Why Police Officers Lie Under Oath

From The New York Holy Times, via Instapundit:

“In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so. That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. . . . Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in. . . . In 2010, a New York City police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that ‘our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.’ He continued: ‘At the end of the night you have to come back with something. You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.’”

Hit the Times link to read the whole thing.  And VOTE TO CUT OFF THE FUNDING !!!

Government Cheese

"They'll turn us into beggars, cause they're easier to please...."



Give a man a free house and he'll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he's a big spender
no food on the table and the bills ain't paid
'Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They'll turn us all into beggars 'cause they're easier to please
They're feeding our people that Government Cheese

Give a man a free lunch and he'll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat 'cause he doesn't have to pay
Give a woman free kids and you'll find them in the dirt
Learning how to carry on the family line of work
It's the man in the White House, the man under the steeple
Passing out drugs to the American people
I don't believe in anything, nothing is free
They're feeding our people the Government Cheese

Decline and fall, fall down baby
Decline and fall, said fall way down now
Decline and fall, fall down little mama
Decline and fall, decline and fall
Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he'll climb in the back even though nobody's driving
Too ******* lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he'll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can't you see
I ain't gonna eat no Government Cheese

Hit this link before criticizing a single sentiment in this song.  Lord have mercy, what a mess. 

You Get What You Pay For

From The Daily Pundit:

Our society chooses to pay for bastards and wonders why the number of bastards increases. Our society refuses to support poor families with married fathers in residence, and wonders why the number of single mothers increases. Our society pays for single motherhood, and wonders why we get it. Our society gives stipends to unemployed and/or homeless males, and wonders why we get more and more of them.


Why on earth would any of the poor pay attention to “cultural signals” when the check that comes to them pays for exactly the opposite?

The phenomenon is called "perverse incentives". 
It is why a government anti-global warming program is paying me to run forklifts all night.  (Hit the label below)
It is why we're subsidizing corn syrup producers while subsidizing an anti-obesity campaign. 
It's why a lot of beautiful, intelligent kids are put in Special Ed in exchange for their parents getting a "crazy check". 

But but but but....our intentions are always so pure !

You got served !!

From the greatness of Reason magazine, on how to deal with Nanny State legislators who don't know how to find their way out of a sack, but who believe they know what's best for you to eat:

San Francisco's ban on giving away a free toy with a child's meal containing a certain number of calories, salt, and other particulars is set to kick in tomorrow. McDonald's, the clear target of the ban, had a year to figure out a way to change its business practices. Seems like they used the time wisely, reports the SF Examiner.

The San Francisco ban on providing free toys to entice children to eat unhealthy foods goes into effect Thursday, but McDonald’s plans to comply with the law by charging 10 cents a toy for their Happy Meals and donating the money to the nonprofit Ronald McDonald House.

(Catch that nice bit of editorializing about what's "unhealthy" there?)

And from the SF Weekly:

In any event, it appears the fast food chain's sharpie lawyers have McTopped San Francisco's legislators. Count this city's lawmakers as the latest among the billions and billions served.

Good for McDonald's.  They got around the toy ban by charging a dime for the toy. 

 The Aggie grew up eating McDonald's Happy Meals, and has now upgraded to McDonald's Value Meals (or the WhataBurger equivalent) and she now has the body fat of a mop handle and can do enough pull-ups to qualify for Navy Seal training.  Out of 120 people who tried to make it into the YMCA's lifeguard training program, she's one of 12 who qualified, and one of only 7 who finally passed the class.  (Not that I'm proud or anything....)

There's a lot that's unknown about proper diet and health, but this much is clear:

1) The San Francisco City Council doesn't know jack shit about this topic.  The Federal Government knows even less.  Go here for a personal testimony. 

2) Michelle Obama tried to hop on the Food Nazi Bandwagon last year, releasing some guidelines from her throne for all of us who truly love our children to follow.  Go here for the pics of Barack feeding a hot dog into The Teleprompter's orifice a few days later.

3) When I was in the Literary Retail business, I sold every diet and nutrition book that was brought to market.  The new ones couldn't be kept on the shelf, they sold so quickly.  They had totally different content than the old ones published the year before.  The old ones couldn't be given away, mostly because they were old and had different contents than the new ones that were recently featured and slobbered over by Oprah Winfrey.  The only things these books had in common were dietician authors and a short shelf life. 

4) I grew up being told to eat my fruit, eat my fruit, eat my fruit.  But that stuff turns to sugar as soon as it is digested.  I don't eat quite as much fruit now.  I feel better.
    
5) All laws, rules and regulations have unintended consequences and create different incentives from the ones intended by the prophets who bring them down from the mountain.  As an example, Happy Meal toys are now cloaked in the righteousness of the Ronald McDonald Houses.  Good work, guys !

Here's the great Jonathan Edwards, doing his 1971 mega-hit "Sunshine".  (I especially like the line "Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life, he don't know what he's askin'.  He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine.") 

One last thing, totally off-topic....Edwards mentions performing this at an anti-war rally.  Are we going to have any more of those rallies, or do we have to elect a Republican president first????

More stunts from the people who can't deliver the mail.....

The great Radley Balko has devoted a significant part of his life to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners. 
Here's his latest cause:

Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner is set to be executed on November 9.


I wrote about Skinner for Slate last year. While the Troy Davis execution was awful because there were significant doubts about Davis’ guilt, and the Willingham execution because there has since been an overwhelming consensus among forensic arson experts that he was convicted with junk science, the outrage in Skinner’s case exceeds both—and that’s despite the fact that Skinner may well be guilty.

Skinner (who has already come within an hour of execution) is about to be executed despite the fact that there is testable DNA from the murder weapon, the rape kit, hairs one of the victims was found clutching, and a jacket left at the crime scene similar to one worn by another possible suspect, all of which has yet to be tested.

And it’s even worse than that. The state started testing on the hairs a decade ago. When preliminary mitochondrial testing came back negative as a match to either Skinner or the victim, the state just decided to stop further testing....

....I have no idea if Hank Skinner is guilty. Neither does the state of Texas. The difference is that I and anyone with a lick of conscience would prefer we find out before the man is put to death.


Seems that Texas officials would just rather not know.

Thomas Sowell on tax cuts

Please stand for this month's reading from The Gospel According To Saint Thomas....

Economist Thomas Sowell, the smartest man in the world now that Milton Friedman is dead, has given us an assortment of new scriptures to ponder.

As Saint Thomas has grown old, his offerings to his disciples have become shorter, but no less pithy. We should treasure them, ponder them, and hold them in our hearts.

In this reading, The Good Doctor has arisen from his pallet to straighten out the issue of perverse incentives, tax cuts, and the issue of why people hire people and bother to be productive in the first place. 
We know that it has become tiresome for Saint Thomas to be bothered with stamping out ignorance in his old age, and value his contribution all the more because of his patience. 

Please remain standing until the end of the reading from the scriptures:

The first big cut in income taxes came in the 1920s, at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He argued that a reduction of the tax rates would increase the tax revenues. What actually happened?

In 1920, when the top tax rate was 73 percent, for people making over $100,000 a year, the federal government collected just over $700 million in income taxes-- and 30 percent of that was paid by people making over $100,000. After a series of tax cuts brought the top rate down to 24 percent, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income tax revenue-- and people making over $100,000 a year now paid 65 percent of the taxes.

How could that be? The answer is simple: People behave differently when tax rates are high as compared to when they are low. With low tax rates, they take their money out of tax shelters and put it to work in the economy, benefitting themselves, the economy and government, which collects more money in taxes because incomes rise.

High tax rates which very few people are actually paying, because of tax shelters, do not bring in as much revenue as lower tax rates that people are paying. It was much the same story after tax cuts during the Kennedy administration, the Reagan administration and the Bush Administration.

The New York Times reported in 2006: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year."

Expectations are in the eyes of the beholder-- and in the rhetoric of the demagogues. If class warfare is more important to some politicians than collecting more revenue when there is a deficit, then let the voters know that.


The man has spoken.


Thus endeth the reading from The Gospel According To Saint Thomas.

You may be seated.

We do not ordinarily show videos on pull-down screens here at the Chapel of Saint Sowell, but in this case, as an aid to worship, we have included the following:
This is a video of someone who just....doesn't....get it.  If you have children in The Chapel who can't view this type of material without laughing, please take them to the nursery now. 

This is why Our Gospel must be spread throughout our land, the world, even to D.C. and The New York Times. 
 


Thank you all for attending our services this morning. Let's all go to Luby's !

On house fires and ObamaCare

You've probably heard about the South Fulton Fire Department - the one that wouldn't put out a house fire because the homeowner hadn't paid his yearly $75.00 fire protection fee. 



This thing is a great parable/metaphor for about a dozen different things, but let's hit some of the high points. 

* Let's start by saying that most of us would've put out the fire if we owned a fire truck.  We would have done it at no charge.  Once.  Maybe five or six times.  But after that.... 

* People fear what would happen if libertarians got their way and more and more government services were privatized.  (People wouldn't have access to government services if fees weren't paid, etc.)  Well, that's already happening with government services, isn't it? 

* Do you think that a lot of people who had not yet paid their $75.00 fee to the South Fulton Fire Department have now done so?  In a hurry?  Ya think? 

* If the South Fulton Fire Department had put out this fire, do you think anyone in his right mind would have paid the $75.00 fee next year? 

* If you were in the business of putting out fires for people who had paid a yearly $75.00 insurance policy, how many fires could you put out for no charge before you went bankrupt ?  Would anyone ever pay your $75.00 insurance policy if they knew that you were always on call and willing to sacrifice your time, equipment, and/or life for no charge? 

* And now the big one.... Once ObamaCare goes into effect, insurance companies won't be able to turn away people who haven't been paying insurance premiums.  If you're willing to pay a (relatively) small fine up front, they have to take you as a customer and start paying all your medical bills.  Will anyone in his right mind pay for insurance before he gets sick? 

* I'm going into metaphor overload.  Have a good day ! 

Do you ever voluntarily participate in activities where success is punished?

Here are some quick Monday morning questions.

Who would you rather have investing your money?  10 billionaires, selected at random, or the top 10 people on the president's economic advisory team?

Who would select the investments most likely to assure a long term profit?   10 billionaires, selected at random, or the top 10 people on the president's economic advisory team?

When government spends your money, do you believe that they are making the best possible decisions when doing so?  Even when they spend it on Turtle Tunnels and African Genital Washing?  (Google it.)  Are the Turtle and Sanitizing jobs likely to grow without further government support?   

If the Bush Tax Cuts are allowed to expire, do you believe that the wealthy will continue to put the same amount of money at risk, which, by the way, is the only way to create continued employment growth? 

Do you know how much Federal tax revenue declined after the Bush tax cuts went into effect?  Is it possible that Capital Gains Tax revenues doubled after the tax cuts? 

If Capital Gains Tax revenues doubled after the Bush tax cuts, if you were going for the maximum amount of tax revenue, would you prefer to take 39% of $100 or 35% of $200?

Do you voluntarily participate in activities where success is punished? 

I'm just wondering.....

Paul Krugman couldn't find his way out of a sack

It's Fisking time, boys and girls ! 

I'll be needing a few tools....

Scalpel - thanks.
Laptop - got it.
Righteous Indignation - I've got plenty.
Various Free Market, Libertarian and Christian websites - check.
Copy of Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics (3rd edition) - got it.
Chainsaw - yep.
Metzenbaum scissors - check.

Let the Fisking begin ! 

Paul Krugman, the most drop-kickable of all Statist apologists, has typed up this little beauty for The New York Times:

NOW THAT'S RICH
We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.

My time is limited, and I don't have enough time or space to do anything but ask this simple question....  What in the hell does providing "public services" have to do with helping the economy?  Barack Obama has poured more swill and slop into the "public services" trough than any other president who has ever lived.  It has done nothing to help the economy, but it has saved a lot of Obama supporters government jobs.  All of this was done at the expense of the private sector.

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

These politicians don't want to cut checks, Paul.  They want to let people keep the money they earned.  The money doesn't belong to the government until the government decides to graciously give some back.  They money belongs to the people who earned it.

What — you haven’t heard about this proposal? Actually, you have: I’m talking about demands that we make all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the middle class, permanent.

That's a nice attempt at class warfare.  But consider this:  47 percent of us pay NO income tax.  If taxes (and spending) are ever going to be cut significantly, the cuts will come from the taxes paid by someone other than the lower classes.  (Subject for further review: how many of our super-rich came from the middle and lower classes.  Another subject for further review:  who woke up one day and decided that America has classes?  One more subject:  Should people try hard to change their economic status?  What would be in it for them?)

Some background: Back in 2001, when the first set of Bush tax cuts was rammed through Congress, the legislation was written with a peculiar provision — namely, that the whole thing would expire, with tax rates reverting to 2000 levels, on the last day of 2010.

Paul says that like it is a bad thing.  Also, note the use of the word "rammed".  In Paul's world, Cash For Clunkers, ObamaCare ® and TARP were "passed".  Tax cuts are "rammed". 

Why the cutoff date? In part, it was used to disguise the fiscal irresponsibility of the tax cuts: lopping off that last year reduced the headline cost of the cuts, because such costs are normally calculated over a 10-year period.

Let's define Fiscal Irresponsibility.....How about "failure to reduce spending to reflect income"? 

It also allowed the Bush administration to pass the tax cuts using reconciliation — yes, the same procedure that Republicans denounced when it was used to enact health reform — while sidestepping rules designed to prevent the use of that procedure to increase long-run budget deficits.

Ditto.  Bush spent money like a recovering alcoholic cowboy.  So did Daddy Bush.  So did Reagan.  But they were mere hints of what was yet to come, a series of John The Baptists preparing the way for The Teleprompter Jesus....

Obviously, the idea was to go back at a later date and make those tax cuts permanent. But things didn’t go according to plan. And now the witching hour is upon us.

That's because The Crips And The Bloods The Republicans and Democrats will never, ever voluntarily cut spending.  That's why we need to elect some Libertarians and get back to a two-party system. 

So what’s the choice now? The Obama administration wants to preserve those parts of the original tax cuts that mainly benefit the middle class — which is an expensive proposition in its own right —

Once again Paul reveals his belief that letting people keep their own money is expensive.  MAKING PEOPLE PAY RIDICULOUSLY HIGH TAXES IS EXPENSIVE ! ! !

....but to let those provisions benefiting only people with very high incomes expire on schedule. Republicans, with support from some conservative Democrats, want to keep the whole thing.

Abso-freakin'-lutely.  Keep the whole thing.  Starve the beast.  Federal employees have compensation and pensions anywhere from 50% to 100% better than those found in the private sector.  And from what I've seen, they have about half as much responsibility.  What is so criminal about not wanting to be robbed to support the Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous?

And there’s a real chance that Republicans will get what they want. That’s a demonstration, if anyone needed one, that our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt.

The mind recoils.  Paul Krugman won a Nobel in economics.  Next thing you know, they'll be giving Nobels to someone in the last three Democrat administrations, like Obama, Gore, or Carter.  Oh.  Never mind. 

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

That logic assumes that the super-wealthy will continue to produce income if they know that Obama is going to get more of the (potential) profit. 
But $680 billion....That's the amount of the previous stimulus package, right?  Well, if we don't give 'em the money, they can't redistribute it to their friends, right? 

For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

Let's not ask why the states needed $26 billion dollars.  We don't want to go there.  Surely California was spending its money responsibly, and isn't on the hook for ridiculous public employee pensions....

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year.

Paul, you ignorant slut.  The money wouldn't GO to the richest 1 percent.  It would STAY with them.  They are the ones who are producing the alleged $680 billion.  They would get to spend it in the way that they think best, instead of forking it over to be spent the way George Bush, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid thinks best. 
Also, Paul, I'm betting that you are well paid.  I'm also betting that you have a tax expert go through your taxes, looking for every possible deduction.  I'm just betting that you talk the talk, but don't walk the walk.  

But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

You can also take the same group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick out 470 of them.  These 470 are paying no income tax. 
You can probably pick out another 330 of them who are government employees or suppliers, and who live off of taxes paid by the top 100. 
What does all this mean? 
It means we have too many people living off of money taken by force.  If you announce that more money is going to be taken for redistribution to Statists, the infamous top 5% is going to start hiding its money.  Wait and see. 

How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits?

Well, because of Texas A&M University, I'm having a budget deficit.  Therefore, I spend less. 

Well, history is repeating itself. The original campaign for the Bush tax cuts relied on deception and dishonesty. In fact, my first suspicions that we were being misled into invading Iraq were based on the resemblance between the campaign for war and the campaign for tax cuts the previous year. And sure enough, that same trademark deception and dishonesty is being deployed on behalf of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

It is now impossible to cut taxes for anyone except the wealthiest 50% of Americans, dumb ass. 
Speaking of dishonesty, our government is now claiming that we're pulling the combat troops out of Iraq, but we are still going to have 50,000 troops over there, and I think they have guns.  Whassup with that? 

So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?

Perhaps it is an aspirational thing.  I don't make several million a year, but I would like to.  I will try harder if I can keep the several million a year, instead of giving more of it to our costly adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and California. 

Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.

GIVING THE MONEY?  GIVING THE MONEY?  THE GOVERNMENT ISN'T GOING TO GIVE PEOPLE THAT MONEY ! ! !   THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO TAKE THE MONEY, AND BLOW IT ON STUPID CRAP ! ! ! 
Paul, please go to "Clues 'R' Us", and get one. 

No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

According to The Washington Post, we're spending $25,000 per kid in many public schools.  How much more do you want to blow per classroom, under the heading of  "saving teaching jobs"?  Is there any amount that would be enough? 
So far, the Obama administration is standing firm against this outrage. Let’s hope that it prevails in its fight. Otherwise, it will be hard not to lose all faith in America’s future.

1)  People spend their own money more wisely than 3rd parties spend it. 
2)  Taxes must be taken by force. 
3)  High taxes act as a disincentive to wealth creation.
4)  Make-work jobs, those created by government, eventually run out of money. 
5)  Paul Krugman couldn't find his way out of a sack.

High taxes equal high emigration and high deficits

This is from the TaxProf blog, where Paul L. Caron lists the states with the highest tax rates for top earners.  All of these are Blue States that went for Obama, by the way:

1. Hawaii:  11% (income over $400,000 (couple), $200,000 (single))
2. Oregon:  11% (income over $500,000 (couple), $250,000 (single))
3. California: 10.55% (income over $1 million)
4. Rhode Island:  9.9% (income over $373,650)
5. Iowa:  8.98% (income over $64,261)
6. New Jersey  8.97% (income over $500,000)
7. New York:  8.97% (income over $500,000)
8. Vermont:  8.95% (income over $373,650)
9. Maine:  8.5% (income over $39,549 (couple), $19,749 (single))
10. Washington, D.C.:  8.5% (income over $40,000)

Ok, so what? 
Well, this is from the Wall Street Journal.  It's a map showing the migration patterns from state to state. 

With the exception of Oregon, all of the top tax states lost population from 2008 to 2009.  Most of them were already losing population in the earlier time period. 

Entrepreneurs don't like putting money at risk in places where greedy little government munchkins can confiscate more of their increasingly unlikely earnings. 

(Washington D.C. isn't shown on these maps, and would probably be an exception to all trends since it is ground zero for the currently popular porkfests.  Looters are moving there to be a part of the ongoing orgy of stimulus pillaging.)

But don't state governments need more money to operate?  Can't states just increase the tax percentage and have an automatic increase in revenue? 

Here's a map from The Economic Populist, showing each state's budget deficit as a percentage of the state's overall budget:

Hawaii is the only pale outsider among the ten listed by The TaxProf above. All of the other top tax states have a large gap between revenue and spending.  (Granted, a state can "go Reagan" with low taxes and insanely high spending levels and go dark brown on this map.) 
So what does it all mean? 

Be like Texas.  Take less away from people.  Spend less of their money.  You'll probably end up with more people and more money. 

The Paycheck Fairness Act, or REASON NUMBER 5,729 TO DO ALL MANUFACTURING IN CHINA

Think of all the people who do the same job as you.  Not almost the same, not practically the same, but the same.  Same job, same place, same amount of experience, same cost of living, same circumstances, and same track record with the same manager/owner. 

Ok, got the list?  Raise your hand if the number you came up with was zero.  Ah, almost all of you.  So it should come as no surprise that all of you are paid different amounts, even if the work you do is almost, but not quite, the same. 

Ok, now think of the wildly different amounts that you may have paid babysitters.  Or if your lawnmower has needed repair more than once, think of the dissimilar amounts that you have paid others to mow your yard.  Remember the different prices that you've paid for hamburgers?  Dishwashing liquid?  Hell, think of the different amounts you have paid for identical, absolutely identical, gallons of gasoline. 

It's unfair, isn't it? 

The Obama administration wants to end this gross unfairness with something called The Paycheck Fairness Act, also known as REASON NUMBER 5,729 TO DO ALL MANUFACTURING IN CHINA. 

The Paycheck Fairness Act is described as follows:

A much needed updated of the 45-year-old Equal Pay Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act is a comprehensive bill that would create stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay, and strengthen federal outreach, education and enforcement efforts. Championed by longtime AAUW friend Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the bill would also deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about employers' wage practices or disclose their own wages. Together with the Ledbetter bill, this critical piece of legislation can help create a climate where pay discrimination is not tolerated, and give the new administration the enforcement tools it needs to make real progress on pay equity.

In other words, if you've been busting your rear end on the job, don't bother asking for a raise.  Because if they give you a raise, they have to give a raise to everyone whose job description is similiar to yours, and it just ain't going to be worth the hassle. 
The burden of proof will be on the employer to show that any increase in compensation is NOT due to sex discrimination. 
If there's a lawsuit against your employer, the potential for punitive damages will be more or less unlimited. 
If there's a lawsuit against your employer, you, as an employee, will automatically be part of any class action lawsuits unless you opt out. 

This thing is a feast for lawyers, a feast for federal employees, and a feast for anyone wanting to play the Victim Card.  In other words, this bill was written to appeal to Obama's support base. 

Anyone who hires anyone within our borders needs his head examined. 

And people wonder why the unemployment rate hasn't improved.  Barack Obama and Congress would have to study hard for ten years to rise to the level of "Economic Idiots". 

End of rant.

6 suggestions for creating jobs

On Meet The Press yesterday, I watched former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, the Republican National Committee’s Ed Gillespie, and New York Times typist David Brooks.  The sat in a circle and lamented the current failure of the Statist dream.


They were trying to decide how to create jobs and “grow” the economy. It would have been funny had it not been so depressing. Some level of government pump-priming was assumed by all to be necessary. Needless interference from Washington munchkins was a given. No one really questioned the level of harm caused by the recent Porkulus, TARP, Detroit and Wall Street bailouts. Even ideas about tax cuts were presented as “for small businesses only”, as if the janitors at General Electric weren’t worth a raise, but the millionaire owners of a Mom’n’Pop enterprises should automatically get a tax break.

(One important thing to remember: Corporations don’t pay taxes. People do. Corporations merely aid the government in collecting taxes from people - they funnel money to Uncle Sam from their employees, their vendors, customers, and their owners.)

Ford, Maddow, Gillespie and Brooks, along with their lords and masters in government, are like the folks whose only tool is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. The only remaining solution in their toolbag is to take away everything, and then parcel it back out to the people whose behavior they like.

Imagine that you are a small business owner, one of the ones now beloved by politicians everywhere. Or imagine that you are one of Obama's greedy mega-business owners and that you have difficulty speaking because of all the steak and lobster stuffed into your cheeks and the multiple cigars in your mouth that you lit with $100 bills stolen from the savings of orphans.

Imagine that you’re either one of those types of guys. There’s really no difference between the two, except for lobbying power. What would encourage you to hire more people? More speeches from The Teleprompter Jesus? “Investments” of more of your tax money into green “energy”? (Note the scorn quotes.) Would you feel better about hiring more people if the government passed another Porkulus Plan to spend even more money on….government?

I think not. Ask yourself if the following proposals might be more effective:

1. We currently have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Cut that tax rate in half. Let businesses keep the money that they’re earning and let them spend it as they see fit. They can spend it on themselves, on employees, on equipment, on paying vendors, or giving the savings to customers. Either way, it will still get spent or invested. Letting Bill Gates or Mark Cuban or even Jerry Jones spend the money is always a better choice than letting Obama, Reid and Pelosi give the money to their constitutents. If that means there’s less money to be squandered by the Richland Hills Texas City Planning Department, well, so be it.

2. The teen unemployment rate is hovering around 40-50%. We just had a minimum wage increase from $5.25 to $7.25 an hour. Statists are always, always, always surprised when these arbitrary price-fixes hurt teen employment. I have teenagers show up every day looking for work, and some of them might already be worth $10.00 or $12.00 an hour to my employer. Some of them are worth about $3.00 an hour, if motivated with cattle prods. Some of them aren’t worth the amount of CO2 they pump into the environment every day. I would be willing to take a chance on hiring trainloads of these kids if I could do so at around $4.00 an hour. Some of them would be making $12.00 within a year. Most would not. Others would quit within the first week. The only way to find out who is in which group? Hire a bunch of them. But I’m not taking that chance at $7.25 an hour.

3. The black unemployment rate is now at 15%, as compared to a nationwide rate of 9.6%. Why is this? It’s because if I hire a black guy and he doesn’t work out, I’m going to have to spend countless hours with our Human Resources department proving that I’m not a racist who discriminates against black people. The black employee that I let go will automatically be given unemployment compensation, whereas we usually fight those claims filed by someone in a non-protected group. If employees couldn’t sue employers who didn’t want to employ them any longer, just like grocery stores or lawn services can’t sue me when I stop employing them, we might again see minority employment once again pass white employment levels. (Do a bit o’Googling to find out when that was last true. Hint: use the key words “Davis Bacon Act”.)

4. When you hire a babysitter, do you look forward to withholding and paying her taxes? Do you feel obligated to provide for her health insurance? Do you believe that babysitters should be unionized, without benefit of a secret ballot election, and that you should then be forced to hire ONLY union babysitters? Would collecting taxes, providing healthcare, and paying more for union babysitters cause you to hire more or less of them? Please be brief with your response.

5. Our president delights, absolutely delights, in demonizing successful large businesses and employers who want to hang onto the money they earn after they take the risk of hiring people. Could whoever programs his teleprompter change the script and get that idiot to stop doing that? He’s scaring people.

6. Central banks are starting to look at dollars as if they were hand-grenades dipped in HIV vaseline. These people know that the current regime isn’t going to stop throwing money to its constituents as if every day is Mardi Gras, and billions are beads. They know that the Obama/Bernanke/Pelosi Axis Of Inflation is about to start firing up the printing presses. Could we encourage them to stop spending, since dollars are the only currency we can use in the U.S., and we don’t want the market to be flooded with them?

I don’t have an economics degree, and I will never, ever be selected as a talking head on Meet The Press. But I do hire people. Or don't.  It just depends on the incentives, doesn't it?