RANT: “Poverty” versus “Poor”

Thursday, October 16, 2008

http://www.thinkinghomebusiness.com/2008/10/16/dealing-with-poverty-closer-to-home-wendys-list/

*** begin quote ***

To Easton Ellsworth who has labored mightily to bring us Blog Action Day 2008 and poke and prod us to participate, and to all my blogging colleagues who have posted about poverty and about what can be and is being done about it, my admiration and my thanks.

*** end quote ***

I heard the clarion call all bloggers to much ado about nothing. And, I ignored it as “drivel” at best; socialism at worst.

Not that anyone cares, but here’s why!

Sigh, seems so obvious to me.

“Poverty” is a industry here in the USA. There are folks who are deriving a lot of earnings, moral superiority, and kudos that they don’t deserve. Like the United Way CEO that earns megabucks. Like all the paid gooferment employees, that earn a healthy chunk of change now and in their future retirement, for their “public service”.

Don’t make me barf!

First, poverty, the industry is despicable. To be truly poor is a terrible human condition. But, not having stuff, isn’t being poor. Go to Africa, where folks die of starvation. Or, disease from not having clean water. Where their gooferment really does kill them. Or, they have massive inflation of money.

That’s true poverty.

Any time any one talks about “poverty” here in the USA, I am instantly reminded of the TV interview of this shell of a fellow waiting on line in some African community to get an application for a green card. The interviewer asked the fellow why he wanted to come to the USA. He responded immediately “You have fat poor people.”

I think that sums it up. We need folks like him. I’d have given him a green card just for that service to our country.

See the “poverty industry” wants us to think that the bottom ten, twenty five, or fifty percent is “poor”.

Sorry!

They aren’t. Not by that fellow’s metric.

And, their situation is USUALLY either due to their own mistakes or the gooferment.

So, that’s why I think all the blogging would do a bit of good. The problem is defined wrong!

I happily contribute to Homefront New Jersey, where a very underpaid lady, make a nickel in to six pennies, as she helps single moms (mostly) move off welfare and onto their own two feet. That’s progress.

We should be striking at the heart of the problem but that is the misconceptions and gooferment welfare. Good luck doing that.

Argh!

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RANT: It’s not an “economy” failure, nor a “free market” failure. It’s a “political” failure!

Saturday, October 11, 2008

On Oct 10, 2008, at 10:08 PM, P wrote:

*** begin quote ***

From: “Chuck & Joyce”
Date: October 10, 2008 7:18:54 PM EDT
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: Fw: Our failed economy

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?

*** end quote ***

TO WHICH I REPLIED:

the economy hasn’t failed. we’ve failed to keep our politicians in line with what the dead old white guys outlined as the proper role of gooferment. at our own peril. anyone who votes for an incumbent this year is part of the problem. even if the incumbent had NOTHING to do with it or did nothing bad, they were: (1) tacitly complicit; (2) too stupid to realize what was coming down the road; OR (3) ineffective to stop it. Look at how many times Ron Paul was the lone voice “no”! No on the war. No on taxes. No on Fannie and Freddie. No on the Fed. Sigh. Best gooferment money can buy. Sorry. It wasn’t an economy failure; it was a political failure. We may become the next hyperinflation — like present day Rhodesia, Argentina of the 70s, or Germany of the 1930s. We know how well those all worked out. Gold coins may be needed. The Dead Old White Guys told us that was money. But we didn’t listen as FDR and Nixon fooled us. The 1913 FED started to procession to where we are today. Spinning out of control. Does no good to be right when the commonweal goes over the cliff taking us all to perdition. Argh. It’s all socialism and the elite in their hubris have led us there. Now where is my pitchfork and torch!

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Warning! Don’t stick your fingers in the Libertarian’s cage and poke or prod them. They can snap back. Us little L libertarians are very frustrated. No amount of warning “Here comes The Cliff” has done any good. All we get are dumb looks as people ask “Who’s Cliff?” Guess you know now. Welcome to what Mises, Hayek, Rothfarb, and all the “Austrian School” economists have been warning about!

Don’t blame me. I supported Ron Paul!

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RANT: Wooden arrows?

Sunday, October 5, 2008

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/03/1489413.aspx

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Tucked into pages 262 and 263 of the bill, for example, are provisions that will aid the manufacturers of “certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.” The bill will exempt the arrows from an excise tax of 39 cents. There are also tax breaks for race-track owners, for rum imported from Puerto Rico, for worsted wool makers, Hollywood film and television production companies and on and on.

*** end quote ***

Maybe this will be a wake up call to Get Rid of Incumbent Politicians (GRIP)?

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RANT: Ditto; Gooferment go home!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/fairfax3.html

No More Help, Please by Stephen Fairfax

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My so-called representative voted for the Billionaire Bailout. It’s easy to understand why; he’s collected $732,629 from the Securities & Investment industry alone. My firm has paid far more than that in taxes, but taxes don’t buy congressional votes the way campaign contributions do. The 7 Massachusetts “representatives” who voted for the Billionaire Bailout have collectively gathered more than $11,785,000 from investment, banking, real estate, law, lobbying, and building industries. No wonder they support the Billionaire Bailout despite overwhelming public opposition.

*** end quote ***

You really couldn’t have forgotten the three rules of politics: (1) feather your own nest; (2) reward your friends; and (3) punish your enemies.

The Bailout does all three! But not for thee or me.

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RANT: How is this “fair”?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=76645

ELECTION 2008

VP debate moderator Ifill releasing pro-Obama book

Focuses on blacks who are ‘forging a bold new path to political power’

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Let’s at least pretend to be unbiased!

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RANTING: Estimates? Gooferment estimates? ROFL!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/09/24/a_political_solution_part_ii

Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thomas Sowell :: Townhall.com Columnist
A Political “Solution”: Part II
by Thomas Sowell

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Estimates of how much money a government program will cost are notoriously unreliable. Estimates of the cost of the current bailout in the financial markets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some say it may reach or exceed a trillion.

*** end quote ***

Estimates are always wrong. In this case, we have no idea of the liability the congress critters are signing your children up for!

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RANT: DRM never!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/26/walmart-shutting-dow.html

Boing Boing – A directory of wonderful things

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection — only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans

Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 26, 2008 8:34 PM

*** begin quote ***

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they’re repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you’ve changed email addresses or if you’re not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

*** end quote ***

That’s why I’d never buy anything with a DRM in it. I learned this lesson early and had it reinforced by Yahoo buying Real who bought whatever it was that I liked.

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RANT: SNY network leaves RU game to TALK about the Mets!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

What a joke.

RU was playing Morgan State. Not a big game by any means. But, SNY left live coverage of that for the Mets “post game” show, where they couldn’t show any of the game highlights. So they spent the better part of a hour TALKING about it. Talked it to death! How dumb!

Sorry RU, you deserved better!

They rejoined it with 2:57 left in the SECOND quarter with the score 35 zip. Game was over.

Why bother?

Just shows you the level of respect SNY has for its viewers.

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RANT: the newspapers made it look like Governor Patrick bravely vetoed a $3 billion

Friday, August 29, 2008

http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/

BELIEVE 15% OF WHAT YOU SEE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Carla Howell

*** begin quote ***

Our mothers told us, “Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see.” But when it comes to government spending articles in the Globe, perhaps we should only believe 15% of what we see.

Governor Patrick recklessly ratified a $2.55 billion spending increase for plush government pensions — boosting an already bloated government pension cash cow. While most private sector workers and taxpayers have NO employee pension.

But the newspapers made it look like Governor Patrick bravely vetoed a $3 billion govenrment employee pension increase.

I pride myself in spotting bias, inaccuracies and deception in news coverage that pertains to government budgets. Sadly, I find it in almost every single one I read.

Unless I read too fast — and don’t take the time to read the fine print. Which I did last week. The Boston Globe ran a story with the headline “Patrick rejects pension increase…Benefit could have cost state billions.” The second paragraph states, “Fiscal watchdogs had warned that the benefit could cost the state more than $3 billion over the next 20 years.”

I concluded from this that Governor Patrick vetoed the entire $3 billion government employee pension expansion, which he had previously supported.

A few days before this story, a Globe editorial advised the governor to veto this one – hinting that letting the bill stand could incite voter anger and affect the November election. It seemed to be a thinly veiled warning that a veto was necessary to stop Question 1 to End the Income Tax from winning.

I helped give legs to the story by mentioning in a media interview last week that Patrick’s $3B veto was a sign that Question 1 to End the Income Tax is already having an impact on government spending.

Then I saw a letter to the editor in the Globe penned by a careful reader who pointed out that Gov. Patrick did not veto the entire $3B
government employee pension increase as the Globe’s headline suggests. Rather, he vetoed only 15% of the increase – and let 85% of the increase stand.

I should know better than to ignore the fine print of a news article about government budgets. Mea culpa.

Upon rereading the article, I can’t vouch for what percentage was actually vetoed without doing research. But 15% seems to be in the
ballpark.

So it’s possible our initiative already helped to stop $450 million in new state spending, but not the $3B I’d hoped (at least not as a result
of this particular veto).

Please use my oversight as a reminder of how much care it takes to avoid falling for claims that a politician cut government spending – when he
actually increased government spending.

*** end quote ***

Like Star Trek and their Prime Directive, the Doctor’s Hippocratic Oath, and the old Gallo ad “We serve no wine before its time”, politicians have an a similar canard. I don’t know who came up with it, but I first heard it from a troublemaker, Jim Gearhart, at the local radio station 101.5.

“Politicians are ALWAYS: feathering their own nest, rewarding their friends, or punishing their enemies.”

Carla would be well advised to remember that. In her “mistake”, she forgot that the paper was reporting on a “politician”. Vetoing a public pension bill would be that political directive. So by definition, the report was EITHER biased or just honestly wrong! Guess I’m jaundiced, it was a deliberate cover up to give the Guv good press and a handout to the trough feeders.

Argh!

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RANT: Gotta Fill To Stop The Drill?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008


You have to admire the power of sarcasm! National energy policy should be imho: nukes; natural gas in cities transport, drill, defeat nimby, and empower the free market to solve the “problem”. One created by the gooferment I might add! Argh!

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