No better place then Boulder I suppose.
Advocates working toward a fair-trade Boulder want city leaders to go beyond the basic commitments that other fair-trade towns have made to spread education and encourage a fair-trade marketplace. They want Boulder also to promise to ensure employee uniforms aren’t made in sweatshops and to buy fair-trade products when catering meetings and events.
Read more here.
What a government, eh?
YANGON, Burma – Myanmar’s junta seized U.N. aid shipments today meant or a multitude of hungry and homeless survivors of last week’s devastatingcyclone,forcing the world body to suspend further help.
The aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Burma on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.
“All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Risley said.
“For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time,” he said.
Sad, are they that fearful of losing power? What paranoia. How many lives will they sacrifice?
Read further details here.
On May 7th Deborah Clem wrote a letter to the editor making the simple claim that there is no scientific concensus regarding global warming. Since approaching this issue with anything resembling an open mind violates the majority of Boulderites worldview, and especially employees and editors at the Daily Camera, it’s no surprise they took a little editorial license on the title for her letter. It read.
Now why would the Daily Camera editors put the phrase “freebie tax” in quotes? It must be because anyone with common sense knows that if a store is giving away freebies they’re making it up by selling other items. Hence, anyone with common sense would not tax the “freebie” since they are already receiving the tax on the freebie with the other items being sold.
So it’s no great surprise that the City of Boulder has a freebie tax and very little common sense. Councilwoman Lisa Morzel, for a Boulder politician, has an uncommonly clear view of the picture…
“I think there are some legitimate questions about if this is a legitimate tax,” Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said.
She said the tax, in her opinion, is akin to “double taxing” business owners whoalready generate sales tax for the city.
“This is making us look pretty ridiculous,” Morzel said. “We can at least get the discussion going and at least let the public know that we are working on this.”
Since the City stands to lose money, it must be a fair tax…
But that argument hasn’t flown with city officials, who insist the tax is legitimate under the code and would lead to as much as $100,000 in lost annual revenue were it to suddenly go away.
Cry me a river. And…
City Manager Frank Bruno told the council not to rush into action, however, simply based on consumer complaints.
“I think it’s important to bear in mind this isn’t something new,” Bruno said. “It’s been on the books since 1981. … This is not the city trying to be cute in any way.”
Frank you’re right, the city isn’t being cute, it’s being very very stoopid. Of course, business owners are only a small fraction of the population. Hurry up and get to your next job Frank.
Repeat after me… “It’s all about the money”. Makes me wonder if intersections with red light camera have shorter yellow lights. Guess I have a project for this weekend.
Here are 10 reasons why, from Rich Sloan’s (co-founder of StartupNation) blog on Amazon.com.
Ever the global warming opportunist, it didn’t take Al Gore long to connect the dots between the Myanmar cyclone and global warming.
Our government at work, as reported by the Volokh Conspiracy.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the indictment. The government egregiously failed to meet its constitutional obligations under Brady and Giglio. It failed to even make inquiry as to conviction records, plea bargains, and other discoverable materials concerning key witnesses until after trial began. It repeatedly misrepresented to the district court that all such documents had been disclosed prior to trial. The government did not admit to the court that it failed to disclose Brady/Giglio material until after many of the key witnesses had testified and been released. Even then, it failed to turn over some 650 documents until the day the district court declared a mistrial and submitted those documents to the court only after the indictment had been dismissed. This is prosecutorial misconduct in its highest form; conduct in flagrant disregard of the United States Constitution; and conduct which should be deterred by the strongest sanction available.
There are always people on power trips that think the law doesn’t apply to them or is there’s to abuse. Locally Ward Churchill come to mind, along with the landgrabbers Edie Stevens and Dick McLean, although admittedly they appear to have the law on their side. At least the local judges interpretation of the law. Elliot Spitzer comes to mind as well.
I doubt veggies are cut this way at your house! Chris “Jesus” Ferguson shows how its done.
The owners of Gayego, the 17th place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, have quite the success story to tell. The Wall Street Journal editorial page tells the story quite succinctly.
And then there’s Gayego, which placed a mere 17th in the field of 20 horses. Gayego’s trip around the track at Churchill Downs is the story of another dream come true – the American dream. His owners, Carlos Juelle and Jose Prieto, are former Cuban dissidents who escaped Fidel Castro’s dictatorship and now live in California.
According to news reports, Mr. Juelle lost his job as an accountant and endured 21 months in a labor camp after speaking out against the regime. Dr. Prieto, a physician, was sentenced to death by firing squad for giving medical aid to wounded freedom fighters.
Look where they are now. Congratulations and let freedom ring.
… in the mountains near Nuevo Leon in Mexico. Watch the video here.
The global warming brainwashing continues worldwide. Here’s an example from St. Peter’s College in India.
‘It was a total environmental package comprising varied themes like melting of glaciers, depleting ozone layer, greenhouse gases, depleting water resources and drying up of rivers,’ said director Manish Magan.
‘If we don’t wake up now, it will be too late tomorrow. Nature’s moods and rhythms have to be respected. The younger generation, which will have to face the consequences arising out of an imbalanced ecological order, has to be guarded and warned against further deterioration of the environment by our lop-sided developmental policies and growth priority,’ said Father John Farreira, principal of the college.
This morning I watched a History Channel special “The Little Ice Age: Big Chill“
Not so long ago, civilization learned that it was no match for just a few degrees drop in temperature. Scientists call it the Little Ice Age–but its impact was anything but small. From 1300 to 1850, a period of cataclysmic cold caused havoc. It froze Viking colonists in Greenland, accelerated the Black Death in Europe, decimated the Spanish Armada, and helped trigger the French Revolution.
Scientists can’t determine with a high degree of certainly what caused the little ice age, although the actions of Man are not one of the theories. It’s a fascinating story, and does show the dramatic effect a few degree temperature change can cause.
Well not exactly live blogging anymore.
Since I got some hits from folks searching for live blogging of the Berkshire meeting, so I took the liberty of searching myself. This was all I found, although Liz Clayman implied she would have live blogging on the Fox business news website. However, I was unable to find it.
Barbara Kiviat, Time/CNN
Sam Gustin at the Conde Nast portflio.com website
Justin Fuller from Morningstar
OK, I finally found Liz’s live blogging, and other blogging by her regarding the shareholder meeting can be found here, although I’m sure the link is not permanent.
Buffett and Munger comment…
Says he can’t remember a similar crisis in his lifetime in which residential real estate sent “out the shock waves.” But he’s seen many variations on the theme. “There are these primal urges in trying to get rich and wanting to believe in the tooth fairy.” Munger: “It was a particularly foolish mess.” Even Internet-based delivery of groceries, which was really stupid, was smarter than what happened in the mortgage mess, says Munger.
From Maoxian’s financial blog.
via CNBC, Buffett responded to a question regarding boycotting the summer Olympics
1:38 pm: When asked if he would encourage Coca-Cola to boycott the Beijing Olympics over Tibet, Buffett says he thinks every country should participate in the Olympics. Olympics are a “wonderful event” and contribute to a better world over time. Munger adds that he thinks China, while imperfect, is moving in the right direction. Buffett says the U.S. is also moving in the right direction, because at one time it denied the vote to blacks and women.
I agree. I’ve been to Shenzhen China, across the border from Hong Kong, multiple times on business. While visiting, I see a vibrant economy, and people enjoying (some) freedom, working hard and enjoying life.
Have I seen signs of an authoritarian government, you bet. I’ve been in a circumstance where a cab driver wouldn’t pick us up. I’ve been watching a TV program when the government pulled the plug because Tibet was being discussed.
Yet, you get the inevitable feeling of a country moving forward, and making progress with steps that can’t be undone.
Read the nine reasons…
Hat-tip to Michael Covel.
I applaud the Supreme Court ruling upholding the State of Indiana’s law requiring photo ID to vote.
Unfortunately, the voter registration group ACORN disagrees. The solution is simple, ACORN should disband. Here’s a short summary of the fraud ACORN perpetrated in Washington State from this Fox news article on voter fraud.
But if photo I.D. requirements had been the law in Washington state, the voter fraud scandal involving ACORN in 2006 would never have happened. According to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, the incident “was the worst case of election fraud in our state’s history. It was an outrage.”
Two years ago ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up — all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes. Reed said he was appalled.
The head of ACORN’s Washington State office, John Jones claims it was an isolated event, even though it involved 5% of the voters they registered for that year.
“It was a difficult time but you know what, that was the exception and not the rule. The exception was that something did not go right,” Jones said, denying that the organziation was responsible.
So ACORN agreed to do the obvious
ACORN paid a $25,000 settlement and agreed to monitoring of its voter registration efforts.
If ACORN is an organization whose goal is to register people, without prejudice, for whatever party they wish to register for I wish them well. However, if they are trying to cherry-pick who they register, they should especially be on the alert for attracting exactly they kind of people that they did in Seattle. What kind of dummy couldn’t figure that out? Apparently a dummy by the name of John Jones and his superiors.
Joanne Jacobs writes about teaching students how to behave at Webster Elementary, a school with mostly low-income Hispanic and black students, in San Diego. The end result…
Now the school’s calm, cooperative atmosphere and good scores draw students from other neighborhoods.
This also seems ties into the educational challanges post from yesterday.
