Sunday, January 25, 2015

Looking for Robin Hood

Glenn Beck , on the radio got into the current round of Robin Hood tax  schemes. I find Beck in small doses useful for his more expansive perspective. His solutions, thought out as they may be, are short sighted in comparison. That aside, the point was that Obama is not Robin Hood. Obama is the sheriff. It is not a new thought.

 Of interest is the idea that the Sheriff of Nottingham is a representative of his government, a bureaucrat.Getting my head around it, there is this form 2002:

"As one wag perceptively pointed out some time ago, Robin Hood’s claim to fame was not that he took from the rich to give to the poor, but that he took from the tax collector and gave back to the people their own money. The central issue was over taxation, and Robin Hood was most emphatically not on the side of the bureaucracy. The ultimate bad guy was Prince John, the very caricature of greedy, arrogant government; the proximate bad guy was the Sheriff of Nottingham, the ruthless enforcer whose audit strategy was even more intimidating than that of the IRS"
 Tax is only the beginning. Follow any right leaning or libertarian new source for very long and there is a bureaucrat out of control and getting away with it. It follows as well that Robin Hood is often painted as some libertarian crusader protecting the poor.  Are we looking for someone to take his place?  Forget the economics, it about freedom and forget Robin Hood. Today in the United states he is the "poor".

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Jay Nixon in Short

  Living in Missouri I pay little attention to politics in the state. There seem to be little point in light of increasing national control. Jay Nixon got little of my attention. He was elected in 08 and 12, if it had been an off year he would have lost.

After watching his press conference in Ferguson, the first I'd seen of him, it was clear in short that he is an idiot.    Declare a state of emergency but a curfew latter. Call out the national guard but don't deploy them any where near the problem areas. Hold press conference but don't answer the phone from the mayor as his city burns.  The Lt. Gov. went after himMore for entertainment.  Dig a little there is a lot more just on Nixon's stupidity in Ferguson with out getting into the rest of it.

That progressive idiocy is expected. That he got reelected is inferring given that we know now he would hand concealed carry permit holder information over to the feds.Don't know what happened to the original story so will start with this.
"Kinder accused the Missouri Department of Revenue of working with the Department of Homeland Security to install new hardware and software to obtain data on Missouri citizens and transfer this information to DHS and unnamed third parties."
This all started with a guy in southern MO wonder why the DMV needed his concealed carry info and it spiraling from there.

Friday, January 16, 2015

"no solution" middle east really?

   Sent an email to some talking heads in Aug 2013 during a refrain of "we can't nation build" I was try to keep it short and may expand on it later:

Is there a word that describes the act of seeing something done badly and failing then assuming it can't be done?

     Fight the ideological war.
Freedom or democracy do not equal liberty. From the Pres. on down, talk in terms of individual liberty. The moral, practical and economic case as well as the stabilizing effects should be explained in terms of solutions to both small and large problems at all times. Let the Islamist fight a clear declaration of liberty instead of the amorphous democracy and inconsistent freedoms.

    Stop the parliaments.
European models, that's the best we can do? Representatives in parliaments answer to the party. Electing reps individually makes them more accountable. In older governments parties gain influence, it just doesn't hand it to them. 

    Build republics.

Repeal the Civil Right Act and stop moving track

     H/T Maggie's Farm
After all the confusion, that these happen, and frustration, that no one pays it any attention, I find yet another unnoticed track change. I am still amazed this little country or civilization hasn't collapsed in on itself. NRO - Phi Beta Cons
 "Unfortunately, as George Leef points out in today’s Pope Center feature, the Supreme Court’s decision in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) effectively precluded employers from basing hiring decisions on aptitude test results."
We can thank the Supreme Court
  "The justices ignored the legislative history and gave deference to the federal agency charged with enforcing the law, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)."
 Clueless legislators pass a law blueprinting some new track for society. The executive writes the rules to build the track. They both cheer how great they are for doing so and painting a big sign "PULL" on the ground throw. The judicial stares at the switch, looks good to me. No One looks at where the new track goes.


Sunday, January 11, 2015

Online Wandering

 I like my e-walkabouts even if they are mostly a distraction.
and grandma the poisoner
"At first, my mother was the only one who’d refuse to eat Grandma’s food, and I thought she was being paranoid. Then I started noticing that every time I went to Grandma’s, I’d pass out on the couch or on the train on the way back to the city. When I stopped eating Grandma’s food, my brother thought I was paranoid. But I stopped passing out, and pretty soon he stopped eating Grandma’s food too."
 Curiosity leads me to these thing, indirectly. The "why, what am I reading" moment hasn't gone. A link from Maggie's Farm lead me to pallets.
 "There are approximately two billion wooden shipping pallets in the United States. They are in the holds of tractor-trailers, transporting Honey Nut Cheerios and oysters and penicillin and just about any other product you can think of: sweaters, copper wire, lab mice, and so on."
Curiosity of the industrial, especially of the ubiquitous type.  The original article's site I didn't find of much interest. A little back track to Marginal Revolution.

 The advice to not get lost in the encyclopedias from an early library lesson floats by. The internet move faster than a book and I'm not trying to finish a research paper, and the advice is ignored once more. The other link on the  page is best long reads of the year. And we're clicking.