Stupidity and ignorance in Lincolnland

Stupidity and ignorance is now more or less politics as usual here in Lincolnland. Bobcats are dangerous vermin and so numerous that a hunting season is needed to control their burgeoning population dontcha know. TPP has never even seen one in our state, but hunting bobcats is now legal in our state.  This is pure ignorance and stupidity in action and required that our legislators and governor simply act in opposition to everything that is known about the biology and population of bobcats. Hey who needs science when one of our legislators has seen just mobs of bobcats every time he's been out in the field.  Now it is true that bobcat numbers have rebounded in the southern parts of our state since trapping and hunting them was banned, but no one knows how much hunting their populations can stand if any without going into decline, but let's not let any wildlife biology get in the way of hunting. Sorry, kitties the boom-boom boys have been turned loose and it's just because you've got a nice pelt. Boy does that show us lefty, know-it-all, animal huggers a thing or two! They don't need no stinkin' science to help decide things. This is but a small example of how bad governance has gotten.  This image was obtained from the Wikimedia Creative Commons and it was made available for non-commercial, educational use by ForestWander. What kind of bozo would shoot this animal just for fun and a trophy hide?  

Monday, monday

Monday started early when a cat woke TPP to tell him that a thunderstorm was approaching, a fact he would find out himself in another 10 to 15 minutes. She's got good hearing and is a little afraid of thunder. The morning news confirmed that here in Lincolnland politics particularly the state's gerrymandered election districts were not going change because a political hired gun of a legal persuasion managed to convince a judge that the half a million signatures, more than twice the total needed, were invalid so the voter initiative would not be on the ballot. Democracy in action. Yeah, sure. BTW you only need 5000 signatures to become a candidate for governor. And then SCOTUS amazes us with the contorted legal logic they use to empower corporations at the expense of individuals. This after the most buffered branch of the government decides that women entering clinics don't need any spatial protection from the friendly counselors attempting to harass and intimidate them. SCOTUS needs a good dose of their own medicine.  Actually some of the justices just need to get out every year or so and see how people actually live and behave. On the good news front, more rain fell and Costa Rica won at the world cup. Ole mis amigos. Maybe the cat has the right idea; find a quiet place safe from thunder boomers and go back to sleep. 

Primary season blues

Nothing can be more depressing than election season here in Lincolnland. The state presently has a governor who ascended to office when the feds locked up his predecessor in a special prison kept just for disgraced politicians. This fellow is not a crook, not ethically challenged, but not particularly effective either. Yawn. The opposition sees the governorship as a vulnerable position, so lots of wannabees have emerged and in another week we citizens get to choose among them for a worthy candidate.  It's a grim choice.  The front runner is a self-proclaimed 1%er of the 1% (i.e., a 0.1 percenter). In simple terms a filthy rich businessman who has already spent 5 or 6 million of his own money on his campaign. In and of itself that doesn't bother TPP, but where is it written that guys who've made a lot of money would be any good at running a state?  A state isn't a business and isn't run like one either. This guy is full of rhetoric and clueless otherwise.  So he comes across as arrogant do-it-my-way-or-else type of tyrant who think of themselves as "leaders".  Another local candidate also touts his business experience ignoring the fact that his business as skated along the thresh hold of bankruptcy and questionable decisions with regard to what a conflict of interest is in politics. OK, if something you are voting on stands to enrich you Mother, whose investment is being managed by yourself, sort of as a shill because you couldn't get the loan otherwise, it's a conflict of interest to vote on it.  Then there's the treasurer who shows all the signs of having reached the pinnacle of the peter principle, and now is over reaching for higher office as rumors and a law suit emerge suggesting a questionable relationship with a principle assistant that generally would be found unacceptable to conservative voters. It does little to inspire. Nonetheless, the Phactors shall try to vote for the least objectionable, least harmful of the bunch if indeed that can be determined. Anyone want to trade? 

We're number 2!

You take your bragging rights where ever you can get them.  In this case, and to our utter amazement, Linconland is not the worst run state in the USA (You go California!), but actually the 2nd worst run state.  Now we keep trying to improve our ranking, and the thing we seem best at is locking up governors (at this we're number one).  But maybe ours are just dumber and therefore easier to catch.  It's as if the gangster era never really left, but now the favorite targets for theft by politicians are state retirement funds, which not only lack the state contribution completely, but the principle paid in by workers has been used like a checking account by the state.  Is that legal?  Probably, but it's still theft.  So at times you have to wonder how anything gets done at all.  Lincolnland has all but done away with public higher education because the state contribution has dropped to an almost insignificant portion all the while blaming the universities for raising their tuition and not controlling their costs.  And never once did voters get to decide if this was what they wanted or not.  Unfortunately, the grass isn't very much greener on other sides, so you just don't have a good place to move to.  But come visit anyways.  Chi-town has some really good restaurants and lots of museums, oh, and it's the Second City of course.

LIBERAL!

Oops, sorry to bring this up, but TPP missed publishing this in time for the election, but the sentiment, the message still are appropriate as nothing much has changed, and why waste a perfectly good blog rant.  Just a couple of days before election day, TPP got a flyer in the mail from the GnOPe of Lincolnland;  they wanted my vote, not for anyone in particular, not for any particular issue or agenda, just in general, more or less for everything.  In fact the missive only featured one word in bold, red letters: LIBERAL.  Yes, vote against anything liberal; vote against the liberal agenda; vote against Washington liberals (if only we really had some!); meaning vote for the GnOPe.  Personally TPP is insulted.  The GnOPe seems to think that the word LIBERAL will affect me the way the word SQUIRREL affected the dog in the movie UP.  Well, TPP has stopped associating with the GnOPe since they became the party of stupid.  However this increases the likelihood that this message resonated quite well with their party's main base, but liberal doesn't mean what they think it means.  TPP has long embraced a liberal philosophy of equality and justice supporting free and fair elections, freedom of speech, religion, and press, a right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. If the GnOPe is serious about opposing a liberal agenda, then they should be more specific about which of these rights and freedoms they wish to limit or take away.  Well, in a manner of speaking all of them, for one group or another.  The GnOPe doesn't want minorities or people who vote against the "conservative" agenda to vote.  The GnOPe doesn't want women to have any rights at all.  And freedom of religion is OK as long as it's the right religion, theirs, and even when this is pretty confusing for the them trying to convince the religious right that Obama is the wrong kind of Christian while at the same time sort of side stepping the issue that Mittens isn't any kind of Christian at all by their own standards.  Before receiving this missive, TPP was actually thinking (uh oh, a GnOPe no-no) of voting for at least one GnOPe candidate for state office, by all accounts a reasonable, nuanced fellow, but his party, the party of stupid, managed to alienate another voter.  So maybe he'll get this message and think about what he stands for.  Nah!  The R next to your name virtually assures your election in the sea of red surrounding our university town.

How to run a state - university

Once again the political brain trust of our fair state (Lincolnland) has figured out how to weasel out of a fiscal obligation.  In this case what is likely to happen is that the state will place the responsibility for contributing "their" share of money to our pension fund upon the universities.  Then they will crow about having cut costs and balanced the budget.  But the cost did not go away; it just got shifted elsewhere, and in this case to the universities.  Now this is nothing new.  The state has been withdrawing support gradually over nearly 30 years, placing unfunded mandates upon the universities, and as a result of the state support dropping form about 68% to less than 23%, tuition has gone up.  Transferring the cost of pensions will only make this situation more chronic.  Our fine politicians will brag about not having raised taxes while they will have raised the cost of higher education for all future students and their families.  If they do the same thing to school districts and community colleges, then property taxes will also go up, but since these are not levied by the state, that won't count.  The simple point is that to pay for the state's obligations, taxes will have to go up, but lacking the political resolve to do the right thing, they will back out of the mess and leave it to everyone else to figure it out.  Is it any better anywhere else?     

Civil Unions permitted in Lincolnland

We citizens of Lincolnland don't get too many opportunities to brag, but in approving civil unions for same sex couples, Lincolnland got one right. Gay people have always been among our circle of friends and acquaintances, and many of them have been couples for nearly as long as the Phactors, yet without any of the legal protections of actually forming a couple. Locally the argument has long been framed as one of religious freedom. Religions that condemn homosexuality, oppose same sex marriage or civil unions. So when last this came up it was necessary to ask the speaker why under the auspices of religious freedom couldn't our church (Unitarian) marry same sex couples since no such prohibitions existed? Ah, well then came the blather about the slippery slope, the danger this posed to "real" marriages, and the downfall of society. So what about our religious freedom? Well, you all know that in the USA religious freedom is taken to mean the freedom of the majority religion to do as they damn well please and everyone else had better allow it. But try to even the playing field, and suddenly the majority is persecuted. The poor dears. A rather prominent citizen here abouts went on an anti-gay rant, and somehow a stage whisper leaked out, "What a bigot." And they said, "Well, that's what my religion says and what I believe." OK, so you're a religious bigot, fine, but a bigot none the less. There was a fine round of applause.