Tuesday, November 24

The forced transfer of land from private homeowners and small businesses to a rich, connected, powerful developer in Brooklyn has received sanction from the NYS Supreme court.
This kind of eviction for the benefit of the rich developer and the parasitic tax collectors was endorsed by the SCOTUS under Kelo v. City of New London decided in 2005. The KELO decision created a popular backlash across the country, prompting legislation in many states to limit forced takings (not in NY), but the decision was also supported by some powerful interests, too, like the NY Times. Note that the Times editorial was penned from a building they were able to purchase earlier on the cheap due to eminent domain support as part the renewal of the greater Times Square area. Impartial observer, not so much. Imagine once we get fully state-subsidized media... Anyway, it's also worth noting that the planned development which robbed the Kelo's of their home isn't even progressing.
Either way, just to be clear - you may be forced from your home or business if the government deems it may reap greater tax revenue from your property after it is handed over to someone else.

Friday, November 20

"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians began taking down their statues of Josef Stalin, the mass murderer who killed millions of people. Astonishingly, in America, the National D-Day Memorial is honoring Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at its museum in Bedford, Virginia."

Thursday, November 19

Going "Rogue", according to Webster's:
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1561
1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

Tuesday, November 10

In hindsight, the horrors of the socialist empires (Soviet Socialist, National Socialist) seem like the obvious, logical conclusions of the dreams of their leaders. Bryan Caplan shares one remarkable author (and some of his own thoughts) who was able to predict with uncanny accuracy the configuration of such planned societies before their emergence.

Meanwhile, yesterday, America’s paper of record published a long winded, typically opaque opinion by “theorist” rock-star Slavoj Zizek lamenting the situation of those central and eastern European countries who struggle with political change, development, and the crime of “anti-communism.” Arguing by association, implication, and innuendo, but never logic or history, he fills his writing with the passive voice and implies laughable moral equivalents (the censorship of McCarthyism and murderousness of Stalinism).

He eventually leads the reader to lament a man driven to suicide from a failed collective farming experiment in Bolivia, a man who lines earlier was noted for “enforcing” (Zizek’s own term) collectivization on Ukraine, leading to 10s of millions dead by “terror-famine” (Try reading The Harvest of Sorrow for a detailed account that will depress you for a season).

To break it down, he plays the reader for sympathy for a Soviet Eichmann , an ugly and morally dishonest enterprise, though one imagines he thinks himself clever for it.

The continued endorsement of such lines of thought – support for the myth that the socialist states were ever not murderous, the fantasy of socialism without coercion, smart sounding Marxist piffle – remains only possible for those who choose to ignore the history that is still so close, still alive in millions who lived through it, those who pretend that a society completely organized could be anything but coercive.

Monday, November 9

Such a simple but potent symbol of the systemic failure of communist model: the Wall. Fallen, 20 years ago today.
The great physical manifestation of the metaphorical Iron Curtain, the wall accomplished a task unheard of in a free society - forcing people to stay. That communist regimes needed guns, concrete and barbed wire just to keep their system from dying from emigration is a simple irrefutable argument for the terribleness of their systems.
Celebrate your freedom today!

Friday, November 6

The Berlin Wall that came down 20 years ago this month was an apt symbol of communism. It represented a historically unprecedented effort to prevent people from "voting with their feet" and leaving a society they rejected. The wall was only the most visible segment of a vast system of obstacles and fortifications: the Iron Curtain, which stretched for thousands of miles along the border of the "Socialist Commonwealth."
- Paul Hollander The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of European Communism continues to be under-reported and under-celebrated.

Wednesday, November 4

Note to Senior White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett: you don't get to speak truth to power anymore. You're in power. You work for the most powerful man on the planet. You're the "man" in "when the man says jump you ask how high."

This is speaking truth to power.

Eliot Spitzer explains how the White House defense of the status quo will give Republicans powerful ammunition in the 2010 elections.