George Rebane

To add more local information to the developing story of Nevada County’s unfunded liabilities, please see ‘Who will bail out our local employee pension plans?’ by Mike McDaniel.  This piece emphasizes the points made in ‘Gold, Groceries, and Guns’ and underlines that the financial rot runs right down through the states to the counties and towns.  As a free-market capitalist I am red-faced that the suits in the private sector thought they also could follow the government model and borrow themselves to prosperity.

On the same theme, a local correspondent points out that KNCO is reporting that gun sales are up over 25% in the past few months (here).  He adds, “As a form of protest against the new socialist order I did my part by purchasing ammo on election day.”

Let’s end this on a more humorous item from the ‘We’re from the government and we’re here to help’ file.  It seems that the churches of New York City have gone above and beyond acceptable levels of compassion by opening up their facilities to the homeless on particularly cold nights.  You see, the city has its own homeless housing program and will brook neither competition nor interference from such God-fearing folks (report here).  It has ordered the houses of worship not to shelter any freezing homeless unless they also comply with certain regulations like having to operate the facility at least five nights a week – it’s the “all or nothing” rule.  Again, I wish I were making this up.