Why people suck at disaster prep

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Oscar Gordon

Interesting results of a disaster prep game

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Mark this date on your calendar

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Phil Kadath

The French have beaten the US to good idea involving government.

Fancy setting up house in a French government ministry? Or retiring to a royal hunting lodge? Line up now for a supersize sale of 1,700 properties by the French state, seeking to shed dilapidated, expensive-to-maintain buildings and chip away at the country’s record-high debt.

Foreigners are welcome to join the bidding, Budget Minister Francois Baroin said in announcing the sell-off Wednesday — but their cash must be clean. Any buyer, whether a movie star, foreign government or ordinary taxpayer, will undergo thorough background checks.

By releasing a long-term list of state properties for sale publicly for the first time, the government appears determined to avoid the kind of controversies and secrecy that dogged some past sales of French property, both public and private, to shady magnates or deposed despots.

The properties in question include chateaux, such as one in Thonon-les-Bains built in 1800 and perched on the shore of Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps. Another is a royal hunting lodge and guest house built the century before in the Saint-Germain-en-Laye forest west of Paris. “Buildings unoccupied for many years. Needs restoration,” reads the government’s listing for that property.

France, with its historically strong, centralized state, has too much property, Baroin said, disproportionate compared with other countries. The state must get rid of “useless and unadapted buildings.” The plan announced Wednesday lays out planned sales from now through the end of 2013.

The best ways for the US government to retire our national debt are through tax cuts and the releasing of their vast property holdings, to citizens only, for cash.

The French have figured this out. When will our “leaders”?

Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

The problem with attaching jail time to every law

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Oscar Gordon

Is that you soon find yourself incarcerating more people than anywhere else in the world.

A smarter way is to only jail violent offenders.  Non-violent offenders, and people who commit violence unintentionally, should remain free, and on probation.  This not only saves the taxpayer money by not jailing these people, but it also leaves these offenders free to keep working so that they can, at the very least, provide some financial compensation to their victims, or to society (depending on the violation).

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Warms the Cockles of my cold, dead, Libertarian heart

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Oscar Gordon

Politicians turning on Unions

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Repellant

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Phil Kadath

I’ve managed to keep this idea off RNS for a while now, but after reading Gene Healy’s column in Washington Examiner last night, I have to put it out there.

I’ve told The Wife this ideaso many times that I’m not allowed to bring it up any more: A quick way to remove half the money in D.C. Congressional politics would be to repeal the 17th Amendment.

The left are always crying about “money in politics…wah…wah…wah!”

But if you talk about the above solution they then begin to cry about “disenfranchisement…wah…wah …wah!”

And then if remind them that Wyoming and Alaska have the same number of Senators as California and New York they wail endlessly about “equal representation..wah… wah…wah!”

And then you get a phone call from their therapists saying how you’re hindering their therapy sessions.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Sorry, but I disagree

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Phil Kadath

An Anon over at Breitbart’s Big Government site is quite outraged about something Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ick) is working on. Normally, I’d be right behind whomever it is writing that and be outraged, but not this time.

The Durbin amendment imposes a price control scheme on the fees oil companies and retailers pay when they accept payment by credit cards.  The amendment was conceived and pushed for by lobbyists for big oil companies and big retailers like BP and Wal-Mart.  Their goal is simple — shift the costs of accepting credit cards from their bottom line to the consumers.

Durbin admitted that he offered the amendment after detailed discussions with a big retailer CEO.  The bottom line is that the Durbin amendment will put billions of dollars into the pockets of Wal-Mart, big oil companies like BP and other big box retailers who depend on consumers and their credit cards for revenue.  It’s unfathomable that while the government has opened a criminal investigation into BP, the US Senate wants to hand them a massive check.  Under the Durbin “BP Bailout” amendment, giant corporations will no longer be required to pay their fair share of the costs of receiving these services. Consumers will now pay those costs.

I like this idea for one big reason: There is too much credit out there.

What was one of the major factors in the Real Estate bubble?

Easy credit.

Likewise, what was one of the major factors leading to the stock market crash in 1929?
Also, easy credit.

People treat credit like cash. I’d lay $20 down that if you asked the average American what the interest rate is on their plethora of individual credit cards, they would be wrong. And I’d put another fiver on top of that that half of those people don’t know and are just guessing.

You want to cut back on ignorant use of consumer credit. Charge them a fee for each use of the credit.

Why should the retailer pay this fee? What is the benefit to them, really?

Sure, it means you have more options when it comes to paying them, hopefully leading to more sales for the retailer.

But it is also a convenience to you to be able to pay them without using legal tender. So why should you get a free ride?

Not to mention that those of us who pay cash are paying higher prices for products because the store makes less money on each sale when a person pays with credit.

Sorry, y’all, but while I’m not exactly happy that Congress is involved, and I don’t like that there’ll be a new law made, I’m liking this idea.

Then again, I don’t use my cards all that often.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments

It’s a cryin’ shame

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Phil Kadath

That this didn’t really happen.

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The problem with bans & prohibition

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Oscar Gordon

One insight, more than any other, ripples down from Okrent’s history to our own bout of prohibition. Armed criminal gangs don’t fear prohibition: They love it. He has uncovered fascinating evidence that the criminal gangs sometimes financially supported dry politicians, precisely to keep it in place. They knew if it ended, most of organized crime in America would be bankrupted. So it’s a nasty irony that prohibitionists try to present legalizers—then and now—as “the bootlegger’s friend” or “the drug-dealer’s ally.” Precisely the opposite is the truth. Legalizers are the only people who can bankrupt and destroy the drug gangs, just as they destroyed Capone. Only the prohibitionists can keep them alive.

Once a product is controlled only by criminals, all safety controls vanish and the drug becomes far more deadly. After 1921, it became common to dilute and relabel poisonous industrial alcohol, which could still legally be bought, and sell it by the pint glass. This “rotgut” caused epidemics of paralysis and poisoning. For example, one single batch of bad booze permanently crippled 500 people in Wichita, Kan., in early 1927—a usual event. That year, 760 people were poisoned to death by bad booze in New York City alone. Wayne Wheeler persuaded the government not to remove fatal toxins from industrial alcohol, saying it was good to keep this “disincentive” in place.

RTWT Here

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What the government giveth

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Phil Kadath

The government can take away.

Death Panels? Not so much.

More like “Disability Panels”.

Millions of patients face losing NHS care as bosses prepare to axe treatments to make £20billion of savings by 2014, a top doctor has warned.

Among procedures being targeted by health trusts are hernias, joint replacements, ear and nose procedures, varicose veins and cataract surgery.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, warned NHS bosses wanted ‘wholesale reductions in budgets’.

He said primary care trusts – which commission care – are already compiling lists of ‘low value’ operations that would no longer be provided.

These include hip replacements for obese patients and some operations for hernias and gallstones. Procedures for varicose veins, ear and nose problems including grommets in children are also not funded in some areas.

Dr Porter said it was wrong to impose blanket bans on such procedures when some patients might benefit.

“Looks like you’ve got a bad hip there, Mr. Smith. Too bad you’re a tubby fucker. Nurse, please help Mr. Smith down the hall so that he can pick out a nice wheelchair.”

They do it because they care. Though, not about you.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 2 Comments

Of course it doesn’t have “side effects”

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Phil Kadath

The Norks have a juice product they want to sell to the west. I know I won’t be trying it.

North Korea has developed a “super drink” that, it says, can multiply brain cells and stop skin ageing.

The secretive state’s official news agency, KCNA, says the drink contains 60 kinds of “microelements” extracted from more than 30 species of plants.

It attracted “much interest from Chinese, German and other businessmen” at a trade fair in Pyongyang last month, the agency reports.

It was developed by a joint venture fruit juice company.

KCNA says: “It, with effects of both preventive and curative treatment, helps improve mental and retentive faculties by multiplying brain cells.

“It also protects skin from wrinkles and black spots and prevents such geriatric diseases as cerebral haemorrhage, myocardium and brain infarction by removing acid effete matters in time.

“It, much higher than quality cosmetics in anti-oxidation capacity, is efficacious for different skin diseases, including allergic dermatitis. It also makes skin fair.

“The drink has no side-effect.

Let me tell you a little something about the medical testing community: Death that happens after consuming a product is labeled an “Outcome”, not a “side effect”.

So, technically, they’re not really lying with that last statement.

Ship it to San Francisco. They could use the brain cells. The rest of the world could use fewer hippies.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment