Today, Illinois' new governor, Pat Quinn, proposed a 50 percent increase in the income tax rate stating that it was based on "...something we all believe in -- ability to pay..."
Mr. Quinn - we don't all beleive in Marxism.
Karl Marx's famous - "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" - is the central communist idea - that the most productive should be forced to pay for what other's receive from the state for free - only because the most productive, as a result of their productivity, have the means to pay.
This socialist philosophy - which so scares MOST of us to our bones - is based on the twisted and debased principle that the people exist to serve the state.
Of, by, and for, Mr. Quinn. Of, by, and for.
This democracy exists to serve its citizens, not the other way around. The government exists to provide benefits and protections to the VAST MAJORITY of its citizens. It exists because we will it to exist, not because it forces itself upon us.
We all agree that government has worth. We respectfully can disagree about how much it should do, and how much it should cost.
But when we start losing sight of the role of government we risk losing the country itself. Here it is again, just in case Mr. Quinn, or any of the rest of our leaders need a refresher.
"...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
It is simply amazing that the last 6 months have so changed us, that we now numbly accept, in the tenor of public discourse, the very concepts and ideas that generations of Americans gave their lives to protect us against.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I just got ripped off...
Google finally got me...
I overran the free storage limit on my google account, and they made me pay $20 for another 10GB for a year. What a rip!
I could have bought a TB network drive from Dell for $179.
Let's see ... that's 1,099,511,627,776 bytes at $179 (call it $200 with tax and shipping) or $0.00000000018 per byte.
Take 6 or 8 zeros off and I'm still getting a whopping, I coulda had a V8, headache.
My first 1 TB storage system was the Digital StorageWorks Enterprise Storage Array we introduced in 1993/4. It came in 3 fully loaded 19" racks and cost over a million dollars.
Doh....
I overran the free storage limit on my google account, and they made me pay $20 for another 10GB for a year. What a rip!
I could have bought a TB network drive from Dell for $179.
Let's see ... that's 1,099,511,627,776 bytes at $179 (call it $200 with tax and shipping) or $0.00000000018 per byte.
Take 6 or 8 zeros off and I'm still getting a whopping, I coulda had a V8, headache.
My first 1 TB storage system was the Digital StorageWorks Enterprise Storage Array we introduced in 1993/4. It came in 3 fully loaded 19" racks and cost over a million dollars.
Doh....
Friday, March 6, 2009
A virtual world of virtualness
I wrote this a while ago, but returning from Nice last week, it still strikes me as somewhat prescient - if I do say so myself.
Kirby's Sub-theorem #2 - Virtualization eventually surrounds and commoditizes every IT resource
Ultimately, IT infrastructure will be made up of groups of commoditized resources – processor power, network bandwidth, storage capacity, etc. – connected through ‘buffering zones’ which are at their core virtualizers.
These connecting layers between resource pools will also provide the control points for infrastructure management. These connecting layers will be a loosely coupled network of policy enforcement engines – both providing the decoupling (virtualization) of the resources and enabling management policies to be injected, enforced, and visualized.
As data moves between servers and storage, policies will control access and placement. As traffic is moved from applications to end-users, policies will control security, quality of service, and even provisioning of additional resources.
IT operations will be provided a single unified view of the infrastructure and policies, enabling near-instant IT response to changes in the business environment.
It will be interesting to see how the virtualizers are eventually virtualized.
Kirby's Sub-theorem #2 - Virtualization eventually surrounds and commoditizes every IT resource
Ultimately, IT infrastructure will be made up of groups of commoditized resources – processor power, network bandwidth, storage capacity, etc. – connected through ‘buffering zones’ which are at their core virtualizers.
These connecting layers between resource pools will also provide the control points for infrastructure management. These connecting layers will be a loosely coupled network of policy enforcement engines – both providing the decoupling (virtualization) of the resources and enabling management policies to be injected, enforced, and visualized.
As data moves between servers and storage, policies will control access and placement. As traffic is moved from applications to end-users, policies will control security, quality of service, and even provisioning of additional resources.
IT operations will be provided a single unified view of the infrastructure and policies, enabling near-instant IT response to changes in the business environment.
It will be interesting to see how the virtualizers are eventually virtualized.
Forget Iceland - OSG is off to Galt's Gulch
Ok, so I was right and the loonies were wrong. $750B didn't do diddly. The S&P is one-half of its high 18 months ago, and headed further down today. Unemployment at 8.1% is the highest in decades, but the new treasury secretary can't find anyone who wants a job working for him.
Congress is drunk-dipping our collective ATM cards, the president is partying hardy at the white house every night, the US is on its way a People State, and Atlas is damn close to shrugging.
For goodness sake, what are we doing? 8570 earmarks-do you think that's ok? Do you seriously think that increasing taxes on people who create value, and then spending it on pork barrel projects, unemployment benefits, and welfare, will lower the deficit and increase employment?
Do you honestly think nationalizing banks will make people invest in them?
Do you think taking away the fear of failure and the benefit of success will motivate acheivers?
When has that assinine theory ever worked?
…”the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money…” Obama press conference, Feb 2009.
Good heavens, do you honestly believe that?
Have we forgotten the lessons of the last century, that coerced self-sacrifice causes a society to self-destruct?
Where are the men of the mind? Has Galt spirited them all away?
Hey John, don't forget me...I'm packed and ready for the call.
Congress is drunk-dipping our collective ATM cards, the president is partying hardy at the white house every night, the US is on its way a People State, and Atlas is damn close to shrugging.
For goodness sake, what are we doing? 8570 earmarks-do you think that's ok? Do you seriously think that increasing taxes on people who create value, and then spending it on pork barrel projects, unemployment benefits, and welfare, will lower the deficit and increase employment?
Do you honestly think nationalizing banks will make people invest in them?
Do you think taking away the fear of failure and the benefit of success will motivate acheivers?
When has that assinine theory ever worked?
…”the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money…” Obama press conference, Feb 2009.
Good heavens, do you honestly believe that?
Have we forgotten the lessons of the last century, that coerced self-sacrifice causes a society to self-destruct?
Where are the men of the mind? Has Galt spirited them all away?
Hey John, don't forget me...I'm packed and ready for the call.
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