Stream of Joyce it is....

Good roads, canals and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood  of the town. They are upon the greatest of all improvements.
Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI, Part I,  p. 174

Preamble:
I am so tired hearing the right wing wack'o conservatives whining about taxes. There are a whole bunch of places on Earth where there are low or even no taxes. Like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia to name a few failed states of tax free bliss. Yet the havens of tax free bliss have not relieved me of my whining conservative friends. Why is that do you think? It seems even in Canada that the tax system runs more on inertia and four more years then on the greatest good for the greatest number. What I would like to see is an international index of tax efficiency measured with a numerical value to four decimal places from .0000 to 1.000. Now as we all know governments spend tax dollars. How do you measure a well spent tax dollar? How do you measure a poorly spent tax dollar?  Well lately it has dawned on me that a well spent tax dollar can be measured by the number of tax dollars it will return to government revenue in the future! Let me list a few well spent tax dollar projects (i) the Saint Lawrence Seaway, (ii) Hoover Dam (iii) Tennessee Valley Authority
(iv)Canadian National Railway  and (v)Petro Canada. The last two were sold off simply because government shouldn't be in business! And the Canadian government made an absolute killing on both deals! That is a well spent tax dollar! Hoover Dam generates a whooping river of money still; not to mention all the tourist traffic. That was a well spent pile of  tax dollars. Have you seen the brand new Buicks? The latest GMC trucks? Well my little tea-party friend "Government Motors" seems to be working really well indeed! The United States government should retain the interest in Government Motors. It appears that so far the quality of the managers in the Federal Civil Service are of a much higher quality then mere vulgar capitalism based corporations! Someday not tomorrow or the next day, but soon enough, we are going to go toe to toe with the Asians again! Where do you think you are going to get your tanks planes and guns? Toyota? Cream of Sum Young Guy Motors in China? Oh stop your killing me....What is a poorly spent tax dollar? It is simply a tax dollar spent that will not return even itself to government revenues in the length of time of a 25 year residential mortgage!! A good example of poor tax spending is excessive defense spending. A good example of a well spent tax dollar is education... I figure there must be a way to measure this just from the standard "national accounting" numbers that are already out there... Is there or what?

Economy:
The "rare earths" article has surged in page views recently at Wikipedia. This was caused by the Chinese choking off some delivery's to Japan... The Chinese have a "stranglehold" on rare-earth? Since freaking when? Is this figure as accurate as there GDP growth numbers? This is a crock!! The Russians have more of this filth stored from the Soviet days then the Chinese can shake a stick at! Here in Canada we haven't even started and or bothered to look for it! But it is here.. oh ya we got it up the wazzooo! I must be right... the surge has petered out and the article is back to its average number of page views... hmmmm do you think there is information in that??

Rare Earth-What today is made of...

Media:
This blog is reaching the farthest ends of the earth! I can't freaking believe that people in Russia are reading!??
And eight other countries.. It seems, much to my chagrin, that the most read post was my first stream of shit rant! I thought I would get booed out of the blog o verse.. And the post that I thought would go through the roof was the one on Saint John the Apostle.. really proud of some of the turns of the word in that one... Not one freaking view! Go figure. Writing is frustrating hard and cruel. Pictures are coming! I am starting to amass them and soon as I can figure out how to pound them in you will see them...Watched the New Sherlock Holmes on WPBS this evening and it was the best television I have ENJOYED in a long time...When Sherlock says "I am not a psychopath! I am a high functioning sociopath.. Get it right!" He really is a man of my own heart.