, and recognized by the Chinese government. Xiaogang has since been labeled as the pace-setter of the nation's rural reform.


Here's a similar story, from the Volokh Conspiracy.  This one hits closer to home.

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.


Time to quote Thomas Sowell for the 10,000th time.  Laws and policies should never be evaluated by their stated goals and objectives, but by the incentives they create. 


In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials.


Like we're about to do with healthcare. 


People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.


In other words, when the hardest-working, most creative Pilgrims realized that they were working themselves to death for people who didn't want to work as hard?  They started Going Galt.   


Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.


And what have we learned from this? 

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.