The Georgia Legislature Backed Down To Extortion

Once more the Georgia Legislature backs down to protests and steals from the people in this state to give it to those who self-indulgently claim to be "artists". And once more I say "if your art is any good people will pay for it. If people will not voluntarily pay for it - TAKE THE HINT."

Property Tax

I got a notice of a re-evaluation of my home's assessment for property taxes. I, along with 100,000 others. Normally it would be a time of gloom because of the rising taxes. This time, it is a time of gloom because of the falling ones. My evaluation, like everyone else I spoke with has fallen - massively, nearly 40%. And I am going to appeal yet another $15,000 reduction since one of the nicer houses behind mine has an even lower price posted on the for sale sign in front of the house and is not getting any takers.
There are two parts of the property tax and they are handled differently. The County uses "the book", the total of all property value in the county and divides it by what the need to spend and set this millage*. No real problem, they will change the number of mils and we will pay the same for police, and firemen, and jails.
Now the schools on the other hand have a limit on the millage rate they can charge - 21 mils. Anything more than that requires an act of the state legislature. The City of Atlanta had one a few years back to go up to 25 mils. It was not a pretty sight. Some of the rural counties tax themselves 9 - 12 mils. These are the ones with no growth, and coincidentally (?) the ones where everyone knows all the school board members and the Superintendent. Well, in my county, we have been living pretty high on the hog between support tons (literally) of illegal aliens, and massive anonymous executive salaries (I don't know them, and I work there), and incredible technology we are constantly between 18 and 21 mils. So... there is nowhere up left to go. So down we go. No more feng shui decorations and fancy furniture for the front offices. No more "My room is too hot! It is 73 degrees in here." Now if they would just reduce some of the bloat at the central office. Much of it exists just to satisfy the insatiably demand from the Imperial Federal Government for paper; but some of the bloat exists because" I have a budget and I can get someone else to do the drudge part of my work".
Things are going to get ugly.



*one mil is one tenth of a cent, or one dollar for every thousand per mil. i.e. 20 mils on a hundred thousand dollar valuation = $2000 per year.

Who Gets The Education? The Kids Or Me?

One of the joys of most jobs is the exposure to world you aren't familiar with. It was true when I worked setting up conventions and trade shows; but it is especially true working in the schools, watching the children learn. But I learned something yesterday. Oh, it was a familiar subject and method, I see it every year at this time. Out in the hall in front of the classrooms are little crudely pasted up graphs of the distributions of various items. Sometime it is favorite TV shows, favorite colors, or favorite flavors of ice cream. This one was about internet access. How did these kids' parents get their internet? More than half of them had Comcast at home; a few had AT&T broadband; a few didn't know where their internet came from, it was just there; one had dial-up; but no-one had an entry in the 'did not have' column. What got my attention was that this school traditionally has a "free-and-reduced" breakfast and lunch participation of more than 95%!
I wonder what a similar survey would say about flat screen TVs? I see the cars their parents drive when they drop them off at school.

Only in America can you be poor and still have broadband, flat screen TVs, and expensive cars. It's easy when you don't have to pay for food, shelter and medicine.

Knowledge is Power, Time is Money

From http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/equation.html

Knowledge is Power
Time is Money
and as every engineer knows, Power is Work over Time.

So, substituting algebraic equations for these time worn bits of wisdom, we get:

* K = P (1)
* T = M (2)
* P = W/T (3)

Now, do a few simple substitutions:

Put W/T in for P in equation (1), which yields:

* K = W/T (4)

Put M in for T into equation (4), which yields:

* K = W/M (5)

Now we've got something. Expanding back into English, we get:

Knowledge equals Work over Money.

What this MEANS is that:

1. The More You Know, the More Work You Do, and
2. The More You Know, the Less Money You Make.

Solving for Money, we get:

* M = W/K (6)

Money equals Work Over Knowledge.

From equation (6) we see that Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches 0, regardless of the Work done.

What THIS MEANS is:

The More you Make, the Less you Know.

Solving for Work, we get

* W = M K (7)

Work equals Money times Knowledge

From equation (7) we see that Work approaches 0 as Knowledge approaches 0.

What THIS MEANS is:

The rich do little or no work and are essentially ignorant.

Let Me See If I Understand This ...

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- China’s finance ministry failed to draw enough demand at sales of 273-day and 91-day treasury bills today after the central bank tightened control on money supply to restrain inflation, according to traders at two banks.

Ok, the Chinese are buying our Treasury Bills (think bonds) so that our Politicians have money to buy votes with so that they can stay in Washington, party, makes rules for us to follow that they don't, get a lot richer than their salaries would suggest, and our children and grandchildren will pay back or suffer from the defaulting on; and the Chinese in turn are supporting this with debt (think bonds) that their children in turn will have to pay. But you have to wonder, who are the Chinese selling their T-Bills to?

Charles Ponzi ... Bernie Madoff ... You guys were just pikers, just a drop in the bucket to the U. S. Government.

Has Class Warfare Unintended Consequences?

Several weeks ago I published a quote from Doctor Karl Menninger on 'Normal'. There is a question that I have been tossing around in my head for years. "Why are today's kids trying so hard to emulate the lowest elements of society rather than reaching for as much as they can?" As I go through the schools and watch the kids pursue the latest fads which invariably make the kids look dumber than a post, I note that no one is reaching for class. No one is trying to show themselves as better than they are. No one is trying to be better than they are. WHY? Or Why not? Has class warfare become such a staple of modern life that they are afraid to admit to having any?
The status symbols of this day and age are those of the thug, those of the poor, those of the hopeless. I started to write "except for their cars". And then I retracted, because even their cars have the declassé status symbols of over-sized mismatched (to the car) wheels and gaudy trim.

There is an old parable about jump[ing] for the highest branch of a tree rather than the lowest for if you miss there are lower branches you can catch; for if you jump for the lowest there is nothing below to catch you. In a day when the lowest rungs of our society are filled by illegal immigrants and out-sourced jobs, to me, reaching for the highest seems more important than ever.

By the way, that is yours truly in the tie and London Fog walking to school in the 11th grade as seen in an old high school yearbook.

Representative Hank "Capsize Guam" Johnson

The whole world has jumped on Representative Johnson's silly remark that adding more soldiers to Guam might make it capsize. But the truth is that the Georgia 4th Congressional District has a history of ill-formed logic and ignorance.

No one on any news or talk radio shows has mentioned that Rep Hank Johnson replaced six-term Representative and 2008 Green Party (read Communist Party) presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. Cynthia you may remember was the one who slugged the Capitol security officer for asking for her credentials. She is also the one who went to help Castro harvest sugar cane while she was a US Representative.

She first Representated the 11th Congressional District which was gerrymandered from SE Atlanta all the way to Savannah¹ (check a map for how silly this district is) specifically to include minority voters to assure a Democratic seat and break up Republican areas. But this was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Johnson . She was then redrawn into the 4th Congressional District which is no less gerrymandered by population although it is more contiguous.

(Original 11th district shown in dark blue)

Maybe the Representatives aren't the stupid ones. Maybe they represent their voters accurately.


¹ 250 miles long and in places less than 100 ft wide.

The Verse of the Day

"EVERYTHING Obama has done has hurt America; NOTHING he has done has helped America. Not domestically. Not Internationally. ZIP ZERO ZILCH NADA NOTHING."

And you know why? It's because they hate America. America stands for everything they despise: democracy, capitalism, freedom... Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, freedom of association...

When you put people in charge who hate America, don't be surprised when they try to destroy it.

David Peterson in comments to the Wall Street Journal Online

Psalm 109:8

"Let his days be few; and may another take his place of leadership. "

Agent provocateur

Interesting, I have not heard once the suggestion that there might be any agents provocateur out there amongst those dangerous revolutionary tea party people. Could it be that it is just too dangerous for the agents to expose themselves to the risk of those violent senior adults? Or could it be that just as I would stand out at a Berkeley anti-{insert cause of the day here} rally they might appear out-of-place? Or do you suppose it could be that the press does not wish to plant the suggestion in our minds that our Chicago politicians in charge could be so devious as to have their own planted agents hurl the epithets that they fear so much?
Like Nancy Pelosi says, she saw this in San Francisco in the seventies and it scared her. I had forgotten how the straights, the seniors, the family people, the employed, the homeowners, and the parents had rioted in San Francisco in the seventies. By the way Nancy, where were you standing when it scared you? Too close to the front of the mob? Did those policemen standing in front keeping you from destroying everything scare you?

Those seniors, family people, employed, homeowners, and parents standing out in front of "your" Capitol are trying to protect their pensions, homes, businesses, and children's futures from Representatives who represent their own interests rather than those who elected them. Representatives like you, Nancy, whose arrogance knows no bounds.

Atlanta Representative John Lewis and the Congressional Black Caucus went trolling for racial slurs in amongst the protesters last week and claim to have found 15 of them in amongst the thousands of people in front of the Capitol. Unfortunately neither of their cameras nor those of the press or anyone else managed to capture them. Next time they will place them better. Do you suppose it just might be because race wasn't the issue? Did they miss the point that the protest is over deficit spending, representatives who do not follow the will of their constituents, and ever increasing government power, and not race? Has Representative Lewis become so blind he cannot read the signs and only believes his own hype? Are his ears so closed that he doesn't even know what the protesters are really saying as he hears only the "N-word" that he wants to hear?

The (ever so less than) mainstream news has been trying to pump up the public perception of the violence of those against the non-representative actions of their Representatives. They miss one point though: those people are us, and we know what's in our hearts; and so far, it is not violence. It is simply: we want our government to leave us alone to take care of our own life, liberty, and persuit of happiness.

For Those Who Think That Giving Any Government Broader Powers Is a Good Idea.

It’s always worth remembering, however, that the vast majority of unnatural deaths in the last century were the direct result of government action – as often as not, action taken against its own citizens.
Casey's Daily Dispatch

The article goes on to state and then to quote from no less a source than the Atlantic:

While there is no comparison in the current context to what occurred in Germany, at least in the U.S. and other developed countries, that doesn’t mean that things can’t degrade, and quickly so.

With the economy in shreds, persistently high unemployment, and another hit to the national bottom line likely, almost anything is possible. Another Timothy McVeigh, or another Waco, or widespread societal upheavals are all certainly well within the realm of possibility. As is, of course, another 9/11.

With the government’s own threat assessment already in a semi-permanent state of Code Orange, it wouldn’t take much to tip things to Code Red, at which point we would witness – and experience – the consequences of the many legal changes that have been put into place since 9/11.

On that topic, the following is an excerpt from an article that Doug Casey sent over, from The Atlantic …

A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt?

A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.

According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.
(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

It would require these "belligerents" to be coded as "high-value detainee[s]" to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the president. (The H.I.G., of course, was established to bring a sophisticated interrogation capacity to the federal justice system.)

Any suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents considered a "high-value detainee" shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

To the extent possible, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.

Full article here.

All together now, let's repeat the refrain:
"It Can't Happen Here".

Socialized Medicine is Slavery

Doctors are not servants of their patients, they are traders like everyone else in a free society and they should bear that title proudly considering the crucial importance of the services they offer.

Ayn Rand(1905 - 1982)

Normal

"The adjuration to be normal seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of normal to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal."

Psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger

Mencken Nails It Again

“The legislature, like the executive, has ceased, save indirectly, to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature, in the main, of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle – a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism."


H.L. Mencken writing in the American Mercury, May 1930

Sorry I haven't been posting ...

...I've had other things on my mind and have been stretched a little too thin.

Mother is in Emory Eastside Hospital in Snellville again for a flare-up of her congestive heart failure and has been for about ten days. She is doing a lot better now after the did a thoracentesis and removed most of the water from her lungs. The rest they are trying to remove with Lasix®. Personally, I wish they had done a paracentesis also as that really made the difference last time.

I truly believe the culprit to be Bernoulli. His principle combined with the constant high humidity this winter and her oxygen have caused the moisture in the air to precipitate out into her lungs. The water in her lungs and abdomen is pressing on her heart which like the jaws of an alligator only has muscles to contract and nothing to extend save the relaxation of tension.

My mother is 89 years old. Will they still be allowed to treat us when we are 89?

Unemployment and Wife Beating

According to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, unemployment is a major cause of wife beating and spousal abuse. Funny, I always thought the media blamed the Super Bowl. At least until statistics disproved that theory.

Now Fred Thompson made the joke that we all have thought and many said - This ought to be be fair warning to Mrs. Reid after November's coming election.

BUT: Now a spokesman for Senator Reid has taken Senator Thompson to task because, Senator Reid was the child of abusive parent(s).

But here comes the big one: Statistically, the common factor for abusers is ... child of abusive parents.

I'll repeat, "Watch out Mrs. Reid. You've got a problem."

This Is So Wrong On So Many Levels

Danny Williams,Premier of the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, is in Miami. No, that's not wrong, Miami is filled with Canadians in the wintertime. No, he is there for heart surgery. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a “minimally invasive” surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago.

I thought we were to believe that Canada's health care system is so much better than ours. Well no, the officially allowed procedure up there is to bisect the breastbone and chest and operate through that opening. He decided that he preferred the sound of having merely a laproscopic set of incisions under the arm and the operation being done that way. He thought it might be less uncomfortable and have a better success rate.

But he did make it clear through a spokesman that he was not going to the United States in order to go to the head of the line in getting treatment for his heart condition. Do you mean that there is a waiting line for treatment for heart failure? That is certainly what that statement implies.

I have many times spoken and written of the Canadians seeking treatment for prostate cancer here in the Atlanta area, something that Canada considers a waste of resources; but I admit I am tickled at the prospect of all the Obama-supporting fat school teachers I encounter on a daily basis waking up to discover that joint replacement surgery is a luxury and therefore not covered by government health care.

We can't abandon our health care system - Where would the poor Canadians have to go to get care?