“We’re here to pay taxes”

“We’re here to pay taxes, create jobs, and improve our communities.”

CLICK!

Silly me. I thought you were here to sell high-grade medical marijuana with the best service and lowest price consistent with quality. I’m sure your customers don’t patronize you to pay taxes, even in Oakland CA.

That was a quote from the guy who owns 4 medical marijuana dispensaries, who suggested to city officials that they should raise his taxes. and the “Click” was me turning off NPR Morning edition in stunned disbelief.

Maybe I’ll go shopping today

Amazon.com cut ties with business affiliates in North Carolina after the state drafted legislation that would force the company to collect sales tax.

The company’s affiliates program, called Amazon Associates, started in 1996. It lets Web-site owners and bloggers make money by posting ads for Amazon products. If someone clicks through and buys something at Amazon’s main store or its Endless.com site, the affiliate gets a referral fee of as much as 15 percent.

“We will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26,” the company told North Carolina affiliates in its notice. “We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.”

It sucks for bloggers and others counting on that money, but…I love it.

Democrats seek to seize park in Brookville OH

“I am against the Tea Party coming to our park,” Charlotte Szabo said at the Tuesday, June 2, City Council meeting. “That is our park and I don’t want them in our park.”
Szabo’s objections to the event stemmed from her opinion that the event’s organizers held Republican Party viewpoints.
“This is not a Democratic or Republican event,” Mayor Dave Seagraves said. “They are people who want a voice calling for smaller government.”

Well, she’s right; it’s “their” park. After all, I can’t plow it up and plant taters there, as I could if it were my park. But as long as we’re going to honor this fiction of collective ownership, the collective that Szabo belongs to  is known as “the people of Brookville”, and they have the right to rally there for redress of grievances.

Honduras

OK, let me see if I have this right:  an army (with the democratically-elected legislature’s approval) deposes a president for attempting to prolong his term in defiance of the constitution…and this is “anti-democratic?”

The problem here is not with the Army but with the Honduran constitution.  What sort of flimsy POS allows itself to be amended by popular vote, proposed solely by the President?  After they get things stabilized, they need to address that issue. And if in fact the referendum was extraconstitutional, why didn’t they just impeach his butt, especially considering that not even his own party was supporting him? I know that if Bam-Bam tried something like this, even with the support of a Democrat congress, I would hope and expect that the Army would step in, because that’s not how we amend our constitution.

“Community organizer” assaulted by his constituency

A pinko old man got the snot beat out of him when a punk decided that he wanted a bike.

“The irony of the whole thing is that the 15-year-old kid that created this whole incident probably doesn’t realize how much Bob was trying to make his world better,” said Steven Flagg, who serves with Mr. Brundage on the Toledo schools’ watchdog group Urban Coalition.

No, the irony of the thing is: live by “what’s mine is yours”, die by “what’s mine is yours.”  Dailahntae Jemison had the courage to do the thing in person, in the open, up close and personal, instead of hiding in a voting booth.  That was wrong, but no more wrong than the other, and at least he put his future on the line.

Ohio library brouhaha

Breda is out rallying the troops, God bless her. She “gets it” on guns…but like most conservatives, she doesn’t “get” AmSoc. And she sees a nice juicy piece of Loin of Breda there in the Cannibal Pot, and it’s hers, damnit, and she’ll fight off anyone who dares to dip their ladle anywhere near. I’m sympathetic; I’d “like” for cuts to come from some other program, and even though I don’t directly use public libraries and work for a private college, this still affects me because of OhioLink. But that preference doesn’t mean I have a right to ANY of it.

I called her out in her comments:

I’d be a lot more sympathetic if I heard protests from patrons rather than library staff and administrators, or if they weren’t wringing their hands over peripheral services like materials for the blind or Internet access for “urban outdoorsmen”. Fact: there will be cuts. Certainly, library cuts should be proportionate to everyone else’s, and they aren’t. Anything that will cut OhioLink services hurts me personally.

Personally, professionally, I think that libraries are one of the least cuttable things. But we’re all standing around the cannibal pot, and once we’ve accepted the premise that “what’s mine is yours” (which IS the premise behind taxpayer funding of libraries), we don’t get any more say than anyone else. And who are we to say that reading books for free is a more important service than paying for cheesesuckers like my common-law-stepdaughter-in-law to download Child #5 (as she just has), or making sure that Portage Co. is meth-free, or or or… It’s all stolen money, and every public librarian is IN PRACTICE a socialist. If you wonder why so many people in our profession are leftists, it’s because they’re honest enough to admit who butters their bread. How bad would it be if people had to throw a quarter into a turnstile to enter the library, or pay a buck to borrow a book? “Free” public libraries aren’t a right; they’re something instituted by a rich bastard steel magnate, because he thought thats where his excess money would do the most good.

Preacher Ted wants to cut a deal with the Humane Society

Governor Strickland wants to set up a new bureaucracy to deal with animal welfare issues, in an attempt to take the wind out of HSUS’ attempt to dictate agricultural practices in Ohio. HSUS is having none of it, claiming that such a board would be taken over by the ag industry, which of course is so.

The problem is that HSUS knows it can sell their bill of goods to the Ohio voter, who has no clue about rights (property or animal) and who will vote for whatever sounds good. And voters never find daylight between “good idea” and “should be the law”.  Personally, I object to battery hens; they’re a big reason why I keep chickens. That doesn’t mean I want to stop others from doing so, even though wiping out cheap eggs would make my $2/doz eggs more competitive. I really don’t care about that, because we sell them all. As for farrowing crates, I don’t keep hogs and really have no clue, but from what I’ve read, in terms of animal safety and, yes, cruelty, I suspect they’re the least-bad option.

Personally, I think that HSUS should concentrate on legislation to prevent raccoons from breaking and entering into barns and sealed cages and murdering ducklings, as happened at Black Water Farm last night. I demand justice!  What, you can’t pass or enforce laws on wild creatures? How is it that raccoons have more rights than I do?

And in other farmy news…the keynote speaker at the Family Farm Field Day this year is…Joel Salatin. And I’ll be in Madison. WAAAAAH!

My new BFF came back to church

Remember this guy?

He was back yesterday, right at the beginning of the service. I tried not to make eye contact, but he came right up to me. I said, “I’m worshipping now; talk to me later.” “Later” in his mind was the beginning of the Epistle. I told him I didn’t have anything, and he left. Then of course the Epistle was about caring for the poor. “Thank you for the whap across the face, Lord; may I have another, Sir?” So I prayed for him, because anyone who would disrupt a service needs that. Mark had reported the first incident to the security guard, saying, “You should know what this congregation looks like.” I’ll be charitable and assume that meant “not scruffy”.

At least he wasn’t stealing purses while people took Communion.

Whinge of bat

Sandra Davis – High Priestess at the Crystal Cauldron – had reserved Our Lady’s Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport for her Pagan group’s Annual Witches’ Ball.
But when she rang to make payment arrangements she was told the event could not be held there and – despite already having printed tickets – another venue must be found.

So of course the hag (yes; look at the picture; she makes Susan Boyle look like Helen of Troy) is charging religious discrimination. Which of course it is, and such discrimination as any religious group has a right to make. Have you ever discussed Catholicism with a Wiccan? I doubt seriously whether a practicing Catholic would be welcomed at the Witches’ Ball.

What’s interesting about this story is what it doesn’t say. We don’t have any real information about the initial contact. One of two things must have happened at that stage: either the church secretary or whoever was making arrangements did not inquire into the nature of the group being rented to, or that group misrepresented themselves. If the first, then the church is clearly in violation of contract, especially if there was a written document (and what kind of batshit-crazy person starts investing in a public event before they have the venue nailed down?), and should just suck it up and take the pagans’ money . I suspect that the latter is actually what happened though. Legally, contract law is a much stronger recourse. One shuts up and hires a lawyer….unless you can’t because you lied about who you were, thus nullifying the contract. At that point, you have no recourse but to resort to the court of public opinion. Well, they could use their Mighty Magical Powers to persuade the church to change their minds, as tradition states the English witches did when Hitler threatened to attack England. But it’s a lot easier to get your picture in the paper with your kewl magical paraphernalia.

The One endorses Fox News

…as the only network actually doing their jobs.

“It’s very hard for me to swallow that one,” Obama told CNBC when asked whether he thinks the media is too easy on him. “First of all, I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

The interviewer quickly assumed Obama was referring to Fox News, a suggestion the president didn’t disagree with.

“Well, that’s a pretty big megaphone,” he said. “And you’d be hard-pressed, if you watched the entire day, to find a positive story about me on that front.”

There’s something disconcertingly Chavezian about that statement.