The EU: Steady on Its Course from Tragedy to Farce
It was several years ago now that my friend David Pryce-Jones told me about the European Union’s fruit police. Fruit was just the tip of the orchard, so to speak, but the fact that those preposterous bureaucrats in Europe had outlawed curvy bananas made a deep impression on me. It was V. Lenin who said that “Communism means keeping track of everything,” and here were the non-elected busybodies of the EU deciding what sorts of bananas were legal — legal. And not just bananas, of course. They were also deciding what you could and could not say, whom you could criticize, what sort of potatoes you could grow and . . . it took them nearly 100,000 pages to spell out all the things their wards (i.e., the persons formerly know as citizens) could and couldn’t do, say, buy, accumulate, spend, hire, fire, worship, play, read, draw, look at, and commune with. It was all part of what I have called elsewhere “The New Gleichschaltung.”
“Gleichschaltung”: that was the word used by certain Germans of another era — a twentieth-century moment that was supposed to last 1000 years but in the event spanned the early 1930s until May 2, 1945. The blizzard of rules, regulations, must and must-nots emanating from Brussels aims at “harmonizing” the disparate countries of the European so-called union into a single quasi-political-economic entity. As I noted then, one part of this effort was meant to make it easier for the police in one country to round up people in another country for various torts — possessing or selling the wrong sort of bananas, say, or criticizing an EU minister or directive.
So if you are British and you say something nasty about the French while on vacation in Greece, you might wind up in a Greek jail for two “or more” years. Since the EU made it illegal for journalists to criticize its policies a year or two ago, it is not clear what sort of debate this latest piece of totalitarian legislation will spark. Of course, this is not the first time that Europe has attempted to “harmonize” its laws. Beginning in 1933, there was a concerted effort to “harmonize” not only the laws but also all of social life. The German word for the process was Gleichschaltung. That time the effort came out of Berlin. It almost worked. It took the combined military might of England, the United States, and the Soviet Union to stop that earlier push for “harmony.” It is anyone’s guess what it will take to stop this new, Brussels-based effort.
They’re worrying about the tin foil? How apt.
It has been argued that America, free of a feudal past, necessarily will refuse the statism advanced by conservative reformers in Europe. But if Social Democracy is not recognized for what it is here, in the US, we will throw away what remains of our patrimony. That process was well under way in the 1930s, and I summed the transformation of the Enlightenment here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/12/switching-the-enlightenment-corporatist-liberalism-and-the-revision-of-american-history/. Note how “scientific history” was rejected in favor of “cultural history” that made economics irrelevant, and was mostly dedicated to combatting “bigotry” instead of a fully developed American history.
correct.
Currently, there is not enough tin foil to make those tin-foil hats for the EU bureaucrats.
It wasn’t the tinfoil that caused the problem. It was the red ribbon. Too Bolshie, y’know. It might make people think about where this whole project is going. It might well be that Europe was better off under the old monarchs. There are enough Habsburgs to ‘fill all the thrones of Europe should the republics fall’.
The EU has clearly gone bananas.EU history repeats itself, the first time as farce the second time as tragedy.
I believe you have that backwards. The first time as tragedy and the second time as farce, is in this case especially more apt.
“The great events and dictators in world history reappear in one fashion or another; But the first time as tragedy, the second as farce“.
“Since the EU made it illegal for journalists to criticize its policies a year or two ago, it is not clear what sort of debate this latest piece of totalitarian legislation will spark.”
That makes EUism a full blown totalitarian system like Communism, Fascism and Islam. I’m sure Herr Obama wants to import that.
Journalists will not NEED to criticise the Eu-all they need do is report the facts-the readers will do the criticizing themselves.
What’s the difference? The USA is going bankrupt and congress is charging Roger Clemens with perjury for lying about using a drug that was legal. If we want a glimpse of our future, it is europe, the eu and greece as a specific example. The massive fraud and failure that is the EU exists today in the US government with too many examples to list but I assure you. Find a silly regulation in the EU about bananas, and we can beat it.
Good piece… but I likely would have hit the delete key halfway through after realiing these effete Eurocrats were simply attempting to recreate what they are seeing in America as the states become nothing more than geographic districts managed by their superiors in Washington.
” …states become nothing more than geographic districts managed by their superiors in Washington.”
Well said sir.
Yes and no. They certainly are trying to get rid of national identity. But they despise free markets, freedom of speech, self-reliance, and other conservative values. This aligns them with the most extreme wing of the progressive movement but puts them at odds with mainstream America.
Since most bananas are curved naturally, it would take some sort of genetic tinkering to make them straighter. I thought the EU didn’t like “Frankenfoods”?
Someone (I don’t know who) summed the EuroMess up perfectly recently. Quote;
“Germany tried to unify Europe twice, and made a mess of it both times. Today, they could be the ruling state of Europe almost for the asking, and they have concluded that it isn’t worth having.”
Empires, even ones that fail on the launch pad, tend to end with whimpers rather than bangs. In this case, accompanied by the sort of groan you use with an epic facepalm.
cheers
eon
… non-elected busybodies of the EU deciding what sorts of bananas were legal — legal. And not just bananas, of course.
We have bureaucrats here, too, but they don’t have the freedom of motion their counterparts in Europe enjoy. This is because there is no direct democratic control over the spending of taxpayer money there.
In Europe, no rule is broken when the gubmint intrudes, no U.S. Constitution rulebook to account for, no unhappy electorate to worry about. Here, being in the U.S., the socialists (i.e. the bureaucrats) must arrange for a fake reading of the Constitution, and every two years they must rely on George Clooney, Bob Scheiffer, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah and Bill O’Reilly to hold the folks at bay.
They were also deciding what you could and could not say, whom you could criticize…
Geerts Wilders beat his rap. True, he’s financially ruined and lost a few years of his life, and lives under protective custody, and they may charge him again, but he’s free. European style.
The EU project is, more than anything, an excercise in fundamentally undemocratic arrogance and Ruling Class hunger for power. The EU will almost certainly survive in some fashion, but the entire premise and requirements of the Euro were fatally flawed from the very beginning. It is simply not possible for countries as structurally different as Greece, Spain and Germany to exist under the proscriptions required by the single currency, and that was well known from the beginning.
Ruling Class arrogance is a serious problem in the USA, but the degree of arrogance by the bureaucRATs in Brussels makes the Socialists in the DhimmicRAT party look like amatures.
“It took the combined military might of England, the United States, and the Soviet Union to stop that earlier push for “harmony.” It is anyone’s guess what it will take to stop this new, Brussels-based effort.”
Well, it looks like the European Union (EU) and the Euro are about to collapse for two simple reasons: greed and laziness, two very European characteristic traits. Greed, because the Europeans for decades since the end of World War II thought they could live in a socialist “paradise,” filled with countless benefits flooding their social-welfare states, from free medical care and edcation, to free schools, low-cost housing, and early retirement. Laziness, because even when faced with imminent financial collapse the people still refused to give up their benefits in order to save their country financially. One only has to look at Greece to see how both of these flaws came together to form a perfect storm of bankruptcy.
And yet the Europeans still refuse to change. Even though their economies are collapsing around them, they still want all of their many benefits, especially retiring at an early age (as in France or Greece). No matter how much “austerity” you implement in those countries, if you’re not willing to change the welfare state that got you in this mess in the first place, then you’re still going to fail. So what do you call people when faced with financial collapse still want all of their social-welfare goodies? Greedy and lazy.
Libertyship46,
I don’t agrre. I’m living in the EU in Hungary. The “early retirement” in the EU is between 62-69 years. It depends on where are you living and how long are you working. After 40 years working, my mother gets 300 $\month. Everybody are speeking about Greece and you took some sweeping statement. The people, the culture are different between the EU and we are living in different countries, and heve different history. The Europians are not greedy and lazy. They are working hard to support the EU bureaucrats…
As for the free medical care. You don’t want to get into a hospital with this free medical care. You have to look after an insurace company, to get a better care.
All my children went to private school, because they are much more(!) better.
I haven’t met anybody in Europe yet who likes the EU bureaucrats, because the silly laws and their stupid view.
And here is a link, find Budapest on it.
http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2009/08/how-much-do-you-need-to-work-for-big.html
“especially retiring at an early age (as in France or Greece)”.
isn’t it bizarre, the Germans are working less than the French, and less thean most of the Southerners too though:
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS
Kati is right aout the age of retirement, EVEN in France, you have to have accomplished 41/42 years of work before pretending to retire.
Organizations which fail in their main mission typically adopt tangential missions. An immediate example is President Obama’s failure to restore the economy to prosperity despite a vast increase in federal spending, so he voices his support for same-sex marriage. Colleges produce millions of marginally employable graduates saddled with student debt, so they create Offices of Sustainability. The California Assembly, faced with a ruinous state fiscal deficit, debated the rights of people who have had sex-change surgery. If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.
A very good insight. Jack
Alas, Nickel, it is not original, but I got it from a good source: Chief Justice Burger. He observed that the USA was drowning in litigation, the courts were facing long delays in trials, commerce was hamstrung by lawsuits and costly regulations, and doctors had been rendered overcautious for fear of lawsuits. He could have added that most Americans could not afford legal representation, the criminal courts are primarily a plea bargain machine, and most Americans consider attorneys dishonest and corrupt. Meanwhile, what did the American Bar Association do about all this? They adopted official positions on abortion, tax funding for art works, race and sex quotas, AIDS (they’re against it), gun control, homelessness, nuclear proliferation, parental job leave and homosexuality. I can think of two reasons why the leaders of an organization go off on tangents when they fail at their main missions. First, it’s easier. If you’re in the leadership of the Anglican or Presbyterian church, it’s easier to weigh the propriety of ordaining a lesbian than to figure out why your church’s membership has shrunk by 20% in twenty years and how to remedy it. The second reason is “functionalism”, each profession’s idea that their opinions on any subject are more expert than anybody else’s. Hence, Physicians for Social Responsibility claims special insight on nuclear weapons, global warming, nuclear power, gun control, war and poverty because they’re doctors.
“If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.”
Bingo!
I’ve heard two great examples of that technique, both from Britain.
British Rail used to be notorious for trains departing late. There was a widespread awareness of this fact and a lot of grumbling about it. The bureaucrats thought about it long and hard and finally devised a solution. Did they buy lots of new trains, hire better staff, get better computers? Heck no, they solved the problem essentially for free: they redefined “late”. Whereas the old definition was 4 minutes – if a train left more than 4 minutes after the scheduled time, it was late – they simply changed that to one HOUR! Their next published stats no doubt showed impressive improvements in “on time performance” and I expect they had a series of ad trumpeting their improvements. The trains didn’t actually leave any earlier but the administrators got to brag about big improvements and justify a few more bonuses.
The second example was more recent. Tony Blair’s Labour government, disturbed by high unemployment numbers and worried about the impact on their re-election prospects, had their bureaucrats in the National Health twist the arms of doctors and redefine many thousands of people who were chronically unemployed as sick. (According to Theodore Dalrymple, a doctor himself, most of the doctors caved in to the arm-twisting, despite their awareness that there was nothing medically wrong with these people.) The Labour Party got to brag about dramatically better employment numbers even though not one job was created. And, since these people weren’t actually sick, there was no need to spend money to treat them so medical costs did not go up.
You’ve got to give the bureaucrats credit for such creative solutions to problems!
Jack, I hate to disagree with your insightful comment, but I don’t think that Obama saw economic recover as his main mission. That’s what he ran on, but his real priority was imposing socialism.
On this Memorial Day we should pause for a moment to remember all those who gave their lives to rid the world of the “National Socialists” in order that the “Bureau Socialists” could rise to power. Or, maybe they’re “Lugar Socialists” (http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/05/27/lugar-individualism-as-opposed-to-community-led-to-his-defeat/). It’s just another in a long list of politicians throwing away the sacrifices of our armed forces. Imagine the thoughts of the soldiers on D-Day as they ventured forth to make the world safe for tyranny. I guess “National Socialism” was just the wrong tyranny. We needed Lugar and his ilk with their “kinder, gentler” tyranny.
On this Memorial Day we should pause for a moment to remember all those who gave their lives…
Amen. When push comes to shove, a guy’s gotta protect his own and put it on the line. For everybody else.
***
But back to Ruling Elites:
Socialism don’t work, that we know, and hey sure that may be bad grammar,
Temptation of Other People’s Money impels folks to pick up the social hammer.
OPM is a matter of justice, getting what you need, you deserve, even what you want,
If movie war veteran George Clooney is espied behind his tax shelter, give him a taunt.
A monarchy by any other name is still a monarchy. Europeans have always loved their Kings – and, of course, hated everybody else’s kings. Is the attitude of the EU bureaucrats any different than that of past – failed – royal houses?
Actually, yes. Medieval monarchies in the West, and even to a lesser extent the early modern “absolute” monarchies, were restrained by a whole host of customs, charters, laws, traditions, and religious taboos.
Our rulers recognize no such restraints.
Maybe I don’t get something here.
From the following article, it’s a battle between the Swiss Lindt and the Austrian Hauswirth on chocholate bunnies.
Lindt sued Hauswirth for copying their trademark, but the EU court didn’t agree with Lindt, hence the remark.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150335/Meltdown-chocolate-bunny-battle-EU-judges-rule-Lindt-trademark-golden-rabbit.html
BTW, anyone can see the similarities between the bunnies. To me, at least, it looks like the Austrians are benefiting from Lindt.
I expect Obama and Bernanke will bail them out. $10 Trillion should do! No terms of course!
Is this funny or what?
Have we forgotten that Hitler and Lenin both began their plans and gathering of troops for their projects during and just after the loss of european empires with the “Guns of August”? That they succeeded in their projects only some decades later. It takes a while to manipulate a takeover of an entire living social structure. Hot War is only one, although very effective, means. Another is a cold war, civil and or economic.
The “European Union” was a “dream from the fathers” of the lost european empires. As the upstart and boo-hiss Anglo- nation the USA became the pre-eminent social and economic power in the world, plans were already afoot to challenge this hated and envied now superpower.
But quiet. Not to awaken to their schemes those cowboys of the West. They might be needed as cavalry against that other power in the Soviet Union. That Union whose eminences understood the european mind. with its subtleties, its a- and immorality, its humiliations during the 20th century and its ruthlessness to regain its eminence.
The peoples of the sovereign nation/states to be managed via their ambitious and in some cases treacherous politicians and intelligentsia. Et voila, the European Union “for the good of the people” cloned on the United Nations.The citizens of the various nation states to be encompassed to be at first seduced economically, and then compelled with laws that dismissed the sovereignty and proclivities of the member states. Ambitious politicians of the various nation states willingly ceded the independence, the sovereignty of their citizens to this new dream concocted by the humiliated in the hot war of the 1940s. The most needless and contemptible those of Great Britain.
Which encouraged them to further depredations culminating in the inevitable failure of their designs. Unable to understand – these superior, these “elite” these intelligentsia – that citizens without eminent university credentials, the commoners of the various nations were not complete idiots.
Now these eminences are shocked shocked that citizens, commoners, took the money and ran. Ruining all their plans for these ingrates. And most importantly and most infuriatingly making it at least for the moment impossible to conclude their challenge for hegemony to that hated and envied upstart nation. That USA with its vulgar, unsophisticated, sexist, racist, ignorant common, low-class Americans. That rebellious child of the English which provided the greatest good to the greatest number since its coming of age.
Now Americans might be wise to look at the plans and actions of elites and intelligentsia of Europe as template for what appear to be similar designs for America with New Age politicians and intelligentsia. Who also plan “for the good of the people” while dismissing the people as beneath notice. The common Americans who they daily dismiss as crackpots of guns and religion ignoramuses, inherently racist, sexist and generally contemptible. These same people who have elected them to the greatest honour in the citizens’ gift, representative of the citizens, servant of the AMERICAN People.
The EU looks very much like the “Zollverein” implemented in Germany in the 19th centry, by Frederich List and that Preussia directed with authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zollverein
Reading, I was reminded of a recent article on the actions of the “milk police” in one of our own western states. In their efforts to protect us from ourselves they have determined that folks cannot drink the unpasteurized milk of cows that they own and board out at a farm.
Seems the busybodies are everywhere amongst us. I figure it’s only a matter of time until sensible folk revolt and squash them like the annoying bugs they are.
When the Euro was launched, I said to my wife, “This will fail. Not next year, maybe not for ten years, but it will fail, and it will fail miserably.” I never understood how those countries, with markedly different styles of government, societal norms and cultures, not to mention economies, could possibly co-exist with a common currency. Had they gone with a United States of Europe as a single federal government, the Euro had a chance. But they didn’t. So the Euro has no chance. Less chance than a snowball in the bad place.
Roger, Two points:
1- I think it was marvelous that the EU’s found something for all of the old Stasi apparatchiks to do;
2- This isn’t that much different than what is currently going on in CA, where Progressives at all levels are blissfully ignoring the “ship of state” careening from one ice-berg to another while they impose “paper or plastic” regulations on the prolls.
It seems that the only priority on the Left is to misplace them.
Chocolate candy is just one example. Look at the EU’s carbon dioxide war for a giant move to destroy the economies. Neither Hitler nor Napoleon could have been more economically damaging. Affordable energy underlies modern civilization, as Yergin explained in “The Prize”. It looks like mass suicide on a scale unknown in history.
“And when will that be? My prediction? Before 2012 runs its course.”
I hope that you’re right about the timeline! After the EU is history, we can begin working to dismantle the UN, or at least to get the he11 out.
Any way to take the United Nations down at the same time as the EU goes belly up? It seems to me that those un-elected bureaucrats are every bit as concerned about telling everyone else how to live AND demanding more and more American taxpayer money to do so as the Brussels bunch ever did.
You are absolutely right, and the risible aspects of the EUSSR have given way to horrible aspects.
And their utter arrogance is never better shown as when they try to impose their left-lib ideology on Third World countries.
Expats in Jakarta were appalled when a UK senior diplomat blatantly interfered in the local debate on the death penalty. But we’re fighting back!
http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/bali-bomb-swine-gets-off-light-and-no-doubt-the-eussr-applauds/
The great early 20th Century sociologist and political thinker Max Weber coined the term “bureaucracy” and described bureaucratic structures as the most efficient way to to perform work and increase production. Of course he assumed that the work that the bureaucracy was created to perform was actually worth doing. However 90% of what the EU does (such as regulating Lindt bunnies) doesn’t even rise to the level of “make-work.” It is simply an exercise in the ability to control something for it’s own sake.
The EU has proven conclusively that Europes truly great contribution to post-WWII life is it’s ability to bureaucratize virtually everything. This has alwasy been an underlying theme in European history but it received a shot of industrial-strength steroids when the U.S. assumed nearly all of Europes defense responsibilities from 1945 to just recently. During that time of the “U.S. Defense Umbrella” the eurocrats were able to give themselves over to an orgy of rule-writing and activity-controlling behavior tht resulted in an EU constitution of more that twelve hundred pages (and counting.)
I suppose that much of this this is attributable to the stil-ticking feudal traditions of Europe, their almost instinctual contempt for freedom, and the zeal with which Socialists embrace the micro-management of virtually everything.
All of this was based on a deal that Europes “managing classes” struck with the hoi polloi after the war. That deal was “You follow our rules and we will give you stuff.” (The historical and intellectual architect of this worldview was no less a control-freak than Otto von Bismarck.) However Europe, as a continent, is simply running out of the resources to provide the necessary “stuff.” there is bound to be a breakdown in the current bureaucratic structure, i.e. the European Union, on which the deal was based.
If and when the euro collapses and the EU ceases to be anything more than a huge bloated bureaucracy based in Brussels (bureacracies never really die) I believe that thee will be a violent lurch leftward throughout Europe by a populace demanding more stuff. We have seen the reception that reasonable austerity measures have met with in Greece and, to a lesser extent, in France. Most of Europe’s citizenry has decided to reject freedom in favor of a continuing flow of goodies. Whatever happens – It won’t be pretty.
“However 90% of what the EU does (such as regulating Lindt bunnies) doesn’t even rise to the level of “make-work.” It is simply an exercise in the ability to control something for it’s own sake.”
Essayist Theodore Dalrymple can’t even bring himself to call what the bureaucrats do “work” because he’s seen first hand that it simply doesn’t qualify. Instead, he refers to “activity”. The bureaucrats, in effect, go through the motions via lots of meetings and so forth but they don’t actually DO much of anything except pontificate and write arcane rules.
The good doctor is right about that. “Activity” is a much better term.
C. Northcote Parkinson once observed….” The smaller the function, the greater the management.” The EU is fixated on trivialities that, to their collective mindset, demand greater and greater management. Regulating the sale of Lindt chocolate bunnies makes sense in such an artificial world. Now the European Union is faced with huge problems of a real-world nature. They don’t know what to do. They can’t go forward because the money has run out. They can’t go back because that would bring an end to the gigantic bureaucratic artifice known as “Europe.”
To paraphrase Churchill “So they [European Union] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”
Change a few place names and you have described life in California today
So true. But they do have better maintained roadways.
You’re saying that Europe has better maintained roads, right? Because according to Victor Davis Hanson, many California roads are currently in very poor repair. I don’t know myself; I haven’t been to California in 20 years….
Europe going down the drain.
Just get ready for the global decline. if the euro goes, the dollar goes.
Taxifornia is broke, but the governor and the public sector unions want to build the bite the bullet train for $200,000,000,000 + cost. the head of the california bullet RR makes more than(366,00) the amtrak head, and conquistofornia has NO Train and NO tracks. so who cares about deficits? or bankruptcy. we got the eurotrain right here in the golden state. well in 40 years projected time.
adios,
harv
prop8ifornia
viva illegal alien drug gang sanctuary states.
and i thought Franz Kafka exaggerated, go figure.
adios,
harv
got land surveyors?
It’s about trademark’s!
Austrian chocolate company has to stop making Easter bunnies that look like those made by Switzerland’s Lindt & Spruengli, a court has ruled after an eight-year legal battle.
Family-owned Hauswirth will now seek ways to change the appearance of the chocolate rabbits it has been making for half a century, co-owner Peter Hauswirth said, suggesting it could move its brand name from the bottom to a more prominent spot.
year legal battle.
Family-owned Hauswirth will now seek ways to change the appearance of the chocolate rabbits it has been making for half a century, co-owner Peter Hauswirth said, suggesting it could move its brand name from the bottom to a more prominent spot.
Both chocolatiers have made the distinctive sitting bunny shapes wrapped in gold foil with a red ribbon – in Hauswirth’s case, red and white – bow tie. An Austrian court has now ruled the similarity could confuse consumers.
It just hit me that the nanny state caters to womens fears.
Women crave safety — safe water, safe restaurnts, safe food products, fire retardent clothing, mandatory bicycle helmets for kids, child proof produts, stong enviromental regulation,..
Once the bureaucrats have the power, they tell us how to wrap our bunnies.
Roger;
Very well written piece w/ great examples of the Brussels Elites’ arrogance. However, I find umbrage w/ your nonchalant ‘translation’
of “Gleichschaltung” as ‘harmony.’ Are you kidding? I don’t blame you for not speaking German or any other EU language; most US writers don’t. By simply googling you’d find this: meaning “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”… It has, however, a more sinister meaning behind the lines understood only at a native level speaking. It is to achieve the objective by force, group-think & submission. Voila, there lurks the bloody head of nazism/fascism/socialism/communism = tyranny. Don’t kid yourselves, the US is well on its way to join the EU unless there is a major change of guards come November.
Lastly, I am impressed w/ most of the comments; thoughtful, informed, factual. That gives me hope re: this November.
The eurocrats in Brussels are Europe’s best and brightest. They will have no trouble finding employment once their bureaucracy shuts down. Corporations will be lining up to hire them.
no doubt, but the EU deputees will have hardest times to reinssert in local positions, as they are for a significant number unfame has been
This is precisely the same type of activity now being pushed through various UN agencies, the OECD, and the World Bank just for starters as they now decree that our well-being and happiness are to be the primary purpose of government?
Did you know the UN just published its first World Happiness Report? Can any good come out of this unless pushing its policies is your livelihood?
The real problem though is that global education is the method for spreading this poison. And the actual implementation of the US Common Core State Standards dovetails perfectly with plugging the US back into the UN’s Education for All statist boondoggle.
I have been writing on the various elements for the last few weeks but today’s post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/you-mean-i-cant-teach-because-the-economy-should-not-grow/ starts dealing with the UN components directly.
Tomorrow Gleichschaltung will get a whole new meaning as I go over what will be coming into US classrooms in the name of educating for Sustainable Development.
It is only sustainable if you have a bureaucratic sinecure. Paid with our tax money of course.
do you know that such personalitees, who gets big wages don’t pay taxes?
BTW, Christine Lagarde at IMF:
€323 257, plus €57 829 for representation charges pro year
http://www.toutsurlesimpots.com/exoneration-d-impots-pour-le-salaire-annuel-de-380-989-euros-de-christine-lagarde-au-fmi.html
she sure can lecture the Greeks to pay their taxes !
The Greeks (those that used to pay some) stopped to pay them , waiting to recover their drachmes
I am aware that the planners essentially do not want to bear any of the consequences of their plans, including the costs.
We have an entire class of administrators who function as parasites killing the hosts: functioning societies and economies and aspiring societies and economies.
Economic laws function much like gravity. Whether you understand it or even know about it does not impact in the least how it operates. Gravity will dictate what happens when we go out a window. Economics will dictate whether these bad policies and practices implemented in the name of education and human capital development have a positive return.
If most of the expense is to limit what students can know or do and ensure students have the desired values, attitudes, and beliefs to tolerate being managed, we have embarked on an economic death spiral.
We just do not know it yet. Since we are the providers of the OPM and have no desire to be a deceased host sucked dry by the credentialed parasites, we have to push through the PR blitz and sales pitches.
If Brussels got hit with some high-yield nuclear weapons, would anyone mourn the loss of these EUnuchs?
“The great change that has occurred during the last decade is that socialism in [the] strict sense of a particular method of achieving social justice has collapse.” Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960. Hayek argued that statism has shifted from public ownership of property to a perpetual proliferation of regulation.
And here we are 52 years later, with ambition transformed into idiocy.
This article’s explanation of the situation with those Lindt chocolate bunnies is a bit weird and incomprehensible and it turns out to be phony.
Lindt had applied to trademark the image of their chocolate bunny, but were being prevented in various countries from doing so. So Lindt sued over it. The court said that the bunnies’ appearance is not different enough from many other manufacturers’ bunnies to warrant a trademark. Had the court allowed it, it would have meant that other companies could have been sued by Lindt for trademark violation due to the look of products they’ve already been making for decades, if not centuries. So this was a matter of preventing hyper-regulation and not establishing it.
Full information is here:
http://www.confectionerynews.com/Regulation-Safety/Lindt-chocolate-bunny-trademark-gunned-down-by-ECJ
This was a garden-variety trademark suit and not a matter of a bunch of regulators going berserk. The author should have done 20 seconds of fact checking. (That’s about all it took me.)
The best example of the madness from Brussels is the ruling that you can’t claim water will prevent dehydration. What more can possibly be said?!?!
Just to keep the correctors at bay. I know they’ve walked this ruling back. The point is the fact it ever came out in the first place.