Medary.com

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A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention. (Yeah, it's possible I might have ADD . . .)

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
Behold my "Awesome Zelazny Riff" at Ace of Spades HQ here: Advice for Governor Palin. My comment is at #194, which you have to scroll down through the whole dull, tedious thing for, because for reasons I don't understand, the direct link doesn't work. Bummer for you, eh? No, seriously, go. It'll be worth your while. Trust me! Have HOPE.

Lord of Light is, I think, my all-time favorite book. Of all time.

Oh, another thing that I just think is the funniest thing:
Guantanamo eyed for 9/11 trial -- So . . . we . . . have to . . . close the prison there . . . so we can . . . hold . . . the trials there? Huh? WTF?

In other news, Mark Steyn speaks Truth to Power:

In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself. So quite reasonably he sees government dependency as the natural order of things. And in his college-loan plan he’s explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you’re a schmuck and a loser. In the America he’s building, you’ll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama’s proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It’s the audacity of hopelessness.

Hope! Change! Perpetual Servitude To Your Masters In Washington (who, of course, love you)!

More after the "read more" . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

. . . the state can do a great deal to help the spreading of knowledge and information and to assist mobility. But the point is that the kind of state action which really would increase opportunity is almost precisely the opposite of the "planning" which is now generally advocated and practiced.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention. (Yeah, it's possible I might have ADD . . .)

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:

OK . . . does anybody other than me detect the inherent contradiction reflected by this Reuters article title: Obama assails Republican foes, urges bipartisan effort? Would it help if I pointed out that Obama waited ONE ENTIRE FRICKIN' YEAR to have this meeting? Why shouldn't the Republicans feel just a bit miffed--at least? Obama has spent the entirety of the last year demonstrating by his actions that he and his party didn't give a rat's ass what the Republicans wanted, and had absolutely no interest in talking to them, hearing what they thought, or even paying them the simple courtesy of respect. Anybody remember "I Won?" But now, all of the sudden, Obama wants to play Mr. Bipartisan, and oh by the way, you Republicans are the bad guys?

Who held all the cards for the past year, Mr. President? Who sat in the White House? Who had 60 votes in the Senate? Who had an unassailable majority in the House?

If the Congressional Republicans were smart they'd tell Obama to take his "Bipartisanship" and stick it where the sun don't shine. This is your show, big guy, they would say, and it's been your show for the past year. If you can't do the job, it's not the Republican's fault.

Obama, you are headed down a road that will completely ruin the American economy. What you are doing has been tried before. It does not work. So yes, indeed, we hope you fail at that. You, sir, are not FDR, and this is not 1934. You are much more Herbert Hoover than you are Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it's much more like 1930 than it is 1934, and a huge section of the American public knows it. (Oh, by the way, the New Deal was pretty much a disaster, too, extending the Great Depression by six long years (according to UCLA economists)--extending it by implementing precisely the same kind of policies you are inflicting on the country now. ) You don't know the right things to do to heal the American economy, and the things you think will help will wind up causing much, much more damage, and much, much more suffering for the people you were elected to serve. That's "elected to serve," not elected to reign over, by the way. So pull your nose down out of the sky and stop trying to look (and act) like Benito Mussolini.

See you in November, Il Duce.

More after the "read more" . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

In a directed economy, where the authority watches over the ends pursued, it is certain that it would use its powers to assist some ends and to prevent the realization of others. Not our own view, but somebody else's, of what we ought to like or dislike would determine what we should get. And since the authority would have the power to thwart any efforts to elude its guidance, it would control what we consume almost as effectively as if it directly told us how to spend our income.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention. (Yeah, it's possible I might have ADD . . .)

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
If you live where the government assesses a property tax, you do not own your property. The government does. You just rent it, and the government is your landlord. Emphasis on the "Lord" part, serf! Don't believe me? Try not paying your property taxes. Something very, very like an eviction will happen to you.

Thought #2--if you're big into gold, you might want to think about getting out--ore at least diversifying. Because George Soros is saying that "The next bubble is gold."
And how he has made his billions is that he creates bubbles, and then he pops them--making money off both ends. That's his game.

Anyway . . . "it's just news. It's just news! . . . " (beware of laser beams)

How To Report The News (only one f-bomb, but what the heck, it's kind of in context):


You have seen The Matrix, haven't you? Haven't you?
Boing Boing carries the humor to its logical Internet blog-based conclusion.
And now, the rest of the news . . . I n s p e c i a l E n g l i s h . . . (that visual joke was for the shortwave fans out there . . . )
(After the "Read More" of course . . .)

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The power conferred by the control of production and prices is almost unlimited. In a competitive society the prices we have to pay for a thing, the rate at which we can get one thing for another, depend on the quantities of other things of which by taking one, we deprive the other members of society. This price is not determined by the conscious will of anybody. And if one way of achieving our ends proves too expensive for us, we are free to try other ways. The obstacles in our path are not due to someone's disapproving of our ends but to the fact that the same means are also wanted elsewhere.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention. (Yeah, it's possible I might have ADD . . .)

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
Special State of the Union Address Review:

What the hell was THAT?

Section Two: Things That Amuse Me:
2.1: Simians:
This space unintentionally left blank.

2.2: Travel:
This one, too.

2.3: Sports:
No. 21 Vanderbilt beats No. 14 Tennessee 85-76
UMKC women’s coach juggles basketball and baby
NFL will go through Texas for two from SDSU
More after the "Read More" . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

If we remember why planning is advocated by most people, can there be much doubt that this power would be used for the ends of which the authority approves and to prevent the pursuits of the ends which it disapproves?

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention. (Yeah, it's possible I might have ADD . . .)

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
Good Government Plan--the Medary/Filbert State of the Union Plan For The Future (it's a bit choppy--sorry about that . . . it's not a speech, after all, it's more of a rant . . .):

Government has served us badly. The sector of American society which is most out of control is government--it has failed to govern well, it has failed to govern efficiently, it has failed to govern responsibly, it has failed to govern humanely, it has failed to govern--period. Government can not make us happy. The best government can do is to enforce the laws. We have forgotten these simple facts. We must re-remember them. We must recognize is that THE ONLY ENTITLEMENT we have from government is the entitlement of the fair, impartial execution of the rule of law. The government is not an instrument of "social justice" but an instrument of REAL justice. Justice must mean one thing to all people--justice must once again become blind to all of the differences which separate us--wealth, race, class, gender, or anything else. No person is entitled to the life, liberty, or property of another person--not in this country, the United States of America. The rich are not entitled to the property of the poor any more than the poor are entitled to the property of the rich. The sick are not entitled to the time of the healer, just as the healer is not entitled to an unearned income from his or her charges. For too long, government has been the instrument of the rich against the poor, or the poor against the rich; the elites against the masses, and occasionally the masses against the elites.

These are symptoms--symptoms of a government which has grown too powerful--"too big to fail" in the current vernacular. But a government which is too big to fail has already failed in its fundamental duty--the duty to fairly and impartially enforce the rule of law.

Time is short. We must not fail to deal with these problems now--and deal with them properly and rationally this time, not wildly and emotionally, as we have done in the past.

Here's part of what we need to do:

Our only hope to avoid the economic ruin of national bankruptcy is to grow our economy fast enough to avoid the utter, complete, total disaster we are facing. Government programs can't do that. The only thing we know of that CAN do that is the power, the ingenuity and the enterprise of the American people, unleashed from the shackles of government interference and intervention. We have seen, over and over and over again, that government does not produce anything except more government. Government is indeed the major reason why we now have the problems we have. Government is not the solution. Government has no solution to the problems we face. The people, acting as a free people in a free market, are the solution.

The area where government has failed the most tragically is by stupidly obligating us to pay for an ever-increasing number of "entitlements" which we simply can not afford. We must address the "entitlement" question--Social Security, Medicare--or we will fail and fall.

We can not afford to be the world's policeman, and we can not afford to be the world's emergency response squad. We must defend America and Americans--that is the purpose of our military and our national defense infrastructure. Everything we do in foreign affairs and in military affairs must be with this in mind--America and Americans First.

Immediate, across-the-board, 10% cut in all non-defense government spending. The ENTIRE proceeds of which is returned to the American taxpayers--Oh, wait. It gets better . . .

Complete, independent, third-party audits of every, single, solitary entity which exerts in any way power authorized by or delegated from the Federal Government, including and especially the Federal Reserve. Results of the audits are not only public, but posted online as soon as they are completed. Agencies that fail the audit are subject to elimination and consolidation with more responsible governmental organizations.

Enact a flat income tax--a single percentage tax on all personal income, from whatever source derived. The first . . . oh . . . say . . . $20,000 of income for singles, $40,000 for married couples, plus $10,000 for each minor child . . . is totally exempt from tax. Capital Gains taxes are abolished (capital gains now considered as regular personal income); corporate income taxes are abolished (we all know that they just get passed through to consumers anyway). Propose a Constitutional Amendment that a national personal income tax and a national sales or VAT tax may not be levied in the same year--to eliminate the inevitable temptation to do both--keeping the politician's hands out of the cookie jar, so to speak.

Make Social Security/Medicare actuarially sound. The only way to achieve this, I'm afraid, is to shut it down and re-build it from scratch. We are on the hook for everyone who is alive at the time that this reform is enacted, I'm afraid. But the obscenity of using the Social Security Trust Fund as a Ponzi scheme to fund the Federal government through the back door must end. Close down the existing Social Security--don't allow new people to enter that corrupt, broken system--and pay the damn thing off out of general revenues. Create a diversified and robust National Retirement System based primarily on private funds, but augmented to ensure a basic sustenance level for all Americans who have responsibly paid into the system. No pay, no play, however. Separate health care from National Retirement--they are two different things.

Open the national market for medical insurance. Make medical spending accounts easier to open and fund for normal, working-class citizens. Exempt MSA funding from income taxation up to some nominal amount ($10,000 a year?). Exempt MSA interest earned from income taxation if the money stays in the MSA. Allow the same income tax exemption for one person to fund another person's MSA (promoting person-to-person charity.)

Begin bringing American troops home from Japan and from Europe, especially Germany. We won World War II sixty-five years ago. We don't need to continue to occupy Japan and Germany, let alone Iraq. We also don't need to base our troops in other European countries who don't think they need to pay for their defense because that's what Americans are for. Wrong. American military forces are to defend America and Americans, not to defend British, Spanish, Italians, or anybody else. We are not your mercenaries. We are, if you are still willing, your allies--which means that you have responsibilities to uphold, too--responsibilities you have been shirking for far too long.

Abolish by Executive Order all violations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments currently in law or regulation of the Federal Government. The President, and each and every member of Congress, is sworn to Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution. It isn't just the Judicial Branch which is tasked with protecting the Constitution--it's all three branches of the Federal Government. It's far past time for Congress and the President to start taking that oath seriously, to serve the American People.

Enact a rational energy policy: Exploit the national reserves of gas and oil to the maximum extent, and accelerate research into alternative energies--especially fusion. Eliminate unnecessary red tape hindering construction of power plants, especially nuclear power plants. End the disastrous, Quixotic tilt at "climate change," redirecting research funds to research into adaptation strategies.

Vigorously, aggressively investigate and prosecute all instances of voter intimidation and vote fraud.

Simplify, Streamline, and Strengthen U.S. Immigration procedures and Border protection. Make it easier for good people to come to the U.S. and harder for bad people to get into the U.S.

Immediately sell off GM, Chrysler, and any other private company wholly or partially owned by the U.S. Government. If they fail, they fail. The government's job is to enforce the laws, not to ensure that specific companies continue to wheeze along.

Oh, there's much, much more, (abolish the Department of Education, terminate Federal funding for the NEA/NEH/PBS/NPR, eliminate the ICC, rein in and downsize the FCC, etc., etc.) but that's just fifteen minutes, off the top of my head . . .

More, including the nearly daily link extravaganza, after the "Read More" . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.