Why The Libertarian Party Has So Many Ballot Access Problems

Skullduggery is underway in Ohio to keep the Libertarian Party off the ballot. 

In 2012, we had to find a Texan named Gary Johnson so that our presidential candidate named Gary Johnson could be on the ballot.  (That's a long, tiresome story that you wouldn't bother reading if I wrote it.) 

Baptist preachers can get on the ballot in Saudi Arabia easier than a Libertarian can get on the ballot in Oklahoma. 

Here's the simplest explanation, courtesy of somebody on Libertarian Reddit. 

I'm recruiting Tarrant County candidates until the December 9th deadline.  Every one of them will be on the ballot. 

God Bless Texas !! 

I am a Mercedes-Benz

Let me begin by saying that I am a Mercedes-Benz.  Not a Ferrari, not a Rolls, not a Corvette, but a little better than a Cadillac. 

I'm 53 years old, work in a family business, and I've always been pretty damn good at what I do.  I've been "Employee Of The Year" or "Manager Of The Year" for three different companies, one of which you've probably heard of. 

If Washington decides to raise the minimum wage to $20.00 an hour I won't be one of the ones going unemployed because the political idiots set the bar too high for me to find employment.  Except for one brief stretch of starting over in a new field, I've made more than $20 per hour for the last 30 years or so.  (Thirty years ago, $20 was more like today's $40.)   

Now that the throat-clearing is out of the way, here's what you'll find this morning in the New York Holy Times:

The White House has thrown its weight behind a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.  

“The president has long supported raising the minimum wage so hard-working Americans can have a decent wage for a day’s work to support their families and make ends meet,” a White House official said. President Obama, the official continued, supports the Harkin-Miller bill, also known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25.  

The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Tom Harkin of Iowa and in the House by George Miller of California, both Democrats. It would raise the minimum wage — in three steps of 95 cents each, taking place over two years — to $10.10, and then index it to inflation. The legislation will probably be coupled with some tax sweeteners for small businesses, traditionally the loudest opponents of increases to the minimum wage.

The overwhelming majority of economists know that there is a trade-off with this type of legislation. 

1)  They know that the true minimum wage is zero dollars per hour, and that the higher Washington sets the minimum (actually, a price floor), the more low-skilled workers they condemn to earning the true minimum wage, which is....zero. 

2)  They also know that higher and higher minimum wages have a disproportionate effect on teen employment, minority employment, and most of all, teen minority employment.  A couple of years ago, when the unemployment rate was at 9%, teen unemployment was at 24%, and black teen unemployment was at a whopping 42%.  (It's now dancing around 50%, BTW.) 

Why does this happen?  As a very general rule, minority teens have no skills.  No track record.  No one knows if they can get to work on time, work hard through an entire shift, or get along with others. 

The same thing can be said about white teens.  But white parents can (generally) get to work on time, work hard through an entire shift, and (sometimes) get along with others.  And the apples usually don't fall too far from the tree. 

So if you're thinking about hiring a kid, who are you going to go with?  The little white snowflake from the 'burbs, or the black kid from the 'hood?

Here's what you're going to do.  I've sat back and watched you do it.  This is the minority teen unemployment rate, cross-referenced to the rising minimum wage.  One of the most beautiful correlations you'll ever see:

I'm almost 100% safe from unemployment.  So is my daughter.  We got us some skills.  We can type, manage, hire, fire, ship, transport, purchase, cashier, file, pile and get 'er done. 

I'm a Mercedes-Benz. 
Minority teens are 30-year-old Yugos. 

If the government declares that the least you can pay for a car is $50,000.00, which one are you going to buy? 

You're going to go with the Mercedes every time. 

Good work, Barack!!




 

Own it, Democrats. Own it.

From Pro Publica:

San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are “cradle Democrats.” They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election.

Since 1995, Hammack and Brothers have received their health coverage from Kaiser Permanente, where Brothers worked until 2009 as a dietitian and diabetes educator. “We’ve both been in very good health all of our lives – exercise, don’t smoke, drink lightly, healthy weight, no health issues, and so on,” Hammack told me.

 The couple — Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59 — have been paying $550 a month for their health coverage — a plan that offers solid coverage, not one of the skimpy plans Obama has criticized. But recently, Kaiser informed them the plan would be canceled at the end of the year because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The couple would need to find another one. The cost would be around double what they pay now, but the benefits would be worse.

 

“From all of the sob stories I’ve heard and read, ours is the most extreme,” Lee told me in an email last week.

Hammack and Brothers apparently didn't know that a healthcare scheme concocted by a president with no medical, business, insurance or reality experience, then finger-f***ed by a Congress selling freebies for votes, and then implemented by contractors with nothing on their resumes but political connections....  Well, they just thought the idea would somehow work. 

Hammack recalled his reaction when he and his wife received a letters from Kaiser in September informing him their coverage was being canceled. “I work downstairs and my wife had a clear look of shock on her face,” he said. “Our first reaction was clearly there’s got to be some mistake. This was before the exchanges opened up. We quickly calmed down. We were confident that this would all be straightened out. But it wasn’t.”

Sweet, sweet little rabbits.  Let me explain the world to you.  If you hand over control of your life to other people, they're not going to concern themselves with what you need.  Their concern will be for 1) the needs of themselves and their families, 2) the needs of their supporters, and finally 3) your needs.  It's always been that way.  You can look it up. 

I asked Hammack to send me details of his current plan. It carried a $4,000 deductible per person, a $40 copay for doctor visits, a $150 emergency room visit fee and 30 percent coinsurance for hospital stays after the deductible. The out-of-pocket maximum was $5,600.

This plan was ending, Kaiser’s letters told them, because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. “Everything is taken care of,” the letters said. “There’s nothing you need to do.”

The letters said the couple would be enrolled in new Kaiser plans that would cost nearly $1,300 a month for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).

And for that higher amount, what would they get? A higher deductible ($4,500), a higher out-of-pocket maximum ($6,350), higher hospital costs (40 percent of the cost) and possibly higher costs for doctor visits and drugs.

This couple's old plan was what they wanted. 
Barack Obama knows what they really need. 

Here's some Rolling Stones. 

You can't always get what you want.  But if you vote for Obama, you'll get what you need.



 

Stop praying in public. It is sinful

From The Christian Science Monitor:

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that challenges whether the city council of Greece, N.Y., can open its meetings with a public prayer. The arguments will likely focus on an appeals court ruling that found the prayers – given by a range of believers from Jew to Wiccan but dominantly Christian – smack too much of religion.

The lower court said those giving the prayers were prone to “convey their views of religious truth.”
The high court may not take kindly to judges passing judgment on the types of prayers, at least the spoken kind that are delivered in a government setting. For a court to impose a definition of prayer – by reviewing prayers and then banning them – could be seen as coercive. It would imply a government hand in how individuals should, or should not, pray.

Godalmighty, I'm so tired of writing about this.  Here's what Jesus had to say about public prayer.  (And Jesus is the primary god/ghost/spirit/SkyMan being prayed to in this conflict.)  If you accept his teachings as infallible, it carries the same weight as his teaching on giving, self-sacrifice, and money, all of  which, now that I think about it, is also cheerfully ignored. 

Matthew 6:5-8

⁵ “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ⁶ But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ⁷ And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

That's it.  The final word.  When you pray, go to your room and close the freakin' door.  Don't get behind a microphone and ask God's blessings upon the unholy works of the Greece, N.Y. city council. 

 

TANSTAFHC

TANSTAFHC. 

TANSTAFHC is a bastard acronym fathered by Don Boudreaux and Robert Heinlein. 

"There Ain't No Such Thing As Free Health Care". 

Someone is paying for the free healthcare.  The doctor is being fed.  The medicine didn't create itself.  The electric bill really does have to be paid.  The nurse typically has to pay rent or a mortgage. 

It ain't free. 

Please do the world a service, and start slapping TANSTAFHC all over the U.S.  The Affordable Healthcare Act isn't free.  You will not get free healthcare. 

And the closer we get to the goals of the Affordable Healthcare Act, the further it's going to get from affordable. 

 

Canada has a lottery to determine who gets to see the local doctor

Here's some good stuff about Canada's healthcare system, and I can't believe that Republicans didn't make more of it during the ObamaCare enactment tragedy of several years ago. 

All of the "civilized" nations have universal healthcare, right? 

It seems that Canada has a doctor shortage.  Canada's healthcare system is run by the government. 

To quote the great Milton Friedman,  "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."  That probably applies on both sides of the U.S. northern border. 

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor. 

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

There are places in Canada that have a freakin' lottery to determine who gets to have a family doctor.

Ok, that's out of my system.  Why a lottery?

As of 2007, there were 12,000 Canadian docs practicing in the USA. 

In 2006, 1 in 9 Canadian-educated physicians practised in the United States. If physicians who were born in the United States are excluded, this number is reduced to 1 in 12. This accounts for just over half of the net loss of physicians from the Canadian-trained physician workforce. Collectively, this is equivalent to having 2 average-sized Canadian medical schools dedicated to producing physicians for the United States. Canada is the second largest source of immigrant physicians to the United States, second only to India.

People go where they can get a better return for their labor.  Doctors do it, I do it, and you do it. 

No one smart enough to get through medical school wants to be at the mercy of some charismatic, photogenic idiot who managed to get elected by claiming that a doctor's time and labor is a basic human right. 

So Canada now has a doctor shortage, especially in rural areas.  So do they turn healthcare over to the free market? 

No.  That wouldn't be "fair". 

Do they open more medical schools and train more doctors?  Do they allow nurses to handle more of the medical treatment load (which every nurse I've ever known claims that she could do....)? 

No.  That would be giving up central control. 

Canada has a lottery to see who gets a family doctor. 



Within 20 years, the USA will have a lottery system for family doctors. 

Enjoy the decline! 

3 Possible Explanations For Leftist Behavior

Your chances of being seriously injured in an automobile accident today are much less than 1%. 
If you have a baby in the car with you, and the child is not in a protective "infant seat", the child's chance of serious injury or death is still much less than 1%.  It's not even 1/100th of 1%. 

But if you want to see our friends on the political left start tearing out their hair, ripping their clothes, calling the police, and having fainting spells, just throw a two-year-old in your car without strapping the kid into an infant seat, and make a quick run to the grocery store and back.  There is a very small chance that you could do some small injury to the child, and this makes nanny-staters have anxiety attacks. 

Now, consider this: 

If a government doesn't have any restraints on its ability to print paper money - i.e. "fiat currency" - the chances of inflation ruining its economy are 100%.  It will have a ruinous effect on every child in the nation.  They will all live diminished lives as a result of older generations refusing to pay as they go.  It will happen every....single....time.  ALL paper money has eventually become valueless (except to collectors and hobbyists) and it has always been the younger generations who are stuck cleaning up the mess. 

Here's another fun fact.....  Each year in the United States, approximately 30,000 persons with BB and pellet gun-related injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments.  Most (95%) injuries are BB or pellet gunshot wounds; 5% are other types of injuries (e.g., lacerations sustained inadvertently while cleaning or shooting a gun, or contusions resulting from being struck with the butt of a gun). Most (81%) persons treated for BB and pellet gun wounds are children and teenagers. 

That's why most of our friends on the political left don't allow their kids to go near a BB or pellet gun.  (Side note - When I was a kid, my friends and I often had minor BB and pellet gun-related injuries.  None of these battle scars were accidental, because we were shooting at each other.  Fun as hell, and the current generation of fragile, dainty, precious little snowflakes will never know that joy.) 

30,000 minor injuries per year from BB guns, and 95% of the victims are children and teenagers?  That's a lot. 

Contrast that unspeakable horror with this one.  The minority teen employment rate is now approaching 50%.  With 8 million minority teenagers in the U.S., this means 4 million are unemployed. 

Our minimum wage laws make it illegal to employ them.

(The thought process of the Statists is that the kids are better off unemployed and jobless at a minimum wage of $7.25, than employed and productive at the wage of $3, $4, or $6 per hour that their skills are worth.) 

Our friend on the left do not give a shit.  You really can't imagine the size of the shit which they do not give.  Go figure. 

Our friends on the political left want to do whatever is necessary to protect us from the big, bad world.  They'll delay the approval and release of life-saving medicines, even though the delays probably cost us 100,000 lives per year.  They even boast about how many lives the new drug will "save" each year.  Do the math, and you'll quickly learn how many lives were lost by preventing the manufacturer from selling it 5 years earlier.

So why the disconnect? 

My theory is that Statists just enjoy messing with agreements that are none of their business.  I don't like the idea that there are people whose skills are only worth $3.00 per hour.  I hate it.  But I also know that work of any type, for any salary, teaches people about punctuality, dependability, and other good work habits.  Almost all $3.00 labor is eventually worth $7.25 to someone, somewhere.  So you'll never catch me lobbying for an alternative universe where low-skilled labor is worth as much as skilled labor.  I don't have that mindset.  As long as the parties in the job agreement does what they says they're gonna do, it's none of my business, or yours. 

Here's another possibility for the contradiction.  Statists generally aren't held responsible for unintended consequences of their policies.  Rather than voting for the candidate who promises to reduce eliminate Social Security payments to millionaires, they support the guy who is going to print money to make the payments.  The kids don't see an immediate harm to themselves, and plus, kids can't vote.  That might explain some of the bizarre policies, and the same explanation easily applies to stimulus packages, economic development boondoggles, and healthcare debacles. 

Those theories - love of meddling and freedom from consequences - aren't enough to explain all of it. 

There's always the possibility, of course, that they're just freakin' stupid.