Steve

Grandpa John's-- The Blog dedicated to laissez-faire-ness.

I hear that the Liberals are going to begin manufacturing a new line of automobiles according to liberal principles. They expect the new Uranus models out of the chute and onto the showroom floor by early 2005.

Hey, guys, you're lucky that I had cut out about 3/4 of what I had written before I posted it. I didn't realize until now that we Burris have shorter attention spans than I... Rats! What was I going to say?

Funny that Lance mentioned using a thesaurus-- this Sunday's NY Times Crossword's theme featured Roget.

From this morning's State Journal-- Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. Then you'll be a mile away, have his shoes, and can say anything you like.

Hodo, back when you were a budding young artist your dad would display your works on the living room wall. Your signature on one more resembled Hodo than Todd. The crossbar of the T was low and intersected a vertical line in the picture. The final D looked like an O. HODO. I don't know why, but, it stuck in my feeble mind. (Probably drug induced.) Anyway, it's still much better than, 'Stevie-Weevie gives me the Heebie-Jeebies' or 'Steve, when you left Texas and moved back to Wisconsin, the mean IQ's of both states went down.'

Adam Smith- Important Scottish economic theorist. I expect he had a major impact on American Revolutionary thought. ...Moral Sentiments (1759) & ...The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Free Trade? Generally speaking, I would expect free trade to benefit all countries involved. All would have access to a greater variety of goods, services, and technologies, as well as greater exposure to the thoughts and ideas emanating from another culture. Historically, a great proportion of these exchanges occurred after military conquest and subjugation. In contrast, direct foreign aid usually only entrenches and enriches the leadership while doing nothing to develop the people or that nation's capital foundation.

My prima facie response to this question therefore is, "Of course!!" But upon further review... I remain a proponent, but would only use one exclamation point. We have put many obstacles in our own way that hobble our efforts for fair free trade. If the powers that be only allowed players under six feet tall to participate on our olympic basketball team, no matter the skill level of the players, they would have a difficult time competing productively on the world scene. (Although they did beat Liechtenstein by 3 in double overtime.) In the same way our legislators, bureaucracy, and activist judiciary (for Todd's benefit) have laid weights on our productive segment that they themselves could not even bear. The first area that comes to mind is environmental standards. The mixture of pop-scientific claims, fervent watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside, and very seedy), legislators that love your children more than you, judges that rule with caprice, and bureaucrats that wish to justify and bankroll their existence drop anchors to retard those that are moving to actually do something. Government action that unnecessarily increases production costs inhibits our ability to compete.

It therefore should be obvious that, for the sake of free trade profit, I support polluting air and water, poisoning the children, feeding dogfood to the elderly (or maybe even spotted owl and snail darter burgers), and denuding the forests (They cleared paradise and put up a parking lot-- Ooooo, bop, bop, bop, bop.) In addition, all scientists, ecologists, congressmen, judges, bureaucrats, or anyone attempting to inhibit me from getting affordable North Korean nukes fer me an' mah racist, secksist, hommofobe, reelijus funnamentlist, skinhed buddys... Oh, sorry, I forget to keep up my facade on occasion.

There are also several items that should be restricted from the trade freedom as well. Arms to Bin Laden, et. al. Chicago Bears game videotapes. (Unless it's for Baryshnekovski's Funniest Home Videos or Gutierrez de Sanchez's Lo Cree o No.)

Since y'all think I'm verbose, I'll have to include the remaining 3/4 of this for a later posting.