Community Organizing a Race War

This fits right into his pattern.

President Obama said that if economic prescriptions of the type he supports to increase economic growth and reduce “income inequality” are not adopted, then race relations in the United State may deteriorate further.

“If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise,” Obama said in an interview published Sunday by the New York Times. “Racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot. If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested, ” he said.

 --quoted at Gateway Pundit

 Holder's doing spadework on the same project.

There's a reason for that "income inequality", of course.  It's called ObamaCare

Leaky Lois Lerner and the Fifth

It's no wonder that "Leaky" Lois took the fifth before Congress.

Seems like this linked essay points to several criminal violations of IRS law, not to mention several dozen items which fall right into line with typical (D) "ethics."

Obozo's "Economic Growth"

One point seven% GDP growth in 2Q13.

Oh--by the way--the 1Q13 "growth" was revised from 1.8% down to 1.1%.  Yah, that's all "sequester" according to the wonzo Left.

Except that the "sequester" is an infinitesimal percentage of GDP.

The ObozoCare Earnings Trap

SanFranNan strikes again!

...Under the ACA, federal subsidies in the form of tax credits to buy insurance on new state health insurance exchanges will be available to millions of people who can start enrolling on those exchanges Oct. 1. The subsidies are available to people or families whose incomes total 400 percent above the federal poverty level or less, and are designed to cap their insurance premiums at 9.5 percent of their total income.

For a single person, that FPL income maximum is $45,960 per year. The maximums are adjusted upward for couples and families until maxing out at $94,200 for a family of four.

Under a scenario that ValuePenguin.com identified, a couple in Ohio, both age 50, would be eligible for subsidies worth $3,452 to purchase a so-called silver insurance plan—a moderately priced level of benefits under the ACA’s scheme—that costs $9,346 annually if they made up to $62,040 per year.

But if they made just $1 more than that, they would lose the subsidy. Wu noted that the couple then would have to earn at least $65,492 to make up for the lost subsidy...--Quoted at AmSpecBlog

The second highlight is the point of the original article.

But it's worth re-reading the first highlight:  ObozoCare premiums will snatch NINE AND A HALF PERCENT of your income. 

That's "free" health-care, right?

Friend of Barak? "Good" Romney!

There are two kinds of private-equity folks.  Evil Romneys, and Good Friends of Barak.

...Homeowner Schulte deserves special attention. If this deep-pocketed donor and private-equity whiz were a Republican, the Occupy hordes and left-wing super-PACs would have made him a household name by now. The SEIU already would have picketed his private residence. Cher, Bette Midler and Chris Rock would be tweeting furiously about this privileged white robber baron in all caps.

Schulte, you see, earned his money in much the same way the demonized Mitt Romney did: through corporate restructuring and rescuing debt-burdened companies. He and his former partner, Sam Zell, have happily embraced the nickname “grave dancers” since the early 1990s. By 1993, their billion-dollar “vulture fund” based in Chicago had purchased all or part of Jacor Communications, the embattled media conglomerate; Sealy Corporation, the mattress empire; and the distressed Schwinn Bicycle Company.
The duo also scooped up Santa Fe Energy Resources (an oil and gas company) through a partnership and refinanced Revco D.S., the drugstore chain. Schulte called his financial playground “the land of broken dreams,” according to the Los Angeles Times, which described the partners as “bottom-fishing.”...

Nevermind.  B Hussein's staying at his little Martha's Vineyard place later this summer.

Making Brookfield (and Fox Point) Into Milwaukee

You all recall "smart growth" plots, of course. 

They're back--on steroids--with the Obozo Regime.

...What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?

A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push is well underway. Yet the president doesn’t discuss his regionalist moves and the press does not report them.

...The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities.

*Ahem*  Remember that every single township, village, and municipality in the USA is a "recipient of federal aid" by one route or another.

Your New Berlin problem is about to become your Brookfield and Fox Point problem.

The skulduggery is operative in the San Francisco Bay area.  (Yes, they deserve it.  Nonetheless....):

...In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.

A regional plan that blocks traditional suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this scale is virtually unprecedented. That’s why the Obama administration awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest “Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012.

Tom Barrett is grinning ear-to-ear.

HT:  Cold Fury

"Business Records" or Private Information?

Ticker mentions a disturbing ruling from the 5th Circuit.

You do know that your phone is always communicating with the towers when it's turned on, right?  That's how it works -- it has to occasionally ping back and forth between the tower and device in order for a call to route to you, a text message to be delivered, etc.

Guess what?  There now is a court ruling that since you voluntarily "gave" that information to the cell company even though it would be impossible for you to have such a device and have it work without giving that data to them because your giving that data (your location) was "voluntary" it is not protected under the 4th Amendment and thus does not require a warrant.

Really??

The Miracle at Treasury

It's nothing short of a miracle, right?

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for July 26, which the Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 70 straight days.

That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt.

Since no one in the Obozo Administration would lie or cheat, or massage the numbers, we can take the numbers at face value, meaning that it is a miracle!

Ted Cruz: the Long Game Player

By now it should be apparent that the Men Without Chests--McConnell, Boehner, Ryan, McCain, Cantor, et.al., are playing the 'short game':  get re-elected and to hell with the hindmost, who happen to be the remaining taxpayers.

It's not new; Reagan had to fight his way through a similar pack of cowardly well-manicured fops in the '70's.  Reagan then played his long game and deconstructed the Soviet Union, Carter's "malaise", and some parts of the Progressive State.

Reagan left office, and the well-manicured fops came out of their closets and beauty salons again to dominate (R) politics.

Now comes Cruz, who understands the long game.

...Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, and the institutional left want to drag out the Obamacare fight as long as possible. ...

If they force Republicans to keep waiting to rid the country of the law, Cruz thinks they will have hooked Americans on the subsidy to the point where it cannot ever be repealed.

“It is why hand in hand with delaying the employer mandate for big corporations, the Obama administration announced it wasn’t going to enforce the eligibility requirements for the subsidies,” Cruz said...

Cruz added that if Republicans choose not to fight Obamacare this September, the left, Obama, and the Democrats win, and Republicans lose....

The only reason that the Progressives have won is that they understand and play the Long Game.  The only reason that Conservatives have lost is because the (R) Party is not Conservative; it is, instead, filled with mirror-transfixed Men Without Chests.

Carry on.

No Kidding! Really??

I don't expect Milk-Carton Barrett or his blue-clad Stooge Flynn to mention this too often.

“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,”says a new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders he signed in January.

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” the CDC study, entitled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” states.  --quoted at Captain's place

Who knew?

Next Up: Chicago

You can bet that Chicago's corp-counsel is studying Chapter 9 of the BK code.  It won't happen this year--but it's imminent.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show. 

Last week, Moody’s Investors ordered an unprecedented triple-drop in the city’s bond rating, citing Chicago’s “very large and growing” pension liabilities, “significant” debt service payments, “unrelenting public safety demands” and historic reluctance to raise local taxes that has continued under Emanuel.

That "low taxes" thing--at least, low property-taxes--goes back at least 30 years.  Compare like-valued bungalow prop-taxes in Chicago and Milwaukee and you'll be astonished at how little the FIBs pay.

Is De-Funding ObozoCare Our Lexington Green?

Since ObozoCare is designed to fail, what is Obozo actually trying to do?  (Wherein we walk back our Sensenbrenner-bashing but propose another theory.)

Before we get into the technical stuff on ObozoCare, keep some other things in mind:  the politicization of the IRS and its database, the use of NSA and its database for domestic spying (not to mention drones), Obozo's increasingly strident class- and race-war rhetoric, and the rear-guard actions of  Tonto Holder.  It's also very important to recall that Obozo is, and always has been, an Alinskyite revolutionary who ran with a crowd of bomb-throwing Communists.  He's not just a rabble-rouser with a pretty face.  And despite the focus on ObozoCare, this is NOT just about ObozoCare.

...The far bigger portions of the program, including the billions and billions of dollars in subsidies that will start going to Americans on Jan. 1, are mandatory spending, an entitlement funded by an automatic appropriation which is written into law and runs without further congressional action. To change that, Congress would have to change Obamacare.

In the Senate, that would take 67 votes — the amount needed to overcome a guaranteed presidential veto. If the 46 Senate Republicans voted unanimously to end the Obamacare entitlement, they would have to persuade 21 Democrats to go along....Human Events quoting Byron York.

On that point, Sensenbrenner was correct.

But that's not all that York wrote.

...Money to fund Obamacare comes from two sources. A relatively small part of it, including some of the funds used to get the program going, comes from Congress’ regular yearly appropriations. Congress could raise or lower the amounts without changing Obamacare itself. The defund-Obamacare Republicans in the Senate hope to strip out that discretionary funding from a continuing resolution needed to fund the government that Congress will debate in September.

They know they won’t succeed. Democrats, with 54 votes, have enough to pass anything that requires a simple majority, and won’t have much trouble getting to a filibuster-proof 60 votes, either....

IOW, the Pubbies could tug at ObozoCare's cape, but not really derail it.

There are consequences either way.

Karl Rove...warned he was nervous about the effort because “it gives the President the bully pulpit and a gigantic stick on which to beat us, because all he has to do is say, ‘Look, this law was passed, it’s on the books, I’m going to veto your continuing resolution that doesn’t fund ObamaCare, and it’s on you for shutting down the government.’”

No kidding, Karl.  Really?  Will pResident Divisive really do that?  My stars!

In fact, Karl, that's exactly what he's hoping to do.

Weakening this parasitic system before it takes root is vitally important.  Karl Rove may be overestimating the threat ObamaCare’s failure poses to the grand design.  It’s supposed to fail, and the answer proposed by its authors will be more government control, not less.

Review again:  IRS, NSA, Holder, race- and class-war rhetoric, and then think.

Why is the Gummint buying every round of ammo that it can??

Hayward, our essayist, is subtle, but makes the point and invokes a couple of the right images:

...is ObamaCare really an irreversible mistake?  It’s difficult to repeal a Big Government program with billions of dollars in subsidies and slush funds, but this whole notion of Americans as slaves to political destiny is both offensive to our traditions, and untrue. Everything can be changed.  Even the Constitution can be amended.  The people who say the Constitution is a meaningless old scrap of parchment also claim a law passed in 2010 is chiseled in stone, and hung around the neck of every American for the rest of history with an unbreakable chain. What’s needed to effect meaningful change is determination....Remind Americans that forcing them to finance the propagation of ideas they disagree with is tyranny...

God help us all, because "determination" may not be the only necessity here.

Ruling Class/Country Class Revisited

Angelo Codevilla could smile with pride.  Ross Douthat finally figured out that the good Professor is right.

Douthat references Bolingbroke.  Codevilla could have referenced G K Chesterton's "Hudge and Gudge".

Nothing new under the sun--except the growing and more surly resentment from the ruled.

By the way, Rand Paul owes no small debt to P J Buchanan and Ron Reagan.

Krauthammer Goes All War-Party

Krauthammer is either whistling through the cemetery by pretending that 'the majority' of Republicans are "interventionist," or he's exposing the difference between Republicans and Actual Conservatives.

Either way, K-hammer opened his mouth and reminded us that he's a member of the War Party, just like Billyboy Kristol, John McCain, and a few other fossils-with-megaphones in DC.

As a reminded to Chuckie, "interventionism" is a social disease usually pimped by the military/industrial complex.  Eisenhower warned us about that pimp and its consequences. And Ike was no "isolationist."

Was RoJo Bought Off by McConnell?

It appears that RoJo has been given a shiny object to pursue--"getting a handle on the debt/deficit with Obama & Co."--so that he'd keep his mouth shut and eyes closed over ObozoCare.

(In passing, we heard Jim Sensenbrenner tell us that 'Obozocare can't be de-funded because it's an entitlement.'  Really, Jimbo?  You think we're as stupid as that, Jimbo?)

Here's Protein Wisdom's take on the Senatorial Quislings who have refused to sign onto Lee's proposal:

...What brought Levin to state this so bluntly, using words like “quisling” to describe OK’s Tom Cole, is the reaction of the GOP leadership in the Senate to the Mike Lee proposal, which would fund all the rest of the government, but would ask the House to refuse to fund ObamaCare — the ready occasion for such a brilliant strategic broadside being that Obama continues to re-write the law on the fly, handing out waivers and delays to corporate interests while insisting that private citizens and smaller businesses get no such grace period.  This is law by whimsy, which means it is no stable law at all.  It is lawlessness and imperial diktat.

The Lee plan — which McConnell has remained silent on, but whose position we can glean from Cornyn’s sudden desire to have his name removed from the Lee letter, McConnell being the only Senate Republican who can put pressure on Cornyn — is being actively opposed and publicly criticized by Republicans, who insist that because Obama is President, the measure is nothing more than a “temper tantrum” (Cole, a Boehner Lt.) and “one of the dumbest ideas” Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has ever heard.

Such outrage!  Such sturm und drang!!  Such asinine remarks!!  Such willful blindness wrapped in a cloak of righteousness!!!

To be clear, the measure would not shut down the government unless Obama and Reid decided to shut down the government.  And even then, the GOP House can pass bill after bill funding all other aspects of the government, leaving the ball in Obama and Reid’s court.

Beyond even that, the strategy is a political winner — not just a Constitutional and fiscal winner.  And that’s because it amounts to the GOP keeping it’s [sic] promise to repeal ObamaCare, not by way of symbolic votes that will always go to the Senate to die, and so are not votes to repeal ObamaCare at all; but rather by using the power of the purse to defund inequitably enforced and wildly unpopular law.

So why all the screeching from the harpies (yes, they're not really masculine) like Burr, and the treachery of McConnell?

This is, as I’ve noted a million times here, the perfect way to pull the veils off of the GOP establishment and its ruling class designs.  It essentially puts an end to the Kabuki theater we’ve all been witness to from the GOP leadership (who I’m convinced secretly salivate over the power and revenue ObamaCare will bring into the government) and forces them to show their faces:  any Republican who does not support the measure is, in fact, voting to keep ObamaCare and see it implemented and taking root.

And RoJo--who GOT ELECTED because he wanted to eliminate ObozoCare--sold his birthright for a mess of pottage:  sitting in the White House, lifting his little finger and having tea over "defining the deficit."

Even Wales would have been better, RoJo.

All Your Privacy Is Ours!!

ObozoCare throws your privacy under the bus.

...The Privacy Act is a general prohibition, subject to narrow exceptions, on disclosure of records between agencies or to the public. The “routine use” exception allows disclosure when the use of a record is “for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which it is collected.” Privacy being essential to patient care, it is impossible to justify a “routine use” exception for a system knowingly built in a way that will permit disclosure of intimate health care data. 

In this regard, the administration is not only preparing to violate the law, it is also holding itself to a far lower privacy standard than that to which it is trying to hold the private sector. In announcing the administration’s “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” last year President Obama himself said, “American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online.”

A June Government Accountability Office (GAO) report gingerly avoided all the significant privacy and operational issues surrounding the HHS system, and did little more than report that CMS admitted it was behind on certain parts of the program but felt it could catch up. Nowhere did our congressional watchdogs show any sign that they had actually tested the system and considered its readiness for public use.

HHS:  your more friendly NSA!

"ObozoCare" Advertising: $700 MILLION

He'll spend $700 MILLION taxpayer dollars advertising "ObozoCare"...but only where (D) incumbents are a threatened species.

It's no wonder that we refer to them as FIB's.

Ryan Likes NSA Snoopers, Too!

One wonders on what platform Paul Ryan will run in '15/'16.

He has never voted to de-fund ObozoCare and never advanced the idea as Chair/Budget.

He is assiduously working for amnesty.

And he doesn't mind NSA's hoovering of every phone call, email, and 'net browse.

Sensenbrenner, Petri, Duffy, and Ribble voted to de-fund NSA's super-snooper, by the way.

Ryan voted with Kind to keep it.

Cat Dumps, China Mfg Dumps, and Coal....

Cat's EPS went south by about $1.00.

Red China's (PMI) manufacturing index cratered.

Coal used to refine metals in the US is down, down, down.

Richmond Fed numbers foretell misery.

ObozoNomics Strikes Again!!!

More ObozoEconomy: HAMP Defaults

That lack of jobs we mentioned a couple posts down has another effect:  HAMP defaults are high.

Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a federal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday. 

Nearly 1.2 million mortgage modifications have been completed since the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was first launched four years ago. Yet more than 306,000 borrowers have re-defaulted on their loans and more than 88,000 are at risk of following suit, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) found in its quarterly report to Congress.

In addition, the watchdog found that the longer a homeowner stays in the HAMP modification program, the more likely they are to default. Those who have been in the program since 2009, are re-defaulting at a rate of 46%, the inspector general found.

Charming.

Ryan's Wrong If Shilling's Right

In the post below, we highlighted Gary Shilling's analysis of the economy.  In brief, Shilling said that there is not enough growth to absorb the available labor force.

That analysis is not consonant with Paul Ryan's ....ahhh.....*shilling* for "immigration reform."

...Before long, Ryan is chattering about immigration reform, ticking off talking points as he half-jogs down the hall. He mentions the economy 19 times in the next 15 minutes.

The United States needs more labor to grow faster, he says,...

It cannot be both.  Either Shilling is correct, that growth is too anemic to absorb the available labor, OR Ryan is correct, that growth comes from more available labor.

Back when Les Aspin was teaching Econ 101, there was no such thing as a "labor push" effecting an increase in demand and thus, economic growth.  Maybe Ryan has a new theory.

Or maybe he's just wrong.

"Recovery"? Yes, for "Alternative Forms of Compensation"

It's a great "recovery" for non-earned compensation, as Gary Shilling demonstrates here.

And as we also learn, it is truly a jobless recovery.  Obozo is totally useless as a "jobs" President, except for golf caddies and community organizers.

The outlook for the labor market remains bleak. Older Americans are holding on to their jobs longer, limiting openings for newcomers, and employers are cutting costs by extending working hours and paying overtime, rather than hiring. 

Layoffs and discharges remain low. Voluntary departures have risen a bit, but are still sluggish as workers stay put in uncertain times. Meanwhile, job openings have risen rapidly after a collapse, though new hires have increased much more slowly.

... People out of the labor force for nondemographic reasons react to the push of few job prospects and the pull of alternative forms of compensation. If physicians certify job-related disabilities and judges approve them, people can draw disability benefits until they reach normal retirement age, when they are eligible for Social Security retirement benefits. 

...In June, almost 11 million people collected disability benefits, up from 3 million in 1970. In addition, disability benefits are higher than earlier in relation to wages.

And 'alternative forms of compensation' is not just "disability."

...drawing Social Security benefits has become more attractive. The payments have been adjusted for cost of living increases since 1975. Because of the lack of inflation, there were no increases in 2010 and 2011, but there was a 3.6 percent adjustment in 2012 and a 1.7 percent revision this year. The number of recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, jumped to 47.8 million in December from 28.2 million in 2008, a 70 percent increase.

The problem is that there is not enough "recovery."  It's only about 2/3rds what's required:

My company’s research has found that, based on post-World War II history, it should take 3.2 percent real gross domestic product growth just to keep the unemployment rate steady -- meaning that at the current growth of about 2 percent, the unemployment rate would rise more than one percentage point a year and now would be 12 percent. Instead, it was 7.6 percent in June.

There is ... a logical explanation for the huge differences between the actual unemployment rate and the higher expected rates: a big drop in the participation rate. As discussed earlier in this series, the decline in the labor participation rate to 63.5 percent in June from its February 2000 peak of 67.3 percent means there are 9.5 million fewer people in the labor force

Per Shilling, this whole thing will straighten out in about five years.  By no co-incidence, that's after Obozo gets shown the door.

Where's RoJo on ObozoCare?

Maybe Senator Ron Johnson was asleep when the letter and/or bill was circulated for signature.

...Senator Mike Lee has issued a letter saying he will not pass a continuing resolution that funds Obamacare. He has been joined by fifteen Republican Senators....

 ...Likewise, Ted Cruz has legislation that would defund Obamacare....

NEITHER of them bears Ron Johnson's signature.  That's somewhat curious, as RoJo says he's "a fiscal conservative" and would like us to think he opposes ObozoCare.

Stevie Wonder Quits Touring

Apparently S. Wonder will not play in states which have stand-your-ground laws.

He'll save a lot on airfare:

"Many states have some form of stand-your-ground law. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming."  --quoted at Vox


Since "Dancing on the Ceiling", what has he done, anyway?

Finally, Cojones!

Clipped from today's headlines:

After years of controversy surrounding its “Indians” nickname and logo, the Mukwonago School Board has voted to draw a line in the sand by ignoring a state order to change its mascot name by Aug. 15...

 It'll be fun to watch heads explode at Wis DPI.  Tony Evers might just break down and cry or something.

Boobs Wearing Badges

In the latest installment of Gummint-Stupids, we find the US Marshal's office lost $60 million in radios.

Yup.  $$SIXTY MILLION.  For 2,000 radios.

Encrypted radios.  The ones that criminal syndicates really want to "find."

Of course, it's just "an inventory system change".  And it took an FOIA request to get USMS to admit the problem.  And USMS employees were ordered to use the phone--not email--when discussing the matter internally.

Well, at least they have ammo. 

Right?

Was It Just "the Democrats" Destroying Detroit?

From what one hears and reads from the right, the Democrats were solely responsible for the decay and collapse of Detroit.  Nothing else mattered.  Only the Democrats in the city council and the school board.

Not Toyota.  Not Honda.  Not Hyundai.  Not Volkswagen.  Not Nissan. 

Just the Democrats.

Not J-I-T, not design-for-manufacture, not Six Sigma, not robotics, not single-piece flow, not cross-training, not global sourcing, not CADAM systems.

Just the Democrats.

Not the Great Recession of '08-present, either.  Nope.

Huh.

Paul Ryan Cannot Defeat Econ 101. Neither Can Rubio.

It's a mid-length essay which begins with the eminently sensible Sowell, counters with the 'economistic' (all-for-economy-and-profits-to-hell-with-the-rest) Cato line, and ends with a brilliant takedown of the Cato bunch, and Ryan, and Rubio.

(Note well:  while Sowell calls out the agriculture industry, the IT boyzzz (Microsoft, Google, and Silicon Valley in general), along with the Industrialist Gang are just as guilty of the sophistry and deception as is Cato.)

Ryan should be paying attention to Sowell instead of pandering to interests which, frankly, are not consonant with the interests of the US as a whole--that is, if Ryan would rather be a statesman than a politician.  Rubio has already picked his label.

Here's a portion of the anonymous argument which is the final blow to the Cato/economistic bunch:

...But note further: they simply assume that the default constraints on economic agents in America do not, or should not, include population based on our collective democratically determined policies regarding the population levels and demographics we want. If marginal low value economic interests can expand only by first ignoring that constraint by intentional and flagrant violations of the law implementing the democratically enacted policies and now want new legislation to repeal the policies leading to the constraint, in the interest of nothing but more GDP in aggregate, so be it. It’s economism on steroids.

And there is no principled stopping point. The labor supply globally in excess of American labor willing to do the cucumber picking at the ever expanding margin at the lowest possible wages is for all practical purposes unlimited; so they want, and openly argue for, completely unlimited immigration. How could they not? Once any limit becomes binding the argument compels them to want to eliminate it!...

And lest Cong. Ryan play the "Catholic" card and yammer about 'social justice,' there is no Catholic teaching or doctrine which demands that a state impoverish its own people--whether through taxes, increased debt, or otherwise--for the benefit of non-citizens of that state.  None.  Zero.  Zip.  If Ryan would like to argue otherwise, let him cite the specific teaching.

He can't.

HT:  PowerLine

"....In All the Wrong Places/ Looking for..."

They're not looking for love.  They're looking for a fight.

You know that Holder has a team of "specialists" within DOJ which 'seeks to preserve order' when there are threats to that order.  And you know that that team was heavily involved in the Trayvon Martin protests in Florida.  The team organized and facilitated the protests--thanks to you taxpayers!

The Usual Suspects:  CPUSA, SPLC, and Black Panthers were involved in the protests.

Guess what else was spotted?

They carry and wear emblems associated with Socialist Groups and have connections to other Marxists protests in recent past. Some of them wore shirts that said ” Wisconsin Solidarity” and “Michigan Solidarity”. These refer to the pro union protests in those two states when they passed laws to become right to work states.

Well-traveled bunch, eh?

HT:  Badger Pundit

The Anti-Gun "Mind"

This about sums up the sub-room-temperature IQ of gun control wackos:

HT:  AOSHQ

Milwaukee's Trayvon Rally

One notorious name at the rally was "Worker's World Party."

Apparently they didn't die out after the USSR cut off the funding.

House Immigration Bill: More Smoke and Mirrors

Yah, but well, ya'see, Paul Ryan's for.......well......something, right?

Basically, the House bill is just another turd smeared with frosting.

Mowing the Lawn

If mowing your lawn is a tiresome and lengthy task, consider this machine.

Time for Chevy to combine with Ariens; drop an LS-7 into a Gravely....

Why Liz Cheney?

Noting that Erickson of RedState has endorsed Cheney loud-and-clear, and noting that Ms. Cheney is the daughter of one of the country's most prominent War Party members (and that Sen. Enzi is not a RINO in almost any sense), it occurred to me that Ms. Cheney brings only one thing to the Senate primary:  a NeoCon/War Party flavor.

I ain't the only one.

...Making the case for an activist foreign policy has fallen largely to Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both of whom increasingly resemble the aging characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, shambling around the Senate chamber and waxing nostalgic about the good old days when they could bomb other countries in peace. Beyond Rep. Tom Cotton, the neoconservative darling who still staunchly defends the Iraq intervention, there’s little fresh blood among Republican hawks in Congress these days. So perhaps it makes sense for Liz Cheney, the daughter of one of the architects of Bush-era foreign policy, to provide a Senate counterbalance to Paul.”...Domenech quoting Gerson

This will be interesting.

Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin

Balshazzar had a problem.  So does Obozo.

...IRS leadership in Washington claimed the harassment of tea-party and other conservative groups requesting tax-exempt status was confined to the Cincinnati office, where a few rogue workers bungled the application process. Lois Lerner, then the head of the exempt organizations unit in Washington, said "line people in Cincinnati" did work that was "not so fine." They asked questions that "weren't really necessary," she claimed, and operated without "the appropriate level of sensitivity." But the targeting was "not intentional."...

...House investigators soon talked to workers in the Cincinnati office, who said everything they did came from Washington...

...Now comes Mr. Hull's testimony. And like Ms. Hofacre, he pointed his finger upward. Mr. Hull—a 48-year IRS veteran and an expert on tax exemption law—told investigators that tea-party applications under his review were sent upstairs within the Washington office, at the direction of Lois Lerner.

Who is "upstairs" from Hull?

Mr. Hull told House investigators that at some point in the winter of 2010-11, Ms. Lerner's senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the applications would require further review:

Q: "Did [the senior adviser to Ms. Lerner] indicate to you whether she agreed with your recommendations?"

A: "She did not say whether she agreed or not. She said it should go to chief counsel."

Q: "The IRS chief counsel?"

A: "The IRS chief counsel."

The IRS chief counsel is named William Wilkins. And again, he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS.

Think Boehner has the cojones to do what he should do?

Nah.

HT:  Peter

Not Humor, Unfortunately

It ain't funny.  It's true.

HT:  Camp of Saints

How Big Is "Too Big"?

Speaking of Dodd-Frank (the below post), we learn even more from its example.

All told, regulators have written 13,789 pages and more than 15 million words to put the law in place, which is equal to 42 words of regulations for every single word of the already hefty law, spanning 848 pages itself.
And if that seems like a lot, keep in mind that by Davis Polk’s estimate, the work implementing the law is just 39 percent complete.  --FreedomLine quoting The Hill

Another law school graduating class is employed!!

Next time some Gubmint twit gives you shit, cite Section 243 of Dodd-Frank as your authority.  It'll take them about 3 weeks to figure out you're kidding.

Sweet! GE Cap, AIG, Pru Are "Too Big to Fail"

Well.....it's "sweet" if you are GE Cap, AIG, or Pru.

If you're not, suck eggs.

Lefty Fetishes and G K Chesterton

A thought-provoking little item highlighted at Cold Fury which calls to mind the great Chesterton.

.....Let me give another example of left-wing Puritanism in action... which will be recognizable to many of you. Last month, at a birthday party for a three-year-old, I was hit with the realization that most of the parents around me were in the grip of moral panic, the kind of fear of contamination dramatized so well in The Crucible. One mother was trying to keep her daughter from eating a cupcake, because of all the sugar in cupcakes. Another was trying to limit her son to one juice box, because of all the sugar in juice. A father was panicking because there was no place, in this outdoor barn-like space at some nature center or farm or wildlife preserve, where his daughter could wash her hands before eating....

Ah, yes, that's familiar.  The quoted column-author is a Lefty, and he's addressing Bloombergian Puritanism.  But behind that Bloombergian fetish is G K Chesterton's prescient quote:

“When you break the big laws you do not get freedom. You do not even get anarchy. You get small laws.”

The New Puritans, beginning with Wilson, were determined to re-manufacture civilization without the fuss and bother of the 10 Commandments.  So now we have the 10 Billion Commandments of Slurpee regs, EPA regs, toilet-and-lightbulb regs, and ObozoCare regs.

Chesterton was right, but I doubt he could have imagined the scale of the problem.

Obozo's Omerta

No surprise that a Chicago product uses the technique.

...Congressman Frank Wolf said Thursday that survivors of the Benghazi, Libya terror assault have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from speaking out about the deadly attack.

“According to trusted sources that have contacted my office, many if not all of the survivors of the Benghazi attacks along with others at the Department of Defense, the CIA have been asked or directed to sign additional non-disclosure agreements about their involvement in the Benghazi attacks,” Wolf said on the House floor. “Some of these new NDAs, as they call them, I have been told were signed as recently as this summer.”

"Nice job you have.  It would be too bad if you were to lose it.  How would you feed your family?"

That's also the M.O. of the recently-departed FBI SAC.

It's a chlamidya thing infecting Gummint folks.  Spreads rapidly.

FBI Investigation Raises Another Question

Seems as though the FBI's Milwaukee boss has already been transferred outta here.

There's a criminal investigation of her activity going on.

Here's a very interesting bit of the story:

...Carlson is under potential criminal investigation by the Office of Inspector General after she told agent Mark Crider in April that it would be in his best interest "to come down on the side of the government in this matter," according to court records in the case....

Hmmmm.  Not only is a member of a protected class agitating for discrimination against a member of ANOTHER protected class (snark-worthy in itself), but it also seems as though she has a serious misunderstanding of ethical conduct.

That gives rise to another question:  has her "come down on the side of the government" problem influenced other investigations?  Or those of other subordinates in the FBI?  IOW, is this another case of an LEO with a "convict 'em at any cost" mindset?

Just sayin'.....

"Immigration Reform"? Nope. Tax Increase!!

The Rubio/McPain/Schumer Abomination has another little surprise chocolate inside.

A little-noticed part of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of S. 744 shows that it would in fact impose a $20 billion Medicaid expansion on states. According to the CBO score of the legislation, this provision would occur over a decade-long period after the President signs the bill.

Remember that SCOTUS struck down the $20Bn tax on States which was part of ObozoCare?  Yup.  It's back, disguised as part of "immigration reform."

In related news, McPain has no idea what's in that box of chocolates.  Seems as though his "accomplishment" is more like Rosemary's Baby every day.

They Got Their Wish, Good and Hard

The elected the commie, and supported him ever since.

Until they read the fine print.

The first union grievance is that the employer mandate is leading business to hold worker hours below 30 hours a week to comply with the Administration’s regulatory definition.

... The unions are also aggrieved because they have failed to gain special subsidies for the multi-employer health insurance plans allowed under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947

...Now what they’re seeing is workers are looking at the exchanges and seeing, ‘I can drop out of the employer plan, I get a huge subsidy, I come out ahead, and don’t have to be a member of the union.’ So this is a disaster for the unions...

(Hot Air excerpting K-hammer quoting the WSJ and NRO)

No wonder the local AFSCME "leader" decamped to DC.  The party is over in Flyover Country.

IRS Corruption: Whole New Level

This is chilling.

...Mr. Martel, a criminal investigator for the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, was telling her that an official in Delaware state government had improperly accessed her records on that very same day.  --Althouse quoting WaTimes

The victim was Christine O'Donnell, the rather unusual (R) Senate candidate.

As Althouse emphasizes, it was a STATE Gummint which "accessed" IRS records.

And as Althouse emphasizes, the MSM droids have no interest whatever in IRS corruption.

IRS Persecutions: Yup, They're Political

Nothing new here except naming names.  It was Obozo, or Axelrod, or Emanuel who pushed the order--but they'll continue to demolish the republic nonetheless.

EPA's "Sue/Settle Shuffle" Strikes Again

Currently the EPA regulates lightbulbs, toilet flushing, and electricity generation.  EPA has demonstrated its willingness to make electricity cost-prohibitive, drive coal miners into jobless Hell, and raise the price of electricity to the sky, among other minor inconveniences.

Now they'll be regulating dead trees, ethanol production, the Milorganite plant, and silage operations on farms, too.  Look forward to living in the Third World without relocating.

ObozoCare Smashes the Working Poor

Are the consequences intended or not?  The JS reports that a head-on collision is coming as a result of ObozoCare, and it will smash the working poor.

Josie Armour makes about $460 a week caring for a man born with cerebral palsy. Her hourly wage is officially $11.50 but in reality is probably less than that. Most days, she puts in extra hours, and she works seven days a week.

Armour, 59, has cared for the man for more than a decade and loves her job.

...Armour works for Independence First, which provides services for people with disabilities, and she is an example of one of the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act.

Independence First and similar organizations are paid a set hourly rate from Medicaid for personal care workers who help people with disabilities with dressing, bathing and other tasks needed for them to remain in their homes.

The state determines what it will pay for those services. And unlike a restaurant or retail chain, Independence First can't just raise its prices.

Yet it will be required to provide health insurance to employees who work 30 hours a week or pay a potential penalty under the so-called play-or-pay mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

(The JS reporter implies that other businesses CAN simply 'raise prices.'  That's debatable, to say the least.)

So what are the consequences?

Because Independence First employs a large number of people with disabilities, its insurance costs are sky-high — an estimated $11,000 a year for individual coverage.

Under the law, a worker's share of the premium is limited to 9.5% of his or her wage. That works out to a bit less than $2,200 a year for someone who makes $11 an hour and works 40 hours a week.

Providing health benefits could cost Independence First more than $5,000 a year for each full-time worker.
The other option is to pay a penalty of $3,000 for each worker who gets subsidized coverage through the marketplaces known as exchanges.

That works out to $1.4 million for the 470 personal care workers who work more than 30 hours a week — or almost all of Independence First's net income of $1.6 million, on revenue of $35.9 million, last year.

(Look again at the italics.  That 9.5% premium contribution is coming soon to a theater near you:  your own job.  Got cash??)

The article also mentions that nursing homes are heading into a crisis, as will daycare centers.

The Lightworker's fairy-dust turns out to be hot nuclear waste.  Too bad.

Obozo's Treasury Massaging the Numbers

This is simply not believable.

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for July 12, which the U.S. Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt that is currently subject to a legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 has stood at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 56 straight days.

That means that for 56 straight days the federal debt has remained approximately $25 million below the legal limit.

If you believe that, you also believe in pink unicorns and fairy dust.

Come to think of it, you'll also believe that Obozo is a "uniter."

The Sludge From Capper's Site

We've had more than a few "concern sludge" posts in the combox lately.  Sure enough, the AFSCME's main clown and his coterie of Little Lefty Fauntelroys is back.

And they post the "N-word" comments.  It's a false flag op--except I think they actually mean what they say.

Martin Alive Except for Police Statistical Tricks?

As it turns out, Trayvon Martin was a victim of police chicanery.

The February 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martion might never have happened if school officials in Miami-Dade County had not instituted an unofficial policy of treating crimes as school disciplinary infractions....

Martin was found in possession of stolen goods, and (separately) in possession of marijuana.  However, neither of those resulted in juvie charges due to "policy" instituted by a police chief bent on manipulating crime stats.

Martin could well have been in juvie hall instead of 200 miles from his Miami-area home a year ago February.

Complementing the Phone Records

The Feds, who track all your phone calls, email, and web-browsing, can also watch you walk across the street.

And if you think this presentation shows ALL of Argus' capabilities, you're wrong.  Twenty years ago the Feds could read a license plate number from 15,000 feet.  They can count the eyelets on your shoes now.

Sequester Problems at DOD, Right?

Yah, that header is snark.

The Washington Post has some interesting details of emails sent by Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) contracting and budget officers to their colleagues.
“Our available funding balances remain large in all appropriations — too large to spend” just on small supplemental funds often required by existing contracts, the June 27 e-mail said. DISA’s budget is $2 billion.

“It is critical in our efforts to [spend] 100% of our available resources this fiscal year,” said the e-mail from budget officer Sannadean Sims and procurement officer Kathleen Miller. “It is also imperative that your organization meets its projected spending goal for June. . .”

Yet they found a way to cut the pay of 650,000 employees by 20% between now and 9/30/13.

The War Party will find a way to fix this.  There must be some grease-spot on the face of the Earth requiring a few hundred thousand US troops for a couple of years.  We can give 'em a good dose of democracy lessons or something, right?

HT:  Mish

Ah, Yes...TARP

Two in a row HT's to Bayou (see below for #1).  This one's on TARP, the $700Bn that TurboTaxTimmy and GWBush flushed into the sewer system known as "The Banks."

...We gave it to the banks. But no one knew what they did with it. I proposed to Tim Geithner that we find out. He was outraged. He cursed me out, using the F-word. He said it would bring the whole banking system down, if I asked.

"I went ahead and sent out a letter. I didn't really have the authority or the staff to insist. But all of the big banks wrote back. And most of them gave me dodgy responses or gave me the brush-off.

"What did they do with the money? They were supposed to increase lending to help bring about a recovery. None of them did that....

Thus spake Barofsky, the (former) Inspector General of Treasury.

By the way--the actual exposure from TARP is well into the trillions of dollars, not "$700 Billion."

A Clear-Eyed Take on Zimmerman

There are no "winners" in the Zimmerman case.  Martin--obviously--lost.  Zimmerman will live a very truncated 'life' going forward, as will most of his relatives, especially his wife.

As the linked essay states most of the portrayals in the press and blogworld have been simplistic to the point of plastic caricature.  Too bad.  There are a lot of lessons which should be taken from the event. 

By the way, this fellow articulates the thoughts I've had about the affair (Drat.  He published first.)  Here's where we totally agree:

...It seems to me that Zimmerman was out of line in some of his actions. As a neighborhood watch volunteer, he wasn’t supposed to be armed, but he was. I don’t see that he had any reason to be suspicious of Martin other than the fact that he was a young thuggish-looking black teen....

...Even if Zimmerman wanted to report it to police, he had no business getting out of his car and risking a confrontation....

 ... Zimmerman and Martin definitely looked at each other through racial lenses, but whether they were or not, each one of them had a chance to escape the confrontation. I’m inclined to believe Zimmerman’s story that Martin picked the physical confrontation...

... Both of them had the chance to walk away from a confrontation, but both kept pushing at a certain point. Once the confrontation started, though, Zimmerman had the legal right to defend himself if he thought he was in danger....

...I think both of these guys were responsible for the confrontation. Either one of them had the power to walk away before it escalated, but neither did. They’re both responsible in the moral sense.
Martin wasn’t the baby-faced innocent victim that some people want to see. Zimmerman isn’t the racist murderer that some want to see. They’re just two people who made some bad decisions that added up to someone getting killed.

HT:  RenMan

"Small Arms" Treaty Fails

Forty-six (D) Senators voted to renounce national sovereignty:

Baldwin (D-WI); Baucus (D-MT); Bennet (D-CO); Blumenthal (D-CT); Boxer (D-CA); Brown (D-OH); Cantwell (D-WA)   Cardin (D-MD); Carper (D-DE); Casey (D-PA); Coons (D-DE); Cowan (D-MA); Durbin (D-IL); Feinstein (D-CA); Franken (D-MN); Gillibrand (D-NY); Harkin (D-IA); Hirono (D-HI); Johnson (D-SD); Kaine (D-VA); King (I-ME); Klobuchar (D-MN); Landrieu (D-LA); Leahy (D-VT); Levin (D-MI); McCaskill (D-MO); Menendez (D-NJ); Merk (D-OR); Mikulski (D-MD); Murphy (D-CT); Murray (D-WA); Nelson (D-FL); Reed (D-RI); Reid (D-NV); Rockefeller (D-WV); Sanders (I-VT); Schatz (D-HI); Schumer (D-NY); Shaheen (D-NH); Stabenow (D-MI); Udall (D-CO); Udall (D-NM); Warner (D-VA); Warren (D-MA); Whitehouse (D-RI); Wyden (D-OR)

Yes, indeed!  That's our little Tammy, first on the list!!

HT:  Protein

Your Tax Dollars on the Stairway

TMJ4 finds $500K staircase, US Attorney says 'it's all for security purposes'.

Uh-huh.  Yup.  Because there are so many "theft of papers" cases at the Fed Building, right?

Some People Are More Equal Than Others, ya'know.

The Cause of Recession: Demographics

If you wish to hold Obozo harmless vis-a-vis the recession, you may be right.

But you won't like the reasoning at all.

“I think clearly we can see that the economic crisis which we are observing in the western world is a direct consequence of 1968, of the rejection of Humanae Vitae, of the rejection of the Church’s teaching, and the approval of the sexual revolution, which has caused a demographic crash.”  Those were the words of Rev. Wojciech Giertych OP, the Theologian of the Papal Household...

Fr. Giertych is not an optimist; he sees inter-generational violence on the horizon in Europe, and perhaps in the US.

Two quick notes:  Japan is even worse off than Europe, and Bank of Japan's Bernanke-ism, now in its TENTH year, is not working.  Conversely, Third World nations are enjoying (marginally) better economic stats than the West.  That's because they have babies.

Clinton's Illegal Legacy; the IRS Gambit

If you thought that Clinton and Ted Kennedy were telling the truth about IRRA in 1996, you are mistaken.  (But then, if you thought that Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy EVER told the truth, you're in need of treatment.)  Clinton's IRS decided to flat-out ignore Federal law to protect illegals and their employers.

The question of whether to legalize illegal aliens and put them on a pathway to citizenship may be the most controversial legislative issue facing the U.S. Congress this year.

But, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), seventeen years have already passed since the Internal Revenue Service made its own “policy decision” to “’legalize’ illegal aliens.”

It's bad enough that IRS management inflicts punishment on the political right and brags about it.

Now it turns out that they unilaterally decide to ignore Federal law to protect illegals--and to ship them a bunch of money. IRS is also protecting the employers of illegals by unilaterally declaring that the law, which requires reporting to INS--doesn't apply.

Try telling IRS that the law doesn't apply to you sometime....

It's about time that IRS goes away, ain'a?

Or maybe it's time to extend the TEA Party revolution to W-4 activity.

NILF-WJNs, Ratios: The ObozoDisaster Economy

Wherein the author demonstrates that the Obozo Economy --like the Obozo Foreign Policy and the Obozo Respect for Laws--is worse than awful.  As usual, socialist policy inflicts its worst damage on the lower and lower-middle classes, here forcing them into part-time work, if they can find work at all. 

...The “official” unemployment rate held steady at 7.6%. The economy created 195,000 jobs in June. The BLS revised payrolls for the last three months upwards and the labor participation rate (the percentage of the total population over the age of 16 in the labor force) improved slightly moving from 63.4% to 63.5%.
However, there were several very troubling indicators. The number of people who gave up looking for work because they believe no jobs were available increased by 206,000 from a year earlier to 1 million. The number of individuals who were working part time increased by 432,000, twice the number of jobs created. Full time jobs actually declined by 272,000....

Yah, that's grim, unless you eat part-time, or have a part-time mortgage.  Or maybe part-time electricity, hey!!  Part-time water and sewer, anyone?  How about part-time car payments?

...The BLS reports a number each month which it labels “Not in the Labor Force – Want a Job Now” that seems to confirm this study’s conclusion.

According to the BLS, in June there were 6,580,000 people out of work who “want a job now” but who BLS excluded from the ranks of the officially unemployed, including those who were too discouraged to look for a job in the past 30 days. Adding these people back into the labor force produces an unemployment rate of 11.3%, again well in excess of the “official” 7.6%....

The author and a colleague developed a "Growth Ratio."  During the Obozo Regime, that's not been healthy, either.

...The Growth Ratio is the year-over-year growth in the number of jobs (measured through the BLS’s household survey) divided by the year-over-year growth in the civilian non-institutional population (the number of people who could be in the labor force)....In June, the growth ratio clocked in at 1.15%, indicating that employment growth over the previous twelve months was slightly greater than population growth. The average for the recovery to date is a dismal 0.97%. In other words, the labor market has actually gotten slightly worse since the recovery began. Yet the early years of a recovery should be its most robust, especially where a recession was severe. Considering the loss in employment during the last recession, the growth ratio should be consistently hitting 1.5% or better, as it did following prior recoveries once the Growth Ratio went positive....

There is a conclusion:

In short, real unemployment is well above the “official” 7.6%. The official rate has only declined because of a very disturbing decline in the number of people the BLS considers in the labor force. In addition, as employers divide the number of available full time work hours among a larger group of part time workers, the official unemployment rate makes it appear as though our economy is growing and creating more jobs than it is. Dividing full time jobs into more numerous part time jobs is not an indication of economic growth. Yet, even with this false positive, job creation is barely exceeding population growth...

Another summary:  how about part-time "demand" growth?  Ever see that happen??

Fourth Circuit Emulates Ninth

It was a struggle to "reason" to the conclusion that ObozoCare does not "burden" religious organizations.

It was a particularly difficult struggle to wrestle RFRA to the ground and kill it off in this case.

But the Fourth Circuit succeeded.

So far.

The Real Compassionate Conservatism and Intermediary Institutions

From a somewhat lengthy post at RedState, we are given this quote from Arthur Brooks (AEI) who wrote in the WSJ:

...If Republicans and conservatives double down on the promotion of economic growth, job creation and traditional values, Americans might turn away from softheaded concerns about “caring.” Right?

Wrong. As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown in his research on 132,000 Americans, care for the vulnerable is a universal moral concern in the U.S. In his best-selling 2012 book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Mr. Haidt demonstrated that citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak. By contrast, moral values such as sexual purity and respect for authority—to which conservative politicians often give greater emphasis—resonate deeply with only a minority of the population. Raw money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country’s growing entitlement spending, don’t register morally at all....

OK.  Now we switch to Jonah Goldberg:

...As a candidate, Bush distanced himself from the Gingrich “revolutionaries” of the 1994 Congress, and he criticized social conservatives such as Robert Bork, who had written an admittedly uncheery book, Slouching towards Gomorrah. He talked endlessly about what a tough job single mothers have and scolded his fellow conservatives for failing to see that “family values don’t end at the Rio Grande.” As president, he said that “when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” According to compassionate conservatives, reflexive anti-statism on the right is foolish, for there are many important — and conservative — things the state can do right....

Brooks again:

...The left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are being erased....

Now Medved:

...The American people .... respond to “its morning in America.” They respond to our greatest days are ahead of us not behind us. They respond to the fact that this country is a nation of kindness and optimism. And when it comes to that optimistic spirit that is why the core issue here is not a green eye shade kind of where we have to balance the budget and we have to balance this. It has to be growth. That is what we are talking about. Growing the economy, growing families, growing communities, growing lives we have the right answers. We have the right answers not only for the country, not only for our states, as Arizona is demonstrating, we have the right answers for individuals and for families and for communities and that is what we have to be able to do, If we emphasize appealing to people based on their individual characteristics and decisions not membership in some kind of group...

And finally to the post's author, Bill S:

And that’s what “compassionate conservatism” was supposed to be about…not about “No Child Left Behind” or Medicare Part D.  It was about supporting vulnerable people via charities and other organizations, with a little help from the government.  True “compassionate conservatism” is about empowering charities to help the needy…to enable “little platoons” to assist.

Burke used the term "little platoons" to describe intermediary institutions, churches and schools, clubs and charities that served neighbors.

Too bad the ACLU spiked all that stuff Bush tried with "faith-based initiatives," eh?

The Bill of Indictment Against Obozo

Nicely laid-out articulation of what is a Constitutional crisis. 

...The employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act contains no provision allowing the president to suspend, delay or repeal it.

... In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants...

... Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration....

And there's the infamous non-defense of DOMA, a lesser offense only of degree.

The essay also supplies pertinent SCOTUS decisions, including one slapping Bill Clinton for *saving* money (gasp...)

Seems to me that some Congressman should institute a lawsuit over the ObozoCare violation.  But that would take balls.

Oh, well.

HT: Althouse

A Little Advice for Ryan (and Walker)

Paul Ryan fell all over himself trying to explain how the Senate's immigration abomination was kinda sorta good.  Scott Walker had to "clarify" a comment he made on the same topic.

Here are a couple of congresscritters who actually get it:

...“They have shown no respect for traditional Constitutional separation of powers,” Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., told National Review’s John Fund about the impact of the ObamaCare delays on the immigration debate, “and that makes it difficult to pass laws where the fear is that they will simply ignore the parts they don’t like.”

Carroll goes on to write that, “Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who is on the House Judiciary Committee and had been a member of a bipartisan group working on immigration reform, echoed Roe’s concerns on Meet the Press. ‘In fact, if you look at this ObamaCare debacle that they have right now, this administration is actually deciding when and where to actually enforce the law. And that’s what some of us in the House are concerned about. If you give to this administration the authority to decide when they’re going to enforce the law, how they’re going to enforce the law… what’s going to happen is that we’re going to give legalization to 11 million people and Janet Napolitano is going to come to Congress and tell us that the border is already secure and nothing else needs to happen.’”...

"Selective enforcement" also applies to IRS and the NSA, remember. 

So what is the "Rule of Law" these days?

Bueller?  Anyone?

Got SWAT? Go Kill Somebody--Updated

What passes for "law enforcement" these days is more than a little disturbing.

...detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me...

...On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart....

Whoops.

Then there's the latest/greatest abuse:  SWAT-for-regulators (!!)

...By the end of the 2000s, police departments were sending SWAT teams to enforce regulatory law. In August 2010, for example, a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black-and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. More raids followed in September and October. The Orlando Sentinel reported that police held barbers and customers at gunpoint and put some in handcuffs, while they turned the shops inside out. The police raided a total of nine shops and arrested thirty-seven people...

Nope.  Not drugs, not gambling, not prostitution.

...thirty-four of the thirty-seven arrests were for “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor for which only three people have ever served jail time in Florida.

The most disturbing aspect of the Orlando raids was that police didn’t even attempt to obtain a legal search warrant. They didn’t need to, because they conducted the raids in conjunction with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Think about THAT the next time you sell whole milk to your neighbors.

HT:  PW 

More:   I took 3 of my grandchildren jug fishing (tie string to a milk jug, attach a hook and bait and set them in the water, come back hours later and bring in the fish). This was a first for my kids. We left about 9:00 p.m., and after setting out two of the jugs we got stopped by two officers from Illinois Department of Natural Resources (appropriately shortened to DNR). They were going to do a safety check. They had guns, dressed as Gestapo, and had bulletproof vests.  --quoted at PJMedia

The DNR with BULLETPROOF VESTS?

Be serious. 

Here, the acronym stands for "Damn Near Russia."  The FIB's could learn something from us.

Mass. Clash Leaves 72 Dead

National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

More at PW.

Obozo, the President of Train Wreck

If you thought that (illegally) abrogating the insurance mandate and (irrationally) putting ObozoCare applicants on the "honor system" were the last you'd hear about the ObozoWreck, you're wrong.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah wrote a letter to the administration asking why the president is already requesting 107 percent more than three years ago to pay for subsidies.

That would be MORE THAN DOUBLE, for you math-challenged Lefties....

The Corn-A-Holers Love to Lie, and to Blame YOU

The Corn-A-Hole crowd knows how to lie.  They're also good at blaming YOU for problems that they cause.

They just *forget* a couple of facts.  Of course, the JS "reporters" don't include them, either.

...Raising the amount of the biofuel in gasoline could reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, lower fuel prices, and aid the environment because the ethanol blend burns cleaner, ethanol advocates say...

That will also raise the price of corn--therefore, of beef, pork, and chicken--which will increase hunger in the Third World and have a negative impact on your budget.  Unless you don't eat much of anything.

As for Blame-Spreading:

Don't blame ethanol for water in gasoline, says Kristy Moore, vice president of technical services for the Renewable Fuels Association.

Most of the problems stem from careless handling of fuel, such as leaving the cap off a gasoline can and failing to use a fuel stabilizer when outdoor power equipment is put in storage for months, according to Moore.

"We call these 'housekeeping issues,'" she said. "If someone doesn't take care of equipment to keep water out of the fuel, they're going to have a hard time starting that engine."

This snippy little bitch deserves .....ahhh........wellllll.........

Ethanol IS a water-magnet.  There's no question about it.  Her contention that the owners of outdoor power equipment (boats, mowers, chainsaws, generators, snowblowers, trimmers, leaf-blowers) are just ignorant slobs is ......umnnnhhh....cheeky, to be kind.

Gasoline usage for O.P.E. is unpredictable.  Mowers don't get used during dry spells; snowblowers don't get used in dry winters.  But precipitation is unpredictable (unlike bitchiness in females), so one buys X gallons of fuel with the hope that it will all get used.  It's only a hope; rarely a reality. 

I'm certain that Ms. Moore and her paymasters will not buy back all the unused Corn-A-Hole at the end of a given season, right?  Should we dump it on their doorsteps instead?

Here's another wonderful little line of s*&^:

The small-engine industry has lagged behind automakers in keeping up with changing fuel standards, according to Moore.

First off, the automakers' R&D/Engine Engineering budgets are approximately the same as Briggs' entire annual sales volume.  Secondly, there IS no "leftover" gasoline in (most) automobiles, because they are in continuous use.

Ugly little fact, no?  Gee!  It's un-mentioned!!!

Corn liquor in internal combustion engines is a cancer, both for the engines and for the consumers.

However, it's a cancer that can be cured with an election or two.

The AFSCME Gets What It Wished For. It Ain't Pretty

I know that it's not really nice to indulge in schadenfreude.  So I'll try to make that indulgence short.

Bloomberg reports this week on the latest Obamacare trend sweeping across the country: Cities and states may soon attempt to unload unsustainable health costs on the federal government by dumping employees and retirees onto exchanges....--Heritage Foundation quoted at McCain

Can Milwaukee County be far behind?

Be (Exceedingly) Polite

Heh.

The Wall Street Journal reports: compared to last year, CCW permits are up 17% in Florida, near 100% in Ohio, and in several States have already exceeded their 2012 levels, halfway through 2013. The total issued nationwide is now estimated at 8 million.

HT:  Arms/Law

The VERY Short Memory of Lefties

A Left-o-Blog from Madison notes that Walker's transportation budget is heavy on borrowing (about $1BN, to be specific.)

They cite WISTAX, a non-partisan tax watchdog:

...As borrowing has increased, the share of the state transportation budget going to debt service has grown. WISTAX found that these mandatory debt payments rose 230% from $93.3 million in 2002 to $306.9 million in 2012. Debt service accounted for only 4.1% of transportation expenditures in 2002 but 9.5% by 2012....

Gee.  Who was Governor between 2002-2012?  And didn't that Governor steal re-allocate about $1BN from the transportation trust fund during his kleptocratic reign?

I'm no fan of Big Spending, nor Big Borrowing, and have noted that Walker's budget is laden with both.  But in fairness, Walker didn't put the State into the position it's in.

That was Diamond Jim Doyle.

Either way, the RoadBuilder Lobby scores again!!!

Even MORE Gummint Spying on You

What the NSA, IRS, and ObozoCare doesn't catch, the CFPB will.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform, is collecting reams of data on your bill-paying and spending habits.

In fact, the Obama administration is compiling a massive database of personal information, including monthly credit card, mortgage, car and other payments.

The data will be warehoused by private contractors and shared with other federal agencies and Congress, as well as researchers in the field.

Naturally, that's to protect you.

Or not:

CFPB has failed to adequately protect the data it's amassing from major banks and consumer credit reporting firms from unauthorized disclosures, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns.

In fact, CFPB's own inspector general recently cited "weaknesses" in its security program. His findings were corroborated by a Government Accountability Office report that expressed concerns about CFPB's data security.

Does anyone you know know how to read and send smoke signals?  Because that's about all that the Gummint doesn't collect.