Nom de plume: Rivrdog

A lesson for the Socialists

,,,if they will listen.

It's a time-honored lesson in European politics, but since the advent of the European Union, one which hasn't been seen much.

Part of Spain is seceding.

It's simply secession. Yep, in most political unions, some would say ALL political unions, there lies a process for breaking up a nation into subordinate parts. If the process is followed carefully, which it usually isn't, the parent nation has to go along, or get sanctioned by the larger union for breaking it's constitution. If the process isn't delineated in a political union, armed revolution will arise to serve as the process for political change.

This has happened before. World War One happened because the make-up of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, composed of smaller states allied under an Emperor. Some of the Empire's smaller states decided that they had had enough of Empire, and two of the populations rebelled (Serbia and Montenegro). In an attempt to hold everything together, the Austria-Hungarian military empire was stressed past the breaking point, and all the delicate treaties with the other Empires of the day fell apart, with the geopolitical situation devolving into war.

Democratic Socialism, as an organized movement, was born in the populist sweeping-aside of the old Empires of Europe. It has had a century to establish itself as the model of politics in Europe, but it has never gotten a popular hold on the Continent. The European Union, the Socialist super-government which was supposed to hold all the various Socialist nations together, has utterly failed to stamp out the nationalism of and in the individual countries, and the economic demise of several of the weaker members has accelerated the process of EU decline. Some members, such as Greece, are happy with cradle-to-grave Socialism and are determined to keep it, even at the cost of their economies, and some members, like Spain, seem to be okay with re-drawing the borders and letting the recalcitrant regions slip away.

Neither of these two approaches is logical. The smart play would be for the EU to hold a convention of members, agree to end the first Union, and draw up another. The Second Union would have to give new nods to member nationalism, and it would have to allow members to establish their own currencies again. The next Union would become more of an alliance than a super-nation which it is now. The Europeans are good at Conventions. They love to design them, hold them and will usually agree to be bound by their diktats, so an EU2 is easily doable.

Okay, that is the lesson for today, Students.

Here is your homework: prepare a short paper to compare and contrast the devolution process now underway in Europe, to the American political process. Opinions of conclusion are encouraged in your summaries.

Thank you for your attention in today's class.

Dismissed.

/the Perfesser closes his books, loosens his tie and sits back for his usual, enjoyable five minutes with the brighter students who hang around after lecture/

A liberal victory you may have overlooked

...but nevertheless, one which WILL impact you greatly.

I refer to the sea change in the politics of the American Medical Association. It is now reliably a liberal institution instead of the conservative institution it was a scant decade ago.

My evidence is here, and also I have direct anecdotal evidence as well because I have a young Doctor of Medicine in my family.

This will impact all of us who oppose Federal Socialized medicine, because without the Doctors' help and active opposition, it is unlikely that the HCA will ever be overturned and the practice of medicine returned to the arena of private enterprise. In fact, it will likely go the other way, with Doctors all becoming de-facto if not de jure employees of the Federal Government, with a Union and all, as well as a huge pay raise to insure their fealty. Merrie Olde Englande went that route a decade or so ago, and the STARTING pay for Brit Doctors in their National system is now $400K/yr in our money equivalent. The tag-along there is that the National system then began to use less Doctors, and delegated most of the physicians' previous work to Physician's Assistants or Nurses.

Since I have a Registered Nurse in my family as well as a Doctor, I can assure you that the machinery to implement the "de-Doctorization" of US Healthcare is beginning to grind. Not very fast at the moment, but when the call comes down from our Government, an actual Implementation Schedule will be posted and you will be far less likely to see a Doctor on your initial visit to a health-care facility after I-Hour.

The times, they be a-changin'.

That's the Progressive Movement. "Change to achieve the illusion of progress."*

#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@

*This particular, and very accurate, definition of Progressivism was brought to my attention in the mid-1970s by my police partner JGP. I believe he actually coined it to describe Police Management Progressivism, but it fits the political movement better.

Does our military make you feel safe?

Consider this comment, posted on a major milblog. If you don't feel that the commenter's posted attributes of military leadership and deployment take our military MOST of the way towards filling the role of muscling-up a dictatorship right here in these younighty-states, please tell me in comments why you think we're not closer to that nightmare than we were just ten years ago.

For you progressives: since most of these changes in military leadership and deployment-thinking have occurred during Obama's first term, any thoughts on what would change if he loses the election? If you say "nothing would change", I tend to agree with you, but please amplify.

Tax rebates are good, right?

Let's look at the idea of Government reducing the tax burden for targeted industries.

I'm a conservative, and even a bit libertarian, although I don't go full-Wookie with their grand plan to hide the nation internationally and zone everyone out on dope. I generally support most libertarian ideas on economics, though, so I look favorably on reducing the tax burden wherever it may be reduced.

The key here is "wherever it may be reduced". Government, in recent decades, "Big Government", has made a habit of never seeing money that didn't need spending, so the expenses of Government are many and growing, and in fact, Federal Government is guaranteed by law to grow at 7% per year (built-in budget increases for all Federal Departments, there's no such thing as Zero-based Budgeting at the Federal level).

So, if the Government has income that can be reduced, we would generally say "reduce it", because we believe, against all reality, that this results in less Government.

When Big Government reduces it's tax demands, there is always a reason. Recently, the State of WA re-instituted some tax breaks for the film industry. Movie producers and their investor-financiers are always looking for ways to cut the cost of producing their films, so, other things being equal, the least-cost location for out-of-studio work always gets their attention. Since film-making is a high-dollar enterprise, big money gets spent "on location". Makes sense that States would want to attract this business, doesn't it?

Nazzofast. It is NOT so simple as just relieving the film-makers of paying most or all of their business income tax in return for them doing their expensive work in the State. Key personnel are sometimes given tax breaks on income taxes (WA doesn't have those), and other incentives that cut into State revenue are generated. In Oregon, a largish office working directly under the Governor, at last report with 30 State-paid staff and/or consultants, exists just for the purpose of attracting film-makers to work in Oregon (where there is a HUGE State income tax).

OK, now armed with how it's done, and the supposed why it's done, we nod our heads and say, "do it".

I don't agree, for two reasons. The first reason is the effect the final product, likely a fiction-based film, has on the society: this type of entertainment dumbs us all down, for the most part. We tend to better accept fiction as life when we get our heads into film. Accepting fiction is the stuff of politician's dreams, because, as you well know if you've read the 3,500 or so posts on these pages, Government and it's leaders operate by baffling us with bullshit, mainly because they couldn't sell us the reality of what they do on their very best day.

The second reason is that these tax-break perks are a form of political corruption. There is almost a market for them, with brokers, and all. A big producer with a $200 million movie to make might well send an emmisary to several states and dicker over the size of the tax breaks to be issued to his firm. The government weenies he dickers with now all get various bennies, better known as corruption. The sleazy relationship thus produced reinforces the film industry's political influence and the politicians' influence over the film industry, neither of which is helpful for the society.

So, all these arrangements need to be conducted out in the open, subject to public scrutiny, but they never are. Instead, we cheer whenever we hear that another film will be created in our State.

If we knew the half of it, we wouldn't be cheering, we'd be crying.

Progressive Soundboard: May Day protests

May Day is a big deal for Progressives. At least as big a deal as the 4th of July or Cinco de Mayo is for patriots in the US and Mexico, respectively. You have to be prepared. You have to be in the mood, so the Rivrdog Progressive Sound Board has it all laid out for you, just as if you were a rich One Percenter, and your Butler had just laid out your Tycoon clothing for you to jump into and be chauffered off to your seat on the Stock Exchange, so you could play with your daddy's money and make the 99% miserable.

First, the music. You have to have the correct music for May Day street activities.

That would be the famous Internationale, translated into many languages by those music-lovers at the Kremlin, and brought to you by the web-hosting service Angelfire.

Next, you have to exercise your mind, so as to have it properly stretched out to receive all that political theory from the Left. Is that a vague reference to promiscuous sexuality? No, it is a DIRECT reference to promiscuous sexuality. We conservatives are nothing if not direct, you see. No nuance for us, no ma'am.

At Rivrdog, we have a mental "stretching exercise" of a discussion topic all ready for you:

would today's expected large resurgence of leftist street activity have been possible without the support of the Obama Administration, and indeed, most cities' leftist Administrations? 

Discuss. Free, of course, discussion is always free.

Finally, drink. If you are hitting the posh 1%-er boulevards with your protest, and the weather is less than ideal (won't get out of the 50's today in Little Beirut, aka, Portland, OR), you must fortify yourself. No fine brandy or Scots whisky for you. No, that would be too "one-percenter" of a drink. You'll have to make do with Vodka, the proper intoxicant of the masses, as written here.

Okay then. You've been pumped up with the music, had your mind stimulated by the discussion, and you've fortified your spirit with the proper spirit, so get out there and give Capitalism some hell!

Ted Nugent got Obama's attention

With his speech at the NRA convention, which, I'll admit, was a FAR more fire-and-brimstone presentation of speakers than I would have imagined. They probably even closed the NRA-LifeLock booth during his speech, so everyone could concentrate on the TV screens and not the pitchmen.

So, now Ted has a problem, a Secret Service problem. That makes the Irony list, that the Secret Service should begin a Presidentially-directed harassment program of Ted Nugent. Hell, it appears that the Secret Service wouldn't know morality or truth if it ran them over with a D9 Caterpillar as if they were Rachel Corrie.

Anyway, what will your Rivrdog do about it? I don't need the Secret Service around here, soooo....

I will bend over backwards to accomodate opposing viewpoints, in fact, I am starting a new Department on my blog just for that.

Welcome to the Progressive Sound Board.

All progressive comments will be welcome here, no matter how stomach-chruning they might be to me, and I might even make individual blogs out of the more provocative ones! I might even get a well-known Progressive moderator to keep track of this Board-within-a-blog.

Welcome aboard, dissident Crew!