Greatness lies not in being strong,
but in the right use of strength.
Henry Ward Beecher
Kibbe's Election Autopsy
Internet Clippings
I haven't done one of these for a while, but I have a marvelous freeware software product installed called CintaNotes (the publishers also have a premium version) which I often use to clip text. Many of these are up to 3 years old, many from Facebook, intended for republishing. Some of these are from other and are attributed; my own work is in red typeface.FEE Comment (5/15)
Ronald A Guillemette Who SHOULD be arrested are those authoritarian bastards, many of them spamming this thread, who attempt to obstruct, even make illegal, the voluntary contracts between those low-experienced/skilled workers and those businesses willing to employ, many of them small with limited operating budgets. Political whores picking a number out of their asses are not only economically illiterate but are basically pricing a significant percentage of prospective workers out of the labor markets; the same hypocritical "progressives" who claim to be non-racist ignore the disparate adverse effects of counterproductive wage policies on urban minorities and young people. A minimum wage policy is, de facto, a punitive tax on low-income workers and their employers; if these idiots really wanted a less damaging, more coherent redistribution policy, they might look at an earned income credit vs. social welfare programs.
CATO Institute (7/15)
I don't think that I am qualified to speak for the black experience, but I'll suggest in part the government has been seen as the most reliable ally in standing up to majoritarian abuses, the US military among the earliest, most reliable and fairest employers (and government hires almost 1 of 5 blacks among the employed). And there can be little doubt that black participation in public office greatly increased, particularly in the Old South, during the Civil Rights era.
I do think libertarians provide a solid alternative for blacks: morally hazardous social welfare policies have created a permanent underclass of government dependents, Urban blacks generally live in more crime-ridden neighborhoods, are incarcerated at disproportionate rates, have no viable alternative to failing public school, face challenges to employment in an anemic overregulated, overtaxed economy with occupational licensing restrictions and dysfunctional minimum wage laws.
But I do think we have a bad PR problem: we are seen as the principled behind the free expression rights of racist groups, we have opposed almost every major initiative of the first President of color, our agenda to shrink government affects a large number of employed blacks and government benefits for many poor blacks.
(Probably an Illinois Policy thread excerpt in 5/15 about Illinois' public pension crisis)
To all of the people who are up in arms about the pensions being threatened:
1. You should be. In their present form, Illinois will NEVER be able to pay these obscene payouts.
2. In the last 2 years, 180,000 people moved out of Illinois.
3. Illinois has the 2nd highest property taxes in the nation.
4. At this very minute, pensions devour 25% of Illinois's budget.
5. As right now, there about 12,500 retiree's making more than 100k. And by, 2020, there will be about 25,000 retirees making more than 100k... (that's just 4 years away)..
6. Chicago is one of the most dishonest and corrupt city in the United States.
Quotes
- Try to know everything of something and something of everything. ~ Henry Brougham
- Our aspirations are our possibilities. ~ Samuel Johnson
- Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend. ~ Robert Frost
- Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Reason Discussion of Whether Naziism Is a Variation of Socialism 8/15
I believe Beeler is a democratic socialist apologist and the following were his comments in the thread followed by my response and some references.
Nazis weren't socialist. They masqueraded as socialist but implemented very few socialist principles. They were fascist capitalists. Our government is more socialist than the Nazis were.
Like · 11 hrs
Noah Beemer I'm just going to copy and paste this here. Don't use the word "socialism" in ignorance.
"Democratic Socialism is a system of government and economics that at its base believes that capitalism is a tool to be used for the good of the people. An unfettered capitalistic system spins out of controls and ends up with a small handful of rich elite who either buy out the government for their own bidding (an oligarchy), or assume complete control of the government and people (case in point: Nazi Germany). Democratic Socialism seeks to remedy this probably by offering all the benefits of capitalism with some regulation to prevent injustice and government corruption. It is a system that is by the people, for the people. Many countries in the past have masqueraded as socialist when in reality they were authoritarian communist. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other Scandinavian countries are models of modern socialism. Denmark is one of the easiest countries to start a business in the world, attesting to the fact that socialism is not at odds with business and capitalism.
Authoritarian Communism is a system in which the state completely controls the economy. Citizens have no private property, and the get their pay directly from the government in most cases. Freedoms of religion and speech are usually infringed upon. It is not a true democratic society, there is usually only one party, or possibly two mock parties. Democracy is dead in these governments, and you have no rights as an individual. You forced to be merely a cell that works for the governing authority.
What Bernie stands for is Democratic Socialism, or libertarian socialism, which preserves the rights of all people, but does not treat businesses as individuals protected by the Constitution. He works for the interest of the American people, not those who would seek to purchase the governing officials for their own benefit. If you read this, then you know what these terms now mean, and I would hope that you would no longer use them ignorantly. Communism and Socialism are not the same, and our government is already largely Socialist, excepting that our politicians can be legally bought by the highest bidder, resulting in the oligarchy we now live in. Republican candidates are pushing toward a system that is nothing less than fascism. Bernie hopes to return control of the government to the people."
Noah Beemer doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, Naziism is a variation of fascism, that may allow some facade of private ownership but under the regulation of the State. If you study the rise of Hitler, you know he targeted Jewish capitalists in a classic class warfare argument.:
"Using a farrago of previously unpublished statistics, Aly describes in detail a social system larded with benefits —open only to Aryan comrades, naturally. To “achieve a truly socialist division of personal assets,” he writes, Hitler implemented a variety of interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, frequent “polemics against landlords,” subsidies to German farmers as protection “against the vagaries of weather and the world market,” and harsh taxes on capital gains, which Hitler himself had denounced as “effortless income.”
"Aly demonstrates convincingly that Nazi “domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime.” And with fresh memories of Weimer inflation, “transferring the tax burden to corporations earned the leadership in Berlin considerable political capital, as the government keenly registered.”
http://reason.com/archives/2007/08/15/hitlers-handouts
HumanProgress 8/15 on Plastics and the Oceans
Not so fast! According to a new study published in Environmental Science and Technology by co-authors Professor Jun Yang and Yu Yang of Beihang University, and Stanford University engineer Wei-Min Wu, plastic is biodegradable.
“Plastic, long considered nonbiodegradable and one of the biggest contributors to global pollution, might have met its match: the small, brownish, squirmy mealworm. Researchers have learned that the mealworm can live on a diet of Styrofoam and other types of plastic. Inside the mealworm’s gut are microorganisms that are able to biodegrade polyethylene, a common form of plastic.”
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