Guest essay by Caleb Shaw
It is a painful thing to confront someone whom one is accustomed to respecting, and to tell that person they are barking mad. Usually one avoids it, or dismisses the other’s strange behavior as “a difference of opinion,” and speaks platitudes about “the importance of diversity,” however when a person is going, “Arf! Arf!” right in your face, there is no way around it. This includes governments, when they become barking mad.
Thomas Jefferson knew this, when he quilled the Declaration of Independence, listing King George’s barking mad behaviors, however there has been a recent, revisionist effort to show that King George the Third wasn’t all that bad, and his blue urine wasn’t due to porphuria, and his spells of foaming at the mouth were but minor episodes, especially when he was young and was busily losing the American colonies. (I think this may in part be due to the fact that porphuria is hereditary, and certain people don’t want the rabble giving Prince Charles appraising looks.)
The argument states that, if you could get an audience at his glittering palace, King George was quite lucid, and even charming, and that the points he raised, about the government’s right to tax, are valid to this day. There is even some reproach towards America and Jefferson for failing to understand King George’s points.
However taxation was not the issue. Taxation without representation was the issue. When one looks back with twenty-twenty hindsight, the solution to the problem seems simple: Simply give the thirteen colony’s thirteen elected representatives in Parliament. It seems like such an obvious thing, to give Englishmen abroad the same rights as Englishmen at home, and seems so conducive to unity and the expansion of an unified kingdom, that to switch the subject to the-right-of-the-government-to-tax seems a sleight of hand bound to stub thumbs, to lead to schism, and to create discord out of harmony. It was, in fact, a barking mad thing for King George to do.
As soon as one treats ones own family as the enemy; one fosters a house divided, which must fall. Perhaps the greatest example of this madness occurred in 1914 when three of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren occupied thrones that governed roughly half the planet, as King of England, Kaiser of Germany, and the wife of the Czar of Russia. Unless these relatives considered their own family to be the enemy, there could have been no World War One, which was a calamity and slaughter so mind-boggling, and so shattering to people’s structures of belief, that it’s declaration was in many senses the beginning of a war that hasn’t ended.
The way to avoid all this madness is simply to understand there is one sort of behavior that leads to marriage, and another that leads to divorce. Assuming one can concede unity is better than division, and harmony is better than discord, (and there are some scoffers who refuse to concede this,) then heeding others (or their elected representatives) is wisdom, and any alternative deafness is ignorance. It is hugely important for those in positions of privilege and power to never lose touch with the so-called “common man.”
Unfortunately this is exactly what appears to have happened in Washington, where the leadership has seemingly forgotten, if they ever knew, how hard it is for less privileged people to scrape by. They have lost touch with humble lives that can be quite happy, provided a certain criteria involving basic necessities are met, and instead are making decisions that cause the poor to experience hardships which the leaders themselves are seemingly oblivious to. Enamored by their own eloquence, charmed by their own intellectual gyrations, they fail to see some of their concepts are barking mad.
“Cash for Clunkers” was an example of such madness. It was basically an ill-thought-out and erroneous solution to a fictitious problem based on a fraud, however it sounded elegant and efficient to the privileged at glittering parties inside the Beltway. In one fell swoop they imagined Cash for Clunkers would increase the gas mileage of American vehicles, reduce Carbon Emissions and therefore halt Global Warming, increase car sales and therefore stimulate the economy, replace low tech vehicles with high tech vehicles and therefore benefit more advanced technologies and technicians, and do all this for a paltry three billion dollars the nation didn’t have, but that could be printed. In short order Cash for Clunkers then destroyed 690,114 perfectly viable vehicles, which were traded in for 690,114 new vehicles.
It was barking mad to destroy all those perfectly good cars, and to get nothing in return for it but three billion dollars of debt. What person in their right mind does such a thing?
It didn’t even reduce Carbon Emissions, because building and shipping a new car requires three to eight tons of carbon, while driving the same old clunker required zero. It would take over five years to make up the difference with a new car, and eight years with a new truck, if the increased gas mileage was as good as promised, (which it wasn’t, due to computer glitches, faulty sensors turning on the check-engine-lights, and people driving with the check-engine-lights on, and also the natural aging of new cars.) Furthermore, the foreseen reduction of carbon would have had only an infinitesimal effect on world temperatures, even if Global Warming were proven true.
However none of a economist’s or climatologist’s pseudoscience meant much to the poor. The poor do not buy new cars; they drive the clunkers that better-off people trade in. What Cash For Clunkers meant for them was that 690,114 poor people were without a car. As the price for second-hand cars soared, many were plunked into the catch-22 position of young men who can’t get a car because they don’t have a job, and can’t get a job because they don’t have a car. But what does Washington know of such unhappy lives? They say, “Let them buy a new car” in the manner of Marie Antoinette saying, “Let them eat cake.”
In their ignorance Washington glibly stated that Cash for Clunkers would be a boon for scrap yards, blissfully unaware that much of the profit at such yards comes from taking apart engines for parts, and that, with engines destroyed, profits would sharply decline. But what does Washington know or care about greasy hands and bruised knuckles?
At least 300,000 and as many as 500,000 of the 690,114 new cars would have been sold anyway, because people need new cars even without incentives, so the government was paying-for and destroying between 300,000 and 500,000 used vehicles for absolutely no reason.
During the brief surge in car sales Cash-for-Clunkers brought about, sales of American cars actually decreased as Asian sales increased, for people were concerned about soaring gas prices at that time, and desired the better gas mileage of Asian cars. This means much of the slight increase in the national-average-gas-mileage (noted with great satisfaction by government Cash-for-Clunker statisticians) would have occurred without the program. It also means Cash for Clunkers didn’t increase the sales of of American cars, and in fact hurt the American car industry more than it helped it. The government would have done better to focus on reducing fuel prices, but actually aimed to increase those fuel prices, to lower the nation’s “Carbon Footprint.”
Some stated that if the poor couldn’t afford cars, their immobility would increase the use of public transportation. Again, it is not the wealthy that have to stand waiting in blazing sun or in winter blasts, or are uprooted because they do not live where such transit is available.
The unintended consequences go on and on. The mechanics skilled in repairing clunkers were hurt; the newer cars were far more expensive to maintain, due to computer glitches, and, when faced with the fact that plugging into a dealer’s computer to diagnose a problem could cost a hundred dollars, people simply chose to drive with the check-engine-lights on. (So you can throw the manufacturer’s estimated-gas-mileage out the window.) People do what they must to get by, and there even was an increase in uninspected and unregistered cars.
It is not that the poor want to be scofflaws or to enact some sort of political rebellion. They simply want to survive, but survival is something the barking mad in Washington has forgotten all about.
This brings me to the current madness of increasing the cost of heating a home, on purpose, to fight some theoretical warming of the planet in the future. This is another display of being barking mad, for the coming winter is no environmentalist’s theory; it is a grim reality that can kill.
What do the privileged elite in Washington know about cold homes in January, or of needing to chose between freezing and food? At their glittering, January parties the only ice they know is in their drinks, as they pontificate the politically correct arfing they call profundity. They know how to frown at the words, “strip mine,” while waving away the subject of unemployed miners, who they never face eye-to-eye. They know the correct disapproval to show for the rural poor’s smoking wood-stoves, and the right way to clasp hands and smile as wind turbines kill eagles. They rumple brows over a tenth of a degree rise in world temperatures they can’t feel, enacting legislation that chills the homes of the poor they never meet ten to twenty degrees.
The fact such legislated “energy poverty” is barking mad was already proven, by an increase in the death rate of the elderly in England by 30,000 in the winter of 2012-2013. The elderly of England could not afford both food and fuel, and didn’t get enough of either. Because the old can’t withstand cold, especially when hungry, and because a common cold can swiftly turn to pneumonia, turning down the heat meant death for 30,000.
What sort of savage society of primitive cannibals allows its elderly to be treated in such a vile manner? It was to avoid such barbaric treatment that FDR created Social Security in the first place. His grave must rumble with a rolling sound, now. To have intentionally brought such misery down upon the general population is the behavior of the certifiably insane. The English leaders were barking mad, and now Washington wants to copy them.
The oncoming hardship, bad enough in an ordinary winter, may be worsened by an especially brutal winter. In theory an El Nino might warm the planet, as a whole, by a tenth of a degree, but in fact an El Nino Modoki, (which is expected,) may warm other areas but brings exceptional cold to one particular part of the planet: The eastern and central United States. Some runs of some models foresee a winter as bad as 1976-1977, which was so vicious it prompted people back then to talk of “a coming ice age.” It is to be hoped these model runs are wrong (as they often are) but what if they are not? Assume the attitude of an Alarmist, and imagine that the models are right. We are then facing a crisis.
Our government seems exceptionally incapable of dealing with such a crisis, for it lives in a landscape of delusion. It does not care for the elderly; it cares about being re-elected. The oncoming winter could loom like the black shroud of the Grim Reaper, and still a politician’s primary concern would be suppressing voter turnout in unfavorable districts. The best that can be hoped for is a national awakening, and a voter backlash in November, and a completely changed congress next January, but by then it will be too late.
It is conceivable, even likely, that in the face of a winter like 1976-1977, fuel prices would skyrocket, and there would be shortages, brown-outs, and even shutdowns. For many there would be no money left over, after paying for heat. There would be no so-called “disposable income.” For the poor, it would not be a matter of staying warm; it would be a matter of staying alive. Immediate action would be required, but by the time the bumbling bureaucrats came wandering back from their Christmas recess, not even a potentially vibrant new Congress would be able to kick their inertia into action before March, at which point the damage would be already done.
In the face of such a future it is high time for the American people to enact a rebellion, but not like any rebellion the powerful expect. It should be a rebellion outside the expectations of economic experts, and completely beyond the comprehension of Washington insiders and the wealthy elite. It would be beyond their comprehension because it would do what they fail to do. It would care for the elderly, and care for neighbors.
Considering all too many Americans don’t even talk to their neighbors, such a rebellion might seem impossible, however Hitler did not think it was possible Londoners could withstand his Blitz, yet they slept in subways, and those of Hitler’s advisers who guaranteed London’s despair, due to people sleeping in subways, were flabbergasted by an increase in high spirits, as the English people rebelled against the barking mad oppressor raining bombs from their skies.
The rebellion I envision doesn’t involve raining bombs or sleeping in subways. It merely involves sleeping at a neighbor’s, or having several elderly neighbors sleep at your house. It involves the simplest economics, which is that if you turn off the heat and electricity and drain the water pipes, and move in with your neighbor, the two of you will together only need to pay half as much for heat, if you share the costs. In cases where three households can fit into a single house, you would only pay a third the cost. Nor would such an arrangement be permanent. To be most effective, it should last only sixty days, from just after Christmas to before the first of March. These sixty days involve the cruel heart of winter, when heating bills are most likely to ruin a budget. If you could put up with your neighbor only that long, think of the money you’d save!
Of course, getting along with neighbors is no easy task. If the younger adults question the old-timers, they might learn about neighbors called “hippies” who lived with neighbors in places called “communes,” and learn about lots of things you should avoid doing. However likely they wouldn’t learn what to do to make the situation work, for most communes were abysmal failures. Getting along with neighbors is no easy thing, even for only sixty days.
However the Londoners, sleeping in subways during the Blitz, were sustained and derived relish from the simple fact they were defying Hitler. Perhaps the same relish might make neighbors more able to tolerate neighbors in modern times, for surely such behavior on the part of the American people would shock the socks off the barking mad in Washington. It is beyond the limits of their feeble minds, for they prove they are incapable of comprehending neighbors caring for neighbors, when they fail to care for constituents.
Just imagine what the effect would be, if my idea caught on. When the oil delivery man came down a street with ten houses, he would not deliver oil to all ten, but to only five, or even only four. Because he delivered less, rather than the oil price going up, it would go down, due to the laws of supply and demand.
Even better is to imagine the consternation in Washington. They depend, in part, on a tax collected with each gallon of oil and propane delivered. If only half as much oil and propane is delivered, they collect only half as much tax. It is tantamount to them opening their pay envelope on payday, and seeing their paycheck is only half as large as they expected.
They will deem this a serious problem. Fortunately, they are such dunderheads they will never see it coming, and by the time they wake up the sixty days will be past, and everyone will be back in their own houses, innocently whistling.
I imagine that at this point the elite will be absolutely furious. How dare the American people behave as if they are independent and free! How dare they be so ungrateful as to pay fewer taxes! Laws must be passed to prevent this rebellious behavior! If the new congress does not pass the laws, the EPA will do it! Laws against the cohabitation of neighbors must be written in stone! Climate scientists must be hired to prove cohabitation causes Global Warming! (This may seem like an irrational response, but you need to remember these people are barking mad to begin with.)
They may even say it is better for people to freeze alone than to cohabit in a warm, shared, happy household. At their glittering parties they will nod in agreement about how cohabitation stresses leach fields and septic systems, and must be banned. Others will state cohabitation spreads infectious diseases, and must be banned. Whatever they say will seem sublimely logical, to them. However whatever they say will increasingly look like bunkum, to an American people who neither died of infectious diseases nor destroyed their leach fields, during their sixty-day, Gandhi-like, nonviolent rebellion.
However, just to be on the safe side, those with legal inclinations should perhaps prepare some legal briefs beforehand, arguing that religious freedom is involved. It doesn’t matter if they are atheists, they can point out Christianity makes a big deal about loving neighbors, and that “loving your neighbor as yourself” is right up there with worshiping the Creator, among Christians.
Not that we Americans care all that much about our neighbors. What we care for is our own independence and individuality. However, through the wisdom of our forefathers, we also know that we had better care for the independence and individuality of our neighbors, and stand united, or we will fall divided, for if our neighbors lose their independence and individuality, so will we.
So important is this concept that those with legal inclinations should likely figure out a way to file a lawsuit even before the EPA bans cohabitation. The best defense is a good offence, after all. The rest of us, who are not so legally inclined, should likely have some talks with the neighbors we never wanted to bother, and have never before gotten to know, during these Halcyon days of summer.
Scoffers will say my proposal will never work. (Likely their neighbor has halitosis and seldom changes his or her socks.) However when dealing with the barking mad you need to bark back. (Though you might like to allow your neighbor to live as he chooses, you need to tell him that for sixty days he should brush his teeth and change his socks.) However I think my idea just might work, due to something I noticed in my study of the London Blitz.
While the history of the English People, from the death of Queen Victoria to the eventual death of Queen Elisabeth II, largely looks like a free fall from huge responsibility to irresponsibility, from power to powerlessness, from grandeur to meaningless obscurity, they did have one moment when they, and no one else, stood utterly alone and took on an evil we cannot imagine. It truly was their “finest hour.”
Next time you are filled with self-pity about high heating bills, or about being stuck in a traffic jam, or about having a neighbor with halitosis, pause and imagine London during the Blitz. Every day bombs rained from the skies. Every day people you knew died. However rather than self-pity a defiance grew. Their motto was, “We can take it,” but what possessed those people to make up such a motto? The best description I ever heard, of what possessed London, simply called it “A White Heat.”
It was a moment in history when it was not America who stood up for Freedom, the English did. That class-ridden, moribund, down-falling society stood for Liberty when America didn’t. And why? Because of “A White Heat.”
As a poet, I love that description, “A White Heat,” but as a scientist I am appalled, for no thermometer can measure it. Even as a pseudo scientist and psychologist I am made nervous, for psychology seldom talks of a goodly power that can take on Hitler and shame him to suicide.
Christians would likely assert “A White Heat” is a gift from God given to those who take on evil, but because I don’t want to alienate goodly atheists, I’ll just state that if you stand by Truth, Truth stands by you. It is the strangest thing, for I am a pragmatist who prefers a large woodpile to standing by a cold stove expecting “White Heat”, but I’ve seen this over and over in my life: If you tell a lie, it haunts you and tracks you down, but if you tell the truth, though you may get sneered at and jeered at and even fired, in the long run you get “A White Heat.” Scoffers can doubt, and point out 30,000 elderly in England felt no “White Heat” this side of Glory, but it is also true people do not take kindly to politicians telling them to freeze, and it it does not take much for a smoldering public to blaze into Light.
I confess I am counting on this unscientific “White Heat” to help out, when I make my proposal that neighbors love neighbors to the degree where they can abide together for sixty days. I know what can go wrong, for I am an old man who remembers the debacles of hippie communes. I furthermore know anyone who had to live with me for sixty days would be sorely tested. However the redeeming thing is that the sixty days would annoy the heck out of the elite in Washington. The sublime satisfaction of annoying such extremely annoying people would make even putting up with me worth it. In fact, it might turn the living situation into a sort of party, quite enjoyable due to the presence of “White Heat.”
In conclusion, that is my proposal. We need to condescend to love our neighbors for sixty days. If others have other ways we might respond to leaders who are barking mad, I am eager to hear their proposals. However I hope we can agree on this: The leadership is barking mad, and it is time to bark back.
Before I embark on the epic voyage of reading this, I will comment on the part I have read so far, the part about King George III.
The author, in common with most Americans blame George III for the problems of the colonists leading up to the American Revolution. In fact, then, as now, the monarch had (mostly) only symbolic power. The laws of the land (and the Empire) bore his signature, but he was not the author of them, nor were they his ideas.
The blame for what happened lies squarely with the parliament. They were the authors of the laws and policies, they were responsible for sending the King’s army to enforce them.
It is important to remember that in England, the armed forces swear allegiance to the crown for pretty much the same reasons that the US armed forces swear allegiance to the flag, and not the federal government. It (in theory at least) puts a firewall between the army and the government.
In the case of the UK, in theory at least, the Queen could order the armed forces to remove an abusive government without causing a constitutional crisis. No doubt the government being removed would see it as such, but it would be perfectly legal.
So yes, it was the King’s army that imposed the laws, but not at the order of the King – although his signature would have been on the orders. Those orders would have been written by the government, quite likely at the behest of wealthy individuals (equivalent of today’s banksters) wanting to carve up and control the American colonies as they had done with India and somewhat in Canada.
If it makes you feel better to personalize the issue and blame one man, go ahead. But in reality he was rather feeble minded and he was sick. He was exploited by his government at the behest of what would these days be called corporate greed.
I won’t touch on the complicity of some of the colonists, lets just say that this was an attempt to control and exploit the resources of the American colonies by greedy people.
It backfired, because the people they were trying to exploit ere not “ignorant savages” as in other countries, but educated and competent Englishmen (and a few other nationalities too, to be fair) who recognized exploitation when they saw it.
Yes, giving representation in parliament would have been the correct way to handle this, but that would have made a big dent in the riches that current members saw as their own from exploiting the colonies.
King George III was a tool. Not the author of the entire sad episode. The French, of course, were perfectly happy to stir the pot too.
It is not just the people in Washington who are barking mad…it is the culture and the entire system of Washington that is nuts. Sane people go their and become mad in a matter of weeks. But most who go to Washington are already barking mad, because the election process requires a person to gradually give up their sanity. The fund raising, the lying, the special interests and the game-playing required to be elected, gradually destroy the most noble among us.
This is our fault. We no longer require our so-called representatives to be honest or statesmen and women. We require them to tell us what we want to hear regardless of reality, and elect them on their ability to lie convincingly and massage the media. We elect con artists, and they appoint their fellow con artists to important positions, and then they laugh all the way to the bank.
Like Joe Bastardi, I fear for my country. What we need is a grass roots effort to restore our constitutional republic, but most of the blades of grass have no idea what a constitutional republic is and no clue as to why they should want one. In time they will find out, but it may be too late when they do.
Glad someone finally mentioned the Cash for Clunkers gimmick. In our small rural area clunkers are driven by everyone. The car dealers were furious being forced to destroy vehicles that much of our town couldn’t afford, even used. I started off angry. This is a coal mining area, and it just gets worse.
I don’t think that fuel poverty is going to spark a big, long-lasting protest here. D.C. will just expand its EBT program to cover fuel.
What’s needed is for contrarians to actually get some funding to amplify the case they are making, and for global temperatures turn down.
What the ??? That method of protest could not be more wrong than if written by a rabid environmentalist or Nancy Pelosi herself. Makes about as much sense as suggesting we all protest by moving our families into high-rise, 600sq ft , no-frill apartments and getting rid of our personal vehicles. We need to do the exact OPPOSITE. If you want freedom from these people, it will not be free.
I am fighting the socialist “FLEX YOUR POWER” plan as well,. When they call for turning off lights and all appliances during normal hrs, I do just the opposite. Need a few blackouts to get people to say “screw this” and start demanding more low cost energy power plants. If CAGW were real, then I would agree to make sacrifices. However, I choose NOT to reduce my standard of living and give up my freedoms just to make some Progressive happy. If you want to live your life ‘Doing Without”, that is exactly what you will get if you succumb to this Progressive agenda.
Vote with your feet, find somewhere warm to live, like we did – 25 degrees south, on the bottom edge of the Queensland tropics.
There is nothing you can do for the old – in a few years they will die anyway, when social runs out of money.
But the young still have a chance.
That dog won’t hunt.
The only thing keeping my noisy neighbours alive is that they live in an entirely separate building from me. Just saying.
E.M.Smith says:
July 14, 2014 at 9:54 am
*
I like your idea better. A yearly exodus, a caravan X hundred (or thousand) vehicles long, growing bigger with each year as the word spreads. No one’s home “invaded” and no one living under anyone else’s rules, yet all traveling together on an adventure into the warmth – Flocking to the Sunshine (while telling the government to “Flock Off”).
Those who don’t want to holiday south, can bunk in together as Caleb suggests. No have-to anywhere. So that’s two ideas, two solutions.
I like the traveling caravan idea. Not only would there be adventure, but there’s a lot of room for slogans, flags and banners on the sides of those buses – a traveling tour with a message.
Excellent.
Making the barking mad even worse is the fact that government itself will have to pay higher fuel and energy prices from budgets already insufficient.
So on top of debilitating higher cost impacts on the elderly, poor, businesses and all others new fees and taxes will be needed to pay for the higher cost of government at every level.
At some point this level of deliberate official madness becomes a crime against humanity demanding public upheaval, intervention and prosecution. Does it not?
Caleb
You might be interested in this graph I did a year ago of the UK circumstances in which the rising costs of energy were graphed against the falling temperatures.
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph11.png
The UK govt managed the Unique treble of increasing fuel prices dramatically just as temperatures tumbled whilst at the same time reducing the number of power stations to produce that energy in the first place.
Pure genius!
It would be very interesting to see similar graphs for other western countries that have followed this mad route of penalising its citizens to fight a climate threat few of us can see or feel
Tonyb
I missed the paragraph about moving in your neighbors after you turn your heat off. Our neighbors have horses, the others have cows. Not sure how that would work with our dogs.
In my home province of Ontario the Liberal government has presided over a 10 year reign of rising electricity prices (they’ve doubled). Then the Premier cancelled two gas plants at a cost of $1 billion to the tax payers just to win two seats in an election. What did we citizens do? We re-elected the Liberals with a majority.
If we can’t even elect a proper government how can we possibly bring ourselves to move in with our neighbors and have a measurable effect on the system?
On the other hand my one neighbor has an amazing wine cellar so I could be persuaded to help in this noble cause – if I can choose which neighbor…
Perhaps there is a misdiagnosis here. One possibility is that they are not “barking mad,” but these politicians want electricity and personal transportation to be a class privilege.
Human life is not at all made happy by having basic needs met. If that were the case, then we may all be incarcerated into Smart cities for our own happiness. Instead, our country has always been a place where any citizen can engage in commercial activity and own private property. Now that there are unnavigable environmental and tax laws, it is becoming impossible for the cook to open a restaurant, or the farm owner to grow crops at a profit.
But for the Eris-tocracy, there are always waivers from the regulatory maze of tax and environmental laws they pass.
It is called, “the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law.” This is an ancient class of people, and seizing what anyone else has or enjoys by using regulations is all they are capable of. This Eris-tocracy only wants enough people alive to serve their palaces (and perhaps to live under the Collectivist system that makes them feel good about themselves). So the misdiagnosis is that they are not mad in a psychological sense, but they are spiritually insane.
Alcheson says, “Makes about as much sense as suggesting we all protest by moving our families into high-rise, 600sq ft , no-frill apartments and getting rid of our personal vehicles.”
I did a little looking around recently, and in fact the minimum apartment sizes are now being slowly worked around. For example:
“In San Francisco, developers are seeking permission to rent out apartments as small as 150 square feet.”
“Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday invited developers to propose ways to turn a Manhattan lot into an apartment building filled mostly with what officials are calling “micro-units” — dwellings complete with a bathroom, built-in kitchenette and enough space for a careful planner to use a fold-out bed as both sleeping space and living room.
If the pilot program is successful, officials could ultimately overturn a requirement established in 1987 that new apartments here be at least 400 square feet.”
It is taxation with representation that turns corporations into “people.” Corporations pay taxes just like people and so corporations have the same rights to representation as people. If you pay you get to play. Easy solution, quit taxing corporations. Corporate taxation just invites corruption and government manipulation of the marketplace. Back to the Constitution. Divide the federal budget by census determined (it’s original purpose) legal citizens and send a bill to each state for collection. Or a flat tax or prorated or something (figure it out) percentage of personal income from all sources and push the current tax code overboard.
@Nickreality65 – Taxes are a form of behavior modification. Sometimes planned (excise taxes on luxury goods) and sometimes not. And thus taxes on corporations are also a behavior modification. So I doubt they will ever be done away with.
However your idea is a worthy one. It does present an interesting dilemma for the left. They can get rid of the whole “Corporations” free speech issues (the campaign contributions) by eliminating taxes on them, but then they would not be able to control the corporations the way they would like (penalizing them for paying executives too much – the amount decided arbitrarily).
Zeke, you are talking about a room that is 10 x 15 feet! That’s not living area that is jail cell. Apparently no one will be expected to have a partner or children in the future.
@Rhoda R – that is the plan.
Thank you for this article. I’m one of those people who can no longer afford to heat the place, haven’t been able to for about 4 years. I’ve also been looking to replace my piece-of-crap car for months but simply cannot find anything used remotely within my price range. I’m pretty rural so without my car food shopping is pretty much limited to the gas station down the street, which of course drains even more money.
It’s not the struggle that bothers me—it’s knowing the cause of it, the needlessness of it, and that there’s no way out of it without ‘permission’ or becoming even more of a ‘criminal’ than I’m already forced to be. And oh how I resent the snotty, condescending responses i get if I dare question the wisdom or compassion of the policies that cause this. They’re tailor-made to ‘help’ people just like me, dontcha know, because all poor people are by definition too stupid to run their own lives.
I don’t think I will ever be able to see the government, the UN, or supporters of either as anything but dangerous enemies ever again.
Peter
A slack day for Obummer is a day when he is not playing golf.
Eugene WR Gallun
The idea of sharing quarters in cold weather goes back a long time. See the practice of “bundling” in colonial America. I read of this originally in the book Our Lusty Forefathers, which devoted a chapter to the practice.
Rhoda R says:
July 14, 2014 at 3:51 pm “Zeke, you are talking about a room that is 10 x 15 feet! That’s not living area that is jail cell. Apparently no one will be expected to have a partner or children in the future.”
The average prison cell is 6’x8′.
A lot of people truly enjoy the 32’x8′ camper trailer, even with 3 or 4 kids – but of course the charm of that is probably being in the wilderness and planning to leave to another beautiful location after a few days. (;
A bit more of this would get governments around the world taking a little more notice of their peoples.
Think about the action and apply it to your “leaders” for want of a better word.
It couldn’t be all bad.
These are not unintended consequences. They are intentional. We are not witnessing breath taking stupidity, but cunning deceit. The destruction of civilization really is their goal.
E.g. “Cash for Clunkers” was intended to eliminate the vehicles that could be afforded by poorer families, thus driving them into using public transportation.
Let ‘wise’ people make decisions and that’s what you get. I think they call it bureaucracy.
Leo Smith says:
July 14, 2014 at 10:19 am
Leo, every last one of us could refuse to pay taxes and D.C. wouldn’t blink an eye. They would get the money from the FED printing presses. This was part of why Reagan’s starve the beast didn’t work. Two other things would be necessary to make that work 1) end the fed and 2) Constitutional Amendment forbidding borrowing.
It was hard to tend to business this afternoon, with my mind thinking about some of the comments.
I must say some of you people sound grumpy. We’d likely get along great, if stuck together for sixty days. However we’d likely get a tongue-lashing from the local preacher, in terms of our ability to love-our-neighbor. (When I write I like to have sub-themes wound in with the main theme, and loving-our-neighbors, and our modern inability to do so, was a sub-theme of this work.)
I got to thinking about the concern some expressed that we are being herded like sheep to slaughter into 150 square foot units. They feared doubling-up for sixty days was an incremental step in that direction. I myself think the incremental step might be different. It might be to get people so deeply in debt that they lose their homes. If people doubled-up for sixty days, and sailed through the winter without getting more deeply in debt, then anyone who wanted people to lose their homes would say, “Curses! Foiled again!”
I certainly would not want anyone doubling-up against their will. It merely is an option the lower middle class might consider. However, judging from the comments, I doubt my proposal will go viral. It was just a trial balloon, and apparently is a lead one.