Tools for working the soil

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 102008
 

So much for the idea that I’ll buy my wife a John Deere B tractor for her birthday someday. Well-heeled collectors are now driving up the prices, according to the WSJ. (“Old Tractors, Maserati Prices“) Not that it would be of much use on our little acreage.

I’ve not even used a tiller to work up our garden the last few years. Instead, I spade it by hand. I like the quiet of it — it’s quality time for thinking — and I’ve long liked doing spade work. Maybe I should have been a professional grave digger, back in the days before backhoes. My parents are visiting now, and when Dad (who is 89 years old) saw how I get the garden ready these days, he decided to do some spading himself. So the garden is getting spaded up much faster than usual, thanks to his help. And last year I probably made the garden much bigger than it needed to be. There was more corn than we knew what to do with. (I plant the corn; Myra does everything else.) It will be hard to keep from enlarging it a little more this year. I also like the idea that I’ll still be able to do this work if I get to 89 myself.

Myra was the Iowa farm girl. I was not raised on a farm myself, nor was I raised in Iowa. But I think the word “tractor” evokes the same image for both of us — a Johnny Popper — one of the later versions of the Model B, like the one towards the bottom of this page. I presume it was one of those that she drove into a center support post on her father’s new garage when she was maybe 7 years old. (I’ll have to check the details with her sometime.)

Though I don’t know how someone that young could have managed the clutch on one of those. So maybe it was something else. I remember an old Alice Chalmers with a hand clutch, which worked so smoothly a kid could handle it.

No blasphemy, please. We’re Google.

 Free speech  No Responses »
Apr 092008
 

Some of my fellow conservatives used to think I was over the top when I talked about how abortion is becoming the Holy Sacrament of the secular left. I predicted that soon no nominee would get past the Senate Judiciary Committee without personally performing the sacrament in front of the assembled senators.

Well, look at this. Google will put up with a lot in the name of free speech, subject to Chinese government veto, of course. But one thing it will not tolerate is abortion ads if they also include religion. That is blasphemy and cannot be allowed.

But to be fair, it isn’t quite as bad as their stated policy makes it sound. Google will relent and accept PRO-abortion ads for sites that ATTACK religion.

Thrilled with the idea

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Apr 092008
 

There is talk about CBS hooking up with CNN. CNN would do the reporting, while CBS would provide the on-camera airheads.

That would be a shame. How could CBS possibly replace the reportorial talent it has in places like Albany, New York, where their people report that NYC “commuters are thrilled with the idea” of a millionaire’s tax to fund transportation. It doesn’t even need to conduct a poll to know this. All it needed was two quotes.

Oh, well. If the deal with CNN goes through , these reporters can probably get jobs at Gallup and Zogby, and save those companies tons of money by teaching them how to come up with results without doing expensive polling.

But I hope it doesn’t happen until they’re done cheerleading New York City into enacting this millionaire’s tax. Some of those millionaires will need a place to go, and here in Michigan we could use more people like that on our tax rolls.

Start here with price controls

 Free markets  No Responses »
Apr 062008
 

I probably should credit someone for putting a great idea in my head, but I don’t remember who. Maybe it’s George Will, who got me thinking about price-fixers such as Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

With the command-and-control propensity of contemporary liberalism, Clinton predictably advocates a policy that has a record, running from Roman times to the present, that is unblemished by success. It is the policy of price controls: Her proposed five-year freeze on interest rates would be a control on the price of money.

Despite this “unblemished” record, there are probably people out there who think they are smart enough to make such controls work.

Well, if they’re so smart, let them practice on their own, first. Some of us think government is too expensive. Let them put a freeze on the amount of money government is allowed to take in. No cuts in “services,” no layoffs, just put a freeze on the price of government. Then, after they use their brilliance to get that to work, they can talk to us about putting freezes on private-sector transactions.

Help Hillary fight

 Regulation  No Responses »
Apr 052008
 

I am told (over at SCSU Scholars) that Hillary Clinton was talking about the minimum wage on Jay Leno. She claims a boy told about her mother. The minimum wage was raised, then her hours were cut, so she isn’t making any more money. Hillary says we need to fix that.

I agree, and am willing to join her in that fight. Here are some ways:

  • Cut business taxes so businesses will have more money to pay those higher wages (which they won’t do willingly, of course, but will do when competition forces them to do so).
  • Cut individual income taxes so people will have more money to pay the costs that businesses attempt to pass on to consumers.
  • Vote price-controlling politicians out of office this fall.

A plan for more federal bailouts

 Regulation  No Responses »
Apr 052008
 

There’s a lot not to like about Henry Paulson’s plan for a federal powergrab for the financial services industry, but here’s one I hope people will be thinking about:

The proposals include calls for a federal insurance charter that would allow big insurers — which are currently regulated by the states — to more easily operate nationally.

In other words, this would let the bigger insurers squeeze out the smaller ones, creating monster corporations that will be too big to be allowed to fail, and which will therefore be eligible for federal bailouts.

Florida backlash?

 Bash the Messenger, electoral politics  No Responses »
Apr 032008
 

I’ll bet they’re making it up.   Not a single bit of evidence is cited, and the reporter doesn’t say whether she even asked for any.   Do they have even one example of a Florida voter who says she’ll be so angry about the delegation not being seated that she’ll vote Republican?   Even Democrats tend to be more clearheaded than that.   Is this anything other than the best, lame rationalization that Howard Dean could come up with?

WSJ: Democrats Fear Florida Backlash

Democratic leaders fear that if Florida’s delegation isn’t seated, voters may feel robbed of their primary votes and take out their frustrations on the Democrats in the fall.

A more accurate news item would have said, “Howard Dean claims to fear that if Florida’s delegation isn’t seated…”

Guide to presidential candidates

 electoral politics  No Responses »
Apr 032008
 

Here’s a brief guide to the presidential candidates.  I threw Al Gore in because of Dick Morris’s article.

If Hillary Clinton is president, she’ll wake up every morning thinking about how she’s going to grow the welfare-police state.

If Barak Obama is president, he’ll wake up every morning thinking about how he’s going to grow the welfare-police state.

If Al Gore is president, he’ll wake up every morning thinking about how he’s going to grow the welfare-police state.

If John McCain is president, he’ll wake up every morning thinking about how he can knife conservatives in the back, or pick some scab on a conservative wound that’s just started to heal.   He’ll do other things, too, but that will be his top priority.

Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act

 Regulation  No Responses »
Apr 022008
 

I learned about the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act” from townhall.com writer Johnnie B Byrd.   I like it, and I like the new compact fluorescent bulbs.   We’ve started using them a lot at home because of the economics.  But it seems that Congress is scared to death that people will find out that markets can work, so found it necessary to make them mandatory.

Until now I had not ever heard of Michele Bachman, U.S. Representative from Minnesota’s 6th district, who proposed this measure.   From reading the wikipedia article about her I see a few things that make me nervous, but anyone who can propose a law like this can’t be all bad.

And to think I used to live in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which is part of her district.  When I was living there back in the 70s we had a leftwing Democrat as our congressman.  I don’t remember his name, but I remember being told that he had shown up at a manufacturing plant where I was working, to stick his nose in some labor business, and was told by the plant manager to get the hell off of the property.    I like living in a country where plant managers can tell members of Congress to do that without having to live in fear of retribution.   In this particular case, I actually sympathized somewhat with the unionized workers, but I heartily approved of the plant manager’s action.

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