One of the loudest battle cries of the modern Republican is Get The Government Out of People's Lives. The logic behind this motto is that over several decades -- some would say as far back as the Woodrow Wilson administration, but in any case, at least as far back as FDR's tenure -- that government has taken it upon itself to "do things" that government, strictly speaking, has no Constitutional Right to do.
Typically, this slogan is applied to specific areas of American Life, like the Social Welfare patchwork, the regulation of commerce and Environmental regulations, that are often onerous, nonsensical, contradictory, and sometimes just plain dumb. I happen to agree with much of this sentiment, but for the purposes of this screed, it will not be necessary to talk about the Cradle-to-grave aspirations of some sectors of Government at all levels. That's for another conversation.
What we're talking about today is the questionable level of government interference in something as simple a putting a new goddamned storm door on your house.
Showing posts with label Taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taxes. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
25 Things The Next Republican President Must Do...
And when I say "must do", I really mean must. Like before anything else. Ten seconds after taking the oath of office and ensuring that the Obama's haven't stolen the White House silverware.
This list assumes two things:
a) Mitt Romney defeats Barack Odouchebag in November, and
b) The GOP retains it's majority in the House, and gets one in the Senate
Otherwise, this is all academic.
So, here's my list of the the Top 25 Things The Next Republican President Must Do (in no particular order):
This list assumes two things:
a) Mitt Romney defeats Barack Odouchebag in November, and
b) The GOP retains it's majority in the House, and gets one in the Senate
Otherwise, this is all academic.
So, here's my list of the the Top 25 Things The Next Republican President Must Do (in no particular order):
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Now You Know Why that Stimulus Bill Didn't Work...
...because the money is going to China.
Rhode Island Wind Farm will use turbines Made in China, paid for by Stimulus Funds.
Really? I mean, Rhode Island is so small you could probably power the entire state with half a dozen hamsters running in wheels attached to an Our-Gang-style, jury-rigged generator. And who knew they had sewage systems in Rhode Island? I thought it was just Massachusetts' parking lot.
This story is problematic -- and typical of government 'solutions' to any problem, because:
a) Green Energy sources, especially windmills, don't work as they are dependant upon a fuel which is largely unpredictable or expensive to create or capture, in this case, the Wind. Wind power is not practical as a primary power source, and in addition it kills off birds in great numbers (birds being too stupid to avoid flying into whirling turbine blades, or to avoid falling out of nests built on the towers), which sorta-kinda defeats it's supposed ecological benefits.
b) I wonder what Jeff Immelt over at GE thinks about his asshole-buddy relationship with the Obama Administration now? I thought we made wind turbines here in America, unless the American brand -- heavily subsidized by tax dollars -- is still too damned expensive (probably because of Union Wage scales) to be bought by Americans. I reckon Jeff figured that having paid enough of his shareholder's money to get into Obama's good graces,and having his broadcast arms (NBC and (P)MSNBC) practically get Obama elected without doing as much as a single investigative piece on him, that GE was entitled to every dollar the government intends to waste.
Sometimes, Jeffy, when you lie down with -- and kiss the asses of -- dogs, you wake up with fleas...and a really bad taste in your mouth.
c) EnvironMENTALism is simply Socialism in better packaging. Not only are we now implementing a regime of 'renewable energy' which is part of a grander scheme of redistributing wealth all over the planet at our expense, we're paying Communists to help us to do it.
d) If Rhode Island needed three windmills -- to pump shit through a pipe -- why didn't the taxpayers of that state just pay for it themselves? Maybe because that would have meant the state couldn't spend that money on bi-lingual education or funding abortions. Priorities, and all that.
EnvironMENTALism is the New Socialism; it's basic aim is to arrest the technical development of the Industrialized World (by restricting it's use of energy and by pouring billions of dollars into largely-useless and wasteful initiatives) which will allow the Third World -- largely exempt from the Carbon Control Scheme -- to 'catch up', thus bringing about Socialism in effect. It operates by pulling one society down, while allowing another to make incremental-and-unregulated surges upwards, and so, artificially aims to 'equal' everyone out without having to toss a violent revolution to achieve any of it. Of course, all this really means is that Western economies, through Green Energy initiatives, Carbon Control regimes, international treaties and U.N. Mandates, will be economically hamstrung until everyone in Katmandu, New Guinea or the Congo, can afford an iPad and at least half a meal a day, while the West will have committed Economic and Social suicide under the banner of "saving the environment".
The purpose of Green Energy projects is to basically waste resources that otherwise would have been spent by individual consumers or taxpayers to increase their standards of living and quality of life, and thus, increase the distinctions based on wealth between peoples. Building windmills is fundamentally the same as baking a million loaves of bread -- and then setting them on fire. It's the equivalent of catching a few billion fish and then dumping them back into the sea. Energy is expended, resources are used up, labor is wasted, capital is spent... and no one benefits from it.
Except the Chinese who get paid for the windmills, the politicians who took the bribes to make sure the Chinese got the contract, and the doofus in the Serengetti who, if his standard of living hasn't been raised, as least has the smug satisfaction of knowing that his American counterpart hasn't gotten any richer or more comfortable.
That is, after all, what Socialism is all about: it's all about fear, and guilt, and envy, all wrapped up in a nice,shiny package emblazoned with the words like "Equality!" and "Plenty!", and all it can really guarantee is that there's Plenty of squalor to be Equally distributed. Now that's REAL Equality: we can all starve to death at the same speed.
Why do you think it is that every Socialist regime in history comes with a Secret Police and a system of Gulags, after all?
So, while we'll all be equally miserable, if the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) have their way, we can at least console ourselves with the thought that our initial motive was high-minded...
...and that Rhode Island has a wind-powered sewage treatment plant just at the point in history when indoor plumbing becomes a thing of the past, seeing as how bankrupt and homeless Americans will all soon be living in cardboard boxes in the woods because their government spent their hard-earned tax dollars to give the Chinese jobs at their expense.
Until the Watermelons start complaining that all those people living in the woods are destroying the ecosystem, of course. The government of Rhode Island will probably respond to that next environmental crisis by outsourcing the roundup and transport of it's citizens to the concentration camps to Russia, or something.
It's probably the one service GE doesn't provide, and I hear The Russkies are really good at that sort of thing.
Rhode Island Wind Farm will use turbines Made in China, paid for by Stimulus Funds.
Really? I mean, Rhode Island is so small you could probably power the entire state with half a dozen hamsters running in wheels attached to an Our-Gang-style, jury-rigged generator. And who knew they had sewage systems in Rhode Island? I thought it was just Massachusetts' parking lot.
This story is problematic -- and typical of government 'solutions' to any problem, because:
a) Green Energy sources, especially windmills, don't work as they are dependant upon a fuel which is largely unpredictable or expensive to create or capture, in this case, the Wind. Wind power is not practical as a primary power source, and in addition it kills off birds in great numbers (birds being too stupid to avoid flying into whirling turbine blades, or to avoid falling out of nests built on the towers), which sorta-kinda defeats it's supposed ecological benefits.
b) I wonder what Jeff Immelt over at GE thinks about his asshole-buddy relationship with the Obama Administration now? I thought we made wind turbines here in America, unless the American brand -- heavily subsidized by tax dollars -- is still too damned expensive (probably because of Union Wage scales) to be bought by Americans. I reckon Jeff figured that having paid enough of his shareholder's money to get into Obama's good graces,and having his broadcast arms (NBC and (P)MSNBC) practically get Obama elected without doing as much as a single investigative piece on him, that GE was entitled to every dollar the government intends to waste.
Sometimes, Jeffy, when you lie down with -- and kiss the asses of -- dogs, you wake up with fleas...and a really bad taste in your mouth.
c) EnvironMENTALism is simply Socialism in better packaging. Not only are we now implementing a regime of 'renewable energy' which is part of a grander scheme of redistributing wealth all over the planet at our expense, we're paying Communists to help us to do it.
d) If Rhode Island needed three windmills -- to pump shit through a pipe -- why didn't the taxpayers of that state just pay for it themselves? Maybe because that would have meant the state couldn't spend that money on bi-lingual education or funding abortions. Priorities, and all that.
EnvironMENTALism is the New Socialism; it's basic aim is to arrest the technical development of the Industrialized World (by restricting it's use of energy and by pouring billions of dollars into largely-useless and wasteful initiatives) which will allow the Third World -- largely exempt from the Carbon Control Scheme -- to 'catch up', thus bringing about Socialism in effect. It operates by pulling one society down, while allowing another to make incremental-and-unregulated surges upwards, and so, artificially aims to 'equal' everyone out without having to toss a violent revolution to achieve any of it. Of course, all this really means is that Western economies, through Green Energy initiatives, Carbon Control regimes, international treaties and U.N. Mandates, will be economically hamstrung until everyone in Katmandu, New Guinea or the Congo, can afford an iPad and at least half a meal a day, while the West will have committed Economic and Social suicide under the banner of "saving the environment".
The purpose of Green Energy projects is to basically waste resources that otherwise would have been spent by individual consumers or taxpayers to increase their standards of living and quality of life, and thus, increase the distinctions based on wealth between peoples. Building windmills is fundamentally the same as baking a million loaves of bread -- and then setting them on fire. It's the equivalent of catching a few billion fish and then dumping them back into the sea. Energy is expended, resources are used up, labor is wasted, capital is spent... and no one benefits from it.
Except the Chinese who get paid for the windmills, the politicians who took the bribes to make sure the Chinese got the contract, and the doofus in the Serengetti who, if his standard of living hasn't been raised, as least has the smug satisfaction of knowing that his American counterpart hasn't gotten any richer or more comfortable.
That is, after all, what Socialism is all about: it's all about fear, and guilt, and envy, all wrapped up in a nice,shiny package emblazoned with the words like "Equality!" and "Plenty!", and all it can really guarantee is that there's Plenty of squalor to be Equally distributed. Now that's REAL Equality: we can all starve to death at the same speed.
Why do you think it is that every Socialist regime in history comes with a Secret Police and a system of Gulags, after all?
So, while we'll all be equally miserable, if the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) have their way, we can at least console ourselves with the thought that our initial motive was high-minded...
...and that Rhode Island has a wind-powered sewage treatment plant just at the point in history when indoor plumbing becomes a thing of the past, seeing as how bankrupt and homeless Americans will all soon be living in cardboard boxes in the woods because their government spent their hard-earned tax dollars to give the Chinese jobs at their expense.
Until the Watermelons start complaining that all those people living in the woods are destroying the ecosystem, of course. The government of Rhode Island will probably respond to that next environmental crisis by outsourcing the roundup and transport of it's citizens to the concentration camps to Russia, or something.
It's probably the one service GE doesn't provide, and I hear The Russkies are really good at that sort of thing.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Why The Wisconsin Union Battle is Important...
Just read this Micheal Goodwin column in yesterday's New York Post, and try to hold your breakfast down.
The City of New York spends $730 million a year on 7,300 so-called teachers that it doesn't even want? You know what? I can believe it...easily. I don't know which is worse; that staggering sum, or the fact that I have accepted this as most likely as close to the truth as we're ever going to get about what an expensive cesspool unionized public education has become without even thinking twice about it.
$730 million for 7,300 teachers, most incompetent, some criminal, who just can't be fired because the unions have negotiated a Byzantine 'review' process that keeps even the child molesters on the payroll, and collecting benefits, for years. Even if they're sitting in jail.
I was shocked to discover, if Godwin's figures are correct, that the average New York City teacher has received a 43% (cumulative) pay raise since Mayor Pantybunch... sorry, that's Bloomberg... has been in office. And this douchebag is supposed to be a financial genius? That is unconscionable when you stop to consider that in return, he didn't even get the ability to chuck the worst teachers in the system onto the unemployment line.
But I'm certain he's monitoring their salt intake very carefully.
Start with the teacher I met on the subway yesterday -- on her way to some sort of rally to 'support' her educator comrades in Wisconsin -- who was carrying a hand-written sign upon which she had spelled the state's name W-I-N-S-C-O-N-S-I-N. Get that idiot out of the classroom, immediately. How much do you want to bet that she was probably rated in the top 50% of teachers in NYC, too? When I made her aware of her grievous spelling error and asked how she could justify her continued presence in a classroom with baleful spelling skills like that, she told me to "go mind your own fucking business...", and took great pride in telling me she has a Master's Degree -- that's why she deserves everything in Creation, you see -- and what the fuck do I know about anything?
Nice. Just the sort of role model you want for your kids, I'm sure.
For all of those mouth-breathing idiots idling at near-riot in Madison, who just don't seem to get it, here's why my state is broke -- and this is why we taxpayers are pissed. Your governor is just trying to avoid the same disaster. Unfortunately for you doofuses -- and to the great benefit of Wisconsin taxpayers, and then the country as a whole once Walker's victory infuses some backbone into governors nationally-- he's going to succeed.
The City of New York spends $730 million a year on 7,300 so-called teachers that it doesn't even want? You know what? I can believe it...easily. I don't know which is worse; that staggering sum, or the fact that I have accepted this as most likely as close to the truth as we're ever going to get about what an expensive cesspool unionized public education has become without even thinking twice about it.
$730 million for 7,300 teachers, most incompetent, some criminal, who just can't be fired because the unions have negotiated a Byzantine 'review' process that keeps even the child molesters on the payroll, and collecting benefits, for years. Even if they're sitting in jail.
I was shocked to discover, if Godwin's figures are correct, that the average New York City teacher has received a 43% (cumulative) pay raise since Mayor Pantybunch... sorry, that's Bloomberg... has been in office. And this douchebag is supposed to be a financial genius? That is unconscionable when you stop to consider that in return, he didn't even get the ability to chuck the worst teachers in the system onto the unemployment line.
But I'm certain he's monitoring their salt intake very carefully.
Start with the teacher I met on the subway yesterday -- on her way to some sort of rally to 'support' her educator comrades in Wisconsin -- who was carrying a hand-written sign upon which she had spelled the state's name W-I-N-S-C-O-N-S-I-N. Get that idiot out of the classroom, immediately. How much do you want to bet that she was probably rated in the top 50% of teachers in NYC, too? When I made her aware of her grievous spelling error and asked how she could justify her continued presence in a classroom with baleful spelling skills like that, she told me to "go mind your own fucking business...", and took great pride in telling me she has a Master's Degree -- that's why she deserves everything in Creation, you see -- and what the fuck do I know about anything?
Nice. Just the sort of role model you want for your kids, I'm sure.
For all of those mouth-breathing idiots idling at near-riot in Madison, who just don't seem to get it, here's why my state is broke -- and this is why we taxpayers are pissed. Your governor is just trying to avoid the same disaster. Unfortunately for you doofuses -- and to the great benefit of Wisconsin taxpayers, and then the country as a whole once Walker's victory infuses some backbone into governors nationally-- he's going to succeed.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Unions? Who Needs 'Em?
Re: The Wisconsin Teacher's Union. The news is full of reports from the front lines of Madison, so I'm not about to rehash much of what has already been reported and debated in the Press. If you want to really know what's happening in Wisconsin, because the media pretty much lies or reports in a biased fashion about everything, then I suggest you go over to Ann Althouse's blog. She's doing an excellent job in telling you everything you need to know.
Some observations on this entire charade (because despite all the bullshit about Worker's Rights and the 'It's for the children...' nonsense, it is a charade);
a. On the Wisconsin state senators who fled the state to avoid having to vote on a bill that threatens their rice bowl: It seems that democrats love democracy...until they lose. Man up, put your Big Boy Pants on, and take your lumps. There was an election in Wisconsin and the People Have Spoken; they want their state to put it's books in order, and the first part of that process involves renegotiating unsustainable union contracts.
If you really consider yourself to be a Representative of the People, rather than a parasite who preys upon them, you'll go back to work. It is reprehensible that elected officials, charged with the Public Trust, can abandon their posts in a naked parliamentary maneuver designed to protect their sources of campaign cash.
I wonder if these so-called Public Servants are still being paid while on the lam? I wonder if the Governor can order their arrests for dereliction of duty?
b. At the rate we're going, a good number of those Union Slobs are about to lose their jobs, anyway. Unemployment is hovering near 10%, and if you count the people who have stopped looking for work, it's probably closer to 17%. That means that nearly 1-in-5 taxpayers isn't making enough to pay taxes at all. It's those taxes that pay your salaries, Numbnuts! The well is going dry, and when it finally does, you'll get laid off, anyhow. Why not soften the eventual blow, and just agree to do the right thing -- for yourselves -- even if it means giving back a few perks, or making a greater contribution to your own benefit plans?
Oh, right. Sacrifice is something other people are supposed to do.
c. Communism is a bad idea. Always was, always will be. Unions were the initial foothold that communism managed to create in America. If you hadn't noticed -- mostly because you probably can't read, which is why you have a union job in the first place -- the Soviet Union is gone, and the Chinese have all but abandoned ironclad Communism for unbridled Capitalism.
The Labor Union is as anachronistic as spats, hoopskirts, and ox-drawn carts. For organizations that claim to be 'Progressive', it's hard to reconcile that claim with the romantic intellectual attachment to the 1920's, and the serious mental state in which no one has noticed that Times Have Changed, and Things are Different.
The days of the Industrial Robber Barons are gone (unless you happen to be Jeffrey Immelt or Google), and so are the days of the Machine Economy, which still required brute labor and often entailed dangerous, unhealthy and oppressive working conditions. The Unions, it's true, did much to ensure that the horrors of the 20-hour day at the Dark Satanic Mill became a thing of the past, but the economy we live in now bears no resemblance to the one of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th Centuries. People are no longer victimized by their employers they way they were then, and nowadays, in instances where there is an actual beef about some form of victimization, there's 4,000,000 lawyers who will eagerly leap at the opportunity to sue a Fortune 1000 or a State, and rip off their clients, simultaneously.
Worker's Rights are now chiseled in stone, so to speak. Thank you,Labor Unions. Now please kindly leave the stage. You've done your part.
The playing field has changed. Those teachers in Madison are now behaving much like the caricature of the top-hatted, red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist, manning the barricades to protect the privileges gained by stealing from the public and by victimizing others.
d. I think the majority of the Union people in the streets of Madison right now are cowards. What they fear the most is having to actually work for a living and having to compete on an even playing field with the rest of us. I doubt that most could, because their working habits have been formed in the Union Crucible, where actual results mean nothing and where talented individuals are hounded out of the herd in order to maintain the same, lower standards for the greater mass, while struggling to maintain a system of high-pay-high-benefit compensation that can no longer be justified.
I have first-hand knowledge of this due to my (thankfully brief) experience working at the Department of Commerce, where the average, room-temperature IQ public employee seemed the type who's employment prospects before government 'work' probably fell somewhere between Orange Jumpsuit and "Can I Super-size that for you?". As for the efficacy of the Union in 'improving working conditions', I'm reminded of the time when I was contracted to do IT work for the New York Shipping Association (Longshoreman's Union), and was sent to build out an emergency data center in a building in Port Elizabeth (the union muster hall,no less) which was crawling with rats, lousy with asbestos, and full of drunks. The rats were rivalled in numbers only by the empty bourbon bottles (only the cheapest kind, bought with Union Funds, no doubt) scattered about the offices.
e. Teachers, as a rule, are typically drawn from the lowest 20% of any college graduating class. There are statistics all over the place attesting to this fact, go find them if you don't believe me. These are not always the best and the brightest, and the results we've seen produced by our Public Education system more than bear this assertion out. Yes, there are some extremely good and dedicated teachers, but the majority are brain-damaged ticket-punchers who only resorted to an Education Degree when it became painfully clear to them that their dreams of becoming an Archaeologist, The Great American Novelist, Chemical Engineer, or C.P.A. were sadly dashed upon discovering that those endeavors require intelligence and a work ethic.
f. Just in case I haven't said this before; fuck unions. The only thing less-useful than a Union is an Islamic Terrorist, who at least has the virtue of blowing himself to smithereens and so ensuring that his mayhem and stupidity are a one-shot deal.
g. This battle is not about economics (even if economic factors have brought the Madison Protests to the fore), or even of fundamental fairness; it's about maintaining a series of often-outrageous privileges which can no longer be justified, and about the ability of the Unions to buy the politicians who will continue the gravy train.
If the teachers in Madison actually cared about the children, they'd be at work, teaching Billy and Jennie proper condom use, or all the finer points of anal sex, subjects which somehow managed to replace rote mathematics, phonics and American History in the typical Public School curriculum. You can, you know, still work and hold negotiations over your contract at the same time. If you really cared about the children, you wouldn't be putting your interests above theirs.
Multitasking is something Unions don't do, either, it seems.
Instead, what they're doing could, in the strictest terms, be likened to extortion. The fact that there might be a contract that gives them the right to engage in this form of extortion doesn't make it morally right. If anyone ever needed a list of reasons as to why the rest of the planet is kicking our ass economically, and why employers are willing to risk breaking the law and hire illegal immigrants, or flood the State Department with H1-B requests, you need only show up at any mass meeting of Unionized Workers. There you will find, in microcosm, everything that's wrong with the American labor market.
This process being played out in Madison has done us a great public service, however unintentional; it has exposed the naked hypocrisy of the unions, and given us yet one more example of what's wrong with our so-called 'Political Leadership'.
Some observations on this entire charade (because despite all the bullshit about Worker's Rights and the 'It's for the children...' nonsense, it is a charade);
a. On the Wisconsin state senators who fled the state to avoid having to vote on a bill that threatens their rice bowl: It seems that democrats love democracy...until they lose. Man up, put your Big Boy Pants on, and take your lumps. There was an election in Wisconsin and the People Have Spoken; they want their state to put it's books in order, and the first part of that process involves renegotiating unsustainable union contracts.
If you really consider yourself to be a Representative of the People, rather than a parasite who preys upon them, you'll go back to work. It is reprehensible that elected officials, charged with the Public Trust, can abandon their posts in a naked parliamentary maneuver designed to protect their sources of campaign cash.
I wonder if these so-called Public Servants are still being paid while on the lam? I wonder if the Governor can order their arrests for dereliction of duty?
b. At the rate we're going, a good number of those Union Slobs are about to lose their jobs, anyway. Unemployment is hovering near 10%, and if you count the people who have stopped looking for work, it's probably closer to 17%. That means that nearly 1-in-5 taxpayers isn't making enough to pay taxes at all. It's those taxes that pay your salaries, Numbnuts! The well is going dry, and when it finally does, you'll get laid off, anyhow. Why not soften the eventual blow, and just agree to do the right thing -- for yourselves -- even if it means giving back a few perks, or making a greater contribution to your own benefit plans?
Oh, right. Sacrifice is something other people are supposed to do.
c. Communism is a bad idea. Always was, always will be. Unions were the initial foothold that communism managed to create in America. If you hadn't noticed -- mostly because you probably can't read, which is why you have a union job in the first place -- the Soviet Union is gone, and the Chinese have all but abandoned ironclad Communism for unbridled Capitalism.
The Labor Union is as anachronistic as spats, hoopskirts, and ox-drawn carts. For organizations that claim to be 'Progressive', it's hard to reconcile that claim with the romantic intellectual attachment to the 1920's, and the serious mental state in which no one has noticed that Times Have Changed, and Things are Different.
The days of the Industrial Robber Barons are gone (unless you happen to be Jeffrey Immelt or Google), and so are the days of the Machine Economy, which still required brute labor and often entailed dangerous, unhealthy and oppressive working conditions. The Unions, it's true, did much to ensure that the horrors of the 20-hour day at the Dark Satanic Mill became a thing of the past, but the economy we live in now bears no resemblance to the one of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th Centuries. People are no longer victimized by their employers they way they were then, and nowadays, in instances where there is an actual beef about some form of victimization, there's 4,000,000 lawyers who will eagerly leap at the opportunity to sue a Fortune 1000 or a State, and rip off their clients, simultaneously.
Worker's Rights are now chiseled in stone, so to speak. Thank you,Labor Unions. Now please kindly leave the stage. You've done your part.
The playing field has changed. Those teachers in Madison are now behaving much like the caricature of the top-hatted, red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist, manning the barricades to protect the privileges gained by stealing from the public and by victimizing others.
d. I think the majority of the Union people in the streets of Madison right now are cowards. What they fear the most is having to actually work for a living and having to compete on an even playing field with the rest of us. I doubt that most could, because their working habits have been formed in the Union Crucible, where actual results mean nothing and where talented individuals are hounded out of the herd in order to maintain the same, lower standards for the greater mass, while struggling to maintain a system of high-pay-high-benefit compensation that can no longer be justified.
I have first-hand knowledge of this due to my (thankfully brief) experience working at the Department of Commerce, where the average, room-temperature IQ public employee seemed the type who's employment prospects before government 'work' probably fell somewhere between Orange Jumpsuit and "Can I Super-size that for you?". As for the efficacy of the Union in 'improving working conditions', I'm reminded of the time when I was contracted to do IT work for the New York Shipping Association (Longshoreman's Union), and was sent to build out an emergency data center in a building in Port Elizabeth (the union muster hall,no less) which was crawling with rats, lousy with asbestos, and full of drunks. The rats were rivalled in numbers only by the empty bourbon bottles (only the cheapest kind, bought with Union Funds, no doubt) scattered about the offices.
e. Teachers, as a rule, are typically drawn from the lowest 20% of any college graduating class. There are statistics all over the place attesting to this fact, go find them if you don't believe me. These are not always the best and the brightest, and the results we've seen produced by our Public Education system more than bear this assertion out. Yes, there are some extremely good and dedicated teachers, but the majority are brain-damaged ticket-punchers who only resorted to an Education Degree when it became painfully clear to them that their dreams of becoming an Archaeologist, The Great American Novelist, Chemical Engineer, or C.P.A. were sadly dashed upon discovering that those endeavors require intelligence and a work ethic.
f. Just in case I haven't said this before; fuck unions. The only thing less-useful than a Union is an Islamic Terrorist, who at least has the virtue of blowing himself to smithereens and so ensuring that his mayhem and stupidity are a one-shot deal.
g. This battle is not about economics (even if economic factors have brought the Madison Protests to the fore), or even of fundamental fairness; it's about maintaining a series of often-outrageous privileges which can no longer be justified, and about the ability of the Unions to buy the politicians who will continue the gravy train.
If the teachers in Madison actually cared about the children, they'd be at work, teaching Billy and Jennie proper condom use, or all the finer points of anal sex, subjects which somehow managed to replace rote mathematics, phonics and American History in the typical Public School curriculum. You can, you know, still work and hold negotiations over your contract at the same time. If you really cared about the children, you wouldn't be putting your interests above theirs.
Multitasking is something Unions don't do, either, it seems.
Instead, what they're doing could, in the strictest terms, be likened to extortion. The fact that there might be a contract that gives them the right to engage in this form of extortion doesn't make it morally right. If anyone ever needed a list of reasons as to why the rest of the planet is kicking our ass economically, and why employers are willing to risk breaking the law and hire illegal immigrants, or flood the State Department with H1-B requests, you need only show up at any mass meeting of Unionized Workers. There you will find, in microcosm, everything that's wrong with the American labor market.
This process being played out in Madison has done us a great public service, however unintentional; it has exposed the naked hypocrisy of the unions, and given us yet one more example of what's wrong with our so-called 'Political Leadership'.
Friday, January 07, 2011
There's a Reason The Iron Curtain Lasted As Long As It Did....
You can debate the ultimate cause all you want, but my vote for the Number One Reason Why Communism Lasted As Long as It Did in Eastern Europe is...
A large population of brainless simpletons.
There is apparently something very wrong with Romanians.
On the other hand, citizens protesting tax hikes put in place by a wasteful government is something to cheer. I especially like this woman's entrepreneurial spirit:
"This law is very good," said Mihaela Minca. "It means that our magic gifts are recognized and I can open my own practice."
Perhaps if Christine O'Donnell had been the Tea Party candidate for President of Romania, she might have won...
A large population of brainless simpletons.
There is apparently something very wrong with Romanians.
On the other hand, citizens protesting tax hikes put in place by a wasteful government is something to cheer. I especially like this woman's entrepreneurial spirit:
"This law is very good," said Mihaela Minca. "It means that our magic gifts are recognized and I can open my own practice."
Perhaps if Christine O'Donnell had been the Tea Party candidate for President of Romania, she might have won...
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Scene from A Supermarket...
This morning I had reason to do some food shopping at a local ShopRite store. Normally, I don't do the grocery shopping around here, except for the occasional "Ooops! We're all out of X!" kind of shopping, but my Mother is recovering from her knee replacement, and so this duty now falls upon me.
I was armed with a list, and a bad attitude, that left me very little patience for anyone this morning, as this is something I really don't like to do, but hell, I like to eat, too.
So, there I am, looking the douchebag, pushing a shopping cart up and down the isles very carefully following the list (because if I forget something, or get the wrong thing, I have to listen to a symphony of whining and complaining, because I'm a useless retard, you see. Mother doesn't actually come out and say that, but from her demeanor you know she's thinking it. The older she gets, the more aggravating and ungrateful she becomes. Anyways, while I'm re-enacting my Hunter-Gatherer heritage in the modern day, air-conditioned landscape of the supermarket, I caught sight of "Bertha".
Now, I don't know if her name really is "Bertha"; it's just that when I saw this incredibly massive lump of humanity, that's the name that popped into my head for her. She looked like a blob of raw cookie dough on thick, stumpy I-think-you'd-call-them legs. Easily 150 pounds overweight, she had more chins than a Chinese phone book, and she quite possibly might be the only women in the world that could make a cement floor creak. You could hear her thighs rubbing together as she stumped past. I never knew denim could make that kind of sound, or was that heat-resistant. I could have sworn that she might burst into flames from friction at any moment.
Bertha has four children in tow. Two of them, probably 8 or 9 years of age, are the sort one might associate with a Charles Dickens novel; they are dirty, given to outbursts (with especially-foul language for children so young). They are dressed shabbily. The older of the two, a boy, looks the sort who tortures animals for fun, and one day will grow up to be a convicted felon. The second, a girl, appears as if the words "toothpaste" and"dentist" are not to be found in her vocabulary. She has a set of protruding buck teeth that hang over her lower lip, and if you really had to, you could probably open a beer bottle on them.
The two younger children (perhaps 4 or 5 years old), have a hunted appearance. They are sullen, and silent. One is a habitual nose-picker, and the other has the most grotesque birthmark (I should hope it's a birthmark!) that covers the left side of his face from ear to cheekbone. They too are filthy, and appear underfed.
"Bertha", however, is resplendent in that trailer-park-ghetto sort of way; she's got bling. She's got cornrows festooned with multi-colored beads, a gold tooth or two, and has more rings than Saturn. She's also wearing a gold medallion on a chain that reminded me of a hood ornament. The Bluetooth headset hangs from her ear, and she's talking a mile-a-minute, jabbering in the Urban Patois, sprinkled liberally with the word "muthahfuckah". I would say "muthafuckah" and it's variations constituted every third or fourth word in the one side of the conversation that I could hear.
I would see "Bertha" and her herd every few minutes. Perhaps five or six times during my meandering up and down the isles. She's always talking, stopping only occasionally to threaten one of the kids who's misbehaving, or perhaps just to stop for breath. The little kids are riding on the wagon's rails, until she swats them off because, she complains, she "can't push this muthafuckin' cart with your asses hanging all over it." The older boy and girl are breaking packages open as the little brood wanders the market, pilfering food when their...ahem...mother...isn't looking. The smaller boy manages to bring an entire case of apples down when he grabs one from the bottom, spilling them all over the Produce section's floor. He's about to take a bite when he gets slapped across the face. Not because he's stolen something, mind you, but because he's "embarrassed" her in public by making a mess that the store manager might make her pay for.
I run into "Bertha" again at the checkout counter. She is in the next isle. Still talking, still spraying the "muthafuckahs" between short intervals of yelling at her children, who are now into the candy at the register. "Bertha" has $211.00 of groceries. She "pays" for them with Food Stamps, and leaves, while I'm still being "rung up".
My last sight of "Bertha" was in the parking lot, as she drove by in her tricked-out Navigator, complete with what I like to call "Ben-Hur hubcaps"; those chrome monstrosities that have a sort of spiked hub protruding from them, and of course, the counter-rotating food-processor-like blades on the interior of the wheel. I can see the seat-back DVD players...plural. The last sight I get of them as they leave is the nose-picker, his face plastered against the glass of the rear passenger window, and he's got that Thousand Yard Stare that one normally associates with an infantryman in combat.
It struck me, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time this year, that "Bertha" is probably what democrats call "working poor". People who use food stamps, and utilize more social services than one might imagine actually exist, but who somehow manage to afford cellphones, Navigators with DVD players, and enough bling to finance a small country. They're so "poor" that they're grossly obese, their distended bellies the result of too much KFC instead of the ravages of malnutrition.
We have the first generation of "poor" on Planet Earth who are overfed, and suffering from diabetes and food allergies, I'll bet.
The Welfare System in this country no longer exists to help people in need, or to provide for people who cannot do so for themselves; it now subsidizes a lifestyle in which it is no longer necessary to even make an attempt to provide for yourself, and the neglected children you've borne, while you go out and somehow (probably illegally) obtain the means to load yourself up with gold and luxury automobiles.
"Poverty" no longer means deprivation; it's only a relative comparison of obvious material wealth. The "Rich" and the "Poor" all have the same things: automobiles, cellphones, fattening food, cable television, air conditioning. It's just that the "Poor" don't have to work for it, and the "Rich" are compelled to provide it for them by the State.
The problem with all this "Tax Cut" talk in Washington these days isn't that the Rich "have too much". It's that the "Poor" can't be maintained in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, complete with SUV's and free food, if the government can't take (steal) enough money away from those who earn it.
Just don't expect that simple truth to be told during the "debate" over the "Bush Tax Cuts", which itself is a serious -- and deliberate -- misnomer.
I was armed with a list, and a bad attitude, that left me very little patience for anyone this morning, as this is something I really don't like to do, but hell, I like to eat, too.
So, there I am, looking the douchebag, pushing a shopping cart up and down the isles very carefully following the list (because if I forget something, or get the wrong thing, I have to listen to a symphony of whining and complaining, because I'm a useless retard, you see. Mother doesn't actually come out and say that, but from her demeanor you know she's thinking it. The older she gets, the more aggravating and ungrateful she becomes. Anyways, while I'm re-enacting my Hunter-Gatherer heritage in the modern day, air-conditioned landscape of the supermarket, I caught sight of "Bertha".
Now, I don't know if her name really is "Bertha"; it's just that when I saw this incredibly massive lump of humanity, that's the name that popped into my head for her. She looked like a blob of raw cookie dough on thick, stumpy I-think-you'd-call-them legs. Easily 150 pounds overweight, she had more chins than a Chinese phone book, and she quite possibly might be the only women in the world that could make a cement floor creak. You could hear her thighs rubbing together as she stumped past. I never knew denim could make that kind of sound, or was that heat-resistant. I could have sworn that she might burst into flames from friction at any moment.
Bertha has four children in tow. Two of them, probably 8 or 9 years of age, are the sort one might associate with a Charles Dickens novel; they are dirty, given to outbursts (with especially-foul language for children so young). They are dressed shabbily. The older of the two, a boy, looks the sort who tortures animals for fun, and one day will grow up to be a convicted felon. The second, a girl, appears as if the words "toothpaste" and"dentist" are not to be found in her vocabulary. She has a set of protruding buck teeth that hang over her lower lip, and if you really had to, you could probably open a beer bottle on them.
The two younger children (perhaps 4 or 5 years old), have a hunted appearance. They are sullen, and silent. One is a habitual nose-picker, and the other has the most grotesque birthmark (I should hope it's a birthmark!) that covers the left side of his face from ear to cheekbone. They too are filthy, and appear underfed.
"Bertha", however, is resplendent in that trailer-park-ghetto sort of way; she's got bling. She's got cornrows festooned with multi-colored beads, a gold tooth or two, and has more rings than Saturn. She's also wearing a gold medallion on a chain that reminded me of a hood ornament. The Bluetooth headset hangs from her ear, and she's talking a mile-a-minute, jabbering in the Urban Patois, sprinkled liberally with the word "muthahfuckah". I would say "muthafuckah" and it's variations constituted every third or fourth word in the one side of the conversation that I could hear.
I would see "Bertha" and her herd every few minutes. Perhaps five or six times during my meandering up and down the isles. She's always talking, stopping only occasionally to threaten one of the kids who's misbehaving, or perhaps just to stop for breath. The little kids are riding on the wagon's rails, until she swats them off because, she complains, she "can't push this muthafuckin' cart with your asses hanging all over it." The older boy and girl are breaking packages open as the little brood wanders the market, pilfering food when their...ahem...mother...isn't looking. The smaller boy manages to bring an entire case of apples down when he grabs one from the bottom, spilling them all over the Produce section's floor. He's about to take a bite when he gets slapped across the face. Not because he's stolen something, mind you, but because he's "embarrassed" her in public by making a mess that the store manager might make her pay for.
I run into "Bertha" again at the checkout counter. She is in the next isle. Still talking, still spraying the "muthafuckahs" between short intervals of yelling at her children, who are now into the candy at the register. "Bertha" has $211.00 of groceries. She "pays" for them with Food Stamps, and leaves, while I'm still being "rung up".
My last sight of "Bertha" was in the parking lot, as she drove by in her tricked-out Navigator, complete with what I like to call "Ben-Hur hubcaps"; those chrome monstrosities that have a sort of spiked hub protruding from them, and of course, the counter-rotating food-processor-like blades on the interior of the wheel. I can see the seat-back DVD players...plural. The last sight I get of them as they leave is the nose-picker, his face plastered against the glass of the rear passenger window, and he's got that Thousand Yard Stare that one normally associates with an infantryman in combat.
It struck me, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time this year, that "Bertha" is probably what democrats call "working poor". People who use food stamps, and utilize more social services than one might imagine actually exist, but who somehow manage to afford cellphones, Navigators with DVD players, and enough bling to finance a small country. They're so "poor" that they're grossly obese, their distended bellies the result of too much KFC instead of the ravages of malnutrition.
We have the first generation of "poor" on Planet Earth who are overfed, and suffering from diabetes and food allergies, I'll bet.
The Welfare System in this country no longer exists to help people in need, or to provide for people who cannot do so for themselves; it now subsidizes a lifestyle in which it is no longer necessary to even make an attempt to provide for yourself, and the neglected children you've borne, while you go out and somehow (probably illegally) obtain the means to load yourself up with gold and luxury automobiles.
"Poverty" no longer means deprivation; it's only a relative comparison of obvious material wealth. The "Rich" and the "Poor" all have the same things: automobiles, cellphones, fattening food, cable television, air conditioning. It's just that the "Poor" don't have to work for it, and the "Rich" are compelled to provide it for them by the State.
The problem with all this "Tax Cut" talk in Washington these days isn't that the Rich "have too much". It's that the "Poor" can't be maintained in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, complete with SUV's and free food, if the government can't take (steal) enough money away from those who earn it.
Just don't expect that simple truth to be told during the "debate" over the "Bush Tax Cuts", which itself is a serious -- and deliberate -- misnomer.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Dear New York State Legislature: Don't You Feel Stupid Now?
When you tax a commodity to the sky, don't be surprised when the trade in that commodity goes elsewhere, and you lose the tax revenue you had hoped to get. Let this be a lesson to you in basic economics. Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other states will now benefit and collect their much-lower, and more-reasonable cigarette taxes, as New Yorkers looking to save a buck on smokes start looking out of state to buy them. Organized crime is probably already on this like flies on shit, and making a fortune -- none of which you will ever see.
Also, don't be surprised when price gouging occurs because no one is paying attention, or because pricing rules are contradictory or misunderstood: in my neighborhood, a pack of Marlboro Lights is now selling from anywhere between $11.50 and $14.00, depending which store you go into.
You do realize I could buy three six-packs of barely-drinkable-piss-water for that, get behind the wheel and kill more people in 30 seconds than my second-hand smoke has in the last 27 years?
Bunch of assholes in Albany. You should all be shot, and as an added bonus, we can fix it so that your final cigarette before the firing squad will have been purchased in Vermont.
Also, don't be surprised when price gouging occurs because no one is paying attention, or because pricing rules are contradictory or misunderstood: in my neighborhood, a pack of Marlboro Lights is now selling from anywhere between $11.50 and $14.00, depending which store you go into.
You do realize I could buy three six-packs of barely-drinkable-piss-water for that, get behind the wheel and kill more people in 30 seconds than my second-hand smoke has in the last 27 years?
Bunch of assholes in Albany. You should all be shot, and as an added bonus, we can fix it so that your final cigarette before the firing squad will have been purchased in Vermont.
Friday, July 09, 2010
How Would You Fix It? Part I
Here are some suggestions about how to correct the biggest problems our country faces today. They will have the virtues of being direct and unencumbered by either sensitivity, or Political Correctness. Sensitivity is for brain-addled Libtards, and Political Correctness is for those unable to grasp verifiable, and often ugly, truths because of the psychic pain and guilt it inflicts upon their fragile little metrosexual psyches. Truth often hurts -- it should. Without a foundation of truth, no problem can ever be identified, let alone solved.
This is but the first installment. I plan to have three installments in the series.
I will get an inbox full of venom, I'm certain, because my solutions spare no one's feelings. In fact, they don't even take anyone's feelings into account. Actually, so far as I'm concerned, everytime I get a nasty e-mail from a panty-bunched, bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, metrosexual Citizen of the World (i.e. Libtard), I will reward myself with a nice Milky Way Bar, if only because I would regard the epithets of hater, homophobe, xenophobe, racist, sexist, anti-this-that-and-the-other as great big shiny badges of affirmation, and I won't be able to find anyone able to produce the medals I'll deserve to have pinned to my chest for it all fast enough.
None of what I advocate will ever be done, because it just makes too much sense and goes against the grain of both political parties, in that they would all eliminate the possibility of graft, and put an end to the tired old game of allowing politicians to pontificate and posture without actually having to do anything.
So, here you go. You don't have to agree, but you do have to deal with it. In no particular order;
A) Illegal Immigration: 1. Build a nice, new, open-air prison in the New Mexico desert (where they used to do all the nuclear testing). Ensure that it has no buildings, an inadequate water supply, and just the very barest rudiments of sanitation. Make sure it's in the hottest,most-radioactive portion of the desert you can find, and fence it in with razor wire and landmines. Once there, captured illegal aliens will be kept until they can be "repatriated" to their country of origin.
2. Place 50,000 troops along the southern border, equipped with packs of snarling, vicious attack dogs trained to leap into action at the first scent of chipotle. Give the troops "shoot-to-kill" orders, so that when the Invaders from the South ignore their three warnings to turn back, you can show them we mean business.
3. Those fortunate few who manage to evade the minefields, dogs, machine-gun nests and snipers by surrendering, or being granted mercy by the Border Patrol and Marines, or just got themselves slightly wounded, will be shipped to that lovely open-air resort in New Mexico I've just mentioned, where they can bake in the heat and prey upon each other under the sight of machine-gun-armed watch towers.
4. The President of the United States (not this one, because he hasn't got any balls) will make a public announcement; if you're in the country illegally, you will have 90 days to see to your personal affairs, and then yo9u can get the hell out of the country. If you don't, we've got a nice vacation in New Mexico planned for you, where you will branded upon the forehead and hands to make it easier for us to identify you again, just in case you decide to try sneak north one more time.
5. Alert all business owners in the US that the fines and penalties for illegally hiring illegal aliens will be trebled. Remind them of the old capitalist axiom that if you can't stay in business without breaking the law, you probably shouldn't be in business --and then put them out of business permanently.
6. Eliminate "Birthright Citizenship" for any child born in an American hospital in cases where at least one parent (to be determined by DNA testing) is NOT a citizen or legal resident.If that qualification cannot be met, ship mother and child to the new Disneyland in New Mexico as a birthday gift, just as soon as that's medically feasible.
7. Tell the President of Mexico to run his own goddamned country, and to keep his tubercular peasantry on his side of the fence. In days past, a mass-migration of the sort that is common on the southern border used to be called "an invasion", and was resisted by military force.
8. The State Department will stop handing out visas, to anyone, like candy. No visa will be approved without an adequate background check on the potential recipient, and if takes a decade to complete it, that's just too bad.
9. Make English the Chief Lingua Franca of the United States. Government at all levels will no longer pay for bi-lingual education. It will no longer print, transmit, distribute or provide any service or form written/conducted in anything but English, unless doing so is necessary to maintain public order and safety, or is deemed to be in the national interest.
10. Set up a $5 billion prize to go to the first asshole who manages to genetically engineer a head of lettuce that can be picked by a machine.
B) War on Terror
1. The recent "disappearance" of 17 Afghans brought to the United States for training is indicative of something our political leadership has failed to grasp. If we assume that those 17 men were considered to be the best-and-the-brightest that Afghanistan had to offer, then the lesson of their desertion is that a) they won't fight for their freedom or country, and b) they have no interest in helping to build a better future for their country, families, or culture. If we're losing in Afghanistan, then this is a remarkably clear reason of why; even the best Afghans don't give a shit -- the rest are simply fighting for their centuries-old right to be wife-beating, animal-molesting, opium-smoking, piss-poor, praying-five-times-a-day douchebags. I suggest a new strategy that I like to call "Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth", and then leave.
2. The sectarian violence in Iraq continues, because a) we're protecting the next generation of Saddam Husseins with American guns, b) Islam is a murderous ideology which preys upon the unaware and defenseless, and since Rumsfeld's "Dead-Enders" couldn't whack the Great Satan's military, they're more than content to whack each other. Every IED, every marketplace bomb, every mortar attack on a city center is training for the various forces in Iraq who are just waiting for us to go home so that they can fight each other for the honor of being the next bunch of dumbasses to challenge the United States again...and lose again. New Strategy -- Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth and then leave.
3. Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. Period. If that means the only places left to hear the Farsi language spoken is in the depths of Hell, then so be it. If that means that the only traces of Persian culture left anywhere is whatever is to be found in museums, then that's too bad, as well. The idea that there's a nascent "democratic" movement in Iran (the one the "experts" have been talking up for 3 decades now) was crushed in the streets of Tehran last year, and even if it had been successful, it would only have brought "reform" at the margins of Islamic life. There are no "moderates" in a theocracy. New negotiating Strategy; Fuck 'em, Scorched Earth.
4. Pakistan is NOT our Ally; it is the biggest failure of British foreign policy in history, and is nothing but a bubbling cauldron of anti-Western hatred, murder, duplicity, and has perhaps the worst smelling people on Earth. New approach to Pakistani relations; Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth.
5. Saudi Arabia is NOT our Ally; they simply like our money -- and like the Germans --would rather that the United States pay for it's defense. That just means more money for the thousands of Saudi"princes" to waste on the non-Islamic delights of the West -- Booze, blonds, gambling, drugs, and porn -- that they can't get at home. Saudi Arabia is a den of pious hypocrites presiding over a mass of camel-raping nomads. Basis for a new Saudi relationship; Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth, then leave.
6. No change for the good in the Islamic world will come from US. It must originate with THEM. An entire culture, millenia-old, must be transformed. That transformation will not happen because Americans built schools and roads; it'll happen only when the consequences of NOT changing are made apparent, like when half the Middle East is a smoking crater. Ask the Japanese and Germans -- both once on the receiving end of the Fuck 'Em, Scorched Earth policy -- how that worked out.
7. realize that many of the "Security Measures" put in place since September 11, 2001 are really restricting the freedoms of Americans more than they are hindering terrorists. Security efforts should be redirected towards stopping and going after REAL terrorists. If this means racial profiling of certain individuals and groups, then that's the price we need to pay for security, and the price they pay for not turning their murderous relatives in to the authorities.
8. Terrorists do not recognize anyone else's Human and Civil Rights, international borders, thenicities of the Rule of Law, or the rules of basic decency, therefore, they are entitled to the same measure of regard.
9. Declare that any terrorist attack on the United States and it's allies will result in immediate retaliation against every terrorist or organization within reach of American power, regardless of whether any particular group was responsible for that attack or not. Just kill every terrorist within reach.
C) The Government
1. Shut down the Federal Government -- except for really essential services -- for three months out of every year. Send the overpaid union slobs who...ahem...work for the government home for a nice, long vacation without pay.
2. Pay every federal worker the minimum wage that their democratic party lapdogs advocate so loudly for. Give raises to them based solely on merit, which in a Federal Bureaucracy usually means someone can count to 20 without removing their shoes and socks.
3. Close the Department of Education (which educates no one), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (think: does the typically American "urban" look "developed" to you? HUD is a welfare housing scam), phase out the Post Office (e-mail is free, you know), consolidate every "Civil Rights Division" in every federal department within the Department of Justice (why do the Department of Transportation and the HHS have "Civil Rights" divisions?), immediately revoke every Executive Order, Signing Statement or Presidential Dictate and such that have the names Barack Obama, William J. Clinton, or James Earl Carter on them.
4. Stop the whoring of the political class, and publicly fund elections, with a reasonable cap on campaign spending (this might be one of those few ideas Libtards have that I can agree with).
5. Repeal the McCain-Feingold Tenure for Elected Offcials....err...Campaign Finance Reform Act.
6. Encourage the electorate to throw every remaining Aging Hippie and decrepit Cold Warrior out of Congress. They are hopelessly stuck in the past and nothing short of dynamite -- or unemployment -- will convince them that they live in the 21st Century now.
7. Make having passed the Bar Exam or having once practiced Law a disqualification for public office.
8. If there's a mandatory retirement age for the rest of us, there should be one for Congresscritters, too.
9. Someone should be tasked with going through the Federal Register and immediately repeal any law or regulation that has been superseded by technology, or which has not been enforced in any meaningful way since 1970, so long as doing so does not compromise public health or safety,or represent a danger to Civil Liberties.
10. No member of Congress should be allowed to become wealthy while in Public Service. They should be required to place all of their assets into blind trusts, post monthly financial statements, and as soon as a Congresscritter announces an income of $1 million or more, they should be investigated to find out just how they got it.
11. Declare that Congress will no longer be allowed to borrow money without there first being a National Emergency, declared by a 2/3 majority vote in both houses.
12. Add a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Not balanced in the "out years", not balanced by accounting tricks, not anything that describes a "reduction in the rate of spending growth" sort of fantasy, but a mathematically provable balanced budget which can be audited by standard accounting methods, and which requires that spending be balanced by cuts.
13. No more Earmarks. No more sneaking transportation Bills into Education Bills, and other tricks. No more changing Congressional rules to suit the needs of either party at any particular moment. Every Member of Congress should be required to post their daily activities, votes and positions on a publicly-accessible website available 24/7/365 so that the voters know what they're up to. Every memeber of Congress should have a microchip implanted in them so that we can find them 24/7/365, to be removed when one leaves office.
14. No tax hikes without a 2/3 majority vote of both houses.
D) The Economy
1. Repeal ObamaCare and it's attendant taxation.
2. Demand repayment of all TARP funds by a date certain, with interest.
3. Do not spend the remaining "Stimulus Money". There were no "shovel-ready" projects so much as there were democratic party allies to be paid off, and the majority of the cash is still in the pipeline. Might as well put it back into circulation so that the credit markets aren't quite so tight.
4. Declare "Tax Holidays" where the Federal government will not collect any personal income taxes whatsoever. Say, two or three months out of every year, anytime after April 15th. Put money back into the consumer's hands and let it work it's magic.
5. Declare a Tax Amnesty where anyone who owes back taxes and is NOT being investigated for criminal activity can be given the opportunity to reach a reasonable settlement with the government. The IRS should be designated as a Terrorist Organization.
6. No Inheritance Taxes. You already paid taxes while alive, you shouldn't have to anymore after you've died.
7. No Capital Gains Tax on any profit of less than $100,000.
8. Re-instate the Glass-Steagall Act, and make the mega-financials divest themselves of their conflicted interests. There will be no more "Too Big to Fail" after that. Allow the Bankruptcy laws to operate the way they were intended to when a corporation goes into default.
9. Get the Federal Government out of the Mortgage Business; dissolve Fannie and Freddie and liquidate their assets.
10. Promote policies which will bring a return of the manufacturing sector to American shores. Since the United States cannot compete in the field of "cheap" manufacturing because of lower wages around the world, the thrust of these policies must be the promotion of High-Quality manufacturing processes. If Americans can't make it cheaper than anyone else, then we can damned well make it better than anyone else! As the saying goes, "Cheap usually turns out to be expensive", so you might as well make it worth the customer's while to spend the extra money for the good stuff.
11. Develop an energy policy which is high on nuclear, clean coal and natural gas (i.e. domestic sources), and not-so-hot on petroleum. Stop the Ethanol Subsidy, because it is actually stifling creativity in the area of alternative fuels..Announce a government-sponsored $5 billion prize to the first person or organization that can produce both a viable alternative fuel, and an engine which can run reasonably-efficiently and reliably on it.
12. Destroy the Progressive Income Tax Code, and start over from scratch. No more giving "Tax Credits" to people who don't pay taxes, no more loopholes or special regulations. Simply state that the Federal Government will take x-percentage of your total gross income (salary, tips, wages, capital gains), and not a penny more, regardless of income level.
13. Pass tough Tort Reforms and get the lawyers out of the Boardrooms, Factories, Hospitals and off my television set.
14. Pass a law declaring the United States is a Right-to-Work Nation, and bust the unions which artificially skew the wage scales, prevent the free circulation of labor, and who are buying politicians with their member's money.
15. Lower Corporate Tax rates to make American business more attractive to investors, foreign and domestic.
16. No VAT taxes.
Make of this what you will.
Tomorrow in Part II, I'll tackle Race Relations, Energy, The Two-Party System and the BP Oil Spill.
This is but the first installment. I plan to have three installments in the series.
I will get an inbox full of venom, I'm certain, because my solutions spare no one's feelings. In fact, they don't even take anyone's feelings into account. Actually, so far as I'm concerned, everytime I get a nasty e-mail from a panty-bunched, bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, metrosexual Citizen of the World (i.e. Libtard), I will reward myself with a nice Milky Way Bar, if only because I would regard the epithets of hater, homophobe, xenophobe, racist, sexist, anti-this-that-and-the-other as great big shiny badges of affirmation, and I won't be able to find anyone able to produce the medals I'll deserve to have pinned to my chest for it all fast enough.
None of what I advocate will ever be done, because it just makes too much sense and goes against the grain of both political parties, in that they would all eliminate the possibility of graft, and put an end to the tired old game of allowing politicians to pontificate and posture without actually having to do anything.
So, here you go. You don't have to agree, but you do have to deal with it. In no particular order;
A) Illegal Immigration: 1. Build a nice, new, open-air prison in the New Mexico desert (where they used to do all the nuclear testing). Ensure that it has no buildings, an inadequate water supply, and just the very barest rudiments of sanitation. Make sure it's in the hottest,most-radioactive portion of the desert you can find, and fence it in with razor wire and landmines. Once there, captured illegal aliens will be kept until they can be "repatriated" to their country of origin.
2. Place 50,000 troops along the southern border, equipped with packs of snarling, vicious attack dogs trained to leap into action at the first scent of chipotle. Give the troops "shoot-to-kill" orders, so that when the Invaders from the South ignore their three warnings to turn back, you can show them we mean business.
3. Those fortunate few who manage to evade the minefields, dogs, machine-gun nests and snipers by surrendering, or being granted mercy by the Border Patrol and Marines, or just got themselves slightly wounded, will be shipped to that lovely open-air resort in New Mexico I've just mentioned, where they can bake in the heat and prey upon each other under the sight of machine-gun-armed watch towers.
4. The President of the United States (not this one, because he hasn't got any balls) will make a public announcement; if you're in the country illegally, you will have 90 days to see to your personal affairs, and then yo9u can get the hell out of the country. If you don't, we've got a nice vacation in New Mexico planned for you, where you will branded upon the forehead and hands to make it easier for us to identify you again, just in case you decide to try sneak north one more time.
5. Alert all business owners in the US that the fines and penalties for illegally hiring illegal aliens will be trebled. Remind them of the old capitalist axiom that if you can't stay in business without breaking the law, you probably shouldn't be in business --and then put them out of business permanently.
6. Eliminate "Birthright Citizenship" for any child born in an American hospital in cases where at least one parent (to be determined by DNA testing) is NOT a citizen or legal resident.If that qualification cannot be met, ship mother and child to the new Disneyland in New Mexico as a birthday gift, just as soon as that's medically feasible.
7. Tell the President of Mexico to run his own goddamned country, and to keep his tubercular peasantry on his side of the fence. In days past, a mass-migration of the sort that is common on the southern border used to be called "an invasion", and was resisted by military force.
8. The State Department will stop handing out visas, to anyone, like candy. No visa will be approved without an adequate background check on the potential recipient, and if takes a decade to complete it, that's just too bad.
9. Make English the Chief Lingua Franca of the United States. Government at all levels will no longer pay for bi-lingual education. It will no longer print, transmit, distribute or provide any service or form written/conducted in anything but English, unless doing so is necessary to maintain public order and safety, or is deemed to be in the national interest.
10. Set up a $5 billion prize to go to the first asshole who manages to genetically engineer a head of lettuce that can be picked by a machine.
B) War on Terror
1. The recent "disappearance" of 17 Afghans brought to the United States for training is indicative of something our political leadership has failed to grasp. If we assume that those 17 men were considered to be the best-and-the-brightest that Afghanistan had to offer, then the lesson of their desertion is that a) they won't fight for their freedom or country, and b) they have no interest in helping to build a better future for their country, families, or culture. If we're losing in Afghanistan, then this is a remarkably clear reason of why; even the best Afghans don't give a shit -- the rest are simply fighting for their centuries-old right to be wife-beating, animal-molesting, opium-smoking, piss-poor, praying-five-times-a-day douchebags. I suggest a new strategy that I like to call "Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth", and then leave.
2. The sectarian violence in Iraq continues, because a) we're protecting the next generation of Saddam Husseins with American guns, b) Islam is a murderous ideology which preys upon the unaware and defenseless, and since Rumsfeld's "Dead-Enders" couldn't whack the Great Satan's military, they're more than content to whack each other. Every IED, every marketplace bomb, every mortar attack on a city center is training for the various forces in Iraq who are just waiting for us to go home so that they can fight each other for the honor of being the next bunch of dumbasses to challenge the United States again...and lose again. New Strategy -- Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth and then leave.
3. Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. Period. If that means the only places left to hear the Farsi language spoken is in the depths of Hell, then so be it. If that means that the only traces of Persian culture left anywhere is whatever is to be found in museums, then that's too bad, as well. The idea that there's a nascent "democratic" movement in Iran (the one the "experts" have been talking up for 3 decades now) was crushed in the streets of Tehran last year, and even if it had been successful, it would only have brought "reform" at the margins of Islamic life. There are no "moderates" in a theocracy. New negotiating Strategy; Fuck 'em, Scorched Earth.
4. Pakistan is NOT our Ally; it is the biggest failure of British foreign policy in history, and is nothing but a bubbling cauldron of anti-Western hatred, murder, duplicity, and has perhaps the worst smelling people on Earth. New approach to Pakistani relations; Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth.
5. Saudi Arabia is NOT our Ally; they simply like our money -- and like the Germans --would rather that the United States pay for it's defense. That just means more money for the thousands of Saudi"princes" to waste on the non-Islamic delights of the West -- Booze, blonds, gambling, drugs, and porn -- that they can't get at home. Saudi Arabia is a den of pious hypocrites presiding over a mass of camel-raping nomads. Basis for a new Saudi relationship; Fuck 'em. Scorched Earth, then leave.
6. No change for the good in the Islamic world will come from US. It must originate with THEM. An entire culture, millenia-old, must be transformed. That transformation will not happen because Americans built schools and roads; it'll happen only when the consequences of NOT changing are made apparent, like when half the Middle East is a smoking crater. Ask the Japanese and Germans -- both once on the receiving end of the Fuck 'Em, Scorched Earth policy -- how that worked out.
7. realize that many of the "Security Measures" put in place since September 11, 2001 are really restricting the freedoms of Americans more than they are hindering terrorists. Security efforts should be redirected towards stopping and going after REAL terrorists. If this means racial profiling of certain individuals and groups, then that's the price we need to pay for security, and the price they pay for not turning their murderous relatives in to the authorities.
8. Terrorists do not recognize anyone else's Human and Civil Rights, international borders, thenicities of the Rule of Law, or the rules of basic decency, therefore, they are entitled to the same measure of regard.
9. Declare that any terrorist attack on the United States and it's allies will result in immediate retaliation against every terrorist or organization within reach of American power, regardless of whether any particular group was responsible for that attack or not. Just kill every terrorist within reach.
C) The Government
1. Shut down the Federal Government -- except for really essential services -- for three months out of every year. Send the overpaid union slobs who...ahem...work for the government home for a nice, long vacation without pay.
2. Pay every federal worker the minimum wage that their democratic party lapdogs advocate so loudly for. Give raises to them based solely on merit, which in a Federal Bureaucracy usually means someone can count to 20 without removing their shoes and socks.
3. Close the Department of Education (which educates no one), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (think: does the typically American "urban" look "developed" to you? HUD is a welfare housing scam), phase out the Post Office (e-mail is free, you know), consolidate every "Civil Rights Division" in every federal department within the Department of Justice (why do the Department of Transportation and the HHS have "Civil Rights" divisions?), immediately revoke every Executive Order, Signing Statement or Presidential Dictate and such that have the names Barack Obama, William J. Clinton, or James Earl Carter on them.
4. Stop the whoring of the political class, and publicly fund elections, with a reasonable cap on campaign spending (this might be one of those few ideas Libtards have that I can agree with).
5. Repeal the McCain-Feingold Tenure for Elected Offcials....err...Campaign Finance Reform Act.
6. Encourage the electorate to throw every remaining Aging Hippie and decrepit Cold Warrior out of Congress. They are hopelessly stuck in the past and nothing short of dynamite -- or unemployment -- will convince them that they live in the 21st Century now.
7. Make having passed the Bar Exam or having once practiced Law a disqualification for public office.
8. If there's a mandatory retirement age for the rest of us, there should be one for Congresscritters, too.
9. Someone should be tasked with going through the Federal Register and immediately repeal any law or regulation that has been superseded by technology, or which has not been enforced in any meaningful way since 1970, so long as doing so does not compromise public health or safety,or represent a danger to Civil Liberties.
10. No member of Congress should be allowed to become wealthy while in Public Service. They should be required to place all of their assets into blind trusts, post monthly financial statements, and as soon as a Congresscritter announces an income of $1 million or more, they should be investigated to find out just how they got it.
11. Declare that Congress will no longer be allowed to borrow money without there first being a National Emergency, declared by a 2/3 majority vote in both houses.
12. Add a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Not balanced in the "out years", not balanced by accounting tricks, not anything that describes a "reduction in the rate of spending growth" sort of fantasy, but a mathematically provable balanced budget which can be audited by standard accounting methods, and which requires that spending be balanced by cuts.
13. No more Earmarks. No more sneaking transportation Bills into Education Bills, and other tricks. No more changing Congressional rules to suit the needs of either party at any particular moment. Every Member of Congress should be required to post their daily activities, votes and positions on a publicly-accessible website available 24/7/365 so that the voters know what they're up to. Every memeber of Congress should have a microchip implanted in them so that we can find them 24/7/365, to be removed when one leaves office.
14. No tax hikes without a 2/3 majority vote of both houses.
D) The Economy
1. Repeal ObamaCare and it's attendant taxation.
2. Demand repayment of all TARP funds by a date certain, with interest.
3. Do not spend the remaining "Stimulus Money". There were no "shovel-ready" projects so much as there were democratic party allies to be paid off, and the majority of the cash is still in the pipeline. Might as well put it back into circulation so that the credit markets aren't quite so tight.
4. Declare "Tax Holidays" where the Federal government will not collect any personal income taxes whatsoever. Say, two or three months out of every year, anytime after April 15th. Put money back into the consumer's hands and let it work it's magic.
5. Declare a Tax Amnesty where anyone who owes back taxes and is NOT being investigated for criminal activity can be given the opportunity to reach a reasonable settlement with the government. The IRS should be designated as a Terrorist Organization.
6. No Inheritance Taxes. You already paid taxes while alive, you shouldn't have to anymore after you've died.
7. No Capital Gains Tax on any profit of less than $100,000.
8. Re-instate the Glass-Steagall Act, and make the mega-financials divest themselves of their conflicted interests. There will be no more "Too Big to Fail" after that. Allow the Bankruptcy laws to operate the way they were intended to when a corporation goes into default.
9. Get the Federal Government out of the Mortgage Business; dissolve Fannie and Freddie and liquidate their assets.
10. Promote policies which will bring a return of the manufacturing sector to American shores. Since the United States cannot compete in the field of "cheap" manufacturing because of lower wages around the world, the thrust of these policies must be the promotion of High-Quality manufacturing processes. If Americans can't make it cheaper than anyone else, then we can damned well make it better than anyone else! As the saying goes, "Cheap usually turns out to be expensive", so you might as well make it worth the customer's while to spend the extra money for the good stuff.
11. Develop an energy policy which is high on nuclear, clean coal and natural gas (i.e. domestic sources), and not-so-hot on petroleum. Stop the Ethanol Subsidy, because it is actually stifling creativity in the area of alternative fuels..Announce a government-sponsored $5 billion prize to the first person or organization that can produce both a viable alternative fuel, and an engine which can run reasonably-efficiently and reliably on it.
12. Destroy the Progressive Income Tax Code, and start over from scratch. No more giving "Tax Credits" to people who don't pay taxes, no more loopholes or special regulations. Simply state that the Federal Government will take x-percentage of your total gross income (salary, tips, wages, capital gains), and not a penny more, regardless of income level.
13. Pass tough Tort Reforms and get the lawyers out of the Boardrooms, Factories, Hospitals and off my television set.
14. Pass a law declaring the United States is a Right-to-Work Nation, and bust the unions which artificially skew the wage scales, prevent the free circulation of labor, and who are buying politicians with their member's money.
15. Lower Corporate Tax rates to make American business more attractive to investors, foreign and domestic.
16. No VAT taxes.
Make of this what you will.
Tomorrow in Part II, I'll tackle Race Relations, Energy, The Two-Party System and the BP Oil Spill.
Friday, June 25, 2010
What Else Should You Do With a Kid in a Laundromat?
If the new $1.60 tax on a pack of smokes wasn't outrageous enough, now we find out that many city laundromats have been installing (illegal) cut-rate slot machines! Many of these laundromats,incidentally, happen to be in "low-income" (read: Deadbeat) neighborhoods, and while the machines are illegal, since enforcing the law will eventually mean "taking cops off the street" (in New York, everything eventually means "taking cops off the street" or "teachers out the classroom"), it wouldn't surprise me if the City and State didn't find away to just say "Fuck it!"... and then tax that, too. Of course, pretty soon all we'll hear is how "the poor" are being preyed upon by these machines, and the Children are getting hooked on gambling.
Within a week, there will be a story in the Daily News about some 12 year-old who has gunned down his classmates for their quarters, so he could get his laundromat fix on. It'll almost be safer to walk the streets of Harlem -- at 3 a.m., stark naked, "Rob Me!" written across your forehead in fluorescent ink, and with an asscrack full of $100 bills -- then it will be to enter a laundromat with loose change in your pocket.
Within a week, there will be a story in the Daily News about some 12 year-old who has gunned down his classmates for their quarters, so he could get his laundromat fix on. It'll almost be safer to walk the streets of Harlem -- at 3 a.m., stark naked, "Rob Me!" written across your forehead in fluorescent ink, and with an asscrack full of $100 bills -- then it will be to enter a laundromat with loose change in your pocket.
Official: Pot Now Cheaper Than Tobacco...
Only in New York will a pack of smokes set you back a whopping $12.00!
I've said for the longest time that the reason behind the increasing taxes on cigarettes was to make every New Yorker want to turn to drugs so that our elected douchebags can continue to pick our pockets, only by then none of us will notice.
It's the same song every year: the cost of healthcare is breaking the bank. The State needs more money, or the hospitals will all close, and we'll all die of ingrown hemorrhoids or something. Smokers, because they engage in a habit that leads to serious health problems that tends to require expensive courses of treatments, should be expected to shoulder this burden, because it's because of THEM that the State has to spend these outrageous sums.
Umm, no.
The reasons why New York State has to devote so much money to pay for healthcare, are;
a) it's paying for the care for those who don't pay for it themselves, like the welfare queens, illegal immigrants, the"poor" (who all seem to have Bluetooth and Patent-leather Air Jordans, while I don't; "The Poor are the Rich That Jesus Warned You About" -- Kathy Shaidle),
b) is paying for the care of people who engage in even riskier behavior, which require even more expensive treatments, but who are also politically-protected (or cossetted) classes, especially AIDS victims, blacks, IV Drug users, and crack addicts,
c) The asswipes in Albany have never heard, apparently, of an effective cost-containment strategy known as "tightening one's belt" or "economizing", or even -- dare I say it? -- privatization,
d) The State government continues to mandate payments for conditions and procedures that have nothing to do with people's basic healthcare needs (like...ahem..."Family Planning", sex-change procedures, needle exchange programs).
e) The State mandates that insurance companies also pay for these non-basic healthcare requirements, and then add a laundry list of even more ridiculous procedures and treatments (like penile implants and vasectomies),
f) The State allows illegal immigrants to use our emergency rooms for every need from a case of the sniffles to multiple gunshot wounds without even making an attempt to 1) collect a dime from these people, and 2) deport their fucking asses after they've been treated,
g) The Fed'ral Gubmint mandates coverages and treatments, and then leaves the responsibility of paying for them to the States,
h) We have a bunch of pig-ignorant political ticket-punchers in both Albany and Washington, D.C.. For some of them, ticket-puncher might actually describe more work than they actually do,
i) The healthcare unions in this state goon strike every fifteen minutes, until the guy who wheels you to-and-from the hospital door gets paid six-figures and has nine weeks of paid vacation, can retire at 59-1/2 with a fat pension, and can't get fired short of committing multiple child rape, and the dismemberment-murder of a miniature poodle in front of 12 witnesses and a video camera,
j) The Lawyers treat the medical malpractice system like a personal feeding trough where it's somehow a doctor's fault if your child was born with Cerebral Palsy, harelip or Forked tongue, prehensile tail and other GENETIC defects, and you can sue his ass into another galaxy for it.
k) Medical science is making it possible for people to live longer (or is it really just linger longer?) with health issues that once would have killed them off relatively young. Many of these people are elderly, and rely heavily on city health services to supplement what State and Federal Medicare won't cover or provide.
Okay, I can see the point of encouraging people not to smoke by making it prohibitively expensive. But then what happens when enough smokers actually quit because of the high price? Why, then the expected tax revenue which justified the tax increase in the first place just might dry up faster than Hillary Clinton's teat at a Sahara Desert Shamwow convention! And then, of course, the "solution" will be to raise cig taxes again, naturally! The concept that smokers tend to die younger (thus consuming fewer healthcare resources!) is never even seriously entertained. Cutting the fat from the system is a laughable suggestion. Saying "No" to the unions, the lawyers, the deadbeats and the druggies gets you a queer look, as if you've just landed from Mars and have asked for a Sarsaparilla and a blowjob.
Soon, some clueless douchebag of a City Councilman will wonder where the hell the smokers all went, while lamenting the closure of yet another city-run hospital, the predictable result of the very policies he's advocated for years! New York politicians are dumber and denser -- and less in-touch with reality --than the national norm, you know.
But then again, this is New York City/State, and if someone suggested to the Mayor, Governor and Assembly Speaker there was a buck to be made by recycling the undigested corn in your stool, they'd find a way to tax you per cob. Those Regal personages can't be expected to engage in common-sense solutions to these problems -- or even make tough decisions on them -- because they're too busy addressing the really vital issues of the day: making sure you don't get too much sugar in your doughnut, too much salt in your street meat -- or have too much cash in your wallet.
Or something similarly Earth-shatteringly important, like this.
I say that instead of lighting up a Marlboro, perhaps it's high time to light up the statehouse in Albany, and Gracie Mansion. Of course, even saying that here facetiously will probably earn me a visit from the NYPD. Judging from the whopping 1-hour-and-16-minutes it took them to respond to a a two-car accident in front of my house two days ago --- when the Precinct House is but a mere 11blocks away -- I can probably expect the SWAT team to arrive on-or-about Columbus Day.
I expect that within a month's time, we'll be hearing that the "Loosey" will become the new underground currency of choice-- replacing the overinflated, Chinese-financed, ObamaDollar Monopoly money we use now -- and enterprising drug dealers will soon be dealing in Lucky Strikes instead of heroin because of the higher profit margin.
Dipshits, all.
I've said for the longest time that the reason behind the increasing taxes on cigarettes was to make every New Yorker want to turn to drugs so that our elected douchebags can continue to pick our pockets, only by then none of us will notice.
It's the same song every year: the cost of healthcare is breaking the bank. The State needs more money, or the hospitals will all close, and we'll all die of ingrown hemorrhoids or something. Smokers, because they engage in a habit that leads to serious health problems that tends to require expensive courses of treatments, should be expected to shoulder this burden, because it's because of THEM that the State has to spend these outrageous sums.
Umm, no.
The reasons why New York State has to devote so much money to pay for healthcare, are;
a) it's paying for the care for those who don't pay for it themselves, like the welfare queens, illegal immigrants, the"poor" (who all seem to have Bluetooth and Patent-leather Air Jordans, while I don't; "The Poor are the Rich That Jesus Warned You About" -- Kathy Shaidle),
b) is paying for the care of people who engage in even riskier behavior, which require even more expensive treatments, but who are also politically-protected (or cossetted) classes, especially AIDS victims, blacks, IV Drug users, and crack addicts,
c) The asswipes in Albany have never heard, apparently, of an effective cost-containment strategy known as "tightening one's belt" or "economizing", or even -- dare I say it? -- privatization,
d) The State government continues to mandate payments for conditions and procedures that have nothing to do with people's basic healthcare needs (like...ahem..."Family Planning", sex-change procedures, needle exchange programs).
e) The State mandates that insurance companies also pay for these non-basic healthcare requirements, and then add a laundry list of even more ridiculous procedures and treatments (like penile implants and vasectomies),
f) The State allows illegal immigrants to use our emergency rooms for every need from a case of the sniffles to multiple gunshot wounds without even making an attempt to 1) collect a dime from these people, and 2) deport their fucking asses after they've been treated,
g) The Fed'ral Gubmint mandates coverages and treatments, and then leaves the responsibility of paying for them to the States,
h) We have a bunch of pig-ignorant political ticket-punchers in both Albany and Washington, D.C.. For some of them, ticket-puncher might actually describe more work than they actually do,
i) The healthcare unions in this state goon strike every fifteen minutes, until the guy who wheels you to-and-from the hospital door gets paid six-figures and has nine weeks of paid vacation, can retire at 59-1/2 with a fat pension, and can't get fired short of committing multiple child rape, and the dismemberment-murder of a miniature poodle in front of 12 witnesses and a video camera,
j) The Lawyers treat the medical malpractice system like a personal feeding trough where it's somehow a doctor's fault if your child was born with Cerebral Palsy, harelip or Forked tongue, prehensile tail and other GENETIC defects, and you can sue his ass into another galaxy for it.
k) Medical science is making it possible for people to live longer (or is it really just linger longer?) with health issues that once would have killed them off relatively young. Many of these people are elderly, and rely heavily on city health services to supplement what State and Federal Medicare won't cover or provide.
Okay, I can see the point of encouraging people not to smoke by making it prohibitively expensive. But then what happens when enough smokers actually quit because of the high price? Why, then the expected tax revenue which justified the tax increase in the first place just might dry up faster than Hillary Clinton's teat at a Sahara Desert Shamwow convention! And then, of course, the "solution" will be to raise cig taxes again, naturally! The concept that smokers tend to die younger (thus consuming fewer healthcare resources!) is never even seriously entertained. Cutting the fat from the system is a laughable suggestion. Saying "No" to the unions, the lawyers, the deadbeats and the druggies gets you a queer look, as if you've just landed from Mars and have asked for a Sarsaparilla and a blowjob.
Soon, some clueless douchebag of a City Councilman will wonder where the hell the smokers all went, while lamenting the closure of yet another city-run hospital, the predictable result of the very policies he's advocated for years! New York politicians are dumber and denser -- and less in-touch with reality --than the national norm, you know.
But then again, this is New York City/State, and if someone suggested to the Mayor, Governor and Assembly Speaker there was a buck to be made by recycling the undigested corn in your stool, they'd find a way to tax you per cob. Those Regal personages can't be expected to engage in common-sense solutions to these problems -- or even make tough decisions on them -- because they're too busy addressing the really vital issues of the day: making sure you don't get too much sugar in your doughnut, too much salt in your street meat -- or have too much cash in your wallet.
Or something similarly Earth-shatteringly important, like this.
I say that instead of lighting up a Marlboro, perhaps it's high time to light up the statehouse in Albany, and Gracie Mansion. Of course, even saying that here facetiously will probably earn me a visit from the NYPD. Judging from the whopping 1-hour-and-16-minutes it took them to respond to a a two-car accident in front of my house two days ago --- when the Precinct House is but a mere 11blocks away -- I can probably expect the SWAT team to arrive on-or-about Columbus Day.
I expect that within a month's time, we'll be hearing that the "Loosey" will become the new underground currency of choice-- replacing the overinflated, Chinese-financed, ObamaDollar Monopoly money we use now -- and enterprising drug dealers will soon be dealing in Lucky Strikes instead of heroin because of the higher profit margin.
Dipshits, all.
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