I bet I kin break 10,000 aigs....

Remember that scene from "Cool Hand Luke," where he bets he can eat 100 eggs?  This is a remix, I guess you'd call it, but it's pretty great:  "When it come to the law, NOTHING is understood."



French farmers went one better:  They bet they could break 10,000 eggs.  Outside a tax office.  To protest low prices.  (Note:  not to protest high taxes, to protest low prices.  Even though higher prices would in effect be a higher tax, on everyone else.  Gotta love Gallic logic.)

The French version.  An English translation (sort of). M.K. offers this interpretation (edited a bit, don't blame him):

It announces breathlessly that some goods will be on sale from June 26 to July 30.  Note that also that certain "economic zones" are excluded from this, and their sales dates are different, being carefully rotated in accordance with the....MASTER...PLAN! If you live in Guyana, you'll have to wait until October 3 for your cheap socks. 

The paragraph below the list notes that, thanks to the Economic Modernization Act (lol) the number of days for permitted discounts has been restricted. Now you know why the French drink, and smoke those ridiculous cigarettes.

And then, M.K. offers this lagniappe: Apparently in highly competitive or struggling businesses, the final weeks leading up to the sale period is a time of rising bankruptcies due to shrinking cash flows amplified by consumer hold-back and retailers' inability to lower prices to save their bacon...  

Minimum Wage

The Montana Department of Employment, Division of Labor Standards got an anonymous tip that a small rancher was not paying proper wages to his help.  They immediately sent an official  agent out to investigate him.

GOVT AGENT: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.

RANCHER: Well, there's my hired hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $350 a week plus free room and board.

GOVT AGENT:  Well, those payments and conditions are within the law.  Anybody else work here?
 
RANCHER:  Well, I wasn't going to say.  But there's also a mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work on the ranch. He makes about $10 per week, sometimes less.  He pays his own room and board.  I do buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night so he can cope with life, but then sometimes he tries to make love to my wife.

GOVT AGENT:   Okay, yes, then THAT's the guy I heard about, and need to talk to -- the mentally challenged one.

RANCHER: That would be me.

Sweet Fancy Ethanol!

Our good friends on the left side seem to worry about corporations buying the election, with money from their treasuries.  Fair enough, that would be a problem.  But isn't it also a problem that our President is buying the election, with money from the US treasury?

I assumed that this was a hoax, when I first read it.  Prez O has decided that farm prices are "too low" (compared to what?  Is it really bad for poor Americans if food prices fall?  WTF?)

(more below the fold)