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ECIDA approves Time Warner tax breaks

First, The ECIDA isn’t giving its own money to Time Warner, it is taking the money directly from taxpayers. Second, this is being done with the expectation that jobs will be saved. That doesn’t sound like a very concrete plan.

There is just a bit too much irony in the fact that a company with a government sanctioned monopoly on cable TV services is now the recipient of corporate welfare.

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New York’s Court of Appeals has now decided that paternity can be ruled valid, even when the DNA evidence says otherwise. Whether or not a man is the biological father is immaterial in some cases. The Court ruled that the “best interest of the child” trumps Mother Nature. Even the deliberate lies of the mother is not enough to stop the Court from ordering child support and back support. Here’s the gist of what the 2 dissenting judges had to say -

The dissenters objected to the application of estoppel against a “completely innocent litigant” who was misled by the child’s mother. They noted that the woman swore in Family Court that she had not had sexual relations during the relevant time span with anyone other than Mark, an assertion that DNA analysis proved was a lie.

They said the decision rewards people who make no effort to nurture or support a child who may be their own while penalizing people like Mark who immediately assumed responsibility.

“With this decision, this Court supports a public policy that says a man should never take on a parental role unless he wants to be unconditionally responsible for the child’s financial support,” Judge Bundy Smith wrote.

Judges Smith and Bundy Smith concluded that it could not serve the child’s best interests “to have an order of filiation declare respondent to be her father, a man, who in addition to having no biological tie, has no interest in continuing a relationship with her or her mother.”

(read the whole story)

Baghdad Erupts in Mob Violence

BAGHDAD, July 9 — A mob of gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.

(the rest is here)

While driving around in my car today I heard an interesting news story. A new underground market is flourishing in Iraq. It is the market for fake Id’s, used by Sunnis and Shiites to hide their ethnic background. The fear of violence and death is so great that the Iraqi government is casting a blind eye toward the fake Id’s. The quasi-government in Iraq understands the real threat present in Iraq. Thank you George!

This editorial, appearing in the Washington-Post, sums up what is wrong with our system of government subsidies.

Cultivating Waste
Massive federal farming entitlements hurt at home.

Monday, July 10, 2006

HEART SURGEON Jimmy Frank Howell owns a piece of land that hasn’t produced crops in years. The federal government has paid him $490,709 in rice subsidies since 1996. Michael T. Sullivan’s family, corn farmers, sold most of their crop last year above a government-set minimum price. He got $292,054 in federal agricultural payments anyway.

We’ve known for a long time that America’s bloated food subsidy programs rile foreign governments, complicate trade talks, distort agricultural prices and disproportionately benefit large agribusinesses. As if that weren’t enough, the results of a nine-month Post investigation published last week vividly detail the scandalous waste of America’s vast farm subsidy system.

the rest of the story.

“I’ve had a tough time learning how to act like a congressman. Today I accidentally spent some of my own money.”

Joseph P. Kennedy