http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/03/mon_holy_smokes_taxes_on_rolli.html
From $1.09 to $24.78, that’s an impressive jump.
I hate smoking about as much as the next guy. But wise up, fellow US slaves. Your vice is next.
Most people would agree that the government giving gifts to a small number of corporations is wrong. It falls outside the powers and thus the rights of the US federal government, and thus it is also unconstitutional, for those who think there’s any value left in that document.
The problem with doing something wrong is that it often generates even more wrongs. Now that my money has been stolen to reward AIG’s failure, the US house of representatives has felt the need to selectively punish the same corporation it wrongly gifted. In passing the bill that taxes select AIG bonus recipients at a confiscatory 90% rate, 328 ignorant congressmen violated Article I of the constitution twice.
Most people need to be reminded what section 9 of article 1 says: “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” A bill of attainder is, per Wikipedia, “an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial.” An ex post facto law is a law that “retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law” (per the same source).
Ex post facto, really? Yes, the bill would make the 90% tax on AIG retroactive to December 31, 2008.
This is a solution that pleases a very angry and very dangerous president. For those willing to defend Obama’s actions, imagine the havoc for which this precedent paves the way. Think about a Bush-like predecessor, perhaps. Do you want this person arbitrarily gifting favorite companies, or arbitrarily punishing companies that have fallen out of political favor?
There is no justifying either the bailout or the punishment. “But, we had to bail out AIG and these companies…” Well, no. By allowing AIG to succeed, we reward failure, and instill a system that will create larger and larger corporations. That should be frightening to even the socialist left who likes the idea of government control over corporations.
Instead, AIG and ilk should have been allowed to fail, or better, do whatever it had to in order to figure out how to survive. The outcome? Lots of people would probably have suffered. Better “lots” than “all.” But what positive might have come out of this? Perhaps ingenuity from some of the bailed out companies, cleverness that would have enabled their survival and advanced our survival skills in the face of severe economic problems. Perhaps the failures might even have signalled the end of monstrous corporations like AIG, begat by a widespread lack of trust in them; this failure might have led to the rebirth of small, competitive financial firms with little political power. I know who would be happy with that!
The cynical, conspiracy-theory side in me says that all of these events are scripted. From failure (long predicted by sensible economists) to bailout to revenge, it’s all about granting the monstrously bloated US federal government even more power over you.
Too bad for all of us that a petulant Obama will likely get his way for a while.
So said Eric Holder, who is somewhat ironically referred to by the mass media as “the first black attorney general.” He was talking about our reluctance to honestly discuss race issues.
We are indeed cowards for that and many other reasons–cowards for not having bucked the politically correct agenda forced down our throats for the past 30 years. Cowards for not speaking up against the censure of those who dared speak up in attempts to discuss race. Cowards for letting politicians run our lives. Cowards for electing politicians who brazenly express disdain for the very same people who voted for them. Cowards for helping chip away at freedoms in the name of personal greed and disdain for the way others live. Cowards for electing politicians who granted even more power to themselves and the corporations who controlled them.
Still, I don’t need to hear it from a hypocrite like Holder standing behind a bully pulpit. I think it’s a good harbinger of what to expect the next four years–browbeating easy targets who have been chastised into keeping their mouths shut. We’ve already heard Obama’s disdain for the average schmuck working-class American who clings to guns or religion. The attorney general echoes more of the same, no doubt smirking after he leaves his throne, knowing full well that most of us rednecks know better than to even mention race.
Next up, I fully expect the target to be the upper middle class as the handouts grow. A much larger number of Americans than before will owe nothing to the government, while a small percentage of us who are willingly struggling to achieve and attempt to improve our lot in life will pay the burden of the cost. We will be made to feel criminally guilty and will be painted as part of the problem, and our already higher percentage of money thieved will be deemed as not enough.
Obama’s administration will be as good at scapegoating people as was the Bush administration. Segments of us, the cowards, will become the axis of evil, no matter the battle. Mr Holder: You are a coward and a bully, but you’re welcome to come spout your bile face to face any time, to demonstrate otherwise.
I was at the gym, walking to warm up for running on the treadmill. The television was tuned to Fox (and I can hear all the shrill screams from readers), and it would have been clear to anyone that I was paying attention, as my treadmill was immediately in front of the screen. An older woman, perhaps 55, walked up to the treadmill to my left, looked at the screen, walked back to the towel ledge, grabbed a remote, walked back, and changed the channel before I knew what was happening. Not to her daily soaps, but to one of the other politically-biased news outlets (it might have been MSNBC).
Weird. This woman was obviously a Fox-hater. It doesn’t really matter to me which broadcast outlet I get my lies from, but I said to her anyway, “You don’t think that’s rude?” She had her headphones on and just gave me a strange look. I didn’t feel like causing a scene, so I moved treadmills to another TV and watched Martha Stewart (apparently there is a dearth of watchable stuff on TV nowadays).
The left fascists look to control you in different ways from the right fascists, most notably by suppression of belief systems they don’t like. They love the idea of larger government, because it grants them a larger sphere that they can influence.
Don’t like religion? Great, all we have to do is claim something to be under control of the government, and then the religious nuts can’t speak freely. Don’t like conservative radio? Great, let’s re-institute the ignominiously named “Fairness Doctrine” to try and force your viewpoints. (I wonder, will the Fairness Doctrine apply to the heavily left narrowcasting of NPR?) Or great, let’s institute “hate speech” laws and collegiate speech codes. Don’t like groups of people lobbying the government? Great, let’s push the right fascists and left fascists to get together to establish “campaign finance reform.” So much for the first amendment.
The [censored] who changed the channel without asking is representative of what we are in for under the thumb of left socialists. Don’t like what other people say or want to hear? Use force to shut them up or to shut off their source of information.
“You haven’t proved a crime, and you can’t because it didn’t happen,” Blagojevich said. “How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?”
I believe we should mount a “Keep Blagojevich” campaign. I’ve always felt it important that we not hide problems but instead keep them visible, so that we continue to discuss them, and so that they set examples to others of things not to do. Government inherently invites corruption and special treatment for those that are currently favored and politically correct. We must continually remind the gullible–the voters–of this fact. What better way than to help a sick man keep his power over them?
A simple act by one brave man….
….can change the world in a blur….
….and arouse dissent among the victims….
….and put tyrants on the defensive:
Warning, rats in the area:
Good tidings of great joy! The reason for the season is still in the race:
The Ex-Emperor-To-Be will soon have no subjects to direct and harass:
They can’t protect their own building but they DO protect us from runaway basketball mascots:
Rapid Response for the Fatherland is on it’s way:
No room for individualists within the state collective:
No room for non-conformists within the civic religion:
Country First!:
This is what the corporate media thinks is important- A confirmed liar and thief has lunch with the daughter of a long dead president:
Make it a public display- Flush your allegiance to the state:
Wash regularly. Don’t’ let the horsesh%# accumulate on your rear bumper:
A great Christmas gift- A new dart board for the game room:
I absolutely cannot believe that I totally forgot the terrible significance of this day. I feel like such an ass for not giving it a single thought until now, as the sun begins to set on me and my neighbors.
But now that I’ve been reminded, I’ll be thinking about those hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered in cold blood. The mothers. The fathers. The children. All of them–total strangers though they were, who lived long before my time–are on my mind right now.
Nobody in this country should ever forget what this day means. Nobody. Ever.
Nobody.
Ever.
It would appear that the legally privileged gangsters of “the People’s” Republic of China have traded the boot stamping on a human face for the calm, soothing injection to oblivion within the comfortable confines of a “mobile execution chamber.”
By way of Disinfo.com, I found this report by Tim Boucher:
What is that fine looking vehicle, you ask? Why, it is part of “China’s new fleet of mobile execution chambers.”
Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China “promotes human rights now,” says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van.
The AOL News link that Boucher cites doesn’t appear to be working, but I found this June 2006 USA Today article on the execution of convicted murderer-rapist Zhang Shiqiang in one such death chamber-on-wheels (which appears to be the article Boucher quoted and attempted to link):
The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped “death vans” that shuttle from town to town…
For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.
I could just see something like this being supported by both major parties here in the United States. Why, just think of all the “terr’rists” they could round up and execute!
And it’s all perfectly humane! No muss, no fuss.
(Cross-posted at The Postmodern Tribune.)
Scott Horton has posted an interview with freelance investigative journalist Christopher Ketcham at Antiwar.com Radio that I highly recommend.
Ketcham discusses his latest article for RadarOnline, “The Last Roundup”, in which he tells of a government data base (or perhaps network of government data bases) allegedly code named “Main Core”, which may contain names and personal information on as many as 8 million Americans considered to be potentially obstructive of Uncle Sam’s “Continuity of Government” operations in the event of some kind of national crisis or emergency. These individuals “could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention,” according to Ketcham.
