Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Hey "liberals"; are you upset about the possibility of paying lower taxes? Would you like to pay higher taxes? Do you feel as though the U.S. federal government might be robbed of funds that rightly belong to it? Did you know that you can increase your own taxes voluntarily?

It's true!

Just follow thins link to the official Bureau of the Fiscal Service website, and put your money where your mouth is!

You're welcome!

Obamacare Architect Says "Liberals" are Stupid

You may have heard, or read, by now about the controversy surrounding Obamacare (and Romneycare) architect Jonathan Gruber.  If not, here's a pretty good summary in video form.

If you follow the video link to YouTube, you can watch much longer versions of his remarks in context, which makes them even worse.

Most of the controversy surrounds Gruber's insults directed at American voters.  He called American voters stupid and economically illiterate, and accuses Americans of not caring about the uninsured.  His solution, then (in his own words) was to "[exploit] the lack of economic understanding of the American voter", and to use the "tortured way" in which the bill was written, and the bill's "lack of transparency" to trick American voters into accepting a law they would have otherwise rejected.

Gruber's statements shouldn't be controversial.  Gruber is right.  Sort of.  If you actually believed that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor", and "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan", and that Obamacare would cover the supposed 40 million uninsured Americans, and that Obamacare would cover preexisting illnesses, all while "bend[ing] the cost curve down" and not "add[ing] a dime to the national deficit", then you sir/ma'am really are naive, gullible, economically illiterate - and yes - stupid.

In other words, Gruber is saying that "Liberals" are stupid, because "Liberals" swallowed every lie that Gruber - and more importantly, every Democrat politician - sold them, hook, line and sinker.

Ladies and gentlemen: Gruber is referring to you.

Conservatives and Libertarians have been warning the country about all of Gruber's and the Democrats' lies since 2009.  Conservatives and Libertarians aren't Gruber's "stupid", economically illiterate, stingy voters.  "Liberals" are.

Possibly the most important part of this whole controversy is that Gruber unintentionally gave the whole world a glimpse into how Leftists think.

Leftists believe ordinary people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, and too stingy to care for the needy through voluntary charity.  Leftists therefore believe that ordinary people need Leftist elites - like Gruber and all the Democrats who forced this monstrosity on the rest of us - to make decisions for ordinary folk and force them to care for the needy at gun point, through taxation.

The fact that charity provides politicians with no opportunity for graft, and taxation offers myriads of opportunities for graft, never enters the Leftist elites' minds, of course.  It's all for the children, you see.

So, thank you, Jonathan Gruber, for being honest.  Even if you never meant to be. 

Obamacare: Told You So (Continued)

Just in case you thought it was only those evil businesses with their dirty profits cutting workers' hours to avoid Obamacare's penalties...

Community College of Allegheny County will cut the hours some instructors to avoid paying for their health insurance coverage under new Affordable Care Act rules.

CCAC President Alex Johnson announced in an email to employees last week that the school would cut course loads and hours for some 200 adjunct faculty members and 200 additional employees. The Affordable Care Act -- nicknamed Obamacare -- classifies employees who work 30 hours or more per week as full-time, and CCAC would be required under the new law to provide employer-assisted health insurance to those employees. Instead, temporary part-time employees, such as clerical, computer, seasonal and other positions, will be limited to working 25 hours per week, and adjunct instructors will only be able to teach 10 credits per semester. Permanent part-time employees, already eligible for health care coverage, will be unaffected. The Pittsburgh-based college estimates the move will save it from spending an additional $6 million. 

Expect to see much more of this in the near future.  Thanks, Obama voters!

Secession, No. Federalism, Yes

You may have heard that the White House website now has petitions from all 50 states requesting permission to peacefully secede from the Union.  The most famous of these - and the one with the most signatures - is from Texas, naturally.  The whole thing is silly, but it reflects a real problem.  A whole lot of Americans are unhappy with the federal government, which makes perfect sense.  It's impossible to please 350,000,000 people at the same time.  It's highly unlikely that any state will actually attempt to secede, but the existence of so many disgruntled voters is no laughing matter.

There is, however, a very simple solution to this problem.

 Let the central government do the things that only central governments can do -- national defense, regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic warfare with one another, protection of basic civil rights -- and then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues. Don't like the way things are run where you are? Move to a province that's more to your taste. Meanwhile, approaches that work in individual provinces can, after some experimentation, be adopted by the central government, thus lowering the risk of adopting untested policies at the national level. You get the benefits of secession without seceding.

Pretty simple, right?  If you want to live in a state with enormous debt, high taxes, business-stifling regulations, high unemployment, lots of poverty, welfare and income inequality, and crappy schools, move to California, New York or Illinois.   If you want to live in a state with low debt, low taxes, little regulation, lots of jobs and low unemployment rates, move to North Dakota, Texas or Utah.

It's not even a new idea.

Sound good? It should. It's called federalism, and it's the approach chosen by the United States when it adopted the Constitution in 1789. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

It's a nice plan. Beats secession. Maybe we should give it another try.

For a bunch of racist old white dudes, those Founding Fathers sure were smart!

Why We Home School (Continued)

Since when is it acceptable to allow students to scribble on a kid's face with permanent marker because he doesn't read all that well?

A formal complaint regarding a Declo teacher’s treatment of students who failed reading goals has been filed with an Idaho commission on educators’ professional standards and ethics.

Cassia County School District Superintendent Galen Smyer said Monday his district filed the complaint after fourth-grade teacher Summer Larsen allowed students to scribble with permanent marker on the faces of classmates who failed to meet reading goals.

McGrath said the commission meets five to six times a year.

“They investigate complaints and then take any necessary action if they find an individual has violated state ethics code,” she said.

McGrath said action can include suspension or revocation of a license.

“It’s a long process,” she said.

It's always a long process.  You know what would make it a short process?  School choice.  Parents whose kids were humiliated like this would simply take their kids to another school with better teachers, and the funding would go with the kids.  School administrators would fire the bad teachers and hire better ones for fear of losing even more funding.

Problem solved.

But, for the most part, we don't have school choice in the US.  So we can either send our kids to sub-standard public schools, or spend money on top of the taxes we already pay to educate them elsewhere.

But we're the crazy ones for home schooling our kids.

California Running Out of Other People's Money

In the past, when I've written about how, "the trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money", I've used Greece as an example.  Although I still think Greece is the best example, several states in the US are doing their best to catch up.  California is arguably in the lead.

The real cause for California's fiscal crisis is simple: They spend too much money. Between 1996 and 2012, the state's population grew by just 15 percent, but spending more than doubled, from $45.4 billion to $92.5 billion (in 2005 constant dollars).

What are Californians getting for all this government spending? According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation's welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country's population. That's four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York [another "Liberal" bastion ~ OS]. Meanwhile, California eighth-graders finished ahead of only Mississippi and District of Columbia students on reading and math test scores in 2011.

Surely, California can solve all its problems by taxing the rich, right?  I mean, that's what Democrats always tell us.  Except, California has already tried that.

Despite Brown's historic tax hike, the California Legislative Analyst's Office announced this week that the state still faces a $2 billion budget deficit just for the next fiscal year. California's liberal electorate has already racked up an additional $370 billion in state and local debt over that last decade. That is more than 20 percent of the state's gross domestic product.

According to the California State Budget Crisis Task Force, that comes to more than $10,000 in debt for every Californian. And because the state's credit rating is so low, California taxpayers must fork over about $2 for every new dollar borrowed. In 2012 alone, the state budget included more than $7.5 billion in debt service -- more than most states' budgets.

Don't think for a second that California's chronic deficits are caused by low taxes. Even before last Tuesday's tax hikes, California had the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate. Now it has the nation's highest top marginal rate and the nation's highest sales tax. And the budget still isn't balanced.

What do Californians do when fed up with excessive taxation, regulation and debt?  Move to Texas.

Middle-class families that want actual jobs, not welfare, are fleeing California in droves. According to IRS data compiled by the Manhattan Institute, since 2000, almost 2 million Americans have left California for other states. Their most popular destination: Texas.

It isn't a tough move to make. Thanks to low taxes and simple regulations, Chief Executive magazine ranked Texas as the best state to do business in for 2012. Guess who ranked dead last? That's right, California. And not only does Texas (6.8 percent) have a far lower unemployment rate than California (10.2 percent), but, according to the Census Bureau, income inequality is worse in California than it is in Texas.

Again, this is a case of federalism at work.  States with low taxes, light regulation and a business friendly climate attract businesses (duh!), which create jobs, which attract people.  The opposite is also true.

From the Manhattan Institute's Civic Report of September 2012.

Note how the top "sender states" - the ones people are leaving in droves - are "Liberal" bastions, while the top destination states - the ones to which people and businesses are escaping - are largely Conservative.  This shouldn't surprise anyone.

What makes matters worse for California is that when they push people out of their state, those people take their money with them (duh!), which shrinks California's tax base.  California isn't just losing people to other states, it's losing money.

From the Manhattan Institute's Civic Report of September 2012.

So, California keeps raising tax rates on a smaller number of people, which causes more people to move out, which shrinks the state's tax base, so they raise tax rates...

California really should be the #1 place to live in the US.  The state's natural beauty, raw materials (petroleum and natural gas abound), fertile soil and weather should make it a great place to live and do business.  Instead, California's politicians, elected by California's people, keep making it increasingly difficult to make a living, so people move to Texas, where doing business is much easier.

So, which model do you think the US as a whole is currently following; California or Texas?  Which model should we follow?

Throwing Good Money After Bad

The federal government's insistence on wasting money on "green energy" companies has achieved self-parody.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu at A123 Systems

Electric car battery maker A123 Systems received a $946,830 check from the U.S. Energy Department on the day it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month -- providing more ammunition for critics who say the Obama administration is blindly funding failed clean energy companies.

The Waltham, Mass.-based company also told two U.S. senators in a letter this week that it may seek more money from the $249.1-million Energy Department stimulus award it won in 2009. A123's Oct. 16 check was the latest payment as part of the original grant, which is distributed incrementally as the company meets certain benchmarks. A123 has received $133.3 million of the grant so far based on its investments in new battery plants in Livonia and Romulus, Mich.

You know what we really need in this roaring economy?  We need the federal government to take our money and give it to politically connected loser companies in the administration's pet industries.

Who do you think makes more productive financial decisions with your money; you, or DC politicians and bureaucrats?

Remember, governments don't pick winners and losers.  They only picks losers, because winners don't need governments to prop them up with money confiscated from tax payers.

Saudi Dakota? (Updated)

The US economy may be stagnant, but North Dakotans haven't noticed.  Recession?  What recession?

The “Economic Miracle State” continues to lead the nation with the lowest state unemployment rate at 3% in September, at almost five percentage points below the national average of 7.8%.  There were 11 North Dakota counties with jobless rates below 2.0% in September, and Williams County, which is at the epicenter of the Bakken oil boom, continues to boast the lowest county jobless rate in the country at just 0.7%.  The exponential growth in North Dakota oil production has fueled exponential growth in the state’s oil and gas jobs, which have more than tripled over the last three years.  Overall employment throughout the entire state increased 5.6% over the twelve month period through September; four times the tepid 1.4% pace of job growth nationally during that period.

It ain't no miracle.  It's a deliberate decision to allow free market forces to work and create wealth by accessing the state's natural raw materials, namely petroleum.

What’s especially impressive is the incredible exponential increase in North Dakota’s oil production over such a short period of time.  The state’s oil production has doubled in just the last 16 months, from 364,160 bpd in May of last year to 728,494 in September of this year.  Oil coming out of the state’s Bakken Formation is behind the huge increase, as that oil field in western North Dakota now supplies 91% of the state’s oil, up from only 78% of the state’s oil two years ago.  Bakken oil output has doubled in just the last 15 months, from 320,435 bpd last June to 662,428 bpd in September (see bottom chart above).  At the current pace of production increases, North Dakota’s oil production will surpass one million bpd by the end of next year.  And it’s the exponential increases in shale oil production in the Bakken region of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas that have the United States on a trajectory to become the world’s largest oil producer in the next eight years.

Considering North Dakota's economic boom due to "frackin' the Bakken", and that the US has more petroleum in the Green River Formation than all the world's known oil reserves, the federal government must be eager to allow more drilling and exploration on federal lands, right?

Not so much.

The Interior Department on Friday issued a final plan to close 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West originally slated for oil shale development.

The proposed plan would fence off a majority of the initial blueprint laid out in the final days of the George W. Bush administration. It faces a 30-day protest period and a 60-day process to ensure it is consistent with local and state policies. After that, the department would render a decision for implementation.

As I wrote before, "it's not as though, in this roaring economy, we need all that inexpensive energy or high-paying jobs".

The US is over $16,000,000,000,000 in debt and counting.  The federal government added over $120,000,000,000 to that debt in October 2012 alone and is on track to add another $1,320,000,000,000 to the debt by the end of fiscal year 2013.  Raising taxes will likely cause the economy to slow even more.  Even if the federal government were to cut spending drastically (good luck with that), we would need enormous economic growth to begin paying down our monstrous debt.

In other words, we need the kind of growth North Dakotans have enjoyed for years.

UPDATE (19NOV2012): The following charts demonstrate how hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has increased total US reserves of petroleum and natural gas by making previously unavailable reserves available.  Further technological advances will make the Green River Formation available.

From the Energy Information Administration

Euro Zone Back in Recession (Updated)

How's Socialism working for Europe?

The debt crisis dragged the euro zone into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite  modest growth in Germany andFrance, data showed on Thursday.

The two leading economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period.

Got that?  Their two leading economies grew at the roaring rate of 0.2%.

But the resilience could not save the austerity-hit 17-nation bloc from overall contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2-percent drop in the second quarter.

Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone’s 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy in recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.

Incredibly, this is the direction some Americans actually want to follow them off the cliff by spending more, borrowing more and taxing more.  It's insane.  We should be taking the opposite approach, because as Ed Morrissey states...

At some point, the Germans and French citizens will tire of having their production dedicated to rescuing less disciplined neighbors on the Continent.  When that day comes, the Atlantic will not protect us from the shock waves — which is why it’s more urgent than ever for the US to get its own fiscal house in order.

Fortunately, our president promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  Of course, it's his second term now, and he hasn't even tried, but it's the thought that counts, right?

UPDATE (18NOV2012): Half of UK voters want to leave the EU, and I can't say that I blame them.

The survey will fuel the growing political debate about Britain’s future place in the EU, which has seen even Cabinet ministers suggesting that the UK would prosper outside the union.

The YouGov poll showed that 49 per cent of voters would vote to leave the EU in a referendum. Twenty-eight per percent said they would opt to remain a member, while 17 per cent said they did not know how they would vote.

British voters are also gloomy about the future of the EU: 65 per cent said they are pessimistic about the union’s prospects, while only 22 per cent were optimistic.

Another poll published yesterday in The Guardian claims it's more like 56%, but the link wouldn't work for me (maybe it'll work now).

Remember when Americans thought the EU would overtake the US as the world's leading economic power?  No nation, or group of nations, can spend more than they take in, lavish their population with welfare programs that give them incentives to not work, punish those who do work with excessive taxes, make it excessively difficult to start or run a business with excessive regulation,  produce too few children to replace in the future the people who are working today, and expect to survive.

And we're making all the same mistakes.

Which States Are Best for Jobs?

With thanks to Keith Bloom.

Federalism is part of the genius of the Constitution, which gives the federal government very clear, limited powers, and leaves all other "rights and powers" in the hands of "the people and the various states".  All states face similar problems; crime, unemployment, natural disasters, etc.  But each state devises different solutions to those problems.  Some work better than others.  Some are worse than the problems they're supposed to fix.

When one states' solution works well, other states follow suit, although usually with local variations.  When a solution fails miserably, the smart states learn from their neighbors' mistakes and stay away.  States are also more responsive to their residents than is the federal government, mostly because they have fewer people to please. 

Finally, if a person is unhappy with his/her state, at worst they can move to a state they think does things better, which is a whole lot easier than moving to another country.  Trust me.  I've done both.

And that is what makes Federalism work; competition between states. 

One area in which states compete is the job market.  Some states make it easier than others for businesses to create jobs, which means more businesses move to those states, which means more people move to those states looking for work.  Which states make it easiest for businesses to create jobs?



40% of the US population created 75% of new jobs.

 Since the recession ended in June 2009, almost three out of every four jobs added to U.S. payrolls have been in Right to Work states (1.86 million out of 2.59 million), even though those 22 states represent only 38.8% of the U.S. population (120 million).  In contrast, only about one of every four new jobs were created in forced-unionism states (730,000), even though more than 61% of Americans live in those 28 states (189 million).  Relative to their population, the Right to Work states have been job-creating powerhouses during the recovery, and forced union states haven’t even come close to “carrying their weight” in terms of their share of the population.  Adjusting for differences in population, Right to Work states created four new jobs for every one job added in forced union states, because those 21 RTW states created 2.54 times more jobs even though forced union states have 1.6 times as many people.

That means that, since June 2009, 40% of the population created about 75% of the new jobs in the US.  So, which are these right-to-work, job-creating power houses?

States with right-to-work laws, and forced union membership laws.

You know what?  That map looks kind of familiar.  It looks a lot like the map of...

States with Republican (red) and Democrat (blue) governors since 2010.

But what about state legislatures?

State legislatures by political party

So, is there a correlation between a business-friendly climate and job growth?  If so, which party's policies lead to the most job growth?  Judge for yourself.

Here are the top 20 most-friendly business states according to CNBC:

1.Texas
2.Utah
3.Virginia
4.North Carolina
5.North Dakota
6.Nebraska
7.South Dakota
8.Colorado
9.Georgia
10.Wyoming
11.Minnesota
12.Iowa
13.Idaho
14.Indiana
15.Kansas
16.Tennessee
17.Wisconsin
18.Oregon
19.New Hampshire
20.Arkansas

So, naturally, American voters elected a president with a similar pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda, right?  Not really.

President Obama, speaking at an AFL-CIO conference in April this year, “I believe when folks try to take collective bargaining rights away by passing so-called right-to-work laws, which might also be called ‘right-to-work for less’ laws, that’s not about economics, that’s about politics.”

 Is it any wonder the US economy has been stagnant since 2009?  Pres Obama should thank all those Republican governors and legislators, because without them, he'd have no "jobs created or saved" to brag about.

Ronald Reagan said that "the best social program is a job".  He was absolutely right.  Government welfare programs don't lift people out of poverty.  Jobs do.  Businesses create jobs.  Demonizing businesses and weighing the down with excessive regulation and taxation doesn't work.

But Republican-led states demonstrate what does.

Obamacare: Told You So (Updated)

What happens when you make it more expensive to hire people?  Businesses hire fewer people.  Weird, isn't it?

With 20 or so new or higher taxes set to be implemented, ranging from a $123 billion surtax on investment income, through the $20 billion medical device tax, all the way down to the $600 million executive compensation limit, Obamacare will be a nearly unbearable tax burden on the economy.

Because what this roaring economy really needs is more burdensome taxation and regulation to prevent it from growing too quickly.

As recently as a week ago, a global auto parts manufacturing company in Ohio known as Dana Holding Corp., warned their employees of potential layoffs, citing "$24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses".  After laying off several white collar staffers, company insiders have hinted at more to come.  

When you tax something, you get less of it.  So, of course, Obamacare includes a tax on the manufacture and development of medical equipment, because the last thing we want is American companies developing and manufacturing medical equipment!

Welch Allyn, a company that manufactures medical diagnostic equipment in central New York, announced in September that they would be laying off 275 employees, or roughly 10% of their workforce over the next three years.  One of the major reasons discussed for the layoffs was a proactive response to the Medical Device Tax mandated by the new healthcare law.

Thanks, Obama voters!


UPDATE (11NOV12): John Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John's, says Obamacare will increase the cost of hiring employees and force his company to cut employees' hours.

A day after Barack Obama earned a second term in the White House, Papa John's founder and CEO John Schnatter said the president's signature health-care reform law would increase his business costs and possibly result in employees' hours being cut.

In August, he made national headlines after telling shareholders the Affordable Care Act — commonly known as Obamacare — would result in a 10- to 14-cent increase for customers buying a pizza.
"I got in a bunch of trouble for this," he told the students. "That's what you do, is you pass on costs. Unfortunately, I don't think people know what they're going to pay for this."

No kidding.  For some reason, a percentage of the population can't seem to understand that nothing is free.  They think whatever government gives them costs nothing.  That percentage of the population seems to be growing.

Schnatter, a Mitt Romney supporter and fundraiser, said he was not "pro or against" the reform law [he seems pretty clearly against ~ OS] but likened the government's involvement in health care to its operation of the U.S. Postal Service, saying "the worst entity in the world for running the thing is the government." [we agree there ~ OS]

"We're all going to pay for it," he said, estimating the new law would cost the business $5 million to $8 million annually.

Under the Affordable Care Act, full-time employees — those working 30 hours or more per week — would have to be provided with insurance at companies with more than 50 workers. Schnatter said it was likely that some franchise owners would reduce employees' hours in order to avoid having to cover them.

"That's probably what's going to happen," he said. "It's common sense. That's what I call lose-lose."

Yes, it's common sense, which is very rare in DC.

UPDATE (13NOV12): More businesses are cutting employees' hours.

Last month Darden Restaurants — which employs 185,000 people at nearly 2,000 Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse and Red Lobster restaurants — revealed that it was scaling back many of its employees' workweeks to 28 hours.

This month Kroger — the grocer that employs 350,000 people — announced that existing part-time workers and new hires would be limited to working 28 hours per week.

"Kroger is doing this to avoid paying for full-time health care for employees who currently only receive part-time benefits," one employee explains. "And (so) they will not get hit with the $3,000 penalty."

How have "Liberals" reacted to this?  Why, those evil, greedy, Capitalist pigs are robbing the workers!  Boycott!

Many progressives are today organizing a boycott over Papa John’s threat to cut worker hours in response to President Obama’s re-election. John Schnatter, the CEO of Papa John’s, said that as a result of Obama’s re-election, and the subsequent implementation of Obamacare, he would consider cutting his employees hours. Scnatter's comments immediately created controversy, and many Twitter and Facebook users are now promising to boycott the pizza chain.

The writer is either ignorant, or lying to his readers.  Schnatter doesn't set anyones hours.  Franchise (i.e. small business) owners control employees' hours.  They're the ones who have to figure out how to make ends meet, and Obamacare makes that more difficult.  Schnatter merely predicted - based on obvious economic reality - what most franchise owners will do.

Who does this hurt most?

Millions across the country are likely to be affected by the mandate — and the vast majority of these will be lower middle class people who desperately need that extra income to make ends meet.

In other words ObamaCare's "employer mandate" will wind up hurting the very people Obama claims to be fighting for — reducing their take-home pay at a time when loose monetary policy is already whittling away at the value of every dollar they earn.

When will Americans learn that there is no free lunch?  When government offers you something for "free", you end up paying for it in other ways.

Running Out of Other People's Money

Margaret Thatcher famously said that "the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".  She didn't say what happens then.  Greece gives us an idea.

Private businesses have closed down in the thousands. Unemployment stands at a record 25 percent, with more than half of Greece's young people out of work. Caught between plunging incomes and ever increasing taxes, families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Higher heating fuel prices have meant many apartment tenants have opted not to buy heating fuel this year. Instead, they'll make do with blankets, gas heaters and firewood to get through the winter. Lines at soup kitchens have grown longer.

But at least Greeks are pulling together in hard times, right?

Life in Athens is often punctuated by demonstrations big and small, sometimes on a daily basis. Rows of shuttered shops stand between the restaurants that have managed to stay open. Vigilantes roam inner city neighborhoods, vowing to "clean up" what they claim the demoralized police have failed to do. Right-wing extremists beat migrants, anarchists beat the right-wing thugs and desperate local residents quietly cheer one side or the other as society grows increasingly polarized.

.....

After battering his Egyptian assistant, the mob turned on Mr Abdulbasset, who had defied police to keep his shop open...  The riot police watched on but did not intervene

The authorities will take care of all this vigilante justice, right?

Greece's sclerotic justice system has been hit by a protracted strike that has left courts only functioning for an hour a day as judges and prosecutors protest salary cuts.

At least if they get beat up, Greeks still have "universal", government-provided medicine, right?

A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May," it read, "Please respect their work."
.....
"When the pharmacies are closed and I can't get my insulin, which is my life for me, what do I do? ... How can we survive?" asked Voula Hasiotou, a member of an association of diabetics who turned out for the rally.

Keep all this in mind when politicians tell you we need to keep borrowing over $1 Trillion per year, as we have during all four years of Pres Obama's first term. 

Think this can't happen in the US?  On the contrary, there's no reason why it can't.  And if we let it happen, it'll be far worse.  The US and EU bailed Greece out.  Our population is 31x bigger than that of Greece, and our economy is the biggest in history.  No one is big enough to bail us out.

Here's one last quote from the AP article on Greece.

"Our society is on a razor's edge," Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said recently, after striking shipyard workers broke into the grounds of the Defense Ministry. "If we can't contain ourselves, if we can't maintain our social cohesion, if we can't continue to act within the rules ... I fear we will end up being a jungle."

Not even close, Mr Dendias.  Greece is following the eternal cycle.  From oppression to revolution, from revolution to freedom, from freedom to prosperity, from prosperity to entitlement and indolence, from entitlement and indolence to anarchy, and finally from anarchy to dictatorship and oppression.

And we're heading in the same direction.

Democrats' Plan for the Debt Crisis

I've asked this question of several "Liberals" and, so far, received exactly zero answers.  What is the Democrats' plan to avert America's approaching debt crisis?  Does anyone out there have an answer?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Here's a little background.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Budget Committee Thursday that President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget — “the most expensive in United States history” — would “put the U.S. on an ‘unsustainable’ course” if enacted.

Geithner also told committee Chairman Paul Ryan that although the Obama administration doesn’t have a “definitive solution” to the debt crisis, it definitely knows it doesn’t like the Republican solution. ...

“We have millions of Americans retiring every day, and that will drive substantially the rate of growth of health care costs. You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours,” Geithner said.

Washington & Colorado Legalize Pot

The best argument against government prohibition of drugs is that the prohibition does more harm than the drug itself, just as prohibition of alcohol did.

Now we'll get to see if that argument is true or false.

Voters in Washington and Colorado passed ballot initiatives Tuesday to legalize marijuana for recreational use, the biggest victory ever for the legalization movement.

"The significance of these events cannot be understated," said NORML, a pro-legalization organization, in a news release. "Tonight, for the first time in history, two states have legalized and regulated the adult use and sale of cannabis."

But in many ways, it's just the beginning of the battle. Marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government, which overrules states' rights. [States do not have rights.  People have rights, states have powers. ~ OS]

"The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will," said Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, in a statement. "This is a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug ,so don't break out the Cheetos or goldfish too quickly."

The voter approval of legal weed in Colorado and Washington could lead to a Supreme Court battle with the federal government, according to Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, where he has conducted economic studies on nationwide drug legalization.

"[The feds] will do whatever they can to interfere with marijuana legalization in any state," said Miron on Tuesday, before the initiatives passed.

This is probably where the issue belongs; with the states.  Section 8 of the Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate trade between the states, so the federal government could keep interstate sales of cannabis illegal.  However, the states are the "laboratories of democracy".  If one state enacts a law and it turns out well, other states will naturally follow suit.  If it doesn't, they won't.  That limits the damage done by any one law to the state that enacted the law.

"Liberals" and libertarians have been telling us for decades that this would work.  Now we'll see.

In other news, who would've thought that Oregon, of all places, would vote "no" on a similar measure?

The Nanny State Fails the Sandy Test

What's wrong with bloated, morbidly obese government?  As if the expense and violation of basic rights wasn't bad enough, it turns out that big government doesn't do it's job.  Take New York City, for example.

With an almost eerie foreshadowing, the dangers laid out by scientists as they tried to press public officials for change in recent years describes what happened this week: Subway tunnels filled with water, just as they warned. Tens of thousands of people in Manhattan lost power. The city shut down. . . .

“A fair question to ask is, have we been as focused as we need to be for emergency preparations,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize ties to the administration. “We’ve just been lucky. We need hardening for the risk we’ve always faced. Until things happen, people aren’t willing to pay for it.”

Government has important, limited, legitimate functions in society.  Infrastructure is one of them.  So, why didn't New York City build the infrastructure that could have prevented the destruction caused by Super Storm Sandy? 

Here in New York we have a very busy government. It’s worried about the kinds of fats we eat and the size of the soft drinks we buy, and there is no shortage of regulations affecting businesses, street vendors, and individuals. But in all this exciting fine tuning, nobody seems to have bothered to think about the much greater task of keeping floodwaters out of the subway system. Admittedly, getting public support and finding the money for flood protection would be hard, but it is exactly that kind of hard job that governments are supposed to do. Leadership is getting the important things done, not looking busy on secondary tasks while the real needs of the city go quietly unmet.

Every law, every regulation, every tax requires enforcement, and that requires resources.  When government gets busy regulating every aspect of people's lives, there are no resources left to do what it's supposed to do.  The result is what's happening now at Staten Island.

Even as the city and feds rushed food, water and generators to the borough, residents and their elected officials fumed that Staten Island was being prepped as the starting line for Sunday's New York City Marathon, even as the rest of the island is left to deal with the aftershocks of the mega-storm.

"The notion of diverting even one police officer, one first responder, one asset away from this carnage is beyond irrational,” Councilman James Oddo told the Daily News. Earlier, Oddo called the idea of hosting the marathon as “idiotic” on his Facebook page.

Obviously, NYC's government has its priorities backwards.  But that shouldn't come as a surprise.  That's what happens when government tries to do too much.

UPDATE (04NOV12): The inimitable Mark Steyn puts is far better than I ever could.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/

Even in those few parts of the Northeast that can legitimately claim to have been clobbered by Sandy, Big Government made it worse. Last week, Nanny Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, rivaled his own personal best for worst mayoral performance since that snowstorm a couple of years back. This is a man who spends his days micromanaging the amount of soda New Yorkers are allowed to have in their beverage containers rather than, say, the amount of ocean New Yorkers are allowed to have in their subway system – just as, in the previous crisis, the municipal titan who can regulate the salt out of your cheeseburger proved utterly incapable of regulating any salt on to Sixth Avenue. Imagine if this preening buffoon had expended as much executive energy on flood protection for the electrical grid and transit system as he does on approved quantities of carbonated beverages. But that's leadership 21^st-century style: When the going gets tough, the tough ban trans fats.

Then he relates it to our federal government's inaction in Benghazi.

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats' calls for help – even though he had aircraft and Special Forces in the region. Too bad. He's all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America's uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite Special Forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandoes? In Iraq, al-Qaida is running training camps in the western desert. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are all but certain to return most of the country to its pre-9/11 glories. But in Washington the head of the world's biggest "counterterrorism" bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees.

However, even within big government, common sense sometimes wins.  Mayor Nanny Bloomberg finally canceled he NYC Marathon.  But he failed to even get that right.

Fresh off his flight from San Francisco Friday afternoon, Leland Kim had just picked up his numbered marathon bib and registration packet at the Javits Center and was headed to the ING New York City Marathon Expo.

Then he got a text message from a friend: "We're so sorry the marathon got canceled."

Confused, Kim asked someone working at the expo about it, and was told the marathon was still going on. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had been saying so all week. And Kim had already spoken to runners who'd come from New Zealand, Argentina, Russia and Ireland.

Picking Losers...

...And lying about it.

Abound Solar is a "green energy" company that, like Solyndra (backed by Obama bundler, Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser), received millions in tax payers' money, then promptly went bankrupt.  Unlike Solyndra, Abound Solar is is now under criminal investigation for misleading investors.  That's private investors, not tax payers.  But that's old news.  Onto the current story.

Recent remarks by President Obama to a Denver-based TV anchor stand in stark contrast to new emails obtained by CompleteColorado.com.

This past Friday, President Obama told KUSA's Kyle Clark, in response to a question on the federally-backed but failed Colorado company Abound Solar, "And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy (DOE), they have nothing to do with politics."

Of course they have nothing to do with politics.  Specifically, they have nothing to do with the fact that...

Abound Solar... counts major Obama bundler Pat Stryker among its early backers

But never mind that.  Let's go to the emails.  Here's the key sentence.

You better let him know the WH wants to move Abound forward.

What?  I thought that "these... decisions... are made by the Department of Energy", not the White House!  Say it ain't so!

Next time a politician rails against those eeeeeevil venture capitalists, then touts the need for government to "invest" some corporation or industry, keep three things in mind.

1. Venture capitalists use their own money, or investors' money, to invest in companies they believe will turn a profit.  Either way, the investors provide the money voluntarily. 
2. Governments that "invest" in companies force tax payers to give their money to those companies, whether the tax payers think it's a good investment or not.
3. Politicians always make decisions based on political considerations.
4. Politicians don't pick winners and losers.  They pick losers.  Because the winners don't need government to force people to give them money.

Welfare, Work & the Future

It never fails.  Every election year - presidential, general, mid-term or special; doesn't matter - Democrats accuse Republicans of being big, bad meanies who want to take money away from poor people (welfare) and give it to rich people. 

Here's the reality: federal welfare spending (entitlement spending, the social safety net; whatever you want to call it) has increased almost exponentially since the 1950s.  Look at the chart to the right.  Every small decrease in welfare spending subsequently gets dwarfed by an enormous increase.

In fact, today about 70% of Federal spending goes toward some project that keeps people dependent on the Federal government.

Worse, it hasn't done much good.  While welfare spending has skyrocketed, the poverty rate remains essentially constant.  Is the purpose of welfare spending to pull people out of poverty?  If so, it clearly isn't working.  If not, then what is its purpose?

Clearly, we're not getting our money's worth.  We keep spending more, but the poor stay poor.  In fact, right now the poverty rate is rising.

So, if all this spending is not pulling people out of poverty, what effect is it having?  George Will has a great column on that subject, which highlights the book, A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic.  Author Nicholas Eberstadt points out multiple detrimental effects of federal welfare spending. 

As evidence of the moral costs, Eberstadt cites the fact that means-tested entitlement recipience has not merely been destigmatized, it has been celebrated as a basic civil right.

.....

Since 1948, male labor force participation has plummeted from 89 percent to 73 percent. Today, 27 percent of adult men do not consider themselves part of the workforce: “A large part of the jobs problem for American men today is not wanting one.” Which is why “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are lower in America than in Europe.”

Is that what we want?  Does anyone think it's a good thing that an increasing number of adult men feel no need to work?

“In 1960,” Eberstadt says, “roughly 134 Americans were engaged in gainful employment for every officially disabled worker; by December 2010 there were just over 16.” This, in spite of the fact that public health had improved much, and automation and the growth of the service/information economy had made work less physically demanding.

Think about that for a minute.  The percentage of people working is shrinking, while the percentage of people not working is growing.  Therefore, a shrinking number of workers is supporting a growing number of non-workers.  The following cartoon depicts this problem perfectly.

In case you think this is a Democrat vs Republican problem...

“The growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Between 1960 and 2010, the growth of entitlement spending was exponential — but in any given year, it was on the whole over 8 percent higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat. . . . The Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations presided over especially lavish expansions of the entitlement state.”

...which is borne out by the first chart above. 

Worst of all, the spending listed above adds enormously to the federal debt, which stands at over $16 Trillion.  Our children and grand children will either pay that debt, or worse, default on it.  We're robbing them tomorrow to pay people not to work today.

Economist Herbert Stein (father of Ben Stein) said, "If something cannot go on for ever, it will stop".  America's welfare state can't go on for ever.  It will stop.  That is certain.  There are only two questions:

When?

How?

Why We Home School (Continued)

Educating Ourselves has some great information on the "education" bureaucracy's priorities.

Between 1950 and 2009, the number of K-12 public school students increased by 96 percent. During that same period, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew by 386 percent. Of those personnel, the number of teachers increased by 252 percent, while the ranks of administrators and other staff grew by 702 percent—more than 7 times the increase in students.

....

...if student growth had matched that of non-teaching personnel from 1992 to 2009 and if the teaching force had only grown 1.5 times faster than the pupil enrollment, American public schools would have an additional $37.2 billion to spend per year—the equivalent of an $11,700 a year increase in salary for every American public school teacher.

The "education" bureaucracy's priorities have nothing to do with educating children.  They have everything to do with providing high-paying, high-benefit jobs with cushy retirements to government bureaucrats.  It's a self-perpetuating waste machine.

The worst part is that the government stiff forces people like Aimee and me, who choose to opt out of it, to pay into it.

But here's the biggest question.  Teachers whine incessantly that they don't get paid enough.  Why don't they do something about this?

The Road We Really Traveled

President Obama's 8-minute re-election infomercial, produced by Davis Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth) and narrated by Tom Hanks, gets the Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Pop-Up Video treatment (simultaneously!) from Andrew Klavan and Bill Whittle.

If I Wanted America to Fail

"If I wanted America to fail, I wouldn't change a thing."

Exactly.  We're headed toward a cliff.  We have been for a long time, and politicians from both major parties have been driving us toward that cliff.  Some have driven faster than others, but the direction is the same.

I don't think it's too late to change course, but eventually it will be.  How soon?  I don't think anyone knows that for sure, but I suspect it won't be long.