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“Escape from New York II”

Kurt Russell should make another sequel to his movie “Escape from New York.” This one, “Escape from New York II,” would feature New Yorkers fleeing tax-collecting ogres.

Reported the New York Post:

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers — and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City — meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

New York rivals California in having terrible government. Mayor Bloomberg and the New York state’s governors have been obsessed with hitting people with greater taxes.

It was just in 2007 when Bloomberg and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were celebrated as by Time magazine “The New Action Heroes.” Now, both men are global laughingstocks of bad government.

Come to think of it, Kurt Russell already made a flick about leaving Taxifornia, “Escape from L.A.” After making “Escape from New York II,” he could make “Escape from L.A. II.”

(Check this out: 3,500 TV Stations Directly On Your Computer.)

“Whitey on the Moon”

Someone mentioned to me that there’s a rap called “Whitey on the Moon.” I checked it on YouTube. Turns out it’s from 1970 by Gil Scott Heron, whose “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” I was familiar with. These were some of the first rap songs, and don’t have the profuse profanities of later raps.

A YouTube of “Whitey on the Moon” is at the end of this blog. The lyrics are here. My comments follow:

This really is a libertarian rap, from 1970. Consider these lines:

I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon).

The moon shot cost 0.5% of GDP during the 1960s, one of the three great new wastes of confiscated tax dollars, the 2 others being the Great Society welfare socialism and the Vietnam War. No wonder the country went broke.

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon).

The 1960s profligacy was paid for with borrowed money — which we’re still paying off. Now, Bush and Obama have put us even deeper into debt. Obama says he’s going to run up another $9 trillion in debt over the next decade.

The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)….
The price of food is goin’ up.

The 1960s government’s mammoth waste sparked inflation that has debased the currency by 95% since then — while pushing the middle class into upper-income tax brackets.

Taxes takin’ my whole damn check.

Black men, on average, die at about age 65, about 10 years less than the white average. So half of them they pay into the rip-off Socialist Security and Medicare systems their whole lives — then get nothing because they’re dead before they can collect.

Why aren’t blacks libertarians?

With all this — and even more ripoffs and tyrannies in the 39 years since the rap was rapped — why aren’t all blacks libertarians? Why don’t they demand the elimination of taxes that give them nothing but bankruptcy? Why do they favor even more government, instead of less?

I can understand why blacks didn’t vote for McCain (and Bush before him), who were terrible; I opposed them, too. But why did they vote for Obama, who’s obviously a stooge of America’s white ruling elite?

Blacks should be less concerned about “Whitey on the Moon” than Whitey on Wall Street, manipulating the government — Democrats as much as Republicans — so Wall Street can profit from inflation, unneeded wars, and depression.

NY Times perpetuates its own myth on “death panels”

I sure am not going to miss the New York Times when it’s euthanized. It’s always been the government’s Pravda to the Washington Post’s Izvestia.

Today there’s this headline:

False “Death Panel” Rumor Has Familiar Roots

The story begins:

WASHINGTON — The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks….

But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago….

They’re already killing patients!

But as I pointed out yesterday, the death panels already exist.

And what to the Timesies expect is going to happen? When costs go up and about half of medical expenses come in the last 6 months of life, there’s no way grandma and grandpa are not  going to escape being snuffed out. It already happens in Holland under its socialized medicine scheme.

Democrats might as well put their whole socialized medicine scheme under the leadership of smiling “Dr.” Jack Kevorkian — Dr. Death

Go, Art, go!

For many a petty king ere Arthur came
Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the land;
And still from time to time the heathen host
Swarmed overseas, and harried what was left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less, till Arthur came.

— The Coming of Arthur, by Tennyson

No one ever “wasted the land” as much as Orange County’s Red County Republicans. Their latest petty attack [Note: as of 8:28 a.m., July 22, that post no longer is up] on local libertarian activists is against Art Pedroza, editor of the Orange Juice blog (which gets the color of this county right).

The anonymous “Orange Juice Watch” blogger — why can’t he reveal his name? — attacks Art for Art’s private business. Then Mr. Anonymous Chicken attacks local businessman Tony Bushala.

Who said Red Countyites were pro-business? They’re anti-business, just like their beloved ex-President Bush, who said last January, 8 days before he left office:

I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles when I was told … the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression. [But] we’ve taken extraordinary measures to deal with frozen credit markets [that] have helped thaw the credit market.

Bush was talking about his massive bailout of Wall Street, with Main Street getting the tab. The bailout, of course, didn’t work, any more than Obama’s copycat bailout has. But Wall Street sure did well, especially Goldman Sachs, the company formerly headed by Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson.

This report noted:

Goldman posted the richest quarterly profit in its 140-year history and, to the envy of its rivals, announced it had earmarked $11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers.

Goldman Sachs and the Republican bigshots got the gold mine, the rest of America got the shaft.

Reagan’s Way

Ronald Reagan won two landslides by putting together a coalition of disparate groups: Cold Warriors, free marketeers, family values types, and others.

The Red Countyites think they can win by alienating the Ron Paul movement and other libertarians and paleoconservatives, such as Art, Tony, Steven Greenhut, and myself.

They think they can win with the Neocon philosophy of imperialism-until-bankruptcy that jammed us into the economic collapse we’re in now.

Ron Paul is the new Reagan

The Red Countyites irrationally hate Ron Paul, who actually was a key element of the winning Reagan coalition.

Look back to the 2007-08 presidential race. Remember anything memorable said by any candicate except Ron Paul?

And guess what? He just got every Republican in the House to co-sponsor his audit-the-Fed bill, H.R. 1207.

As Alan Bartlett, a libertarian within the Republican Party, keeps telling Republicans, they have to bring libertarians into the fold to win. But they won’t.

They say they’re in the mold of Reagan. But I knew Dutch Reagan. I supported him in 1968 when I was 13, and in every primary and general election after that. Red Countyites, you’re no followers of Ronald Reagan.

But if you want to be like him, first, stop attacking local businessmen. Second, Call for what Reagan did after the Marines were blown up in Lebanon: Pull American troops out of the Middle East.

The $35 million Lou Correa would get for Orange County would COST us $1 billion

Update: Of course, Lou “North” Correa sold out and voted in favor of the tax — and against taxpayers.

State Sen. Lou Correa is a smart fellow. But he must have taken that New New Math back in grade school instead of real math.

In return for selling his vote for the $14 billion tax increases in Gov. Arnold’s Budget Abomination, Lou extracted from his fellow Democrats, who run the Legislature, $35 million more in state spending for Orange County (for the first year; more in subsequent years — if state Democrats keep their word, which they might not).

But Orange County’s 3 million residents are 8% of California’s 37 million. 8% of the $14 billion tax increase is  $1.12 billion.

Next: $1.12 billion – $35 million = $1.085 billion. That’s how much Lou’s vote would cost Orange County.

That’s $362 for each Orange County resident, each year, in higher taxes. And it’s $1,448 for a family of four, each year.

As I write on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 15, it’s still not too late for Lou to vote against this Budget Abomination.

Great new political site

My former colleagues at the editorial page of The Orange County Register just put up a great new site, FreedomPolitics.com.

It features libertarian reporting, insight, and links on Orange County, California, America, and in partibus infidelium.

They criticize Bush for being…

Bush: The Great Regulator

To hear Democrats tell it, the past eight years have been a binge of dangerous deregulation. Veronique de Rugy argues Bush was anything but a “hands off” regulator.

Reason: Bush’s Regulatory Kiss-Off

And the site ridcules the Feds’ latest bank bailout (with your tax money or inflated dollars):

Federal Bank of America

Following a new bailout of the bank on Thursday, the US Government is the largest shareholder in Bank of America.

Two weeks after closing its purchase of Merrill Lynch at the urging of U.S. regulators, the government cemented a deal at midnight Thursday to supply Bank of America with a fresh $20 billion capital injection and absorb as much as $98.2 billion in losses on toxic assets, according to people involved in the transaction.

The bank had been pressing the government for help after it was surprised to learn that Merrill would be taking a fourth-quarter write-down of $15 billion to $20 billion, according to two people who have been briefed on the situation, in addition to Bank of America’s rising consumer loan losses.

The second lifeline brings the government’s total stake in Bank of America to $45 billion and makes it the bank’s largest shareholder, with a stake of about 6 percent.

Check it out.

We’re sweltering out here in California…

Go ahead, make fun of us out here in California. We have…

* America’s worst governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger-Shriver-Kennedy, who has spent the past 5 years destroying this once-great state.

* The worst state Legislature in the nation, run by Democrats who make Kim Jong Il look like Ronald Reagan.

* A $60 billion state budget deficit.

* The highest taxes in the nation.

* Looming tax hikes.

* A crumbling infrastructure.

Yeah, but the last 4 days in Southern California we’ve been enjoying temperatures of from 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m ready to install an air conditioner.

In California, the government may tax you out of a job. You may be living on the street, eating government cheese (paid for by somebody else’s taxes). But you can still go down to the beach in the middle of January in your bathing suit and get a suntan.

So, denizens of Bad Weather states and Canadian provinces, as you suffer another cold spell — it’s minus-40 degrees F in Minnesota, or 125 degrees colder than out here — keep our balmy weather in mind as you gloat, as you ought to, over the foibles of California’s corrupt, dysfunctional, idiotic government, including not just its elected officials but — this being a democracy — its voters.

We’ll be lounging on the beach in 80-degree weather trying to avoid a sunburn.

Bush’s destructon of Iraq

Imagine if, in the last 6 years, 75 million Americans were dead or displaced. That’s the equivalent of what Bush did to Iraq.

Since his aggressive, unconstitutional, unjust, and unconscionable invasion in 2003, here are the numbers:

1.3 million Iraqis dead.

2.7 million Iraqis displaced inside Iraq.

2 million Iraqis exiled to other countries.

Total: 6 million Iraqis dead or displaced. That’s about 1/4 of the country’s prewar population of 24 million.

(In addition, 4,223 Americans have been killed — so far — and 30,000 to 100,000 wounded.

The war, as everyone now knows (and as I knew before the war started, and wrote about it), was totally based on lies: the lie that Saddam held “weapons of mass destruction,” the lie that he had delivery vehicles for the weapons that could reach America, and the lie that he had ties to al Qaeda.

Bush, Cheney, Condi and the other mass killers soon will be gone from office. They’ll be writing their memoirs for millions of dollars and collecting $100,000-plus speakers’ fees. If there were any justice in this world, they would be arrested and put on trial for aggressive war and mass murder, found guilty, and jailed for the rest of their lives. But there is no justice in this world.

However, there is nothing but justice in the next world.