Wednesday miscellany
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011- Life in prison for cutting off beards? Ridiculous law gets more ridiculous by the minute.
- And not only in Feddieland. (Money quote is in the final paragraph.)
- Terrorist entrapments are getting pretty desperate, too.
- But get the gummint out of the way and people still do amazingly cool things.
- Speaking of dogs, here’s another awwwww moment.
- The tidbit about the crucifix chain is what’s interesting here. Hm. Might hit the pawnshops and second-hand stores for that little bit of preparedness.
- What George Orwell can teach us about police brutality.
- Polar Pure water treatment and the drug war. I agree with Radley Balko; the Polar Pure guy sounds like a cool, crusty old character. But doesn’t it just make you wince when some victim of the feds protests, “I’m all in favor of regulation, BUT …”? Oh, the total not-getting-it-ness!
- Finally, two on MF Global that both go far beyond MF Global. The first nails it on how big government and big gamblers-with-other-peoples’-money are so much alike. The second? Well, salutes to the few who still have integrity. Too bad that having integrity in that business means going out of business.
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November 23rd, 2011
“Shoe factories paid their workers in bonds for shoes which they could exchange at the bakery for bread or the meat market for meat.”
Am I the only one who thinks that seems like a really cool way to do things? And, from what I understand, if they were labelled “coupons” instead of “bonds”, and contained a disclaimer that it wasn’t redeemable for cash and did not count as legal tender, they’d be legal in the US. A possible small-community currency alternative?
(I know, I know, the whole “Does it matter if it’s legal or not?” thing, but for some of us, for one reason or another, the attempt to stay legal still matters. Personally, I try for now because my dad would be the first to turn me in.)
November 23rd, 2011
This caught my attention. One might even say a chill ran down my spine. So the Germans have already gone this route with disastrous results, “but most observers now agree that massive ECB intervention is the only way to avoid catastrophe”???
November 23rd, 2011
EN — Exactly. It’s creepy, the uniformity with which conventional pundits are now crying for “massive ECB intervention.” They insist it’s the only cure. They insist that, if it doesn’t happen, catastrophe will ensue. Gads, how many times, from how many commentators have we all read that in the last few weeks?
But never, ever, ever, ever do they address the question of where that mass of ECB money is supposed to come from and how more debt and more funny money can “cure” problems caused by debt and funny money.
A chill. Darned right.