Politics and other nightmares

Jimmy Carter learns that power trumps rhetoric:

We've heard about Nazi Germany as the model of scary totalitarian states in which children are brainwashed to spy on their parents and inform on them if they do not follow accepted doctrine. Is this the same kind of thing or not?

They're watching you right now.

They counted every beer you drank during last night's Red Sox game.

They see you sneaking out to the garage for a smoke.

One possibile recommendation of the governor's commission on government restructuring is consolidation of public libraries and the elimination of small and mid-size library systems. This has upset those in charge of the Westchester Public Library:

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce did a poll and, no big shock, found a lot of unhappy Hoosiers:

Indiana has the highest number of separately elected county officials in the country, all with separate taxing authority, the Chamber said, and over 76 percent said they favor a statewide overhaul of local governments if it means greater efficiency and lower property taxes.

Some 11 percent of those polled opposed an overhaul, while 13 percent were uncertain.

A lot of people will probably be making fun of this. I am the government! I can even control the language:

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil's Federal District Governor Jose Roberto Arruda ``fired'' the present participle from his administration, citing inefficiency.

And I thought Indiana's alcohol laws were convoluted:

The state Senate's Law and Justice Committee is trying to liberalize beer sales in Pennsylvania.

Today it approved House Bill 1420, which would permit beer distributors to sell one, two or three six-packs of beer at a time. Currently, distributors can only sell full cases of either 24 or 30 cans.

[.  .  .]

Don't know how Fort Wayne let Monroe County sneak in ahead of us to score this potential first:

Bloomington - A proposed ordinance in Monroe County could extend a smoking ban to include cars when children are present.  It's a relatively new idea across the country and is creating controversy in central Indiana.

[. . .]

I swear we're all in the wrong businesses. The real money is in consulting:

The results of a management study that cost the Philadelphia School District nearly $700,000 have languished unread by top officials for almost a year, The Inquirer has learned.

In fact, it took district officials about a week to even locate a report by the consultants involved after The Inquirer requested the information.

Speaking of Burma and "1984" -- all you whiny people who are paranoid about being on camera 24 hours a day; just shut up and stop being silly:

LONDON - Mayor Bloomberg has a message for New Yorkers who don't like surveillance cameras: Get real.

Around the time reform-supporters in Russia fired up their faxes and e-mails and surrounded and protected Boris Yeltsin, the conventional wisdom started growing that the new information technology would liberate "the people" rather than empower their would-be oppressors. "1984" had gotten it wrong. But as we can now see from the monstrous actions by the thugs in Burma, that view may have been a tad premature: