Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Here's your phony economic recovery in a nutshell:

"Well .. on the great government-led economy we have this news for you ... From Gallup:

Gallup's Job Creation Index for April reveals significantly more hiring within the federal government than in the private sector ... By almost a 2-to-1 margin, federal employees say their employer is hiring rather than firing, giving the federal government a relatively robust +18 Job Creation Index for April. The Job Creation Index among private-sector and other non-government workers is +9 ... Indeed, the federal government appears to be significantly outpacing the private sector in terms of the relative number of jobs created.

Pretty much what you would expect from a regime led by someone with a heartfelt belief that America's greatness comes from government."

By printing money and hiring people out of the productive private sector into parasitic government jobs, government can make any economic number appear positive - even unemployment. But all this does is hurt the real economy. We're on the way down, not up.

TAX AND SPEND:

The VAT would be a hidden revenue generator and would increase the wealth and power of Washington aristocrats at the expense of the people so naturally Republicans support it too.

Big casino owner moving from Las Vegas to Macau. Why?

"[T]he corporate tax rate ranges from 3 to 12%. Individual tax rates range from 0 to 12%. There are no minimum wage laws in Macao. There is no VAT in Macao. “Resident and non-resident individuals are taxed only on Macau-source income. An individual is considered resident if that person holds an identity card or permanent residence permit issued in Macau.”"

The question isn't why is he moving to Macau. The question is why would anybody stay in the US anymore?

REGULATION:

President Obama claims:

"Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them"

How's that mine safety working out for West Virginia miners? How's that oil rig safety working out? And of course government limits the liability for these corporate accidents - it doesn't enforce it. Most people are right a lot of time. Obama's wrong on almost everything.


House financial regulation bill gives FTC power over the internet. Democrats want to add vitamin regulations too.


Big businesses win another regulation to limit their competition by restricting the capital requirements of venture capitalists.

HEALTH CARE:

The CBO says that up to 10 million workers will lose their current insurance under Obamacare. I bet it's higher than that, but why didn't they report this before it was voted on?

Obamacare is bad for the poor and minorities.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Every American who supports the war on drugs should be forced to watch this video of a paramilitary police raid on a house where they shot the owner's dog. Nobody can justify this level of violence against non-violent people. The punch line: this is how they serve search warrants. Search warrants. They don't even have an arrest warrant (not that this would be justified with an arrest warrant either). The family inside is lucky they weren't killed too. The war on drugs has made evidence more important than lives, and the result is Americans are victims of extreme violence.

WAR:

FBI catches would-be Times Square bomber. He's a naturalized US citizen originally from Pakistan, and he should be treated as a criminal, as should all terrorists since we're not legally at war. He's Muslim, but that doesn't mean he's al Qaeda or Taliban (I still wonder if his bomb was supposed to go off and who put him up to this mission), but this makes the Taliban in Pakistan claim more believable. We might well have turned the Taliban in Pakistan into enemies willing to attack the US.

Bloomberg suspected a tea partier set the bomb, and he said so in front of camera. It just goes to show you don't have to be smart to make a billion dollars. You just have to identify a need that nobody else has filled. Like firearms, free markets are a great equalizer. It's also a reminder that aristocrats aren't necessarily smart either. They're just experts at getting re-elected.

POLITICS:

At 11:37 into this video, Obama starts making jokes about Obamacare, and he takes a shot at Mitt Romney for supporting it the first time around when it was called Romneycare in Massachusetts. This is funny. Mitt Romney makes John Kerry look like he has principles.

How much kool-aid has this guy drunk?

"The Democrats are the party of responsible government, and America needs at least one of those."

Blind partisanship on both sides is scary.

May Day rallies turn violent, but of course, you don't hear that in the news. All you hear about is those violent tea partiers who pick their own trash after rallies. The thing is, we've become so used to the violence on the left that we practically ignore it. But violence on the right is so rare, it would be huge news, so they make it up.

MEDIA:

MSNBC has been trying to carve out this hard-left niche since the day it was formed, and it's not getting ratings.

MISC:

Great essay describes how zoning laws harm communities, increase pollution and make us more unhealthy and unhappy.

I'm not impressed with either the idea of a government plan for oil spills or the plan itself. And naturally government limits the liability of big corporations. Big corporations are arms of the government. They're tax collectors. In America, you can't tell where the government ends and the corporations begin. If it wasn't for government regulations that protect corporations from competition, these kinds of accidents would almost never happen and their effects would be greatly mitigated.

Reaction to oil spill will increase environmental problems. America isn't going to give up oil. If we reduce drilling here, we increase drilling elsewhere, and we increase shipping of oil to the US. Since the US is the most technologically advanced and environmentally friendly oil producer in the world, that means oil production will be more dangerous to the environment. Any attempt to use the government's gun to increase the price of oil will cause the price to go up, and therefore will cause production to increase (think war on drugs).

Thomas Sowell highlights incidents of black Americans attacking Americans of Asian descent (I hate having to write about this racial motivated crap - when will people be happy to just be Americans?) because of their achievements and says achievement envy is more dangerous than wealth envy.

I'm torn on the tasering of this kid who jumped on the Phillies field last night. Whether he was a kid or not doesn't really matter. He was adult-sized. Tasering can kill people, but the kid was trespassing. I would rather have seen a player cold-cock him than have the cops taser him without any signs he intended violence. Security guards and cops have managed to tackle these guys for hundreds of years without risking killing them. I prefer that approach to tasering unless the guy shows signs of intending violence.

Author believes that Americans are too entrepreneurial to go the way of Europe, and this brings up a good point. Americans are not like Europeans or Asians. We're descendant from the subset of Europeans and Asians who were the most adventurous, brave, independent, innovative and productive. This genetic difference is the source of American exceptionalism - individuals of tremendously independent character operating in an environment of tremendous economic freedom - not military interventionism abroad. The reason I bring this up is a lot of people think that as America fades, China will take our place, but that can't happen. Because of the unique nature of the American people and because of the transfer of the most independent individuals in the world to America over the centuries, no country on earth has the same entrepreneurial ability. So while China may become the next productive powerhouse (it already is), it won't produce the pace of innovations that America has produced over its history.

"According to a poll cited by Gartner, when asked "Do you think that starting a new business is a respected occupation in your community?", 91% of Americans polled said yes vs. 28% of British and 8% of Japanese respondents."

Wow. Even I wouldn't have expected that much disparity. But while our entrepreneurial spirit may not be able to be broken, the entrepreneurial ability of Americans can be and is being crushed by government to the detriment of the country and the world.

Contrast of liberals who are trying to force every American to have to show their national ID card to their attacks on anybody who thinks immigrants should have to show proof they're in the country illegally. This isn't hard to understand. Liberals want to oppress everybody equally.

This seems like a pretty good way to deal with the oil leak. Why is it taking so long?

Poor people are more likely to be fat than middle class or rich people. That's because being fat tends to be a reflection of character.