Samizdata

I have watched the documentary filmed by two french brothers this evening… and wish to make it clear they are a total exception to the below. They shared the danger of their new found friends in the NYFD, survived the WTC collapse side by side with them and throughout told an honest story.

I only wish the world of the media had more Men like them.

I flew home from London today. The fact I accepted this for a travel date is one tiny finger of defiance to those who misunderstood Americans so badly. I am not going to say a great deal as much is being said by those with far more right than I to say it. Today we remember. Today we honour. Today we come together and reiterate just how undefeatable is the spirit of our free country

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said to his BBC interviewer in New York City a few minutes ago: “We will fight. And we will win”. Our enemy does not understand us and has no conception of what they have awakened. If our enemies did have any idea of what they have unleashed, they would be terrified of the fearsome retribution that awaits every one of them.

“We will fight them. And we will defeat them.”

Carla Howell’s recent debate with Michael Widmer, former Press Secretary for Governor Michael Dukakis and high tax proponent (and oh yeah, currently President of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, wink,wink, nudge, nudge) is now online. You’ll find the RealMedia link there.

Carla also reports the Massachusetts Teachers Union has done a bit of Orwellian thinking. They renamed their ” Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts — Education Fund” or TEAM to the media attracting false advertising name of “Massachusetts Budget & Policy Center” just to attack the ballot proposition.

When I was a kid teachers were teachers: not just another bunch of porkers at the trough.

The Boston Globe printed new poll results on Thursday, August 29th which show support for the repeal of the state income tax has grown from 30% to 40%. The poll was conducted by KRC Communications Research (Democratic pollsters). It was based on a survey of 801 likely voters. What is even more exciting about these results is the poll occurred before the Massachusetts LP’s full page supporting ad appeared in the Globe.

This is getting very interesting!

For more information try the Small Government web site, Carla Howell for Governor or Michael Cloud for US Senate

Paul Marks sees the rotting effects of increasingly authoritarian statism on both coasts of the USA

New York City has been known as the heart of statism in the United States since the late 1930’s. However, in recent decades the State of California (or rather its rulers) have been keen to overtake New York in statism.

New York State still (by some measures at least) manages to just have higher taxes than California (although I doubt that New York State is still ahead in terms of state spending as a proportion of average income), but in terms of regulations California is well ahead, and in terms of the practices of the courts California has (in some ways) the worst legal system in the United States.

Statist Californian cities (most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco) are handicapped in their race to have higher taxes than New York City by the fact that so much is centralised in California – but they do their best, and in terms of regulations are in many ways ahead of New York City in statism.

Why I am going over this well known and rather sad story? Well there have been recent developments in the race to collapse.

California has decided to ban home schooling (at least parents will now need to be qualified teachers) – this should increase the government education budget (in a state that is heading for bankruptcy anyway) and reduce the standard of education.

Not to be outdone, New York City is banning smoking in restaurants, bars and so on that seat under 35 people (smoking is already banned in establishments that seat 35 people or more) – all this is a direct aping of Californian regulations. New York City already has the highest taxes on tobacco in the country (much to the joy of organised crime). Both the anti smoking regulations and the higher taxes are the brain children of the new ‘Republican’ Mayor (both New York City and New York State have a long tradition of ‘Republicans’ of this sort).

Is the race to collapse intentional? I do not think so. Although the Greens and other small groups (stronger in California than in New York State) really do want collapse, mainstream Democrats and Republicans do not. However, intentions will not change results (objective reality sees to that).

Which area will collapse first? I simply do not know. New York City has already gone bankrupt once (during the mid 1970’s), and been bailed out (in return for some fiscal responsibility) by New York State and the United States government, I suppose history could simply repeat itself.

California may simply be too big for such a bailout, especially as the national (and world) economy goes into decline next year (unless there is an oil price collapse of course). A Californian collapse should finally get people’s attention focused on the fact that statism does not work.

However, academia and the media will work hard to prevent people drawing this conclusion. We can expect lots of articles and TV interviews from the likes of Paul Krugman on the lines of “the collapse of this symbol of capitalism proves that laissez-faire does not work”.

At least in the United States the TV networks (although utterly dominated by ‘liberals’) still feel the need to sometimes have people on screen arguing against the statist account of an event – they are not quite on the level of British television.

Paul Marks

In a landmark decision, W.R. McDougall says:

“Your number is finally up, America. I, together with the rest of the civilised world, wish to announce that we, yes we, the true human beings, intend to wash our hands of you.

Yours is a sick, warped, twisted cesspit of a nation drenched in the blood of innocents and corpulent on hamburgers made with the flesh of oppressed humans harvested for you by Sharon the Butcher and which you wash down with sticky, sweet drinks full of chemicals perfected by the Nazis and eagerly sold to you by your egomaniacal corporate criminals who intimately control absolutely everything you ever say, think or do.

You are solely and directly responsible for every single bit of misery and injustice that has ever occured since the inception of mankind and you neither realise nor care! But then what can one expect from a country whose national sport is Disembowelling Senior Citizens with a Pitchfork? And you all laugh while you do it just to reinforce how depraved and bestial you have become. And all the while you worship at the infernal throne of Bush the Barbarian who gnaws on the bones of harvested infants while licking his chops at the prospect of the next peace-loving nation he will reduce to dust and ruins with a mere contemptuous flick of his gnarled hand.

You conspire with each other in hideous cabals as you infest every corner of our beautiful planet like some kind of toxic parasite, sucking all the goodness out of creation and excreting in your wake poisonous fumes which deplete the air we breathe and contaminate the precious oceans with the odious ruins of your bloated bodies.

You arrogantly insist on the right to bear fossil-fuels and deplete the ozone layer with your primitive guns and you lose not even a wink of sleep while all around large parts of the globe fester with raw sewage and unmentionable diseases! Just look at Africa, Asia and my underpants!

But what’s the use of me complaining when you don’t even care a jot? Who else but demons could stand by indifferently while impoverished Argentinian civil servants are forced into sexual congress with farm animals while you flaunt yourselves flagrantly in your electric go-go bars with your styrofoam bossom-enhancers and obsessively free-market genitals which you wave provocatively at anyone who has the decency and heroism to stand up to your tyrrany. I am one of the few, one of those heros who is sick of watching you spend trillions of dollars on precision-guided nuclear-tipped junk food to launch into the unguarded orifices of helpless third world children and now everybody knows that the world would have woken up much sooner and smelled the stench of your fetid influence were it not for the genetically-modified TV programmes that you force them to watch.

Just how stone-hearted can you get? I bet if I was lying, stretched out in front of you on the sidewalk you wouldn’t even stoop to tell me the time. You wouldn’t even give a damn. You’d just walk right over me, wouldn’t you. Yes, you would. In fact you’d hop and skip over me, cackling with malicious glee at my misfortune before running off to one of your precious malls to buy onion-ring flavoured condoms with which to asphyxiate some poor Afghan peasant. In fact, you’d probably drive over my supine body in one of your monster, four-wheel drive, 12 cylinder blood-guzzling pick-up trucks while eating a pizza topped with endangered species. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you. Yes, you would. You’d trample all over me. You’d stamp viciously on the soft protuberances of my helpless body with your hob-nailed cowboy boots while laughing and telling each other dirty jokes and practising your golf swing and high-fiving and whooping and whistling dixie and waving fl…AAAAAAARRGHHHH…MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED!!!”