George Rebane
Cheri West, senior aide of Assemblyman Brian Dahle, has declared her candidacy for the District #1 supervisorial slot that will be vacated by Nate Beason next year. Jo Ann and I only know of her, but don’t know her personally. She sounds like a worthy candidate to oppose Heidi Hall, her very progressive opponent who is already well known in Nevada County. Looks like it’s time to start thanking Nate for his service, and manning the ramparts for Ms West. In socialist California, folks like us in the backwoods are among the last who don’t believe that ‘More government is better.’
Apropos to the Pope’s visit, I find it hard to understand how the Left can say that capitalism harms the poor and underprivileged, when it and it alone has been the system over the centuries that has reduced hunger, destitution, and ignorance in the world. Early adopters of capitalism are the countries that have prospered. An easy test is to examine the countries that have most ruthlessly suppressed capitalism – how are the poor and underprivileged doing in those lands?
On the VW scandal. Today we learn that VW’s monkeying with its cars’ pollution control software is a well-trod path in the auto industry pioneered years ago by GM. This doesn’t excuse the bastards for doing it, but it does shed light again on the ongoing collateral damage from progressive governance. Car makers regularly game the system in various ways to satisfy the likes of the EPA and CARB in their butt stupid assertions that pollution controls don’t impede performance. Anybody with a half-assed engineering education learns in his freshman year that that is horse pucky. It’s part and parcel of the progressive mantra that tax rates don’t affect business decisions/performance.
Large multi-national car makers have now become corporatists. They can make cars that uphold the environmentalists’ BS while being tested and still deliver performance on the highways. This is a wink-wink relationship that works as long as no one looks too carefully behind the curtain. And then some wonks at the University of West Virginia didn’t get the message and looked behind the curtain; the rest now is history, both settled and still being made.
The same goes on with business tax rates and certain companies that dutifully tell their progressive legislators that all is well with higher taxes. Why? Because they own the market segments where they can pass the added tax costs on to the consumers who dutifully pay higher prices while being told by the same politicians and unionists that the corporations are making obscene profits (when the profits remain unchanged as promised). What really happens is that the poor middle class and welfare schlubs take it in the shorts without a clue as to how they are being milked.
[update] Gun-free Australia’s crime rates are soaring after law abiding citizens were forced to surrender their arms. As usual the butt stupid politicians are at pains to explain why homicides, assaults, and armed robberies are up – armed robberies up 44%, in Victoria state alone homicides are up 300%. Over the previous 25 years all national crime rates were dropping until their liberals decided to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for mandated repurchases of legal firearms from its citizens. It probably would have done no good to remind the idiots down under that now only criminals have guns, and the bad guys all know it when they walk into a house or a store. Up here we are still unclear on the concept, as the Left does its best to abrogate the Second Amendment through an increasing pile of ever more byzantine regulations on gun ownership, accessories, ammunition, and usage. And check out the crime rates in our Democrat controlled cities where draconian gun laws are in effect. (H/T to RR reader and correspondent.)
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