Our Arrogant Central Planners Are At It Again
The government is once again manipulating the economy to make things better. Their meddling never helps anyone except their campaign funds, lobbyists, and rich crony capitalists. Get ready, folks, another bubble-burst the likes of 2007-2009 is on the way.
“Bowing to pressure from Washington, the San Jose, Calif.-based Fair Isaac (NYSE:FICO) has agreed to tweak its widely used credit-risk scoring model to give a break to consumers with debts that have gone into collections.”
“Last month, 56% of lenders surveyed by FICO expressed concern that an “unsustainable real estate bubble is inflating.””
Two Sides of Patriotism
On this Memorial Day, I feel a deep sense of gratitude and respect for those who have given their lives in military service, as well as for those who have survived and those who continue to serve. However, I have mixed emotions on the subject of patriotism and military service. While I cherish the ever-diminishing freedoms that I enjoy as an American, I am highly skeptical of government and its coercive manipulation of good, well-intentioned citizens. I offer here some brief thoughts on patriotism.
Side One: The Patriotic Citizen
Generally speaking, a patriotic citizen feels a sense of pride and affection for his/her homeland, and is willing to fight to protect it. In the case of the United States of America, citizens generally value their perceived freedoms and the political system which they believe protects and preserves those freedoms. they see the flag as a symbol of all that they know and love and feel pride when they look upon it, and anger when the flag is treated with disrespect.
Patriotic citizens value and respect their nation’s military forces as necessary to defend and protect their way of life against external threats, and many are willing to give their lives in military service to do so. Genuine honor and affection is held for those who serve.
Side Two: The State
The State encourages, promotes, and uses the patriotic sentiment of its citizens for its own selfish ends. Patriotism is like an hallucinogenic drug that fills people with passion and fervor robed in honor and heroism, but is ultimately self-destructive. It distorts their vision and clouds their judgment, making rational, critical, objective thought and debate nearly impossible.
Patriotism feeds and drives the war machine which creates fabulous wealth for politicians and corporations of the military/industrial complex. This comes at the expense of taxpayers who are robbed of their earnings by burdensome taxation to fund ever-increasing growth of the military, and the lives of those who are sucked in to military service due to patriotic fervor, government coercion (the draft), or lack of opportunity to make a living elsewhere due to distortion of the free market resulting from uncontrolled growth of governmental taxation and regulation.
The State perpetuates a climate of fear and a continual state of war (or threat of war) while spending millions of dollars on propaganda to keep the patriotic zeal of the masses stirred up in support of military activities and expenditures, which no matter how far removed, are always somehow necessary to protect and preserve our freedom and way of life. Meanwhile, politicians, suppliers and contractors to the military reap enormous profits year after year as more and more of the capital resources of the nation are funneled into the war machine.
For proof of the very un-patriotic self-interest of politicians, one has to look no further than to the pittance allocated by Congress to: a) service member pay and benefits, and b) care and treatment of those wounded in service. The level of compensation for those who offer their lives (and, by extension, the lives of their families) is shameful. However, it makes sense when considered in its true light, because there is little, if any, profit for politicians or corporations from pay and benefits for service members. That is merely overhead – a necessary, if low priority, evil in the pursuit of self-enrichment. The real money is in guns, ammunition, tanks, planes, ships, etc.
In conclusion, I suggest that the next time a flag is waved before you and appeal is made to your patriotic sentiment, stop and think deeply about what is going on. Is this really necessary? Is there a real and present danger? What will be the real cost, in lives and resources, of such action? Whose freedoms will be violated by the exercise of our own? Who is profiting from this?
Sucker Advertising
I have always been amazed that people are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege of advertising for-profit corporations. Maybe it is due to my modest upbringing that I was never bitten by this bug. In childhood, when many of my friends were sporting the latest and greatest name-brand shoes, shirts, pants, etc. – I and my siblings were dressed in discount store attire. It was not until my freshman year of high school that I obtained my first pair of white leather Converse high-top basketball shoes (very popular at the time), and that only because I paid half the cost out my own earnings from a newspaper route.
Now, well into adulthood, I appreciate not being enamored of brand names. I like quality products as much as the next person and own many top-brand items. It’s difficult to find something that doesn’t have a brand name or logo conspicuously displayed. The products themselves are not the subject of this rant. The object of my derision is the willingness – yea, eagerness – of people to pay top dollar, not for brand-name products per se, but for the opportunity to make themselves living, walking billboards for the brands. It is one thing to own a pair of famous brand shoes: perhaps there is some real increased utility due to the quality of workmanship or materials which adds value for which the consumer is wiling to pay more. On the other hand, why pay a premium price for a t-shirt simply because it has a brand name or corporate logo printed on it? Where is the increased value to the consumer? Is there any more usefulness to a shirt (or shoes, or coat, or whatever) that has a corporate logo on it than one that does not?
I have no objection to corporations selling such merchandise. Why wouldn’t they? It’s free advertising. Actually, it’s better than free, because consumers are paying lots of money to advertise for them. It’s brilliant. It makes advertising, which is normally a cost of doing business, into another profit stream. More power to them. I only wish that I could get in on the action. Easy money.
Nor do I object to the right of people to purchase such merchandise. If that’s how you want to spend your money, go for it. I only ask, why would you? Unless you are wealthy enough to spend money without a care, why waste yours only to further enrich corporations who don’t give a damn about you? They should be giving away those logo t-shirts and ball caps for free, but why would they, when people are willing to buy them? Think about it.
I understand the psychology of the behavior. People perceive value in certain brands and recognize that other people likewise perceive value in those brands, and they want to be associated with the stature and success and popularity of those brands. If brand “X” is perceived as cool (choose your positive adjective), then association with that brand will make the user feel cool and, at least in their mind, make them cool in the eyes of others, too. I suppose that we all succumb to such reasoning (consciously or not) to some degree. Everyone wants to be liked and admired – even those who work so hard to be seen as independent and contrarian. It’s really about grasping for a sense of significance, isn’t it?
The bottom line is this: don’t be a sucker. Spend your hard-earned money on things that you want and need and that will enrich your life, not some corporation that knows and cares nothing about you. Find significance in who you are and what you do, not in what other people think about you.
Democrats show desperation with race card play
The obviously coordinated attack on Republicans by Democrats, charging that the root of all opposition to President Obama, his administration, his policies, etc., is rampant racism reveals that Democrats are desperate and on the run. The charge of racism is baseless and utterly ridiculous.
The fact is that Democrats cannot defend the complete failure of the Obama administration on virtually every issue and policy. They have shown themselves, along with the President, to be liars and frauds and they have run out of excuses and counter-arguments. So, grasping for anything to get them off the hot-seat, they pulled out the race card. Gee, what a surprise.
To be fair, Democrats are not the only liars and frauds in Washington. Republicans share much of the blame for the rock-and-roll-horror-show that is the United States government. However, the Dems are in charge and President Obama has excelled as Liar-in-Chief. He has also done quite well as the Divider-in-Chief, constantly fueling every possible division among us.
The real point is this: the President and his fellow Democrats, who together dominate Washington at the moment, have failed to lead the nation in a positive, productive direction and they are out of excuses. They realize that an ever larger number of Americans are finally beginning to see that the emperor has no clothes. And another election is on the horizon.
Where is the outrage over knife violence?
Where is the outrage over knife violence following the mass-stabbing at a Pennsylvania school on April 9? Why aren’t people calling for knife registration, knife-free zones, waiting periods for knife purchases, or a ban on knives altogether? Do it for the children, for God’s sake! After all, knives are used in violent crimes far more than guns. Knives were the primary weapons that lead to over 3,000 deaths in a single day in the U.S. on 9/11/01. Knives were used by a group of assailants in a brutal attack in a crowded train station in China that left 29 dead and 143 wounded, March 1, 2014. Far more people carry knives than guns. In fact, these deadly implements have proliferated into every home in America (gasp!). Yet there is no outrage, no legislation, no threat to civil liberty over knives. I haven’t heard a single word from Michael Bloomberg about the growing knife threat. What the hell is going on?!
This demonstrates that the gun-control efforts in the U.S. are not really about public safety, or the lives of children, or any of the other pretenses put forth by anti-gun zealots. It’s about guns. They don’t like guns. They are afraid of guns. They think people with guns are dangerous – but only law-abiding citizens with guns, not criminals with guns. Criminals with guns aren’t a threat, because they are victims of racism, rich people, and lack of compassion and government assistance – so, nevermind their guns.
Do you have children? Do your children ever play at the neighbor’s house? Have you asked your neighbors if they have knives in their homes? Your children could be in danger!
Libertylines 
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