One Obama paragraph. Five errors.

I've been very, very busy at work, so I haven't been posting much on this site.  I've been producing things that other people want.  I produce things that people voluntarily give their money for. 

The president of the United States has been very busy too.  But he takes things by force. 

Fortunately for the nation, Barack Obama has disadvantages that I (and many others) don't have. 

You see, we're not burdened by being totally full of shit. 

Here's a recent Barack speech, in italics. 

"You'll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there's gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible.  And there's a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. 

And I take pride in being the Point Man for Tarrant County, Texas, for many of those who say "a plague on both your houses".  Both houses spend other peoples' money like drunk cowboys.  Both sides support the Drug War, they've supported the War on Gays, the War on Brown People, etc., etc., etc.  My side doesn't. 

But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific.  We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well;

Name ONE "economic theorist" who says that if "the folks at the top" (and they're centered around D.C.) do well, then EVERYBODY ELSE is going to do well.  Name one.  Barack, I will kiss your ass on the White House steps, and give you 30 minutes to draw a crowd beforehand, if you can produce the economic theorists who claim that if the folks at the top are doing well, then EVERYBODY ELSE will somehow do well.  There will always be some losers.  Always.  In the purest libertarian capitalist system that anyone can imagine, there will be some heartbreaking losses.  Someone, somewhere, will be the last VHS cassette manufacturer. 

BTW, here's a map of the wealthiest counties in the USA.  I'll never tire of posting it.  Barack is in the middle of that radioactive orange spot. 

....who deny the science of climate change;

Well, you got me there.  Climate is changing.  It always has.  I believe that it always will.  So does everyone else.  But I'm not going to stop flying, or hauling the nation's toilet paper around in semi-tractors.  Barack, you aren't going to stop flying either.  So please, please, please drop the posturing.  We've been through four or five Ice Ages in the past, and we're blessed to live in the gap between a couple of them now.  Enjoy it while it lasts.   

....who don't think making investments in early-childhood education makes sense;

Here's an analysis of the Government Accounting Office's study that proved that investment in early-childhood education don't make sense (when government is the party making the investments).  Most caring people in America have heard of this study.  Read it, for God's sake....

who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you're not living in poverty.... 

If, if, if....If, if, if....  That's like saying "if you get lucky enough as a low-skilled victim of public schools and the legal system and the drug war, you're not living in poverty."  We have a horrifying number of unemployed minority teens in this country.  They are unemployed because the minimum wage is too high.  The only alternative to that view is to believe that employers are now more racist than they were 70 years ago. 

...who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.

I scoff at that notion.  I repeat....  I scoff at that notion.  And if you are honest, so will you.  Think of your workplace.  Think of someone who does your exact job, with your exact experience level, and your exact output, and your exact level of training. 

Thought of that person yet?  No?  Well, you never will.  He or she doesn't exist.  That's why this segment of Barack's Inequality Crusade is a red herring.  It's a feast for lawyers and the government's regulatory munchkins. 

Also, if you adjust for hours worked and education, women make virtually the same as men.  Barack's Pajama Boys pulled that 77% number out of their asses. 

So there you have it.  One paragraph of a Barack Obama speech.  Five misrepresentations of reality.  He could've said that Republicans are superstitious homophobes.  Well, maybe.  He could've said that they're scared of people with different skin colors from theirs.  Well, yeah, but so are Democrats.  Barack could've said that Republicans are Crony Capitalists of the worst possible sort, and I woulda stood on my coffee table and cheered. 

There's so much low-hanging fruit out there, just waiting on a politician like Barack to reach up and pluck it. 

He can't even do that properly. 

Sorry for the anger in this post.  But I'm so tired of that man.  I've spent a long, long day trying to hire and train victims of our public schools who first became victims of the Welfare State, who then became victims of the Drug War, and who then later became victims of "the helping professions" in government social work bureaucracies.  The system depresses me and terrifies me. 

Good night. 

I was wrong, wrong, wrong !!!

I found this old post while looking for something else, and found a terrible mistake. 
Look at prediction #4 on this link.
I apologize for the error. 

Government didn't invent the internet

I always thought that our government invented the internet, and usually conceded that point in barroom arguments. 
I was wrong, and I apologize for the error. 
From the Wall Street Journal.  I'm scraping the whole thing before it disappears behind a paywall:

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."


It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.

For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project. In a 1946 article in The Atlantic titled "As We May Think," Bush defined an ambitious peacetime goal for technologists: Build what he called a "memex" through which "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."

That fired imaginations, and by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network—a "world-wide web." The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

.But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

So having created the Internet, why didn't Xerox become the biggest company in the world? The answer explains the disconnect between a government-led view of business and how innovation actually happens.

Executives at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., were focused on selling copiers. From their standpoint, the Ethernet was important only so that people in an office could link computers to share a copier. Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox's venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations. "They just had no idea what they had," Jobs later said, after launching hugely profitable Apple computers using concepts developed by Xerox.

Xerox's copier business was lucrative for decades, but the company eventually had years of losses during the digital revolution. Xerox managers can console themselves that it's rare for a company to make the transition from one technology era to another.

As for the government's role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed—just as the commercial Web began to boom. Economist Tyler Cowen wrote in 2005: "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."

It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It's also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

From the people who want to control the economy, your health, police the world, and lower sea-levels

Here are the press credentials for the next Teleprompter Jesus campaign trip. 
The states where the Teleprompter will be installed are shown in white. 

Note to the Brits, Aussies and Canadians who visit this site regularly:  Denver, the last city on the list of Teleprompter stops, is in Colorado.  The Obama team highlighted Wyoming instead. 
Hey, a square state is a square state. 

Confessions of libertarian revenuer

About three weeks ago, I started corresponding with an IRS agent.  Yes, a living breathing IRS agent. 

After he convinced me that he wasn't going to try to audit my dachshund manure business, we started talking about the problems he saw within his agency.  After a while, I started feeling like a priest in a confessional. 

After I asked him to flesh out his story a bit, I got this gem of an email. 
Enjoy. 
For many years, I have been living a lie.

I have kept my orientation a secret from all but the most trusted of friends. I carry on my duties, day after day, knowing that if my peers knew my deepest feelings, they would hate me. I know that if my employer found out who and what I was, I might get fired. I bear the hidden guilt of someone who took an oath to do things contrary to my own conscience.

No, I am not a gay soldier recently liberated by the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I am a libertarian who works for the federal government.

More specifically, I'm a Senior Revenue Agent for the Internal Revenue Service.

To some, that might sound a lot like a Vegan working for a meat packing plant. Although I accept your visceral revulsion at the apparent hypocrisy, I respectfully disagree. Most libertarians are for minimal government, not no government. Most libertarians are for lower, flatter, more fair, and more consistent taxes, not zero taxes.

I support a flat tax out of the principle of fairness. If that means that some of my coworkers (or me) gets laid off, so be it. I do worry about my ability to find a job, but I am not so unprincipled that I would alter my beliefs because they might impact my wallet. Even with a flat tax, the government and firms will still need accountants.

I will not provide too many details about myself or my duties, because I still want to keep my job. Also, my responsibility to my work demands confidentiality. So I will speak in generalities, and I pray that you will listen to my tale without requesting personal information or enlightening details. I remain in the closet.

I began working for the federal government not out of some sense of civic duty, but because it was a decent job offer at a tough time. I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Accountancy, and scored a junior position with a Big Six accounting firm. I worked mostly on accounts for medium-sized firms, but eventually graduated to big accounts. Unfortunately, my esteemed private employer had some rather large difficulties with one client you might have heard of, and I found myself looking for other employment.

I don't believe the ethical stain of my previous employer transferred much to me, but finding work in our profession was difficult at that time. I was offered and accepted a job with the IRS. At the time, I considered myself a Republican with some socially liberal beliefs. I wasn't politically active, and I didn't find much joy in seeing the guys in the red jerseys win. Several scandals involving Republicans in my home state turned many people against the GOP, and an inexperienced, little-known Democrat from Chicago joined the Senate that year. I was more interested in women, sports, fast cars, and other things that young men like.

Earlier, in my sophomore year of college, I had taken an economics course in which the professor talked about Austrian economics. It would be more accurate to say he ridiculed them. But his contempt for their species only made me want to learn more about them. I discovered the Von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL, and applied for a scholarship to attend one of their summer sessions. I was accepted, but I had to cancel my trip at the last minute because a water line broke and flooded my apartment. I did, however, receive all the books which sat on my bookshelf, unread, for many years.

While applying for work, I began to read the works of Von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Bastiat, and others. I was enthralled with their prose, thinking to myself, "YES!, this is EXACTLY what I believe!"

Still, I didn't harbor any ill will toward my government. I didn't feel oppressed as a citizen or a taxpayer - yet.

I met a wonderful woman in Chicago and, shortly after I took the IRS job, we got married. We had a beautiful daughter together, and I bought a house near the federal building. Little did I know that my American Dream was going to turn into a nightmare of self-discovery and disillusionment.

For the first time in my life, I had to pay high income, sales, and property taxes. Fees for state services were high, and the cost of living was incredible. I was well-paid by the standards of mere mortals, but the vast majority of my income was consumed by my mortgage, taxes, insurance, and retirement savings. Even with a dual-income family earning into the six-digits, we struggled to pay our bills. Despite the large bills for taxes, the services we received were substandard by the measure of any other state I've lived in.

In my early years with the Service, I treated the accounts like nothing more than files to review. When I found tax delinquencies or suspected fraud, I reported them to Collections or Investigations. I didn't recognize that there were HUMAN BEINGS on the other end of my work. I didn't merely do my job with diligence, I thoroughly ENJOYED being a petty bureaucrat and prided myself on being the best there was. Happiness was an empty In-Box. I received awards almost yearly for the zeal of my examination efforts and subsequent collections. I was doing the Lord's work.

Things fell apart. First, the Service began to outsource some of our duties to private firms in order to save money. In order to protect my job, I joined our labor union. The union promised to "fight" to maintain our jobs, our pay, and our benefits. Indeed they did. A few years afterward, the government finally relented and brought Collections back into the government fold. They claimed that our system of Collections was more efficient, and that every dollar spent brought in $7 of revenue.

The following year, I was blind-sided with a spurious allegation of professional impropriety based on an anonymous complaint. After a deeply disturbing investigation that turned up no evidence, I was essentially cleared; but no one survives such an anal exam without scars. I ceased to be regarded as the "Golden Child" in my Division. The awards stopped even though I worked as well and harder than ever.

Once I became persona non grata, going to work was painful. But we had just begun this terrible recession and accountants were having difficulty finding work or retaining their jobs. I know, because the moment I was threatened with being fired, I began a new job search and no one was hiring.

The union was of little help to me. Sure, they sat by my side as the Service probed me, but they didn't do much to help. As we moved into the election season, I began to notice that the union was hell-bent-for-leather to elect Democrats to office. Although they are prohibited by law from contributing directly, they had a PAC that gladly accepted voluntary donations, and we received requests for donations frequently. Almost all of the letters from the union president spoke in bellicose rhetoric of "fighting" for more pay, more benefits, more employment, and she directed anger squarely at Republicans. There wasn't even a facade of impartiality. Their priorities were JOBS, PAY, BENEFITS.......... and every other facet of employment far behind.

I recall a story - perhaps apocryphal - of the head of the US Patent Office who suggested the office be shut down because everything that could be invented had already been invented. History has proven him to be short-sighted, but think about that for a moment! The head of a US government agency recommended that his OWN OFFICE be shuttered - that all of the staff be fired and his claim to glory and power be incinerated.

Do you think that the Secretary of Education would ever say, "Our work here duplicates and interferes with the work of the states, and we should close the Department of Education."?

Do you think that the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would ever conduct a research study into deposit insurance that might conclude it causes moral hazard in the banking system, and therefore the FDIC should be disbanded?

Would a Secretary of the Navy suggest he had too many aircraft carriers, or would the Postmaster General ask that mail service be privatized?

Do you think that the head of ANY government organization would take a sober, independent, logical, and reasoned look at the work they do and conclude that it is a waste of taxpayer money?

Would any public sector union agree that their employee retirement plans were unsustainable and employment or wages were too high?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you must be smoking dope (which I do think should be legal).

Earlier this year I was planning on attending a research conference in Washington, DC, but it was canceled because of budget cuts. In fact, most of our conferences this year were canceled. Most people would think that eliminating conferences to Vegas where $16 muffins and $10 boef bourginon appetizers are served is a good thing. Not so fast.

Conferences are often the ONE TIME per year where colleagues in our organization across the nation get to meet, face to face, to discuss our work. In a single line item, conference expenditures look enormous by layman's standards, but it is a tiny fraction of our operating budget. By far, the most important expense for a federal agency is employee pay and benefits. Even the combined expenditures on daily or weekly trips adds up to more than any 5-star resort conference. I submit that the attention given to conference travel lately is a red herring, designed to distract you from the real problem - excessive government.

I was watching Fox News last week and heard the commentators making fun of an Obama official's signature. I ignored the empty rhetoric and focused on the subject line in the memorandum: Eliminating Excess Conference Spending and Promoting Efficiency in Government.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2011/m11-35.pdf

The letter explains that President Obama asked all his federal agencies to review conference expenditures and other "unnecessary" expenses in order to make government more efficient. It proceeds to list the numerous steps The Chosen One has taken to reduce federal expenditures (notwithstanding an enormous increase in our deficit). The memo reads more like a campaign ad than a presidential directive.

Look, I have been examining corporate accounts for years, and I never saw a single company with negative earnings that could get back into the black by switching to Kyocera printers, reusing coffee filters, selling the corporate jet, switching to single-ply toilet paper, or by making the CEO work for free. A company awash in red ink has problems too large to be solved by small measures. And even after earnings resume, it takes years for a company to dig itself out of the hole it was in to restore customer, supplier, and investor confidence.

This nation is awash with red ink, and cutting nickels and dimes is like holding a bake sale to retire our national debt. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone waste no matter how small, but we need to think BIG if we're going to attend to our problems. If $16 muffins gets people angry enough to march on DC with torches and pitchforks, then show me my place in line. I think this anger will soon subside as attention turns to the next American Idol and the next two World Series teams. When a federal agency cancels a conference, it doesn't send the cash back to the Treasury - the canceled expense goes back into the agency budget where it is SPENT ON SOMETHING ELSE - something far less transparent and far less useful than a conference of professional employees. Trust me, I don't shed any tears over canceled conferences, but doing so accomplishes very little.

I believe that many of my coworkers and I are diligent and capable public servants, but I'd be lying to you if I said we were all necessary. I'd be lying if I told you that there weren't government employees who sit at their desks reading books. I'd be lying if I said there weren't too many layers of middle management where "good ol' boys (and girls)" were promoted just to keep them happy and in the government service. I've even seen the revolving door between the regulators and the regulated.

I remember a defining moment when I began to realize that I was referring PEOPLE to Collections. It's true that many of these people were tax cheats or incompetent at managing their finances. But I forgot about all the cases where we collected taxes ahead of all the employees, suppliers, customers, and creditors to whom the business owed money. Uncle Sam always jumped the queue. I forgot that many of these businesses fell on hard times, and their business' survival very well could have hinged on the amount of taxes they paid; but for onerous taxes, they might have made it.

Many of my colleagues never left bureaucrat mode. To the ingratiators, their primary stakeholder is their boss, not the taxpayers. Some are "Retired on Active Duty," coasting to an easy pension. Others don't bother to approach even a minimal standard of duty performance, and managers are too spineless to counsel them much less fire them. If they receive a middling evaluation, they'll still complain they are being poorly treated. It's tough to get HR to do their jobs in processing personnel actions swiftly and correctly. When you do outperform your peers, there is a lingering air of contempt for having raised the bar. Supervisors are notoriously risk-averse, adding their veto to anything that is even remotely innovative (and hence disparaging or disturbing of the status quo). Nevertheless, the official propaganda is focused on high performance and institutional change - you're just not supposed to believe it.

I've spent my own time (not taxpayer time) reading those Austrian books, and I'm impressed now more than ever. I clearly see the government stacking the deck for favored constituents. Now, I clearly see the strings holding all the puppets, making them dance for other people's amusement. I've seen various government programs which tried and failed to drag us out of recession.

But more importantly, as the housing and financial crisis inflated, I saw the government "profits" rolling in. At the IRS, we work closely with states since they usually base their taxes on federal taxable income. We monitor and research revenues from all sources. From the late 1990's through the mid-2000's, government revenues were pouring in everywhere. Tax authorities were ebullient - flush with revenues from artificially-created wealth. We knew the good times wouldn't last, but we didn't care. Taxes were our business, and business was GOOD!

After the crash, we continued to cruise on the momentum we had built. Friends of mine who worked for other federal agencies were working overtime (for additional pay, of course). When a recession strikes, the demand for government services skyrockets. Federal and state employees were never so loved and hated, feared and respected as when millions of people NEEDED our assistance and cooperation to take their turn sucking at the teat of government. Through two presidents and an accommodating Congress, life was still good for the federal employee.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Colosseum to see the gladiator fights and the lion feeding. When the recovery didn't go as smoothly as planned, the taxpayers of this great nation began a quiet revolt. It was the sound and sight of millions of locusts, still in the distance, but heading straight for the harvest. Government entered panic mode. Managers in various divisions and agencies went into overdrive to justify with data the reasons for their continued existence. From bogus investigations and committees, to frenetic leadership, to pointless cheer leading, to political rent seeking. Values gave way to toeing the party line. It seemed that the only job of a government employee was to retain their job.

As the TEA Party gained momentum and Republicans stole Nancy Pelosi's gavel, the Earth shook in Washington, DC, and I'm not referring to the recent tremor. When Obama finally conceded that greater expenditures were no longer politically feasible, he embraced faux austerity. It was now no longer a matter of whether he would make cuts, but how much. And he was too beholden to labor unions to concede too much; this had to be a controlled release of pressure.

I remain in the eye of the storm. The changes to the payroll tax have kept us busy. I quit the labor union, refusing to donate one more dime to an organization that puts themselves above all other interests. It's their sense of ENTITLEMENT that is most repugnant. They can't fathom the idea that we could ever serve the American people with fewer employees and at a lower labor cost. In my position, I'm relatively underpaid as Accountants go, but I have a non-pecuniary benefit of relatively secure employment. I"m not complaining about low pay. There are many people at the IRS, though, who serve no useful purpose.

I empathize with anyone who has or will lose his job, and I hope I don't have to face that - but I already have once lost a job, and I may yet again have to stretch my neck for the executioner's axe. I have faith that my investment in human capital will see me through.

If I were the Head Guy in Charge, here's what I would do:

- Eliminate either the corporate income tax or the tax on dividends and capital gains
- Implement a flat tax with an exemption of one-half the national median income, adjusted annually
- Start from the top of Whited Sepulcher's list of government agencies and see which ones we could do without
- Have my Vice President start at the bottom and work up, meeting me in the center.
- Privatize social security, making each person responsible for their own retirement savings and ending redistribution
- Eliminate public sector unions for every purpose other than ensuring fair processes and procedures for employees.
- Privatize most government services wherever feasible
- No taxes on blood, sweat, or tears

I would end all forms of corporate welfare. I'd end the federal minimum wage. I'd require states to have a balance budget on a multi-year cycle with stress tests on their budgets.

I would move our national capital to Salina, Kansas, making the surrounding area as inhospitable to lobbyists as possible. Congress would become a part-time job. Remaining government agencies would be located in areas where land is cheap and high-quality labor is available. Washington DC would be renamed "Monument City," representing the monumental waste of resources and its role as a monument to monolithic government power and authority.

Barry Obama would be forced to take Amtrak back to Chicago, although I'd rather run him out on a rail in its original sense.

I'd make our military leaner and meaner, setting a more modest agenda for our role in international diplomacy and defense, but wielding a terrible swift sword against any enemy who dares to threaten us or our allies.

I'm not sure which Republican I support for the nomination yet. It's doubtful Ron Paul could win, and if he did he'd likely get chewed up by both parties.

Ladies and gentlemen, our government is rotten to the core. From the Civil War to the Great Depression and WWII and through the Civil Rights era and the Post-911 world, our government has taken on enormous power and eroded our liberty. It will take decades (not four or eight years) and extraordinary leadership by many people to unwind it. The entire culture of government must be changed.

I'd recommend a Constitutional Convention to rewrite our beloved laws in a way that even retarded lawyers could understand it, but to me they already possess crystal clarity for anyone willing to study the history of our great Republic. Could the Ninth and Tenth Amendments be made any more clear?

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know in which direction I want to go. Thank you for your patient and kind attention. I'm spent. Rant concluded.

A libertarian revenuer.

Why Rick Perry is wrong - Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme

For years, I've mistakenly thought of Social Security as a Ponzi Scheme.  I was wrong.   
What's a Ponzi Scheme, you ask? 

Here's the U.S. Securities And Exchange Commission's answer:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.

During the recent Republican debate, Texas Governor Rick Perry made a stir by declaring that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme.  Lamestream Media outrage immediately blanketed the earth.  Animal shelters were working overtime because of the MSNBC Talking Heads having multiple litters of kittens all over their desks.  If I remember correctly, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews stood and ceremonially tore their garments and dipped their foreheads in hot vats of black ashes.  (I've got it Tivo'd at home, and will correct the names if necessary.)  Mitt Romney, in a white heat to look like the responsible adult in the room, rushed to the program's defense.  New York Timesians have gathered to reconcile their faith with the inconvenient evidence of Ponzi-ism. 

I laughed and laughed.  I shouldn't have. 

According to Reason magazine, my current source of infallible doctrine, Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme.  Here's why:

1)  Ponzi schemes take money from new suckers and use it to pay older suckers.  Social Security collects money from new victims, uses some of it to pay previous victims, and spends the rest on stimulus packages, Cash For Clunkers, TARP, wars, prisons, slop, slush, and kickbacks to supporters and government drones.  Trillions of dollars from the Social Security Lockbox have been looted in this manner. 

2) Ponzi schemes attract their money through fraud and lies.  Social Security funds are collected at gunpoint.  If you disagree with that statement, try not paying for Social Security. 

3) When Ponzi schemes run out of suckers, they collapse.  When Social Security starts running low on suckers?  The men with guns simply raise your rates.  Here's the Cato Institute:

In fact, Social Security taxes have been raised some 40 times since the program began. The initial Social Security tax was 2 percent (split between the employer and employee), capped at $3,000 of earnings. That made for a maximum tax of $60. Today, the tax is 12.4 percent, capped at $106,800, for a maximum tax of $13,234. Even adjusting for inflation, that represents more than an 800 percent increase.

In 1950, every retiree had sixteen Social Security victims working to support him.  We now have only three suckers working to support every retired sucker.  In 2030, it'll be only two suckerw working to support every retired sucker.  Look for the men with guns to increase your rates. 

So.... according to Reason magazine, Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme (in the Bernie Madoff sense of the word). 

It is something much, much worse. 

I regret my previous error. 

The vintage poster came from here. 

Helpful Advice

Never go online to ask for proof...

If you really don't want something to be proven. 

The Awesome Predictive Powers of The Global Warmists

Here's The Independent (UK) from just 10 years ago....March 20th, 2000.  Put your coffee down.  You don't want to get giggly and start spewing all over your keyboard:

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

This is a pic of the snow on the A3, taken a couple of days ago. 

....However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

This dude is in Epsom, somewhere in South England.  He's trying to dig out his car from all the non-snow.  Please take note that the insane statements about the snow came from Dr. David Viner, a legit scientist from the Infallible, the One True Church, the Peer Reviewed Climate Research Unit at The University Of East Anglia.  I'm not anti-science.  I'm not an anti-intellectual.  But in this case, I think Dr. David Viner and the CRU Hockey Team were looking for a payday. 

....David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Here's a picture of a British kid in the "virtual cold".  Jesus Christ Almighty, I can't believe these clowns are still taken seriously. 

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

No, Doc, heavy snow like this always causes chaos.  It doesn't matter if you call it weather or climate.  Heavy snow causes chaos. 

The chances are certainly now stacked against the sort of heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in "London Snow" of it, "stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying".

Not any more, it seems.

I bet someone wishes he could take a Mulligan on that last sentence. 
Oh, and here's The Telegraph (UK) from a couple of days ago.  Almost every road in Britain is a snowed under mess....

Forecasters warned that parts of Britain could see record low temperatures this week of -26C (-15F). Heathrow will experience lows of about -9C (16F) tonight and further snowfall is expected in the South East during the evening rush hour.


Motorists continued to struggle. The M25 was closed in both directions for about six hours while drivers on the M40 in Oxfordshire suffered severe delays.

Commuters were warned to expect treacherous conditions with thick ice and freezing fog today. Train passengers also face delays and cancellations, particularly in the North. Eurostar services between London and Paris have also been affected.

Air travel experts warned that even when the weather improves it will take at least 48 hours before flights return to normal.

And let's close it out with a comment from Powerline, from which all these great links came....

It's fun to ridicule the warmists because they are so often wrong, but their errors are in fact significant: a scientific theory that implies predictions that turn out to be wrong, is false. A principal feature of climate hysteria is its proponents' unwillingness to be judged by the standards that govern real science.



Yeah, they screwed up when they offered a concrete prediction, and it really hurts the funding when  prophecies don't come to pass. 
They'll not make that mistake again. 
But don't despair.  Let not your heart be troubled. 
If you look over in the sidebar, you'll see a countdown for the end of 2013, when Gore predicted that the polar ice caps will disappear. 
The blog entry for January 1, 2014, is going to be a fun post to write. 

Best. Correction. Ever.

Every now and then, people get in a hurry and have to issue a correction. 

Go here. 

Public Education Billboard Of The Day

From HolyCoast.com:

NOT a Photoshop. 

How manly is your drink???

All I'm going to say in my defense is that Michelob Ultra has only 2.5 carbs per serving, okay? 
Before I switched over to Michelob Ultra, the few things I consumed were clustered around the Keith Richards "Hair On Your Chest" axis. 
I got up to 237 pounds before I switched over to Michelob Ultra.  Now I weigh 185.  So there. 
I've never even been aware of the existence "Sophistication" scale running from left to right. 

I was never a frat boy. 
I used to be a lightweight, then I became a heavyweight, mostly from eating rice stuffed inside baked potatoes, wrapped in Texas Toast, and then deep-fried inside a pizza crust. 
That's the ONLY reason I switched to Michelob Ultra, okay?  To lower the carbs.  But it's actually pretty good stuff. 

I drive a Ford F-150 pickup.  I've stared down employees who are rapists, thieves, and convicted felons. 
Michelob Ultra is good stuff.  Especially the Pomegranate Raspberry flavor one.  I've always wondered why bartenders kinda giggle to themselves when I order that. 

I shot a 6-point buck the very first time I went deer hunting.  Top that, Justin Bieber. 

The defective, faulty, erroneous chart came from here.
I also kinda like the Barry Manilow CD where he covers Broadway show tunes, but that doesn't mean anything. 

The list of the mistakes in the list of the mistakes

Go here for the Obama administrations review of the mistakes made that allowed Captain Underpants to get on flight 253 with explosives tucked into his drawers on Christmas Day.

Go here for the preliminary list of the Obama administrations obvious mistakes in the Obama administrations review of the mistakes that allowed Captain Underpants to get on flight 253 with explosives tucked into his drawers on Christmas Day.

This list of mistakes in the list of the mistakes is still being vetted for mistakes by Patterson Management Systems (PMS). Any mistakes in the latest list of corrections to earlier lists of mistakes will be released as soon as possible.

In the meantime, please ask yourself why you want these people running our healthcare system.

Jeff Jacoby Responds

Yesterday, Jeff Jacoby, Libertarian Demigod and Op/Ed journalist for The Boston Holy Globe, graciously responded to my "Public Schools, Private Schools, and Carl Carter" post. He had written a column in The Globe deploring the government's near monopoly in education. I loved the article and linked to it, but with a lengthy caveat that a little Guvmint intervention was for the best - they forced school integration in the 60's, for instance, correcting a grossly unjust situation.

Jacoby's email was polite, but devastating. This was the key sentence....

But just remind me -- who was it that segregated the A. W. James Elementary School in the first place?

It was, ahem, (cough, cough) The United States Government. The aspects of education they were best at repairing were the parts they had screwed up.

And that's why he's published through The Boston Holy Globe, and I'm published through a company laptop. I'll try not to depart from proper small government principles ever again.

The Whited Sepulchre, having been spanked, regrets the error.