#1
Bitcoin sounds like a fantasy by the type of libertarian that sits around trying to figure out how to charge for lighthouse services.
Currency is nothing more than a way to ease barter transactions. Transfers of any "leger entry" have to have some physical goal or it is pointless. Gov't could very easily declare Bitcoin illegal for all debts public and private and include in their auditing/surveillance process arresting anyone caught using it. It wouldn't shut it down completely but it would be no more than another part of the black market.
Unless you're a 3rd world economy the black-market is no threat to the gov't.
#2
Unless you're a 3rd world economy the black-market is no threat to the gov't.
AlanC, the whole idea is not to be a threat to the Govt. Stay off the radar, remain invisible. My little investment which had gone up 30% in the previous 3 days has now gone up 200$ in the last 3 days after going up 300% in the previous 18 months. Is it in a bubble? It sure is and I'm loving it.
Are you paying your taxes on your investment? Is the SEC monitoring your transactions?
You can't stay off the radar as you start to grow. As soon as you access any of that "profit" you are lible to pay taxes on it AND your lible to report it whether it goes up or down. As soon as the amount becomes big enough to draw any attention the hammer will come down. See Cyprus.
If the amounts never become big enough to attract attention who cares?
New Yorkers have long retired to the warmth and ease of the Florida coast, but eyebrow-raising numbers show that in recent years, most of those moving from the Empire State to the Sunshine State have been going there to find work.
Florida remains the top destination for outbound New Yorkers, but the new migrants are a lot younger than you'd expect.
This means that an increasing number of New Yorkers either can't afford to remain in their home state or can't find work there -- and are thus moving to states with friendlier business climates to find it.
Of course, New Yorkers think about more than taxes and nanny state laws when deciding where to live, but when costs get too out of control, they tend to vote with their feet. The problem is that many of the people that infected New York are carrying the liberal contagion to Florida. As the Instapundit likes to say, the Florida communities need teams of welcome wagons to greet the newcomers and remind them why Florida isn't like, and doesn't want to be like, New York...
#3
This has been going on for decades. Buffalo, NY emptied out with a vengeance after the Bethlehem Steel plant closed in 1983, throwing its last 10,000 employees out of work. Pretty much the only jobs available are with government at various levels or the university.
#5
Same is happening in London with the white middle class unable to afford living in London leaving the Rich and poor only.Rich in million pound houses and the poor mainly immigrants in social housing.No middle class left.They are the commuters who keep the economy going in the UK.
#6
Same with the Californistas [see - Colorado]. It literally follows the pathology of the plague.
I have tried to tell you people several times that if you scratch some of these co-called Californians you will find a New Yorker. Call it anecdotal evidence if you want but I've been a resident of California since, well, longer than I want to admit. I'm old, OK? The point is in the early 1970's there was a flood of people coming into this state from places like New York, New Jersey and, yes, even Texas and even Colorado too. In fact I happen to have known people who moved here from your precious Colorado and they were NOT Republicans. I've said this before too: There used to be a popular saying about California that the United States was tilted so that all the loose fruits and nuts rolled out here. So now some of you are getting your fruits and nuts back. I have no sympathy for you. Do your city councils and county admins take money from the developers who build vast new housing tracts for these migrants? Ours did too. It is very difficult to contend with all that money. I do have some sympathy for states like Florida catching the latest wave of migrants from New York. I think the New Yorkers stopped coming to California after their sheer numbers caused the cost of housing out here to skyrocket. Yeah, just try to compete with these people for housing.
It seems to me it would be easy to leave New York. It's crowded, dirty and the weather sucks. But where do you go after they've screwed up San Diego?
#8
Sorry to be a bore. After this I will desist. But another interesting fact is that California voters recently defeated a proposition that would have legalized marijuana. So now the question is: do the people of Colorado blame their current state of affairs on imported Californians?
#11
I know people who think fracking is the answer to California's budget problems. I'm not necessarily opposed to fracking but I think they're dreaming. As long as the people of this state keep reelecting looney liberals to the state legislature it won't matter how much money fracking brings us. They'll spend it as fast as they can get it and then some.
#13
Instead of fracking, maybe a little FRAGGING would help solve the problem.
Not to advocate civil unrest but we are on the verge of some really ugly crap with critical mass approaching on favoritism for illegals, high unemployment, and a state government that wants all of your money. They would tax sex if they could find a way to keep score.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/02/2013 17:18 Comments ||
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#14
Sorry my china, in the end we lose. You've been there Bill, you've seen it.
Not precious to me. Just worrisome watching your neighbor's home burn. I'm a bit south where because the tax base is lower there's less to loot and because there's a shortage of 'water' developers have been stopped in their track having a requirement to show where they're going to get that commodity to support what they want to do.
#17
Not interested in fracking in terms of state budgets. As you point out, they'll spend twice whatever comes in. I am interested in fracking from the standpoint of abundant, affordable energy produced in the US. Hell, if I had to invade someplace for oil it wouldn't be Iraq. It would be the Golden State.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/02/2013 07:49 ||
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#1
Mattis being pushed out is just amazing, but then again I was amazed that Mattis would take the job to begin with.
The question is "What else do you want from a general?" and apparently the answer is "Someone who tells Champ what he wants to hear."
Posted by: Matt ||
04/02/2013 9:26 Comments ||
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#2
Sort of reminds me of the wall hugging drone General in "Mars Attacks" who calls his wife and says "Thirty years of avoiding decisions and agreeing with everyone has paid off, I get to greet the Martians!"
Gadzooks, how long will it take to root out the drones and deadwood from our flag ranks after the empty suit leaves office?
Any guess on when Obumble will start appointing "Political Commissars" for the military?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/02/2013 10:04 Comments ||
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#3
All were melanin-challenged and failed to meet the regime's profile for future leaders.
Captains of the religious right are always calling us back"
Rev. Luis Leon, speaking at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, Easter 2013
#4
Any guess on when Obumble will start appointing "Political Commissars" for the military?
Those are called Undersecretaries at DoD.
Very painful not having Lee, Longstreet, Johnston, et al on the team when it was important. Stalin purged his officer corps too, it was General Winter and interference from another pol among the opposition that saved his ass.
#6
I am reminded of mussolini's quote:
"when I have two candidates for promotion, I always promote the one with less ability because that he will know he owes his position to me."
We all know how the Italian army performed during WWII.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/02/2013 11:00 Comments ||
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#2
American soldiers and Marines found themselves fighting guerrillas who used tactics and weapons, such as IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that were very effective against a conventional force.
IED's and IED makers CAN fok'n be DEFEATED, if the political will is there. This piece of kak is filled with uninformed half-truths. You CANNOT win a counterinsurgency and permit neighboring states to provide safe havens and sanctuary. It simply does not work.
#3
Hah, next you'll be expecting media outlets to tell the truth Besoeker. You know why such things never happen. Well, until the next reckoning that is.
#5
Actually we do have good record on irregular warfare. The Vietnamese turned back one conventional invasion from the north after we pulled out the bulk of our forces with the 'insurgency' pretty much destroyed. Then the Donk dominated Congress stepped in and cut funding and support. The second conventional invasion succeeded. If there's a lesson in there, it's for the Israelis, SKoreans et al on whom they can trust.
Well this ought to get the hive humming. Ben Carson finally comes out and says what I have been thinking for years. White Liberals are fine with minorities as long as they stay in their place, support Democrats, and take the check every month. Once they start speaking out about things like not needed Democrats in order to succeed, they are vilified.
A long blah-blah about the usual feminist drool. For a moment I thought the author had actually caught on, but, no. The blindness remains willful.
[NY Times] Late last week, I was driving my daughter to her play-based, shoe-optional, sugar-free preschool -- a magical Arcadia where an actual chicken is free to roam and grow fat off Pirate's Booty, and where the major areas of academic focus revolve around turn-taking, problem-solving and the life story of Rosa Parks -- when I experienced a moment of self-doubt so paralyzing I almost had to pull over. The radio in my car was tuned to an NPR show, on which callers were debating the decision by the C.E.O. of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, to ban employees from working from home. I'd been thinking about Mayer since early that morning, having fallen down an Internet rabbit hole that plunged me deep into her art collection, her exclusive wardrobe and her estimated $300 million net worth. Specifically, I was thinking about the rather highhanded, Marie Antoinette-ish way in which she dismissed the need for extended maternity leave, as if it hadn't occurred to her that building an en suite nursery for her newborn next to her office basically elided the need for it, since the baby could remain within a few feet of her all day long.
En route to the preschool, I was suddenly visited by an apocalyptic vision of the future: I saw my daughter as a frustrated former liberal-arts major stuck in a midlevel job at a company where, despite the easy availability of 3-D holographic telepresence software allowing people all over the globe to interface with one another from the comfort of their own brain implants, employees were now required to "live from work" and occasionally beam themselves home for some cursory family face time. Moreover, I saw that I alone was to blame for this dismal state of affairs, because I am a deluded throwback to carefree days, and in my attempt to raise a conscious, creative and socially and environmentally responsible child while lacking the means to also finance her conscious, creative and environmentally and socially responsible lifestyle forever, I'd accidentally gone and raised a hothouse serf. Oops.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/02/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Now a generation have been raised to believe have a right to equal pay but also a right to be treated specially. While it starts out being about women, it morphs into being about 'human beings.'
#3
I forget her name but there is this psychologist at San Diego State University that states the "self esteem and award without accomplishments" of trophies for losing every game in AYSO and not having awards ceremonies to avoid huring feelings and trying to stop keeping score at little league games, and all the other feel good don't bruise the ego blather has created a generation of monsters. Self entitled, no work ethic, no sense of accomplishment, self important and technologically isolated from true socialization.
Much of what she has written about predicts the behavior such as Newtown and Aurora. Everyone thinks they are "Special" and are a celebrity and will do literally anything to have their moment of fame.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/02/2013 10:10 Comments ||
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#5
It's not a new phenomenon. Bloomburg (the media outfit) was lauded a few years back for having a 'lifestyle workplace', complete with restaurants, hair salons, media lounges and other mercantile outlets on premises. Apparently the concept of it being of a modern 'company town' was overlooked.
#7
The problem with all of these trendy neat places to work with the hair salons, gyms, massueses, gourmet dining, and video games is that stuff was designed to keep guys working around the clock...now they don't work at all.
How do you tell a guy to get to work when he can go to the climbing wall, skate board park or natorium any time he wants.
Google is trying to rein in this silliness they started.
As it is, that is what most of these arrogant little shits think they are owed for their unproductive presence at work.
And trust me, they will backstab and sabotage anyone that makes them work.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/02/2013 17:23 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
