Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Free kibbles

Once again Barack Obama is fighting against freedom and supporting a dictator-wannabe - this time in Honduras. Hugo Chavez, who had everything to do with Honduras's president trying to seize power, blames the US for the military stopping him and restoring the rule of law. What a bunch of crap. Obama would love to see the leftists seize power in Honduras too. The leftists running the UN have it wrong too.

Where does Obama think he gets the power write an executive order allowing indefinite detention of anybody? I don't see that in my copy of the Constitution.

Author makes strong case that Dreams From My Father, supposedly written by Obama, was really written primarily by Bill Ayers.

High ranking Democrats put the kibosh on hearings into ACORN's criminal activities. ACORN got the protection they paid for with our tax dollars that had been funneled to them previously.

Norm Coleman concedes Minnesota senate race to Al Franken. Bummer.

The head of the service employee union has unusual access to the White House. Imagine that. Obama needs these unions to help the create the poverty he wants to force on Americans.
"Stern said the group deployed 100,000 volunteers during the campaign, including 3,000 who worked on the election full time."
Can you imagine of a corporation spent this kind of resources on an election? There would be holy hell to pay. I don't understand the double-standard.

California to set its own emissions standards because government hasn't done enough damage there yet.

Story provides an object lesson of what happens when government interferes in the marketplace, this time by subsidizing alternative fuels.

Another report on how the CBO rigged it's analysis to help Democrats pass the tax and trade legislation.

Quote from essay wondering of Democrats' global warming plan is an overreach captures Obama's motivations for everything he does:
""The worse, the better," Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution."
Obama's goal for America is the same as Lenin's hope - to make things so bad in America that we'll have a Marxist revolution. And he's off to a good start.

General Electric is the biggest benefactor of one of government's bank bailout programs even though it isn't a bank. This is another example of how every government intervention in the market takes wealth by force from people who earned it and gives to people who did not earn it. Naturally damage done by big government always leads to bigger government as Obama wants to limit companies from being both a producer and a financial company. That's just another example of Obama's war on business.

I want to thank Mitt Romney for implementing Obamacare in Massachusetts several years ago where it's been a complete disaster and a lesson about the consequences for Obamacare. Mitt Romney is no friend of freedom.

New details for Obama's health care plan show this is just another facet of his war on business and prosperity.

Congratulations to ABC for exposing the lies the Obama administration told us about his stimulus boondoggle to get it passed.

Barney Frank calls for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to loosen credit standards. You can't make this stuff up. We have empowered the stupidest government in the world.

Congratulations to Iraqis and US troops for pulling out of Iraqi cities on time. This a significant milestone, that's why the terrorists are trying to ruin it.

Iran's hardliners are ordering attacks in Iraq. I read dozens of articles about the protests in Iran, and not one mentioned how much those protesters must be inspired by the advance of freedom in Iraq. Unfortunately I didn't mention it my soon to be published essay either.

Why do states pay people not to work? That's indefensible. I if a worker wants unemployment benefits, he or she can buy unemployment insurance.

Beautiful essay describes how small government is growing and transforming into statism at all levels.

Supreme Court overrules Sotomayor on discrimination case. The Supreme Court is right on this one. Sotomayor was egregiously wrong.

Boortz nails Obama good by comparing his failure to react to North Korea's missile launch and protests in Iran but instantly backing the radical leftist in Honduras who just tried to illegally change the constitution so he could stay in power.

The Heritage Foundation outlines policy for improved missile defense.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Free kibbles

As wrong and dishonest as Krugman is in his field of expertise, supposedly economics, I'm not surprised he's equally wrong and dishonest about global warming.

Mises scholar explains the double standard and foolishness of legislating against bigotry. Can you imagine laws forcing customers to shop at stores owned by people of a specific ethnicity? The key to reducing bigotry (it will never go away) is to stop reinforcing it with stupid laws and let the market work. The market is a harsh punisher of bigots.

The names of the Republicans who voted for the tax and trade bill and estimates of the damage the bill would wreak if it became law. Because the bill punishes domestic energy production but not overseas energy production, domestic oil companies would have to shut down plants and move overseas.

Pharaoh Obama wants the Senate to pass oppressive global warming legislation only after it passes oppressive health care legislation. Otherwise he'll strike his staff on the ground twice and send the people scurrying for cover. Notice the common theme?

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Free kibbles

Iranian government arrests 8 members of Iranian staff of British embassy for meddling during the riots. This is another step in the ongoing attempt to blame foreigners for the riots. I'm sure it's playing well with Ahmadinejad's poor, uneducated supporters and the Basiji militia. Britain and EU call for release of staff. The government may have crushed protests in the streets, but the Iranian people have not given up. Former president and Khamenei rival calls for systematic investigation into election fraud.

Proving that President Obama is divorced from reality and cannot see beyond his narcissistic vision, adminstration officials says Obama still wants direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program. Of course its nuclear program is still an important issue for us, but talking to these butchers cannot help. It can only exacerbate the situation by making it appear to Iranians that the US is weaker than the Iranian regime.

Text of Obama's Cairo speech.

Video of Obama calling for civilian national security force which sounds a whole lot like Iran's Basiji militia.

Now Obama is pretending detainees at military tribunals have rights. So they have the rights in a trial but not a right to life (since we were trying to kill them in battle before we captured them)?

I had missed this article exposing that Obama's mother and grand parents were communist sympathizers and atheists. This is evidence that Obama's religious ties are phony. I knew Obama's father was a communist.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Free kibbles

Iranian President Ahmadinejad attacks Obama for his belated condemnation of violence against Iranian protesters, and it looks like the Iranian government is going to check ballots for fakes after all. Leading mullah calls for harsh penalties for protesters, and government-supporting militia breaking into houses and beating protesters.

Opposition leader stops calling for protests. The government finally got to him. It'll be interesting to see if these protests have taken on a life of their own. I doubt it. Obama may change his mind on meeting with Iran's leader. May? Did he watch the same violence the rest of Americans did? Is he ignoring what the tyrants are doing? Is he the only person in America too dumb to recognize that Ahmadinejad is playing him for a fool and a wussy? This incident shows how rudderless Obama is morally. He's embraced moral relativism seemingly to the point of being amoral. And his narcissism makes it impossible for him to sympathize with the victims. Murder your own citizens? No problem. I'll just scold you a little bit for show before we get together and fist bump. The Iranian tyrants are exactly who we knew they were when Obama was making plans to wine and dine them. We learned nothing new about them in this incident. Obama just doesn't care. Obama is incredibly scary. When the bigger, secondary recession hits, I hope Obama doesn't turn out to be the strong man.

Iran is using web technology to stifle dissent and track down protesters while successfully blocking nearly all electronic communications out of the country. In this case, technology seems to have aided the government more than the protesters. But that's not surprising. Governments are slow to adopt new technology, but web technology has been around long enough that governments are catching up.

Comparing and contrasting Iran to past dictatorships in crisis.

Iraqi security forces crack down in preparation for the US pullout from Iraqi cities next week.

I didn't remember that Democrats got burned by supporting a BTU tax for Bill Clinton in 1992. Let's hope history repeats itself.

I'm all for finding a mechanism to pay people not to cut down forest, but I doubt that provision in the tax and trade bill is it.

The experts were surprised that jobless claims rose last week, reminding us that those experts don't know what they're talking about. This recession is going to get worse, probably a lot worse, before it gets better.

Politics trumps science once again.
"...less than two weeks before the EPA formally submitted its pro-carbon dioxide regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty 'decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.' In an e-mail message (pdf) to a staff researcher on March 17, the EPA official wrote: 'The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.'"
xxx

Friday, June 26, 2009

Free kibbles

China to block sale of Hummer to Chinese firm citing environmental reasons. What are we doing to ourselves?

16 year old girl who doesn't age is still the size and mental capacity of a toddler.

Waxman-Markey passed a procedural vote in the House today, and it looks like it will pass the House. Yikes! Analysis shows more flaws with the CBO cost estimate of Waxman-Markey. The House passed the bill by 7 votes with 8 Republicans voting with the Democrats.

At least California's government is honest. They admit their CO2 tax is a tax.

Pirate hunting cruises are a free market solution to pirates.

In what world does it make sense to endanger lives during a seven mile car chase because a cab driver doesn't have a cab license? Is a cab license really worth killing people over? Apparently government thinks it is. Government must be obeyed or you and innocents around you forfeit your right to life. Why couldn't they just pick this guy up at his home or the next time they saw him at the airport?

Nice to see George Will publicize Mises scholar's research showing the punishing consequences of Spain's green jobs movement that Obama is using as a model.

The Onion reports US trading gold for cash to pay off debt. Funny.

This comment from Boortz regarding Mark Sanford is dead on:
"I'll tell you what really bothered me. Father's Day. It's Father's Day and this character is nowhere to be found. He has four sons wondering where their daddy is. How sad. Meanwhile .. another step backward for the Republicans. Look ... the Republicans love to parade through town on their moral high horses. When they fall off it's naturally going to make more noise."
Absolutely.

SuperObama.

Obama leaning toward mandating health coverage. Government control of health care always means rationing. Congress to give unions tax breaks on health care, so non-union workers will be subsidizing union workers' health care. Obama hints at rationing care in town hall.

Yet more absurd rent control ideas from San Francisco.

Throwing money at schools
doesn't make them perform better.

The government of California could run out of money by July 28th. It's easy to laugh at this, but this is a harbinger of future catastrophe. When the Federal government runs out of money, Mexico will still have oil money to throw around. I won't be surprised if Mexico offers to bail out California in the near future if it seceeds and joins Mexico. I know it sounds outlandish, but the Mexicans have been working to take back California for decades, and with the collapse of the US racing toward us like a freight train, they might well succeed.

How long will Barack Obama use the bromide about seizing the moment? Until it stops working.

Congressman wants to tax returns on short term investments at 80 percent. Day traders just spit coffee all over their keyboards. If this were to pass, there would be almost no companies that could go public. Nobody would take the risk on them.

This proves what I've always thought about electric cars. It's no more clean to drive them than to drive any other cars because the energy is produced from burning fossil fuels either way. In fact, I would imagine, all things being equal, electric cars are less fuel efficient because the energy has to change form twice, and that's always a lossy process.

Iran's government pushed dissension off the streets but exposed a clerical split.

Detroit public school system identifies 257 ghosts on the payroll. That's what you get when you give government a monopoly. Imagine what they'll do to us when they control our health care.

I'm not the only one who thinks Democrats' radical leftist agenda is slipping away. I think the tax and trade vote today, only winning by 7 votes in the House, is the last hurrah. The honeymoon with the press is fading almost as fast as the honeymoon with the people. I don't think tax and trade will pass the Senate, and that's going to make it easier to stop the rest of the agenda. But it's no time for complacency. As soon as the people get complacent, Democrats will slip something devastating by us. And Republicans can still screw us over too. 8 of them voted for tax and trade, or it would have died today. Plus, if Republicans filibuster Sotomayor like McConnell suggests they might, that would most likely backfire on Republicans, giving Democrats the momentum again.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Free kibbles

In what's become a daily ritual, North Korea warns of nuclear retaliation if the US hinders its ship.

Opposition delays new demonstrations in Iran because of violent government response. The Mullah's regime may survive this. Opposition leader continues to try and bring out protesters.

ABC offers some mild criticism of Obamacare, but they should have slammed it hard. Why didn't they fact check the costs? Oh yeah, they love Obama.

In 8-1 vote, Supreme Court rules strip search of 13 year old girl is unlawful, but confers immunity on officials who performed the search. I assume that's because the school's policy allowed the search, but if so, that's the old "I was just following orders" argument. Any school official knows it's wrong to strip search a student and should be punished for doing so.

"Freedom is needed for technological advance; and when freedom is lost, technology itself decays and society sinks back, as in the Dark Ages, into virtual barbarism." There's a lot of truth packed in this tiny essay.

God bless Farrah Fawcett.

The US is sending weapons to the pretend government in Somalia. How much do you want to bet that those weapons are used to hijack US ships in the future? Aristocrats just can't admit they don't know what's going on and they're not in control everywhere in the world.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Free kibbles

House to vote on tax and trade bill Friday. We can't let Iran, health care, or anything else distract us from stopping that onerous bill. Time to call and write our representatives. Compromise on behalf of farmers may have weakened the bill, but it's still a devastating bill.

The Heritage Foundation reports that the Congressional Budget Office grossly underestimated the cost of Obama's tax and trade bill and points out a number of serious flaws in that analysis.

Cato informs that not only does Obama's tax and trade bill provide onerous caps on our economy, not only will it have no measurable effect on climate, but the bill also contains powerful protectionist clauses that will insure future trade wars. As Cato says, what's not to hate?

Cato declared the EPA should abandon life-style accounting because it's not only impossible, it's useless. You aren't kidding. With an Orwellian name like that, the EPA would certainly be monitoring human gas emissions in no time.

President Obama had sent a personal letter to Ayatollah Khamenei a month ago hoping for better relations. How'd that work out for the people of Iran? The guys Obama planned to sit down and talk with without preconditions shoot and kill some protesters, beat others with batons. Clashes around protesters. Iranian leaders blame Great Britain for the protests. Obama's entire reaction to this situation shows what little empathy he has lies with the Mullahs, not the people. Republicans wanted Obama to be more forceful. US rescinds invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Fourth of July picnics. No Iranians had accepted anyway. Why did that take so long?

Mousavi not under house arrest, but the staff at his newspaper have been arrested. Neda as a symbol of the cause. Blogger suggests the video of her death may be a hoax. This article suggests she may have volunteered to be shot to inspire a revolution. As outrageous as that sounds to me, I doubt it's outrageous to Iranians.

It seems Obama's grand designs for transforming the Middle East, yet more blind and dumb radical leftist ideology, inexorably tie Iran and Israel together in Obama's mind. It's terrifying to think that Obama might have planned to use the threat of Iran getting the bomb to bully the Israelis into concessions. I've long pointed out that Obama is a dangerously heartless man who will do anything to achieve his goals, and I knew he would favor the Arabs over the Israelis in the Middle East, but even I never considered he might use nuclear blackmail against Israel. It's unfortunate Obama was getting ice cream with his kids on Saturday when Neda Soltan was killed. It just looks bad, but we can't expect Obama to sit in the situation room 24/7 for weeks at a time during the Iranian protests.

Ann Coulter gets this one right, "Obama's tough talk this week proves that his gentle words last week about Ahmadinejad and Iran's "supreme leader" (peace be upon him) constituted, at best, spinelessness and, at worst, an endorsement of the fraud." Obama was more concerned about Obama, and therefore his plans to meet with the Iranians without preconditions, than about the Iranian people or the American people. This is what you would expect from a person dangerously, psychologically narcissitic and lacking empathy for others. (I didn't know that Lebanese voters had tossed out Hezbollah in favor of a pro-American government - good deal.)

Everybody captured in war claims abuse, and because radical leftists jump on any excuse to attack the US and divide the country, it's an incredibly powerful and easy tactic to use against us.

Iraqi terrorists kill 60 in Sadr City blast. They really don't want the US to leave.

US trade officials rebuke China for web censorship in computers, but Obama won't rebuke the Iranians for shooting their own citizens in the streets (until a week later, after the entire country has told him he's supposed to care). I thought we didn't meddle. Obama obviously has no moral compass.

Florida deregulation bill only would have deregulated big insurance companies. What's up with that? Deregulate all of them. And if people can't afford hurricane insurance or to rebuild, they should move to a place that doesn't have hurricanes.

I didn't realize that, "in the dynamic US economy, even in good years, 15% of the jobs disappear each year." Wow. That's creative destruction in action. Another great quote:
"We see wasteful government misdirections of production through subsidies and directives such as an energy policy that promises "green jobs," but is an energy policy missing one key ingredient: delivery of affordable reliable energy. The jobs created would be created in the same way that substituting spoons for shovels would increase employment for grave diggers or, to paraphrase Frédéric Bastiat's "Petition of the Candlemakers," in the same way that mandatory restrictions on sunlight would enhance employment for candle makers and other producers of artificial light."
Mises scholar takes issue with claims that 9/11 showed the limitations of libertarianism. Where does that even come from? How bassackwards are these claims? The only plane that wasn't intentionally crashed into a building is the one in which the passengers adopted libertarian principles and fought back against the terrorists without waiting in vain for government to save them. The first defenders in any attack are individual citizens. Government agents are the first responders, meaning they show up after the attack has already occurred. The key to security is empowering individual citizens to defend themselves against attackers. Great Jefferson quote to finish the essay answers the question: What is the state?"It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property."

Tax on cigars to fund SCHIP puts cigar business out of business.

700 New York City teachers are paid to do nothing. Thanks, unions. Don't you love how they buy Democrats then they negotiate their contracts with those same Democrats? Includes facts from study by the Heritage Foundation on how damaging unions are. "One study found that unionizing reduces capital investment by 30 percent". Wow.

Right on schedule, government interference in Citigroup and Bank of America is leading to brain drain. To compensate for lost bonuses, companies are raising salaries, but those salaries don't come with incentives to produce, so they won't be as effective. And they're not the only companies. Obama is getting just what he wants - a weaker America that is more dependent on government. Obama and Democrats are dismantling the greatness of America right before our eyes at an even faster pace than Bush and Republicans did.

Just to drive the point home, it took George Bush 7 years to run up a total $1.8 trillion in deficits. It only took Obama one year, but of course most of that deficit is owned by Bush. But Obama is going to run a $1 trillion deficit on average per year for the next 10 years. That's what anybody who did their homework before the election expected. Any Obama voter who's surprised by this failed to uphold their responsibility as a voter and should never vote again.

Congress loads up war bill with pork and Obama eats like a pig. So much for Obama being a pork buster.

There is no such thing as a right to education or health care. Those things must be provided by others, and we outlawed being able to force others to labor for nothing during the civil war.

In essay skeptical of government created health co-ops, Cato reports there are 1,300 health insurance companies in the US.
"Supporters of government-run health care have no intention of letting the co-ops be independent enterprises that operate by the same rules as other insurers. This is not really about creating more choices and competition. In fact, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) makes it clear, for example, that the co-op's officers and directors would be appointed by the president and Congress. He insists that there be a single national co-op. And Congress would set the rules under which it operates. As Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says, "It's got to be written in a way that accomplishes the objectives of a public option.""
The public trojan horse by another name.

Michelle Malkin follows the money and finds the same few radical leftist billionaires and MoveOn.org pushing Obamacare.

Cato continues its excellent advocacy for pulling out of Afghanistan. We won the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan seven years ago. Let's leave.

Man's attempt to build a toaster from the collection of raw materials up is meant as a criticism of capitalism but instead shows the amazing power of freedom, capitalism and the invisible hand compared to the utter failure of central planning. It also illustrates the complexity of the chain of production. The metals going into a new toaster today came from mines years ago, and the metals making the trucks that carry those raw materials to be processed was mined a decade ago or more.

Not only do Republicans have to figure out how they've lost so badly in a country where conservatives far outnumber liberals (that one's easy - Republicans have governed more like Democrats than conservatives), but conservatives have to figure out why they keep electing Republicans who don't support their professed values.

Liberal academic discrimination against Asians.

15 year old invents algae based energy system.

Will Google create California's next earthquake?

The easiest way to get rid of Medicare fraud is to get rid of Medicare. This is another example of big government creating corruption and creating ever bigger government in response. Big government is a death spiral.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Free kibbles

So the battle for hearts and minds in Iran is over whether or not Neda Soltan is a martyr. She was not an activist. Why does that matter? Her boyfriend says she wanted freedom. I don't claim to understand Islam, but I bet that boosts the martyr factor. Here she's called an unlikely martyr. Analysis of the role of clerics. Still flailing and searching for a scapegoat, Iranian officials accuse UN leader of meddling. Kangaroo courts are going to try to blame the west. These demonstrations have nothing to do with decades of repression and stealing an election. There's nothing to see here. Move along.

Boortz lampoons Obama's press secretary saying Obama has been moved by what's going on in Iran. Obama's afraid his tyrannical buddies might lose power. Then who can he charm? The Iranian government says no new election. Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims western elections are rigged. Our political process is far from free and our elections are certainly corrupt, but I don't think there's any equivalence to what just happened in Iran. This guy's sounding more like Kim Jung Il every day.

Iranian government expels British diplomats, and Britain returns the favor.

Text of Obama's speech about Iranian protests from Friday. Better late than never. Obama is finally, nearly a week after the fact, speaking more forcefully. I understand Obama didn't want to choose sides on the election issue, but he should have definitively sided with the Iranian people, their freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and freedom to chose their own government from the beginning. Calling the government murder of protesters a debate is ridiculous. I never found an Obama quote calling the violence in Iran a debate, only Gibbs's comment. I'm not the only person who thinks Obama doesn't want to see regime change in Iran. Ralph Peters blast of Obama reaches a new level.
"We now have a president with Jimmy Carter's naivete, Richard Nixon's distaste for laws, Lyndon Johnson's commitment to the wrong war, and Bill Clinton's moral fecklessness."
And that's just for starters.

Reason reminds us how bad the Iranian unrest might have been handled if McCain had been in office. McCain's comments are bellicose and incendiary, and his actions might have been destructive. But Obama and McCain aren't our only choices (though our bogus election system led us to that). There was a good way to respond - with firm and clear support for the right of the people of Iran to assemble, speak, select their own government and not be shot, arrested and disappeared for it.

Some more experts are finally realizing what Mises scholars have been telling us all along - another wave or foreclosures is on the way.

Obama lays down rules for counting workers employed by his stimulus boondoggle. He plans to use this to claim he saved or created these jobs, but that's not what it means at all. Obama is destroying jobs in the private sector to create these jobs, making us all poorer for it.

39 percent of voters now blame Obama for the economy. That's because his policies have made it worse. Look for this number to climb quickly.

Reason breaks down Obama's financial regulation proposal which will be ineffective because deregulation did not cause of the current economic crisis - government did.

The Onion takes a nostogic look back at jobs, paychecks and workplaces in America.

Obama is feuding with another government watchdog - this time the TARP overseer. Why don't these people understand that Great Pharaoh with in his divinity is all wise and all knowing and the law is just an impediment to his grand designs for turning America into a third world country? How about the White House calling firing the Inspector General who blew the whistle on fraud being conducted by a major Obama donor "political courage"? If you're going to lie, make it a big one. Obama will claim black is white all day long.

Either Obama is warning Inspector Generals not to cross him, or he's covering something up.
"Under such circumstances, the summary termination of an IG [Walpin] appears to any reasonable observer to be political revenge at best — and possibly worse, if it’s intended to prevent further investigation, cover up wrongdoing, or signal other would-be investigators to watch their backs. As is true with the Justice Department’s unexplained dismissal of the suit it had won against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia, the administration’s silence is telling.

If a conservative were in the White House, this story would receive front-page coverage, with commentators and congressmen alike arguing that the White House’s actions amount to an admission of highly unethical conduct. Somehow we don’t think this kind of behavior is the “change” in Washington that voters were expecting. But we remain hopeful that the mainstream media will finally wake up and start holding Obama accountable for some of his questionable actions."
Absolutely. Walpin is calling for a Congressional hearing on his firing. I hope he isn't holding his breath.

Obama's tax and trade bill is a jobs killer. We already knew that, but Obama keeps lying about that too. Climate scientist whose research is supposed to be the basis for latest White House climate report claims Obama misrepresented his research.
"1. Over the long-term, U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation . . . there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record."
Doesn't this researcher understand that Great Pharaoh is smarter and more knowledgeable than him?

Arizona hasn't had this many days under 100 degrees in a row in June since 1913. Funny how that climate change always turns out to be like a previous climate. It's like it's cyclical or something.

Unions using environmental laws as a club against non-union companies.

Rhode Island legislature overrides veto by Republican governor and legalizes medical marijuana. Good for them.

The reparations crowd achieved another victory in march toward reparations by getting an apology for slavery from the Senate. I want to know which Senators were keeping slaves and why they aren't in prison.

How government has shut down public swimming pools.

Armed robbers target college students knowing they won't be armed. Government loves to turn citizens into victims.

School officials cheat for students on tests to make it look like their school is teaching kids better than it really is. Government in action.

Why don't states bill the Federal government for any service rendered to illegal immigrants, including prosecution and imprisonment?

33 percent of Americans strongly disapprove and strongly approve of Obama's actions as president. Put me in the former. He's dropping like a rock.

New York Times and CBS intentionally over-sample Obama voters to produce fraudulent poll that makes it appear that Americans support Obama's take over of health care. The White House can't name any countries where government health care programs work well, but they want to force it on us here.

Obama to go on campaign trail for health care and use his "yes we can" slogan to brainwash supporters. Why not? He doesn't do any governing. He has 40 million czars for that.

Obama claims he wants any health care solution to keep down costs. But, as anybody with half a brain already knows, government is the worst organization in the world at controlling costs, so giving government control over our health care can only increase costs, and increase them dramatically. A recent study shows that costs of Medicare and Medicaid have increased 34 percent higher per patient than the cost of private health care.

George Will applies just a tiny bit of logic and shows unequivocally that Obama's public health care option is a trojan horse for socialized medicine.
"The party of government aims to make Americans more equal by making them equally dependent on government for more and more things."
Nice summary, but let's not forget that Republicans are the other party of government.

In an essay explaining how Obama's public plan will destroy private health insurance, Reason also explains one reason why our private health care costs are rising that I wasn't aware of:
"Medicare hasn't controlled costs by discovering some wonder drug to deliver new efficiencies that the private sector doesn't have. In fact, the Government Accountability Office lists Medicare as a "high-risk" program, thanks to its long-term financial problems and its vulnerability to fraud. Rather, Medicare has cut costs by deploying the economic equivalent of leech-therapy: slashing payments to providers. The only reason providers haven't been bled out of existence is because they have offset these cuts by raising prices charged to private insurance plans. In effect, then, the good performance of Medicare that Obama and Co. tout has been purchased by beggaring the private plans that they deride.
...
A study last December by Milliman Inc., an independent consulting firm, commissioned by America's Health Insurance Plans, found that underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid accounted for nearly an 11% increase in the health care costs of private plans. This means that on average a privately insured family is forced to pick up about $1,800 extra every year of the government's slack. Private plans, all in all, are subsidizing government programs to the tune of $90 billion annually."
Ouch. That's another way, besides direct subsidies, that government is driving up the price of private health care.

Michael Barone's a pretty apolitical guy, and his analysis of Obama is dead on. What's funny is Obama is just like many of us predicted. Obama is who we thought he was, and we're all paying the price.

I want a voucher for a nice house. This reminds me of the subprime fiasco. Mortgage companies sliced and diced their subprime mortgages and repackaged them with regular mortgages then sold them to diffuse risk through the entire financial industry. How'd that work out for us? Imagine how having a crime infested welfare house in every neighborhood is going to work out for us.

Brit Hume says Obama's press conference today marked a shift in the press - the beginning of the end of the honeymoon.

When has Obama ever explained his policies and had it make sense? FDR's New Deal didn't make any sense either. Great Explainer is the wrong term. Great Misleader or Great Liar is more accurate.

Teachers unions trying to ruin charter schools.

French President Sarkozy says burqas are not welcome in France. What if a woman wants to wear one? Not that I understand why one would, but I'm not Muslim. It seems to me that freedom is the best policy. I don't think that women doing certain activities, like testifying in court, should wear the face cover. Facial expressions are too important for communication.

Democrats in state legislatures are pushing for laws forcing employers to allow workers more time off. Naturally, that will make businesses and America less productive and therefore poorer. Government needs to stay out of the contract between employer and employee. Voluntary exchange is always superior to government force. But there are more employees than employers, and Democrats are using this ploy to buy votes.

Iraq to auction off oil contracts.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Free kibbles

NIH spends $400,000 to discover why men don't like condoms.

It seems counterproductive that, in order to discredit the Iraqi government, insurgents are going on a killing spree before US forces pull out of Iraqi cities. It seems to me they would allow the government the symbolic victory, then hammer the cities after US forces were gone. Maybe the boost to recruitment they get from having US troops in cities is more important than discrediting the government.

Security forces break up another small rally in Iran. It's hard to guess if enough Iranians are going to risk attacks by the government to create an actual revolution.

Boortz asks how Obama's change is working out for the country.

Obama's claim he wouldn't take lobbyists money was always a sham.

Obamacare sticker shock. $1.6 trillion and still many uninsured.

Stealing from the Democrat play book, conservatives are scaring seniors with reduced benefits if Obamacare is passed. Opening up Medicare to all would not help seniors. It would cause the collapse of our country, and that's not good for anybody - even the anarchists.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Free kibbles

Imus on Sharpton's show. Sharpton's controversies. Haditha Marine to sue John Murtha. Appeals court claims Marine can't sue Murtha.

Iranian government quashes protests by force, at least for the moment. Opposition leader urges more protests. European telecoms help Iran set up internet censorship apparatus.

US fortifies Hawaii in preparation for North Korean test. I guess this is better than sitting on our butts like Obama did last time.

Private universities outperform government universities. No surprise there.

If I was still in Texas, I'd go to Ron Paul's Texas barbecue.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Free kibbles

Small groups of protesters defy Iranian government and fight riot police. We may be watching the start of another revolution in Iran.

Rosie O'Donald hangs upside down in her closet. Listen to Imus.

McCain-Feingold favors incumbents. I don't believe this was an unintended consequence.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Free kibbles

Will protesters in Iran march tomorrow? If so, will security forces attack them? This is a big threat for the Mullahs.

George Bush continues to pretend he supports free markets. You know what's really sick is I think he believes it. George Bush obviously has no idea what a free market is.

Mises scholar recognizes that President Obama is intentionally harming our economy, but I don't agree with this theory about his motives. While Obama undoubtedly wants personal wealth for him and his co-conspirators from looting, his primary goal, imo, is to harm America.

Advertisement for roommate allows only people who voted for Obama.

Cato analysis shows that Obama's financial regulation scheme is a scam that ignores the real problems with our financial network and therefore will create bigger and worse financial crises in the future by protecting the biggest institution from market forces that keep them honest.

The WSJ breaks down Obama's financial regulation proposal.

Obama team enjoys their phony stimulus numbers.

Boortz showcases Republicans' big government health care alternative. While not as bad as Democrats' bigger government health care plans, this Republican plan is still all about government, not freedom. Stupid.

How Congress abused Medicaid so it's now crushing state budgets and how Obama's health care plan will be similar.

Obama health care bill delayed in Senate.

ABC to run Obama infomercial on health care, but they won't accept ads for free market health care alternative because they don't accept advocacy ads. I wonder if the spokesman made that response with a straight face. Just because NBC provided a similar infomercial for HillaryCare in 1994 doesn't make it OK.

Obama wants tax and trade legislation passed next week. Obama knows his honeymoon is crashing, and he's desperate to pass some of his agenda before it's gone completely. Time to write the representatives. I think Obama is a master of distraction. He likes to make speeches on one subject right before Congress votes on another. That way the people are distracted from what's important - what's going on Congress. Right now he's making speeches about health care and financial reform to distract Americans from tax and trade.

It's no coincidence that the aristocrats leading the energy debate on both sides are invested in companies that would benefit if their side wins the debate. Aristocrats want to make money for themselves and their families like everybody else, and their political battles are about improving their lives at our expense.

The Pentagon claims that protests are an example of low-level terrorism. I guess they never heard of the right to assemble acknowledged in the first amendment. Obama loves the right for ACORN to assemble, but the rest of us are terrorists when we do it.

Obama is about the only leader silent on Iran's election fraud. He has nothing to gain by condemning the elections. First, condemning those elections would open him up for attacks about election fraud in 2008. Second, he wants to charm Ahmadinejad into giving up his nuclear program.

Inspector General fired by Obama for investigating large Obama donor fights back. If George Bush had done this, Democrats would have called for an independent counsel already and the press would have run front page articles every day since it happens. Just like when Bush fired the US Attorneys.

Obama's war on business takes a bizarre twist when the FDA attacks Cheerios for claiming to be a drug. This is surreal power play. Get your damn hands off my Cheerios, Obama.

Here's a chart that shows just how badly Obama's economic policies have hurt America - so far. If Obama had done nothing, unemployment would have leveled off at about 9 percent. But because Obama saddles us with more new debt than all other presidents combined, unemployment continues to rise at a steady pace, will pass 10 percent and go even higher. The more government grows, the manage damage it will do.

Cato launches website dedicated to health care policy. Cool.

Cato advocates unleashing health status insurance as a free market solution to our health care problems. Health status insurance is an inexpensive insurance that guarantees you can get insurance at a later date even if develop some sickness warranting it. Cato explains that allowing Americans to control their health insurance instead employers would reduce costs.

Charles Krauthammer slams Obama for his silence on the unrest in Iran.
"And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world."
I think Obama has much more sympathy with the Mullahs than the Iranian people.

Pat Buchanan thinks Obama is smart to stay silent on Iran, but he sets up a false choice. Obama's choices aren't limited to doing nothing and condemning the Mullahs. Obama can support the will of the Iranian people, whatever it is, and express his desire for their safety.

In a fabulous essay, Jonah Goldberg laments the betrayal of capitalism by big business.
"Some historians claim Caesar actually said, "Tu quoque, fili mi?" or, "You too, my child?"

Whether that's more accurate, it certainly seems a more fitting declaration as the coup de grace of capitalism's murder is at the hands of its most successful child: big business.

Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition. On health care, insurance companies and others repeat the mantra that they want to be "at the table rather than on the menu," all the better to be positioned as a tax collector of the welfare state. General Motors and Chrysler have gone from being pimped-out prostitutes of the state to outright chattel more akin to the leather-bound gimp in "Pulp Fiction," eager to do the bidding of the president and the UAW."
But this isn't a new phenomenon. Big business has been in bed with government for decades at least. Big business has always pushed government to protect it from competition. But not until the Bush/Obama administration has it been anywhere near this successful.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Free kibbles

The Federal Reserve meets Lord of the Flies.

Lord Geithner gets grilled over Obama's new financial regulatory power grab.
"In testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Geithner said that gaps and weaknesses in the regulatory framework governing banks and other financial institutions "presented challenges" to the government's ability to monitor and address risky market bets. One problem, he said, is that no single regulator saw its job as protecting the economy and financial system as a whole."
Don't you like how it's just assumed that government is responsible for protecting our economy? Spoken like a power-hungry, elitist central planner. I don't need Lord Geithner to oversee my voluntary exchanges, and neither does anybody else. All this will do is create more problems like the current financial crisis government created. And then we get the standard refrain:
""Every financial crisis of the last generation has sparked some effort at reform. But past efforts have begun too late, after the will to act has subsided," he said in prepared remarks."
Yeah. No matter how onerous the regulations, it's never enough. Everything would have been hunky dory if we had just given government even more power to begin with.

You may never read a quote describing the futility of our education system that's better than this:
"The public education system, which is a disastrous, wealth-destroying, failed endeavor, is held up as the standard by which we must all live. You go where they tell you to go, stay at the educational level they put you at, advance when they tell you to advance, slog through what they put in front of you, believe what they tell you to believe, and finish your "education" at a chronological age that somebody somewhere determined should be the age when you should be set free to live out your life. Your innate ability, your desire, your interests, your foundational knowledge - none of that matters because public education is set up to equalize and collectivize children so that they are all on the same pre-determined schedule. Still, people are surprised each time they hear about a 15-year-old attending college or an 18-year-old graduating from college. They were taught that children should all advance together through the education system based on chronological age and do exactly what every other kid their age is doing. The masses never question the irrationality of such nonsense. And you wonder why the American educational system is producing mostly professional consumers, couch potatoes, and TV-watching, amusement-demanding, non-reading robots."
Awesome.

Retailers are closing shop in Detroit. The destruction is amazing.

It's pretty obvious that weaker copyright is better for society. Copyright limits what artists can do. It's better to have fewer limits.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Free kibbles

Cato lists a bevy of tax proposals on the table to fund Democrats' reckless spending and says they threaten any economic recovery. That's an understatement, but this isn't:
"So why do politicians keep driving taxes and spending higher? One reason is that most Republicans in Congress have abandoned spending restraint. Consider House Majority Leader John Boehner. He heckles Obama's spending as "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment." But the president recently challenged him to find specific programs to cut, and the best Boehner and his team could do was a list of cuts worth less than 1 percent of the bloated federal budget. If Obama is a "socialist," then the House Republican leadership is 99 percent socialist.

Republican leaders have forgotten that the best defense against big-government Democrats is an aggressive offense. In the mid-'90s, the GOP proposed abolishing whole Cabinet departments and eliminating the deficit with spending cuts. That changed the terms of the debate, helping derail President Bill Clinton efforts to grow the government. With spending in check, the economy soared during his term."
We can't just blame the Democrats. Republicans are only slightly less terrible.

Obama plans to further control the banking industry, giving him more power to harm our economy.
"It was the inability of the US government to take over Lehman Brothers that threw the financial markets into turmoil in September last year."
The lies are flowing freely, and the oblivious will eat them up. "Much of which is subject to approval by Congress..." Like Congress is Obama's lacky. I guess it actually is right now.

Republicans try to block Obama from rationing health care. Even if this was to pass, Obama would veto it. But it puts the Democrats on the defensive and on the record. Harry Reid threatens to force health care down Americans' throats. I think he may lose some Democrats which will put this in jeapardy. He's already bypassed the filibuster in an unethical move. The US Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill.

Mises scholar calls the Value Added Tax (VAT) being considered by Democrats to pay for their health care bonanza a "particularly odious proposal".

Reason explains, "There are only three ways to pay for this expansion of health insurance coverage: increased taxes, reduced benefits, or shiny gold ingots falling out of the sky."

In response to the evidence that Paul Krugman called for Fed rate cuts to create a housing bubble, Krugman has denied doing so and ridiculed those who claim he did. In response to that denial, Mises scholar offers a lengthy list of quotes from Krugman specifically calling for rate cuts to produce a housing boom. Krugman is hoist on his own petard. Listening to this idiot is foolish.

Harry Potter author accused of copyright infringement. Live by the sword; die by the sword.

Supposedly House Democrats shut down debate for the evening last night, then after a bunch of Republicans had left, they reopened debate and votes so they could defeat Republican amendments. If this is true, the Democrat leadership should be recalled.

I heard an interesting comment today. With all the fraud in our latest election, Obama has no moral authority to criticize fraud in the Iranian election. True.

Obama releases propaganda about alarming global warming. He's watching his agenda evaporate in front of eyes, and he'll say or do anything to get something passed.

Yet another economist predicts we're heading for a second recession caused by government policies, must like what created the Great Depression.

80 percent of Americans want the government to sell its shares of Chrysler and GM ASAP. 64 percent want to force the government to sell within a year. That's good news. The longer Obama waits, the more unpopular he'll become.

Reminding us that the media is just an extension of government, ABC is giving Obama a platform to promote his health care agenda. NBC is lending its equipment to Obama to help him out. This is disgusting.

Despite the recent decisive rejection of new taxes by California voters, Democrats are proposing new taxes.

83 percent of voters support requiring photo ID for voters.

Reason argues for privatizing dealing with pirates. Why should we subsidize shipping companies that choose risky routes with naval protection? This isn't like pirates of the Caribbean which threatened all shipping on the east coast. It isn't like the Barbary pirates which threatened all ports in the Mediterranean and impressed Americans into service. Shipping companies should either avoid the area, defend their ships in the area, hire private forces to patrol the area, pay ransoms or pay liability for any of their sailors who get hurt.

Americans are suddenly concerned about deficits and government intervention in the economy. Better late than never I guess.

Obama is trying to use the violence in Mexico created by the war on drugs to push gun control.

I think Reason is drawing the wrong conclusion from the inverse relationship between economic freedom and fertility. Economic freedom frees more people to become liberals, and liberalism harms fertility rates. A free society without liberals would have fine fertility rates.
"The income, investment and consumption opportunities that people forego when they choose to rear children are even greater in truly free economies."
Now this is certainly true. In the old days you used to have to have 10 kids to guarantee you'd be OK in old age, now you don't need any. And we have birth control.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Free kibbles

Despite protests and petitions, German government implements internet censorship. Coming soon to the internet near you.

NASA to crash rocket into moon in attempt to observe water in the exploding debris. I'm surprised environmentalists aren't condemning this. As we advance, there's going to be a movement to keep humanity from "spoiling" other planets and moons.

Boortz takes Obama to task for his deafening silence on the election and subsequent protests and violence in Iran. Obama isn't about to make a stand on principle.

While pushing for the FairTax, Boortz shows just how badly Republicans governed:
"A recent Gallup polls shows that 40% of Americans describe themselves as conservative. Only 21% of Americans call themselves liberal and 35% consider themselves moderate."
And that's after Republicans blew it so spectacularly. Amazing.

Knowing that Obama's health care plan will limit their salaries and put many of them out of business, doctors at the AMA booed Pharaoh Obama during his health care speech. Great Pharaoh was not pleased. This shows how stunningly out of touch Obama is. Anybody who wasn't an extreme narcissist would have expected to get booed for presenting that plan in front of that audience. The public health care plan is sinking Obama's socialized medicine agenda. Excellent. Even not counting Obama's public health care plan, the rest of the plan is going to cost over $1 trillion. Obama is loving every minute of bankrupting all of us and our country.

Obama didn't consult Britain over sending detainees to Bermuda because he was afraid Britain would say no. I want Obama to send me to Bermuda.

Republican Sen. Thune proposes bill that would force government to divest from all companies by July 2010 and block the government from buying into companies in the future.
"The Government Ownership Exit Plan would require the sale of any ownership interest such as warrants, preferred stock, or common stock and apply any revenue from the sale of those assets to the reduction of the national debt. The plan would also prohibit the federal government from making or unduly influencing management decisions of private companies such as appointing senior executives and board members."
Hell yeah. Now this is a positive development. It's a positive agenda. This is the kind of thing that will help Republicans recover. I didn't know the government has bought into over 500 banks. Wow.

Dick Cheney responds to Panetta's accusation with class.

I'm not the least bit surprised to find that politicians and serial killers share many personality traits. The only people who want to be professional politicians are warped individuals who want to lord power over others. Much like serial killers. And our political system rewards the worst of the lot, so our country is being run by freakishly power hungry and corrupt politicians.
"Kouri, who's a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.
...
Kouri notes that these criminals are psychologically capable of committing their dirty deeds free of any concern for social, moral or legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse.

"This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want," he wrote. "Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.""
I'm copying this article to my computer in case it disappears.

Mises scholar uncovers 2002 Paul Krugman essay in which he calls for Fed Chairman Greenspan to create a housing bubble. He got what he wished for, and we're all suffering for it. Now he wants a new bubble to replace that one. It's amazing that people listen to this village idiot.

Unemployment to reach 10 percent by next year. Comparison of employment rate calculation to those for the Great Depression.

Biden is trying to cover his and Obama's butts since it was his economist that claimed if Congress passed Obama's $787 billion stimulus boondoggle, unemployment would bottom out at 8 percent. Of course Biden's economist was one of those who failed to predict this recession. Those who predicted this recession also predicted that Obama's stimulus boondoggle would make unemployment worse - and now it's at 9.4 percent on its way to double digits.

US to borrow money from China to give to China to fight climate change. This is a redistribution of wealth from the broke US to wealthy China. We're mired in recession, and China's economy is growing at over 7 percent this year. Why do we tolerate this insanity?

While this health care plan is far superior to Romney's and the Democrats' plans, I wouldn't call it a free market plan. Here's my free market health care plan - stop all interference in the health care market by government. That'll save way more than this guy's $5 trillion, and it's fantastically simpler. But this guy is wrong about the goal of aristocrats regarding health care - seizing power. It has nothing to do with actually providing health care.

This might be where Chavez has overreached.

As I posted a prediction a year or two ago, cooling temperatures are hurting farmers and threatening our food supply. More CO2 would help, but kook-aid drinkers still want to reduce CO2 to cool the already cooling planet.

Tax Foundation's tax and trade household calculator.

Doug Bandow from Cato is right that the US needs to shed defense commitments, not increase them by formalizing extending the US nuclear shield to cover South Korea. He used some of the lines he tried out in his email exchange with me:
"Kim Jong-il is evil, not stupid; he wants his virgins in this life, not the next."
He also picked up something from me in that exchange he uses here:
"And the U.S. government's principal responsibility is to protect American lives, not to guarantee the security of foreign lands."
He's dead on about South Korea and Japan developing an offensive missile capability to deter NK and China, but I think he's wrong about leaving the door open to nuclear weapons development by those countries. That last thing we want is another nuclear arms race. Pakistan, India and China are too much of a nuclear arms race already. Bandow's willingness to risk the loss of millions of lives on his personal feeling that deterance will work with lunatic Kim Jung Il the same as it worked with sane regimes is exceedingly egotistical and reckless, imo. His ego was on display in that email exchange with me too.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Free kibbles

Holy crap! Barron's, that iconic financial rag that arguably surpasses even the WSJ, calls for the abolition of the Fed based on the the Austrian theory of the business cycle! This will probably go nowhere in the short term, but it's astounding and providential in the long term. America is not a nation of morons. As I've long contended, only America's voters are overwhelmingly moronic. The vast majority of Americans support freedom, but neither of the two parties ever give us that choice. This might be earth shattering in an almost invisible way.

Robert Murphy predicts our economy will be horrible for a decade, but he suggests the character will be more like 70s stagflation, but much worse, than 30 depression. But I think this analysis is too optimistic. Murphy doesn't include the effects of Social Security going broke during this decade or of Medicare going broke in a similar time frame.

Mises scholar explains that socialized medicine is a license for the government to kill people. Canada is seizing shipments of an unlicensed and therefore inexpensive cancer drug, and as a result Canada cancer patients are dying. Socialized medicine gives government agents, health care cops, the power of life or death over every citizen. That's insane.

Security forces shoot protesters at pro-challenger rally in Iran. Obama troubled by Iran violence. Woop-te-do. That and a buck fifty will get you a Starbucks quality coffee at McDonald's. I'm troubled by Obama.

American children spend less time in school than children elsewhere. That's not our education problem. Our education problem is the government monopoly on our schools. But I'm sure government will jump on this as an excuse to indoctrinate children for longer. But more homework isn't a bad idea.

Yesterday I lamented that Democrats are losing the issues to Republicans before Republicans made any changes, but House majority leader John Boehner supplies a shred of hope:
"“We’re digging ourselves out of a deep hole,” he admitted. “We took it in the shorts with Bush-Cheney,
the Iraq War, and by sacrificing fiscal responsibility to hold power.”"
Not to mention a host of other anti-freedom initiatives. I hope this message gets through to all Republicans.

Some of the Uighurs are kicking back in Albanian and drinking Tom Collins's. I bet these guys are in the news at some time in the future in a bad way.

Apparently North Korea's last nuclear test was only big enough to destroy three or four square miles of downtown Los Angeles, not 10 to 20. I feel so much better. I guess a silly little threat like NK isn't worth Obama's precious time at all.

Dayton Dies a Little More

Dayton Dies a Little More


by Mark Luedtke



Back in February, I received criticism
from readers, family and friends for writing:




Dayton leaders
say they want the city to become a center for high tech development.
I spent 20 years working in high tech in Texas, 15 in Austin, and I
can tell you Dayton leaders are not serious about making this happen.



The people of Dayton and Ohio may not
acknowledge our problems, but NCR understands them. That's why NCR is moving its
headquarters from Dayton to an Atlanta suburb. The people of Dayton
are hurt and angry. The Dayton Daily News reported that, “Local
officials in Ohio grumbled that NCR never even let them compete.”





But that anger is misplaced. We are not entitled to NCR. NCR doesn't belong to us. It belongs to its
stockholders. As for local and state officials, they've had 35 years
to compete, but all they've done over those 35 years is make
the business climate more punishing. Who can blame NCR for not
wanting to talk in that environment? We shouldn't be angry at NCR for
moving to greener pastures. We should be angry at ourselves and our
elected representatives for making Dayton and Ohio so unfriendly to
business.





The question isn't why did NCR leave.
The question is why did NCR stay here so long despite the punishing
business climate we created. NCR was far more committed to the
success of Dayton and Ohio than Dayton and Ohio were committed to the
success of NCR. You can't have a healthy relationship when one side
does all the giving and the other does all the taking. Our failure to recognize that government policies are forcing
even the most socially conscious business icons of our community to
leave in order to stay competitive is delusional and self-destructive. Until we face
reality, Dayton will accelerate as one of Forbes's 10 fastest dying
cities.





The Tax Foundation ranks Ohio 47th
in business tax climate. If NCR CEO Bill Nuti had tied on a blindfold
and thrown a dart at a map of the US, 46 out of the 50 states he would have hit would have been better for his business than Dayton,
Ohio. Ohio is at the bottom of the heap with California, New York and New
Jersey, respectively. Even Michigan, basket case that it
is, has a better business tax climate than Ohio. Please don't shoot the messenger for reporting we're suffering from
self-inflicted wounds.





Anybody who thinks this move by NCR is the
tip of the iceberg had his or her head buried in the sand for the last
35 years. NCR began its exodus from Dayton in the early '70s when
Ohio implemented the income tax. NCR has 2,800 employees in
Georgia today and only 1,300 in Dayton. NCR has been moving out of Dayton
for 35 years. This isn't the tip of the iceberg. It's the caboose of
the train.





The same is true for the city as a
whole. As I wrote in February, downtown is practically a ghost town.
Dayton's population has dropped every decade from a high of 262,332
in 1960 to an estimated 155,461 in 2007. If you saw those numbers
without knowing what city I was talking about, you'd think I was
talking about a dying city in a Soviet satellite state. Big government
policies are destroying our city and our state.





One of the biggest reasons is the
progressive income tax. The income tax is a tool used by government to create poverty. That's why
Marx listed it second of his ten requirements for implementing Marxism.
The income tax punishes achievement and rewards lack of achievement. As a result Ohio has a lot less of the former and a lot more of the
latter. The same is true for the country at large. We should be happy
NCR didn't leave the US for even greener pastures, but socially
conscious NCR chose to move to Georgia where it could create 2,000 more jobs - something it couldn't do
here.


Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore describe exactly how much damage state income taxes do to the economy:


Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found
that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including
Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such
as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to
the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida,
Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same
years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster
personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.





Georgia may not be in that top nine, the Tax Foundation ranks it 27th, but it's a heck of a lot better than Ohio and has the labor pool and international and customer connections NCR needs.


Every dollar government spends also harms our economy because we pay for it twice. First we pay for it in taxes (and we have to pay the
interest when we borrow, President Obama). Second, every dollar
government spends makes our economy less efficient. You might have
wanted to spend $100 on shoes which would promote productive local
business, but when government takes your $100 from you by force, it spends
it on non-productive government instead. Not
only don't you get your shoes, you pay again because of lost
economic activity and lost jobs in the area that leads to depressed wages. Every government job is a job lost from the productive private sector.





Government regulations
and mandates also pervert our economy and give an unearned benefit to some party at the expense of the rest of us. Voluntary exchange by
definition benefits all parties involved and is the basis of a strong
economy. Government force is the enemy of prosperity. Unfortunately
government force is all the rage in Dayton, Columbus and Washington.





We know how to attract and keep
businesses – tax incentives. Politicians do it all the time. Gov.
Strickland reportedly offered NCR $31 million at the last minute to
offset the $58 million offered by Georgia, but that was far too little, far
too late. Mayor McLin offers tax breaks to politically powerful businesses. But this begs the question: why don't we lower taxes for everybody? Why
should we allow politicians to reward their politically connected
favorites at our expense? If we cut spending and lowered taxes for
everybody, businesses wouldn't leave and new businesses would come to
Ohio. Everybody would be rewarded, and we'd have a growing, thriving
economy that would generate prosperity for all.





It's too late to do anything to keep
NCR, but we have the power to change Dayton government for the
better. Once we do that, we can hold it up as a model for state
government. The solution is simple: embrace freedom instead of
government force. We should dramatically reduce the city budget. We
should contract out all services we can. Since all government
spending harms economic development, government spending for economic
development should be stopped immediately. We should abolish the
income tax and cut other taxes to correspond to spending cuts. We
should market Dayton in other Ohio cities and high tax states around
the country like California, New York and New Jersey as a no
income tax, low tax city.


--


Study documents the tremendous damage high taxes to do people. This is a must read essay.

Updating
some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that
from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays
and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as
California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the
nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada,
New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the
no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal
income growth than their high-tax counterparts.
You don't
have to be Milton Friedman to understand that if you want prosperity in
your city, state or country, you dramatically lower taxes, abolish
income taxes and cut government spending accordingly. Period.

Dayton NCR employees bitter, but at least one gets it. NCR is a global company and Georgia provided global services. The Tax Foundation ranks Ohio 47th in business tax climate. Michigan is only 20th. Michigan has a better business tax climate than Ohio. Georgia ranks 27th. The question isn't why did NCR move. The question is why did NCR stay here and get punished so long. California ranks 48th. New York ranks 49th. New Jersey ranks 50th. Dayton population.


"The basic argument of lower taxes, lower personell costs, and a larger labor pool and air connections probably were deciders [for NCR]." Ohio implemented the income tax in 1972, and NCR moved 10s of thousands of jobs out of Dayton in the early 1970s. This can't be coincidence. This website says Georgia's income tax is higher than Ohio's. What about corporate tax?

Georgia gave NCR $56.9 million in tax breaks
to incentivize it to move to Georgia, but NCR CEO Nuti said the tax
breaks, while nice, were not a major factor in the decision to move. Dayton Business Journal is overflowing with NCR stories. Nuti details the criteria
used in selecting new location. Gov. Strickland offered NCR $31.1
million in incentives to stay, but Dayton City Commissioner accuses NCR
of not returning phone calls. NCR was founded in 1884, and NCR already has 2,800 employees in Georgia compared with 1,300 in Dayton.

"Local officials in Ohio grumbled that NCR never even let them compete."
What a joke. Ohio and Dayton had 125 years to compete. Why didn't they
give NCR, and every other business in Ohio and Dayton, tax breaks last
year? The year before? That smacks of entitlement mentality. No matter
how much burden the city, county and state placed on NCR, the
aristocrats felt entitled to have NCR remain in Dayton. This should be
a wake up call, the burden of local and state government are driving
businesses and people out of Ohio, but our aristocrats are sulking
instead of waking up.