By Nathan Barton
Good morning, and just one day to go to get to 2015. A big storm is sweeping the Four Corners, and bitter cold is hitting the northern Rockies and Great Plains, thanks to a really strange twist in the jet stream, as the winds flow southwest and then reverse over Cape Mendocino in far Northern California and sweep east across the continent.
Some news of interest:
Not only are government agencies becoming more inefficient and failures at accomplishing their missions (and “better” at wasting money), but the contractors are as well. The WIPP fiasco was fairly low-key news almost a year ago, and it is good to see the contractor hit hard for its failure to accomplish what it is being paid for (losing 90% of their fee), but keep in mind, this is just their “fee” and all the costs of doing business for the contractor are being paid in full, in a “cost-plus-fee” contract like this.
Of course, the 60 million or so saved by punishing the contractor at Los Alamos doesn’t go very far when the FedGov is busily wasting dollars by the trillion, as this story relates. It is not just these STUPID expenditures, but virtually ALL spending by government that is wasteful, if for no other reason than the FedGov’s actions are so counterproductive. The “war on terrorism” just creates MORE terrorists and terrorism; the “war on some drugs” just creates all sorts of losses of liberty and destruction of the economy, the welfare state just creates MORE welfare recipients (both individual and corporate), and so forth. Yet, being able to use these really asinine examples of government stupidity will help win over more people to the understanding of just how bad government is.
Margaret sent this article “In North Dakota, A Tale of Oil, Corruption and Death” which illustrates in gory detail what a mess government can be, and how corruption is NOT just limited to DC or to traditional state and federal government agencies. Despite tremendous blessings of natural resources and a beautiful homeland, and energetic people, the MHA Nation (better known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, of North Dakota, are an economic, social, and cultural mess. Corruption, killing, and worse is rampant. The AmerInd tribes of the Northern Plains have been under the thumb of the FedGov since about 1851, and totally under FedGov control since about 1880, or more than the famed Seven Generations, and a worse example of socialism, even outright communism in the Soviet sense, is very hard to find. Family ties continue to pull on people who have been wise enough (or desperate enough) to escape the reservation, and they get sucked back in. And con-artists of all types and skin colors/heritage are drawn like flies to honey. It is bad.
Things are bad in Mesopotamia, still, as well: and a LOT more bodies than in North Dakota. The Caliphate struck again several times, including a suicide bomber at a funeral (the US drones aren’t the only way to attack funerals, I guess), while a man who may have let his loyalty override his common sense and came out of retirement was killed lest he make a difference. Echoing Mama Liberty’s thoughts from a few days ago, I wonder when they are going to run out of people: not just by killing them off, but who would want to HAVE a child to grow up in this horror? The answer, of course, is that these people, sadly, have been bred for this, not for seven generations, but for SEVENTY generations: 1400 years of bloody murder with religion as the excuse, of inbreeding with economics as the excuse, and of propaganda about their false understanding of God: heritage reinforced by environment in a hideous gestalt.
The Taliban declared victory as NATO formally ended its war in Afghanistan on Sunday, holding a low-key ceremony in Kabul after 13 years of conflict that have left the country in the grip of worsening insurgent violence. Ironically, the event was arranged in secret due to the threat of Taliban strikes in the Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated suicide bombings and gun attacks over recent years. As many have pointed out, this is official garbage and hypocrisy, as more than 13,000 troops (almost all American) and who knows how many “contractors” will remain in country to fight “Al Qaeda” but NOT officially the Taliban. Trillions of dollars and tankers of blood wasted.
A mixture of commentary and news on an important subject: What are McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets made of and how are they made? While a McNugget will NEVER surpass a properly raised, butchered, and fried chicken like my great-grandmother made (Clovis, NM, 1961), they are still both a nutritious and good value. ArcLein points out the good and the bad, including the way chickens are raised in factory farms today, and it is both fascinating and informative. There is no perfect food, but some fast food is better than others, and we can debate the advantages and disadvantages of hot McNuggets over a frozen cold meat and cheese sandwich at our leisure!
Darwin’s Law at Work? In 2013, 32,719 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the United States, a 3.1-percent decrease from the 33,782 fatalities in 2012. The Transportation Department says the number of fatalities decreased in every category (cars, trucks, motorcycles) — except for bicycles. At a time when the Obama administration is encouraging people to walk or pedal, bicycle fatalities increased by 1.2 percent in 2013, to 743 from 734 the prior year. Pedestrian fatalities declined by 1.7 percent to 4,735 in 2013, but DOT said that number is 15 percent higher than the record low of 4,109 pedestrian fatalities in 2009. Now as I recall, traffic fatalities used to be around 50,000 per year, in the days when we had only 200 million people – and now we have more than 320 million. Drivers must be doing something right, although government takes credit (as always) for it: new regs, new punishments, new construction, etc. But the increase long-term in bicyclists especially is good for the race, if you believe in Darwin awards. Pedestrian and bicycle deaths are 17% of the total: and you KNOW that they don’t amount to a tenth that in miles traveled. Anyone who drives mountain highways in Colorado can understand one reason for these death rates increasing so much: bicyclists do NOT understand (or don’t act like they understand) the physics of motion.
One last item for this last commentary of 2014.
The Fuehrer rules: his powers and privileges far exceed any “constitutional monarch” in the world, and are actually greater in many ways than so so-called absolute monarchs and outright dictators. For example, that pretty boy in North Korea can’t go play golf in Hawaii, and that bearded old guy who is the protector of Mecca can’t use drones to kill kids in Afghanistan or Pakistan. This piece of garbage that squats in 1600 PA (except when he is on vacation, which seems to be about 50% of the time) wanted to play golf on his Hawaiian vacation, so he forced two Army officers to cancel their long-planned and scheduled wedding at the military golf course, for his personal pleasure. (They were male and female: if they’d been a homosexual couple of either sex, I bet he’d have gone someplace else.) The arrogance and privilege, and the constant disruption of daily life for millions of people, that has been assumed not just by THIS tyrant, but by ALL recent occupiers of 1600 PA, is an insult to a free people – and even to a people who are all but slaves, and cost billions both in direct expenses AND in lost time and money for businesses and families and individuals. How LONG can this go on?
Mama’s Note: How long can this go on? As long as people are willing to allow it.
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.
The Price of Liberty 
Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-53C: Goodbye, 2014!
By Nathan Barton
Good morning, and just one day to go to get to 2015. A big storm is sweeping the Four Corners, and bitter cold is hitting the northern Rockies and Great Plains, thanks to a really strange twist in the jet stream, as the winds flow southwest and then reverse over Cape Mendocino in far Northern California and sweep east across the continent.
Some news of interest:
Not only are government agencies becoming more inefficient and failures at accomplishing their missions (and “better” at wasting money), but the contractors are as well. The WIPP fiasco was fairly low-key news almost a year ago, and it is good to see the contractor hit hard for its failure to accomplish what it is being paid for (losing 90% of their fee), but keep in mind, this is just their “fee” and all the costs of doing business for the contractor are being paid in full, in a “cost-plus-fee” contract like this.
Of course, the 60 million or so saved by punishing the contractor at Los Alamos doesn’t go very far when the FedGov is busily wasting dollars by the trillion, as this story relates. It is not just these STUPID expenditures, but virtually ALL spending by government that is wasteful, if for no other reason than the FedGov’s actions are so counterproductive. The “war on terrorism” just creates MORE terrorists and terrorism; the “war on some drugs” just creates all sorts of losses of liberty and destruction of the economy, the welfare state just creates MORE welfare recipients (both individual and corporate), and so forth. Yet, being able to use these really asinine examples of government stupidity will help win over more people to the understanding of just how bad government is.
Margaret sent this article “In North Dakota, A Tale of Oil, Corruption and Death” which illustrates in gory detail what a mess government can be, and how corruption is NOT just limited to DC or to traditional state and federal government agencies. Despite tremendous blessings of natural resources and a beautiful homeland, and energetic people, the MHA Nation (better known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, of North Dakota, are an economic, social, and cultural mess. Corruption, killing, and worse is rampant. The AmerInd tribes of the Northern Plains have been under the thumb of the FedGov since about 1851, and totally under FedGov control since about 1880, or more than the famed Seven Generations, and a worse example of socialism, even outright communism in the Soviet sense, is very hard to find. Family ties continue to pull on people who have been wise enough (or desperate enough) to escape the reservation, and they get sucked back in. And con-artists of all types and skin colors/heritage are drawn like flies to honey. It is bad.
Things are bad in Mesopotamia, still, as well: and a LOT more bodies than in North Dakota. The Caliphate struck again several times, including a suicide bomber at a funeral (the US drones aren’t the only way to attack funerals, I guess), while a man who may have let his loyalty override his common sense and came out of retirement was killed lest he make a difference. Echoing Mama Liberty’s thoughts from a few days ago, I wonder when they are going to run out of people: not just by killing them off, but who would want to HAVE a child to grow up in this horror? The answer, of course, is that these people, sadly, have been bred for this, not for seven generations, but for SEVENTY generations: 1400 years of bloody murder with religion as the excuse, of inbreeding with economics as the excuse, and of propaganda about their false understanding of God: heritage reinforced by environment in a hideous gestalt.
The Taliban declared victory as NATO formally ended its war in Afghanistan on Sunday, holding a low-key ceremony in Kabul after 13 years of conflict that have left the country in the grip of worsening insurgent violence. Ironically, the event was arranged in secret due to the threat of Taliban strikes in the Afghan capital, which has been hit by repeated suicide bombings and gun attacks over recent years. As many have pointed out, this is official garbage and hypocrisy, as more than 13,000 troops (almost all American) and who knows how many “contractors” will remain in country to fight “Al Qaeda” but NOT officially the Taliban. Trillions of dollars and tankers of blood wasted.
A mixture of commentary and news on an important subject: What are McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets made of and how are they made? While a McNugget will NEVER surpass a properly raised, butchered, and fried chicken like my great-grandmother made (Clovis, NM, 1961), they are still both a nutritious and good value. ArcLein points out the good and the bad, including the way chickens are raised in factory farms today, and it is both fascinating and informative. There is no perfect food, but some fast food is better than others, and we can debate the advantages and disadvantages of hot McNuggets over a frozen cold meat and cheese sandwich at our leisure!
Darwin’s Law at Work? In 2013, 32,719 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the United States, a 3.1-percent decrease from the 33,782 fatalities in 2012. The Transportation Department says the number of fatalities decreased in every category (cars, trucks, motorcycles) — except for bicycles. At a time when the Obama administration is encouraging people to walk or pedal, bicycle fatalities increased by 1.2 percent in 2013, to 743 from 734 the prior year. Pedestrian fatalities declined by 1.7 percent to 4,735 in 2013, but DOT said that number is 15 percent higher than the record low of 4,109 pedestrian fatalities in 2009. Now as I recall, traffic fatalities used to be around 50,000 per year, in the days when we had only 200 million people – and now we have more than 320 million. Drivers must be doing something right, although government takes credit (as always) for it: new regs, new punishments, new construction, etc. But the increase long-term in bicyclists especially is good for the race, if you believe in Darwin awards. Pedestrian and bicycle deaths are 17% of the total: and you KNOW that they don’t amount to a tenth that in miles traveled. Anyone who drives mountain highways in Colorado can understand one reason for these death rates increasing so much: bicyclists do NOT understand (or don’t act like they understand) the physics of motion.
One last item for this last commentary of 2014.
The Fuehrer rules: his powers and privileges far exceed any “constitutional monarch” in the world, and are actually greater in many ways than so so-called absolute monarchs and outright dictators. For example, that pretty boy in North Korea can’t go play golf in Hawaii, and that bearded old guy who is the protector of Mecca can’t use drones to kill kids in Afghanistan or Pakistan. This piece of garbage that squats in 1600 PA (except when he is on vacation, which seems to be about 50% of the time) wanted to play golf on his Hawaiian vacation, so he forced two Army officers to cancel their long-planned and scheduled wedding at the military golf course, for his personal pleasure. (They were male and female: if they’d been a homosexual couple of either sex, I bet he’d have gone someplace else.) The arrogance and privilege, and the constant disruption of daily life for millions of people, that has been assumed not just by THIS tyrant, but by ALL recent occupiers of 1600 PA, is an insult to a free people – and even to a people who are all but slaves, and cost billions both in direct expenses AND in lost time and money for businesses and families and individuals. How LONG can this go on?
Mama’s Note: How long can this go on? As long as people are willing to allow it.
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.