Alan C.
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Posts posted by Alan C.
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Why are Venezuela’s supermarkets so empty?
Venezuela's supermarkets don't have enough food. Or toilet paper. Or, well, anything really. And that's why the government is about to start fingerprinting people to ration goods.But why can't an oil-rich country even keep its stores stocked? Well, it's the price controls, stupid. They always and everywhere create shortages. Here's why they have done so in Venezuela.1. The government is running a massive deficit, around 14 percent of GDP, that it's financing with the printing press. The problem, of course, is that money is worth less when you create more of it to pay your bills. So it's not surprising that Venezuela's inflation is officially 60 percent, and might actually be as high as 300 percent.2. But the government thinks it can wish away this inflation with currency and price controls. -
36% of Generation Starting to Turn 21 This Year Born to Unmarried Mothers
If you count a generation as spanning 20 years, then approximately 36 percent of the American generation born from 1993 through 2012 — which has begun turning 21 this year and will continue turning 21 through 2033—were born to unmarried mothers.80,838,742 babies were born in the United States from 1993 through 2012, according to the birth reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 29,007,173 of those babies were born to unmarried mothers.That does not count the 40.6 percent of babies (1,605,643 out of 3,957,577) born in 2013 who were also born to unmarried mothers.In fact, according to the CDC, at least 40 percent of the babies born in each of the last six years — 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 — were born to unmarried mothers.Back in 1940, only 3.8 percent of American babies were born to unmarried mothers. By 1960, it was still only 5.3 percent.The curve that tracks the increasing percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers starts to bend upward in the mid-1960s. By 1965, it was 7.7 percent. By 1969, it was 10 percent. By 1975, it was 14.3 percent.It broke 20 percent in 1983; 30 percent in 1992; and 40 percent in 2008. That year it was 40.6 percent. In 2009, it was 41.0 percent. In 2010, it was 40.8 percent. In 2011, it was 40.7 percent. In 2012, it was 40.7 percent. And in 2013, it was 40.6 percent.It is a statistical fact that the institution of the family has been collapsing in America over the past 45 years.Such a terrible tragedy.
What happened in the 1960s, I wonder?
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Fairbanks spent $7G defending mayor's $37.50 fine
The city of Fairbanks has so far spent about $7,000 appealing a $37.50 elections fine leveled on the mayor.
The Alaska Public Offices Commission ordered City Mayor John Eberhart to pay the $37.50 fine in May after concluding he broke a state election law in the October 2013 election by sending an email on his city council email account.
In that email, Eberhart, then a city council member, asked city staff to research resolutions and ordinances sponsored by Eberhart and his mayoral opponent Vivian Stiver. In the eyes of the commission, the records request equaled an illegal use of municipal resources to influence an election.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the city government is paying for Eberhart's appeal costs because it's obligated, in most cases, to defend public officials who are sued as part of their official duties under the city's indemnification law.
City Attorney Paul Ewers says the city has paid about $7,000 during appeals.
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The sexual abuse of about 1,400 children at the hands of Asian men went unreported for 16 years because staff feared they would be seen as racist, a report said today.Children as young as 11 were trafficked, beaten, and raped by large numbers of men between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, the council commissioned review into child protection revealed.And shockingly, more than a third of the cases were already know to agencies.But according to the report's author: 'several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist'.
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Crazy people are searching for validation by soliciting acknowledgement from others.
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The article is a worthwhile read.
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Young fan who dresses like Cuba's Fidel Castro meets his idol
An eight-year-old Cuban boy who likes to dress up as Fidel Castro got to meet his idol after Cuba's 88-year-old retired leader invited him and his family to his Havana home for a chat.
"I felt a lot of emotion upon seeing Fidel," Marlon Mendez told Reuters on Monday from his home near Havana.
"The whole family hugged him. It was my dream to meet Fidel, and I did it... My mother was shaking."
There is a brief video at the link. I didn't see the boy's father in the video; only his mother.
Also note the Che Guevara picture on his wall.
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Food Stamp Enrollments Never Drop Below 45M for 3 Consecutive Years
The Obama recovery is in full swing.
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Will I have to deal with "bully" types my entire life? Did I initiate force by challenging him to a fight?
You will likely have to deal with bullies indefinitely.
You didn't initiate force because he consented.
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Cuba’s Anarcho-Capitalist Club Plants the Seed, Defies State Oppression
Nelson Chartrand and Joisy García run the Anarcho-Capitalist Club of Cuba. With eight other members, they are focused on promoting the radical ideas of the philosophy on the island — a place where, as they describe, “everything is illegal.”This is no easy task. Capitalism could not be further from the Cuban reality — private property is expressly forbidden as an individual right — and the totalitarian nature of the Fidelista state means anarchism is even more distant.The Cuban regime’s decades of economic confinement have been bad enough, but repression of thought is also ever present, and it is only getting worse. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has blacklisted Cuba for “the level of threats, harassment, and acts of repudiation against human rights defenders in Cuba … particularly those involved in the defense of the rights of persons who have been deprived of liberty for political reasons,” among many other crimes.However, the anarcho-capitalists haven’t given up after facing threats and aggression.Chartrand can only access the internet once per week, through a connection provided by an embassy in Havana, but he graciously shared some of his precious online time with the PanAm Post and our readers.. . .In Cuba, there is no private property. Self-employed workers are not private but quasi-private. The only private property that exists in Cuba is in hands of the ruling elite.
A worthwhile interview to read. It's nice to see these ideas penetrating into oppressive societies.
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More Than A Thousand Stood Under Heat & Sun For Free Food In Miami
More than a thousand locals lined up Friday morning for several hours under the scorching sun and heat in Miami for a box full of food.
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“It’s a blessing because if it wasn’t for them I couldn’t eat today...”
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Many of those lined up were elderly. One man was so overcome by heat, he had to be treated and transported.
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Venezuela Proposes Fingerprinting Shoppers
President Nicolas Maduro has announced a mandatory grocery fingerprinting system to combat food shortages.
He said late Wednesday the program will stop people from buying too much of a single item, but did not say when it would take effect.
The move was met with skepticism. Critics say the new system is tantamount to rationing, and constitutes a breach of privacy.
The socialist South American country has been grappling with shortages of basics like cooking oil and flour for more than a year.
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It's called intellectual myopia or intellectual near-sightedness. It means that a person lacks depth of intellect and foresight. It's a result of lacking life experience which is why children view the world this way.
Some people never grow out of it and so they retain it as adults. We see this among left-liberals/progressives like Sam Seder and Ana Kasparian who view the world through the eyes of children. It's possible for people to posses exceptional talent and still retain a child-like mentality.
Intellectual myopia has been recognized and written about in the past:
William Penn wrote, "If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools."
Herbert Spencer wrote, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the results of folly is to fill the world with fools."
Frederic Bastiat wrote a book called, That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen.
Henry Hazlitt referred to it in Economics In One Lesson as the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
Thomas Sowell subtitled one of his books, Thinking Beyond Stage One.
The cure for intellectual myopia is life-experience (specifically consequences). In a state of nature, natural selection would purge stupidity from the gene pool. The State interferes with this process by insulating people from the consequences of their mistakes, bad choices, and poor judgement.
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Again, who knows if this legit. Nobody knows who this "source" is. Even if this proves to be factual, it won't stop the race hustlers from inflaming tensions. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have made careers convincing people that there are racist boogeymen hiding around every corner.
Missouri cop was badly beaten before shooting Michael Brown, says source
“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”
According to the well-placed source, Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson to stop walking in the middle of the road because they were obstructing traffic. However, the confrontation quickly escalated into physical violence, the source said..
“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move," the source said. "They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face.
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Not sure what this is all about, but it's a new fad among decadent lowlifes.
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France’s Relentlessly Deteriorating Unemployment Fiasco
The French economy has been aptly led by the most despised tax-and-retreat President of the Fifth Republic, François Hollande, whose approval ratings didn’t stop plunging until they broke through the 20% mark, and by his equally adept government. They left the private sector wheezing for air. And a huge government sector, whose expenditures account for over half of GDP, has been running very recalcitrant deficits to the point where the prior solutions, such as creating jobs, any jobs, even fake jobs, with the stroke of a pen funded by borrowed money that future taxpayers would have to deal with, have gotten mired down.
And so the French unemployment fiasco continues unabated. In June, the number of people registered with the unemployment office, Pôle Emploi, as jobless and who made “positive efforts” to obtain employment (Category A) rose 0.3% from May and 3.8% from last year to a new record of 3.662 million. If the people are included who only have part-time jobs but want full-time jobs (Categories B and C), the total jumped 0.4% from May and 5% from a year to a new record of 5.343 million.
And if those job seekers who for whatever acceptable reason are deemed to not have made “positive efforts” recently (Categories D and E) are included, the broadest measure of the French jobs fiasco jumps to 5.719 million, up 24,000 or 0.4% from May and up 5.7% from a year earlier.
. . .
The OECD pegs the French labor force at 28.6 million. So we divide those registered as unemployed who don’t even have a part-time job (Categories A, D, and E), a total 4.075 million people, by the labor force of 28.6 million people. It produces an unemployment rate of 14.2%. And using the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes the involuntary part-timers, the unemployment rate skyrockets to 19.9%.According to Wikipedia, France has a population of 66.6M.
That works out to about 43% of the population working.
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Sober woman arrested for DUI after being hit by police car
Accused of a cover-up, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and four of his deputies are named as co-defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit — and it all started with a FOX6 investigation that garnered national attention. A sober driver was arrested for drunk driving in February of 2013 — and she’s still fighting back.When a Sheriff’s deputy T-boned her car last year, Tanya Weyker suffered more than a broken neck. She suffered the indignity of a false arrest for driving while intoxicated.Now, she has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.. . .The lawsuit comes two months after a FOX6 investigation showed Sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Quiles T-boned Weyker’s Toyota Camry and then lied about who caused the crash.Weyker admitted to having a few sips of a friend’s drink that night — and nothing more.Her injuries were too severe to perform field sobriety tests.Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Griffin arrested Weyker anyway — and cited her for driving drunk, even though blood tests would later prove Weyker had no alcohol or drugs in her system.“I explained to him my eyes were red and glassy because I was crying,” Weyker told FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn.Erickson says his client was treated like a criminal as she laid in a hospital bed in pain.“Had to ask for permission to use the wash room in front of a deputy who was keeping watch on her,” Erickson said.Video from an airport surveillance camera eventually proved that Deputy Quiles never stopped before turning onto Howell Avenue — as he claimed in his report.The Sheriff’s Office knew about the video two days after the crash, but the drunk driving case continued for 10 months before a prosecutor finally decided to file formal charges.“A video that exonerated Ms. Weyker was sat on for months and months until the good work of FOX 6,” Erickson said.. . .“She, all her life, thought that law enforcement was here to serve and protect and to tell the truth and be on the side of good and go after the bad guys. She never expected that the bad guy would, in fact, be law enforcement,” Erickson said. -
Not sure if this is legit, or if the police are simply using reporters to spread propaganda.
Over a Dozen Witnesses Corroborate Officer’s Story In The Death of Michael Brown
Christine Byers, crime reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, posted the following on Twitter late last night:Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop’s version of events in shooting #FergusonThis comes just hours after autopsy reports reveal that Michael Brown was shot while facing the officer, refuting his friend’s claim that he was shot in the back, execution style.A video showing Michael Brown robbing a convenience store just minutes before his death has been circulating newsrooms and social media almost nonstop.This new information, coupled with that which we already know, is beginning to paint a much clearer picture of what really happened to Michael Brown, and calls into question the validity of the outrage displayed by the people of Ferguson.The involvement of Al Sharpton, as well as the family’s decision to retain Benjamin Crump, who previously served as the attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family, suggests that the people of Ferguson are not seeking justice at all, but instead are aiming to create a public spectacle for attention.. . .The citizens of Ferguson are not doing their community any favors. Somehow, the rest of the country understands that justice is attained in a courtroom with decorum, not by literally destroying one’s own community out in the streets. -
Ferguson protesters: The peaceful, the elders, the looters, and the ‘militants’
Ferguson police officials would not quantify how many looters have been arrested since the Brown shooting but presented a Washington Post reporter with a stack of roughly 50 arrest reports. While some of those arrested for stealing are from Ferguson, a large number have addresses listed in Illinois or in Texas.“It’s like looting tourism,” an officer commented as he showed the reports. He asked not to be named. “It’s like they are spending their gas money to come down here and steal.”DeAndre Smith, fresh from looting the QuikTrip on a recent night, told reporters: “I’m proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what’s supposed to happen when there’s injustice in your community. St. Louis — not going to take this anymore.”Ferguson is a sign of things to come. What is happening there is exactly what will happen in the event of a dollar collapse.
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Photos of property destruction in Ferguson
The legacy of left-liberalism is a legacy of destruction. Everything left-liberalism touches leaves a smoldering heap of wreckage in its wake.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Blacks are murdered in Chicago annually, but don't expect race hustlers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to show up and stoke the fires. There are no political points to score there.
Looting Decimates Small Businesses in Ferguson
Looters and vandals have smashed windows of store fronts, spray painted graffiti, stolen property, and burned down businesses. Some stores re-opened with plywood plugging up their smashed windows. The words “open for business” are often spray painted on the plywood, but many customers are too afraid to even come.
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“Our patients are canceling left and right because they don’t want to come on our street,” the owner of a medical facility told Breitbart News. “It’s affecting our bottom line for the past week. We’re going on the 8th day now.”
The same business owner was concerned about releasing her businesses name for fear of retribution by protesters who may burn down the facility like she says they had already done to a friend’s place of business. Additionally, the shop owners are concerned the damages done may not be covered by their insurance.
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'Slavery,' pregnancy drove California professor to accost teen pro-lifer, say defenders
Supporters of Mireille Miller-Young cite the "cultural legacy of slavery" and even the effects of pregnancy to explain why the feminist studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara would accost a teenager spreading a pro-life message on campus.The pregnant 38-year-old who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor counts of theft, vandalism and battery after stealing and destroying an anti-abortion poster and injuring a a16-year-old activist, says she’s sorry for some of her actions and hopes to “makes amends through community service.” -
VA Spent $1.4 Billion in Stimulus Funds on Green Energy Projects, Cemeteries
Local VA finds another 1,146 unread patient images
A review of the imaging system at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System prompted by 900 lost X-rays revealed there were an additional 1,146 unread patient exams going back to 2011.Also see my other thread: Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital's secret list
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I didn't think that Popeye was a bad movie. I saw it with my family in the theater when I was a kid.
I recall reading somewhere that Robin Williams didn't like the movie and regretted acting in it. If I had ever had the opportunity to meet him, I would've told him that he shouldn't feel that way and instead be proud that he brought joy to millions of children.
Philadelphia seizing homes, cars, cash under asset forfeiture
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