Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Student loan fraud has nearly doubled since 2009. Something about 2009 sounds familiar. What happened in 2009?

Oh yeah, that was the last year private lenders made student loans. After 2009, the federal government took it over as part of Obamacare, so the interest paid by students would offset health care costs for poor people.

Either this is a government-run program that’s twice as corrupt as a private-run program, or half as competent. Who could have seen that coming?

joe doakes

Who could have seen it coming?

Less than 47% of the people, unfortunately.

Dems must smell their own blood in the water for next year; they’re frantically trying to attack the notion that tax cuts help create jobs…

…in the minds of those who don’t check the facts.

This one’s been popping up on Twitter lately:

State-Level Tax Cuts Don’t Boost Job Growth Study Says bit.ly/X1m24L #wiunion #wiright #p2b #inunion #nhpolitics #stribpol #topprog

— America United (@Progress2day) May 31, 2013

So I looked at the link.  It’s from “Think” Progress, which is always a good sign that you’re about to descend into the fever swamp.

And it says…:

The five states that implemented deep tax cuts during the 1990s experienced slower job growth over the next economic cycle than states that did not, and none of those states experienced income growth that exceeded inflation, CBPP found:

And what states were those?

The post doesn’t mention ’em.  You have to look at the fine print on the handy graph they included:

Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts and New York?

Five states that were pretty much boom economies throughout the 2000s before the crash (perhaps because of the tax cuts in the 90s)?   States that in most cases had very little room for job growth – before the crash (at which point the “study” conks out), anyway?

This is sort of like the Dems’ slur against Romney – the Massachusetts economy grew slower when he was Governor (because it was already pretty much steaming along at full bore)!

Distrust, but verify.  Then, almost invariably, distrust some more.

Less than half of the wealth lost in the recession has come back in the “recovery”:

From the peak of the boom to the bottom of the bust, households watched a total of $16 trillion in wealth disappear amid sinking stock prices and the rubble of the real estate market. Since then, Americans have only been able to recapture 45 percent of that amount on average, after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to the report from the St. Louis Fed released Thursday.

In addition, the report showed most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, which primarily benefit wealthy families. That means the recovery for other households has been even weaker.

To the extent unemployment is down, it’s in part-time jobs.  The average hours worked per week has dropped in recent months.

No.  You are not better off than you were four years ago.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minnesota House passes an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour.

Sure, it’s the highest in the nation; but if they made it $100 per hour, we could ALL be rich.

Cheap bastards.

Joe Doakes

Where’s the ambition to do Big Things, Joe?

Make it $500 an hour.  In a 2000 hour year, that makes everyone a millionaire!

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The federal government spent $890,000 on maintenance fees for bank accounts with no money in them. Watchdog groups say the government should close the accounts faster. They’re missing the point.

Suppose Congress gives Dog Gone a $500,000 grant to study how assault weapons exacerbate global warming. The government opens an account to hold the funds, Dog Gone receives period draws until the money is spent, and afterwards, the government audits the expenditures to make sure they were proper for grant funds. If not, Dog Gone must repay the money – so naturally, the account must be held open for her to pay the money into. If it takes a few years to complete the audit, the government pays fees to maintain an empty account.

The underlying premise is the government should give grants in the first place. Reject the premise. Don’t give her the grant. Then there would be no account to pay maintenance fee on. We’d save far more than the million in maintenance fees.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Talk about attacking symptoms…

One of the left’s favorite chanting points this past few months has been that, supposedly, Minnesota’s job growth under an all-Democrat regime has outstripped that of newly-Republican Wisconsin.

Conservatives responded that Wisconsin was shaking off the after-effects of decades of “progressive” incompetence, and would take a while, while in the meantime Minnesota was still coasting on having had ten years of one combination of GOP governor or legislature or another.

Well, the coasting’s stopped:

There was a “substantial vacation” in U.S. entrepreneurial activity last year—but nowhere was it as pronounced as in Minnesota.
That’s according to The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, a report compiled by the Kansas City, Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The study essentially defines entrepreneurial activity as being tied to the launch of new businesses, and it is meant to serve as an indicator of business-creation activity across the United States.
The report found that there was a national lull in entrepreneurship in 2012, when roughly 514,000 entrepreneurs opened new businesses each month, down from 543,000 in 2011.
The report defines entrepreneurial activity based on how many adults per 100,000 residents started a new business each month during the year. Minnesota fared the worst, with only about 150 out of 100,000 residents opening businesses on a monthly basis.

Minnesota has always been a difficult place to start a business.

Run a Fortune 500?  That’s a whole ‘nother thing – although ask yourselves how many Fortune 500s based in the Twin Cities are building non-retail operations in the state these days.

But how about Wisconsin?

This MPR story a few months back shows that while Wisconsin is lagging, a big part of the reason is that the Badgers are overcoming so much negative intertia from when the Democrats had full reign over the place.

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG is standing in the line for car tabs at the Saint Paul Sears with Avery LIBRELLE)

LIBRELLE:  I saw your blog post about the restaurant in Mower County that is offering discounts for gun nuts who bring guns into their restaurants.

BERG:  Yeah.  That’s pretty cool.

LIBRELLE:  I’m sure there’ll be a mass shooting there soon.

BERG:  (shakes head silently, with deep weariness)

LIBRELLE:  What this does mean is that they should raise their minimum wage.

BERG:  (wearily)  OK, I’ll bite.  Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Because the owner is giving away money.

BERG:  Er…huh?

LIBRELLE:   Discounts.  That’s money he’s giving away.  That means he could afford to increase his staff’s wages.

BERG:   Er, the discount – leaving aside the extent to which it might be a personal protest statement – is what’s called a “loss leader”.  It’s designed to get people to come out, bring their non-gun-carrying friends – to get people in the door.  Once they’re through the door, that’s more traffic, more word of mouth, more potential to win over customers that keep coming back and spending more money.

Sort of like when Chipotle has their Free Burrito Day.  They lose money on that day’s burritos – but hopefully create loyal repeat customers who come back later to pay full price.

LIBRELLE:  Well, if they can do that, they can afford to pay the dish washers and waitresses and counter staff more.

BERG:  Er, why do you think businesses do that?

LIBRELLE:  Because they’re rolling in money at the expense of the worker!

BERG:  No, it’s to increase business.  It’s called Marketing, and Advertising; spending a little money so that there’s more business, which in turn brings in more money, which eventually goes into things like paying off investors and turning a profit and expanding and remodeling and buying a new oven and, by the bye, salaries.   Because a successful restaurant can afford to give a raise, while an unsuccessful one can’t even retain workers.

LIBRELLE:  Giving away the workers’ money in this way is like the Bush Tax Cuts.  That money is needed.

BERG:  Government doesn’t need to advertise or market.  And even if the money were “the workers’ money”, it’s part of marketing a business, to try to make it successful  Like spending money on advertising, or on having clean restrooms and unripped seats, or laminated menus, or quality ingredients and attractive preparation and presentation; it’s about making people come to your business, and then making them want to come back.

But – and I can’t stress this enough – the business’ revenue is not “the workers’ money”.  The person or people who started and run the restaurant – which provides the jobs for “the workers” – has the job of using that money to the business’ best advantage, to promote and maintain the business.  Which includes paying salaries.

LIBRELLE:  It’s more important that they pay the salaries.  Without the workers, the owner is nothing.

BERG:  Er, what now?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the workers that make the business.  Without the workers, there’d be no business.

BERG:  I’m sure that’s news to every sole-proprietor entrepreneur out there…

LIBRELLE:  Look at Bain Capital.  Mitt Romney didn’t even show up to work for months at a time.  And yet the janitors had to show up every day.  Bain could have prospered without Romney, but not without janitors.  The janitors deserved the money more than Romney.

BERG:  (Stands, gobsmacked in stunned silence)

LIBRELLE:  Without those janitors, Bain would have failed.

BERG:  So you’re saying that janitors can manage venture capital better than managers can empty trash and sweep floors?  Or that restaurants would spontaneously form in Mower County without someone to rent a building, set up a kitchen and a counter and some tables and buy some inventory and hire and train some cooks and waiters and dishwashers.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not.

BERG:   OK, then…

LIBRELLE:  I’m saying that without janitors sweeping the floors, the capital would never have been managed.  Without a dishwasher, there’d be no restaurant.

LOUDSPEAKER:  “Number 36”

BERG:  Oh, that’s my number.  What’s yours?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, I don’t have one.  I just love hanging out here.

BERG:  (shuffling toward the window)  You what?

LIBRELLE:   Yeah.  It’s a great lesson on how business should work!

BERG:  Huh.  Wow.  And to think some people say liberals don’t understand business.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Right?

(And SCENE)

(more…)

Over the past couple of days, critics – and a few parents – are making the usual outraged noises about MSNBC chat-bot Melissa Harris-Perry and her notion that parents’ idea that they, rather than government and society, are responsible for their children.

On the one hand, the news consumer needs to allow for the fact that Harris-Perry is a media figure who needs to create some sort of commotion to rise above the fray, especially at flailing MSNBC.

On the other?  The notion that government and our “elites” really do believe that they are lending our kids to us at their own sufferance is out there in many slightly-less-obvious ways.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeik are a German couple.  They’re Christians, they’re from Germany, and they brought their three (now six) children to the US when they were threatened with imprisonment for trying to home-school their kids.

And as much opprobium as American society – pop culture, the educational-industrial complex and the like – put on home-schooling here, it’s nothing compared to Germany:

Home schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, when school attendance was made compulsory, and parents who choose to homeschool anyway face financial penalties and legal consequences, including the potential loss of custody of their children.

And so the Romeikes, like many before them, came to the US.

To escape such legal action, the family fled to the United States in 2008 and was granted political asylum in 2010, eventually making their home in Tennessee. U.S. law states that individuals can qualify for asylum if they can prove they are being persecuted because of their religion or because they are members of a particular “social group.”

Now – do you consider risking prison and losing your children over choosing to raise their children in a way that is considered perfectly more or less perfectly normal in the US a form of persecution?

I certainly do.

But not the Obama administration:

The board overturned the initial asylum decision, arguing that homeschoolers are not a particular social group because they don’t meet certain legal standards, The board said that the home-schooled population is too vague and amorphous to constitute a social group.

“People who reject the local educational system” – as millions do in the United States with varying but usually minimal repercussions – aren’t a “social group?”

Apparently the only “social groups” the Obama Administration recognizes are the ones that chant about “the 1%”…

Now the family is fighting that decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case on April 23.

“We think we have a pretty strong case,” Romeike family attorney Michael Donnelly told ABC News. “We feel that what Germany is doing by preventing this family and a lot of other families from exercising their rights in the education of their children violates a fundamental human right,” he said.

Donnelly says the right of parents to decide the direction of their child’s education has been established in Article 26, section 3 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

Most people don’t realize that compulsory education was part of a process established by Prime Minister Bismark in the 1870s to keep the German government, military and economy fed with the proper ratio of people; 10% officers/management/professionals, 30% non-commissioned officers/foremen/tradespeople, 60% soldiers and sailors/laborers and farmers.  People in manufacturing and retail would call it “supply chain sourcing”.  And the Big System can no more allow parents a role in the supply chain than WalMart can allow a company to hand-whittle their furniture their own way.

Fewer people realize that the likes of Horace Mann adapted the system to the United States in the early 1900s, and for more or less the same reasons.

Over the decades since – decades where people placed misguided trust in government – it became largely accepted that the government school (or parochial schools that largely aped the government style, with uniforms and some carefully-measured religious instruction thrown in for good measure) was not just the best way to educate kids – it was the only way.  That was intentional; public schools are a supply chain source, no less than the ones in Germany; it’s just that the manufacturing standards have changed since the 1960s.

Which is why the idea of school choice – home schooling, charter schools and open enrollment – was so openly and actively denigrated by the establishment.

So the Romeike case will be an interesting barometer of how the Administration views this key human rights issue.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It happened once, when the government ran out of money in the midst of a Depression.

Could it happen again?

Good question.

On the one hand, you’d hope people would learn from history.

On the other hand, government isn’t “people” in the sense of “individuals acting in concert toward the mean of their best interests”.

And the record throughout history of “governments empaneled by waves of populist fervor on platforms involving mostly giving stuff to people” just isn’t all that good.

Adam Carolla on the effects of welfare on its recipients:

Sorry to post Bill O’Reilly, but it’s where the quotes are:

O’REILLY: Did she ever discuss that with you? What was her attitude about getting the assistance from other people?

CAROLLA: Her attitude was, one day when I said to her from the mouth of babes, I just said: Mom, why don’t you just get a job and then we wouldn’t have to do all this. And she said, if I get a job, I’ll lose my welfare. And, she really should have just handed me a pack of cigarettes at that point, because it’s probably the worst thing you could do to a nine year old.

But I learned, at that point, that this is valuable. I don’t have the white privilege guilt that many other people in the media have. I understand what it’s like to be on the dole. And it doesn’t make these people any stronger. You hobble these people; you take away the one thing they have, which is dignity, and the ability to pull them out of this mire. And they can’t because you’ve atrophied their muscles by doing everything for them.

So here’s my question:  in the unlikely event Lefties accept Carolla’s statement (as opposed to excoriating and symbolically excommunicating him from the lefty communion), will those same people apologize to Mary Franson, who said essentially exactly the same thing last year?

Just curious.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The European Union told Cyprus it had to raise 6 billion Euros in order to get 4 billion more from the EU to bail out its banks. Cyprus waited until banks closed last Friday to announce a “one-time” tax on bank accounts. Accounts with less than 100,000 Euros would pay 6.75%; larger accounts would pay 9.9%, all automatically deducted and sent to Berlin.

The idea is . . . unpopular. Cypriot banks are still closed to avoid massive runs of people trying to grab their money before the government does.

It occurs to me, this isn’t a new concept. Didn’t Larry Pogemiller propose a shift away from income taxes toward net worth taxes about six years ago, in a bid to shift the burden of paying for a Nicer Minnesota away from “working families” over to “wealthy retirees?” I don’t remember the automatic deduction feature in his plan, but the basic idea is the same. In fact, it’s older than that. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”

To heck with being an outlaw, Willie should have been a government bureaucrat! He was just ahead of his time, is all.

Luckily, that could never happen here. The President might have the Constitutional power to drop Hellfire missiles on unsuspecting Americans, but he can’t just take money out of their bank accounts. He can’t, right? Right?

Joe Doakes

Don’t be silly.

We’re “doing fine”.

The Shorter Anti-Unionization Activist: “Unionization would force us to,raise prices. Forcing us to unionize to accept state aid payments would cause me to stop accepting kids who get state assistance. Providers can already join the union; in eight years, out of 11,000 providers, exactly 57 have joined. I already work hard on improving the quality of the care I provide. By the way, the stories of unethical behavior on union reps’ parts in the card check process are true and omnipresent. We are independent businesspoeple! If we wanted to work inside of a larger organization, we’d have stayed with our old careers!

The Shorter Rep. Nelson (author of the union jamdown bill, and a carpenters union activist in his per-legislative life): Unions all help provide better quality care, training, and standards.

The Shorter Response To Nelson From Providers: Um, those are the job, in order, of existing licensing authorities, and myself.

The Shorter Pro-union Daycare Provider: I’m a loving nurturing person. I teach my kids. Aren’t teachers unionized?

The Shorter Union AFSCME Rep’s Case, with the actual thought completed in parentheses This bill won’t force anyone into a union! (It’ll merely give a mass of unlicensed fly-by-night providers the right to compel all you licensed providers to unionize to if you get state money.

The Shorter Committee Chair Joe Mullery: Unions don’t skim anything.  

The Shorter Mary Franson (leading opponent of jamdown, and a former provider herself):. This bill isn’t about improving care. It’s about enriching union officials and funneling dues money to the DFL-supporting unions.

The Shorter Carly Melin (27-year old second term rep who was carted directly to her district after graduating from Hamline Law just in time to meet residency requirements, and neither has kids nor any notable non-legislative post-law-school job history): Hey! Don’t insult the unions!

The Shorter Results:. Six in-the-bag-for-the-unions DFLers “yes”, five Republivans “no”.

A look back at Sequestration after 13 hours.

I can only assume things have gotten worse.

I got this via email today from a regular correspondent who works for a state agency; I’ll add emphasis to the key parts:

 “A friend of mine at [another state agency] told me about the hype and reality of his situation.”

“The national association to which the state agency is affiliated with has sent out a series of communications intended to raise anxiety about sequestration. The national association declares that almost 1 million vulnerable Americans will lose their health care services due to sequestration. The actual effect on my friend’s local agency is that their federal financial allocation will drop by 4%. This drop is after increases totaling almost one third more in 2013 compared to 2008. The actual amount of the sequestration cut can be absorbed by cutting the local agency’s travel budget by about 40%. The largest cuts at the national level will be to reduce the expansion of the program, not cuts to existing clients.”

Guesstimating the net effect in federal dollars on this state agency; a 4% reduction in aid that’s risen 33-odd% in four years takes the agency back to, er, August of 2012.

Once upon a time P. J. O’Rourke said that this sort of budgeting – “Baseline Budgeting”, where all increases and decreases are relative to the previous budget – allows both sides to look at a budget that reduces an increase, claim simultaneously that the budget increases spending and cuts spending, and both be telling the truth and lying.

Anyone who “survived” the 2011 “government shutdown” recognizes this sort of ofay alarmism.

Hopefully a majority of the rest of the country does, too.

To:  Everyone in the USA
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant who’s been through it all before
Re:  “Sequestration”

Hey, everyone,

You may not remember this, but we’ve been through all this before.  Remember the “partial government shutdown”, back in the nineties?  It was a whole big nothing-burger.

Oh, the Clinton Administration tried to make sure that the people felt whatever pain was generated – closing parks, cramping down on the voters.  But as a rule, the whole thing affected nobody.

And here in Minnesota, we had a “complete” shutdown two years ago (which, again, wasn’t – the courts kept most of the government going as “essential”).  It lasted a few weeks.  Then Governor Messinger Dayton abandoned it, when he realized Minnesotans, for all his efforts to squeeze and scare them – shutting down state parks and highway rest areas, threatening to lay off teachers – barely noticed any difference.  While the media did its best to prop up the Messinger Dayton line, the people of Minnesota heard the gales of calumny but saw and felt a big fat nada burrito.  Even Governor Messinger Dayton – as cosseted and isolated from reality as his staff keeps him – noticed; on his trip around the state to whip up support for the DFL budget, he saw tepid crowds of union droogs, and a few professional protesters, and realized he had nothin’ (which may be why Dayton makes so few public appearances these days).

So it’s time for “sequestration” – the “radical” budget cuts that Obama and the super-di-duper commission agreed to as a stick to lead everyone to the “carrot” of an actual federal budget.  We’ve been waiting nearly 1,400 days for a budget from the Democrat-addled Senate, so Washington figured a “stick” was needed.

By the way – how radical and drastic are those cuts?:

Yep. They’re not even cuts.  They’re reductions in the increase.  Indeed, almost completely worthless, if cutting spending is your goal, but really nothing but a fart in the wind; sort of like “dropping HBO” in your family budget, even though your gas bill is rising and your teenage kids are costing more and more.

Obama will try to make “sequestration” hurt; he’ll slow down the TSA lines, he’ll gundeck some ship overhauls and clamp down some military maintenance budgets, he’ll inveigle some big cities to lay off a few cops and teachers, he’ll shut down Yellowstone as the cameras record photos of crestfallen children.  Hell, Joe Biden may even personally try to close the gates at Disney World.

But there is no there, there.  It’s a scare tactic, engineered by Obama and his compliant media.

It needs to be ignored.

That is all.

Matt Yglesias, a deeply logic-challenged person with a grievously warped sense of moral order, is nothing if not a reliable toady of the Obama Administration, or for that matter any other Democrat for whom he shills.

And so it’s truly crocodile tears I cry for him as he relates the difficulties involved in starting a small business in the City That Big Progressive Bureaucracy built, Washington DC:

My wife and I bought a new place, and instead of selling our old condo, we’re going to rent it out. And thus I became a small-business man.

Or, rather, I’m becoming one. Entrepreneurship—even on the smallest and most banal scale—turns out to be a time-consuming pain in the you-know-what. My personal inconveniences aren’t a big deal, but in the aggregate, the difficulty of launching a business is a problem and it may be a more important one as time goes on.

Why yes, Matt. It just may be.

He relates in painstaking detail the rigamarole it takes to set up a “business” whose only product is an overpriced condo:

In the District of Columbia, I need to get a simple Basic Business License to rent out a single dwelling. After puzzling over the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs website for a bit, it became clear that step No. 1 was actually to file form FR-500 with the Office of Tax and Revenue, which you can do online. Then it was time to hustle down to the DCRA (which closes at 4:30 p.m.) to file the paperwork. Once there, I learned that filing the FR-500 online wasn’t good enough—I needed a hard copy. Fortunately, the Office and Tax and Revenue was right across the street, so I went there and refiled. Then it was back to the DCRA to stand in line to get a number, wait for the number to be called…

It goes on from there.

Yglesias does make one good observation…:

Not that I expect your pity. I don’t even pity myself. Going through the process, I mostly felt lucky to be a fluent-English-speaking college graduate with a flexible work schedule. But the presence of a stray pamphlet offering translation into Spanish, Chinese, or Amharic seemed like it would be only marginally useful to an immigrant entrepreneur. A person who needs to be at her day job from 9 to 5 would have a huge problem even getting to these offices while they’re open.

Yep.  Very, very true.

Yglesias asked for this kid of government – and I don’t mean in the figurative, “you voted for Barack Rex, take your medicine, Ivy-League hamster!” sense of the term.  I mean literally; one of his articles was  entitled “Regulation Breeds Innovation“.

It does indeed.  Black markets and off-the-books sublets are, in fact, a form of innovation.

Side note:  He didn’t build that.

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 close the deficit, which is a dodgy proposition, given how tax hikes crush economic growth.

Question:  Which example do you suppose the MN DFL is emulating as they cackle madly over their word-processors today, cranking out bills by the pound?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

No less respected economist than Paul Krugman is recommending the US pay down its national debt by minting a Trillion-Dollar Coin. He suggests it be made of platinum because that’s really valuable. I say it should be rubber, not only because “rubber check” accurately captures its value, but because there’s precedent.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.”

Obviously, we won’t call it a Ningi, that sounds weird (and we’d owe Doug Adams royalties). We’ll call it a $1 trillion dollar coin. But why stop at one? Why not go all out and issue 16 trillion-dollar coins to pay off the entire national debt completely?

And while we’re at it, why not raise the minimum wage to $100 so we’ll all be rich? And throw in free cosmetic surgery, paid for by Obamacare.

Rich, handsome, debt free . . . now THAT’s the kind of Hope and Change I was looking for.

Joe Doakes

Como Park.

I’m afraid to ask an esteemed economist like Prostetnic Vogon Krugman how we’re going to pay for a trillion dollars worth of platinum – or what that’ll do to the world’s platinum supply.

To:  Dave Mindeman
From:  Mitch Berg, Non-Physicist
Re:  Elementary Logic

Mr. Mindeman,

I had yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast this morning.  Then the sun rose.

Clearly, the yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice caused the sun to rise.

Thus, I owe it to humanity to have yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice tomorrow, lest the world be plunged into darkness.

You might respond “but Mitch, your breakfast didn’t cause the sun to rise!”.

To which I’d reply “No, it is a FACT!  I had my yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice.  And then the sun rose!”

You might reply “Mitch, that’s just stupid.  You’re taking a correlation between two factoids and claiming causation.  You’re ignoring the fact that the earth is rotating on its axis once a day, giving the sun the appearance of rising in the east…”

“Dave, Dave, Dave.  Bubbeleh.  You’re rationalizing.  And clearly afraid of something.  Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go play “Moby Dick” on the tabletop with pencils, to prevent the volcano from blowing up under Los Angeles.  Again”.

That is all.

(more…)

October:  Millionaire pop stars campaign relentlessly for Barack Obama.

November:  Pop stars campaign against big government being involved in their livelihoods:

A coalition of 125 celebrity musicians, including pop singer Katy Perry, have joined forces with anti-tax advocates including Grover Norquist and the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) to oppose an intellectual property “reform” bill that critics charge expands government to the detriment of the free market.

Opponents say the Internet Radio Fairness Act, being pushed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), would mandatorily lower the licensing fees paid by Internet radio giant Pandora, moving the royalties system further away from a free market and instead entrenching a system in which government sets compensation rates while picking winners and losers.

It reminds me of the celebs who’d campaign for gun control and then turn around and use their celebrity, money and pull to get carry permits for themselves (Bill Cosby) or their bodyguards (Rosie O’Donnell).

And don’t get me wrong – I’m all for getting government out of as much of the market as we can, while we can.

But it’s the hypocrisy, stupid Katie

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Commenter “Troy” posted a great quip on a prior column, it deserves a post of its own:

***

President Barak “Underpants” Obama’s Plan for the Nation:

Step 1: unlimited debt

Step 2: ?

Step 3: Prosperity!

***

Genius!

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Neither Troy nor I are the first to note that Obama’s economic policy resembles this cartoon…

…which is famous among engineers and scientists, but not so much among liberal politicos.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Why Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Geithner says there shouldn’t be a debt limit for the federal government.

On the other hand, we can be certain most of that $23,000,000,000,000.00 is Bush’s fault. Must be. Somehow. So I suppose that’s okay, then.

I still haven’t figured out The Plan. We can run up unlimited debt without any consequences because, why, exactly?

We don’t have enough money to fund day-to-day operations so we take an operating loan. Fine, but doesn’t that loan eventually get repaid meaning someday you expect not only to have enough money to fund day-to-day operations, but also surplus money to pay down the principal? How many rich people do we have and can we possibly tax them enough to pay off that kind of debt? If now, what’s the plan for retiring the debt?

Alternatively, if the plan is not to repay it but to keep printing money, doesn’t that result in Weimar or Zimbabwe inflation and economic ruin?

I don’t understand it. Fine, I’m ignorant, explain it. But the politicians can’t explain it in a way that I can understand it. So either I’m ignorant AND stupid, or they’re bullshitting me and have no solution but won’t admit it. I concede the possibility of the former but I suspect the latter.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I’m trying to figure out what the Dem’s campaign to make unlmited debt seem normal, even good – because that’s what they’ve done for every perversion of reality they’ve inveigled the American people into accepting – is going to look like.

I’m going to guess:

• Steven Colbert starts sarcastically referring to things he thinks are dumb (and the audience, via his neo-Skinnerian satire training, therefore thinks are smart) as “Debt-y”.
• Have that dumpy-looking hYpStR chick from the “your first time” video do a cutesy video about “your twenty trillionth time”.

More?

Do I even need to say it?

Nationwide, it was a 50-50 election, aided by a media that gave up most pretense of legitimacy to play praetorian guard, and a turnout machine that was, frankly,pretty flawless.

It wasn’t helped by Romney’s campaign’s epic technical bobble – putting all its swing-state GOTV efforts into a technical basket that hadn’t even been stress-tested, and which failed miserably under pressure on election day.

But we held the US House.  Unlike 2008, Obama at least has a speed bump or two in his way.

As to Minnesota – well, Katie bar the door.  I’d bet on a budget over $40 billion, and taxes to match.  I’d also bet that Minnesota companies accelerate pushing their blue-collar operations across the borders to North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Mexico and points west.   We’ll still have lots of Fortune 500 companies here, in the same way New York has a lot of them.  But the people who do the building, manufacturing, servicing, warehousing, planning, programming?  These jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.

The good news?  The Senate elected Dave Hann and some of his best Tea Party underclassmen to leadership – Dave Thompson, Roger Chamberlain and the like . The House leadership under Kurt Kaudt should be similarly aligned to – I hope, dear Lord, I hope – tell the DFL to go pound sand when they try to put a “bipartisan” veneer on their excesses.

After leaving this state with no significant tax hikes, a stable unemployment rate and no deficit, it should be a stark contrast with the state we see in two years.

Joe Doakes, perhaps in a bit of a blank verse mood, emails:

Some parents aren’t competent to pick their own children’s lunch menus

So their kids are fat

And develop health problems

Which the parents can’t afford to pay to treat

And which society isn’t willing to leave untreated

Because children shouldn’t suffer for their parents incompetence

So we treat the children

And we pay for it

And it costs a lot

Which runs up the deficit

Which we should prevent

By reducing spending on sick kids

By reducing the number of fat kids

By stopping kids from getting fat

By picking their lunch menus for them

Using union public employee lunch menu pickers

Who receive wages and health insurance benefits

Which cost a lot

Which runs up the deficit

Until the money runs out

And society collapses

So we go back to letting parents set their own kids’ lunch menus

And some kids get fat

And they develop health problems

But their parents can’t afford to pay for treatment

Because society has collapsed

Because we ran up the deficit

By hiring union public employee lunch menu pickers

Instead of letting parents pick their kids lunch menus

And letting children suffer because for their parents incompetence

The way they’ll have to suffer

When society has collapsed

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Joe should read this at a poetry slam sometime soon.

Joe Doakes from Como Park wrote last week:

On this day in 1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States.

The last budget of the United States was proposed by the Senate on April 29, 2009.

So have generally accepted accounting principles become obsolete or are they simply being ignored and if so, by whom and why?

Joe Doakes,
Como Park

Once it goes past “Quicken”, I’m lost…