The Freedom Phile

State of the Union 2012

2012-01-27T16:16:00.001-06:00

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQdwr-xNJIU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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TaxProf Blog: 2012 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States

2012-01-27T09:10:00.000-06:00

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/01/2012-state.html

TaxProf Blog

« Pew, TPC Analyze Graetz VAT Plan | Main | Brown: An Equity-Based, Multilateral Approach for Sourcing Income Among Nations »

January 26, 2012

2012 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States

The Tax Foundation yesterday released the 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index (9th ed.) which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates:

1

Wyoming

41

Iowa

2

South Dakota

42

Maryland

3

Nevada

43

Wisconsin

4

Alaska

44

North Carolina

5

Florida

45

Minnesota

6

New Hampshire

46

Rhode Island

7

Washington

47

Vermont

8

Montana

48

California

9

Texas

49

New York

10

Utah

50

New Jersey

Interestingly, all ten of the states with the worst business tax climates voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and five of the ten states with the best business tax climates voted for John McCain (and eight of the ten voted for George Bush in 2004).

January 26, 2012 in Tax, Think Tank Reports | Permalink

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Comments

It looks like the gov of NC won't be running for re-election.

Posted by: Sandy P. | Jan 26, 2012 11:02:40 AM

Now compare these rankings with the state's unemployment rates and real estate foreclosures. Nevada #3 and Florida # 5 have the highest unemployment rates in the country and worst real estate markets with the most foreclosures. Iowa #41, Maryland #42, North Carolina #44, Vermont #47, and New York #49 all have below-average unemployment rates. Conclusion?

Posted by: Tax Practitioner | Jan 26, 2012 11:30:29 AM

With a few exceptions, the Mississippi seems to be the dividing line. Maybe the cities whose radio stations begin with "K" are more fiscally responsible than those whose radio stations begin with "W".

Posted by: PacRim Jim | Jan 26, 2012 3:14:45 PM

Possible being unemployed in NY or Ca is so depressing people move?

Posted by: Fred | Jan 26, 2012 3:50:51 PM

"Now compare these rankings with the state's unemployment rates and real estate foreclosures. Nevada #3 and Florida # 5 have the highest unemployment rates in the country and worst real estate markets with the most foreclosures. Iowa #41, Maryland #42, North Carolina #44, Vermont #47, and New York #49 all have below-average unemployment rates. Conclusion?"

My conclusion is you are leaving out very pertinent information. Nevada and Florida have high unemployment in part because they have had insanely high population growth. Just about nobody moves to Vermont and New York and New Jersey have been losing representatives for years.

Looking at actual job creation, the business friendly states have far more jobs (even Nevada) than they did 10 years ago, even in today's weak economy. The business unfriendly states are severely lagging in job growth. Many of #48's jobs have been moving to #9 for the past several years. Very close to none are moving the other direction.

Posted by: mojavewolf | Jan 26, 2012 4:09:44 PM

Hey Tax Practitioner: "Conclusions?"

Well, let's see: at #6, NH's unemployment rate is the same as VT's, and RI is 3rd from the bottom.

My conclusion? I can cherry-pick just as well as you.

http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Posted by: Yam Dankee | Jan 26, 2012 4:13:57 PM

Conclusion? Correlation does not equal causation - a basic fact that 'tax practitioner' should know, but apparently doesn't.

Posted by: LoneStar78730 | Jan 26, 2012 4:47:55 PM

Coincidentally, I consider most of the last 10 nanny states. NJ, NY, RI, MD, CA, Must wear a motorcycle helmet. Can not get a gun carry license. (Wisconsin gets a pass as just going shall carry.) So my conclusion is that Democrats hate freedom. But I have known that forever!!

Posted by: Dannytheman | Jan 26, 2012 4:55:57 PM

Nevada and Florida have high unemployment and in both cases tourism is the states' number one industry. Tourism as an industry is well know to be more fickle in relation to the national economy rather than the local economy.

Posted by: sbk | Jan 26, 2012 5:55:11 PM

A valid point sbk, but in both states the hardest hit large sector is construction. You don't want to be an unemployed roofer or carpenter in Las Vegas, but the resorts will come back. Same in Florida. In hindsight, it's amazing that either state could sustain such a boom for several decades. It isn't birth rates; it's people fleeing from blue model states. DMV stats in both states, plus Arizona and Texas back this up.

Posted by: mojavewolf | Jan 26, 2012 6:44:35 PM

Come from a family of 5 kids raised in Cincinnati Ohio (#39); we're all in late 40's and early 50's now. Exactly one kid remains in Ohio; the rest? - in Florida (#5) (as are retired Mom and Dad), Texas (#9), Indiana (#11) and Arizonaa (#27). A State cannot stay healthy if it can't hold on to its citizens. The same is true at the country level as the US will learn over the next few decades.

Posted by: Texan | Jan 26, 2012 8:47:48 PM

Referring to Scott P comment that "Iowa #41, Maryland #42, North Carolina #44, Vermont #47, and New York #49 all have below-average unemployment rates."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has the Unemployment rates by State, seasonally adjusted for Dec 2011 the following rankings, Iowa [5.6%], Maryland [6.7%], North Carolina [9.9%], Vermont [5.1%], and New York [8.0%]. National Average Unemployment according to these numbers is 7.8%.

Leaving out California [11.1%], Illinois [9.8%], Rhode Island [10.8%], shows a bit of "cherry-picking" of data.

Conclusion: Taxes as well as employment base (i.e. what kind of jobs are available) impact employment. However, taxes will also impact how many jobs of any type will be available.

Posted by: Alan Boyd | Jan 26, 2012 8:58:45 PM

In their comments above, Texan, mojavewolf, and others suggest why the Obama administration and its blue-state allies are so hellbent on restricting traditional automotive travel and the mobility of Americans. It stops people from voting with their feet to escape bad government.

Posted by: Jake | Jan 26, 2012 9:20:16 PM

Perfect… Obama Leaves Event Promoting Clean Energy in Motorcade of 22 Gas Hogs (Video) | The Gateway Pundit

2012-01-27T04:47:00.001-06:00

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/beautiful-obama-leaves-event-promoting-clean-energy-in-motorcade-of-22-fossil-fueled-vehicles-video/

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Rejecting The Keystone Pipeline Is An Act Of National Insanity - Investors.com

2012-01-20T14:19:00.000-06:00

http://news.investors.com/Article/598312/201201191838/keystone-pipeline-obama-veto-jobs.htm?src=IBDDAE

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JustOneMinute: I Know The Feeling

2012-01-18T11:02:00.000-06:00

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/01/i-know-the-feeling.html

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Private Equity Firm Hypocrisy - By Katrina Trinko - The Corner - National Review Online

2012-01-16T16:27:00.001-06:00

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/288167/private-equity-firm-hypocrisy-katrina-trinko

Private Equity Firm Hypocrisy - By Katrina Trinko - The Corner - National Review Online

Deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter wrote a memo last week blasting Mitt Romney for leading a private equity firm:

Mitt Romney has staked his entire candidacy on one claim: that his "real world" experience in the private equity business uniquely qualifies him to lead our economy and the nation. …

But in fairness, Romney's objective in business was never job creation. As one of his colleagues recently told the Los Angeles Times:

"I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation," said Mark B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain, who worked closely with Romney for nine years before forming his own firm. "The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors." …

When asked by TIME Magazine whether Mitt Romney is a job creator or destroyer, Warren Buffett said that while businesses shouldn't hang on to people they don't need, "I don't like what private-equity firms do in terms of taking out every dime they can and leveraging [companies] up so that they really aren't equipped, in some cases, for the future." Voters need to understand the kind of economy Mitt Romney's experience entails – and it doesn't sound like the kind of economy that's built to last.

But apparently Cutter wasn't always so opposed to private equity firms: she previously worked as a spokeswoman for J.C. Flowers … a private equity firm.

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Spengler » Private Equity and Creative Destruction

2012-01-14T11:44:00.001-06:00

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/01/12/private-equity-and-creative-destruction/

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2012 predictions | KurzweilAI

2012-01-12T17:38:00.001-06:00

http://www.kurzweilai.net/2012-predictions

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Thanks to the Oil and Gas Boom, ND, AK and TX Have Regained All Jobs Lost During Recession

2012-01-07T10:22:00.001-06:00

Thanks to the Oil and Gas Boom, ND, AK and TX Have Regained All Jobs Lost During Recession

CARPE DIEM

Despite the gradual improvements in the U.S. labor market and the 8.5% jobless rate for December, the payroll employment level of 131.9 million jobs in December is still more than six million jobs below the 137.9 million peak level when the recession started in December 2007. In percentage terms, December payrolls were 4.5% below the December 2007 level, see the chart above.

In contrast to the ongoing "jobless recovery" at the national level, there are three states that have now regained all of the jobs lost during the recession: North Dakota, Alaska and Texas (see chart above). What do these three states have in common? They are all oil and gas rich, and have been adding thousands of mining and natural resources jobs over the last several years (12,000 in North Dakota, 2,200 in Alaska and 66,600 in Texas) to keep up with the increased domestic production of energy resources, mostly for shale gas and oil.

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Government: The redistributionist behemoth (George F. Will/Washington Post)

2012-01-07T10:20:00.001-06:00

Government: The redistributionist behemoth (George F. Will/Washington Post)

memeorandum Firehose

George F. Will / Washington Post:
Government: The redistributionist behemoth — Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today's redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

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Christmas_Reporting_800.jpg 800×987 pixels

2012-01-02T11:51:00.001-06:00

http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Christmas_Reporting_800.jpg

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The_Years_Ahead_0112

2012-01-02T07:58:00.001-06:00

From Evernote:

The_Years_Ahead_0112

Conservative Blogs Central: Pelosi Doing "Occupy" Protest In Hawaii

2011-12-28T18:25:00.000-06:00

Conservative Blogs Central: Pelosi Doing "Occupy" Protest In Hawaii

PJTV - Three Years Under Obama - Bill Whittle

2011-12-26T18:39:00.000-06:00

PJTV - Three Years Under Obama - Bill Whittle

Ed Driscoll » California, There It Went

2011-12-26T14:10:00.000-06:00

Ed Driscoll » California, There It Went

Everyone Has His Own Facts

2011-12-24T16:17:00.001-06:00

Everyone Has His Own Facts

The Glittering Eye

James Pethokoukis produces seven different charts on the economy over the last several years, decade, thirty years, and dating back to 1916, proclaiming them the "most illuminating economic charts of 2011". The first chart is the infamous chart of projected unemployment deployed by Obama White House economic advisors Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, updated to the present day, and which may well sink a second Obama term. The best that can be said about it is that they were wrong.

The second illustrates the shockingly rapid decrease in the size of the work force since 2008, without which the U-3 unemployment rate would be above 11%. I don't believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was the Great Vacation and I don't believe that about the late recession and subsequent weak recovery, either.

Others include a chart of median income and consumption since 1980 (a different take on the declining median incomes story), a chart of the percentage of total wealth possessed by the top 1% of income earners since 1916, a comparative chart of recoveries from recessions over the last 30 years, and a projection of the rising level of public debt.

For each of the charts there's probably another chart that illustrates its opposite or places the blame on somebody else. What I think that most strongly partisan Republican and strongly partisan Democrats miss in the food fight is that the number of Americans affiliated with either party is actually falling and the number of independents is rapidly overtaking the number of registered Republicans. I think they care more about what will be done than about whose fault it was.

What is President Obama going to run on in 2012? That it's all Bush's fault and that four more years of Congressional gridlock is just the ticket for healing the country's ills? It's more likely he'll try to emulate Harry Truman and run against the do-nothing Congress which seems like a pretty good strategy considering Congress's popularity is substantially lower than his. Employing that strategy without undermining the Democrats' continuing control of the Senate will be extremely delicate.

And then there are the pesky facts. President Obama got very much what he asked for in the first two years of his term. Largest fiscal stimulus in the history of the Republlic? Check. Continuing the bailouts started by the Bush Administration? Check. Healthcare reform? Check. Don't like the Bush tax cuts? The Obama White House asked that they be extended. Blaming the White House's asking for the wrong things on Bush or the Republican House may not be that easy a sell.

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The 7 most illuminating economic charts of 2011 « The Enterprise Blog

2011-12-24T16:15:00.001-06:00

http://blog.american.com/2011/12/the-7-most-illuminating-economic-charts-of-2011/

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@preciousliberty, 12/24/11 2:45 PM

2011-12-24T14:46:00.001-06:00

Precious Liberty (@preciousliberty)
12/24/11 2:45 PM
ACORN Officials Shred Documents, Fire Workers After Exposed As Organizing Occupy Wall Street - ow.ly/89zm9

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Article: Hard-hitting ABC special: Barbawa Wawa asks Obama what super-power he wants

2011-12-23T18:05:00.001-06:00

Hard-hitting ABC special: Barbawa Wawa asks Obama what super-power he wants
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/12/hard-hitting-abc-special-barbawa-wawa.html

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Simply The Best… American Crossroads Salutes Barack Obama – America’s 4th Best President Evah (Video) | The Gateway Pundit

2011-12-23T08:13:00.000-06:00

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/12/simply-the-best-american-crossroads-salutes-barack-obama-americas-4th-best-president-eveh-video/

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New Study Reveals Illinois Lost 1 Resident Every 10 Minutes During Last 15 Years | The Gateway Pundit

2011-12-23T08:09:00.001-06:00

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/12/new-study-reveals-illinois-lost-1-resident-every-10-minutes-during-last-15-years/

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It’s For the Kids… 14,866 IL Teachers Made Over $100,000 Last Year – Phys Ed Teacher Made $203,154 | The Gateway Pundit

2011-12-20T12:09:00.001-06:00

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/12/its-for-the-kids-14866-il-teachers-made-over-100000-last-year-phys-ed-teacher-made-203154/

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SCOAMFy Christmas, Suckers!

2011-12-19T06:39:00.001-06:00

http://minx.cc/?post=324840

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With More Vacation Days and Separate Travel, Price of Obama’s Annual Hawaiian Holiday Rises | Hawaii Reporter

2011-12-18T15:43:00.001-06:00

Found this interesting link on the Drudge Report:

With More Vacation Days and Separate Travel, Price of Obama's Annual Hawaiian Holiday Rises | Hawaii Reporter

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/with-more-vacation-days-and-separate-travel-price-of-obama%E2%80%99s-annual-hawaiian-holiday-rises/123

Get iDrudgeReport on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad free at the iTunes Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/official-drudge-report-free/id375614185?mt=8

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2011-12-17T14:10:00.001-06:00

Spengler » Thomas Friedman and the Higher Education Bubble

2011-12-17T13:52:00.001-06:00

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/12/16/thomas-friedman-and-the-higher-education-bubble/?singlepage=true

Spengler

That Thomas Friedman would spout stupidity and anti-Semitism surprises me no more than the appearance of a gumball after I put a quarter into the machine and turn the knob. But one line in the New York Times' calumnist's (sic) Dec. 13 tantrum against Israel was worth a double-take:

I sure hope that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let's say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.

Why on earth is the "real test" at the University of Wisconsin? For liberals, the only people who count are the smart people, because it is an article of faith that social engineering can fix all the world's problems, and a logical conclusion that only smart people qualify as social engineers. It doesn't matter what the dumb people think. They are the ones who need to be socially engineered. To Friedman, it is irrelevant whether Americans at large support Israel by a 4:1 margin or better, and that support for Israel is growing steadily, as the Gallup Poll consistently shows:

That poll includes dumb people, so it doesn't count. To Friedman, what matters is what university audiences might think. The insularity of the liberal mind is astonishing. It brings to mind the anecdote about Emperor Ferdinand of Austria (deposed for incompetence in 1848). He went hunting and shot and eagle. The bird fell to his feet, and Ferdinand said, "It's got to be an eagle — but it's only got one head!"

The American university system exists for the most part to produce the social engineers who will fix all the world's problems. During the 1960s, those of us who had the misfortune to attend the better colleges were taught that our mission was to make the world perfect, through the Great Society, arms control, internationalism, disarmament, and so forth. When the Vietnam War and the urban riots of the 1960s showed that the liberalism of our elders had not fixed the world's problems, we abominated them, and pursued even more radical versions of social engineering. The radicalization of the universities produced a generation of clever people unsuited to productive activity in the real world but skilled at bloviating, and they became the tenured faculty of today. And their salaries, privileges, and perks continued to grow to the point that $50,000 in annual tuition barely covers them. Overall CPI is up 70% since 1990, but tuition and fees have risen by 300%.

Source: Moody's

Meanwhile the hard-science faculties of major universities (as well as the better music conservatories) filled up with foreign graduate students, mainly Asians. As I noted in a recent post, MIT's Chinese graduates now get higher starting salaries if they return home. The most disturbing report of all was a UCLA study showing that only 40% of students who initially chose a science/engineering/math major finished a degree within five years (for blacks and Latinos, the completion rate was closer to 15%). Americans simply won't work hard enough.

Rather than produce smart people, the university system has dumbed America down. After two generations of academic wheel-spinning, the transformation of universities into Maoist re-education camps with beer kegs has ruined their practical value. The giant sucking sound you hear is the air going out of the higher education bubble. As the New York Times reported in a Nov. 23 feature, "One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from non-elite schools. A bachelor's degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability."

Student loans, with a default rate of 8.8%, are the new subprime debt.

The only good news here is that liberal mainstream culture can't afford to brainwash as many American kids as it used to. Prof. Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University likes to say that the big question in American politics is whether the red states can produce kids faster than professors from the blue states can corrupt them. The lure of the elite universities was the promise that kids could have their cake and eat it, too, that is, save the planet and drive a Volvo. The dashed hopes of American students promote the sort of misbehavior we see in the Occupy Wall Street protests. They would do better to sue their universities for fraud and demand a return of their tuition, with interest. Somehow, I don't expect quite the same level of mobilization for Obama in 2012 as we saw at the universities in 2008. The kids won't have gas money, let alone cars.

The existential question for liberalism becomes: If you so smart, how come you ain't rich? Who cares what an audience of soon-to-be-unemployed kids at the University of Wisconsin might think? With their heads stuffed with literary theory, gender studies, and environmental pseudo-science, they are barely qualified for the cubicle jobs they will obtain if they are lucky. There is some value to a B.A. of any kind; it teaches you to read, memorize, show up on time and repeat what you are told. College graduates, at least, can read the new job manual, which explains why their unemployment rate is much lower than the national average. But few of them will live well, and almost none up to their expectations.

Liberalism, like cancer, is a self-liquidating malady. Eventually it kills the patient. Secular Americans, mainline Protestants, loosely-affiliated Catholics, and Reform and Conservative Jews breed like Germans or Italians, with fewer than 1.5 children per female. By contrast, Hispanic Catholics have 3 children, and evangelicals 2.6 children. America is like Schroedinger's Cat, in a superposed state of being dead and live. And long before demographics catch up with liberal culture and extinguish it, like the post-Alexandrine Greeks or the 5th-century Romans, the economic destruction wrought by liberal education will have impoverished most of a generation of American young people.

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Joe Biden. Jon Corzine. He`s The Smartest Guy That I Know.

2011-12-17T05:41:00.001-06:00

Joe Biden. Jon Corzine. He`s The Smartest Guy That I Know.

tomllewis

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Just How American Is The Boeing 787 Dreamliner? (BA)

2011-12-17T05:31:00.000-06:00

Just How American Is The Boeing 787 Dreamliner? (BA)

Business Insider

Boeing is one of the great American brands. But most people don't realize that most of Boeing's airplane parts come from external vendors from all over the world.

Below is a diagram from Goldman Sachs ' 100 favorite charts (via Zero Hedge). It reveals just where all of the parts come from for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Basically, American companies make the front and back of the plane. The rest come from all over the world.

Please follow Getting There on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

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What a Wonderful World with David Attenborough. [MOBILE VIDEO]

2011-12-16T19:16:00.001-06:00

http://m.wimp.com/wonderfulworld/

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Wake Up And Smell The Espresso (Education) in [Market-Ticker]

2011-12-12T19:51:00.001-06:00

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198954

Wake Up And Smell The Espresso (Education) in [Market-Ticker]

Here we go again...

Laura Sayer, unsure of what she wanted to do after graduating from college in 2006, figured a master's degree was "a safe bet."
With $5,000 in undergraduate loans from her time at the University of Cincinnati, Sayer was set back $50,000 more after completing the Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. The 27-year-old now makes about $45,000 a year as an administrative assistant for a nonprofit group, a job that didn't require her advanced degree.
More people are losing the same gamble as a 33 percent jump in U.S. graduate school enrollment in the past decade, coupled with an 80 percent surge in tuition and required fees, runs headlong into a weaker job market. Universities are fueling the trend by offering more one- and two-year programs in areas from environmental science to sports management that rarely come with financial aid other than the option for loans.

And how does that happen in a free market for loans?

It doesn't.

Why not? Because nobody in their right mind would loan you $50,000 for two years of school to complete a Masters if there was not a decent return on the investment, which means that your income expectations would be boosted by more the fully-laden interest-inclusive cost over the next ten years (the typical repayment period) from where you are without it.

Yet Laura was able to source the money. Why?

Because the financial industry bribed, cajoled and scammed its way into turning that debt into something that Laura could not discharge in bankruptcy. As such there was no risk for the lender in making the loan and they didn't give a damn that there was no reasonable expectation that Laura would find a job that paid at least $10,000 a year more with her Masters than she had before it -- a job that in addition would actually require the Masters to obtain.

Remember, the lender always has superior information because they have the benefit of all the loans they made before and how they performed. They also have spent a lot of time and money modeling loan performance and they thus controlled all the variables that went into those models. As such they are, on an "actuarial" (across the entire universe of these loans) basis far more knowledgeable than Laura is about whether she will be able to pay and they know what factors control for that success -- and which do not.

Laura has none of this information. She knows only one thing -- how hard she is wiling to personally work, and she has some idea of her personal aptitude. That's all. She's at a severe disadvantage in this evaluation.

This is why bankruptcy was written into the Constitution and why it's so important. The threat of the borrower declaring bankruptcy and avoiding the debt taken on is the only market check and balance that works to restrain predatory and abusive behavior by lenders. With it no lender intentionally makes a foolish loan because while the borrower has their credit rating ruined the lender loses their actual investment.

This intentional distortion, which the lenders and government pressed for and profit from, must be addressed. There is no student and no family that should ever consent to a non-dischargable student loan under any circumstances and no adult worth the title "parent" should be willing to provide or file any document related to qualification for same, including but not limited to a FASFA. Among other things it is none of the damn government's business what income and assets a parent has in relationship to their now-adult offspring, as their obligation to provide for said offspring ended at the age of 18 years.

We will never solve the problem of out-of-control educational costs until parents and students stand en-masse and simply refuse to cooperate with this rank corporate-sponsored and government-assisted financial rape. Neither the universities or the lenders are your friends -- they're predators, you're their "meat", and part and parcel of their predation is capitalizing on our youth's inexperience and a drilled-in "trust in authority" (false and malicious) claim that has been foisted off on them during their previous years in school.

It's that simple.

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More Bad News For the Climate Crooks™: U.S. Has Only 575 Years of Gas and 500 Years of Coal Left in Ground

2011-12-11T08:55:00.001-06:00

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-bad-news-for-climate-crooks-us-has.html

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Leading actuarial firm: health care premiums to rise up to 85% thanks to resurgence of deadly Bubonic Plague and Obamacare but mostly Obamacare

2011-12-10T16:00:00.001-06:00

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/12/leading-actuarial-firm-health-care.html

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The Phony Populism of Former Labor Secretary Reich :: Fox&Hounds Fox&Hounds

2011-12-10T13:47:00.001-06:00

http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2011/12/the-phony-populism-of-former-labor-secretary-reich/

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PEOPLE ARE AWESOME (DON'S VERSION) - YouTube

2011-12-10T13:45:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EEu42L0ufBY

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“Obama’s economic plan? Back to the ’70s!”

2011-12-08T14:09:00.001-06:00

"Obama's economic plan? Back to the '70s!"

protein wisdom

Which means that we have to stuff a flux capacitor into a Firebird rather than a DeLorean — but that we'll still have to stomach a lot of Yes and Chicago. I guess is the point.

James Pethokoukis:

[...] what Obama is really saying is this: "Let's go back to the 1970s." It was a Golden Age of Equality, with the top 1 percent's share of national income at its lowest level of the 20th century. And the nostalgia surely doesn't stop there. It was also a time of strong unions, expensive oil, regulated industry and high tax rates. This is exactly the Obamacrat agenda. Of course, the 1970s were also a time of economic chaos and stagflation that led voters in 1980 to reject Jimmy Carter by a crushing landslide. Yet Obama wants give that formula another shot.

[...] Back during the success-punishing 1970s, the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent. And guess what? Liberal economists such as Paul Krugman, Brad Delong and Peter Diamond — whose nomination by Obama to the Federal Reserve thankfully failed in the Senate — think the top tax rate should zoom back there again. More evidence that Clintonomics is dead in today's Democratic party. Then again, Obama, like many Democrats, never thought the Reagan tax cuts made much sense. As Obama wrote in "The Audacity of Hope: "The high marginal tax rates that existed when Reagan took office may not have curbed incentives to work or invest … but they did lead to a wasteful industry of setting up tax shelters." So the only downside was excessive tax planning?

[...] Here is the real record of cutting taxes and regulation: The U.S. economy grew at an average pace of 3.3 percent from 1983-2007, inflation — the scourge of the 1970s — was slayed, and the stock market rose by 1,400 percent. Median middle-class incomes rose by roughly 50 percent. (These numbers are even more impressive when you recall that heading in the 1980s, experts were predicting a dystopian, Solyent Greenesque, Age of Limits future for America.) Obama would be lucky to fail like this.

Sure, median middle-class income exploded. But still, others had more — and that's what the income inequality argument is all about: taking what others have and spreading it out evenly, even if that means we wreck the very process that allowed for that 50% real wealth increase.

The left wants us to envy the wealth of others rather than embrace the fruits of wealth production itself — by way of a proven economic system that raises the standard of living for even those at the bottom of the "income disparity" scale such that our poor mirror much of the world's "rich" (they have cars, DVD players, computers, flat screen tvs, shelter, food, etc.).

And it's all so they — rather than a disinterested and organic free market — can direct wealth. The free market system takes away the power of the central planner. Which is why the central planner has to kill the free market system to consolidate power.

That they use class warfare and emotional sophistry to gin up outrage in those their institutions have trained to be useful idiots is not surprising. But surprising or not, the totalitarian impulse must nevertheless be identified, illuminated, and soundly defeated — each and every time it rears its fork-tongued face.

To borrow from that great freedom fighter, Kyle Reese, "Listen, and understand. [Socialist Utopianism] is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. [Or at the very least, it's made you it's worker bitch].

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Just a guy whistling on a talk show... [MOBILE VIDEO]

2011-12-07T19:19:00.001-06:00

http://m.wimp.com/whistlingguy/

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@DANEgerus, 12/5/11 2:52 PM

2011-12-05T15:03:00.003-06:00

DANEgerus (@DANEgerus)
12/5/11 2:52 PM
A Tale Of Two Economies In The Headlines therightsphere.com/2011/12/a-tale… 5.7% unemployment under Bush was 'bad', 9% under Obama an optimistic sign

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Media Bias

2011-12-05T15:03:00.001-06:00

http://www.therightsphere.com/2011/12/a-tale-of-two-economies-in-the-headlines/

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Roger’s Rules » Pilot, Co-pilot, and Gunner: or, Ending the TSA Tyranny

2011-12-05T14:34:00.001-06:00

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/12/03/pilot-co-pilot-and-gunner/

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Can you guess what the 'worst-run states in America' award-winners have in common?

2011-12-04T15:15:00.001-06:00

Can you guess what the 'worst-run states in America' award-winners have in common?

Doug Ross @ Journal

The financial website 24/7 Wall St. analyzed the worst-run states in America. Can you guess what the worst three states have in common?

48. Michigan
> State debt per capita: $2,963 (21st lowest)
> Pct. without health insurance: 12.4% (18th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 15.7% (15th highest)
> Unemployment: 11.1% (3rd highest)

Michigan has arguably suffered more than any state in post-industrial America. The state is one of just four with a credit rating of AA-, although its debt per capita is actually below average. The state ranks among the worst in the country for violent crime, unemployment, foreclosures and home price decline.
Source: (September, 2011): From the Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2010, the percentage of residents 25 or older with a high school diploma

49. Illinois
> State debt per capita: $4,424 (13th highest)
> Pct. without health insurance: 13.8% (23rd lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 13.1% (25th lowest)
> Unemployment: 10% (10th highest)

Illinois has fallen from 43rd last year to the overall second-worst run state in the country. The state performs poorly in most categories, but is worst when it comes to its credit rating. Illinois has a credit rating of A+, the second worst given to any state, behind only California. The state has been on credit watch since 2008 because of budget shortfalls and legal challenges against then-governor Rod Blagojevich.

50. California
> State debt per capita: $3,660 (21st highest)
> Pct. without health insurance: 18.5% (8th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 14.5% (tied for 21st highest)
> Unemployment: 11.9% (2nd highest)

California has moved down one slot on from last year to earn the title of the worst-run state in the country. In the fiscal year 2009, the state spent $430 billion, roughly 14% of all the money spent by states in that year. Compared to its revenue, the state spent too much — California had the 10th lowest revenue per person, and spent the 15th most per person. California is the only state in the country to be rated A-, the lowest rating ever given to a state by S&P. Despite the huge amount the state spends each year, conditions remain poor. California has the second-lowest percentage of adults with a high school diploma in the country, the second-highest foreclosure rate and is tied for the second highest unemployment rate in the U.S.

What they have in common is this:

• Decades of unchecked Democrat control at every level of government

• Massive, bloated, public sector unions that are intertwined with the Democrat Party and demand increasing percentages of the economy; they have but one aim: to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer

• Sanctuary cities that attract illegals, programs that offer easy access to welfare payments and government subsistence programs, high rates of single-parent families, and therefore high levels of urban crime

You would think that someone in legacy media would actually analyze this data and report on it, but then again, I've always been a dreamer.

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The Government Is Expropriating Private Wealth at a Rapid Rate | The Beacon

2011-12-03T13:15:00.000-06:00

http://blog.independent.org/2011/11/28/the-government-is-expropriating-private-wealth-at-a-rapid-rate/

The Government Is Expropriating Private Wealth at a Rapid Rate

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About a month ago, I posted in regard to what I called "the euthanasia of the saver." This comment had to do with the fact that nominal interest rates in the United States for financial investments such as bank certificates of deposit and bank savings accounts—the kinds of investments traditionally employed by retired persons and small savers, who wish to gain income without exposing their funds to great risk of capital loss—now fall considerably below the rate of inflation, and hence the real (or inflation-adjusted) yield on such investments is negative. That is, the nominal payoff is insufficient to offset the loss of purchasing power of the money invested.

About a month before I wrote my commentary, my old friend Richard Rahn had, without my noticing, written on the same issue in a commentary article published in the Washington Times, but he had gone beyond the simple point I made. Rahn notes that besides suffering the loss of wealth occasioned by the negative real yield on such investments, the investor has to pay tax on the nominal yield—truly a case of the government's adding insult to injury. He notes that given the currently prevailing rates of interest, rate of inflation, and tax rates, a small investor who earns a nominal yield of 1% and pays a 20% marginal tax rate, while the rate of inflation is 3.5 %, actually ends up paying a real tax rate of 370%. For example, an investor buys a $100,000 CD, earns $1,000 in annual interest, pays a tax of $200, and incurs a loss of $3,500 in purchasing power on the invested principal. Total (nominal) income is $1,000; total real tax (nominal tax plus inflation tax) is $3,700.

This expropriation of private wealth is not accidental. It is the joint product of the Fed's near-zero interest-rate policies, the Fed's money supply increases that underlie the current rate of inflation, and the tax rates established by Congress and administered by the IRS, including the taxation of nominal interest earnings even when they amount to real losses of capital, rather than genuine earnings. The government clearly aims to expropriate private wealth on a massive scale. The only plausible alternative interpretation of these policies requires us to believe that the government officials who set these policies are complete idiots about basic economics.

The expropriation amounts to a huge sum. For example, the value of the Non-M1 component of the monetary aggregate M2—consisting of savings and small time deposits, overnight repos at commercial banks, and non-institutional money market accounts—currently amounts to more than $7.5 trillion. If investors lose 2.7% on this investment each year (nominal yield minus the sum of the amount lost via taxation of nominal interest and the amount lost via the inflation tax), the loss amounts to about $204 billion. Because this type of investment is not the whole of the investments subject to this effect, the total amount the government is expropriating comes to a much larger sum. Because this taking continues year after year, so long as current conditions persist the continuation of this expropriation for another year or two will bring the cumulative amount expropriated in this fashion to more than $1 trillion since the onset of the recession and the Fed's adoption of the near-zero interest-rate policies, along with its allowance of substantial growth of the money stock and the consequent decrease in the money's purchasing power. This is a rough calculation for the purpose of illustration. My point does not hinge on a precise estimate, because any well-founded estimate is sure to amount to a gigantic sum.

In sum, the government's monetary and fiscal authorities are currently engaged in the expropriation of private wealth on a vast scale. Entire classes of investors—especially people who saved during their working years and expected to live on interest earnings on their accumulated capital during their retirement years—are being steadily wiped out. Astonishingly, this de facto robbery is being committed by a government that misses no opportunity to shed crocodile tears over how single-mindedly it seeks to protect the weak and helpless among us.

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Dead Movement Walking: Top Six Signs the Left And Mainstream Media Have Hung Occupy Out to Dry - Big Journalism

2011-12-03T11:09:00.000-06:00

http://bigjournalism.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/01/dead-movement-walking-top-six-signs-the-left-and-the-msm-have-hung-occupy-out-to-dry/

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Coolest guy in the world is back for 2011. [MOBILE VIDEO]

2011-12-02T19:43:00.001-06:00

http://m.wimp.com/coolestback/

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Article: America’s Public Sector Union Dilemma — The American Magazine

2011-11-27T16:49:00.001-06:00

America's Public Sector Union Dilemma — The American Magazine
http://www.american.com/archive/2011/november/americas-public-sector-union-dilemma

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@yidwithlid, 11/27/11 8:09 AM

2011-11-27T08:13:00.001-06:00

Jeff Dunetz (@yidwithlid)
11/27/11 8:09 AM
Climategate II Emails Show US/British Govs Colluded W/Scientists to Suppress Anti-Warming Data twurl.nl/h7601z #teaparty #nobama #fox

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NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw At 6PM On Black Friday

2011-11-27T07:13:00.001-06:00

NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw At 6PM On Black Friday

Business Insider

[Published with permission from The Wall Street Examiner.]

In a report released on Black Friday around 6 PM, when nobody is around, let alone paying attention, except for crazy people like me, the NY Fed posted a mea culpa on just how lousy its economic forecasts have been, a function which I had already performed over a year ago (The Fed – Clueless, Delusional, or Both?). The author of the report stated the crux of the failure thusly:

One source for such metrics is a paper by Reifschneider and Tulip (2007). They analyzed the forecast error performance of a range of public and private forecasters over 1986 to 2006 (that is, roughly the period that most economists associate with the Great Moderation in the United States).

On the basis of their analysis, one could have expected that an October 2007 forecast of real GDP growth for 2008 would be within 1.3 percentage points of the actual outcome 70 percent of the time. The New York Fed staff forecast at that time was for growth of 2.6 percent in 2008. Based on the forecast of 2.6 percent and the size of forecast errors over the Great Moderation period, one would have expected that 70 percent of the time, actual growth would be within the 1.3 to 3.9 percent range. The current estimate of actual growth in 2008 is-3.3 percent, indicating that our forecast was off by 5.9 percentage points.

Using a similar approach to Reifschneider and Tulip but including forecast errors for 2007, one would have expected that 70 percent of the time the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 should have been within 0.7 percentage point of a forecast made in April 2008. The actual forecast error was 4.4 percentage points, equivalent to an unexpected increase of over 6 million in the number of unemployed workers. Under the erroneous assumption that the 70 percent projection error band was based on a normal distribution, this would have been a 6 standard deviation error, a very unlikely occurrence indeed.

He then went on to enumerate the 3 big reasons the Fed had gotten it wrong:

Misunderstanding of the housing boom. Staff analysis of the increase in house prices did not find convincing evidence of overvaluation (see, for example, McCarthy and Peach [2004] and Himmelberg, Mayer, and Sinai [2005]). Thus, we downplayed the risk of a substantial fall in house prices. A robust approach would have put the bar much lower than convincing evidence.
A lack of analysis of the rapid growth of new forms of mortgage finance. Here the reliance on the assumption of efficient markets appears to have dulled our awareness of many of the risks building in financial markets in 2005-07. However, a March 2008 New York Fed staff report by Ashcraft and Schuermann provided a detailed analysis of how incentives were misaligned throughout the securitization process of subprime mortgages—meaning that the market was not functioning efficiently.
Insufficient weight given to the powerful adverse feedback loops between the financial system and the real economy. Despite a good understanding of the risk of a financial crisis from mid-2007 onward, we were unable to fully connect the dots to real activity until 2008. Eventually, by building on the insights of Adrian and Shin (2008), we gained a better grasp of the power of these feedback loops.

He then added that perhaps the biggest reason for the failure was "complacency," with which I heartily concur, but to which I would also add hubris and stupidity.

At the beginning of the piece the author cited a Turbotax Tim Geithner quote: Our best plan is to plan for constant change and the potential for instability, and to recognize that the threats will constantly be changing in ways we cannot predict or fully understand.

Adding to that the author wrote, "The quotations from Keynes and Geithner at the start of this post capture the importance of constantly striving to ensure that policy is robust to unexpected events. As explained in much of the recent work of the 2011 Nobel Prize–winning economist Tom Sargent, the unexpected events for which policymakers need to make provision have the characteristic of being the most likely unlikely bad event. The collapse in housing prices and its propagation to the economy certainly fit this description."

This is what I would call the "Nobody could have foreseen" fallacy, a tool often used by the professional economist and economic pundit class. I guess that I and the countless thousands of others who frequented this and other bearish websites at the time of the top of the housing bubble, who did foresee what was coming, must be the "nobody" that the pros refer to.

It's good to be nobody or not so good, because even though nobody took precautions, nobody ultimately took the hit. Because in this case, nobody was prepared for what happened, and nobody took steps to both protect and profit from it, while the rest of the Wall Street seers and the Fedheads, who are all somebody, didn't foresee it. As a result somebody got their asses kicked. But that hasn't stopped them, because Uncle Sam bailed them out, spending nobody's money, and nobody's children's and grandchildren's futures to do it. So in that sense, it's better to be somebody, even though somebody initially took the loss that nobody saw coming, until the US government bailed them out on behalf of nobody.

I wrote the following comment on the NY Fed Liberty Street blog. I don't know if it will still be there in the morning, so here it is.

The excuse that most other professional forecasters didn't foresee it is just that, an excuse. Some professional forecasters did see it. They were derided as Cassandras and dismissed by Wall Street and Fed insiders, who are only beholden to each other, and to their own delusions.

Millions of amateur economic forecasters who frequented the financial message boards and blogs saw what was happening and what was coming. They had one important advantage. They live in the real world, not inside the Beltway, not within the marble halls and equally hardened thought processes of the Fed, and not in the ivory towers of academia, a word which sounds like a disease, because it is a disease. Not only do these environments cause delusional thinking, they attract delusional people. The same is true of policy makers.

I call it elitist personality disorder. It leads to delusions of grandeur, delusions of omniscience and omnipotence, and the unwillingness to take responsibility for failure and incompetence, instead engaging in blame shifting.

Postscript. Yep, less than a half hour later, they pulled my comment. I left a subsequent comment which isn't fit for a family oriented website like this one.

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Watts Up With That?

2011-11-26T11:47:00.000-06:00

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

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Second leak of climate emails: Political giants weigh in on bias, scientists bowing to financial pressure from sponsors | Mail Online

2011-11-26T11:44:00.001-06:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2066240/Second-leak-climate-emails-Political-giants-weigh-bias-scientists-bowing-financial-pressure-sponsors.html

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Picture: Northern lights

2011-11-25T20:40:00.001-06:00

Northern lights
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61762571@N00/6395427271/

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The Supercommittee’s Failure: What Really Happened | Power Line

2011-11-24T14:58:00.000-06:00

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/the-supercommittees-failure-what-really-happened.php

Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries « Looking at the Left

2011-11-24T11:42:00.001-06:00

http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2011/11/zuccotti-utopia-portraits-of-revolutionaries/

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Barack Obama, Emperor of Insolvency

2011-11-24T10:15:00.000-06:00

Barack Obama, Emperor of Insolvency

Doug Ross @ Journal

The lede in today's coverage of the U.S. deficit struggle ("Obama reopens debate on US stimulus") at the Financial Times is troubling on two fronts.

Barack Obama sought to reignite the debate over an economic stimulus package on Tuesday, demanding that a bitterly divided Congress pass an extension of payroll tax cuts before the end of the year.

"We still have to give the economy the jolt that it needs," the US president said on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, a day after a bipartisan committee failed to agree on a $1,200bn deficit reduction package. He added he would do "everything in his power, with or without Congress".

Consider:

• Fact: the "payroll tax cuts" simply accelerate the collapse of the Social Security system

• And what kind of president talks about operating "without Congress"?

Our beloved Dictator-in-Chief knows that America is insolvent, that Social Security is headed for collapse, and that Obamacare simply hastens the implosion.

But, some believe that was the plan all along.

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Figures: OWS Organizers Occupying Luxury Hotels « Jammie Wearing Fools

2011-11-20T12:07:00.001-06:00

http://www.jammiewf.com/2011/figures-ows-organizers-occupying-luxury-hotels/

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Greasing the solar skids - m.NYPOST.com

2011-11-19T12:13:00.001-06:00

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/greasing_the_solar_skids_yf8pKoJEcktj7gUSFOWurO

Greasing the solar skids

Last Updated: 10:31 PM, November 18, 2011

So it turns out that Solyndra may be just the tip of the iceberg that is the Obama administration's politically charged energy-loan scandal.

Even as Energy Secretary Stephen Chu was on Capitol Hill this week, claiming — against all the e-mail evidence — that the White House played no role in the Solyndra debacle, came word of an even bigger potential scandal.

Turns out a California-based "green jobs" firm with a troubled financial history got a $1.4 billion Energy Department loan guarantee — three times the size of Solyndra's jackpot — despite mountains of debt.

And it turns out that the principal private investor in BrightSource Energy, the lucky recipient, is a company called VantagePoint — whose "venture partners" include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

That's a name that certainly opens up a lot of doors in Barack Obama's Washington — when Kennedy's not busy preaching to New Yorkers about their environmental crimes and trying to shut down key energy sources, like Indian Point.

It also doesn't hurt that a VantagePoint official (and Obama fund-raiser), Sanjay Wagle, left the firm to become a renewable-energy-grants adviser at — yep — the US Department of Energy.

The revelation of BrightSource's bailout — and the RFK Jr. connection — appear in Peter Schweizer's explosive new book, "Throw Them All Out."

To be sure, BrightSource itself was upfront on just how iffy an investment its company was: "This offering involves a high degree of risk," warned its IPO registration statement. "We have generated substantial net losses and negative operating cash flows since our inception and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future."

How much in losses? "We have incurred losses of approximately $204.1 million from our inception through March 31, 2011," it conceded.

Moreover, "our proprietary technology has a limited history and may perform below expectations when implemented."

Wait — it gets better.

In an SEC filing, BrightSource conceded that its very survival depends on its ability to build Ivanpah, a 370-megawatt solar power plant, in California — even while admitting that its ability to do so is "subject to significant risk and uncertainty."

None of this should surprise: The New York Times reported Thursday on "the new calculus on political and policy shifts" when it comes to energy "as the White House sharpens its focus on the president's re-election."

Still, this is a viable candidate for a $1.4 billion taxpayer-funded bailout?

In Barack Obama's Washington, yes.

Especially if you've got someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on board.

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CARPE DIEM: Obama's Indefensible Pipeline Punt

2011-11-18T06:27:00.001-06:00

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/11/obamas-indefensible-pipeline-punt.html

Obama's Indefensible Pipeline Punt

"With a total length of close to 3,000 kilometers, the new [Keystone XL] pipeline would add just over 1 percent to the already existing network of crude oil and refined products lines that crisscross the United States and parts of Canada. Why, if pipeline safety is a key concern, have we not seen waves of civil disobedience focused on more than a quarter million kilometers of existing pipelines?

Long-term statistics show convincingly that there is no safer way to transport large masses of liquids over long distances than a pipeline. Moving the same amount by trucks or rail would be much more risky, in addition to being vastly more expensive. So would be moving the oil from Alberta to British Columbia and then shipping it by tankers via the Panama Canal to Texas.

Here comes the craziest twist: if the opponents of the XL succeed and prevent its construction, there is a strong possibility that Alberta's oil sand-derived oil will be piped westward to Canada's Pacific coast and loaded on supertankers going to Asia, to feed China's grossly inefficient industries.

By preventing the oil flow from Canada, the United States will thus deliberately deprive itself of new manufacturing and construction jobs; it will not slow down the increase of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion; it will almost certainly empower China; and it will make itself strategically even more vulnerable by becoming further dependent on declining, unstable, and contested overseas crude oil supplies. That is what is called a spherically perfect decision, because no matter from which angle you look at it, it looks perfectly the same: wrong."

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Personal Finance - Lifehacker

2011-11-18T06:24:00.001-06:00

http://lifehacker.com/5860452/forecast-your-financial-future-with-pocketsmith?tag=personal-finance

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@RIGHTZONE, 11/18/11 5:56 AM

2011-11-18T05:58:00.001-06:00

Leonard Park (@RIGHTZONE)
11/18/11 5:56 AM
OWS, Rape, public masterbation, public deficating, demands for handouts, anti-semitism, violence, destruction of private property.

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@poorconservativ, 11/18/11 5:55 AM

2011-11-18T05:57:00.001-06:00

Poor Conservative (@poorconservativ)
11/18/11 5:55 AM
Watch This Devastating Video: #Obama Knew, So Holder Is A Liar bit.ly/nxLL06

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@CarterFliptMe, 11/18/11 5:52 AM

2011-11-18T05:55:00.001-06:00

WisConservative (@CarterFliptMe)
11/18/11 5:52 AM
Class Warfare at Occupy Wall Street hulu.com/w/961l Liberal Hypocrisy in Full Bloom. This is Progressive BS at it's Finest! #tcot #ows

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Five questions for Energy Secretary Stephen Chu

2011-11-17T15:56:00.001-06:00

Five questions for Energy Secretary Stephen Chu

The Enterprise Blog

The New York Times reports this morning:

An unrepentant energy secretary [Stephen Chu] will square off on Thursday with a Republican-led committee that has spent months arguing that his department showed political favoritism and incompetence when it approved a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra.

As I pointed out in the Washington Post this week, Peter Schweizer blows the lid off of the Obama-Chu loan guarantee and grant programs in his new book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison. Here are five questions House members may want to pose to Secretary Chu today, based on Schweizer's research:

1. "$16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama's National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party." How is it that 71 percent of the loan money went to President Obama's political cronies?

2. Please explain your decision to approve more than $2.4 billion for Leucadia Energy, a company that Schweizer writes "had one employee and $120,000 in annual revenue." Schweizer notes that "The company is a subsidiary of Leucadia National, whose chairman and CEO is Ian Cumming. Cumming served as a member of President Obama's 2008 National Finance Committee and was on the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee. Curiously, Ian Cumming wrote three rather large checks to Democratic Party committees just weeks before his funds were approved. He wrote a total of $69,900 in checks in April 2009." Is this a coincidence, Mr. Secretary? Moreover, according to a government audit, as of December 2010, eighteen months after the loans were made, the Leucadia projects had resulted in a grand total of three jobs. Do you consider this an example of success, Mr. Secretary?

3. Please explain your decision to provide $1.4 billion in loan guarantees to a company called Brightsource to build the Ivanpah Solar Electrical System on federal land in California. According to Schweizer, at the time the company had debt obligations of $1.8 billion and in 2010 lost $71.6 million on revenue of just $13.5 million—and had informed the Securities and Exchange Commission, "Our ability to complete Ivanpah and the planning, development, and construction of all three phases are subject to significant risk and uncertainty." Is it a mere coincidence that the single largest shareholder (25 percent) in Brightsource is VantagePoint Partners, whose principals included Sanjay Wagle, the managing co-chairman of Cleantech and Green Business Leaders for Obama, which raised millions for Obama's campaign?

4. After the 2008 election, Schweizer writes, Sanjay Wagle joined the Obama administration as a "renewable energy grants adviser" at the Department of Energy. Please explain Mr. Wagle's role, if any, in loans and grants made to VantagePoint-backed companies.

5. Please explain how it is that ten members of President Obama's finance committee collectively raised $457,834 for his presidential campaign, and were in turn approved by your department for grants or loans of nearly $11.4 billion? Is this a mere coincidence? Would you consider that a good return on investment?

There is enough material in Schweizer's book to grill Chu for weeks—but answering these five questions would be a good start.

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@preciousliberty, 11/17/11 12:15 PM

2011-11-17T12:31:00.001-06:00

Precious Liberty (@preciousliberty)
11/17/11 12:15 PM
The U.S. is 235 years old yet over 1/3 of our debt will have been accrued by President Downgrade in just 4 years - ow.ly/7wQQe

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Patriotic Millionaires

2011-11-17T12:30:00.001-06:00

http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/17/patriotic-millionaires-demand-higher-taxes-but-unwilling-to-pay-up-video/

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Just Like the Tea Party: A List of Occupy Mayhem Sorted by Type | Verum Serum

2011-11-17T11:20:00.001-06:00

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=33490

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Five Lessons for America from the European Fiscal Crisis

2011-11-17T11:06:00.000-06:00

http://wp.me/przCm-3dT

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What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? — The American Magazine

2011-11-15T17:43:00.001-06:00

http://american.com/archive/2011/november/what-if-middle-class-jobs-disappear/

What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? — The American Magazine

Structural change is an important factor in the current rate of high unemployment. The economy is in a state of transition, in which the middle-class jobs that emerged after World War II have begun to decline.

The most recent recession in the United States began in December of 2007 and ended in June of 2009, according to the official arbiter of recession dating, the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, two years after the official end of the recession, few Americans would say that economic troubles are behind us. The unemployment rate, in particular, remains above 9 percent. Some labor market indicators, such as the proportion of long-term unemployed, are worse now than for any postwar recession.

There are two widely circulated narratives to explain what is going on. The Keynesian narrative is that there has been a major drop in aggregate demand. According to this narrative, the slump can be largely cured by using monetary and fiscal stimulus.

The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation. According to this narrative, the slump can be cured by having the government commit to and follow a more hands-off approach.

I want to suggest a third interpretation. Without ruling out a role for aggregate demand or for the regulatory environment, I wish to suggest that structural change is an important factor in the current rate of high unemployment. The economy is in a state of transition, in which the middle-class jobs that emerged after World War II have begun to decline.

As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee put it in a recent e-book Race Against the Machine:

The root of our problems is not that we're in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring.

In fact, I believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition. The impact of the internal combustion engine and the small electric motor on farming and manufacturing reduced the value of uneducated laborers. Instead, by the 1950s, a middle class of largely clerical workers was the most significant part of the labor force.

The Great Transition from 1930 to 1950

Government's role as an employer and as a regulator is likely to exacerbate earnings inequality going forward.

Between 1930 and 1950, the United States economy underwent a Great Transition. Demand fell for human effort such as lifting, squeezing, and hammering. Demand increased for workers who could read and follow directions. The evolutionary process eventually changed us from a nation of laborers to a nation of clerks.

The proportion of employment classified as "clerical and kindred workers" grew from 5.2 percent in 1910 to a peak of 19.3 percent in 1980. (However, by 2000 this proportion had edged down to 17.4 percent.)¹ Overall, workers classified as clerical, professional workers, technical workers, managers, officials, and proprietors exceeded 50 percent of the labor force by 2000.

Corresponding declines took place in the manual occupations. Workers classified as laborers, other than farm or mine, peaked at 11.4 percent of the labor force in 1920 but were barely 6 percent by 1950 and less than 4 percent by 2000. Farmers and farm laborers fell from 33 percent of the labor force in 1910 to less than 15 percent by 1950 and only 1.2 percent in 2000.

The advent of the tractor and improvements in the factory rapidly reduced the demand for uneducated workers. By the 1930s, a marginal farm hand could not produce enough to justify his employment. Sharecropping, never much better than a subsistence occupation, was no longer viable. Meanwhile, machines were replacing manufacturing occupations like cigar rolling and glass blowing for light bulbs.²

If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries.

World War II also demonstrated the increase in the relative importance of white-collar workers and machines. With all due respect to GI Joe and Rosie the Riveter, it could be that Cynthia the Clerk is a more appropriate symbol of the war effort, as logistics and communications came to be dominant factors. Although Winston Churchill famously praised "the few" who flew airplanes during the Battle of Britain, historians emphasize the role played by the communications and control systems on the ground, staffed to a considerable extent by women, in making the British victory possible. Female clerks also played a crucial role in the process of decoding German messages—the famous Enigma intercepts.

The structural-transition interpretation of the unemployment problem of the 1930s would be that the demand for uneducated workers in the United States had fallen, but the supply remained high. The high school graduation rate was only 8.8 percent in 1912 and still just 29 percent in 1931. By 1950, it had reached 59 percent.³ With a new generation of workers who had completed high school, the mismatch between skills and jobs had been greatly reduced.

What took place after the Second World War was not the revival of a 1920s economy, with its small farming units, urban manufacturing, and plurality of laborers. Instead, the 1950s saw the creation of a new suburban economy, with a plurality of white-collar workers. With an expanded transportation and communications infrastructure, businesses needed telephone operators, shipping clerks, and similar occupations. If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy.

The trend away from manual labor has continued. Even within the manufacturing sector, the share of production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing employment went from over 85 percent just after the Second World War to less than 70 percent in more recent years. To put this another way, the proportion of white-collar work in manufacturing has doubled over the past 50 years. On the factory floor itself, work has become less physically demanding. Instead, it requires more cognitive skills and the ability to understand and carry out well-defined procedures.

The Current Transition

Blockbuster video adversely affected the capital of movie theaters, Netflix adversely affected the capital of Blockbuster, and the combination of faster Internet speeds and tablet devices may depreciate the organizational capital of Netflix.

As noted earlier, the proportion of clerical workers in the economy peaked in 1980. By that date, computers and advanced communications equipment had already begun to affect telephone operations and banking. The rise of the personal computer and the Internet has widened the impact of these technologies to include nearly every business and industry.

The economy today differs from that of a generation ago. Mortgage and consumer loan underwriters have been replaced by credit scoring. Record stores have been replaced by music downloads. Book stores are closing, while sales of books on electronic readers have increased. Data entry has been moved off shore. Routine customer support also has been outsourced overseas.

These trends serve to limit the availability of well-defined jobs. If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries.

The result is what David Autor calls the polarization of the American job market. Autor and various research collaborators have documented a number of findings that reflect this polarization:⁴

• In recent decades, wage and employment growth have both been lowest at the middle segment of the skill distribution. Wage improvements have tended to be concentrated at the high end, and employment gains have tended to be largest at the low end of the skill distribution.

• This particular symptom of polarization is also prevalent in OECD countries other than the United States.

• In the United States, this polarization was exacerbated by the economic downturn. While both high- and low-skill jobs have held steady, the brunt of the recession has been borne by mid-skill workers. For example, growth in employment in sales was 54 percent from 1979 to 1989, 14 percent from 1989 to 1999, 4 percent from 1999 to 2007, and -7 percent from 2007 to 2009. Employment in sales was a key component of upward economic mobility after World War II, but technological change and globalization appear to have stalled or perhaps reversed this engine of middle-class affluence.

• From 1980 to 2007, real wages for male workers with only a high school degree fell by 12 percent, real wages of male workers with only a college degree rose by 10 percent, and real wages of males with post-graduate degrees increased by 26 percent. Female workers show a similar pattern, although wage gains were generally higher for females over this period.

Using the latest Census Bureau data, Matthew Slaughter found that from 2000 to 2010 the real earnings of college graduates (with no advanced degree) fell by more in percentage terms than the earnings of high school graduates. In fact, over this period the only education category to show an increase in earnings was those with advanced degrees.⁵

The Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition.

The outlook for mid-skill jobs would not appear to be bright. Communication technology and computer intelligence continue to improve, putting more occupations at risk.

For example, many people earn a living as drivers, including trucks and taxicabs. However, the age of driver-less vehicles appears to be moving closer.

Another example is in the field of education. In the fall of 2011, an experiment with an online course in artificial intelligence conducted by two Stanford professors drew tens of thousands of registrants. This increases the student-teacher ratio by a factor of close to a thousand. Imagine the number of teaching jobs that might be eliminated if this could be done for calculus, economics, chemistry, and so on.

It is important to bear in mind that when we offer a structural interpretation of unemployment, a "loss of jobs" means an increase in productivity. Traditionally, economists have argued that productivity increases are a good thing, even though they may cause dislocation for some workers in the short run. In the long run, the economy does not run out of jobs. Rather, new jobs emerge as old jobs disappear. The story we tell is that average well-being rises, and the more that people are able to adapt, the more widespread the improvement becomes.

Challenges Due to Rapid Change

If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy.

There are two challenges. One is the sheer speed of adjustment. In a hyper-Schumpeterian economy, the main work consists of destroying someone else's job. Garett Jones has pointed out that the typical worker today does not produce widgets but instead builds organizational capital. The problem is that building organizational capital in one company serves to depreciate the organizational capital somewhere else. Blockbuster video adversely affected the capital of movie theaters, Netflix adversely affected the capital of Blockbuster, and the combination of faster Internet speeds and tablet devices may depreciate the organizational capital of Netflix.

The second challenge is the nature of the emerging skills mismatch. People who are self-directed and cognitively capable can keep adding to their advantages. People who lack those traits cannot simply be exhorted into obtaining them. The new jobs that emerge may not produce a middle class. Instead, if the trend documented by Autor for the period 1999-2007 were to continue, most of the new jobs would be low-end service jobs, for which competition will tend to keep wages low.

The recent trend in job polarization raises the possibility that gains in well-being that come from productivity improvements will accrue to an economic elite. Perhaps the middle-class affluence that emerged during the latter part of the industrial age is not going to be a feature of the information age. Instead, we could be headed into an era of highly unequal economic classes. People at the bottom will have access to food, healthcare, and electronic entertainment, but the rich will live in an exclusive world of exotic homes and extravagant personal services. The most popular bands in the world will play house concerts for the rich, while everyone else can afford music downloads but no live music. In the remainder of this essay, I want to extend further this exercise in imagination and consider three possible scenarios.

Three future scenarios

The most optimistic scenario is the one I consider least likely. Under this scenario, the supply of workers adapts to changes in technology. In particular, this means a future with relatively fewer workers whose skills are limited to following directions in well-defined jobs. Instead, more workers will have the cognitive ability, initiative, and self-discipline to constantly update their skills, adapt to new technology, and to participate in the creative part of creative destruction. Under this scenario, economic growth will be very high, and median earnings will also be high.

The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation.

I do not believe that this optimistic scenario will emerge through more spending on education or even with education reform. My reading of the research is that variations in education techniques lead to differences in outcomes that tend to be small and transitory.⁶

If the optimistic scenario does arise, I suspect it will be the result of discoveries in biology. Perhaps pharmacology will succeed where pedagogy fails.

Turning to more realistic scenarios, I see the desirability of the outcome depending on the extent to which institutions serve to ameliorate problems created by disparities in ability. At one extreme, charities and government will develop humane, rational approaches for providing for the needs of people who are disadvantaged in an economic environment where rewards are concentrated among those who are disciplined, self-directed learners with creative gifts. At the other extreme, collective institutions will be arenas in which elites compete for resources, even when they claim to be fighting on behalf of the disadvantaged.

I would assess our current situation as closer to the adverse scenario. Our government is very responsive to cries for bank bailouts or to pleas for subsidies coming from well-connected companies, large (General Motors) and small (Solyndra). That same government is much less likely to target assistance in a charitable fashion.

With all due respect to GI Joe and Rosie the Riveter, it could be that Cynthia the Clerk is a more appropriate symbol of the war effort.

Economist Steve Allen calculated that a $447 billion spending plan could be used to pay all 14 million unemployed workers $32,000 a year to take low-paying or volunteer jobs.⁷ While there may be no practical way to implement Allen's approach, it does illustrate the deficiencies in existing stimulus proposals. Even according to the most optimistic estimates, these create or save many fewer jobs per dollar spent.

My guess is that the more power is concentrated in governmental units, the less likely it is that our collective institutions will be geared toward achieving outcomes that are charitable and make efficient use of resources. Trying to get large sums of tax money past the grabbing hands of rent-seeking elites will be like trying to get a stagecoach full of gold past a horde of armed robbers.

Government's role as an employer and as a regulator is likely to exacerbate earnings inequality going forward. Government pay scales and contract award policies tend to place a very high weight on formal academic credentials. This increases the advantages of advanced degrees both directly and indirectly. The more that government requires educational credentials, the greater the rewards to the providers of educational credentials. Of course, becoming a provider of educational credentials requires obtaining high credentials oneself.

I suspect that a more decentralized set of voluntary collective institutions would achieve better results. People are less likely to donate to institutions that provide windfalls only to elites, so that such organizations would lose out in a competitive environment. I believe that a scenario in which many people have dignified jobs and enjoyable lifestyles is more likely to emerge in an environment with decentralized voluntary charities than one with concentrated, coercive government.

To put this another way, I think it is possible that technocrats will be able to come up with programs that offer decent work and reasonable incomes for workers with modest skills. However, I have more faith in a process in which technocrats must compete for charitable donations than a process in which they compete for government power.

Arnold Kling is a member of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He writes for econlog, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

The Ex-SEIU Boss, Donor Dollars, No-Bid Contracts & Testing Anthrax Vaccines on Kids

2011-11-13T12:19:00.001-06:00

The Ex-SEIU Boss, Donor Dollars, No-Bid Contracts & Testing Anthrax Vaccines on Kids

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More Luddism

2011-11-13T12:05:00.001-06:00

More Luddism

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Biden: First Guy We Called for Economic Advice Was Jon Corzine « Jammie Wearing Fools

2011-11-13T09:45:00.001-06:00

http://www.jammiewf.com/2011/biden-first-guy-we-called-for-economic-advice-was-jon-corzine/

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@rorycooper, 11/10/11 9:50 AM

2011-11-10T09:54:00.001-06:00

Rory Cooper (@rorycooper)
11/10/11 9:50 AM
RT @iowahawkblog: College: a place where you are taught to get angry at the bank who lent you $100,000 to go to college.

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Old Rich Young Poor

2011-11-07T06:39:00.001-06:00

http://m.cbsnews.com/fullstory.rbml?feed_id=1&catid=57319521&videofeed=37

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Article: Romney just dramatically raised the stakes vs. Obama

2011-11-06T17:53:00.001-06:00

Romney just dramatically raised the stakes vs. Obama
http://blog.american.com/2011/11/romney-just-dramatically-raised-the-stakes-vs-obama/

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Blue San Francisco Plans To Stiff The Unions | Via Meadia

2011-11-06T16:34:00.001-06:00

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/11/05/blue-san-francisco-plans-to-stiff-the-unions/

Blue San Francisco Plans To Stiff The Unions

Scott Walker move over; San Francisco is the latest front line in the battle against abusive public sector unions.

The bluest city in the bluest state in the union has woken up and smelled the latte; generations of extortionate collusion between shamelessly greedy and shortsighted union leaders and unforgivably opportunistic and irresponsible politicians have left the Blue Paradise on the Bay with a pension bill that it simply can't pay. As MercuryNews.com tells it,

San Francisco's public pension system took a beating during the recession, which has left it carrying a hefty unfunded liability for its 26,000 current and 28,000 retired employees. The city's pension obligation is growing by $100 million a year, leaving less funding for police and fire protection, park maintenance and health services for the needy.Unable to keep up, San Francisco is among several California cities asking voters to help tackle the public pension problem—which is now one of the biggest causes of municipal budget shortfalls.

Several things about this story deserve a closer look; one is that Blueville by the Bay has more retired workers than current employees. Unless San Francisco has been on a hitherto unnoticed frenzy of cost cutting and layoffs, this means that the city has long had a grotestquely out of line pension system that permits people to retire much earlier than they should. A more reasonably retiree ratio would be something like one to four; a one to one ratio means that the city is paying as many people to rest as it is to work. The technical term for this in accounting circles is "blind folly". It is often written in Greek: ατη and it is well known as the stage that comes between hubris and nemesis while a tragedy unfolds.

San Francisco may be the Athens of the West, but it is not the only California city that is taking ballot measures to the voters as a way of reducing unsustainable pension obligations. San Diego and San Jose are also planning ballot measures; the unconscionable collusion between greedy union leaders and ambitious politicians threatens to ruin cities up and down the coast.

California's shortsighted unions and politicians have left their successors in a horrible position: do you slash pensions that old people rely on, or do you cut government services like police, fire protection and education? Taxpayers generally favor the first alternative; it is hard to persuade hardworking immigrants struggling to raise kids that they should send their kids to bad schools on dirty, unsafe streets to save the money necessary honor abusive contracts made by past generations of labor and political bosses.

The courts, however, take a different view. Contracts are contracts and cannot lightly be broken. Union lawyers are appealing ballot initiatives and pension changes in the courts; often, they win.

Via Meadia thinks that contracts ought normally to be honored, but some agreements are so unrealistic that they are unenforceable. If the unions fight too aggressively in the courts, the cities can always go bankrupt.

Meanwhile, the public unions in California are isolating themselves politically. Insisting on "geezers first, kids last" public policy is neither decent nor honorable nor wise. The political and economic failures of the Baby Boom generation are nowhere more obvious than in California. The Boomers inherited a golden state of promise and dynamism; as they begin to retire they are leaving it a debt ridden hulk — and the wrecking crew wants fat pensions for a job well done.

Many will have to make do with less than they'd expected; a generation that failed to make California rich enough to afford generous pensions will not be able to collect.

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#OccupyDC ‘What Democracy Looks Like’ : The Other McCain

2011-11-06T15:31:00.001-06:00

http://theothermccain.com/2011/11/05/occupydc-what-democracy-looks-like/

#OccupyDC 'What Democracy Looks Like'

Posted on | November 5, 2011 | 70 Comments and 8 Reactions

"Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. And New York City lets it go on. . . . [T]he coverage of OWS protests compared to the coverage of tea-party protests is the worst media double standard in recent history."
– Allahpundit, Hot Air

"These are the people the Democrats and their accomplices in the media stand with."
– The Lonely Conservative

Michelle Fields has posted her crew's video of the violence and intimidation perpetrated by the "Occupy DC" mob Friday night:

About the elderly woman you see on the video (3:20) who got shoved to the ground by the "Occupy" mob:

"Her name is Dolores Broderson, age 78. She rode on a bus for 11 hours from Detroit to get there. She went to the emergency room with a bloody nose and bruises on her hand and leg."

We can no longer tolerate media assertions that this is a non-violent movement. When your purpose is to inspire hatred, to threaten and intimidate, when you trespass and obstruct traffic, when you chant obscenities and deliberately seek to provoke confrontations — no, you're not being non-violent, no matter how often you claim to be "peaceful."

But who can expect honesty from such savages? And who can any longer doubt that the mainstream media are acting as accessories to this criminal movement by pretending that the "Occupy [Whatever]" mob's regular eruptions of violence and criminality are atypical aberrations? Just look at the headlines:

Occupy Protester Arrested In $10M Arson Fire
– KMGH-TV

Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate
– Ira Stoll

Zuccotti protesters put up women-only
tent to prevent sexual assaults
– New York Post

Fear Of Violence Spreading To OccupySeattle
– Thomas Ferdousi

"Nothing to see here, move along. Just what 'democracy looks like.'"
– Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom

Yes, in the sense that "democracy" is a mob contemptuous of Western civilization, without respect for private property, ignorant of the Anglo-American Rule of Law tradition, and worked into a fevered frenzy by ritualistic incantations of radical-egalitarian concepts of "social justice" — well, indeed, this is what democracy looks like.

Those smelly hippies probably never even heard of Edmund Burke, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman , Thomas Sowell , et al.

Perhaps the malodorous mobsters would reply: "We're not going to pay money for books, you capitalist vulture!" But even if you offered them Leonard Read's classic essay, "I, Pencil," online for free, they couldn't be bothered to spend the time needed to read its 2,229 words. Even if you could force them to read it, however, they couldn't possibly understand it, either because they lack the intelligence to comprehend basic reasoning, or else because they've been so thoroughly brainwashed into the collectivist mentality as to have become actively hostile to freedom.

As I explained last week, the "Occupy [Whatever]" movement is about "Organized Ignorance." Once you've seen the phenomenon first-hand — chanting slogans or doing their ridiculous "mike check" call-and-response routines — you realize that their insistence on speaking in unison is a function of their inability to think as individuals.

"The good news is that more and more Americans are seeing these disgusting creatures in action. It will help Republican candidates immensely in 2012."
– John Hinderaker, Powerline

Good news? If you look at it from a short-term partisan perspective, I suppose it's good for independent voters to be reminded of what the Democratic Party's "base" really looks like. But there is something genuinely tragic, and profoundling troubling, in watching this sorry "Occupy" farce unfold. So many young people have been so miseducated that they can't tell "heaven from hell, blue skies from pain," et cetera.

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!

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Article: Artificial intelligence: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy

2011-11-05T14:06:00.000-05:00

Artificial intelligence: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence

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Article: BoomBotix BLOG » Blog Archive » Unveiling the Proof watch for the iPod Nano

2011-11-05T13:53:00.001-05:00

BoomBotix BLOG » Blog Archive » Unveiling the Proof watch for the iPod Nano
http://www.boombotix.com/skullyblog/proof-nano-watch

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What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? — The American Magazine

2011-11-05T05:46:00.001-05:00

http://american.com/archive/2011/november/what-if-middle-class-jobs-disappear/

What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear?

As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee put it in a recent e-book Race Against the Machine:

The root of our problems is not that we're in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring.

The Great Transition from 1930 to 1950

Government's role as an employer and as a regulator is likely to exacerbate earnings inequality going forward.

If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries.

The Current Transition

Blockbuster video adversely affected the capital of movie theaters, Netflix adversely affected the capital of Blockbuster, and the combination of faster Internet speeds and tablet devices may depreciate the organizational capital of Netflix.

The result is what David Autor calls the polarization of the American job market. Autor and various research collaborators have documented a number of findings that reflect this polarization:⁴

• This particular symptom of polarization is also prevalent in OECD countries other than the United States.

The Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition.

The outlook for mid-skill jobs would not appear to be bright. Communication technology and computer intelligence continue to improve, putting more occupations at risk.

For example, many people earn a living as drivers, including trucks and taxicabs. However, the age of driver-less vehicles appears to be moving closer.

Challenges Due to Rapid Change

If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy.

Three future scenarios

The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation.

If the optimistic scenario does arise, I suspect it will be the result of discoveries in biology. Perhaps pharmacology will succeed where pedagogy fails.

With all due respect to GI Joe and Rosie the Riveter, it could be that Cynthia the Clerk is a more appropriate symbol of the war effort.

Arnold Kling is a member of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He writes for econlog, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

Obama White House Rebuffs Request for Solyndra Documents | The Gateway Pundit

2011-11-05T05:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/11/obama-white-house-rebuffs-request-for-solyndra-documents/

Obama White House Rebuffs Request for Solyndra Documents

On May 26, 2011, the White House posted this video praising Solyndra as a Recovery Act success story. In August, Barack Obama's gleaming example of green technology – Solyndra – filed for bankruptcy. The solar panel manufacturer squandered $535 million of stimulus money in a little over a year.

Why Solyndra?
Top Obama bundler George Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted a $535 million loan from the government. And top Solyndra officials also made numerous visits — 20 — to the White House, according to logs and reporting by The Daily Caller. Solyndra officials in the logs included chairman and founder Christian Gronet and board members Thomas Baruch and David Prend. The company secured the $535 million loan despite the fact that it was widely known Solyndra was in deep economic trouble and had negative cash flows since its inception.

Kaiser said he did not use political influence or talk to administration officials about a massive government loan to Solyndra. However, the Solyndra investor made multiple visits to the White House in the week before the Department of Energy approved a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra on March 20, 2009

(Solyndra)

But, Barack Obama had no regrets.

In fact, Barack Obama was so impressed with the failed solar company that the administration wanted to give it another $469 million on top of the $535 million to make it an even billion dollars in taxpayer cash.

Today the Obama White House announced that it would not honor a subpoena and release all documents related the the $535 million Solyndra scandal to a House committee.
The AP reported:

The White House on Friday strongly rebuffed a subpoena from House Republicans seeking all communications about a failed solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee.

In a letter to two top Republicans on the House energy panel, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said the request "was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation."

The White House and the Energy Department have already turned over 85,000 pages of documents on Solyndra Inc. The California-based company filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers after receiving $528 million in federal backing.

Ruemmler said those documents show no wrongdoing or political favoritism by the administration. She added that curiosity alone is not a justification to encroach on the Executive Branch's longstanding confidentiality interests.

House Republicans have used Solyndra to highlight what they see as President Barack Obama's failure to create clean energy jobs. The company was the first to receive a federal loan guarantee under the 2009 stimulus law, which greatly expanded the program. Obama visited the company last year to praise it publicly.

Documents already obtained by the committee show that the administration knew the firm had problems, yet continued to support it.

On Thursday, a subcommittee of the energy panel voted on party lines to issue the subpoena, calling the White House "obstructionist."

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Joe Biden conspicuously silent on Occupier sex-crime spree | The Daily Caller

2011-11-04T21:36:00.001-05:00

http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/04/joe-biden-conspicuously-silent-on-occupier-sex-crime-spree/

Joe Biden conspicuously silent on Occupier sex-crime spree

Remember when all Joe Biden could talk about was rape? He kept saying the Republicans aren't backing the American Jobs Act because they want everybody to get raped? Then he clammed up about it for some reason. But we'll always have the memories. Good times.

As the media tries to feed the embers of a sex scandal despite a distinct lack of A) sex or B) scandal, let's take a look at our good friends in the Occupy movement who are giving ol' Sheriff Joe something to cry about. In less than two months, they've already racked up an impressive list of rapes, sexual assaults, and other assorted sex crimes across the country.

Denver Post, 10/15/11:

An Occupy Denver demonstrator was arrested late Saturday for "sexual misconduct" after allegedly groping a male television photographer.

Corey Donahue, a 28-year-old medical marijuana activist, was arrested at 10:20 p.m. in Civic Center park, according to three photographers who witnessed the event. Two of the photographers work for The Post.

This is Donahue's third arrest in six weeks.

All of which go toward his Occupier Merit Badge. This one's a tough call, though. If you think it's wrong for a man to be attracted to another man, you're a homophobe. But if you think it's okay to sexually assault people, you're a pervert. So it evens out.

Incidentally, Donahue showed up in another Denver Post story a couple of weeks later:

Infighting, backbiting and people she viewed as violent opportunists led one of Occupy Denver's most visible participants to quit the local movement after the peaceful protest turned violent Saturday.

Rebecca "Becca" Chavez, 29, announced on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, "I support Occupy Wall Street whole-heartedly but I cannot, at present, support, endorse, or be a part of Occupy Denver…"

True to keeping the movement faceless, Chavez intentionally never called herself a leader, but no one at Occupy Denver would disagree that she was influential.

"Becca was a part of a contingency that thinks if we completely let them (the police) bash our skulls in, then we'll win," said Corey Donahue, 28, a self-identified anarchist who helps in the Occupy Denver kitchen. "That kind of 'militant nonviolence' won't work."

That's right, people of Occupy Denver: This guy is touching your food.

CBS Cleveland, 10/18/11:

An "Occupy Cleveland" protester tells police she was raped in her tent over the weekend.

Cleveland police are investigating an alleged sexual assault incident Saturday at the "Occupy Cleveland" rally involving a 19-year-old female student from Parma.

According to police reports, the 19-year-old student was instructed by "Occupy Cleveland" personnel to "share a tent with the suspect due to a shortage of tents." The suspect identified himself as "Leland" to the woman. The woman told police that after she had thought the suspect went to sleep in his own bed, she slept in a sleeping bag provided to her by the rally.

Emails from CBS Cleveland to the "Occupy Cleveland" movement were not immediately returned.

Well, they've got better things to do than worry about women being raped in the public place they've turned into a squalid Obamaville.

KOMO News in Seattle, 10/18/11:

A man accused of exposing himself to children at least five times across Seattle was arrested early Tuesday morning.

Seattle police say he was taken into custody at his Kenmore residence around 1 a.m.

Officers had been given a composite sketch of the suspect and detectives learned he had been at Westlake Park taking part in the Occupy Seattle protests.

This is what degeneracy looks like.

Apparently, sexual assault is such a problem at Occupy Baltimore that they drew up guidelines on how to report it. Baltimore Sun, 10/19/11:

Efforts by the Occupy Baltimore protest group to evolve into a self-contained, self-governing community have erupted into controversy with the distribution of a pamphlet that victim advocates and health workers fear discourages victims of sexual assaults from contacting police.

The pamphlet says that members of the protest group who believe they are victims or who suspect sexual abuse "are encouraged to immediately report the incident to the Security Committee," which will investigate and "supply the abuser with counseling resources."

The directive also says, in part, "Though we do not encourage the involvement of the police in our community, the survivor has every right, and the support of Occupy Baltimore, to report the abuse to the appropriate authorities."

Despite this caveat, the heads of three rape crisis centers and a nurse who runs the forensic division at Mercy Medical Center called the message about not involving police dangerous. They said it contains erroneous information that could undermine efforts to convince victims to properly report crimes and get the counseling they need.

The memo was later revised to take out the "Don't talk to the pigs" part. Hey, you know who has never put out any guidelines on reporting sexual assault? The Tea Party. What are they hiding???

NY Post, 10/30/11:

Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park battened down the hatches yesterday as the early October snow turned their tents into igloos, but the close quarters also made easy pickings for one predator.

A sex fiend barged into a woman's tent and sexually assaulted her at around 6 a.m., said protesters, who chased him from the park.

"Pervert! Pervert! Get the f–k out!" said vigilante Occupiers, who never bothered to call the cops.

"They were shining flashlights in his face and yelling at him to leave," said a woman who called herself Leslie, but refused to give her real name.

She said that weeks earlier another woman was raped.

"We don't tell anyone," she said. "We handle it internally. I said too much already."

"Handling it internally" seems to be working out just fine so far.

NYDN, 10/30/11:

A 23-year-old woman is accused of attempting to pimp out a teenage girl she met at an Occupy New Hampshire protest earlier this week.

After Justina Jensen, of Manchester, became friendly with the girl, she went on the Internet and arranged a tryst between her and a man — who was actually an undercover cop, according to Union Leader…

Jensen, who went by the alias Remy, made a deal on behalf of the teen to have sex with the man, who called himself Mad Mike, for $150.

When the man asked for a location for the duo to meet, Jensen gave her address and was arrested — after a brief struggle — in her home…

According to police, Jensen was going to start training the teen to become a prostitute.

Somebody call Julia Roberts. We've finally got a plot for Pretty Woman 2.

Pegasus News, 11/1/01:

Dallas Police confirmed that they have arrested a man named Richard Wayne Armstrong who they believe had sex with a 14-year-old female runaway in a tent at an Occupy Dallas protest. Armstrong is a non-compliant registered sex offender.

The girl told police during questioning that she told the man she was 19 years old. The girl is from Garland.

Armstrong was arrested on October 27, 2011 for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender and Sexual Assault of a Child, the Dallas Police Department reports.

What's the big deal? It's not like he put a crosshairs symbol on a map, or said, "Don't retreat, reload."

And then there's Occupy Madison, which was denied a permit because a protester was caught publicly masturbating. Guess he couldn't find anybody to rape.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I'm sure there'll be more and more incidents like this by the day. Just a little something to remember the next time Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or anybody else tries to tell you how great the Occupy movement is.

(Thanks to the MacIver Institute's #OccupyCrimeWave map.)

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@foxnation, 11/3/11 8:12 AM

2011-11-03T09:50:00.001-05:00

Fox Nation (@foxnation)
11/3/11 8:12 AM
INSANE VIDEO FROM OBAMA'S BASE IN OAKLAND bit.ly/uETu2S

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Physics vs. Phys Ed: Regardless of Need, Schools Pay the Same [Michigan Capitol Confidential]

2011-10-31T09:56:00.001-05:00

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/15940

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Mapping Stereotypes Project by alphadesigner

2011-10-29T15:50:00.001-05:00

http://alphadesigner.com/project-mapping-stereotypes.html

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Untitled

2011-10-29T15:10:00.001-05:00

http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-ash4/83491/133/150419974440_8856.mp4?oh=c8230b761a349e38079ee81fb28e4c8c&oe=4EAF0000&l3s=20111029125728&l3e=20111031130728&lh=0c9b0d4607e7f88eb44cd

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PJTV - Three and a Half Days - Bill Whittle

2011-10-29T09:32:00.001-05:00

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=6158

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@JimPethokoukis, 10/27/11 1:52 PM

2011-10-27T13:56:00.001-05:00

James Pethokoukis (@JimPethokoukis)
10/27/11 1:52 PM
What's driving Dems nuts today? This >>> For the left, income inequality is the new global warming bit.ly/vEwyxA

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@vermontaigne, 10/27/11 1:25 PM

2011-10-27T13:29:00.001-05:00

Dan Collins (@vermontaigne)
10/27/11 1:25 PM
Energy Jobs Can Jump-Start the Economy: The Story of Marcellus Shale: The Marcellus Coalition has a new video th... bit.ly/tCg5jp

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Works and Days » Rage On—and on and on…

2011-10-24T06:26:00.000-05:00

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/rage-on-and-on-and-on/?singlepage=true

Works and Days

Occupy Wall Street?

I've been following the Wall Street protests, in New York and elsewhere. I read as well of the Democratic Party's sorta interest in turning the anger of a few into a left-wing Tea-Party-like movement of many.

Against that background, I've also been counting up Barack Obama's excuses (ATM machines are to blame and so are the tsunami, the EU, George W. Bush, the nine-month-old Republican House, the Arab Spring, the D.C. earthquake, and rising oil prices). He's also growing his target list of various insults (everyone and everything from Clarence Thomas, Nancy Reagan, and the Special Olympics to fat-cat bankers, corporate jet-owners, millionaires and billionaires, and "the teabag, anti-government people").

Out of all that chaos, I think there are two constants that explain the Obama frustration and the current outpouring of invective at Wall Street, "them," the affluent, and our capitalist system in general.

So Sorry — It Doesn't Work

On a wider political level, there is a growing realization that today's brand of liberalism is really a form of slow societal suicide. We see red states recovering from recession; blue states are still broke. Greece is a mess; so is the entire anti-democratic, statist, and redistributive EU. Keynesian economics is about as dead as global warming/climate change/climate chaos in the age of Climategate, Al Gore, Inc., and a planet cooling over the last decade.

The old idea of open borders is also over. The notion is discredited that teaching new arrivals multiculturalism and ethnic chauvinism, providing them massive subsidies, and ignoring federal statutes was both more humane and more efficacious than the old melting pot of our youth. Solyndra was the epitaph of the lie of "millions of green jobs." Obama will never utter that now bankrupt phrase again. "Green" means millions of dollars in printed federal money for each job produced, but even far more millions to crony capitalists who hid their malfeasance with hope and change sloganeering.

The Façade Peels Away

Independents are starting to see the end of the latest liberal experiment. Society simply cannot continue paying a half-trillion-dollars to import gas and oil, and hundreds of billions to subsidize inefficient wind and solar, even as known U.S. coal, gas, oil, shale, and tar sands reserves soar — but remain vastly underutilized. The administration's Energy Department (e.g., gas should reach European levels, people cannot be trusted to buy the right light bulbs, California farms will blow away) is now simply the sibling of the EPA.

Raging Against the Machine

Soon even some mainstream Democrats will grasp the lie. Obamism not only does not work; its fiscal, energy, cultural, and foreign policies result in Greek-like stasis and chaos. It hinges on scapegoating those who say it does not work. Its current anger is sort of like the furor directed at those who were either trying to change or depart from the ossified medieval Church, when altruistic doctrine hides penances, exemptions, and vast estates. Stop the Smears begat JournoList which begat AttackWatch.com.

Again, all of the above is why Obama's target and excuse lists grow and the old calls for civility and unity fade. How can a Democratic president, with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate for two years, keep faulting the present mess on either an ex-president who left almost three years ago, or a Republican-controlled House of some nine months tenure?

Junior Has Been Had?

But on a personal level, these more cosmic issues are coming home as well. Many of the current group of protestors down at Wall Street — remember the summer's earlier flash mobbing here and the hoodies in the UK — are unknowingly raging against just this "system" where some have more than they do and will always have more, given the current frozen economy. About 2010, the music stopped and those without chairs were out of luck.

Many are furious that they have or soon will have very expensive degrees, bought at the price of either exorbitant loans or near insolvent parents who paid the $100,000-200,000 for today's BAs. The students cannot rage against the modern corrupt, but ideologically sacrosanct, university. There, diversity czars outnumber French professors. Academic success is calibrated by avoiding introductory undergraduate classes — and all for the "student."

The Old Way

After all, in the old days, faculty taught 6-8 (and more) classes a year. Administrators taught too and were relatively small in number (unlike the 1-1 ratio at the CSU system, the world's largest university). The curriculum was designed to instill inductive thinking. It prepared the student to write well, think, and have a corpus of dates, events, people, and places at his fingertips for reference and elucidation.

In the Belly of the Beast — And?

Politicking was rare even in the 1970s. Well over thirty years ago, I took some 30 courses in Greek and Latin language and literature at UC Santa Cruz, and another 12 PhD seminars at Stanford — all from whom in retrospect I would imagine were mostly hard left. But who knew? Not once in eight years of undergraduate or graduate education did a liberal professor go off topic to rant or, indeed, to mix politics with history or literature or language. There were no points given for politically correct answers. No sermonizing poured forth from the rostrum. There was also simply no time to do so, given the enormity of the assignments. Reading five pages of Thucydides in Greek for each class or understanding the structure of ancient Athenian democracy left no time to blast an aspiring Ronald Reagan. I am sure indoctrination started in the early 1960s, but even in the 1970s it had not completely taken hold.

Relatively Cheap, Really Good

In other words, for much of the 20th century, college was not that exorbitantly expensive (my hardscrabble grandfather farmer sent all three of his daughters to college, two to Stanford, on the meager profits from 100 acres of raisins in the midst of the Depression). Students emerged literate and mostly disinterested and inductive. The most impressive degrees, of course, were not history or English (much less environmental studies). Instead the palm went to engineering, physics, mathematics, and biology. These were the hard sciences and skills that few of us could master. Social sciences were relatively small enclaves. And while science majors got As in their gut GE anthropology, sociology, and psychology courses, the opposite was not true: the latter majors panicked when forced to take a basic physics or physiology class to graduate.

I note in passing that not only were there no black, Latino, gender, green, film, gay, peace, or leisure studies courses, programs, and empires, but also a general impression that no one would wish to pay for such classes that imparted little real knowledge about the inductive method or the necessary referents of literature, history, and science. So many of these classes were therapeutic. Some were downright accusatory: go back through history and as melodrama point out the bad and good guys (based on present-day liberal standards), or study how modern capitalism should be replaced by a more humane model — in environmental, financial, religious, racial, class, and gender terms.

So here is where the last thirty years all led: to too many students who are indebted, poorly educated, and without skills like high-tech engineering, sophisticated medicine, or computer design that the country needs. They are consumed with contemporary furor as the education bubble of nearly a trillion dollars in debt is about to burst. They are mad at the system that they were taught oppresses them, but also at themselves. Who would not be after spending so much money for something of so little value? Nothing is more embarrassing to watch than arrogance coupled with ignorance — and spiced with occasional glibness and the slow realization that they've been had.

Beyond Reproach

It is taboo for the Obama technocracy to consider exploiting the vast natural riches of America. And how can one admit that printing money destroys prosperity? Who can confess that expectations of government subsidy ruin personal initiative? So how, then, can students question the utility of their educations? They don't dare object to the university's manner of operations, or how their loans underwrote the need for a six-figured assistant provost of internal development or associate vice president for diversity awareness — or a vast number of new hip professors who just thirty or forty years ago would not be seen as professors at all.

I think in over twenty years of teaching I received about 5,000 memos warning me about insidious practices of sexism, racism, classism, or other sorts of oppression, what the chair, dean, provost, president was doing about it (usually setting up a watchdog faculty committee) — and not a single one wondering how we could bring rigor to the curriculum and real learning to the students.

The End of the Dream

In sum, there is panic. Obamacare, near-zero interest rates, more environmental and fiscal regulations, government takeovers, bailouts, and stimulus, nearly $5 trillion in debt, $1.6 trillion in annual deficits, vast increases in food stamps and unemployment insurance, and hectoring the private sector — all that and more did not restore prosperity. More likely we ruined a natural recovery — if 9.1% unemployment, anemic GDP growth, ruinous debt, precipitous declines in the standard of living, and the return of the old record misery index are any indication. All Obama in 2012 is left with is the old trifecta of "Bush did it," "they" will cut your Social Security, and a subtle racism fuels all opposition.

There is a deer-in-the-headlights paralysis in all those who believed that you could get a government subsidized $100,000 loan, receive easy As in environmental studies or sociology, buy a prestigious BA certificate, and then enter the lucrative world of the government bureaucracy — teaching, administering, suing, and regulating.

Not Enough Smelts or Pipelines to Go Around

But it did not work that way (there is not room enough for all of us to champion the delta smelt, find insidious racism in the Detroit schools, shut down an oil pipeline, or sue Arizona). Instead, we are left with an energy-poor country sitting on energy riches, a moribund economy with millions in the private sector piling up cash rather than investing or hiring, and cohorts of young, flat-broke, indebted, and politically prepped but poorly schooled students wondering where is the good life and why a Wall Street fixer, or computer nerd, or company man civil engineer makes so much more than they, the anointed, do.

So they rage on — and on and on…

(Thumbnail on PJM homepage created from multiple images from Shutterstock.com.)

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Works and Days » Rage On—and on and on…

2011-10-24T06:25:00.001-05:00

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/rage-on-and-on-and-on/2/

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World power swings back to America - Telegraph

2011-10-23T17:35:00.001-05:00

Found this interesting link on the Drudge Report:

World power swings back to America - Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8844646/World-power-swings-back-to-America.html

Get iDrudgeReport on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad free at the iTunes Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/official-drudge-report-free/id375614185?mt=8

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@PolitixGal, 10/23/11 5:07 PM

2011-10-23T17:23:00.001-05:00

PolitixGal (@PolitixGal)
10/23/11 5:07 PM
What do the top ten cities (over 250k) with the highest poverty rate all have in common? Democratic Mayors. #tcot pic.twitter.com/HtP7JVUn

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The Virginian: Obama is to jobs what Gore is to weather.

2011-10-23T07:12:00.001-05:00

http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2011/10/obama-is-to-jobs-what-gore-is-to.html

The Virginian

This blog is about what interests me. Since I am intensely interested in current events as well as being a student of history, I get my news from a vast number of sources. The Internet has freed people throughout the world from one-way sources of information. The consumer of information is no longer limited to being the passive recipient of that information deemed important or newsworthy by the gatekeepers of the mainstream media (MSM). Thanks to the Internet, news and information is now an interactive process. Nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than the exposure – within hours – of the Killian Memo forgeries by bloggers, followed days later by the reluctant dragons of the MSM. This site is dedicated to a fierce defense of the truth, freedom and honor.

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Barry's Stimulus

2011-10-23T07:06:00.001-05:00

@pepper_10, 10/21/11 5:36 PM

2011-10-21T17:39:00.001-05:00

Pj (@pepper_10)
10/21/11 5:36 PM
The Austrian Business Cycle Theory Explained - YouTube - goo.gl/Tb24J

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Questions

2011-10-21T12:08:00.001-05:00

Today's Questions for the President

October 21, 2011 10:24 AM

By Peter Kirsanow

In a December, 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, you graded your own job performance as "a good, solid B+." You added that "if I get health care passed, we tip into A-." Obamacare has since passed.

The '"misery index" today is at its highest level in 28 years.
The unemployment rate has been above 9 percent for 27 of the last 29 months.
Long-term unemployment is at its highest level in more than 70 years.
The national debt is $14.8 trillion — nearly $5 trillion more than four years ago.
The federal deficit is $1.3 trillion — more than eight times higher than four years ago.
Federal spending is $3.57 trillion — nearly $1 trillion more than four years ago.
The United States' credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history.
You spent $814 billion on a stimulus program so unemployment wouldn't rise above 8 percent and would drop to 6.5 percent by today. Since then, unemployment has never droppedbelow 8 percent and is 9.1 percent today.
A record 45 million Americans (nearly one in seven) use the food-stamp program — 20 million more than four years ago.
A record 3.8 million foreclosures were filed last year.
Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.

In an interview with Jake Tapper a few days ago, you didn't give yourself a specific grade but stated that you "believe all the choices we've made have been the right ones." Is it correct to assume, then, that you were actually shooting for the above results?

What might the above figures be if you had made just one wrong choice? What would the above figures have to be in order for you to give yourself a "D" ?

How long was the wait list for your constitutional-law class?

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Local Residents Hate Wall St. Occupiers | Power Line

2011-10-21T11:47:00.001-05:00

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/10/local-residents-hate-wall-st-occupiers.php

LOCAL RESIDENTS HATE WALL ST. OCCUPIERS

The New York Post reports on a "chaotic" Community Board meeting in which residents who are unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park unloaded on the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters:

"They are defecating on our doorsteps," fumed Katherine Hughes, a stay at home mom who has the misfortune of living one block from the chaos. "A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids."
Fed up homeowners said that they've been subjected to insults and harassment as they trek to their jobs each morning. "The protesters taunt people who are on their way to work," said James Fernandez, 51, whose apartment overlooks the park.
Board member Paul Cantor said that residents are fed up with the incessant racket that emanates from the protest at all hours. "It's mostly a noise issue," he said. If people can't sleep and children can't sleep because the protesters are banging drums then that's a problem." …
The line to speak at the standing room only meeting spilled out of the board's office and onto the street outside where Zuccotti sympathizers sparred with angry residents. One elderly woman told a protester to stop screaming and was met with an even hgiher volume. "Get some earplugs!," retorted David Stano.

The Democrats are crazy to align themselves with people–bums, essentially–who will annoy if not enrage the vast majority of voters. That Democrats are willing to take a chance on being the "Occupy Wall Street" party is the clearest possible evidence of how desperate they are, and how much they fear next year's elections.

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Report: Occupy Oakland Devolves into “Lord of the Flies” | Verum Serum

2011-10-21T06:40:00.000-05:00

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=31000

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Ten Things to Keep In Mind for 2012 - National Review Online

2011-10-20T11:24:00.001-05:00

http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/280670/ten-things-keep-mind-2012

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Occupy Events Nationwide Marred by Reports of Sexual Harassment, Assault | Verum Serum

2011-10-20T06:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=30928

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Obama still flush with cash from financial sector despite frosty relations - The Washington Post

2011-10-20T05:44:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-has-more-cash-from-financial-sector-than-gop-hopefuls-combined-data-show/2011/10/18/gIQAX4rAyL_story.html?hpid=z1

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@weeklystandard, 10/19/11 2:33 PM

2011-10-20T05:18:00.000-05:00

weeklystandard (@weeklystandard)
10/19/11 2:33 PM
Reid: Protecting Government Employment More Important Than Saving Private Sector Jobs: We all suspected this was... bit.ly/nx11Yd

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Celebrated redistributionists discover healthy respect for private property « Hot Air

2011-10-18T18:56:00.001-05:00

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/18/celebrated-redistributionists-discover-healthy-respect-for-private-property/

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1	Wyoming	41	Iowa
2	South Dakota	42	Maryland
3	Nevada	43	Wisconsin
4	Alaska	44	North Carolina
5	Florida	45	Minnesota
6	New Hampshire	46	Rhode Island
7	Washington	47	Vermont
8	Montana	48	California
9	Texas	49	New York
10	Utah	50	New Jersey

The Freedom Phile

State of the Union 2012

TaxProf Blog: 2012 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States

TaxProf Blog

January 26, 2012

2012 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States

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