8/18/2013

Thoughts On A Sunday

BeezleBub and I spent the evening at Meadowbrook Farm, catching the act of Bob Marley (the Maine comedian, not the dead reggae star).

All I can say is that he was wicked funny! He has captured the essence of New England humor.

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I liked this comparison by James Delingpole, equating shale gas with Rearden Metal of Atlas Shrugged.

One of the things [Ayn Rand] foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas. In Atlas Shrugged it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it. But of course, Rand’s fictional progressives don’t want Reardon (sic) Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed.

Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it’s unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous. Rand doesn’t actually use the phrase “the precautionary principle.” But this is exactly what she is describing in the book when various vested interests – the corporatists in bed with big government, the politicised junk-scientists at the Institute of Science (aka, in our world, the National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society), the unions – try to close down the nascent technology using the flimsiest of excuses.

I've seen Atlas Shrugged as scarily prescient. It's like Obama and the rest of the progressives are using it as a guide rather than a cautionary tale.

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It seems the Democrats aren't wasting any time, having started rallying their 'hater' base for the 2014 mid-term elections.

Their target? Making sure their voter base - non-citizens, felons, 'multiple' voters, and the dead - can vote in the next election, much as they have in the past. The want to do away with voter ID laws in the states that have implemented them.

I can't wait to hear them explain how 115% of eligible voters voted in various Democrat districts. Not that I'm holding my breath as they haven't explained how that occurred during the last election.

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Who'da thunk it?

Is possible that Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has become a union buster?

The action in question deals with the automation of all tool booths on the Massachusetts Turnpike. After a union sick-out back in 2009 caused massive traffic tie-ups at the tool booths along the Pike, changing over to all electronic toll collection was inevitable. In turn, that means all those toll takers will now be out of jobs.

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It looks like Connecticut has been going the way of California, Illinois, and some other blue states.

Where it once had a thriving economy, a strong middle class, and business-friendly climate, it now has heavy taxes, business-hostile regulations, and a struggling middle class.

...[I]t is one of those states, like California, which once were independent-minded and traditionalist Yankee Red, but gradually turned Blue and then finally Dark Blue. They took their prosperity for granted. Farms, inventors, entrepreneurs, booming factories, great private schools, and great universities and colleges; the summer homes of the prosperous of NYC and even Hollywood; a charming coastline great for swimming, sailing, and fishing; old-time Yankee towns and virtues.

Government policies did their damage. State taxes and local property taxes. Unions corrupted urban governments, along with some of the immigrant Mafioso components. Semi-skilled blacks from the rural South moved north in a vast migration for the industrial jobs, jobs which fled this high-tax, heavily-unionized post-War state leaving them with nothing while immigrant Mexicans happily do most of the hard labor and even skilled labor like masonry and construction, and are happy to work in our Dunkin Donuts shops.

Connecticut had the highest per capita income in the nation for decades, but that is no longer the case. Even though there are more wealthy residents in the state, the number of middle class residents has been shrinking. Businesses are either relocating out of state or thinking of doing so. All in all, Connecticut is heading down the same path as California and Illinois.

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First, they tell us to get out. Then they want us to come back.

I wish they'd make up their minds.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we've hit a stretch of good weather, the summerfolk are trying to cram in as much vacation as they can, and where once again Monday has returned all too soon.