11/09/2008 by mezzrowjr
By Marty Nemko:
I had a client today who always gives 110%. Yes, he reaps rewards, but he's stressed out much of the time, makes mistakes as a result, and hasn't developed close personal or professional relationships.
by mezzrowjr
A brilliant post by a commenter at Men's News Daily about the proposed plan from The Choosen One on his new community service program amfortas left this repsonse:
amfortas said,
Change came in the Morning.
We were not ready.
We were distracted.
Exhausted.
Battle had taken its toll
The Family barely survived.
But the children played.
Malevolent Smile.
She was Ready.
Definite. Ordered.
The Blue Pencil, poised.
Poisoned.
The first was Fair, our childhood’s most cherished friend:
Resolver of squabbles, distributor, sharer,
Fair cared for all:
a string of rubies around her doomed, pale and lovely neck.
It was so sad.
They said it was consumption.
All used up, in tatters, shrouded,
she just faded away.
Next to go was that sturdy, quarrelsome Equality, which surprised us all
as he was so in demand, they said,
by all,
especially some;
aye, and relied upon.
For so many years a staunch friend and fighter.
His burial dressage, a white cheesecloth, yoked neck.
Naked beneath,
his scarred skin a testament.
Parchment.
Burned Beyond Recognition.
Truth tried hard.
Was Tried. Hard.
Derided, Derrida-ed,
denied existence;
perjured,
Falsely accused,
she struggled
as she was garrotted.
Died hard.
Soon after that, Justice
suicided off a nearby cliff.
Lover’s Leap, a place then
from which many a couple had gazed out,
seeking the broader vista.
Now has Disabled Access.
Was it in despair?
Perhaps sympathy with the others.
No-one saw her silent fall.
Was she pushed?
Who could gain?
Her handmaids will argue for a time and time,
billing Innocence by the hour,
Kept in chains, for gain.
The old, wise man, Honour, lost his marbles, they said.
He languished as the village idiot for a while,
The butt of jokes and calumnies.
Taunted.
His body was found in a ditch one day.
Starvation.
They left it there.
The loss of these good companions all
has been followed now
by Liberty and Freedom,
two noble and leathery old soldiers.
They put on their dress uniforms, immaculate,
faced each other squarely and
blew each other’s brains out.
Such fine shots, both.
They left a note. Signed as written together.
They could no longer support the malignancy of the vile regime,
the note said.
They felt duty-bound to remove themselves
from further abuse,
the note said.
They took Duty with them.
An Altar was discovered in the woods
On which the charred bones of hermaphrodite Trust
Were found,
Sacrificed to Narcissus, elevated to the Pantheon.
Tears flowed down Olympus’ stony sides.
Even God cries.
After, there was Laughter, Music, Whine.
High pitched.
So much fun.
The departed were only words
After all.
Oppressive words.
Now dead.
Like Fathers.
Dead, white males.
What, three were maids?
So? Whatever, said the wenches.
No one noticed Love fall to her knees.
Her calls for help were drowned by song.
Trampled to death under dancing feet.
The last to succumb.
Four.
The surging mob, with popular will,
Tied Democracy’s hands, and,
fattened and degraded on suet foie gras
trotted it to the abattoir.
The Impostor was on the scene quickly.
Ready, Definite.
Re-defined.
By Order. She said.
Scripted.
The Princess of Lies rides
over barren lands.
Long hair her spider-silk, chain-mail
down her back.
Across her breast,
Over her steed’s flank.
Hooves on skulls.
The children gabble and cry.
No words
describe
their pain.
They were
forbidden.
November 7, 2008 at 8:43 pm
by mezzrowjr
March 10, 1997
by Doug Bandow
In yet another display of how the Clinton administration intends to use bipartisanship as a cover to fleece U.S. taxpayers, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Texas to win the support of former President Bush for increased spending on foreign affairs. "There is a stupid feeling in some quarters that we don't have any more threats in the world," complained Bush.
Yet the administration's request for a 1.2 billion increase for the State Department and the Agency for International Development obviously has nothing to do with foreign threats.
Indeed, if international threats had anything to do with the foreign affairs budget, it would have been cut radically after 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Cuba's Fidel Castro, North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic are all poor substitutes for the Soviet Union.
Instead of dropping, however, international affairs outlays have been growing. According to Bryan Johnson and Brett Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation, expenditures rose steadily from 1987 through 1994, before dipping slightly. The State Department's budget is more than a quarter larger today than in 1985.
And now the State Department is demanding even more money. Of course, Washington has opened embassies in the any new countries that arose out of the ashes of the communist bloc. However, America has no pressing need for a large diplomatic presence in nations like Armenia, Georgia and Slovenia.
Anyway, as Johnson and Schaefer point out, "There is plenty of money in wasteful and ineffective economic development aid and other nonessential accounts to cover the cost of these new operations." Since World War II the United States has spent nearly $1 trillion (in 1997 dollars) on foreign aid. The result is debt, dependency and poverty.
Even many advocates of foreign assistance have been disappointed by the results. For instance, USAID admitted in 1993 that "much of the investment financed by USAID and other donors between 1960 and 1980 has disappeared without a trace." USAID administrator Brian Atwood admits that in the case of Zaire, "the investment of over $2 billion of American foreign-aid served no purpose."
Decades of experience demonstrate that government-to-government transfers do not generate self-sustaining economic growth.
Virtually every Third World state has received significant amounts of foreign aid, yet the majority have stagnated economically, indeed, many nations have been losing ground. Fully 70 developing countries are poorer today than they were in 1980; 44 are worse off than they were in 1960. Nowhere do aid levels correlate with economic growth.
Many of the biggest recipients of foreign assistance, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Sudan and Tanzania, have been among the globe's worst economic performers.
Peter Boone of the London School of Economics reviewed the experience of nearly 100 nations, concluding that "Long-term aid is not a means to create growth." As Boone explained, "Poverty is not caused by capital shortage, and it is not optimal for politicians to adjust distortionary policies when they receive aid flows."
An even more comprehensive study is "Economic Freedom of the World: 1975-1995," by economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson and Robert Block.
Two particularly important lessons emerged from their study:
* First, economic policies matter. Countries earning a rating of A or B averaged real per capita GDP growth of 2.4 percent from 1980 to 1994. In contrast, the economies of the 27 countries graded an F actually shrunk. Explain the authors: "No country with a persistently high economic freedom rating during the two decades failed to achieve a high level of income. In contrast, no country with a persistently low rating was able to achieve even middle income status."
* Second, economic reform yields economic growth. According to the study, the 17 nations with the greatest increases in economic freedom enjoyed an average growth rate of 3.1 percent from 1985 to 1994. Per capita GDP declined in most of the 16 nations with the largest drops in economic freedom.
by mezzrowjr
Alexander Hamilton - 1775
[Hamilton is quoting Blackstone’s Commentaries, bk. 1, ch. 2:]
"If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other."
From Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961-79), 1:106.
by mezzrowjr
Febuary 2006
This year’s spectacular Rose Bowl game attracted a phenomenal 35.6 million viewers because it featured what we want: rugged men playing football and attractive women cheering them on. Americans of every class, men and women, remained glued to their television sets, and nearly 95,000 spectators watched from the stands.
The runaway success of this game proved again that stereotypical roles for men and women do not bother Americans one bit. Political correctness lost out as all-male teams battled and women cheered.
It’s too bad that male sports are being eliminated on most college campuses. Except for Texas, USC, and a few other places, radical feminism rules in the athletic departments at the expense of popular male sports.
Feminists oppose anything that is all-male or all-female unless it’s gay marriage. They won’t be able to ban the Rose Bowl anytime soon, but the Feminist Majority Foundation posts this warning on its website: “By encouraging boys to become aggressive, violent athletes, and by encouraging girls to cheer for them, we perpetuate the cycle of male aggression and violence against women.”
Using bureaucratic and legal clout, the feminists have been censoring out hundreds of traditional manly college sports teams. If your favorite college once had a wrestling, baseball or track team, check again: there’s a good chance it has been eliminated.
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