Dems say Secret ballot for Them, but not for us?

-By Warner Todd Huston

We have been talking about it for some time here, that most odious provision in the Democrat pushed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that eliminates the secret ballot for prospective union members. Democrats want to eliminate the secret ballot because, they say, it will make it easier to enlarge union membership without all that messy votes of conscience stuff. It’s easier, they feel, to leave prospective new members open to union intimidation to get them to vote pro-union.

So, doing away with the secret ballot is a particular goal of the EFCA. Democrats are dead set on passing this act with this anti-democratic voting measure intact.

Yet in 2001 the same Democrats that are so intent on eliminating the secret ballot for American workers were all exercised over maintaining the secret ballot for Mexican workers.

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Dems say Secret ballot for Them, but not for us?”


Giving Obama a Chance

-By Selwyn Duke
Being a cerebral sort, when I ponder President Obama’s seduction of America, I think of the story of the snake and the duck. To be brief, the snake wants the duck to take him to the other side of a creek, but the duck is reluctant. He says, “But when we get there, you’ll bite me.” The snake is very persuasive, however, and convinces the duck he wouldn’t do such a thing. He just wants help and would have the utmost appreciation. Well, I think you know what happened upon concluding their little crossing. Bam! The snake bit the foolish bird, who then started stammering, “Bu-bu-bu-but you said . . . .” The snake just replied, “Hey, you knew what I was when you picked me up.” I suppose the duck just wanted to give the serpent a chance.

That certainly is what many want us to give Barack Obama. Criticize the president and you’re admonished for being unfair and partisan. “Give the man a chance!” hiss the critics. Or is it that they quack? Whatever.
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Giving Obama a Chance”


ABC Groaner: Now Just Living ‘Near’ Fast Food Places Kills?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The ABC News medical unit wants to warn you about a stunning new risk to your health: fast food. Amazingly, it “ups your stroke risk” ABC tells us. Of course, we all know that eating too much fast food is bad for us, right? Well ABC has even more startling news. It isn’t necessarily only eating the stuff that’ll kill you. You see, ABC wants us to believe that just living near fast food places will kill you, too.

Now stop laughing. I think ABC is serious with this stuff.

ABC unleashed this “news” piece on February 19 with a headline that screams “Living Near Fast Food Ups Stroke Risk” and based it on yet another one of those groundbreaking “studies” that are always touted as “science.” This piece is filled with dire warnings and shocking conclusions… unless you actually read it, that is. Then you find it is really built on conjecture, maybes and assumptions instead of hard proof. So much for science.

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ABC Groaner: Now Just Living ‘Near’ Fast Food Places Kills?”


Paper At Last Finds Unions Hurt Business, When it’s THEIR Business

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is often called the “Red Star” Tribune by residents of Minneapolis for its long-time, virulently left-wing outlook. Many has been the time when the editorial board of the Star Trib has carried water for political candidates shilling for big labor.

The STrib endorsed Obama for president for his supposed fiscal responsibility as well as his focus on the working classes. It is well known that big labor was solidly behind Obama and have been getting payoffs every week since the January inaugural.

But that was then. Now-a-days the STrib is not so keen on unions. In fact, it is so put off by unions that it is going to court to have its contract with its printers union annulled and asks for new terms to be imposed by the courts to save the paper from going bankrupt. Apparently, unions are fine for politicians as far as the STrib is concerned, but when it is faced with real life union demands, well, the courts are asked to save them from union excess.

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Paper At Last Finds Unions Hurt Business, When it’s THEIR Business”


Ireland’s Worst Driver FINALLY Caught

-By Warner Todd Huston

A Polish immigrant to Ireland has wracked up dozens of parking tickets and driving violations in nearly every county of the country. Police there have been trying to hunt him down for years, but every time they corner him he has left a different home address causing consternation and confusion for Irish police the country over.

Now, Police in Ireland have been looking hard for this Polish nerr-do-well, Mr. Prawo Jazdy, with an intensity that beggers description. And now we have the pleasure to announce that the constabulary of the Emerald Isle at last has found this cunning criminal. Or maybe they didn’t exactly find him as simply discover his true identity.
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Ireland’s Worst Driver FINALLY Caught”


George of Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Doesn’t Get EFCA… or Does He?

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a recent issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a story on the delicate political spot occupied by Senator Arlen Specter was discussed showing that he has worked himself into a can’t win for loosing situation. He’s made both sides mad with his erratic stance on both sides of the political fence.

But one quote by Bill George the head of the Penn. AFL-CIO was telling about how unions view the Employee Free Choice Act. At least in George’s case, he proves to either have no clue what’s in the EFCA, or he knows all too well and is willing to obfuscate just to get it passed.

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George of Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Doesn’t Get EFCA… or Does He?”


Three Movies, Six Dancers, One Perfect Song

-By John Armor

The greatest single piece of dance music ever written is The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss. It appears at a critical point in three movies, all favorites of mine. In each case it demonstrates the emotional power of the right music at the right time in the plot.

The first movie is an obvious use. Yul Brynner dances with Ingrid Bergman toward the end of Anastasia to this waltz. This occurs at the point where he begins to see that the woman he was grooming to pretend to be the surviving Anastasia, might actually be that surviving member of the assassinated Romanov family.
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Three Movies, Six Dancers, One Perfect Song”


Crappy Inaugural Poem Finds Crappy Sales

-By Warner Todd Huston

Let me first say that I am no judge of poetry. I have little knowledge of the stuff and have even less interest in it. So, for all I knew the poem that Elizabeth Alexander read during Obama’s inaugural was a great one. It seemed a bit pedestrian to me, but, like I said, what do I know?

As the days rolled onward after the inaugural ended more and more people in the know about poetry came out to say that Alexander’s poem was a bad one. Well, apparently the poem buying public agrees with those in the know because the book in which this panned poem appears is selling like crap cakes.
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Crappy Inaugural Poem Finds Crappy Sales”


ABC’s Jake Tapper: The Sam Donaldson of the Obamanation

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is it Jake Tapper or Jake Scrapper? I am beginning to think the later as amongst the Obamagobbed media, ABC News’ senior White House correspondent Tapper is emerging as the man ever ready with the pointed question for Obama and his administration. We may even call Tapper the Sam Donaldson of the Obama era.

We all remember the many long years when Sam Donaldson would stand before Republican presidents (oh, and Clinton, too) and their press secretaries and, in that accusing monotone, ask the the most pointed question of the day, don’t we? Of course, we also remember the less than newsworthy subjects he often interjected there, too. Like the question he asked George W. Bush in 2006.

“Mr. President, should Mel Gibson be forgiven?”

Who cares, Sam? And even if we did care, why should this be a question that a president must weigh in on. It’s as bad as the fool Washington Post reporter that recently asked Obama about “ARod.” Would a little relevance be too much to ask when our supposedly hard-edged media are “speaking truth to power”?

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ABC’s Jake Tapper: The Sam Donaldson of the Obamanation”


‘Blue Dogs’ Stave Off EFCA For Now

-By Warner Todd Huston

Greg Sargent is reporting that a coalition of conservative Democrats, the so-called “Blue Dogs,” have joined to ask Speaker Pelosi not to bring the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to the floor.

The Blue Dogs have asked Pelosi not to consider the bill until the Senate has first voted on it. As far as the Senate goes, Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he won’t bring it up for vote unless he knows he has 60 votes and that number doesn’t seem very likely at this time.

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‘Blue Dogs’ Stave Off EFCA For Now”


Wall Street Journal Gives Action to Principles

-By Warner Todd Huston

Kudos must go to the Wall Street Journal for standing by its principles. Haaretz reports that the WSJ pulled its sponsorship this week for a tennis tournament in Dubai after that Islamic state ignorantly denied a visa for an Israeli player scheduled to play there.

Dubai refused the visa for Israeli player Shahar Peer because of the supposed anger of Muslim tennis fans over the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza. United Arab Emirates officials claimed they feared riots if they allowed Peer to attend.
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Wall Street Journal Gives Action to Principles”


The AP Talks of ‘Happy Fish’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Fish are people to, you know? At least the Associated Press seems to think so. It seems the AP has decided that a ruling by officials that run a state park in Pennsylvania that allows people to feed bread to carp at Pymatuning State Park will make the fish “happy.”

With a report headlined “Fish likely to be happy with Pennsylvania ruling” the AP has absurdly decided that fish both know that their gastronomic intake was a subject of the Pennsylvania legislature and will be satisfied with the final ruling.

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The AP Talks of ‘Happy Fish’”


How Barack Obama Wants to Make Black Children Poorer

-By Warner Todd Huston

In 1996 Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the welfare reforms that for the first time in 20 years caused poverty statistics for black children to fall to unprecedented lows during the modern welfare era.

In 1996, Barack Obama was against these reforms.

In 2009, with his giant welfare bill he calls a “stimulus plan,” Barack Obama has eliminated these reforms.

Watch this video to see how Obama wants to return to the days of higher poverty rates for black children.

Proof once again that Democrats want to enlarge welfare rolls, destroy the lives of citizens, make everyone poorer, and create a permanent underclass that they can count on for votes.


Effective Tools in Education

-By Nancy Salvato

Nancy Salvato

“I don’t know, I’m waiting for you to tell me how I feel.” (Reese stops thinking and becomes the world’s happiest tool) Reese Joins the Army “Malcolm in the Middle”

On posted a response to my commentary, Three Good Reasons to Become a Teacher: June, July and August.

“I became a teacher because I wanted to know I would be secure in retirement. I also happened to like working with kids.”

I found his comment more than slightly disturbing because one would hope that a person would enter the teaching profession based on a desire to teach, not for the pension. As a matter of face, novice teachers who participated in a study about why educators leave the profession expressed reasons for entering the field of teaching, such as; to help young people, share their love of learning, improve society, loved their subject, liked young people and felt responsibility to the next generation. Isn’t it amazingly fortuitous for Mr. Galt that he just happened to like working with kids.
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Effective Tools in Education”


NutRoot Outrage at Fake Video Bashing John Gibson of Fox News

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is a tale that should serve as a cautionary one to all that inhabit the Internet. It’s all about the instant outrage, the ginned up hatred, the immediate immolation, that one sees so often infesting the left in our fair country. It shows how unhinged many there are. It started on the Huffington Post on February 19, when poster Alex Leo found what he thought was a video of John Gibson of Fox News saying that new Attorney General Eric Holder was like a monkey with a “bright blue scrotum.” In reality, though, what Huffposter Leo found was a spoof video, not a real one, of someone else’s words edited over the top of John Gibson’s video.

It wasn’t true. It was a fake. Regardless of the truth, however, the left-o-sphere went wild with faux outrage over the obviously “racist” John Gibson and his evil remarks. Within hours the tale had spread over to DailyKos, and other lefty bloggers as well as the site of supposed bastion of troof, Keith Olbermann. Even the profane folks at Wonkette went for the manufactured lie. Naturally, comments of outrage accompanied each posting on this fake story. (Thanks to JohhnyDollar for the work on this)

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NutRoot Outrage at Fake Video Bashing John Gibson of Fox News”


Chigo Trib: GOP Doesn’t Want to Help, ‘No Interest in Family, Work or Neighborhood’

-By Warner Todd Huston

For the Chicago Tribune, Romney supporter turned Obama man Douglas Kmiec indulged in quite a litany of name-calling, finger pointing and demagoguery against the GOP that would have been amazing from the same man only one year ago. Hopefully questioning “The Death of the GOP,” Kmiec has shown that he no longer cares much how he is viewed, going full Democrat Partisan at this point.

In his Tribune article, Kmiec outrageously says that Republicans don’t care about “helping” the country, that they denigrate the “values, hopes and planning of others,” and have “no interest in family, work or neighborhood.” After heaping such calumny onto the GOP, he then does further damage to poor Mitt Romney by happily reminding us that Romney is a “flip flopper” that should join the Obama administration. Some friend he is!

Douglas Kmiec used to have a certain reputation as a serious man of the law and a man of religious conviction. Apparently that reputation is no longer important to him if this display of name-calling is any indication.

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Chigo Trib: GOP Doesn’t Want to Help, ‘No Interest in Family, Work or Neighborhood’”


A New Way to Backdoor a Gun Ban: Onerous Insurance

-By Warner Todd Huston

Want a gun in Illinois? Fine. Then you’ll be forced to carry an expensive, million dollar insurance policy to be “allowed” to observe your Second Amendment right. At least, that will be the law if lefty gun-banner Kenneth Dunkin has any say in the matter.

Dunkin (D, Chicago) has made this attempt to undermine the Second Amendment even worse than a mere “insurance” policy. He has also slipped into this unConstitutional morass a provision that says gun owners will be liable if their gun is used in a crime after it has been stolen from them. The bill also authorizes the State Police to confiscate the firearm owner’s ID (FOID) from any citizen that doesn’t comply with purchasing the hefty insurance policy.

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A New Way to Backdoor a Gun Ban: Onerous Insurance”


The Tax Man’s Spy Eye in the Sky

-By Warner Todd Huston

Maybe you are a homeowner with substantial acreage in your possession. Maybe you have a nice fence with which you might makes “good” neighbors of those whom you may want to keep off your land. Maybe you then built a small barn or a shed but forgot to mention it to your county appraiser and regulatory offices by applying for a building permit.

Don’t worry. You’ll still be paying through the nose. The tax man has found a new way to get you and its called Google.

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The Tax Man’s Spy Eye in the Sky”


Microdictatorships Line The Road To The Future

-By Frederick Meekins

In my column “Capital Implements Measures Violating Rights & Property”, I warned that a number of steps taken in the name of curtailing crime in a particular Washington, DC neighborhood forbidding entrance to anyone but those whose business and reasons for being there were deemed legitimate by law enforcement were to be baby steps in laying the foundation of a plan that would ultimately turn many of America’s cities into micropolice states by cordoning off selected segments of concentrated areas of population. Some snickered at my idea as I in part drew inspiration for my projections from an episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” where the downtrodden were corralled into sanctuary districts and they also chided me for failing to comprehend the complexities of the lawless situation supposedly requiring a response characterized by considerable sternness.

In all honesty, as an analyst basing many of my conjectures upon extrapolations where I see various trends headed, there are times when I wonder if perhaps I have overreacted to certain things I have stumbled across in the news. However, in light of a number of additional press accounts, any doubts I may have had about America’s municipalities eventually going into a state of lockdown with few chances of them reopening have been laid to rest as things continue along to such a lamentable destination
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Microdictatorships Line The Road To The Future”


Publius Podcast: Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit? Who’s Gonna Teach Him?

And the latest Publius Forum Podcast is here.

Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.


Where’s the Transparency? Obama’s Secret Orders Caught Media Unawares

-By Warner Todd Huston

Despite all claims to the contrary, President Obama has not been very vigilant about pursuing that idea of “transparency” he ballyhooed during the recent campaign. Politico reported on a host of documents, proclamations and executive orders that Obama has made in the last month and none of them were online. In fact, many were not even released at all to the press by the White House.

So, where is the drumbeat of outrage about the “secret presidency” we heard for the last 6 or so years?

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Where’s the Transparency? Obama’s Secret Orders Caught Media Unawares”


Sneaking Abortion Funding Into Every Bill

-By Warner Todd Huston

For some thirty years Congress has built into bills a legislative device called a “pro-life rider.” These riders prevent public funding for abortion from being slipped into bills under the radar. These riders have wide bi-partisan support having resisted elimination since the 1970s.

But, now these riders are coming under threat by the new Obama administration and his pro-abortion Democratic Party cohorts. A bi-partisan group of House members, however, seek to quash the effort by Obama and his followers to reverse a thirty-year tradition, one that conforms to the majority opinion of the American electorate.

Heath Shuler (D-NC), Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and nearly 100 of their fellow House members have signed a letter urging the House majority leaders to retain pro-life riders into the coming session and beyond. (see text of letter here, .pdf file format)

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Sneaking Abortion Funding Into Every Bill”


Philly Judge Dishonors Memory of Fallen Police Officer

-By Warner Todd Huston

On February 13, a popular Philadelphia police officer was killed in the line of duty. 25-year-old Officer John Pawlowski was shot by Rasheed Scrugs, a career criminal that was due in court the following Monday for his latest car theft bust. Since then Officer Pawlowski’s photograph was placed as a memorial in the roll-call room of the 35th District, a room that doubles as the courtroom of Municipal Court Judge Craig M. Washington.

Judge Craig M. Washington was not as reverent of the memorial as everyone else, however, and requested the photo of the fallen officer be removed from his “courtroom.” Judge Washington went to several police officials demanding that the memorial photos be removed. When police officials refused the request, Judge Washington decided to rip down the memorial himself.

Naturally, the Federal Order of Police and officers of the 35th District were not amused. In fact, they were incensed.
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Philly Judge Dishonors Memory of Fallen Police Officer”


Maryland: Tradition and History Severed With New State Song Legislation

-By Warner Todd Huston

Contrary to popular conception, the South was not united during the Civil War. Every single southern state gave thousands of their sons to the northern armies and Maryland was no different. In fact, Maryland gave more soldiers to northern armies than it did southern (About 32,981 fought for the north and only 4,039 fought for the south). But this does not mean that Maryland was a state with overwhelming northern sentiment. Federal authorities were constantly suspicious of Maryland’s pro-Confederate sentiment, so much so that they feared New President Abraham Lincoln’s travel through the state might end in an assassination attempt. Being a border state, it had an awful lot of vocal southern sentiment and that sentiment shows in the state song, “Maryland, My Maryland.”

And now, 144 years after the civil war ended, legislation is going through the Maryland state house in Annapolis to change the long standing lyrics of the state song(adopted in 1939). It seems the “Confederate sympathies” in the song are too much for lawmaker Pamela Beidle (D-Anne Arundel) to take.
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Maryland: Tradition and History Severed With New State Song Legislation”


Offending the Islamofascists

-By John Armor

It was just a minor story on Friday about a Dutch politician being denied entry to Britain at a London airport. You might well have missed it. But it was an extremely important event for its broader meaning.

Geert Wilders, a member of the Netherlands parliament, was invited to Britain by a member of the House ot Lords. The invitation asked Wilders to show his 17-minute film “Fitna,” which he made last year. Fitna juxtaposes quotes from the Koran with images of Islamofascists attacking and murdering various non-Muslims.
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Offending the Islamofascists”


Investing In High Unemployment And High Inflation

-By Dan Scott

Now that Pelosi, Obama and Reid got their so-called Economic Recovery Plan passed and signed into law what’s an investor to do? That depends upon whether you think the plan will work or not. If you don’t believe it will work as advertised then you know the economy is about to enter a period of high unemployment and high inflation in what I would call the Carter follies redux. At this point even some in the liberal MSM don’t believe it will either.
Analysis: Stimulus won’t jump-start economy By Jeannine Aversa / Associated Press
No, the big stimulus plan won’t “save or create 3.5 million jobs,” as the president and congressional Democrats claim — at least not this year.
The economy will remain feeble through 2009, analysts warn, and businesses will keep shedding jobs, though not as many as they would have without the $789 billion boost._Advertisement
The stimulus agreement, heading for final votes in the next day or so, goes to the heart of President Barrack Obama’s strategy to revive the economy and will go far in shaping how Americans view his economic leadership.
What it won’t do is quickly snap the country out of the painful recession, now in its second year.
It should provide some relief, economists say, though some argue it won’t plow enough money into the economy to prop it up.

So already the liberals are back peddling by blaming Bush for a year long recession, when in fact it’s only been 6 months or 2 quarters of negative GDP, they admit their pump priming of the economy with deficit spending isn’t going to work as advertised.
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Investing In High Unemployment And High Inflation”


Unheroic Superheroes, Watch out for the Watchmen

-By Warner Todd Huston

Who Watches The Watchers? -A Comic Book As Political Commentary and a new blockbuster movie soon to hit theaters

If you thought the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight, was dark and cynical, wait until you see Watchmen, arriving in theaters on March 6, 2009. Brooding Bruce Wayne will have nothing on a “hero” that rapes his sidekick, another one that has no interest in mankind at all, one that is a megalomaniac, one that is psychotic, and one that is overweight and sexually impotent all set against a backdrop of a United States that is many shades of despair and evil. It makes Batman, The Dark Knight, seem like a festival of sweetness and light. This is the Watchmen, soon to be released by Warner Brothers. If this new flick at all follows that anti-American, nihilism of the original comic books we are in for some dark stuff, indeed.

Why do contemporary artists all seem to think the end of the world is nigh? Why has art become a thing of ugliness, instead of light? With all the beautiful things we see every day, the delicacy of a flower, the turn of a woman’s arm, the grace of a bird in flight, we are treated only to the bizarre and horrid by our artists. These days we see sculptures that look like molecular mistakes writ large. We live in architecture with the image of a jumble of blocks thrown to the ground in the midst of a temper tantrum by a gigantic, petulant child. We view paintings that appear more accidental than planned. We have movies full of violence and anti-social behavior. On the radio we hear music that celebrates all the worst in man. We even have comic books that belittle heroism, that deconstruct the good and exceptional turning their heroes as cartoonishly flawed as the most obscene head case on the Jerry Springer Show.

When did entertainment turn so dark?

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Unheroic Superheroes, Watch out for the Watchmen”


This is Why Government is Legalized Theft

-By Warner Todd Huston


Imagine you are the head of a company that loses a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Then imagine the public outcry if you announced that you were going to raise your prices to pay off the lawsuit. Would the public get incensed? Would you lose business? Likely both. It’s even somewhat likely in this litigious climate in which we live that the decision to raise prices to payoff the lawsuit would spawn yet another lawsuit against you. Ah, but we are talking business, aren’t we?

Now imagine that you are a city government and a court finds out that you’ve ripped off hundreds of thousands of your city water customers by wildly overcharging them for installing new fire hydrants. Imagine that you’ve been ordered by the courts to rebate $22 million to those city water customers. And then imagine that you announce that the rebates will be paid for by taxing the city water at an even higher rate than before.

In other words, you, the city, will be expecting the water customers to pay for their own rebates by charging them higher rates to fund that same rebate. Yes, the same “customers” that have no competition for water and no choice but to pay through the nose will be paying themselves their own rebate.

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This is Why Government is Legalized Theft”