Category Archives: Economics

Still more on communications

Posted on by

I got an e-mail today off our web site, complaining that we’re too hard to contact. He went on and on about it. He wants to spend money. He was asking several questions that are answered on the web site. His message did not include his phone number or address, just the e-mail.

My e-mail reply was bounced back to me by his mail server.

This reminds me of the woman who always hooks up with scum-of-the-Earth men, who abuse her, and she then ends up hating men, the Progressive who advocates massive restrictions on commerce and then complains about businesses colluding with politicians, and the gun control advocate who points to Chicago’s crime rate as a reason why we need more gun restrictions.

Methinks thy complaints be self fulfilling.

Quote of the day—Lyle

Posted on by

The answer is pretty simple. It can be found in the basic tenet (which is a lie) of communism; “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

You get more stuff by asserting your need. You assert your need by asserting your status as victim. Victims need perpetrators from which the goodies are coerced. And so it’s very simple; if you’re in the business of looting, you go where there is the most wealth to be looted. That’s the U.S.

Lyle
April 29, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Bill Maher
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Divemedic

Posted on by

Here in America, we have passed the tipping point: There are more people on the government dole than there are working and paying the bills. There is no longer an escape. The slide towards financial collapse has begun. Once the powers that be see this, they will try to avoid the anarchy that happens when the free money machine stops, and there will be a massive crackdown.

It is mathematically certain.

Divemedic
March 26, 2013
A virus
[There are some outs. None of them particularly pleasant.

  1. Entitlements are drastically cut. The scale required to balance the budget will result in riots, starvation, inadequate shelter, inadequate health care, and large numbers of premature deaths.
  2. The deliberate killing of “undesirables”. In some scenarios this is just a more direct version of 1. above. Another scenario is that the “undesirables” are the moderately wealthy (the extremely wealthy can almost always escape) and the looters extend their “on the dole” careers until they have consumed all that is consumable including most of each other.
  3. Massive influx of productive people and wealth from other parts of the world. This wealth and productivity would be taxed to continue supporting paying out the “entitlements”. The addition of new people to the roles of the beneficiaries would have to be essentially stopped with productive people having to work, essentially, “until their dying day” to pay off the debt without adding to it.

The third option is the least unpleasant and had some hope of occurring. This is because other countries are ahead of the U.S. on the collapse timeline. The wealthy of those other countries will, and are, fleeing. If the U.S. can attract those people then it may become a viable option. The biggest problem is that those on the dole are also fleeing areas of economic collapse. As long as the U.S. has “free” food, shelter, education, health care, ad infinitum it will be just as impossible to keep them out as has in the past.

I think the most likely scenario is that the government will not cut entitlements or stop adding people to the roles of those on the dole. The political reality will be that it is always easier to continue the looting tomorrow than it is to trigger the riots today. The end result of this is that the inevitable collapse is more complete and more people will die.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

Posted on by

The one topic Sol cannot talk about are the Jewish overseers: the Judenrat, and the Kapos, Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. Of these men and women, Sol just shakes his head in disbelief. The evil of the Nazis is comprehensible for evil is ever present. But the Jews who cooperated in the genocide of their own people is beyond imagination.

The Judenrat and kapos are still with us.

Too many American Jews worship at the altar of the state. Their religion is not Torah Judaism, but the Democrat party. So closely do they identify with the power of government, they don’t even realize that they are creating the apparatus of a soft tyranny that will enslave their children and their children’s children.

Obamacare is Egyptian slavery. It is Pharaoh’s court of magicians, charlatans who create an illusion of reality.

Robert J. Avrech
March 25, 2013
Passover 2013: Of Slaves, Slavery, Judenrat, Kapos and America
[It’s not just Obamacare. It’s the entire nanny-state. And it may not be so “soft” when the economic system collapses.—Joe]

Five year plan?

Posted on by

From Tyler Durden:

Yesterday Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 544, “a bill to require the President to develop a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.”

In effect, Senator Harkin wants the President to centrally plan the economy. Never mind that the President has zero experience in business or manufacturing. But hey, this worked out so well for Stalinist Russia, it’s no wonder Mr. Harkin wants to copy that model.

If I were emperor of the U.S. I could come up with a plan that outperform anything the President could accomplish in five years and have it implemented in five days. It’s really simple:

Government shall make no law restricting the free association of people other than a tax on retail sales not to exceed 5% and to enforce contracts freely entered into by people and companies.

All waste products shall be safely contained or returned to the natural environment in such a manner that those people responsible for producer of said waste are willing to build their own homes on, eat, breath, or drink said waste products.

In five years there would so much wealth generated there would be private companies with terraforming Mars, robots bringing mining products back from the asteroid belt, and sex tourists going on vacations to the resorts in low earth orbit.

Unintended consequences

Posted on by

Or; Action, Reaction, Synthesis
Or; Thesis, Antitheses, Synthesis
Or; “I’m not sure that it means what you think it means.”

Refusing to sell to government entities that attack the second amendment is fairly popular, it certainly has made good press, and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, but I’m not sure people are thinking things through.

Oskar Schindler was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, and he had extensive business dealings with the Nazis. Just keep that in mind.

Let’s say we all refuse to sell to any government entity that even infringes (literally; “touches around the fringes”) on second amendment rights. That would be all of them. Just keep that in mind; we are talking ONLY about degrees of violation when we say that New York or Chicago is bad and OUR jurisdiction is…what…a bit less egregious? Or does your state and local .gov commit zero infringements? So we all refuse to sell to any government entities. What will be their obvious reaction, for 100% sure and for certain? Taxpayer funded, government owned munitions factories of course, with union workers, full benefits and a retirement plan, and now they are, one way or another, competing with the private industry. Good luck with that. OR, you know all it takes is for one individual company to sell to your worst violators, they will become the next General Electric, i.e. a pet company for the tyrants, funneling their profits via multiple channels into the Democrat Party. They’ll arrange it that way just for that purpose. It’s what Progressives do.

What we KNOW…. that isn’t true

Posted on by

Mark Twain said: It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” I’ve seen a lot of examples of this in my life, and heard of more. I’m sure you have too. In fact, in installment 002 of “The Stars Came Back” Helton points out that a lot of time the so-called experts have really BAD plans, and that you can’t tell what the outcome of a lot of projects will be based on the credentials of the people starting it.(He is specifically talking about climate science, in fact)

The Climate debate is no different. There is a LOT of garbage out there (and I say this a a teacher with a cert that includes “Earth Science;” I’m in the “CO2 is plant food” camp) Then, along comes something from out of the dry fields that takes on directly one of those “common knowledge, common sense” things directly, and says, “We were wrong. The solution we have been pushing for decades is CAUSING the problem!” It takes some good sized balls, and a dose of humility the size of a Hollywood celeb’s coke habit, to make an admission like that. More so to take that fact, and a much better DEMONSTRATED solution, on the road.

We all know over-grazing causes land to turn into deserts, right?

Maybe not. Maybe the solution to desertification is to put MORE beef in the fields, and on the grill. It’s a win-win-win-win, meaning the lefties will HATE it, and fight it tooth and nail. But the guy makes a good case.

So much for that “common caliber” meme

Posted on by

Re-think?

Background checks

Posted on by

The anti-gun people insist “improved background checks” and even “universal background checks” should not be controversial. Let me try to explain why they are both pointless and completely unacceptable to thinking people.

Pointless demonstration number 1:

The claimed purpose of background checks is to prevent “people who shouldn’t have guns” from acquiring them. That is a noble objective. It sounds so reasonable and “common sense” that I want to agree without giving it even a seconds thought. It’s an excellent idea! It’s such a great idea we should apply that to some other dangerous things. Let’s have background checks before people can purchase recreational drugs. Far too many people abuse them and destroy their lives and frequently the lives of others. Keeping recreational drugs out of the hands of people that would likely abuse them is just “common sense”. Right?

Oh! That’s right. We have something way beyond background checks in place for most recreational drugs. We have banned them not just from “people that might abuse them” but from everyone. How’s that working out? How long does it take the average high school dropout to find a way around the ban? Yeah, that’s right, Einstein. The average high school dropout can get all the recreational drugs they want within an hour anytime of the day, any day of the week. So just how effective you think a background check would be in reducing the abuse of recreational drugs?

Now apply what you know about the recreational drug issue to firearms. A background check is totally pointless.

Pointless demonstration number 2:

Universal background checks can only claim effectiveness if they can be enforced. Prostitution is illegal in most states but if a beautiful woman leaves a $100 bill on my nightstand when she leaves in the morning (yes, stretch your imagination a bit, or a lot, for purposes of illustration) how does  the government enforce the “no sex for money” prohibition in this case? It was a “private transaction” between willing parties. Do you think either party has an interest in disclosing the transaction to the police? And even if they do there is a significant obstacle in that it becomes a “he said, she said” problem.

In the absence of gun and/or gun owner registration the case of the “private transaction” between gun owners boils down to the same thing. The government, and perhaps one party to the transaction, can claim no background check was done. As long as the person being prosecuted keeps their mouth shut and the transaction wasn’t recorded it is going to be impossible to prove that a background check wasn’t performed. Remember, in order to get the Brady Act (“instant” background checks for gun transactions) passed the law states that all record of passing background checks must be destroyed. Searching the records of all those authorized to perform background checks would be a violation of Fourth Amendment rights.

Pointless demonstration number 3:

Even if a background check is performed it only requires a stolen or fake ID to defeat it. The fake ID doesn’t even have to be for a real person! The check is not against a “white list” of people that are “allowed” to have guns. The check is against a “black list” of people that are disallowed from possessing guns.

Conclusion:

If you still advocate for background checks for firearms I can only think of two possibilities:

  1. You have a motive other than reducing the misuse of firearms.
  2. You also get confused when your caretaker is reading Dr. Seuss books to you.

Now that we have it settled that background checks are completely pointless let’s proceed on to the “unacceptable” demonstrations.

Unacceptable demonstration number 1:

Background checks cost money and time. The FBI portion of them is “free” to the people doing the transaction. But really that just means the government is wasting scarce law enforcement resources using money they obtained through taxes (obtained at gunpoint–oh, the irony!). The only people authorized to do background checks are people with Federal Firearms Licenses (FFLs). Because it is time consuming they always charge a fee and you must do a face-to-face transaction. This adds more wasted time and money to the transaction. A transaction which is a specific enumerate right.

This pointless waste of time and money is unacceptable at any time but when the government is deeply in debt and the economy is doing poorly wasting precious government and private resources it is even more so.

Unacceptable demonstration number 2:

If law requiring universal background checks is passed it will only be a short time before the politicians will “discover” the “loopholes” that prevents the law from working as intended. These include the lack of gun registration and the lack of defense against fake IDs. Any attempt at gun registration in the U.S. will result in massive non-compliance on a scale that will make alcohol prohibition look like first graders failing to stay in a straight line while waiting to go on recess. Look at the non-compliance experienced in the failed long gun registration in Canada. Multiply that by three (the difference in per capita gun ownership rate), multiply that by two (U.S. citizens trust the government less than Canadian citizens), then add ten billion rounds of ammunition (annual consumption by private citizens). Or look at New York state,  multiple by fifty (the citizens of other states included in the non-compliance) and multiply that by ten (the citizens of New York state have the option of moving to a freer state, with no place to escape the resistance will be more fierce), then add ten billion rounds of ammunition.

The “ID loophole” was identified years ago by the Feds and they passed a law requiring “Real ID” by the states. How’s that working out?

For the government to force this sort of situation upon the people is unacceptable.

Unacceptable demonstration number 3:

Since demonstrating that background checks are pointless the continued insistence upon forcing them upon the people this must mean that those continuing to advocate for them are either evil (option 1 above) or have the comprehension skills no better than that of an above average German Shepard (option 2 above). Despite the existence of blue dog democrats we have never elected someone so stupid as a real dog to a Federal office (Senator Patty Murray is not a counter example, she is capable of reading and comprehending most Dr. Seuss books). One can only conclude those advocating for background checks are evil or are doing so under duress.

Good people don’t knowingly and willingly cooperate with evil. It is unacceptable.

Conclusion:

Background checks are pointless and unacceptable. We are better than this.

Even compromising with those that advocate for them is the moral equivalent of compromising with people that want “common sense” limits on the 13th Amendment or someone intending to rape your 10 year-old child. The response must be an exceedingly firm no.

Update: I almost forgot, as pointed out by Tim S. in email a few days ago, there is a form of background check almost all gun owners would accept. That is if there were an “endorsement” on your state ID card (such as drivers license) like the restriction for corrective lenses or endorsement for motorcycle or commercial drivers license. It wouldn’t be much, if any, more effective than that currently proposed by the anti-freedom people. But it would eliminate the concerns over registration and most of the expense and wasted time. If such a thing is offered as a compromise to the anti-gunners expect it to be vigorously rejected. They know it doesn’t meet their “needs” and as such will refuse to give in.

Update 2: See also the conclusions which can be drawn from this study.

Random thought of the day

Posted on by

Doesn’t it seem more than a little messed up when Pravda is urging us to never give up our guns, telling us we are wrong to go down the Marxist path while the New York Times is urging us to give up the constitution?

Quote of the day—Louis Michael Seidman

Posted on by

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Louis Michael Seidman
December 30, 2012
Let’s Give Up on the Constitution
[H/T to Roberta.

It’s good to have clarity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

Posted on by

The defining American code is freedom. The defining liberal code is compassion. Conservatives have attempted to counter that by defining freedom as compassionate, as George W. Bush did. Liberals counter by attempting to define compassion as liberating, the way that FDR did by classing freedoms with entitlements in his Four Freedoms.

On one side stands the individual with his rights and responsibilities. On the other side is the remorseless state machinery of supreme compassion. And there is no bridging this gap.

Daniel Greenfield
December 17, 2012
Gun Control, Thought Control and People Control
[H/T to JPFO.

Nearly every paragraph in Greenfield’s post would qualify for a QOTD here. It is filled with awesome insights.

I decided to focus on these two paragraphs because of the last sentence of the second paragraph quoted above.

I’ve read that no two businesses or even species in nature share the same exact marketplace or ecologically niche at the same time. One will dominate and push the others out or cause them to differentiate themselves.

The freedom and anti-freedom, the left being the dominate flavor of anti-freedom, people are in a political struggle for the geographical niche known as the United States of America. There is no compromising with the other side anymore than there is compromising with someone that wishes to rob you or loot your business. There is only winning versus losing and protecting your property versus having your property redistributed for the common good.

The language of the left betrays this mindset.

In their “compassion” they will sometimes “concede” a “buy-back” of firearms they want confiscated. You can’t “buy back” something that was not yours to begin with. And you can’t “buy” something with money that you confiscated (in the form of taxes) from the victims you want to take the property from. But in the mind of the left all property, including money, is “community property” and there is no inconsistency. They don’t, and probably can’t, “get” the problem we have with their plans.

The anti-gun people claim removing restrictions against people carrying firearms on college campuses is “forcing guns on campuses”. Did you catch that? In other words we are using the power of government to force liberty upon them. One of daughter Kim’s economic class reading materials literally referred to the U.S. government “forcing free markets.” In their language and their world/philosophical view that makes perfect sense rather than being a self-contradicting statement.

They can barely understand that we don’t trust the government. They can understand not trusting the “right government” which in broad terms is a government which is not “compassionate.” But they cannot understand not trusting a government because of its size. The classic joke about the anti-freedom people fear Libertarians because they would take over the government and leave everyone alone is funny because it is true. It is beyond their philosophical framework to not trust the government based on its size. It simply doesn’t make sense. It is a nonsensical thought and in order to make sense of it they have to redefine the fear of large government in other terms such as “greed”, “selfishness”, or a as a close relative recently told me, “heartless bastards”. Gun owners cannot possibly be serious about defense against a tyrannical government and rational gun ownership must be redefined in terms of a hobby, penis substitution, or some sort of paranoia in order for it to make sense to them.

Any “compromise” they offer is defined in terms they understand. They are “compromising” by “allowing” us to continue our “hobby” by registering our firearms/magazines and submitting to a licensing process. In their minds this is a HUGE concession. In our minds this essentially defeats the entire usefulness of the right to keep and bear arms.

It goes deeper. They do not comprehend that the act of submitting to the government over a basic right is unacceptable. Submission to government/authority on every level is so fundamental to their nature it is like a fish in water. Any glimpse of “not water” is very brief and incomprehensibly hostile. It is extremely scary to them. More government is less scary and more “compassionate” to them.

They oppose us so vigorously and with so much violence because they see it as does a fish having their water removed. In their minds we have to be insane, incredibly stupid, or have evil intent. There is no other way to explain our actions and desires. Hence they are completely justified in killing us because if we had our way we would destroy their existence.

As Greenfield says, “There is no bridging this gap.”

I only see two possible outcomes and two ways to get there.

The possible outcomes are:

  1. One side will dominate and force the other side into virtual extinction.
  2. The sides will find different geographical niches. This option would mean the collapse of the union of the individual states.

The two ways to get there are:

  1. “Education.” The left has been working, successfully, on education for a century.
  2. Force. The left is close to reaching a critical mass and they now contemplate a victory through force.

The force option will result in massive numbers of people being forcibly imprisoned and/or murdered.

The big wild card in this deck is that the intended victims are arming up and training. The outcome is difficult to see. It depends both upon the order in which the cards show up and how the cards are played. For example had a “Newtown massacre” occurred before the Heller decision the course of history could have been drastically different. And so it is with our future.

I hate to go all Godwin here but I’m seeing the final option being played by the anti-freedom people as being the Final Solution to the “freedom problem”. Let’s play our cards well.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gerry

Posted on by

You’d think they would know their American history. Taxes started the debate, going to take the colonials firearms started the war.

Gerry
December 27, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Alan.
[This may become the quote of the year or the decade. It might even be quote of the century. The next few months or maybe year or two will tell.

Rivrdog has thoughts on the comment as well.

At the highest levels of the gun control movement the people are generally not stupid or ignorant (there are some exceptions). A case could be made that these people know that in the present political climate of oppressive and unjust taxes the confiscation of firearms will be a spark in the tinder box that ignites a rebellion. Furthermore a case could be made that such a rebellion is exactly what they want so they can rid the country of “those troublemakers” that hinder the implementation of their utopia.

If such a disaster occurs I hope the case is proven at their eventual trials.—Joe]

Quote of the day—World of NewsNinja2012

Posted on by

At the end of 2010, there was an estimated 17.5 trillion dollars in United States retirement assets, including 3.1 trillion in 401k’s and 4.7 trillion in IRA’s. The idea that those who thrive on money and power would permit such an alluring trove to go untapped is laughable.

World of NewsNinja2012
December 25, 2012
Full Steam Ahead On Obama’s Theft Of IRA’s And 401k’s
[H/T to a Tweet from Adam Baldwin.

I think the “Full steam ahead…” title is an exaggeration but I do think long term there is a significant threat that politicians will claim IRA’s and 401k’s will “have” to be confiscated “for the good of the country”, “social justice”, or some other buzz phrase. “Complications” will ensue when they find very few buyers for the confiscated stocks, bonds, and precious metals. In the following political seasons similar justification probably will be given to private ownership of homes, land, and other private property. If the “complications” don’t reach “interesting” levels after the confiscations of the retirement funds they will when they start confiscating homes.

The “fiscal cliff” of next week is little more than a road turtle compared to the Grand Canyon at the end of the unfinished bridge our financial train is headed for at full speed and full power.

“Interesting” times are ahead.—Joe]

Sustainability

Posted on by

Sound good. The left are always going on and on about “sustainable
agriculture,” and “sustainable lifestyles,” and “sustainable energy,” and
so-forth, and they make some reasonable arguments. The viability of their
solutions is another matter, but the problems are, at their core, real enough.
Yet they absolutely refuse to address the things that are obviously and destructively
NOT sustainable, and will make the above problems even worse, such as all aspects
of the welfare state.

The Welfare State is totally a creature of government creation,
subject to any rule change they want to make. People respond to their perceived incentives. Every trend line you can draw
show that all forms of public assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security
(normal and disability) etc., are utterly NOT sustainable, and are in the
process of destroying the vary system that supports it (the rule of law, free enterprise,
property rights, etc), and it does so because it is NOT aligning incentives with
goals; indeed, it is filled with perverse incentives. Until people can see
that, the leviathan will continue to grow. We need a balanced budget amendment,
NOW. If people saw the real cost of
government because they were seeing it in real-time, not just putting it on the
credit card for someone else to worry about later, they would understand, and demand
less. Debt is too abstract, and not scary enough, as the colossal level of
private debt clearly illustrates. Balance the budget, via taxes or cuts or both,
and the cuts will follow as the real and immediate pain sets in.

Evidence of inflation

Posted on by

I recently purchased some Potassium Chlorate for Boomershoot 2013. The delivered price per pound increased 47% from March of this year. Both the price for the chemical and the cost of shipping increased by nearly the same percentage.

It won’t really affect the next Boomershoot but if the inflation rate were to continue at 47% every nine months (approximately 65%/year) it would cause me considerable concern and change the planning for Boomershoot 2014.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

Posted on by

Not all the media is in the tank for Obama. It’s a heck of a situation, though, when Pravda is the one hold out.

David Hardy
November 26, 2012
Not all the media is in the tank for Obama
[Even excluding Pravda it’s a slight exaggeration to say that all the media is in the tank for Obama. But it’s close enough to be funny.

The most interesting part of the article is that Pravda is touting the free market and criticizes Obama and the U.S. for repeating the USSR mistake of going down the Marxist path.—Joe]

Putting setbacks into perspective

Posted on by

Whenever I think things are going badly, and I’m bummed about
the prospects on the political scene, I think the barbarians are
winning, and it’s all going to hell in a hand-basket, I take solace in history.
Rome was the most powerful empire the world had ever seen, had built amazing feats
of engineering, and been sustained by astonishing feats of logistics, and had
many stories of unimaginable bravery and personal strength. It has existed
nearly forever, it seemed. Rome Was Eternal.  

Until it was sacked. And repeatedly taken over by a
succession of military despots, kings, generals, armies, Senators, and foreigners,
and was sunken into the darkness of barbarism and illiteracy, even as each new replacement
empire claimed the mantel of “Rome’s successor.” Some people fled the invaders,
and hid in the nastiest and most inaccessible of the local swamps and fens,
amidst the islands and channels where cavalry and armies couldn’t go after them.
They fled the easy (but crime- and corruption- and invader-infested) life of the
hills and fertile soil of northern Italy. It was a hard life, with no powerful
protector, difficult farming, lots of places to wreck your boat, fetid water and disease, and no time
for anything as non-essential as high culture or art. They clung to life, remembered the best of Rome, and
did the best they could.

Nearly a thousand years later, the city-state of Venice was
one of the most powerful in the world, and its fleet (with help from Spain and
the Papal States) crushed and halted the fleet of the powerful Imperial Ottoman Turks at Lepanto. Ideas are powerful things, and humans are resilient. We may
not fight our way out of the darkness before we die, nor may our children, but
we pass on the good ideas and knowledge to them, and instill in them a sense of
history, and, one day, it WILL happen. Property rights, individual freedom, limited
government, and free markets work.
They will, eventually, take over, because they are more powerful than the
forces trying to limit them… but it may be a long, long slog, and will most assuredly
NOT be a straight line.

 

(History geeks, take note: this is the simplified version of
things, where the essence is correct, in the interest of telling a good story
with a powerful idea to put current events in perspective.)

Quote of the day—Simon Black

Posted on by

Increasing taxes won’t increase their total tax revenue. Politicians have tried this for decades. It doesn’t work. The only way to increase tax revenue is for the economy to grow… and higher tax rates do not pave this path to prosperity.

Ron Paul was spot on. Economic ignorance abounds. And all the Talking Heads in the mainstream media blathering away about the Fiscal Cliff are only reinforcing his premise.

Bottom line– the Fiscal Cliff doesn’t matter. The US passed the point of no return a long time ago.

Simon Black
Guess what they’re NOT cutting in the Fiscal Cliff…
November 15, 2012
[H/T Tyler Durden.

I’m headed for a cabin in the woods this weekend. What are you doing?—Joe]

Interesting times

Posted on by

Observe Greece to see what our future looks like… Greek Brothel To Sponsor Broke Elementary School:

This is what complete social collapse looks like. First, the local Neo Nazi party has soared in the polls and is now the third most popular Greek party. Then, in lieu of other sources of capital, a local brothel became the head sponsor of a minor-league soccer club from Larissa. Now, the same brothel which appears to have seen a substantial return on its advertising spend, has decided to branch out… straight into a local elementary school. That’s right: a whorehouse is advertising its “services” to children in an elementary school. In exchange for what? Money to purchase a Xerox machine and a library.