Public Service Bonanza - Comments on USA situation

From the online Reason  e-zine site, this intriguing article chronicles some amazing stories of the growth and wealth of the American public service sector.

The flavour of the piece can be gleaned from the its concluding paragraph, reprinted here...

"It’s a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results: Higher taxes, eroded public services, unsustainable levels of debt, and massive roadblocks to reforming even the poorest performing agencies and school systems. If this system is left to grow unchecked, we will end up with a pale imitation of the free society envisioned by the Founders."

To access the full article click on Class War...

Class War

How public servants became our masters

by  Steven Greenhut 

from the February 2010 issue

This blog entry is my first at simply pointing to the work of others at their own sites.
If it goes well I may do more of this.

Crazy Business - Legal costs for bank financing

The nub of this piece is the perverse amount of paper and the attendant legal costs  involved for owners of small businesses to borrow modest amounts from banks. In a recent file involving a $50,000. loan and a $30,000 line of credit, the bank required over 40 documents to be generated, in triplicate of course, with legal costs of approximately $5,000.

Bogus Promotion - from what should be a trusted source

While waiting for the doc in a clinic examination room I stare idly at the glossy poster directly across from my perch on the examination table. It's got something to do with antibiotics and resistance. The punch line in big letters exclaims: " Inappropriate use of antibiotics can lead to resistance".

And it occurs to me that while that caption may be true, it is quite misleading. And that's sad.

Why are we Northerners ?

I'm a Northerner. Most of the people I know are Northerners.What I am having trouble with is the question - why are we Northerners?

To put a little flesh on this question, it occurs to me that it might be preferable to be a Southerner. If indeed it is preferable to be a Southerner, why do we persist in being Northerners.