Here's where the current edition of Conservatism will take you...

A shout-out to "Xithras" at Democratic Underground for this.

Why are some of us unsympathetic to these types? Because we live with them every day. We see them flaunt their destructive ways, we watch as they protest and scream for the shutdown of our "socialist" school systems, the revocation of environmental laws, and the unraveling of the social contracts upon which our society is built. These people are anti-tax, anti-government, and anti-society. If they had their way, ALL fire departments would adopt a "fee for use" system. So yes, I unapologetically admit to a bit of schadenfreude when one of them sees their house burn to the ground, as their libertarian fantasies rear up and bite them in the ass.

I've seen it, I've lived it, and I'm all out of sympathy.

I live just outside of the smallish unincorporated city of Salida California, a dirty little burg of about 18,000 people just north of Modesto California. It's the heart of California's conservative wonderland, the California Central Valley. This is an area where even the Democrats run to the right of each other in an attempt to pick up votes.

Salida, a city of 18,000 people, has no municipal fire department. It's fire services are provided by the surrounding county. It has no city government. It's government services are provided by the surrounding county. It has no police department. It is patrolled by a single sheriff's deputy, provided by the county. The town also has no high schools, and foists its kids off on nearby Modesto to finish their educations (to their credit, Modesto just opened a brand new $100 million dollar high school in Salida, to provide the educational opportunities that its residents won't). Why doesn't a city of 18,000 people provide these fundamental services on their own? To answer that, I'm going to provide a simple example.

Salida has street lights. To run those street lights, the people of Salida formed the Salida Lighting District many decades ago. While they were happy to form the district, they refused to pay for it. The town, which only had about 1500 people at the time, didn't have the resources to fund it, so the county stepped in and covered that too.

In 2001 the Salida Lighting District ran into a serious problem. Escalating electrical costs, combined with aging and deteriorating equipment in many areas, were driving operational costs through the roof. Rapid growth had also caused the town to explode and transform from a tiny farm town into a full blown city. It's appeal? "No city taxes here!" was an actual selling point used on some neighborhoods when they were going up!

Unfortunately for Salida, the economy was also in the tank in 2001, and the county was broke. So it came up with a plan. A simple assessment to fund the district and keep the street lights on. The assessment, in total, would have added about ONE DOLLAR a month to the average persons property taxes. $15 a year, per home, is all they needed to keep the lights on. The residents were OUTRAGED. They held protests along the main street, blanketed the community with flyers and campaign posters slamming the proposal, and saturated the local airwaves with their talking points about how the government was "oppressing" them through taxation, which they see as a form of slavery ("They can take your land and property if you don't pay! You are not free if you have to PAY the government for the right to be left alone! Taxes = Socialism!").

Would you like to guess how the people of Salida finally voted? You guessed it. Those streets were DARK. And you should have HEARD the residents whine when their crime rates shot up, when their cars started vanishing from their driveways, and when vandalism went through the roof. Of course, they couldn't blame themselves for the new crime. Nooo...they blamed the "lazy" sheriffs department for not patrolling more, and "soft on crime liberals" for not locking away criminals for longer terms. No matter how bad things got, it was ALWAYS the "liberals" fault.

Today the lights are back on, funded by the county. I pay to power the lights to protect their homes, even though they have consistently refused to do so.

So, yes, I'm not particularly sympathetic when I hear about someone getting bit by their own greed. Does that make me a bad liberal? Maybe, but it also makes me human.

Supporting these libertarian freeloaders, in my book, is like enabling a junkie. You may make their lives easier and more pleasant, but your enabling behavior is simply feeding their addiction. Like all addicts, they need to hit bottom and admit that their lifestyle has to change before they're going to be willing to do so. While our natural liberal inclination is to step in and help them, I genuinely believe that we're just making the problem worse when we do so. Libertarians and tea baggers are junkies, addicted to an idea and supporting a social model that is fundamentally unsustainable in a modern society. Yes, it's tragic that this guy lost his house because he wouldn't pay for fire protection, or that the people of Salida lost their cars and had their houses vandalized because they wouldn't pay for street lights, but we solve NOTHING by swooping in like superheroes to save the day. To them, we're still the enemy, and their addiction continues unabated.

Should I Sell mine for nothing?

Massive props to my mother's cousin Delores, who sent this in an e-mail:
NOTE: the reference to www.politifact.com is something I added in.

I have something valuable that I do not wish to sell. I have not listed it on Craig’s List nor put an ad in the paper. Yet every day I am bombarded by those who wish to buy it. Even foreign corporations are using the Chamber of Commerce as a go-between to purchase what I have. Some of the buyers introduce themselves but most do not. Why they want to remain anonymous I do not know. I feel no shame in possessing this asset yet there must be some shame associated with BUYING one.

As you may have guessed, it is my vote that everyone wants to buy. The funny thing is that if I were willing to sell it I would not receive anything for it. Where all this money goes I do not know but I do know that the seller doesn’t receive anything.

Perhaps you also have been approached in this way. If you simply accept the buyers’ word for how your vote should be cast then you are both lazy and a fool. Do foreign corporations REALLY want what is best for YOU? Do anonymous strangers? Why would they?

You can find out the truth about what they say by simply going to places such as FactCheck.org, or poltifact.com. You can check on someone’s voting record at VoteSmart.org. Or you can simply sell your vote and then complain about the results of having done so.

Thank God for giving us brains. Pray that everyone uses theirs to know what they are voting for - what is true and what is not.

Wow...

My friend, Che' Vyfhuis does a spiritual blog called "Namaste Wholistic", and she just did the NICEST writeup on - me:
http://namastewholistic.blogspot.com/2010/05/beautiful-people-profile-damon_31.html

SO nice to be appreciated like that...

An example of what's happened to the GOP...

...and why it's driving itself off a cliff at full throttle. You would think, from previous postings in this space,that I would rejoice in this. Instead, I lament it. A viable opposition party is absolutely necessary for the health of any kind of democracy, and the Republicans are taking themselves out of the game.

Read the whole article in Newsweek:

In the year and a half since Barack Obama was elected president, Republicans nationwide seem to have given up on the whole governing thing and chosen instead to play a long, rancorous game of "I'm More Conservative Than You Are." They've been playing it in Utah, where incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett—lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 84—lost a primary battle this past weekend. They've been playing it in Florida, where moderate Gov. Charlie Crist was forced last week to abandon his bid for the Republican Senate nomination and run as an independent instead. And they've even been playing it on the national stage, where the RNC recently toyed with the idea of imposing a purity test on potential GOP candidates. Comply with eight of the party's 10 "Reaganite" principles, the thinking went, and you're worthy of funding. Fall short, and you might as well be Leon Trotsky.

Conservatives would claim that the Republican Party can only regain power by "returning to its roots" and banishing heretics. But a funny thing happened on the way to winning national elections again: the GOP has drifted so far right that it's retroactively disqualified the only Republicans since 1960 who've actually managed to, you know, win national elections. Based on their public statements, policy proposals, and accomplishments while in office, none of the modern Republican presidents—not Richard Nixon, not Gerald Ford, not George H.W. Bush, not even Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush—would come close to satisfying the Republican base if they were seeking election today.

The point is not that these guys were liberals. It's that the GOP is at risk of becoming so dogmatic that it would exclude even its most iconic members. Preemptively ruling out the sort of pragmatic policies that have worked in the past is a novel strategy, and it clearly plays to the passions of the moment. But unless the demographic evidence is wildly inaccurate and the country is, in fact, growing more and more right wing over time, it's probably not a strategy that's going to work particularly well in the future.

2012 - the end of the world?!?!?

NO.
Not even close - Hollywood's best special effects notwithstanding.

Here's some of what NASA has to say on the subject:

"Much like Y2K

(Boy, how true THAT turned out to be - NOT! -Me)

, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar."

So, yet another big, scary apocalypse story bites the dust. Sorry, scaremongers.

Betcha THIS doesn't show up in the mainstream media...

...Not enough gloom & doom.

"Banks' repayments of TARP preferred stock and warrants continue to turn a profit for the U.S. Treasury Department, according to analysis by SNL Financial.

As of March 30, the government has made an 8.5% annualized return on the 49 companies that have exited the Capital Purchase Program and the Target Investment Program, which was created to provide additional funding to Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. SNL defines "exiting" the programs as completely redeeming the preferred stock and repurchasing the warrants. Institutions that had their warrants auctioned by the Treasury are also considered to have exited the programs, as are institutions that declared bankruptcy.

The proceeds from both TARP warrant repurchases and auctions have largely fueled the profitability of the programs. The redemptions of the preferred shares alone generally only provide the government a 5% return, which comes from the dividends. American Express Co.'s and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s warrant repurchases in July 2009 helped create some of the largest annualized company returns at 23.3% and 20.0%, respectively. According to Linus Wilson, a finance professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Goldman Sachs' warrant represented one of the best deals for the American taxpayer, as reported by Bloomberg News on July 22, 2009. Wilson said that based on his calculations, Goldman Sachs paid 98% of the value of the warrants.

Overall, 64 institutions have fully redeemed their preferred stock issued under TARP. Of those, 39 have repurchased warrants, while seven have had their warrants auctioned by the Treasury. In sum, institutions that have exited the programs, plus those 18 that have fully redeemed their TARP preferred stock but still have their warrants held by the Treasury, returned 7.6%, as of March 30."

Full story here.

Wonder if this is going to help Goldman Sachs get themselves out of the fire they built for themselves...

Could I have a show of hands AGAINST finance reform?

This from the Huffington Post:

Goldman Sachs put its own interests ahead of its clients in trying to profit off the souring housing market of 2007, documents released Monday show.

The firm, which had profited handsomely off packaging and selling securitized subprime home mortgages to investors during the housing boom, switched directions in early 2007, furiously shedding its home mortgage-linked risk and buying as much insurance as it could, effectively shorting the market throughout the year -- a move that netted the firm "billions and billions" at the expense of its clients, according to the documents released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

"Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars from betting against the housing market, and it placed those bets in some cases at the same time it was selling mortgage-related securities to its clients," said the committee's chairman, Carl Levin (D-Mich.). "They have a lot to answer for."

Goldman says it always puts its clients' interest first. It's a position the firm has stuck by as Levin's investigation has produced emails and internal documents apparently showing otherwise.

Despite the fact that 67% of the American public favors action to reform the financial markets, Republicans in the Senate voted UNANIMOUSLY yesterday to prevent such a bill even being discussed on the floor of the Senate. Ironically, these same senators, who were VERY loud in proclaiming (about healthcare reform) how "we should not go against the will of the American People", have now voted against a 67% majority...is there any more doubt that the GOP is aligned with corporate interests, AGAINST the American Public?

It's worth pointing out that, prior to FDR and the New Deal, we had unregulated financial markets, and a "panic" every 20-30 years: 1797; 1819;1837(followed by a 5-year depression); 1857 (full effect didn't let up until the Civil War) 1873 (followed by a 6 -year depression);1893 (3-year depression); 1907, and 1929(perhaps you've heard of that one...).
Then came Franklin Roosevelt, and common-sense market reforms. There was not a major financial crisis in the USA from 1934 until the 1980's, when, under Reagan, moves were made to deregulate the financial industry. Then in the mid-late '80s, we had the S&L crisis/scandal, and in 2008 - well, you know.

Hmmm...crisis every 20-30 years (deregulated), or steady growth with no panic (regulated)? Seems the GOP likes the former...