Category Archives: Private Property

The Power of Private Property

Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, The State

“Bat shit crazy” is what Rep. Ron Paul was called when he suggested that “victims of the flooding of the Mississippi River … should be building their own levees.” What do you know? Before evacuating the area of Vicksburg, Miss, reports NPR, “some residents and farmers took matters into their own hands and built personal levees to protect their homes from floodwaters. Some of the levees rise as high as the roof, if not higher.”

Come hell or high water, people will protect what’s theirs; what they’ve worked for. Government, on the other hand, is engaged in the crooked calculus of attempting to minimize overall damage and maximize the common good. Since its agents have no stake in the property managed, the plans and their execution are bound to be shoddy.

“Entrusted with the management and regulation of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know , only pretend to care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your performance plummets?

“The root of environmental despoliation is the tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights in the resource. One of my favorite running routes wends along miles of lakeside property, all privately owned, and ever so pristine. Where visitors dirty the trail that cleaves to the majestic homes; fastidious owners are quick to pick up after them.

In the absence of private ownership in the means of production, government-controlled resources go to seed. There is simply no one with strong enough a stake in the landmass or waterway to police it before disaster strikes.” (Source: “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann”)

‘Arab Spring’ Spills Over Into Israel

Democracy, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Private Property

The American news cartel and commentariat have promised that the Arab Spring is a good thing. And indeed, by their standards, the breaching of Israel’s borders by neighborly Arabs with a spring in their step is not necessarily a bad thing. Today Haa’retz has conceded what DEBKAfile reported on May 15:

Israeli forces on high alert for Nakba Day, Sunday, May 15, failed to seal three national borders on the Golan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip against large-scale incursions. Dozens of Syrians and Hizballah invaders were able to overrun the Israeli Golan village of Majd al Shams and hoist Syrian and Palestinian flags in the main square; Hizballah-sponsored Palestinian demonstrators breached the Lebanese-Israeli border and damaged IDF installations; and hundreds of Palestinians battered the Erez crossing from the Gaza Strip.

Haa’retz caught up with DEBKAfile:

Sources in the Northern Command confirmed the existence of intelligence indicating that Nakba Day demonstrators planned to try to cross the border near the “Shouting Hill,” across from Majdal Shams. However, they said, the IDF had based its deployment on past experience, and expected the Syrian army to prevent the demonstrators from breaching the border.

However late, at least Israel does defend its border communities, which is more than can be said for the homes ransacked and ranchers shot on the US’s south-western border (often while patrolling their fence lines and tending their cattle).

UPDATED: Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions

Democrats, Education, Government, Labor, Political Economy, Politics, Private Property

The following is excerpted from “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” my new WND.COM column:

“For evidence of the power of the teachers unions acting out on the streets of Madison, Wis., look no further than your property taxes. Almost 50 percent of mine are garnished for ‘Local School Support.’ ‘Port, Fire, Hospital, Library’ constitute a miniscule 5 percent of the property-tax bill. Law enforcement is not even itemized. Other states confiscate even higher percentages from their propertied taxpayers in the service of government-employed teachers.

Yes, do use the term ‘government unions,’ won’t you, as ‘public sector’ or ‘public servants’ implies, incorrectly, that these people serve the public. Besides, have you seen these slackers? In his path-breaking book, ‘The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education,’ Peter Brimelow left us with a lasting mental image of our children’s over-sated role models, attending one of the National Education Association’s annual meetings. The same apparition is everywhere apparent in Madison, as teachers ‘wobble and waddle through the teeming crowds of [supporters] … thighs like tree trunks, bellies billowing, jowls jiggling.’

Over and above the property tax – the federal income tax claims from those who pay it more monies for the educational oink sector. Whether the taxpayer has children in the system or doesn’t, whether he chooses to homeschool his offspring or pays for a private school, whether he approves of the job government pedagogues are doing or doesn’t – he has to pay them, even go into hock for them.

To compound it all, America has a most progressive tax code. According to USA Today, the number of Americans who owe no federal income taxes, and do not share in the cost of government, stood at 47 percent in 2009, and is increasing. What has come to pass John C. Calhoun predicted in ‘A Disquisition on Government,’ where he described the devolution of a democracy in which all private property is, eventually, subjected to the vagaries of majority rule. …”

The complete column, “Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions,” is now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE (Feb. 26): Tom DiLorenzo points out the power of the monopoly that is the government union:

The enormous power of government-employee unions effectively transfers the power to tax from voters to the unions. Because government-employee unions can so easily force elected officials to raise taxes to meet their “demands,” it is they, not the voters, who control the rate of taxation within a political jurisdiction. They are the beneficiaries of a particular form of taxation without representation (not that taxation with representation is much better). This is why some states have laws prohibiting strikes by government-employee unions. (The unions often strike anyway.)
Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The “solution” to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics.
As taxpayers in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and many other states are realizing, the future has arrived. The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. They must either raise taxes dramatically to fund these liabilities, as some have already done, or drastically cut back or eliminate government-employee pensions.

What The Effing ‘Children’ Cost YOU

Crime, Democracy, Education, Labor, Private Property, Taxation

The Takers, tax consumers, want the Makers, the so-called rich, to support their parasitical life style. And the Über-parasites, the politicians, make the most of this state-of-affairs, otherwise known as human nature. For evidence of the power of the constituency that claims what’s YOURS on behalf of THEIR effing children, look no further than your property taxes. More than 50 percent of mine are garnished for “Local School Support.” “Port, Fire, Hospital, Library” constitute a minuscule 5 percent of the property-tax bill. Law enforcement is not even itemized. So when you’re told that budget cuts will hurt the police and sheriff departments across your state (here)—understand that said budget is probably already tiny and will be getting tinier in service of the Our Children, ignorance—the worst in the developed world—is unaffected by the money we are compelled to spend in furtherance of that legendary ignorance.

If you pay property taxes, please tell us at BAB what percentage your state extracts for the benefit of The Effing, Ignorant Kids.