The Social Security Ponzi Scheme

In at least one respect, Social Security is even worse than a traditional Ponzi scheme:

 

 

Progress

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

–  Robert Heinlein, in “Time Enough for Love,” 1973

 

Woman Faces 93-Days Jail — for Vegetable Garden

Bureaucrats, evidently with nothing better to do, are taking a Michigan woman to court on a misdemeanor charge … for growing vegetables in her front yard.

Bass’ garden is a little unique because it’s in her front yard.

“We thought it’d be really cool to do it so the neighbors could see. The kids love it. The kids from the neighborhood all come and help,” she said.

Bass’ cool garden has landed her in hot water with the City of Oak Park. Code enforcement gave her a warning, then a ticket and now she’s been charged with a misdemeanor.

As usual, the dispute centers on interpretation of an unclear ordinance.

“That’s not what we want to see in a front yard,” said Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what’s “suitable?”

The bureaucrats of Oak Park define “suitable” as “common.”  That sort of thinking leads to cookie-cutter blandness.

Welcome to the Nanny State Militant.

Via http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/julie-bass-of-oak-park-faces-misdemeanor-charge-for-vegetable-garden-20110630-wpms

 

Crocker Blocker Shocker!

In 1878, railroad millionaire Charles Crocker decided to buy up the lots surrounding his mansion on San Francisco’s Nob Hill to improve his view of the surrounding vistas. He reached agreements with all the neighbors except for German undertaker Nicholas Yung, who refused to sell.

“I would have been happier than a condor in the sky,” Crocker wrote, “except for that crazy undertaker.”

His solution was pure spite: He built a 40-foot fence around Yung’s cottage on three sides, spoiling his view in hopes that he would sell. The fence can be seen behind the central mansion in this photo; only the chimneys of Yung’s house project above it.

“How gloomy our house became, how sad,” Yung’s daughter later wrote. “All we could see out our windows was the blank wood of the rich man’s fury. … The flowers in the garden all died, and our lawn turned brown, while inside the house everything felt perpetually damp.”

Yung held out nonetheless — according to some reports he mounted a 10-foot coffin atop the wall facing Crocker’s house — and the two maintained a senseless deadlock for years. Yung died in 1880 and Crocker in 1888; only then, when the mansion was sold to a new owner, did Yung’s heirs relent and sell their lot.

You didn’t mess with Chuck Crocker!  But my sympathies lie with the Yungs.

Imagine Crocker trying to get his “spite fence” approved by San Francisco’s Planning Commission today.

Via: http://www.futilitycloset.com/

 

Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’

This is explosive.  So watch the mainstream media ignore or downplay it.

Background: the Dept. of Justice had substantively won a civil rights case for voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party.  Nonetheless, the Obama DOJ suddenly dismissed the case,  to the consternation of the judge and several career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division of DOJ.

Now, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether the DOJ refuses to prosecute violations of voting rights if the victims are white.

The Justice Department is ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims and wrongly abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year, a top department official testified Friday. He called the department’s conduct a “travesty of justice.”

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department’s Civil Rights Division, spoke under oath Friday morning before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a long-awaited appearance that had been stonewalled by the Justice Department for nearly a year.

Coates discussed in depth the DOJ’s decision to dismiss intimidation charges against New Black Panther members who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in military-style uniforms — one was brandishing a nightstick — and allegedly hurling racial slurs.

The case has drifted in and out of the limelight over the past year as the commission has struggled to investigate it. Former Justice official J. Christian Adams fueled the controversy when he testified in July and accused his former employer of showing “hostility” toward cases that involved white victims and black defendants. Nearly three months later, Coates backed up Adams’ claims. In lengthy and detailed testimony, he said the department cultivates a “hostile atmosphere” against “race-neutral enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act.

In general, I think a Republican take-over of the House and/or Senate could help Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection prospects, due to the potential for triangulation that it would offer him.

However, Republicans in control of either house could hold hearings to investigate matters such as DOJ’s alleged refusal to protect the civil rights of white victims.  Those hearings would be political dynamite.

via FOXNews.com – Voting Rights Official Calls Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’.

 

Fascinating Story of Love, Politics, and Betrayal

The love story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, and what Stalin did to them and their infant son.

One of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever heard, with the author, Paul Gregory, at: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/07/gregory_on_poli.html

Same day, I ordered the book.

 

Honor Killing in America

These are the Said sisters, Amina and Sarah — two pretty Texas teens who were brutally murdered on New Year’s Day 2008. The main suspect: their father, Yaser. Their crime: dating non-Muslim boys. Their penalty: honor killings.

Tonight (Friday, August 6) at 10 p.m. eastern, Fox News will broadcast Bill Hemmer’s one-hour special investigating the case, and the risk Muslim girls face at the hands of their male relatives if they act too . . . American.

via Honor Killing in America – The Corner – National Review Online.

 

70 Years Ago Today: Their Finest Hour

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

via Their Finest Hour.

 

Surprises as Soldiers Return Home

Anyone who can watch these videos without at least a moist eye should have his pulse checked.

 

For those angry with America: Conflict Kitchen

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with. The food is served out of a take-out style storefront, which will rotate identities every 4 months to highlight another country. Each Conflict Kitchen iteration will be augmented by events, performances, and discussion about the the culture, politics, and issues at stake with each county we focus on.

I’m thinking of starting a chain of restaurants serving cuisine from every country that the US military has helped.  It will have a much longer menu.

via Kubideh Kitchen.

 

Wrongfully in prison for 35 years, but not bitter

James Bain is a man I’d like to meet.

Meeting 54-year-old James Bain, the one thing that stands out is that the smile never seems to leave his face. He appears happy and positive, and the bitterness that might be buried inside a man who was wrongly sent to prison for 35 years is nowhere to be found.

“I kind of see myself as a man of God and being like Joseph,” he said.

“In a sense, I feel like a bear, coming out of hibernation. Like, they come out to eat, mine would be coming out to enjoy what I have missed.”

Bain has missed a lot. His life was returned to him and his family in December, when a Florida judge freed him after DNA testing proved he did not kidnap and rape a 9-year-old boy in 1974 in Lake Wales, Florida.

I cannot fully understand James Bain’s remarkable grace.

A good materialist would say that his attitude is helped by the fact that he’s about to get $1.75 million from the State of Florida ($50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment).  But that neither seems adequate compensation, nor explains his lack of bitterness.

via Man wrongfully imprisoned for decades happy to start relearning life – CNN.com.

 

Piracy: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship

In this image released by the Royal Dutch Navy Monday April 5, 2010, a boarding party slides down a rope from the frigate Tromp’s Lynx helicopter onto the mv Taipan. The Dutch Defense Ministry says one of its Navy frigates has freed a German merchant ship and its 15-strong crew from pirates off the coast of Somalia after the Dutch ship’s helicopter fired on the captured freighter’s bridge and arrested 10 pirates who had boarded the ship on Monday morning about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Somalia. The German ship’s crew members had locked themselves into a secure area of the ship and were unharmed. One Dutch marine was slightly injured during the boarding. The Defense Ministry statement says that despite damage to its bridge, the German container ship was able to resume its voyage. (AP Photo/Royal Dutch Navy)

Way to go, Dutch!

via The Associated Press: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship.

 

Leadership

1776:      “We hold these truths to be self-evident …”

1787:      “… in Order to form a more perfect Union …”

1863:     “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish form the earth.”

1941:      “With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounded determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.”

1961:      “… ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

2010:

 

Spirit of Liberty

As Judge Learned Hand once observed,

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right….

I wish that Congress would get that message, before it’s too late.

 

The Somali Who Couldn’t Make It to the Bathroom

On the evening of New Year’s Day, the Dane who drew the Mohammed cartoon was saved by his bathroom door, when he was attacked by a Somali extremist.   Kurt Westergaard, the 75-year-old cartoonist, was looking after his 5-year-old granddaughter, when the axe-wielding  Somali broke into his house.

Westergaard had little time to react.

He pressed an alarm button to summon police when the attacker entered the house … by breaking a window.  He did not have time to collect the child from the living room before locking himself into a “panic room”, a specially fortified bathroom. He said the assailant had shouted “swear words, really crude words” and shrieked about “blood” and “revenge”, as he smashed the axe in vain against the bathroom door….

The attacker, who was also carrying a knife, shouted, “I’ll be back”, before going outside to confront police. He smashed a police car window with the axe and was shot in the hand and a knee when he threw the axe at an officer.

So far, they’re 0 for 2: both Salman Rushdie and Kurt Westergaard are still alive.

Yet, one cannot adequately imagine the fear that Mr. Westergaard must have felt, knowing that his granddaughter was alone in the house with that terrorist, or the ongoing, corrosive tension from living under such threats.

And one can be sure that self-censorship occurs, out of fear of arousing these crazies.   Newspapers and academic journals refuse to print the Mohammed cartoons, in articles about those very cartoons.

The axe-wielding Somali is a grim reminder that we start a new year still facing the lamentable choice between running the risk of attacks from Muslim extremists or constricting our freedom of expression.  I really wish that I had more confidence that our government is serious about protecting our freedoms.

Link: Panic room saved artist Kurt Westergaard from Islamist assassin – Times Online.