Tuesday, September 19, 2006

There Is, At Times, Good News in the World

A brother and sister, each thinking the other dead for the past sixty-five years, along with most of the rest of their family, due to being separated because of Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews, are reunited.  I like that.

Kin reunited 65 years after Holocaust

Posted by John Venlet on 09/19 at 01:43 PM
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Tax Almighty

Al Gore, the current godfather of the global warming crowd, has proposed taxing pollution instead of payrolls.  Note that Gore does not state tax pollution instead of individuals, though, supposedly, Gore’s tax idea would eliminate all taxes currently paid by individuals, including social security taxes and unemployment compensation taxes.

I’m fairly certain that this idea, as appealing as it may sound to every individual who works for a living, and as radical and difficult to implement as it may be, will be roundly discussed by bevies of economic “planners,” both Republican and Democrat, to either prove that the idea has merit, or that the idea is so far fetched that it is simply a ploy to gather bushels of votes if Gore should decide to run for President in 2008.

Mencken reminds us what an idea like this actually means.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Gore says tax pollution, not payrolls

Posted by John Venlet on 09/19 at 01:06 PM
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Recommending Rand to the Muslim World

Writing in The American Spectator, Ralph R. Reiland recommends the writings of Rand to replace the curriculum of death which is so popular in the Muslim world.

What the aforementioned young people could use is some major deprogramming. For starters, the suicide-promoting poetry in their curriculum could be replaced with some Ayn Rand, the perfect antidote for self-immolation.

In For the New Intellectual, Rand warns against “death-worshipping mystics” who control and humiliate through the use of guilt and fear, preaching that a man’s pursuit of happiness here on earth is evidence of depravity and selfishness, that his independent mind is a source of arrogance, his body a source of evil, that his liberty, self-esteem and individuality are desecrations of the commandments for obedience, humility, suffering, renunciation and self-sacrifice.

“There is no way to make a human being accept the role of a sacrificial animal,” writes Rand, “except by destroying his self-esteem."

The piece is titled Children As Bombs

Posted by John Venlet on 09/19 at 02:52 AM
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