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ideological culture subsidy too much government

The Government Store to Nowhere

Zohran Mamdani, socialism, market failure, government store, groceries

New York City Mayor Commie Mamdani is putting into action, sort of, his plan to introduce government-run grocery stores and bring down grocery prices.

Renting a Brooklyn storefront may cost anywhere between $60,000 to $600,000 a year depending on location and square footage. And there are other costs. Investors profit when they’re right about the opportunity and revenue exceeds costs. This means that they must satisfy customers.

Or . . . taxpayers can fund everything regardless of success or failure.

One goal a city official mentioned about the government-run stores: “We will listen to the community, so the food on the shelves will reflect what people in this neighborhood eat.” Meanwhile, stores catering to ethnic-food preferences of neighborhoods abound in New York City. Mission accomplished.

“Listening to the community” means that neighborhood people have to talk. In markets, they need only buy or not buy. Money talks, businesses already listen.

When nobody buys Product X, vendors stop selling it. When many buy Product Y, more units get stocked. Of course, customers can ask a store to carry some product. And the store can either oblige or explain that unfortunately nobody else wants to buy it.

Mamdani’s government-run stores will follow practices that either emulate the market — unnecessary, as plenty of private grocery stores and supermarkets already exist — or interfere with market processes and make everything more cumbersome and expensive. But the government subsidies will make everything seems cheap to the customer waiting in the long line. 

The real costs will be the ever-suffering taxpayers’ job to pay.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Jack Vance

Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air. His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million years in contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, live wood, wind, and rain. Now this creature is suddenly — on the geologic scale, instantaneously — shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass, plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack all compatibility. The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability but so little.

Jack Vance, “Rumfuddle,” Robert Silverberg (ed.), Three Trips in Time and Space (1973), Section 5 (p. 177).
Categories
Today

54° 40’N

On April 17 1824, Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54° 40’N.

The 17th of April (other years):

1907 — The Ellis Island immigration center processed 11,747 immigrants, more than on any other day.

1942 — French prisoner of war General Henri Giraud escaped from his castle prison in Königstein Fortress.

1969 – Communist Party of Czechoslovakia chairman Alexander Dubček was deposed.

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture international affairs subsidy

The Price of a Canadian Education?

Canada, education, authoritarianism, freedom

At a convention of Canadian Liberals, tech executive Patrick Pichette proposed that youngsters eager to escape Canada be charged a half-million dollars for what he apparently regards as a privilege, not a right.

We must remind ourselves that the word “liberal,” here, is used in its modern, anti-liberal sense: of the ideology of ever-increasing restraints on everybody.

Very illiberal.

Even if Pichette means Canadian dollars, that’s still $360,000 in real USD dollars. Hardly a ten-dollar processing fee. More like extortion. He rationalizes that the kids owe that much anyway thanks to Canada’s heavily subsidized education system.

Terry Newman observes that Pichette “is a Canadian who left Canada for better opportunities himself.” He went to California and Google and now lives in London.

But Pichette and his de facto self-exemption are not the problem. The problem is all Liberals who “want to govern as many aspects [of the economy] as possible, pick winners, and unload the tax burden of the massive bureaucracy onto Canadians, the smartest of which understand this clearly and choose to leave.”

While Pichette’s proposal had his audience of Canadian Liberals cheering, sane individuals rightfully express varying degrees of alarm. After all, punishing people for leaving a country is eerily reminiscent of what totalitarian states do: prevent them from leaving altogether.

Pichette’s rationale itself is based on a misunderstanding. Are the half-million per student subsidies really there to educate? More like to placate well-organized lobbies of too-often ideologically driven careerists. 

The idea that Canadian students actually receive half-a-million-dollar educations is not believable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Brian Aldiss

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his own excreta.

Brian Aldiss, The Dark Light Years (1964).
Categories
Today

From Birmingham Jail

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama, for protesting segregation, on April 16, 1963.

Categories
crime and punishment government transparency partisanship

Open Secret Re-opened

Peter Schiff, Trump, classified documents

Sometimes the news, hot off the press, turns out to be re-heated leftovers. But while some foods should not be re-cooked, the latest declassification appears worth a second feast.

The “new” news is historic: “The FBI said Monday night that it is ‘closely’ reviewing newly declassified memos,” reports John Solomon at Just the News. The declassified material shows that “the intelligence community kept secret for years evidence raising questions about the credibility and bias of the main accuser in President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment case.”

The CIA analyst who posed as a “whistleblower” about Trump’s controversial phone call asking that the Ukraine government look into Biden family corruption in the country was a Biden supporter. Deep blue. A known hater of Trump.

He was also a friend of “fired FBI Director James Comey and [Peter] Strzok,” the latter notorious from his work during the heady days of the Russiagate biz.

The analyst’s name is redacted in the newly declassified documents, but, Solomon notes, other media outlets identify him as “Eric Ciaramella.” 

Why does that name seem familiar? Because Ciaramella’s identity has been an open secret for over half a decade, at least since October 2019. 

Though the name was unsuccessfully protected by Adam Schiff, now a U.S. Senator from California,  the biggest secret was his partisanship, and the weakness of his evidence, both “kept from Trump’s impeachment proceedings by ex-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Monday. 

“Gabbard accused the former watchdog of ‘weaponizing’ the whistle-blower process to hurt Trump.”

Not exactly shocking. 

Which the ever-increasing ranks of Trump critics may now regret. How many times can they impeach the same president? 

At some point a Never Cry Wolf element comes into play.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Kingsley Amis

The rewards for being sane are not very many but knowing what’s funny is one of them.

Kingsley Amis, Stanley and the Women. London: Hutchinson, 1984.
Categories
Today

Bergen-Belsen Liberated

On April 15, 1945, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.

Categories
international affairs

Sharing Power with Evil

shared power, world police, war, foreign policy, Israel, China, North Korea

“What does America do next?” Tucker Carlson recently asked Jiang Xueqin, the Chinese Canadian known for his Predictive History YouTube channel.

“So, what I would do is basically sit down everyone, okay, including Russia, China, Iran, and say, ‘it’s time for a new world order where we are partners in this relationship,’” explained ‘Professor’ Jiang. “Before America was a hegemon, before the U.S. dollar was a world reserve currency, but now what we want to do is open a dialogue where everyone is respected, where America is no longer the bully but a willing partner in creating a new economic order that benefits everyone and not just a few.”

To which, Mr. Carlson responded: “I think that’s the wisest possible advice and probably the only path that preserves civilization.”

The previous day, he declared, “The U.S. is not going to defend and cannot defend Taiwan.” 

After informing Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, that “we’ve reached the limits of our power and power has limits,” she inquired, “What about Japan and South Korea?” 

“Oh, man, it’s hard,” acknowledged Tucker. “I don’t understand exactly how that’s going to go . . . But, in the end, big powers want to and get to control their regions . . . hopefully in a non-brutal, enlightened way, but they want some influence over their neighbors. 

“We can no longer be the sole author of terms, of commerce, of anything,” he offered. “We have to share power.” 

“With China?” injected Beddoes.

“Of course,” he shot back, “because of their scale. And so, there’s got to be a non-destructive way to do this.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s regime is the most destructive in world history. Let’s not partner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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