May 22, 2012

Welfare Socialism in Macrocosm

What do you do when thanks to years of overspending and failure to live within your income, your credit sucks? Do you [a] work on improving your obviously horrid budgetary habits, or [b] try to suck off  the good credit of someone more restrained and prudent by having them co-sign your loans, thereby dragging their credit rating down some?

Well, now we know how many of Europe's governments would answer that question.

Germany rules out common euro bonds

Germany refused to share the debt burden of stressed eurozone peers on Tuesday, ignoring two of the most influential international economic bodies which offered support for proposals championed by Paris, Rome and Brussels ahead of a summit.


In case you couldn't guess, the "two influential international economic bodies" are the OECD and the IMF, who will be next in line to be asked to prop up the profligate spending. Basically what it boils down to is that France's new socialist president, among others, would like Germany to pick up the tab for bailing out mismanaged spendthrift EU nations such as Greece. With Germany saying nein on "loaning" any more money directly to Greece, François Hollande's solution is to back-door the deal by dragging germany into co-signing more bad loans.

They're running out of other people's money.

May 07, 2012

NANNY. STATE.

Parents: Rule’s half-baked
State’s junk food ban could take bite out of school fundraisers
Bake sales, the calorie-laden standby cash-strapped classrooms, PTAs and booster clubs rely on, will be outlawed from public schools as of Aug. 1 as part of new no-nonsense nutrition standards ...  
At a minimum, the nosh clampdown targets so-called “competitive” foods — those sold or served during the school day in hallways, cafeterias, stores and vending machines outside the regular lunch program, including bake sales, holiday parties and treats dished out to reward academic achievement. But state officials are pushing schools to expand the ban 24/7 to include evening, weekend and community events such as banquets, door-to-door candy sales and football games.
As a parent of two teenagers, I've got to say that if not for "competitive" foods, a lot of students simply would not eat at school. Not only do school lunches make the word "unappetizing" a HUGE understatement, but the crowding during lunch periods in large schools at times makes getting and eating the school slop literally impossible.

If the people of Massachussets are going to stand idly by and put up with this kind of nanny-state autocracy extending outside the school 24/7 to all school-related events, then "sheeple" is looking less ad hominem and more descriptive.