You have said everything there is to say.

Of course "follow the money" applies here.  To paraphrase that comment, 'follow the power'.

At least we know who is really running America... and Greece.  Or was that a non sequitur?

May it be so.  The tellie license is an obscenity, but the Brits have rolled over on this one for too many decades.

As with any tax revolt, if enough people simply refuse to comply, then it is unenforceable.  Of course the storm trooper method of simply rolling through the neighborhood picking out individuals to be used as examples will be enough to make the weak of constitution comply.

Even Hitler's storm troopers found a village or two who were willing to face firing squads rather then be slaves for eternity.

Your neighborhood supermarket and the Vietnamese machinist have the right idea.  If you want to solve a problem, either hire a contractor yourself (if that is legal, probably not) or do it yourself.

I once lived in Asuncion, Paraguay.  The curbs were 18" high, and when it rained every street became the storm drain.  To cross a street, you paid 5 Guarani to a strong young man, and climbed on his back.  In moments you were on the other side of the intersection.  I've done it scores if not hundreds of times.

Bottom line.  Any citizen who waits for the government to solve a problem he can solve by himself is an Obama collectivist in waiting.

Fix it yourself.

The prosperity of DC is no different than the prosperity of Saudi Arabia.  The oil money (tax money), enriches those in control, the Saudi family (Bureaucracy) and leaves the rest of the nation to serve massa and admire the plantation mansion, and the lifestyle massa lives.

Wow, DocJay, how do you really feel?

How can I possibly add to such a concise evaluation of the stakes at risk in November?

Where there are many laws, you can be found guilty any time it is necessary.

You are somewhat correct.  Linda, for instance was paralyzed from the neck down by polio at age 18 months.  She partially rehabbed back to total paralysis from the hips down, and used crutches until about 10 years ago, when it caught up with her.  She is now a high functioning quadriplegic.

We do benefit from those who have gone before, but we spent almost 10 years working in countries where polio and other diseases have gone untreated.  We know the costs well.

One of the costs we pay here in the West is that we have such a fear of death that we have robbed the process of it's dignity. 

Death is simply moving on, if you are a Christian it is to a better place.  Our hope is that God is true to His word.  Death isn't something to fear, it is a release.

Occasionally I wonder if my wife and I have been right in totally droping out of the medical system and educating ourselves for self treatment without drugs.  Linda is a quadriplegic and 64 years old, I am 69.  We have literally nothing to do with conventional doctoring.  Linda self treats her very high blood pressure which she has had since childhood, and I simply take good care of myself.

Oh, and we both take God seriously and lead an extremely low stress lifestyle.  Spent almost 10 years in third world countries as a missionary, and had some very narrow escapes from violence.

Life is good, and this thread makes it easier to maintain our commitment... to each other and to God.

Opting out is not as hard to do as it would appear.

In the late 1960s we lived in La Mirada, California.  It was at that time a contract city, run much like Sandy Springs.  Life was good, taxes were low and services were good.

Don't know about now.

Do you mean small businesses violating not only the immigration laws, but engaged in undermining their own country?  In New Mexico, as in Arizona and California, the reconquistas are not an insignificant bunch of radicals, they are a movement which is seeing it's vision fulfilled by American politicians and fiscal profligacy.

And there are many ways the desires of small business for cheap help can be fulfilled short of undermining the poor of their own country.  Want to dry up the demand tor illegals?  The minimum wage would be a good place to start.  Forcing the hand of small business toward innovation is another.  Personally, I don't like the taste, or lack thereof, of machine picked tomatoes.  But they satisfy 90% of the public, and do not any more require tens of thousands of braceros to pick them.  I probably won't like the machine picked lettuce when it comes, but fewer braceros is the result. 

America is being diluted.

Like!

You have found a gem in the above quote.  Newbigin almost perfectly describes the process we have undergone in the West.  His only shortcoming, the failure to note that the process began with the autonomy of man from God.  It is that factor from which flows all the rest of the pathology of perfect autonomy.

Without God, none of the other elements of a healthy civilization can be realized.  Even unbelievers who reject God long to be in His shadow, basking in His perfect community.  They are simply not yet ready to accept the possibility of a Creator God. 

Here I am not speaking of the God haters, those atheists who actively war against His Being.  They have chosen death rather than life, and will have their  choice fulfilled.

Ricochet is a community of God lovers and people who desire God but are not yet ready to know Him.  But we are a part of a community in His image.  We do not want to be alone in this world.  We need companionship with others who also know that they are designed by God to reflect His community, which theologians call the Trinity, but which is actually God's Family.

As with all things progressive, Obama's positions are a matter of convenience.  He has the benefit of a national press that will erase inconvenient contradictory statements from their coverage.  Only an intelligent electorate can avoid being fooled by this. 

The rest are the reliable Obama voters that put him in office and will try to keep him there.

By the conversation, I see you have chosen door number two.  And behind that door, which is chosen by those who prefer the status quo and cannot abide efforts at creative thinking, or those of us who simply recognize that any attempt to help CINY out of their self inflicted miseries, will end it all.

Either the efforts of most of the Ricochetois take us into the land of reality, or we had better plan our actions once the house of cards collapses.

Or dream that politicians reform.

As long as the feral government is in the hands of statists, California, NY and the apt abbreviation, Ill., have nothing to fear.  BO rewarded California's profligacy in the past with stimulus funds to keep the union pensions rolling in, and the past is prologue. 

The feral government will maintain a form of chaotic equilibrium among the states until one of three things happens:

1.   The more responsible states finally rebel.

2.   The whole house of cards collapses under it's own weight of irresponsibility.

3.   The Dems finally lose the feral government, including the Supremes, and the GOP loses it's statist moorings.

My money is on number 2.  Both choices 1 an 3 require a political class with actual character and courage.  As I said, I'm betting on number 2.

And what will be the new currency of the defunct feral union?  The "barter".  I'll make you a fine dinner if you will fix my lawn mower.  And I'll trade you fresh organically grown tomatoes for a tuneup on my 20 year old car.

This will be the result of the "progress" that the progressives promise.  Demagogues are the salvation of an ignorant people.