Murphy's Fourth Law: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Chart of the Day: "I just called to say 'I love you'"....
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| Why We Have A Huge Public Pension Problem via the Independent Institute |
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| Via Being Classically Liberal |
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| Via Being Classically Liberal |
Because the US Government Does Not Want to Cut Subsidies to Big Cotton, We Get To Pay Brazilian Farmers $300M: Your Tax Dollars At Work
As much as I've been extolling the virtues of free trade, the reality of world trade is more mercantilistic in nature with countries who petition the WTO on "unfair" trade practices, like "excessive" subsidies promoting oversaturation of global markets, depressing prices for other exporters. In this quid pro quo world, opening one's markets is considered a "concession" (i.e., potential vulnerability for domestic producers) and closing markets is a withdrawal (typically a key export market prized by the trading partner).
So roughly a decade ago Brazil won an appeal from the WTO against excess US cotten subsidies. The US, rather than back off domestic subsidies or risk losing Brazilian "concessions" to its exporters to Brazil, agreed to subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers to the tune of roughly $150M per year. During the recent sequester, the US attempted to reduce those (foreign) subsidies, which basically reopened the case of roughly $800M in excess domestic subsidies. Hence, the US agreed to pay off a $300M settlement of foreign subsidies.
Isn't it amazing, in all the drama over sequester cuts, what didn't get significant cuts were those huge domestic cotton subsidies?
DC Police Bullying Black Man In the Wrong Neighborhood of a Reported Burglary
Politically Correct Nonsense of the Day
From the National Review:
A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead. The instructions were part of a list called “12 steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” developed by Gender Spectrum, an organization that “provides education, training and support to help create a gender sensitive and inclusive environment for children of all ages.” If teachers still find it “necessary” to mention that genders exist at all, the document states, they must list them as “boy, girl, both or neither.”Author Katherine Timpf sparked a national kerfuffle; if I go to the Google dictionary, the first meaning of "instruct" is "direct or command someone to do something, especially as an official order" while the third meaning is "give a person direction, information, or authorization, in particular", In reality, the school was giving its teachers sensitivity training on transgender and related issues, although the suggestions were not implemented as official policy:
Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent Steve Joel pushed back Thursday against what he said was misinformed reaction to the district’s gender identity training by national commentators and news outlets.Joel said the handouts were suggestions and strategies, not mandates, about how teachers could reach all students in their classrooms. The training occurred at the request of an Irving teacher looking for guidance dealing with students.In fact, Snopes, which I usually respect, felt it necessary to debunk the mandate issue.
Let's be clear: if and when your employer publishes and distributes a set of guidelines to all the teachers, he's sending a not very subtle message. It's one thing to respond directly to some unnamed Irving teacher's undisclosed question (maybe a gender identity troll?) This is nothing short of political correctness run amok; I wish that public school superintendents showed as much concern for abysmal reading, math, and science scores as they did with political correctness.
Really? Girls, boys, both, neither? Methinks that someone has listened to "Lola" one too many times... I've seen estimates of up to 1% of births include some variation of sexual ambiguity. I don't really see where that becomes a teaching issue unless the child has questions over which bathroom ro use. Obviously bullying other children needs to be addressed, regardless of the issue. The need to know people are different? Duh! I have the ability to bend my thumb back at a right angle, something I inherited from my Dad and which few people I've seen can do. Do we thumb-benders require our own identity group? I guess if I was hitchhiking, I might freak some people out.
But in their ideological pursuit of gender identity, "purple penguins"? Not only will we have a species identity crisis, we now have a color-identity crisis: "Mom, why aren't I purple just like all the other penguins?" Isn't it time that school administrators and faculty get back to the prime directive and stop sweating the small stuff?
One final note regarding political ideology run amok in public education:
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| Screen capture from NBC News video |
A five-year-old kindergarten at E.R. Dickson Elementary in Mobile County, Alabama pointed a crayon at a fellow student and went "Phew!". That was enough for the local education gestapo to force her, without the knowledge and consent of her parents, to sign a contract in crayon promising not to kill anybody or commit suicide. (She later had to ask her mother the meaning of the word 'suicide'.) This ludicrous overreaction to harmless child play demonstrates a lack of common sense in the school hierarchy.
Choose Life: Jenna Haley's Dad Writes a Moving Open Letter
I covered "the Bucket List" baby, Shane Haley, in Friday's post. Shane's maternal grandfather recently penned a compelling letter in the Prayers for Shane Facebook group.
A Letter From Jenna's Father:
TO MY LOVING DAUGHTER
I watched you grow and, as a child, you were strong willed and determined in all that you did. From biddy sports to High School sports to academics in college. When you put your mind to something, nothing was going to stop you.
From the day we found out the tragic news about baby Shane, you were determined to give him a life time of love in whatever time God gave you with him. And that you did. I honestly don’t know if you ever saw your father cry before, but know these last few days I have. I have never felt such a roller coaster ride of feelings and emotions as I have this week. Most of all, the strongest one is warmth. The warmth of Love that you and Dan and Shane have given us all. The warmth I felt when I walked into the room after you gave birth to Shane, and saw the look on your face as you gazed at him. The warmth I felt when I first heard him cry. The warmth I felt when I held him to my chest.
I am amazed at the outpouring of Love and Warmth that the Facebook page has created. I think I understand what the purpose of starting this was; so that you, Dan and Shane can bring more awareness to anencephaly and to create memories that would last forever. But it has grown into something so much larger than that. It has become a conduit for millions of people to realize that while there is some bad in the world, the vast majority of people really want to Love and that Love makes us stronger. You know I joined Facebook for the first time this week because I was amazed at the outpouring of love people were sending and I wanted to read more of the heartfelt messages and comments. With all the millions of people responding, there were a few people with bad thoughts and there were some with bad intentions. In the “Serenity Prayer” most people know the first few verses. But in the middle verses it says, “Accepting hardships as a pathway to peace. Taking as Jesus did, this sinful world, as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that he will make this right”.
We are all imperfect. But the strength, love and warmth that you and Dan and our little angel Shane have given us is perfect and, for me, Life Changing. I am humbled by you and Dan. I want to thank you for this amazingly beautiful roller coaster ride.
With All My Love,Facebook Corner
Your Father
Shane’s Pop-Pop
(Being Classically Liberal). (F) The hypocrisy of this president is obscene. The fact that he openly acknowledged drug use in his book, and 6 years later he's still kidnapping and throwing people in a cage for the same drugs he used. What does this tell you about his character? His "moral-fiber"? He is a pathetic human-being, and has no empathy or concern for any of us.
Let's face it: anyone smoking marijuana is abusing his body, not unlike tobacco. (There are some reasonable medicinal uses.) But all prohibitions tend to be counterproductive from an economic perspective.
Actually studies have shown that marijuana doesn't cause cancer the same way tobacco does
Marijuana has other issues: "Frequent marijuana use can have a significant negative effect on the brains of teenagers and young adults, including cognitive decline, poor attention and memory, and decreased IQ, according to psychologists. "It needs to be emphasized that regular cannabis use, which we consider once a week, is not safe and may result in addiction and neurocognitive damage, especially in youth," said one expert." Here's a summary of the last twenty years of research: http://www.sciencedaily.com/rele.../2014/10/141007092449.htm
You take care of veterans by keeping them out of unnecessary wars, period. And you take care of veterans health issues by privatizing their healthcare.
(Being Classically Liberal). Thoughts on discrimination:
I hold liberty to be far valuable than the perceived right not to be offended. This includes the liberty to discriminate against people. Obviously, discrimination on the basis of superficial physical traits, like race or sex, is incredibly shallow. However, the libertarian recognizes that is a man's/woman's right to associate (or not associate) with whomever they please and for whatever reason.
For example, I wholly support gay marriage. I think that people should be able to marry whomever they want for whatever reason. I also wish the state would butt out of marriage, but that's probably never going to happen. Regardless, I also believe that the bakery that makes wedding cakes has a right to deny service to whomever they want, for whatever reason. Private citizens and businesses should not be forced to serve people they don't wish to (except for in rare life-threatening cases.)
Just because I support someone's freedom to discriminate doesn't mean I endorse discrimination (I personally think it's wrong).
You know, you seem to be more worried about paying tribute to the self-anointed politically correct high priests. Let's get it straight: the point is the right of free association. If I choose to sell my prized baseball card to my nephew vs. an atheist who is willing to pay me more, that's my decision. If I want to turn away a married friend who shows up at my restaurant with his mistress, that's my decision. Similarly, if I choose to specialize my business in serving traditionally married couples, that's not your affair, any more than if I choose to open a big and tall shop or open a restaurant that refuses to sell its food takeout.
There's a difference between the right of gays to associate and intervention by Statist judicial tyrants into the social context, against social norms and the traditional heterosexual marriage and family constructs.
What a legitimate classical liberal should say is there is a legitimate free market, other suppliers will compete for business that any vendor leaves on the table. It's not personal: it's business. Personally, whether or not I believe in "gay marriage", I wouldn't turn away a paying customer; the relationship is his moral responsibility, not mine; after I sell my product, it's his property.
A lot of the notorious cases are ridiculous: take wedding cakes. It's fairly easy to buy a standard cake and decorate and/or top the cake yourself (the last time I saw there were scores of vendors selling "gay marriage" figures on eBay). And, of course, you don't have to have a reception or a cake; that's not a statutory requirement in the Statist mutated version of "marriage".
Agree [to OP] 100%. People ought to be allowed to hate - and in the case of business owners, the clientele are allowed to stop patronizing them and run them out of business in response to the hate.
Spoken like a true fascist. Your intolerance for people who don't agree with your point of view is touching.
(Independent Institute). "When the fraud was ended, the government was faced with a choice: either hike taxes on residents to make up the shortfall and continue paying public-employees their generous pensions in full, or reduce the pensions to match the returns from the funding that had actually been set aside. As happens all too often in these cases, the politicians sided with the interests of government employees against the public."
Why has it taken the public sector decades after most of the private sector to double-check actuarial trends of increasing longevity and its implications on unfunded pension liabilities? Or the overall last 14 miserable years of stock market returns to realize investment returns were unrealistic? Or that subpar economic growth wasn't enough to generate enough tax revenues to sustain huge pension outflows? And why do the parasitic public unions think they are entitled to huge taxpayer bailouts of unfunded liabilities kicked down the road of escalating Baby Boomer retirements?
Proposals
This has got to be the best shocked reaction to seeing a boyfriend I've ever seen on film--great swerve!
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Scott Stantis via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall |
Linda Ronstadt, "When Will I Be Loved?"
