Failed States

The Weekly Standard has an article about a path for states to file bankruptcy.  Glenn Reylolds pointed to it and raised it with a comment from Volokh Conspiracy that states that file for bankruptcy should loose their statehood.

I like that idea.  For the simple reason that a state that drives itself into bankruptcy has proven itself unfit for self government.  What I will never support is a bailout of anything the state owes to itself. My rules:

• Statehood is revoked.  A state going bankrupt is not like  a person going bankrupt.  It invariably takes place over a long time with lots of people, including the People, involved and in spite of multiple layers of checks and balances including of course, elections.  It should not be called a territory.  It is unfair to territories that have managed to run their own affairs.  They should be called Failed States.
• All state property becomes federal property.  Parks, buildings, trucks, highways, you name it.
• The governor is replaced with a presidential appointee approved by the Senate.
• The legislature is dissolved and Congress has oversight.  Yeah, this doesn’t exactly sound like an improvement, but the legislature more than any other institution is responsible for the state failure.
• Federal courts acquire jurisdiction over former state courts.
• Federal bankruptcy courts take over all jurisdiction of state finances and go about reorganizing and liquidating the state’s assets just like any other bankruptcy.

I’m not sure breaking up failed states before bringing them back into the  Union is an advantage.  If California were broken up into San Fransiscostan, LAstan and the Former Great State of California Minus the Other Two Stansstan, it would make two permanent Democratic Senators four permanent Democratic senators and two open senate seats.  How does spreading the corruption improve things?

And no bailout.  There is no reason why solvent states should be dragged down by a failed state.  There should be punitive elements to this.  The intentional failure of a state should not be rewarded.  Not to the government politicos.  Not to the public unions.  Not to the people who voted stupidly for years.

An old name arises from the ashes

I had heard about the resurrection of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat but had not run across it until I was intentionally browsing Missouri based bloggers.  The Globe-Democrat was the second daily newspaper competing with the St. Louis Post Dispatch.  The Globe-Democrat died as a newspaper years ago.  It was resurrected as an online news channel only.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat

I’ve stuck it on my link bar to see how it develops.

Oh, the sweet irony that the Globe-Democrat is a conservative news outlet.  What’s that Nelson Muntz says?  Oh, yeah.  “HA-ha”

Do You Think You Have A Right To Breath?

The question being asked when people complain about the government’s abusive, invasive security screenings is, ‘If you don’t like it, don’t fly.  Do you think you have a right to fly?”

And my response is, “Do you think you have a right to breath?”

The leftist, “progressive” view point is that you only get to fly as a gift from the government, the Giver Of All Things.  It is not an infringement of your liberties for them to impose draconian security because you are free to not travel.  This is one of those deaths of a thousand cuts that lead down to, “Do you think you have a right to step outside your door?”  to avoid the security check points at every bus stop, rail station, ferry, and eventually, every street corner.  Big Sis, the Protector Of All Things, has already called for the first three.  I just added the last because it is the obvious next step.

One of my professors once said that the essence of liberty is mobility.  To move is to be free.  Don’t like what’s going on around you.  Move.  This was why the frontier was so important to the development of American culture.  Didn’t like your lot in life?  Move West.   This is what made the automobile so important to the liberation of the American society.  It provided the freedom for someone to go when and where they wanted.  And this is why the leftist “progressives” hate cars so.  They go to sleep at nigh terrified that somebody somewhere is going when and where they want.  This is why having the government punish people for flying is so satisfying to them.

But the thing about that death of a thousand cuts…is it doesn’t have to stop there.  Once the government can deny people the freedom of movement, the government owns them.  That’s what prisons do.

“Do you think you have a right to fly?”, to “Do you think you have a right to walk out your door?”, to “Do you think you have a right to breath?”  The lesson of every autocratic government ever in the history of the universe is once the government owns you, the answer is no.

Darn

No heads gonna explode.  Bristol didn’t win Dancing With The Stars.

My ranking:

Jennifer Grey – Best Dancer.  Destined to win since week three.

Kyle Massy – Biggest surprise.  Short, fat kid is not who you expect to be in the finals of a national dance competition.  If Bristol hadn’t been there, I would have voted for him.

Bristol Palin – Most improved.  She came from nothing.  No acting experience.  No dance experience.  No nothing.  Just sitting on the stage at the convention smiling when the camera swings by.  Yeah, there was that whole, “I voted for Bristol to see liberal heads explode” thing.  But she really did grow before our eyes.  Wonder what she’s going to do next?

Biggest winner?

ABC

Wanna bet the producers are staring at the calendar going, “So how long do we have to wait before we invite Willow?”

Put the Lame Duck out of our misery

The Constitution should be amended to start a new Congress on the 15 of November.  Transportation and communications are no longer obstacles for arriving in Washington, DC immediately after an election.  And it will eliminate the travesty of the Lame Duck session.  The losers clearly no longer have the consent of the governed and should not be allowed to pass legislation for which they no longer can be held accountable.

Credit where credit is due

4 hrs waiting for my flight. Is this where the phrase terminal boredom comes from?

Two trips through airport security. Aside from my mortally smelly socks, it was exactly like every other trip. TSA agents’ conduct was commendable even with a special request. I didn’t see any of the naked scanners in use. They were there, but not used. Did Pistole get get shown his reserved spot under the bus?

Ramblings

Since I’m sitting in an airplane, I’m continuing to read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

It would probably be more correct to finish the book before pontificating at length on it, but that oh so reeks of academian standards incompatible with a blog called Way Too Opinionated.

The so called “Pogressive” movement is built more than any other thing on the belief in raw power and the concentration of that power in the hands of a ruling clique. That creates the juxtaposition against (you didn’t think I could use those big words, did you?) the essence of the Classical Liberalism of the country’s Founding Fathers, namely the decentralization of power among the many.

This probably isn’t new to many but it is an epiphany for me.

Normally I am averse to the idea of “Populism”. Even though I am a practicing (if not highly active Tea Partier). Populist movements always seems to be migrating towards a least common denominator mob rule. Possibly because the “populist” movements of my younger years were all Leftist in origin.

But I can start to get an image of the difference.

Progressivism builds on an organization built around Big Goverment, Big Unions, Big Corporations, Big Academia, Big Media all colluding together to empower and agrandize themselves at the expense of any one not part of the collusion. The entire thing revolving around the accumulation, concentration and exercise of power over everything.

So what does the opposite look like? I’m not going to say small. The problem is not really the physical size of the institutions of “Progressivism”, but the power they have. So the opposite would be the decentralization and dilution of power.

In government, this is what the Constitution is all about. The checks and balances were supposed to avoid the accumulation of power by one branch, especially the executive branch to avoid the rise of another monarchy. The Bill of Rights was specifically created to prevent the rise of autocratic government but to avoid the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariate’ I.e. the Bill of Rights is about Liberty not Democracy. This is a nuance many miss. The majority does not rule if that rule violates the rights laid out in the Constitution.

The problem with Big Business is not size or the fact that they make Big Money. The problem is that ability of big business to use it’s money to buy influence.

This buying of influence through money, or membership, or information pemeates American society today. It is opposition to this accumulation of power that the new Tea Party needs to target. Or as Glenn Reynolds has said, the Tea Party wants to go to Washington and not tell poeple what to do.

Traveling

Making amuck undesired business trip right before Thanksgiving. First trip through security will nor make on the Drudge Report. Too uneventful.

Guess we answered that question

Q: If Princess Lisa wins in Alaska…does that make Alaska a welfare state?

A: Yes.  Alaska get $5 for every $1 it pays.  And Princess Lisa goes to Washington bragging about how much she’s going to steal for the home state.  Just like Uncle Ted [Stevens].

I’m so disappointed.

TSA and the Nuremburg Trials

The sob story of the day is that the TSA agents with their hands up your ass are suffering soooooo badly due to the derision they are taking from the people they are molesting.  Poor babies.  They go home crying.  Boo-hoo.

Perhaps it would help them feel better about themselves to know that the international legal standard from the trial of war criminals at Nuremburg is that a crime committed under orders is still a crime.  i.e. “The ordered me to do it” doesn’t cut it.

I stated before that the airline unions could stop this crap.  Shut down the airline industry until the strip searches, sexual assaults and all the other nonsense stops.  The other side of the coin is that the TSA rank and file could stop it.  Unless of course, they’re having too much fun.