The Imperious at Occupy

I lingered outside the Logistics Tent at Occupy Boston to observe a demand for community funds. The gentleman to the extreme right of this picture is dressed in black; he insists he must have more black clothes. He has no cash, however, so he expects the lady manning the Logistics Tent to give him some money. Right now.

Shakedown at Occupy Boston

One way to get money in a group such as OWS, where everyone is supposed to be equal, and issues are decided collaboratively, would be to wait patiently until the next General Assembly meeting. These happen twice a day at the occupy thing at Boston. Various people would  persuasively present divers ideas, and presumably, the group would discuss the relative merits of the various demands for money. Then the group would put up their hands and wiggle their fingers and give UP TWINKLES if they like the idea of spending their limited resources in that particular way. Or DOWN TWINKLES if they did not like this way of spending the money.

The Logistics lady tells him she cannot help the man clad in black. She has no money; if she did have any money, it would be locked up. She has no key so it would be impossible for her to get the money and give it to him.  But he insists. He has to have the money right now, because he needs to buy black clothes because he is going to do an action. This action absolutely has to  happen right now.

The world is full of such people who horn in on the front of the line and who get what they want or need despite the fact that others are patiently waiting, or despite the fact that others are in need but are too embarrassed to ask. I think many OWS people might protest against such behavior, calling it "greed".

There is an imposing statue of Gandhi at Occupy Boston.
People will say "meet at Gandhi for the 3PM meeting". Gandhi was not a big fan of Greed.

Whatever you call it, there are plenty of people in the world who have enough arrogance and enough drive that they are going to lean on people until they get their share (or more than their share) of the world's limited resources.

It's human nature. Some systems recognize this trait and harness self-interest for the public good. Apparently OWS has not found a way to overcome this particular trait of human nature. The man wearing the black clothing never did take no for an answer. The logistics lady pointed to the donations box at the neighboring tent. She said they were collecting donations through the day, and perhaps when they had enough money in the box, they would be able to give him enough money to fund the "action" he felt was so important. But again, the man in black got more agitated, and refused to be pacified with vague promises of later consideration.

So another young lady came up and spoke very nicely to him and agreed to take him to some authority figure in the camp (I don't think they are supposed to have those) and make a special immediate request for the money.  I had to go off and watch an important race on the Charles River, so I don't know what happened next. He probably got his funds. The arrogant and self-important always find a way to the money, no matter what kind of society they are living in.
_____________
Also happening at Occupy Boston:
Find out what happened when it came time to pick up the trash.

Three Percent Sounds so Small

Gag me with a spoon.

If you can stand to read the White House propaganda linked above, you will find that, on top of everything else we have already forked out in his first 100 days, our man Obama thinks we ought to devote another 3 percent (at least) of our GDP to research and development...(creating) new policies that invest in basic and applied research, (creating) new incentives for private innovation, (promoting) breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and (improving) education in math and science.


New policies that invest in basic and applied research?? What does our young green president think we have already been doing? Is he trying to make us believe that this country does not already invest massive amounts in basic and applied research? We have colossal government taxpayer money pouring into research already, through NASA, through the Department of Agriculture, through federal grants to a huge number of universities, through NIH. And we have an amazing level of private investment as well in a large range of scientific and technological areas, or as he would call it, basic and applied research. A free market economy excels at investing in the scientific breakthroughs of tomorrow, allowing its people to invest where they see the problems, to find solutions a government could never imagine.


Our GDP was 14.33 trillion dollars in 2008. And Barack Obama wants to spend at least another three percent of that. Three percent never sounds like a lot, but why the heck isn't he man enough to come right out and say that he is talking about 420 billion dollars?? I'll tell you why. Because that is one heck of an unaffordable lollipop and Obama knows that the working, taxpaying people of this country are sick and tired of spending another several hundred billion dollars every time he gets out of bed in the morning. Especially on things like education, energy, medicine and private innovation, for gosh sakes, which we already spend PLENTY ON! We already outspend any other nation on education, but he wants to take more of your money away from you and fritter it away on a problem which can't be solved with more dollars. If more and more money has not fixed education by now, there is little reason to believe that spending more money will bring us results. Breakthroughs in energy and medicine? Helloooooo! We are the most innovative country on Earth with regard to both! It is time to appreciate what we have been doing, and more importantly, it is crucial for Mr. Obama to learn a little something about the country he lives in, and to try to understand HOW we managed to do it.


We elected a very naive young man. He said in his address to the National Academy of Sciences,

I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow. It's our character to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again.

Obama seriously thinks we lead because it is somehow embedded in our character? Surely not! The reason we have been leading is that we have a framework which allows our people to live largely government-free, and to do the things which only people (not government) are capable of, including keeping a lot of their money so that they (the people who know best how to spend their own money) can invest it as they see fit and use it to create amazing things. We call that framework our Constitution, and that is what makes us great, not the fact that we are some kind of natural leaders. We are really just like any other people, no better, no more talented, no smarter. It is our framework which allows the individuals of this nation to be all we can be and to create things which are rarely, if ever, dreamed of in more tyrannical or totalitarian societies which control the people through socialistic economies driven by oppressive taxation.

By taxing the people enough to devote an exorbitant three percent of GDP to governmental research, Obama will quickly kill everything which he says he wants to bring about in this country which is already great for reasons obviously unknown to Obama.



Hot diggity damn, if you want Obama's wishlist of inventions to actually happen, you have to let the money and the rule-making stay with the people. Only the people, using their own money and resources, and free of onerous government regulation and control, can create what the current leader of the (current) free world says he wants, things such as

solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again; an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us.

Bureaucrats will never make any of the above happen. No one can legislate genius into existence, no one can collect enough tax to force people to create clever things. No one can make government large enough to bring the world to perfection. Not even Obama.

If we want to keep advancing as a nation we have to keep reminding Obama and all the congress people who seem so very much in love with him, that governments don't create. Only people create. And the government has to be kept very small to allow the people to blossom. The best way to create new incentives for private innovation is to leave the resources in the hands of the individual and never let government get its grubby hands on them!

A List of the Lollipops

Here is a veritable treasure trove of information about how stimulus money might be spent, especially intriguing because you can register your opinion! Citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed "shovel-ready" projects in their own cities can find, discuss and rate those unaffordable lollipops, from the new silver led recreation center in Annapolis, Maryland, to the Tannery Arts Center Working Studios in Santa Cruz, CA. If you are already familiar, you can even go so far as to use the wiki feature to add the facts you know right into the description. If you don't know about a project near you, maybe you would like to give your local officials a call and start asking questions. Your local officials will spend the money more wisely if they know you are watching.

Obama has promised to invest stimulus money in a wise way and now it is up to us to make sure that happens, holding public officials to account for the FEDERAL taxpayer money they spend for their local projects. Should federal moneys be used in this way? No. It is not the province of the federal government to tax the citizens all over the land in order to help local areas clean up playgrounds and make nice little bike trails and outdoor museums, etc, etc. After all, the job of the federal government is to pay for federal responsibilities, like defense. But as Obama and Pelosi have pointed out time and time again, they won the election. So they are going to engage in this crazy big spending anyway. Let's just not roll over, however, and let them fritter away this money without hearing an earful from us.

The lollipops on this list of stimulus projects seem to come in two varieties:

ONE: Projects which the local population do not believe are worthy of funding. We all have limited finances, and therefore, we have to set priorities. It is safe to assume that large numbers of items on this list are items the locals did not feel were worthy of their own local tax dollars!

TWO: Projects which the locality had already budgeted money for. (The jurisdiction involved will now simply shift the moneys, and spend their own local taxpayer money on something else). Kind of a shell game, with the federal taxpayer (that would be you and me) being the dupe.

You can find projects by searching or by browsing by locality or program type. Once you find a program, there are three things you can do:

1) vote on whether you believe the project is critical or not; (and see how others are voting)

2) edit the project's description and points in favor or against, and

3) post a comment in the conversation about the project.

Dig in, and let us know what you find. A lot of this stuff sounds just lovely and sweet, as unaffordable lollipops so very often do. But other projects are just unabashed horrendous wastes.

Obama IRS by WINDYDESIGN
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Telling it like it is

Quotations from the week:

I can't think of any ongoing enterprise in the history of mankind that is well managed by a government.
------Larry Kudlow, CNBC

We're going to be in this recession a lot longer than we thought, because as soon as we start emerging, high taxes are going to put us right back down.
--------Maria Bartiromo, CNBC

Big government is back and the Democrats are asking you to pay for it.
--------John Boehner, House Republican Leader

Socialism: it works! by WINDYDESIGN
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People are getting angry about the big spending and have started to assemble in cities across the country.
Some talking points from the New American Tea Party.

1. This is a non-partisan event — in fact, it’s critical of both parties — large-scale government interventions into the free market were kicked off under Bush, and Obama’s doing no better.

2. The American taxpayer is better at spending his money than the government. If you ask your average taxpayer if he wanted to spend millions of dollars on golf course renovations, you could be sure he’d say no.

3. Small business owners are the backbone of the economy, not large failing corporations. Amping up regulations only hurts these businesses.

4. It is our *optimism* that guides our frustration. We believe so strongly in the ingenuity and hard work of the American people, that we feel big government measures will only get in the way of their success.