Category Archives: Private Property

Another Storm in a Tea Cup, Apparently

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Ilana Mercer, Media, Private Property, Regulation

This blog title replicates one written in 12.19.06. The repetitiveness reflects the lack of change in the media status of the people of the “provinces.” Thanks for asking, Robert, we are okay, having weathered a major ice storm that hit the Pacific Northwest. But we were without power for close to three days.

FoxNew reported only yesterday that “250,000 electric customers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia were without power Friday because of a winter storm that coated much of Washington state in ice, swelled Oregon rivers and brought the expectation of more flooding in both states with warmer temperatures and rain.”

Scratch that: Power went out on Thursday morning. By nighttime, the temperature inside my home had plunged to 52 degrees. Even though we have a generator (purchased after the 2006, first “Storm in a Tea Cup”), we were caught with practically no fuel, having listened—and heeded—the weather reports. No warnings were issued. If anything, our weather experts predicted a big thaw come Thursday.

However, cold air and an arctic north wind saw temperatures drop into the 20s across much of the region. Fluffy snow (20cm, at least), on which I had jogged happily a day before, was soon covered in a thick sheet of ice. All through the night we listened as clumps of the stuff fell from the giant ceder trees onto the house. Fortunately we had had the trees windsailed, so they seemed stable, but the weight of the ice saw big branches snap off like twigs.

We had been thinking of having a few trees felled, for safety. But, as you know, your property is not your own, and each such consideration demands a letter from an arborist and a hefty shakedown “baksheesh,” paid to the local goons at the municipality. Such regulation is probably responsible for loss of life.

Indeed, sadly, a falling tree killed an unknown neighbor, RIP: “The tree fell on a person backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a shed this morning near Issaquah, said King County said King County sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West.”

This post reflects upon the stasis among the statists and media sycophants. And since any oscillation in the form of a learning curve is absent from the system called the state, local and federal, I will repeat the questions I posed after the 2006 storm in the Pacific Northwest:

Utilities are only nominally private and are heavily regulated. How have regulations affected their response times and, most crucially, the maintenance of the power grid?

The grid and power lines suffered mostly tree damage. In this part of the world, the trees everywhere are intertwined with the cable. Why? Why isn’t a wide tree-free swath maintained around these vital structures? Why are trees not chopped back?

I suspect the explanation lies in the self-defeating dementia of tree fetishists, and “Watermelon” legislation — green on the outside; red on the inside. However, as usual, the “Watermelon” worldview creates more havoc than it prevents. Because of wood fires, the usually pristine air in our part of the world resembles the air above the shanty town of Soweto. The resources and energy spent–and the lives lost–because of this mess are many times the cost or worth of a few thousand trees.

On a less personal note, this week’s WND column was an especially hot one, but there is no point in posting it to the blog now. I will, rather, post the column once it goes up on RT. My “paleolibertarian” column now features on the Russia Today broadcaster’s website. I ask all my BAB readers to “Recommend/Like” the RT column, each week, and retweet it. RT deserves your support for its support and interest in ideas other banal minds won’t touch, don’t you think?

And on a funny note: It was a struggle to keep our African parrots warm, but they settled into the routine. When T. Cup awoke this morning to warm, normal house temperatures and light levels, he demanded happily, in his old cute voice: “yummy-yummy.” And then he quickly comforted himself, “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

A recent image of T. Cup and his “mommy” is on the gallery. To view TC, wait for the page to upload all the images.

UPDATED: Fired Up Over Firing

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Elections, Free Markets, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Reason, Republicans

As I pointed out weeks ago on an RT broadcast, Newt Gingrich attacked Mitt Romney for what are the prerogatives of private property and the fiduciary duty of a CEO managing private property: firing people or evicting them from private property.

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t quite put it in such uncompromising terms, but he points out today what a feat of unparalleled moronity is the specter of “capitalism being attacked by the Republican” presidential front-runners.” “It’s senseless. It doesn’t make any sense,” gushes Rush.

Establishment conservatives only acknowledge reality once their own kind awakens to it, in this instance, Romeny’s vigorous defense of profits was noticed by Rush due to National Review’s Jay Nordlinger, who has rightly derides Mitt Romeny’s anti-capitalism detractors.

“Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race?” The one guy out there defending capitalism, the one guy out there trying to explain corporate profits to the Occupy crowd, he’s the squish, he’s the moderate, he’s the guy that we have the problem with? “That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a ‘real conservative’? Speak bad English and belch?

[Don’t bother to post here in reply if you are unable to separate this episode from the actors you dislike, and are wont to launch into a, “I hate all establishment conservatives, therefore I, lazily, refuse to address anything they say or do, right or wrong, and demand that you, Ilana, appease my idiocy.]

UPDATE: Paul defends Romney ‘fire’ comment and history at Bain. Good for him.

What is interesting is that dumbo Dana Bash—a CNN reporter whose love for Obama is second only to Jessica Yellin’s, another CNN pack animal—spun the Paul response as strategic, rather than principled. She’s not even an “analyst,” for what that title’s worth at CNN, yet she’s parsing a Paul response for markets (a thing she has no grasp of) as a response for politics. Yellin is now, as I write, yelling with excitement because, naming anonymous sources (isn’t that a no-no in Journalism, unless a matter of life-and-death?), she has had confirmation from her Man’s camp (BHO), that Romney has unraveled in the past 48 hours. Weird. Didn’t he just win a New Hampshire Primary?

UPDATE IV: Payroll Pickpockets: ‘Please, Sir, I Want Some More’ (Pocket Money for the Peons)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Government, Private Property, Republicans, Taxation

It’s intended as a temporary, two-month tax cut. Nothing permanent. Our munificent masters in DC are wrangling over whether to throw their galley slaves (taxpayers) some pennies in time for the Holidays. In and out of our pockets they reach, only to decide, on Tuesday, that “a Senate plan for a two-month extension” of the payroll tax was “irresponsible and unworkable,” and that “it would create uncertainty by failing to resolve the issue past February.”

Swept up in the manufactured drama, CNN observes: “However, the Senate agreement was negotiated by Democratic and Republican leaders and received strong GOP support in passing on an 89-10 vote. … President Barack Obama joined the Democratic chorus, noting that Senate leaders from both parties had agreed to the short-term extension in order to guarantee that taxes don’t increase for working Americans while negotiations continue early next year on the one-year extension that House Republicans say they support.”

Said the agitator from Chicago of House Republicans: “What they’re really holding out for is to wring concessions from Democrats on issues that have nothing to do with the payroll tax cut.”

Why does the thief-in-chief not advocate for permanent tax cuts? Why not cut taxes meaningfully?

The whole routine reminds me of Oliver Twist, the little orphan protagonist in the eponymous Charles Dickens novel. And in particular, the scene where he rattles his breakfast bowel for some more gruel.

UPDATE I: PRIVATE PROPERTY. We’ve been over this before, Pauli, in another post. You are wrong about tax cuts being “hooey.” Not unless private property is “hooey.” Let me put it plainly: I don’t care what DC spends, so long as it’s mitts off my property. A pay check is private property. Your formulations are predicated on communal ownership; mine on private ownership. Throttle the revenue stream, restore private-property rights, and the bastards can do what they like.

UPDATE II: The War Street Journal is furious at House Republicans:

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

UPDATE III (Dec. 22): To the defenders below of taxation in all its permutation: I am sure I speak for your sovereigns in DC: They are, no doubt, grateful for your faith in their ability to mange your money. From this scribe’s perspective, however, money stuffed down the maw of the Federal Frankenstein will seldom end up where it’s supposed to (as if that “destination” is so laudable to begin with). Congress, the president and the bureaucracy: These are embezzlers par excellence—so good are they at what they peddle that they have BAB’s fearless bloggers on their side.

Wake up: Money extracted from us by the Feds is fungible. Any additional revenues the Feds receive via taxes they will use to plunge private property owners deeper into debt. The solution to the debt is not to be found in seizing private property (through taxes) and placing it in communal ownership (state bureaucracies), where resources are never allocated efficiently and are always squandered.

But, this is the season of good will, and the oink sector that serves the tax-and-spend police state that Uncle Sam has become is, I am sure, thankful for your confidence

UPDATE IV: The peons get pocket money for two more months. ObamaMedia celebrate a tactical victory for the Prince of Darkness. Details of the deal here. Puke fest all around. CNN correspondents Jessica Yellin is almost yelling, “Political touchdown.” Almost.

Theatre of the Absurd

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, History, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, The State

A couple of hours ago I filed this week’s WND column with my editor (I file on Wednesdays). I have just heard Judge Napolitano deliver his editorial on Freedom Watch. Uncanny. The theme of my new column tracks with the Judge’s editorial. I had titled my column “Who’s It To Be? Teddy # 1 Or Teddy # 2?” (My good editor will often find better, more pithy titles.) In any event, I wrote this:

“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day? And I replied, “The dice were loaded in Teddy’s favor. The sitting Democratic president (Obama) and the Republican odds-on favorite for president (Gingrich) are in TR’s corner…”

Our heroic Judge, in his December 7 segment (not yet posted), asks and answers similar questions.

Hopefully, many more people beyond the libertarian orbit will come to experience the same gut reaction at this theatre of the absurd.