The Curmudgeon Letters - Volume 6 Number 19

The California Supreme court just ruled that under the California constitution it is unconstitutional to prohibit same-sex marriages! Because I love it so much, I quote here from the actual text of the opinion of the Court as my Quote of the Day.

Quote of the Day

“… we conclude that, under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage. As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family — constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons for the benefit of both the individual and society.”—The Supreme Court of California, May 15, 2008 See text of opinion.

Mexico Drug War

I have often written about how our unsane drug prohibition laws have literally caused the takeover of foreign countries by well-financed, well-armed gangsters, hoodlums and barbaric criminals. The list of countries that fallen into anarchy and chaos as a result of the drug trade in countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and Central America.

Well here comes our Karma! I now I think we are close to the point at which we can include Mexico on that list. On April 27, 2008 a running gun battle between competing drug gangs in the streets of Tijuana resulted in 13 killed and 9 wounded. It wasn’t the first time that street gun battles have broken out there. Elsewhere in Mexico there have been incidents where the bad guys were using rocket launchers and grenades in the streets. The chief of the federal police was assassinated—the beginning of a pattern we have seen in many other countries around the world! In Sonora, below the Arizona/Mexico border, the police killed 15 members of a drug gang they say killed five policemen and 2 civilians. For a story about this war between the Mexican government and the drug cartels see the Seattle Times article.

Clear Thinking Congressmen

Roscoe Bartlett, (R- MD), speaking to witnesses testifying about “E-Waste”—disposal of highly toxic electronic products—spoke with great emotion and apparent anger. He wanted the witnesses to tell him how we could redirect the values of the American people away from video games, entertainment and energy wasteful activities of all kinds to conserve resources for out descendants. That was important to him because as he said, he “has 10 children, 16 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.”

I wonder how many SUV’s, speedboats, ATV’s, Motorhomes, television sets, game consoles, home computers, cell phones, etc. those 28 people have purchased?

As far as I can tell, the root cause of every environmental problem is overpopulation. Furthermore I think because of overpopulation of the world, every solution has a consequence that is as big a problem as the one it solved. Consider one of the clearest examples, ethanol. It is pretty clear that ethanol production has at least two such consequences. The skyrocketing price for corn is causing the increasing price and declining shortage of food around the world! It looks like maybe 100 million people will starve to death over the next year or two. And, the high productivity of corn is due to two things genetically engineered seed stock and fertilizers made from petrochemicals—increasing the demand for oil!

Hmmm

I read the other day that, as a part of the “surge”, 40,000 servicemen and women have been “deployed” (forced to go) to Iraq although they were evaluated by the military as being “unfit for combat.”

The Birth Tax

The tax burden assessed by the National Debt to every child at birth in the US is now:

$ 30,810

At only a 6% fixed rate annual interest, when these children graduate from college (assuming that they didn’t have to get college loans), they will owe:

$111,024

The current National Debt, as of Thursday, May  15,  2008 is:

$9,366,021,234,567

(5,854,375 ALI)

That is an amount now exceeding the total lifetime income of every one of the American men, women, and children living in any one of 34 states working their entire lives to pay off this debt. And that is just to pay off the principal. $600,000,000 is roughly the daily interest expense (325 ALI daily or 118,625 ALI per year)!  See National Debt Clock. For just the cold data see Bureau of Public Debt, and for a very interesting FAQ sheet go to the U.S. National Debt Clock FAQ.

Cost of the Drug War

As of today, Thursday, May  15,  2008, this year we have spent over

$19,063,000,000

(11,914 ALI)

See http://www.drugsense.org/

Bush's Killing Fields

According to the official reports of DoD as of Thursday, May  15,  2008

      4077 US Soldiers killed in Iraq

           501 US Soldiers killed in Afghanistan

        309  Coalition soldiers killed in Iraq

        309 Coalition soldiers killed in Afghanistan

          More than 655,000 Iraqis killed since the beginning of the war (Reuters)
See http://iCasualties.org