The Revolutionary Holocaust - Live Free or Die

I'm not a fan of Glenn Beck, but he's made a riveting one-hour documentary to refute revisionist history that leads many Americans to believe that vicious dictators like China's Mao Tse Tung and sadistic revolutionaries like Che Guevara are heroes that we should look up to. Everyone should see "The Revolutionary Holocaust - Live Free or Die" that aired today on Fox News Channel. Beck has uploaded the documentary in 5 parts on YouTube and we're presenting it here for your viewing.

Plunder!: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation - Book TV

Don’t miss this talk about government unions.  The author is from California.  Note how many things sound familiar: from issuing edicts on Friday afternoon and voting then into law on Tuesday night to how we are getting less and less government “services” for more and more taxes we pay.  And how the union’s plan is to simply keep raising taxes – forever.   From the website:

Steven Greenhut takes a critical look at government workers and the unions that represent them.  Mr. Greenhut argues that government employees, who receive salaries, benefits, and a level of job security that far outpace workers in the private sector, have become a huge drain on state and federal coffers.  He spoke at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Orange, California. 

Economics - Plunder!: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation - Book TV

Click on the “watch” link on the right side of the page to view the video of the presentation.  It’s about an hour.

US embraces communist health care plan as rest of world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the end of communism

Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin wall was torn down. Symbolically and idealogically it was the end of Communism. Freedom had prevailed. Evil had been conquered. As a child of the 50s, I was taught that the Communists and the Soviet Union were our enemies, they wanted to kill us, to "bury" us. If you are too young to remember air raid drills and "duck and cover" in school, then you probably don't fear communism the way I do. "The Cold War" was real then and we lived with the shadow of nuclear war every day.

Two years before the fall of the wall, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate on the 750th anniversary of Berlin and uttered those famous words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" That marked the beginning of the end of the Berlin Wall and our mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan's role in ending the Cold War is often diminished by revisionist historians as if the events "just happened." Time has an article that at least acknowledges the efforts of Reagan and Gorbachev (leader of the USSR) to actively pursue the end of the war and bring freedom to the Eastern Bloc.

The Soviet Union lasted almost 70 years under communist dictatorship and had the second largest economy in the world after the United States. Even so, the US economy eclipsed the USSR's. A failed war with Afghanistan and a failed economy eventually led to the collapse of the communist government. 20 years after the victory of freedom over tyranny, the United States is rushing headlong towards communism at an alarming pace. A failing economy? A war with Afghanistan? What's the answer? Communism!

Manteca Bulletin - Free car wash for veterans Wednesday

As far as I’m concerned, Quicki-Kleen can keep their free car wash for veterans. I see no reason to participate in any public relations stunt that brings credit to the people who orchestrated the bullying of a fellow citizen who wanted to open up a competing car wash.

The owner of Quicki-Kleen was listed among those who led the “cause” of blocking a new car wash from opening in the 300 block of Yosemite Ave a few months ago.

What does this have to do with veterans you ask?

Well what veterans fought for was freedom. That means the freedom to do business back at home. Anyone who would try to block a competitor using socialistic arguments and questionable “petitions drives” is nothing more than a freedom hating bully. All the free car washes in the world won’t make up for that.

Manteca Bulletin - Free car wash for veterans Wednesday

SSJID make glorious revolution!

 
The text reads: SSJID will give glorious power and the people make great harvest.*

SSJID retail power will help agriculture survive & thrive

*accuracy of translation subject to variations.  Could also mean: We will take the power from the oligarchs!  Not for our glory!  But for YOU!  Only for YOU!

What happened in ‘82?

This is from the report on “affordable housing” that’s to be presented at tonight’s council meeting. (Pg 10, fig 1) It’s a graph of how much money people make (personal income) in this county over the years and compared to the average of the nation (United States) and the state (California.)

According to this, the rest of the state has done pretty well over the years. One of the more prosperous places in the nation. (Many lucrative industries, Hollywood, aerospace, silicon valley, etc). So what went wrong with San Joaquin country?

And in particular, what happened in 1982? SJ was more or less about as wealthy as the nation as a whole, just a little less than California as a whole. But according to this chart, the bottom fell out in the early ‘80’s. You can see the red line (San Joaquin) diverge from the national average about then, and the “gap” in poverty increases.

So what went wrong? Did people suddenly get stupid? Prop 13? Williamson act? The ascendency of “central planning?” State takeover of school funding? Ronald Reagan? (no, the nation prospered under Reagan). Then what was it? Maybe someone should ask the expert tonight.

Why I care about the free market

I remember this every time someone accuses me of being “greedy” or non-caring or insensitive to the plight of the less fortunate.  (The last time was by the consultant hired by the city.  She was astounded that I didn’t think the housing project for the old people was a great idea.)

 

The answer for why I believe so strongly in the free market, and why it’s important, is explained in a mere 40 seconds.  (1:00 to 1:40 in this video.)  Also this is background for some of the claims I made in a previous entry.

YouTube - Milton Friedman - Greed

Office of behavior modification

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “we” (who’s we?) “have to get people out of their cars.” Usually it involves not funding road repairs and funding a high tech bus station (multi-modal station) instead. Or creating a subsidized bus service that travels two miles through Manteca and costs roughly $25 each trip. (The passenger pays $1, the taxpayer pays the rest.)

How many times have we heard about incorporating “smart growth” into something they call the city’s “general plan?” It’s about fighting something called “sprawl” and its evil proponents, “the developers.” Here, the “sprawl” is defined as what occurs precisely after the point in time that I move in to an area (i.e., sprawl-fighters want to move to an area and build a home for themselves, but it’s “sprawl” if anyone else does the same.)

Paradoxically, Manteca has a set of regulations outlawing building small houses and using less than a minimum amount of land while simultaneously providing taxpayer money to certain builders if they build below that minimum. It's called “high density.” Remember “density” is the inverse of “amount of land used.” So the city outlaws building on small lots, then wonders why people aren’t building on small lots, then decides to fix the problem by paying a developer to build on small lots.

Manteca also complains about traffic congestion. And at the same time it builds speed bumps, “bulb outs,” wide medians with trees in the middle of roads, and caps roads with dead ends just yards from the cross street so that road can’t be used to relieve traffic congestion. The policy is to force you to use the congested road. Then they do “studies” before giving out building permits and charge homebuyers huge extra taxes to fix the “congestion” they say they “cause.”

Come to think of it I think I just answered my own question. It’s the “cycle of money/laws/favors” in Manteca. But that really wasn’t the point of this entry, I just found the following article by George Will interesting:

Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong Newsweek George F. Will Newsweek.com

Central planning

In this otherwise routine story, the MB writer quotes a Manteca landowner asking the city officials at the dept. of central planning:

“Tell me what I can do to keep this place up,” he said he asked city
officials. “Anything, tell me what is the legal use and
landscaping. What can I do to use the property, then I can develop
it.”

This reminds me of a story recounted by Milton Friedman in his book/TV show Free to Choose. He asked a university student in the Soviet Union what did he plan to do with his future. The student answered, "I don't know, they haven't told me yet!"