Double Standards (Political Edition)

Remember when Sarah Palin said that "you can see Russia from Alaska"?  No, she never said, "I can see Russia from my house".  That was a Saturday Night Live parody that political ignoramuses ascribe to her.  Sarah Palin was, of course, right.  You can see Russia from the Alaska across the Bering Straight.

"Liberals", naturally, ridiculed her for making a factually accurate statement.  They always know better, even when they're wrong. 

Compare that with how they treat Pres Obama's many geographical errors.

Mr. Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois. 

In reference to the Falkland Islands, Mr. Obama called them the Maldives — islands southwest of India — apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred Malvinas. The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial. 

When in the state of Hawaii, Mr. Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the U.S. Army’s Arabic-language translators assigned to Iraq could better be used in Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of Afghanistan. For that matter, he apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.

Remember, Sarah Palin made a factually accurate statement about her home state, and was ridiculed for it.  Pres Obama made multiple abysmally ignorant statements about his country and both his home states (Hawaii and Illinois).  Clearly, the "Liberal" media mocked him mercifully for it, right?

Of course not!  Haven't you been paying attention?

The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects such as geography and history. The former is often not taught anymore as a required subject in our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class and gender oppression to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.

See?  When Sarah Palin makes a factually accurate statement, she's an idiot.  When The One makes multiple ignorant statements, it's everyone else's fault.  Gotta love how that works.

To be fair, the author I quoted above - Victor Davis Hanson - is a conservative, which is why he was willing to point out all those ignorant statements.  "Liberals" won't even admit they exist.

Obamacare: Told You So (Continued)

Those of us who support economic liberty warned that Obamacare would result in an increase of part time employment, vs full time employment.  Obamacare supporters shrieked, "racist!" 

Told you so.

Employers around the country, from fast-food franchises to colleges, have told NBC News that they will be cutting workers’ hours below 30 a week because they can’t afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. 

“To tell somebody that you’ve got to decrease their hours because of a law passed in Washington is very frustrating to me,” said Loren Goodridge, who owns 21 Subway franchises, including a restaurant in Kennebunk. “I know the impact I’m having on some of my employees.”  

Goodridge said he’s cutting the hours of 50 workers to no more than 29 a week so he won’t trigger the provision in the new health care law that requires employers to offer coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week. The provision takes effect in 16 months.

Hey, now that they mention it, this couldn't possibly have anything to do with the report that 97% of jobs created in 2013 are part time, could it?

“Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,” said Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

“That is really remarkable.” 

Hall is no ordinary academic. He ran the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs report, from 2008 to 2012. Over the past six months, he said, the Household Survey shows 963,000 more people reporting that they were employed, and 936,000 of them reported they’re in part-time jobs. 

“That is a really high number for a six-month period,” Hall said. “I’m not sure that has ever happened over six months before.”

“There is something going on if such a large share of the hiring is part time,” Hall said. ... 

Hall speculated that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, shorthanded as Obamacare, might be resulting in employers shifting workers to part-time status to avoid coming health care obligations. 

“There’s been so much talk about the effects of Obamacare on part-time work,” he said. “This is such an unusual thing to see.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/02/198432/most-2013-job-growth-is-in-part.html#.Uf-UcGRAS7g#storylink=cpy

 What?  You mean businesses respond to the economic incentives artificially created by government policies?  No way!  Of course, anyone with any understanding of economics - or common sense - would've seen this coming.  As Chris Conover wrote before the BLS report was published...

Denialism may be too strong a term.[1] But there seem to be a lot of people arguing that Obamacare has little or nothing to do with the rise in part-time employment. Some deny the rise is even happening, while others are content to deny that Obamacare is the culprit. Admittedly, it takes a little detective work, but if we systematically review the available empirical evidence in an even-handed fashion, the conclusion seems inescapable: Obamacare is accelerating a disturbing trend towards “a nation of part-timers.” This is not good news for America.

 So, is this consequence of Obamacare intended, or unintended?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/02/198432/most-2013-job-growth-is-in-part.html#.Uf-UcGRAS7g#storylink=cpy

The Free Market Cure

You may have seen this graphic floating around Facebook.

Apparently, that quote comes from a speech he gave at Georgetown University. 

“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”

Bono is right, of course.  But it's always nice to have data to support your beliefs.  So, here it is.

The US and UK, with economic policies that respected property rights and economic liberty far more than China's, grew steadily in GDP/capita, which is a pretty good indicator of increasing wealth.  When China loosened economic regulations, their GDP/capita skyrocketed.

So, economic liberty leads to economic prosperity.  Great!  Which way are we headed now?  According to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, we're 10th in the world, and dropping.

US Economic Freedom score over time

According to the Heritage Foundation...

Registering a loss of economic freedom for the fifth consecutive year, the U.S. has recorded its lowest Index score since 2000. Dynamic entrepreneurial growth is stifled by ever-more-bloated government and a trend toward cronyism that erodes the rule of law. More than three years after the end of recession in June 2009, the U.S. continues to suffer from policy choices that have led to the slowest recovery in 70 years.

All in the name of helping the poor, of course.  Ironic, isn't it?