Even in India, Government's Main Function is to Choke the Economy

Gurgaon is a thriving piece of India, despite having absolutely no government services. Those who constantly agitate for descriptions of how things get done if government doesn't step in to provide water, policing, and to take money from the productive and give it to beggars, can learn a lot from Gurgaon.

Amplify’d from www.insideronline.org

India has stumbled onto the secret to economic growth, reports the New York Times: In 1979, the state of Haryana created Gurgaon by dividing a longstanding political district on the outskirts of New Delhi. One half would revolve around the city of Faridabad, which had an active municipal government, direct rail access to the capital, fertile farmland and a strong industrial base. The other half, Gurgaon, had rocky soil, no local government, no railway link and almost no industrial base. As an economic competition, it seemed an unfair fight. And it has been: Gurgaon has won, easily. Faridabad has struggled to catch India’s modernization wave, while Gurgaon’s disadvantages turned out to be advantages, none more important, initially, than the absence of a districtwide government, which meant less red tape capable of choking development. Read more at www.insideronline.org

 

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It's Palin Season!

Hey Democratic Media Complex, we know what you're doing.



"Be vewwy quiet. We aww hunting Pay-wins."



h/t: Stix

Amplify’d from www.gocomics.com

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Class and Common Sense

Some English fellow calling himself "lenin" writes at his eponymous blog on many matters that lend their selves to Marxist proselytizing. Recently he attacked the idea that optimism about economic mobility was a common sense conclusion, favoring the idea that there was no economic mobility because class barriers were too strong. Being a Marxist-Leninist, "lenin" advocates empowering the government to protect individuals against these class barriers. The problem is summarized in this quote.

The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.

The Irish Potato Famine came about because of the same potato blight that ten years previously had killed off the potato crop in the USA, and that had spent the previous several years killing off the potato crops in Europe. But the reason it brought about a famine that killed off the Irish, despite all the corn and cattle that were raised in Ireland being exported to feed England, was government. The conquering English government had passed laws preventing Irish Catholics from owning or leasing land during the 16th and 17th centuries, and only restored some ability to lease land in the 18th century while leaving the title to Irish lands in English hands. Irish lived in such government created poverty that they could only survive on the potato, which was the only crop that could feed a family on one or two acres of farming land. If the potato failed, then the Irish had no way to feed themselves and died. All the wealth of the country was being exported to England by the order of the English government.



The point is that the English government oppressed the Irish and created the potato famine. Likewise, the Ukrainian famines of the 1920s and 1930s that killed off 20% of the populace were created by the Russian government of Lenin and Stalin. The permanent famine in North Korea is created by the North Korean government. Chinese and other communist famines of the 20th century, including the famine created by the communist Ethiopian government of the 1980s, were all the result of government oppression.



In ancient times, it was the actions of kings plundering their peoples that always led to famine and revolt. It has always been so. Governments oppress the people. That is their function. The only government that does not oppress is one that is prevented by the actions of the people from oppressing them, and that requires starving the government and taking away all the powers it has.



This is what "lenin" ignores. Government does not get rid of oppression or class barriers. Government creates them. What are class barriers but measures of how close people sit to governmental power? The ultimate high class person is the king, followed by his court, other nobles, and preferred tradespeople with royal monopolies to engage in this or that type of commerce. Free men are below that, and government owned servants and slaves below them.



So if the government's actions create these classes, how should we ever expect the government to create a classless society? The answer is we cannot. As it is in the government's structural interest to create class boundaries, the only way to prevent the creation of class boundaries is to starve government of power. Given that "lenin's" solution to class barriers is impracticable, let us consider the question of economic mobility.



Is he right that it is impossible for individuals to raise themselves by their bootstraps from poverty to success? Does it require assistance from people who help voluntarily, or does it require government to clear the way? Clearly it is possible for people to lift themselves up from poverty by their own bootstraps. We all know of people who have done it. There is no question that it is possible. Is it easy? No. How can it be made easier? Get help from friends and family. That has worked for many immigrants to the US who arrived with nothing and own hotels, convenience stores, restaurants and other thriving businesses within a generation. Several families from India or Thailand or Vietnam or Korea would pool their money and invest in the best businessman, who would start a successful business and pay back his investors, and they would follow either individually or in new agreements.



At the end it boils down to optimism versus pessimism. Which are you: A glass half full or a glass half empty person? If you are an optimist, you're a capitalist. If you believe you are doomed to oppression and need the help of government, which has never voluntarily freed a people from slavery but has created plenty of slaves, and which oppresses by its very nature, then you are a marxist, socialist, communist, fascist, royalist, or some other kind of believer in big government.



As for me, I believe in individuals and capitalism. It creates freedom and wealth. Big government, on the other hand, oppresses individuals and creates equal misery for all. Pick your side wisely.

Amplify’d from leninology.blogspot.com

Over the last dozen or so years, there has been a substantial rise in inegalitarian political attitudes, a drop in support for redistribution and, confluently, a more modest but real drop in the number of people who think of themselves as being 'working class'. It is axiomatic that public attitudes are complex, with clusters of seemingly contradictory attitudes expressed on the same subject. The most recent social attitudes survey (British Social Attitudes, 27th report) confirms this with its mixed bag of results giving socialists reasons to cheer and mourn. But this is banal, what we would expect. The question is in what overall direction does the balance of these composite attitudes tend; in what direction is the trend over time? The authors of the survey find that on such matters as welfare, poverty and wealth redistribution the public has shifted to the right and ascribe this to New Labour's tenure in office. Most interesting for my purposes, though, are the findings on the 'race to the top'. These findings disclose a set of attitudes which in the relevant ideological struggles would tend to favour the right. They find that most people think of themselves as upwardly mobile, and believe that 'meritocratic' factors such as "hard work" are the most decisive in determining one's success (as compared with 'ascriptive' factors such as class, or race). When you consider that this is not merely debatable but absurd, that hard work is very far from being a more important factor in success than class background (or race, gender, etc), it becomes apparent just how much ideological ground work has had to be done to construct this 'common sense' worldview, and how much the constituents of this 'common sense' had to compete with and displace every day experience. Read more at leninology.blogspot.com

 

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A picture is worth a thousand words

How many thousands of words are these pictures of Bibi Netanyahu and Barack Hussein Obama worth?

Amplify’d from therealrevo.com

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Pity Poor Jane Mecom

Sometimes it is interesting to think like a socialist liberal. Let me join in the fun Jill Lepore had with her nonsensical op-ed in the New York Times,. She had her fun setting fire to a field full of strawmen. It's time to join in, and add a modest proposal of my own.



Here goes...



Poor Jane Mecom. Too bad that half of her big brother Ben Franklin's brains and drive and profits couldn't have been redistributed to his sister so she wouldn't have lived in such misery. Of course, Ben would have suffered and never been able to become the father of the Revolution. Hi wouldn't have thought of the kite-flying experiment. Nor would Poor Richard's Almanac have survived to a second printing after the profits from the first were seized and given to his sister, instead of being invested in a larger second run. Maybe the US would still be a province of England to this day, and we'd all play cricket and throw darts in the pub, after having tea and crumpets at half three. And we would have a king. Maybe even a prince born in the English colony of Kenya. But if the US had remained a provincial backwater and the internal combustion engine never became a commercial product, well all those advances in human prosperity would be worth losing if only Jane Mecom hadn't been subject to such suffering.



As for those other people whose lives were saved by American advances in science, prosperity and wealth... Screw em.



In fact screw every energetic person who wants to be free and pursue happiness instead of having their earnings and abilities leveled with those who are lazy, stupid, and/or unlucky.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Poor Jane’s Almanac

Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all. Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not. At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other’s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. “Nothing but troble can you her from me,” she warned. It’s extraordinary that she could write at all. “I have such a Poor Fackulty at making Leters,” she confessed. He would have none of it. “Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing?” he teased. “Perhaps it is rather fishing for commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women.” He was, sadly, right. She had one child after another; her husband, a saddler named Edward Mecom, grew ill, and may have lost his mind, as, most certainly, did two of her sons. She struggled, and failed, to keep them out of debtors’ prison, the almshouse, asylums. She took in boarders; she sewed bonnets. She had not a moment’s rest. And still, she thirsted for knowledge. “I Read as much as I Dare,” she confided to her brother. She once asked him for a copy of “all the Political pieces” he had ever written. “I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails,” he joked. He sent her what he could; she read it all. But there was no way out. They left very different paper trails. He wrote the story of his life, stirring and wry — the most important autobiography ever written. She wrote 14 pages of what she called her “Book of Ages.” It isn’t an autobiography; it is, instead, a litany of grief, a history, in brief, of a life lived rags to rags. It begins: “Josiah Mecom their first Born on Wednesday June the 4: 1729 and Died May the 18-1730.” Each page records another heartbreak. “Died my Dear & Beloved Daughter Polly Mecom,” she wrote one dreadful day, adding, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away oh may I never be so Rebelious as to Refuse Acquesing & saying from my hart Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” Jane Mecom had 12 children; she buried 11. And then, she put down her pen. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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D or R: Who cheats on taxes more?

The Daily Beast asks if the old saw is true that if a Republican cheats it's in the boardroom, while if a Democrat cheats it's in the bedroom.

Amplify’d from www.thedailybeast.com

Since Tax Day will be the talk of the weekend, The Daily Beast scoured hundreds of news reports going back to the 1990s to find which political party can claim the most tax offenders. We came up with a list of 25 politicians who have been embroiled in tax scandals over the past two decades.

The verdict? Turns out Republicans have the bigger names—Jack Abramoff, Randy “Duke” Cunningham—but Democrats have the most tax scandals by a margin of 18 to 7.

The offenses encompass a spectrum of cases and officials—an indication that no public official or office is immune. There’s Jerry Fowler, former elections commissioner of Louisiana, who funneled state dollars toward a voting machine company in which he had an interest. Bill Campbell, former mayor of Atlanta, who knowingly owed the IRS more than $60,000. And former U.S. treasurer Catalina Villalpando, whose signature was on U.S. currency from 1989 to 1993—and owed the IRS more than $45,000.

Republicans and Tea Partiers tend to shout the loudest when it comes to tax reform, and they’re also the most law abiding—when it comes to paying their taxes, anyway. Read more at www.thedailybeast.com

 

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False Flag KKK Posters in Chico

The Tea Party being a grassroots movement rather than an organized reelection campaign, it's quite possible for members to have mutually contradictory aims. But the constant accusations of racism from the Democratic Party and its comrades in the national media are so ridiculous they have reached the level of parody. It is not predictable that no matter what a conservative or tea partier says the vast left wing conspiracy will claim there was a hidden racist agenda behind it. Everything is blamed on racism.



And of course the greatest irony of all is that the KKK was the Democratic Party's partisan terrorist organization, formed to oppress Republicans and blacks by means of violence and terror. To use the KKK as an attack against Republicans is a tremendously a-historical falsehood and irony. It insults the intelligence of every observer.

Amplify’d from www.krcrtv.com

The Chico Tea Party Patriots are speaking out after an offensive flyer was distributed Thursday about the group’s rally on Monday claiming to be from the tea party. Thousands of posters were stuck up around butte county depicting the Klu Klux Klan symbol, a burning cross, and the words "Help us take our country back from the Kenyan" referring to President Obama.

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Who should decide the health care I get?

Should an insurance company decide what it can afford to give me?



Should a government appointed and paid panel of experts decide what they can afford to give me?



Or, and maybe this is too radical to be acceptable to Democrats, should I decide in consultation with my doctor what I want, need, and can afford?

Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com

In a blog post on the president’s speech yesterday, Paul Krugman offers a great example of how some on the left think about health-care costs:

And when people start screaming about death panels again, remember: you can always buy whatever health care you want; the question is what taxpayers should pay for. And compare this with a voucher system, in which you have insurance company executives, rather than health-care professionals, deciding which care won’t be paid for.

The ideal, then, is technocratic management where experts who “actually know about health care and health costs” are the ones who say yes and no. And the alternative is understood to be insurance companies deciding what will be paid for.

As Krugman implies, someone must make a decision about “which care won’t be paid for.” Shouldn’t that someone be the patient and his family rather than Krugman’s panel of experts? Read more at www.nationalreview.com

 

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Surprise: Governments waste lots of $$$

After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP opened up the checkbook and started writing checks to local governments for "cleanup" and other associated costs. Is anybody at all surprised that these governments wasted the money on corruption and things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the oil spill? I can't imagine even the most intellectually dishonest argument from a professionally dishonest arguer, say a lawyer, a sociologist, or a professor of semiotics, that could justify this.



Except, naturally, that it seems to be the mission and the justification of government to waste money this year in order to justify raising taxes so government can waste even more money next year. If you have ever worked for a government agency you know exactly what I'm talking about. It happens every year in every agency of every government everywhere: Intentional waste in order to protect next year's budget.

Amplify’d from www.theblaze.com

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles and gear – much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought a dozen SUVS. A parish president in Louisiana got herself a top-of-the-line iPad, her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.

Florida’s tourism agency sent chunks of a $32 million BP grant as far away as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state’s east coast, which never saw oil from the disaster.

Some officials also lavished campaign donors and others with lucrative contracts. A Florida county commissioner’s girlfriend, for instance, opened up a public relations firm a few weeks after the spill and soon landed more than $14,000 of the tiny county’s $236,000 cut of BP cash for a month’s work. Read more at www.theblaze.com

 

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Dreams of my President

It turns out that not only do we all dream of being President. What would we do? Who would we meet? Would we try to enrich ourselves or serve our nation? But our President dreams of being us: anonymous, normal, ordinary citizens who just want to live our lives free of the distractions from Washington DC.



What do you think? Should Obama get his wish and be an ordinary, anonymous citizen and really good looking guy again? There is an easy way to make it happen, Mr. President.

Amplify’d from www.dispatch.com

"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he said at the meeting in the White House. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can't take a walk." He says he enjoys golf but is not the fanatic that some have portrayed. "It's the only excuse I have to get outside for four hours at a stretch," he said. His impossible dream: "I just want to go through Central Park (in New York) and watch folks passing by ... spend the day watching people. I miss that." Read more at www.dispatch.com

 

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