I haven't said anything in a week, but I haven't had much to say at all. Still don't but I thought I would toss something up here anyway.

The Supremes have decided the Kelo case in the worst possible way for property owners. Essentially, any government agency can seize anyone's property for any purpose, including giving it to another private individual or company. Being a property owner in the United States just became a liability. I expect to see real estate become a buyers market as a result. It likely will anyway, with housing prices setting new records on a daily basis. If you think you might sell your house anytime in the next five years or so, sell it this summer.

The Democrats want to steal my paycheck and give it to the mentally inferior and call it "fairness." The Republicans want to steal my land and give it to some corporation to build a strip mall on it. Well, ok, not my land in particular. At least not at the present time. But you get the idea. I used to hold out some hope that the Libertarians had a shot, but they squandered their one chance and wasted everyone's time and money on internal feuds. The last presidential candidate they ran was still wearing his straight-jacket. I now get a fat envelope every month or so with "Is the Libertarian Party Dead?" splashed across the front of it. I say "Yes" to myself and toss the envelope unopened into the recycle bin. Personally, I hope they all rot in hell.

I hear a steady buzz that we are in places like Iraq to preserve our democracy. We are a republic and the founders explicitly warned against democracy and in fact put in place guarantees so we wouldn't slide into democracy by accident, but there are precious few who know that, and none that work in D.C. or report on the goings on there. But leaving that aside, I can't help but ask, preserving what exactly? A corpse? We are no longer citizens, but subjects. We work and follow the rules, and hope to avoid the notice of the storm troopers. I feel like Lando Calrissian; any feeling I have of control over my property, my personal effects, even my own body is nothing but an illusion that can vanish at any time.

Here is a bit from Jerry Pournelle's site. It is roughly related to the above:

The WSJ today has an article on a Texas town that tried to provide WiFi for citizens (by subscription) and ran afoul of SBC which wants a monopoly on all this stuff and while it doesn't yet provide DSL and is not sure when it will, wants to see that local governments don't compete. Funny, they're all for local governments providing monopolies whenever possible; just not competing.

The rapaciousness of Republicans for corporate welfare and benefits for what is laughingly called the "private, competitive" sector is matched only by the unrelenting greed of the Democrats for benefits for Public Service Employees and their Unions. (Why should "public service" have both civil service and union protections? One or the other, but why both?) We have a party of greedy capitalists (Adam Smith said the greatest enemy of capitalism is capitalists, who can't ever meet without conspiring to get government to limit competition) vs. a party of confiscatory taxation and "public benefits" which generally turn out to be more jobs for bureaucrats and higher salaries for public officials. A pox on both their houses.

I wasn't able to find a link to the WSJ front page piece with either Google or MSN search but I know it's out there because I have the paper, and I think someone sent me a link which I now can't find. Oh well.

The whole notion of leaving things to local government, and fiscal responsibility, seems to be gone now. Everything is to be federalized, so that bribes have to be big. With local government a lot of people can get in on public corruption because the price of entry is lower. Federalize it and you need a lot more money to pay before you can play.

Me, I'm all for allowing private companies to get in to provide services, but I am not for state legislatures forbidding cities to get into the game. Let cities and towns do as they want. Meanwhile the cable companies, fearing their monopolies, have their own legislative agendas. The phone companies are losing revenue and want it back so they want a monopoly on high speed internet.

Well it's all grist for the mill and I suppose I'll deal with much of it in the column, but for the moment I am a bit disgusted with them all. I am sure I'll feel better later.

On a different topic completely, I had the ...uh opportunity to see a lot more of our friendly landscaper "lady" today than I really wanted to see. Her entire be-thonged ass was sticking out of the top of her pants while she was weeding the rockscape around the office. Now, I've probably shown a little crack here or there while working, but I generally realize it if for no other reason than I feel a bit of a draft, and take corrective action. This individual's pants were essentially off. How could anyone be oblivious to that? And we're not talking about a quick peek; she was showing for a good twenty minutes. And no, I wasn't timing her. I'm judging by the length of time I was hearing "Oh my God!" "That's disgusting!" "Where's my camera?" and other such comments while I was trying to work.

Then I stumbled across Dad Gone Mad's latest post (rated PG-13) on this very subject. Working with teenage girls has made me realize the effect of absent fathers is having on our teenage girls. Walking through the high school or mall on an average day is like watching the Playboy channel. The only real difference being the Playboy channel would have its license revoked for showing some of what I see there.

So I guess it's OK that the country is going into the toilet as long as we get to look at lots of perky boobs and butt checks along the way. Personally, St Kitts is looking better by the day.

Especially when I read stuff like this. The locals joke about Northern Michigan having two seasons; winter and three months of bad sledding. I've seen the pictures from the late 1800's. It's not a joke. Many of the old farms around here have doors on the second floor without a balcony. That was how they got in and out of the house in the winter. I remember winters with enough snow that people had to melt it over a fire and dump the water in the bathtub because there wasn't anyplace left to stack it. The road crews in Flint would use front loaders and dump trucks to haul snow downtown and dump it into the Flint River just to make room to plow the streets. The EPA made them stop that. It seems the road salt was messing up the Flint River's delicate balance of heavy metals, motor oil, and raw sewage. Up here near the lake, there was even more snow. Most of the people living here in Northern Michigan today have never seen real snow. If this story holds true, they will.

I'll be in St. Kitts. I'm not married to a travel agent for nothing.