Zen and the Art of /.*/

I am the licensed charitable gambling manager for the Osseo Fire Department Relief Association.

I write to you today to express my bitter disappointment and profound concern over the state of charitable gambling in Minnesota.

The event that precipitated my correspondence to you today is the fact that myself and two of my fellow paid-on-call / volunteer firefighters spent seven hours this past New Year’s Day holiday performing the newly-required Annual Physical Inventory and Cash Count, instead of enjoying the much-needed holiday with family and friends.

Charlie Sheen sits down with the president…and BARRAGES him with inconvenient truth! Holy shit, batman. I wish there was a video–I would have liked to see him squirm. His response, or lack thereof, is extremely telling. Hope? Change? Nope. New puppet, same puppet masters.

Update: Stupid. Just saw the small print. Cool article anyhow… Pretty much how I would expect it to go down.

Great article by Jake Towne over at C4L.

The list goes on and on and on. I’m baffled that people continue to think that we somehow need the federal income tax… Wake up.

The Fed Under Fire

When Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207) began to accumulate more and more co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, I was somewhat skeptical, thinking that most co-sponsors were merely signing on to look supportive of Washington’s nebulous notions of “accountability” and “transparency.”

The Creature from Jekyll Island - A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G Edward Griffin (1:11:11)

A speech given by G. Edward Griffin in 1994 (!) on the contents of his book of the same name. Required listening. No excuses.

In this statement, delivered by Ron Paul on February 13, 2008 to the United States House of Representatives, Dr. Paul proposes three actions the government should take to allow individuals to use private competing currencies:

1. eliminate legal tender laws,
2. eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints, and
3. eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins.

Faithfully executing these three actions would have wonderful, seemingly miraculous effects. So many of the myriad other problems that we constantly worry about, argue about, and fight to rectify would steadily melt away.

I have been outraged the past couple days over the fact that my Congressman, Republican Erik Paulsen of Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, voted for the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.”

The object in this particular case, tobacco, is really immaterial. What I’m furious about is the flagrant violation of the rights of free people. As usual, after fuming for a while, I wonder if I’m overreacting–maybe I’ve finally lost my mind and I’m certifiably bat-shit crazy.

Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises (audio version here)

I stumbled across this gem recently, which does a great job of explaining just what it says–that moderate, middle-of-the-road policy is unsustainable and just leads steadily towards socialism. There is no “improvement” that can be applied to a free market economy that does not fail and require further “improvements” ad infinitum, until you arrive at all-out socialism.

This past Saturday, the MNGOP held its State Central Committee meeting. After voting in some of the same old scumbags involved in the shenanigans at last year’s state convention in Rochester, the delegation proceeded to vote down the following resolution:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Bill-Grants-President-Unprecedented-Cyber-Security-Powers-504520/

Every person in this country with half a brain should be charging the capital and throwing batteries at these scum.

“…the president would have broad authority to designate various private networks as a “critical infrastructure system or network” and, with no other review, “may declare a cyber-security emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from” the designated the private-sector system or network.”