Publicani

excerpt from Charles Krauthammer

Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However — life is a vale of howevers — suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak, and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like three-to-one against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health-care bills.

USA TODAY today compared federal pay with private industry pay. Two major conclusion:
1. The typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private-sector worker.
2. The federal worker get more than 4 times in benefits ($40,785) than private worker ($9,882).

One thing is missing from this analysis – job security. The federal worker has his job more secured on at least three levels:
1. he is almost never fired,
2. his department will almost never be closed,
3. his employer will never goes out of business.

The free market values job security. Tenured professors are getting probably a half of what they would get if they worked in private industry but they don’t want to switch to private sector mainly because of the job security.

So the true discrepancy is much higher.

How strongly will you work to:
1. end affirmative actions?
2. end federal income tax?
3. close our borders?
What do you want to do with illegal immigrants?
4. close our military bases in other countries?
5. bring our troops home?
6. phase out federal government entitlement program?
7. end minimum wage laws?
8. abolish election finance laws?
9. encourage homeschooling and private schools?
10. reduce the size of the government by two/thirds?

Written by a 25-year-old named Pia Varma.
From http://www.barbedwirebiker.com/board/index.php?/topic/49235-america-betrayed/

The fault, dear Americans, is not in our stars but in ourselves!

OK, I’ll admit it. I didn’t pay much attention in high school English class. Julius Caesar? Yawn! To be honest, didn’t really get it. I thought that Caesar was the good guy and Cassius and Brutus, the two men who led the plot to kill him, were the bad guys. But it was the ’90s, the Cold War was over and I had prom to think about. To snap up a line from Shakespeare’s play, it was all Greek to me!

Flash forward several years to our new post-9/1 1 America. We are fighting two wars, a global battle against terrorism, low interest rates and cheap money have caused a credit crisis of gargantuan proportions, the Treasury has become a free-for-all, the welfare state is growing quicker than you can say Nancy Pelosi, the government is becoming more powerful and corrupt, rampant inflation is imminent, and corporate-cronyism has replaced the free markets.

Maybe it’s time for us all to re-read history.

You see, many, many years before there was the United States of America, there was a Republic called Rome. Actually, I never realized that “Ancient Rome” as we’ve come to know it existed in three phases that spanned the course of almost a thousand years. It was founded sometime between 758 and 728 B.C. and existed as a monarchy for over two centuries. It then became a democratic Republic, which lasted for 460 years, and finally transitioned to an empire for the final 200 or so years. [Read more →]

Many people are confused and misled by widely accepted wrong definitions and notions of capitalism. Check this latest example, the New York Times Sunday Book Review on Ayn Rand:

But Cerf offered Rand an alternative: if she gave up 7 cents per copy in royalties, she could have the extra paper needed to print Galt’s oration. That she agreed is a sign of the great contradiction that haunts her writing and especially her life. Politically, Rand was committed to the idea that capitalism is the best form of social organization invented or conceivable.

Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done.

So, what do you think capitalism is? Making a buck? Greed is good? Dog eats dog?

The following generally accepted definition, displayed even in Wiki, is equally misleading:

Capitalism is an economic and social system in which capital, the non-labor factors of production also known as the means of production, is privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in markets; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor.

Are you ready for the definition of capitalism? Want to think a little more?
Here it is: [Read more →]

Genius is being able to divide a big project into small parts.

We have a few weeks before Congress will pass a healthcare bill. This is the time to take a fresh look at the healthcare industry, and discuss possible solutions to the problems it has.

Washington politicians are telling us that the status-quo is not an option, that it’s time for a change, and we should speak if we have a proposal to improve the healthcare. So here it is. This proposal is not as radical as the bill proposed in the Congress, but it’s the only proposal I am aware of that when implemented, will really reduce the price, will really increase the choice and the competition, will really be deficit neutral, will really provide free or almost free cover for all uninsured and all people with preexisting conditions, and will really not raise a penny in taxes on anybody.
[Read more →]

Today, I received this email from andri.manager@gmail.com:

What is incometax?
Would you consider giving me a hand or at least some advice based on your experience? Any help appreciated.
Thanks. Warmest Regards, Tim

It looked weird. One tip off that it is likely not a real person is that he signs a different name (Tim) than is on the email address (Andri), and his email address also includes an apparent title (Manager), which is odd.

So I asked a few of my friends what it could be. They told me it was an email from an IRS agent. The point is to entrap me into giving the agent provocateur advice not to pay income tax, which after a quick search I understood to be a criminal offense. [Read more →]

Architects make a case that 9/11 buildings were not destroyed by fire but were professionally demolished.