I’m recalling the wisdom of two people...

My friend Darren at RotLC, a prisoner in the People's Democratic Republic of Kalifornia (PFRK). When the state went through a drought a few years back, the local water board asked people to use less water. He, and thousands like him, did that. And he water board realized they would loose money as fewer gallons were sold. So they increased water rates. Well, after the drought, the water rationing ended...but they didn't drop the increased rates. Shocking.

Well, with the pandemic of 2020 in full bloom, the tax man is again showing he wants his cut first.

Tax on working at home proposed

By Kelvin Chan ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON — White-collar staff reaping the financial benefits of working from home should be taxed to help other workers who aren’t getting the same advantages, experts at Deutsche Bank said in a new report.

In its report on how to rebuild the economy after COVID-19, the bank proposed a 5 percent daily tax on each employee who continues to work from home, which could raise tens of billions of dollars for governments. The money could be used to help lower-income workers who have taken on greater risk because their jobs can’t be done remotely, it said.

The bank noted that the global pandemic has turbocharged the shift to remote work, a trend that looks set to last for the long term, with many workers expecting to spend at least a few days of their workweek at home even after the pandemic ends.

These workers benefit from more convenience and flexibility. They also save money because they don’t have to pay for commuting costs, takeout lunches or buying and dry cleaning work clothes — but it means those businesses that have grown up to support office workers won’t be able to recover and that “the economic malaise will be extended,” the report said...

One of Margaret Thatcher's great quotes (paraphrasing from memory), "The way to not solve a problem is to establish a government agency. The bureaucracy will never want it solved, the agency would loose it's reason for eating at the public trough." Assume this temporary tax is put forth, when will it end?

The Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill....

A couple of years ago I finished William Manchester's three volume biography of Sir Winston Churchill, The Last Lion. While I was checking out some things on YouTube, stumped onto this. He was the last non royal family member to get a state funeral, until Lady Margaret Thatcher passed in 2013.

A great man passed one week to the day after I was born. But again, it's not how you're buried. It's how you're remembered. And Mr. Churchill is still remembered well.

RIP Sir Winston.

The Iron Lady

I cannot count the number of times I've expressed my admiration for the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Unlike the last Democratic nominee, Lady Thatcher was a leader, an inspiration to women and men, and all of her accomplishments she achieved on her own. Denis Thatcher, her husband of over fifty years, was a successful businessman in his own right. But no one questions she would have been very successful, with or without him.

The same will never be said of Mrs. Bill Clinton.

I saw this article and I wanted to post it in August, but someone named Harvey interfered. I'm slowing getting back in the swing of things, hope you have a great week.

We Have Her Example

by Jonathan Aitken

The greatness of Margaret Thatcher is readily apparent to those who honor the conservative principles by which she lived. She believed in rolling back the power of the state, allowing free enterprise to flourish, breaking the stranglehold of organized labor unions, upholding the rule of law, shifting the middle ground of the postwar political consensus, and maintaining her country’s commitments to NATO and the Western Alliance. How she achieved these goals in the socialist environment of 1970s Britain is a remarkable story; most of it comes down to her personality and character.

Lady Thatcher began her journey as a greengrocer’s daughter in the provincial Lincolnshire town of Grantham. Her father, Alfred Roberts, was a lay Methodist preacher involved in local politics. Roberts was a Liberal in the tradition of William Ewart Gladstone, what Americans today would call a classical liberal or a libertarian. A straitlaced, studious, and God-fearing schoolgirl, Margaret Roberts came of age amid the Second World War—a formative experience. In her early years she developed a profound admiration for the United States, whose airmen were stationed around Grantham in large numbers. She also formed a lifelong suspicion of the instinctive German desire to dominate Europe.

A scholarship to Oxford opened her eyes to political ambition within the Conservative Party. She was greatly influenced by reading Friedrich Hayek’s seminal work The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944. Standing for Parliament at the age of 25 in a constituency that had historically been a Labour stronghold, she honed her skills as a campaigner and met her future husband, Denis. From then on she was driven by a determination to climb the ladder of power at Westminster in order to put her principles and her patriotism into action. She loved her country and longed to restore the past glories of Britain’s economic and military strength.

“One man with conviction makes a majority,” Edmund Burke is supposed to have said. Never was this axiom better proved than by the woman who seized the leadership of the Conservative Party at a time when its official name had become singularly inappropriate. A polite account of her failed Tory predecessor, Sir Edward Heath, would say that he sought a middle way between traditional Toryism and the socialism of the Labour Party. A decade of decline left Britain as the proverbial “sick man of Europe,” with inflation running at over 20 percent and militant trade unions calling the shots in many areas of government.

I was elected to Parliament in the depths of this mid-1970s crisis of confidence. It took only a short while to recognize Margaret Thatcher’s gifts as a leader, though in those early days she was not a particularly talented speaker. She often came off badly at the gladiatorial clashes of Questions to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. But this was not a major disadvantage. What counted was the character breathing through the sentences.

THATCHER SEIZED LEADERSHIP of the party from Heath in 1975 and then defeated James Callaghan’s Labour Party in the 1979 general election. The moment she crossed the threshold of No. 10 Downing Street, Britain’s national decline seemed almost irreversible—but not to her. Against massive opposition she slashed public expenditure, broke a national coal strike, and denationalized a swath of state-controlled industries. In the middle of the domestic crises that these policies engendered, she sent a military task force to liberate the British settlers in the Falkland Islands following their seizure by the military junta of Argentina. She thought she was defending the rights of British subjects against the illegal aggression of a dictatorship. The U.S. State Department, headed by Secretary Alexander Haig, showed a curious ambivalence, making every effort to persuade Margaret Thatcher to back off and find a compromise.

Not for the first time, the bureaucracies of Washington were divided against themselves. Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s Anglophile secretary of defense, proved a tower of strength to the British military. So did the CIA. With rather more American assistance than was admitted at the time, the Falkland Islands were liberated. Belatedly recognizing the force of Margaret Thatcher’s moral argument against the Argentines, President Reagan eventually swung in her favor. It was the beginning of a partnership that lowered the temperature of the Cold War and eventually won it for the West.

On the domestic front, the so-called “Falklands Factor” established Thatcher’s authority and helped her to win two successive elections. The economy turned around thanks to her dedication to the sound fiscal principles she had learned in her father’s grocery store. She used the rhetoric of the housewife to persuade the nation of the importance of thrift and balanced budgets. She brought the labor militants to heel with lines like “We back the workers not the shirkers.” She had an instinctive feel for the aspirations of blue collar voters, many of whom voted for a Tory Prime Minister for the first (and only) time in their lives.

In the confrontation with the Soviet Union, she and Reagan proved to be a winning team. Together they succeeded in confronting Soviet expansionism by deploying NATO cruise missiles across Europe, despite the staging of massive anti-nuclear demonstrations. While championing Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, she simultaneously opened up a remarkably effective line of communication with Mikhail Gorbachev.

As a bridge-builder between Moscow and Washington, she softened the ground on which disarmament deals could be brokered. She also became an icon of Western freedom to the beleaguered peoples behind the Iron Curtain. The interplay between Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev has not yet been properly judged in the courtroom of history. But all three deserve a favorable verdict for leading the world into a safer era of much greater, although still imperfect, mutual understanding.

Thatcher was short on humor and small-talk charm. Her nickname, “The Iron Lady” (coined in 1976 by the Soviet Red Star newspaper), was as appropriate in Westminster as it was in Brussels or the Kremlin. She took no prisoners with her fierce arguments and passionate advocacy of principles. But ultimately she delivered enormous results. Britain was transformed. The Western Alliance was strengthened. Eastern Europe was liberated. Not all the credit for these stellar accomplishments goes to Thatcher, but without her they would not have happened.

For the last two years I have been immersed in writing a new biography of Margaret Thatcher that will be published on both sides of the Atlantic in October. Its title, Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait in Personality and Power, announces the theme of the book: how, by sheer force of character, Mrs. Thatcher was able to change the course of British history. She also changed, in partnership with Ronald Reagan, the direction of the Western Alliance so that victory was achieved in the Cold War.

A few weeks ago I interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev for the biography. He paid Margaret Thatcher the glowing tribute of saying that her personality and her achievements were greater than those of any other political leader of her time. It was a fitting tribute to a remarkable leader. May she rest in peace.

Some of her greatest quotes:

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.

No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.

The quote about being liked reminds me of something Reagan told Jimmy Carter, "I've always thought it was more important to be respected than liked."

RIP Lady Thatcher. No man could replace you, only succeed you. God we could use you now.

The Iron Lady strikes again!

British MPs Vote Margaret Thatcher 'Best Prime Minister in Modern History' 

Just more proof the “Iron Lady” was a force to be reckoned with. In a recent survey of British members of parliament as to who was the most successful and decisive prime minister in modern times, Margaret Thatcher came out on top. 

Politics and international relations undergraduates at Royal Holloway University in London polled 158 members of parliament to rate prime ministers from Clement Attlee in 1945 to Gordon Brown in 2007 on a 10-point scale based on 12 traits. Thatcher earned the highest score with 7.4, just beating Attlee’s 7.3, as well as Tony Blair’s 6.8 and Winston Churchill’s 6.5. Her high scores were largely thanks to her bold decisiveness as a leader. 

 “As well as being judged the most successful prime minister, she also elicited the widest range of responses. In death as in life the Iron Lady remains a divisive figure, idolised by some, condemned by others.”  

Baroness Thatcher was a champion of the free market and individualism, once declaring, “There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”...

For the 20th Century, I put her a close second to Churchill.  But without question, she is the best PM of the second half of the 20th Century.  Now I really found this interesting.

...Thatcher’s message of self-reliance contrasted strongly with the prime minister she narrowly beat in the MP survey. Clement Attlee was a Democratic Socialist whose administrationintroduced the National Health Service and nationalised one fifth of the British economy. Yet, despite Attlee’s successful reforms, the polled MPs still chose Thatcher and her conservative method as most effective. 

It appears even our British friends recognize that conservatives are the most qualified to get the job done.

 Gee, you mean seizing a fifth of the economy and introducing socialized medicine may not be the best way to go?  Who would have thunk it!

RIP Lady Thatcher.  I know you and Ronnie and smiling at this.

Good to hear from a legitimate Peace Prize winner

Courage. That is what I always think when I see this man (not man-child, like the current occupant of the White House). Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John-Paul II showed fortitude against the international communist system, but they were in the West. They didn't have to worry about them or their family's being written out of existence. That cannot be said of Lech Wałęsa. He led a legitimate union movement against an oppressive regime and was instrumental in seeing communism collapse in Europe in 1991.

Back before the Nobel Peace Prize became a joke, the Nobel Committee honored a real peace activist for leading a country to a better way. Since then they have honored a the last great leader of the Soviet Union (Gorbachev, 1990), a terrorist (Yasser Arafat, 1994), a failure as a deliberate insult to the then sitting president (Jimmy Carter, 2003), a snake oil salesman (ALGORE, 2007) and a man-child completely unqualified to run a cash register, much less the only superpower in the world (B Hussein Obama, 2009). Millions are free and better off thanks to the works of the previously listed President of the US, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Pope, but for some reason their efforts are not acknowledged by the committee. I would wonder why, but I think we all know the answer.

Leadership is like a vacuum in nature. It is abhorred. Wałęsa was someone who led a movement and a nation to a better way. In this short interview he is very critical of B Hussein Obama and his not taking the reigns of leadership. I would cut the man-child a bit of slack, he has no concept of the term. He's just a street thug with better cloths. But I'm drawn to Wałęsa's statement "I managed to destroy a bad system..." Gee, you mean things aren't set in stone, you can change a bad system (e.g. Obamacare). What a concept. But it requires something missing in this right now on the national stage called leadership. Hopefully American will find a Wałęsa soon. We need him.

Here is the interview video:



Thank you Chicks on The Right for the article link.

Here is the trailer of the movie that Beth and I will spend good money watching.

Reverse this and see how it's covered in the Forth Estate....

OK, let's assume B Hussein Obama has a stroke next week and passes. Or Jimmy Carter finally rides the Earth of his presence. Or Bubba Clinton is finally found in the bed of a really jealous husband. I know, Mrs Clinton will be relieved, but on the point of this post there will be a state funeral soon afterwards. And Republicans of all stripe will show their respect. More accurately the they will be respectful of the former occupant of the White House.

Now we come to the other side of the aisle. Lady Thatcher will be buried Wednesday in a state funeral in everything but name. How are the leftist being respectful to a fallen human, mush less a great leader and woman.

Well, let's just say no one should be surprised.

TIGHT SECURITY GUARDS AGAINST THREATS TO THATCHER FUNERAL

Margaret Thatcher survived an assassination attempt when she was prime minister and police are taking no chances that her critics might seek a final attack by targeting her funeral.

A major security operation has been planned for Wednesday's ceremonial event, amid fears it could be disrupted by far-left groups, Irish republicans or individuals obsessed by the Iron Lady.

The high-profile guest list, headed by Queen Elizabeth II and set to include a host of global political figures and celebrities, has also increased the pressure on Scotland Yard.

Peaceful protests, anti-Thatcher chants and banners are also expected following a week of impromptu street celebrations to mark the death of a political leader who remains hugely divisive.

Hundreds of people joined a "party" in Trafalgar Square on Saturday night, and several said they would return to demonstrate at Thatcher's funeral.

The former premier's coffin will be carried through the streets of London with full military honours.

"I plan to go there and turn my back when she comes," Sigrid Holmwood, a 34-year-old artist, told AFP, saying she objected to the expensive send-off given to such a divisive leader.

Hate to tell you Sigrid, but no one cares. But if this gives your life some meaning, well, help yourself.

Police are scanning social networking sites for information about possible protests on Wednesday, after the events last week were spread on Twitter and Facebook.

They have also urged people planning to disrupt the funeral to contact them, a pro-active tactic used with success during last year's London Olympic Games...

...Dai Davies, a former head of royal protection at the London police force, told The Times newspaper that police chiefs were most likely to be concerned "about a fixated person with a psychological hatred of Margaret Thatcher".

Another potential threat could come from Irish republican dissidents who still hate Thatcher for her hardline approach on hunger strikers during the conflict in Northern Ireland.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the main paramilitary group fighting British rule in the province, tried to kill her with a bomb in 1984. She survived but five people died.

The IRA gave up its armed struggle a decade ago, but dissident groups are still active in Northern Ireland...

Again, when a Democratic president is laid to rest, do you think there will be Tea Party groups along the streets in DC showing what they really thing of these men. Probably not. And if their are a few idiots along the routs, you can rest assured they will be put shown by MSNBC, et all as an example of right wing hatred or some such rubbish.

But the left is never extreme, hateful or distasteful, right Chris Matthews.

You have to wonder if St Peter and the rest are ready for her!

From this morning's Houston Chronicle

UPDATE:

Another great one and says ti well.

To The Right Honorable Lady....Well Done!

And then, there were none. The triumvirate of the last quarter of the 20th Century instrumental in the defeat of international communism were President Ronald W Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The first two left us in the early part of the 21st Century. Now we have lost the last of this distinguished group.

When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Britain was a dump, “the sick man of Europe” and on the brink of total economic collapse. When she left power in 1990, it was the one of the financial capitals of the world. She is associated with her political philosophy of Thatcherism, based on low taxation, low public spending, free markets and mass privatization. I personally admire Margaret Thatcher for her honesty, bluntness and strength of character. Many others hate her, though, mainly on the left of politics who believed that she destroyed workers rights and slashed public spending. During her tenure she had to deal with mass unemployment, out of control inflation, endless strikes, a war with the Falklands and an attempted assassination by the IRA. In February 2007, she became the first British Prime Minister to be honored with a statue in the House of Commons while still alive; a testament to her incredible legacy.

A quote from Churchill seems appropriate right now: You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.. Before there was the term class ceiling Thatcher shattered it. And she didn't need "Stand by her man" like other notional leaders did. From this morning's Hotair an example of Lady Thatcher standing up and how.

Some of her greatest quotes:

Pennies don’t fall from heaven – they have to be earned here on earth.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.

Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.

My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.

Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word.

I, personally, have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that the death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.

A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country’s flag.

to Conservative backbench MP John Whittingdale: The trouble with you, John, is that your spine does not reach your brain.

For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other’s good intentions.

If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Consensus is the absence of Leadership

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

It pays to know the enemy – not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation.

Imagine a Labour canvasser talking on the doorstep to those East German families when they settle in on freedom’s side of the wall. “You want to keep more of the money you earn? I’m afraid that’s very selfish. We shall want to tax that away. You want to own shares in your firm? We can’t have that. The state has to own your firm. You want to choose where to send your children to school? That’s very divisive. You’ll send your child where we tell you.”

RIP Lady Thatcher. You took on challenges that others said were insurmountable and led a nation back from the brink. At a time leadership is needed you are sorrily missed.

The Iron Lady...

Beth and I finally had a night off together and after an excellent steak dinner we settled in for The Iron Lady. I’ve blogged on this before that there were questions on the plot, one reviewer calling it a hatchet job. After watching it, I must agree.

Like Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher tragically has been struck down late in her life with mental illness. A legit issue to discuss in a biography, absolutely. However I think more time of the movie shows Thatcher as a elder mental invalid than her time in office. Half the movie must be of her speaking to the ghost of her late husband Dennis. Her rise in a male dominated political system, leadership of first the party and then the nation is juxtaposed to a discussion with a man not there. The time that made her a historical figure is given second shift.

Her turn around of the British economy is given less than five minutes, the Falkland War probably that a little more. A cabinet meeting is used only to imply the dementia she suffers from now was present during her time in office. She deserved much better than this even though Meryl Streep was excellent in her portrayer of the women, the script was a stab in the back. Similar to what CBS tried to do to Reagan soon after his death. I am glad I didn’t waste an hour of overtime on taking Beth and I to see this at the movie. Redbox is a great thing.

I unashamedly wept when Reagan and Pope John Paul II passed. I know I will for her. When great men and women pass I often recall this quote from The Shoes of the Fisherman, a story of a Soviet political prisoner elected Pope. As they are preparing for the funeral of the dead Pope, an American reporter goes over the way the Church will bury it’s fallen leader.

The Pope was dead. They would mourn him with nine days of Masses and give him nine Absolutions-of which, having been greater in his life than other men, he might have greater need after his death. 

Lady Thatcher you were greater than most of the men and women in your generation and it’s fitting you will be given the a state funeral upon your passing. That is significant. The last non-royal to get one was Winston Churchill.

And Darren, she’s still here so please don’t send me any email! ;<)

The Iron Lady....

To say the least I look with trepidation about the upcoming film on Margaret Thatcher. Although Meryl Streep has a remarkable resemblance of the best British PM since Churchill, the leaked plot has not given me a warm and fuzzy.

You can read a favorable review of the movie here or a not so favorable review here. Here is the trailer. Gotta say I love the final quote from it. Hopefully there will be more to like. But I will wait for a few more reviews.