Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Goddard. Can’t think of anything to add.
I was listening to NPR the other morning, and they had a former Obama transportation secretary blaming poor transportation infrastructure on Republicans refusal to increase gasoline taxes. So why don’t they use the existing gasoline taxes? Obama’s smallest budget is 30% larger than Bush’s largest budget. Where is that money going?
Democrats see the solution to all problems as raising taxes, because their constituency depends on them stealing money from other people, and giving it away to Democratic voters. They use a small portion of it for something useful, so they have an excuse to raise taxes even further.
Well — there is this. There are two motivations going on here, which must be the case with any ideology that relies on deceit: That which motivates the deceivers and that which motivates the deceived. “I want to get hold of that money so I can give it away to my constituents and get re-elected” is deceptive, but not deceived; “I want that guy to win his election so I can get money” does not, in & of itself, involve deception. Some proggies are very up-front about this. Of course, they may be victims of deception. But their problem isn’t quite so much with not-knowing, as with not-caring. They tend to live for today, maybe for tomorrow if they’re feeling extra diligent about planning ahead, but usually just for today. They want money. How can society continue to function? It isn’t even on their radar; no really, go talk to them sometime, you’ll see my point…
To these two subclasses of proggie, we can add a third, since there are many among them who do not rely on social services, yet aren’t independently wealthy and are not running for public office. They just want more liberalism, for a variety of reasons that have to do with unproductive base human impulses. From inspecting these reasons, we can divide this third subclass down further. A lot of them think of politics as a football game: Root for the home team, and that’s all that matters. Others, I suspect, know deep down that conservatives are correct in pointing out that society cannot continue to function this way — you can tell by the way they get unhinged when they lose arguments. They’re not just repeating hype about the beneficial effects of liberal programs, or Hillary has worked so hard, or you-didn’t-build-that.
They have genuine passion, and it isn’t about helping the less fortunate, it is in the last of those. You didn’t build that. An individual, or group of investors and other contributors, separated from everything else outside by a wall, gave up these huge pantloads of time, money, blood, sweat and tears that were not contributed by anyone outside that wall. They made something happen that improved life for many others, perhaps for everyone, and got filthy stinking rich. Or, at least, deserved to. The you-didn’t-build-that proggies have a burning, white-hot, visceral phobia against this thought. Can’t hold it in their heads. There’s something about it that makes them uncomfortable.
Others want to help the less fortunate, but they’re not sufficiently interested in doing that to donate their own time or money to charity. Perhaps it is fair to intermingle them with the ones described in the paragraph above; if something good must be done, we individuals are not capable of doing it and shouldn’t even think of such a thing, it all has to go through government. Perhaps they suffer from the common phobia. Like they think people, taking the initiative, and acting without forcibly collected tax dollars or appointed oversight authority, are not capable of doing good. We can only break things and hurt each other. “It is the not-idle hands that are the devil’s workshop,” you might say. They seem, to me, to be laboring long and hard to tear down one status system in order to replace it with another: You shouldn’t enjoy any special abilities or privileges from working hard to build something and making a profit off it, status instead should come from working for the government. They talk a lot about making everything equal for everyone; but, I think, if they lived in a society of their own making, in which everyone was equal all of the time, they’d never successfully adapt to it, ever. It might eventually kill them. They’ve got to find a way to be better than the average, and they’re frustrated because it is they and their peers who are constantly working against anyone having any way to establish or maintain such distinction.
Other than the foregoing, I really don’t have much of an opinion about it.
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The Two Moralities of the Minimum Wage.
Economics that Political Science sophomores (leftists in office) flock to misuse.
Magnanimous vs. Mundane Morality
Neither of which involves gub’mint wealth redistribution to “favored” status folk so they MIGHT change their anti-social behavior.
The Independent Review (a journal of political economy)
V19, #1, Summer ’14
In the same issue, Sin tax, and Sindustry, which specifically goes into “hey! where did all that “for the children money actually go?” including all that “infrastructure” tax on assorted energy “fuel”.
- CaptDMO | 06/12/2014 @ 11:53