Outside The Asylum

1.  Break up the budget into line items 2.  Forward those line items to taxing authorities at every level- city, county, state, and federal 3.  Allow individual tax payers to fill out an extra-long-form return, with the caveat that by doing so you agree to allocate every penny of your taxes to something that makes a difference in your life or the lives of people you care about. Doing so would reduce the incentive of the rich to cheat on their taxes (because by paying more taxes, they can regain some small amount of power to fund government programs directly) while enhancing even the common person's ability to influence government (truly voting with dollars for programs that help your family and your friends).   People who choose not to fill out the extra long form, have their taxes applied to the general fund which provides matching grants to those programs that either nobody else will fund (one FTE if your program attracted $0 this year, whose job it will be to...

An open letter, in this time of synod,  On the secular feast day of Martin Luther King Jr, 2022 The Most Reverend Archbishop Alexander King Sample Metropolitan of Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon Your Excellency: Upon reading the preparatory documents for the synod, I see the church beginning to make a similar mistake that secular culture over the past 22 years in the United States has made.   In the church, we have a proud tradition of social justice going back to the writings of Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum.  Our form of social justice is nearly unique in this world; we see each human being, no matter their station in life or socio-economic class as a Child of God, and thus our solutions to injustice are often open all, regardless of means, ability, or superficial identity judgements. Our social justice truly mirrors the concept that the Baptist Preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., espoused in his great Dream Speech, that we judge people not by the color of their ...

The video below dares to ask the question- is local pollution necessary to curb global climate change? It also asks some other hard questions, like should we send young 18-36 year olds to die rather than allow terrorist activity to continue? It's well worth a watch.  <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9dnN82DsQ2k" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I posted this on Next Door, just to be attacked by the usual suspects.  So I'm reposting it here.  If the discussion there doesn't go more towards parents and teachers there rather than DINKS and SINKS and people who have neurotypical kids and don't care if they're stuck at home all day playing video games, then I will be deleting the discussion on next door. Anybody else depressed by the Beaverton School District going back into lockdown? This disease can't be the disease-that-shall-not-be-named, despite every social media wanting it to be. I had hoped the vaccines would work- that is, would confer enough immunity to stop further mutations. I had hoped I was wrong. My whole family is vaccinated. We were wrong. Vaccinated people are still spreading this, the vaccines have failed so far, regardless of what the pharmaceutical shills will tell you. And now my special needs son; who had on his IEP to have work experience, will like his senior year get no work exp...

85%. That is how often prenatal testing is wrong. So get off your ableist high horse and let the children be born!

Guess what, I have NOTHING in commoon with this woman. She claims that class doesn't matter. Well, it sure as heck mattered as I was growing up, and it matters to me today, far more than race ever will.

I would still consider excessive profit to be taken from either your customers or your labor, and perhapbs both. It's a sign you could either lower price or raise wages. Having said that, this economist does have a point- good thing he has the hair to cover it.