Recently in Government Category

I caught the end of tonight's World News on ABC. Since it was Friday their usual last feature is Person of the Week.

This week it was the three mayors of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Mesa, Arizona. What is it that moved ABC to select them as Persons of the Week? They want the federal government (specifically Congress) to stop dickering around and do something about America's crumbling roads. After all, the US used to be number one when it came to the quality of our highways and byways. But no longer. We now rate 20^th in the world behind Malaysia and Cypus.

"If they pass the surface transportation bill and America Fast Forward, it will allow us to accelerate the building of that 30-year project in a 10-year period of time, creating 166,000 jobs," Villaraigosa said. "These are the kinds of innovative things that the Congress has an opportunity to do that they haven't done up to now. ... Their failure to address the No. 1 issue in America, the jobs issue, is akin to the captain of the Concordia jumping off the ship before the passengers had been rescued. This Congress needs to get back on that ship and do their job."

I have to admit that I agree with these mayors that our highway system has been seriously neglected over the past few decades. Some states do an admirable job keeping their roads in good shape but they have to struggle to do it, sometimes sacrificing other infrastructure programs to keep the roads open.

But there's something I must point out that the mayors have conveniently forgotten: the ~$800 billion stimulus package put forth by President Obama in 2009. If every penny of that money had gone to fixing roads and other infrastructure they wouldn't have had to try to cajole Congress into dealing with the issue now. We would be almost 3 years into the 10 year rebuilding effort and plenty of people presently unemployed would be working. But no one mentions that out of the entire stimulus package less than 10% went to infrastructure, and not just roads. The rest of the stimulus went to expanding government and lining the pockets of Obama supporters.

Do we really want Congress to drop another trillion dollars on projects that won't do anything but waste taxpayer dollars we don't really have? If we're going to drop a bundle of tax money on roads, then the appropriations will need to be specifically targeted to each state and limited to use on roads only. No "bridges to nowhere", no side projects that have nothing to do with improving roads, and provisions to do away with the Bacon-Davis Act restrictions (saving tons of money in the process).

As bad as the real estate bubble and subsequent meltdown was here in the US, the bubble in China is worse and the meltdown will be far more spectacular. Unlike the one in the US, the Chinese meltdown includes entire cities built in anticipation of demands for housing, manufacturing, and consumer spending. It is this last that shows just how badly the Chinese government has overestimated the demand, particularly in light of the highly inflated prices for housing.

One other difference - while shopping malls in the US have been struggling remain open as retailers either fail or decide to move to another location (sometimes to the web), many new malls in China never had the retailers to begin with. One mall, called the South China Mall (also known as the Great Mall of China), was supposed to be the biggest retail mall in the world, with over 1500 shops under one roof. Instead it sits virtually empty, with few operating shops and even fewer customers.

To see how bad it is, an Australian news crew visited one of the new cities. Thousands of apartments sit empty, as do many of the retails shops.



Billions of dollars spent on ghost cities where very few live. This is what happens when the government decides what the demand will be rather than letting the private sector figure it out and build only what they can sell.

Very little surprises me about the ever more nonsensical, illogical, and incompetent Obama Administration. Two of the latest examples of this dysfunction: federal fines placed upon fuel companies for failure to blend certain biofuels in gasoline and diesel even though those biofuels don't exist; and new regulations imposed by NOAA that seriously cripple the New England fishing industry even though the need for those restrictions cannot be justified.

With every move Obama and his minions make we move closer to the dystopian hell of Atlas Shrugged. I figure it's only a matter of time before something like Directive 10-289 is handed down by executive order from Obama. (Don't think it won't happen. One clueless leftist on the WSJ Forums suggested stopping the economic abandonment of California by otherwise viable businesses by making it illegal for them to relocate out of state or to trim jobs. Others on the forum informed this idiot that such a thing is tantamount to slavery and illegal seizure of private property without due process or just compensation - the 13th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution, respectively. But then the Left doesn't really like the Constitution, does it?)

Because stupid things like this have been happening a little bit at a time, most of the people in the US don't realize it's happening. But if Obama tried to shove his agenda down our throats overnight there would be armed rebellion by the states and a Second Civil War could result. Except this time it wouldn't be North versus South but Red versus Blue.

Now that we've made it past the first of the year, the focus here in New Hampshire turns in two directions: the upcoming Presidential Primaries and annual town/state budgets. Of the two, the primaries are receiving the most attention by both the populace and the media.

With the New Hampshire primaries scheduled for January 10^th, the media attention has been cranked up to "11". The various presidential wannabes have been spending every free moment in the Granite State, minus time in Iowa in preparation for tomorrow's Iowa Caucuses. (The one exception seems to be Jon Huntsman, who sees New Hampshire as the key to his moving forward.) There will be one last 'big' debate amongst the GOP candidates on the 7^th, with national coverage by ABC.

It's going to be intense for the next eight days.

The lesser of the two events, the annual battle of budgeting for the towns also start in earnest. Not that there hasn't been a lot of behind the scenes work on assembling proposed budgets for the various departments and schools.

Here in my small town the town and school budgets have been undergoing a lot of scrutiny by the board of selectmen, school board, and the budget committee. Everyone wants to cut spending, but of course it's always "someone else" who should cut their budgetary requests. It's never a pretty process and at times emotion can get in the way of logic and reason. When a position is cut in one of the town departments, many of us realize it means that someone we know, perhaps a friend, will lose their job. (That's happened to a friend of mine in the planning department. Her full time position - with benefits - was cut to part time. She couldn't justify staying there under those conditions and left for another job.) In some cases open positions have been eliminated for the time being, leaving some departments short staffed. But those are the choices that have to be made in order to keep spending in check when everyone is having a difficult time making ends meet, particularly those on fixed incomes within our town.

Once the various boards and committees have done their thing it will be up to the voters in each town to vote on them, either at town meeting or during the town elections in March. (A few towns hold their town meetings in April or May.) Towns with a board of selectman/town meeting form of government fall in to two categories: traditional town meeting and SB2.

The traditional town meeting is usually held in some time in March, and all registered voters are encouraged to attend. The voters will discuss and vote on all of the articles presented on the town warrant, some covering budgetary items and other with changes in zoning ordinances (assuming a town has any zoning at all). A second town meeting, usually called the school district meeting, deals will warrants pertaining to the towns school expenditures.

SB2 towns do things a little differently, with two different sessions for both the town and school portions of the warrants. The first session deals solely with discussion and amendments to the town and school warrant articles. The second session of each meeting takes place on election day in March, with the voters deciding whether to approve the various warrant articles discussed the previous session.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems, but they seem to work pretty well. In any case, the tax money that will be spent in the upcoming fiscal year is vetted by the very people that will be paying those taxes. (There are a few taxes which the town voters have no control, those being the county and state assessments levied upon them to run county operations and for some education funding, respectively.)

The state will be dealing with some supplemental budget items during the upcoming legislative session (the state runs on a two-year budget cycle). Sometimes adjustments are made if there's an unexpected expenditure needed to deal with unforeseen circumstances. Sometimes it's the other way around, with some line item that was approved but never implemented, meaning there are surplus funds that can go to other purposes to fill shortfalls someplace else. Sometimes the surplus goes towards the state's so-called rainy day fund, a savings account that can be used to fill revenue shortfalls under very specific circumstances.

All we can do is hope they folks in the state capitol don't go on some kind of a mindless spending binge. But then it does help that the GOP holds supermajorities in the state Senate and Executive Council and a majority in the state House.

I know, I'm a few days late on this, but I'm still trying to catch up. Gimme a break. I've been sick.

Now that government subsidies for ethanol have ended, as have the tariffs on Brazilian ethanol, what will the effect be fuel prices? In the end, probably not a whole lot. After all, ethanol is only 10% of the volume in E10 gasolines. Assuming Brazilian ethanol becomes more popular with blenders, you might see an approximate 5¢ per gallon drop in gasoline using it. For blenders using US corn ethanol, you might see an equivalent rise in price. But the main thing is that you and I and everyone else will be paying for it up front rather than having the cost of it buried by taxpayer funded subsidies (to the tune of $6 billion a year).

As many of you know, I am not a fan of gasoline/ethanol blend fuels. They cause too many problems, particularly in small engines (lawnmowers, snow blowers, chainsaws, etc.) and in marine use, where nominally humid conditions can cause the ethanol to settle out and clog the fuel systems of boats, something I've had to deal with over the past couple of years. And while the end of subsidies and tariffs are a good thing, that will not make me like the blended fuels. There are still too many downsides. (One of the 'benefits' of ethanol sold to us by the EPA was that it would make gasoline burn cleaner. And it does..for carbureted engines. But it has no effect on fuel injected engines other than decreasing fuel economy by 5%. This is a benefit?) Of course the EPA wants to boost the ethanol content in fuels to 15%, but so far the Congress has said "No". Even Congress understands the downsides to such a move and the EPA has not shown the move will be beneficial to anyone but the EPA and ethanol producers.

After watching this ABC News story about how the Treasury has come to its senses and stopped minting dollar coins no one wants, I had to ask this question: Why did ABC come to the wrong conclusion about these coins?

On more than one occasion I have posted about how the government has gotten it wrong when dealing with the dollar coin. I've posted about it three separate times this year alone.

The problem isn't that the Treasury is making coins no one wants. It's that it's still printing dollar bills that last for a small fraction of the time that a coins lasts. The cost to print a bill is half that of minting a coin. A dollar bill lasts between a year and a half and two years. A coin lasts between 25 and 30 years. In the long run the coins costs less. But as long as the government keeps the dollar bill, no one will want or use the dollar coin...except maybe for commuters on certain public transit systems. (The 'T' in Boston uses dollar coins as change in its "Charlie Card" dispensers.)

The US taxpayer could save billions of dollars by getting rid of the dollar bill and switching to the dollar coin. But no one seems willing to make the switch, particularly when the vending machine companies start bitching about how reconfiguring their machines to accept the dollar coin will be expense. But expensive to whom, even if the claim is true? Why should the taxpayer subsidize that particular industry (for that's what it is if we stay with the dollar bill)? When Canada switched to Loonie (their dollar coin) and the UK switched to the pound coin, the vending machine companies did not fail. (Of course this part of the story is but a small part of the non-decision to stay with the bill.) All it takes is for someone in government to finally step up and say "Sorry folks, but it's costing everyone too much to keep printing this small denomination so we're switching over the the coin."

Oh, there will be the typical hew and cry by those who just don't like change of any kind (no pun intended). But eventually they'll use them just like everyone else.

The time to retire the dollar bill is long overdue.

I could write volumes about the continuing ClimateGate scandal, but more than a few people have beaten me to it. One of them is James Delingpole in a WSJ opinion piece. But as good as his piece is, it is in the comments we find a few gems. Probably one of the better ones was penned by Michael Rivero as he reduces it to a few salient points as well as illustrating the actual motivation behind so many of those who want to push us back to a hunter-gatherer existence. Here is his comment in its entirety with a few formatting edits to make it easier to read (WSJ doesn't allow HTML tags in comments):

For more than ten years we have watched for "Carbonazis" try to do to Earth with CO₂ when ENRON did to California with electricity; make themselves very rich with lies and deceptions about a non-existent crisis. Along the way we have seen data manipulation, siting of temperature sensors near sources of heat (in one notorious case right next to a trash incinerator), collusion with the corporate media to keep opposing data from the public, even as the former head of Greenpeace admits making up claims about Greenland losing its ice cover, Phil Jones admits warming stopped 15 years ago (which anyone living through the last four hard winters already knew) and Al Gore insisting that the temperature of the Earth's core is "millions of degrees" while he uses computer generated images of collapsing arctic ice for his "documentary" (which has already been denounced by the British courts for containing numerous lies and misrepresentations.)

The global warming cult is not interested in saving the Earth, and shamelessly exploits the public's desire to save the Earth to enrich and empower themselves, living like royalty as they tell the rest of the people they must live more poorly.

"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." - Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

"We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy." - Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

"I believe it is appropriate to have an 'over-representation' of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience." - Al Gore, Climate Change activist

"It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true." - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis..." - David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member

"The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope." - David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth

"If we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it is possible under capitalism" - Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First!

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsiblity to bring that about?" - Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

"A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation." - Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." - John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor." - Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia

"The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man." - Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

I don't think we need any more proof of the Left's intentions in regards to AGW, do we?

It's only a matter of time before this kind of nonsense kills someone here (assuming it hasn't already):

In Scotland, fire officials who were so hidebound to official health and safety procedures allowed a woman who'd fallen down a collapsed mineshaft to die rather than allow rescue personnel to retrieve her and get her to treatment. Her fall had given her life-threatening injuries but if she had been rescued and transported to a hospital she would likely have survived. Instead, she died due to severe hypothermia because she was partially immersed in water for hours. It wasn't that they couldn't reach her. Firefighters already had, one of them staying with her for over four hours before being ordered to abandon her.

Why have rescue services if they aren't going to be allowed to rescue the very people they're trained to serve? It seems the chief in this case was too much of a paper-shuffling bureaucrat and not enough of a firefighter.

Think such a thing won't happen here? Don't bet on it. It's only a matter of time before someone like the fire chief in question allows something like regulations, budget restrictions, or union rules to kill someone that might otherwise have been saved.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

It is said the truly smart will learn from the harsh lessons of others' failures. I can say that one member of the WP clan is that smart, that being the youngest of the WP sisters. (As she says, she made her own mistakes while growing up that our parents never found out about.)

It would be great if the political class presently ruling the US was as smart as my youngest sister. Unfortunately they are not.

They see the economic meltdown occurring in the Euro-zone, yet refuse to learn the lessons countries like Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain are teaching us, the primary one being that eventually you will run out of other people's money to fund all the wonderful social programs that have been used to bribe the electorate.

Italy is the latest to teeter on the brink of insolvency, and should it go over the edge it is quite likely it will pull the rest of the Euro-zone with it. Greece's default damaged the European economy yet it has only a fraction of the GDP of Italy. Should Italy default Europe will take an additional $2 trillion hit it cannot afford. Is it any wonder Germany is considering abandoning the Euro and going back to the mark? Can anyone deny that this problem has been driving the British public to demand a referendum about whether or not to remain in the EU? At least those two countries see the problem and realize they'll have to bankrupt themselves in a doomed effort to prop up economic policies from Brussels.

But too many of our own politicians at the state and federal level, regardless of party, seem oblivious to the fact that unless we make some drastic changes in how our federal government taxes and spends we will be headed down the same path. Labor leaders ignore the fact that neither businesses or taxpayers are a bottomless source of funds, shortchanging their own members by making promises no one can keep.

Should the US fail to put its financial/economic house in order, and right quick, it will pull the world economy down with it into a depression unlike any we've seen before.

As the foreclosure crisis drags on, it appears banks holding some of the foreclosed properties are taking drastic measures to lighten their burden.

As we've seen in Detroit, foreclosed and abandoned homes have been demolished. In a number of the hardest hit suburbs empty housing developments, some with hundreds of empty never-occupied homes, are being bulldozed to remove the need for the banks or the towns to maintain and police them. (Some of these upscale homes have turned into squatters dens, housing drug dealers and prostitution operations.)

The trend has been spreading, with a number of cities passing legislation to enable them to work with banks to demolish foreclosed properties that are unlikely to ever be occupied before they molder away from neglect. One of the latest to deal with this issue has been Cleveland.

The sight of excavators tearing down vacant buildings has become common in this foreclosure-ravaged city, where the housing crisis hit early and hard. But the story behind the recent wave of demolitions is novel -- and cities around the country are taking notice.

A handful of the nation's largest banks have begun giving away scores of properties that are abandoned or otherwise at risk of languishing indefinitely and further dragging down already depressed neighborhoods.

Four years into the housing crisis, the ongoing expense of upkeep and taxes, along with costly code violations and the price of marketing the properties, has saddled banks with a heavy burden. It often has become cheaper to knock down decaying homes no one wants.

As the linked article states, a number of other states and cities have passed laws allowing the same kind of operations to demolish distressed properties and ease the burden of supporting empty properties.

One area I predict will see such demolitions in the near future is the Las Vegas area. Entire neighborhoods sit empty, with street after street of new homes never sold and never occupied gathering dust and becoming the icon for a modern ghost town.

While not nearly as eerie as the modern ghost cities seen in China, it's still a sad testament to the housing bubble enabled by Congress with their weak oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Harking back to my earlier post about clueless "you owe everything you have to the government" US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, here's an object lesson about how government is not the leading 'agency' when it comes to roads, utilities, housing, and so on being the only thing that allows entrepreneurs to create anything, including jobs.

To take a look at her lunatic vision and how it is so wrong all we have top do is look to China to see how absolutely wrong she is about the whole thing.

China, anticipating the need for more housing, schools, and recreational facilities for all the people who will be working for all of the new businesses have built entire new towns and cities to provide all those things. The only problem? They're empty. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Some have been empty for ten years and the only people living and working in them are the government employees tasked with maintaining these ghost towns.

I'm sure Elizabeth Warren would think such a venture is exactly how things have been done in the US. But that isn't the case. History shows that businesses arrive, build factories and the roads that lead to them. They pay to have water, sewer, and gas lines run to their businesses. The same is true of electrical and telecommunications lines. The government doesn't pay for any of that.

Well, that's not entirely true.

Some states, cities, or towns cut deals in order to entice new businesses to come to their areas. Some even go so far as to take private property by eminent domain to hand over to them all in the name of increasing the chances of having new jobs come into being. (That worked out so well for the city of New London, Connecticut after they won their case in the US Supreme Court - the infamous Kelo vs New London decision.)

But to attribute all of the infrastructure needed for businesses to even operate solely to government is being disingenuous at best and irrational at worst. For the most part developers pay the cost of adding to the infrastructure need to support new construction, not the taxpayers. And then the businesses pay utilities bills for the electricity, water, gas, and sewer services, sometimes to the municipality and sometimes to private utilities. But none of that is paid for through taxes. So Warren's claims that government is the one who provided all those things is only partially correct, end then only peripherally. Government may be the agent for some of those things, but they generally don't use taxpayer dollars to provide those things.

Roads are different, but even then it isn't as if roads were built just for the businesses she's demonizing. They were built for everyone, including her and the businesses that provide the jobs for the people she says she wants to serve.

It seems yet another attempt to do away with the dollar bill is in the works, something I have advocated since the Sacagawea dollar coin made its appearance.

Proponents of keeping the dollar bill cite the unpopularity of the coin because no one is using them. But the reason they don't use them is because the dollar bill is still being printed. It also wastes billions of taxpayer dollars to keep printing bills that wear out in 18 to 24 months. Coins last at least 20 years.

Two of those working against doing away with the dollar bill? Senators Scott Brown (R-MA) and John Kerry (D-MA). This doesn't surprise me because the sole company that makes the paper used to print all of our paper currency is located in Massachusetts. Without the dollar bill they won't make nearly as much income as they have been, meaning they'll probably have to lay off some employees. So the two senators from Massachusetts are working to protect a small number of jobs in the Pay State at the cost to the taxpayers of $183 million per year.

Over the years I wrote about George W. Bush that he wasn't to be taken lightly. His "aww, shucks" persona hid a sharp mind, constantly leading people to underestimate him.

As Walt Harrington mentions in his piece, Dubya and Me:

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.

As I've written more than once that Dubya's like that good ol' boy who will invite you into his home for a couple of cold ones and some poker, and you'll leave some time later a little drunk and lot lighter in the wallet.

As time has gone by and Obama has been put his stamp on the presidency, George W. Bush's image has been rehabilitated. Those highway billboards picturing a smiling and waving Bush and the tag line "Miss me yet?" may have been a bit of satire, but somehow I think more than a few people, including some Democrats, do indeed miss him.

Though Harrison had known Bush for a number of years, he didn't really understand him until he had the opportunity to have dinner with him at the White House one evening, an informal meal with just Bush, Harrison, and Mark McKinnon, Bush's campaign media adviser. As Harrison described it:

I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn't answer.

"I've never known you to be speechless," she said, genuinely surprised.

I finally said, "It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets."

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find others have found themselves feeling exactly the same thing after spending time with Bush, even now, despite the fact that he's been out of office for over two-and-a-half years.

One of the things that surprised Harrison: Bush is a voracious reader. Most of what he read was historical non-fiction. As Harrison tells us, his understanding of history, particularly those parts made by his predecessors, helped him understand the broader context of what he had to deal with as President. It's a shame the present occupant of the White House lacks even a modicum of that understanding.

Is it any wonder George W. Bush is looking better every day as we look back upon his presidency?

(H/T Instapundit)

I sacrificed otherwise useful time and watched the President's speech to a joint session of Congress. Did I hear anything unexpected? Not really, except for...

"...pass this bill right away."

Claims that everything in his plan would be paid for rang hollow, particularly when he explained where the money would come from: thin air. The so-called "savings" from the debt-reduction boondoggle, really a reduction in the amount of money the government was going to spend that it didn't have, can in no way be considered as a means of paying for the American Jobs Act.

Unfortunately his speech sounded more like a campaign speech than a policy speech, slamming Congressional Republicans for being obstructionist. I think I would be obstructionist too if I knew the 'plan' the President has put forward won't work and will cost too much. (I think Obama defines 'obstructionist' as Republicans who won't do what he tells them to do.)

One thing that clued me in that Obama really doesn't understand why businesses hire was his plan to reduce taxes on small businesses, one cut mentioned being payroll taxes paid by employers, citing the tax reductions as a means to induce businesses to hire more employees. But businesses don't hire employees to get a tax break that won't cover the cost of hiring. Businesses hire when they need more people to meet increased demand for goods or services, period.

While I agreed with him that our infrastructure needs a serious overhaul, I believe it's too little too late. Stimulus 1.0 should have put almost all $878 billion towards infrastructure improvements, not the measly $55 billion actually spent on it. Stimulus 2.0 will be throwing more money we don't have after the original money we didn't have and I think it will have an even smaller effect, except for expanding the deficit.

On more than one occasion he made mention of fairness and fair play. Unfortunately I think his definition of those terms is far different from just about everyone else's. It has nothing to do with equal opportunity and everything to do with equal outcome. Unfortunately he will get his equal outcome if he gets his way, all of it bad.

I think it's about time I start drinking heavily....

Listening to the plans President Obama has made to address the jobs problem, it is no surprise to anyone that he really doesn't have a plan, or at least not a new one.

If his $878 billion stimulus program had been used to actually address a number of problems within the country, those primarily being our crumbling infrastructure, rather than using it for political patronage, we might not have as much of an economic problem as we presently face. But far too many of us knew very little of that money would be used to stimulate anything but the growth of the federal government.

Will Obama's September 8^th speech try to make a case for spending even more money we don't have to pay for more political patronage? If history is any indication, then the answer is likely yes.

What the president really needs to do (but won't) is to rein in his renegade agency heads (NLRB or EPA, anyone?) who are making sure it's damn difficult for anyone to create jobs...except for government jobs.

What the president needs to do is to get the government out of the way of free enterprise to let it do what it does best - create jobs.

What the president needs to do is fire all his czars and advisers because, quite frankly, they have no idea what they're doing. Most of them are academics with little, if any, real world experience doing things like running businesses or meeting payrolls or dealing with an ever increasing avalanche of government regulations and paperwork that does nothing but cost time and money to deal with yet add little of benefit to anyone except bureaucrats.

What the president needs to do is realize that one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, was right when he said to America "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem."

What the president needs to understand that no one in government, and I mean no one is either smart enough or wise enough to run the American peoples' lives. After all, everyone in government is having a hard enough time running their own lives, let alone those of 300,000,000 other people in this country. Every government that has tried to do so has ultimately failed, resulting in widespread misery. Quite often those governments end with fatal results for members of those governments.

What the president needs to understand that no one in government, and I mean no one, is either smart enough or wise enough to run the American economy. History is littered with plenty of examples to show this is true. Unfortunately the president and many in Congress have ignored this truth, figuring that this time they'll get it right. (They won't.)

All I expect from the president during his speech is more of the same old crap he's taken from the FDR, LBJ, and Karl Marx playbooks, just put in new wrappings and hyped by the Lame Stream Media.

In other words, "There's nothing to see here, folks. Move along!"

I guess we can call this yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, something the Left seems to be very good at overlooking.

We've been reading about the effects of California's so-called "Amazon Tax", which was supposed to force Amazon to collect California sales tax for all sales made to customers in the state because of its presence by way of its affiliates program. The Golden State expected to collect millions in extra revenues, but no surprise to those of us well versed in unintended consequences, they've collected very little.

Why?

Because Amazon shut down its affiliates program in California, denying the state any extra sales tax revenues. But there's a secondary effect the legislators didn't foresee that will further decrease tax revenues: loss of income taxes from the affiliates.

Since the now former affiliates are no longer paid a commission from sales made through their links, they no longer generate the income taxes that would have been paid into the state coffers in Sacramento.

Talk about a twofer: no sales tax revenues and even less income tax revenues.

Maybe the pols in Sacramento were expecting Amazon to go to court to block implementation, but leave its affiliates program intact. Instead, Amazon said "Enough!" and pulled the plug, leaving California even worse off than they were before this idiot tax.

But wait! There's more!

Now California wants to pass a "fitted sheet" law that would make it illegal for hotels to not use fitted sheets on their beds. How effin' dumb is that?

It's no wonder California is doomed. All the really smart people have already left, taking their money and their businesses with them.

A follow on to yesterday's cartoon rant about the riots in England is this video rant by one of my favorite Brits, Pat Condell. For those of you who have never seen any of his video pieces I must warn you that he does not pull any punches and calls it exactly like he sees it.

I think this cartoon illustrates the thinking of those rioting in the UK all too well.


For more head to Spider and Scorpion.

One of the things said about blogging is that bloggers shouldn't apologize for not blogging. Normally I would agree with that, but not this time.

It isn't that I haven't had anything to write about (quite the contrary). It isn't that I've lost interest (I haven't). It's merely that life has intruded, leaving me with far less time to write anything worthwhile.

Over the past couple of weeks or so I have been getting home late, usually from some kind of meeting of a town committee or board, though once because I had to make an unexpected trip to the WP In-Laws to pick up BeezleBub and we didn't get back until 10:30PM. At that point I was just too darned tired to do anything but go to bed.

It's been these little things that have contributed to my lack of posting anything inciteful, witty, or outright offensive (at least offensive to the Left). I've resorted to borrowing heavily from humorous e-mails or Facebook postings to make sure this blog stays active. I'm going to have to do that one more time as I had yet another late evening. But at least this is educational in that it makes our nations' fiscal problem a little easier to understand.

Received via e-mail:

Federal Budget 101

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.

Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700

Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200  

Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500  

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

Amount cut from the budget: $385

So in effect last month Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. What family would cut $385 of spending in order to solve $16,500 in deficit spending? 

It is a start, although hardly a solution. 

Now after years of this, the Jones family has $142,710 of debt on its credit card (which is the equivalent of the national debt). 

You would think the Jones family would recognize and address this situation, but it does not. Neither does Congress. 

The root of the debt problem is that the voters typically do not send people to Congress to save money. They are sent there to bring home the bacon to their own home state. 

To effect budget change, we need to change the job description and give Congress new marching orders. 

It is awfully hard (but not impossible) to reverse course and tell the government to stop borrowing money from our children and spending it now. 

In effect, what we have is a reverse mortgage on the country. The problem is that the voters have become addicted to the money. Moreover, the American voters are still in the denial stage, and do not want to face the possibility of going into rehab. 

Yup. I'd say the above pretty much explains it in terms we can all understand.

The irony of this? I received this by way of the very liberal parent of a friend of mine. It's a shame she hasn't been able to integrate this little bit of education into her view.

This rant by a small business CEO tells it like it is, something the folks inside the Beltway no longer seem to understand. Do they really think "incentives" to hire will induce business to hire anyone? Businesses hire only when they need more people, not because the government provides some kind of lame incentive to do so.


If the government really wants to give businesses an incentive to hire, then maybe it should get the hell out of the way. Maybe government should stop sucking so much money out of the economy that there's less available to invest or to buy goods and services that create the demand for more jobs. Maybe rogue government agencies should be reined in before they do irreparable damage to the businesses that actually create the jobs.