Double Birds

Jack Abramoff recently gave an interview on how he had bribed at least 100 congressional offices .  He said that those numbers were pretty low when it comes to lobbying. Michael Moore entertainingly depicted the revolving doors between Goldman Sachs and Congress.  But like many on the left, he doesn't grasp that the problem isn't that the power of government can be bought and sold.  The problem is that government has power at all. Governmental power is greater than that of any corporation or individual.  Government can take money it has not earned.  No other entity can legitimately do that. The big banks that received the bailouts, received them from the government.  On their own, banks have to get their money from people who voluntarily give it to them.  But not if they lobby Congress. Notice that once lobbyists get some tax money, they can use our taxes to bribe Congress.  Congressmen and crony corporations use the revolving door of lobbying to ...

Hawaiians—tired of waiting for bureaucrats to pull their heads out—build their own road: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/09/hawaii.volunteers.repair/index.html Road anarchy (building roads without government) is possible!

The Road Idea Contest got delayed like I-15 under stimulus package construction.  I learned a lot from this contest, and will make future contests even better. I received a great road idea from Scott Brusaw of Solar Roadways.  His company wants to build solar panels into our roads . A solar road could: Power the cars that drive on them. Generate heat to keep snow from forming ice "Paint" itself with lights Power the world Pretty cool idea.  I hope Scott can succeed in changing our roads.  Under our current system of state and federal control of roads, innovation is difficult to accomplish.   Check out his TEDx talk . The road contest was meant to be a mental exercise to get people out of the paradigm of socialized roads. For example: a private company would lose customers if it fined them for driving too fast.  A competitor who figured out how to let people drive safely at 200 or 300 miles per hour would gain the customers. Roads are so ubiquitous, that it...

How much does it cost you to drive down the road? I'm not talking gas prices.  Or car prices.  Or even how much it costs to build and maintain the roads. I'm asking, how much does the government charge you for using its roads. Everything.  All the wealth that you have, or ever will have, according to one bureaucrat. Elizabeth Warren, a woman running for Senate, recently said : "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:  you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for ; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific...

The question was this: A seemingly healthy 30 year-old man decides to not buy health insurance because it is too expensive.  He ends up in a coma.  Should we let him die? Wolf Blitzer loaded the question as a man would load bullets into a gun.  It wasn't meant to get an honest response.  It was meant to make a tv spectacle, and to make Ron Paul look bad.  Just as the debate was not meant to be an honest debate, but a show, a spectacle to befuddle the masses into a stupor between election cycles. The scenario seems like a case of rampant, inhumane capitalism versus merciful government intervention.  Our debates are usually constructed in similar anti-capitalist  false dilemmas , because establishment Republicans and Democrats both hate capitalism, and want to give more power to the state. Start at 2:30. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook The Republican audie...

For all of you who have rolled your eyes when I've said that roads should be privatized, consider this: Have you ever been pulled over for speeding?  When the guy with a gun fined you a hundred bucks for going too fast, did it ever seem odd?  What if Costco started tazing , fining, and imprisoning people who drove their shopping carts too fast down the aisles?  Wouldn't you think it odd if a Costco teller pulled a gun on you, and told you to get your ni**er a**  down on the floor, if you, say, were  paralyzed , or black ? 72-year-old woman tased. Respect the elderly, or respect my authoritah ? Why don't we think it odd when it happens on our roads?  Americans are apt to forget that highways were built to prevent popular uprisings .  That speed limits were put in place to force gas rationing .  And public schools never teach that roads are monopolies. Recently, an  Eastern European mayor has used a tank to run over the vehicles of his own ...

Matt Damon thinks teachers should have tenure.  The same website ( boingboing ) that portrayed his statement as heroic , had another article on how public schools in Missouri were banning books  ( Slaugherhouse-Five ).  On the same page, posted on the same day! Just give them more effin money! (Edited by Double Birds) Boingboing has a whole list of school shenanigans , that make our education system look like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. We all want to fix education.  But money is not the only problem. The root of the problem is politics.  If a politician thinks he can score re-election points by busing inner-city kids to the suburbs , and rural kids to the cities, he'll do it.  If he thinks he can score points by banning Kurt Vonnegut, or expunging Mark Twain , or dumbing down F. Scott Fitzgerald , he'll do it. Why is a politician getting involved in the first place?  Why is it his business how my kid is raised?  Isn't that somethi...

Some small thoughts on Braveheart and The Smurfs . One wants freedom, the other wants his mom to do his laundry. (Edited by Double Birds) At FilmEcon .