Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?
Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment (1977).
“Property taxes just keep going up,” Daughtry lamented on social media. So “first-time homebuyers can’t take the plunge . . . and older Mainers struggle to afford staying in the towns they know and love. . . . We’re setting up a Property Tax Task Force. They’ll provide suggestions to the legislature. Then legislators can use their findings to pass laws that make living in Maine sustainable for EVERYONE in our state.”
Steven Robinson, editor-in-chief of the Maine Wire, points out in his Robinson Report that Daughtry herself is a big reason for the problem she now supposedly wants to remedy.
Her hand-wringing over high taxes is, he says, “borderline psychopathic behavior and true gaslighting — akin to O.J. Simpson standing over some stabbing victims and filming a TikTok video demanding an explanation for how they ended up dead. . . .
“On two occasions just this year Daughtry has celebrated — yes, celebrated! — taxes going up on working Mainers.”
Daughtry and other Democrats passed LD 2012, a bill to repeal the limit on municipal property tax levies. As the bill itself said right up front, “property taxes may increase.”
The Senate leader is not exactly apologizing for her tax-and-spend ways to date, so maybe her giddy gaslighting has something to do with seeking higher office. Who knows.
But at least with Steven Robinson in the neighborhood, she isn’t getting away with her phony baloney scot-free.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob
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A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
ISABEL PATERSON The God of the Machine (1943), p. 258.
On August 29,1786, Shays’ Rebellion — an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers — began. It was the first tax rebellion after the successful one in 1775–1783, and it so spooked the political leaders of the federal government that they ordered some amendments to the Articles of Confederation — eventually reconfiguring the federation with the U.S. Constitution.
Though the rebellion is named after former revolutionary soldier Daniel Shays (August 1747 – September 29, 1825), his actual role is disputed.
Yet his life wasn’t over. And although he remains partly incapacitated, his career, amazingly, wasn’t over either: his wife Mary tours with him, and voice-cloning technology is helping him create songs with a Randy Travis timbre.
When things were at their worst, Mary rejected the doctors’ prognosis because, as she says, her husband was still fighting.
“There was never a doubt in Randy’s mind that he could make it through it. It was that magical moment that I went to his bedside when they said, ‘We need to pull the plug. He’s got too many things going against him at that point.’ He had gotten a staph infection and three other hospital-born bacterial viruses . . . one thing after another. And the doctors were just saying, ‘He just doesn’t have the strength to get through this.’. . .
“That’s when I went to him. That was the moment that I knew that Randy Travis was gonna make it because he squeezed my hand and a tear went down his face. And I said, ‘He’s still fighting.’”
Mary Travis praises artificial intelligence.
Along with musician friends, AI is helping her husband complete lyrics and is simulating his voice so that he can, indirectly, sing again.
The technology is guided by a human attention to nuance, and Randy himself obviously feels that what is being created conveys his spirit.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961).
On August 28, 1789, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus. Over four decades later, the New York penny daily The Sun perpetrated the infamous Great Moon Hoax using Herschel’s son’s name to legitimize its science-fictional “reportage.” The fourth of six installments hit the streets on August 28, 1835, in which “Sir John” tells us of the small, furry human beings with bat-like wings who (from their gesticulations) seemed to be rational. Eventually Richard Adams Locke confessed to having written the work — as “satire.” Edgar Alan Poe accused Locke of plagiarism while The Sun benefitted, on the whole, with increased circulation.
That might as well be the explicit goal of California’s regulators and politicians — and all too many voters — for the results are clear enough. All who refuse to use electric cars and solar energy must suffer . . . with ever-higher gas prices, at the very least.
Two major oil refineries that provide gas for California as well as a few neighboring states have announced that they are closing their doors. They can’t hack it.
One analyst predicts that in consequence of these closures and related destruction of production, the price of gas will shoot up to $8 per gallon.
Lane Riggs, CEO of Valero Energy, which is closing a refinery near San Francisco, says the state’s tough “regulatory enforcement environment” is to blame for the loss of the sixth-largest refinery in the state.
Also throwing in the towel is a Los Angeles refinery, this one the state’s seventh-largest, operated by Phillips 66.
Brittany Bernstein notes that Phillips announced the closure “just 72 hours after California passed ABX-2, which requires refineries to hold additional inventories of finished stocks.” Yet another arbitrary burden on a company’s ability to function.
Last year, Chevron moved its headquarters from California to Texas because of the toxic environment for producers in California.
The researcher who’s predicting $8 per gallon gas, USC Professor Michael Mische, says Californians have “legislated ourselves into a situation where the costs are extraordinarily high and the political environment is extraordinarily harsh.”
Solution: reverse and undo. Please permit me to assume that this is possible.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.
ISABEL PATERSON The God of the Machine (1943), p. 92.
On August 27, 1828, the South American states of Brazil and Argentina recognized the sovereignty of Uruguay in the Treaty of Montevideo.