Gov. Paterson and parks Commissioner Carol Ash are planning to close dozens of parks and historic sites to help close the state’s $9.2 billion deficit. These sites include historic locations from the Revolutionary War as well as the cancellation of Fourth of July fireworks on Long Island. We continue this downward spiral across the country as we continue to spend billions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, many of these closures and cancellations will save a million dollars or less while the Obama administration is planning to pay for a short-range missile defense system for Israel of more than $200 million and increasing military aid to over $3.15 billion this year, here.
The Administration and Congress continues to gush money, including paying for the defense of foreign countries, as states are destroying their parks, educational systems, and public programs. This includes spending wildly on oil-rich countries like Iraq or affluent countries like Israel. Perhaps we can have tourists divert to Baghdad to see the olympic-sized swimming pool built at the demand of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior (here) or to Israel to see the rocket defense system given to that country.
For the full story, click here.
Anony: Yeah, us toofless trailer park types ain’t got no books.
Have a happy bigoted day.
Damn that Bill Gates helping all those ferners!
Aspire Public Schools Secures $90 Million Bond Financing for Permanent Facilities with Guarantees from Gates and Charles and Helen Schwab Foundations
12 Major Foundations Commit $500 Million to Education Innovation in Concert with U.S. Department of Education’s $650 Million “Investing in Innovation” Fund
Foundation Giving $110 Million to Transform Remedial Education
Cabrillo College’s Academy for College Excellence Receives $3.6 Million to Expand Academic Support Program for Under-prepared Students
United Way of King County Awarded Grant For Work to End Chronic Homelessness
Washington Families Fund Launches New Strategy to Prevent and End Family Homelessness
Oxfam America Strengthens Support for Gulf Coast Organizations Advocating for Affordable Housing and Workers’ Rights
Foundation Grants $300,000 For New Facility for Portland’s Homeless Kids
All this and more can be found at: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
Tooties,
Who feeds you? Really, you cannot know all of the specific information that you disseminate and still be as big of a fool as you come off as. You must cut and paste a lot other wise, you are a bigger fool that I thought you were. Maybe others disagree with me.
Byron: It’s not that they couldn’t go overseas, it is just that it would cost them.
Take Bill Gates for example. He is spending his wealth overseas instead of here where it is much needed. He became wealthy in the bosom of this our country. He received the benefits of citizenship (protection from invasion, freedom to become rich).
And who does he help in our time of need? Foreigners. And foreigners who will never change their ways. Money down the drain.
According to democrats, Americans are suffering such that the nation will not survive if the federal government doesn’t help them. Maybe if people like Gates had spent their money helping Americans have adequate health care we would not be in the position of having to face a totalitarian takeover of our system.
People like Gates, who benefit more than most, ought not to be allowed to siphon off the system and then turn his back on the little guy who also paid taxes to provide him with the means to succeed.
I think it was Thom Jefferson who said that if a man was richer than government (or some such similar thing) he shouldn’t be forced to hand over his money in his lifetime, but what money he has left after he distributes what he will to his family, ought to go to the government. I really cannot remember the specifics exactly.
Now, I oppose such a thing because the government gets greedy and wants to take it all. My point is that Jefferson saw that some people can get exceedingly rich and thus have a greater responsibility.
Warren Buffet (a loathsome man) admits our trade deficit is making us poorer. True. That means we have to have things to export. Sadly, products made overseas by foreigners are counted as our exports yet Americans never got paid for making them. This calculus has skewed the whole system for quite a while allowing government to misrepresent our export capacity in relation to the sustainability of the middle class, which is now collapsing after years of abuse.
Paul Craig Roberts summarizes it this way
“Americans lose both ways: first they lose good jobs in exchange for cheap foreign goods; then they lose the ability to pay for the foreign goods as the falling value of the dollar drives up the prices of the foreign goods. People trapped between falling incomes and rising prices are not people with a future.”
This is a disaster and I don’t think anyone who reaps the benefits, monetarily, and as socially, ought to be able to stand above it all without a greater obligation especially when they have contributed to it.
Roberts points out that during early on in Obama’s run for the White House, he proposed high tax CUTS for businesses who stay here. Where did that go? Out the door. He doesn’t really care about workers.
Roberts writes “Ralph Gomory is one of America’s most distinguished mathematicians and co-author with William Baumol, past president of the American Economics Association, of the most important book on trade theory in 200 years, Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests. Gomory has pointed out that corporations break the link between their interests and America’s interest when they offshore their production for US markets. By producing abroad, they raise foreign GDP and lower US GDP. By producing abroad, they raise the productivity of foreign labor and lower the productivity of US labor. By producing abroad, they increase the productivity capabilities and trade position of other countries at America’s expense.”
Exactly
And finally, Buffet was saying something different when he wasn’t connected with the Obama admin. Roberts summarizes:
“Warren Buffett, has proposed a way to bring US trade into balance. Exporters would be awarded import certificates in the dollar value of their exports. The certificates would be sold in a market to importers, who could import goods in the dollar amount of the certificates. This way imports cannot exceed exports. Moreover, as the certificates would be profit to exporters, it encourages more exports. Free trade theory never intended for economies to be in permanent trade disequilibrium.”
Why aren’t they doing that?
I’ll tell you why. Obama and crew (Bush too) intentionally want to collapse our economic system, create chaos, completely overthrow the government and the Constitution, subjugate the USA to regional or global governance (through a world monetary unit if necessary) and bring in the Council on Foreign Relations long time goal: the New World Order.
That is also what amnesty is about (importing disloyal hostile foreigners willing to accept a north American union scenario).
If Obama and congress would stop spending, slash budgets, we could hold off the collapse, perhaps, while we implemented new export policies which would help build up the middle class again.
But he cannot do that since America would prosper.
Some federal marshals need to get up some gumption and arrest Obama, Pelosi, and Reid for sedition.
Tootie:
I used to like Paul Craig Roberts but I don’t think he really gets it. I think your comment on forcing people to do something they may not want to do is why I disagree. Doesn’t if follow that if you can force a company to remain in America you can also force an individual to buy American? That sounds more like a dictatorship than a free economy.
I think markets should be free across borders. Free trade, in my mind anyway, is essential to a healthy economy. One needs to look at why companies are sending factories overseas, it isn’t all about cheap labor. I would imagine that with transportation costs and the costs of doing business in a foreign country and the logistics involved it would not necessarily be cheaper to do business there. I am also under the impression that foreign labor is not nearly as efficient as American labor on an order of 2-3 times. I.E. for every widget a foreign factory produces an American factory can produce 2-3 widgets.
Why do you think American companies send factories overseas?
As far as Rothbard is concerned, the anarchy issue is definitely a turnoff. But that is the problem with much of hard libertarian thinking.
Buck: Well, I see your point, but they didn’t make a park of the purchase! LOL
Obviously it was understood that new territory would become states and not possessions controlled by the federal government.
If I had to find a place in the Constitution which justifies the purchase, I’d have to put my finger on the treaty making power of the president. After that congress handled making states out of the new territory. Seems like everything was done on the up and up.
I admire the federal powers, the men at that time, for having not created a federal “state” in the new territory. It would have competed with the new united states and been a threat.
Tootie
I guess it’s a question of which came first the chicken or the egg.
It’s been a long time, but I vaguely remember being taught in high school civics about a big todo over something called the Louisiana Purchase, which came before states were formed in that territory. As I recall, it was a tea party icon, Thomas Jefferson, that was President when that was accomplished.
Now I don’t know who has first say about what land should be place in the National Parks Services hands, but it seems to me that the $11 million we paid back then should give the Feds first choice. I could be wrong.
Byron:
Murray Rothbard is a genius, but he is not my cup of tea. I subscribe to some of his theories, but I’m not an anarchist as I believe he is. He opposes the nation-state, I do not.
One of my other main disagreements with Rothbard is the extent to which he promotes free markets. I believe free markets ought to be extremely free and supremely robust right up to the point where they ought to be limited by national security. He doesn’t think so.
By national security I mean, when the American middle class has no high wage jobs our economy collapses, national security kicks in, and at is where I draw the line for free markets.
I support the economic theories of Paul Craig Roberts. He believes (as I do) in limited free markets such that businessmen are not allowed to live here and prosper by taking their businesses overseas while reaping all the political benefits of living in a free society.
If Americans wish to do business overseas they should be taxed in such a way that it would make more sense for them to stay and pay Americans good wages. Or they should get the hell out and renounce their citizenship.
I also believe there are times when tariffs are necessary. Rothbard doesn’t. Tariffs are also Constitutional and meant for raising money to run the federal government. They can cause trouble, but if done wisely, they do work.
If there are no governments (what Rothbard promotes) then there is interminable violence and conflict and ultimately a reordering back into nation-states and probably dictatorships. All this is counterproductive when we already have nations we just need to fix.
In other words the abolition of the nation-state, which Rothbard advocates, makes impossible to conduct the economic system he promotes. That is illogical.
And I don’t believe in a transference of people across borders for job competition. He does. I believe nations are essential if we ever hope for someone somewhere on the planet having the chance to live in freedom. A free exchange of people weakens the nation state, ruins the incomes of native born populations, destabilizes them, and leaves them ripe for tyranny.
It is interesting to note that Adam Smith’s theory of wealth didn’t include the transfer of people. It only included the transfer of goods and products across borders. When neocons (who are big fans of outsourcing and and transference of people) proclaim they support Adam Smith and free market. Yet they don’t realize that Smith’s theory didn’t account for the outsourcing and transfer of populations they advocate. And it still hasn’t dawned on them that this isn’t working. They don’t call republicans stupid for nothing!
Anyway, Roberts is a brilliant scholar and I also highly recommend his book “The Tyranny of Good Intentions”. Lawrence M. Stratton is co-author with him. It is a wonderful little primer on how we have lost “justice” in our justice system because we have forgotten the Anglo-Saxon tradition of law as it came to us through the Rights Of Englishmen.
His comments on the corruption of the 5th amendment though plea bargaining are excellent. And his outting of Rudy Giuliani as a dirty rotten scoundrel is superb.
I adore him.
He has been thrown out of republican circles though he once edited National Review, and wrote and edited for the Wall Street Journal. They threw him out because he told the truth, in my opinion.
Even the places he has written for recently have given him the boot because he keeps talking about the government’s impossible tale of how the twin towers collapsed.
So he has recently quit writing columns, has a new book out, and seems to only trust talking with Alex Jones online!
LOL
But I love him anyway.
Buck: I mean there is nothing allowing the feds to seize the lands for parks.
Buckey: I don’t care if it costs only a dime, there is nothing that permits the feds from seizing these lands. This is about unconstitutionality and it is about taking land that belongs to the states.
I realize that people at this website cannot stand the Constitution, but that is still no excuse for not learning a little more about it.
And I’m not referring to park fees, I’m referring to government possessing billions if not trillions of dollars in prime real estate and monitoring who and how one may enter into these lands so the elites have a nice place to go without having to pay for the lands themselves.
And I’m referring to the elites who keep the riff raff away (strip malls and the such so they have something pristine to look at when they get a hankering for it without have to own the lands themselves.
Byron
dum vivimus servimus
Tootie:
what do you think of Maury Rothbard?
bUCKEYE:
you are a brilliant man/woman :). Best analysis of what is wrong with our country I have seen in a long time.
Tootie
Yeah, I know, those fees are a real burden. Especially for seniors and those with young children.
http://www.nps.gov/fees_passes.htm
That’s probably what keeps the hoi polloi out.
I wish women should stop voting ’cause that certainly wasn’t in the constitution, either. We gave them the vote and now look what a fine mess we’re in.
Buck: Not federal dollars and federal parks. There ain’t nuttin in the Constitution that permits it. If people want their state to protect that land, fine with me.
Federal parks are playgrounds for snobby arrogant elites who have the time and money to go to them and don’t want to be bothered by the rabble they cannot stand but claim to have compassion for.
Byron
Wonderful! Now all we have to do is find a few more Rockefellers and DAR ladies to set up enough non-profit corporations to take care of all our parks and historic sites. That will save about $2 billion a year. Good on you. Don’t expect a tax refund, though.
Tootie
“I’m for non-violent protest, even when my opponents do it.” Yep.
And I’m in favor of using my taxes to keep parks and historic sites open.
How about you?
Buckeye:
I’m sure that Tea Party members paid enough taxes to receive the “free” protection you mentioned.
Loons on the left always think government services are “free”. Which is why they keep advocating that government steal other peoples money and give it to themselves.
I’m for non-violent protest, even when my opponents do it.
How about you?
I hope public libraries close down all over the country. I’ve had it with the library Nazis who do little but harass patrons and rig the book selections to their left-wing political ideology and then pretend they are open minded.
Well who’s crying now Adolph?
My goal right now is to buy off as much as I can from their used book shops (fire-sale anyone?). I’ve gotten some great cook books.
It got real bad a number of years ago when the library Nazis sent the cops to arrest a very pregnant woman who didn’t realize she misplaced a book after she moved to a new home. Took her from home, they did.
We have become accustomed to hearing about this abuse from the library Nazis over the years and that makes me glad they are worried about their jobs, these ungrateful snobs.
I guess I never got over the loss of the card catalog. It was one of the best and most glorious ways of stumbling across gold.
I’ll never forgive them for it. Ha!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/jarvis/jarvis82.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/libraries.html
Ron Paul would already have the troops home from all over the world, not just the Middle East.
(Go Rand go!)
Democrats love war and destruction. Always have, always will. No reason to think otherwise.
Code Pink: quiet as a church mouse, it’s Obama’s war now.
You were a fool if you thought Obama would live up to his word and bring our troops home. Why were you a fool for believing Obama’s word? You were a fool because there was no evidence or track record to prove he could can be trusted to live up to his word.
Ron Paul has decades of proof that he can be trusted.
Then why did Obama win? He won because Democrats AND Republicans are not really interested in a man they could trust, they only pretend to be.
And so, there goes another trillion dollars down the drain.
If you think Obama cares for America you don’t have your head screwed on right.
He wants her destroyed. So did George Bush.
Why? Why would they want that?
World government. It cannot happen with a powerful and independent USA