ENCOURAGING: Swiss Say ‘No’ to Soaking the Rich

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

‘Inequality in Opulence is Better than Equality in Poverty’ — Switzerland Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutte 

# – # – # – # – #

https://reason.com/2025/12/03/switzerland-just-overwhelmingly-rejected-a-new-wealth-tax-will-california-lawmakers-learn/

Switzerland Just Overwhelmingly Rejected a New Wealth Tax. Will California Lawmakers Learn?

  • The hammer of heavy wealth and inheritance taxes falls hardest on those still climbing the economic ladder.

J.D. Tuccille | 12.3.2025 7:00 AM

*** begin quote ***

California progressives are pushing a wealth tax that would skim 5 percent of the assets of billionaires to cover the state government’s fiscal gap. That is, it would hit billionaires to start—there’s no telling who would come to be regarded as wealthy enough to be fleeced as the state’s spending likely continues to outstrip its revenues. But before Californians proceed down the path of chasing high earners out of the state, they should consider the example of Swiss voters, who just rejected a billionaire tax of their own.

*** end quote ***

Unfortunately, all the “We, The Sheeple” in the Pepuls Republik of Kaliforkneeah are NOT smart enough to realize that, like the Federal Gooferment’s income tax, eventually in a few years will come “down” to include everyone. 

Argh!

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ENCOURAGING: Oklahoma girls’ basketball team does the moral thing

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/15/oklahoma-girls-basketball-team-championship-return?utm_placement=newsletter&user_id=66c4b9c55d78644b3a882a4d

Oklahoma girls’ basketball team returns championship after realizing they lost

  • Scoreboard error gave Academy of Classical Christian Studies team the edge over Apache high school

José Olivares
Wed 15 Oct 2025 05.00 EDT

*** begin quote ***

A US high school girls basketball team is said to have proved “there are still good people in this world” after taking the unprecedented step of returning a championship it had won after realizing they had actually lost the title-clinching game.

The story stems from the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, where a crucial scoreboard error early in the game gave the girls basketball team at Academy of Classical Christian Studies the edge over its Apache high school counterpart, as CBS News recently reported.

*** end quote ***

“Let us remember we are in the Holy Presence of God. For more days than I’d care to count, those words were said in my presence. Not until now do I think I begin to understand them.” — character “John” in CHURCH 10●19●62 Volume 2 Page 371

Here’s a classic case of “doing what’s right” when it would be easier to do nothing.  But forever, that coach and team would know that they did NOT win.  In essence, they would be cheating themselves out of an opportunity to grow up.  

“Your habits will determine your future.” — Jack Canfield in The Power of Focus

I hope that everyone make a big fuss and an exemplar of what “good American character” looks like.  The most comperable example is when those Japanese sports fans at the Olympics cleaned up after themselves. 

We can all learn some lessons here.

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ENCOURAGING: Hegseth’s Speech “Those who long for peace must prepare for war.”

Thursday, October 2, 2025

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/read-hegseth-speech-generals-admirals/

READ: Hegseth’s Speech to Generals and Admirals
Sept. 30, 2025

*** begin quote ***

Mr. Chairman, the Joint Chiefs, generals, admirals, commanders, officers, senior enlisted, NCOs, enlisted and every member of our American military, good morning. Good morning, and welcome to the War Department, because the era of the Department of Defense is over.

You see, the motto of my first platoon was, “Those who long for peace must prepare for war.” This is, of course, not a new idea. This crowd knows that. The origin dates to the fourth century Rome and has been repeated ever since, including by our first commander-in-chief, George Washington, the first leader of the War Department. It captures a simple yet profound truth; to ensure peace, we must prepare for war.

From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit. Not because we want war. No one here wants war. But it’s because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver it.

*** end quote ***

I was interested in his 10 points. Could find it reported anywhere on the inet.  I wonder why?

I like the line that “in with the Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs, and the Pattons.”

I hope he can make this culture change stick.  

Would I want my eldest son, who is 15 years old, eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently wielding? If in any way the answer to that is “No” or even “Yes, but,” then we’re doing something wrong, because my son is no more important than any other American citizen who dons the cloth of our nation.

Seems like he, or his speech writer, hit the nail on the head.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” – George Washington 

Still very true.

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ENCOURAGING: “Forbidden” llists are counter-productive to censorship

Monday, September 15, 2025

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/from-forbidden-to-top-sellers?r=3snn7d

From Forbidden to Top Sellers

  • If books are any indication, the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is losing in the marketplace of ideas.

John Leake  —  Sep 09, 2025

*** begin quote ***

The dummies who tried to impose a censorship regime in the United States should have understood that their scheme wouldn’t work.

Key actors in the “censorship-industrial complex,” as Michael Shellenberger calls it, should have understood that their enterprise was doomed to fail, just as the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books), maintained between 1560 to 1966, was doomed to fail.

Notable authors on the Index included Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Nikos Kazantzakis, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Desiderius Erasmus, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius.

Rather than censoring and banning ideas, it’s always better to discuss and debate them. 

*** end quote ***

I remember in Catholic High Skrule each week, the Diocesan newspaper (I forget the name) would print the Forbidden Books and Forbidden Movies lists.  And the good Christian Brothers would make a point of reminding us that these would damage our souls.  Little did they realize it was, just like Adam and Eve, tempting us.  I know everyone tried to read or see these “evil demons”.  Most of us succeeded.  Word quickly spread which were worth the effort and which weren’t.  Laugh!

I don’t think it made a difference.  

If I was the Principal I would have put the summer required reading list as “Prohibited” and it would have gotten read.

Sigh!  Those were the “easy days”.

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ENCOURAGING: Samaritan’s Purse is a great example of “foreign aid”

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/a-flourishing-garden-of-faith-in-liberia/

A Flourishing Garden of Faith in Liberia

  • In her desperation, Tutu cried out to God. He answered through a Samaritan’s Purse urban gardening project, which is now blessing her and others in need. 

© Copyright 2025 Samaritan’s Purse. All rights reserved.
Samaritan’s Purse
PO Box 3000
Boone, NC 28607
828.262.1980

*** begin quote ***

Hunger and malnutrition are constant threats in Liberia, with few safety nets to catch families when they fall. Here, in one of the poorest nations on earth, parents often face incredibly difficult choices.

*** and ***

The Samaritan’s Purse team brought shovels, hoes, rakes, a wheelbarrow. There were also seeds for lettuce, tomato, beetroot, pepper, and cabbage.

Our team showed Tutu how to build raised garden beds, how to space her crops for sunlight and airflow, and how to grow vegetables in sacks—a method she’d never seen before but one critical for avoiding erosion and soil diseases.

“I already knew a little about planting cassava—that’s a common food here—but I had never seen a garden with all these things,” she said. “Especially one growing in bags. That was new to me.”

*** end quote ***

I love when a true charity sparks in the dejected impoverished individual entrepreneurship and that lifts them out of poverty and spreads dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) organically in civil society.  What more can someone ask for their personal “foreign aid” donation that to truly change the world?

I’ve read many times small charities distribute livestock to needy families or villages and eliminated starvation and poverty by introducing “capital animals” to spark optimism, hope, and industry.  

Just recently, I read about “camel’s milk” becoming an “industry” by the introduction of some knowledge (i.e., camel care; processing milk) and some technology (i.e., milking tools and technique).  How much could that have cost?  And the “uplift” is enormous. 

Western civilization has uncovered “capitalism” as the key that unlocks the prison of poverty.  No better way to get hostile individuals to cooperate than by demonstrating “win win” solutions. 

I’ve often thought badly about USA’s “foreign aid” which is described as “poor people in the USA donating to rich people in foreign countries”. What better way to transform it than to get “We, The Sheeple” to support these transformative charities.  Gooferment can’t do “charity” efficiently or effectively.  Private organizations can focus on worthy causes and individuals.  Time to end Gooferment “foreign aid”.

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ENCOURAGING: Maybe AI isn’t so good after all

Monday, August 18, 2025

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ask-ai-why-it-sucks-at-sudoku-youll-find-out-something-troubling-about-chatbots/#ftag=CADf328eec

Ask AI Why It Sucks at Sudoku. You’ll Find Out Something Troubling About Chatbots

  • How much can you trust a generative AI tool if it can’t explain itself honestly or accurately? 

Jon Reed  —  Aug. 8, 2025 4:00 a.m. PT

*** begin quote ***

That’s what researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder found when they challenged large language models to solve sudoku. And not even the standard 9×9 puzzles. An easier 6×6 puzzle was often beyond the capabilities of an LLM without outside help (in this case, specific puzzle-solving tools).

*** and ***

You might expect LLMs to be able to solve sudoku because they’re computers and the puzzle consists of numbers, but the puzzles themselves are not really mathematical; they’re symbolic. “Sudoku is famous for being a puzzle with numbers that could be done with anything that is not numbers,” said Fabio Somenzi, a professor at CU and one of the research paper’s authors.

*** end quote ***

That’s some “wonderkid” you’ve been celebrating in the press.  “AI will revolutionize … <insert favorite profession>”! 

So we have kids using it to cheat in school; NBD  —  no big deal.

Legal opinions cite incorrectly or cites non-existent court cases —  BIG deal!

And, now it can solve a 6×6 sudoku.  Or gives the wrong answer?

With the final straw, it can’t “show it’s work” (i.e., the steps it used to reach the “solution”).

Pardon me if I declare AI “not ready for prime time”!

The human equivalent is the Titan submersible suffering a catastrophic implosion and you want me to let is drive a truck?  We don’t need AI to make disasters.  Humanity can do it quite well without help.

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ENCOURAGING: A local champion and educator for proper childhood nutrition overcomes challenges

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Nurse Swaps Medicine for Mangos After Epiphany: Patients Were Malnourished While Fruit Rots All Around

Nurse Swaps Medicine for Mangos After Epiphany: Patients Were Malnourished While Fruit Rots All Around

By Andy Corbley – May 23, 2025 

*** begin quote ***

In Uganda, a nurse was excited to start practicing medicine, but realized only afterwards that his patients didn’t so much need pharmaceuticals as proper nutrition.

14 years ago in northern Uganda’s Yumbe district, Francis Asiku was riding home from that nursing job having witnessed a four-year-old suffering from acute malnutrition. It was a disturbing experience he admits, but while passing by some mango trees in the village of Midigo, he saw birds feasting on mangos that were rotting on the ground.

A question stopped his pedals and his mind: why were the birds eating that nutritious fruit? Why was it left to rot? The epiphany which followed gave rise to the Mango Project, a local-led initiative to preserve mangoes from the two harvests per years, and get them into the mouths of the least-fortunate children.

*** and ***

“Should we wait for the government to come to our rescue, and yet the situation keeps getting worse?” he remembers asking his earliest colleagues on the Mango Project.

*** and ***

Asiku has become a local champion and educator for proper childhood nutrition, armed with an orchard of 310 hybrid mango trees bred to resist fruit flies and erratic weather. He knows that mangos alone can’t resolve the problem: for example they contain virtually no protein or iron, vitamin B2, B1, choline, or zinc.

So in response to the interest in the project from donations, Asiku managed to squirrel away enough money to afford a solar-powered drier, with which he dries okra and eggplant, adding sources of vitamin K, B1, magnesium, and calcium.

He hopes to obtain a government license to distribute his foods further afield.

*** end quote ***

Amazing what one human can accomplish from a simple observation and follow thru.

I was shocked at his realization that Gooferments really don’t help and often frustrate solutions.

If the fellow had a GOFUNDME, then I’d have chipped in.  A few dollars may translate into saved lives.

Never underestimate the power of one motivated individual.

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” — Robert A. Heinlein

“Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.” Attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, scientist and engineer. 

This fellow found his lever, his place, and moved the world!

—30—

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ENCOURAGING: a team of ~50 make a “triple play”

Friday, May 9, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/05/07/health/10-year-old-heart-transplant-patient-saves-lives-of-two-toddlers/

Hero 10-year-old heart transplant patient pays it forward — to save the lives of two toddlers
By Diana Bruk  — Published May 7, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

*** begin quote ***

Doctors at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed an extremely rare series of surgeries in July that changed the lives of three children forever. 

A heart from a deceased donor was transplanted into 10-year-old Hend Almesafri, who paid it forward by then providing her pulmonary valve to John Catoliato, 2, and her aortic valve to Teddy Carter, 3. 

*** end quote ***

Again a team of ~50 make a “triple play” IMHO.  Three beautiful babies all getting a new lease on a real life without the future of more surgeries in the future.

Really amazing.

Just goes to show you what humans are capable of when someone really “makes it happen”.

I don’t care what it cost because it’s time, attention, and resources well spent.

Now let’s focus on the “lessons learned” and AAR (after action reports).  

How can we as a society of caring responsible adults make this the norm rather than the “news”?

I pray this inspires everyone to look around to make their own “miracles”.

Dona Nobis Pacem

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ENCOURAGING: Bicycle Refurbishers Pedal Good to the World for 26 years

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/chicago-bicycle-refurbishers-pedal-good-to-the-world-for-26-years-with-150000-bikes-saved-from-landfills/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_medium=weekly_mailout&utm_source=29-04-2025

Chicago Bicycle Refurbishers Pedal Good to the World for 26 Years With 150,000 Bikes Saved from Landfills
By Andy Corbley – Apr 24, 2025 

*** begin quote ***

Working Bikes, located at 2434 S. Western Ave in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, has seen an awful lot of bikes pass through its doors; pulling them from landfills, picking them up off the curbside, or accepting them from community members. Over 150,000 have been repaired since the registered 501(c)3 got its wheels turning in 1999.

12% of all the bikes they restored are sold in the Working Bikes storefront. 15% meanwhile are donated right back to the people of Chicago through local program partners that will ensure they arrive in the hands of people in need of transportation.

The whole operation is volunteer-supported: anyone can come in and fix a bike or learn how. A few dedicated employees ensure that salable models are in excellent condition, or boast unique designs and features.

*** end quote ***

I love the international economic chain that they have created.  Micro-loans to buyers and training local talent  — here and overseas  — in repair and maintenance.

That’s America in action!

—30— 

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ENCOURAGING: Interesting heroic tale of the Polish “James Bond”

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

FROM PRIME VIDEO

The Resistance Fighter

The Resistance Fighter tells the incredible true story of the Polish “James Bond” war hero Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, a man of extraordinary courage, who served as an emissary between the commanders of Poland’s resistance movement and the Polish government in exile in London at the height of WWII.

# – # – # – # – # 

I doubt I’d ever have, or would have had, the courage to act in this fashion.

—30—

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