Reason Morning Links: Debt, a Riot, and Scientology

Jesse Walker | August 10, 2009

• The deficit grew by $181 billion last month.

• The Treasury wants the country's debt limit boosted higher.

• If Sacramento tries to spend less on your favorite state program, you might sue to stop them.

• The Justice Department is reportedly ready to have a special prosecutor investigate torture by CIA agents.

• A prison riot breaks out in Chino, California.

• Declassified documents describe the U.K.'s dossier on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Comments

Anonymous|8.10.09 @ 8:16AM|#

The attorneys are seizing on state laws that were drafted in sunnier economic times, some of which were put in place by citizen initiative. They created new programs or expanded existing ones and contained language intended to solidify the place of those programs in state government. Now, the state is broke, and lawmakers and the governor are finding their attempts to take money from the programs rebuffed by the courts. Just the lawsuits themselves cost the state millions of dollars in attorney salaries and other legal fees.

That's central planning for you. You freeze conditions through legislation, and it cracks loudly when the underlying assumptions have chance to be proven wrong. I think I've heard this tune before.

L. Ron Hubbard|8.10.09 @ 8:19AM|#

There is nothing more terrifying than listening to a tomato scream.

Jim Morrison|8.10.09 @ 8:21AM|#

I want to hear the scream of the butterfly.

|8.10.09 @ 8:25AM|#

Makes pretty good sense to me dude!

RT
www.anon-web-tools.net.tc

Hannibal Lecter|8.10.09 @ 8:26AM|#

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.

Rich|8.10.09 @ 8:26AM|#

"It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations," Mr. Geithner said in a letter to lawmakers.

He's starting to really scare me. Did he get laughed at again?

"Congress has never failed to raise the debt limit when necessary," Mr. Geithner said.

And it's always necessary. Debt limit -- what a concept! How about we don't raise it, and see what happens?

Fluffy|8.10.09 @ 8:45AM|#

Why was British intelligence in the 70's sending "urgent" telegrams to their LA operatives about L. Ron Hubbard's fake degree?

They really had nothing else to work on that day?

And they couldn't just send a normal telegram, to find out that Scientology was a fraud a few business hours later than they would by marking it "urgent"?

I can declare Scientology a fraud without sending any telegrams or consuming any state resources at all.

|8.10.09 @ 8:48AM|#

What's the point of a debt-limit that can be raised whenever. Its like a Vegas drunk saying he's only going to lose $1,000, when that's gone, he's only going to lose $2,000, etc. etc......

Fluffy|8.10.09 @ 8:50AM|#

When does bankruptcy become California's best option?

It would have a punishing impact on the state's ability to raise future debt, but at what point is that outweighed by the fact that it would allow the state to escape a lot of these budget constraints, and/or alter its state employee retiree pension and healthcare obligations, which have to be absolutely brutal?

Rich|8.10.09 @ 8:50AM|#

Fluffy, they had been hypnotized by the royal family.

|8.10.09 @ 9:32AM|#

If Sacramento tries to spend less on your favorite state program, you might sue to stop them.

Give a man a fish two days in a row and he'll think free fish is an entitlement.

Just one more reason to oppose all government expenditures.

|8.10.09 @ 9:34AM|#

When does bankruptcy become California's best option?

After they get their too-big-to-fail federal bailout courtesy of We the People. Duh.

|8.10.09 @ 9:36AM|#

When does bankruptcy become California's best option?

Three years ago?

|8.10.09 @ 11:00AM|#

I can declare Scientology a fraud without sending any telegrams or consuming any state resources at all.

But their teevee ads are really cool; incomprehensible, but cool.

Why do I have this overpowering urge to become a Scientologist?

|8.10.09 @ 11:12AM|#

British intelligence...

I don't believe these two words belong in the same sentence and certainly not together like that. Especially when followed by the words "in the 70's."

Mike M.|8.10.09 @ 11:32AM|#

The deficit grew by $181 billion last month.

Looks more and more likely every day that this calendar year's deficit will exceed $2 trillion, and end up at a mind-blowing 15% of GDP.

alan|8.10.09 @ 1:27PM|#

'Star Wars' canon is finally shooting itself in the foot

Finally shooting itself in the foot?Finally? Personally, I started hating on this series around the same time me nuts dropped, but over the weekend I watched the one retconned as New Hope because the kid I was looking after (one of my renters kid's) wanted to watch it. First time in twenty years, for me, and something stood out. Why is Han Solo talking about the Jedis like they are some kind of ancient mythology when their down fall occurred at the same time as the birth of the twenty year old kid he is talking to and Han is in his mid thirties? I'm sure it has been rehashed over a million times, but successfully ignoring the series beyond one time through for each means I skipped out on the debate.

|8.10.09 @ 1:37PM|#

Well, Obi Wan says in ANH that Darth Vader killed Luke's father at the time the Empire took over, placing the time of that event at most a few months before Luke's birth. So whatever contradiction is there is within ANH, not between the different episodes.

And I don't see it being a contradiction anyway. Han would have been like ten years old when the Republic fell, and the Jedi may not have had business to do on his world.

Art-P.O.G.|8.10.09 @ 2:06PM|#

If Sacramento tries to spend less on your favorite state program, you might sue to stop them.

Seems odd. If the state doesn't technically owe the people anything, how can they sue over what they'd end up losing in the future?

alan|8.10.09 @ 2:10PM|#

The Jedis operated like the Secret Service, at the very core of the center of power. I don't think if after Reagan was shot, the SS was canceled, I would be going around thinking they were mythical.

Also, Han Solo treated Luke like a back water hick because Luke was and Han wasn't.

I'm more likely to believe the Jedis is something that conceptually changed for the story line in the time between the first movie and the second series.

alan|8.10.09 @ 2:13PM|#

Jedis is something that conceptually changed

err, Jedis are something . . .

Trying to do too many things at once. Okay, I'll spit out the gum.

|8.10.09 @ 2:15PM|#

Jedis didn't levitate anything in Star Wars (A New Hope, for you whippersnappers). I think I liked that Jedi better than the later version.

obama |8.10.09 @ 2:18PM|#

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/world/americas/11prexy.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

|8.10.09 @ 3:13PM|#

alan, Han said that he didn't believe in The Force, not the Jedi. Perhaps he thought the Jedi did what they did without "supernatural" means and just made up the Force. In any case, Obi Wan's (false, of course) explanation of Luke's father's death places the demise of the Jedi around the time of Luke's birth, so that point is already present in ANH.

There are plenty of other contradictions and implausible events (and non-events) among the SW films, though.

alan|8.10.09 @ 10:22PM|#

Han said that he didn't believe in The Force, not the Jedi.

That is true. I could see a positivist doubter like Han even in those fantastical circumstances. I gathered though from Han Solo's comments that the Jedi had been a spent force for generations though even with the drama surrounding the fall of the republic.

Personally, I think it could have branched out from this origin in ANH to some less silly background narratives. The concept of the Sith and the two seems not only tacked on, but arbitrary. Why does the dark side of the force shape in that peculiar way? You can't train an entire monastery of baddies in the dark side, but you can for the forces of good?

|8.11.09 @ 3:17PM|#

With the horrific overcrowding in California prisons it is amazing that there has not been more riots. Of course, the smallers conflicts don't make the media.

Unreasonably long sentences; unjustly denying parole to serious offenders who have served their time and are not, or no longer are, dangerous; replacing mental hospitals with prison time; and the overwhelmed, broken parole system are bankrupting California, the state of "Higher Incarceration".

We need to evaluate individuals when deciding sentencing and release rather than continuing the one-size fits all tough-on-crime turned dumb-on-crime policies. That might have prevented the release of the man who recently killed the police officers in San Francisco, and could save salvageable lives and families of those who are unnecessarily locked up for too many years at our expense.

Too much fear mongering over repairing our prison systems!