When You Get PigFluAIDSEbola, Visit Rand Paul's House

Here's Rand Paul's plan to save 500 billion dollars. You'll love it, right up until you die of PigFluAIDSEbola. (Alternatively, I suppose it's possible Rand Paul is actively seeking to bring about the Zombie Apocalypse- fast zombie version- in which case, bravo!)

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH………………………….$1,283,000,000. (23%)
Notes: The Government Printing Office is abolished.

Sweet, he's getting rid of his own job! Oh, no, he's not. He's getting rid of our national library. Who needed information, anyway?

JUDICIAL BRANCH………………………………..$2,434,000,000. (32%)

Fuck it, who needs judges anyway? Laws are so 2010.

AGRICULTURE……………………………………..$42,542,000,000. (30%)
The Agriculture Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Resources Conservation Service, and Foreign Agricultural Service are abolished. The Forest Service gets a $1.2 billion haircut.

We really could make a lot of cuts in agriculture. For example, when my BIL worked at Johnson & Johnson headquarters, they allowed sheep to graze on the front lawn every so often so they could get tax cuts meant for actual sheep herders. We could definitely get rid of that sort of thing. That's not what Rand Paul is talking about, is he?

Agriculture Research Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture- two of America's premier scientific organization, doing research on diabetes and diseases the destroy crops. Who needs that? You don't eat things, do you? Fuck it, you've never heard of it, it must not do anything useful to you.

COMMERCE……………………………………………$5,322,000,000. (54%)
National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is cut by $857,000,000.

National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration- Did you check the weather today to see if you should carry an umbrella or a snow shovel? In the future, you can guess about that. It'll be fun.

EDUCATION…………………………………………..$78,000,000,000 (83%)
Only the Pell grant program survives.

Education? Who the fuck needs that?

ENERGY……………………………………………………$44,200,000,000 (100%)
The Defense Department takes over all of Energy’s remaining functions (nuclear waste, for example) and about $18 billion of its budget.

Yeah, you know what I'm not messing with? Nuclear waste. Let's not induce confusion in the process of dealing with nuclear waste.

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES…………..$26,510,000,000. (26%)
Notes: FDA is cut by $230,000,000; Indian Health Service is cut by $650 million; CDC is cut by $1.17 billion; NIH by $5.8 billion.

What have the FDA, the CDC or the NIH done for you lately? Seriously, they're just a waste. I like eating a mixture of pig feet and mercury when I think I'm eating tofu. It adds a little excitement to my day. And plagues? Plagues are fucking awesome! I'm sure we'll all enjoy the PigFluAIDSEbola outbreak of 2013. When 90% of humanity dies, there's more for the rest of us!

HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT….$53,100,000,000. (100%)
Notes: Completely eliminated. Veterans’ housing programs are transferred to the VA

Cuz who needs housing? If those poor people don't like being homeless, they should go live in their bootstraps.

JUSTICE…………………………………………………….$9,057,000,000. (28%)
Note: Office of Justice Programs is abolished.

Rand Paul likes the judiciary so much, he cut it twice!

TRANSPORTATION……………………………………..$42,810,000,000. (49%)
Notes: Amtrak is completely de-funded.

I'm guessing that Amtrak is not 49% of the DOT budget, and considering the state of our roads and bridges, this really concerns me. Unlike Rand Paul, I do not think plunging from a suddenly collapsing bridge would be fun.

CORPS OF ENGINEERS.……………………………….$1,854,000,000. (27%)

Ah, the US Army Corps of Engineers. They're only responsible for investigating, developing and maintaining the nation's water and related environmental resources. You don't need water, do you?

Let's see what (else) Rand Paul wants to abolish entirely:

Affordable Housing Program. God, those poor people and their incessant whinging about housing! fuck them!

Consumer Product Safety Commission. Caveat emptor, bitches! CAVEAT EMPTOR!

National Endowment for the Arts. Art, who the fuck needs that while your children are dying in unsafe cribs and you're bleeding from every orifice from the PigFluAIDSEbola plague?

These people, they scare me.

You're Not Atlas, and That's Called "Farting" not "Shrugging"

Did I ever tell you I used to be a registered Libertarian?

For reals! I was totally into libertarianism, although I never did make it more than 50 pages into even one Ayn Rand book. so, why was a libertarian? Because I was 19, that's why. 19 year olds tend to be smug little know-it-alls, and I was no exception. Then I got poor and had the wonderful opportunity to view our country from a whole new perspective- hungry, cold, hurting and from under the jackboots of our corporate owners. Today I stand before you (sit digitally nowhere near you?) a socialist.

Anyway, I thought I'd address this ridiculous tripe from Significant Pursuit by Renaissance Guy.

This post is going to be a little like Atlas Shrugged, but not as long. Or as brilliant.

When a fly vomits on your arm, that's more brilliant than Atlas Shrugged. Don't sell yourself short, RG.

What if the owners and mangers of a large factory gathered all the workers together and said, “For the next month your wish will come true. You can run this company, and we will allow you to split 100% of the profits among yourselves. However, there are a few catches. . .”?

So . . . all the workers everywhere want to ditch the owners of companies and become the owners? Maybe you're not selling yourself short there, RG. Maybe you are kind of stupid.

Look, I'm not stupid, so I know that I cannot run the law firm I work for. For one thing, I'm not a lawyer and there are laws concerning impersonating an officer of the Court*. However, there is no reason for my boss to randomly abuse me. There's no reason our sick days got cut from 4 to 2. All that accomplished is that (a) we come to work sick and everyone gets sick, and (b) people take the same number of days off, but don't get paid for anything over 2 days.

Then there's the rule about not being able to leave for doctor's appointments. I work Monday through Friday, 9-5, when all doctors have their hours. I'm apparently never supposed to get sick ever again. I only have 2 sick days, and preventive care would help me not get sick, but I can't go to the doctor, so . . . yeah, it's just abusive. And he's just doing it because he can. But he's rich, so according to RG, it's good! Everything rich people do is good because rich=good and poor=bad.

We'll just ignore the fact that RG is a Christian and I'm pretty sure Jesus did not say anything like that.

These machines that you operate were purchased by us. They belong to us. You may not use them, since that would be giving you an advantage that we did not have when we started. You see, we didn’t just open the doors of this buidling and find it already equipped and furnished.

Come to think of it, we bought the building too, and the land. We paid lots of money not only to have it built but to make sure that it complied with the hundreds of federal, state, and local regulations. (It might interest you to know that during that process we employed lots of people, giving them an opportunity to make a living.) So, since we, the owners, had to buy this building, we request that during this month when you get to keep all the profits, you find your own building.

Um, yes. And I'm sure the owners of this fine company had no assistance in buying all that stuff. They paid for it in cash they earned on their paper routes, no doubt. There were no investors, no banks lending money, no tax breaks, nothing. What colour is the sky where you live, RG? Over here in reality, it's blue.

There’s one more thing that you need to know. If, during that month, you lose money, then you will have to share that loss, too. You will collectively have to pay us back, since we are the ones who normally take the hit when our profits are down. We are the ones who usually take the risk, but since you envy us so much, you can have that risk yourself.

Because when the auto companies and the banks tanked back in 2008, nobody helped them out. Nobody like you and me, the common taxpayer. Oh, wait . . .

We doubt that you will be able to build a building and equip and furnish it in time to make much money this month, so we suggest a few other options. If you wish, we can terminate you temporarily, and you can live on unemployment benefits. Please remember that we pay for those benefits. (Which means that we pay all of you less than we otherwise could.) If you would rather, you can try to pick up other jobs during the month. Maybe you will find a job that you like better than the one we give you. You have our blessing to go and do that job permanently. Good for you, in that case!

Actually, we all pay for unemployment. Ever looked at your paycheck, RG? It says so right on it. Unemployment insurance is well named. You pay into it while you work, and if you ever need it, you get a little back. Just like car insurance.

Also, "there are no other jobs out there" is exactly the reason my boss feels free to throw my stapler at me. He only missed because I ducked. I stick around because, well, there aren't any other jobs out there. That doesn't make his abuse acceptable.

You know what, you're pissing me off, so I'm stopping this right here. Here's me shrugging, RG.

Dear Asshole Attorney (who likes to throw staplers at me):

You don't even know how to use a computer. You can't check your email, you can't type your own letters or legal documents, you can barely even answer the phone. You can't use the billing software and you certainly don't have sufficient hours in the day to answer all the phones, do all the filing, type all the documents, send out all the mail, send out all the bills and do all the other things necessary to run this office.

But, for one month, I'm going to give you the opportunity to do just that. All of us, the secretaries, the receptionist, the paralegals, the billing office, we're taking a 30 day vacation. Your clients don't like waiting 5 minutes to talk to you, but I'm sure they'll be totally cool with waiting 30 days to get anything done. Oh, that's right, you have 20 days to respond to a complaint filed in District Court. Well, I'm sure you'll figure out how to use the computer before the 20 days is up. Don't worry about it. Multi million dollar companies love losing lawsuits by default.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Sincerely,

The Wage Slaves

*It is legal to practice law without a law license as long as you make it very clear you do not have a law license. Think about that for a few seconds and you'll realize why it never comes up.

Libertariate All Night Long!

I generally avoid any "serious" "position" "article" that invokes Atlas, shrugging, Ayn, Rand or Galt, because it's a sure way to give myself heartburn, but [redacted] dared me to read this one, so here we are.

I assumed, given the title, A New Way to Fix, oh, I'm sorry, apparently libertarians don't waste money on needless capitalization rules, "A new way to fix debt crisis*: Unchain Atlas", that this was an article about cutting wasteful spending on feeding and housing the disabled and elderly. (Betcha didn't think I was going to go straight back into that sentence, did you? Ha!**) While this article does touch upon such "solutions", as is required by the Ghost of Ayn Rand under penalty of being read the infamous 70 page speech by Glenn Beck on a meth bender, that's actually not the "solution" being proposed.

I know, right?

No, Walter Donway blazes a newish trail straight into deregulation.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act drives companies to list their stocks abroad, and the effects of the huge financial regulation package passed by the Obama administration are too new to estimate accurately. But all anti-trust laws, relics of the Nineteenth Century, are unnecessary and protect no one except less able competitors. Environmental laws consume gigantic amounts of capital every year, even though United States air quality and the water supply are hugely cleaner and better than they were 20 years ago.

Huh. That's weird. Environmental laws in full force and effect and the air and water supply are cleaner and better than they were 20 years ago. It's almost like, well, I hate to say it, but, it's almost like those laws might have something to do with the cleaner air and higher quality water supply. Apparently, if you actually read the 70 page speech, cause and effect no longer have any connection whatsoever. I wonder how often Mr. Donway sticks his fingers in electrical outlets and then says, "Damn! Hurt that time, too!"

He's being a teensy bit disingenuous about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, btw. I have no idea how effective the Act is, but it was actually drafted in response to the corporate and accounting scandals, like Enron, that cost investors billions when the price of the shares collapsed. But, hey, caveat emptor and who's John Galt and all that.

So, what sort of deregulation does Mr. "I can't believe it hurt that time, too!" Donway want? Total. Total deregulation. Of everything.

Give it all a rest, a complete rest, for 10 years. Occupational Health and Safety regulations could be left to the trial lawyers, who already exact a staggering toll from hospitals and businesses. One idea is just to put regulations on hold for a full decade, creating a holiday from regulations and regulatory compliance.

I hope you enjoy eating salmonella sandwiches on your ergot bread as you drive your old school Pinto over a bridge made entirely of twisty-ties. I hope you enjoy living in a brand new house that catches on fire as soon as you turn on the lights and collapses into a pile of scrap timber when a car with no muffler drives by. Oh, that penicillin you're taking? It's not 500mg to a capsule, it's 100 mg, and it's not penicillin, it's sawdust. Too bad you can't test that shit yourself, at home. I certainly wouldn't get into a plane. Or live near an airport. Or under any flight paths.

I wouldn't put your child in a car seat, or in a car, or in a crib, unless you have some way of testing those things for safety yourself. Then again, who knows what their clothes are made of now, or their diapers, or their toys.

As for working? Good luck. If you're lucky enough to have a desk job, you'll be working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a lot less than you do now. Health insurance? Are you high? Well, maybe, who knows what was in that aspirin you took this morning. Do you work anywhere even moderately dangerous? Don't worry, you won't be working there for long, but I'm sure your 11-year-old won't mind picking up where you were killed off.

But it's only for 10 years. I'm sure the economy will be completely fixed by then . . . by the generous cash donations the unregulated companies will be giving to the government. Sure.

*Or pointless grammar rules. I had no idea Ayn Rand was opposed to the definite article. The more you know . . .

**I drank 2 beers at 3am this morning in a desperate bid to get 3 hours of sleep. It did not work.

Intestinal Fortitude*

The Slacktivist is all fired up and posted three posts in a day. I think. I usually only check over there twice a week, so imagine my shock at the Pharyngulesque posting schedule. I was caught by this comment from Robert, one of the Slacktivist's libertaritrolls, in response to a post that makes the point that calls for armed insurrection from people living in a more or less functioning democracy are nothing more than childish wish fulfillment of the Wolveriiiiiines! variety:

The thing is... once upon a time... people regularly died just getting from A to B.

"[Move to the New World? It'll take months to get there? I might die? Ok.. sure, let's go.]"

So things like armed revolution were more within their comfort zone.

So now what you see is things like people that would never of taken the Pilgrim Journey in the first place... rationalizing their complete lack of intestinal fortitude... by down-playing the realities that this nations foundations are drastically being altered.

As our liberties are being consumed they continue to point avenues of legislation and lobby as viable methods for true change.

That's like pointing to buttons on a dashboard; while on the other side the wires are being cut; simultaneously laughing at the people that are saying we should pry the panel off and get set to rewire the lines that were cut.

This isn't fiction.
There are volumes of example of constitutional "rights" being ignored by the powers that be.

I'm not saying we need true change.
I'm approaching the place where they doesn't really matter to me.

I'm simply saying that a vast number of people are simply deluding their selves about what is actually happening; because they simply don't have the guts their ancestors did to face the situation as they did.

Look, there is a huge difference between "We're being ruled by some people thousands of miles away we have no say over" and "my party didn't win the election". No, really, there is. Get over it.

Yes, life was cheap in the late 1700s. This does not make people of the 1700s braver than us, it just means that without antibiotics, without vaccines, without safety equipment and doctors, people died. A lot. And young. Suggesting armed warfare to people in 1775 was suggesting just another form of death to people who had been living on borrowed time since the age of 5.

What our Wolveriiiiines! fans seem to ignore, what Robert ignores, is that war was different in 1775 than it is today. Canons were a big deal in 1775. Reloading a rifle took minutes and you had to reload after every shot. And those rifles weren't particularly accurate to begin with. That's not today's war. Today's war is automatic rifles that can be reloaded in seconds, after spewing out dozens of bullets in seconds. Today's war is Predator Drones and smart bombs and the dead lying everywhere and nowhere to run.

I wear a necklace made of bullets left over from a civil war. A 17 year old girl in Liberia, who grew up in a refugee camp, makes these necklaces out of bullet casings because they are easy to find. Bullets, like refugees, are everywhere in Liberia. So are orphans and widows, the maimed and the dead.

People in Liberia divide time into two: Before the War and After the War. An entire generation of children have no idea what it is to live in a world not defined by bullets and death and refugees and loss and pain.

Robert, and the rest of his Wolveriiiiines! crew want that. They want that for the children of America. Why? Because fuck universal healthcare, that's why. Because taxing the rich just a little bit more is totally worth making sure our children are more familiar with bullets than schoolbooks and toys.

There are problems with America. I've talked about them before and I will talk about them again. You know what won't solve those problems? Bullets. Killing our neighbors will not put food on anyone's tables, it won't provide children with better educations, it won't get medicine to the sick. I don't think those are really the problems Robert has with America, but unless his problem is that there just aren't enough dead people, aren't enough burning buildings, aren't enough refugees and widows and orphans, bullets won't solve his problems, either.

*I hate the phrase "intestinal fortitude". You know what takes intestinal fortitude? Eating at that taco place in South Side. Any other use of the phrase is a multisyllabic scatalogical reference that is not nearly so clever as some people think.

Confusing Cause and Effect

I keep coming across these vaguely libertarian (I've got mine, fuck you!), pseudo-Christian complaints about government social programs. I don't know if this has been going on for years, or if this is something new, but they always strike me as being . . . I don't know. Disingenuous? Obtuse? I'm not sure.

For one thing, if you truly care about feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, I'm not sure why you would care who does it. Sure, we shouldn't be paying for charity by prostituting children, but why so much fuss about charity done through taxes as opposed to churches? I've heard weak complaints about "waste", but churches pay administrative costs, too, so it's not like 100% of the money is ever going to charity.

To me, it sounds like a combination of two things: a rather childish I don't want to and you can't make me! (but I totally would anyway if you just wouldn't make me) and how dare you take the Jesus out of caring for the poor!

Take this particular post from American Catholic, for example. Basically, the author argues that government social programs are the cause the very social ills they address. As if children were never starving before we came up with WIC, or in this case, as if all the elderly were happily being supported by their families until Social Security came along, and then people stopped caring for their elders and now the elderly are lonely and poor.

Working with a large number of recent immigrants from India, one of the biggest social differences that stands out when family interactions are discussed at work is that in Indian families it is expected that unless they are very rich, when parents retire they will go to live with one of their married children, or circulate from one filial household to another, staying at each for several months out of the year. This is practically unheard of in the US at this time, and it is frequent for US-born people around the office to say, when hearing about this, “I couldn’t stand to have my parents visit for more than a week.” However, such arrangements were far more common both in the US and in Europe before social programs to assure an independent income for the retired rendered such arrangements unnecessary. One can argue that longer distances make for closer families, and certainly, human nature being what it is, enforced closeness can lead to resentment instead of love, but I don’t think it takes a great deal of imagination to see that this is a case where removing the need to care for each other in a practical and financial sense has allowed the erosion of social relationships.

Um, no. The reason Social Security and such were created was because of the large numbers of elderly persons living in extreme poverty because they weren't being supported by their families. Keep in mind, in order to be supported by your children, three things need to happen, (a) you have to have children, (b) those children need to survive to adulthood, not a guaranteed thing when Social Security was created, or even today, and (c) those children need to be doing well enough financially to support you. That's an awful lot to make people depend on, especially people like me who can't children.

I would also like to point something else out. Religious charity existed well before government social programs. The fact that government social programs had to be created is proof of the fact that voluntary religious charity was not enough. If it were enough, we wouldn't need food stamps and WIC and Social Security. Duh.

Oh, and the next person who invokes Scrooge as proof of anything is getting a visit from nihilist hackers. Scrooge is not real, people. Stop it!

So Funny I Had to Share

christian, libertarian, ayn rand, jesus, charity,
Thanks to [redacted] for pointing me to Our Libertarian Spirit, source of much lulz for proposing that Ayn Rand and Jesus are spiritual siblings*.

It is far too easy (intellectually lazy) to conclude that Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand are miles apart in what they teach. Nothing is further from the truth. It is only necessary to juxtapose the words of Ayn Rand with the words of Jesus to see they teach exactly the same.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

If you've read Atlas Shrugged and anything attributed to Jesus in the Bible, you're laughing so hard you can't breathe right now.

Jesus and Rand aren't "miles apart", they're diametically opposed. Ayn Rand hated Christianity, specifically because of all the charity proposed by Jesus.

The following excerpt is from a letter to Sylvia Austin dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287:

There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.

This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).

The concept of altruism, the calls to charity, are something that Rand found appalling.

What Christian Prophet is engaging in is essentially doublethink: I like the idea of living only for the self and kicking all those freeloading maggots off of welfare, but Jesus said to help the poor . . . no, wait, it's really the same philosophy! Yay!

Look, you can't square Ayn Rand's philosophy with Christianity, no matter how you wield that hammer. I get it, "it's mine and I'm keeping it!" is much more attractive than "give it all away to the poor and follow me", but don't try to claim they're the same thing.



*Christian Prophet actually calls them "spiritual brother and sister", but "sibling" means the same thing and allows for alliteration. Never pass up an opportunity for alliteration.

Let's Hear It for Begging!

libertarian, health care, charity, fail

There's no zealot like a new zealot, and renaissanceguy is indeed a zealot. A Libertarian zealot. Honestly, I'll take the freaks over at Rapture Ready over Libertarians. A belief that Jesus is going to descend from the sky on a white horse shortly after Kirk Cameron converts in a public restroom is way saner than the Libertarian answer to poverty and need, which can be summed up thusly:

Beg, beg and beg some more.
Beg until you can beg no more!

Recently a commenter named Personal Failure asked:

What happens when private help isn’t available or isn’t enough? What then? My husband has MS. He needs medication, tests, doctors and treatments, but he was rescissed by his insurance because he failed to disclose a blow to the head as a child. (Does not cause MS.) He can get his MS meds free from the company, but those meds are known to cause liver damage, and he can’t get liver function tests for free, so he can’t take the meds. So there he is on the couch, too dizzy to walk the dog, let along work. Libertarianism works great- until you can’t work.

I have thought long and hard about an answer. Here is part of the answer below. More is coming, but I try to keep each post around 500 words.

I do not want to minimalize the situation that you find yourself in. It stinks, plain and simple. My heart goes out to you and your husband. I hope that he has the remitting kind of MS and that he enters remission soon. I would first like to ask a series of questions and then conclude with a comment about your last sentence.

Note 1: MS comes in 6 varieties, the most common being Relapsing/Remitting. R/R however, does not mean that you go from symptoms to total lack of symptoms. The disease may go into an inactive state, but the damage from the active state may very well remain. The dizzy? It's not going away. That's permanent now.

Have you sought a legal remedy against the insurance company? It sounds like they have violated their contract. Libertarians are against anyone’s doing that.

ZOMQF! That's hi-fuckin-larious. People are recissed every day in this country, and people die because of it. Recission is immoral and unethical, but it's not illegal.

Have you asked your friends and family for help? Perhaps each of your close friends and family members would be willing to pay for one liver test per year.

Basic social understanding fail. On two levels, actually. (1) I'm poor. Generally, if you're poor, all your friends are poor. I have no idea where rich people hang out, but it's not where I do. (2) If you want to find out exactly how many friends you have, get sick and stay sick. You probably have 1 or 2 friends. Oh, and begging? As if MS weren't bad enough, now we've got to beg?

Have you asked a church or other religious body for help? In my hometown there is a network of churches known as the Community Ministries that provides all sorts of resources to people in need. Maybe there is something like it where you live.

I'm an atheist, but even so, my local churches are totally overwhelmed with the need for food and shelter. There is no church medical charity in my area. For those counting, this is beg #2.

Have you held fundraisers or, better yet, asked a close friend or family member to hold fundraisers on your husband’s behalf? That is often done for people with chronic illnesses.
Is your husband a member of a support group? Perhaps they know of a foundation or private charity that could help him out.

And beg #3. Oooh, I have an idea. Let's take my desperately ill husband and parade him around for strangers to point at and feel sorry for. Not that every gas station in town isn't already filled with little donation jars for this person's house fire or that person's leukemia.

Has your husband thought about ways that he might still be able to make money from home, perhaps part-time? If that is not possible, please forgive my even asking the question. Last year I was struck with a debilitating condition that I thought would make it impossible for me to work anymore at my job. I told my wife that I might have to stay home from school and try to write a book or offer private music lessons or private tutoring to struggling students. Fortunately, my condition is under control–at least at the moment.

Oh, you know just how I feel. You almost had to maybe have a conversation about working from home. Hey, asshat, you never even tried to work from home, so you have no idea if that's possible or not, and, Teh Hubby did work from home. Before he got too sick to work.

In the meantime, I have no problem with you and your husband availing yourself of any government programs for which you qualify. You helped pay for them, after all. Although I would like to see most public welfare programs reduced or abolished, you might as well benefit from the ones that are operating now.

Oh, it's so nice of you to let us try to get disability/medicaid in another 3 months. You know, before you try to get rid of it. That's so sweet.

It is not fair to discuss whether or not Libertarianism would work in light of or current situation. The United States of America is not currently operating under anything like a Libertarian-type government. I believe that both you and your husband would be better able to withstand the current crisis if Libertarian principles were enacted.

Orly? You haven't given me one example of a Libertarian principle that would help in this situation, probably because their aren't any, you whingey spleenweasel.

There's Irony . . . and Then There's Irony

john galt, irony, libertarian, socialism, stupid,
In the category of "it's so ironic I can hardly see it through the glare of irony" we have Working to Hard to Go John Galt This Week.

Is there such a thing as a Randian Poe?

A lot of those who value political liberty in the U.S. are devout Christians. wait, is trying to create a theocracy political liberty? i'm confused. I’m an atheist myself aren't we all?(I wouldn’t classify anyone as an objectivist who wasn’t i think there may be something wrong with that statement), but a large majority of the best people I know on a personal level (as well as the people I most admire in history) are people of faith fair enough, and the large majority of them are Christians we do live in the US. As a homeschooler in New Jersey, I feel particularly indebted to the Christian families who did (and continue to do) the yeoman’s work in making and keeping homeschooling a viable educational option for my family, even if some of their motives for doing so are not the same as mine. some of their motives? how about all their motives? how about motives like "i never want my children to even be in the same room as a gay person, let alone be taught that gay people are human"? some! And in this fight in particular, I’m proud to stand with anyone who recognizes my right to be free, even if they may disagree with my personal plans for my freedom, or with my reasons for valuing it. strange bedfellows indeed, mr. galt. In short, nothing would make me happier than for people of all faiths and of no faith to win the fight for liberty so we can be free to be bitter enemies once again, our common foes having been vanquished . rather the problem with strange bedfellows, to be sure. "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is not supposed to be a life philosophy. I’m not diminishing the significance of our differences, they're HUGE! they hate you. they think you want to rape children! really, really big differences but neither should the strength we can derive from our common values be diminished. until you win your little war and fall to squabbling with one another.

I’ve made this point before, but I think it bears re-emphasizing as it might not be obvious to someone unfamiliar with this site: I really, really don’t want to ever actually have to go “John Galt”. if you go john galt, do you stop writing drivel like this? if so, i'm all about you going john galt. Now I still feel quite certain that the only way to avoid having to do so is to show that you actually are willing to. ummm . . . you cannot possible display that you are willing to do something without actually doing it. "i will pull this trigger. i will. i'll do it . . . maybe. someday. if you shoot me one more time, i'll do it!" But there’s more that can be done too, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. about how to go galt without actually going galt? And it has to do with recognizing an important fact about the conflict between your average producer and your average functionally anti-freedom person i think that's me.: neither one has their heart in this fight the way their opponent fears they do. The producer is not pro-freedom because they desire to see widows and orphans starving does it matter what your motives are if children starve? hey, sorry you're homeless and starving, but my motives are pure- don't you feel better now?, and the person who thinks that freedom is undesirable just for the record, i do not find freedom undesireable does so out of a miscalculation about both the impracticality of freedom and the efficacy of force as a necessary evil who is he talking about?, not because they desire to see productivity punished. There are exceptions to this characterization on both sides, but they constitute a minority small enough to be ignored when considering the forces that shape society. More to come eventually. let's hope so.

Libertarian Ideals

homophobia, homosexual, christian, christianity, bigotry, discrimination, libertarian, government, regulation, gay
Our friend emissary has learned something about himself: he's okay with government regulations against businesses discriminating against blacks, not so much when the regulations protect gays.

I ran across a very interesting forum discussion that caused me to question some things I had always assumed. It all came down to a simple question: Should government be able to regulate who whom! WHOM! a private business must (or must not) serve? In researching further on terms brought up by the discussion, I found that one person was arguing what's known as "the libertarian concept of freedom of association".

The libertarian concept of freedom of association is often rebuked from a moral/ethical context. Under laws in such a system, business owners could refuse service to anyone for whatever reason. Opponents argue that such practices are regressive and would lead to greater prejudice within society. Right-libertarians sympathetic to freedom of association, such as Richard Epstein, respond that in a case of refusing service (which thus is a case of the freedom of contract) unjustified discrimination incurs a cost and therefore a competitive disadvantage. (wikipedia: freedom of association) i provided the link, i'm not sure why emissary couldn't.

Here's my problem with libertarian ideas: they look great on paper, but fail to take real human behavior into account. Our current economic crisis is the result of unregulated capitalism. Libertarians will argue that regulations on businesses are bad, that businesses will, if left to their own devices, be run in a manner that produces the most profit and the least loss, and that businesses that are run badly will fail. There is no need for government to interfere. That, of course, fails to take into account that certain greedy assholes will cheerfully run a business into the ground in order to achieve personal short-term gain, and that there are enough greedy assholes out there to do serious damage to the world's economy. (see: reality)

Let's look at the explanation of freedom of association above. " unjustified discrimination incurs a cost and therefore a competitive disadvantage." Sounds true, doesn't it? Refuse to serve between 5 and 10% of the population, and you will be at a competitive disadvantage to the other businesses who do serve that market. However, this is not the reality we live in.

If every business in the area refuses to serve homosexuals on religious grounds, then the business that does serve homosexuals is likely to lose a significant portion of its business, the people who agree with emissary. Unless the number of homosexuals in the community is larger than the number of homophobes in the community, serving homosexuals puts businesses at a disadvantage. Therefore, homosexuals will not be served.

Government regulation solves this problem. Every business has to serve every segment of the population- homosexuals, blacks, women, atheists, muslims, etc.- and therefore no segment remains unserved. Because of the regulation, businesses can hide behind "well, we don't really have a choice" if someone like emissary complains.

I do like the end of the post, where emissary almost has an epiphany about his own bigotry. Almost.

Growing up, I learned about prejudices against people because of their differences (especially race and religion). So I had never before questioned that government should have laws like this in place.But the homosexual marriage issue has caused me to pause and really think about it.

Stimulus Package- How Spending Works

economy, depression, recession, stimulus, economic, conservative, liberal, acorn, national, mall, nea, john galt, libertarian

Okay, so I'm not an economist, and if you are, feel free to correct/educate me. (No, really, I learn a lot from people who take the time to correct me in my comments. It's pretty cool.)

First of all, Democrats are pushing spending as a way to help the economy, and Republicans are pushing tax cuts. Ideologically, this pretty much defines Democrats and Republicans. Here's the thing: both spending and tax cuts do stimulate an economy, the questions is how much and how quickly. For every dollar of spending, you get a $1.50 of stimulus, and it's quick. (Think about it: if Jack isn't working, he isn't paying bills or buying food or renting movies. Give Jack a job, and that's exactly what he'll do.) For every dollar of tax cuts, on the other hand, you get $0.75 of stimulus. Why? Anyone affected by a tax cut already has a job. They're already paying bills and buying food and renting movies. Give them a tax cut, and they might spend more, but maybe not. They might just put more money in their 401k, which doesn't help the economy right now.

So, let's take a look at the evul librul stimulus package, shall we?

$2.4 billion carbon capture products... that's clean coal technology ( i had to look it up.). That $2.4 billion will give people jobs: jobs in development, jobs in actually building the products, jobs in transporting the products, jobs in advertising the products. Jobs are good! (And a cleaner environment doesn't hurt, either. Please don't excoriate me on whether or not clean coal actually works, I don't know. Feel free to educate me, just don't yell.)

$4.19 billion for ACORN and other bogus "community organizing" groups... Yes, I know, the barely there scandal with ACORN. What does ACORN do, anyway? Well, for one thing, THEY EMPLOY PEOPLE. Again, jobs are good. ACORN employees help poor people, which is good, too. (I think that's what sets the bigotsphere off. How dare they help poor people! We all know poor people are immoral and lazy and promiscuous. How do you think they got poor in the first place?) They help with housing, they fight to end predatory lending, they're helping with the Gulf recovery, they help poor children get good educations, they fight for paid sick days and a living wage . . . ACORN is Teh Evul!

$650 million digital tv conversion... I don't really understand the whole conversion thing, but I'm guessing somebody will get a job out of this.

$79 billion to bail out the state education system...god knows we wouldn't want somebody teaching evilution or gay sex to 4 year olds!

Hundreds of millions for family planning...what, no number? damn those poor people wanting to control their fertility! how dare married poor people want to have Teh Seks! how dare poor women want pap smears! (i shouldn't have read that sinner's prayer. i think it worked.)

$400 million global warming research...scientists need jobs, too! (oh, and i'm pretty sure we all need air to breathe- unless Who Is John Galt? has gills.)

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts...$12 billion dollars A MONTH for the war in Iraq, and this asshat is angry about a onetime payment of $50 million for art? artists need to eat, too, buddy!

$200 million to refurbish the National Mall..does asshat think we will be refurbishing the National Mall by taping $200 million in ones over every surface? Hello, construction workers REALLY need jobs right now. And, George W. Bush's reign of terror allowed the National Mall, a symbol of our history, to turn into a national disgrace. It should have been refurbished years ago. Shameful.

so, true to his name, Who is John Galt? is against people having jobs. Good for you. See how well it works out for you when we hit depressionland. Asshat.