LIBERTY: Cure poverty by getting gubamint out of the way!

Thursday, August 31, 2006

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200608/POL20060831b.html

‘Throwing Money’ at Poverty Won’t Solve Problem, Expert Says
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
August 31, 2006
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Ron Mincy, professor of social policy and social work practice at Columbia University, said the government must take action to increase earnings if anything is to be done about poverty, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.

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OH OH I KNOW! Let’s have a war on poverty. We can pass welfare programs with lots of rules and bureaucrats.

Oh yeah, that’s right, we’ve done that!

(For those edukated in gubamint skool, let me remind you of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.)

Well if I was the devil, then here what I’d do to make people poorer:

* Create a system that devalues the value of money. That strategy worked to bring down the French Monarchy.

* Increase taxation, have lots of different taxes. Make it complicated so that experts will have to be hired. And, hide them so no one really knows what they are paying in taxes. Make them waste their time with meaningless tax exercises like saving receipts to see if you exceed the medical deduction threshold.

* Grow the government. Every regulator needs a citizen to regulate. Like that joke about the Agriculture Department employee crying because “his” farmer died.

* Criminalize everything. Make drugs expensive. Make everything as difficult as possible. Make people seek permission from various levels of government and agencies so that they can make the applicant figure out deadlocks of conflicting requirements.

* Impose criminal sanctions of victimless crimes, imaginary crimes, “conspiracy”, racketeering, or lying to the government.

OH yeah, that’s the way things are!

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: “Fair”, “Flat”, or plain old … it’s still a tax … immoral!

Thursday, August 31, 2006

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/118/5872/fair.asp?wid=118&nid=5872

THE “FAIR” TAX IS A WELFARE SCAM
Monday, August 28, 2006

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The “Fair Tax” is at least as bad as the income tax in every way, and worse in some ways. It’s not a tax cut. It’s not a tax elimination. It’s just a strengthening of the tax system by linking it to a welfare program — just like Social Security, which has been a “third rail” issue in American politics for half a century precisely because millions of Americans have a vested interest in keeping the checks coming.

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Oh just what we need is another “dole”! Fair tax, Flat Tax, Income Tax, or Estate Tax is just tax. More of the same piled higher and deeper.

Taxes are an immoral theft of both people’s time and their past, present, and future effort. It’s an ineffective way to accomplish things. It’s inefficient in both how much it costs to collect them (i.e., we pay for the IRS and we spend time filling out stupid forms) and how much it misses (i.e., underground economy).

Let’s start getting out of this hole now!

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Debunking the English terrorist threat … sounds like F troop doing chemistry! Very funny imho.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

http://www.file.sc/7575f2/

As you probably know, I listen to Free Talk Live (http://freetalklive.com) on a pretty regular basis when I’m commuting via podcast.

[No, not because it’s free!]

It’s an entertaining pro-liberty show. Recently they did a rendition of a Register article that went into the chemistry of the recent English threat.

Having attempted to make explosives in high school chemistry, (hey who knows why; the nerd herd thought it would be a kool if we could blow up the darn place; that’s why I think of any school — public or private — as a prison!), I KNOW it’s not as easy as one might think. Thermite is pretty easy. (And a hoot, when the good brother teaching chemistry singed his arms putting out the fire we created. Accidentally, of course.) Phosphorous burns nicely as well. (Note, don’t throw water on that fire. I remember the same Brother panicking, doing it, and creating a nice steam cloud. Whatta hoot!) Leaving the bunsen burners open just sets off the gas alarm; no boom. Oxygen in a bottle is lame; unless you can put it under pressure, but Boyle’s Law works against you.

So, I listened with a big chuckle as Ian read the article about how do actually do the chemistry in an airplane’s lavatory (laboratory). It his a chord ’cause I know first hand that blowing stuff up isn’t as easy as it looks on TV or james bond movies.

Any way, I snipped it out and put it on a free site for your enjoyment. Yell if you need it done differently.

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Posted by reinkefj