You Sure Haven’t Come a Long Way, Baby

UK Telegraph:

Career chances for working-class ‘no better now than 30 years ago’

Working-class men are no more likely to get into well-paid careers than they were a generation ago, according to academics.

A study claims that there has been “little obvious sign of any decline” in the influence of family background on life chances.

It says that although many more people now go to university, this does not necessarily mean they will earn more as employers struggle to make sense of the “ever-expanding plethora” of qualifications.

(snip)

“There is little obvious sign here of any decline in class-related factors which affect the chances of younger men compared to older men.”

There was a “striking” increase in the gap between rich and poor among the younger workers compared, with older ones.

So you go to school, play by the rules, and expect to get rewarded.  Instead, you get told where to go.  The reason is that the working class is the working class, in a horribly class conscious and class bigoted society.  Therefore, the upper classes and middle classes will never give them as much as the time of day.

Related:  The BNP’s Conundrum

The Loudmouths Are Back

P-D:

African-American group plans protest on I-70 during Monday night rush hour

ST. LOUIS — A group of African-American contractors and businesspersons announced today plans to hold a protest on Interstate 70 Monday during evening rush hour in the middle of All-Star Game festivities.

Members of the group, the African-American Business and Contractors Association, said at a news conference in St. Louis that they want the region to know that too few minority contractors are being hired as subcontractors on public projects.

“It seems like things have changed. In reality, they have not changed,” said Hilary Ogunrinde, owner of HLS Hauling and member of the contractors association. “You should be outraged because there is discrimination in your neighborhood.”

The demonstration would occur 10 years and one day after one brought motorists to a halt on I-70 at Goodfellow Boulevard. That protest, which resulted in 125 arrests, vaulted local tension over the lack of highway contracts for minority businesses onto a national stage.

The July 1999 demonstration “brought motorists to a halt on I-70 at Goodfellow Boulevard” because then-SLPD Police Chief Ron Henderson, a black affirmative action appointment (who would later benefit from more affirmative action when President Bush 43 made him the head of the U.S. Marshals Office in St. Louis), closed down the highway before the protests.  The reason is that Chief Henderson agreed with the protesters.  Individuals and organizations are true to their principles — an affirmative action beneficiary like Chief Henderson supports affirmative action beneficiary wannabes like these black “contractors.”

In reality, demonstrating and interrupting on state right-of-way (interstate highways’ right-of-way is purchased and owned by their respective states’ Departments of Transportation, not the Federal government), is a state crime.  The reason the state didn’t do anything about it is that the state had a Democrat Governor (Mel Carnahan) and a Democrat Attorney General (Jay Nixon) in July 1999.  Nixon was still trying to live down his opposition to deseg that he maintained in previous years, so there was no way in hell that he was going to cross any black activists.

A couple of years later, when MoDOT was stringing together the funding to rebuild Highway 40, which is going on right now, these selfsame black “contractor” whiners wanted to hold another protest, that time in Richmond Heights.  They wanted to “shut down” Highway 40 between McKnight and Brentwood.  The object of bad fortune for them is that Richmond Heights had a white police chief that didn’t put up with bullshit.  He had his officers spray-paint yellow lines that marked the boundary of the state right-of-way for Hwy. 40, as it was not fenced off at that time, and said that the RHPD would arrest those who trespass across the yellow lines.  Guess what?  There was no “highway shutdown.”

The reason the black “contractors” are back at it now is because the SPLD once again has a black affirmative action police chief, in the person of Dan Isom.  For all of Joe Mokwa’s faults, (Mokwa took over after Henderson left for the U.S. Marshals job), he wouldn’t have put up with this bullshit.  Isom, on the other hand, will do what Ron Henderson did.  And, like ten years ago, we have a Democrat Governor (Jay Nixon) and a Democrat AG (Chris Koster), so that won’t be a problem for the rabble-rousers, either.

That means that those of you who use 70 in the city better find alternate routes on Monday.

UPDATE 7/11: According to someone who posted a message at St. Louis Cop Talk on this matter, there might be a Federal law that prohibits the interference of interstate commerce.  Nice in theory, but meaningless in reality — In July 1999, the President was Bill Clinton and the AG was Janet Nero.  No way in hell that they would have crossed these black “activists” or the black police chief who made things easy for them.  Now we have an affirmative action President and an affirmative action Attorney General, who likewise won’t apply any such laws.  That’s one of the things that I’m sure the “activists” have taken into consideration, when deciding to start the “highway shutdowns again.”  Even though Matt Blunt, George W. Bush, and Bush’s three Attorneys General were ballless on race, they were still Republicans, and this created a visceral but paranoid fear in these “activists.”  Like I said above, Jay Nixon was Missouri AG in July 1999, and all the way up until his election as Governor last year, and even though he tried to live down the deseg thing, the black “contractors” might have feared him a little more in tandem with a Republican Governor.

UPDATE 7/14: As it turns out, their “shutdown” wasn’t really a shutdown at all.  All that happened was a few of the loudmouths stood on the sidewalks of the overpasses over the depressed section of I-70 Downtown.  They held up a few signs, and then quickly went away.  Meanwhile, cars driven by fellow loudmouths stopped near the overpasses so that drivers would have to stop to see the signs.

From what I’m reading on various St. Louis websites, these protests aren’t as universally supported in the black community as the ones ten years ago.  After those, various state-funded “construction career centers” and other affirmative actions measures were started, and that has created a new affirmative actioned black elite (Eric Vickers) who’ve got theirs, and to hell with everyone else.

Roland, We Hardly Knew Ye

Won’t seek a Senate term in his own right in 2010.

CW seyz that the Democrats are now more likely to hold the seat.  I think the truth is just the opposite — The Stupid Party in Illinois is totally ballless, especially on race.  They would have rolled over for for Burris.  Now that whatever Republican will very likely face a white Democrat, the Republican might have a tad more fortitude.  If the Republican winds up winning, this is going to be a big slap in the face to the President that used to hold this Senate seat.

Reading Between the Lines

SEMO:

Federal plan to recruit more tugboat pilots may have backfired

NEW ORLEANS — A federal program to recruit more tugboat pilots may have backfired by allowing thousands of novice captains to take the helm and contributing to a 25 percent increase in the number of accidents on the nation’s rivers.

An Associated Press review of Coast Guard records indicates that the U.S. tugboat fleet is increasingly piloted by captains who have spent as little as one year in the wheelhouse.

“The system has failed,” said David Whitehurst, a tug captain and member of the board of directors for the National Mariners Association, a national tug workers’ group based in Houma, La.

“We have the highest horsepower in history, pushing more tonnage than ever in history, with the least knowledgeable personnel in history. It is a disaster. Look at the accidents we’ve had in the past few years.”

Said Richard Block, secretary of the mariners’ group: “You can’t learn to run a towing vessel overnight, and some of these companies are simply rushing it too much.”

The article doesn’t mention this explicitly, but I’m sensing that there’s affirmative action involved here.  Any “Federal plan” to recruit anyone for employment these days is going to be AA-heavy.

Someone much wiser and much more efficient with words than myself wrote a couple of years ago:

In the early morning hours of September 22, 1993, an Amtrak passenger train struck a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, and plunged into the Mobile River killing 47 persons to become America’s worst railroad disaster.

Amtrak’s “Sunset Limited” was on its Los Angeles to Miami route when, around 3:00 A.M., it crashed into a section of the Bayou Canot Bridge which, only minutes before, had become misaligned as a result of a collision by a barge. Two crewmen were burned to death, three persons died of smoke inhalation, and 42 passengers drowned when several passenger cars sank to the bottom of the Mobile River.

The driver of the tugboat “Mauvilla” that had damaged the bridge was a negro named Willie Odom. Mr. Odom is living testament to the ravages of affirmative action, and the disasters which so often accompany it.

Willie Odom had originally gained employment with the Warrior and Gulf Navigation Systems as a deckhand. Almost certainly as a result of pressure from the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Odom was allowed to become a pilot-trainee after only one year: Naturally, he failed the necessary exam on his first attempt.

Although he then had a pilot-trainees’ license, this didn’t mean Odom was a qualified pilot: Judgment and skill are necessary prerequisites for this. Mr. Odom couldn’t read navigational charts, he pursued his course despite a blinding fog, and eventually took a left, rather than right turn, that resulted in his collision with the bridge.

Advocates of “affirmative-action” and the E.E.O.C. are actually more culpable than Willie Odom for this disaster. They should be held accountable.

***

Hot Headlines Now

SEMO:  Dexter mayor charged with DWI

He was driving under the influence…of barbecue pit fumes.

SEMO:  Jackson votes to ban fireworks sales, use

Just in time for Independence Day.

P-D:  Allen Icet to Thomas Schweich: Look at my endorsements

Schweich to Icet:  Don’t talk about my endorsements:

London Sunday Times:  Al Gore invokes spirit of Churchill in battle against climate change

Being consistent with the analogy, then Al Gore is Goebbels.

WSJ:  Let’s Treat Borrowers Like Adults

But that would have a disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics.

WND:  NEA leader: Conservative b@$+@%&s picking on us’

Gee, I wonder why.

NPR:  Health Care Overhaul Ignores Illegal Immigrants

And this is a problem because…?

Politico:  Rove deposed in U.S. attorney probe

“U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President.”  That’s all you need to say.

LiveScience:  Could Michael Jackson Have Been Cloned?

Seems to me he’s already been cloned hundreds of times.  They call it Usher, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake, and so on.

AP:  Resolution honoring Jackson faces GOP opposition

If Shiela Jackson-Lee doesn’t get her way, she could hook up with Jeese Jackson and Michael Jackson’s remaining siblings and go on tour as the Jackson 10.

Reuters:  Amsterdam considering bank help for prostitutes

If they don’t repay the loans in cash, there is an obvious way for the bank to get remuneration.

Dan Stein:  Krispy Kreme Fined $40k for Illegal Hiring

A business that is known for its “hot” merchandise gets fined by a government agency called ICE.

I Can Provide the Story About Jeb Bush and the CFR. However, You Need to Supply Your Own Barf Bag.

Miami Herald:

Jeb to push for immigration reform

Jeb Bush will be back in DC this week to present a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored report on immigration policy that calls for a path to legalization for illegal immigrants — a position shared by his brother, former president George W. Bush.

Jeb, George and the CFR.  Those are the three best reasons not to do it.

The task force — co-chaired by Bush and Mack McLarty, former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff — argues that “the failure to reform immigration laws and procedures threatens to harm America’s economy, jeopardize its diplomacy, and weaken its national security.”

The report urges Congress and the Obama administration to undertake a new effort with three central components: “the creation of a more efficient legal immigration system that responds to labor market needs and enhances U.S. competitiveness; a strong enforcement regime that secures U.S. borders and ends the hiring of unauthorized workers; and a program of earned legalization that will offer an opportunity for many illegal immigrants to earn the right to remain in the United States.”

Translated into English, the “three central components” mean:  (1) cheap labor for big corporations, (2) what need will there be for a border patrol if you’re just gonna let everyone in?  It’s like legalizing drugs then boosting funding for the DEA.  (3)  Since there will be amnesty, there will be no “unauthorized workers,” and therefore no employer will be hiring “unauthorized workers,” since they’ll all have amnesty; same point as I made in (2).

As far as the part after the last semicolon, a question I have had in my mind, one that I have never had answered with any credibility, is this:  Why are we to think that we somehow have an obligation to give a “path to citizenship” to people who sneak into the country?  If I sneak into Mexico, nobody with any real authority is going to think that I deserve a “path to citizenship,” I would get my ass jailed and then deported.  And by “deported,” I mean actually returned to the United States, not the flimsy American definition.

This Is Much More Complicated Than It Needs to Be

Bloomberg:

Google to Challenge Microsoft With Operating System

July 8 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., owner of the most- visited Internet search engine, is developing a computer operating system based on its Chrome Web browser, taking aim at Microsoft Corp. in its strongest market.

The system will be designed at first for low-cost laptops called netbooks, Google said in a blog post. The company is in talks with partners on the project and computers running the software will be available in the second half of 2010.

The plan escalates Google’s rivalry with Microsoft, which extends to Web search, browsers and business applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. Windows, Microsoft’s flagship product, runs about 90 percent of the world’s personal computers. Google is also trying to spur Web-ad sales after reporting its first sequential revenue drop as a public company.

“There is a possibility that the new OS can break the paradigm Microsoft and Intel created over the past 20 years,” aid Yukihiko Shimada, a computer analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. in Tokyo. “There is plenty of business opportunity for Google in this market.”

You don’t need to read any further.  It all boils down to this:  Google is creating its own Linux distro.

The whole irony of it is that Google is doing this based on the “success” of their Chrome browser, yet they won’t release Chrome for Linux, and third party compilations of Chrome’s source code for Linux work badly.

Related:  Easy C(hr)ome, Easy Go

How Soon We Forget

Daily Mail publishes previously unreleased photos of the 7/7 terror attacks.  This is the same paper that hates the only party that truly wants to prevent future such attacks, the BNP, and sucks Tory dick day in and day out.  Half the Muslims in England are there, so it seems, because of the explicit invitation of Margaret Thatcher.  She babbed on and on about their “family values.”  Sound familiar, American?

Call me loopy, but I fail to see who homicide bombings and terrorist attacks are indicative of family values.

Elder Abuse: It’ll Get Worse Before It Gets Even Worse

WSIL:

Groups Fight To Curb Elder Abuse

CARTERVILLE — Advocates say their funding for fighting abuse to seniors will not be affected by the so-called “doomsday budget.” This news comes at a time when elderly abuse in Illinois is at its highest rate.

“We know that a lot of abuse goes unreported so there may even be more than we know about,” said John Smith, Executive Director of the Egyptian Area Agency on Aging.

(snip)

“A lot of times it’s by family members who use it for their own means,” said Smith, “couple hundred dollars there, taking 20 dollars out of the billfold.”

Smith says a lot of the abuse isn’t reported because people aren’t aware it’s happening, don’t know where to go to get help or are simply afraid.

“There’s help out there, there is someone that will be on the victim’s side,” said Smith.

Really?  There is?  Not if the abuse is done at the hands of the low chattel black and Hispanic employee base that nursing homes love to hire.  Remember, Claire McCaskill’s husband is a nursing home conglomerate owner, and all they’re concerned about is making as much money as they can.  That’s what cost Claire McCaskill the election for Governor in 2004.

The only thing going for old people now is that there are nursing homes.  In 2050, when America becomes majority non-white, and in the decades after that, as the United States becomes majority Hispanic, old gringos like me won’t have nursing home, the Hispanic-run Federal and state governments won’t spend dime one on old gringoes because young Hispanics will need the welfare money.  This is why I laugh and cringe at cheap labor propagandists when they say we need more Hispanics to save Social Security — yeah, right, stoop labor making minimum wage is going to fund Social Security.  Single mothers with children whose income is low enough don’t even pay Federal income taxes, they actually get money back in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit.  And, like I said before, once their numbers get big enough, and their political power breaks critical mass, they’ll cut old gringoes off of Social Security, Medicare and nursing homes.

But Osama bin Laden Is a Billionaire

McClatchy:

Protectionist language dilutes effort to boost jobs in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A new Obama administration trade measure, intended to provide jobs in Pakistan as an alternative to the lure of Islamic extremism, could mean little because of protectionist language approved in the House of Representatives , according to American retailers and Pakistani manufacturers.

The “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” legislation, which is now before the Senate , allows for duty-free export of textiles to the U.S. from militancy-plagued northwest Pakistan, but it specifically excluded cotton trousers and shirts and other popular clothing items.

The administration strongly supports the zones, which if successful, could generate employment and help quell the terrorist threats to the U.S. and its forces fighting the Taliban -al Qaida insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan .

My response to this is very similar to that when I hear liberal do-gooders whine that we need to give jobs to black gang-bangers so they don’t run with a gang.  They already do have jobs; it’s called dope dealing.  Illicit, illegal and (depending on your beliefs) immoral, but a job nonetheless.  Likewise, these militants already do have jobs; it’s called terrorism.  You don’t think they’re strapping backpacks full of explosives and blowing up busloads of Jewish children for nothing, do you?  OBL takes care of the family they left behind.

If this goes through, it won’t be but a matter of days that the last few remaining textile mills in the United States, mainly in the South, close down, and firms like Hanes, Jockey and Fruit of the Loom build plants in Pakistan.  Remember, this is the same President who claimed that he was going to end tax breaks for companies that moved jobs overseas.

For once, the U.S. House is doing something wise.

Shades of Ten Years Ago

There were only 1,000 people, not counting cops and security guards, outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles for yesterday’s rememberance of Michael Jackson.  In the days leading up to the memoria, the media speculated that there would be a million people camped out there, which is why the city had so many cops outside the building.

What I think happened was that the media tried to engineer a big turnout, but it worked in just the opposite way — people got so fearful of crowds and congestion that they stayed away.  Had the media not trumpeted such a large hypothetical turnout, more people would have come.

This reminds of Pope John Paul II’s visit to St. Louis in January 1999.  The local media were predicting huge crowds and gridlock along the routes that the Popemobile would travel.  But their panic actually kept people away — except for his first trip on the first day in the Popemobile from Lindell and Skinker east to the Archbishop’s residence near the New Cathedral on Lindell, there were hardly any people along those routes.  The evening that the JP II went in the PMB from the Archbishop’s residence to the Kiel (now Scottrade) Center for the youth parade, there was nobody save the local media along the route. And the next morning, when JP II went from the Archbishop’s residence to the Trans World Dome (now Edward Jones Dome) for what would turn out to be (and still is) the largest indoor gathering in American history, for the special Sunday Mass, it was the same deal — no people, only media.  It was actually a little embarrassing — JP II in the PMB was usually surrounded by seas of well-wishers wherever he went.

I Don’t Think We’re Getting the Whole Story

About the incident in Philadelphia from yesterday when a private swim club told the black children using its pool to beat it, because a camp of white children, which paid the club for the use of the pool, were getting what they paid for.  One of the black children claims that one of the white adult chaperones said something naughty about black people.  We do know for sure that the whites got out as soon as the blacks got in, which is the history of the United States of America in the last several decades.  Except the whites didn’t leave their neighborhoods, black crime drove them out.

The reason I don’t think this is the whole story because this happened in Philadelphia in 2009, not Mississippi in 1950.  Philadelphia’s civic elite, going back to Ben Franklin days, has always been snooty, Quaker and egalitarian.  Ben Franklin didn’t much like the German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, those that were actually turning lesser land into productive farms.  And the good Krauts had no use for Philadelphia.

I can’t imagine anyone coming out of that city with any semblance of authority insulting blacks or any minority group.

UPDATE 7/9: The black swimmers will now be welcome for the rest of the summer at Philadelphia’s Girard College.  The irony of that is that its founder, Stephen Girard, left it in his will that his college and the trust fund that was generated from monies in his will that Girard College and scholarships that the trust would fund would only be for poor white orphan boys.  Official Philadelphia spent decades trying to shred his will and piss all over Girard’s grave, and they finally succeeded in 1968.  Now it’s gone so far in the other direction that the College will now become host to these supposed victims of discrimination.  All I can say is there goes the neighborhood, except that the neighborhood went years ago.

UPDATE 7/13: The swim club in question will allow the black children in question to use the club’s pools.  It was nice knowing ya, Valley Swim Club, because your days are numbered.  The reason I know this is that you showed fear in front of the dog, and therefore the dog is going to do nothing but bark at you until he shreds your body to pieces.  You ever hear of Denny’s?

Let Me Guess, Some Muslim Got Offended

Telegraph:

Shopkeeper ordered to remove ‘soldier’ mannequin

A shopkeeper in Bolton has been ordered to remove a mannequin dressed as a soldier from outside his store on the grounds that it reminds neighbouring bank staff of an armed robbery.

Hamid Shahabi was astonished to receive a letter from council officials telling him that he risked an enforcement notice and a fine unless he complied.

He says he started to display the camouflage-clad figure outside his shop, Arms and Outdoors, as a tribute to British soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article didn’t say this, but I think it’s all a cover for the fact that, since the mannequin honors the British role in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the town doesn’t want to offend Muslims.

Blessing In Disguise

I’ve been reading some of the tweets from Dana Loesch about the tea party in Washington, Missouri this past weekend.  (3,000, btw.  That’s spectacular for it being so far out.)

During their April 15 tea party, there was a figurative hat passed along, for food donations and money donations, so it could be passed along to an organization called Circle of Concern, which (I think) distributes food to St. Louis area food pantries.  CoC gladly accepted the donations raised in April 15.

And they wanted to pass the hat around again on Saturday.  But, all of a sudden, CoC doesn’t want to accept Tea Party donations anymore.  As it turns out, CoC is bending over for Charles Jackoff at KTVI, a left-wing Missouri blog called Fried Up, and of course our good ole fiends at the Southern Poverty Pimp Center.  What happened, evidently, is that Fried Up sent in an interloper to the April 15 tea party in Downtown St. Louis, who held up a sign threatening to assassinate Congressman Russ Carnahan.  Of course a Fried Up photog was there, took the pic, and stupid ass Jackoff and the never so intellectually honest SPLC took it as gospel.

This is how bad is getting; the SPLC can influence food donations.  I can only hope that it means less food in the mouths of SPLC-favored minorities, but, as you will read below, don’t bet on it.

My advice to Dana Loesch and the St. Louis Tea Party movement is to take this as a blessing in disguise, and to use your charitable energy where it’s really needed.  You’re wasting your time if you want to donate food to food pantries, especially the St. Louis City ones.

My late ex-aunt (ex because she and my mother’s brother divorced a few years before she died) was the coordinator of a food pantry in the Carondelet neighborhood of St. Louis City.  She was still living and the coordinator of said pantry when I was going to high school, and since my HS had volunteering requirements, I did most of my volunteering at the food pantry in question.  One of the things I quickly learned is that a goodly percentage of people who came in asking for food and for utility assistance, and a high percentage of their black clients, only needed food and utility help because they were blowing their welfare checks on dope, and selling their food stamps (they were paper in those days) for a cash amount less than the value of the food stamps, and using the cash to buy dope.  A lot of them didn’t live in the pantry’s service area — a fly on the wall told my aunt that she overheard a couple of the clients in on that particular day saying that they “stayed” up on Cote Brilliante on the North Side.  If those two weren’t in the service area, but using fake documentation to suggest that they were, they were only caught because of a snitch (who was white), then there were a lot of them not living in the area and getting away with it.  Also, there was an epidemic of clients selling the food given to them for money, turning that money into dope.  Only a few were caught, but that means there were many more doing it.  The few that were caught doing that were black.  The higher ups, in response to that, had my aunt instruct her volunteers to put pre-printed labels on the foodstuffs, indicating that these items were donated items for pantry distribution, thinking that it would deter some of the re-selling.  But it didn’t help, and that should have been no surprise to anyone; the kind of people who would buy such food from the people who are trying to hawk it aren’t the world’s most upstanding citizens.

My aunt tried three times to report to the food pantry’s directors, and the official St. Louis food donation clearing house, about the rampant cheating that was going on.  Every time, she was turned away and called on the carpet for “racism.”  Most of the pantry directors were high up in the Missouri Synod Lutheran church were the pantry was based, the rest were tied in to some nearby UCC church.  The clearing house’s people were all black lovers as well, so it’s no surprise to me that they take Morris Dees’s and Charles Jackoff’s mouths as The Bible.

Being as the very early 1990s were recession years, there were obviously a lot of people there who needed and deserved the help.  But once the economy got better, they didn’t need the help.  The leechers (mostly black) remained.  And I would imagine that the demand at that pantry is way up, and that people who really need the help aren’t getting as much help because of the hangers-on.

All that these food donations do is to perpetuate their dope habits.

Don’t help people who hurt themselves.

The Effectiveness Of The Vote Act

The following is a letter I wrote to then-Sens. Kit Bond and Jim Talent (Rs-MO) in late 2004. I am posting it here for posterity, with amendments afterward.

***

Dear Sen. Bond and Sen. Talent,

One of the hallmarks of a democratic republic is the public privilege to vote, and public confidence that voting is a procedurally effective way to affect change, not only in determining who holds public office, but also in the actual determination of public policy when it comes to issues or propositions on ballots.

The day that the public loses confidence in their vote is the beginning of the end of the republic.

Unfortunately, I fear that day is quickly arriving.

While there is much talk about Republican Party “conspiracies” to disenfranchise racial minorities, I believe that such is virtually non-existent.  Instead, there seems to be much fraud when it comes to people casting multiple ballots, dead people and dogs voting, and corrupt poll workers stuffing ballot boxes after-hours.  Coincidentally, I believe there was a lot of that in Florida in 2000 – pro-Democrat forces punched multiple ballots for Al Gore after the polls closed, and illegally stuffed the boxes, and some of the “chads” wound up dimpled, hanging and/or pregnant simply because the corrupt poll-workers tried to punch too many ballots with a stylus at the same time.  Donna Braziele, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, said that she could “get five points on the ground” for Gore if the average poll margin for Bush over Gore was under five percent.  By “on the ground,” I think she meant black voter fraud.  Illegal after-hours box stuffing is common in the ghetto where there are strong political machines that revolve around a personality.  Between 1987 and 1993, IMHO, Bill Clay’s machine stole a number of St. Louis local elections, including city government and school board.

Also, I have heard that there are tens of thousands of people double-registered in multiple states.  For instance, I have heard that there were some 40,000 double-registrants in New York State and Florida, about the same in Ohio and Florida, and about 10,000 double-dippers in California and Colorado.

The true disenfranchisement occurs when vote fraud dilutes the real votes of real people.  When vote fraud is rampant in certain parts of the country, it does not behoove the average person to vote at all, for the average person gets it in their mind that “they” are going to put in who “they” want anyway.  At such time, that “end of the republic” scenario I just described beckons.  I certainly am not happy here in St. Louis when my vote, which I agonized over for weeks, gets negated by a Pomeranian.

With all of this having been stated, I believe it is some time for some serious reforms in our elections processes.

Because we are much more of a mobile, interstate society than ever, I believe that this justifies action on the part of the Federal government.  Therefore, I believe that an amendment should be added to the U.S. Constitution making objects of Federal jurisdiction such things as determining the qualifications for the franchise, registration of voters, and the voting-day logistics.  Obviously, the Federal government does have and should still have the authority to determine when elections for Federal officers should be held, but I would leave most everything else up to the states.

When this amendment is in place, I would recommend these actual reforms:

(1)  Since the Federal government would now have the power to decide who gets to vote and who doesn’t, I would disenfranchise all convicted felons.  In my opinion, if felons aren’t responsible enough to own firearms, then they aren’t responsible enough to vote.

(2)  The registration database of all registered voters in the country should be a federal object.  Obviously, the database should show where and which precinct the person is registered in.

(3)  Pursuant to that, every registered voter should be issued a federally-issued Voter Identification Card, which would also include a digital photograph of the voter, as well as a bar-code individualized to the voter.  The beauty of that is that when there is a digital photo of a person, certain facial features of a person can be quantified using polygons – meaning that if one person tries to register in more than one place, the national database would do a polygonical analysis and show that the person is already registered to vote somewhere else.  The bar code would allow the voter to “check in” by means of an electronic scanner on election day and update the national database to show that s/he has already voted that day.

(4)  A national voter ID card is justifiable at the same time an omnibus national ID for individuals is not, because voting is a privilege, not a right, akin to driving a motorized vehicle on public roads.  After all, we all have a right to promulgate our political opinions, but we don’t have a right to make anyone pay attention to our opinions.  Likewise, we all have an opinion on who should be President or Senator or Governor, but it does not follow that appropriate appendages of government (i.e. Boards of Election Commissioners, Canvassing Boards, etc.) should heed everyone’s opinion therein in determining who actually wins those elections.  For instance, teenagers and jailed felons have the right to have an opinion, and express that opinion, on who should win public office, but it does not follow that they should actually have the franchise.

(5)  With this system, voting would be a lot easier and a lot more convenient.  There would be no more hour-deep lines at polling places.  All one would have to do on election day is scan one’s bar-coded Voter ID card in, and the system would mark this person as having voted.  One would vote using touch-screen systems, ones that have multiple paper printouts for auditing and re-counting purposes, one paper printout for the precinct judges to ballot-box in, one for the voter, and maybe others as deemed necessary.

(6)  With a national database, any person could vote on what they would get to vote on in their precinct, but they could vote on it using any Federally-issued and operated “voting booth” in the country.  For instance, Missouri holds its primaries in August, and St. Louis holds its municipal elections in March and April.  Missouri residents that are out of Missouri in August and are registered to vote in Missouri (and MO only) could vote on Missouri primary day even if they were in Alaska, just scan their Voter ID card and vote their precinct’s ballots.   St. Louis City voters could vote on mayor and aldermen on those election days even if they were in Florida on those days.  Obviously, only those registered to vote in St. Louis City would get to vote the St. Louis City ballot, and St. Louis City’s Board of Election Commissioners would get to choose what is on the ballot, and Missouri’s constitution would still rule on when St. Louis City’s city elections are.  This would eliminate the whole need for absentee ballots and the worries about fraud that spawn in the realm of absentee ballots.

(7)  Now that the beauty of the system described above is known in preserving the axiom of one-person-one-vote-one-location, perhaps extending certain busy election days to more than one day might be in order.  For instance, since the biggest voter turnout is on Presidential election days, perhaps the days when one could vote in the Presidential election could be extended to days earlier than just that certain Tuesday.  You might want to keep the polls open for four days or maybe a whole week.  Point is, fraud-friendly absentee voting and “early voting” would not be needed anymore.

(8)  I would make it to where an individual would have to show a little initiative to register to vote, and because a photo ID would be necessary, there would have to be only a certain, finite number of Federally-supervised places where one could register to vote.   Motor-voter would have to go, because one would have to prove citizenship to register.  Mailing in a  paper card to register should be out too, because a person would have to show his or her face at some edifice somewhere.  On-line registration should also be nixed.  But the Federal jurisdiction of voter registration means that any citizen could register at any Federal center, but only register for where they actually live, even if they live in St. Louis and happen to be registering to vote at a Federal center in Hawaii.  This would also mean that a registrant would have to prove where their primary residence is.  In my opinion, if one is too lazy to show this relatively minimal amount of initiative, one is not responsible enough to vote, and such a person probably doesn’t know beans from shinola about what he or she is voting for anyway.  Conceal-carry permit holders have to show a lot more initiative, ability and qualification to earn those privileges.

(9)  And, in accordance with our great “traditions” of civil rights and equality, there should be no explicit discrimination in terms of race, color, gender, creed, etc. in determining who gets to vote, but obviously only citizens of at least a certain age who are not convicted felons should get to register and vote.  Of course, we should be mindful of the fact that the citizenship requirement will have a disparate impact on illegal aliens, mostly Hispanic, and the felon disqualification will wind up “disenfranchising” many blacks, and since blacks and Hispanics are the base of the Democrat party, be prepared to hear that party’s hacks, as well as the civil rights industry/hustle (inasmuch as the two are distinguishable) whine about racism.

(10)  There probably shouldn’t be a charge to register or a charge to vote, either, meaning that the Federal government would have to incur all costs, even though voting is a privilege akin to driving on public roads, and there are charges to get those kind of licenses, and in most states that have “conceal-carry” privileges, it costs big money to get one of those licenses.

(11)  No more need for military absentee ballots.  Federally-supervised voting machines can be placed on military bases and installations in the USA and around the world, and service personnel can also register to vote (where they live), and actually vote their own home precinct, on base or on installation.  No more worries about deadlines to mail in military absentee ballots, and cretins like Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) wouldn’t be able to engage in veiled conspiracies to disenfranchise his state’s overseas military personnel just to try to throw PA to Kerry.

(12)  States and localities would still have the responsibility to notify voters registered in their jurisdiction that there is an impending election, even if the election is minor.  For instance, if a certain neighborhood in St. Louis City is having a special property tax plebiscite, then all the registered voters in those precincts would have to be contacted by the city notifying of the election, even if some of those registered voters are on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

(13)  Tabulation of ballots would be much easier, and would probably be instantaneous.  In fact, in theory, this system could be hooked to the internet, and anyone could watch the live, on-line tabulation of ballots, though security measures would have to be tight to prevent hacking.  Though this entire procedure would be a Federal responsibility, multiple mainframe computer systems and redundant systems could be set up in many places to ensure the integrity of the counting in case of power failures.

(14)  Also the paper trail described above would serve as an emergency backup.  At that, to ensure the credibility of the computer tabulations, precincts could be selected at random, and their paper-trail tabulation could be compared to the computer tabulation for that same precinct; statistically speaking, if say, five percent of all precincts nationally were chosen at random, and none of them show a discrepancy between paper counts and computer counts, then the entire nationwide system is very likely to be above board.  (To keep the element of surprise, the precincts should be chosen at random using a computer, but the judges at these precincts should not be informed that theirs is one being audited until the polls close and officers of the law show up with an announcement of the audit.  The element of surprise therein will be an extra safeguard to keep everyone “in line.”)   If the Nielsen organization thinks that a random sample of all of five thousand households in the whole country is statistically sound enough to figure verily ratings for TV shows such that advertisers give Nielsen ratings credibility on what to pay for ad space on TV, then five percent of precincts is far more than sound in this scenario.

With this kind of system in place, even the high-turnout elections would run smoothly, and with relatively minimal supervision at individual polling places.  Voter fraud would be virtually impossible with this system.  No more multiple voting by blacks in north St. Louis city and north St. Louis county, no more of these black election “judges” sitting around after the polls close punching multiple voter cards for Bosley in 1993 or the pro-busing school board slate in St. Louis City in 1991, no more Chicago-style wild corruption, no more turnout from the cemeteries and the dog pounds, no more of these New York City jetsetters voting for Gore/Lieberman at their New York address then hopping the jet down to West Palm to vote for Gore/Lieberman at their Florida vacation house, and no more of these yuppie Beverly Hills types who buy up a few acres on the Front Range in Colorado and pretend they’re cowboys on the weekends voting in both places.

No more long lines, no more having to worry about “getting back into town” on election day to vote, and no more trepidation about the integrity of the ballot.

It will not only take action on your part, but it will also take some political fortitude.  You see, most of the fraud originates in and around racial and ethnic minorities that vote Democrat, so if you actually propose these reforms, you’re going to hear caterwauling from Democrat party shills about racism, disenfranchisement, intimidation and so forth, though it will be these ills that these proposals are looking to solve.  Keep in mind that they will make these charges because any effort to squelch vote fraud will have the net effect of making it harder for Democrats to win national majorities and for non-whites to defeat whites.  (Recall that at least 3 million illegal alien Hispanics voted in 2000, and this is the biggest reason Bush didn’t win the meaningless “popular vote” that year.)  Voter fraud tends to benefit black Democrats over white Democrats in big cities, Democrats over Republicans in general, and establishment Republicans over populist Republicans in primary races, (Bush 41 out and outright stole a primary win from Pat Buchanan in 1992, can’t remember which state), so you might very well get a lot of blowback from plutocratic Republicans should you propose these measures.

This act should replace and supplant the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In fact, it will be more fair than VRA, because VRA only applied to certain states and jurisdictions with “histories” of discrimination and voter intimidation.  The Effectiveness of the Vote Act would apply to all jurisdictions, and have Federal election police at every polling place, not just those in certain states.

Thank you for your time.

***

Amendments:

(15)  If the agreed-upon procedure requires that some thing (paper ballots, electronic boxes, etc.) be transferred to a central counting station, then they should be transferred from the polling place to the required locations by law enforcement officers, who will take the objects at the first moment they are able.  This will prevent corrupt black poll workers and ACORN thugs from trying to fool around with the system and punch extra votes for Democrats/Obama.

(16)  There should be a new Federal law enforcement agency created, relating to election issues.  Officers of such an agency should be at every polling place, and should have the power to make arrests for voting and suffrage related issues, either those that happen at the polling place on the day(s) of the election, or past election related issues.  However, they should not have the power to make arrests for matters other than voting issues.  That would be the one concession I would grant to the civil rights crowd.

(17)  An E-Verify system should be used to check on the immigration status of those who want to register to vote.  Obviously, illegal aliens aren’t allowed to vote.  And such a system should bypass the pro-illegal alien Hispanic/Democrat/liberal election authorities in illegal-heavy states like California.

(18)  Based on the likelihood that the current system has illegal aliens registered to vote, and has a lot of people double-registered in different jurisdictions, everyone who wants to vote should be made to re-register when the new scheme is all set, even if they have registered before under the current flawed system.

(19)  The U.S. Justice Department should “test” the system, not only on election days, but at other times.  For instance, they could enlist the help of Foreign nationals and ask them to attempt to register to vote, ask those under the age of 18 to try to register to vote, they could give permission to people who live in one jurisdiction and actually vote there to attempt to vote in another jurisdiction, to make sure that they can’t vote again b/c the system already shows them as having voted.  Ask qualified adults not registered to vote to register in a jurisdiction not their own.  Ask qualified adults not registered to vote to register to vote where they really do live then try to do so somewhere else.  Ask a qualified adult to try to register to vote using DOJ-provided fake documentation.  Ask convicted felons to try to register to vote.  Have someone who lives in a precinct that has a special election one day to travel to another state and vote their local ballot from that other state on days when the voting is open, as they should be able to.  Of course, they should have DOJ letters on hand, to show the Federal election police that they’re testers and not real crooks.  Any way possible that the system could be gamed is what the DOJ should try to do, to make sure it can’t be compromised.

(20)  I said above that felons shouldn’t be able to vote, but I am open to compromise.  There are four options:  (1) The FL/KY paradigm; felons are not allowed to vote at all.  (2) The policy of most states, felons can vote as long as they’re not incarcerated or on probation.  (3)  Felons can vote as long as they’re not incarcerated, but can vote if they’re on probation.  (4) Felons should be allowed to vote, even if they’re incarcerated.  Whatever we do, it should apply to all states.  If I favor any compromise that allows felons to vote, it should be #2.  However, if we choose any option but #4, then DOJ “testers” will have to pay or fete convicted felons to attempt to register to vote when they legally can’t (whatever that paradigm is), to make sure the system works.  As a reward, they can have a few months lopped off their probation.

(21)  There is a lot of discussion in 2010 about Democrat attempts to suppress the military absentee vote in IL and NY.  With my system, there would never be any such worries, because electronic voting machines can be put on overseas (or even domestic) military bases, and American embassies and consulate offices in other countries.  You would vote your American home precinct on the election day(s).

How Many Times Must I Say It? Don’t Show Fucking Fear In Front of a Fucking Dog.

South Carolina showed fear in front of the NAACP dogs in 2000, by moving The Flag that was flying atop the State House dome down to a memorial.  The NAACP is still mad, and this has resonated to the Atlantic Coast Conference not holding anymore conference baseball tournaments in South Carolina.  For the record, the only ACC school in SC is Clemson.  (Fine, as far as it goes, but if the ACC was going to move anything out of SC, it should have been blacksketball.)

The legislators in SC, plus the pseudo-conservative groups, that agreed to and engineered this compromise, thought they were being so clever, and thought the NAACP would stop bitching.  Instead, the NAACP got more shrill and hateful.  That’s what happens when you show fear in front of the dog.  Now, back in the late 1990s and in 2000, had you stared down the dog and beaten down the dog, and told the NAACP to fuck off every time they tried, they wouldn’t be complaining today.  Look what happened in Mississippi in April 2001:  Ninety percent of white voters and twenty percent of black voters told the NAACP to fuck off, and that they did.  Notice you don’t hear the NAACP growling at MS much anymore, and certainly nowhere near the level they growl at SC.

Incidentally, (and ironically, as the blog has a canine name), I’m taking the blog that calls it self the “Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler,” but is really the Pro-Idiotarian Lapdog, off my blogroll and off my RSS feed reader.  I found out about this story today at Pro-Idiotarian, but couched in hate whitey hate Dixie language.  Whoever wrote the post did say that s/he/it is coming around to supporting the Confederate flag a little bit, mainly because Walter Williams and about two other blacks support it.  I’m glad your precious little house Negroes gave you permission to support the Confederate flag, you nadless bozos.  I, however, need no such permission to be pro-Flag or pro- or anti-anything.  Free, white and 21, as they used to say.  Besides, it was fun at first to read a blog that’s nothing but “fuck you Obama fuck you Obama fuck you Obama” all day long, but it gets old after awhile.

Not the People’s Headlines

KSDK:  PHOTOGALLERY: Fair St. Louis draws a patriotic crowd

Remember when the V.P. Fair (which is what it used to be called) drew a large crowd?

CNS:  Former DC Mayor Charged with Stalking Girlfriend

Girlfriend charged with having a boyfriend old enough to be her grandfather.

P-D:  Gov. Nixon should restore St. Louis’s elected [school] board

I agree, we need a few good laughs.

AP:  Leahy finds solace from Senate on his Vermont farm

I agree, the Senate has too many cocky sonsofbitches, and by “too many,” I mean one.

CNS:  Climate-Change Bill Could Lead to Increased Regulations on Fireworks

Oh no, I’m scared.  Big cities might have laws against setting off fireworks.

P-D:  Schweich to announce bid for Missouri auditor

Among the first issues his campaign will have to deal with is the candidate’s disturbing links to Jack Danforth.

AP:  Franken eyes role as ‘people’s proxy’ in hearings

Likewise, the Soviet Union was a ‘people’s republic.’

AFP:  German industrial orders ‘gain 4.4% in May’

Of course they did, Germany is the last white country left that manufactures anything.

AP:  ‘Slumdog’ child star moves into new home

Moving from a cardboard shack to a tin shack.  Upgrade!

Today is “Pick on the BNP” Day in the British Press

(1)  The Daily Mail, i.e. Tory Party propaganda, claims that the “big bad terrorist wolf” isn’t really AQ, but right wingers with “links” to the BNP.  Again, they push the same old bullshit that I discredited last month, that James Von Brunn had “links” to the BNP.  Just to make it clear, you can have a “link” to an “extremist” if your fifth cousin stayed in the same hotel one night as the third cousin twice removed to the best friend of someone who used the n-word.  In other words, it’s all ADL and SPLC fund-raising agitprop.  Or, in the case of the Daily Mail, an attempt to get BNP voters to vote for their precious David Cameron.

(2)  To answer claims by the BNP, a center-left “equality watchdog” group says that immigrants do not get special access to British public housing.  And in that, they might be right — I’m sure that England’s domestic citizen minorities get the pick of the litter.  The BNP responds; In passing, they mention that 80% of Somalians in Britain live in public housing.  I wonder why any Somalians are in Britain to begin with — Don’t they have perfectly good Scandinavian countries and American states with Scandinavian heritage to ruin?

Like Father, Like Son

P-D:

Major Case Squad probes killing of Jennings boy, 14

The Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis is investigating the shooting death of a 14-year-old Jennings boy who was gunned down as he walked down the street on Friday night.

(snip)

On July 7, 2005, Hinton’s father — Andrew Hinton — was killed during an argument at a retail store in St. Louis.

Isn’t that just rich — day in and day out, that particular community does nothing but bash the evil ole “white poleeeceseseseses.”  But when one of their own gets mowed down in the typical fashion, but the local constabs can’t put two and two together to find suspects, Official St. Louis brings in the A-Team.  It won’t be a week until the MCS is accused of racial profiling.

I wouldn’t spend all this time on this case if I headed the MCS.  There’s this thing called gratitude.

Waste Not, Have Not

AlertNet:

New climate strategy: track the world’s wealthiest

WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) – To fairly divide the climate change fight between rich and poor, a new study suggests basing targets for emission cuts on the number of wealthy people, who are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, in a country.

Since about half the planet’s climate-warming emissions come from less than a billion of its people, it makes sense to follow these rich folks when setting national targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the authors wrote on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As it stands now, under the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, rich countries shoulder most of the burden for cutting the emissions that spur global warming, while developing countries — including fast-growing economies China and India — are not required to curb greenhouse pollution.

Rich countries, notably the United States, have said this gives developing countries an unfair economic advantage; China, India and other developing countries argue that developed countries have historically spewed more climate-warming gases, and developing countries need time to catch up.

That’s what the Kyoto Protocol is about — giving plutocrats in rich countries, the very people who emit a disproportionate share of greenhouse gases, an excuse to outsource to China and Bangalore.  The legerdemain that allows China and India to be “exempt” is that Kyoto measures a country’s pollution per capita.  The environment in China and India might be horrible, but divided by a billion-plus people means that they’re “clean” in Kyotospeak.

If it were me, the thing I would look at is not the overall carbon emission by an individual, but the efficiency of personal emissions based on one’s lifestyle.  Of course, a billionaire with 10 houses and two Gulfstreams is going to emit more carbon than a peasant in rural China.  But sometimes, comparing rich people is the fair comparison to make, i.e. Bush versus Gore.  Also, what concerns me isn’t rich people in rich countries, it’s poor people (especially of a certain hue) in rich countries.  You know, we yank our thermostat up to 90 in the winter, we don’t do anything resembling maintenance on our hooptees.  Such people emit far more carbon than their “lifestyle” would suggest.

All This Was Easily Preventable

MSNBC:

Researchers say they can guess your SSN

There’s a new reason to worry about the security of your Social Security number.  Turns out, they can be guessed with relative ease.

A group of researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University say they’ve discovered patterns in the issuance of numbers that make it relatively easy to deduce the personal information using publicly available information and some basic statistical analysis.

The research could have far-ranging implications for financial institutions and other firms that rely on Social Security numbers to ward off identity theft. It could also unleash a wave of criminal imitators who will try to duplicate the research.

This news would have been met by the world with a collective “yawn,” except that SSNs have become far more than what they were originally intended for.  If SSNs were today what they were at the inception of Social Security and later Medicare, and that is a simple account number that you have with the Social Security Administration for the payment of SS and Medicare taxes into the system, and then your eventual receipt of benefits from the system, then someone getting your SSN would be useless to them.  Carnegie-Mellon’s algorithm would be merely an intellectual curiosity if SSNs were simple SSA account numbers.  Now, their breakthrough means that everyone is at risk.

Instead, because the busy body bureaucrats and the nanny state want your SSN for almost everything, getting your SSN is the gateway master key to stealing your identity.  All an illegal alien needs to go to get a “documented” life is to make up or steal an SSN, and everything is downhill from there.  This is why I laugh at “lifelock” commercials.  We shouldn’t have to pay $10 a month to save our identity; the Federal government merely needs to follow its own laws.  I’m sure there are tomes and tomes full of SSN confidentiality laws.

War on Tylenol

What gives?

When the FAA wanted to come out with new regulations on private aviation, I got the feeling that that was a bait-and-switch, the “ridiculous” with which the “sublime” was meant to beat back.  And by “sublime,” I think they meant new taxes.  All a play for money.

That’s what I think is going on with the FDA’s War on Tylenol.  They’re huffing and puffing about taking it off store shelves and making it prescription only.  That’s obviously not going to happen, but they’re going to huff and puff with a “ridiculous” proposal until a “sublime” alternative comes along.  I think they want new taxes on acetominiphin.

Four Words: Submit a Damned Bid

MoDOT and IDOT will let contracts this fall for the new Mississippi River bridge near Downtown St. Louis this fall.  Minority contractors want into the feeding frenzy.  My advice to them is to submit a bid; if yours comes out the lowest, then you’ll get the job.  Simple as that.

Of course, the white knuckledragging backwards deliverance bigots at MoDOT and IDOT will want you, Jim Crow-like, to get something called a “performance bond.”  You know how it goes; actual people will be driving back and forth on this bridge, and the apartheid seggies have the audacity to want this bridge to work and to have structural integrity.  “Structural integrity,” sounds like white racist hate speech.  Translated into Ebonics, that means they be puttin they foot on yo’ neck.

Of course, there might be other reasons why getting a performance bond is going to be a problem.

Shorpy Does Washington, Missouri

I think that building is still standing.

Coming to Southern Illinois?

The Mayor of Marion wants him and many others like him to habitate at the nearby Club Fed.

During my roadtrips from St. Louis to Nashville, or trips that use 64-57-24 to get to wherever I’m going, I always wondered why there’s that exit off I-57 to Illinois Route 148, the last one on 57 going South before you hit I-24.  There are no motorist services or significant towns to speak of anywhere near that exit.  It wasn’t until I moved down this way that I figured it out — the Federal prison.

You really have to know where you’re going and what you’re doing to get to the prison from any town along Route 13 — Marion, Carterville, Energy, Carbondale.  It’s a tad easier, but still convoluted, to get to the prison from the aformentioned exit.  I think the reason that it’s complicated is that if any of the inmates escape, they won’t have an easy time getting to populated areas in order to hide out.

Windows XP Becoming “Insecure,” All of a Sudden

Prediction:  As the release date of Windows 7 draws nearer and nearer, there will all of a sudden be more and more “problems” and “insecurities” with XP.  If you catch my drift.

If you don’t catch my drift, what I mean by that is that MSFT will be using its update mechanism to plant problems in XP in order to get people to “upgrade” to 7, i.e. empty your wallets to MSFT.

The Bearer of Bad Ideas

Phyllis Schlafly devotes her July 3 column to the folly that was the 2006 health care reform in Massachusetts.  But she couldn’t devote one word to the Governor that supported such “reform,” and signed it into law.  If that certain former Governor wins his party’s nomination in 2012, you can bet that she’ll support that former Governor for President.

In case you’re stumped:  Romney.

President Obama’s Accountant: Take Notice

Jake Wagman of the Post wonders facetiously (or maybe not) if the prorated amount of President Obama’s salary that he would earn while he throws out the first pitch at the All-Star Game next Tuesday should be subject to St. Louis City’s 1% earnings tax.

And why shouldn’t he?  According to the rules of the taxing authorities President Obama and tax cheat Timmy supervise, all of the players at the All-Star Game have to prorate their salaries and pay state and city income/earnings taxes on that amount in the jurisdictions of road venues.  Those that play in the ASG will get a bonus for playing in the game; that money will be subject to the 1% St. Louis City earnings tax and the Missouri state income tax.  Accountants for professional athletes have to juggle tax returns for not only the Feds, but for a number of states, and a few cities.

If you’re a baseball player that makes $1.62 million a year, that figures to $10,000 a game.  If you play for the Cardinals, you’ll earn 81 home games times $10,000, i.e. $810,000, in St. Louis City, Missouri that year, all that subject to Missouri income and St. Louis earnings taxes, not to mention the Feds.  A three-game road trip against the Dodgers means your $30,000 of salary is subject to California state income taxes and Los Angeles City income or earnings taxes, plus the Feds.  And for leagues that have teams in Canada, you’ve gotta do the Canadian national and the requisite provincial return if you play games in Canada, i.e. a three game interleague stint in Toronto for the Cards makes that US $30,000, translated into the de jure exchange rate for CDN$, subject to Canadian national income taxes and Ontario provincial income taxes, and Toronto’s city income or earnings taxes, if it has one.  If one or several of your team’s games is in Japan, or Mexico, or London, you’ve gotta do those countries’ returns as well.  MLB has played some games in Japan and Mexico, the NFL has played regular season games in Mexico and London, and the NFL wants to put a Super Bowl in London.

Rush Limbaugh will no longer do any shows from New York City, because the city’s tax authorities hound him to death to make him prove that the days he works out of South Florida are days that he’s actually there.  Florida has no income tax, which is why Rush, Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge moved there.

The only saving grace is old age and retirement taxes, such as the American Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment taxes, FICA and FUTA, which are not income taxes, they’re earnings taxes;  there is a multinational treaty that the U.S.,  the U.K., Australia, Japan (?), and most of Europe is in, that a citizen of one country only needs to pay the OASDI taxes for either their own country or the country where they live, not both.  While I’m on that subject, there is a difference between an income tax and an earnings tax — they only seem the same, but those phrases are not interchangeable.   They’re different in that an earnings tax only taxes you for wages and salaries that you earn as part of an employment situation, and income tax is on both employment and other income.  For instance, gambling winnings is subject to income taxation, but not earnings taxation.  If you’re a St. Louis City resident that wins the Powerball, you’ll pay Federal and Missouri State income taxes, but not the city earnings tax, and not Federal FICA and FUTA.

The St. Louis City earnings tax is even more complicated than Wagman suggests.  If you’re a St. Louis City resident, you have to pay that 1% earnings tax even if you work outside St. Louis City, even if it’s anywhere in the United States.  I had a buddy back in St. Louis (a city resident) that was (and presumably still is) being hounded by the city to pay the earnings taxes on wages he earned in Kentucky in 1990.

Light Bright

SPACE.com:

No Fireworks in Space on July 4

This Fourth of July weekend will be filled with dazzling fireworks displays for many Americans, but not for NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, who is flying high above Earth on the International Space Station.

Barratt is the only American on the space station’s six-man crew, which includes two Russian cosmonauts and astronauts from Japan, Canada and Belgium. But while astronauts can see an amazing amount of detail on the Earth from the station’s unique vantage point, spotting the traditional U.S. Independence Day fireworks is not among them.

“It’s beyond the capability of human eye apparently to see manmade fireworks from orbit,” NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told SPACE.com. “It’s 200 miles away, you know.”

How prescient of them to run this article.  I was thinking of the same thing myself when watching the fireworks in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on Saturday evening.  I knew that the ISS would fly over the country and was manned, and I figured that they wouldn’t be able to discern any fireworks.  But my reasoning was different — fireworks displays happened in big cities and medium-sized towns.  If you look at a picture of the United States at night, you’ll see that all the big cities are blobs of light.  They way I figured, any light from the fireworks would have been drowned out by the regular city lights looking down from a couple hundred miles.  As it turns out, even if our cities were dark, the fireworks don’t put out enough light to be seen from that far by human eyes anyway.

So much for my plans for next Independence Day to go to North Korea :)

Waste Electricity — Government Hates Competition

Just as governments now want to tax your driving by the mile, because increased fuel efficiency in cars means that governments are seeing declining per-gallon gas tax revenue, Missouri wants to add surcharges to your utility bills if you are efficient with your energy use.  They couch the argument in a lot of flowery language, but I suspect that the reason is just the same — if you use less energy, government gets fewer energy sales tax dollars.