Shot in the Dark

Category: Capitalism v Socialism

  • Keith Ellison And Barack Rex

    There are two ways to look at Rep. Keith Ellison’s statement to a group of minimum wage protesters last week; emphasis added by me: “We in Congress will try to raise the minimum wage. We got opponents on the other side of the aisle who say that there shouldn’t be no minimum wage. So, we…

  • Happy Thanksgiving, America

    Video taken from a “Sign Up For Obamacare” event yesterday evening. Nah, it was WalMart. Probably.

  • Doomed To Fail

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Bankers were seriously panicked over the last shut-down, fearing government might actually stop paying welfare.  Bankers were willing to fund the welfare system while Democrats kept ratcheting up the hysteria to force the Narrative on the public.  How much of the bankers’ war-gaming was spent lobbying Republicans to turn the…

  • A Little Knowledge

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my various liberal lawyer friends, it’s this; when I see news of the filing of an absurd lawsuit demanding a bizarre amount of money for an insane claim, take a step back and a deep breath.  A filing does not equal a judgment; while the occasional batspittle-crazy judgment…

  • With All Respect Due The Esteemed Drs. Banaian And Spry

    A line that hovers before me in blog and news-site comment sections like a red cape in front of a bull; “most economists agree”.  Forbes’ Louis Woodhill has at that oldie-but-goodie: Let’s be blunt. Whatever economics is, it is not a science. Unlike physicists, who can predict an asteroid’s closest approach to earth within a…

  • What The Hell Do We Do With Our Society? (Part 1: What Can We Learn From New Orleans, The Rockaways And Detroit?)

    I grew up in pretty boring times.  If you’re reading this and you’re under the age of 86, so did you, really.  And let’s be clear; when it comes to the march of human history, boring is good.  “May you live in interesting times” is often attributed as an ancient Chinese curse; it appears to…

  • Unexpected

    This is your Obama economy, part oh-who-the-hell-remembers: The residential real-estate rebound suffered a setback in June as housing starts unexpectedly fell to the lowest level in almost a year, curbing how much construction contributed to U.S. economic growth last quarter. Believe harder and faster, people!

  • Rebuilding The State Economy

    I met my friend Avery LIBRELLE yesterday out on the bike trail.  Avery, naturally, rides a recumbant bike.  Go figure. LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Tom Stinson, the state economist, says that Minnesota is doing pretty well!  And that our education system is one of the reasons!  MITCH:  Well, good! LIBRELLE: Hah!  Better than good!  It means the DFL…

  • Back On The Shelf

    It was the humblest and most obscure among the DFL’s orgy of tax pushes this past session.  And it may be the one that has the broadest impact fastest The DFL imposed a tax on warehouse services this past session; basically, if it goes into a warehouse, you pay for it.  And pay.  And pay. …

  • And They Say DFLers Don’t Get Economics

    Let’s say, hypothetically, that you live in a city. And in that city there are 19 big companies.   They have everything that makes up a big enterprise – a CEO, executives, management, stores, labs, manufacturing plants – in your city. And then the economy picks up.  And the 19 big companies hire more people,…

  • Liberté, égalité, vacances

    France’s continued Hollande from reality gets a rude wake-up call from America. With an unemployment rate that’s been hovering around 10% for nearly four years, unemployment benefits that somehow manage to be the most generous in Europe and yet exclude thousands of eligible non-workers, and an attempted tax bracket of 75% on top earners, France clearly…

  • Meanwhile, From The Laboratories Of Democracy…

    News flash:  States that govern according to conservative precepts – especially cutting taxes to spur growth – are doing better than “progressive” states.  Much, much better.  And yep, even government revenues benefit. In the meantime, “closing the deficit” with taxes rather than growth is dragging “progressive” states down. And that’s presuming the tax hikes actually…

  • Have Your Stored A Ton Of Cornmeal Yet?

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The hype around the “fiscal cliff” reminds me of the hype around Y2K which supports my suspicion that’s all it is – hype. If the GOP fails to cave in, we automatically enact the spending cuts adopted by John Kerry’s Super Committee and cut the monthly shortfall in half.…

  • Revolution On Eternal Repeat

    I’ve been a huge Dinesh D’Souza fan since I read his Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President over a decade ago; it may have been the best Reagan bio ever. And I got a chance to see 2016 over the weekend.  It didn’t disappoint: The movie’s thesis is… (Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk spoilers…

  • Lest We Forget

    What does this chart represent? No, it’s not the Brett Favre Media Bell Curve. It’s the comparison between: Obama’s projected unemployment with Porkulus (Dark blue line) Obama’s projected unemployment without Porkulus (Light blue line) The actual unemployment rate (Red dots) Question for all you Democrats; if Romney releases his tax returns, will those red dots…

  • I Have Seen The Future Under Obama, Dayton And Company…

    …and this is it. Expect a surge in building French restaurants in Switzerland. Oh, yeah. And expect the French to recoup a fraction of the money they expect to recoup from it.

  • North Dakotans In The Mist

    As I’ve noted over the years, I was born, grew up and went to college in North Dakota.  I left when I was 22 – largely because everything I really wanted to do with my life involved one kind of city or another.  At that time, “things I wanted to do with my life” mostly…

  • Close Enough For Government Work

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I always liked this quote from Stranger in a Strange Land: “ . . . a politico-judicial decision unparalleled in jug-headedness since Doheny was acquitted of offering the bribe Secretary Fall was convicted of accepting.” Well, unparalleled until [last Thursday]. United States Supreme Court upheld Obamacare requirement that everybody…

  • Slim Pickins

    Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: I went with my son-in-law looking at used cars this weekend. Have you seen the prices? Shockingly high. With incentives, rebates and interest rates, brand-new costs the same as used. You do, indeed, pay a lot these days for that “pre-depreciated” option. The used vehicle market seems to be…

  • Hollande Vacation

    France goes on a holiday from financial reality and makes Sarkozy pack. The future of the European Union (and worldwide markets) may hinge on the following question: Is François Hollande a “fool or a knave”? Hollande, seeking to become France’s first Socialist President since François Mitterrand, won a narrow victory Sunday over Nicolas Sarkozy – ending the…

  • Right To Work: A Time For Choosing

    If there’s one issue where the GOP-led Legislature has dropped the ball this session, it’s in letting the “Right To Work” Amendment (henceforth RTW) proposal languish, apparently to die, in committee. Rumor coming from the Legislature is that the leadership is afraid that the unions will dump a ton of money into Minnesota to fight…

  • While The DFL Is Busy Defending ID-Free Voting…

    …the GOP is focused on jobs. The “MNGOP’s “Reform 2.0” agenda moved forward yesterday with the passage of the “Tax Relief And Job Creation Act”, which passed in the House. I wish every working Minnesotan could see this bit from yesterday – Rep. Matt Dean tearing chunks out of Ann Lenczewski, who’d just finished demigogueing…

  • That “We The People” Thing

    Janet Dailey, writing in the Telegraph, notes British Minister of the Exchequer George Osborne’s visit to the US, along with Prime Minister David Cameron. “George who, minister of what?” George Osborne.  The “Minister of the Exchequer” is what they call their “Secretary of the Treasury” over there. Anyway, Dailey – who is a center-right columnist…

  • This Is Your “Obama Recovery”

    The Dems are crowing about the drop in unemployment numbers. But if you look a little further into the numbers, you see that the American job market is not better off than it was four years ago.  Indeed, it’s a lot worse. On Inauguration Day in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate…

  • The World Tax is Flat

     Rick Perry stabs the tax system in the heart.  But under the plan, is it dead or simply pining for the fjords? Steve Forbes must feel like he’s stepped into a time machine. The 1996 & 2000 GOP presidential candidate briefly electrified the denizens of political wonkdom with his conception of a national flat tax…