I heard today that Halliburton is moving its headquarters to Dubai. There's so much to say about this and the response from the Socialists in Congress that I don't know where to start.

First, Halliburton's CEO says "the Eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities." Gee, that wouldn't be because all the Leftists and Enviro-nazis won't let us drill for oil in any part of this hemisphere would it? Say in ANWR?

Second, an obvious reason for the move is the much more favorable tax laws in the UAE. One of these days the Socialists will figure out that our crushing corporate income tax in this country is driving businesses away. If we were to implement the Fair Tax in this country, it would turn the United States into the biggest tax haven on the planet. Think of the economic boom that would result from all these companies moving to the United States!

(As an aside, I'll mention that the Socialists haven't figured out yet that there really isn't a corporate tax. All taxes at the business level are simply passed along to its customers as the cost of doing business.)

Third, there's a good chance a Socialist will be elected President in the next election. If it's either the Hildabeast or Obamamamama, you can bet Halliburton will be in the cross-hairs considering the hatred the Left has for this company. (Do you think they hate them more because Darth Vader used to be the CEO?)

Next we come to the Socialists' responses. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-NH said the company's move is "corporate greed at its worst." Sorry Senator, you're forgetting it's not your money. If they want to keep your filthy paws off their money, it's perfectly OK for them to do so. In Gregory v. Helvering (1934-5) 239 U. S. 465,460 Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland said, "The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted." In the same ruling it says, "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury, there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." I'd ask you, though Senator, to comment on all the off-shore money the Kennedys have, hmmm? Is that greed?

Finally, we have Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, who is planning to hold a hearing. You go, Henry. Holding a hearing is a waste of tax money, but at least it keeps you and your friends busy so you don't go raising taxes or surrendering to terrorists.

Good luck Halliburton. Perhaps one day we'll have the Fair Tax and you can come back. If our economy isn't reduced to some pre-Soviet-collapse Eastern European hell hole. Or if the country isn't just a bunch of smoking radioactive craters.

There was a story published on CNN's web site on New Year's Day called New State Laws Highlight Political Hot Buttons (article appears to no longer be available). The article outlines some new state laws ranging on things from the minimum wage, to preventing bullying in school, to cutting taxes on the poor. That's all fine, I guess. It's basically just reporting what happened. But right after the part where it talks about raising the minium wage in seven states, including Massachusettes, we get this little nugget:

"We've made Massachusetts the best state to live in for struggling working families," said Carl Nilsson, an activist for poor people, citing the higher minimum wage and an earlier state law that requires health care insurance for all.

Setting aside the fact that Mr. Nilsson is obviously completely ignorant about basic economics, or a socialist idiot, or both, we have to wonder about the inclusion of the commentary in an otherwise mostly objective list of new laws. I'm sure they could have done just a little bit of digging and found someone that would point out that this law is just as likely to cost the "struggling working families" their jobs because the employers could no longer afford to pay them. Or is is because the socialists at CNN are just so blinded by their love of government telling evil businesses how to operate that they never considered there is another side of the coin? Hell, even the title ("Hot Buttons") of the article indicate there may be differing views on the laws.

While they were at it, perhaps they could have found how many "struggling families" depend on a worker working for the minimum wage. I don't know the exact number, but I've heard and read that the vast majority of people working at the minimum wage are kids flipping burgers after school to earn a little gas money.

Alabama's minimum wage is still at the default federal level of $5.15 per hour. Yeah, that's not a lot of money, but even the local Wendy's (the last time I checked) starts new workers off at $6.00 per hour. What does that show? It shows that when businesses need people to work for them, they will pay what the marketplace demands. Even the much maligned Wal-Mart starts new workers out above $5.15. There is no need for heavy-handed government bureaucrats to come in with a one-size-fits-all minimum wage.

Oh, I wonder what brand of signature shoes the little socialist-in-training is wearing in the photo at left....

Update: I heard some statistics today (1/4/2007). A full two thirds of people earning minimum wage are people working in restaurants or places where they might be expected to receive tips that will suppliment their incomes. And a full two thirds of those are earning 10% more than minum wage six month later. As Will Anderson put it on his talk show, the socialists want you to believe that America has a strict caste system. They don't believe that there is any mobility in peoples' stations in life. They don't believe that through hard work, effort, and wise choices someone can improve their life. And they certainly don't want recognize the politically incorrect notion that someone can make their life worse by making stupid choices. To the left, a person being poor is always a result of losing at "life's lottery".

Back on my original website, I posted a rant about how a man named Lonnie Lundy was sentenced to life in prison for drugs even though no drugs were found. So you'd think someone who was actually caught trying to buy 400 pounds of marijuana would probably get the death penalty by lethal meat grinder or something, right? Well, not if you're the police chief's son. In that case you only get 18 months.

Meanwhile, the government keeps us safe from the evils of pseudoephedrine. We certainly can't take the chance that some dork will take a perfectly legal and useful cold drug and turn it into crystal meth, now can we? No, we have to inconvenience the whole damn country just to make it harder for someone to make meth. If you ask me, we should let them make all the meth they want. Then the stupid people who take the crap will remove themselves from the gene pool and the rest of us can buy Pseudofed whenever we need it. I wonder if the changes have even slowed the meth producers down? Probably not....

Here is a link to a YouTube recording of a man arguing with a Verizon customer service supervisor and the customer service manager that they overcharged him the quoted rate for a data connection while travelling in Canada. They kept saying that "$0.002 per kilobyte" was ".002 cents per kilobyte", which is obviously off by two orders of magnitude. The result was he was billed some $71 rather than 71 cents.

The scary part was that none of the people he talked to ever "got" it. They (especially the "floor manager" he talked to last) seemed to think that because the number had a decimal point in it, they were supposed to say "cents" rather "dollars". Just listen to it. It's unbelievable.

Those who know me know I share Neal Boortz's and John Stossel's views of the complete failure of government education. Now I don't know for certain that these people were government educated, but I'd bet money on it.

I ran across this article by John Stossel that has a 2003 quote by a federal appeals judge named Alex Kozinski. Perhaps it's because Judge Kozinski is an immigrant from Eastern Europe that he has such an astonishing grasp of the purpose of Second Amendment. Here is the quote:

The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbably these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Wikipedia has an interesting writeup of the Second Amendment. Included is some of the history of the debate around the Bill of Rights. It has some of the "draft" versions of the amendment that were shuffled between the House and Senate prior to passage. Some of the versions have a definition of militia. Specifically, it says, "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people...." It seems inescapable that anyone with an original intent view of the constitution would say the right to bear arms is an individual right, not just a collective right.

A few years ago I created an LLC to encapsulate some business that I do. I went shopping around to find somewhere to open a bank account for the LLC. I checked with the credit union I normally use for my personal finances, but they didn't offer any sort of business account at the time (they do now). Compass Bank was advertising "free checking for small businesses" so I thought I'd give them a try.

The terms of the free checking account seemed ok. I could make up to 150 transactions per month (I see it's 500 now) before I would get hit with a fee. That was plenty. About the only thing I had to pay for was to have the checks printed. Fair enough.

Then I got my August statement.... Read on...

Several days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coast, New Orleans is finally getting some help, but it still looks like a scene out of Escape from New York. I heard last night that the race warfare pimp Jesse Jackson is heading there. I wondered how long it would take before he quit smooching the ass of Hugo Chavez, the communist thug in Venezuela, and head to the next place where he could get his mug in front of a camera.

I was going to post this as an update to the earlier story, but thought it was too important and deserved its own story.

It appears the law enforcement incompetence was even worse that I mentioned in my last story on this topic. Rather than reproducing it here, I'll just provide a link to a list of the screw-ups on Neal Boortz's web site. I normally wouldn't "Monday morning quarterback" a group that puts their lives on the line like the police, except these screw-ups cost four lives and one serious injury.

This is yet another old rant I've migrated from my old web site to Geeklog. This one is about something a lot of companies seem to think they need to have: Vision Statements (and/or Mission Statements).