A post racial President?

Best post that I have read regarding the ouster of Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams from the greater Tea Party movement:

While I understand that Mark Williams is trying to make a point of how backwards the logic of the NAACP has become, the execution of that point is a complete failure. This “letter” is the kind of thing that simply strengthens the left’s argument about racism in the Tea Parties. So much of it reads like the stereotypical accusations that have been leveled at blacks for eons. Without full background behind the debate between Williams and the NAACP, it is too easy to read this letter and assume the charges are being leveled against all black people. It’s an Epic Fail in execution.

Another reason why this letter is a failure is because it doesn’t directly address the true problem with the NAACP. The NAACP’s problem is that they are using the good they did in the past like a mask. The mask is designed to look like they are defending or advancing the black race, when what they really are doing is launching racial attacks in order to defend the liberal agenda. Getting into a battle over the term “colored people” does little to remove the mask and expose the true goals of the NAACP.

It is high time we all started challenging those who play the race card for political gain. However, race is still a flashpoint for controversy and thus requires a very thoughtful and tactful approach. Sloppy ill-conceived approaches like this one can only backfire and end up doing way more harm than good.

The ObamaCare beta is happening right now in MA

So, how is RomneyCare doing these days?

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees.

In Sandwich, business consultant Bill Fields said he has been hired by small businesses to enroll about 400 workers in state-subsidized care since April, because the company owners said they could no longer afford to provide coverage. Fields said that is by far the largest number he has handled in such a short time.

“They are giving up out of frustration,’’ Fields said of the employers. “Most of them are very compassionate but they simply can’t afford health insurance any more.’’

Precisely how many small businesses have recently given up offering insurance is hard to pinpoint. The Office of Labor and Workforce Development said the most recent quarterly insurance data collected from small companies has not been compiled.

Oh, snap! It seems that companies are kicking their employees off of their insurance rolls and hoisting them on the taxpayer! What a shock! You think that this might happen with ObamaCare? Nah, come on now.

Companies are sitting on their cash

According to this report, non-financial firms have $1.6 trillion dollars in cash. My guess is that they are sitting on all this money due to all of the uncertainty that is expected when taxes rise in 2011.

Lost hope

Do you need to remove that Obama sticker from your car?

HT: Capital Commentary

Politicians on a dragonslaying mission

Harrison Price adroitly summed up the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill yesterday. This bill is a victory for Fannie Mae cheerleaders, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. They will sell it to the public as a great accomplishment by liberal government to make the financial sector "safe." Yet, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are allowed to run their treasury busting business without nary a slap on the wrist---they continue to lose billions of taxpayer dollars each quarter. Liberals are going to claim that this bill is a great achievement. That is, of course, until another collapse rears its ugly head and then they will look to blame someone or something else.

Rainbows and Unicorns

The porkulus bill created three million jobs? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

It's time for another sales job!

The stimulus has not made much of a dent to private sector job creation, so Mr. Obama is on a propaganda tour to sell it to likely voters in the upcoming November elections. Isn't it interesting that a good chunk of the porkulus will get spent before mid-term elections?

Enjoy the decline!

I'm sorry, but this is still a waste...

According to this story on CNN, this one stimulus program is popular with Republicans because it puts people back to work:

There's at least one stimulus program that's creating jobs and winning praise from both sides of the political aisle.

A little-known Recovery Act initiative is expected to put more than 200,000 unemployed people back to work in 32 states and the District of Columbia. It's called the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund, and it subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits and government agencies.

But the $5 billion it receives runs out on Sept. 30, even though employers and state officials administering the money say there's lots more demand out there...

The "program will provide much-needed aid during this recession by enabling businesses to hire new workers, thus enhancing the economic engines of our local communities," Barbour said when the initiative launched last year.

While this program sounds promising at first, it essentially subsidizes hiring until taxpayer funds run out. Does that sound like an efficient way to run an economy? This is a perfect example of how people are fooled by short-term results while the long term ramifications are not even explored. CNN thinks this program is putting people back to work but this program is taking funds out of the private economy and having it redistributed by federal bureaucracy. How efficient is that?

Small businesses not hiring

More evidence that the "stimulus" has done nothing for small businesses and that matters will only get worse:

A payroll services firm says employers with no more than 19 workers made fewer hires in July than in any month since October. Those companies usually drive the unemployment rate down.

For the recovery to gain steam, most economists believe small businesses need to be strong enough to hire new workers. But according to one measure, the employment picture in this sector is weakening.

Intuit Inc., which provides payroll services for small employers, says the nation's tiniest companies had fewer new hires last month than any time since October.

The data are further evidence of a trend that has had many economists worried for months and intensifies concerns that smaller firms may not be robust enough to help lead the country out of its financial slump. The slowdown in hiring is particularly troublesome, experts say, because small businesses typically hire first during a recovery. A reluctance by little companies to add positions could mean that the big firms, which typically lag behind, will add jobs even more gradually.

"It's a bad sign," said Susan Woodward, an economist who tracks small business employment for Intuit. "Small businesses hire first — and they're losing their steam."

Does anybody believe that tax hikes next year will help small businesses?

Accounting gimmicks and Social Security

Despite what Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have been telling you, the Social Security trust fund is in bad shape. Robert P. Murphy at LVMI explains.

Prescient words from Uncle Milton Friedman

From chapter five of Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” which was originally published in 1962:

Each recession, however minor, sends a shudder through politically sensitive legislators and administrators with their ever present fear that perhaps it is the harbinger of another 1929-33. They hasten to enact federal spending programs of one kind or another. Many of the programs do not in fact come into effect until after the recession has passed…The haste with which spending programs are approved is not matched by an equal haste to repeal them or to eliminate others when the recession is passed and expansion is under way. On the contrary, it is then argued that a “healthy” expansion must not be “jeopardized” by cuts in governmental expenditures. The chief harm done…is therefore not that it has failed to offset recessions, which it has, and not that it has introduced an inflationary bias into governmental policy, which it has done too, but that it has continuously fostered an expansion in the range of governmental activities at the federal level and prevented a reduction in the burden of federal taxes.

Does any of the above sound familiar? All I read from liberal blogs and Paul Krugman these days is how it would be a bad idea to stop “priming the pump,” cutting government stimulus and spending. To be sure, we can see from the above quote from Mr. Friedman, that this is not a new strategy and it most certainly is not one that has favorable long term results. Anybody want to bet that it will all turn out differently this time?

Soldiers as historical art

These are some great photo's of soldiers posing as symbols of American history.

You're going to need one

Introducing the Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card!

Happy July Fourth!

Here's a little ditty by some guy named Jimi Hendrix.

Interview with a Zombie!

This video is a riot! Thomas Woods is interviewed by a zombie regarding his latest book. Since most talking heads and talk show hosts are brainless boobs, this zombie does a swell job.

Electric Sheep

Hey taxpayer, did you know that your government has decided that some of your hard earned money needs to be funneled to boutique electric car makers? That's right, it's for your own good too. You see, these electric cars are being hailed by everyone within earshot as the next big thing that will save us from the evils of fossil fuels. Oh, electric cars have been around for about a hundred years you say and will never really catch on because of their limited range and long recharge time? Well, too bad because there's nothing you can do about it. And if you complain be sure to know that you'll be attacked as insensitive to the environment, disdainful of technology, and uncaring about our dependence on foreign oil. What's the matter with you? Why these electric sports cars boast an impressive roster of celebrity customers that have shelled out $109,000 each for their eco-bling. Oh, did I forget to mention that they get a nifty federal and state tax credit for their selfless purchase? Yes, yes, our government knows winners when they see them. Especially if you're one of the owners of this company or someone holding one of their IPO's.

It must be fun to have access to other people's money and also be able to decide how to spend it.

It must be nice.

Daily Kos polling is bunk! What a shock!

Why am I not surprised by this? The Daily Kos posted a very disturbing poll about Republicans not long ago and the Left circled around it like sharks around chum. Well, it turns out that the whole poll was bunk. I've said it before and I'll say it again---the Daily Kos is not a reputable and reliable news source; it is essentially a blog that spews progressive propaganda with no regard to the verity of what it posts. It is the modern internet version of Pravda.

Addendum: It seems as the progressive site that I linked to above as proof of "sharks rounding chum" deleted its post hailing the Daily Kos poll. I guess the blogger found it too psychologically painful to handle the reality of it all.

Beck on Hayek

Mr. Beck hits a homerun in my estimation by hailing F.A. Hayek and "The Road to Serfdom."

Enjoy the decline!

This is a sobering projection but it is right on target with what I have been saying so far about the "stimulus" package:

Deep cutbacks by state governments such as California have all but obliterated the effect of the nearly $800 billion federal stimulus enacted last year, she said at a luncheon sponsored by the center-left New America Foundation.

Tyson said the current "jobs gap" between the number of jobs the economy is producing and full employment is about 11 million. Even if job growth surged to 350,000 a month, it would take four years to get the unemployment rate to where it was before the recession began in December 2007, she said.

If job growth is at a more modest 200,000 a month, it would take 11 years.

"When you look at the forecasts, you've got to go to 2015 before unemployment falls back to the 5 percent to 6 percent range" where it was before the recession began, Tyson said. The slowdown in Europe, a key destination for U.S. exports, makes things worse, she added.

Administration officials have indicated that Tyson is under close consideration to replace Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orsag, who announced his departure Monday.

With the current economic policy that this administration is advocating, I simply don't see matters getting better any time soon. More federal spending, more short-term tax credits aimed at some industry to boost demand, and more threats of regulation and higher taxes will not spur the economy to a strong expansion.

Great Blog Award

I want to thank Rich and Cher over at Askcherlock for this wonderful award. Please take some time and visit their blog. I find that even though we do have different political views, they maintain a lively blog and they also have a very tolerant core group of visitors which is very rare on the blogosphere. Thanks again, guys!

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!

White House budget director Peter Orszag to step down:

The most visible members of President Barack Obama's economic team, will be leaving his post in July—the most senior official to leave the Obama administration, according to two knowledgeable administration officials.

Officials close to Mr. Orszag noted that he had served nearly four stressful years in similar posts, first as director of the Congressional Budget Office, then as Mr. Obama's first director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Orszag helped steer through Congress a $797 billion economic-stimulus bill in his first weeks at the White House job before becoming one of the driving forces in shaping the health-care law.

One of the things about politics that drives me nuts is how hacks like Orszag can have such a negative impact on people that never voted for him. Orszag was one of the authors and advocates for the second "stimulus" package--a virtual porkfest--and he pushed ObamaCare like no other. Many generations of Americans will have their economic livelihoods diminished for many years while this guy will get a back slap and applause on his last day at his post.

We have a lot of Oil

Remember Tuesday when Pres. Obama said this: "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

Well, it's not exactly true.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get de-listed!

You must understand that as taxpayers we are liable for nearly $5.5 trillion. BTW, all of Fan and Fred debt is "off the books." So, we don't see their liability reported in the yearly federal budget.

Around the horn

1) Business as usual: More proof that the financial reform bill coming out of Washington is eyewash. The credit agencies get a free pass.

2) Just like Cash for Clunkers, Cash for Caulkers, Cash for Appliances, after the tax breaks end as they are now doing with the housing market, the positive numbers that some liberal economists would tout as proof of a a strong housing recovery start to fade away.

(Additionally, and on a macroeconomic scale, does anyone want to make a bet at what's going to happen when taxes go up next year when the Bush tax cuts expire? The Bush tax cuts act like a tax break for the greater economy in the same way that all these much smaller "Cash for" programs did; when the tax cuts go away, it's a sure bet that we are headed for the doldrums in the very same manner that auto sales slumped after Cash for Clunkers did.)

3) Even liberal news outlets are predicting a dire November for Democrats.

Don't give a junkie more drugs, don't give a debt junkie more debt

"We had less debt cumulatively (two years ago), and more people employed. Today, we have more risk in the system, and a smaller tax base," Taleb said.

~Nassim Taleb, professor and author of the bestselling book "The Black Swan."

They refuse to see...

This was my comment to this post:

There are three ways to increase aggregate demand:

1)”Prime the pump”–transfer wealth from the private economy to the public and then redistribute.

2) Have the central bank print more colored green paper.

3) Cut taxes.

Numbers one and two have been tried and we have little to show for it. Jan. 1, 2011 will be very interesting when taxes bump up again.

With less people working and paying taxes (the real unemployment rate is closer to 17% IMHO), those that are working will have to take up the slack with more taxes to pay for all the promises made by the political class. Somebody needs to stop shoveling before the hole gets too deep.

I have noticed on many liberal blogs of late an unmistakable air of denial on how policies by the Obama administration has essentially hurt our economic recovery. Instead, they have tried desperately to find an answer for the lack of job growth and the precipitous economic recovery. Some say that the stimulus wasn't enough, others say that this sluggish, limping growth is the "new normal" because of competition from China, Brazil and India---developing nations with economies that are half the size of the U.S. economy combined! (The total GDP of Brazil is roughly the GDP of the state of Texas!) I've even seen posts praising the Obama administration for saving us from the Great Depression (by the mastery of Tim Geithner!) that would have surely followed if a stimulus would not have been passed; this, of course, ignores the sad fact that the stimulus was essentially a giant wealth transfer scheme that pushed off the inevitable reckoning which fast approaches.

I am convinced that many of these liberal bloggers refuse to see the coming economic storm and the failure of Obama's interventions into the economy because it is simply too psychologically painful to admit that their man was wrong or that liberal fantasies of wealth distribution will not make us more prosperous. So it continues.

How minimum wage laws hurt teens

Criminal negligence

The following excerpt is from a letter to the WSJ regarding the Deepwater Horizon disaster:

The BP testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on May 25 says it all, but perhaps that material needs to be explained. From looking at that evidence, this is what we know:

1) When cementing the production casing the cementing crew, which was being supervised by BP, had difficulty landing the top plug into the casing shoe. This was the first "red flag" because a satisfactory cement job to the production string is fundamental to the safe operation on a go forward basis. The fact that the cement job did not go as planned should have caused the testing operation that followed to be carefully scrutinized, it clearly was not.

2) As is normal practice, the integrity of the pressure tight seal was tested by pressuring up on the casing and observing the pressure response. If pressure bleeds off there is clearly a problem with the pressure integrity of the shoe, However, industry practice dictates that a positive test, that is no pressure drop, is not diagnostic, simply because the reservoir pressure is sufficient to retain the pressure being applied. A negative test is useful because it is diagnostic of a failed cement job. In this case the test was positive.

3) Again, as is normal industry practice a negative pressure test was run, with pressure released from inside the casing and the pressure response was measured. In this case evidence has been bought before the committee that there was a 1,400 psi pressure response. This response is highly diagnostic and is therefore the second "red flag" and at this point the BP supervisors should have concluded that they had what the industry calls a "wet shoe." That is that the cement job had failed to form a seal at the casing around the reservoir which we know contains high pressure oil and gas.

4) At this point a decision should have been made to do a remedial cement job; this is an expensive operation, but having seen a 1,400 psi response, there was no choice.

5) The BP engineers then proceeded with the balance of the operation to temporarily abandon the well. This meant replacing the 14-pound-per-gallon mud that was in the wellbore with 8.5-pound-per-gallon sea water. The denser mud had been, up until this time, the primary pressure control and was keeping the hydrocarbons in place despite the lack of an adequate cement job at the casing shoe.

Given the two red flags that had been thrown up previously, one would have expected that as a precaution a cement plug would have been placed somewhere in the wellbore as a secondary pressure seal before this primary pressure control system (heavy mud) was evacuated from the wellbore. But at the very least the mud replacement operation should have been heavily scrutinized. Clearly it was not.

6) Evidence provided at the hearing, including the pressure data transmitted from the rig for the last two hours before the explosion, is diagnostic. At 8:20 p.m. on the day of the explosion the pressure data suggest there was a constant flow of sea water being pumped into the drill pipe that was displacing the heavier mud system which was the primary pressure control for the well. The rate going in was 900 gallons per minute, but the flow data of mud coming out was steadily increasing from 900 gallons a minute at 8:20 p.m. to a rate of 1,200 gallons per minute at 8:34 p.m. During this 14-minute period one can conclude that hydrocarbons were flowing and pushing more fluid from the wellbore than was being pumped in.

This letter which was written by the president of Samson Oil and Gas clearly illustrates that it really was sheer negligence by BP that caused the explosion which sank the rig. Every industry standard of safety and protocol was ignored. The question I ask is, how would more regulation have stopped such negligence?

More on why government fails!

This post hits the mark:

Liberals feel, not unjustifiably, that people act out of their own best interests yet, somehow, when you take a collection of selfish individuals and put them together in public office they transcend their nature. If only it were true...

Liberals will always set themselves up for failure by taking the moral high ground in creating complex governmental systems which fail because people will always view this type of failure as being worse than any other. Why? Because people elected fellow citizens to rise to the challenge to make our lives better.

When these complex Liberal governmental system fail it is the fault of private industry. Liberals will say: Acme Corporation spend millions on lobbying and that influenced the decisions of several members of a vast, unknown bureaucracy to make bad decisions. Within a short amount of time, a few government employees are crucified, the CEO of Acme is on the evening news, and Liberals move on. Liberals do not want to own up to the fact that it was they who created a government so entangled in everybody’s lives that they set the stage for too big to fail...

So what are the solutions? If the oil is near the coast and we need it, allow companies to get it thus ignoring the expensive, dangerous to find oil 5,000 feet below the water. If health insurance is expensive, allow insurance companies to compete against one another nationwide and find a way to make it work. Don’t create artificial markets like those for CO2 which suck limited capital away from things which can instead go towards more productive areas. Don’t tax people and companies to death giving them a disincentive to find new products and services to fill needs people have. In short, allow people to fill holes in life with their skills, talents, and drive don’t shut them down by forcing them to act in ways contrary to human nature. And, finally, except in areas of law enforcement, security, butt out.

~Read the entire post by Harrison Price at Just Politics.

More on government failure

1) The number one book on Amazon is written by an economist. Thank you, Glenn Beck!

2) The Treasury reports that U.S. debt will rise to 19.6 trillion by 2015; someone should alert congress.

3) The Congressional Budget Office has tacked on another $115 billion to ObamaCare. That brings the total cost to more than $1 trillion in the first ten years

4) Gold continues to hit new highs.

5) Strict European and federal requirements failed to spot cadmium in Shrek glasses. What else can’t they spot that could kill us?

6) A little hysteria and a vocal minority goes a long way. Federal officials now want to ban peanuts on airplanes. They might as well ban everything on board since there is bound to be at least one person or group that is allergic to something. Are you feeling safe yet?

Shoals ahead?

I'm not a big fan of Art Laffer but his piece in the WSJ
recently is worth your time:

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe "double dip" recession.

I wouldn't go as far as claiming that we will experience a "double dip" recession, but overall, I agree with Mr. Laffer---tough economic times lie ahead.

Printing Press Ben

One of the best video's I have seen from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute that explains the role of the Federal Reserve and its current open market operations; also covered is fractional reserve banking and why Bernanke is a very dangerous man.

Shortsighted environmentalism endangers humanity

With these two recent posts (here and here), Harrison Price over at Just Politics got me thinking about the damage that environmental groups are clearly responsible for and their knack to weasel out of complicity with skillful deflection when things go terribly wrong. Harrison reminds us of how enviro's in Alaska prevented an oil pipeline to be built overland to carry the oil that had to be shipped out by tanker; shipping oil by tanker is far more riskier than transporting it over pipelines--the Exxon Valdez disaster was ample proof of this.

But this also reminded me of hurricane Katrina. While the media focused on characterizing G.W. Bush as an uncaring bumbling jerk, little was brought to light about why the city of New Orleans flooded as easily as it did. Well, to make a long story short, environmentalists blocked the building of emergency floodgates that would have prevented a Katrina-like storm surge from causing the horrible damage. (Read the L.A. Times article on this here.) But somehow, the environmentalist groups that were responsible for putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in harm's way got little notice. This is a testament to the power of their emotional message while having powerful friends in politics and media.

Glenn Beck on Mao

Unemployment rate drops but most of the jobs created are temp jobs

From L.A. Times:

A burst of hiring of temporary census workers helped push down the unemployment rate in May, but the nation's private-sector employers added a mere 41,000 new jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday.

The jobless rate edged down to 9.7% in May from 9.9% in April, but that was because the federal government added 411,000 jobs for the decade population count. Those jobs were expected and will disappear quickly over the summer.

Where are the green shoots?

So according to the BLS 431K jobs were created in May…41K were in the private sector and 390K were temporary government census workers. This is hardly good news particularly since this temporary bump will be short lived.

Based on employment patterns for the 2000 census, nearly all such census employment gains should reverse out of the data by the end of September, with June payrolls reflecting the first outright contraction in the reversal of current hiring.

Let's face facts, the "stimulus" was a very expensive joke that essentially pushed off the inevitable hardship that states are going to have to deal with sooner or later and that taxpayers are going to have to pay back with interest to China. And all the "green collar" jobs that Obama promised would save us all? It was all B.S. This is an epic train wreck.

The cold hard fact is that Obama's economic plan is not working and is not going to work: it's all a wealth transfer scheme while printing dollars in order to evoke the short-term Philips Curve. But this time, unlike other times, the coming (and current) tax burden to businesses and citizens due to massive debt is dampening economic growth.

Are we heading towards the Spanish model of employment?

Jaime Levy Moreno over at LVMI writes the following sobering thoughts on the Spanish labor market:

For the last ten years, and especially since the recent financial crisis started, Spanish unemployment has risen astronomically, reaching a record of around 20 percent. This, of course, does not count the thousands of illegal immigrants, who don't appear in the official state statistics...

The headline unemployment rate we get fed by our government is useless too. But here's the real kicker regarding employment:

...In order to explain why it is so hard for recent graduates to obtain a decent job in Spain, it is important to know that labor costs are very high for employers — a consequence of strict laws that protect workers. Four weeks' vacation a year is the mandatory minimum. An artificially high minimum wage places a floor under the supply of workers and the demand for jobs, creating a devastating imbalance. This means there is a huge demand for jobs and little desire on the part of employers to fulfill it.

Additional reasons for the lack of job offers in Spain include the excessive finiquito, the final pay a worker is entitled to under Spanish law when fired: 45 days of salary for each year worked at the company. Furthermore, taxes on employers are very high — at least a 50 percent of each worker's annual salary, which means that if someone is paid €20,000 a year, it costs their employer at least €30,000 a year to hire them. All this makes an employer very reluctant to hire an employee, which creates a high rate of unemployment and a huge number of "garbage contracts." These taxes also promote black-market activity, which either sidesteps the established rules or ignores them altogether.

The taxes on employee wages are very high as well, which brings us back to the mileurista social status. These taxes create a substitution effect: firms have become desperate for new technologies to reduce labor inputs. One recent example in Spain is McDonald's move to start substituting workers with new machines that take the order for the customer, reducing the number of workers. The goal is to leave only two sets of employees — the ones in the kitchen and ones that hand the food to you at the counter.

The lesson here is that the harder and more expensive it is made for employers to hire, the less jobs will be created. Unfortunately, we have too many in the political class that believe that having the sort of "safeguards" that Spanish firms have to deal with is acceptable and a matter of fairness. Of course, what they don't tell you that there is a cost to implementing these labor regulations---less jobs.

Less Rigs, less work, more unemployed

From CNN:

The White House responded Thursday to concerns that the ban on drilling for oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico will cost the region thousands of jobs.

"The six month moratorium on deepwater drilling was instituted for a clear reason," White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN. "The President believes we must ensure that the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is never repeated."

But Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that prohibiting deepwater drilling could cost the state up to 6,000 jobs this month, and 10,000 jobs over the next few months, in a letter sent Wednesday to president Obama.

If the ban continues for an "extended period," Jindal said, the state could lose up to 20,000 existing and new jobs by next year.

The moratorium was extended last week from 30 days to six months pending the outcome of an investigation into what caused an oil rig operated by BP to explode and sink last month.

The ban requires all Gulf wells in more than 500 feet of water to shut down, and also prevents permits from being issued for any new deepwater drilling.

However, there are 4,515 shallow-water wells in the Gulf that will not be affected, according to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (LMOGA)...

...According to the LMOGA, roughly 33 floating drilling rigs in the Gulf will be idled as a result of the ban. Jindal said 22 of those deepwater rigs are off the coast of Louisiana.

And the group estimates that as many as 1,400 jobs are at risk for each of the 33 idled rigs.

Those jobs pay an average of $1,804 per week, which means the potential for lost wages for all 33 rigs could be as much as $330 million per month, LMOGA said.

Comment: I understand that people are upset about this horrible spill that continues unabated as I write this, but there is already a strong indication coming from the Obama administration to curtail or prevent future off-shore drilling. Some of this is to appease the radical "greenies" in the Democratic party but also to look like he is being tough on BP and Big Oil. Less drilling for our resources means less American jobs and less tax revenue. It also means more reliance on foreign sources for a product that, despite what "greenies" tell us, we will continue to use and need for decades to come.

Self-righteousness and force

Why go to college when public sector jobs are so SWEET!

Obama's Katrina?

This piece by Charles Krauthammer on the BP oil spill is too good to go unmentioned:

Here's my question: Why were we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep -- to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico...

...Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way."

"To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. No one has the assets and expertise of BP. The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.

Stingy, stingy!

Austrian economist Walter Block hails the miser!

Happy Memorial Day!

A great day to relax with family and don't forget to thank a vet too.

Walter E. Williams on Discrimination

Cities going broke

I hate to say it but I have a bad feeling that we are going to see more of these in the next couple of years.

Liberal economic plan is working to perfection...

From USA Today we find out that government payouts are now larger than private paychecks:

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. "This is really important," Grimes says.

The recession has erased 8 million private jobs. Even before the downturn, private wages were eroding because of the substitution of health and pension benefits for taxable salaries.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that individuals received income from all sources — wages, investments, food stamps, etc. — at a $12.2 trillion annual rate in the first quarter.

This is a worrisome trend that I don't see curtailing anytime soon with the wretched policies coming out of Washington.

The problem with regulation

Can you say regulatory capture? Economists have been studying this phenomenon for decades but some people simply are not convinced that it really does happen.

The Rand Paul kerfuffle

It is amazing how in three days so much has been written about Rand Paul and his statement about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here is one of the best I've read yet:

Even if Mr. Paul was speaking out of a principled belief in the rights of voluntary association, he was wrong on the Constitutional and historic merits. The Civil Rights Act of 1964—and its companion laws, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965—were designed to address abuses of state and local government power. The Jim Crow laws that sprang up in the South after Reconstruction and prevailed for nearly a century were not merely the result of voluntary association. Discrimination—public and private—was enforced by police power and often by violence.

In parts of the mid-20th-century South, black men were lynched, fire hoses and vicious dogs were turned on children, and churches were bombed with worshippers inside. By some accounts, two-thirds of the Birmingham, Alabama, police force in the early 1960s belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. State and local government officials simply refused to acknowledge the civil rights of blacks and had no intention of doing so unless outside power was brought to bear.

The federal laws of that era were necessary and legal interventions to remedy the unconstitutional infringement on individual rights by state and local governments. On Thursday Mr. Paul finally acknowledged this point when he told CNN, "I think there was an overriding problem in the South so big that it did require federal intervention."

One tragedy of that era is that the frequent use of "states rights" arguments to defend Jim Crow discredited those arguments for decades and eased the way for federal intrusions on state power that really are unconstitutional.

Here is another one.

Contending that only government power saved us from slavery and Jim Crow, it ignores the role of private power – the abolitionists, and the civil rights movement – that brought about that government power. More important, it invites us to believe that government had little or nothing to do with slavery and Jim Crow in the first place when in truth we would have had neither without government’s creation of those legal institutions, with legal sanctions that kept them in place. Indeed, it is limited government, government limited to securing our rights, that is the surest guarantee against those twin evils.

Comment: If Paul had explained the historical fact that it was government power (in this case, state power) that knuckled private businesses to impose a racist law they did not want, he would have weakened the liberal notion that if private businesses are left to their own devices that they will certainly all be discriminatory. That is simply not the case. Jim Crow was state sanctioned racism. It is a historical fact that private owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South lobbied hard against the Jim Crow laws. After the law was passed, they unsuccessfully challenged the law in court. These private businesses also implemented the law very sporadically in the beginning until some employees and even management were threatened with jail time if they didn't stop ignoring the law.

Private business did not want Jim Crow.

More from Power Hungry...

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" --Chapter 13.

In this chapter, I learned that all hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius are manufactured with rare earth materials called lanthanides. In fact, these rare materials are used heavily in solar panels and wind turbines too. And without these materials, there can be no hybrids, wind turbines, or solar panels. Guess who has a de facto monopoly on lanthanides? China. And guess who also has a lot of the lithium for those high tech batteries in hybrid vehicles? China. (Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia also have lithium.) So, while we hear from environmentalists about the evils of imported oil from countries that hate us, depending on “green” technology will have us dependent on rare earth materials from at least some countries that don’t like us—China and Bolivia. We would be back in the same boat. Incidentally, the above is another reason why solar panels and wind mills are manufactured in China. They have the raw materials and the cheap labor. So when Obama spoke about “green” collar jobs making solar panels and wind mills…well, those jobs would actually be created in China.

The Median CPI and Bees explained!

This is a fun video explaining median CPI.

HT: Carpe Diem

The Big Payoff and the Big Comedown

This portion from Mortimer Zuckerman's article in the WSJ
needs some attention:

It is not an accident that in framing the national stimulus program in 2009 Congress directed a stunning $275 billion of the $787 billion as grants to the states to support public-service employees in health care, education, etc.

So now that stimulus funds have dried up, I guess states are going to have to do what they were able to push off with stimulus funds--make some deep cuts to state spending. The public sector workers and their unions got a sweet deal from Obama. Now it's time to sober up.

More from Power Hungry...

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" --Chapter 12. The most salient point in this chapter could be summed up easily:

1) “Every megawatt of wind power that is added to a given electricity system must be backed up with a megawatt of gas-fired generation.” That’s right. If your city or county or state decides to add wind mills to it electricity generation, it then needs to either add a back up or it needs to currently have enough energy capacity in the existing system to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow. And those “back-up” forms of generation must always be manned 24/7 just in case they are needed. Think about that for a minute. If you are a public utility and you are mandated to generate some of your power from wind, you know that this means more employment, more overtime pay for you workers, more capital equipment expenditure—all at the expense of taxpayers and customers that have to pay higher prices. This is a pretty sweet deal for utilities. Additionally, you have “green wash” cover by politicians, environmentalists, and the poor deluded average citizen that believes that something good is being done for the environment while shelling out more for electricity.

More to come.

Arizona threatens to cut L.A.’s electricity!

Whoa! This whole “boycott” thing is getting out of control and ugly.

Does Free Trade Exploit the Poor?

Power Hungry--The truth about "green" energy exposed continued

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" . Chapter 11 deals primarily with T. Boone Pickens and his attempt to sell Americans on his plan. Of course, and no surprise to me, the Pickens plan was just an elaborate way of separating taxpayers from their money. However, there was one piece of information that I found interesting in chapter 11 concerning wind farms and that gets very little press:

1) Oil companies and power utilities have been fined heavily for killing birds. Many of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).

2) Despite the fact that wind mills are very effective bird Cuisinarts, they seem to have been exempted from MBTA.

3) “Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year are being killed by U.S. turbines.” This includes golden eagles.

4) Wind turbines also threaten bats.

At the end of this chapter, I concluded that the environmental movement and wind farm advocates consider birds to be an acceptable collateral damage on the road to the renewable energy utopia. Funny that they don’t hold wind power as accountable as other forms of energy generation when it comes to preserving nature.

Power Hungry--The truth about "green" energy exposed

A couple of days ago, I downloaded Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" to my kindle and I am about 1/3 of the way through it. The book is a trove of information on alternative energy and how unrealistic it is as a quick fix replacement for the much derided fossil fuels we depend on. I'm going to post some of the more salient points from some of the chapters as a reference for myself and others who may be interested in the information.

Chapter 10 dealt with Denmark and its wind-power generation. Here are some quotes and notes to ponder:

1) "Despite massive subsidies for the wind industry and years of hype about the wonders of the Denmark's energy policies, the Danes now have some of the world's most expensive motor fuel. And in 2007, their carbon dioxide emissions were at about the same level as they were two decades ago."

2) Denmark is an oil exporter because it has been very aggressive with its off-shore oil drilling in the North Sea. "Between 1981 and 2007, the country's oil production jumped from less than 15,000 barrels per day to nearly 314,000 barrels per day--an increase of 2,000 percent."

3) Despite its wind power generation, Denmark continues to import coal for electricity generation: Wind power will always need a back-up when the wind doesn't blow. Denmark also supplements their wind power with hydropower from Sweden when the doldrums come for an extended stay.

4) Denmark boasts near-zero energy consumption between 1981-2007 but this is achieved primarily due to near zero population growth and high energy taxes.

5) Electricity rates in Denmark are the highest in Europe. Danes shell out $.38 per kilowatt hour while the French pay $.17 per kilowatt hour. Americans pay $.10 per kilowatt hour.

6) "The Danes are among the most oil-reliant people on earth. In 2007, Denmark got about 51 percent of its primary energy from oil. That's far higher than the percentage in the U.S. (40%) and significantly higher than the world average of 35.6...Denmark is also more coal dependent than the U.S., getting about 26% of its primary energy from coal while America gets about 24% of its primary energy from the carbon-heavy fuel."

More to come.

Greece is the start of the avalanche

This is a great video by Freedomain Radio. Here are some salient points:

1) 20-30% of the Greek population works for the government.

2) Many Greek government workers can retire with a pension in their 40's!

3) Greek government workers work for 12 months but get paid for 14!

4) Greece was able to join the E.U. only by hiding its debt through swap agreements.

5) Greek taxpayers pay 44% (employees pay 16% and employers pay 28%) of salary for social security!

6) You will notice in this video that protestors have a penchant for red flags and Marxist inspired signs.

7) The ending comments on inflation, debt, and statism are spot on.

Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities

Some the trenchant points in this Center for Freedom and Prosperity video:

1) Federal deficits will average $1 trillion per year from now on.

2) The national debt is 60% of GDP today but is set to rise to 90% of GDP by 2020.

3) The Public Held Debt is how much money the federal government has borrowed from private credit markets to finance deficit spending--this stands at $9.9 trillion!

4) The Gross Federal Debt includes the Public Held Debt plus what the treasury has borrowed from other government accounts--such as the social security trust fund--and this debt stands at $14.5 trillion!!

Is it no wonder why gold has hit a new record high of $1,242.70 an ounce.

Another "Stimulus" failure

Now that stimulus funds are drying up, states are going to have to do what they should have done over a year ago--tighten their belts, come clean with residents. They were able to "kick the can down the road" waiting for a better tomorrow that hasn't come. Now the pain will be more severe.

This is one of the reasons why I was against the "stimulus" package. It was obvious to me that state politicians would much rather take the easy way out of not doing the unpopular task of cutting public services but accepting a federal crutch to buy time out of a financial disaster. The incentive to do the wrong thing was simply too juicy to pass up.

The Toxic Twins keep on sucking taxpayer funds

Two of the main causes of the housing boom and bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, continue to weigh heavily on taxpayers. Here is an abstract from the Boston Globe:

Fannie Mae has again asked taxpayers for more money — this time $8.4 billion — after reporting another steep loss for the first quarter. The taxpayer bill for rescuing Fannie and its sibling Freddie Mac has grown to $145 billion — and the final tally could be much higher.

The rescue of Fannie and Freddie is turning out to be one of the most expensive aftereffects of the financial meltdown, and Fannie Mae’s first-quarter financial report yesterday made it clear there is no end in sight.

“The losses are not going to stop soon,’’ said Anthony Sanders, a finance professor at George Mason University, who warns the housing market is likely to drop sharply again this year.

Late last year, the Obama administration pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Fannie and Freddie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion. And with the housing market still on shaky ground, Obama administration officials say it is still too early to draft any proposals to reform the two companies or the broader housing finance system.

Republicans, on the other hand, argue that the sweeping financial overhaul before Congress is incomplete without a plan for Fannie and Freddie. They propose amending the legislation to transform Fannie and Freddie into private companies with no government subsidies or shut them down completely.

The legislation “touches nearly every corner of the economy,’’ Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said in the GOP weekly radio and Internet address over the weekend. “But these major contributors to the crisis are left unscathed,’’ he said, singling out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Democrats call such arguments a diversion. They say Congress already gave the government far more power over Fannie and Freddie nearly two years ago when lawmakers passed a bill that set the stage for a government takeover over of the companies in September 2008.

Fannie and Freddie operate “in a manner entirely different than they had been during the crisis period, precisely because Democrats acted — in collaboration with the Bush administration,’’ Representative Barney Frank, Democrat from Newton, Mass., wrote last week in a memo to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Their losses “occurred before we took the first step towards reforming them . . . nothing we could do today will diminish those losses.’’

Comment: I find it extraordinary that Democrats still want to run interference for these two entities. When Fannie and Freddie were nationalized, I knew that they would continue to be used as a political tool for the current administration. BTW, all of their debt is "off the books." So, most Americans are not aware of the $5.5 trillion liability looming in the shadows. Can anybody say--Greece?

Here is another news link on Fannie Mae and it's massive debt.

Economics in one lesson

Henry Hazlitt can be heard reading a passage from his classic book; it is still very relevant today.

The Louisana oil spill and liberal dreams

This WSJ piece on off-shore drilling and the Louisiana accident is right on the mark:

As the oil in the Gulf of Mexico moves toward the Louisiana and Florida coasts, the left is already demanding that President Obama reverse his baby steps toward more offshore drilling. The Administration has partly obliged, declaring a moratorium pending an investigation. The President has raised the political temperature himself, declaring yesterday that the spill is a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster."

The harm will be considerable, which is why it is fortunate that such spills are so rare. The most recent spill of this magnitude was the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in 1989. The largest before that was the Santa Barbara offshore oil well leak in 1969.

The infrequency of big spills is extraordinary considering the size of the offshore oil industry that provides Americans with affordable energy. According to the Interior Department's most recent data, in 2002 the Outer Continental Shelf had 4,000 oil and gas facilities, 80,000 workers in offshore and support activities, and 33,000 miles of pipeline. Between 1985 and 2001, these offshore facilities produced seven billion barrels of oil. The spill rate was a minuscule 0.001%.

According to the National Academy of Sciences—which in 2002 completed the third version of its "Oil in the Sea" report—only 1% of oil discharges in North Americas are related to petroleum extraction. Some 62% of oil in U.S. waters is due to natural seepage from the ocean floor, putting 47 million gallons of crude oil into North American water every year. The Gulf leak is estimated to have leaked between two million and three million gallons in two weeks.

...As for a drilling moratorium, it is no guarantee against oil spills. It may even lead to more of them. Political fantasies about ending our oil addiction notwithstanding, the U.S. economy will need oil and other fossil fuels for decades to come. If we don't drill for it at home, the oil will have to arrive by tanker and barges. Tankers are responsible for more spills than offshore wells, and those spills tend to be bigger and closer to shore—which usually means more environmental harm.

Comment: The wailing at liberal blogs regarding this horrible accident has, of course, reached its expected perfervid pitch. And I see the usual cavil arguments about a de-regulated oil industry prompted by George W. Bush prevented the use of an acoustic switch which would have prevented all of this mess. All of this is of course unfounded. Some countries do mandate the use of an acoustic switch (Norway, Brazil) and some do not (U.K.). U.S. regulators decided against the use of the switches because of cost and reliability issues. I tried to point out to one guy that all the acoustic switch does is set off the more central blowout preventer remotely and that subs had tried to activate the blowout preventer manually with no success which means that the acoustic switch may not have mattered one way or another. The blowout preventer is malfunctioning. He was not impressed with my argument but instead deleted my post. Classy.

I also made the following observation at other blogs when liberal bloggers were quick to jump on the "drill, baby, drill" crowd and their point on how safe off-shore drilling is: When an airliner tragically crashes and kills everyone aboard, does anyone suggest that society should revert back to ocean liners to get from, let’s say, Boston to London? No. When there is a pile up of cars where passengers are killed, does anyone suggest that society revert to the alternative of horse and buggy? No. Accidents happen even in a perfect world and no reasonable person is going to revert to a lower standard of living because of the threat of the odd incident. So why is oil held to a different standard than other technologies?

Oil is utilized in some form in every stage of production for a constellation of goods. How are you going to make medical devices, medicine, fertilizer, parts for vehicles, etc. without petroleum? Our economy would come to a standstill without it.

There are almost 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that have been operating for years without an accident of this magnitude. This event is a clear outlier in an industry that has done a remarkable job with safety.

The usual argument I read at some liberal blogs is that we need to reduce our consumption of oil so that we don't have to drill as much. I find it astonishing that anyone could believe that this is possible with a growing population and a growing (I hope) economy. Even Denmark which is held up as a wind-mill utopia by liberals has INCREASED its off-shore drilling aggressively and its IMPORT OF COAL in order to meet rising demands. Additionally the Danes have to live with some of the most expensive gas and electricity prices in the world. And that's with very little population growth (just slightly above zero) compared to the U.S. Between 1998 and 2008, the Danish population grew by just 200,000 people. During the same time period, the U.S. population grew by 33 million people. So, I find it shocking that anyone would believe that we could "conserve" our way to less oil consumption.

Trust me, if the U.S. stops its off-shore drilling, countries like Denmark, Norway, Brazil, the U.K., China and others, are going to continue to expand and to be aggressive with their off-shore programs and we will have to depend on them to supply us and the rest of the world.

Catching the imposters!

Here are some great pictures of Tea Party infiltrators getting identified.


Pictures of this anti-war protest in March are fascinating!

Feeling sorry for Big Oil

Rothbard explains why an oil spill, which occurred some time ago, brought out the hysteria in the press and the environmentalists too. It's not any different from what we are witnessing today.

We don't need less investing and savings, folks

Dan Mitchell does a brilliant job at explaining the dis-incentive to save and invest with the capital gains tax.

Price controls, write-downs, and ObamaCare

I'm still guest posting over at The Bobo Files once a week. This week's entry deals with the write-downs that several major companies are going to have to do because of ObamaCare. Last week's post dealt with price controls and ObamaCare. Check them out when you can.

The Greeks will get some of your hard earned money

Congratulations, dear American taxpayer. You get to shore up Greek profligacy. Ruminate on this when the austerity measures fail and the welfare-state loving Greeks are back to the streets putting bricks through windows. I've read several news articles on this and not a one mentions that the International Monetary Fund is largely supported by American taxpayers. I wonder why?

So you want to build a wind farm?

From The Boston Globe:

The nine-year regulatory battle over the nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm is expected to end this week, when US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to issue a final federal decision on whether to permit 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound.

But some opponents of the wind farm are making it clear that if Salazar approves the project, they will go to court to try to overturn his ruling.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, on Martha’s Vineyard, issued a statement yesterday saying they will sue if Salazar approves the project in the 560-square mile sound. The group is one of two Wampanoag tribes that say the proposed turbines, which would be more than 400 feet tall, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and threaten ancestral artifacts on a seabed that was once exposed land.

The Aquinnah tribe said it has hired a lawyer experienced in tribal historic preservation efforts to “fully prepare for administrative and judicial relief should the project move forward.’’ The statement said the tribe has identified more than 14 “legal shortcomings’’ by the Minerals Management Service under the National Historic Preservation Act and may also allege violations of other federal laws.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the main opposition group to the proposed wind farm, has also indicated it will probably sue if the project is permitted.

Advocates for wind energy are closely watching the progress of the Cape Wind project. A flurry of wind farms have been proposed along the East Coast over the past several years, and as technology improves, more are expected.

Supporters say approval of the Nantucket Sound project would pave the way for the United States to catch up to European countries that already have offshore wind farms, and even to surpass them eventually.

But wind energy advocates are also worried that if Salazar denies the project over the concerns of the tribes, other Native American groups — or owners of historic properties — will be emboldened in their efforts to quash proposed wind farms elsewhere.

All I can say is---Go Wampanoag Tribe! Don't trust government! They have screwed you for hundreds of years and they will screw you now for a deranged cause!

Wind farms are the great pie-in-the-sky "clean" energy that environmentalists and their political enablers love to trumpet whenever they find an appropriate situation that may be susceptible to their argument. In this case, it's a great swath of land that can be easily exploited, in their opinion, at the expense of a lowly Indian tribe in the "Blue" state of Massachusetts. The truth about wind farms is that they take up a LOT of land to produce a comparable amount of power that a nuclear power plant could. So imagine massive amounts of land being carpeted by these ugly beasts. Of course, those that are well connected and politically powerful--like a Kennedy--will always be able to stop any plans to block their beautiful view with ugly wind mills. But in Massachusetts, a lowly band of Indians are acceptable fodder.

Advice to Tea Partiers

The Cato Institute has 5 pieces of advice for Tea Partiers:

1. Republicans aren’t always your friends.
2. Some tea partiers like big government.
3. Democrats aren’t always your enemies.
4. Smaller government demands restraint abroad.
5. Leave social issues to the states.

Rothbard tackles the insidious VAT

In this essay criticizing the possible implementation of a Value Added Tax back in the 1970’s by the Nixon administration, Murray Rothbard once again exhibits the sharp insight and the scalpel like perspicuity that he would readily wield into a cogent libertarian argument. In the case of the VAT, the argument raised by Rothbard against it still remains strong and very convincing. Here is an abstract:

The American public will pay a high price indeed for the clandestine nature of the VAT. We will be mulcted of a large and increasing amount of funds, extracted in a hidden but no less burdensome manner, just at a time when the government seemed to have reached the limit of the tax burden that the people will allow. It will be funds that will aggravate the burdens on the already long-suffering average middle-class American. And to top it off, the VAT will cripple profits; injure competition, small business, and new creative firms; raise prices; and greatly aggravate unemployment. It will pit consumers against business, and intensify conflicts within society.

I urge you, dear reader, to read this essay. It is as relevant today as when it was written thirty-eight years ago.

Cash for dishwashers!

From SFGate:

The federal government is giving away $35.2 million to Californians who are buying energy-efficient appliances, but consumers will have to act fast to get the mail-in rebates provided by the latest federal stimulus program.

Rebates will be distributed through the "cash for appliances" program beginning Thursday — Earth Day — to boost the economy and cut energy use in the nation's most populous state.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to buy energy-efficient appliances, recycle their old ones and take advantage of the program's three rebates: $200 for refrigerators, $100 for clothes washers and $50 for room air conditioners.

The federal program was created last year, but each state is distributing the money according to its own rules. In California, the Energy Commission is administering the rebates.

Here we go again. They are transferring wealth from one group of taxpayers to another group--One group doesn't need to buy anything but they still have to chip in for the group that was going to buy anyway. Absurd. Well, at least appliance makers and suppliers make a killing, right? Of course, our government doesn't have the cash to fund this program so it has to do some borrowing by selling government bonds, and therefore pay interest to bondholders, to "give away" these rebates. Ladies and gents, your tax dollars at work.

What ever happened to protesting being patriotic?

Partisan liberals are currently working hard (again!) on a smear campaign against Tea Party protestors. Here are two great excerpts of posts by conservative bloggers on the subject. The first one is Rossputin.com:

The narcissistic and condescending views of Presidents Obama and Clinton is not peculiar to them. Such views are an inherent part of being a true-believing Progressive. Progressivism is based on a fundamental lack of faith in individual citizens or in organizations of citizens to make the best decisions for themselves or for the nation. Progressivism’s key attribute is its insistence that the “smart people", the technocrats, the people who really “care", should be handling the levers of power over every important aspect of our lives, from education to resource allocation.

It is of no matter to a Progressive that every such political construct has failed in the past, with the size of the failure proportionate to the size of the implementation of Progressive (i.e. socialist) ideas. For a Progressive, past failures only mean that not-quite-smart-enough people were put in charge, or that the government domination of the private sector wasn’t complete enough for their plans to work.

The other is by our old friend Harrison Price at Just Politics:

Liberals across the country are on the ropes so it’s time to pull out the slander and lies and they are already trying to sell the story that Tea Party protesters (whom Obama said he was “amused by”) are violent and will cause violence.

During the presidency of George W. Bush “protest is patriotic” however during the time of Obama it is… seditious?

Uncle Milton on wealth transfer

Is the minimum wage racist?

Walter Williams thinks that it is:

One of the more insidious effects of minimum wages is that it lowers the cost of racial discrimination; in fact, minimum wage laws are one of the most effective tools in the arsenals of racists everywhere, as demonstrated by just a couple of examples. During South Africa's apartheid era, its racist unions were the major supporters of minimum wages for blacks. South Africa's Wage Board said, "The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would likely be employed."

What's a demagogue to do?

How does a country that relies so much on energy exports suffer rolling blackouts due to an energy shortage? This paradox is playing right now in Venezuela where socialist big mouth, Hugo Chavez, has gone a long way to crush the private economy for the sake of a larger role for his left leaning regime. Now Mr. Chavez, whose popularity has hit new lows because his many promises have failed to materialize, has new friends in China who will throw $20 billion into the sparse Venezuelan coffers, so that Chavez can go on a public relations spree fixing up highways and various other languishing public works projects. Hmmm...this whole thing sounds kinda familiar.

Links for today

1) My weekly guest post over at The Bobo Files is now posted. Subject: Obama and his Big Labor friends are getting snuggly by the day.

2) The Independent Bloghorn has excellent economic analysis from STRATFOR, an international affairs organization, on China that is worth your time.

3) Just Politics has very interesting comments on unemployment benefits.

Baaaah, baaah! I love government!

Here are some of the lame signs brought to the recent Boston Tea Party protest by some anti-Tea Party sheeple.

Happy Tax Day!

Arrggghh! The beast needs to be starved. Here's what tax forms looked like in 1913.

If only they had read Thomas Sowell...

The emotional issue of "price gouging".

Around The Horn...Newsworthy Links And Posts!

1) From The Economist's Cookbook: Do you know how to assert your rights when being confronted by police?

2) Also from The Economist's Cookbook, one of the best comment I've read lately on Abraham Lincoln.

3) Jeff Perren on liberty and Thomas Jefferson.

4) An entertaining video of a guy who can be deadly accurate with business cards from Freaky Frugalite.

5) The Division of Labor and love.

6) That home-buyers tax credit comes with a hefty price tag.

7) Cracked World has a great post on racism and the Tea Party movement.

Unicorns and Rainbows ride the rails

The California high-speed rail project is a perfect example of how citizens in California have slowly committed economic suicide by believing in unicorns and rainbows:

Is it a high-speed rail ride to the future or a Bay Bridge boondoggle times 10? That's what lawmakers are wondering as more and more questions arise about the plan to build a multibillion-dollar bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"I'm all for high-speed rail, but I want it to be high-speed rail done right," says state Sen. Joe Simitian.

Simitian has plenty of reasons to be concerned. Not only will the rail line go right through his Peninsula district, but also he chairs the Senate budget subcommittee that oversees the $9 billion in voter-approved bonds for the project.

In addition to worries about how many backyards will be torn up for the line, he and other key legislators are asking question's about the High Speed Rail Authority's business plan - which remains murky at best.

For example, no sooner had voters approved the bond package than the initial $33.6 billion price estimate jumped to $42.6 billion because the authority had failed to account for inflation. And that cost could climb even higher if the rail goes underground through the Peninsula, as many communities are now requesting.

Then there is the estimated ticket price for a trip from L.A. to San Francisco, which has jumped to $105 one way - making the line much less competitive with the price of an airline ticket...

One of the biggest fears, however, is that the state will not be able to keep the explicit promise made to voters that they would not be on the hook if the finances fall short.

This is becoming a common scenario in California; in this case, gullible voters approve billions for high-speed rail bonds without really knowing the total cost. The whole project was sold as a solution to a host of issues like pollution reduction, congestion reduction, and besides, Europe has high speed rail and we should be just like them. All good reasons, I guess, to blow through billions of state funds on a project that smells like a boondoggle.

The cost of complying with the IRS

Public Pension Crisis

Why the heck did I go to college? I could have joined a public union early on as a roadside sign inspector or something and been better paid than most people in the private sector. Additionally, the pension benefits are SWEEEET!

Around The Horn...Newsworthy Links And Posts!

1) Good luck in trying to tax the rich to close the deficit.

2) Nearly half of U.S. homes escape taxes.

3) Mortgage rates jump higher as Fed stops buying mortgage-backed securities.

4) Another liberal crusade and another evil chemical that they need to save us from.

5) Milton Friedman on hope.

6) Is the Tea Party like the KKK?

Lemon capitalism

GM loses billions in the fourth quarter of 2009. Didn't the federal government "lend" GM billions of tax payer funds?

Our health care future

If you want to see what the likely future of national health care will be like in the future, look to what is happening in the state of Massachusetts:

The standoff between Massachusetts regulators and health insurance companies intensified yesterday, as most insurers stopped offering new coverage to small businesses and individuals, and state officials demanded that the insurers post updated rates online and resume offering policies by Friday.

People seeking to buy health insurance for the first time, or customers looking to change policies, found they could not do so, at least temporarily.

The confusion — or market chaos, as one insurance industry official called it — followed the state Division of Insurance’s rejection last week of 235 of 274 premium increases proposed by insurers. The increases were for policies covering what is known as the small group market, which includes more than 800,000 people across Massachusetts.

Insurance Commissioner Joseph G. Murphy said he has asked insurers to quote rates for new coverage through the state’s Health Connector website by week’s end, and reminded them that they are required by law to do so. The new quotes would use base rates set last year, plus additional factors such as the age and size of a company’s workforce, Murphy said.

“If we don’t see the rates posted by the end of the week, we have a variety of enforcement tools at our disposal, including the ability to fine carriers,’’ warned Murphy. “It’s imperative that consumers have information available to them as they consider their purchasing options,’’ he said.

Health insurers, however, said they could not calculate new rates until a judge rules on their request for an injunction to prevent the state from continuing to block increases for the coverage period that started April 1. Insurance carriers had proposed premium rate increases averaging 8 to 32 percent, which the state found excessive. The case is expected to go before a Superior Court judge in Boston as early as tomorrow.

What a mess, but it's really not a surprise. Hang on tight because this is coming to a theater near you.

Creating more problems...

Ever wonder why that McDonald's salad costs more than the Big Mac? Well, it's no surprise that our government has something to do with it.

Too little, too late

I'm getting a real kick out of finding articles in liberal newspapers about the ravages that ObamaCare will inflict on states and small towns. It's too bad that they didn't do this kind of reporting BEFORE the bill was passed.