That’s What I Thought

But…But…It seemed like a good idea at the time!

From Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

The Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London stands as one of the worst in recent years, handing local governments carte blanche to seize private property in the name of economic development. Now, four years after that decision gave Susette Kelo’s land to private developers for a project including a hotel and offices intended to enhance Pfizer Inc.’s nearby corporate facility, the pharmaceutical giant has announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut.

The aftermath of Kelo is the latest example of the futility of using eminent domain as corporate welfare. While Ms. Kelo and her neighbors lost their homes, the city and the state spent some $78 million to bulldoze private property for high-end condos and other “desirable” elements. Instead, the wrecked and condemned neighborhood still stands vacant, without any of the touted tax benefits or job creation.

That’s especially galling because the five Supreme Court Justices cited the development plan as a major factor in rationalizing their Kelo decision. Justice Anthony Kennedy called the plan “comprehensive,” while Justice John Paul Stevens insisted that “The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue.” So much for that.

Quote of The Day

“… In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By  robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty  of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the  Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

… after this is accomplished, and the Brave New World begins
When men  are paid for existing, and no man pays for his sins,
As surely as Water will  wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings, with  terror and slaughter, return!”

– Rudyard Kipling

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Firearms Manuals

Lose the manual to one of your guns?

Buy a used gun with no box/manual?

Here you go.

http://stevespages.com/page7b.htm

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

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Obambi Likes Them There E-Mergencies…

Remember a couple weeks ago when Teh iWon declared a national state of emergency because of the Swine Flu Pandemic that really isn’t a pandemic?

Well now we have a mandatory “climate emergency” (WTF!?!?!?) being written into federal law:

From the Washington Examiner:

Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez.

Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions…to address shortfalls” in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions.

When Vitter asked EPA Administrator what would be done in such a situation, she refused to say. So it must be asked: Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or anything else the “emergency” requires?

Is anyone guarding the asylum?  Seriously…I’m asking.  Really.

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Celebrating the USMC Birthday

I missed this yesterday.  In case you did too…

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Veteran’s Day

via

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Happy Hump Day 11-11-09!

From Wirecutter.

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Semper Fi Until I Die

OK: One more Marine Corps Birthday post/video that I just found over at Mike The Marine’s place.

Until the day we die…Happy Birthday Marines!

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Quote of The Day

“The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made…He has been called United States Marine.”

-Historian T. E. Fehrenbach

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