Posted on 06/25/2002 12:51:20 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:06:58 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
June 25, 2002 -- Investigators probing the ImClone scandal are examining key new evidence that casts doubt on what domestic diva Martha Stewart and her broker have said about her stock sales, it was revealed yesterday.
On Dec. 27th - the day Stewart sold her ImClone shares - phone logs show the home-and-garden guru's society stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, called to say the price of the company's shares was dropping, congressional probers said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Would making license plates be considered a craft?
How greedy do you have to be in order to be happy?
Bill Clinton, when he was President sold inside secrets to the Chinese government. Now there's a real crime.
"The government picks the citizens' pockets taking half their money yet may of them think the government is looking out for their best interest and Martha Stewart's their 'enemy'." -- Zon
Politicians and bureaucrats are notoriously incompetent when it comes to solving real problems yet champions at creating problems where they need not exist.
Politicians and bureaucrats create and implement roughly 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. That number increases on average from one year to the next. Each year they tell us that the new laws are "must-have laws" that people and society can't prosper without. They do that to keep people from running society headlong into destruction. To that end lawyers are their greatest champions.
Yet how is it that citizens and the society they make up has managed to not only survive but increase prosperity when they didn't have this year's 3,000 new laws last year or for decades before. Likewise, how did citizens increase prosperity for decades prior to last year's 3,000 new must-have laws? And they do that despite a mountain of laws that they've already saddled with. Thirty new laws a year is probably overkill. But 3,000 is insane.
During Clintons eight years in the White House alone, there were 25,000 new laws and regulations created. How many of those laws did you break? With that many laws piled on top of the ones that already existed virtually every citizen is a criminal.
However, if in a day it was physically possible to apprehended even one quarter of those lawbreakers society would come to a screeching halt. Yet with all these supposed criminals on the lose prosperity continues to increase.
Seems obvious that lobbyists and special interest groups seeking to buy access to government power in order to gain unfair competitive advantages would be non existent if politicians weren't putting government power up for sale in the first place. They sell the "little guys" snake oil while they sell access to government power to their cronies.
Politicians and bureaucrats write and implement thousands of laws each year to justify their unearned paychecks and to usurp power that rightfully belongs to the citizens.
It seems obvious to this writer that politicians and bureaucrats think the citizens are as stupid as themselves and can't readily comprehend the bigger picture when given even a small amount of full-context facts presented honestly.
Government intervention into peaceful, private activity -- free association wherein any or all parties are free to walk away -- will make things worse rather than better.
Parasitical Elite vs. Prosperity Creators
If civilization had to chose between business/science and government/bureaucracy, eliminating the other, which is the better choice?
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and private property rights -- military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
"And yet there are no victims of inside trading as there are in robbery or murder. Suppose that A holds 1000 shares of XYZ Co. stock, and wants to sell those shares. B has "inside knowledge" that XYZ will soon merge with Arbus Corp., and buys the 1000 shares for $50 apiece; B, let us say, is right, the merger is soon announced, and the XYZ shares rise to $75 apiece. B sells and makes $25 per share, or $25,000 profit. B has profited from his inside knowledge. But has A been victimized? Certainly not, because if there had been no inside knowledge at all, A would still have sold his shares for $50. The only difference is that someone else, say C, would have bought the shares and made the $25,000 profit. The difference, of course, is that B would have made the profits as a knowledgeable investor, whereas C would have been simply lucky. But isn't it better for the economy to have capital resources owned by the knowledgeable and farsighted rather than merely by the lucky? And, further, the point is that A hasn't been deprived of a dime by B's inside knowledge." -- Murray N. Rothbard
Subversion Document #2-3A Trapped in the Ostracism Matrix
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