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Friday, August 9, 2013

Under the Fedora: Incentives


Life is full of various incentives and this week has been full of them.

Breaking news today is the IRS is continuing to target conservatives even though the scandal is in its 90th day.

Since the MSM is totally ignoring the scandal & Eric Holder has apparently no intention to enforce the law, this should be no surprise. There is no incentive for this administration to stop.

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NBC & CNN provided an incentive to Reince Priebus to make a move that a lot of people in the GOP were very pleased to see.

The problem becomes if you pull out of these debates or keep these people from moderating them then the MSM storyline becomes: “GOP candidates duck real journalists.” and that would be the meme on every single network and their excuse to duck out of coverage.

However the Hillary Movies solve this problem admirably. It provides an excuse, a justification, well of COURSE we can’t have our debates with the people from CNN or NBC. as Reince put it:

The question is, if the party is going to spend time and money and resources in organizing an intelligent and reasonable debate calendar, should we have networks and moderators that are promoting Hillary Clinton depose our candidates and I say: No Way!

It's rather funny when your political foes give provide incentives to do the right thing.

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The Bob Filner case also is an example of incentives can you move you. New accusers keep popping out & word is out that democrats knew all about what has been going on, but Filner had an incentive to ignore this. Pick out Bob Filner in the video of the House lining up behind a defiant Bill Clinton during his post impeachment speech of defiance?




Don't you think Filner took note of what happened to Bill Clinton since that day? What would the incentive be for him to stop or fear being punished by Democrats for what he's done?

I don't see one.

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In Colorado a property company provided an incentive as well, for thieves:

As of October 1, residents cannot display, use, or possess any firearms or weapons of any kind, anywhere on the property.

However the reaction and negative provided enough incentive for them to reverse direction.

Incentives giveth, incentives taketh away.

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RS McCain has been talking about apparently a rash of sexual harassment in the Atheist Skeptic community

Now more women are coming forward to testify that the “hostile climate” for women in the atheist movement is not limited to the Radford situation. Atheist podcaster Stephanie Svan described a case involving Jim Frenkel, while Carrie Poppy describes her problems at the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), which hosted the conference where Stoltznow claims she was sexually assaulted by Radford.

The most interesting aspect of Carrie Poppy’s accusation is the finger she points at JREF President D.J. Grothe, whom she denounces for “constant duplicity, dishonesty, and manipulation.”

I don't understand the problem, if these people man in an evolved animal rather than made in the image of God that this behavior, while socially considered rude or in some cases illegal because of man made social constructs, would in fact be a natural result of said evolution. If that's the case shouldn't it be treated accordingly.

That being the case what is the incentive for them to behave otherwise if that's the logical conclusion?

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The Owners of the Boston Globe were responded to two incentives this week. The regular losses were a huge incentive to sell to whoever was willing to buy.

After purchasing the Boston Globe in 1993 for a then-record $1.1 billion, the financially troubled New York Times just announced it sold the 141 year-old paper to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry for a mere $70 million. That’s a straight 93% loss. Figuring in two decades of inflation would only make it worse — as does the fact the Times retains the Globe’s pension liabilities, estimated at over $100 million.

and the Red Sox owner has incentives of his own

Maybe the Globe figures if anyone can turn things around, he can, after all he has a history of producing Miracles that nobody would have believed possible. (and that doesn’t even include this season).

Their fanatical liberalism however was an incentive for them to take an offer less than 1/4 of the high bid.

There is no incentive greater to the left than to keep the right away from any cultural component that can break their monopoly.

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Since we talked a little baseball let's join the A-Rod chorus. He is playing pending the appeal of his suspension. He has hit .273 with two walks & a HBP to this point. No RBI's extra base hits or runs scored to this point.

The Yankees are 11 games behind the Red Sox & seven games out of the Wild Card with three teams ahead of them before they even get to the wild card teams. He's not going to take the over the finish line. Why do you think he is coming back rather than just taking his suspension. Well here is an incentive $28 million this year and between $20 & $25 million per year left on his contract. Until he loses his appeal his contract is solid but once he does...


“The Yankees could argue that they’re going to try to void the contract, and certainly Alex Rodriguez would oppose that through grievance, and in all likelihood it would end with some kind of buyout rather than either side entirely winning,” McCann said in a telephone interview on July 29.

As long as baseball is giving out 10 yrs/$275M to people there is a huge incentive to keep doping no matter what the Penalties

Speaking of money you might remember the name Tawana Brawley. Steve Pagones whose life was ruined by the accusations pushed by Al Sharpton et-al does and he's finally getting some satisfaction:

10 checks totaling $3,764.61 were delivered to ex-prosecutor Steven Pagones — the first payments Brawley has made since a court determined in 1998 that she defamed him with her vicious hoax.


What I found interesting is that while Brawley will apparently be working to pay off Pagones for the rest of her life, fans of Sharpton paid off his share of the debt years ago.

You see Sharpton is very useful when it come to generating race bating headlines for the left or to incite a black community unwilling to deal with the reality of certain issues.

Brawley is not, so while there is incentive to pay off the Rev Al there is none to bail out a LPN trying to support her daughter on her pay.

Yeah the left really loves regular people.

Finally I got into a big discussion on twitter this week over homosexuality. While I've always been a fan of the whole inch people toward the right direction people seemed really upset that I was unwilling to declare gay sex not sinful. One writer was particularly interesting as he kept insisting that prohibitions were all based on faulty translations.

I found the argument VERY Amusing:



The Bible is not only THE best selling book in history one of the most studied books in the history of history. The idea that all of the greatest scholars in the the last 1700 years have been totally mistranslating Greek for over a dozen centuries, including the people closest to the writing of the time until suddenly in my lifetime enlightened folk finally figured out that there is no prohibition against Homosexual acts.

The arrogance of such a belief is amazing but there is a powerful incentive to such things that I wrote about a long time ago:

Over and over when I read about Anglican priests becoming Catholic we hear about the study of doctrine and the conclusion that the Church is true and right. On the other side we hear the I wants. The church doesn’t allow something that the person whats or objects to a sin that the person does, so they find a different church.

One group looks for truth and goes toward it, the other has sin and wants justification to allow it.

There are people who understand the truth of Christ but have trouble with their sins, for myself it's a constant struggle & fight that I wrestle with daily but for some they've decided to simply redefine what sin is suddenly no guilt, no temptation, just something you enjoy.

It's quite an incentive that can pay dividends for the rest of one's life.

the question becomes will it pay dividends beyond it and that is, to me the most powerful incentive of all.