Newspapers are filled with stories (example) about how Russia’s Sochi Olympics construction has cost a lot of money due to “corruption.” I asked my in-apartment Russian experts what this might mean. It turns out that cronies of the government are getting paid more-than-standard-commercial rates to build stuff. So taxpayer funds are being transferred to the politically connected.
I’m wondering how this is different than the U.S. military, which is ridiculously expensive but not typically labeled “corrupt.” TIME reports that the cost of a USAF Boeing 757 (C-32A) is about $43,000 per hour to the taxpayers; Conklin & De Decker says that $12,000 per hour is about what an airline would spend to fly one extra hour in the same airplane. In December, I wrote about how the U.S. Army is planning to do primary helicopter training in $6 million Eurocopters (foreign militaries and private flight schools get this done in aircraft that cost about 1/20th as much)
Is Russia’s Sochi project more corrupt than the U.S. military?
Sochi cf. military industrial complex
‘What Eisenhower Said About the Military-Industrial Complex Is True’
“Politics itself is nothing but an attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.”
P.J. O’Rourke
The War on Drugs, another disaster. A half century, billions of dollars, countless stupid laws, Mexico a war zone. Result? Every drug known to man, woman, or hermaphrodite is for sale at great prices in every high school in America. Another triumph of private enterprise over governmental regulation. If Washington tried to provide free drugs, it couldn’t come close. No one would be able to get so much as an aspirin.
Infinite Arrogance, Infinite Incompetence
Downsizing Government
Yeah! Studebaker!
Yeah! War on Drugs!
Yeah! Big government coalition!
Continue reading ‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.’ »
Tags: Big Government, corrupt government, downsizing government, drug prohibition, drug war, KJw-BgMH5EU, LF2n1oPhSoE, military industrial complex, NnRdk0btBGc, Ozymandias, P.J. O'Rourke, RDT, revolving door tax, Sochi, Studebaker, war on drugs, xhYJS80MgYA
Posted 2014/02/04, 7:17 am
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Category:
"Irish Democracy",
Beadledom,
Cults,
Forward!,
Government,
History,
Little People,
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Ozymandias,
Philosopher Kings,
Statolatry,
Thugocracy,
Tyranny,
You Can't Fix Stupid ·
Comments Off on We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.
[I]t is a myth that the US is becoming ‘libertarian’ – the number of restrictions on personal behaviour is increasing, not decreasing. At the same time as marijuana is being legalised in Colorado, cities are banning e-cigarettes for no rational reason. The newly ‘liberal’ America says it’s cool to smoke marijuana but then demonises those who eat a McDonald’s hamburger or drink a Big Gulp soda. Many of the same people who are posing as liberty’s champions over marijuana are the same ones who are leading the charge when it comes to bans, limits and nudges on tobacco, soda, school lunches, and so on.
Marijuana and the myth of libertarian America
The American Aristocracy worries about the little people:
What an odd situation in which we find ourselves, where the most influential figures in politics, media, culture, and the academy, the leaders of institutions from the presidency to the Senate to multinational corporations to globally recognized universities, spend most of their time discussing inequalities of income and opportunity, identifying, blaming, and attacking the mysterious and nefarious figures behind whatever the social problem of the day might be. This is the way the clique that runs America justifies the inequalities endemic to “meritocracy,” the way it masks the flaws of a power structure that generates Brown-educated cable hosts and personal chefs who open ballparks with a phone call. This is how a new American aristocracy comes into being, one as entitled and clueless as its predecessors, but without the awareness of itself as a class.
Love in the Time of Obama
Let’s start by downsizing the federal government – a smaller government means less rent-seeking.
DownsizingGovernment.org
Department of Education – college con
Department of Labor – unemployment, FUTA, job training, monopoly unionism
Department of Energy – clean coal, Solyndra
Department of Health and Human Services, HHS – Medicaid, fraud, Medicare,
Department of Agriculture, USDA – ag subsidies, wheat, corn, rice, dairy, soybeans, cotton, sugar
The gradual accretion of power by a vast administrative state, combined with an administration intolerant of dissent, has produced a clear and present danger to basic American freedoms.
Enemies of Friends of Abe: How the IRS chills freedom of association.
Continue reading ‘America is Not Becoming More Libertarian’ »
Tags: _i4u3FHBxbE, 0OuOSxgaSN0, ag subsidies, agriculture, corn, cotton, dairy, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, downsizing government, federal government, hgAet3xa94U, HHS, little people, Ozymandias, rice, Solyndra, soybeans, Sugar, USDA, vwKpT7P9OiU, wheat, xXyJ9hpX0Vo
