The headline is that Arlen Specter told Michele Bachmann to shut up and get back in the kitchen.

Not quite in the headlines?  Even if you leave out Specter’s little sexist jape, you hear Bachmann clobber Specter on all the points that are going to be big and key this fall; jobs; prosperity; everything but more and more and more regulation.

Nancy Pelosi takes a crack at interpreting Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts:

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said on Thursday that Democrats remained committed to passing far-reaching health care legislation, but she said that the House would not simply adopt the Senate version of the bill and send it to President Obama in part because of problematic provisions that she said contributed to the Republican victory in the Massachusetts special election on Tuesday.

Yeah, that’s it. The good citizens of Massachusetts made good use of all the time and visibility that Congress has allowed for the study of the proposed health care bills. Joe the Plumber, Bill the Banker and Sally the Social Worker gave haste to reading the Senate version, comparing it meticulously to the House version.

It was some clause of some paragraph of some provision somewhere that displeased them and made them turn on hapless old Martha and her saggy queen mother, Nancy.

I wonder if exit pollers were asking voters “was it the fourth paragraph of the Senate version as it contrasted the fifth paragraph of the House version that changed your mind? Or was it the font?”

“Unease would be a gentle word in terms of the attitude of my colleagues toward certain provisions in the Senate bill,” Ms. Pelosi said.

I can picture Pelosi saying that on camera while over her shoulder and out of focus, Democrats, overstuffed briefcases under their arms, papers streaming out of them, are seen fleeing like rats from a burning building.

America is pretty okay with their health care as it is for the time being and would rather their government help them find a job and quit spending their great great great great grandchild’s retirement. Nancy Pelosi may be the only liberal in Washington that didn’t get the message Tuesday evening.

“Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

“Air Force One made an emergency trip to Logan field…”

“when theres trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured, there’s trouble everywhere and they know it.”

-Scott Brown tonight

In Obama’s speeches, one favorite phrase: ‘Let me be clear’

Obama’s declarations of clarity are far more than a little presidential throat-clearing.

In a presidency in which everything is murkier than Obama could have imagined, the “let me be clear” preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but.

“Now let me be clear — let me be absolutely clear…”If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, a quarter-million dollars a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” Since then, several proposals have muddied that assertion, including the Obama-approved tax on costly health insurance plans.

Let me be absolutely clear about what health reform means for you,” he said in July. “. . . It will keep government out of health-care decisions. It will give you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.” In fact, the government’s role in health care would increase under the legislation, and the changes would, in all likelihood, result in many people ending up with different coverage through reasons not of their own choosing.

Now, let me be absolutely clear:

Proverbs 26:24-26: “A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speech is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.”

When Barack Obama expressed concern over the deficit, and pledged to cut it in half, I suppose there were some taxpayers that actually thought that implied a reduction in government spending.

Nope. What he meant was he was about to invent another tax and wrap it in fabricated righteousness.

President Barack Obama may propose a fee on financial-services companies as a way to fulfill a vow on cutting the budget deficit in half, administration officials said.

Despite the fact that by some miracle the government is well on it’s way to recovering much of the infusions made last year in the interest of preventing further disaster, Obama wants more. How dare the financial sector recover from a crisis seeded by the government and admittedly germinated by the avarice of a few bad apples and actually start turning a profit again!

Banks repaid the U.S. $165 billion last year, letting the government recoup about two-thirds of its total investment in the banking system through the $700 billion financial rescue, according to a U.S. Treasury Department report released today.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program also collected $12.9 billion in fees, dividends and interest, the Treasury said. So far, the U.S. has made an 8 percent return on its bank investments, a Treasury official told reporters.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said he expects the government to be repaid for the funds put into banks at a profit.

You can’t have it both ways.

A few banks exhibit risky behavior while the government looks the other way. Risk is realized. The government bails the banks out just as the banks expected, thereby rewarding them by mitigating the risk normally realized by this behavior.

No one should be surprised that some banks are picking up where they left off, and the government is just as culpable as the banks.

Public sentiment has turned against last year’s government rescue of the financial-services industry. Almost two-thirds of Americans believe bailing out the banks was a bad idea, a Bloomberg National Poll taken Dec. 3-7 showed.

Just over half of respondents said banks should be subject to stricter regulation and 31 percent would allow troubled banks to fail.

Americans are pissed off – and they should be – but not just at the banks, rather at the bureaucrats that saw fit to reward risky behavior with taxpayer dollars.

…and ironically now seek to create yet another tax to repair the damage caused by the misuse of taxpayer dollars in the first place.

One must never underestimate a liberal’s creativity in finding new ways to confiscate capital and turn something into nothing.

But there they were, the United States Senate, at 1 a.m. Monday, rushing to vote in the middle of a snowstorm to close debate on the most important piece of legislation of our time — the nationalization of the U.S. health care system.

This holiday season consumers armed with smartphones are using the internet in their palm to find the best deals, keeping retailers on their toes, and presumably driving prices down.

The rise of smart phones, with their go-anywhere Web access, is changing the shopping game this holiday season.

Tech-savvy shoppers are finding it easier than ever to work the system to get the best deals.

They’re scanning barcodes with their cell phone cameras to load into price comparison Internet sites while standing in store aisles, using GPS to find discounts at nearby stores and flashing electronic coupons straight from their phones.

This is how a free market works.

Now, imagine of you will, a time when health care consumers, free to choose from multiple providers of insurance and care, armed with reviews and cost comparisons via the internet and driven by the same motivation to get more for less.

…if only the government would get out of their way, reform indeed we would have.

…are not so evil after all.

The government recently advised that women don’t really need so many mammograms…that it takes 1900 of them to save one life.

Insurance companies’ reply?

Don’t worry. You’re covered…

Insurance companies contacted by USA TODAY say they will continue paying for annual mammograms amid widespread fears that new breast cancer screening guidelines from a federal task force could lead women to lose coverage for those tests.

The guidelines – suggesting that most women under 50 don’t need routine mammograms and that women over 50 need them only every other year – were issued Monday night by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

…until the government takes over that is.

Instead of apologizing for it’s past.

The Chinese, though members of a famously old civilization, seem to possess some of the vigor that once defined the U.S. The Chinese are now an astonishingly optimistic people. Eighty-six percent of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with 37 percent of Americans.

Take a bow, indeed Mr. President.

This is how a recession gets fixed…

A crop of potentially groundbreaking companies is emerging from the wreckage of the Great Recession. No question, some will blow up, and others will fail to reach their potential. But the downturn has done little to dampen the entrepreneurial spirit. During the first half of this year, angel investors financed 24,500 new ventures, 6% more than during the same period last year, according to the Center for Venture Research. The overall amount of money going into startups has declined, but the figures suggest that this year will see the birth of roughly 50,000 companies with enough promise that someone is betting money on them. “It may be that this is the best time to start a company,” says Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship.

History shows that great companies are often built during bad times. In 1939, at the tail end of the Great Depression, two engineers started Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in a garage in Northern California. Silicon Valley itself was largely created during the nasty recession of the mid-1970s. During that decade, entrepreneurs laid the groundwork for the boom of the 1980s, building companies that pioneered three new industries: Atari in the video game business, Apple (AAPL) in personal computers, and Genentech in biotechnology. “The only people who venture out in tough times are on a mission, which is what you need,” says Michael Moritz, managing partner of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that invested in Apple back in the ’70s.

The entrepreneur; the capitalist, seeking the American dream of wealth and freedom, has always been the seed of who we are as a nation, our standard of living and what we’ve done for other nations. Despite Michael Moore’s attempts to discredit it, and Barack Obama’s attempts to destroy it, capitalism is still our only hope for recovery.

It’s The Unemployment, stupid.

The announcement a week ago of 10.2% unemployment is a significant political event for President Barack Obama. It could well usher in a particularly serious crisis for his political standing, influence and ability to advance his agenda.

Double-digit unemployment drove Ronald Reagan’s disapproval ratings in October 1982 up to a record high 54%. It was only when unemployment dropped to 7.3%, roughly two years later, that he was able to win a landslide victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election.

Alas, Barack Obama will not have the same opportunity that Reagan did – he doesn’t have the tools (the ideology)…or the people.

Barack Obama is all-in already with his “Stimulus Plan” in the sense that

1) He wants us to think that it’s working, and it is not.

2) As such, he doesn’t want us to think that his Stimulus Plan made things worse, which it did.

Had Barack Obama given America the message that they should have had, that they deserve, it would have been something like this:

Dear fellow Americans: You’ve lived beyond your means and so has your government, and now we must all pay the painful price as our economy returns to a more normalized state. We in the federal government will do what we can by extending unemployment benefits and such, but beyond that, as much as you will hear otherwise from those on the far left, stimulus programs and other gargantuan government spending programs will only worsen and extend the inevitable pain we must all go through to right the ship.

Instead, he doubled down on the failed fiscal policies of George Bush and simply dug the hole deeper.

Now the hole is filling with water and Barack Obama can’t get out.

Obama’s only option politically is to lobby for more stimulus spending and sell the American people on the efficacy of the last one. The former will fall on deaf ears as the deficit becomes an issue with the American people; the latter as the din of high unemployment washes over Obama’s Teleprompterings^™.

His dithering on Afghanistan and misappropriated focus on health care “reform” will be transferred to his economic impotence, and so on and and so on.

A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama’s ratings are likely to drop even further.

A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president’s efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That’s one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.

The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn’t a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.

The only way the President gets out of this alive is to willfully and publicly abandon the failed liberal approaches to virtually every issue that has presented itself in his short Presidency.

What are the chances?

Mr. President, Mr. Rock.

“Hello, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. President.”

Mr. President, Mr. Hard Place.

“Hello, nice to meet you as well.”

“It’s an honor, Mr. President. Thank you for inviting us into your Presidency. Should we get started?”

2012.

Indeed.

It was twenty years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell.

It’s hard to remember at twenty years remove that it, and the Communism it represented, didn’t just get swept away in a wave of small-l liberal euphoria. 

Dinesh D’Souza, in his excellent bio of Reagan, notes that between 1980 and 1983, the experts were united in their belief that the “Second World”, Communism, was here to stay.  Make no mistake, people had recovered from the spell of Walter Duranty long enough to know that the Soviet system was cruel and corrupt gangster-run autocracy even worse than Chicago.  The publication of The Gulag Archipelago and other releases from the samisdat media, and the flood of people who fled Germany from 1948 through 1961, popped the bubble of acceptability that had accompanied travesties like Stalin’s “Man of the Year” awards in 1939 and 1942, and Stalinism’s embrace by “intelligentsia” throughout the West (including the early version of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer/Labor Party).   The stories of the thousands of heroic Soviet-bloc citizens who risked death and imprisonment fleeing their foetid, starving, lumpen homelands inspired many a young patriot in the day.

But while the bloom was long off the rose of western acceptance of Communism, the number of western intellectuals who seriously believed in 1980 that the decade would see the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in short order, communism itself would have fit in a single room at a Ramada Inn. 

There had been resistance, of course; in Budapest and Gdansk in 1956, Prague in 1967, Gdansk again in ’71 – all put down with ruthless brutality by the authorities, including the Soviet military.

And so I’m not aware that anyone held out that much hope for change in 1979 – thirty years ago – when Lech Walesa, a young electrician in Gdansk, led a pro-democracy union strike in Gdansk.  The movement had traction, of course – it swept Poland, and threatened to spin out of control; the Polish Army under General Wojciech Jaruzelski staged what amounted to a last-ditch military coup to bring down the government and declare martial law to quell the strikes, siccing “ZOMO” thugs (no, it’s not Polish for SEIU) on the protesters and strikers.  Jaruzelski was reviled around the world for the action – although there is evidence that history has misjudged the General, that he acted as did many in the Polish Army, as a Polish patriot, to prevent a Soviet invasion, which would have been much, much worse).

And indeed, had the status quo ante held sway after 1980, nothing much would have happened.

But in 1980, the election of Ronald Reagan signalled an end to detente – the diplomatic legitimazion of the Soviet gangster regime.  Reagan jacked up the rhetoric war, and the civil support for trade unionists behind the Iron Curtain (with considerable help from Margaret Thatcher, the Pope and, speaking of strange bedfellows, Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO), as well as building up the US military from its post-Vietnam nadir (although to be fair Jimmy Carter had realized the problem, and taken a few of the necessary high-level steps to start facilitating this).   The rhetorical confrontation peaked at Reagan’s classic Brandenburg Gate speech in 1987…

…but the diplomatic war had reached its Battle of Stalingrad at the Rejkjavik conference the year before, when Reagan called Gorbachev’s bluff on intermediate-range nukes.  Lily-livered pundits in the west flew into a panic, expecting mushroom clouds over London…

…but Gorbachev blinked.  He realized the communist East could not outlast the free West.  He accelerated the “liberalization” of the USSR and the Communist bloc – not to extinct it, initially, but to try to save it.

It was too late.  The Poles tossed aside the commies, followed by the Czechs. 

It didn’t go entirely without a fight, though.  As the Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – tried to follow neighboring Poland’s suit, Soviet soldiers attacked some demonstrations.

But in dizzyingly short order, the Communist Bloc, which had killed tens of millions of people in the previous seventy years (estimates range from 20 to 60 million) and floated on a sea of blood that dwarved even Hitler’s monumental crimes against humanity, fell, kicked to the curb in a sea of ebullient humanity.

The left never got it.  Some of them had backed the wrong team.  Others were so invested in the idea that capitalism and western-style liberty were obsolete that they couldn’t wrap their arms around the new reality.

Some believe that if western-style democracy and liberty were so cool, the nations left in the wake of the fall of The Wall should have been able to get up and run from the get-go.  I distinctly remember Tom Brokaw, in 1992, describing Poland’s difficulties in changing from a command economy to free-enterprise.  “Et wrold sheem thut Eesturrrn Yurp’s ukspurramunt in Kapetelezm hez FEHLED” (“it would seem Eastern Europe’s experiment in capitalism has failed“), he said, with no further comment, apparently seeking his own Waltern Cronkite “this war can not be won” moment, writing off three whole years of effort on Poland’s part.  He was wrong, of course; Poland survived, and thrived.  And while the road to prosperity has been difficult for some former Soviet counties (indeed, for Russia itself, which may or may not be socially amenable to small-L liberal goverment), most of Eastern Europe thrives today, free of prowling Black Marias and windowless trains in the dark for long enough that people are starting to forget what they meant. 

Which must be an incredible blessing.

But Brokaw’s pronouncement, more than anything I can remember, started curing me of the habit of watching network news.

There are those who still say the whole fall of The Wall was Gorbachev’s idea – an idea that requires a preposterous suspension of disbelief, buying the notion that the Politburo – think Capi di Tutti Capi in Russian – would turn the Premiership over to anyone whose goal wasn’t the survival of the system. 

Whatever.

My many friends and acquaintances and neighbors and co-workers over the past twenty years who fled to the West tell me that they and their people back home remember who their real friends are.

So – Fröhliche Zwanzigste Jahre der Freiheit, Deutschland.  Und viele mehr.

May the rest of us remember.

At least better than our feckless current leadership does.  Obama blew off the observance, just as he blew off Poland’s observance, six weeks ago, of the beginning on its soil of the greatest single cataclysm of human history.

Just as well.  He’d probably deliver a heartfelt apology for the US having won.

This morning the Pastor at our church brought up the recent health care debate thusly:

“A friend came up to me this morning and asked ‘So what do you think about the health care vote yesterday.'”

It was clearly a loaded question, the Pastor explained.

His reply was that he would respond with a God-centered perspective. Every person, every life in this country is precious; sacred. “Our health care system should reflect that.” He said further that he didn’t know how it should be managed or paid for but that is how he believes we should be approaching this issue.

…and I found myself agreeing with him in principal, although I’m not sure he believes government is the answer or not.

Is there a way to look at this debate from a “What Would God Do?” perspective?

I would not presume to know what God would think and recognize that many of you don’t even believe that God exists.

I do believe that individuals and families should have access to quality health care in America and should have a choice as to where they buy insurance to protect them against catastrophe, and how much of that risk they are comfortable retaining. They should have a choice as to where they seek care and from whom.

While I believe it is inevitable that all citizens be required to carry some form of health insurance, I believe they should have more choice as to where they obtain it, not less, and without regard to where they work. For those times that they are not able to afford it temporarily due to unemployment or being unemployable, the government should provide a backup and help those that can’t help themselves.

So far I think most Americans would agree with me and would deem it common sense. Believe in God or not, most would agree government should have a benevolent and responsible role in health care. Where Americans find themselves divided is how to get us there.

I believe God helps those that help themselves and expects us as individuals to help those that can’t. Teach a man to fish and if he can’t, give him one.  If we all lived this way, much of our federal government would find itself out of a job.

As for health care, creating incentives and removing barriers is or should be the conservative approach. Private enterprise has a way of filling a vacuum if it is allowed to do so. After all, there certainly is a demand for quality health care, and people are willing to reasonably pay for it. That sounds like the preamble of any good business plan.

But liberals would say that the private enterprise system has failed here and it is time for a benevolent government to wrest control. They offer more of what broke the system (and many others) in the first place.

If Congress cares so much about Americans, their health care and actually improving it, why is there such a rush to ram it through the legislative system?

Why are they not recognizing who they serve and honoring the promise to allow legislators and the public time to read and understand the bill?

Why are they lying about how many people are uninsured by choice?

Why is the trillion-dollar burden not borne by everyone equally, and not skewed for political bias?

Why is Congress exempt from the plan?

If there are such savings to be gained why does it cost a trillion dollars more than the current system?

Liberals think that an ever-growing government is the only means by which to effect change on any front.

The fact that many Americans don’t have health insurance or access to quality care is not a function of a lack of government intervention rather a result of too much of it.

Government has so regulated the industry such that most Americans have their health care choices made for them by their employer, who has the ability to choose from only a few insurance companies and thus care providers in each state.

If insurance carriers have been allowed to dictate to doctors and patients, have failed to cover preexisting conditions, while at the same time jacking up costs and profits, it isn’t due to a lack of regulation, rather a lack of competition because of over-regulation.

As I have said before, don’t blame the free market system when the market isn’t free.

A truly free market would force insurance companies and health care providers to vie for consumer health care dollars on the basis of coverage, quality and cost, just like auto insurance, which is also required by law.

Beyond that, a compassionate, benevolent (and mostly God-fearing) citizenry would see the mutual benefit of a federal government that takes care of those that legitimately can’t take care of themselves.

But what about those that can help themselves and choose not to? What would God say to this? For example, you don’t exercise, you eat too much, and you smoke or take drugs?

Does God expect us to pay the wages of our sins, or does he call for a benevolent government to transfer those burdens to others? That is admittedly also a loaded question and the answer is clear.

The current bill says that the government will not allow private and public insurance companies to penalize you for the higher burden you will eventually be to the system.

I think God would expect you to pay the wages of your ill-chosen behavior. I think God would expect you to take care not to be a burden to your neighbor. I think God expects you to live your life with others in mind.

God would have voted against this bill.

Taxpayers vote with their feet. They’re hoofin’ it to Texas…and from California; two diametrically opposed microcosms of political ideology:

What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes. Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor.

while California and Texas are comparable in terms of sheer numbers, their demographic paths are diverging. Before 1990, both states grew much faster than the rest of the country. Since then, only Texas has continued to do so. While its share of the nation’s population has steadily increased, from 6.8 percent in 1990 to 7.9 percent in 2007, California’s has barely budged, from 12 percent to 12.1 percent.

Unpacking the numbers is even more revealing—and, for California, disturbing.

What’s so special about California?

California and it’s economy are faced with the fallout of massive over-spending, immigration, health care and arbitrary and burdensome emissions regulations – which have failed by the way. Sound familiar?

What’s so special about Texas?

between 1998 and 2007, the states without an individual income tax “created 89 percent more jobs and had 32 percent faster personal income growth” than the states with the highest individual income-tax rates. California’s tax and regulatory policies, the report predicts, “will continue to sap its economic vitality,” while Texas’s “pro-growth” policies will help it “maintain its superior economic performance well into the future.” The clear implication is that California should become more like Texas.

…and so should the US. With Texans hinting at secession, is the Lone Star state the lifeboat for the other 49? Might it be time to jump in?

Nawwww. Let’s see how the Vikings finish the season first.

One of the great conceits of the “elite” left – led, in Minnesota, by the Star Tribune’s insufferable editorial board – is that if Minnesota’s taxpayers don’t pony up to pay for a “better Minnesota” – the “high tax, high service” state model – we’ll be a “cold Omaha”.

Voters around the country are saying back – “If it gets us away from you and your moronic, childish policies, Omaha’s not so bad”.

The LATimes notes that voters are making that exact choice with their feet:

In  America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.

The article compares Cali to Texas – but it could just as easily apply to high-tax/high-“service” Minnesota and some of its neighbors:

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau’s latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures in Texas were lower than in all but seven states. California ranked 10th in overall taxes levied by state and local governments, on a per capita basis, while Texas, one of only seven states with no individual income tax, was 38th.

So people in San Francisco tell each other that if they don’t fund every single thing their public employees and special interests want, they’ll become a “cold Austin?”

Did I say “moving with their feet?”

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal — if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.

And it’s here that I hope the author has done his homework; we’ve been through this before.

Refugees from California have already spent the last twenty years fleeing California – for Oregon and for Colorado.  They fled the taxes; they brought their taste for lots of “services”.  Ditto New Hampshire and Vermont; inundated with Massachussetts tax refugees, they have turned their adopted states into high-tax, high-“service” hellholes of their very own.

But what does that get you these days?  (Emphasis added):

Today’s public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

You could say the same about Minnesota and its low tax neighbors.

In more ways than one:

These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.

Perhaps people in Texas, Fargo and Miami will start complaining that if the liberals don’t shut up about being “happy to pay for a better Texas, Fargo or Florida”, they’ll turn into a “warm Los Angeles?”

This past week Keith Ellison issued a breathless, well-worn and blatantly specious (if not utterly ignorant) monologue to justify the further distension of the bowels of the federal government via yet another bloated agency. As I read his drivel, in my ears rang the sultry voice of classic SNL fixture Jane Curtain, warbling on and on and on; aptly blunted by Dan Ackroyd’s signature catchphrase.

the American dream of home ownership, and borrowing generally, washed up on the shores of a financial disaster — the most serious since the Great Depression.

One cause (there were many) was the failure of our system of consumer financial protection. No one was there to review transactions or protect consumers. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency provides the lifeline that consumers need.

Oh, someone was there. Federal regulators were there, telling banks they couldn’t borrow funds at the best rates unless they met certain ratios of mandated risky sub-prime transactions to the prudent and secure deals banks would normally seek.

A free market cannot be held culpable if it is not free.

These so-called predatory lenders Keith, were not only incented to push unqualified home buyers into loans they couldn’t afford, they were strong-armed to do so via quotas and measures put in place during the Carter administration and given teeth during the Clinton administration. Sadly, G.W. Bush failed to preemptively unwind the brewing disaster despite the behest of Senator John McCain, among others.

The government-inflated and guaranteed demand for housing and all the furnishings that go inside created a bubble with all the periphery that usually comes with one. It ended as they usually do – otherwise we’d not know it was a bubble, now would we?

If anyone needed regulatin’ it was the regulators.

The American Dream is just that, Keith. Home ownership, while beneficial to all of us, is not a Government-Given right. With rare exception, when liberals act with politically motivated and self-serving mandates under the auspice of a “lifeline”, disaster follows close behind.

…and that disaster, our Great Recession, is the direct result of exactly the same type of programs Mr. Ellison and his ilk offer as it’s “solution.”

No one around here shall be surprised by the Star Tribune’s confusion of a deliberate expansion of government with the genesis of a sustainable economic recovery.

From new dishwashers for the Albert Lea School District to a new counterterrorism police force to patrol buses and trains, federal stimulus money is pouring in to Minnesota and has directly preserved or created 11,800 jobs so far, state officials reported Monday.

I am sure the dishes at Albert Lea need to be washed and there is no doubt buses and trains need to be kept safe but federal stimulus dollars might just as well be called what they are; broad-based spending of future taxpayer dollars.

Normally called pork but in the heat of a crisis caused by liberal meddling during the watch of another Nobel Prize-winner, the very same wasteful practices that used to give liberals a bad name are now lauded for their “stimulation.”

But of what?

Management and Budget Commissioner Tom Hanson said statistics showed that the stimulus money “puts people to work,” and was having a “snowball effect” by indirectly sparking more job growth. As an example, he said, a highway construction job in Minnesota made possible with federal stimulus money might cause a company to buy a bulldozer from Tennessee that also meant jobs for workers at an out-of-state factory.

…or they might not buy that bulldozer because they might not be stupid enough to think that this economy is coming back any time soon. One project awarded by and funded with government dollars does not a recovery make.

Smart business owners and consumers alike are now finding ways to make the old bulldozer do the work instead of buying a new one simply because the bank will lend them the capital. Easy credit is long gone for the foreseeable future and even if it wasn’t, businesses and consumers will not soon be lured again into the tender trap of “buy today, pay tomorrow.”

The American consumer can no longer drive two thirds of our economy and like their banks, will spend the next several years rebuilding balance sheets by paying off debt, shoring up diminished retirement accounts and accumulating cash reserves to replace buffers formerly consisting of home equity credit lines and credit cards.

As for “Stimulus” spending and it’s true impact, any relief, dubious as it is, will continue only as long as the stimulus dollars keep flowing. Don’t believe that? Just ask your local car dealer how they’re doing now that the Clunkers Cash has dried up.

Government dollars are probably well spent on temporarily extending unemployment and health care benefits until workers claw their way back into the workforce, but continuing to borrow, tax and spend to create temporary relief will cause potentially permanent and devastating damage to our economy, leaving us worse off in the long run.

It is this very prospect, the fallout of our continued fiscal irresponsibility, that is sparking interest in stripping the US dollar of it’s current de facto status as the world’s currency. A national disaster that at best would force us to quickly revert to a low-wage manufacturer nation and at worse result in a catastrophic collapse of the dollar and our economy.

In either case, a catastrophic collapse of the Democratic Party’s reign looms inevitably as the inexorably slow recovery and sustained unemployment will surely outlast the diminishing effects of empty rhetoric, impotent stimulus packages and the patience of unemployed workers.

In the mean time, President Obama and his misguided policies serve only to distract and delay the healing that only the forces of capitalism can effect; the painstaking process of reorienting, realigning, innovating and ultimately forging true and sustainable models for America’s next economic era.

World oil and gas reserves E are vastly, vastly higher than predicted:

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply – and rising fast.

“There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources,” he said.

Gas reserves in particular are seemingly immense – and, being a clean-burning fuel already, should obviate the need for “clean coal” (which is still on the drawing board).

Downside; pundits are seeing this news and saying it pre-empts the need for new nuke plants.  Let’s not get cocky, here…

There’s a war brewing in the Twin Cities metro.

It’s about  trash.

About 2/3 of the communities in the Twin Cities allow or require (depending on your point of view) residents to contract their own garbage hauling.  Saint Paul is one of them.

The rest either run it as a city service, or contract out pieces of the city to private haulers.  Minneapolis treats trash as a city service.

And at all levels governments, lobbing shots about “street repair” and “the environment”, are trying to grab that turf:

When Bill and Mary Simms got a bill for $1,800 to fix the street outside their home, they knew whom to blame — all those garbage trucks.Each week, at least five trucks rumble past to collect trash in their Fridley neighborhood. They show up as early as 6:40 a.m., waking the retirees.Bill Simms, 67, doesn’t understand why his community needs so many haulers when people in next-door Columbia Heights get by with just one. And he’s furious he has to pay to fix streets worn down by all that tonnage. “I’m fed up,” Simms said. 

It’s a common complaint in the Twin Cities, where most communities leave it to residents to hire their own trash collectors. In St. Paul, which is served by 17 haulers, officials could vote on changes this month.

Many homeowners prefer to pick their own haulers, believing that they’re getting the best rate. But they’re wrong, a study commissioned by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) concluded. 

For a 30- or 60-gallon container, those homeowners typically pay at least 50 percent more for garbage service than residents in communities like Minneapolis with organized systems, the study found.

There are other costs, too. City engineers worry about the price of fixing roads damaged by garbage and recycling trucks. Residents complain about the racket, the danger to children, and the emissions.

This is of course nothing but a push to land more unionized government jobs.

Thankfully, some people get it.  People were getting angry about trash long before we had tea parties:

But anytime officials talk about change, they confront angry constituents. Not one community has retaken control of trash collection in nearly 20 years, according to the MPCA study.

Mark Campbell, mayor of Sauk Rapids, was stunned when local officials debated how to reduce the number of garbage trucks on city streets last spring. He said it was the “ugliest meeting I’ve ever participated in.”

And as the honeymoon ends for Hope and Change, let’s hope it gets “uglier” – where “ugly”=”citizens actually exercising their first amendment right to tell government what pier to jump off of”.

I’m going to try to find the MPCA study and the Minneapolis trash budget, and see if I can answer the questions the Strib didn’t.

As Minneapolis’ confronts the idea that its city-driven “improvements” have been either squibs (Gaviidae Common, Town Square) or catastrophic failures (Block E), it’s good – and, for some Minneapolis city councilpeople, counterintuitive – to note that free enterprise is still alive.

Holy Land, a long-time destination for people who like great mediterranean food and groceries, is booming along a tatty stretch of Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis:

Holy Land Brand Inc. CEO Majdi Wadi furthered the commercial renaissance of Minneapolis’ Central Avenue corridor and the Minnesota manufacturing economy last week when he opened the state’s first hummus factory, a sparkling-new facility that produces 60,000 eight-ounce containers a month in what had been a crummy bar on 25th Avenue NE.

“We paid $1.25 million for the old Sully’s Bar [in 2007], which was appraised at $950,000 by the bank,” said Wadi. “We were shocked by the drugs and prostitution. But now, Holy Land has another business that is good for our neighborhood and city.

Sorry to hear that Sully’s – which used to make a grrrreat burger – fell on hard times.  But then, the whole neighborhood had been sliding, even when I lived there.  Good to hear that opportunity still knocks. 

Of course, when someone starts a business in Minneapolis, there’s a good chance a fiscal conservative gets his wings:

“Hennepin County rewards me by raising the property taxes. That’s OK. Wells Fargo loaned me some money, and we’re going to make a good business.”

Anyway – someone tell Michael Moore that capitalism seems to be doing pretty well by the Wadis:

A few blocks away, Holy Land, which now employs 140 people in its store, deli, restaurant and other businesses, expanded its bakery in refurbished quarters that was another derelict building at 1617 Central Av. NE.

“The revitalization of Central Avenue is immigrant-based,” said Paul Ostrow, the longtime City Council member from northeast Minneapolis. “Majdi has blazed the trail since he started making these investments more than a decade ago. He’s global with his imports and exports. He’s a success. And he also cares about Northeast.”

In an interview in his cramped, nondescript office last month, Wadi, 44, a Palestinian immigrant, repeatedly expressed thanks to neighbors and America.

Maybe we should thank him.

Yes!  Thank you, Mr. Wadi!

Note to the city of Minneapolis: don’t thank Mr. Wadi the way Saint Paul and the Met Council is “thanking” all the asian immigrants who’ve done similar work along University Avenue – by building a rail line that runs ’em all out of business.

Sweden, often held up by “progressives” as a model of socialism’s efficiency has collectively come to realize the error of it’s ways and is employing a radical tact to stimulate job growth.

Sweden’s centre-right government on Saturday announced income tax cuts…to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

[needle scratching on Abba record]

Income tax cuts! To stimulate the job market?!!!

Back here in the U.S.S.A, Obama would be focused on bolstering the job market too if it weren’t for his Magical Mystery Tour promoting health care reform that most of America doesn’t want or need, and the government can’t afford.

The proposal, to be presented to parliament on Monday as part of the 2010 budget bill, is the fourth leg of a tax cut programme introduced in January 2007 to stimulate employment.

Tax cuts stimulate employment? Really? I wonder why Obama and his stooges uber-czars haven’t thought of that (you know, cutting taxes for those that are in a position to hire employees, versus cutting taxes for those that don’t pay them)?

“The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees,” the government said.

Companies hire employees in Sweden? Naw, really? Here in America, under the Obama administration, the government hires employees. Are we missing something?

Since coming to power in late 2006, the government has launched a series of measures aimed at inciting Swedes to return to the job market instead of living off of state subsidies.

But that would require effort. Here in America we are sustained by Hope^® and Change^®.

The government said it would also propose a series of measures in the budget bill aimed at boosting incentives to start companies and improve the business climate.

Seriously, somebody should text TheOneWhoWon this innovative idea.

*from Winner Takes It All (Abba)

…says Michael Moore on Leno, promoting his next documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

Um, Michael, greed actually is legal. I’m sure you’re donating all the revenue from your film to charity then, right?

[crickets]

I can’t wait to go see his latest film because what with the economy and all, I’m a little short on cash and I’m sure a film extolling the evils of greed is…free…right?

[crickets]

Moore explained that his vision of democracy is redistributionist, and he gave no voice to the idea that self-reliance and hard work can propel one to great wealth.

“…we live in a democracy,”

“We’re supposed to have like fairness and equality.

Exactly. One citizen, one vote; and the American dream is *like* still widely available to *like* anyone willing to like do the work, at least *like* for now.

“And you know when you have a pie on the table … there’s 10 slices and one guy at the table says nine of those slices are mine…”

Gee Michael, I wonder who that guy is?

“…and the other nine of you, you can fight over the last slice. I mean that’s essentially the kind of economy we have now.”

Well, not everyone can be Michael Moore, can they?

What Michael doesn’t seem to understand is that the reason the one guy gets the nine pieces is that the other nine people don’t “go” for them, and in fact the one guy actually bakes the pie and gives the one back to the other nine.

It’s called a salary.

In America however, the recipe for the pie is public information. Anyone can bake themselves their own pie, and Moore has been doing it for a long time.

Typical liberal: A prescription for thee but not for me:

“Many people find it tough to swallow Moore’s jokes about the wealthy and then watch him fly first class at his publisher’s or film distributor’s expense to his posh home in New York City’s Central Park West, where he also sends his teenage daughter to an elite private school.”

Michael Moore is a talented filmmaker who like many in Hollywood have confused their success in the entertainment industry with an almighty ordination to entreat and admonish the minions at their feet with the gravity of their omniscient wisdom.

“Hey look everybody, it’s Madonna, arriving via private jet and limousine convoy to teach us how to ‘Go Green!'”

Moore’s hypocrisy is legendary, from investments he has made, people he has hired and then stiffed, to his own conspicuous enjoyment of the larger, juicier fruits of capitalism.

One can only imagine the sacrifices a 500-pound man has imposed on himself.

But the Hungry Hippocrit doesn’t care who knows all of this as there is always an ample supply of sycophants, unconscious objectors and serial protesters to stand in line and pay full price to see his drivel.

Which is to say, his hypocrisy hasn’t cost him a penny, so he doesn’t even bother to lift a hammy finger to conceal it.

…which pretty much makes him…a capitalist…pig.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news?  Outrage from Twin Cities’ bar owners over a ham-fisted backdoor tax hike (which we covered last March) got results; the Met Council has cut the regional sewer fee for patio seating:

Twin Cities bar and restaurant owners got a break Wednesday from the Metropolitan Council on fees charged for outdoor patio seating that help pay for the regional sewer system. One pub owner already is planning to add a patio next summer.

The Metropolitan Council approved a 75 percent discount on the fees effective Oct. 1. Restaurateurs had argued that the regional sewer-system fees they pay for outdoor dining seats, on top of what they pay for indoor seating, are excessive.

The Council was charging the same fees for outdoor patio seats – which are really useful from June through August, or April through October for people like me – as they were for indoor, year-round seating.  It made patio seating unaffordable for many restauranteurs and pub owners, like our friend Terry Keegan at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis who, unsurprisingly given the outspoken sort he is, turns up in the story.

And therein lies the “bad” news, of sorts:

Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis shut down its outdoor patio last year after city inspectors said the bar needed to pay $7,200 in regional sewer fees. Keegan’s plans to reopen the patio next year. “We wouldn’t do it at all if they didn’t bring the charge down,” owner Terry Keegan said. “We simply couldn’t afford it.”

So the patio will not, in fact, be open for Saturday’s fifth anniversary MOB gala.  But what the heck; the sidewalk’ll be nice. 

And we have a victory to celebrate now! 

Given how few and far between victories are for small businessmen, property owners and the little guy in places like the Twin Cities this past few years, it’s worth tipping a pint or two.

Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan recently observed that the U.S. is duplicating many of the policies implemented during the Great Depression. Why? Mainly because politicians lack “any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

If you’re new to Friedman’s writing, or perhaps still nostalgically influenced by his presumably serious position as a columnist for the New York Times, you might think this is merely an attention grabbing opening lede which will be smoothly integrated into an otherwise sensible opinion piece as he develops his thoughts on this. You possibly also still believe in the Easter Bunny.

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