Blackjack And Taxes

I love to play blackjack.  Love it, love it, love it. 

The odds are good, relatively speaking.  The house has a relatively small advantage, which I can usually overcome.  I do this by having God on my side, and doubling down after losses. 

My employers at Jukt Micronics love, love, love to go way out on a limb, putting everything at risk, to try to make money by selling goods and services to grocery stores.  They often place "bets" that make my blackjack strategy look rational. 

I will not ever, ever, ever play blackjack in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma casinos have a weird little rule mandating that players put an additional chip in a special "dealer" circle prior to every hand.  There is no way for the player to come out ahead when playing blackjack in Oklahoma.  Not using my strategy, anyway.  I'll bet $5.00 to try to win $10.00, but I won't bet $6.00.   Therefore, I avoid playing blackjack in Oklahoma. 
After all, there are only two things that can happen when using my strategy:  I can loose everything, or I can double my money.  I'm not going to put my money at risk for the possibility of a less-than optimal payout. 

The Jukt Micronics President and CEO have choices also.  They can continue to take risks, putting their money where their ideas are and creating meaningful jobs and excellent products that people want. 
But are they going to continue to take these risks if Washington continues to enforce a greater and greater tax penalty for success? 

At some point, they're going to start avoiding risk the way that I avoid Oklahoma casinos.  They'll either start playing elsewhere, where the penalties for success are lower, or they'll avoid the game altogether for a few election cycles. 

Go here to read an excellent piece from The Cato Institute about the increasing number of people becoming "Tax Traitors".  That's Washington's word for them, not mine.  I prefer the term "smart gamblers".

From 1880

I found this on Libertarian Reddit:

Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS. No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. Few systems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federal minimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based on gold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA. No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions. No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex. As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.

Another example of the Nanny State at work:

Thank God for Qatar, Norway, The Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and France. They make us look fiscally responsible ! !

From The Washington Times:

Americans are used to taking comfort in the fact that European countries such as Sweden, France and Finland are inefficient "welfare states." Even if American competitiveness slacks off a bit, the thinking goes, we'll always be on top because the United States would never allow government to get as burdensome as it is in socialist foreign lands. It's time to start thinking differently as the U.S. bureaucracy expands to record levels.

....even after adjusting for differences in the cost of living and the number of citizens in each country, total U.S. government spending per capita in 2009 exceeded that of all but eight nations in the world. More than 95 percent of countries have smaller relative governments than we do. In total, U.S. government spending came to $17,400 per capita, or about $70,000 for a family of four. The per capita cost of our government is much more than the per capita income of most of the world.

(These numbers do not yet include the increased costs due to ObamaCare™ or the upcoming Porkulus spending.  Plus you could leave out the money we're borrowing from China to protect Japan and Taiwan from China, plus all other defense spending, and we'd still be ahead of 93% of other countries in non-defense spending per capita.)

....We can't afford to throw away $70,000 on government for a family of four. If that fortune weren't funding the bureaucratic leviathan, it would be invested, saved or spent on consumer products people want.

Hell, we're even spending more money than some of the "Social Democrat" nations that provide healthcare, 4-week vacations, subsidized everything, and guaranteed employment, all from cradle to grave.  From erection to resurrection.  Where the hell is the money going? 

It could be used for productive purposes to get the economy moving again. Instead, the money goes down a rathole, dragging America's competitive edge with it.

Just think....They are spending, I repeat, they are spending $17,000.00, per year of your money.  And for what ??? 
You can tax the rich and the fortunate wealthy.  You can apply a punitive tax to Wal-Mart.  You can confiscate every penny from every American earning more than $250,000.00 per year.  All you'll be doing is giving them incentives to stop being productive, or force them to raise the prices of the goods and services that they provide. 
We have to stop voting for people who want to spend money.  We have to stop. 
Socialist flag pics came from here and here. 

What "Turning The Corner" Looks Like

To paraphrase Vice-President Biden, this is one Big F***ing Graph:

I found it over at the Ace Of Spades HQ. 

From the comments: 
So this is what Barry's laser like focus on the economy gets you.

And then:
Yeah, if he applied such focus to foreign policy we'd be at war with everybody but the Cubans.

Please, please, please.....stop the politically motivated violence

I've begged and begged, numerous times over the last few weeks.....
The politically motivated violence associated with anti-Obama sentiment has GOT TO STOP ! 
But it got out of hand again yesterday. 

Dial it back, people, dial it back.  The mainstream media groups are watching. 
They are watching, aren't they? 

Hello, media ???   Are you there?  Anybody reporting on this? 

Oh.  Sorry.  This incident doesn't fit the preferred narrative. 

My bad.   

Lewis Black doesn't think that Lewis Black pays enough taxes. So he has a tax accountant do his taxes.

I watched this Lewis Black/Anderson Tucker interview during last night's Mandatory Treadmill Time.  It's part of the celebrity guilt festival that we see every tax day:

You'll have to go here for the very brief clip.  YouTube won't let me embed this one. 

If Lewis Black feels that he doesn't pay enough taxes, he should simply pay more taxes. 
If Lewis Black believes believes he doesn't pay enough taxes, but has hired a tax accountant?  He should fire the tax accountant.  It really is that simple. 
If Lewis Black feels that he should "give something back", he should continue to produce stand-up comedy routines, bestselling books, and all the other things that have made him one of the top 10% earners in the U.S.   "Giving something back" is not a synonym for "Flushing it down the toilet". 

End of rant. 

Well, Congress just wanted you to know that they're, like, keeping an eye on you

The witch hunts that I wrote about a few weeks ago have been cancelled.

Henry Waxman (D-Mars) has cancelled the show trials Congressional hearings that would have given congress a chance to grill the CEO's who have written off upcoming losses due to ObamaCare™
Turns out that Waxman's own accounting rules required the companies in question to report the write-offs exactly as they did it, and when they did it. 
Go here. 

Things that don't fit the preferred narrative

But I thought the Tea Party movement was filled with ignernt hillbillies? 
Here's The New York Times:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Dr. Robert Atkins vs. The U.S. Department Of Agriculture

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

-Mark Twain

I grew up on a rice farm in North Mississippi, in a family full of big-time eaters.  In addition to rice with every meal possible, we also ate a lot of bread.  Lots of spaghetti. 
When I was working on the farm, and then in warehouses, I never had to worry about weight gain.  It didn't matter what I threw in the furnace, it was going to burn. 

30 years later.....well, you know what happens.  I got up to 235 pounds.  I could feel my heartbeat in my neck without touching it.  When I was younger, my blood pressure was borderline anemic.  Earlier this year, I found out I was in danger of the problems associated with high blood pressure. 

What the heck?  I was making a point (more or less) of eating "balanced" meals, as I understood them.  I didn't eat many desserts.  I had looked at the USDA Food Pyramid on the back of bread wrappers enough times to understand how a regular healthy diet was supposed to work.  I would often sit down and knock off a mega-bowl of rice, and consider it healthy.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Pyramid, for those of you reading in other countries, used to look like this:

See those 6-11 recommended servings of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta at the bottom?  Remember this picture from the back of your old bread, cereal, rice, and pasta packages?  Why was the government advising us to eat more carbohydrates than a Chinese village?  Here's Buzzle:

During this time (2003-2004) controversy arose between the food pyramid of Harvard and that of the USDA. Proponents and supporters of the Harvard model claimed that the USDA pyramid was flawed. The argument had to do with the fact that it was the USDA, and not the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), that created the food pyramid. Ergo, the food pyramid of the USDA was prone to influence from lobbyists in the food industry.

You can go here for an interesting set of links about the sugar, beef, wheat, and tater industries scratching and clawing to preserve their places on Uncle Sam's menu recommendations.  Based on pressure from other health experts, dieters, and the fact that we were all getting fatter than the Sunday newspaper, (and we were dying a lot) the USDA eventually revised the pyramid to cut way back on the carbohydrates.  You can go here to see that they're now recommending 3 ounces of grains every day.  That's a heck of a lot less than 6 to 11 servings. 

So, back to my point..... I had to lose some weight.  I used to be in the bookselling business, so I went to the all-time bestseller, a title that spent about 4 years on the NYT Bestseller List: Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution.  Guess what I found inside? 

* The U.S. is the fattest nation in the world.  Many of our homeless people are overweight.
* Much of this has more to do with insulin resistance caused by eating too many carbohydrates.  We consume so many of the foods pushed by lobbyists (my words, not Dr. Atkins') that our bodies don't/can't burn off any fat. 
* Our epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure can be attributed to these habits. 

There has been sufficient evidence to make these assertions for more than 30 years now.  But the heavy hand of government and such powerful organizations such as the Department Of Agriculture blanketed the nation with messages about low-fat dieting from the 1970's to the present.  In fact, U.S. government statistics from this time clearly demonstrate that along with the dramatic decrease in dietary fat intake....there was also a dramatic increase in the intake of refined carbohydrates, not only sugar, but white flour. 
There is no doubt in my mind that this increase in refined carbohydrates has been spurred by the media attention given to The Food Guide Pyramid, created by the U.S. Department Of Agriculture, which made 6-11 servings of wheat derivatives the basis of the pyramid.  I believe that the Food Guide Pyramid's recommendations have directly contributed to the twin epidemics of diabetes and obesity we now face in this country. 
(The food combinations that were recommended by the U.S.D.A.) are bad for your health, bad for your energy level, bad for your mental state, bad for your figure.  Bad for your career prospects, bad for your sex life, bad for your digestion, bad for your blood chemistry, bad for your heart.  What I'm saying is that they are bad. 

So....
About three and a half weeks ago, I started doing the exact opposite of what the U.S. Department Of Agriculture recommended, and went with Dr. Atkins' approach. 
I've lost almost 20 pounds. 
I've pulled in my belt by THREE notches.  Count 'em.  Three.  Yeah.  Three. 
I've lowered my resting heart rate by almost 10 beats per minute. 
I feel much better.  The sunshine looks brighter.  There's now enough room in my pants for a Mormon family. 
I don't have anyone to blame but myself for getting up to 235 pounds.  I've always known I shouldn't eat so much. 

But is there anything, anything at all, that our government can do better than the private sector? 

One more note: go to Snopes.com for the circumstances of Dr. Atkins' death. 

The thing that is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery

Here's a video that's going viral, prominently featuring The Teleprompter Jesus:



But shouldn't this have gotten a link? Or a footnote?  Or, better yet, a royalty payment? 
Nah, the lyrics don't have anything in common except the Teleprompter Jesus reference.
But it's good to see the idea taking off.

The U.S. tax code: Saving and creating unnecessary jobs

Here's a video from The Center For Freedom And Prosperity about the hidden costs, the opportunity costs, and the obvious right-out-there-in-your-face costs of the American tax system:



Here's an example of the Hong Kong tax system:

It's a freakin' postcard. 
In the Hong Kong system, you don't get deductions for doing what Barack and Nancy and Harry like.  You don't get credit for politically correct behavior. 
You pay a percentage of your income to the government. 
(They do have an alternative form, where taxpayers are allowed to take deductions for a few things like charitable donations, care of elderly relatives, and retirement savings.  Go here to read more.  But for the most part, citizens send in the form shown above.)

Now, think of the time and effort you've spent calculating your taxes.  Think of the tax accountants in the U.S. who have spent the last few months discovering tax loopholes, protecting their customers' money from the government, despite the fact that many of these same customers recently voted for a guy whose stated goal was for the government to spend more money. 
Think of the things that your business can't do because of the tax implications.
Think of the employees you're now reluctant to hire because it would put you in a new Obamacare bracket. 

If you're in the Obama administration, think of how much energy was required for you to be a successful tax cheat. 
The Flat Tax is an idea whose time has come.  Hit the link to learn more. 

The New Jim Crow - by Michelle Alexander

* There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.


* As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.


* If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits -- much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

Scary stuff, isn't it?

During my morning mandatory treadmill time, I watched the following C-Span interview with Michelle Alexander.

She's the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age Of Colorblindness. 

The video is around 45 minutes long, and I'm posting it here for future reference.  Lord have mercy, what an indictment against our government.   



I see victims of the system every day.  They come in applying for jobs.  They've been unemployed for years.  Decades, in some cases. 
Why?  Because when they were 19 years old, they got busted for marijuana possession. 
They have a permanent mark on their record that leaves most employers unwilling to take a chance on hiring them. 
Combine that with idiotic, racist, minimum wage legislation, and Ta-Da !    You've created permanent Food For The Machine. 

Let me explain. 

We have more prisoners than any other nation - 25% of the world's total, despite having only 6% of the world's population.  According to the Michelle Alexander interview, if we were to go back to the 1970's-era incarceration rates, we would have to release 4 out of 5 prisoners currently doing time.

We have so many prisoners that we're having to privatize the cages that we're using to lock up black kids.  Ordinarily, Big Gubmint likes to run everything, but this particular growth industry is beyond them.  Marijuana prohibition creates tens of thousands of jobs, public and private. 

The prison lobby advocates building more and more cages.  (Here's a great link on the prison lobby.  Here's a more specific one on how it works in Texas.)

When the prisoners are released, many of them have to pay for part of the cost of their incarceration. 
They often have to pay for their own parole officers, counseling sessions, etc. and after talking to ex-cons for about 10 years, I'm of the opinion that most of these counselors couldn't counsel a 3-year-old to go the potty. 

If they fail to make these payments, they're either locked up again, or their paychecks are garnished.  After all, the private prison system has to be paid, right?  (Some of these private prison groups are traded on Wall Street.)

Now that you have all that info, can you explain the difference between the current system and slavery?
Do you understand why the prison lobby, in its public and private form, fights so hard to preserve the system? 

Go here to read about John Kerry, John Edwards, and John Dean's "youthful indiscretions" with marijuana use.  Go here to read about Al Gore smoking weed.  Then add George W. Bush, who affirms that he's smoked marijuana, and Barack Obama, who admits to all of the above, plus cocaine. 

What would've become of Barack Obama if he'd been locked in a cage at age 19? 

Marijuana use isn't held against presidential candidates.  So why the hell are we using it to justify creating slaves for the government? 

In which Ron Paul says that which must be said....

The Unspeakable meets The Unfiskable

My friend NickM, of the Counting Cats blog, is never at a loss for words.  Never.  Ever. 
But then he encountered THIS. 

All he could do was highlight the worst parts. 

Prediction: Congressman Bart Stupak will soon be attracting even higher bids

It irks the crap out of me to go to all the trouble of creating a motivational poster like this one....

....only to have the guy retire to "spend more time with his family". 

Since it's difficult to reward a guy properly for betraying an entire nation while he's still holding elective office, I'm betting that we'll soon see Congressman Stupak working in a highly paid job as a bag man lobbyist between donors and The Current Ruling Regime.  Time will tell. 

The latest sign that we are living in The End Times

Go here for details. 

Chapter 9 of the book of Revelation is the most apocalyptic thing I could find to illustrate the pics I found there. 

13The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns[b] of the golden altar that is before God.
14It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates."
15And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.
16The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.

17The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.

18A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 19The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

20The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. 21Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Dear statists - do you take any tax deductions?

April 15th is approaching.  If you're reading this from outside the U.S., that's the day when Americans pay their income taxes. 
I ask these questions online about twice a year.
I challenge people on these any time politics comes up in a conversation.
 
As has been widely discussed elsewhere, 47% of us, with earned income tax credits and other deductions, wind up paying no income tax at all.  The top 25% of taxpayers pay 85% of the taxes. 

If you're a Statist/Democrat, and truly believe that government is the best distributor of assets and that government makes the best choices about how our money should be spent....

....do you ever claim ANY income tax deductions?  Do you feel guilty about not allowing Tim Tax-Dodger Geithner to make even more of your spending decisions for you? 

Do you ever add a couple of thousand dollars to your initial involuntary contribution every April 15th, ? 

Do you ever wonder how many Democrats hire tax attorneys? 

Please....start putting your money where your mouth is.  Add a significant amount of money to your income tax return.  Write a letter to the editor, saying you've done so, and why. 

Everyone you know will think you've lost your mind. 

John Jay Myers, Pete Sessions, and a fan named Christina

My friend John Jay Myers is running for U.S. Congress, 32nd district of Texas. 

Here's JJM"s latest campaign video.  Does John Jay cross the line here?  Heck yes, he crosses it.  Not only that, but he gets a running start, cartwheels over it, stomps it a few times, and then in a final celebratory moment, backs up and does it all again. 
More power to him.  This is no time for shy people. 

John Jay's opponent in this race is Pete Sessions, who in 2006 was able to make the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Top-20 Congressional Corruption List.   Lordy, think of all the competitors for that one.  That's almost like being voted "Worst Juggler" at the Parkinsons clinic.

JJM packed a lot of text and verbiage into this video, so watch it once to get an overall feel for the thing and watch it again, hitting the pause button now and then, relishing every moment.  Then forward it to everyone you know in Dallas. 

Enjoy.  It doesn't get any better than this.     


Go here to learn more about John Jay Myers for Congress.

Stephen Fincher - Welfare Queen For Congress

Stephen Fincher, a Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's 8th district, favors small-government, lower taxes, and he has an appropriate disdain for Obamacare. 
Good for him.
He's also a gospel singer. 
He's a succesful cotton farmer. 

And in one eleven-year period, from 1995 - to 2006, Fincher and his wife received 2.5 million dollars in crop subsidies from government you. 

Now, just for the sheer joy of it, imagine if the Democrats dared to nominate a traditional welfare queen for Congress.  Someone who sits around the house all day, collecting welfare and producing little babies who will reliably vote for Democrats.  Do you think there might be an uproar? 

So what is there about this form of welfare that bathes Stephen Fincher in such down-home, cottony goodness? 
When our government subsidizes a particular crop, it confuses the price signals.  In a truly free market, if too much cotton was produced, the price would drop.  Fewer people would grow cotton.  The price would then reflect what people were willing to pay for it, and what farmers would willingly be paid to grow it. 
If not enough cotton was on the market, the price would rise.  More and more people would grow cotton until the price dropped again. 
Are Obama and Pelosi and Reid paying too many people to grow cotton?  We'll never know. 
But are you having to pay too much for cotton T-shirts, shirts, socks and sheets because of farm subsidies and prohibitive tariffs on cotton imports?  Hell yes. 

And what do other countries do, when they learn that we're giving Stephen Fincher $2.6 million dollars to grow cotton?  They retaliate against American imports into Brazil.  Then Obama and Pelosi and Reid have to do even more silly things to make it ok with Brazil. 

So here's the deal: to avoid retailiation by Brazil on U.S. exports of all kinds of things that have nothing to do with cotton, U.S. taxpayers -- that's you -- will send the Brazilian cotton industry $147 million a year in aid.

It apparently has not occurred to the Obama administration (remember all the indignant campaign talk about Washington lobbyists?) or Congress to simply end the subsidies.

So we  ( you ) will continue to subsidize U.S. cotton farmers AND now we'll also be subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers.

What would happen next in an ideal world?  Well, if the Brazilians were smart, they would totally open up their market to U.S. cotton, along with every other product that we subsidize.  Because if U.S. voters really are dumb enough to produce cotton at a high price and then sell it at a low cost to Brazilians.....well, we deserve to be ripped off even more, don't we? 

Here's Fincher trying to justify his welfare queen status:

“People are quick to say with their mouth full, ‘Well, the American farmer is on the dole,’ ” Fincher said. “But a loaf of bread is two bucks when it could be 10 bucks. I know what it is with the government in my business. We would be all for not having government in our business, but we need a fair system.”

No, no, no.  We are still paying then 10 bucks, but we're paying it to Washington, which takes a cut off the top before passing the 10 bucks to their constituents.   (Instead of merely paying a lower price to Kroger's or Albertson's or Publix or A&P.)  
I've read various economists stating that if we were to end all subsidies, quotas and tariffs, it would save the typical household somewhere between $4,000 to $10,000. 

Here's another Fincher supporter:

(David) Nance, of the Gibson County Patriots, said, "I don't see the agricultural subsidy thing as an issue at all," adding: "If it were an issue, then we would never elect a farmer to Congress at all. Because basically, most farmers get agriculture subsidies. If they didn't, they'd be broke, and we'd be buying our food from China."

David, David, David.    They wouldn't all be broke.  Some might have to start doing something else.  There would be fewer agri-millionaires. 
Here's a cool map of all the farmers in Manhattan who collect $250,000 per year in farm subsidies.  Go here for an explanation.  Big dots represent the $250,000 per year Long Island farmers.  The little dots represent those farmers that you are paying less.  Their commutes from Manhattan to their John Deere tractors upstate must be long indeed. 

Seriously, these Manhattanites need a farm subsidy about like Pope Benedict needs a farm subsidy. 

Our food would be cheaper if Obama, Pelosi, and Reid would simply allow us to purchase food from whoever had the best price.  It doesn't matter if good comes from the other side of I-35, the other side of Tarrant County, the other side of the Red River, the other side of the Rio Grande, or the other side of the Pacific.
Who really believes that the lines of latitude and longitude of the farm matter? 
How much more in taxes would you be willing to pay to keep Mr. and Mrs. Fincher in the style to which they've grown accustomed?   
But some of you, every time you eat a cotton sandwich, or enjoy a cotton and pasta casserole, you feel safer knowing that your food was grown here.  And you delight in knowing that you paid more than you had to. 

The National Cotton Council:  Protecting America's food supply.

"To each according to his need" - Karl Marx

"From each according to his ability; to each according to his need"

                                            - Karl Marx

The Commie Coke pic came from here. 

A few links

Go here to see the understatement of the decade

Go here to see a correlation between the power and prevalence of a certain group and the debt of each state. 

Go here to read about the world's worst White Sox fan. 

Go here to learn why pollsters find that at least 47% of the electorate will support ANY government spending program. 

Go here to read about people who don't have enough rat holes to throw their money into. 

John Stossel on "What Is A Libertarian?"

I used to be a Kennedy-style "liberal." Then I wised up. Now I'm a libertarian.

But what does that mean?

When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.
We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they're for limited government, but they're pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support "nation-building."
And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government -- they say -- to make life kinder for people.
By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone -- in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don't hurt anybody else.
Ironically, that used to be called "liberal," which has the same root as "liberty." Several hundred years ago, liberalism was a reaction against the stifling rules imposed by aristocracy and established religion.

I wish I could call myself "liberal" now. But the word has been turned on its head. It now means health police, high taxes, speech codes and so forth.

So I can't call myself a "liberal." I'm stuck with "libertarian." If you have a better word, please let me know.

Go here to continue reading.....

South Texas, Afghanistan, and the cost of prohibition

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

MEXICO CITY — As more U.S. states permit medical marijuana, and California considers legalizing cannabis sales to adults, Mexico is voicing irritation at the gap between drug laws north and south of the border and saying it undercuts the battle against Mexico's violent drug cartels.

Mexico Secretary of the Interior Fernando Gomez Mont said last week the U.S. medical marijuana trend was "worrisome" and "complicates in a grave way" efforts to resolve Mexico's soaring drug-related violence.

....More states are permitting medical marijuana use, and New York may become the 15th to do so. California, which pioneered medical marijuana use in 1996, is moving even faster, setting a November vote on whether to legalize personal marijuana possession and allow regulated sales of marijuana to those over age 21. If approved, the move would be the first of its kind in the U.S.

A Mexican historian and commentator, Lorenzo Meyer Cossio, said the government of President Felipe Calderon "feels offended" by the growing trend of U.S. states to allow medical marijuana, or perhaps go further as California may do. Mexican laws against marijuana and narcotics remain tough, the result of U.S. pressure dating back more than half a century, he said.

....Calderon, the head of a center-right party, deployed 50,000 soldiers to the border days after coming to office in late 2006 to combat the cartels, which derive huge profits from marijuana as well as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

....Mexican marijuana production is soaring, according to a report issued Thursday by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

.....Even advocates of the decriminalization of marijuana in the U.S. said they empathize with Mexican leaders, who are deploying troops in a fierce battle with well-armed drug cartels at the urging of Washington.

They are caught in the middle of realities of U.S. consumer demands and American political intransigence," said Stephen Gutwillig, the California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group for alternatives to the drug war.

Gutwillig said he thinks the trend toward allowing medical marijuana in U.S. states, and even the outright decriminalization of marijuana, would eventually weaken the Mexican drug cartels. "Any sort of authorized regulated market for marijuana in the United States cannot be good for the bottom line of criminal cartels," Gutwillig said.

Also from the Star-Telegram:

FORT HANCOCK -- When black SUVs trail school buses around here, no one dismisses it as routine traffic. And when three tough-looking Mexican men pace around the high school gym during a basketball game, no one assumes they're just fans.

Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation.
The message: We know where you are.
At schools in Fort Hancock and nearby Texas towns, new security measures and counseling for young children of murdered parents have become a troubling part of the day.

"I have friends with fathers who've been annihilated," said Israel Morales, a junior at Fort Hancock High School. "They just hug you and start crying. It just traumatizes you."
Mexican drug gangs have not fired a single shot in Fort Hancock, and no one has disappeared. But as drug violence continues unabated in and around Ciudad Juarez, residents of Texas border towns fear it will spread their way.

"There's been incidents of school buses followed, and threats to some of the students and threats to some of the staff," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "It's caused us to really go on high alert."

Schools have installed security cameras and hired an armed off-duty sheriff's deputy to patrol its three campuses for the first time.

Here's Alfred W. McCoy, of the Countercurrents website, on one of our biggest problems in Afghanistan:

In the late 1990s, the Taliban, which had taken power in most of the country, lost any chance for international legitimacy by protecting and profiting from opium -- and then, ironically, fell from power only months after reversing course and banning the crop. Since the US military intervened in 2001, a rising tide of opium has corrupted the government in Kabul while empowering a resurgent Taliban whose guerrillas have taken control of ever larger parts of the Afghan countryside.

This is no better than anecdotal evidence, BUT.....  Among my ex-con employees, I've had two who worked on death row (cleaning, etc.).  According to them, prison authorities couldn't keep drugs out of death row.  Think of the implications. 
We're spending billions, incarcerating millions, and creating food for the Big Government machine by insisting on prohibiting something that certain people are going to do, no matter what. 
How much worst does the situation in Afghanistan and Mexico have to get before we end the Drug Lords' production monopoly? 

Freakonomics: The Movie

Freakonomics, the best-selling pop economics book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, will soon be coming to a theatre near you. 
Or maybe it'll just come to Dallas. 

Remember the trend of about 5-6 years ago, when concerned Moms would politely ask "Are there any guns in your home?" before they would allow their little Dylan and Joplin to come over and play? 

Levitt and Dubner reveal that a swimming pool is 100 times more likely to kill a child than a gun.  Then they examing why we worry about guns more than we worry about swimming pools. 

The book examines why most inner-city drug dealers live with their mothers. 

They authors ask if a child's name can affect his future income. 

They look at thousands of standardized test scores, and develop a formula to reveal which teachers cheated to make themselves (and their schools) appear to be succesful. 

The book isn't about economics as much as how to think about a problem. 

Here's a link to the Freakonomics website.  

Their follow-up title, SuperFreakonomics, generated considerable controversy by recommending "Geoengineering" as a climate control solution, instead of requiring people to purchase Big Al Gore's Perpetual Motion Machines.  Go here and here for their blog posts on why they dared commit that heresy. 

Amazing stuff.  Great book.  Can't wait to see the documentary.  These guys are among the many reasons I started reading economics texts for fun. 

You can go here to see the film's website, which is still under construction, and you can go here for a New York Times piece about the film being chosen as the closer for the Tribeca Film Festival. 

Glenn Reynolds on "The Knowledge Problem"

If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981.

Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled "command economies" were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew.

In his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.

Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.

Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.

Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can't possibly be smart enough to make them work.

Later on in the essay:

Hayek's insight into economics and regulation is often called "The Knowledge Problem," and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it's not just the economy that regulators don't understand well enough -- it's also their own regulations.

This became apparent when various large businesses responded to the enactment of Obamacare by taking accounting steps to reflect tax changes brought about by the new health care legislation. The additional costs created by Obamacare, conveniently enough, weren't going to strike until later, after the November elections.

But both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations require companies to account for these changes as soon as they learn about them. As the Atlantic's Megan McArdle wrote:

"What AT&T, Caterpillar, et al did was appropriate. It's earnings season, and they offered guidance about , um, their earnings."So once Obamacare passed, massive corporate write-downs were inevitable

And there's more:

Obamacare was supposed to provide unicorns and rainbows: How can it possibly be hurting companies and killing jobs? Surely there's some sort of Republican conspiracy going on here!

More like a confederacy of dunces. Waxman and his colleagues in Congress can't possibly understand the health care market well enough to fix it. But what's more striking is that Waxman's outraged reaction revealed that they don't even understand their own area of responsibility - regulation -- well enough to predict the effect of changes in legislation.

In drafting the Obamacare bill they tried to time things for maximum political advantage, only to be tripped up by the complexities of the regulatory environment they had already created. It's like a second-order Knowledge Problem.

Possibly this is simply because Waxman and his colleagues are dumb, and God knows there's plenty of evidence that Congress isn't a repository of rocket scientists. But it's just as likely that adding 30 or 40 IQ points to the average congressman wouldn't make much difference.

The United States Code -- containing federal statutory law -- is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117 pages long and composes 226volumes.

No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can't be aware of all the real-world complications it's producing, it can't even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it's doing

He continues:


The bad news is obvious: We're governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can't help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or "better" rules will do any good:  Incompetence is built into the system.

The good news is less obvious, but just as important: While we rightly fear a too-powerful government, this regulatory knowledge problem will ensure plenty of public stumbles and embarrassments, helping to remind people that those who seek to rule us really don't know what they're doing.

If that doesn't encourage skepticism toward big government, it's hard to imagine what will.

I loved everything about this essay except the last sentence.  As long as politicians are promising free healthcare, money, salvation, chickens in every pot, etc., there will be those who believe every word of it. 

Go here to read the whole thing. 

The contradiction pics came from here and here and here and here. 

Two Days Down, Five Days To Go

Two Days Down, Five Days To Go. 

Could Wednesday be next ?

End it, don't mend it.  Privatize that sucker !

The cool logo came from here. 

Happy Easter !

Dr. Jack Cassell: If you voted for Obama, change for you begins now, not in four years

Wow.  Now it's getting personal. 
From Hot Air:

One doctor has decided to make his opposition to ObamaCare as public as possible. Dr. Jack Cassell put a sign on his door telling patients who supported the health-care overhaul bill to find another urologist. He’s also stocking his waiting room with information on the problems in ObamaCare — and so far, most of his patients have agreed with him:

“I’m not turning anybody away — that would be unethical,” Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. “But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it.”

Shouldn't everyone just chill out about Obamacare?  After all, he rigged it where it doesn't kick in for another four years, after the next presidential election.  That's a long way off.  And Congress, and unions, and government employees, and congressional staffers, they all have special exemptions.  So what is this urologist so....pissed off about? 

PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC

PANIC !  PANIC !  PANIC ! 
ABOUT A MONTH AGO, I "MONETIZED" THIS WEBSITE, MEANING THAT I ALLOWED GOOGLE TO POST SOME ADS HERE.   
THIS MEANS THAT EVERY MONTH I'LL MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY COFFEE FOR ONE DAY.
I SWEAR ON A STACK OF BIBLES (KING JAMES VERSION) THAT I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHAT ADS APPEAR HERE. 
THE AD THAT JUST CAME UP ON YOUR RIGHT, AS OF SATURDAY, APRIL 3RD, WAS AN AD WITH AN EAGLE ON TOP, INVITING READERS TO "LEARN HOW TO JOIN THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE". 

DO NOT HIT THAT AD.  DON'T DO IT. 
UNTIL THE CURRENT MESSIAH TOOK POWER, REPUBLICANS SPENT MORE THAN DEMOCRATS. 

DO NOT CLICK ON THAT AD. 
YOUR COMPUTER WILL GET VIRUSES AND YOU'LL BE SPAMMED THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. 
YOUR COMPUTER WILL BE REGISTERED IN A FEDERAL DATABASE OF PEDOPHILES. 

Plus, Republicans are not going to repeal Obamacare. 

I apologize for that offensive advertisement on this otherwise charming website.

Jesus tries to make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Without a permit.

For the last 6 months, I've been putting my theological training to work by re-examining our deeply flawed Bible translations.  Hit this link for a few examples. 
Since it is almost Easter, I thought I would translate part of the Gospel Of Mark, Chapter 11, where Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. 

1.  As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples,
2.  ....saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find an ass and a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie them and bring them here.

3.  If anyone asks you, 'Why are you doing this?' tell him, 'The Lord needs them and will send them back here shortly.' "
4.  They went and found an ass and a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied them,
5.  .....some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying those animals?"
6.  They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go.
7.  When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it.
8.  Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields.
9.  Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

10.  "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" "Hosanna in the highest!"
11.  Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple.
12.  And then the City Council Of Jerusalem approached him, asking, "Why, Lord, did you not apply for a parade permit?  Where was your protective Roman Legion, required to block traffic at major intersections, as per Caesar's statute CDH-30978?"
13.  Then the Lord answered him with a parable, saying "In a far country, there was a man who...."  but the Lord was interrupted by a woman afflicted with a demon.
14.  "Who do you think you are?" said the woman.  "A man of your weight riding that young colt !  You are a species-centric monster !  For you disregard the rights of animals, casting demons into herds of swine, and who knows what else."
15.  And the Lord began to answer her, saying "Away from me, vile spirit !  I shall name thee PETA, and upon this crock I shall build my...."
16.  But before he could continue, a small man approached Jesus, saying "Lord, Lord, did you prepare an environmental impact statement before allowing palm branches to be strewn about the streets of Jerusalem?" 
17.  And the city officials of Jerusalem turned Jesus over to the Romans, who forced the Lord to complete administrative paperwork and travel about the city for permits for the rest of his days.

18. And many years later, as he died, Jesus let forth a loud cry, saying "Father forgive them, even though they have no idea what they're doing."   

Pics came from here and here and here and here.

Barack W. Bush as compared to George Hussein Obama

Long-time Libertarian Party leader Wes Benedict and his staff came up with this gem.  It's part of a flyer to take to just about any political gathering - peace walk, Tea Party, NORML rally, anti-war protest, 2nd amendment rally, or 9-12 parade. 
Go here for a look at the complete PDF. 

The best part of the flyer?  Here are the worst disasters of the Barack W. Bush administration, as compared to those of the George Hussein Obama era.  Compare each number from the Demoblican period to its counterpart in the earlier Republicrat regime: 

Top 10 disasters of the 2009 Obama administration (in no particular order):
1. Cash for Clunkers
2. War escalation in Afghanistan
3. Giant government health care expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus package
6. Expansion of "state secrets" doctrine
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Geithner as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

Top 10 disasters of the 2001-2008 Bush administration:
1. Cash for Car Companies
2. War in Iraq
3. Giant Medicare expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus "rebate" checks
6. PATRIOT Act
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Paulson as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

Satan is behind the media attacks on the Pope

From the Catholic News Agency.  This did not come from The Onion, National Lampoon, or some other parody site.  It came from the Catholic News Agency, in the year 2010, about 300 years after Isaac Newton came up with the Laws Of Motion and 40 years after we put a man on the moon.  We stopped treating people for demonic possession about 250 years ago, and I think we're better people for it. 

Rome, Italy, Mar 31, 2010 / 11:47 am (CNA).- Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”

That would explain soooo many things about The New York Times, wouldn't it? 


Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”

The devil is not behind the attacks.  Priests got behind some 12-year-olds.  The Pope got behind the cover-up.  There's your problem, Gabriele. 

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

I'm not going to make any bad jokes about priests who "grab hold" hold of little boys.  But think of how many centuries this has been going on, and what happened when kids complained about things like this in the past.   

Father Amorth added that in instances of sexual abuse committed by some members of the clergy, the devil “uses” priests in order to cast blame upon the entire Church: “The devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints.”

Well, when an organization demands both celibacy and chastity from its all-male leadership, what do they expect?  Seriously, can there ever be good results from that policy (which, as far as I can tell, was a fairly late development in the Catholic Church)?  Has it ever been different than this?  Was there ever a Golden Age of priestly good conduct? 

“He combats the Church through the men of the Church, but he can do nothing to the Church.”

The exorcist went on to note that Satan tempts holy men, “and so we should not be surprised if priests too … fall into temptation. They also live in the world and can fall like men of the world.”

Ditto for Presidents, Popes, City Councilmen, and Prime Ministers.  Therefore, we should be wary of giving them any more power and control over our lives than absolutely necessary, right? 

The Republicans Won't Repeal Obamacare

The

Republicans

Won't

Repeal

Obamacare.





Get used to it.  The Demoblicans and Republicrats are two sides of the same coin.  Hit the links above.  Your only hope is to vote for 2nd Party candidates. 
The Libertarian Party, the only 2nd Party with ballot access, awaits your vote.  We'll kill the bill for you. 

Is there any way anybody could read those links up top, and still think a vote for Libertarians instead of Republicrats is a "wasted" vote?