Shot in the Dark

Category: The Great Recession

  • The World Tax is Flat

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

  • Taxes Kill

    We’ve known it for decades; raising taxes in a recession is stupid, stupid, stupid. But being a liberal means believing history just doesn’t apply to you: CME Group Inc. is evaluating whether to move some operations to other states from Chicago to reduce its taxes, but it has not decided on an exact timeline, CEO Craig…

  • Chanting Points Memo: “Reagan Was A Moderate!”

    Two things that make me think “something’s just not right here”, and warrant some investigation: Teenagers asking “so, are you going out Friday night?” Liberals citing Reagan. Lately, there’s been a plague of liberals, in print/blogs/on Twitter, stating without fear of contradiction (because, if you’re a Twin Cities liberal, nobody has ever contradicted you) that…

  • “Housing At Any Cost” Costs A Lot

    Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: If I am funding an agency whose mission is to promote home ownership among low-income clients but a substantial percentage of those clients are losing their homes and thereby ending up worse off than before they started – foreclosed, credit ruined and evicted – at what point should I…

  • Afflicting The Afflicted

    From the lefty playbook; compare apples to distributor caps, then use the results to give ones’ supporters the sense of victimizaiton that, you hope, will keep them chanting on cue. So with this bit from the City Pages: Minnesotans who can’t afford their rent outnumber those who can, according to a new study released today,…

  • Why Does Eric Pusey Hate Taxpayers And Property Owners?

    As Reagan once said, “It’s not that liberals lie.  It’s just that they say so many things that are not so”. Now, if you’ve read this blog for a while, you know two things: I, among very few partisan bloggers in the Twin Cities, make a concerted effort to try not only to remain civil,…

  • Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places

    I almost feel sorry for Barack Obama. He’s traveling the world over, looking for some love, and coming up empty. America handed him an epic rejection of virtually everything he has “accomplished”  just two years in. Knowing fully well what was coming, he skipped the country on a trade mission, a multi-bazillion-dollar entourage in tow,…

  • Don’t Fight the Fed

    …fire the Fed. Yesterday we learned the American economy added more jobs than expected. While it was not enough to budge the 9.6% unemployment figure, it was a surprise to everyone…including the Federal Reserve who had just announced a $600 billion dollar initiative to create economic “stimulus” via buying back government debt. This essentially pushes…

  • Nuance

    I’m not going to say that the most frustrating arguments are the ones where your opponent reduces your case to its most absurd extreme. You:  I think it’d be fun to go to Burger King. Opponent:  Why do you hate McDonald’s? You get used to arguments like this if you have junior high kids, psychotic…

  • The Plan Progresses

    While the global economic meltdown has caused immense problems, it might have dealt a major jump ahead to my plan to have my own island nation: The Greek state must sell stakes in companies and also assets such as, for example, unpopulated islands,” Frank Schäffler, a member of parliament for the pro-business Free Democrats, told…

  • Please Sir, I Want Some More

    1977:  Home ownership should be increased via government incentives and if necessary penalties for those that don’t lend money to people that can’t pay it back. Result:  The Great Recession. 2009: Access to banking services should be increased via government incentives and if necessary penalties for those that don’t offer banking services to people that…

  • Don’t Blame Geithner…It’s All of ‘Em

    Last quarter’s “numbers” confirm that the stimulus didn’t stimulate, clunkers was one, the unemployed are still growing in ranks and the consumer is still cowering at home. Democrats are looking for someone to take the fall when in fact they are all making exactly the wrong moves economically, and soon time will show, politically. One…

  • Nowhere to Hide

    Check this out.

  • The Democrats Haven’t Squashed the Entrepreneur Yet

    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…

  • Less Clams for the Yams This Year

    The silver lining in The Great Recession…you can afford to invite more in-laws over this Thanksgiving. This year’s survey, released yesterday, put the cost of feeding 10 people at $42.91. The grocery bill fell 3.8 percent, the steepest reduction since its 4.3 percent drop at the start of this decade. The slump was also the…

  • It’s Already Too Late for Barry Obama

    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…

  • A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

    Interesting webtoy from the NYTimes for figuring and visualizing unemployment trends by demography, age, gender and edumacation. White college educated males (Mitch raises hand) over 45 are around 4.1% so far.  Which is up from somewhere around 2% two years ago.  Rates for women in pretty much every combination seem to be lower than for…

  • Keith, You Ignorant Slut

    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…

  • The Stimulus is Coming, The Stimulus is Coming!

    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…

  • You Could Learn Something From A Former Radio Guy

    When I was getting into the voice-over business, I encountered an “agent” who said that for a small fee – I think it was $100 – they’d start representing me to potential clients. Fortunately I went to Don Vogel, who was a highly-experienced V/O guy, and whose show I’d been producing for a while.  He…

  • Stimulus Simulus

    I was biking on a Three Rivers bike trail in and around my home in Hennepin County today and came upon some young workers building a little area of stairs onto the biking/walking trail from a park. They had arrived in an official Hennepin County van, so I would have to assume that they were…

  • Selling It

    Obama and his ilk are selling the July economic numbers, telling us the stimulus is working, the recession is ending and the economy is on the mend. Businesses shed “just” 247,000 jobs in July, far fewer than the 330,000 most economists and Wall Street analysts were looking for. As bad as that still sounds, July’s…

  • Because I Say So

    The Teleprompter in Chief™ defies reality, regurgitating well-worn propaganda that flies in the face of reality as revealed in real numbers. President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy. “It has already extended…

  • That’s Not What We Meant

    President BHO enlisted the support of our forefathers against their will in his 4th of July radio address. He said the same “unyielding spirit” that drove the pioneers and Depression-era workers was needed now to push for a national health care overhaul, make major energy policy changes, and deal with a struggling economy, he said…

  • The Californication of America

    Its easy for the rest of America to disassociate with the fiscal crisis in California. After all, it represents a bigger-than-life culture of Hollywood, celebrities, extreme lifestyles and a Bush-era “conservative” Guvernator. Even more so in Minnesota where our culture and demographics make us an unlikely analog. Nonetheless, we are subject to national policies now…