Categories
links nannyism

Townhall: Nannies with badges and guns

The enemies of freedom usually pretend to be engaging in their outrageous and over-bearing coercion “for the people’s sake.” Don’t believe them. See Sunday’s column at Townhall — and then come back here for links and hints on further reading.

One thing not made clear in the column (and it can’t go on forever, eh?) is that the big soda ban only applies to sugary drinks (not juices or diet drinks), and only applies to restaurants, targeting fast food joints, really. So Bloomberg’s ban is, in essence, a stab at the lower classes. Fancy restaurants don’t serve the big drinks, as I point out in the column, and you can still buy big non-fountain drinks at the store, and binge . . . sans the convenience of a fast food establishment, where dumb, stupid people are too easily swayed.

Do you ever wonder if much of the welfare state is just an excuse for well-off folks to rag on poorer folks, for being so, well, icky? “You obviously can’t run your lives — if you could, you’d be like us!”

Categories
ideological culture insider corruption

Video: Greece Fire

When politicians fight on camera — literally slap each other around — you know something is pretty wrong in your country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVffMcFWj8Y

Categories
Thought

Arthur Goldberg

Law not served by power is an illusion; but power not ruled by law is a menace which our nuclear age cannot afford.

Categories
national politics & policies

Yes, It Can Happen Here

Take a moment from your regularly scheduled dose of daily optimism, and look on the dark side.

The recent political events in Greece, in which a stable government was not formed, requiring whole new rounds of voting, have received some attention on the nightly news. But there’s still a feeling of “it can’t happen here.”

That’s a great disservice. Because it can happen here.Greece on Fire

And this is not just “political instability.” We’re not talking about a political hot potato going nuclear. We’re talking about complete financial implosion. That’s what happens when government is involved in everything.

“Conservatives” and “progressives” have set up for us a house of cards. So what is now happening in one of the great cradles of Western civilization is likely to happen to the whole of today’s big-government-based civilization.

How bad can things get? Well, for chilling reminders of what a true collapse is like, consult the Economic Collapse Blog. A recent article gave us a top ten list of “things that we can learn about shortages and preparation from the collapse in Greece.” The top five are frightening enough:

  1. Food shortages can actually happen (indeed, have already begun in Greece, starting with the prisons — and remember, America has more prisons than anybody)
  2. Medicine is one of the first things to become scarce (which is bad, if you require meds to live)
  3. The power grid goes down (which means almost everything goes down)
  4. You can’t even take water for granted (and you can’t live without water)
  5. Your credit and debit cards will probably stop working

So, congrats to Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, et al. — they won’t have to preside over the next great crisis. Nor we endure them.

Hey, look on the bright side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Gustave de Molinari

War has ceased to be productive of security, but the masses, whose existence depends upon the industries of production, are compelled to pay its costs and suffer its losses without either receiving compensation or possessing means to end the contradiction. Governments do possess this power, but if the interests of governments ultimately coincide with the interests of the governed they are, in the first instance, opposed to them.

Governments are enterprises — in commercial language, “concerns” — which produce certain services, the chief of which are internal and external security. The directors of these enterprises — the civil and military chiefs and their staffs — are naturally interested in their aggrandizement on account of the material and moral benefits which such aggrandizement secures to themselves. Their home policy is therefore to augment their own functions within the State by arrogating ground properly belonging to other enterprises; abroad they enlarge their domination by a policy of territorial expansion. It is nothing to them if these undertakings do not prove remunerative, since all costs, whether of their services or of their conquests, are borne by the nations which they direct.

Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1899)
Categories
Today

June 8, 1972

On June 8, 1972, a 9-year-old girl heard a soldier scream — a warning to run — and a few seconds later she saw the village temple her family had sought refuge in engulfed in flames. It was napalm. American and North Vietnamese forces, fighting over the village, sent her running screaming, her clothes burned off, her skin melting.

A photographer snapped a shot of her grave distress, and it became one of the most unforgettable photographs of the Vietnam War.

There’s something like a happy ending to the story. The girl did not die. The photographer took her to a hospital, and insisted she be treated. Her face had never been affected by the burns, which covered 30 percent of her body, and her skin slowly healed. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the mother of two children, recently visited with the photographer, Nick Ut, who had saved her life.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Trick and Treats

After more than a year of big labor throwing industrial-size kitchen sinks at Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor became the first of the three governors in U.S. history to face recall and retain the office.

Walker more than survived; he prevailed, beating his Democratic rival by seven percentage points, 53 to 46. In a light blue state, it was a thorough thwacking of the public employee unions, the biggest, bluest special interest.

According to exit polls, Walker even won better than a third of union households.

The man had kept his word not to raise taxes. Further, ending collective bargaining for most government employee unions, along with other reforms, saved lots of money for state and local governments and school districts. This, it turns out, prevented public sector layoffs and helped secure future health and pension benefits.

Walker’s success will be repeated elsewhere.

Hey, already happened! On Tuesday, in San Diego and San Jose, California, voters overwhelmingly passed measures to get a handle on out-of-control public employee pension costs. These measures were, of course, fiercely opposed by government unions.

As cities are cutting programs to pay pension benefits for retirees, a post on the Calpensions blog explains, “Public pension amounts in California are based on what unions are able to obtain through collective bargaining, not what is needed for a reasonable retirement.”

Among Tuesday’s many treats, there was one really rotten trick. California’s Prop 28 passed, weakening the state’s legislative term limits. Most voters, misled by the official ballot summary, thought the measure would result in tougher term limits.

Can’t wait until the next election, which falls nearer Halloween. Hope for more treats than tricks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Edmund Burke, 1775

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth. . . .

Categories
Today

June 7, 1776

The first official move towards secession from the British Empire occurs on June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee presents a resolution to the Continental Congress, which is seconded by John Adams.

Categories
Today

June 6

In 1883, Andy Jackson becomes the first U.S. president to ride on a train.

Also on June 6, in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning marijuana. Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent on this case becomes an instant classic