The Monorail Mess Continues

We predicted here that the monorail would die and so it did. Now, a new prediction: The City of Seattle (Silly Council plus Mayor Nipples) will use every legal action available to them to take over the land the monorail board is trying to dispose of in order to pay off the monorail project’s $110 million debt.

This is just too juicy of an option for the control-freaks and nanny-ists of the city government to pass up. The City might be able to take over the land for its own uses, while leaving the blame for our continuing outrageous MVET taxes on a failed monorail project.

A quote from Nickels in the Seattle PI is telling:

"If it's sold to private users the city wants to make sure it's sold for appropriate uses."

“Appropriate.” What the hell does that mean?

The city ought to have to purchase the land just like any private bidder would. Voters did not initially approve the MVET for any use other than the monorail and now that authority has been taken away. At the very least, the city should have to put a vote to the public, outlining exactly what they want to use the land for, and defining exactly how long we will have to continue paying the MVET in order to pay off the debt that could otherwise be paid off by selling the land.

Otherwise, it should be full steam ahead on selling the monorail properties to the highest bidder.

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Queen Christine and Feminist Anti-logic

WA State’s legislature has enacted yet another example of obsessively control-freak law, this time banning discrimination against people based on their “sexual orientation.” The language of the original law was suitable for unchosen and non-changeable characteristics such as race, but is full of all sorts of weird interpretations when applied to something that is at least partially a matter of personal choice and self-control (or lack thereof). For example, is sexual preference for farm animals now a protected behavior?

At any rate, with little evidence that actual discrimination against gays actually occurs in WA State, there was really no reason to waste so much time and energy updating the statute in question with special protections for gay people. We all know that this addition to the anti-discrimination laws of the state will not do much to help an oppressed people simply because gays are not oppressed. Meanwhile, it adds to the burden of state control over our lives through the now vastly expanded ability to file lawsuits against any person or organization that does anything a gay individual or group does not like.

This is going to be a huge burden for businesses in the state as well as the judicial system. Consider this: Why shouldn't any of us who get fired from a job just claim to be gay and then file a lawsuit? And, if a business is sued for allegedly firing a self-identified gay person because she is a lesbian, the first line of defense will be to claim that the self-identified lesbian is not really a lesbian.

Then, the judge will be in the unenviable position of having to decide if someone is really gay. Worse, contemporary feminist theory claims that we all exist on a "spectrum of gayness," somewhere between hetero- and homo-sexual. Ultimately, will the State Supreme Court have to define a test of where one lies on this "homosexuality spectrum" and then tell us just where the bright line is drawn as a starting point for receiving special protections? That's scary enough after watching the mess the Court made after creating a new legal concept called "meretricious relationship."

As seemingly the only person with power to set up a roadblock against our state lawmakers' silliness, Tim Eyman filed an initiative to roll back the special rights for gay people passed by the legislature. Yes, if this initiative passes, gay people will have to live within the protections afforded the rest of us. It’s a good move on Eyman’s part as opponents of gay marriage (which is part of the agenda and it’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest otherwise) will fund his initiative and be happy to reward him through contributions to his personal income fund as well. Eyman says:

Politicians are deciding based on special interest group pressure and their own reelection calculations. The voters have watched this disgusting display of arrogance and selfishness for weeks.

Queen Christine, a rabid fan and supporter of anything gay (her chief attorney, after all, is a lesbian) used feminist anti-logic and trickery to argue against Eyman’s new initiative:

I'm surprised someone would file an initiative to say let's discriminate against our fellow citizens. It strikes me as counter to the values of the state of Washington to have an initiative now that would say to the people of the state of Washington it's ok to discriminate... against gays and lesbians.

It’s sad to see our hebetudinous legislature pursue something so unnecessary simply because it makes them feel good while also pandering to a group of people that seem to be more celebrated than oppressed. But, it’s even worse to see Governor-through-theft Queen Christine Gregoire deliberately insult our intelligence.

Rolling back a special “protection” is not the same as saying it is “OK to discriminate.” For example, there is no special protection for people who like the color blue, but that doesn’t mean that the state is saying to people that it is OK to discriminate against them. Meanwhile, discrimination occurs constantly in all sorts of settings and over all sorts of issues. For example, the Seattle Silly Council deliberately set out to discriminate against men in their choice of a new member to replace Jim Compton. Nobody in state government, least of all Queen Chirstine, seemed to mind.

Our state’s self appointed Queen is hoping she can prey on the ignorance of logic rampant among King County voters. That’s hardly surprising since gender feminists have been getting away with emotional baiting for years at the expense of fathers and families.

Next, the chivalrous combination in the phrase “women and children” that is often leveraged by gender feminists in order to get special protections and rights for women (often at the expense of children) will be updated to include gays. “Women, gays, and children” will become the moniker for all to drop rational behavior.

But, in this one rare case, I think voters are not going to fall for this sort of dishonesty. Personally, I could care less whether gay couples are able to get married or not, and with the ability of the state to meddle in marriages I don't see why anyone does it. I simply want to keep the irrational ship-of-state out of yet another issue where it seems to do more harm than good. Thankfully, Eyman’s initiative will probably pass, providing at least one moment of sanity in an otherwise depressingly anti-liberty year in WA State politics.

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More on the Evil Telcos

Christopher Stern has a great column in the Washington Post about a concept called “network neutrality” on the Internet. Network neutrality simply means that Internet service providers will treat all content carried over their networks the same. Evil Telcos, like AT&T and BellSouth want to charge a premium to content providers in order for them to get priority status (e.g., with data moving at higher speeds).

Imagine that. You pay Comcast or Qwest for a broadband connection in your home. But, they may cause the web pages that you like to read, watch, or the voice over Internet service you use (such as Vonage) to go slow. Now, that’s a crock and would certainly favor only the few Internet companies that have massive economies of scale, while stifling innovation.

That’s something that our idiot representatives in Congress, like Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, should be fighting. Keep Alaskan tundra pristine? Hardly matters compared to keeping the Internet clean.

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A Plan Better Ignored

Huh?

King County Executive Ron Sims has a “plan” to reform healthcare? And, he calls it already “successful” in King County? And, he thinks the entire world should adopt it?

After watching the King County elections department steal an election for Queen Christine (er … Cris … sorry), the thought of Sims having any say whatsoever on healthcare is scary.

I wonder how Sim’s healthcare plan is supposed to work:

Would we have to pay some extra money under the table in order to get a doctor’s appointment?

When you have an ailment, perhaps you will be urged to deny it and pretend you are healthy.

Or maybe it will involve expensive treatments for things that don’t exist.

Perhaps your doctor under this "plan" will tell you he is curing your high blood pressure problem while cutting off your leg.

Whatever this “healthcare reform” plan is that Sims would like to force on the rest of us, like everything else in King County, you can be sure it will be over-priced and under performing.

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Landslide Coming Your Way

In a previous post, I pointed out that allowing your civil rights, liberty, and freedom to be eroded on even one issue creates a precedent that leads to a landslide of state control over your life.

The voters of Seattle and King County have chosen the nanny state to rule over their lives. Increasingly, with the center of Washington State’s political gravity here, the greater Seattle area is choosing nanny-ism for the rest of the state as well. We've gone beyond the tipping point, giving away one too many freedoms in return for government that over-promises risk free and worry free lives.

You will see this expressed in all sorts of ways, including the UW’s effort to regulate the behavior of students when they are off campus.

The UW has a perfect right to regulate behavior while on campus. When a student is off campus, the UW has no more right to regulate their behavior than the Seattle Silly Council has a right to set zoning policies for Sacramento, CA. But, with neighbors upset over partying students, that’s exactly where UW is headed.

Next, Seattle will set a code of conduct for its citizens when they are outside city limits. Imagine that. “All citizens must remain assimilated to the Borg when outside Seattle.”

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WA State’s Criticism of Walmart is a Scam

Always in the corner of rabid control freaks like Seattle State Senator Kohler-Welles, The Seattle Times today ran a disingenuous headline story about how Walmart supposedly passes the healthcare costs of its employees off on the state.

Almost all of the companies – including McDonalds and Jack in the Box - that have a large number of employees on state provided health insurance are low cost service and retail businesses. This is no surprise. The jobs at places like McDonalds do not require skills that cannot be learned in less than a couple of hours. So, poor and low-skilled people go to these jobs and get paid accordingly.

If the blowhards in the Washington State legislature were really interested in helping poor people, they would ask why there are is so much unskilled labor in the state (poor education) and they would ask why we don’t have higher quality employers. And, they would ask why the supply of newly constructed residential housing has been so restricted that rents are going up much faster than inflation.

But, this is not what they are interested in. They are interested in blaming one or another corporate bogyman that does not play the political game according to their rules. The primary rule is that “thou shalt have labor unions.” So, not surprisingly, Walmart is at the top of the bogyman list. Even the Washington Education Association (WEA), which holds a monopoly over the state’s public school education at the expense of students, attempted to organize a boycott of Walmart.

The political motivation is obvious for anyone that doesn’t participate in Seattle’s moonbat coalition. The reason that so many Walmart employees are on the state’s health insurance program may not be see easy to see. But, it is inadvertently in the Times article:

Medicaid is a state-federal program that provides health coverage to families on welfare and children in low-income families. The Basic Health Plan (BHP), funded entirely by the state, mostly covers low-income adults.

Both programs are aimed primarily at people in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That would mean a family of four with an income of about $38,000 would be eligible.

But, Walmart provides its own basic health plan, with a premium of only $23 per month per person.

Under that plan, employees get 100 percent coverage for their first three doctor visits each year and after that must pay a $1,000 deductible. She said the plan's employee premiums average $23 per month.

While Democrat legislators scream bloody murder over the fact that some Walmart employees choose state provided health insurance, the rest of us ought to be asking why in the hell the state is providing health insurance to a Walmart worker that can buy it for only $23 per month.

The problem is that the state is competing with the healthcare insurance provided by Walmart. In fact, the state is doing exactly what monopolists do - dumping a product or service on the market at a subsidized price in order to drive out the competition. Eventually, they are the only game in town.

Speaking of the only game in town, isn't this all starting to smell like the WEA?

This is not surprising, since most of the Democrats in Washington State want to socialize healthcare. But, it is surprising that the major newspaper of a supposedly well-educated city like Seattle (in other words, with a large population from another state) does not point out the basic economics of the situation.

The answer to the supposed problem of Walmart workers using state-provided healthcare insurance? Simple: Don’t let them. Make them buy it from Walmart. The rest of us shop in Walmart and the prices are low!

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Seattle Shows Just How Bad It Can Get

The Seattle Weekly, normally a weekly newspaper that wraps itself in the flag of progressivism, seems to be waking up to the downside of its own agenda.

In a remarkable column, the Seattle Weekly finally admits that “progressive” Seattle is really no less religious than evangelical conservatism wrapped in secular clothe. It's a different type of religion, to be sure, but no less based on faith ....

You hear all kinds of hyperbole from the lips of nanny statists these days. In Seattle, it ties in nicely with the city's long tradition of hyperearnest citizens, people the critic H.L. Mencken called "uplifters." Those are the folks who "know" what's good for everyone else and have no tolerance for anything they consider against the rules of clean living. They seek to ban whatever activity they don't like. That's often the way of social conservatives, the people who helped bring about Prohibition in the last century and today want to ban a woman's right to choose or eliminate gay rights. They know what's good for everyone because, often, their religious conviction tells them so.

But of late, liberals and progressives around the country are acting just as religious, except many wrap their arguments in the secular prophecy of public-health officials and all-knowing advocacy groups. Progressives are going after "rights" connected to behavior they consider unhealthful. They want to ban smoking completely. They want to so limit alcohol consumption that the speakeasy, once again, becomes reality. They want to ban gun ownership. They want to control what people eat. In Seattle, nannies like Mayor Greg Nickels want to drive strip clubs out of business. And, if progressives cannot get their way through education and mass-media campaigns, then they will resort to the ballot box, coercion, and in the case of Washington state government, a call for social discrimination.
It’s surprising that it takes people this long to wake up to the hegemony of Seattle nanny-ism calling itself “progressive.” Looking at Seattle, you see all the reasons why it is never a good idea to trade away any amount of freedom, no matter what the cause.

Seattle and Washington state’s politicians are practiced at fishing with emotional bait, and our populace seems gullible enough to swallow it hook, lock, and sinker. Nobody seems to realize that trading away one civil liberty amounts to creating a precedent that enables people like Seattle’s Mayor Nickels to take ten more. Eventually, government hits a tipping point where the erosion of your freedoms and rights becomes a landslide of state-ism.

If you are willing to hand over your freedom to someone like Mayor Nickels, he’ll happily take it. In fact, Seattle Democrats seem to be racing Republicans toward ever increasing nanny-ism, promising to alleviate every risk we face if only we will let them. Hillary Clinton will run for the White House with just such a posture, appealing to progressivism's religious beliefs in things like feminism, environmentalism, and socialized healthcare, and hoping the rest of middle America is fooled. The only difference is that while Republican evangelicals have the Bible to point to as a moral compass (perhaps a more honest and time tested method for discerning morals to live by), Hillary Rodham will pretend to by our all-knowing mother who knows best.

In fact, Seattle is a microcosm and purified form of where our country seems to be heading. And there doesn’t seem to be any way out. Neither party stands for classical liberal values any longer. Seattle’s Democrats will appeal to your emotions; national Republicans will appeal to your morals. In the end, they’ll both tell you what your emotions and morals should be, and punish you if you disagree.

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Fathers Keep Children Safe

Mark Lunsford, the single father of a nine year-old girl that was kidnapped and raped by a stranger to the family, is on a mission to revenge the death of his daughter. His mission is inspired and much of what he wants from lawmakers – stiffer sentences for pedophiles and better tracking of them after they are released - is the right thing to do. Pedophiles have been shown over and over again to be very hard to reform.

He is missing one crucial detail though. In case after case of children gone missing, the police focus first on the parents, usually the father. The same thing happens when a wife or girlfriend goes missing or is found murdered. The husband or boyfriend is the first to fall under suspicion.

In fact, Mark Lunsford went through this, as law enforcement intensely interrogated him and his father (Jessica’s grandfather). They were given polygraph tests and underwent intense scrutiny. The media focused its attention on these two as well. Suspicion of Mark Lunsford and his father was further fueled by the fact that they both had previous arrest records, even though those arrests were not in the least bit related to sex crimes. In fact, the suspicion Jessica’s family was held under carried as far as her grandmother, who was also given a polygraph test.

Is this what should be happening?

Steve Groene might have something to say about that. His ex-wife and mother of his two children, together with her boyfriend, were found murdered. Groene’s two children, a boy and a girl, were missing. Groene was immediately held under suspicion. The news media spent considerable time focusing on this poor man, while he was in the most desperate state of his entire life.

Because of today’s environment of domestic violence hysteria and hype, the focus on Groene was exacerbated by the fact that he apparently had a heated argument with his ex-wife a few days before the murders and kidnapping. It didn’t seem to matter that his ex-wife was a known drug abuser and that Groene was distraught over the environment his children were spending time in.

During a good part of the time that Groene was being closely scrutinized by both the media and law enforcement, previously convicted pedophile Duncan apparently had both of the children. Somewhere along the way, he murdered the boy. He repeatedly raped the girl.

Was it appropriate for suspicion to have been placed in such inordinate weight on Groene, the biological father? Might that have proven to be a distraction? Wasn't there plenty of time to grill Groene after putting every possible resource into pursuing the possibility that a stranger had indeed abducted the children? Groene wasn't going anywhere and, if a stranger had the kids, there would likely be a point when it would be too late to save them.

Then there is the case of John Mason, the Georgia man whose fiancée, Jennifer Wilbanks, freaked out and disappeared, leaving him standing at the alter. While she was on a Grey Hound odyssey across the country, local police and the FBI were giving Mason polygraph tests. Convinced they had another Scott Peterson type case to pump up their ratings, one could sense the collective sigh of disappointment from the media once Wilbanks showed up, bugged eyed as usual.

Was it appropriate to consider John Mason suspect number one from the get go?

Why does this happen? Because fake “experts,” the feminist state and it’s associated government sponsored industries, have spent so much time and energy trying to convince us that fathers are generally a negative force, oppressive, controlling, and prone to abuse.

The focus that law enforcement and the media put on husbands and biological fathers is based on the myth that most abductions, kidnappings, and rapes are committed by the man closest to the victim. They are basically practicing CYA – cover your ass. They’ve been burned and criticized when husbands and fathers actually were the culprits, and have learned they are never criticized if they blame the father/husband first and work out the details later. Even when the father or husband was not involved in foul play, the police and the media are still not blamed. Even when a stranger has a child, and law enforcement does not catch them before it is too late, the police and the media are not blamed for focusing on the father/husband. Even though it is very rare for biological fathers to harm their own children, law enforcement seems to protect their own reputations first and worry about finding missing children second.

Here is a great example of how this myth is perpetuated. At About.com, under the category of incest and abuse, you can find a guy named Douglas Larson posturing as an expert on the topic of child abuse. He promotes the idea that we should be more concerned about parental abuse of children than we are about strangers doing the sort of thing that one did to Jessica Lunsford. Throughout this article, Larson hints that fathers should get primary focus.

For example: Larson say, “70 percent of men who batter their wives, also abuse their children.” Larson leaves out the fact that all non-feminists ideology based research shows that women are as prone as men to domestic violence (for details, just ask Indianapolis Colts Nick Harper). He also fails to point out that most abusive relationships are mutually abusive, with both the female and the male instigating violence. He fails to point out the pervasive problem of abuse within lesbian relationships. And, worse, he fails to point out that the majority of child abusers are in fact women.

This pseudo expert is happy to have you believe that most child murders and rapes are committed by their biological fathers. Dig a little deeper, though, and you will see that Larson has an ideological agenda and nothing in the way of actual credentials that would lead any sensible person to believe he should be listened to at all. His only credential is that he is a “women’s advocate.” Larson apparently figured at that laws like the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) provide funding to anyone willing to attack families and fathers, while promoting victimhood among women.

But, Larson is entirely wrong. In fact, according to all serious scholarship and studies by the US Department of Health and Human Services, the safest place for a child is in a home with the biological father present.

Does this mean that law enforcement should not consider the possibility that a parent is responsible for a missing child? Does it mean that biological fathers should never be held in suspicion upon evidence that child has been abused, sexually or otherwise?

Absolutely not. But, it does mean that if we really want to keep our children safe, we should get gender feminist ideology out of the conversation. It leads to gross distortions in the behavoir of law enforcement and the media. More importantly, government policy should not be designed to willfully keep fathers in large numbers out of the lives of their children.

And, when a child like Jessica disappears, and the father is right there working with law enforcement, perhaps the presumption should be that a stranger has abducted the child. Any law enforcement resource distracted from the search to find a child possibly abducted by a pedophile stranger is a resource distracted from the most difficult type of search. And, as we see over and over, there is not much time before it is too late.

After all, usually, the biological father is right there working with law enforcement and uncomfortably in front of the media - scared, lonely, desperate, and too often erroneously standing accused. He doesn’t need to be found. The child does.

I applaud Lunsford for taking a stand and working so hard to increase the seriousness with which society takes the terrible scourge of pedophilia. It probably is too much to ask that he dilute any of the anger he has for the horrible murder of his daughter by questioning the fact that law enforcement and the media wasted time and resources putting him under suspicion. But, someone should.

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Time to Love Bush Again?

Fickle and hysteria driven America seems to love President Bush when the reality of Islamic fascism and extremism shows it’s ugly face as it is now in Iran.

Most recent Harris Poll results as reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Politically, Mr. Bush's 2006 has so far been better than his 2005.... according to a new Harris poll, 43% of Americans have a positive view of Mr. Bush, up from 34% when the poll was last taken in November and the highest since last June. Some 56% have a negative opinion of him, down from 65% in November and the lowest since last June.

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Queen Christine Attempts to Abdicate Thrown

I just ran across an editorial on Orbusmax written in April of 2004 by a guy that was on his way out of the Washington State. It pretty much sums up the reason that Gregoire lost the governor’s race that year.

Yesterday, though, The Seattle Times had a simply gut-wrenchingly funny column as part of their effort, united with the state’s political establishment, to re-make Gregoire into someone semi-likable. Seems people are holding the fact that she cheated her way into the Governor’s office against her.

In tune with the gender feminist crowd (or simple "the genderists" as we like to call this disaffected group) she got her ideology from, Gregoire is ever the victim:

"I really don't know how anybody could be high in the polls when for six months it was just constant, constant bashing," said Gregoire.

Well, really, Christine, or Chris, or whoever you are this week, I’ve got a great example for you. One year after he was elected President, Bush’s approval rating was over 80%. And, that was despite the constant crooning of malcontents like you. He’s still rubbing up against 50%, even after going to war in Iraq and standing firm on his principles while your crowd derides him simply for being a devout Chirstian.

But, there's more:

There has been talk from her top aides about finding ways to show the softer side of a governor often perceived as stiff and scolding. And, annoyed by conservative bloggers deriding her as "Queen Christine," Gregoire's press office on Oct. 31 started calling her Chris in news releases.

I can’t add much to that without taking away the hilariousness of it!

[Jim] Kneeland [a public relations advisor to Gregoire] groaned at the talk of a makeover.

"You're not talking about changing the person, you're just talking about trying to change the image she projects," Kneeland said. "That's not what people want."

Well, you’re right about that Mr. Kneeland. We don’t want an image change. We want to change the person.

If anyone is left with any doubt as to why Gregoire is so despised, the Seattle Times summed it up pretty well:

Indeed, while Gregoire may not be doing so well in the eyes of the general public, she's winning high marks from the political establishment, especially big business, labor and environmental leaders. Some even suggest she accomplished as much in her first year as former Gov. Gary Locke did in two full terms.

Anyone in so tight with the gansters that run the state is not to be trusted.

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Evil Telcos

I’m not quick to buy into the idea that all corporations are evil, like Seattle idiots like Maria Cantwell are so eager to do. (Gotta love the irrationality of a Senator that complains about gas prices in one breath, then is self-congratulatory over limiting supply).

Telcos, however, fit the bill. Cable companies too. Here is the first paragraph of a Wall Street Journal article today:

Large phone companies, setting the stage for a big battle ahead, hope to start charging Google Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. and other Internet content providers for high-quality delivery of music, movies and the like over their telecommunications networks.

The last thing anyone needs is for monopoly telcos (and their Cable TV cousins) to fence off the backside of the Internet access connections we already pay for, and then charge us even more. These companies represent that their connection to your house is the Internet. It’s not. The data bits that reach your house have usually ridden over several networks and only land on the telco’s DSL connection for that last mile.

Keep in mind that not only are you paying for your Internet connection, but every content provider, such as Yahoo and Google, are also already paying big bucks for the Internet connections they have for their servers. Everybody is already getting paid in this formula. It’s not right for a monopoly to use it’s power over a last mile connection in order to hold you hostage.

Complain to Murray and Cantwell. Maybe they can finally get it right for once.

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Schools Perform? No, But Prisons Better.

One would think it would be no skin off the back of the Washington Education Association for students to be required to take and marginally pass a standardized test (WASL) in order to graduate. Teachers are not required to take the test (scary thought what the results would be) and, if nothing else, it gives them a day to relax while their students are taking the tests.

But, we already know that “Education Association” is a misnomer, because the WEA is simply a labor union with only its own interests in mind, not education. This is why it is impossible to take any of their concerns about the WASL seriously.

Quoted in a Seattle Times article, the head of the WEA actually claims that the WASL will lower academic performance. As with many of the positions and statements of Washington State’s political interest groups, there is no logical basis for such an absurd claim, so there is no sense in trying to find one. What the WEA really wants is to hide the dismal performance of their members as measured by the dismal academic performance of students.

There is another fact they don’t want you to focus on. They admit that more than 20% of high school students in the state of Washington drop out of school before they graduate. Of course, they blame this on the WASL.

What they don’t point out is that most of these drop-outs are boys. The media and state politicians don’t want to talk about this fact. Neither does the WEA. What this corrupt triad of power doesn’t want any of us talking about is that schools are anti-boy territory.

In addition to wanting to protect their members from having to improve their own performance, the WEA also wants to hide its anti-boy bias. They obfuscate by pointing out that roughly 80% of blacks and hispanics do not pass at least one section of the WASL. This, they claim, shows racial bias and, of course, the need to spend more money. The biggest chunk of those racial groups not passing the test are boys, however, and the difference between boys and girls is even more glaring among white kids. Race clearly is an issue in education, but this results primarily for economic reasons - parent's income predicts WASL performance as well as race does. The difference in performance between boys and girls results from a system designed to punish the former and nurture only the latter.

The WEA is populated in part by politically correct members that still buy into the “girls are victims” and “girl power” ideology of radical feminists. Some of these people are actually interested in destroying the academic achievement of boys because they believe that destroying the future earning power of males in our society will destroy the dreaded “patriarchy.” Others simply don’t want us to see what a mess they have made, and test scores on the WASL is the clearest evidence.

In both cases, it’s much easier for the WEA if we give boys a free lunch and a basketball court to play on until they are 18, then usher them through graduation ill-prepared to participate in our economy. It's then a matter for the police and the state’s prison system anyway, so why should the state’s teachers suffer?

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More Silliness from Westnut

People like Westneat just never seem to get it. If you live by the regulatory sword, you eventually die by the regulatory sword. If argue for more government involvement in our lives and markets most of the time, it's a little silly to get upset when just that sort of involvement kills something you care about.

Such is the case of the family milk farm Westneat is crying about now.

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Rummaging Through Garbage

The City of Seattle’s latest effort to force you to behave like the borg begins today. Garbage collectors will not collect garbage that appears to have items that could go in the recycle bin.

If you are a libertarian, or if you just think that you pay damn well enough for your city provided garbage collection without getting hassled about its contents, then you’re not happy about this development. The rats will be happy even if you're not. Top heavy garbage cans sitting out for weeks by roads, where they often get knocked over, will keep them well fed.

So, in the end, we might end up with a little more of our garbage going to recycle. But, we could also end up with the rat problem of some large third world cities. Diseases might follow.

In other developing news, Mayor Nickels has announced that the city will begin regulating your bowel movements. Details are not yet available, but rumor has it that frequency, size, and texture will be measured in order to meet strict environmental standards.

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