foolsguinea: (Default)
Getting a free voter ID to satisfy new Wisconsin law--what do you mean, you need to see bank account activity?

And of course when you tell people this interferes with the right to vote, they seem to think that's fine if it interferes with the "wrong kind of people."

John Adams: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

~ ~ ~

http://mockingnerd.tumblr.com/post/8131609735/florida-tea-party-hates-manatees-declares-them
“We cannot elevate nature above people,” said Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”

This is so wrong on at least three different levels. Mrs. Mattos, you're going on the list.

How can you love God and hate his creation? And what does the Bill of Rights have to do with anything?

And, most importantly, defending a population of manatees against a few individual humans is not elevating manatees above humans in general or in the particular. It does not oppose the general manatee population to the general human population, nor the single manatee to the single human. Humans have most of that land to exploit, and now you want this little patch of reserve that keeps the manatee from going extinct?

~ ~ ~

http://tumblr.thedailywh.at/post/8132203159/this-is-all-kind-of-wrong-of-the-day-kymberly
Kymberly Wimberly was all set to become her Arkansas school’s first black valedictorian since 1989.

But, at the last minute, McGehee High School decided Kymberly was to share her spotlight with a white “co-valedictorian” who had a lower GPA.

“When I found out I was valedictorian, I was ecstatic,” Kymberly, who has long dreamt of being at the top of her class, told ABC News. She says the student named co-valedictorian agreed with her that “if the tables were turned, there wouldn’t be a co-valedictorian.”


http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/07/25/38410.htm
The last African-American valedictorian in McGehee School District was in 1989. Wimberly says the school discourages black students from taking honors and advanced placement classes, "by telling them, among other things, that the work was too hard."

~ ~ ~

Alternet: A Quick Explanation of Tentherism

Really, the Tenth Amendment was a bad idea all along. Why amend the constitution to prevent the federal government from performing functions the articles of the constitution design it to perform?

~ ~ ~

Alternet: Meet CNN commentator Erick Erickson
In an “open letter” to Congressional Republicans he wrote, “despite what the pundits in Washington are telling you, it is you and not Obama who hold most of the cards...Should the United States lose its bond rating, it will be called the 'Obama Depression.' Congress does not get pinned with this stuff.”

Sure. Just like no one remembers Tom Delay or Nancy Pelosi's names, instead acting as if W Bush ruled this country as an autocrat. Why, just the other day, I saw someone talking about this Newton Gingrich person, & I said, "Who's that?" I really thought Bubba and Algore tan the country out of a hot dog stand in the 1990's. Oh, there I go lying again!

Seriously though, if this guy didn't seem so sincerely convinced of his bad ideas, I'd suspect him of being an agent provocateur, trying to push the GOP into doing things that will blow up in their faces. Oh, well, saves me the trouble I guess.

~ ~ ~

I leave you with a couple of quotes:

Adam Smith: “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

John Locke: “God the Lord and Father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it: and therefore no man could ever have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions; since it would always be a sin, in any man of estate, to let his brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his plenty.”

John Locke? Really? Huh.
foolsguinea: (rockstar)
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html

I haven't read all of this. I have read some bewildered Yank reactions to the idea.

I think this is important:
"What we're doing when we are paying taxes is buying a product. So the question isn't how you pay for the product; it's the quality of the product."

(Some Norwegian entrepreneur)

In my country, we've had political propaganda denounce "big government," or especially expensive government, as bad in itself for so long that we forget that it's not always bad to pay a high price for a good product.

- -

I suppose some libertarian will come on here & bleat in the comments about the importance of consent. The standard argument that high taxes are a sin, because they are collected non-consensually on the individual level. But by that standard, all taxes are extortion, however low. If you're willing to accept the legitimacy of democratic processes establishing a low tax base, then you implicitly justify those same democratic processes' authority to set a high tax base.

So then one has to have an argument for why taxes at a low rate are hunky-dory while taxes at a high rate are bad. But that's not about consent, not really. The democracy consented collectively to do things this way. If you can't accept that, you can't accept law. All laws on the public restrain individual liberty in some way.

So really what does a low-tax advocate, say one that accepts 19% of GDP being taxed but not 25%, have to justify his position other than, "I don't like that number?"

- -

Of course there's no reason our tax code should be forcing us to buy a metaphorical overpriced Mercedes-Benz over a good Volvo or Toyota. But if forcing people a) to pay for a new Volvo & pay maintenance on it is contrasted with b) trying to sell them a car with no engine, which is the better deal?

I'm not arguing for big government for the sake of bigness. I'm arguing for laws that improve people's lives. Socialized medicine is a damn good place to start.

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