Writes Conor Sen

“The aim is to improve access to post-secondary school for those who need it most: lower-income students for whom college or vocational training can be the decisive factor in their economic future. The president has said he wants the United States to lead the world by 2010 in the proportion of college graduates, a position the country had long held; it now ranks seventh for the 25 to 34 age group. He has also called for every American to attend a post-secondary institution.”–Washington Post

Didn’t we try this with homeownership? And how’d that turn out?

Rockwell’s law: maybe young people would be better off saving $200k instead of pumping it into state-sponsored brainwashing!

Thanks for the kind words. I find little disagreement with your response. I see the debate over direct taxation (as justified as it is) as a distraction to a more important and underlying debate. The means by which the government extracts wealth from us is not nearly as important as the way, and in what magnitude, it is allocated.

I firmly believe that individuals are far more able to efficiently allocate scarce resources than government. Any and all attempts by the government to stand in the way of voluntary transactions between individuals — through government spending, regulation, or currency manipulation — distorts the market resulting in misallocation of resources (ex. excessive home building). Money and resources are diverted from useful and productive sectors of the economy into wasteful ones. Central planners (government) no matter how smart or savvy, are incapable of determining the proper allocation of these resources. Only individuals, through mutually beneficial transactions, guided by market based prices, are able to properly and justly determine what is useful and what is not.

This issue will not be sufficiently addressed until the issue of our money and the people who control it (federal reserve) are confronted, and we return to a sound market based currency. Only then will their be a restriction on the ability of the government to confiscate and squander the hard earned wealth of individuals.

As for Ron Paul: Tthey called him a loon because he predicted, long before the vast majority of others in Washington, that we were headed for a crash of the housing market to be followed by a recession. They called him a loon because he called for sound money that cannot be inflated at the will of government. They called him a loon because he predicted, before the Iraq war had even started, that it would be a quagmire costing much more (in resources and lives) and lasting much longer than initially anticipated. They called him a loon for wanting to abolish the IRS, the department of education, and other bloated, inefficient government departments. They called him a loon because he believes that the market, through countless voluntary transactions is a vastly more efficient and just means of allocating resources than government central planning. The debate over his lunacy has ended. He was right, they were wrong.

Ron Paul introduced legislation aimed at shedding some light on the unaccountable actions of the Fed: HR 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act. Whether or not it would have significant impact or not, i don’t know, but the fact that so many congresspeople — democrats and republicans — have refused to support it, is pretty astounding to me.

Some serious changes need to be made, and fiddling with the tax code isn’t going to do it.

Do some research for yourself:

Fluoride Action Network
The Fluoride Deception

Then consider contacting the city regarding your water supply. The city of Monroe, according to their 2007 water quality report, adds fluoride to the water supply.

Chlorine is then added for disinfection
(we carefully monitor the amount of chlorine, adding
the lowest quantity necessary to protect the safety of
your water without compromising taste). At this point,
the water is filtered through layers of fine coal and
silicate sand. As smaller, suspended particles are removed,
turbidity (an optical quality of the water) disappears
and clear water emerges. Finally, fluoride (used to fight
tooth decay) and a corrosion inhibitor (used to protect
distribution system pipes) are added before the water
is pumped to sanitized, underground reservoirs, water
towers, and into your home or business.

How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli–the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

I believe the government does more than simply consent; they are the enablers. A good example of this enabling is H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 that has been introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauo whose husband, Stan Greenberg, works for Monsanto, the multinational agricultural biotech corporation.

As with all government regulation, it protects the interests of large corporate entities by attempting to squash small local competition. More here on this bill.

• End the wars of military conquest [Fail]
• End the war on drugs [CA drug raids: Fail]
• Eliminate the nuclear arsenal [Smoke and mirrors from Hillary: Fail]
• End the Wall Street corporatist machine and its plutocracy [Even more Krugmanian Keynesianistic state-corporatism: Fail]
• Abolish the PATRIOT Act [Fail]
• Close Guantanamo [A mixed bag; Guantanamo is more of a symptom than a disease.]
• End executive privileges and executive orders [Rooseveltian Lincolnism: Fail]
• Cuddle with baby seals [Can't confirm or deny]; and last, but not least
• Solemnly swear to uphold the constitution (and uphold it) [Epic fail]