If you were to boil down the current crisis in America, and in the West in general, you could do worse than a simple question, who decides? The central struggle at the heart of it all is who decides things like economic policy, trade policy, social policy, and immigration policy. On issue after issue, the ultimate question comes down to who gets the final say on the matter. Given the endless talk of democracy, this should be a settled question, but it is the central question of the age.
You can see this when you get away from the coastal cities and drive out into the areas the beautiful people try to avoid. Charles Town West Virginia is a small city, a big town in reality, which is the county seat of Jefferson County, West Virginia. Prior to recent decades it was famous for having been named after the brother of George Washington, Charles Washington, in the 18th century. It was also where union organizer Bill Blizzard was tried for treason. He was found not guilty.
Otherwise, Charles Town was a sleepy little place until twenty years ago. The old horse racing track was fixed up as part of a casino project. Like many states in America, West Virginia thought capitalizing on degenerates was a good idea. America is now dotted with casinos that rely upon the state to survive. Of course, with the casino came the other things like strip joints and the drug trade. As soon as you cross into the city proper you see a big sign for a “gentlemen’s club.”
Who decided that Charles Town needed a casino? Who thought that was a good idea to build strip joints? These things are often put up to a vote, but the people are told to keep voting until they get the right answer. The fact is a small number of people saw an opportunity to make money off a casino in this sleepy little community, so they worked the system until they got the right to build it. The pitch is that they bring jobs, but no one wants their daughter working at the strip joint.
Further down the moral hierarchy from the gamblers and strip joint operators are the developers who land on these projects like flies in a pasture. At the first hint of government money for a get rich scheme like a casino, the developers turn up looking to build cheap houses and strip malls. All those people coming to work at the casinos and strip joints will need a place to live. That means knocking down something to put up townhouses and apartment buildings.
Of course, this also means the guy who has lived next to a farm his whole life suddenly finds he now lives next to an apartment complex. The guy who owned the hay farm decided that the money from the developer was too good, so he sold the land his family held for generations and moved to Florida. The developer sweetened the deal by promising to name the development after the farm. Housing developments in America are always named after what they replaced.
The guy now living next to an apartment complex is right to wonder how his little slice of heaven turned into an urban nightmare. Who decided that those rental units needed to be next to his home? Who decided that there needed to be a strip mall down the road from that apartment complex? The answer is always the same. The people who owned the land decided, but they are gone now and the people who used to live next to them have to contend with the consequences.
Living next to a housing development or an apartment complex might not sound like a bad deal, given that it brings economic opportunity. Life is trade-offs and progress is no exception to that rule. Sure, the aesthetics of the community decline with each generic block of new homes, but now you have a Walmart, so it means not driving to the next town over to shop at their Walmart. This may or may not be a valid argument, but the point is to avoid that big question, who decides?
Maybe this is for the best and the people making these decisions are right to do what they are doing, but they should then drop the fig leaf of democracy. If they are going to preach the glories of democracy, while ignoring the will of the people, then it is not going to be long before people lose faith in democracy. The great advocates of democracy have no one to blame but themselves for the crisis of democracy. The cause of that crisis is we were never asked.
If the guy who now finds himself driving his family past a strip joint every Sunday on the way to church knows who decided to put that strip joint in his community, he at least knows who to blame. He can appeal to that person or group of people to move that strip joint away from his church. Even if the guy deciding is actually in a swank Manhattan office and lives in a mansion in Connecticut, he is still a man who calls somewhere home and therefore he can be reached.
If the decision is being made by the nebulous concept of democracy, where voting never seems to make a difference, then that man telling his kids that the apartment complex where the cops are always at used to be a farm, owned by a family that first came to the state at the founding, has every right to wonder if the real cause of the problem is that nebulous thing called democracy. Maybe he would be better served by someone, anyone, who takes responsibility for these decisions.
Counterintuitively, this is why economic elites love democracy and socialism. This is something the Marxists never anticipated or ever understood. Democracy and socialism put the people’s stamp of approval on the economic relations. The guy who decided to put a housing development in your town gets to keep all the money while the people living with his choices get to pretend it is their fault. The greatest trick the ruling class ever pulled is in convincing the people they do not exist.
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“democracy and socialism.” And pure Unadulterated Greed.
Now, It all makes sense. Said sincerely
It’s Charleston, not Charles Town. Since it appears you are moving or have moved to WV, it would probably be good to get the name of the state capital and the state’s most populous city correct.
There is a Charles Town West Virginia, look at the map.
You think he made the same mistake multiple times with proper case sensitive the same each time.
5 seconds with Google turned up a Charles Town WV.
Well I’ll be damned and stand corrected.
“ The guy who decided to put a housing development in your town gets to keep all the money while the people living with his choices get to pretend it is their fault. ”
Monetizing “social capital”, then selling it. This concept first reveled to me by none other than Z-man, here in this form a number of years ago. Odd however, in all my discussions with others concerning this phenomenon, it still rings fresh to most people, and Z-man you’ll be pleased to know strikes them as astonishingly prescient as it once did to me.
I too drop amazing pearls of wisdom in Normie Land which I couldn’t possibly have thought up by myself. This blog is an goldmine, err… oyster bed.
Shoulders of Giants.
Who Thinks matters, too. Muchly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thu8DWsirJo “My City Was Gone” By The Pretenders I went back to Ohio But my city was gone There was no train station There was no downtown South Howard had disappeared All my favorite places My city had been pulled down Reduced to parking spaces Ay, oh, way to go, Ohio Well, I went back to Ohio But my family was gone I stood on the back porch There was nobody home I was stunned and amazed My childhood memories Slowly swirled past Like the wind through the trees Ay, oh, way to go, Ohio I went back to Ohio… Read more »
A great song, Mr. Spengler.
Here is a live version that I particularly favor. The lead guitarist outdoes himself.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtrxxMBkfx4&pp=ygUVbXkgY2l0eSB3YXMgZ29uZSBsaXZl
Hard to not still get a little misty eyed for Rush when I hear that, very nice version though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LySTISqaH9o “Farm on the Freeway” by Jethro Tull Nine miles of two-strand topped with barbed wire Laid by the father for the son. Good shelter down there on the valley floor, Down by where the sweet stream run. Now they might give me compensation That’s not what I’m chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday. Now all I have got is a cheque and a pickup truck. I left my farm on the freeway. They’re busy building airports on the south side Silicon chip factory on the east. And the big road’s pushing through along the valley floor. Hot… Read more »
Good tune, good album.
I liked “Budapest” best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKuHv0imaI
Thanks for this one, too.
The real, historical Jethro Tull, for whom the band was named, was an expert agronomist in his time.
Coming out of the covid lockdowns my red state county of 100,000 people has become targeted by Wall Street investors who have become bored with stocks and bonds and have decided to become national scale slum lords. There are are currently 6,000 apartment units under construction. The former farmland the next road over from my house will soon have 2000 residents and a new shopping center. If it was being built for locals it would be easier to accept but we are currently being inundated with Californians and border jumpers. My county voted 70% for Trump in 2020 so I… Read more »
This seems to be the story all over the red parts of my state. If its not housing for undesirables it’s solar farms. Its enough to make a man pray for collapse just so the traffic goes away.
I live in Michigan and the witch in charge and our democratically elected (sarc) legislature just took over the ability to decide where windmills and solar farms can be located, all local decisions be damned. Since I live in a rural area (not hard in Michigan, about 80% of the state is covered with lakes and forests) no one voted for this, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe making the cost of construction prohibitive due to workplace accidents is our only way of voting at this point.
Earth First was not entirely wrong…
https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1732389011983900857
Surprisingly good take from Jonathan haidt
Yes. However, Congress never held a single hearing investigating anti-white libels. The worst of all is Blake Masters’ latest campaign ad. He seemed like someone who might out himself and be an advocate. Looks like he is as corrupt as the rest of them.
A people without a state and a champion.
Who Decides I would say those who have the Power and Won’t suffer the consequences of their decisions which cause strife, suffering, and turmoil…
That is always the question.
Who? Whom?
Ageless questions.
Speaking of real estate, good news! So somebody did a massive short of Israeli bank stocks a few days before October 7th. 10/7 was not only allowed to happen, it was steered in the right direction, aided and abetted by the IDF massacring the kibbutzim socialists, Likud’s political opposition. Bibi was threatened with jail, the unions were on national strike, so he got some tips from Larry Silverstein. Now the country is unified behind a war king. The 4Palestine protests, organized internationally by the very same usual suspects who org’d George Floyd? Own both sides. They are cover and justification… Read more »
Aren’t there massive shorts against particular stocks pretty much every day though?
These were targeted puts far above the normal average. Somebodies make a sh*t-ton of money.
The week after the infamous airline shorts of 9/11, 175,00 “trading firms” disappeared from Wall Street.
Bernhard at his blog, Moon of Alabama, posted on this:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/12/right-before-hamas-attacked-someone-shorted-israeli-stocks-and-funds.html
Looks as if this was another “Let It Happen” event, convenient along multiple axes.
And who decided that our countryside needed to be littered with windmills, solar panels and 5G towers? They just seem to appear. I don’t recall hearing any cost/benefit or environmental debate. Or who’s getting paid what. Or the implications of re-zoning farmland for industrial / commercial develpment. In the absence of any protection one can hardly blame those farmers that sell out.
All that stuff ruining the countryside is a coincidence that you should never notice!
The Greens are determined to turn our soil, water, and air as toxic as China’s.
Judas priest, people. Geothermal steam-powered electric turbines.
Closed loop, 100% environmentally friendly, grid or single site applicable.
Free, relatively limitless energy after sunk costs. What the he!! is wrong with these vultures?
The people who want you dead and your children enslaved and who thinks it is funny…
I know locally there was a pitch by some party to cover local “idle” farmlands with solar panels. I don’t recall the specifics (it went away for now, thankfully) but there was something in it for all the “rubes” (“you’re providing power to your community”, “you’re part of the green future”, “you’ll be paid for something that you’re not making any money on anyway”, etc.). Or the implications of re-zoning farmland for industrial / commercial develpment. I’m not sure what it’s like in other states but in Ohio there’s a big income tax penalty that has to be paid to… Read more »
Let’s look at this a different way. The “Deciders” own all your Blue Hive cities. These Blue Hives give them manufactured “democratic” consent to control your state’s politics. The Blue Hives cannot exist without the food and raw material, and now energy generation, of the hinterlands. So the Deciders, resting on the Hive’s politicians, judges, banks, businessmen and easily managed blob of Hive voters… have decided to place the final Hive survival wedge, energy production, into the hinterlands. A very dispersed, fragile, and nearly indefensible energy system… right into the near reach of the hinterland people they seem to fear… Read more »
They are definitely making everything more vulnerable Brother but I think they think they won’t be affected by a grid collapse so they push for it because it hurts White People…
I defer to your expertise, Sir.
If elections and political appointments received an amount of publicity proportional to their impact on your daily life, the zoning commission would be all over the news, and the president and governor not so much. As it is, you scarcely ever hear a peep about the zoning commission, city council, etc. But to be fair, as power has become more centralized, and that centralized power has reached farther into our lives, there is some justification for going on and on about the presidents and the would be presidents. Not enough to justify the wall to wall daily coverage they get,… Read more »
Capitalism = economic oligarchy. Socialism = bureaucratic tyranny The English writer G. K. Chesterton used to refer to these groups (capitalists and socialists) as Hudge & Gudge and the average gut they wanted to push around as Jones. Neither group cared a whit about Jones except as someone to be exploited. The modern elites have figured out that these supposedly incompatible systems are actually quite compatible and, in fact, reinforcing. The bureaucrats serve the interests of the oligarchs and the oligarchs make sure the bureaucrats are greased. You can dress up the system as democratic but it is just a… Read more »
Jeebus. 10,000 upvotes. This is stellar, the essence of the piece. So facism was the true representative democracy. The collective will of the demos. Who decides? The function of the state was the preservation of the demos. Our dictators- FDR’s original term for his dpartment heads- our dictators, our chieftans, will represent the natio, the people who look and sound like them. They will come from those people, be married into and have heirs like them. So who decided? The People decided. The State is to speak for our interests alone. The people of Italy, Germany, and Japan have a… Read more »
(Japan, you say? But they invaded China. The Flying Tigers had been firebombing Japanese cities before war was declared. They were terrorists telling Japan to stop trying to grab the opium shipments of the Chinese National Air Company, which was in cahoots with FDR. China was becoming a narcostate next door, with the mob bosses organizing a Communist revolution amongst the warlords. The Emperor had been deposed. Japan proffered a traditional Asian imperial tyranny as an alternative for the entire region, which had been under assault by the HSBC druglords since the 1840s. And yes, with all the traditional Asian… Read more »
(p.s.s.- I just saw a clip of Mao, gap-mouthed at how tall Kissinger’s tranny wife was when they met for the first time.
Y’know, Henry K., the guy who opened China, the architect of the WEF and Klaus Schwab’s mentor?)
Expect the ZAE’s usual white supremacists to become frantic to flood Nippon with immigrants during the next ten years. Putin has announced that Russia is engaged in a struggle to liberate the world from the Empire of Lies. Given the proximity of Nippon to Russia and China, driving a wedge between the USA and Nippon must become a strategic priority. (Breaking the ZAE’s grip on Hawaii will be another.) I would expect this to involve a combination of fomenting national pride in Japan and a new spirit of cooperation between China and Japan. However, a Japan with ghettos of humanzees… Read more »
Au contraire. The elites are ethnocentrist and nationalist. Their preferred ethnicity–race, actually–is negroid, and AINO exists to exalt it. The enemy people are the Blue-eyed Ice Devils.
But of course! The Owners are honoring their ancestors.
Democracy sounds suspiciously like a bureaucratic agency or a corporation.
It’s not the signature, memo, or order of some schlubb in the organization.
We don’t know the originating piece of paper or who signed off on this or that form.
It’s “the policy”. The “policy” is the schlubb defending him or herself, and the other schlubbs tribing up in agreement.
Institutions exist to defend their right to exist, but they are a legal fiction.
It’s really some schlubb defending his personal advancement.
This is one of the issues where libertarianism really falls on its face. “It’s my land, if I want to make it a nuclear repository that’s my business.” Many of their Koch front groups actually advocate for the obliteration of zoning laws altogether. If you buy a house with a lot behind it, which becomes a McDonalds, and you sit buy the pool in your back yard listening to people order and their cars idling, smelling the exhaust from the fryers, well, that’s not your property. Suck it up.
In other words, they’re offsetting the costs onto someone else.
There’s a commonality with today’s service industry and the proliferation of begging bowls (tipping) for the help. It sounds so libertarian on its face – let the customer pay what he feels is appropriate – but in practice it becomes an oppressive form of shame-based extraction.
Exactly. Everywhere we turn–including grocery stores–we are dunned to tip for this and contribute to that. Businesses, small and large, have become catenations of panhandling bums. Behold a society where shame is dead and entitlement is endemic.
Get used to it Lads. Even ten years ago it was an extremely rare annoying occurrence to recieve your fast food order incorrectly. These days it’s about a 50/50 chance. If they remember you exist while you wait. At macro, unfixed potholes, shoddy USPS delivery, belated police response that has a fair chance of being “unable to do anything” or even finding the complainant to “be the problem”. Increasingly inefficient bureaucracies that rate-hike you with no recourse for their ever diminishing “services”. Yup. Get used to tipping to get things done somewhat sufficiently. As far as dealing with the enforcement… Read more »
The upside of living in the country is being able to largely do what you want. Pissing off the front porch for instance. The downside is so can your neighbors. Having a buffer between your neighbors is a good thing.
I would go one level deeper. Democracy doesn’t work in large part because the electorate is deficient in many respects. A majority now consist of people who are low IQ, have no skin in the game, easily bribed by unscrupulous politicians, tribal in their voting habits, or prefer big government paternalism to an actual husband. As such, most of the time, we elect the worst hucksters who never held a real job but are good fakers. Add in institutionalized vote fraud and 97+% incumbency, and we are guaranteed to be ruled by unrestrained corruption and incompetence. A human body cannot… Read more »
That’s really the rub. Democracy? Oligarchy? Capitalism? Socialism? It doesn’t matter overmuch when the masses are almost as contemptable as the elites.
“Democracy doesn’t work in large part because the electorate is deficient in many respects.”
In the old days in the USA and Britain — and in ancient Athens as well — voting was restricted to propertied males. People with skin in the game, and by virtue of their station usually not intellectually deficient.
Exactly. There must be a middle ground between rule of an entrenched elite (aristocracy) and rule of the mob (democracy). We want to prevent an entrenched aristocracy, but not do so with an ignorant mob—who we’ve seen are easily controlled by that entrenched elite.
[…] ZMan is not afraid to ask the hard questions. […]
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for dinner.
I will never vote again — after 2020 it finally dawned on me that I simply no longer care. Whatever comes of it is very unlikely to affect me significantly anyway.
That’s the key, isn’t it.
To be able to survive and thrive, and keep your sanity, it’s best to disconnect from society and its infrastructure as much as possible. Think about it.
If you;
Own your property outright
Are on a well
Can heat your house with wood
Grow your own food
Your pretty much self sufficient
I’m not yet there, but pretty close.
Do I want to go backwards vis a vis less conveniences? No, but I don’t want to be shackled to the current shit show.
Maybe. Your county can tax you out of that land. And if your well dries up or your septic goes bad, you got to visit the tax feeders for permission. Democracy, you know
Southpoll has it. We do not own anything – we rent. Would not a rent unpaid by any other name evict just the same?
Until it can’t be taken from you without much bloodshed then it’s just a very tentative position to be in…That’s why Tribe is so important not how much stuff you have or how far off grid you are…Those are great things don’t get me wrong but so many people that is their only focus and it’s go to bite them in the ass…
Lineman: May I suggest it’s also important to also note who owns nearby property and who is a county official. Just returned from a weekend in the city and the office Christmas party, where I had very interesting chats with the owner and #2 guy at the company that employs my husband. Both have bought large tracts of rural land in the past few years (so has the #3 guy but I don’t know him personally). Also important to note that, until we bought our own property, we had no clue any of these gentlemen had bought land and/or made… Read more »
It’s all well and good to live on your mountaintop–and I don’t mean that ironically–but when you inevitably descend from your mountain to run one errand or another, you’re right back in the middle of the horror show. In other words, as long as you’re living in AINO your sanctuary is very provisional.
In a democracy, there is only one solution to this problem. Z has spoken of how, one afternoon and in in response to the will of the people, the rulers decided to completely stop immigration. As a complete coincidence, it was immediately after a big bomb went off in from the the JP Morgan offices on Wall Street. Same with the occasional victories against things like the 15 minute cities and the associated surveillance state. Voting worked fantastically and just like it’s supposed to work! Along with a coincidental and amazing level of destruction of those surveillance cameras. If you… Read more »
Who decides indeed. There was an election in a small Michigan town this November where the entire government was replaced. The previous government thought it was a good idea to build a factory in their area and staff it with Chinese people. The new government vows to reverse this decision and prevent the invasion and destruction of their little world. Since the new government is made up of people from the community, they might not fink on the voters. The courts may overrule them though. But if instead of being able to vote the bums out (which may or may… Read more »
If they’re putting up strip clubs, they’re not rightwing in any meaningful sense, they’re grillercons.
The problem is the society is right wing, not everyone in it.
Does democracy allow people to vote in an oligarchy, or even a monarch?
It is clear to anyone who wants to see it (most don’t) that democracy is the process where we are allowed to choose a candidate vetted by the ruling class. Voters are even allowed to vote directly on laws as long as the propositions are approved by the ruling class. If they aren’t, then they are subverted because the ruling class knows best.
For the most part, the people who yammer on about our democracy are the same ones who tout The Science! Only non believers (heretics) disagree and they are evil
Given your mention of casinos, I hope you’ll allow me a rant. There are very few things I’ve grown to loathe more than state-sponsored gambling. It seems to take advantage of the most stupid of human instincts in the most devious manner possible. When I lived in St. Louis, all the convenience stores/gas stations sold lottery tickets. I still remember the time I walked into the neighborhood store (probably to buy some booze) and there was a lady in line ahead of me with a stack of lottery tickets. She handed them to the clerk and asked him if she… Read more »
LOL. In my state, all the casinos are on injun tribal land, and there a few that abut the major metro areas. I figure it’s the red man getting his revenge on the White eyes. Whatever happened to the basic slot machine where three cherries in a row was a winner?
My experience is somewhat limited to the Trump Taj Mahal, but interestingly enough there were some old school slots there with three cherries in a row. They were all big money slots though. You had to bet $20 or more to play them once. If you want to play a simple game with understandable rules, you have to pony up a lot of money.
We gave them smallpox, they gave us syphilis. We gave them booze, they gave us tobacco. We took their land, they take our money. You’d think we could’ve done better business!
“I figure it’s the red man getting his revenge on the White eyes.”
My history is a bit sketchy and someone may correct me but my understanding is that the Feds curtailed funding the reservations in the ’70s but in return allowed the Injuns to set up casinos (the Feds allowed the states to sanction these casinos). I’m not sure the Injuns actually run them — I’ve heard that it’s often the Italian mafia that does so.
I can’t tell you who really runs big casino corporations such as Caesar’s Entertainment or Penn National (just to name two), but typically the way it works is the big casino corporation runs the casino, and the Indians get half, or some percentage, of the profits. Without that corporate profit angle, it’s hard to picture there having been so much impetus for the second coming of the buffalo.
Casino owners have names like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson. That is, indian names.
One of the great South Park episodes: “Red Man’s Greed.” Check it out. An exceptional episode that portrays this exact situation.
usNthem: I don’t gamble, but I play online soliaire at times when bored or the spirit moves me. Since I won’t pay for the card games I get treated to ads – and many are for online gambling games, including slots. Many of them, where the ostensible company name is, read “Bagelcode.” No lie. Every. Single. Time.
Computerized slot machines, eh? Well, of course there are. At least the old one-armed bandits charmed you a bit before fleecing you. But like everything else in this wretched land, they too have been rendered sterile and soulless.
Cities and states fought “illegal” lotteries for decades saying how immoral they were and that the take was high and how they exploit poor people. Then they figured out they could offer even worse odds/win ratio and rake in the money. The pick 3 and pick 4 have 50% takes. The scratch off is probably worse. This is way worse than any casino slot machines and probably worse than the old numbers racket. Worse, it is presented to the public as a charity scheme to help seniors. They’ve even turned driver’s licenses into grift. The DMV now sells your license… Read more »
I can understand sports betting. Or poker, or blackjack. Whether or not you can actually get the odds in your favor, there is still at least some semblance, even if it’s only an illusion, of control on your part. You make the choice. Otherwise, it’s baffling to me how people throw money at casino games that are clearly and openly rigged against them.
All those flashing lights and sounds. Plus some people cannot grok the law of large numbers.
Arshad Ali: East Asians are HUGE gamblers. If you read of a bus from this or that city going to the casinos, it’s full of either Asians or seniors or Asian seniors.
Was involved in gambling adjacent industries for part of my career. If you find yourself in a room full of operating slot machines, have a listen to the beeps and music. The trick is that taken in the mass, the cacophony of all these machines combined is hypnotic and has ‘beats’ (as in additive sound waves not as in ogg hit rock with stick) components which hover around the alpha wave frequencies. Something similar with the lights. Wouldn’t put it past them to pull similar hypnotic stunts with screen refresh rates and also way the different spinning slot machine columns… Read more »
Even in sports bettering, the odds favor the house. This is more or less true of all professional betting.
The only time betting makes any sense is between people known to each other and where both sides have equal say for the terms of the bet.
Just about all other forms of betting come in the shape of a product, a product whose definition is profit for the seller.
There’s a great book called The Poker Face of Wall Street by hedge fund guru Aaron Brown. (((Yes… I know))). It’s the gambling / market playing equivalent of Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler. Or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As in there’s more to gambling than just gambling if you’re a genius level player. Much to learn about yourself and the character of those you deal with. He’s less full of himself than Nassim Taleb who has written on similar themes. You don’t have to like these people or their world, but it’s a way to see inside the… Read more »
A math professor of mine once said, “Lotteries are a tax on people who don’t understand probability.” Still, SOMEONE has to win! If you believe that the universe or God cares about you, then maybe that love for you will finally manifest with another lottery ticket. Elliot R, the hapa incel who shot a bunch of people in SoCal made a sustained effort at praying to win various lotteries before he failed repeatedly and then went on his k1lling spree. He reasoned that the only way that he could attract a thin, pretty, blonde, white woman was to be rich… Read more »
I’ve always had 2 thoughts about state lotteries/scratch-offs.
1. They’re a tax on stupidity and they tend to be progressive.
2. They are de-moralizing in the sense that I work all my life to keep myself in some level of comfort and to possibly retire in modest circumstances someday. Some schlub blows all his, his wife’s, and his kids’ money on this sh+t and he becomes an instant multi-millionaire.
Just to be contrarian, there’s the economic value of entertainment. For instance I once went to a local casino with a buddy with the thought that I would blow $20 there (plus a drink or two, natch), just because they wanted to go. Well on those funky slot machines it’s possible to idle away huge blocks of time (or at least ‘was’) as I’d lose, win, lose, etc. They really fuzz up the line between video games and gambling games, especially today. Anyway, sans drinks I think I ended up only blowing $18 over the course of two hours. There… Read more »
Most people are not buying a mathematically insignificant chance at life-changing wealth. They’re buying enough hope to get to the end of the week without blowing their brains out.
This is true. I’ve learned to have enough compassion to not launch into the “Lotteries are a tax on fools” lecture every time I encounter such people who must needs clutch at straws of hope.
We should strive to not be like them. But we should also not be Ayn Rand.
Couple of years ago (not even) I was talking with a local Black Rep. candidate on the doorstep (he didn’t win the primary FWIW) and he was telling me developers of places like strip joints, casinos etc. in my city basically circumvent opposition from residents by bribing the commissioners who decide. So maybe 100% of a neighborhood don’t want that new degeneracy joint on the corner, but despite all their campaigning they simply forgot to pay off the right people. Heard another story last week about higher up the food chain in this state someone (naming no names, but you’ll… Read more »
I scanned the comments but I amazingly I didn’t see the quip “local government controls developers, therefore developers control local government”.
Sometimes it’s not even that egregious, unfortunately. Where I used to live a developer just had to make vague references to higher tax revenue and the rubber stamp approving their project couldn’t come out fast enough.
Place I grew up in Australia, eventually the biggest local developer got tired of the charade of having to herd his bought councillors at arms length and simply got himself elected mayor. Used to ceremonially recuse himself every time there was a vote on something involving his projects. And the band played on.
As I was reading this, I could already hear the smug rejection of this from Joe Boomercon and his son-in-law Bob Normiecon in my head, saying: “They’re allowed to do what they want with their land.”
A few years after I moved to my red state redoubt, the Californians started fleeing their state and relocating here. Since we are not allowed to reject them (which is my preferred solution!) “growth” because the big topic in the next local elections. Candidates had slogans like “Smart growth” and “Planned growth.” I was still on NextDoor social media then. I simply asked, “Who is the NO GROWTH candidate? Not smart growth. Not planned growth. No growth.” My state is full of salt of the earth Reagan republicans who are good people whom I am glad to have as neighbors.… Read more »
Where they can enjoy the snowbird traffic jams!!! (grumbles my brother who lives in Coal Gables for the last 20+ years…)
If they moved to Florida, it wasn’t to avoid traffic jams. They were jumping out of the frying pan, into the fire. Florida is “the template,” for this kind of development. I live in a small beach town between FT Lauderdale and Miami. It is nothing but strip malls, strip malls, more strip malls, high rise apartments, town house gated communities, and strip malls. It is absolutely the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen. Moved here for a very good job and to escape NY state politics. From western N.Y. Not NYC. Out of the frying pan, sizzling on the… Read more »
There was a time when the bond between the landowner and his land was a blood bond. With everything monetized, blood is no longer thicker than money.
NB: Those who don’t learn from history, and other poems.
Property taxes have turned “ancestral land” into yet another just-in-time inventory item.
Yes, the concept of private property is sacrosanct and inviolate, even if it leads to hell on earth. And all too often it does.
The illusion of private property…
A neighboring township (one of the largest in the state no less) has zero zoning, zippo. I was visiting a resident and inquired about the non-stop motorcycle noise and they noted that what used to be a golf course was now a motocross strip. They then took light offense when I suggested that maybe some zoning would be in order, since non-stop motorcycle noises I guess were worth the price of them being able to stand whatever building they wanted to up on their property however and whenever they wanted.
I have a bit of real world experience with this. About ten years ago, a developer wanted to buy a chunk of land just down the street from the high school and turn it into a subsidized housing complex. Now, you can’t get a more obviously horrible plan for an area than bringing in dysfunctional poor people and, as a bonus, putting them across the street from high school kids. Naturally, the developer was from NJ, so he couldn’t care less about our little area. Stunningly, the town council was all for the project, despite the overwhelming majority of the… Read more »
A small town where I have a house suddenly found out that the city council had decided to increase the city limits by 50% and build housing on all of the new land. I had been thinking of making that home my residence because of its small town charm. This was universally opposed by the people. At the town meetings, ever person who spoke out to the council opposed the plan except for the people who were paid to promote it. The city council said that they were going to defer making a decision for six months, which made me… Read more »
That’s why a bunch of isolated individuals no matter how large their numbers are will never affect change in the way they want…It has to be organized groups to get what you want…
I live in a rural area that gets less rural by the year. It used to be a very tight-knit community with only mom and pop shops. As a kid, I enjoyed going with my grandma to the local grocery store. These stores disappeared as the owners died, and their kids moved on to other things. The local gas station owner sold his business to Indians, the dot kind. More and more of the woods and countryside gets torn down, and houses are built for shitlibs who proudly display their rainbow flags and Joe Biden 2024 signs. It is a… Read more »
I heard the Amish kept their community as farmland and out of the hands of developers whenever a property came up for auction, they’d show up and collectively outbid any price an outsider would offer. Not sure if that’s still their practice though.
They’re actually expanding around me. They never sell to outsiders and since a lot of the farmers are aging out and lots don’t have kids that want to keep farming, the Amish will come in and buy large tracts of farmland that are coming up for sale.
Fine with me — I’d rather see the land kept agricultural.
The future belongs to those who show up.
I’d much rather be replaced by the Amish than by the third world.
They readily sell out to the English by me (full disclosure: they even sold out to me) but my impression has been that the Amish by me are mostly craftsman when where I used to live they had more of a reputation as farmers. The locals still farm but usually it’s just for hay for their own horses and a small plot for canning stuff for the winter. That brings up an interesting zoning issue as a house with no water(well) or electricity is more of a liability for the community than an asset. I won’t expound upon it now… Read more »
I was just flat out wrong on them never selling to outsiders, as I would have recalled if I looked back on my very own experience — when I was looking to buy my farm one of the places I checked out was Amish owned. They said they were Old Order Amish, but the house was really nice, with electricity and plumbing, and a wood furnace. It seemed like they’d done every legalistic dodge they could to stay within the letter of their religious law, if not quite the spirit. But, that was about 30 years ago, and since they… Read more »
“Not sure if that’s still their practice though.”
If they can afford it they do. And there’s the rub: affordability. Land in Ohio and Pennsylvania has become too expensive for the Amish and so some years back they started buying land in Southeast Minnesota, where they now have a settlement.
There’s a bunch of them out around the Ozarks, too.
…but now you have a Walmart, so it means not driving to the next town over to shop at their Walmart.
I *like* driving to the next town over (actually the next several towns over) to shop at Walmart. I sure wouldn’t want that crap anywhere near me.
Vizzini: We heard there was lots of controversy when the local Walmarts were built in the area we moved to – cannot locate exact year, but I know it was within the last 6-8. Closest to us is in a neighboring small town, 15 miles/28 minutes away, and while it is convenient, that is too close in all honesty.
Google Maps tell me mine’s 20 miles and 27 minutes away (the state routes between here and there are really good, a series of broad creek valleys that happen to run in the right direction, so not much winding. You don’t get the same thing if you head south).
I sure wouldn’t want it any closer.
Vizzini: Part of the time/distance going anywhere from our home includes the three miles of dirt road (well maintained, but dirt/gravel nonetheless) before we hit pavement. And both dirt and pavement are winding and hilly.
I kind of wish I lived on a back road. My place is way off the road, and gated, so I don’t really notice traffic much, but it is a state route.
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson recommend that, when peaceful means fail, use your guns to force your elected officials to do the right thing?
Just saying.
The images of who is coming over the border and how are absolutely breath taking. It is a strange ghoulash where at the top Mayorkas and his buddies have decided that there is no border, and at the border where guards pretend to still guard it, nobody decides who comes and goes. Things are so hazy that those who know what is going on can’t name things aptly. Is it a failed state? Well, if the project is to destroy the state it is succeeding and there is no state. It is like that. In the end, we can easily… Read more »
My solution would be to treat them as vacationers. If they want to step over the border, fine, but they have to pay to stay in motels, pay for their meals at restaurants, find affordable/available housing. They get no rights. No voting, no turning themselves in to any agency, no work papers, no schooling, nothing. Leave them alone, and they’ll go home, dragging their tails behind them.
I still haven’t been able to get over how, when the people at the top told the Border Patrol that not only are we not going to enforce immigration law anymore, we are actually going to act in concert to directly subvert and defy it, and moreover we are going to actively promote and facilitate illegal immigration, and all the Border Patrol did was say, “Yes sir, right away sir.”
Jeffrey Zoar: Check out the demographics of the Border Patrol. They are merely welcoming in la familia.
Isn’t Border Patrol staffed by a large number of paper Americans? Specifically of the Latino type? Its literally a fox guarding the hen house situation.
“Democracy and socialism put the people’s stamp of approval on the economic relations. … The greatest trick the ruling class ever pulled is in convincing the people they do not exist.” Mike of TRS speculated that the Soviet Union versus the USA was an A-B test run by the group that actually won WW2. One of the main reasons that they gave up on the communism of the Soviet Union was that it was too easy to identify those to blame. This obscuring of responsibility, which is a result of representative government in a large country, was a criticism made… Read more »
In other degeneracy news today, Norman Lear has finally gone to hell at the age of 101. I assumed he died years ago as he hadn’t made much news recently. No one better represented the hatred Hollywood has for the historic American people than Lear. Unlike many of them, he was upfront and open about it. I did not know until reading this obit on him that his father was imprisoned for selling fake bonds. How did we survive before these people came to our country?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/norman-lear-boundary-breaking-tv-master-and-progressive-activist-behind-all-in-the-family-dies-at-101.html
Interesting. Just a day or two ago I was web surfing and was going to check if he was still alive but forgot. His comedies were controversial back in the day, but they’d never fly as they were written, today.
Early Life: “…His mother was originally from UKRAINE, while his father’s family was from Russia…”
I’m telling youse bros, everything you need to know about life you already learned in 5th grade, when your elementary skrewl staged its production of “Fiddler on the Roof”.
https://tinyurl.com/2tenzsvj
In sixth grade, public school, I was trusted to deliver the lead character’s lines in It Happens Every Christmas. I played Father Crawford, my wife was really Betty G., and we had a gaggle of storybook children, each of us pontificating the true meaning of Christmas. The jewish complainers were allowed to take the day off. After the hour-long play, we had a town Christmas Fest with cake walks, seasonal goodies, and egg nog, some it plus holiday punch spiked by the staff. West Michigan, tail end of the 1970’s. Christian play. Heavy community involvement. Public school. Jews, who were… Read more »
Ah! Then we know the limits to adrenochrome. These suspects all seem to clock out at about the century mark, like Kissinger and his tranny “wife”.
My family’s natural limit is about 94.
(Thanks, mom & dad.)
So the devil offers these scmucks an extra few years in a wraddled, pain-ridden body. And nightmare memories that haunt them til the end. They wreck the world for that.
Ha! Deals with the devil. Satan always gets the last laugh.
I’ve lost faith in “democracy” in stages over time, but it’s become patently obvious in recent years that it’s nothing but a sham/scam. The thing that initiated that discovery was usually the ballot referendums, either in my city or state. They were often something popular with the people, but not necessarily with those in government. So, when they got voter approval, as sure as s***, they would start working to subvert that will, typically getting some worthless magistrate to overturn the will on some nebulous technicality, or maybe it was supposedly unfair to some slice of the demographic. It become… Read more »
A perfect example of this practice is the whole gay marriage scam. In every state that there was a public initiative/referendum to legalize gay marriage, they were overwhelmingly voted down, even in very liberal states. Yet, the gay lobby kept pushing them, hoping that eventually they people would vote correctly. When that never happened, they used the courts. We all know how that turned out.
The U.S.A, is not a democracy, it is a Republic “representative “ govt. and its states and local govts are also not democracies. The people elect representatives.
So let’s stop with the stew man of “our democracy.”
“If the decision is being made by the nebulous concept of democracy, where voting never seems to make a difference, then that man telling his kids that the apartment complex where the cops are always at used to be a farm, owned by a family that first came to the state at the founding, has every right to wonder if the real cause of the problem is that nebulous thing called democracy. Maybe he would be better served by someone, anyone, who takes responsibility for these decisions.” “Democracy” provides camouflage for the oligarchs who own and run the country. It… Read more »
This constant carping about “democracy” is an intentional head fake; The Founders hated the idea of democracy because it always winds up in dictatorship. This nation was founded as a representational, constitutional republic. The Electoral College is the bulwark which protects us from being governed by Los Angeles, Chicago, & NYC.
On another note my late father always pointed to zoning laws as being responsible for the fat problem in this country; when you forcibly – & artificially – incorporate areas for businesses too far to walk to this is what you get.
Those who advocate for 15-minute cities could also use that argument.
I have never once voted and gotten what I wanted. Not one single time.
Neither have I and I’ve been voting since I was 18 years old which would have made it 1968. And realistically all I ever really wanted was to be left alone. I don’t mind paying my taxes I do mind being screwed. I don’t mind preferring my civil duties. I do mind when they have rigged elections. And don’t tell me elections aren’t rigged cause I’m from Philadelphia and my father was a Democrat ward leader and in 1952 I watched them rigged the election to turn Philadelphia Democrat for the first time in history but it never went back.… Read more »
The act of voting doesn’t improve anything but implicitly makes me culpable to the desolation brought on my community and country.
By the way, a handful of city council people and ordinance committees seem hell bent on slowly allowing the moral destruction of small cities in my area. Pot houses and tattoo parlors everywhere now. Some only hundreds of feet from each other. Ain’t that just lovely?
Just as lovely as the smell of skunk and the sight of all the inked up fatties.
Ugh. The “urban” neighborhoods in Ohio already smell like weed all the time. Now that it’s completely legalized it’s going to get really bad. There will be those pot houses even out in my rural area and if you complain, you’ll be the bad guy. “It brings economic opportunity!”
Yeah, and scores of stoners wasting their lives. As if the meth, oxy and fentanyl weren’t enough. We’ll have just as much of those, but nestled in a nice, pacifying haze of legal weed.
Somewhere, there’s that fine line between criminalizing every pothead, which is a waste of everybody’s time and resources, and promoting marijuana use, which is probably worse. We seem to be on the promotion side of it now. If there was some way to decriminalize it without promoting it that would be ideal, but I don’t know if it’s possible.
Blowing herbs is degenerate behavior popularized by the counterculture in the 60s and 70s. The degenerates are now the Power Structure. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Power Structure smiles upon smoking weed.
Quick update. Just went out to lunch and another cannabis shop is opening soon replacing a former bakery. Same middle to upper middle class communinty next to me. Yup, voting for Trump et al will fix this .
When I cross from Indiana into Michigan, I am now greeted by a sea of billboards advertising the pot shops in Michigan. A state that has boundless natural beauty if you stay away from the Detroit-Flint-Saginaw corridor is basically a giant pot shop with some lakes and forests.