Category: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

If you can’t get rid of big government…

start small:

Maywood: A city that sacked its entire staff
The US city sacked all its staff to stave off bankruptcy – and its citizens think services are now better. Tom Leonard reports.
To the casual eye, nothing about Maywood looks unusual. Police cars patrol the city’s palm-tree lined streets a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, red-shorted lifeguards watch over the public swimming pool and, inside the striking Art Deco city hall, clerks issue yard sale permits. The police cars, however, are from “out of town” and manned by deputies from the county sheriff’s department, while the lifeguards and clerks are on loan from the neighbouring city of Bell.
Maywood – working-class, respectable and 95 per cent Hispanic – has attempted something unheard of anywhere in local government. It sacked its entire workforce and staved off looming bankruptcy by outsourcing everything. More than 70 workers lost their jobs at the end of June. Others were re-employed contractually, losing key benefits. But the newly jobless may be the only people not smiling now…

H/t: Denise.

“Meet Me in Manhattan”

John Hawkins;

The fine folks at The Society Of St. Vincent De Paul are holding an unbelievable raffle. In fact, this is, without a doubt, the best collection of raffle prizes I’ve ever seen in one place. […]
Now today, I’m going to give an opportunity to all the bloggers out there: Link this post, so we can help sell some more of these raffle tickets for charity, and then email me to let me know you’ve done so, and you may win a raffle ticket yourself.

Done!

From Whom Much Is Taken, Much Is Expected

Stephen Taylor;

Indeed in this country, there are two groups of people. In fact, some would call these groups the haves and the have-nots. This is an not inaccurate way of describing it, but those that would might have the two switched. Canadians form two groups: those that receive from the government and those that pay to the government. Those who form — or are constituent to — organizations dependent on government policy (and spending) are firmly against the changes to the census. Those on the other side are largely ambivalent because they are the large, unorganized and unsubsidized net taxpaying masses.
The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.

There is one positive aspect to this controversy – millions of Canadians are now fully informed that, contrary to threats by census takers, refusing to fill out the long form census carries no actual penalty.
I suspect many of us will find that information useful.
h/t Maz2

But Glenn Beck Is The Crazy One

After Glenn Beck’s recommendation, the demand for [The Road to Serfdom] has exceeded our current inventory. A large reprint is due early next week and the availability dates on the retail web sites will change. This is an unusual circumstance for the Press but The Road to Serfdom is a perennial best seller for us so there is no danger of this book being out of stock for long. The book is selling very strongly on Amazon’s Kindle e-book site where it will never go out of stock. It’s safe to say, though, that we have sold roughly a half-a-year’s worth of copies in the last two days.

Via

Harper On The Gun Registry

Live interview with the PM begins with John Gormley shortly … click here to “listen live”. (Segment is over now, audio should be up by tomorrow. Harper was followed by interviews with Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton.)
Feature moment: Taliban Quack* on the gun registry … sharing his “rural roots” from the days of growing up on the farm;

… we had our .22 and it was for going out and hunting ducks.

I’m going to piss myself.
More: Cosh follows the money on those Chiefs of Police.

Keith Olbermann Says

Heh.
More related video…

Because Keith Olbermann’s dying father asked his boy Keith to read Thurber to him, Keith thinks this is good television, calling Thurber the best humorist of the 20th century. Do you know what humorist means? It means seriously unfunny. Garrison Keillor is a humorist, and I’ve seen funnier orphanage fires. Perhaps what Keith’s father didn’t tell him is that listening to Thurber might want to make you die faster. And now Keith reads it on the air.

I Can Sight Paul Krugman From My House

“Many people believe that Krugman doesn’t actually write the columns that appear under his name in the Times, because they are so stupid.

Related from Jeff Goldstein – “The Lie of the Liberal Arts Education”
And while we’re on the topic, there’s a $10,000 [now 20K – ed.] reward out there still waiting to be claimed!

It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.
And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.
THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

Plus: That’s quite the arm you got there, Bubba!
Why lookie here – “Cancon”.

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