I’m not suggesting anything here……

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

–Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I’m just sayin…

It’s something to keep in the back of your mind.

When did we become slaves to government and its employees?

When did we all agree that we are slaves to the IRS, the police, the congress and the house? The local governments as well as the layers in between?

Seriously, when did that happen? I thought that the government was “by the people” and “for the people”, not for itself and against (or over!) the people. We elected representatives to our government, yet they again and again do the opposite of the will of the people. They fail to represent us. They make laws that are not in the interest of the very people that they represent.

We are the people. They work for us, not we for them. President, Congressmen, state senators, mayors, county councilmen, and policemen. They are our employees, rather than we their subjects.

Yet these folks who fail to represent us continue to make laws that we do not want, and spend OUR money in ways that we dislike. They give our money to people and corporations that have not earned it, bailing out corporations with poor management practices. They hand out money to people who either will not work, choose not to, who have failed to bother to attain enough education to function in today’s society, or who are culturally disadvantaged enough that they fail to hold a job. They reward people who make bad decisions over and over again. They reward failure and laziness and punish success and hard work.

There is not a person among us who does not shudder in fear at the announcement of a tax audit. Yet the IRS is a government entity, one tasked by our representatives in government with collecting taxes. Taxes are a necessary thing (let’s not discuss how those taxes are used right here) yet the IRS is heavy handed in its zeal to collect. Failing to remember that the people pay their salaries and that they are indeed public servants, they abuse their authority, not in the collection of taxes, but in the enforcement of the law for those who fail to file or whose understanding of a complicated tax law is perhaps limited.

EPA is another example of a government agency that oversteps its bounds. Tasked with keeping our air and water clean, they have become an agency staffed by overzealous, poorly educated, maniacal people overwhelmed with authority and unafraid to abuse it.

How many times have you encountered a government employee who was nice and polite and efficient? Be it federal or state or county or municipal, they all have the attitude that we work for them, rather than the other way around. Efficiency is, of course, not a part of government. But to find a helpful government employee is a rarity.

And that leads us to the police agencies. Make no mistake, like taxes, the police are a necessity in our society. Many police officers are nice people. Many police departments are not nice. Polite professionalism seems to be waning, and many police are under the impression that they are, if not more privileged than the average citizen, at least above the law themselves.

When a police officer approaches a citizen, should the law abiding citizen fear them? Sadly, in most places, we do. The officers have the attitude that we, the citizens, are subject to their orders and commands. Are we? If breaking a law, and under arrest, then yes, we are. At any other time? No, we are not. You and I are not subjects of the police, yet they expect us to be obedient to their orders. Let’s not forget that the police have a tough job, and that they interact with the worst of our society, but to expect every citizen to act as if they were subject to the orders of an officer is ludicrous. The increased militarization of the police and use of hit squads for investigations and searches is another factor that needs realistic review. The immunity from prosecution is another.

Let us reign in our government employees. Now. Right now. Somehow, we need to remind them that they work for us, not the other way around. While I am not suggesting armed revolution here, we must do something. If we cannot modify the attitude of our governing officials, then we must take action. Somehow, we must reverse the trend.

Soon.

Via Scott, I got this….

It’s worth watching. I agree with it 100%.

What has happened to us?

Had Obama (or even many of the senators that voted for it) bothered to read the $787 billion dollar stimulus bill, they would have known that the bill that they rushed through both houses had a provision to provide an exception for bonuses contractually obligated before February 11 of this year. The provision, and the exception, were inserted into the bill by the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd (D, Conn.), who has received more than $100,000 from AIG employees in the last 20 years, and had written and inserted the relevant provision, with the relevant loophole. Now, because it has come to light, he (and others of his ilk wish to, for political expediency, in some way rescind or, failing that, unconsitutionally tax, the bonuses)

So they cannot blame anyone but themselves for this debacle.

Were it not insulting to weasels, I’d call the entire bunch of senators who voted for this bill AND NOW HAVE THE BALLS TO WHINE ABOUT THE BONUSES, weasels.

So lets just say that they again have used poor judgement in their legislative endeavors.

But the facts are coming to light, and their duplicity shall not long remain hidden .

ETA: SCC has a list of donors and a different take on things. You should check out his list and commentary.

So Obama meets another leader of a country (one with whom we need to be on friendly terms) and his staff bumbles it. This time, they misspell a name of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Now I know that these latin folk have lots of names, some of them long, but fer Christ’s sake, you’d think that they’d get things right after all the other gaffes they have made with other foreign leaders. Plus they pushed his meeting back because it’s St. Paddy’s day. (I know, to the Irish among you, it’s an important day, but not in the greater context of national relations) Nothing like insulting a potential ally. (We all know these latin dudes have hair trigger tempers, so why push it???? Right?)

One might begin to wonder if he and his staff are really using these gaffes as veiled insults, to make already strained relations even more difficult, and to put the US at an even greater disadvantage in the eyes of the world.? I mean, Brazil has several gazillion barrels of oil and the resources to make sugar based (rather than corn based, which is a boondoggle at best) ethanol that they might ship to us (if we ever got rid of the tariff BS). We might need those barrels of oil and ethanol someday soon….

Were I a leader of a country whose fortunes could in any way be tied to the actions of the US (and its Court Jester President) I would be starting to become a bit worried about now. I mean, how unprofessional can he get?

Quinn says, “There will be some that will have a higher tax burden—but it’ll be based on the principle that all of us in a democracy can believe in; ability to pay. My philosophy is to cut taxes on as many people as possible in Illinois.”
Gov Pat Quinn, Illinois.

Democracy? Or Marxism?

I always believed that the Democrats were closet Marxists. Now I may have proof…..

Question: Does a “rich” person use any additional infrastructure or state property than a “poor” person? Who contributes more to the coffers of the state for use by the state for maintaining bridges, roads, police, etc?

But then again, I am NOT a democrat, so what do I know???

ETA: Oh, and what will the governor do if the “rich” move to another state? It’s happening in Kalifornia already. People are moving out due to taxes. If this happens in Illinois (and it will) then who will pay the taxes?

“There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”

Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Interesting lesson in capitalism today and yesterday.

I love gun shows. They, like most flea market type venues, are examples of pure market driven capitalism. And BTW, they are the place where nearly EVERYONE with few (very few) exceptions is polite to each other.

As you may have heard, gun sales are through the roof most places, and this had certainly been true in my observations at the previous gun shows that I had attended.

Most dealers had been steadily raising their prices to maximize profit ( Evil Capitalists Good Businessmen that they are….) but that appears to have run into declining, or at least no longer increasing, demand. Sales were, by most recent standards, sluggish.

Many dealers began cutting prices to stimulate demand.

Sales picked up, and a balance, of sorts, was again reached.

Capitalism, supply vs demand, and profit motive all reach a point of harmony.

I love this country.