No Lawyers for Animals

Well, I suppose there is a little sanity out there.

The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don’t think abused animals need to have their own lawyers.

It’s a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries, but the measure’s defeat Sunday disappointed animal rights advocates, who say Switzerland’s elaborate animal welfare laws aren’t being enforced.

Comparing California and Texas

Michael Barone makes some good comparisons.  Which one of these states is Wisconsin more like?

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state’s history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress—or lack of it—over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million—all originally extracted from taxpayers—into effective TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California—almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes—and no state income taxes—and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California’s year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California’s. But its test scores—and with a demographically similar school population—are higher. California’s once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas’ economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

Lost Jewish Tribe In Zimbabwe

Cool.

In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.

But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.

These tests back up the group’s belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.

Judgment In Favor of Open Carry

Judgment.

IT IS ORDERED that judgment in the amount of $10,000.00, inclusive of attorney’s fees and costs, is entered in favor of plaintiffs, Wisconsin Carry, Inc., and Frank Hannan Rock and against defendants, City of Racine, Sgt. Nethery, and R. Prince, as to all claims of said plaintiffs, state and federal, respecting this action.

Good news that the courts are backing legally protected actions.  Here’s the background. 

Iceland Votes to Not Pay Debt

Iceland is full of welshers. 

Iceland’s voters overwhelmingly rejected a deal to pay billions of dollars it owes to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

With around 90 percent of votes counted, just over 93 percent said no and just under 2 percent said yes. Not enough votes remain to be counted to change the result. Some 62.5 percent of Iceland’s roughly 200,000 register voters cast ballots, the ministry said.

The referendum was on a law about repaying the Netherlands and UK, which helped savers in their own countries who lost money in a failed Icelandic Internet bank.

The British and Dutch governments came up with more than $5 billion for bailing out people who lost money in Icesave—an online retail bank branch of Landsbanki. That Icelandic bank failed in October 2008, along with two other banks in the country.

Under a European Union directive, Iceland now owes compensation to Britain and the Netherlands. The Icelandic government has said it will honor its international obligations.

Iceland’s parliament passed a bill authorizing a state guarantee for repayment of the funds, but President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson declined to sign it in January. He cited public disapproval, and in particular, an Internet petition signed by up to one-quarter of the electorate, as a reason for not signing the bill. He said there needed to be a national consensus in addressing the issue.

That prompted Saturday’s national referendum on the law.