Andrew Ian Dodge is running for senator from Maine and gives a great interview at RedState, including addressing that all-importand facial hair issue:
“Many men in American political history had facial hair like Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, I would wish to continue that time-honored tradition.”
You end up living with the world you built, not the one you thought you built.
Except it still seems a little weird having Atlas Shrugged updated to be set in modern times, and the characters don’t look much like my mental images. Reardon, to whom I most relate, comes closest.
I’m overdue for a reread, but with the film pending, I considered it recently and decided to put it off.
Saw the other day an article about the latest intentions by the USPS to review and possibly close thousands of unprofitable branches.
But we need the services they offer!
But it’s the central focus of the village!
Wail. Gnash.
How can it possibly be this hard? I mean, besides the whole “government bureaucracy” element making it nigh impossible to function, let alone efficiently.
We are closer than we’ve ever been before to a scenario in which a private company could readily take over or supplant the entire operations of the postal service, starting from elements already having been farmed out for the sake of cost and efficiency. In my mind, that makes a lesser leap easy.
Offer up the locations that are on the block. Either as such, or to some other place in the locality, to carry on the same basic functions as a contractor. Simple. Offer them preferentially to the employees who now operate them. Turn them into something between a kiosk and a service desk function of a local store or other business.
Private mail centers have been done! They were so compelling, UPS bought a chain, and FedEx added that aspect to a one-off chain. Stores that double as a post office have been done! My first apartment was in a village where mail went to a PO box in an antique store that doubled as a post office. Quaint. Probably still too subsidized or inefficient. An odd combo.
Let’s try it. We’re already so close.
In which I combine two topics, each worthy of their own, more expansive post(s), to make inroads into the economic and illegal immigrant problems.
First, my preference would be that the minimum wage laws be eliminated. If they are not unconstitutional, they should be. They are anti-life and anti-property, to phrase it redundantly. This idea is really more of a “if we can’t have a perfect world, let’s come as close as we can given where we are” thing.
Second, in that proverbial ideal world, open borders, free immigration, yada yada. Two hands, one mouth, all that stuff. In a less ideal but improved world, if you’re going to have restrictions and enforced borders, then do it. Or be creative with incentives.
So. If you’re not going to go all the way to eliminating the minimum wage, a logical step would be to free it up some. Lower it. Maybe drastically. Call it $3 an hour, for the sake of throwing out a low number. Instant employment rush. No, an adult supporting a family can’t live on it, but that’s not who low earners usually are, and they aren’t for long once they prove themselves. And no, wages in most places, for most things will not drop that far, because market pressure will keep them perhaps not much below where they are now.
But… That would just encourage illegals, and you’d get a flood of those who would work for that little and then it exacerbates that problem. If you concede it’s a problem.
So how about a two-tier minimum?
If you can prove you are legally eligible to work in this country, the low wage applies to you. You have maximum economic freedom to sell your labor.
If you can’t prove your status, being an illegal or ornery, you are not eliminated from working. You are merely in a pool of people for whom the minimum wage is higher. Call it $10 an hour, for the sake of throwing out a proportionately higher number. More might be better, since it would act as a filter on skilled labor immigration. Exemption for self-employment, so if you come here and are the person starting a business, you rock.
Hey, it’s a thought.
Amazing due to the content. Amazing due to being the first sound film of a President.
Finally got the site upgraded. It’s now the latest WordPress, with a changed theme as well. I keep itching to post, reaching a crescendo with my recent discovery that the mother and stepfather of a friend are hip deep in Tea Party activism. Now I have no excuse.
There’s a bit more tweaking needed. The blogroll needs to be changed and expanded. The tagline needs work. Sad, since I thought of then forgot a good one. In any event, since we’re living in something of an unreality at the moment – have been, but it’s peaking – then the name of the blog is unexpectedly appropriate. Not sure how long the picture or even the theme will remain. It’s a lone blogger’s blog now (or so I expect – Deb still has an account, but I killed the others, most never used). The categories need to be redone and expanded.
If nothing else. I hope to write a series of thoughts on different topics, hot or not. This should be interesting in that I am not a conservative, even though I tend to be identified with and relate well to them. The thing is, arguably most conservatives aren’t, depending on the stridency of your definition. It should also be interesting in that I hate any need to be defined or interpreted in proverbial sound bites.
Anyway, stay tuned…
I just can’t believe the furor over the mosque planned near Ground Zero. Well, I can. What I can’t belive is how obscenely misguided so many people are on the topic, and that some of the statements made by one of the worst Presidents ever are correct, yet being shredded to bits.
Look… Everything about the planned mosque is stupid, misguided, and couldn’t be more provocative if it were intended thus. It probably is. The location. The name. The size. The press. The one-sided appeal to tolerance.
It is right to feel strongly about that.
However, it is not acceptable by any stretch to attempt to get government authorities at any level to stop it from being built. Period.
Being annoyed by it, sure. Calling for it and in your wildest dreams having any expectation of it being prevented, that is about as wrong as it gets. Protesting? Sure. To try to persuade the folks behind it that it’s a PR nightmare… assuming that their goal is not to be offensive. Using government power? No. It would be wrong even if it were constitutional.
But…
It goes both ways.
Sometime Real Soon Now look for this place to get a makeover. I want very much to post here regularly, no holds barred, but WordPress needs to be updated, the look needs to be changed, and I don’t expect it to remain a group blog, but rather one reflecting my opinions and interests specifically. Stay tuned…
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You Are Red |
 You are a highly passionate person, and you’d stand up and fight for anything you believe in. You’re a lot like the founders of the United States. You are a bit of a revolutionary. Like most modern Americans, you are have things you love and hate about the USA … and you’re not afraid to say what they are. |
