Muda69

https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding

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Since America's beginning, there has been intense debate about slavery, precisely because it raises questions about this nation's dedication to liberty and human equality. Does the existence of slavery in the context of the American Founding, its motivating principles, and the individuals who proclaimed those principles make the United States or its origins less defendable as a guide for just government?

At the time of the American Founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40 percent of the population. Many of the leading American Founders-most notably Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison-owned slaves, but many did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was "an atrocious debasement of human nature" and "a source of serious evils." He and Benjamin Rush founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1774.

John Jay, who was the president of a similar society in New York, believed:

the honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.

John Adams opposed slavery his entire life as a "foul contagion in the human character" and "an evil of colossal magnitude." James Madison called it "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."

From his first thoughts about the Revolution, to his command of the Continental army, to his presidential administration, George Washington's life and letters reflect a statesman struggling with the reality and inhumanity of slavery in the midst of the free nation being constructed. In 1774, Washington compared the alternative to Americans asserting their rights against British rule to being ruled "till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway."

When Washington took command of the Continental army in 1775, there were both slaves and free blacks in its ranks (about 5,000 blacks served in the Continental army.) Alexander Hamilton proposed a general plan to enlist slaves in the army that would in the end "give them their freedom with their muskets," and Washington supported such a policy (with the approval of Congress) in South Carolina and Georgia, two of the largest slaveholding states.

In 1786, Washington wrote of slavery, "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." He devised a plan to rent his lands and turn his slaves into paid laborers, and at the end of his presidency he quietly freed several of his own household slaves. In the end, he could take it no more and decreed in his will that his slaves would become free upon the death of his wife. The old and infirm were to be cared for while they lived, and the children were to be taught to read and write and trained in a useful skill until they were age 25. Washington's estate paid for this care until 1833.

During his first term in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but the motion was soundly defeated. His 1774 draft instructions to the Virginia Delegates for the First Continental Congress, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, called for an end to the slave trade: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state." That same year, the First Continental Congress agreed to discontinue the slave trade and boycott other nations that engaged in it. The Second Continental Congress reaffirmed this policy in 1776.

Jefferson's draft constitution for the state of Virginia forbade the importation of slaves, and his draft of the Declaration of Independence-written at a time when he himself had inherited about 200 slaves-included a paragraph condemning the British king for introducing slavery into the colonies and continuing the slave trade:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

These words were especially offensive to delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, who were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery went so far as to violate the "most sacred rights of life and liberty." So, like some of Jefferson's more expressive phrases attacking the king, these lines were dropped in the editing process.

Nevertheless, Jefferson's central point-that all men are created equal-remained as an obvious rebuke to the institution. From very early in the movement for independence, it was understood that calls for colonial freedom from British tyranny had clear implications for domestic slavery. "The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white and black," James Otis wrote in 1761. "Does it follow that it is the right to enslave a man because he is black?" In the wake of independence, state after state passed legislation restricting or banning the institution.

In 1774, Rhode Island had already passed legislation providing that all slaves imported thereafter should be freed. In 1776, Delaware prohibited the slave trade and removed restraints on emancipation, as did Virginia in 1778. In 1779, Pennsylvania passed legislation providing for gradual emancipation, as did New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the early 1780s, and New York and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804. In 1780, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state's bill of rights made slavery unconstitutional. By the time of the U.S. Constitution, every state (except Georgia) had at least proscribed or suspended the importation of slaves.

Thomas Jefferson's 1784 draft plan of government for the western territories prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude after the year 1800. The final Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress (and passed again two years later by the First Congress and signed into law by President George Washington), prohibited slavery in the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. That same year, Jefferson published his Notes on the State of Virginia, which included this passage about slavery:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever ... I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

When delegates convened at Philadelphia to write a new constitution, however, strong sectional interests supported the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. "The real difference of interests," Madison noted, "lay not between large and small states but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination." In order to get the unified support needed for the Constitution's ratification and successful establishment, the framers made certain concessions to the pro-slavery interests. The compromises they agreed to, however, were designed to tolerate slavery where it currently existed, not to endorse or advance the institution.

Consider the three compromises made by the Constitutional Convention delegates and approved as part of the final text:

1. On enumeration: Apportionment for Representatives and taxation purposes would be determined by the number of free persons and three-fifths "of all other Persons" (Art. I, Sec. 2). The pro-slavery delegates wanted their slaves counted as whole persons, thereby according their states more representation in Congress. It was the anti-slavery delegates who wanted to count slaves as less-not to dehumanize them but to penalize slaveholders. Indeed, it was antislavery delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania who proposed the three-fifths compromise. Also, this clause did not include blacks generally, as free blacks were understood to be free persons.
2. On the slave trade: Congress was prohibited until 1808 from blocking the migration and importation "of such Persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit" (Art. I, Sec. 9). Although protection of the slave trade was a major concession demanded by pro-slavery delegates, the final clause was only a temporary exemption from a recognized federal power for the existing states. Moreover, it did not prevent states from restricting or outlawing the slave trade, which many had already done. "If there was no other lovely feature in the Constitution but this one," James Wilson observed, "it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the lapse of a few years, and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within our borders." Congress passed such a national prohibition effective January 1, 1808, and President Jefferson signed it into law.
3. On fugitive slaves: The Privileges and Immunities Clause (Art. IV, Sec. 2) guaranteed the return upon claim of any "Person held to Service or Labour" in one state who had escaped to another state. At the last minute, the phrase "Person legally held to Service or Labour in one state" was amended to read "Person held to Service or Labour in one state, under the Laws thereof." This revision emphasized that slaves were held according to the laws of individual states and, as the historian Don Fehrenbacher has noted, "made it impossible to infer from the passage that the Constitution itself legally sanctioned slavery." Indeed, none of these clauses recognized slavery as having any legitimacy from the point of view of federal law.

It is significant to note that the words "slave" and "slavery" were kept out of the Constitution. Madison recorded in his notes that the delegates "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." This seemingly minor distinction of insisting on the use of the word "person" rather than "property" was not a euphemism to hide the hypocrisy of slavery but was of the utmost importance. Madison explained this in Federalist No. 54:

But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another-the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others-the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.

Frederick Douglass, for one, believed that the government created by the Constitution "was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government." Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland but escaped and eventually became a prominent spokesman for free blacks in the abolitionist movement. "Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered," he wrote in 1864:

It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.

This point is underscored by the fact that, although slavery was abolished by constitutional amendment, not one word of the original text was amended or deleted.

Judging by the policy developments of the previous three decades, the Founders could be somewhat optimistic that the trend was against slavery. At the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman said: "the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States and that the good sense of the several states would probably by degrees complete it." In the draft of his first inaugural address, George Washington looked forward to the day when "mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another." And in one of his last letters, Jefferson wrote:

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Nevertheless, there was plenty of reason for concern. In 1776, Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and because slaves cost more to maintain than free laborers. But in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, making cotton production economical and leading to dramatic growth in the cotton industry, which greatly contributed to an increased demand for slave labor in the United States.

In 1819, during the debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state, John Adams worried that a national struggle over slavery "might rend this mighty fabric in twain." He told Jefferson that he was terrified about the future and appealed to him for guidance. "What we are to see God knows, and I leave it to Him and his agents in posterity," he wrote. "I have none of the genius of Franklin, to invent a rod to draw from the cloud its thunder and lightning."

The Missouri crisis was "a fire bell in the night," wrote Jefferson in 1820. "We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." But Jefferson gave no public support to emancipation and refused to free his own slaves. "This enterprise is for the young," he wrote.

Slavery was indeed the imperfection that marred the American Founding. Those who founded this nation chose to make practical compromises for the sake of establishing in principle a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. "The inconsistency of the institution of slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented," John Quincy Adams readily admitted in 1837. Nevertheless, he argued:

no charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.

"In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction," Abraham Lincoln observed in 1858. "All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon."

Lincoln once explained the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by reference to Proverbs 25:11: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." He revered the Constitution and was the great defender of the Union. But he knew that the word "fitly spoken"-the apple of gold-was the assertion of principle in the Declaration of Independence. "The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it," Lincoln wrote. "The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture." That is, the Constitution was made to secure the unalienable rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence.

As such, the slavery compromises included in the Constitution can be understood-that is, can be understood to be prudential compromises rather than a surrender of principle-only in light of the Founders' proposition that all men are created equal. In the end, lamentably, it took a bloody civil war to reconcile the protections of the Constitution with that proposition and to attest that this nation, so conceived and dedicated, could long endure.

Just now, DanteEstonia said:

Pretty much.

So again, please tell us why you choose to be an American citizen if you despise it's founding so much?  

1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Yea....I'm out on the no shave thing. Next thing you'll know you'll be wearing skinny jeans and getting your hair cut high and tight Muda. 

No hipster style here, IO.  I would prefer the Paul Bunyan look.

19 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

The idea that a bunch of slaveowners is “wiser” than us is comical and insulting.

So is that your supposedly college-educated opinion of the founding fathers and framers of the U.S. Constitution?  That they were just a bunch of slave owners and therefore their words and thoughts shouldn't be trusted for anything?    

Tell us again why you choose to be an American citizen?

The Shutdown’s Real Lesson: Government Has Taken Hostage Too Much of the Economy: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/shutdowns-real-lesson-government-has-taken-hostage-too-much-economy

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We are in the third week of the federal government’s partial shutdown. The shutdown is affecting the lives of many federal workers and may soon start disrupting the broader economy. Because the government exerts control over major industries, when the politicians butt heads, it damages activities such as aviation, tourism and recreation.

The problem with the shutdown is not that President Trump is holding the government “hostage,” as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, but that the government has taken hostage of too much of the U.S. economy.

Consider security screening at the nation’s 450 commercial airports. The government took over that function in 2001 when it created the Transportation Security Administration. Over the years, the TSA has generally done a poor job, caused congestion and wasted a lot of money.

And now, because the TSA is the only screening organization we have, the shutdown may affect the entire nation’s air travel. A spokesman for the TSA screener’s union said Tuesday: “Some of [my members] have already quit and many are considering quitting the federal workforce because of this shutdown … The loss of officers, while we’re already shorthanded, will create a massive security risk for American travelers since we don’t have enough trainees in the pipeline.”

He’s probably exaggerating the risk, but political battles would not impact such important activities if they were separated from the federal government. Many advanced nations, including Britain and France, have privatized their screening or moved it to the control of local airports. If we followed suit, there would not be just one “pipeline” for trainees because airports could contract services from numerous companies.

It is a similar situation with our government-run air-traffic-control system. The spokesman for the federal controller’s union said the negative “ripple effect” of the federal shutdownmay last months or years, while the head of the Airline Pilots Association said “the disruptions being caused by the shutdown are threatening the safe operations” of the nation’s airspace.

During the 2013 budget sequester battle, controllers were furloughed and thousands of flights were delayed before the politicians cobbled together a budget deal.

All of this is unnecessary. Dozens of nations have separated their ATC from their government budgets. Canada privatized its ATC system in 1996 as a self-funded nonprofit corporation. That structure has created financial stability, improved management, and generated innovation. The U.S. controller’s union has been so frustrated with federal budget instability and the slow pace of innovation under the current structure that it has backed Canadian-style ATC reforms.

Millions of Americans and the tourism and recreation industries are being affected by National Park Service furloughs. “National parks face years of damage from the government shutdown,” a National Geographic writer said. The national parks have long suffered from deterioration and mismanagement even under normal operations.

The solution is to restructure the parks as nonprofit organizations self-funded by fees and contributions, or to transfer them to state control. Today, while the government’s Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. is closed, the well-run and private Mount Vernon in Virginia-home of George Washington-is open for business.

As federal deficits soar in coming years, budget battles will worsen. That will cause more shutdowns, and it will mean that the national parks, air traffic control system and other assets will be starved for investment.

Our ATC system needs billions of dollars to upgrade to new technologies such as satellite navigation, but it is not clear where the money will come from under current federal control. As for the NPS, it faces at least $11 billion in deferred maintenance because appropriations must be spread over a bloated system of more than 400 parks and sites.

Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service are not affected by the shutdown, but they are losing billions of dollars on their inefficient operations and can’t make needed reforms because of Washington’s dysfunction. They should also be cut loose from federal control.

Privatization of such businesses may seem radical, but a privatization revolution has swept the world since the 1980s as more than 100 countries have moved more than $3 trillion of state-owned businesses to the private sector. Air traffic control systems, postal services, passenger rail and other activities have been successfully privatized abroad.

The federal government’s budget management is a total mess and getting worse. To limit the damage, it’s time to untether the government from as much of the economy as possible.

Agreed.

https://mises.org/wire/fdr’s-worst-perversion-freedom-four-freedoms-speech

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Franklin Roosevelt did more than any other modern president to corrupt Americans’ understanding of freedom. Last week was the 75^th anniversary of his 1944 speech calling for a second Bill of Rights to guarantee economic freedom to Americans. Nation magazine whooped up the anniversary, proclaiming that Democrats now have a “unique—and likely fleeting—opportunity to deliver where FDR fell short” with vast new government programs.

The 1944 speech, given as the tide in World War Two was finally turning, was a followup of his 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech which exploited Americans’ rising apprehensions tosee far more power for the government. Roosevelt promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship and then, as if he was merely enumerating other self-evident rights, declared: “The third [freedom] is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.” Proclaiming a goal of freedom from fear meant that government should fill the role in daily life previously filled by God and religion. Politicians are the biggest fearmongers, and “freedom from fear” would justify seizing new power in response to every bogus federal alarm.

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And, while Roosevelt pretended to magnanimously recognize a right to freedom of speech, that did not include freedom to dissent: “A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups.... The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of government to save government.” Roosevelt sounded like James Madison had simply forgotten the asterisk to the First Amendment about using “the sovereignty of government to save government.” FDR’s “new freedom” would justify suppressing anyone who balked at the political ruling class’s latest goals.

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Three years later, in his 1944 State of the Union address , Roosevelt revealed that the original Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” Roosevelt called for a “Second Bill of Rights,” and asserted that: “True individual freedom can’t exist without economic security.” And security, according to FDR, included “the right to a useful and remunerative job,” “decent home,” “good health,” and “good education.” Thus, if a government school failed to teach all fifth graders to read, the nonreaders would be considered oppressed (lawsuits over public school failures in Michigan and elsewhere against local and state governments have relied on similar claptrap). Similarly, if someone was in bad health, then that person would be considered as having been deprived of his freedom, and somehow it would be the government’s fault. Freedom thus required boundless control over health care.

Roosevelt also declared that liberty requires “the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.” In other words, government should inflate food prices high enough to keep the nation’s least efficient farmer behind his mule and plow. But FDR-style freedom also required unlimited federal control over every farmer. At that point, USDA was dictating to every wheat farmer exactly how many acres of the grain they could grow. An Indiana farmer exceeded his quota to grow wheat to feed to his hogs. The Roosevelt administration hounded him all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming it needed a free hand to "suppress ... a public evil." And what was the "public evil"? Wheat surpluses and uppity farmers who failed to kowtow to every USDA bureaucrat.

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Pundits and progressives who are whooping up Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights almost always ignore perhaps the biggest surprise in that speech. While Roosevelt spoke gaudily of new rights, he scooped George Orwell’s 1984 by revealing that slavery was freedom - or at least “close enough for government work.” FDR urged Congress to enact a “national service law— which for the duration of the war . . . will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.” FDR invoked the “eternally just principle of ‘fair for one, fair for all’” to justify destroying the freedom of every worker in the nation. He promised that this proposal, described in his official papers as a Universal Conscription Act, would be a “unifying moral force” and “a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.” Presumably, the less freedom people had, the more satisfied they’d become. And anyone who did not feel liberated by federal commands was a bastard who deserved all the misery officialdom heaped upon them.

H.L. Mencken wisely observed, “One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.” Americans are still suffering because Franklin Roosevelt’s freedom bunkum was not immediately laughed off the national stage. Any politician who seeks more power today to bestow more freedom in the distant future deserves all the ridicule Americans can heave his way.

Evil.

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/16/how-scientology-recruits-inside-florida

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An organization connected to the Church of Scientology has run seminars in more than a dozen Florida correctional facilities over the past several years, public records obtained by Reason show.

The Florida Times-Union first reported in December that officials at Florida's Everglades Correctional Institution had greenlit a course offered by Criminon, a group that offers "betterment" courses to inmates based on the teachings of sci-fi author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

In December, Criminon put out a press release celebrating the graduation of two groups of inmates in Everglades Correctional Institution and Manatee County Correctional Institution from its course.

 

Criminon submitted an application to the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC), obtained by Reason through a public records request, in March of 2017 to continue running seminars in Florida correctional facilities. In its application, Criminon says it has run 42 seminars in 16 different Florida prisons, jails, halfway houses, and juvenile detention centers since 2011.

"We are dedicated to criminal rehabilitation and reintegration through our education curricula for offenders," Criminon president Brian Fowler wrote to the Florida DOC. "To accomplish our aims, we use the secular works of author and humanitarian, L. Ron Hubbard."

The main text of the Criminon seminars is Hubbard's book, The Way to Happiness, which outlines 21 principles or precepts. According to the application, the courses in its program cover "such subjects as how to study, how to effectively communicate, and how to identify antisocial people."

"The Criminon program is based on the fundamental assumption that the root causes of criminal behavior are lack of self-respect and self-esteem," the application reads.

While improving inmates' study habits and raising their self-esteem are rather unobjectionable goals, Criminon programming has been criticized and removed from other state prison systems because of its link to the Church of Scientology.

Numerous media investigations, ex-Scientologists-turned-whistleblowers, and documentaries have described Scientology as abusive, cult-like, and less a church than a business, and accused it of soaking its members for money and ruthlessly suppressing dissent within its ranks.

Scientology also rejects modern psychiatry, a theme which has also appeared in Criminon materials, a 2005 Los Angeles Times story found.

"If [inmates] are on psychiatric drugs, encourage them to get off. Psychiatrists are heavily into the prison system," Criminon training materials from a California prison obtained by the L.A. Times read. "Most jails and prisons have a staff psychiatrist that goes in daily and gives dosages of various and sundry mind-altering drugs to the inmates. Most of the time this is a ploy to keep the inmates sedated so that they don't cause trouble."

According to the Florida Times-Union and the Miami New-Times, Criminon has been active in Florida prisons since at least 2005, when the Florida legislature appropriated $500,000 for a "Criminon offender program." (The funding was vetoed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.)

The Florida Department of Corrections approved Criminon's application to continue running Way to Happiness seminars. However, it determined it would be an elective course.

"Based on a review of your application submission, we have determined your program would be categorized as an elective program," Kerensa Lockwood, assistant chief at the Florida DOC's Bureau of Applied Science, Research, and Policy wrote in March of 2017. "A review of The Way to Happiness program concluded that there is not sufficient evidence that the program meets a criminogenic need."

The Church of Scientology has been an advocate for criminal justice reforms. It endorsed the recently passed FIRST STEP Act. It has also lobbied Congress on criminal justice issues in the past. A lobbyist for the Church of Scientology, who in addition works on criminal justice reform, told The Daily Beast that he also informally lobbied for Criminon.

However, former high-ranking Scientologists say the group's main interest in criminal justice reform is using expanded rehabilitative programming as a recruiting tool.

"Criminon is just another front group for Scientology," actress Leah Remini, a former Scientologist who is now an outspoken critic of the organization, told The Daily Beast. "This is just a play for Scientology to get the government to pay for its Scientology technology with its Criminon program."

Criminon International and the Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meh, the Church of Scientology is just looking for fresh converts, much like the the Christians church looks for fresh converts via the prison system.

Gillette Tells Men They're Repulsive Creeps. Now Give Them Your Money, You Piece of Garbage: https://pjmedia.com/trending/gillette-tells-men-theyre-repulsive-creeps-now-give-them-your-money-you-piece-of-garbage/?fbclid=IwAR3vVS_AByKCM0AmOsjgan6mrc-GuaYQX_nRgkncEQyqYHUB1DkwSFyC1Cs

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Are you a man? That is to say, are you a genetic male who also happens to identify as a "man," for some increasingly antiquated reason? If so, are you under the mistaken impression that you're not a rapist?

Our society has come a long way in shaming men for behaving in any way that anybody anywhere doesn't like, and reminding men that we're all complicit even if we don't behave that way. But it's not nearly enough. The mere fact of maleness is shameful and problematic. Men and boys everywhere need to be reminded that we're evil. We must learn to hate ourselves as much as everyone else hates us. The patriarchy must be castrated.

And who better to do it than a company that makes razors?

Alexandra Bruell, WSJ:

 

Gillette is embracing the #MeToo movement in a new digital ad campaign aimed at men, the latest message from an advertiser attempting to change societal norms...

“This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own,” said Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette brand director for North America in an emailed statement. “We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse. We want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and hope all the men we serve will come along on that journey to find our ‘best’ together.”

 

This is long overdue. #TimesUp, penis-havers!

Here's Gillette's first salvo in their war on men. WARNING: Contains depictions of male behavior.

See? See what you've done, you repulsive creeps? And don't you think you could use a shave?

If that didn't fill you with regret and self-loathing at being a man, then you weren't one to begin with. Masculinity is more toxic than the plastic in Gillette's inexpensive disposable razors. I didn't even realize how rotten and depraved I was until I saw this ad, and now I want to run out and buy as many Gillette products as I can carry.

Gillette has learned that in [current year], it's not enough for a company to make a product that people want. It's not enough to make them feel inadequate about themselves, and then sell them the supposed cure for that inadequacy. Consumers, men in particular, must be made to feel worthless. They have to be reminded that their needs and desires are wrong under any circumstances, that their instincts are loathsome, that their very existence is a malignancy, and that they're responsible for all the world's ills whether they want to admit it or not.

Now give them your money, you piece of garbage.

If past corporate scolding campaigns are any indication, Gillette will see some pushback from customers who don't know what's good for them. When Starbucks introduced their #RaceTogether campaign back in 2015, they were roundly excoriated by racists everywhere. And guess what? Racism continues to this day. Are you going to allow the same thing to happen with sexism, or are you going to go out and buy a Mach3?

I'm proud to be ashamed of being a man, and I applaud Gillette for refusing to let me get away with it. The best a man can get is the bottom of the barrel.

I'm going to stop shaving in protest.  Who's with me?

17 minutes ago, swordfish said:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/trumps_shutdown_trap.html?fbclid=IwAR1TTfuren5WzGQaEFbJmVWUxGokw6N27TPPkN3CjDnjHINWzxr1YbUZR4Y

Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? 

As an advocate for smaller government one can only hope....................

11 hours ago, Basementbias said:

Wondering if I can use this to discuss all the other IHSAA and even non sponsored that have no direct spot.

Go for it.  There is a reason this is called the Out Of Bounds Forum.

13 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

You are putting words in my mouth.

Then why your statement "Leave the pay issue alone."?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/betos-constitutional-folly/

Quote

Yesterday, Beto O’Rourke made news. In her Washington Post article yesterday on O’Rourke’s immigration stance, Jenna Johnson made the rather interesting point that he often favors proposing debates and raising questions rather than proposing policies. “O’Rourke says he is being open-minded, as he wishes more politicians would be,” Johnsons writes. Exhibit A in her lengthy interview with him: He raised a question about the Constitution. In a quote that’s already flown through Twitter and conservative media, he said this, when pondering whether the United States is now, in Johnson’s words, “incapable of implementing sweeping change”:

"Does this still work? . . . Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?"

This is a variation on a theme I’ve heard countless times on the left — often in response to arguments over originalism and (more recently) in response to anger at the very structure of our government itself. Why shackle ourselves to the wisdom of the distant past? How could the Founders have foreseen the challenges of the present?

It’s worth taking these questions seriously. After all, the Constitution isn’t the Bible. It’s not the holy and inspired Word of God, and if its terms and structure are hurting our Republic, they can and should be amended. But I’d submit that, when one examines the United States and considers the failings that render our politics so dysfunctional, we in fact do have 18th-century answers to our 21st-century challenges and that many of our dysfunctions are the result of abandoning the Constitution, not of embracing it.

We’ve failed because we’ve refused to be managed by the “principles that were set down 230-plus years ago.”

Let’s take, for example, the issue O’Rourke raises about our nation’s military presence around the globe. The vast majority of Americans can’t possibly list all the nations where we’re engaged in actual combat. To the extent that some of those operations are classified, I can’t list all those nations — and following American combat operations is a key part of my job.

We’ve reached this point in large part because Congress has utterly abdicated to the president its constitutional responsibility and authority to declare war. It’s simply handed over one of its most important powers, and it stubbornly refuses to take it back. And that’s not the only power it’s given to the president. Donald Trump has lately been able to make sweeping, unilateral decisions about immigration (the travel ban, for example) and tariffs (our trade war with China) precisely because of previous congressional acts delegating an enormous amount of authority to the executive branch

These issues are symbolic of the larger constitutional challenge of a diminished Congress, where the branch of government intended to be the most powerful is now thoroughly subordinate to the executive and the judiciary. Congress is now — to use Jonah Goldberg’s excellent phrase — largely a “parliament of pundits.” They serve mainly as critics of or cheerleaders for the president and judges who make the truly significant national decisions.

One result of a diminished Congress is a profound sense of political alienation. If you live in a safely blue or red state, then, in a federal election, you may well never cast a single vote of true significance. The leadership of the two most potent branches will be decided by other men and women, the subset of Americans who live in our few truly swing states.

Moreover, our national government’s decades-long rejection of federalism has immense consequences during a time of profound geographic division and negative polarization. Even after 2018’s blue wave, Republicans entirely control 31 state legislatures, and Democrats control 18. That means there’s only one state (Minnesota) that has divided control of the legislature. A modern record of 37 states have “trifecta” governments, with one party controlling both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion.

But if you combine this level of geographic division with the continued growth of the federal leviathan, then you reach the intolerable point where citizens of Texas understand that Nancy Pelosi may have more political influence over their lives than their own governor. Conversely, citizens of San Francisco face a reality where Kentucky’s Cocaine Mitch may well have more real power in their state than Gavin Newsom.

A return to constitutionally mandated congressional supremacy places the federal government closer to the people, as the Founders intended. A restoration of true constitutional federalism would allow progressives and conservatives greater flexibility to build communities that reflect their values, without exacerbating negative polarization by imposing their values on unwilling, resistant cities and states all across the country.

An imperial president legislating through regulation, running myriad wars without congressional approval, and appointing federal judges who even at the lowest level are more powerful than any Senator is not the government the Founders intended. We are most assuredly not governed by the 230-year-old principles of the past but rather by the foolishness of the present.

There’s a path forward for America, but it requires us to look back and rediscover the wisdom of a political generation far wiser than our own.

Here! Here!  The answers are in the Constitution,  our Congress is just too cowardly to accept and take back it's responsibilities.

41 minutes ago, swordfish said:

https://apnews.com/d90578a1687049e9a67db01582ce4278

SF wonders - how does the shutdown slow growth in an economy like the US?  Except for the 800,000 employees, who will receive back pay after the shutdown, how does the growth of a capitalist based economy slow down because of a shutdown?

I would guess that those 800,00 employees aren't creating invoices to private companies for materials ranging from toilet paper to .50 caliber ammunition.  Unfortunately many private companies biggest customer is the US federal government.

11 minutes ago, TRCJunkie said:

Just saw the enrollment post. Ironic they're one student apart. 

Yeah, they have been pretty close for decades.  Even when Maconaquah's overall enrollment plunged due to the closing of Grissom AFB,  Peru seemed to slowly bleed students as well.

Of course what matters is the the Braves have all the quality students.  :)

http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/16/deregulate-the-pill/

Quote

If you live in the United States, you can't obtain birth control pills without a prescription from a doctor. This federal requirement means that the roughly 10.6 million American women on oral contraception must accept regular, invasive, and unnecessary medical care as part of preventing pregnancy.

When the pill first came to the U.S. in 1960, such prescription-only status made some sense. Medical professionals were uncertain how many women would react physiologically. And hormone levels in the first commercially available brand were incredibly high—10,000 micrograms progestin and 50–150 micrograms estrogen, compared to 50–150 micrograms progestin and 20–50 micrograms estrogen on average recently.

But in the nearly 70 years since then, pill formulations have become at least as benign as your average drugstore-aisle offering. Decades of research favors the idea that over-the-counter (OTC) oral contraceptives are safe. They're sold without a prescription in nations across the world, and high-dose emergency contraception has been sold over-the-counter in the U.S. for years. Safety isn't the issue.

 

Nor is there an obvious political impediment. Republicans believe (at least sporadically) in individual rights and deregulation, and a number of GOP lawmakers have recently supported ending the prescription requirement. Democrats often wax on about a woman's right to take control of her reproductive destiny, and in the past many have pushed for freeing the pill, too. So legalizing OTC contraception should represent common policy ground.

Yet the prescription requirement remains on the books. Why?

For years, blame could be cast on the traditional villains of progressive politics: social conservatives who opposed the pill, the Bible thumpers in the Republican Party who pandered to them, and drug companies with no incentive to do anything that might puncture their profits.

But recently, thanks to Obamacare, Democrats have become the primary impediment to freeing up rules around the sale of contraception. In 2019, it's liberals, not conservatives, who are holding the pill hostage for political gain.

..

Since taking office, President Trump has tried to expand the list of organizations that can be exempted from the contraception mandate. A new set of rules were set to take effect this month, but the details are still being fought over in court. This week, a federal judge has blocked them from taking effect in 18 states and Washington, D.C.

Perhaps now is the time to once again leave old birth-control battle lines behind. January 2019 ushered in a new Congress, and left-right alliances in the Trump era are still being rewritten. Political conditions could finally be right for achieving OTC sales of standard birth control pills.

Under Trump, the left has begun to look for ways to allow for undocumented access to medical care. Social conservatives, meanwhile, have embraced a more libertarian approach to these policy battles, fighting to be free from forced participation in things like birth control coverage or gay weddings but not against others' ability to participate.

Today's Republican leaders largely want to be seen as anti-abortion and pro–religious liberty, but not as religious ideologues, prudes, or people standing in the way of pregnancy prevention—which makes embracing OTC pills a pretty safe bet for them if it's built up as a bipartisan affair. Democratic lawmakers could stand out as both champions of women's rights and bipartisan problem solvers. Instead, the left seems content to remain mired in counterproductive Obamacare politics, at the expense of the women they claim to support.

It's time to leave all that behind. Rather than endless rounds of religious freedom vs. women's health care and partisan posture vs. partisan posture, advocates should be concentrating on making it legal to sell birth control pills over the counter. It's the one thing that could truly ensure widespread access, untethered to a person's ability to afford insurance or ability to make it to the doctor on a regular basis, and unassailable by the whims of pharmacists, physicians, employers, and political administrations.

Women deserve better than politically motivated paternalism, but until birth control can be obtained without permission, that's what we're stuck with.

Government trying to control individuals,  color me shocked.

28 minutes ago, TRCJunkie said:

Coach Prescott had well below average success at Peru, especially considering their enrollment in comparison to everyone else's. 

 

He was 3-5 against in county rival Maconaquah, which is a good thing.  :)

https://mises.org/library/socialism-doctrine-aristocrats

Quote

Among the infinity of fallacious statements and factual errors that go to form the structure of Marxian philosophy there are two that are especially objectionable. Marx asserts that capitalism causes increasing pauperization of the masses, and blithely contends that the proletarians are intellectually and morally superior to the narrow-minded, corrupt, and selfish bourgeoisie. It is not worthwhile to waste time in a refutation of these fables.

The champions of a return to oligarchic government see things from a quite different angle. It is a fact, they say, that capitalism has poured a horn of plenty for the masses, who do not know why they become more prosperous from day to day. The proletarians have done everything they could to hinder or slow down the pace of technical innovations — they have even destroyed newly invented machines. Their unions today still oppose every improvement in methods of production. The entrepreneurs and capitalists have had to push the reluctant and unwilling masses toward a system of production that renders their lives more comfortable.

Within an unhampered market society, these advocates of aristocracy go on to say, there prevails a tendency toward a diminution of the inequality of incomes. While the average citizen becomes wealthier, the successful entrepreneurs seldom attain wealth that raises them far above the average level. There is but a small group of high incomes, and the total consumption of this group is too insignificant to play any role in the market. The members of the upper middle class enjoy a higher standard of living than the masses but their demands also are unimportant in the market. They live more comfortably than the majority of their fellow citizens but they are not rich enough to afford a style of life substantially different. Their dress is more expensive than that of the lower strata but it is of the same pattern and is adjusted to the same fashions. Their bathrooms and their cars are more elegant but the service they render is substantially the same. The old discrepancies in standards have shrunk to differences that are mostly but a matter of ornament. The private life of a modern entrepreneur or executive differs much less from that of his employees than, centuries ago, the life of a feudal landlord differed from that of his serfs.

It is, in the eyes of these pro-aristocratic critics, a deplorable consequence of this trend toward equalization and a rise in mass standards that the masses take a more active part in the nation's mental and political activities. They not only set artistic and literary standards; they are supreme in politics also. They now have comfort and leisure enough to play a decisive role in communal matters. But they are too narrow-minded to grasp the sense in sound policies. They judge all economic problems from the point of view of their own position in the process of production. For them the entrepreneurs and capitalists, indeed most of the executives, are simply idle people whose services could easily be rendered by "anyone able to read and write."1 The masses are full of envy and resentment; they want to expropriate the capitalists and entrepreneurs whose fault is to have served them too well. They are absolutely unfit to conceive the remoter consequences of the measures they are advocating.

Thus they are bent on destroying the sources from which their prosperity stems. The policy of democracies is suicidal. Turbulent mobs demand acts that are contrary to society's and their own best interests. They return to Parliament corrupt demagogues, adventurers, and quacks who praise patent medicines and idiotic remedies. Democracy has resulted in an upheaval of the domestic barbarians against reason, sound policies, and civilization. The masses have firmly established the dictators in many European countries. They may succeed very soon in America too. The great experiment of liberalism and democracy has proved to be self-liquidating. It has brought about the worst of all tyrannies.

"If the supremacy of these modern doctrines is a proof of intellectual decay, it does not demonstrate that the lower strata have conquered the upper ones. It demonstrates rather the decay of the intellectuals and of the bourgeoisie."

Not for the sake of the elite but for the salvation of civilization and for the benefit of the masses a radical reform is needed. The incomes of the proletarians, say the advocates of an aristocratic revolution, have to be cut down; their work must be made harder and more tedious. The laborer should be so tired after his daily task is fulfilled that he cannot find leisure for dangerous thoughts and activities. He must be deprived of the franchise. All political power must be vested in the upper classes. Then the populace will be rendered harmless. They will be serfs, but as such happy, grateful, and subservient. What the masses need is to be held under tight control. If they are left free they will fall an easy prey to the dictatorial aspirations of scoundrels. Save them by establishing in time the oligarchic paternal rule of the best, of the elite, of the aristocracy.

These are the ideas that many of our contemporaries have derived from the writings of Burke, Dostoievsky, Nietzsche, Pareto, and Michels, and from the historical experience of the last decades. You have the choice, they say, between the tyranny of men from the scum and the benevolent rule of wise kings and aristocracies. There has never been in history a lasting democratic system. The ancient and medieval republics were not genuine democracies; the masses — slaves and metics — never took part in government. Anyway, these republics too ended in demagogy and decay. If the rule of a Grand Inquisitor is inevitable, let him rather be a Roman cardinal, a Bourbon prince, or a British lord than a sadistic adventurer of low breeding.

The main shortcoming of this reasoning is that it greatly exaggerates the role played by the lower strata of society in the evolution toward the detrimental present-day policies. It is paradoxical to assume that the masses whom the friends of oligarchy describe as riffraff should have been able to overpower the upper classes, the elite of entrepreneurs, capitalists, and intellectuals, and to impose on them their own mentality.

Who is responsible for the deplorable events of the last decades? Did perhaps the lower classes, the proletarians, evolve the new doctrines? Not at all. No proletarian contributed anything to the construction of antiliberal teachings. At the root of the genealogical tree of modern socialism we meet the name of the depraved scion of one of the most eminent aristocratic families of royal France. Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions. The Belgian Henri de Man, once a radical left-wing socialist, today a no less radical pro-Nazi socialist, was quite right in asserting, "If one accepted the misleading Marxist expression which attaches every social ideology to a definite class, one would have to say that socialism as a doctrine, even Marxism, is of bourgeois origin."2 Neither did interventionism and nationalism come from the "scum." They also are products of the well-to-do.

The overwhelming success of these doctrines that have proved so detrimental to peaceful social cooperation and now shake the foundations of our civilization is not an outcome of lower-class activities. The proletarians, the workers, and the farmers are certainly not guilty. Members of the upper classes were the authors of these destructive ideas. The intellectuals converted the masses to this ideology; they did not get it from them. If the supremacy of these modern doctrines is a proof of intellectual decay, it does not demonstrate that the lower strata have conquered the upper ones. It demonstrates rather the decay of the intellectuals and of the bourgeoisie. The masses, precisely because they are dull and mentally inert, have never created new ideologies. This has always been the prerogative of the elite.

The truth is that we face a degeneration of a whole society and not an evil limited to some parts of it.

When liberals recommend democratic government as the only means of safeguarding permanent peace both at home and in international relations, they do not advocate the rule of the mean, of the lowbred, of the stupid, and of the domestic barbarians, as some critics of democracy believe. They are liberals and democrats precisely because they desire government by the men best fitted for the task. They maintain that those best qualified to rule must prove their abilities by convincing their fellow citizens, so that they will voluntarily entrust them with office. They do not cling to the militarist doctrine, common to all revolutionaries, that the proof of qualification is the seizure of office by acts of violence or fraud. No ruler who lacks the gift of persuasion can stay in office long; it is the indispensable condition of government. It would be an idle illusion to assume that any government, no matter how good, could lastingly do without public consent. If our community does not beget men who have the power to make sound social principles generally acceptable, civilization is lost, whatever the system of government may be.

It is not true that the dangers to the maintenance of peace, democracy, freedom, and capitalism are a result of a "revolt of the masses." They are an achievement of scholars and intellectuals, of sons of the well-to-do, of writers and artists pampered by the best society. In every country of the world dynasties and aristocrats have worked with the socialists and interventionists against freedom. Virtually all the Christian churches and sects have espoused the principles of socialism and interventionism. In almost every country the clergy favor nationalism. In spite of the fact that Catholicism is world embracing, even the Roman Church offers no exception. The nationalism of the Irish, the Poles, and the Slovaks is to a great extent an achievement of the clergy. French nationalism found most effective support in the Church.

It would be vain to attempt to cure this evil by a return to the rule of autocrats and noblemen. The autocracy of the czars in Russia or that of the Bourbons in France, Spain, and Naples was not an assurance of sound administration. The Hohenzollerns and the Prussian Junkers in Germany and the British ruling groups have clearly proved their unfitness to run a country.

If worthless and ignoble men control the governments of many countries, it is because eminent intellectuals have recommended their rule; the principles according to which they exercise their powers have been framed by upper-class doctrinaires and meet with the approval of intellectuals. What the world needs is not constitutional reform but sound ideologies. It is obvious that every constitutional system can be made to work satisfactorily when the rulers are equal to their task. The problem is to find the men fit for office.

Neither a priori reasoning nor historical experience has disproved the basic idea of liberalism and democracy that the consent of those ruled is the main requisite of government. Neither benevolent kings nor enlightened aristocracies nor unselfish priests or philosophers can succeed when lacking this consent. Whoever wants lastingly to establish good government must start by trying to persuade his fellow citizens and offering them sound ideologies. He is only demonstrating his own incapacity when he resorts to violence, coercion, and compulsion instead of persuasion. In the long run force and threat cannot be successfully applied against majorities. There is no hope left for a civilization when the masses favor harmful policies. The elite should be supreme by virtue of persuasion, not by the assistance of firing squads.
...

Wise words.

Frankfort High School:  5 different coaches over the last decade, 4 different coaches in the last 4 seasons alone.

Results over that decade:  Last over .500 season:  2009.    2 0-10 seasons ( 2011 & 2018).  2 1-9 seasons (2008 & 2017).  2 2-8 seasons (2014 & 2016)

Points scored vs. points allowed over those last 10 seasons:

2009:  ps: 292 pa: 220  (season record: 7-5)

2010:  ps: 321 pa: 325 (season record: 4-7)

2011: ps: 106 pa: 370  (season record 0-10)

2012: ps: 176  pa:  237 (season record 3-7)

2013: ps: 250 pa:  287 (season record 5-6)

2014: ps: 151 pa: 284 (season record 2-8)

2015: ps: 248 pa: 324 (season record 4-6)

2016: ps: 177 pa: 332 (season record 2-8)

2017: ps: 86 pa: 449 (season record 1-9)

2018: ps: 54 pa: 513 (season record 0-10)

W-L records vs opposing schools over the last decade (includes regular season and tournament).  * Indicates Sagamore Conference opponent: 

Clinton Central: 0-1 

Logansport:  1-3

Tri-West*:  1-9

Southmont*: 2-8

Lebanon*: 0-10

Western Boone* : 1-9

Danville*: 3-7

North Montgomery*: 1-9

Crawfordsville: 8-2

Mississinewa: 0-1

Yorktown: 0-1

Western: 5-4

Greenwood: 0-1

Roncalli: 0-1

Norwell: 0-1

New Haven: 0-1

Delta: 0-2

Peru: 2-0

West Lafayette: 0-2

Frankfort High School:  5 different coaches over the last decade, 4 different coaches in the last 4 seasons alone.

Plus Nick's Kitchen has one of the best tenderloins in the state!

http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/16/the-lessons-of-the-government-shutdown

Quote

This government shutdown is now longer than any in history. The media keep using the word "crisis."

"Shutdown sows chaos, confusion and anxiety!" says The Washington Post. "Pain spreads widely."

The New York Times headlined, it's all "just too much!"

But wait. Looking around America, I see people going about their business—families eating in restaurants, employees going to work, children playing in playgrounds, etc. I have to ask: Where's the crisis?

Pundits talk as if government is the most important part of America, but it isn't.

We need some government, limited government. But most of life, the best of life, goes on without government, many of the best parts in spite of government.

Of course, the shutdown is a big deal to the 800,000 people who aren't being paid. But they will get paid. Government workers always do—after shutdowns.

Columnist Paul Krugman calls this shutdown, "Trump's big libertarian experiment." But it's not libertarian. Government's excessive rules are still in effect, and eventually government workers will be paid for not working. That makes this a most un-libertarian experiment.

But there are lessons to be learned.

During a shutdown when Barack Obama was president, government officials were so eager to make a point by inconveniencing people that they even stopped visitors from entering public parks.

Trump's administration isn't doing that, so PBS found a new crisis: "Trash cans spilling... (P)ark services can't clean up the mess until Congress and the president reach a spending deal," reported NewsHour.

But volunteers appeared to pick up some of the trash.

Given a chance, private citizens often step in to do things government says only government can do.

The Washington Post ran a front-page headline about farmers "reeling... because they aren't receiving government support checks."

But why do farmers even get "support checks"?

One justification is "saving family farms." But the money goes to big farms.

Government doesn't need to "guarantee the food supply," another justification for subsidies. Most fruit and vegetable farmers get no subsidies, yet there are no shortages of peaches, plums, green beans, etc.

Subsidies are a scam created by politicians who get money from wheat, cotton, corn, and soybean agribusinesses. Those farmers should suck it up and live without subsidies, too.

During shutdowns, government tells "nonessential workers" not to come to work. But if they're nonessential, then why do we pay 400,000 of them?

Why do we still pay 100,000 American soldiers in Germany, Japan, Italy, and England? Didn't we win those wars?

We could take a chainsaw to so much of government.

 

The New York Times shrieks, "Shutdown Curtails FDA Food Inspections!"

Only if you read on do you learn that meat and poultry inspection is done by the Department of Agriculture. They're still working. And the FDA is restarting some inspections as well.

More important, meat is usually safe not because of government—but because of competition.

Food sellers worry about their reputations. They know they'll get bad publicity if they poison people (think Chipotle), so they take many more safety measures than government requires.

One meat producer told me that they employ 2,000 more safety inspectors than the law demands.

Lazy reporters cover politicians. Interviewees are usually in one place—often Washington, D.C. Interviewing politicians is easier than covering people pursuing their own interests all over America. But those are the people who make America work.

While pundits and politicians act as if everything needs government intervention, the opposite is true.

Even security work is done better by the private sector. At San Francisco's airport, security lines move faster. Passengers told me, "The screeners are nicer!" The TSA even acknowledged that those screeners are better at finding contraband. That's because San Francisco (Kansas City, Seattle, and a dozen smaller airports) privatized the screening process. Private companies are responsible for security.

Private contractors are better because they must compete. Perform badly, and they get fired.

But government never fires itself.

Government workers shout, "We are essential!" But I say: "Give me a break. Most of you are not."

Rack this post.  This government shutdown only goes to show how unessential a lot of the federal government is.

Yes, due to Canada's socialism.  I'm surprised you haven't moved there yet.  Surely someone with your teaching chops would have no problem finding gainful employment.  And then everything your hold dear would be FREE!

https://www.shouldice.com/faqs/

Quote

Ontario Patients
Ontario’s Hospital Insurance Plan (OHIP) covers all costs to Ontario residents for public ward rate hospital accommodation and physician services.

Semi-private rooms are available at an additional cost. Patients with private insurance may be eligible for reimbursement on submission of paperwork we provide to you on discharge. We do not bill insurance companies directly on your behalf.

All charges are payable on admission by credit card, bank draft or cash.

Non-Ontario Canadian Resident Patients
Provincial health insurance plans cover all costs to Canadian residents for public ward rate hospital accommodation and physician services. Hospital ward charges are billed directly to respective provincial health ministries, with applicable physician services subject to payment by patients on admission. These fees may be submitted to provincial health plans for reimbursement based on paperwork provided to you on discharge. The amount you will be reimbursed will be dependent on your provinces applicable schedule of medical fees.

All qualifying patients will receive an admission letter with a breakdown of fees specific to their surgical procedure and related hospital stay.

Semi-private rooms are available at an additional cost. Patients with private insurance may be eligible for reimbursement on submission of paperwork we provide to you on discharge. We do not bill insurance companies directly on your behalf.

All charges are payable on admission by credit card, bank draft or cash.

US and International Patients
All patients who have submitted their medical questionnaire for assessment and have been qualified for surgery will receive a letter outlining our estimated fees specific to their stated surgical procedure and related hospital stay. Patients with private insurance coverage may be eligible for reimbursement on submission of paperwork provided to you. We do not bill insurance companies on your behalf, however, Shouldice Hospital has no-cost consultants trained to help you with your claim (as foreign insurance coverage is complicated we encourage all patients to pre-approve their coverage prior to admission).

All charges are payable on admission by credit card, bank draft or cash.

8 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

You basically have to be a vet to get a federal job. Leave the pay issue alone.

Hmm, I used to a civilian employee of the department of defense, and therefore the federal government,  and I was not a veteran.

So you agree that federal employees should always get paid more than their public counterparts? Why?