Just Words

Friday 12 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Cuss words are just words like any other. It’s all about context.

Mohr discusses the myriad social purposes swearing can serve, some nasty and some nice. “They definitely are the best words that you can use to insult people, because they are much better than other words at getting at people’s emotions,” she says. Swear words are also the best words to use if you hit your finger with a hammer, because they are cathartic, helping people deal with emotion as well as pain. And studies have shown that they help people bond — like blue-collar workers who use taboo terms to build in-group solidarity against management types. When asked if the world would be better off if everyone quit their cussing, Mohr answers with a four-letter word of her own: “Nope.”

The idea that cuss words are somehow inherently bad is fucking ridiculous. The idea that cussing is the sign of a lazy mind is equally retarded.

Comments Off on Just Words  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-12  ::  madlibertarianguy

The Heart of the Issue

Thursday 11 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Jesse Walker at Reason addressing the heart of the issue concerning the new trend of “Swatting,” or making an emergency call so tense that a SWAT team is called out:

One thing missing from the article is an awareness that there’s a long history of wrong-door paramilitary police raids caused by errors rather than pranksters, with victims nowhere near as rich or famous as Selena Gomez or Tom Cruise. I say this not to downplay how terrible the Hollywood raids are, but to point out that there’s a larger mess here. As California lawmakers ponder ways to penalize the people who make these calls, they should also look into the possiblity that a large, frequently deployed, and easily misled militarized police apparatus is itself a part of the problem.

Yep. Part of the problem of SWAT teams being deployed to the homes of celebrities based on a prank call is the existence of SWAT teams that are deployed to the homes of low level drug users on a daily basis as part of routine police work. The willingness to use heavily armed and militarized SWAT units so readily is the problem, not the result of some other problem.

Comments Off on The Heart of the Issue  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-11  ::  madlibertarianguy

Who Could Have Imagined?

Thursday 11 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Who could have imagined that banks that were bailed out with taxpayer money would dick over the taxpayers who saved them? HuffPo:

A government watchdog says that 137 community banks used $2.1 billion from a special fund aimed at boosting lending to small businesses to repay their bailouts from the financial crisis.

A report issued Tuesday by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says the bailed-out community banks didn’t step up their loans to small business nearly as much as other small banks that weren’t rescued. Some banks that used the small-business lending fund to repay bailouts didn’t increase lending at all, while others increased loans to small business by 25 cents for every $1 from the fund.

Congress created the small-business lending fund in 2010 to encourage banks with less than $10 billion in assets to expand their lending to small businesses. At a time of economic distress, the aim was to help small businesses get capital that had become difficult for them to obtain. The loan program charged the community banks lower interest rates if they used the money for loans to small businesses.

The Treasury Department was authorized to spend up to $30 billion on loans to small banks under the program. Only $4 billion was spent, according to the report by Special Inspector General Christy Romero. Of that, a total $2.7 billion went to the 137 bailed-out banks, which used $2.1 billion of it to repay the higher-interest rescue aid they had received from the government.

For some small banks that received bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the small-business lending fund “turned out to be little more than a TARP exit strategy,” Romero said in a statement.

I’ll re-quote the important part just to make the moral of the story clear.

A report issued Tuesday by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says the bailed-out community banks didn’t step up their loans to small business nearly as much as other small banks that weren’t rescued.

Can we stop bailing out failed institutions that misallocate their resources such that they face going under? Because not only is it immoral to steal hard earned money from the taxpayers in order to keep businesses that take unnecessarily bad risks (even if those risks were highly incentivized by government policy), but it doesn’t fucking work.

Comments Off on Who Could Have Imagined?  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-11  ::  madlibertarianguy

Nothing

Wednesday 10 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Absolutely nothing at all.

Comments Off on Nothing  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-10  ::  madlibertarianguy

Taxing Rights

Tuesday 9 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

I wonder how the left would respond to a proposed tax on free speech. Don’t want your house searched without a warrant? That’ll be an extra tax. But because the left often seems to view the Bill of Rights as some kind of buffet where they can pick and choose what they want and leave others behind, some leftists have decided that taxing those who wish to exercise their right to keep and bear arms is somehow appropriate. Politico on the new movement to tax firearms and ammunition as a means specifically to limit access to them:

State and local officials are pushing a new way to expand gun control: taxes.
Gun owners in and around Chicago last week started paying a new $25 tax on every firearm they purchase. In California, a statehouse panel on April 15 will hear testimony on a nickel-per-bullet tax measure, and in New Jersey, lawmakers want to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo.

The effort to impose new taxes on guns and bullets faces serious opposition from pro-gun groups, but it shows how far some states and localities are willing to go in this new frontier on gun control — especially as Washington struggles to find consensus even on the most scaled-back gun proposals being debated in Congress.

And to make matters worse, these lawmakers are collectivizing the over 100 million gun owners in the US with the very few (comparitively) who actually commit crimes, saying that because I own a gun, I should be financially responsible for the crimes that others commit with guns.

“I’m not asking to take away people’s guns, I’m just saying that for an activity that is relatively dangerous, obviously, people who participate in that activity should pay the full costs of that activity,” said Maryland state Delegate Jon Cardin of Baltimore, who in January introduced legislation to tax bullets at 50 percent.

Gun and ammo tax supporters say those costs include law enforcement programs and paying for the medical care of gunshot victims.

I already do pay the full cost of my firearms related activity. It’s called the PRICE I PAID WHEN I BOUGHT MY GUNS, AMMO, TARGETS, AND MEMBERSHIP TO MY GUN CLUB. Those “other costs” of which you speak have dick to do with me as I HAVEN’T FUCKING SHOT ANYONE. So if I don’t shoot anyone, WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I BE HELD FINANCIALLY LIABLE FOR CARING FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SHOT? Don’t lop me in with criminals just because I own a gun, asshole.

Comments Off on Taxing Rights  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-09  ::  madlibertarianguy

Preferences

Tuesday 9 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

This is why leftists across the land were adamantly against Wisconsin becoming a “Right to Work” state: because individuals get to reveal their individual preferences and choose whether to be part of a union (or not), rather than being coerced by the state, and the collectivist unions just can’t have that. The Washington Examiner:

More than two years after Scott Walker’s showdown with organized labor in Wisconsin, the official numbers for the state’s public sector union membership are in — and they are down. Way down.

According a Labor Department filing made last week, membership at Wisconsin’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 40 — one of AFSCME’s four branches in the state — has gone from the 31,730 it reported in 2011, to 29,777 in 2012, to just 20,488 now. That’s a drop of more than 11,000 — about a third — in just two years. The council represents city and county employees outside of Milwaukee County and child care workers across Wisconsin.

Labor Department filings also show that Wisconsin’s AFSCME Council 48, which represents city and county workers in Milwaukee County, went from 9,043 members in 2011, to 6,046 in 2012, to just 3,498 now.

These numbers come from the locals’ LM-2 filings, annual reports they must make to Labor Department. They can be found here.

They show why the state worker unions and their liberal allies fought such a protracted, bitter battle in 2011 over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s changes to the state’s labor laws. Under the old laws, state employees were obligated to pay dues to a union even if that worker didn’t want to belong to a union. Walker changed that to allow state workers to opt out of paying those dues. He also required unions to submit to an annual re-certification vote. Without those requirements, the unions have found it much harder to retain members.

Once the state can no longer force workers to pay union dues whether they wish to belong to the union or not, many of these workers (in some cases most of them) choose to tell the union to fuck off. Unions rely on state coercion; you either pay union dues or seek employment in some other non-unionized sector. If you’re an employer, you either hire union workers, or move elsewhere. Without state sponsored coercion, unions will wither and die (just as they should), and they can’t allow their partnership with the state be co-opted by the pesky individuals who would choose to have the union pound sand and stay the fuck out of their paycheck.

Comments Off on Preferences  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-09  ::  madlibertarianguy

Massholes

Tuesday 9 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Only a Masshole would charge an elderly man with multiple crimes for the horrific act of protecting himself against a bear on his own property. CBS Boston:

A 76-year-old Auburn man is facing charges after killing a bear in his backyard.

Richard Ahlstrand told WBZ-TV he was stocking his bird feeder Friday night when a bear about seven feet tall and 300-to-400 pounds started chasing him.

That’s when he turned his shotgun on the bear.

“I didn’t have time to aim through the sights, but I aimed in the direction of the head on this thing and I pulled the trigger before it got to me. It just dropped,” he said.

Ahlstrand said he was carrying the shotgun Friday night because he thought he saw the bear in his yard Thursday.

[. . .]

Ahlstrand is now charged with illegally killing a bear, illegally baiting a bear, illegal possession of a firearm and failing to secure a weapon.

Charging a man for a crime when he was protecting himself from a goddamn bear is fucking immoral.

Comments Off on Massholes  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-09  ::  madlibertarianguy

Job Market

Monday 8 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

The job market is so good that had so many people not given up on the prospect of finding a job, and therefore quit looking for one, employment would be at over 11%.

Comments Off on Job Market  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-08  ::  madlibertarianguy

Deja Vu

Wednesday 3 April 2013 - Filed under Dumbassery + Economy + Government

I get this weird feeling that I’ve seen this before. Wapo:

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Reinflating the real estate bubble with cheap cash that loanees can’t afford to pay back? What could go wrong? And banks have nothing to fear as they have been assured that they’ll get a bailout in the event people who ought not be getting loans get loans. So more people are encouraged to get a loan they can’t afford, and responsible people who don’t fuck up their own lives financially by being fiscally responsible have to pay for it. Fucking great.

Comments Off on Deja Vu  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-03  ::  madlibertarianguy

Sense!

Tuesday 2 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

It’s rare that a mainstream news outlet will offer the only bit of sense in a very difficult socio-philosophical issue turned KULTUR WARZ issue. Fox News:

With the Supreme Court now hearing cases centering on the legality of a federal ban on gay marriage and California’s ban on gay marriage, the real way our nation should address marriage rights is to get government out of the marriage business, altogether.

It never made sense to have state or federal government intrude into personal affairs by giving it the power to sanction and legitimize the loving commitment of one individual to another. That is a matter for the adults involved, who should share their intentions and vows in a ceremony with family, friends and any religious institutions they choose (or not), then sign any financial documents they see as being appropriate and, perhaps, exchange rings. End of story.

If two adults are mature enough to get married, they should be mature enough to envision and codify how they will deal with their finances, should that marriage end.

The government’s only interest should be in enforcing child support and fair child custody and visitation for each parent, in the event of a dissolution of the (government-free) marital bond. Making certain that children do not descend into poverty, and spouses are not left without parental rights, would then be the only proper function of the state related to marriage—both triggered only when marriages end. This would be no different than the state’s current role in enforcing child support, custody and visitation in non-married couples.

The legal sanctioning of, or refusal to sanction, any loving union between adults is inherently laden with cultural values. And if it is determined that love and commitment should be the sole driving force behind state and federal marriage laws, then it is utterly and completely illogical to deny five people who love one another the right to marry as a group. Heterosexual government-sanctioned marriage leads logically to homosexual government-sanctioned marriage, which leads logically to polygamy. Anyone who suggests otherwise is suggesting that government should play favorites and show prejudice.

Marriage is no place for government. Get the fuck out of the business of consenting adults. It is not the government’s job to uphold or change what marriage means. Let the individuals in that contract decide what it means for themselves.

Comments Off on Sense!  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-02  ::  madlibertarianguy