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Stonehead

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Everything posted by Stonehead

  1. Stonehead

    Dino Rossi

    'A sense of fairness – and a reluctance to give unrepresented employees a reason to organize – caused leaders to give nonunion workers the same kinds of raises, Deputy County Executive Kevin Phelps said last week."
  2. Every windmill built and every electric car brought out of production and into the market is one step further away from the insanity of the Middle East. But it only seems that the resource wars will shift to other areas.
  3. Stonehead

    Dino Rossi

    [video:youtube]v=ycdiCL5ZOP8 The assumption is that future generations will be enlightened enough not to make the same mistakes of the past!
  4. I predict Google will revolutionize politics: --Google CEO Eric Schmidt Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists'
  5. No. Obama and the Democrats are pursuing the same gameplan initiated during the Bush Administration but have expanded it to include Pakistan and Yemen. Knock one down, twenty more spring back up. But that's the nature of the game isn't it?
  6. Stonehead

    Toast

    What Ben Bernanke will be if quantitative easing round two fails.
  7. Whackmole? Wouldn't that be the name of our CIA led program of drone attacks against the insurgents?
  8. Increasing the number of voters tends to dilute the impact of your vote, especially if the increase is populated by the decision making of morons. Sure, that's a cynical eye on the process but I gotta say it begins in our formative years within the educational system. Seems to reason that reformation starts with education. But if what you really want is a homogenized product then by all means continue with the current system.
  9. The writer of that article brings up a good point and judging by his book (Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality) it appears that the state of our public education system is a large part of the equation. I wouldn't necessarily chalk it up to synchonicity but I simultaneouly ran across related information concerning the role of education. The Underground History of American Education I suppose you could dismiss the guy's opinions but the question remains, is there something wrong with our educational system?
  10. [video:youtube]v=2B_SxGmSJP0
  11. Just Congress?? What about the Executive Branch? [video:youtube]v=bLpNSvpMoZQ
  12. Hey but have any of them kicked any children in the face? [video:youtube]v=TLfbtduLaho
  13. Talkin' about gov't intrusions...here's some newly revealed info about a FBI informant who possibly prompted the Ohio National Guard to open fire on war protesters. Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)
  14. Just remember, Bill. No pressure.
  15. j_b's wet dream: [video:youtube]v=5FkB4uiizVo
  16. Stonehead

    Yay?

    Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds
  17. And to think, you thought that nothing good could come from Tacoma.
  18. Stonehead

    Yay?

    Yeah, I came across more cynical than necessary. I don’t want to burn the system down. In its ideal state, it’s probably the best system that we can have. But here, I evoke the words of Henry David Thoreau who said: “That government is best which governs least” and who qualified his sentiment by adding, “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. The crux of it is that I don’t feel that government need necessarily be the primary vehicle to effect social change. It’s like that anecdote about Gandhi where a mother complains about her son eating too much sugar. She brought the problem to the wise man for him to solve but he said nothing other than for her to return in two weeks. When those two weeks were up, she went back to Mahatma who confessed to the mother that he could offer no solution before eliminating his own habit of consuming sugar. Sure, one could focus on the point of the story as being about not appearing hypocritical but I choose to see it about the importance of the individual in dispelling ignorance and effecting change. I just believe that the apparatus of government while it is used to pursue worthwhile goals such as eliminating institutionalized bigotry or other social justice issues, these same causes are also the vehicle by which government exerts more and more control over an individual’s free will. Putting aside notions of what free will is, this impetus might not necessarily be a bad thing because sometimes we need a prod in the right direction despite having all or most of the information necessary. But, something still bristles on my gut level at that notion of being governed. Now, I don’t believe in the full caricature that we’re automatons or becoming such, but I have moments when it doesn’t seem such a farfetched conjecture. Perhaps a Freudian or other psychoanalyst could chalk it up to anti-authoritarian tendencies developed during my formative years. Or, perhaps a sociologist / historian could say that it’s not so much ontogeny as it is something more along the lines of phylogeny, that culturally we’re still in our formative years towards a more mature society. But again, I just happen to believe that change is effected at the individual level and I would reiterate the emphasis brought forth by Lysander Spooner on the idea of the ‘consent of the governed’, that the social contract implies that the agreement is valid when there are two consenting parties. If I understand correctly, undue influence by one party exerted over the other implies a situation of duress in which case the agreement may legally become null and void. Here, there is no longer free mutual consent rather it is a matter of imposition of the state upon its citizens. So this is becoming the situation where nullification appears to be the answer, not across the board but rather to signal that there are limits to power that will be freely accepted. I don't know if I have the ability to put it more clearly just being an angry hairy ape and all. To summarize: I might have it wrong but my understanding of ordered liberty is that there should be just enough government to protect our freedom but not too much.
  19. Stonehead

    Yay?

    No, you completely miss the point of what I'm saying. Why did you decide to grow your own garden?
  20. Stonehead

    Yay?

    What exactly is democracy? When everything’s said and done, is it in the end just a public stamp of approval on government actions which might turn out to be contrary to the ultimate well-being of the people? I don’t buy the whole line of “if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain”. What a load of horseshit! Some people consider elections to be a sham, not necessarily that there’s widespread corruption but that such large amounts of money are thrown into public relations campaigns to influence the results. In essence the few quiet insistent but rational voices are drowned out by the roar of rushing money. These people choose not to endorse a flawed system by participating in it. The process of voting in itself is no protection. Can’t a democracy foster in a fascistic system? Aren’t we tacitly endorsing the latter system by allowing technology to tip the balance? Saul Allinsky wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in today’s world of techno-authoritarianism. F--- people power. Seriously, are there other ways of petitioning the government for redress of grievances other than through a representative or through the initiative process? For that matter, why government? Not that a person would wage war, which would be insane but perhaps the acceptance that a solution for everything need not be provided. Just live life with all its flaws, accept mortality and suffering as part of the human condition, and perhaps use the greatest tool you were given, not for the pursuit of power but in the pursuit of real happiness.
  21. What's this about? Is it subliminal? [video:youtube]v=pw5uCAgL_1g
  22. Stonehead

    Bend over

    Oh, don't kid yourself, it's certainly both. If you're going to take this tack, it may be a good time to broaden a definition of the State to include a wider array of actors, something along the lines of Gramsci's "extended state" lest one fall into the myopic "big guvermint" schtick that blind to exactly the kind of private economic power j_b's post is about. Certainly it might be an oversimplification but doesn’t everyone recognize the root problem as one of concentration of power whether that power resides in government or in the monied interests of the private sector or in both? I just find it amusing that Otto von Bismarck in recognition of the growing threat from the socialists presided over what was to become the modern welfare-warfare state. To counteract the socialists he used the goals and to some extent the methods of his opponents to achieve the ends of power. We know it wasn’t altruism that informed his actions in the creation of that state. I happen to believe that Government in its proper role should only be large enough to protect our interests but only to the extent that it counteracts another source of power; so government in its wisdom serves to act as a check and balance on the concentration of power. I can’t help with the internal contradiction that might arise due to the fact that one party might have to be more powerful than the other to keep the other in check.
  23. Stonehead

    Bend over

    The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. --Bertrand de Jouvenel, French philosopher, political economist, and futurist.
  24. [video:youtube]b7GIl4zKrV8
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