Brain Gain in New Orleans

The appended USA Today story shows what can be done by private initiative. There is very little need for government. The basic need for government is to insure there is order and rules for protecting persons and their property. As property values fell in New Orleans, new entrepreneurs saw opportunity. The free market works.

Here is a story about volunteers from outside New Orleans that has spent a year helping out. No government necessary, thank you. http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2007/08/superstars-in-t.html

The writer says government must do a better job in natural disasters. It is amazing that the Florida Seminole Indians survived hurricanes for centuries without FEMA.

We should stop paying the government Mafia and use private services. If the private provider does a poor job, the consumer can do something besides complain that the provider needs to do a better job. The consumer can change providers! Commercial and private property owners could hire private fire departments for less money than the government monopoly fire fighters cost. Insurance companies would see to it that their insured properties were built with the best materials. They would make sure smoke detectors and fire retardant chemicals are installed.

With cell phones, shift work, and younger retirees, there is no need for a government fire department whose employees retire young and collect a pension for 30 years, WITH a cost of living raise! The private sector retirees do not have a COLA in their private pensions. There are plenty of volunteers in each community who are willing to accept the challenge and the rewards from the community to prevent fires. No fire house is needed, but the community can and will eventually get one built, without taxing themselves to do so.

Health care and education all will be provided by the market if there is a need and a value to the consumer.

Despite all the hardships Louisiana has gone through since hurricane Katrina, Louisiana ranks fourth as the state with the fattest people in the United States.

Charles Tolleson

USA Today Mon Aug 27, 2007

Two years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Fort Pike Volunteer Fire Department in east New Orleans does not lack for firetrucks. Shortly after the storm, it received two, donated by non-profit groups.Now, if it could only get a fire station to put them in.The department's trucks sit out in the elements, reducing their life expectancy. Its firefighters operate out of their homes and a couple of trailers, while they plod through the tedium and frustration of getting federal help. Their experience is typical of the halting, uneven status of rebuilding in New Orleans.

Significant progress is being made, particularly with funds from non-profits and in cases where homeowners and small businesses can draw on their own money upfront. Some neighborhoods, particularly wealthier ones, have revived. But in much of the city, public facilities and lower-income communities still look storm-ravaged. The New Orleans police chief still operates out of a trailer. In the first three months of this year, the violent crime rate more than doubled over the previous year. Seven area hospitals, four of them public, remain closed, causing an acute shortage of health care services. Throughout much of the city, boarded-up homes still show Katrina's high-water mark, often well into their second floors. And in the Lower 9th Ward, a largely African-American community, it is possible to walk for blocks through erstwhile neighborhoods without seeing anything but tall grass and potholed streets. Tens of thousands of residents still live in trailers.

All of this would make for an unrelenting tale of woe, but for one thing: People are pouring into the city. For all that government is messing up, market forces and individual initiative are helping to right, albeit painfully slowly. In the past year, the population of New Orleans has grown from less than half the pre-Katrina level to more than two-thirds. Many new arrivals are young, idealistic and highly educated newcomers, drawn to the city by its uniqueness and undaunted by its problems.

The Times-Picayune, the city's daily newspaper, recently called the phenomenon New Orleans' "brain gain." Also pouring into the city are an impressive number of senior executives drawn to the challenges of building and rebuilding, rather than merely administering. Schools chief Paul Vallas, city recovery czar Edward Blakely and Tulane University medical school dean Benjamin Sachs are among a long list of nationally or internationally acclaimed professionals coming to New Orleans in recent months. Tulane's president, Scott Cowen, who hired Sachs, says he's getting more and better applicants than he did before Katrina. There are broader lessons in this. The most obvious is that government simply must do a better job the next time there is a natural, or man-made, disaster remotely approaching the scale of Katrina. All levels of government have failed to deliver. But perhaps the most disappointing has been the federal government, which has by far the most resources.


Copyright © 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Spreading Democracy and spreading Religion

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms. Robert Ingersoll

I found this paragraph somewhere on the Internet. CT

A congratulatory note was sent to President Wilson after the delivery of his war message on April 2, 1917. The note was sent by Wilson's son-in-law and fellow Southern pietist and progressive, Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, a man who had spent his entire life as an industrialist in New York City, solidly in the J.P. Morgan ambit. McAdoo wrote to Wilson: "You have done a great thing nobly! I firmly believe that it is God's will that America should do this transcendent service for humanity throughout the world and that you are His chosen instrument." Cited in Gerald Edward Markowitz, "Progressive Imperialism: Consensus and Conflict in the Progressive Movement on Foreign Policy, 1898–1917." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971, p. 375

Comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam fail to mention the role religion played in both wars, like Woodrow Wilson in WW I.

In both Iraq and Vietnam, Christianity was to be protected and promoted. http://reformation.org/vietnam.html

In South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, our choice, was a devout Catholic. Diem and JFK, both Catholics, met before Kennedy became president. Kennedy was impressed by Diem. Diem and the rest of the Christian community needed to be protected from the Communist Atheists. http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0401e.asp (A Lesson from Vietnam). Diem turned out to be a disaster for the U. S.

The United States has backed dictators and oppressive governments of all religions, but the United States has never backed an atheist government.

The attempt to spread Christianity continues. It is disguised as spreading democracy and freedom. If 99% of Americans were radical Christians, the President would invade other countries and simply say he was spreading the word of God in an attempt to save the souls of other people.

If all people living in democracies were Atheists, they would care less about spreading democracy, except to people who were oppressed by a theocracy.

After the goal of spreading democracy in Iraq fails, watch for the U. S. to back a strong one man ruler, like the late Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. The strongman the U. S. installs in place in Iraq will have to allow Christian missionaries in Iraq to "spread" Christianity.

There was no "spreading of democracy" that brought religion to Europe. It was religious oppression and intolerance that created democracy in the colonies and Europe. Western philosophers said man was not a slave to God or King.

Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice called on Vietnam to have more religious freedom. Does she want Vietnam to allow Islam to flourish in Vietnam? Since she is a devout Christian, guess which religion she wants to export to Vietnam!

The Vietnamese have a centuries old Buddhist religion. It was interrupted by the Portuguese and French invaders who imposed a violent religion on the Asian people. Maybe the Vietnamese know the violent history of Christianity and Islam and prefer their brand of religion, Buddhism.

Shortly after the Iraq invasion three Christian missionaries were killed in Iraq. Recently Korean Christian missionaries were captured in Afghanistan. Today, almost 13,000 South Koreans are serving as long-term missionaries in countries around the world. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/march/16.28.html

From Wikipedia- "According to 2006 statistics compiled by the South Korean government, about 34.3% of citizens profess to follow no particular religion. Christians account for 14% of the population and Buddhists 50.7%."


Onward Christian Soldiers.

Update, September 15, 2007 - I just saw Senator John McCain's mother on TV. She said her son John did not have to make a second tour to Vietnam where he was shot down and captured. He went because, in her words, he had a duty to God and country. I never thought I would hear someone in the modern west speak of fighting for God. I guess Muslim mothers are telling their sons to fight for Allah and Islam. Senator McCain was the son and grandson of WW II admirals. One can see how sons are brainwashed into fighting in unnecessary wars.

Update, May 18, 2008- Spreading democracy in South Korea certainly helped spread Christian zealotry, but protecting a bastion of Christianity had a heavy price. Thousands of sympathizers of North Korea wanted their country reunited as it had been for a thousand years. The conservative South Korean puppet government, mass murdered thousands of innocent people, while the Christian United States looked on.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080519/ap_on_re_as/korea_mass_executions_3


Charles Tolleson

Richistan, by Robert Frank

Richistan, by Robert Frank, is a book describing the unusual lifestyles of the rich. A review is here. http://tinyurl.com/2ukr43

I saw Frank discuss his book on C-Span. I have not read the book. Frank said most of the new rich had started their own small business and sold it at a huge profit. They were energetic, hard working, competitive and project addicts. They cannot retire because they become bored. They sound like boys with Attention Deficit Disorder who cannot sit still.

Frank expected most of the new rich to be conservative, small government republicans. What he found to his surprise was most of them were democrats. They felt they had benefited from public schools and other government services, despite their own uniqueness, on their way to accumulating wealth. They thought young people today did not have the same good government they had and had fewer opportunities.

I would disagree with them giving credit to the government for their success.

They think opportunities do not exist today that existed for them. The facts prove otherwise. The number of millionaires continues to increase. Astoundingly, the number of billionaires also continues to increase.

The new rich said they benefited from government services. They do not know how many people would have benefited from private services instead of a government monopoly in services.

The new rich in America could take a lesson from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who give away most of their fortune to charity. Or they could follow the example of Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, who is estimated by some calculations to be wealthier than Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Slim said his charitable foundations planned to invest $300 million in the next few years to build 100 schools in poor regions of Mexico that will focus on digital education. The plan would later be expanded throughout Latin America.

The only good thing the government did for the rich is to protect their property and their production with a rule of law. All a government should do is protect, not provide. The new rich, according to the above book review, who by 2004 were taking home $1.35 trillion a year, a figure in excess of the take-home pay of the whole of France, Italy or Canada, could provide $10,000 per year of education and health services for one hundred million children! No government services required, thank you. These entrepreneurs could provide all these services much more efficiently than the government monopoly. It amazes me that these new rich will advocate the use of force to allow government employees to confiscate their money and decide how to use it. The new rich could do much more good, and more efficiently, if they provided the services, voluntarily.

Charles Tolleson

Canadian Couple Drives 325 Miles to U. S. for Health Care

People who want Universal Health Care in the United States should read this story about a couple who drove 325 miles from Calgary, Alberta to Great Falls, Montana because all the hospital beds in Calgary (Universal Health) were full!

No reason was given why the couple drove past Ft. Macleod, Alberta, which has a hospital and is only 108 miles from Calgary!

No reason was given why the couple by passed Lethbridge, Canada, a town of 81,000 people and only 140 miles from Calgary, which has the Lethbridge Regional Hospital. Was it full also?

I wonder if the Canadian Health Care will pay the Great Falls hospital, or will the American taxpayer eat the costs?

Imagine having to drive hundreds of miles to get medical care under a free market health care system. There would be wailing and gnashing of teeth as the politicians pontificated about how health care is a right and only the government can provide it. This story just proved the government cannot provide health care.

Why is there no outcry to privatize the Canadian health care when it forces someone to drive 325 miles to another country for care? Someone should make a move about the faults of government health care and title the movie, "Sicko, The Sequel"!

Charles Tolleson

Woman has rare identical quadruplets By SARAH COOKE, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 16, 2007

35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, officials at a Great Falls hospital said Thursday. Karen Jepp of Calgary, Alberta, delivered Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia by Caesarian section Sunday afternoon at Benefis Healthcare, said Amy Astin, the hospital's director of community and government relations.

The four girls were breathing without ventilators and listed in good condition Thursday, she said."These babies are doing grand," said Dr. Tom Key of Great Falls, the perinatologist who delivered the girls. The babies were born about two months early and were conceived without fertility drugs, he said. They weighed between 2.6 pounds and 2.15 pounds. Jepp and her husband, J.P., declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press. "The parents have been a little bit shy about the press. ... We agreed to handle it in a way they were comfortable with," Astin said. The couple have a 2-year-old son, Simon.

J.P. Jepp works for Shell Oil Co., and both worked for nonprofit groups until recently, Astin said. The chances of giving birth to identical quadruplets is about one in 13 million, Key said. "This is a very big medical event," he said. "Identical quadruplets are extremely rare. "Medical literature indicates there are less than 50 sets of identical quadruplets, said Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the NYU Fertility Center in New York. The last reported set were born in April 2006 to a 26-year-old Indian woman.

The Jepps drove 325 miles to Great Falls for the births because hospitals in Calgary were at capacity, Key said.

"The difficulty is that Calgary continues to grow at such a rapid rate. ... The population has increased a lot faster than the number of hospital beds," he said. Two of the girls were to be transferred to a Calgary hospital later Thursday. The other two could be moved Friday if their conditions remain favorable, Key said. They will likely remain hospitalized for four to six weeks, he said. "These quads are special," Astin said. "The fact that she carried them 31 weeks and three days is excellent."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.

U.S. Life Expectancy World Ranking Falls

The fear the US is slipping in life expectancy rankings will call for more government meddling in our lives. People will look at this fall in rankings as a problem that only the government can solve. The Marxist will not be satisfied until all countries have the same life expectancy, even if it falls to 40! They will be temporarily satisfied that everyone is then "equal".

What the report fails to mention is that the US life expectancy has actually increased for most demographics, including infants.http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html The report implies the fall in rankings is due to the lack of universal health coverage in the U.S.

In Australia the life expectancy actually decreased in 2000 from 1998! From 1998 to 2000 the United States' life expectancy increased 1 full year while the United Kingdom only increase 6 months. So much for annual studies by government agencies. Would you believe data put out by the government of North Korea? http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000b.htm

The reason a country will have long life expectancies is the infant survival rate. In most industrial countries with universal health coverage infant survival rate is high because abortion of unwanted babies is allowed. In the U. S. even though abortion is legal, too many babies are born to single young females who are not capable of raising an infant.

Many countries have different definitions for infant deaths so the data is not reliable for comparison.

The report does not explain why some of the other countries with universal health coverage are not at the top. There is almost a full year of difference in #20 Norway (79.67) and #36 United Kingdom(78.7) http://tinyurl.com/3x4j4m

Nor does the report give the life expectancy per demographic for a real free market economy, because none exists, against socialist economies.

The report does offer one reason for the fall in rankings of life expectancy, obesity. The government subsidies of fattening products made from corn and dairy products contributes to obesity. If any subsidies should be made, they should be for fruits and vegetables instead of corn and dairy products. Another unseen consequence of a government policy to "Promote the General Welfare" actually may be harming the general welfare.

Obesity indicates that if the world was one happy and peaceful place filled with abundance, no wars, no global warming, 30 hour work weeks,family leaves, and every automobile got 100 mpg, humans would still practice one of the deadly sins, gluttony. In this peaceful world we would just sit around eat ourselves to death.

Charles Tolleson

US slipping in life expectancy rankings By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Aug 12, 2007Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41other countries.For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care,nutrition and lifestyles.Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands."Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years,followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."Among the other factors:. Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese,while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics."The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy,"said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times.". Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.. A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans,the same as Saudi Arabia."It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick,professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau now tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries - 222 in2004 - than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted,the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar."Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."__

Read The Bills Act, Downsize D.C.

Why does a member of congress vote on a law that will impact 300 million people without reading the proposed law? It is called party politics. The party in power is chairpersons of all the committees. The party elects the leaders of the house and the leaders of the senate. The bills proposed are written in the committees by staffs and lobbyists. No bill gets out of the committees without the committee chair's approval. Once the bill is brought up for vote by the full congress, the members vote on a bill based on what the party leaders tell the members. If the members refuse to go along, they will not be supported by the party during the next election. It is almost impossible for a democrat or republican to get elected without their party's endorsement.

Charles Tolleson
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Monday, July 30 was a busy day. The House of Representatives passed 36bills. Assuming a 9-hour day, a bill would have been read, debated,and voted on every fifteen minutes. But that couldn't have happened,because the House also managed to pass 17 resolutions.

How could the House accomplish so much in one day? By not reading or even considering the bills and resolutions they passed.

All in all, the House passed 48 bills in the last week before the August recess, and the Senate passed 32. We normally tell you the total number of pages of legislation Congress passed, but this week,we just don't have the time to add it all up. And we don't think that is needed to prove the point: members of Congress can't possibly have time to read and understand the bills they pass.

Perhaps Congress needs to pass all these bills to keep Big Government running. But that's just the problem. If we want Big Government, we can't have truly representative government. Representation means more than just getting elected. If Congress truly represented the people,they would be reluctant to infringe on our freedoms and spend our money. They wouldn't pass 36 bills in one day. But the more responsibility we place on the federal government, the less time and attention Congress can give to any particular issue. So instead of reading and debating the bills before them, they rush to a vote.That's not accountability. That's not representation. If we want truly representative government, we must Downsize DC. And we must pass the Read the Bills Act.<http://www.downsizedc.org/read_the_laws.shtml>

Afghanistan poppy crop a record

Mistrust those in whom the impulse to punish is strong. -Friedrich Nietzsche

The appended AP story says the Afghanistan poppy harvest will be another record harvest. The report to tell this is 995 pages long! That created some work for the government employee problem solvers. The demand for poppy makes the price go up and more money goes to the hands of the insurgents.

The U. S. Government tries to reduce the use of drugs they say are illegal, and increase the use of drugs they say are legal, i.e. drugs approved by the U. S. Government. The government employees in the government schools prescribe drugs for millions of active boys just to make life easier for the government employees. Problem solved, for a commission from the producer.

The "State" creates problems so they can offer a solution. This is the same way the Mafia operates. A business owner may not have a problem until the Mafia tells the owner she needs protection. The owner will pay. The "State" attempts to solve the problem, for a commission. The more problems the State can create the more money the State can collect in commissions. The Mafia and the State simply take a cut from the producers. The Mafia and the State produce nothing.

The State has grown in size on its commissions from the drug war. The State employees continue to extract money from the producers of both legal and illegal drugs. What was not a problem, the Mafia State turned into a major problem that the State says only it can solve.

The doctors used to practice medicine without attending medical school or having a license. The doctors got together, later with medical schools, and told the government employees that people were dying by the hands of untrained doctors. The government employees agreed that a problem existed and they would solve the problem, for a commission from the doctors and medical schools. The government employees gained employment and power. The doctors' monopoly reduced competition and increased their pay. The consumers lost.

Bilbo Baggins

Afghanistan poppy cultivation skyrocketsBy MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press WriterAfghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year thatcements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroinsource, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stallingproposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.

As President Bush prepares for weekend talks with Afghan PresidentHamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counternarcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show thatAfghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop,3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.

But counterdrug proposals by some U.S. officials have met fierce resistance, including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders,corrupt officials; and on alternative crop production.

Those ideas represent what proponents call an "enhancedcarrot-and-stick approach" to supplement existing anti-drug efforts.They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release of which has been postponed twice and maybe again delayed due to disagreements, officials said.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because parts of thereport remain classified.

Counternarcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to releasea 123-page summary of the strategy last month and then again lastweek, but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not befeasible, the officials said.

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy:http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/

State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law EnforcementAffairs: http://www.state.gov/p/inl/

Audio link to comments on new strategy by acting Assistant Secretaryof State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement ThomasSchweich at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:http://www.csis.org/component/option

Inflation and Productivity

I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.Jean Kirkpatrick

During the past few decades Americans have experienced inflation that has decreased the value of their purchasing power. What would cost $1 in 1960 costs $6.68 in 2006.

Despite the reduction in the value of the dollar, Americans' standard of living has increased. How can this be? Increased productivity is the answer.

Without improving the production efficiency, the quality and efficiency of goods and services today would be the same as in 1960, while costing $6.68, (six times as much), for each $1 of 1960 dollars!

What has caused the increase in productivity? Greed and competition! Pure and simple greed. Greed equals profits. Without the desire for profits, as in socialized countries that lack competition and profit motives, the American efficiency would not have happened.

International competition has also spurned improved efficiency. The Japanese have displayed tenacious competition and the rest of the world has benefited by the Japanese demonstration of efficiency.

Still the U. S. dollar continues to weaken as it prints more fiat money to pay for its wars and domestic programs. What happens when the dollars weakens faster than increased productivity? As the dollar weakens Americans will have less value in the world. Other countries with a strong currency will increase their value. This simply means Americans will become poorer as other countries become wealthier as a result of a weak dollar.

This has been the history of governments that could not contain themselves. Their desire for expansion and more power has an enormous cost. Most grand schemers of empires believe their expansionism will be profitable, as the Spaniards sought gold, and as the U. S. seeks oil, they both have found out wars have unseen consequences, one of which is a financial strain on the treasury. Russia sold Alaska to the United States, and Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. Both Russia and Napoleon needed money.

We need fewer wars and less printed fiat money. What we need is free trade, competition, and profits.

We have intangible and very valuable resources in our society that is more valuable than our currency. These are; the rule of law, private property rights, desire, and the opportunity to learn. We should allow these resources to flourish and grow.

Bilbo Baggins

NASA Teacher turned astronaut

NASA is set to fly a teacher turned astronaut into space. Like the disaster with the challenger with a teacher onboard, this to is a publicity stunt that will insure the funding for NASA does not dry up.

If NASA had continued as a high tech scientific program with only white male engineers and "daredevil" astronauts, it would have been difficult to continue the growth in funding.

NASA placed a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, onboard Challenger to garner public support. Imagine the 3 million female teachers, active and retired, watching a female teacher go into space. Four teachers are now astronuats! It's all about image, and funding. (Plundering the private workers).

Now NASA has all kinds of "teaching" projects. It also has many other projects that have nothing to do with space. Government programs never shrink or go away. They just grow and increase in size and power. It is time to break up the federal bureaucracy and get back to basic governing.

Bilbo Baggins
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NASA set to fly teacher, 21 years after Challenger By Irene Klotz Aug 5, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited

A teacher who walked out of the classroom she loved a decade ago to join the U.S. astronaut corps is scheduled to fly aboard the space shuttle Endeavour this week on a mission to the International Space Station.NASA plans to launch Endeavour on Wednesday on a construction and resupply mission to the orbiting outpost. The ship's cargo bay holds a short piece of the station's structural beam, a replacement gyroscope needed to keep the growing complex properly positioned in orbit, an outdoor equipment storage platform and a cargo container filled with gear for the resident crew.

But the focus of the flight, which will be the 119th for the shuttle program, falls on a petite 55-year-old crew member named Barbara Morgan, a teacher who taught school in McCall, Idaho, until joining the astronaut corps 10 years ago.Morgan wasn't a newcomer to NASA, having trained in 1985 alongside "Teacher in Space" Christa McAuliffe, who flew with the Challenger crew in January 1986.McAuliffe's mission ended in tragedy 73 seconds after liftoff when one of the shuttle's booster rockets failed, triggering an explosion that killed the New Hampshire high school teacher and six astronauts.

After the accident, NASA asked Morgan to serve as its Teacher in Space designee but failed to make good on its offer because a policy change imposed after the Challenger accident banned civilians from flying on the shuttle. A decade ago, Morgan's backers worked out a deal. She would join the astronaut corps and become a fully trained member of the crew, the first of a new category of astronauts called education-mission specialists. Three more teachers are now astronauts.

It was not the job of her dreams but Morgan accepted nonetheless, fulfilling a commitment she made after the Challenger disaster and reaffirmed after Columbia's demise in 2003.'DO THE RIGHT THING'"After the Challenger accident, we had school kids all over the world looking at adults and watching what adults do in a bad situation and I felt it was really important to show them that adults do the right thing," Morgan said in an interview."I'm personally very excited about going into space, but that's not my motivation.

I'm here because of that and because I'm a schoolteacher," she said.Morgan, who is married to novelist Clay Morgan and mother to two grown sons, will have only about six hours during the 11- to 14-day flight for educational events, but she plans to help develop classroom curriculum from her experiences after her return. Most of her time in space will be spent operating the shuttle's robot arm and shuffling cargo to and from the station.The outpost on Sunday received another 5,000 pounds (2,250 kg) of cargo aboard an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft. In addition to fuel, water and food, the capsule delivered a new computer and cables to fix problems that cropped up during NASA's last shuttle mission to the station in June.

Though Morgan's mission has been 21 years in the making, her flight couldn't be more perfectly timed. NASA's image has been badly battered by accusations of inebriated astronauts aboard spaceships, the sabotage of a space station computer and the continuing fallout from the romantic triangle that forced Lisa Nowak and Bill Oefelein out of the astronaut corps and may put Nowak in jail.A lesson from a school teacher may be just what the agency needs to get itself back on track. Endeavour's liftoff is scheduled for 6:36 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.The countdown was set to start on Sunday at 8 p.m. EDT.Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited

Minnesota Bridge Collapse, August 1, 2007

Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

The collapse of a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota will cause much finger pointing and blame. There will be a commission set up to study the cause. There will be a cry for more federal investment (The federal government can print money, the states cannot). Some will even call for the Federal Government to assume responsibility for bridges.

No government official will lose their job. No government official will go to jail for negligent homicide. There will be no hue and cry to privatize the bridges.

Contrast what happens to a government tragedy and one that happens to a private company. Had the bridge been owned by a private corporation there would be a hue and cry for the government to take over the bridge. If the bridge was owned by a private company the Attorney General would hold a press conference and begin an investigation. The private company would be sued and someone would lose their jobs and go to jail for negligent homicide.

When there is a tragedy in a private company, there is a press release, or one spokesperson for the company gets in front of the camera to answer questions. When there is a tragedy by the government, many government officials will be in front of the camera telling the public what a wonderful job the brave and heroic government employees are doing to protect the public, as the government employees collect overtime pay.

People who drive on government roads think the roads are free. They have no idea how much they are paying to drive a mile on a government road. If the roads were privatized then each driver would know how much they pay to drive a mile.

Other government owned programs besides roads are the levee system the Army Corp of Engineers maintains. When the levees protecting New Orleans collapsed during hurricane Katrina causing the loss of over 1000 lives, not one government employee was charged with a crime. There were however, constant attacks on private insurance companies for not paying claims.

Charles Tolleson

Tribal Leaders Turn Against al-Qaida

We know insurgencies have always thrived when they had local support. Without local support they would wither and die.

If the insurgencies lose in Iraq the United States will take the credit for the victory. However the real victors will be the local people who refused to support al-Qaida and other militants.

Success in Anbar province is due to the local tribal leaders refusing to cooperate with al-Qaida.

If the local tribal leaders can defeat al-Qaida, why can't we?

If the local tribal leaders can decide the fate of their provinces, why are we there? Why am I forced to spend my hard earned money on an unnecessary and illegal war?

Charles Tolleson
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"I am optimistic on the security side because of what I see in al-Anbar, and what we're seeing in some of the other provinces where we're getting some cooperation," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

"Military commanders have attributed the decline in violence in Anbar to successful efforts working with local tribal leaders who grew sick of the insurgency-spawned bloodshed and turned their backs on al-Qaida. As a result, the military has been trying to duplicate those efforts in other parts of the country." Associated Press

U. S. Aid to Saudi Arabia

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. David Brin (1950 - )

Now we are giving arms to Saudi Arabia! But the truth is, our foreign aid to the Saudis is payoff, to let us give aid to Israel. Or is it something more sinister and complex? Oh what a tangled web we weave when we lust for power and glory.

The Saudis have untold riches and live in obscene luxury. Oil prices have tripled in the past 6 years. Why should I be forced to pay for the defense of their power and lifestyles? The proposed package comes with a serious sweetener for Israel: a 25 percent rise in U.S. military aid, from an annual $2.4 billion at present to $3 billion a year, guaranteed for 10 years. The weapons sold to Israel are superior to those sold to the Arab states, thereby, as in the past, assuring Israel of the ability to win any war.

At the same time Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates are in Egypt trying to assure the Arab leaders that we will stay in Iraq to"stabilize" the Middle East. I thought we went into Iraq to eliminate the danger of Weapons of Mass Destruction!

Why must we "stabilize" the Middle East? If their God cannot provide for them, why should I be forced to do what their god refuses to do?

Supporting the Arabs leaders that live in untold splendor is why Bin Laden said he attacked us. As long as we meddle in other countries' affairs will we have blow back. Look for the car bombs to go off in the United States.

Do we ever learn? Maybe some learn how to profit from war. The leaders never tire of trying to gain power over their own subjects, and power over other countries.

Rarely has a State had a leader like Cincinnatus. A noble man who served, then went back to farming, letting the power and glory offered him drift away on the wind.

Political leaders have huge egos. Governor Spitzer of New York used the State Police to try to find illegal activity by his political opponents in the New York Legislature so Spitzer could have his own way with controlling the State of New York. This same kind of ego exists among kings, presidents, and popes. They all try to control each other by bribes, blackmail, and threats of war. Their followers go along meekly, thinking like their hubristic leaders, "Our tribe is better than your tribe!"

The tangled webs will continue to be spun, seeking power and glory. Each web creating another Abu Ghraib or Gulag, and drenched in blood.

Charles Tolleson

Some of America's Finest

The family in the above image is typical of millions of American families that we seldom hear about.

The Mother is an art teacher in a high school who has a masters degree and is working towards a PhD.

The Father is the biological father of the boy, and the step father of the two girls. He is an advanced math teacher and high school coach. Good step fathers are rarely given credit for their efforts at trying to raise someone else's children.

Both parents work hard at trying to live the proper life and provide for their children. They give a lot of attention and care to the children. The parents never yell at the children or use physical or verbal abuse on the children. Still the parents set limits and require certain standards of behavior for the children.

The children are well mannered and happy. The children enjoy hanging out with their parents, which is always a good sign the parents are doing the right thing. The children, like another young couple I know, are not allowed to use the words, "stupid" and "idiot" to describe others.

These children are well behaved and have a happy and optimistic outlook on life. They are not taught to believe in mythical gods. They do not attend church or belong to any organized religion.

If the world had more parents like this we would not need big government. What we have is big government programs that reward bad parenting. What the world needs is more good parents and less big, bad government.

Bilbo Baggins