Who Wants "Newsweek"?

The Boston Post asked the "Who Wants Newsweek?" question in a recent article about the once-great weekly magazine being put up for sale after years of declining readership. 

Newsweek's editor, Jon Meacham, is a good writer, but he suffers from a blinding affection for The Teleprompter Jesus, along with the typical inconsistencies that go with joining that cult.  Here's a pic from the cover story that Meacham wrote shortly after the bailout scam:

Later on, Meacham managed to make light of the Tea Party bunch who claimed Obama was some kind of "Crypto-Socialist". 
Go figure.  According to Meacham's cover story, I though we all were. 

Here's the closing paragraph of the Boston Post article:

It would be a mistake to argue that Newsweek’s center-left stance and Obama worship did it in. U.S. News and World Report converted to a monthly two years ago. No one can fault Newsweek for trying a new course. But maybe the world already has a surplus of must-see analysis and opinion.

Well, I disagree.  If you give your readers a steady diet of Barackaganda, you're going to lose readers.  Lordy, if I want a center-left stance, complete with "Obama worship", I can turn on Meet The Press.
.

 

 So goodbye, Newsweek.  You got me through many a dull Study Hall at North Sunflower Academy, 1974 - 1979.  And one other thing, compliments of these folks:

Well, at least we tried - The Tarrant Regional Water District's "River Of Slush" will keep flowing

Well, at least we tried. 

My friend Adrian Murray was unsuccessful in his bid to get a seat on the Tarrant Regional Water District board yesterday. 

Here's the Startlegram:

The campaign was marked by dramatically different depictions of the water district. Lane and Leonard said the district is a well-run organization that is aggressively seeking other water sources. Murray and Basham criticized the board for high-ticket purchases such as a helicopter and argued that the current leadership was recklessly spending public money and making its decisions in secret.

And here are a few blurbs on the Tarrant Regional Water District's Trinity River Vision Project from the Fort Worth Weekly, a periodical not overseen by the people who will profit from this boondoggle project.  This piece was written back in 2007, and I understand that the spending is now approaching a billion dollars. 
Just for some background, this is what the Trinity looked like before they spent the billion dollars.


View Larger Map

Here's what the Trinity looks like now that they've spent the billion dollars.  I think they've torn down two buildings so far.  If someone has a more recent photo of the non-progress, I'll gladly post it.


View Larger Map

Notice the subtle differences?  I don't either.  There aren't any.
Heck, we coulda dredged out a new river running from Burleson to Abbott for that amount. 
Sorry for the digression.  Here's the Fort Worth Weekly:

....According to records obtained by Fort Worth Weekly under the state open records law, the district will spend about $600,000 this year on outside lobbying firms. DFW Airport, by comparison, will spend $560,000 with two Washington lobbying firms, and DART has budgeted about $310,000. Fort Worth paid its Washington lobby firm $168,000 in 2006, and Dallas spent about $240,000.

....Trying to find out why the water district needs to spend so much on lobbying is difficult. Neither Trinity River Vision Authority director J.D. Granger — son of the congresswoman — nor water district board president Victor W. Henderson returned calls seeking comment. Board vice president Hal S. Sparks III said it was not “his place” to comment on such contracts and referred all queries to Tarrant water district general manager Jim Oliver.

....Clyde Picht, who lost to Lane in the water district board race last year, said, “This is a local agency that should basically be concentrating on delivering water cheaply and efficiently to the cities in North Texas. Why would they even need any lobbyists in Washington?”



He has recently announced he will seek a new term on Fort Worth City Council — in part to continue his opposition to the Trinity Vision project. “Their spending habits are getting out of hand,” he said. Picht noted that the water district is already spending more than $100,000 a year on J.D. Granger’s salary (remember, that's Congresswoman Kay Granger's boy - TWS), “and I figured maybe part of his deal might be that he has to call his mother every once in awhile. But I guess they have to hire someone in Washington to keep in contact with her.”


Since October 2001, the district has paid Washington lobbying firm Hicks-Richardson $256,653. The company is budgeted for $60,000 this year. Another Washington lobbying firm, Welch Resources, is due to receive $120,000 in fiscal 2007, and has been paid $290,260 since it first started lobbying for the river agency in 2004.

Local politically connected people are also getting big paydays. Political consultant Bryan Eppstein, who has worked on the campaigns of many water district board members as well as those of Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, is getting a combined $30,000 a month from the water district and Trinity River Vision Authority for a communications/lobbying firm he will head. Included in the duties, according to the contract, are “the development and implementation of legislative and regulatory strategies.” The total worth of the contract, which runs through 2010, is $1.4 million.

....Former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis, who handles lobbying in Austin for the Tarrant district, is budgeted to receive $60,000 this year. Since October 2001, Lewis has been paid $283,500 by the water district. Neither Eppstein nor Lewis returned the Weekly’s calls for this story.

....The $120,000 yearly contract with Welch Resources has raised even more questions from critics. Welch is run by former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker of Mississippi, who booked more than $1 million in lobbying contracts last year.

....Steve Hollern, a former Tarrant County GOP chairman, called the TRV a “massive transfer of wealth from private citizens to rich developers.” The lobbying, Hollern said, “is just part of the cost to keep this transfer going. But I have to give the devil his due. They plan and execute behind the scenes in ways that would make Machiavelli take notice.”

Move along, people, nothing to see here.  Please keep moving, please keep moving. 

Pics came from here and here.

In which the FCC seeks to regulate the internet

This is from the Denver Post:

Whenever people start talking about regulating the Internet, it gives us pause.
Why would you want to regulate a communications and economic platform that has been such a roaring success and has had so few problems?

Well....
1)  The government is filled with Student Council-type control freaks
2)  The government has absolutely nothing to fear from the mainstream media (and yes, this includes the dreaded Fox News) but the internet has proven to be an effective means of exposing government skullduggery. 
3)  All other forms or unnecessary government regulation have created more government jobs.  This regulatory project would do the same.   
So the announcement last week by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski that the agency planned to assert authority over the Internet raises all kinds of red flags.


Hell yes, it raises red flags.  Every street in America should look like one of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution Rallies. 

But then, we are a sedate lot, and don't like to be alarmed until the wolf is at the door, or in some cases, until the wolf is blocking our view of American Idol.  You can hit the link up top to read the rest of the Denver Post piece, but you get the idea.  
Here's Harry Browne on government regulations in general and the FCC in particular:

There's absolutely no reason to have a Federal Communications Commission.

We don't need the FCC to apportion limited broadcast frequencies, because private companies will always find a way to accommodate whatever the market wants and needs.
We don't need the FCC to protect one company from infringing on another's frequency, because we already have police and courts who are supposed to protect property rights.
And we certainly don't need the FCC to protect us from people like Janet Jackson and Howard Stern, because private initiative has given us the remote control — the all-purpose self-censoring device that can keep out of our homes anything we find offensive.

I doubt that a single child's life was destroyed by the 1-second view of Janet Jackson's breast.
But I'm sure that thousands of careers, tons of good entertainment, and billions of dollars have been sacrificed to the Great God of Government Regulation.

It's time to free the airwaves.
It's time to junk the FCC.


The red flag pic came from here.  Censorship button from here.  The Dick Van Dyke show logo came from here. 

How do blondes print a Word document?

I stole this from Harper's site.  She's kinda blonde (literally, not figuratively). 

The Great Trendline Experiment

Here's a fun experiment for those who believe that government regulation is the answer to all of our ills. 
This is a U.S. Census chart showing the poverty level by age group.  It goes from sometime in the past to sometime not too long ago.  I've removed the dates. 

Can you tell when LBJ began his War On Poverty?
Can you tell when the welfare state kicked in?
When did we create the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare?   

Please remember....if the programs and institutions listed above were founded anywhere near the center 75% of the chart, doesn't that mean that poverty was going away nicely on its own before government intervened and prolonged the problem? 

You can go here and see the original chart with the dates included. 

This is an experiment recommended by Charles Murray in his classic "What It Means To Be A Libertarian". 
You can do the same thing by charting workplace accidents, removing the dates, and asking when the government created OSHA.  Your audience will be baffled. 
You can chart highway fatalities, remove the dates, and have people look in vain for the 55 miles per hour speed limit, seat belt requirements, air bag requirements, and the like. 
Ditto for air quality and the birth of the EPA. 

Your government at work.  You can't see the results, but damn, they're busy. 

Missouri SWAT team raids home, shoot two dogs in front of 7-year old, find "small amount" of marijuana: Mission Accomplished ! !

Back in March, I linked to a Radley Balko post about a nasty incident in Missouri where a SWAT team broke into a family's home, shot and killed one of their dogs, and then shot an injured their Corgi. All in front of a 7-year old.

Those Corgis, you gotta watch out for them.

Since Obama's goon squad discovered a misdemeanor-level amount of marijuana on the premises, they were able to charge the homeowner with possession and child endangerment.

In the words of Mr. Balko:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.
Just so we’re clear.

My take on Obama's Boys In Black went as follows:

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job. And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job. So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job?

We now have the Gestapo's Swat Team's video of the incident.  Imagine this is your home.  It's your yard.  That's your son, and those are your pets. 
The homeowner is named Jonathan Whitworth.  His reaction at the 2:50 mark is heartbreaking. 



How much longer are we going to put up with this? Especially when our last three presidents have affirmed that they've smoked marijuana?  Or in Obama's case, used cocaine? 

First they came for the Corgis, and I did not speak up....

Please email this post to every drug warrior you know. 

Reaction to Oil Spill

Marvel Variants has a blog

I've missed two days of posting in the last two weeks, and that's enough to have people wondering if I'm burning out.
Not the case.
If I'm burning out on anything, it's my shipping/logistics/warehousing gig at Jukt Micronics.
We're going 7 days a week until, well, until we don't have to any more.

The villain behind this Capitalistic Frenzy is my boss's boss, known to long-time readers as Marvel Variants.

Mr. Variants started cashing in on his childhood comic collecting skills years ago, and just recently got his own website, Bronze Age Marvel Variants. 

To understand what a "variant" comic book is, go here.  

You can also hit the "Marvel Variants" label at the bottom of this post to read his other appearances on these pages. 

To learn about the Big Daddy of all variants (attention: Star Wars geeks): go here. 

This post explains how the comic book mania can afflict a person. 

This comic book cover was not done by Marvel, and is not a price variant, but I think it is funny.

So do me a favor.  Hit all the links above and give Mr. Variants some traffic, help his website get a Google ranking, let him make lots of money selling comic books, and maybe he'll retire and I can get some days off. 

Please.  Hit the links.  It's for the Libertarian Bloggers ™.

Why "Kick Ass" is one of the best Libertarian movies EVER

1) The police in the movie are portrayed realistically.  They're ineffective.  (One of my truck windows was vandalized a couple of nights ago.  I didn't even bother to report it.) 
2) "Kick Ass", the male lead, gets tired of being hassled, mugged and assaulted and decides on his own to do something about it. 
3) "Hit Girl" is home schooled. 
4) The public school that Kick Ass attends is portrayed realistically.  In the opening sequence, he has to go through a gauntlet of metal detectors just to get in the door. 
5) "Red Mist" smokes some weed but maintains his ability to drive. 
6) The mandatory SUV that the villains use to pursue Kick Ass and Red Mist is a GMC.  (Government Motors Corporation)
7)  Hit Girl is a poster child for gun control.  She hits what she aims at. 
8)  If you don't think a Personal Jet Propulsion Pack (with twin Gatlin guns) is cool, well, stay home.  Watch Dancing With The Stars. 

Al Gore's carbon footprint expands again.

Let's start this post with a profanity alert.  If you're offended by Baptists cussing a lot, read no further. 

Ok, let's assume for a moment that humans cause global warming.  Not by making God angry, the way the evangelists claim that the gays and lesbians in New Orleans made God angry prior to hurricane Katrina.  Not by offending Allah, the way the Iranian mullahs claim that women exposing too much of their breasts causes earthquakes. 
Let's assume that humans cause global warming in the way that Al Gore - The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee - claims that we cause global warming: our "carbon footprints" are too big.  Our homes require too much heat and air conditioning.  We waste water. 

Next, let's assume that this article in The L.A. Times is not filled with typos.  Let's assume that the person who wrote it wasn't drunk. 

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.


The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

I have no idea how many square feet of house are required to accomodate 6 fireplaces.  I don't know why Al and Tipper need five bedrooms.  But I do have theories about Big Al's biological composition, and why nine bathrooms are a requirement.  The man is full of more shit than the latrines at Fort Pemberton. 

I believe that seatbelts could save my life if I'm in an accident.  Therefore, I wear a seatbelt.  I'm starting to believe that what I've been eating and drinking for the last 40 years could kill me.  Therefore, I'm now watching what I eat.  But if Al Gore believes that we are causing global warming, I'll kiss his ass on the courthouse steps and give him thirty minutes beforehand to draw a crowd.   His behavior does not match his rhetoric, except in the smallest symbolic gestures. 

My online friend in Korea, Cedric Katesby, recently mailed me a treasure-trove of good books.  The one I'm currently reading is called "Why People Believe Weird Things". 

I don't have a copy in front of me right now, but one of the great chapter headings goes something like this: "Smart people often believe weird things, because they're so good (smart) at defending beliefs they adopted for non-smart reasons". 

A lot of people side with The Goracle on global warming simply because he's a Democrat.  To oppose him is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.  Well, whatever floats your boat.  Yeah, we should protect the environment.  But we can safely discount Gore's claims that unless we give him money, the oceans will boil.

He.   Does.   Not.   Believe.   It. 
 
You can hit the "Al Gore" label at the bottom of this post and see that Gore doesn't believe any of this mess.  Not a word. 

He's all set to become the world's first carbon-control billionaire. 
He calls his investments "putting his money where his mouth is". 
Bullshit. 
He wants to require YOU to put YOUR money where his mouth is. 

The scale and magnitude of the scam he's trying to execute is beyond anything we've ever seen before. 
He's the most hypocritical son of a bitch that God put guts in. 

The smart people who continue to defend him should admit that they do so for non-smart reasons.

On San Francisco's city employee travel boycott

Let me get this out of the way first.....
If it weren't for the entitlement giveaways that our politicians throw out as if every day were Mardi Gras, I would favor "open borders". 
(Yeah, we would have to stop pissing off the rest of the world, which would greatly reduce the chances that someone would bring in a nuke from Toronto.  And we would have to reduce the size of government by about 90%, so the Statists would have nothing to gain by importing more Statist voters.  Probably a fantasy, but it would be nice.  The #1 predictor of whether you'll be wealthy or miserable?  The lines of latitude and longitude where you happen to be born.  That ain't right.) 

Anyway, because of the Arizona's recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, the city of San Francisco is banning travel by all of their city employees to Arizona.  Here's the San Francisco Chronicle's City Insider Blog:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.
The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It's unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed.

I like that a lot.  I hope that Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, and Long Beach do the same thing.  And on the other hand, I hope that Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Tombstone Arizona retaliate by not allowing their employees travel to anywhere in California.  Or anywhere else. 

I hope the Fort Worth, Texas, City Council doesn't allow its city employees to travel anywhere at all.  I hope that they tell all city employees to stay their asses at home and repair the potholes that are all over the East Side. 

It would be nice if the Booger Den, Mississippi, City Council declared that there would be no more travel on the government tit.  Never ever. 

Why restrict this protest to the city and town level?  I think the world would be a better place if Obama had a sit-down with Hillary and told her something like, "Mrs. Clinton, they've passed a racist, fascist, hate-filled anti-immigration law in Arizona.  And in protest, I need you to stay out of Arizona, China, Israel, Jordan, Africa, and Mexico.  Stay home."   

Would we have more money in the Treasury if we told our defense employees that they couldn't spend any more time defending, say, Germany and Japan, and that those nations were going to have to provide their own defense?  Would our boys and girls currently fighting in the Middle East Sandbox be better off it we told them to come home and get their feet back under their Mamas' kitchen tables?  Let's get them back to defending the borders, and nothing else.  That would solve any and all immigration "problems" right there.

The San Francisco Government Travel Boycott - may it spread far and wide.  

Let's subsidize Brazilians. Just to keep it fair.

We started subsidizing cotton farming sometime back in the 1930's. 
By "we", I mean you, me, everyone who pays taxes, and everyone who pays about twice what they should have to pay for t-shirts, sheets, etc. 

Here's the way the system works:  Wealthy individuals claim that they aren't making enough money by growing cotton.  They threaten to withold support for various politicians.  The politicians counter by giving them your money. 

What's really cool about the system is that since 1995, 78% of the 10.66 billion dollars in US subsidies for cotton went to only 10% of the cotton farmers.  Want to guess where these 10% fit on the income spectrum?

This has become a problem for the much-maligned World Trade Organization, the group with the thankless job of preventing these insane traditions from erupting into trade wars.  (Here's what they try to prevent: We subsidize cotton and put tariffs in place to keep out evil, foreign cotton.  African countries want access to our cotton market, but can't compete because of our government giveaway.  Africa retaliates by putting a tariff in place against American automobiles or steel, or whatever.  Next thing you know, it's 1930 all over again.) 

We now have a situation with Brazil.  Brazil wants to buy a lot of our stuff and we want to buy a lot of Brazilian stuff.  The WTO is trying to work it out.  (In an ideal world, of course, anyone restricting you from purchasing whatever from whoever would be told to go have carnal relations with himself....) 

But Brazilian cotton farmers claim that our system is unfair to them.  We apparently give more to our Agri-Business Welfare Queens than Brazil does. 

So what is the Obama administration doing to correct this problem? 

To make it fair, just, and equitable, they are now subsidizing the Brazilian cotton farmers. 
I repeat:  In order to continue shoveling money to wealthy farmers in the U.S., we are now shoveling money to farmers in Brazil. 

Here's Congressman Jeff Flake on the policy:
“This proposal takes our federal farm subsidy policy from the impractical to the absurd....only in Washington could this pass for logic.”

Even Congressman Barney Frank was able to lift his nose from the trough long enough to make this comment:
“The sensible thing for us to do with the WTO finding – which, unfortunately for American cotton farmers, is clearly correct – would be to reform our own inefficient system of spending millions of dollars a year to subsidize cotton farmers, many of whom are quite wealthy.  Instead, the Obama administration apparently feels compelled to preserve our right to subsidize American cotton farmers by extending that subsidy to Brazilian cotton farmers. People looking for an illustration of the meaning of the phrase, ‘from bad to worse,’ need look no further.”

Why even bother posting this stuff?  It goes on all day, every day.
Well, 3rd-graders can understand that it's a silly policy. 
9th-graders can understand how this hurts the poorest Americans more than any other group.  (Except for, maybe, African cotton farmers.  Go here for details.) 
Hell, even Barney Frank has figured it out.  If people aren't making enough money by growing cotton, it means that too many people are growing cotton.  The same thing once happened to buggy-whip manufacturers, blacksmiths, minstrels, and chimney sweeps.   

And yet we want to trust this D.C. den of thieves with healthcare, manufacturing, shipping, finances, and 40% of our incomes.  So many of us are now involved in the giveaways, the get-backs, and the wealth transfers that it's hard to tell who is paying who - all in the hopes that we'll be in the group that gets back more than they've paid in.  

The cartoon came from here. 

Neighborhood Hope & Change lab busted

From Op-Toons:

Lorrington, Wisconsin--Police busted another hope and change lab in a Madison suburb yesterday, saying it was "one of the worst we've seen."

Law enforcement officials said unemployed youth were "sucking so hard to extract anything they could from empty hope containers, they were hyperventilating before they passed out."


Police said they were tipped off to the hope and change lab because neighbors said the kids next door were laughing nervously, slurring their speech, and walking listlessly into local coffee shops.

You can go here to read about other groups going through withdrawal. 
And go here to add Op-Toons to your favorites list. 

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen express their concern for the planet

Here's a 30-second video of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady asking us to turn off all our lights for Earth Hour. 



Brady's wife, ultra-super-duper-model Gisele Bundchen, has been named the U.N.'s "environmental ambassador" because of her willingness to make environmentally-correct noises whenever someone pulls the string in the back of her neck.  Here's a sample quote:

On climate change, Gisele noted, "Climate change is something we can't deny? It affects all of us. At the end of the day, it's our planet ? we all have to feel accountable."

Here's a picture of the new Brady/Bundchen home. Lord have mercy.

All Prius-driving, toilet paper-recycling, cow fart-suppressing Disciples Of The Cult Of Gore just had their efforts negated.
This monster has 20,000 square feet of space, with an elevator and a freakin' lagoon.  It has a SIX CAR GARAGE. 

The new Brady/Bunchen Carbon Blaster is even worse than Al Gore's house.

It's not quite as bad as Thomas Friedman's house. 

But it is incredible. 
I'll believe that we have an environmental crisis when all the Global Warming spokesmodels start living like it is a crisis. 

Picture from the anti-Palin protest in Eugene Oregon

I don't know if everyone got the email about Eugene being a Hate Free Zone....

On devalued currency

Here's an old one dollar bill from the 1920's.  It's a "silver certificate", meaning that you could swap it for one dollar's worth of silver.  The current one dollar bills couldn't be swapped for enough silver to fill a gnat's rear end.  Our government has printed too many of them. 

See this picture of Andrew Jackson?  In 1905, a $20.00 bill could be swapped for $20.00 worth of stuff, including gold. 
If you made the foolish decision to save a $20.00 bill from that era, it will now only purchase 5% of what it could in 1905.

This hundred dollar bill will only do the job once done by a $5.00 bill.  The Federal Reserve system, created in the early 1900's to stabilize our currency, has succeeded in destroying 95% of our currency's value. 

And if you've got any of these, you might want to spend them now.  If current trends continue, they're going to have to print enough of them for all of us. 

This is a variation of a chain email sent to me by The Whited Mama. 

Jonah Goldberg: There are no socialists

I found a link to this Jonah Goldberg piece on the Cafe Hayek site.  Am copying a vast section of it here so I can force myself to memorize huge chunks of it:

If by "capitalist" you mean someone who cares more about his own profit than yours; if you mean someone who cares more about providing for his family than providing for yours; if you mean someone who trusts that he is a better caretaker of his own interests and desires than a bureaucrat he's never met, often in a city he's never been to: then we are all capitalists. Because, by that standard, capitalism isn't some far-off theory about the allocation of capital; it is a commonsense description of what motivates pretty much all human beings everywhere.

And that was one of the reasons why the hard socialism of the Soviet Union failed, and it is why the soft socialism of Western Europe is so anemic. At the end of the day, it is entirely natural for humans to work the system--any system--for their own betterment, whatever kind of system that may be. That's why the black-market economy of the Soviet Union might have in fact been bigger than the official socialist economy. That is why devoted socialists worked the bureaucracy to get the best homes, get their kids into the best schools, and provide their families with the best food, clothes, and amenities they could. Just like people in capitalist countries.

(And it's why Shasha and Malia Obama are going to a private academy instead of one of their Daddy's hellholes.) 
It's why labor unions demanded exemptions and "carve-outs" from Obamacare for their own health-care plans. And why very rich liberals still try their best to minimize their taxes.

The problem with socialism is socialism, because there are no socialists. Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn't true. I can design a perfect canine community in which dogs never chase squirrels or groom their nether regions in an indelicate manner. But the moment I take that idea from the drawing board to the real world, I will discover that I cannot get dogs to behave against their nature--at least not without inflicting a terrible amount of punishment. Likewise, it's easy to design a society that rewards each according to his need instead of his ability. The hard part is getting the crooked timber of humanity to yield to your vision.

And it's also why the problem with capitalism is capitalists. Some people will always abuse the system and take things too far. Some will do it out of the hubris of intellect. Some will do it out of the venality of greed.

I bring all of this up because many in Washington seem convinced that the solution to the problem with capitalists is always less capitalism. To be sure, a free-market society is in some sense a government program. The government must prosecute criminality, enforce contracts, and demand that the rules be observed. Few lovers of free markets are so laissez-faire as to want to strip the government of its role as referee.

But few should want the ref to suit up and play the game.

Why big corporations love government regulations

Remember a couple of years ago when the toys from China were found to be contaminated with lead paint?
Our Nanny State passed a bunch of regulations designed to end the lead paint menace.  All toys have to go through an expensive, time-consuming testing process prior to sale.  Used toy dealers have to do the same. 

This has put a lot of the smaller toy manufacturing companies out of business.  Many thrift stores simply don't carry used toys any longer.  Who can afford to do all that testing just to sell a used toy?

But what about Mattel, the giant toymaker who imported the poison toys in the first place?

They get a free pass.  They are, after all, Mattel.  They don't have to get independent testing on their products. 
Here's the Hot Air blog:

So let’s get this straight. Mattel buys millions of items from China that violate American product-safety laws and standards. Congress reacts by punishing the entire industry, especially those small businesses that can’t afford independent testing, especially on products that don’t really need it. Thrift stores can’t resell merchandise without testing, making their business model impossible and threatening the charities that rely on those sales. Meanwhile, the economy of scale means that this law gives Mattel a competitive advantage from their own malfeasance — and they get the waiver on independent testing?

Yesterday, we discussed crony capitalism. This is exactly what is meant. This is a perfect example of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace through legislation written to be sympathetic to big businesses, and an enforcement mechanism that favors the big players even beyond the legislation Congress passed. Mattel can push its smaller competitors out of business, or force them into buyouts, because they broke the law in the first place.

Exactly.  It's For The Children™ .
Just wait until these clowns finish regulating Wall Street. 

What to do with your new Tim Geithner currency:

As you probably know, the Secretary Of The Treasury gets to put his name on all the new currency.
As you probably know, the Secretary Of The Treasury went out of his way to avoid paying his taxes, despite his advocacy of lots and lots of new taxes. 
Go here to order your Tim Geithner "Tax Cheat" stamp. 
Yeah, it's supposed to be a crime to deface currency.  It's also a crime to be a tax cheat. 
Call it Civil Disobedience.  A consciousness-raising event. 

And surprise, surprise, the guy who is selling the "Tax Cheat" stamps is now the victim of an audit from Geithner's Goon Squad.  Go here to contribute to his defense fund. 

John Stossel on Myths About Capitalism

If you didn't catch John Stossel last night, there's still time.  Fox Business channel reruns each feature about 4 times.
Last night was about American myths.  Here's Michael Medved on myth #4:

Myth No. 4: The current downturn means the death of capitalism.

"Capitalism is alive and well," Medved said.
"I'm also bugged when people argue that today's problems prove that capitalism "failed." What failed? We had a correction. A bubble popped. But from 1982 to now, the Dow rose from 800 to 11,000. Had it happened without the bubble, we'd say this is one of the great boom periods.
Medved added: "This is one of the biggest lies — the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering. ... Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector."

On a related note, here are some stats from The Austrian Economists site:

% Households with:	Poor 1984	Poor  1994	Poor 2003	Poor 2005	All 1971	All 2005
Washing machine	58.2	71.7	67.0	68.7	71.3	84.0
Clothes dryer	35.6	50.2	58.5	61.2	44.5	81.2
Dishwasher	13.6	19.6	33.9	36.7	18.8	64.0
Refrigerator	95.8	97.9	98.2	98.5	83.3	99.3
Freezer	29.2	28.6	25.4	25.1	32.2	36.6
Stove	95.2	97.7	97.1	97.0	87.0	98.8
Microwave	12.5	60.0	88.7	91.2	1.0	96.4
Color TV	70.3	92.5	96.8	97.4	43.3	98.9
VCR	3.4	59.7	75.4	83.6	0.0	92.2
Personal computer	2.9	7.4	36.0	42.4	0.0	67.1
Telephone	71.0	76.7	87.3	79.8	93.0	90.6
Air conditioner	42.5	49.6	77.7	78.8	31.8	85.7
Cellular Telephone			34.7	48.3	0.0	71.3
One or more cars	64.1	71.8	72.8 (2001)		79.5

Ah, the failures of free market capitalism....
Remember to watch John Stossel.

Picture worth at least a thousand words

Dr. Ralph sent this to me from Pundit Kitchen. 

The Texas Trade Surplus

From a Slate.com essay on why Texas is doing so much better than the rest of the nation:

....(Texas) surpassed California several years ago as the nation's largest exporting state. Manufactured goods like electronics, chemicals, and machinery account for a bigger chunk of Texas' exports than petroleum does. In the first two months of 2010, exports of stuff made in Texas rose 24.3 percent, to $29 billion, from 2009.

That's about 10 percent of the nation's total exports. There are more than 700,000 Texan jobs geared to manufacturing goods for export, according to Patrick Jankowski, vice president of research at the Greater Houston Partnership. "A lot of it is capital goods that the Asian, Latin American, and African [countries] are using to build their economies."

So....should these Asian, Latin American, and African countries worry about their trade deficit with Texas? 
Heck no. 

What matters is how much "stuff" you swap, and who you're swapping with doesn't matter.  It's all about trades per hour.   
Should Fort Worth residents worry about their trade deficits with cities on the other side of Highway 360 ?
Should Texas residents worry about their trade deficits with states on the other side of the Red River?
How about countries on the other side of the Rio Grande? 
Or the Pacific? 

The lines of latitude and longitude of the factory simply...do....not....matter.  The more you restrict trade, the fewer options your manufacturers have for sourcing raw materials and for exporting finished products. 
Penalizing trade serves no purpose but to negate the gains provided to society by technology, labor, ingenuity, determination and progress. 
If Target or J.C. Penney has a sale on items that you want to purchase, would you avoid those stores because the low prices aren't fair to Wal-Mart? 

Illinois Protesters: Raise My Taxes !

From The Chicago Tribune:

SPRINGFIELD --- Thousands of protesters bused down by labor unions and social service advocates rallied at the Capitol today in an attempt to pressure state lawmakers into raising the income tax to avoid more budget cuts.....

"Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!" they chanted, lined up shoulder to shoulder for a few hundred yards stretching a street in front of the Capitol.

(See all the homemade, witty, and creative signs these protesters are using to display their commitment to their cause?  What a spontaneous, diverse, grassroots group !  You can go here for the complete photo gallery.) 

....Jennifer Ritchason, a middle school social students teacher in Bloomington, came armed with hundreds of letters from her students asking legislators for more money for schools. She said she hopes the children’s words will resonate with the governor and House Speaker Michael Madigan, among other legislators the letters are addressed to.

“If you don’t care about your future, I don’t know what you can truly care about,” she said.

Well, Jinny, there are lots of ways to care about the future. 
Here's a chart showing Federal Spending vs. Federal Revenue.  I care about it deeply.  O so deeply:

Well, you say, if taxes aren't rising as fast as spending, shouldn't we be paying more taxes?  Or should we take a long hard look at where the tax money is going? 
Here's a look at what we're now throwing down the Government School Rathole, as compared to 1970:

See the flatlines running along the bottom?  That's not Jimmy Hoffa's pulse rate.  Those are the reading, math, and science scores. 
The government spending line in blue has been adjusted for inflation.  I suspect that the flatlines at the bottom have been adjusted upward for grade inflation also. 

I'm so tired of banging on this particular drum. 
1) If you want to pay more taxes, pay more taxes.  Don't go on talk shows or attend protests demanding that your rates be raised.  Just pay more taxes.  It's easy.  Don't take any deductions.  Write the check for 50% more than you have to.  Then explain your actions to the men in white coats, because your friends and family are going to call them. 
2) With the possible exceptions of a few things relating to infrastructure and the use of force, everything that is privatized runs more efficiently than things that aren't privatized.  Don't bother bringing up G.M. or Chrysler as examples to the contrary.  No one reading this woulda voluntarily contributed their own money to saving those companies.  In the real world, businesses that don't work properly go under. 
3) Can you imagine the employees of Microsoft, Target, Exxon, or Starbucks taking to the streets with signs, demanding that we, their customers, give them more money?  If you felt that they deserved it, would you shop there more?  Or would you politely hint that they get a job with better hours, pay and benefits elsewhere?
4) Does anybody know anyone who has been laid off from a government job in the last two years? 

The Salt Ban

From The Washington Post:

In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.

The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.
"This is a 10-year program," one source said. "This is not rolling off a log. We're talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We're talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people."
The FDA, which regulates most processed foods, would be joined in the effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat and poultry.

Please remember one thing.....
These are the people who used to recommend between 6 and 11 servings per day of grains and starches, a habit that made many Americans fat enough to have our their gravitational fields.

I'm not betting that they're wrong. 

I don't doubt that they mean well. 

We should do all things in moderation, including salt intake, gambling, eating, spending, and bombing Arabs.  But this salt ban sounds like something they're going to screw up.  Fifty years from now, look for a lot of kids suffering from Hyponatremia.  Or asking their neighborhood drug pusher for salt tablets. 

From Thomas Jefferson

Found it on Tom Lewis's blog.

Bill Clinton: Remember what led to Oklahoma City (and, unhhh....forget about Waco)

In which Radley Balko takes Bill Clinton to the woodshed:

In today’s New York Times, Bill Clinton once again tries to tie the Oklahoma City bombing to those of us who hold “the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.”

Of course he sort of proves those of us who do believe such things right by continually using April 19 to tie us to a deranged murderer instead of acknowledging, taking some responsibility for, or expressing any remorse whatsoever for another anniversary we observe today: the Clinton administration’s slaughter of 76 people, including 20 children, at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. Waco gets all of a sentence in Clinton’s op-ed.

Wow.  Bill should have checked his calendar a more closely before hitting the "send" key on that one. 
Clinton's NYT OpEd is nothing more than the latest step in the administration's opposition demonization program:  The Tea Party protesters are all racists.  Opposition to The Obamessiah is unpatriotic.  How could you dare say that you want the President to fail.  If you oppose The Teleprompter Jesus, you're encouraging irresponsible behavior. 
Well, good luck to 'em.  They're going to need it.  Here's something else from Balko's site:  A Pew Research survey that goes all the way back to Ike.  It charts the level of "trust in government".

As a libertarian, of course, you want to see this line dipping on down into the single digits until government is trusted with nothing more than roads, sewers, protecting the borders, and selling raffle tickets for their annual fund-raiser.

Back to Balko.  Here's are his closing paragraphs:

The thing is, Mr. Former President, if I may address you directly, is there are far too may public servants who, as you put it, “do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.” I document them every day on this site. And so despite your admonition, I will continue to criticize them for it. And when, for example, they out and out murder innocent people in the name of a senseless, wasteful, and fundamentally illiberal policy (a policy, incidentally, that you enthusiastically support, despite your admission that you yourself have broken the country’s drug laws), I’ll go ahead and, to borrow your word, demonize them for it.


And you know what? I won’t feel the slightest tinge of guilt about doing so. Nor will I feel the least bit of responsibility for acts of anti-government violence, past or future, even when they’re committed in the name of one or more ideas I might otherwise endorse.

Because fundamentally and categorically, I repudiate the use of force and violence to impose my beliefs, political philosophy, or policy preferences on other people. Until you can say the same thing, Mr. Former President (and we both know you can’t), you can spare me your goddamned lecture.

Happy 4-20

From Snopes.com:

It's both more and less than people make it out to be. '420' began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School in California. '420' (always pronounced "four-twenty," never "four hundred and twenty") came to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m. Keep in mind this wasn't a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who'd made a date to meet near a certain statue. It's thus incorrect to deem that '420' originated as a national or international dope-smoking time, even though the term began as a reference to a particular time of day.

These days '420' is used as a generic way of declaring one likes to use marijuana or just as a term for the substance itself. Its earliest connotation of having to do with the time a certain group of students congregated to smoke wacky tobaccy is unknown to the overwhelming majority of those who now employ the term.

Here's a short little video on why marijuana is illegal.  The answer, of course, is politics. 



I'm indirectly responsible for the drug-testing program for one section of my company, and I support the program 100%.   If employers don't want to hire people who smoke dope, drink alcohol, cuss, don't love Jesus, or are left-handed, that's nobody's business but their own. 
But should any of the above be criminalized, as long as smoking dope, drinking alcohol, cussing, failing to love Jesus, or being left-handed harms no one else? 
No.  Absolutely not. 

Happy 4-20 ! 

Blackjack And Taxes

I love to play blackjack.  Love it, love it, love it. 

The odds are good, relatively speaking.  The house has a relatively small advantage, which I can usually overcome.  I do this by having God on my side, and doubling down after losses. 

My employers at Jukt Micronics love, love, love to go way out on a limb, putting everything at risk, to try to make money by selling goods and services to grocery stores.  They often place "bets" that make my blackjack strategy look rational. 

I will not ever, ever, ever play blackjack in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma casinos have a weird little rule mandating that players put an additional chip in a special "dealer" circle prior to every hand.  There is no way for the player to come out ahead when playing blackjack in Oklahoma.  Not using my strategy, anyway.  I'll bet $5.00 to try to win $10.00, but I won't bet $6.00.   Therefore, I avoid playing blackjack in Oklahoma. 
After all, there are only two things that can happen when using my strategy:  I can loose everything, or I can double my money.  I'm not going to put my money at risk for the possibility of a less-than optimal payout. 

The Jukt Micronics President and CEO have choices also.  They can continue to take risks, putting their money where their ideas are and creating meaningful jobs and excellent products that people want. 
But are they going to continue to take these risks if Washington continues to enforce a greater and greater tax penalty for success? 

At some point, they're going to start avoiding risk the way that I avoid Oklahoma casinos.  They'll either start playing elsewhere, where the penalties for success are lower, or they'll avoid the game altogether for a few election cycles. 

Go here to read an excellent piece from The Cato Institute about the increasing number of people becoming "Tax Traitors".  That's Washington's word for them, not mine.  I prefer the term "smart gamblers".

From 1880

I found this on Libertarian Reddit:

Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS. No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. Few systems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federal minimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based on gold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA. No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions. No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex. As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.

Another example of the Nanny State at work: