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11
Dec
08
LibertyGuys Has Moved!
Hank Paulson Is A Pu$$y
Look – I took a BRUUUUTAL beating recently on some mining stocks. If you believe the powers that be, this bailout is the answer to my prayers, a ‘hail mary pass’ that will rescue the markets, refill our home equity and 401-Ks and IRAs, and everyone will live happily ever after.
Even if ANY of it were true, I STILL say DUMP IT. I am standing on principle, on what I know is right, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll support something so pernicious and evil, even if it would benefit me in the short run.
Because I know what it means. Bailout means socializing losses and privatizing profits. It means massive new inflation, which means more poverty for millions of people around the world, while Wall Street fatcats and the Merchants of Death, who get to spend it first, reap tremendous profits. And, because the government has to spend the money into circulation, it means unprecedented amounts of military spending, and monstrous wars, wars without end.
And it’s empire that creates such horrible things as nuclear weapons and engineered plagues. The anthrax that was used in the only biological weapons attack ever recorded (except for the settlers giving the Indians Smallpox and Syphilis of course) came from the US government lab at Ft. Detrick, MD. The CDC actually sanctioned an Army scientist to reconstitute the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed more people in the aftermath of WWI than the frickin’ WAR did.
This is the kind of madness that is gripping our government. Will you trust your children’s futures to these people?
Even if my balance goes to zero, I defiantly stand and say to the economic fascists “NO BAILOUT – NO WAY!”
26
Sep
08
No Bailout, No Way
As many as 80% of Americans are against the Paulson bailout of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs (his former employer.)
The emails and calls to congresscritters’ offices is running at better than 90% against.
The heedless McCain is positioning himself as a ‘maverick’ again allegedly pushing to ‘get things done’, even though by all accounts he’s just sitting in the meetings, saying nothing.
At least Obama had the sense to put a millimeter or two from Hank Paulson’s plea, on bended knee, to please save him and the rest of the oligarchs from the consequences of their own greed.
A contingent of Republicans in the House, however, is heeding Ron Paul’s sound advice, and is opposing the giveaway. Good for them.
I have no illusions – this monstrous theft is going to pass in some form. But we should all remember who was with us, and who was against us.
News travels fast since Al Gore invented the Internet so I’m not shocked to hear jokes already sprouting from the inference that John McCain helped invent the Blackberry.
“He didn’t have jurisdiction over financial markets, first and foremost,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said, before wandering into more politically perilous ground.
“But he did this,” he said, holding up what looked like a BlackBerry. “The telecommunications of the United States, the premier innovation of the past 15 years, comes right through the commerce committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create. And that’s what he did.”
Better living through Big Government. Maybe a Ron Paul presidency would have killed innovation altogether, huh?
13
Sep
08
America Still Needs A Doctor
Another Successful Cure
I think it is a shame that everyone seems to be fixated on the dust-up between the Barr camp and Ron Paul. It threatens to overshadow the significance of the meeting Ron held (and Barr bagged out on) where he introduced, again, the case for the principles of Liberty over the politics of expediency.
The list of points of agreement that Ron, Ms. McKinney, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Nader endorsed is a call to effect a cure rather than treating (or, not treating) the symptoms. (a side note, it is roughly analogous to my SSS plan for energy and environment)
John Walsh had a great post on LRC today where he sums up the four points;
- Foreign Policy: The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our soldiers from around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East. We must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for attacks on Iran, nor should we re-ignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia. We must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and travel to all who are willing. We must take off the table the threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations.
- Privacy: We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret tribunals, and secret prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. We must reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive orders.
- The National Debt: We believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. The burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.
- The Federal Reserve: We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds.
Often the most effective cures are negative, epitomized by the old joke where the patient describes a pain that occurs when he does a certain action, to which the physician makes a commonsense reply. Let’s apply this to the four points;
Patient – “Doctor, when I garrison the globe with 800 bases in 150 countries, and meddle in the internal affairs of other countries, terrorists keep trying to blow me up! What do I do?”
Doctor – “Stop doing that.”
Patient – “I keep trading liberty for security, yet while I am less free, I am no more secure, what do I do?”
Doctor – “Stop doing that.”
Patient – “I am so in debt I have to borrow money from my business adversaries just to stay afloat. In addition, I am saddling my estate with debt so that my children will be sent to the workhouse to work off my debts for the rest of their lives, and their children, and their children. What do I do?”
Doctor – “Stop doing that.”
Patient – “I have been passing bad checks and counterfeiting bills to paper over my debt and fund my extravagant lifestyle. So far I haven’t been caught yet, but I have noticed that my counterfeits don’t buy nearly as much as they used to, and my neighbors are all dressed in rags and their home is being foreclosed, what do I do?”
Dr. Paul – “Are you dense? Haven’t you been listening to my advice for the past 30 years? STOP DOING THAT!”
05
Sep
08
Yeah, So?
Just got this in an email from my state rep, Steve Barrar. He seems concerned about the shortfall in his personal piggy bank otherwise known as state revenue. He also would like us to believe that we can only prosper through government programs designed and implemented by some superior race in Harrisburg. We should be as concerned with a shrinking of the Commonwealth as we were with Clinton’s shutting down of congress.
State Revenues Fall Short of Estimate, Generating Economic Concerns
The state Department of Revenue recently reported that General Fund revenues have fallen short of meeting monthly projections, as August collections were $117.5 million below estimates.
Collectively, this puts the state $117.6 million below estimate for the current fiscal year following July’s $80,000 shortfall.
August marks the fourth time in the last six months the Commonwealth has missed its estimate by more than $100 million, and it highlights exactly why Republican lawmakers fought hard during budget negotiations earlier this year to control government spending and preserve the state’s Rainy Day Fund.
Although successful, it appears these efforts may not be enough, as Gov. Ed Rendell continues to press for expensive and poorly planned programs such as his health care proposal.
House Republicans have instead been advocating a fiscally responsible plan to ensure access to quality, affordable health care.
Aww, poor guys. Did they ever hear of “making due with less?” They must have because they tell us to do it all the time so that they may continue to spend.
George Orwell, Stop Spinning and Call Your Office
From the United States Constitution, Amendment One, retrieved on 8/30/2008;
Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
From a journalist friend in Denver comes a story about the Democratic National Convention that you probably haven’t quite heard;
This is a belated post after a night in the free-speech pen (“Gitmo on the Platte”), but on Wednesday at noon, Rage Against the Machine and Flobots held a free benefit for Iraq Veterans Against the War at the Denver Coliseum.
Performances were incredible, RATM brought out Wayne Kramer of MC5 to play guitar with them, and at the end of the concert, the bands and 60 uniformed vets led about half the audience (7000 people) on an unauthorized march through downtown Denver to the Pepsi Center, for IVAW to deliver a letter to Obama.
The cops shit their pants, they were going to use tear gas about four times on the route, then the DNC and Denver officials decided tear-gassing veterans would not be such a good idea, so they conducted negotiations and “held” people temporarily, then everyone went home.
From today’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune;
Executing search warrants on Friday night and Saturday morning, Ramsey County authorities raided a building in St. Paul and at least three homes in Minneapolis in an effort to head off disruptive protests of the Republican National Convention.In a statement, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher described the Friday night raid at 627 Smith Avenue South in St. Paul as targeting the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group he described as “a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists who are intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention.”
“These acts include tactics to blockade and disable delegate buses, breaching venue security and injuring police officers,” the statement continued. Fletcher’s statement said no one was arrested. “Numerous items were recovered,” the statement said.In response to the raids, the RNC Welcoming Committee issued a statement denying any criminal intent and described the officers’ actions as ”violence” that was a sign of more extreme police measures to come.On Saturday morning, three people were arrested and detained for probable cause conspiracy to commit a riot following a raid at 3240 17th Ave. S. in Minneapolis after authorities executed the search warrant. Ten other people in the house were processed and released after about 90 minutes, said Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyers Guild.
Nestor said he has not seen documents that support a reason for searching any of the locations, but that the warrant, signed by a judge on Friday, seeks multiple items, including electronics and mp3 players, rags, jars, Molotov cocktails, communication between RNC Welcoming Committee members, urine and feces (emphasis mine.)
Utter, complete, transparent bullshit. Rough them up, intimidate them, confiscate all their materials, photograph them so they will have ‘prior’ arrests, by the time you get a hearing the moment is over, the RNC is over, freedom is over. “Oh, sorry, our bad, here’s your shit back, HAHAHAHAHAHA.”
The three arrested, two 23-year-old women and a 25-year-old man, could be held through the weekend, Nestor said. A judge will review their case within 48 hours. Nestor said the conspiracy to commit a riot charges are vague.
“This is a charge that police use for preventive detention,” he said. “It requires that no actual criminal act be committed and borders on criminalizing political advocacy.”
BORDERS ON? Nestor is being far too kind, BORDERING on aiding and abetting this thuggery.
Via Infoshop News, video of massive police assaults, including threats, intimidation, and confiscation of computers and papers, on alleged “potentially disruptive” protestors, charging them with “conspiracy”;
Glenn Greenwald documents this, he and a colleague were at two of the houses;
There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying…
As much as I hate to write this, I must agree with professor Michael Rozeff, who writes in an article about the E-Gold prosecution on lewrockwell.com today, the government of the United States of America has descended into a police state. Here’s hoping the Rally For The Republic fares better.
Like the opponents of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, we have arrived at the realization that, as vigilant as we think we have been about preventing the emergence of such a state, we have found ourselves, as Garet Garett wrote, with that revolution already behind us.
We’re sorry. We tried, we really tried.
(photo from thorough Denver Post article via the lewrockwell.com blog)
I’ve been trying now to get an Obama supporter, including those who call me on the phone, to tell me what “change(s)” in particular Obama supports. Once you get past his super-stardom and actually listen to what he is saying, it seems, not surprisingly, that he advocates more of the same. His anointment of Joe Biden as his running mate drives home that point as noted in Salon.
This single paragraph says it more succinctly than any other I have read.
Ever since it became clear that Obama would be the likely nominee, the political establishment has been demanding of him more and more proof that his “change” rhetoric is just that — rhetoric, and not anything meant as a genuine threat to the prevailing order of things. Obama, arguably out of political necessity, has repeatedly obliged, eagerly trying to offer proof that he is no threat to them, and the Biden selection is but the latest step in that campaign of reassurance. In sum, Biden is a reliable supporter of virtually every prevailing bit of conventional wisdom within the American elite political consensus, which is why his selection has been widely praised by the establishment, whose principal concern is that their fiefdom not be disrupted and that their consensus not be challenged.
We grew up in the late 60’s – early 70’s on Brill Building pop and Motown pop-soul, followed by all the ’70’s FM rock scene threw at us. Though dimly aware of the crew of George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and, here, Eddie Hazel, the output we were exposed to (“Formaldehyde”, “Dookie Stick” their costumes and stage personas) reduced them to little more than an extended black-culture toilet / pothead joke.
But just click on this clip of the title track of “Maggot Brain”, and listen as Mr. Hazel channels the angels through his sublime guitar playing;
Paul Mahwhinney
Here, courtesy of Sean Dunne and Vimeo, is a vinyl junkie’s wet dream.
Pittsburgh PA’s Paul Mahwhinney is, due to health problems and poor market conditions, forced to sell the world’s largest record collection.
The collection’s value was once appraised at $50 MILLION. In February, he closed his store, Record-Rama, when the collection failed to meet a $3 MILLION minimum bid.
The only possible buyers of a collection that size are the record companies, but they have their own problems.
(Philly people – note the Dynagroove record that pops up at 0:48. (OK, so it isn’t THAT Dynagroove))
This collection is virtually unprecedented, a veritable Library of Alexandria of vinyl.
Another library, the Library of Congress, took a look at his record collection a few years ago.
Based on their survey, they estimate only 17% of the records produced between 1944 and 1966 are available commercially.
Paul Mahwhinney has the other 83%.
Here’s hoping the collection, or the parts therof, finds a good home.
However, at the other end of the Quaker State, Philly’s own Val Shively is no slouch either;
(link from Eric O’Connor on Postal Blowfish)
A few years ago, there was a mania among many cities to “solve” the problem of public urination and defecation by installing mega-expensive, state-of the art restroom facilities. Demonstrations of the units were conducted in Philadelphia, PA and Seattle WA, where this story originated;
After a decade of discussion, five self-cleaning, space-age style chambers were finally opened to the public yesterday…
Seattle has been waiting years for the high-tech toilets. Councils and mayors have debated the issue. It’s been a topic on the campaign trail.
Made in Germany, and leased by the city, the public restrooms are expected to cost a total of about $600,000 a year. They will be paid for through sewer revenues…
“These facilities are self-cleaning, safe, well-situated throughout the city and are free for anyone to use,” said (city councilman)Licata. “They will be beneficial to local businesses because tourists, shoppers, residents and the homeless are equally accommodated.”
But some are concerned that they might become shelter for drug abusers, dealers and prostitutes.
“The community will keep a watch out and make sure they don’t become a haven for that kind of activity,” Stoltzfus said.
Today, we read that the city, of Seattle, whose expenses for the toilets ($5M) over the intervening time period vastly exceeded what was projected, has agreed to remove and sell the toilets – for $12K;
The high-tech public toilets, with sanitizing water jets and automatic doors, were installed in 2004 to accommodate tourists and transients in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, the central waterfront, Pike Place Market and the Chinatown International District. But the city canceled its contract this spring after the commodes became filthy hide-outs for drug use and prostitution.
The city paid more than it planned to take care of the toilets. Workers had to clean the stalls after trash clogged the self-cleaning mechanism. Losing the toilets will save the city some $4.5 million on the remainder of its operating contract and in cleaning costs over the next several years.
The city tried to sell the toilets on eBay in July, but nobody coughed up the $89,000 minimum bid. In its second attempt, which closed Thursday, the city offered no minimum, and 148 bids were cast.
“We sold them for what the market determined them to be worth,” said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities. “Did we get hosed? I’m not sure.“
Here you go Andy, maybe one of these will help next time;
Mises Calculator
Larry Flynt, In Happier Times
Growing up a good Catholic boy, I learned to despise pornographers like Al Goldstein, Bob Guccione, and Larry Flynt (a not AHEM entirely unhypocritical position.) Coming of age in the confused-but-prosperous 1980’s, I was further encouraged (by the now-burnt-out women’s movement) to despise porn and pornographers as somehow primarily responsible for the oppression of women. The good Catholic liberal in me righteously grunted in assent, if not exactly approval.
I finally awoke from this fog of illogic when I read that some feminists believed and wrote not only did porn cause sexual assaults of women, but that, incredibly, some of them seriously proposed that there was no such thing as volition involved in sexual relations between men and women. This pretty much vaporized any remaining credibility of the “women’s movement” for me, standing in opposition to even my somewhat limited experience.
Yet I retained enough residual revulsion for Mr. Flynt and his ilk to be vaguely disgusted by the hagiographic film “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, a response not helped at all by the casting of the addled-yet-smug Woody Harrelson as Flynt, and the walking trainwreck that is Courtney Love as Flynt’s now-late wife.
Later, Flynt, in response to the wrongheaded and politicized impeachment of President Clinton, offered a reward for evidence of sexual impropriety on the part of a sitting member of Congress. I was, having over several years quietly absorbed the political and culture-war rhetoric of talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, still more disgusted by Flynt, as well as his cultural and spiritual alliance with Clinton, exactly according to the plans of the people who were conducting psy-ops on me and no doubt many thoughtful, small-l liberal people, who were nonetheless not fans of the Clintons.
But after the terrorist attacks of 2001, and particularly after the ‘WTF?’ moment I had a couple of days after Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, all the Bush Administration bullshit and lies that had been foisted off on us as a people to get us to support and agitate for what was now ever more clearly an unjust, criminal war in Iraq, started to collapse for me.
I started peeling back the layers of the onion, so to speak, canceling my subscription to the War Street Journal, turning off Fox News, and removing the presets that once delivered me to Limbaugh and the now-appallingly bad Hannity (I had been a fan since his local-show days in New York, where he at least still had a shred of decency about him). I started to read Lew Rockwell’s site, and antiwar.com.
I got turned onto alternate news sources, read everything I could about what was REALLY going on in the world, helped start this blog, and became a warrior (mostly cyber) for Liberty, free markets, and freedom of association and expression. I began to see that even among people with very different cultural, moral, and spiritual views than me, there still existed real dedication to those founding ideals, and that shared devotion to freedom and liberty was far more important than differences on matters of personal morality. This is embodied in the fundamental, negative right to be left alone, easily deducible from the non-aggression axiom. This was a central lesson of Ron Paul’s recent presidential campaign. As Murray Rothbard said;
It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative life-styles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of ‘bourgeois’ conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that ‘liberty is the highest political end’ – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.
And so, we come around to our old nemesis Larry Flynt. The Independent Film Channel has just aired a new documentary, “Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone”, video here, which finds Larry and I in almost eerie concord with regard to the natural rights that inhere in our persons, aptly summarized by the subtitle. It turns out that, at least on matters of freedom of speech, expression, association, and the use of government force to commit war and destruction on people, as well as the aforementioned liberties, I have to confess I’m beginning to find a lot to like about the old smut-peddler.
(link from Independent Film Channel via our pal violet)
The juxtaposition of the two stories on the front page of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer could not have been more jarring – the feature center story about a young Camden, NJ mother’s grief over the death of her young son in a hail of bullets intended by one miscreant for another like him; and a Column 1 story about Philadelphia’s disappointing new mayor performing public mea culpas for his previous harsh remarks about city department of human services personnel.
Through malign neglect and manifest criminality, employees of the DHS caused the death of a child allegedly under their specious ‘protection’.
It would appear that these two incidents are unconnected. We will examine why this is false.
The shooting death of 4-year old Brandon Thompson is an unfortunate case of an innocent losing his life simply by walking into the sights of a criminal taking revenge on a rival with a firearm. Official denials of the connection of this apparent vendetta with drug dealing ring hollow in light of the alleged perpetrator’s previous arrest for possession, and the alleged use of several 9 mm semiautomatic weapons discharging at least 40 shots. Why Camden police officials would be so quick to deny that the shooting was drug-related is suspicious, to say the least. But even if no drugs were involved, why the heavy weaponry? Why else risk getting arrested and doing hard time for weapons possession (concealed carry of handguns is virtually outlawed in NJ) except to defend a territory of criminal activity? Whatever the reason, the alleged shooter, one Donald Lindsey, 20, of Camden risked serious state time even before the terrible act (characterized by the victim’s mother, who saw it happen as deliberate) was perpetrated.
A couple of miles west, Mayor Michael Nutter (D, Same-Old, Same-Old) was being forced to eat every last word of righteous indignation he had previously heaped on the City Of Philadelphia’s criminally corrupt Department of Human Services by the Department’s bunch of crybaby unionized hacks. Said hacks led the mayor to the microphones by his scrotal sack, rhetorically speaking, to apologize for hurting the legitimacy and the feelings of the bloated, corpulent hordes of tax-eaters. Said tax-eaters ineptly and ineffectually fail to protect vulnerable children from their own families while nonetheless succeeding at clinging to the public teat as their reward for doing so. The death of Danieal Kelly, in 2006 dehydrated and ridden with maggots, is only just now being tied to the DHS by a grand jury.
Nutter’s outrage, while probably heartfelt, is a little bit late, and rendered even more impotent by his ass-kissing retraction. The proper response to the systematic neglect of their alleged duties would have been to close the agency outright and replace it with nothing. Failing that, he should simply have fired every member of agency management, hired outside auditors to review all case records, then fire any agency employee whose cases were handled in an unsatisfactory way. In Philadelphia’s union-dominated government, either move would be the kiss of death for Nutter’s political ambitions.
Two different cities, two dead kids. How to relate them? In both cases, the government interposed itself as a moral agent, in Philadelphia by subjecting family relations to the arbitrary will of a public bureaucracy, severing parental responsibility and replacing it with nothing; in Camden’s case the criminalization of drugs and firearms has led to the concentration of both into criminal hands, leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless to protect themselves, their children, and their property.
Just Another Dead Criminal
It was one of those literally unbelievable moments that seem to be happening with increasing frequency – a tax-eating public servant defending his culpability by deception, incompetence, and negligence for the bloody murder of a young female under his control essentially by implying ’she asked for it‘:
The Tallahassee police chief says Rachel was suspected of selling drugs and she was rightly treated as a criminal.
“That’s my job as a police chief to find these criminals in our community and take them off the street, to make the proper arrests,” Jones told 20/20.”
Rachel was in a drug court diversion program when she became an informant. Due to the manipulation of the chief of the Tallahassee PD, she is now a dead informant. Yet despite his manifest culpability for her death, here he is, on TV, defending his reprehensible action of putting this peaceful dope-smoker in the literal sights of two (allegedly, a term with which he disdains to describe the unconvicted Ms. Hoffman) known murdering animals;
“I’m calling her a criminal,” Tallahassee police chief Dennis Jones told 20/20, who maintains that both drug dealers and drug users are considered criminals to his department.
It was like watching a fictional crime drama, except this guy really is on the government payroll, saying this stuff like he believes it.
If Rachel Hoffman was a “criminal, then this guy is nothing but a murderer.
28
Jul
08
When Good Money Goes Bad
Just flipping through today’s local newspaper and noticed a disturbing trend of how gobs of unearned cash gravitating toward unaccountable entities attracts the criminals.
CLIFTON HEIGHTS – Residents and some council members questioned the transfer of $825,000 in grant money to the Clifton Heights Economic Corp., a nonprofit entity that council has no control over, at a recent council meeting.
“I don’t know how we authorized this corporation when we never got papers on this corporation,” said Councilman Mario Alpini. A listing for the corporation at nonprofit compendium Guidestar.org could not be found.
Police: Mother stole $74,000 from Avon Grove Little League
LONDON GROVE – State police arrested a Little League mom after she allegedly stole more than $70,000 raised through hot dog and candy sales, raffles and donations.
Fresh Start program raises questions in Yeadon
YEADON – Councilman Isaac Dotson received answers to questions he raised at the July 17 council meeting concerning Fresh Start Summer Camp, a popular new program serving 43 local teens under the direction of founder Leslie Lewis-McGirth.
Dotson specifically asked, “How many checks did the finance department issue on behalf of Fresh Start and how much money was spent to date?” And “who authorized Fresh Start employees to be placed on borough payroll?” Dotson also inquired about registration fees, employees, salaries and whether they’d received background checks. He also wanted to know if Lewis-McGirth used the borough’s tax-exempt number for grant applications, and “why the borough has not seen any funds, … cash or check?”
This is all from one weekend in one county. And last but certainly not least, the dead tree version of the same paper today reported on the executive director of National Night Out (a non-profit crime watch organization) is under fire for claiming $300,000 in compensation from his $1.2 million budget most of which, as in the stories above, flows from us to him at the point of a gun. By the way, I’m also keeping an eye on the $500,000 check my own local youth club collected from the Commonwealth of PA to build a fieldhouse. The previously-privately-funded organization is quickly becoming a highly-protected fiefdom.
Poison Fruit?
Incompetent government agency fails to perform its job ((YAWNNNN)) cripples an industry ($100 billion worth), and still cannot say with any certainty what exactly happened. Yet absolutely no one in the FDA was harmed.
We Should Have Known, Really
The US Senate just passed the immoral, illegal, unconstitutional FISA “Amendment” bill, which, if you haven’t been following along, includes retroactive immunity from civil prosecution for telecommunications companies that knowingly broke the law, allowing members of the Bush gang to basically route all communications through their systems directly to the NSA without warrant or legal sanction of any kind, an utter violation of the 4th Amendment as well as more than two centuries of settled law.
Throughout the process of the passage of this evil piece of filth through the Congressional colon, Democratic presidential candidate Barack H. Obama claimed he would filibuster the bill rather than accede to its passage, a feather in his cap, to our minds. But yesterday, as had been telegraphed for days prior, he turned around and voted for the immoral, lawless bill.
While not exactly Obama supporters, we had been holding out a slim reed of hope that maybe, just maybe, the charming Illinois politician would be marginally less bad than the evil, clueless John McCain. After all, he has been less strident than McCain on Iraq, and made approving noises about the recent bare 5-4 Supreme Court decision preserving a scrap of constitutional protection of habeus corpus. Even if the passage of the bill was “predetermined” as Russ Feingold said, he could have stood on the Senate floor and made a speech decrying the bill, even if he still felt like he had to vote for it. For an example, see Ron Paul’s record statement on the House bill.
But he didn’t. Obama is turning out to be a typical, immoral, evil liar
(Rollins Band video of “Liar” from YouTube, Venture Brothers video from Cartoon Network, Obama photo from some dumbass Republican’s blog)
From the aptly-enough named Staten Island natives Happy Anarchy comes our first example of betrayal as muse; On “Personal Judas”, sounding alternately like Lloyd Cole, The Cult, and The Tubes, this wry, angry song had me pressing rewind to enjoy it’s crunchy late-70’s vibey goodness. Listen, and disregard the critic’s bias toward -archy;
“Cause you’re lonely, cause you’re poor
Cause they sent you off to war…
Dirty fingers ain’t gonna clean up this mess that we fell in
And you’ve got those stains smeared all over your face
Clean shirt. sucker
I ain’t the one so let’s go find another to pick up the pieces
You’ve lost your red letter, now don’t you feel better?
Cause we all need someone to blame”
Next up – Paper Rival’s “Are We Brothers?” has both lyrical and instrumental outrage aplenty, but counterpointed by sweet harmonies and again, That 70’s Vibe, go listen;
“Our bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
How did we separate ourselves?
The bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
Why did we separate ourselves like this?
Do we share the same blood?
Do we wear the same cloth?
Is it all getting lost?
Are we brothers or not?”
Yet A Couple More Reasons To Love New Jersey
Tags: Corzine, cut, holiday, New Jersey, sales tax
And It's FULL SERVICE!
I love New Jersey. Full-serve regular gas at a name brand station for 30 cents less per gallon than the national average. Almost makes all the refinery pollution worthwhile…
And another bonus – the Republicans in the state legislature are forcing Governor John Corzine’s hand on the economy by proposing to cut the sales tax in half through New Years. Not that it will ever pass, but it is forcing Corzine (D. Goldman Sachs) to do something to relieve the burden of the current financial meltdown on consumers and businesses.
How about this guys – let’s make the rate ZERO. Permanently.
(PHOTO: What I paid for gas today at a brand-name station)