The GOP as Pushy Beggars

That Donald Trump is a bully is obvious. His influence on the Republican Party and conservatives is also apparent. Back in late October 2016 when Trump’s election was still in some doubt in the minds of Democrats, at a press conference in Michigan, Michael Moore explained in clear language why Trump would win: Donald Trump brought to the polls millions of disaffected non-voters and other centerists whose personal losses and disappointments opened them up to a Leader making Promises. Now, the Grand Old Party attempts to energize its loyalists by reacting as a victimized bully.

 

Where do these "matching funds" come from?

Back in 2007, I was elected as a Republican precinct delegate from Ann Arbor Township. It was pretty easy. Ann Arbor is heavily Democrat. There were six slots on the GOP side of the ballot and I was one of four people running. Before moving here, I joined the Austin Tech Republicans luncheon club. Since then, I have been registered on both sides depending on the candidates in the local elections. Austin is heavily Democrat, but sometimes it is important to send the GOP leadership a message in a primary. The same is true of the Democrats. In 2016, I voted for Bernie Sanders as a vote against Hillary Clinton. 

 

Because I still have my Ann Arbor cellphone number, I have been getting these text messages from the Republicans. Their strategy reveals their soul. (And, yes, I block each one. They use a different number the next time.)

 

Now, it's my fault.

Aggressive beggars kept us from moving to Portland, Oregon. Back in 2010, after completing an associate’s, a bachelor’s, and a master’s, work was still hard to find in Michigan. So, we looked around. Portland was nice. The beggars were hard to take. They followed us on the street; sometimes they stood in front of us. Austin was different. With four months of 100-degree highs and no rain, brown was the new green. The beggars in the medians were selling ice water. I liked that entrepreneurial spirit. 

 

Despite the political narratives to the contrary, government in Texas follows the Taxachusetts model. Our senior federal senator, John Cornyn, never met a new law he did not like. We got a problem? Make it illegal. The state legislature made it illegal to buy Tesla automobiles by making it illegal to buy a car from a manufacturer who did not have a dealership in the state. It was the Texas automotive dealers association who got that passed in the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed by the Republican governor. That was changed a couple of years ago. Tesla is in orbit now and that plays well in Houston. 

 

Insistent Begging from Trumps Senior and Junior 

Working on a state agency project now, I have been diving into the Texas Compiled Laws, especially the Texas Government Code and the Texas Administrative Code. We have a franchise tax here. If you license your music or your painting or your poetry, you pay a tax on the income. But, if you license mineral rights, you are exempt from the franchise tax. That’s what makes fascism more successful than socialism: they know whose bread to butter.

 

Showing some concern and then blaming others.

The root of the problem is that in essence fascism is just another kind of socialism. Right wing syndicalism and left wing syndicalism are mirror images. Whatever the shades in their rainbows, the radiation is on the same spectrum. 

July 14 -- Bastille Day. I am not going to post all of these as they keep coming in, but this is starting to sound like On the Waterfront.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Tycoon Dough is Democratic 

In Support of Paid Political Advertising 

President Trump and the Military 

Toxic Leadership 

How to Start Your Own Country

Long before admirers of Ayn Rand dreamed of creating their own “Galt’s Gulch” secret retreat, adventurers and utopians started or tried to start their own independent communities.  California’s Utopian Colonies by Robert V. Hine described many. However, a subtle difference separates those who dream of their own nation. How to Start Your Own Country by Erwin S. Strauss is a taxonomic review of several modern ventures. 

Realize, though, that an entire subset of numismatics is given over to micro-nations just because so many of these ventures are known from the 19^th century forward.  Many issued their own stamps, coins, and notes.  Indeed, the “Pine Tree Shillings” of Massachusetts, all dated 1652 because no king was on the throne, are evidence of that colony’s intention to make itself an independent nation, invading even New Hampshire (temporarily) and taking Maine from France (until relinquished to the USA in 1820).   Here in Texas, the local banner flies no higher than the flag of the USA, but can be much larger.  So, if you want to start your own country, you are not alone.

How to Start Your Own Country is a classic.  Published first by Loompanics in 1979, a second expanded edition was produced in 1984, copyrighted to the author and published under the banner of “Breakout Productions” though still geo-linked to Loompanics.  Strauss is best known to science fiction fans.  His father was a diplomat who got the family out of Nazi Germany before the ax fell.  Strauss grew up in Washington DC and claims a feel for the way diplomacy works.  He attempted his own “Jolly Roger” scheme to launch a gambling ship on the high seas, free of government interference, but abandoned it as ultimately unworkable. 

Obverse of "Republic of Minerva" coin.
Gold and silver.
The Republic of Minerva was defeated
by a boatload of natives with at least
one rifle.

To fund that venture, Strauss signed on as an engineer on an Alaska Pipeline in 1972.  Clearing the decks for that action, he sold his vitamin business to Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw.  His degree in electrical engineering from MIT was jeopardized when he was suspended for a year for contracting the publication of standard textbooks in Hong Kong so that he could undersell the campus bookstore, in part because he was not paying copyright royalties to the professors.  No one could be friendlier to libertarians and Objectivists – and no one could be harsher.  In one parody, he was cast as “Mr. Strauss” the “Mr. Spock” of a starship Free Enterprise: he is ruled by logic, and not influenced by emotion.

 Of all the ventures, Sealand was and is the most successful because they had a workable business plan.  As a “pirate radio” station they had a service to sell and an audience to sell to advertisers.  Contrary to that, many libertarians thought that just wanting to be free and gathering freedom-loving individualists would be enough to ensure success.  It was not, empirically never has been, and logically cannot be.  Most of this book consists of an anthology of tragicomic operettas of brave libertarians tripping over their shoe laces.

Except for Sealand.

That worked.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Fact and Value Aboard Serenity

Objective Intellectual Property Law