In New Hampshire, the forces of libertarianism clashed head-on with the primal forces of nature, and the latter kicked everybody's ass with the well-trained shock troops of the primal forces of nature: bears. https://t.co/biOR2hy4e0
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 16, 2020
Courtesy of Mr. Pierce, the New Republic reviews Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’ book on “The Town That Went Feral”:
… Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.
None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don’t bode well either—especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just “working to create their own utopia,” property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its “discontents,” as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to “indifferent nature” on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of “freedom,” both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed…
If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right…
What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”
Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem…
The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply…
It will probably surprise no one that my sympathies lie mostly with the bears.
Five Ps: Calendar Pet Pics, Voting Plan Illustrations, Mandy Patinkin, Programming Note, Pissed Off
Sister Golden Bear
As a Golden Bear, I support of the right to arm bears.
PaulWartenberg
Lesson I learned from my college course on 19th Century Utopias:
UTOPIAS NEVER WORK.
Libertarianism is driven by this need to prove itself with an ideal model society, but it never works. None of them, not Fruitlands, not Oneida, none of them. The closest to ever stick to their rules and make it past more than five years were the Shaker communities, and they STILL died out because their rules restricted their ability to adapt and add.
MattF
@PaulWartenberg: Shakers also believed in celibacy, which reduced their communal viability. And Hobbes, in the 17th century understood that life in the state of nature was ‘poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.’
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Sister Golden Bear: A bear is already armed, by virtue of their own constitution.
Other Suzanne
I guess the new NH motto is: ‘Live Free and/or Get Mauled’?
Idiots.
Kent
Ha. These Rand cultists always explode in spectacular fashion.
My wife is Chilean and we spend a lot of time there as all the extended family on my wife’s side still lives in Chile. Some of these same Rand cultists tried to establish their own commune in Chile which they called Gault’s Gulch. For real: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10 Naturally they didn’t bother to really educate themselves on Chilean property law because why would American exceptionalists ever bother to do something like that? And the whole thing turned into a giant Florida-swamp land style land scam of idiot investors. They also forgot to secure the water rights, which in Chile are separate from land titles. Oops.
Now they are trying to resurrect the whole project through the magic of bitcoin. For real. Apparently bitcoin was the missing element that prevented them from accessing their libertarian dreams
One of my wife’s cousins is a prominent real estate attorney in Santiago. He says the whole thing is just treated as gringo comedy gold in his world
Money quote:
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
Ditto.
Baud
@MattF:
TIL I exist in a state of nature.
matt
Project Grizzly scaled up to a whole town of libertarians? Count me in!
Jay
@MattF:
Hobbes was a moron.
when Captain Cook landed on Vancouver Island, the average Indigenous person towered over the English by over a foot, outlived them by 30 years, had a mortality rate 1/72 of the English, and on average, laboured for 6 months out of the year.
unfortunately, Cook and his disease ridden sailors, along with other explorers, traders and cross continent trade routes, would result in well over 8 million dead in BC alone, in less than 2 decades.
WaterGirl
Excellent song!
mrmoshpotato
Wait – so being selfish assholes who don’t believe in the larger society and its rules and laws will eventually collapse in tragic fashion?
HOOCOODANOED!
Oh, and to hell with Rand (Paul).
FlyingToaster
Typical for Cow Hampshire*.
New Hampshire is currently suing Massachusetts over income taxes. NH doesn’t have one (nor sales taxes; instead they have “fees” on every damn thing and nickel-n-dime you to death). NH residents who commute to MA are charged MA income tax, and because their state doesn’t charge one, don’t get credited by their home state.
And now, enter the global pandemic, stage right.
NH Workers whose MA offices are not open are still being charged MA income tax. Employers have to affirmatively reclassify them as NH employees, or they’re still subject to MA income tax.
NH doesn’t like that (because they are the best freeloaders off their neighbors, yes they are), so they’re suing. So much for “personal responsibility” on the part of their citizens and Massachusetts employers…
*What Massholes call their leech of a neighbor to the immediate north.
patrick Il
If you are rich and powerful enough libertariansin isn’t a bad deal, particularly when you live in a society where others take some responsibility. Some of us take measles shots which allows ,other entitled souls depend on herd immunity . The smarter and self Aware selfish ones understand they are taking without giving.
Then there are the true believers who have to run from bears.
Just One More Canuck
Go Bears. However, this is not even close to being the stupidest story of the day. Per Wonkette, QAnon says that JFK Jr is going to be announced as Trump’s running mate
In spite of being, you know, dead
https://www.wonkette.com/trump-definitely-announcing-not-dead-jfk-jr-as-his-running-mate-today-say-qanon-followers
Kent
@patrick Il: Of course the rich and powerful typically aren’t libertarian in any consistent sense. They rely on government to legitimate and protect their wealth. And as a vehicle for generating more wealth. Zoning, HOA restrictions, and all the other things they do to keep the riff raff at arms length typically aren’t libertarian. Libertarianism is mostly a tacky middle class white affection.
gkoutnik
@PaulWartenberg: I can remember when I finally came to grips with that truth. I was devastated. Young, idealistic, naïve – and devastated. I so wanted there to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
But today, when I saw there was a song at the end of the post, I knew exactly which song it was going to be! Here’s another one I like even more –
MattF
@Just One More Canuck: And here I’d assumed that JFK Jr. had simply tripped on the edge of the earth and fallen off.
Jay
@FlyingToaster:
you are talking about remote workers, I take it, ppl who would be commuting to in office work, if not for Sars-Covid-19?
Wapiti
@FlyingToaster: I don’t know the law back there, but my wife did freelance work for a California organization. We had to pay CA taxes on the California-source income, despite being non-residents.
Achrachno
I would be concerned that the “Libertarians” would decide to adopt “2nd Amendment” solutions to their bear problems, and deer problems, and squirrel problems, and … loud music problems?
Ksmiami
@Kent: no they don’t explode (too bad)- most Randian social experiments implode
Kent
Well, OK, point taken. They are good at making everyone else’s money vanish.
Jay
@MattF:
no, he’s still exploring the icewall at the edge of flat earth, trying to find a way through, to the actual end of our disk. It’s a lot of icewall.
268,457 km of icewall.
WhatsMyNym
@FlyingToaster:
It’s not a new issue, so I wish them luck with that.
JMG
@Achrachno: Like a lot of states with many hunters, in New Hampshire you’re in just about as much trouble if you shoot a game animal out of season or heaven forfend a protected animal as if you’d shot a neighbor.
FlyingToaster
@Jay: They’d be commuting if their MA offices were open.
But, most non-public-facing offices are closed or at minimal (<25%) staff. HerrDoktor’s office is closed for normal operations; one of the execs will go in every Friday and pick up the mail, mostly to recycle the junk mail.
MA decided that they were still receiving MA income, if they’d normally be commuting.
Jay
NSF warning,
Jay
@FlyingToaster:
it’s fair. When I was commuting to Milwaukee from Vancouver, I paid Canadian Income Tax, US Income Tax, BC Income Tax and Wisconsin Income Tax.
No biggie, other than the paperwork.
A Ghost to Most
While the term “Randian asshole” has been part of my lexicon for decades, It had never occurred to me to apply it to ursines.
Kent
@FlyingToaster: Same thing happens here on the OR and WA border. OR has no sales tax but hefty income tax. WA has no income tax but hefty sales tax.
But WA isn’t suing OR. They are mostly annoyed by it because as a result, Clark County (Vancouver area) where I live is a giant tax leach off the rest of the state of WA because so many Oregonians have moved up here to escape OR income taxes but refuse to pay WA sales taxes by doing their big ticket shopping across the river. Conveniently, all the big box stores like Ikea, Best Buy Home Depot, Costco, Target, etc., are all right across the bridge in OR.
Taken4Granite
As Mr. Pierce notes in his article, the lunatics in question are people who moved to their idea of New Hampshire from out of state. They found out that the real New Hampshire is not like their fantasy New Hampshire, but not before they ruined a town. The newcomers deserve no sympathy, but I do feel some for the people who were there before the Free Town crowd showed up. The former are the reason the latter (and the rest of us) cannot have nice things.
I used to work with somebody who lived in Grafton. He’d be well into his 80s if he’s still alive, so I have to hope he sold out, possibly to one of these idiots, and moved closer to the Lebanon/Hanover area, which is the closest job center to Grafton, and home to a top quality hospital (Dartmouth-Hitchcock).
FlyingToaster
@Wapiti: It depends a lot upon whether you’re a contractor or a temporary employee.
As a contractor, I bill as a vendor. So my out-of-state contracts (and I’ve done several in California over the years) are strictly work-for-hire and I remain solely subject to MA taxation. I had to have this argument with a firm in Iowa, which led to my definition of combat pay as “What I charge the asshats in Moline”.
I’ve had more that one round of “prove you’re not an employee” encounters, involving faxing other clients’ invoices to the auditor to confirm that yep, I’m a vendor.
Jay
Jay
@Taken4Granite:
I feel sorry for the bears, having to deal with Libertarian assholes, rather than dealing with a Social Democracy, with free fall apples for all.
JPL
@Just One More Canuck: Wouldn’t a dead JFK jr. be better than Pence? He’d show more emotion.
Ksmiami
@Kent: if it’s any consolation I prefer your visuals of exploding Rand Paul’s though
Jay
Jay
@JPL:
and he would be in better shape, due to the embalming.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlyingToaster: So it’s “Live Free or I’ll Sue”?
WaterGirl
@Jay: That’s chilling. The police there need to be held in check.
Frank Wilhoit
@JMG: So, no trouble at all?
JAFD
@Kent: Yours truly spent some years living by The Twelve-Mile Arc – PA has sales tax, Delaware don’t. ( I think the statute of limitations has expired for me)
This is not a very relevant comment, but am ‘breaking in’ new computer, now don’t have to type my email into BJ again.
Feathers
@FlyingToaster: I learned it as “Moo Hampshire,” but Cow Hampshire works, too. My brother worked there for a few summers in college as a “Trout Trooper,” AKA marine patrol officer on Lake Winnipesaukee. His stories were great. He also met his wife there, so the Moo Hampshire stories have continued. Also had in-laws there. Read the linked stories and it is true that standoffish laws, especially when mixed with guns, can lead to a rather feral existence. The guns can mean law enforcement and social services involvement in matters that would have blown over, and the resultant monitoring can escalate mental fragility and grievances.
I have worked with wingnut types in Mass who, once their kids have grown, look at the “best schools” rankings and move to rural places with very bad schools, figuring that the taxes will be low and the government ineffective. They see bad roads and potholes as signs that no one is wasting their hard earned money.
Achrachno
@JMG: But to a libertarian isn’t that just another example of statist over-reach?
“If that bear comes onto MY property I have a right to shoot it. Same for that deer eating my wife’s rose bushes.”
MazeDancer
Putting this in two threads, because everyone has to see this.
Joe Biden cut a commercial that is nothing but supercuts of CATS FOR BIDEN!!!!
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1317465638953168899?s=20
FlyingToaster
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep.
Which is insane, because Massachusetts has more lawyers per square mile than anywhere else on earth.
They’ve lost on this issue before; it’s only the WFH orders that’s giving Sununu the Lesser an opening to try again.
Ken
Pratchett in the 20th (possibly 21st) century said it involved squatting in trees and eating your dinner while it was still wriggling.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
all police need to be put in check.
Defund isn’t just about disarming the KKKops, it’s about taking a shit load of the workload they are not suited for, off their plate and refunding nonviolent, non confrontational social work, community building, instead.
If I stay uninfected, on the 20th I get my flu shot, on the 21st, I get to Street Medic the unhoused camp at Strathcona, always a massive undertaking, then the BLM march at the Museum.
Since the Riot at the Hyatt, where a kkkop shot a tear gas canister into my back, while administering first aid, over 25 years ago, I have understood that faced with dissent, the kkkops want to cripple and kill.
For most people, the red cross I wear is a sign of help, aid, assistance. To the kkkops, it’s an aiming point.
FlyingToaster
@Feathers:
I know one of those, myself. He’s spent more fixing his gawdawful pickup’s damage than he’s saved in taxes. Moron!
Ken
BTW I thought it was mandatory in any discussion of libertarianism to quote John Rogers.
Villago Delenda Est
Libertarians are idiots who don’t understand jack shit about how societies function.
Redshift
@Kent: Yeah, rich people tend to be Randian, really. “No one should be allowed to tell me what to do or tax me, and everything I and my company need can somehow be provided without that, I’m sure.”
Villago Delenda Est
@FlyingToaster: They never, ever think things through or learn to suss out cause and effect.
As I said in my previous comment, idiots.
Jay
@Ken:
catchy, but ignorant.
Hunter-Gatherers through out most of history lived better lives, and longer lives, than farmers.
Pastorialists as well, who with the rise of city states, turned on the City States as prey, and used the same tactics used to manage and cull their herds, to slaughter the city dwellers.
16th century London, (225,000 pop) required a daily immigration of 8,768 new workers a day, just to replace those dropping dead from starvation and disease.
Ruckus
@FlyingToaster:
And who will never, ever admit that there might be something to nice roads and services but will at some point get pissed enough to start complaining about the condition of the roads and his shabby government services…..
Yutsano
@Jay: Look at what Camden NJ did. Do that. Profit! It’s really not that hard to reform a police department. You just shift the revenue from the new shiny military toys to more social service people. Oh and police union reform. Just have the NLRB* decertify them all and reform them (police still need labour protections) while greatly increasing liability for injuries/deaths.
EDIT: this may not be the federal agency that handles union relations. If not, the one that does escapes me. Please feel free to correct me.
catclub
and there is the key bit which also applies to having an employer in Massachusetts — California-source income
Kathleen
@Jay: Sounds like the Republican plan to deal with unemployment
Jay
@Redshift:
and when things go south, blegging for every dime of Government aid available, by hook or by crook.
Parasites.
Redshift
One of the reasons we have laws and government is that people’s rights and “freedoms” come into conflict, and need to be resolved (which involves limiting freedoms.)
Libertarianism is “let’s assume that never happens.” Or depending on the flavor, having the freedoms restricted by other private citizens with more guns is a-ok, but having then restricted by government is evil, because reasons. (Reasons usually being “because I have the delusion that I’ll be the one with the most guns.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: They have never figured out that if their next door neighbor decides to set up a pig farm on his property, that it’s going to have an impact on theirs. In effect, the value of their property goes down, and their neighbor has stolen it. How do you fix this without resorting to violence?
cain
@Kent:
Yes, none of us on this side of the river are happy with those clowns. Especially when they voted to not have that bridge across the Columbia after we sunk in over 175 million dollars on that bridge with nothing to show for it. I’m still pissed at them.. since you know they were probably the driving force behind killing it.
But course, they get their free tax free shopping. They still have to pay Oregon income tax though regardless. But washington state doesn’t get much in income from Vancouver residents.
Jeffro
Hey y’all…Eric trumpov is tweeting about Joe Biden’s beach house and I think we’re going to lose bigly in November. I mean, when the son of a ‘billionaire’ whose dad “gets all the capital we need out of Russia” tweets about the size of the Democratic challenger’s beach house…GAME OVER, libtards!
Also, John Cornyn is tweeting about how a Dem sweep means a 104-member Senate and the replies are priceless.
Jay
@Yutsano:
the problem is “leadership”,
you need people in positions of authority who see the problem clearly and take action.
Seattle City Council took a mild step to partially defund the SPD.
The Mayor vetoed it.
the City Council was to gutless to override the veto.
the Mayor just gave the SPD a rush shipment of $500k worth of tear gas, ( illegal) and non-lethals, ( illegal), to “deal” with the elections.
cain
@Jay: I have some nigerian friends and they are busy fighting the system there against SARS. SARS is what seems like an extrajudicial police force that seems to take matters into their own hands. They have terrorized the population.
Now they have been disbanded but now htey are going after cops in general. Police brutality should be combated globally. Because it’s not just here – and I know for a fact that it exists in India – the police go after Muslims and lower castes with a vengeance.
Just Chuck
@PaulWartenberg:
That’s kinda inherent in the name. (“Utopia” == “Nowhere”)
HumboldtBlue
I am not a learned man nor a well-educated one but compared to these fuck knuckles I’m a goddamn genius.
Feathers
@FlyingToaster: @Villago Delenda Est: @Ruckus: Yes to all of this. The US spends far more on automobile repair and shortened car lifespan due to our crappy roads than it would cost to keep the roads properly maintained. People just do not understand the concept of the corporate tax, the extra cost incurred when a public good is supplied much more expensively by a private entity. Tax preparation is a main one. It would be cheaper than the current system for the IRS to simply send taxpayers a bill based on all the information they have already and have us simply sign and return if correct or file an amendment if situation is more complicated. However, we don’t do that. It would save enormous amounts of time and headache, not to mention all the money spent on tax preparation software and preparers paid by people with very simple returns. The business would probably still exist, they would just lose the can’t do math customers, but could charge a good deal more to the higher income people who are left.
But, yeah, shitty roads cost taxpayers more than well maintained roads, but since that money isn’t “taxes” – FREEDOM!!!
snoey
@Villago Delenda Est: In Libertopia you sue him for the loss of value except that he will be rational, see the suit coming, and locate the pigs somewhere cheaper in the first place. Like over the rainbow.
NotMax
Sigh. Guess those elaborate blueprints for Colesylvania get rolled up and relegated to the back of the broom closet.
:)
Jay
Benw
Who would win in a fight between Bears and libertarians?
DA BEARS
Who would win in a fight between Ditka and libertarians?
DITKA
WaterGirl
@Jay: Yep. God help us all if Biden isn’t elected. If he is, then hopefully we can stop arguing about what to call it and get to work, getting back to police being “to serve and protect”.
Still hoping you stay negative.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Reposting from below about the wedding: We went over and scoped it out, and there was absolutely no distancing inside the tent. But the tent was open somewhat, so my husband brought over two chairs and we sat on our property, masked, until the wedding party had gone into the tent, then we brought our chairs to near the door of the tent where we could see the ceremony. It was very sweet, but I was also kind of filled with resentment — one half of the country is forgoing parties with friends and family, and the other half just acts as if they’re immune.
Feathers
@Yutsano: Was talking with someone who was complaining that the defunding the police protests had not had any effects. Pointed out that this was going to be a long haul fight, won jurisdiction by jurisdiction, in local elections, paying close attention to police union contracts and when they were up for negotiation, and getting a city council not beholden to the police in place before then. I asked if she knew this information about her local police department. She didn’t, but I think she started to understand. I’ve started to see fliers on phone poles here with information about a white supremacist in the local police department. May have to start taking the local newspaper although I certainly do not want the extra recycling to lug out.
Ken
Too many willows.
A lot of proposed libertarian communities do create blueprints, with the layouts of all the houses and so forth. It seems kind of counter to the idea that everyone gets to do what they want with their property.
Aleta
Blaze Foley – Election Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08wtZJc-Yic
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdOUDb8vXW8
Another Scott
@Feathers: Some very recent progress in Virginia:
More is coming from the Democrats – there wasn’t enough time in the special session to pass everything they’re working on.
Elections have consequences. If we want good things, we have to vote for sensible people.
Let’s vote the monsters out!!
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Villago Delenda Est:
We live in a rural county with no Zoning. The building permits are a fund raising tool, no inspections occur.
If anyone wanted to put in a sub-division or trailer park, they would have to run their prospective customers past MY HOG FARM, which would be right by the county road, and would stink to the maximum amount possible with hog shit involved.
The sub-divided ranch in AZ where we bought land, has HOA-like rules — which would have put us off the purchase. But the rules allow up to 2 hogs for personal use, etc. Also, the current land owners completely reject the very idea of a HOA. A new property owner from NJ brought up the need for a HOA, at which point her neighbors made sincere threats to her safety.
Just One More Canuck
@JPL: would speak more intelligently, too
Mike in NC
One memorable year we decided to drive to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with friends. We were unaware at the time that Interstate 95 running through South Carolina was one of the poorest maintained major highways on the East Coast. We were constantly swerving to avoid hitting potholes and it was exhausting. Doubt if that has changed much.
prostratedragon
Bear in photo to Graftonian: “Gotta light?”
Kay
It was Trump +10 in 2016.
topclimber
@Jay: Bro, quick math makes your number about 2.7 million per year. Really?
Jay
@Mike in NC:
In Winterpeg and many other Canadian cities, we force the authorities to deal with potholes,
through pot hole gardening.
Driving down Maple Street and encountering a maple tree in the middle of the road, seems to create more pressure than just having your insurance cover a wheel ripped off by a pot hole, which their insurance then covers.
topclimber
@Just Chuck: Whereas. based on our experience of living through one now, dystopias are wildly successful.
HumboldtBlue
@Another Scott:
San Francisco has already implemented a mental health intervention team to respond to 911 calls related to mental health instead of police and the idea of pulling traffic enforcement from armed police is one of the first ideas we’ll see jump to the front of the reform line along with the metal health teams.
El Cruzado
Why would a bear bear arms when it has bear arms.
Jay
@topclimber:
Despite slavery, external and internal immigration, it really flat lined the entire British population growth curve until the advent of sewers and clean water, just in London.
Jay
@El Cruzado:
magazines for when it is shitting in the woods, or youtube clips.
Ruckus
@HumboldtBlue:
Thank you for the chuckle…..
topclimber
@Jay: Sorry, your numbers seem ridiculous. Maybe a link would be helpful? You are talking about the entire population of London dying off each month, only to be replaced by immigrants eager to move to a place that would kill them by the next month.
MazeDancer
FYI, when you text “Cat” to 30330 you get back Kitten GIFs.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Thanks for the update. I was hoping my guess about no distancing would be wrong. The important thing, though, is that you guys stayed safe.
Yes, there is a ton of selfishness on display, and it is not at all pretty.
scott (the other one)
So New Hampshire has no sales tax and it has no income tax. Instead, it relies largely on property tax (and the federal government). This is better…how?
Uncle Cosmo
@prostratedragon:
Bear: Gotta match?
Girl: Yeah – your breath and a buffalo fart.
(Drives off with tires squealing.)
Gvg
@Mike in NC: I don’t think I have ever seen a poorly maintained interstate. I live in Florida and I have traveled up to SC and Washington DC multiple times. Interstates don’t have potholes. Don’t recall the other roads being bad either, though admittedly we were going to well off tourist areas for a conference.
years ago I do recall there was a difference between Florida (good) and Georgia (poor roads) but that was in the 70’s when Florida had realized it was a tourist attraction state and needed good roads and Georgia wasn’t as prosperous yet. Things change. That was decades ago.
Chip Daniels
The best line in the article:
“Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom.”
JoJo
@Jay: We have been dealing with a similar situation in Wauwatosa WI. Lots of protests over the failure to charge a ‘tosa cop for a shooting (this particular cop’s 3rd fatal shooting in 5 years), a lot of police harassment. Last week the guard was here, teargassing us, as well as police from all around the state in full military gear and armored vehicles.
Fair Economist
@Kent:
The outcome?:
All truthfully, I suspect.
Jay
@topclimber:
it wasn’t the entire population dying off every month, as if the city became empty, then refilled. Death as during Sars-Covid-19, and was as now, differentiated by class, wealth, employment, slavery.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60592/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Cummins,%20N_Living%20standards%20and%20plague%20in%20London,%201560–1665_Cummins_Livinig_Standards_and_plague%20in%20London.pdf
Like the “casual” day labourers stacked out at the far end of the Home Depot parking lot, London relied on a constant input of immigration to keep running.
Jay
Yutsano
@Feathers:
Sure…if we make the due date October 15th. And this only works for employees with wages. What do you do if you’re self-employed? Not every business files their 1099-MISC on time or at all. And what about deductions/expenses/exemptions? Situations change from year to year. People would have to inform the IRS in advance when those things change. Your system has been thought of before. This is how things work in a small population country like New Zealand or Ireland. But in a country of 330 million people with different situations that constantly change? The IRS would not only have to be much larger, we would need a massive computer and technology reform. We already need that now yet somehow we manage to keep up.
Jay
@JoJo:
their only answer is “the beatings will continue until morale improves”,
they want us to quit, and we won’t. We outnumber them.
topclimber
@Jay: The link shows deaths peaking at about 40K per year during plague years. So $8k per month for SEVERAL months is plausible. That number per day is not.
In any event, you are correct that plagues fall hardest upon the less fortunate. This has not changed in 400 years.
Jay
@Yutsano:
barely. $750.
the poorest county in the entire USA is the most IRS audited.
because when you are poor, a demand from the IRS for another $100 is something you can’t fight, so your kids go hungry for another month.
when you are a Billionaire owing $8 billion, more lawyers.
when the Con’s were last in charge here, they went after EI “fraud”. The average EI “fraud” or more accurately, dispute or misfiling they recovered, was less than $750.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, millionaires and billionaires rooked the system for over $13 billion in frauds.
Jay
Denali
Interstate 90 goes through a native American reservation, Seneca, I think, west of Buffalo. The road was supposed to be maintained by the Seneca, who refused, because they felt that the US Governmentm owed them millions of dollars. It was in terrible shape for several years, but is better now- I am not sure how the issue was resolved.
VOR
@Gvg: I have seen a difference in interstates when changing states. I’ve noticed a difference crossing from Iowa into Minnesota and from Wisconsin into Illinois, who uses tolls.
JoJo
@Jay: Yes, that’s how it is here, too. All the harassment/beating just makes everybody madder. Tosa residents were REALLY unhappy about the curfew and military-style semi-occupation. It utterly backfired.
Kent
Well sure, but they really aren’t true believers because they don’t think that those rights extend to anyone else not wealthy. They are really mostly authoritarians who welcome a police state for everyone else.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: Didn’t know you were short :)
Kent
Yep, I’m doing my part to vote them out. Dropped my ballot off yesterday. There won’t be a repeat of the bridge fiasco next time as Clark County Republicans have lost every bit of clout they ever had in Olympia and DC. Oregon needs to insist that Clark County put on its big boy pants and expand light rail into Vancouver. Or no bridge.
In our defense, my wife and I both work in Clark County (Kaiser and public schools) so we never actually cross the river except to find dining experiences we can’t get in Vancouver or Camas. I do admit to being very tempted to drive across the river to Costco when I want something expensive like a big screen TV or computer. But we mostly shop on our side of the river.
Gravenstone
Wonder who these morons plan to sue after the first serious mauling inevitably occurs?
debbie
@MattF:
I guess I now know where Tom Waits got that lyric from. Sigh.
Sebastian
Probably way too late and redundant but don’t these guys watch The Simpsons??
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=OkV_ztynYDM
It’s one of the most famous episode of the franchise Lol
Nutmeg again
@FlyingToaster: Alternative: Cow Hamster.
I feel very sorry for the bears who were shot; the bears who will be shot; and, the bear in the photo with a nasty looking muzzle on.
Oh, New Hampshire. The state with a collapsed rock for an emblem. (The Old Man in the Mountain–still embossed on licence plates??)
Feathers
@Yutsano: 1099 employees are 10% of the workforce. Self employed another 10%. What I am talking about would cover about 2/3 or more of the US population, including the poorest, and would remove the burden of tax preparation. Those who don’t get W-2 wages would be in the same situation they are now, and thus not harmed.
I like Virginia’s state tax filings. They are due May 1, and are based on your Federal taxes, i.e., enter the information from line 27 of your federal tax form here.
Another Scott
@Feathers: One thing I hate, hate, hate about the VA state return is that if you want to claim a $259 spouse tax adjustment (if you both earn enough taxable income), then you basically have to do the tax calculations twice – once for yourself, and once for your spouse. And if the sum of the calculations don’t agree within a dollar, then the state won’t accept the return. So, you’ve got to be very careful about how cents are rounded in the various fields. I invariably spend more time on the VA return than the Federal one.
It’s nuts, it’s infuriating, and I wish they’d get rid of it and figure another way to get people the benefit.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
columbusqueen
@PaulWartenberg: Bingo! I recommend reading Hawthorne’s “Bilthdale Romance,” as good a satire of utopian thinking as there is.
Gin & Tonic
@Denali: Interstate 90 there, also known as the New York State Thruway, is a toll road. It has its own revenue stream.
billcinsd
@topclimber: yeah, it is basically replacing the entire population every ~25 days, which seems quite high. Maybe if it was during the plague
Dan B
@Jay: I was happy to have a “progressive” lesbian replace our politically inept, but nice mayor who had replaced our “progressive” gay mayor who had been a sexual predator. Mayor Durkan seems to have an authoritarian streak. She’s definitely a corporate tool and seems to have no comprehension of minority concerns.
She’s battling nasty Democratic Socialist Kshama Sawant, who I’ve met / encountered several times. It is a fight between the elite and the far left. Purity ponies versus the stodgy. I hope there are better options waiting in the wings. The Seattle Police are learning too much from Portland. I went to my precinct as an old white guy and felt intimidated. WTF? Our neighborhood is 15% white and the fucking police are 90% white!
Ms. Mayor wake the fuck up!
You are not as bad as Trump but you are not the goal.