Western Wis. Tea Parties On April 15

Here's a couple of Tea Parties scheduled for April 15 in western Wisconsin. Apparently these are non-partisan events where everybody can bitch about their taxes with the fear of getting a spit shower from your local anti-government, reactionary objectivist. I'm going to try and make both of them. I want to be there for the riots that are sure to take place.

North Hudson at Mud-And-Suds from 4-6 PM

For more information, click here.

New Richmond at the City Hall from Noon-1 PM

For more information, click here.

Can Government Run Things As Bad As The Private Sector?

"...There is every reason to believe that a temporarily nationalized bank will behave much better--even if most of the employees are still the same--simply because we will have changed the perverse incentives. Besides, a government-run bank might spend some time and money teaching its employees about risk management, good lending practices, social responsibility and ethics. The experience elsewhere, including in the Scandinavian countries, shows that the whole process can be done well--and when the economy is eventually restored to prosperity, the profitable banks can be returned to the private sector. What is required is not rocket science. Banks simply need to get back to what they were supposed to do: lending money, on a prudent basis, to businesses and households, based not just on collateral but on a good assessment of the use to which borrowers will put the money and their ability to repay it.

Meanwhile, there needs to be an orderly plan for disposing of the old bad assets. There is no magic in moving them around from one owner to another. In some countries, government agencies (often hiring private subcontractors) have done a good job of selling off the assets. Other countries (including some hit in the East Asia crisis a decade ago) have had an unfortunate experience, bringing in investment banks and hedge funds to dispose of their assets. These institutions simply held them for the short time it took the economy to recover and made a huge capital gain at the expense of the country's taxpayers. To add insult to injury, some even took advantage of tax havens to avoid paying taxes on those huge profits. These experiences suggest caution in turning to hedge funds and other investment firms..."

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Read more @ The Nation.

Ayn Rand RIP...Please

“Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.”

The Wall Street Journal

Read more...



"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selfishness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self."

Ayn Rand
The Soul of an Individualist

"I've met a huge number of conservatives whose world view is what everyone selling a get rich quick scheme is just praying for: "Poor people are poor because they're lazy and stupid. I'm going up. Up. Up!" Unfortunately, like a lot of us, they get a crappy job that pays for shit and they don't go up. Up. Up!

Our would be revolutionaries have gone a step or three down the trail. Clearly anyone who disagrees with them and is doing better than them is part of a conspiracy to hold them back, and anyone doing worse, who is being supported in some way by the state is part of Ayn Rand's great unwashed that would fall into barbarism if not for their continued contribution to society. It's us vs. them! (Well, it's them vs. me, since I work in the sciences and my wife grows arugula and deer tongue in the back yard, but you know.)

Personally, I'm waiting for enough liberal types to get frightened by these guys, followed by the absolute hand waving freak-outery when FOX reports a poll that suggests that a lot more liberals are buying guns."

Kid Charlemagne

Maybe We Should Ban Guns In Commercials...

Maybe it's just me...Maybe I don't watch enough TV...

Here I am watching the NCAA Men's Basketball semi finals and they cut to a commercial. I thought it was a preview for some upcoming show, but it was a commercial for Jimmy John's sandwiches. In the commercial posted below, guns are blazing, people were being terrorized, etc. After the game, the news ran the story on the shooting and killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh.

Maybe it's time to ban guns in commercials. Below is a link to the commercial of which I speak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00f2Ac9e98g&feature=player_embedded

Three officers die in US shooting



Police say N.Y. immigrant shooter's act no surprise

Another 1st & 2nd Amendment Defender...

Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry…

Pittsburgh police Officers Paul Sciullo III and Stephen Mayhle were about an hour short of ending their overnight shifts yesterday when 911 dispatched them to 1016 Fairfield St. in Stanton Heights at 7:05 a.m. The call, described as a domestic argument between a mother and son with no weapons involved, was also heard by Officer Eric Kelly, who had just finished his 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift.

Still in uniform but driving his own white SUV to his Stanton Heights home, he decided to swing by Fairfield to back up his fellow officers from the Zone 5 station in East Liberty.

With 14 years on the force, Officer Kelly knew domestic calls can be the most dangerous an officer faces. This call would underscore that sad truth.

Within minutes, all three officers were fatally shot by the subject of the domestic call, later identified as Richard "Pop" Poplawski, 22. A discharged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a "Zionist nation" revoking his right to own guns...

Read more @ the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.



"He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples' right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill."

Edward Perkovic
Richard Andrew Poplawski's lifelong best friend


“Crazy to me is going through the motions. Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless."

Richard Andrew Poplawski
Killer of three Pittsburgh policemen on 4/4/2009