Having your Cake
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dane County – where you can have your cake, and eat it too, as long as you’re a Democrat.
Y’see, in my state, they have these things called “RTA’s,” or Regional Transit Authorities. They’re areas where you get the privilege of paying a $2 fee on rental vehicles and such in order to pay for investment in the transit infrastructure. Well, that’s what it *used* to be.
Now, in the new budget, they’ve changed that. Instead, the RTA is now an unelected body that gets to charge up to half a percent in sales tax for investment in the transit infrastructure. Supposedly, it will be for an investment in any sort of transit, but the big thing that they’re pushing for in one of the new RTA areas is very limited commuter rail.
Now, that *sounds* like a good thing. I know that I would prefer commuter rail to get me from home to work, if done properly, and when it is done correctly, I support such a thing. But every single study and test of the proposed rail system has said that it’s not going to work. There’s just not the population density in Madison here for it, and the rail system is limited to Madison. It won’t even go to Verona, Monona, or Fitchburg, which are communities that Madison has basically grown around. Because of this, every time they’ve tried to get the people to vote to support it, they’ve voted it down.
Here’s the fun part. The RTA is going to tax all of Dane county (including Verona, Monona, and Fitchburg) in order to build this thing. So if you don’t live in Madison, but do live in Dane County, you get to pay an extra half percent sales tax for the privilege of saying “I paid for that train I never get to use!”
And they don’t need a referrendum to pull it off… or do they?
Well, you see, after the spring elections they modified the proposal to require a non-binding referrendum before they enact the RTA’s. Non-binding, but hey, the folks in the county here have promised they’ll listen to it. So that’s not so bad, is it?
Here’s where the title comes into play. They did that after the spring elections… when they saw that it wouldn’t matter. Dane County had a county-wide election this spring, for the county supervisor. One candidate was supported overwhelmingly outside of Madison.
But the incumbent was supported inside of Madison, and that meant she won the whole thing. Madison (like a Certain School in my hometown) has enough of a population that they can swing the entire election in the larger district. Madison is the city that (theoretically) will benefit most from the RTA being put in place.
So, how do you think the referrendum’s going to turn out?
This is *why* we have the electoral college, broken though it is. If we did a straight-up popular vote election, California and Texas would be the states that traded off deciding who the president was. An electoral system gives each region an equal say in things (or, at least, a more equal say in things – Rhode Island and Texas are a *lot* more even in an electoral system than they would be under a popular vote.) This is why we elect city council members instead of having a straight-up vote on all major issues in town.
So the next time you’re screaming for a popular vote… ask yourself if you want the major population centers being the only people with any say in things. Because odds are, if you don’t live in one, it’s because you didn’t like how things were being run there.
For God’s sake….
Okay folks, think about this for a moment. She sent her kids to the mall alone. Not the mall in a ‘big’ city like Milwaukee or Madison or Chicago, with rampant gang activity and high murder rates, but in a ‘big’ city like Bozeman, Montana, where apparently it qualifies as being a dangerous community because there was one murder there last year.
Folks? My home town of under 30,000 has a higher murder rate than that. Largely because we too had a murder here last year, and I *think* Bozeman has more than 30,000 people.
Now, I’ve heard from a lot of folks on this type of subject talking about how they weren’t raised in a bubble like that. And I’ve heard a lot of other people counter that, usually with a snarl, that the world’s become a more dangerous place since then.
Well, I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. And I wasn’t raised in a bubble like that! I’ve never been molested, abused, or murdered! Yes, believe it or not, I am not one of the living dead, typing from the grave, DESPITE the fact that my mother routinely would let my brother and I go to the playground with nothing more than the supervision of young teenagers! I’ve even played outside with friends with no adult supervision… and I’m still one of the (seemingly rare, to listen to the media) people out there who hasn’t been sexually assaulted!
Let’s look at the facts for a moment. You’re more likely to be molested or murdered by your FAMILY than you are by a stranger – simple fact. Every police officer knows that. It’s been that way for centuries. It’s 99% of the reason that people are still convinced the Ramseys murdered JonBenet. Why? Well, for one thing, family’s got more opportunities. For another, they’re the ones who spend years living with you – you rarely develop enough dislike for somebody to murder them over the course of a chance meeting.
By statistics, you’re doing more to endanger children by making their parents spend time with them than you are by letting them go out on their own. Think about that one for a minute, I’m serious. If you wanted to do the best thing to keep children from being molested or killed before they can defend themselves, you would take them away from their parents and have them raised by a constantly shifting group of random, background-checked strangers, none of whom are allowed to be with the children unsupervised, or for more than 10 minutes. That would probably reduce the abuse rates far more than keeping children from going off on their own.
It would also result in raising a generation of non-socialized introverts who have no concept of how to deal with actual relationships, but hey! Won’t somebody think of the children?
As I said, I wasn’t raised in a bubble (though I came closer to it than many of my peers). I went outside on my own. I played with my friends without adults hovering over us in case some scary monster came out of nowhere and made off with one of us. I was left alone for a whole day at a time with non-related individuals who were charged with taking care of me.
I suffered more abuse in school while being supervised by adults than I ever did outside of it while I wasn’t (what can I say? There are bullies, normal people, and victims of bullies, I was the third.)
We’re raising a generation of paranoid neurotics, folks. People who have been raised to view the world as a dark and scary place, filled with individuals who want nothing more than to hurt them in the most heinous methods possible. And who have been raised to view themselves as incapable of taking care of themselves. That’s a very, very dangerous combination – you take somebody who’s paranoid and neurotic and who feels they *can’t* defend themselves, and often as not they decide that they *have* to defend themselves. When you read the profiles, a lot of people who do very, very bad things do so because they feel it necessary in order to create some sort of order in a world they couldn’t control. In order to protect their insecure selves, they create security by creating corpses. After all, they might reason, the dead can’t hurt them.
Even if they don’t go spree killer, what sort of life is it, constantly walking around in the fear that you’re going to be attacked and can’t do anything about it? I can tell you that one. It’s the same exact life I led while I was being bullied. I would rush home from school, fearing being set upon by older kids. I would hide during recess sometimes, because I knew that if I didn’t I’d end up being the victim of a beating that nobody *would* do anything about unless they saw it happen (and then they’d just stop it, or punish both of us, since ‘it takes two to fight.’)
How did I get past it?
I learned to protect myself. I learned to take care of myself. And that’s how I learned to live without being afraid. Sure, I sometimes walk with a stick. I do so as much for self-defense as I do for style and/or support. But I do so confident in my ability to protect myself.
If you take away people’s confidence in that ability, you take away their ability to *live*. And that’s not worth any measure of additional safety.
Take a peek – Jekyll and Hyde
I’ve just finished and posted a rather lengthy discussion of Jekyll and Hyde to my other blog at the Wolfemann’s Den. If you wouldn’t mind, go take a look – I’ll try to have a more legitimate post up here some time in the next week or so.
Proud member of PETA
People Eating Tasty Animals, that is.
Ladies and gents, he swatted a bug. If this is the only reason they’ve got to get in the paper, maybe people should stop paying attention to them. Leave the drama hounds behind.
Ah, change….
“Change you can’t believe in” is becoming a depressingly common observation about the new administration, when you look at what it’s actually doing. The interesting part is that the lefties are finally recognizing it.
While I’d normally be thrilled to see that the administration isn’t acting on its promises, they’re picking a lot of the wrong promises to back off on. Bankrupting the coal and power industries, putting tens of thousands of people (conservatively) out of work? Full steam ahead, with our current EPA moving towards a ruling that they can regulate CO2 (ie, your right to exhale).
Gay rights, including DADT? Well, no, we won’t really put any effort into it, but here – we’ll give federal employees partners benefits. Never mind that that only benefits a small fraction of your number, they’re the ones who can complain to me directly, and isn’t it spiffy? For the record, my own state governor recently made basically the same offer. I’m equally as impressed by his bravery in the face of stalwart opposition from his own party (remember – the ones who are *supposed* to be in *favor* of gay rights) as I am by Obama’s.
IE, not at all. There’s a reason folks are calling it a consolation prize – politically, the LGBT community loses, but they don’t want us to go home mad. His DOJ is even picking some of the most offensive arguments to *protect* the DOMA and DADT movements he suggested he’d work *against* during the campaign.
Those bailouts and wars and surge tactics that were such a bad idea? Yeah, he supports those too, now. Along with most of the Democrats who were supposed to be against those sort of policies. Mind you, while the 32 Dem’s who voted against them are brave supporters of right-thinking policies, the Republicans who voted against them are all wrong-thinking obstructionists, just in case you were worried that doing the right thing while being a right-winger wasn’t still a greater sin than doing the wrong thing while being a left-winger.
Y’know, I’m starting to think that this *isn’t* change you can’t believe in. It’s business as usual, from (The) One more political hack in a long string of ‘em.
Revolution Roulette
This is a continuation of a series of articles on the Wolfemann’s Den on the songs of the Poets of the Fall’s “Revolution Roulette.” Since I get into politics, I’m cross-posting here as well.
Here we go – getting into the really good stuff here. Revolution Roulette, the title track, is the one that cemented the album in my list of favorites. As with the past songs, it’s one that starts out sounding fairly normal – down with the system, power to the people, it’s time to revolt.
“If this machine doesn’t stop, what will you do if it never goes out, never goes out of season? It never stops as it turns, there ain’t no passion yet it burns, introducin’ my prison! Losin’ myself in this place, soon I’m gone without a trace, freed with that final incision. Look my heart is a bird, it needs to sing and to be heard, not this clockwork precision, yeah!”
The sort of thing you might hear anywhere, hmm? But, as the song (and choruses) go on, it moves into a much, much more unusual theme – one that’s as topical now as ever. You see, there’s a reason the song’s title is “Revolution Roulette.” Like *another* sort of roulette that starts with an ‘R,’ the song poses, it’s a game you just can’t win. Let’s take a look at the chorus as it progresses, shall we? Starting with the first one….
“And the machine grows idiotic.
Who’s gonna be it’s ingenious critic?
Everybody loves a perfect solution to beat the odds against the poorest possible substitution!
What you see is never what you’re gonna get!
Everybody’s playin’… Revolution Roulette.”
The first lines sound normal enough. The machine is breaking down, fouling up – somebody needs to stand up for what’s right and fix this! We love this idea, we love the people who present it to us (shades of election season 2008? Or, for that matter, *any* election season when the people aren’t happy?)
But those last few lines hint at the problems. The idea of there being a poorest possible substitution – not a replacement, a substitution of one broken system for another. Replacing the old problems not only with a new set of them – but possibly a worst one. History has seen this any of a thousand times. The French Revolution – ditching the monarchy for the Reign of Terror. England’s own revolution, when Oliver Cromwell killed the old king and took over, enforcing Puritan ideals. Cuba, China, the USSR – most communist countries, really.
Nazi Germany. Remember, Hitler was elected through a popular vote, on a platform of fixing the problems with the old system that had led Germany into its decline, and the disaster that was World War I.
Throw a dartboard at the dictatorships and genocidal regimes out there – you almost *always* find a case where the dictator came to power through popular support, only to turn on their supporters later on.
“And the machine grows parasitic.
Who’s gonna criticize the good critic?
Everybody has the perfect solution to beat the odds against the poorest possible substitution!
What you see is never what you’re gonna get!
Everybody’s playin’… Revolution Roulette.”
Revolutions are aptly named – they almost always come around to where they started in the end. I’m not going to claim American immunity on this one either – there are a lot of folks, on both sides, who’ve accused the US’ political leaders of trying to establish a monarchy of sorts (I’m not entirely sure they’re wrong either – the barrier to entry in the political arena is a lot higher than it ought to be.) The way that it happens is almost always the same, too.
The system is there for a reason – it provides some sort of service. Most often, it’s basic infrastructure. So elements of the old regime have to be maintained… or, if not, replaced with something very similar. It feeds off of itself, and off of the people – there’s no way to get away from it. What’s worse, the old rebels begin to feel a sense of entitlement. They saved the nation! They brought it out of the jaws of destruction! That they might not have a *clue* how to actually administer the *new* system doesn’t have any bearing on the matter. The fact that everything wasn’t magically fixed when they took over isn’t their problem – they didn’t promise too much, they just need time.
And then it begins to set in.
Who dares criticize them? The people should be grateful! It’s foolish to criticize the people who you owe your freedom to… in fact, it’s not just foolish. It’s wrong. It’s unpatriotic. After all, who *would* complain? Only somebody who thought the old system was better… only loyalists and sympathizers who need to be expunged. *They’re* the ones causing the problems, not the fact that the new regime doesn’t know what it’s doing!
They need to be caught, exposed for the traitors they are, and purged. Then it *will* be the Utopia we’ve been promising. If it isn’t? Well, clearly we haven’t caught all the loyalists and saboteurs yet, and we just need to try harder. After all – some of them are undoubtedly posing as loyal *supporters*, just to get close enough to cause some *real* trouble. We’d better start hunting them down… they can’t *always* have their guard up, we’ll catch them when they slip up.
Whatever. It. Takes. Because it’s for the good of the *people*, you see.
“Everybody has the perfect solution,
But it’s just hard to resist the sweet seduction!
There ain’t no trick to winning double what you bet…
Welcome to, Revolution Roulette!”
And there we leave off – the last chorus, and the final downfall of the revolution as it starts right back up again. The song gives a feeling of a Mephisophelian croupier, taking bets and waiting for the wheel to spin again… but really, it never stops. Some people win, but in the end they always lose again. Because people who start playing with revolutions almost never have an exit strategy.
The successful ones, historically, have been the ones where the rebels had the sense to realize that they could end up being just as bad. I said before that I don’t claim US immunity against claims that we’ve done just that, I don’t say we’re inherently any better. But I will say that I think we lucked out with who led our own revolution – they did a pretty good job of setting it up afterwards to prevent absolute dictators from taking charge. Revolutions are a messy business, no matter how you carry them out… and the results often end up setting up the next one to come.
Better than any speech I’d give….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/14/now-thats-a-commencement-speech/
Finger pointing
Your best friend comes to you, and tells you that he smacked somebody around at a bar the night before. He beat the guy up pretty bad, but he was drunk at the time, and the guy was provoking him. It wasn’t his fault. You hear on the news later that the guy died in the hospital… and you’re the only person who knows that your best friend killed him.
Do you turn him in?
If yes, you’ve just made a hard choice… if not, you’d better hope the cops don’t find out. Because if they do, you’re now what they call an ‘accomplice after the fact.’
What does this have to do with anything? Well… hang on.
Everybody’s pointing the finger.
The problem is… it needs to be pointed. At pretty much everybody. This is the problem with apportioning blame – you can’t just do it to the guys who lost. Well… you can, but that’s not the right way to do it. I haven’t spoken out much on this particular topic, because I’m not entirely sure where I stand on it.
Do I approve of hearings? No… not as long as those hearings are directed at or by a particular political group, and I can’t really see any way to avoid that. The article above points out exactly the problem – the Dem’s are basically saying “well, okay, maybe they did tell us they were doing it… but it’s not our fault for not telling them to stop, it’s their fault for doing it!”
Well, no… it’s BOTH your faults, so you both take the blame, and the consequences! Y’see, that’s how our justice system works – it’s called “accomplice after the fact.” So if you’re going to start charging members of the former administration, you have to start looking at members of the current one too. As the battle cry went among the members of the left when discussing the Iraq war and whether or not we were deceived into starting it – who knew what, and when?
Well, guess what. Sometimes, you find out that your best friend beat the guy up at the bar… and when you don’t turn him in, you become an accomplice. If you’re at the bar with him, and in a position to stop him, and refuse to do so? Congratulations – if you’re lucky, you won’t end up breaking your friendship after the trial! In fact, you might get a lot closer while you’re sharing a cell.
If the hearings would be wholly impartial, and apply the law equally to both sides, I’d support them. If they’re just going to run members of one group or another up the pike? No. If they’re just going to be an excuse to try and bring Bush up on charges? No. Because you can’t just toss out a sacrificial lamb and call it justice. Justice, actual justice, has to apply equally to everybody. Everybody who knew about this, who approved of it, who didn’t do what was in their power to stop it, has a share in the culpability for it.
That is justice. Anything else is a witch hunt, and the opposite of what our nation should stand for.
If you want to run them all up on charges? I’m all for it. Maybe we can engage in an open discussion of right and wrong, when it becomes more than a political weapon… and maybe we can actually figure out what we need to do about it.
My Hero of the Month
My nominee for hero of the month? A 17 year-old girl.
Did she save a life? Quite possibly. Did she face great odds? Most definitely. So what did she do? And how did we not hear about this heroic act?
Well, maybe you did. The problem is, it got slated for the “news of the odd,” usually reserved for the back pages.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/ap_on_fe_st/odd_marching_band_beating
Why do I call her a hero? Because in this day and age, when the advice is to be a good witness and not fight back, when assorted groups are doing their damnedest to disarm law-abiding citizens… she protected herself. And she did it with what she had at hand. If she’d followed the conventional wisdom of the day, she’d have been lucky if she’d escaped with alive… luckier still if she’d only been robbed. She’s ably demonstrated the main reason I walk with a cane, especially in areas I’m not comfortable.
And so I’m naming this girl, from LA County in California, my hero of the month. Because she had the guts to fight back, and protect herself, rather than being a good little sheep asking the wolves to kindly see their way to only taking a leg.
Legalization, Regulation
First, a better worded argument than most I could make, from somebody who knows more about it
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/420-thoughts-on-pot-vs-al_b_188627.html
There’s just a point I’d like to make in addition. Marijuana was never banned because of its health effects. It was banned because William Randolph Hearst was sick of hemp paper competing with wood-pulp (since it was cheaper, more durable, and grew faster), so he made this little film called Reefer Madness to help stir up anti-marijuana sentiment, creating a new Great Evil that needed to be banned.
That, ladies and gents, is why we have to cut down forests in order to make paper. If we don’t go ahead and legalize (and tax, of course) pot, putting a ton of crooks out of business and creating an entire new industry, let’s at least legalize hemp for the perfectly legitimate uses it has. It can’t be used to get high, and it’s a lot greener a product than most of what we’re using now that it could substitute for.
