Tax Delinquency......With Lessons Learned!!

I saw this item today over at Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit site:

It’s easy to see why these people don’t mind higher taxes. They don’t plan on paying ‘em anyway . . . .

One aspect of the current government criticisms currently on display is the differential...dare I say disproportionate in many cases...treatment that the IRS offers to those who theoretically owe federal incomes taxes. The two current poster boys are US Representative Charles Rangel who "forgot" to report well over US$1 million dollars in income over a number of years and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who owed $14,847 in back taxes. Mr. Geithner apparently had no intention of paying until he was nominated for his current post.

Mr. Rangel has provided amended returns and paid the taxes that were owed. He has not paid any interest nor was he assessed any penalties. Mr. Geithner paid $15,000 in interest, but was assessed no penalties by the IRS.

No normal citizen could expect such lenient treatment from the IRS when they experience a legitimate tax debt. Trust me. I had one. We weren't in the same league as Mr. Rangel and Mr. Geithner. Yet when I asked to receive the same treatment that Messrs. Rangel an Geithner received, I was told that the IRS cannot guarantee equal treatment for all taxpayers.

Apparently, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution is not applicable when it comes to matters related to US income taxes.

Glenn has been following the fiscal follies of both Messrs. Rangel and Geithner for quite some time. Additionally, Glenn has been following the huge disconnect between those that run our government. Part of that disconnect is the penalties that our government "masters" and the well connected never seem to pay for violating public laws and policies while us little folks bear the brunt of an overly officious, oafish, and offensive federal government.

Pitchforks were made for situations where public servants forget who they work for.

I believe that Glenn was attempting to demonstrate that people in the federal government were disproportionately above the (tax) law. Glenn's post linked to this LA Times blog which continued the theme of federal workers that were unduly delinquent in paying their taxes. The blog points out several federal departments who's employees have significant tax delinquency issues and who also employ several well connected individuals with tax delinquency issues.

That LA Times blog entry was based on this Washington Post story by T.W. Farnam. T.W.'s story is focused on Capital Hill employees with tax delinquency issues. The general thought again was that the people that are imposing laws on us are apparently unable or unwilling to abide by them as well. In his story, he pointed out that the employees of the Executive Office of the President owed about as much under Barack Obama in 2009 as they had under George W. Bush in 2008.

And that got me to thinking.

If you take the federal civilian employees, the US Postal service (which are not counted as federal employees), and those serving in uniform, the US federal government employs roughly 5.3 million people. The total labor force runs roughly 154.5 million people. That makes federal employees be roughly 3.4% of the total labor force.

Alternatively, if you count only taxpayers, there are 138 million people. That makes federal employees be roughly 3.8% of the total.

The story by T.W. Farnam had a link to a more complete listing of federal employee tax delinquency that was broken down by department/group. You can sort that list a couple of different ways. But the one way you cannot sort it is by the average tax debt per person within a given group. I had to do that myself. We will get there in a moment.

The total tax delinquency of federal employees was roughly US$3.3 billion. The total tax delinquency for the entire United States was roughly US$120 billion in 2003. That's the only number I could readily find. At that rate, federal employees are only 2.76% of the total delinquent tax bill. Given the state of the economy since 2003, I think it is safe to say that the total tax delinquency has gone up just a bit. Which makes federal employees responsible for less than 2.7% of the total bill owed.

So the big lesson learned here is always get to the data before you draw a conclusion. While I do think that the larger point of government policy makers creating laws and policies that they have no intention of obeying, but that they certainly expect us to obey holds true, this particular story doesn't necessarily justify Glenn's comment from above.

Sort of.

The more complete listing linked above had 85 categories of people. It took the data and calculated the average tax debt per person in each category. I then ranked the groups on that average data. The results were surprising.

The table below shows the top 20 categories, plus some others that I found interesting.

GOVERNMENT PERKS - GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

Index	Organization/Type of worker to the IRS	Number of delinquent employees	Balance owed	Average Owed
1	Presidio Trust	10	$680,682.00	$68,068.20
2	Office of Government Ethics	3	$75,304.00	$25,101.33
3	Education	163	$3,995,066.00	$24,509.61
4	Tennessee Valley Authority	292	$6,766,333.00	$23,172.37
5	Executive Office of the President	41	$831,055.00	$20,269.63
6	Federal Housing Finance Board	4	$79,829.00	$19,957.25
7	National Endowment for the Humanities	4	$79,279.00	$19,819.75
8	Nuclear Regulatory Commission	57	$1,099,897.00	$19,296.44
9	Military retirees	84034	$1,525,688,378.00	$18,155.61
10	Railroad Retirement Board	31	$531,798.00	$17,154.77
11	Export-Import Bank of the United States	10	$166,288.00	$16,628.80
12	Labor	463	$7,481,463.00	$16,158.67
13	Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts	754	$11,808,236.00	$15,660.79
14	Equal Employment Opportunity Commission	84	$1,303,316.00	$15,515.67
15	U.S. House of Representatives	421	$6,524,892.00	$15,498.56
16	Energy	331	$4,899,649.00	$14,802.56
17	Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation	155	$2,249,326.00	$14,511.78
18	Federal Election Commission	8	$115,747.00	$14,468.38
19	Commerce	1556	$22,246,314.00	$14,297.12
20	Office of Personnel Management	172	$2,367,268.00	$13,763.19
23	Federal Reserve System - Board of Governors	81	$1,076,733.00	$13,293.00
28	U.S. Senate	217	$2,774,836.00	$12,787.26
29	U.S. Tax Court	4	$51,111.00	$12,777.75
39	Civilian retirees	40000	$454,938,448.00	$11,373.46
43	Navy	6841	$72,432,604.00	$10,588.01
53	Defense	4454	$38,495,128.00	$8,642.82
56	Air Force	5817	$46,787,244.00	$8,043.19
57	Army	11330	$89,966,859.00	$7,940.59
67	Treasury	1204	$7,670,814.00	$6,371.11
74	Military active duty	28853	$109,557,536.00	$3,797.09

The first big surprise is how many government agencies that are directly responsible for either setting or enforcing tax policies have employees that cannot follow those policies. And we're not talking about chump change!

The Executive Office of the President comes in at number 5 on the list!

The Administrative Office of the Courts comes in at number 13.

The US House is 15th on the list.

Perhaps there is some validity to the idea that our government is staffed by people that are unwilling to live under the laws and policies that the rest of us have to observe and obey.

You would think that money men would know how to pay their taxes. Yet the US Federal Reserve - Board of Governors ranks 23rd on the list. The US Treasury department came in at number 67. I am not sure how comforting it is to know that 1200 Treasury department employees cannot satisfy their tax bill in a timely manner.

Due to my military service, I am naturally curious about the military related categories.

Active duty personnel came in at a very respectable 74 out of 85 categories. That may be the result of their lower than average pay simply limiting their ability to get into trouble with the IRS.

Yet the civilian component of the military services....the people responsible for maintaining civilian control....all fared much worse. The Navy at #43, the DoD at #53, the Air Force at #56, and the Army at #57. How can these civilians claim any authority over the active duty military when they cannot complete the simple task of paying their tax debt is beyond me.

Even worse, military retirees were 9th on the list with 84,000 tax scofflaws while civilian government retirees were 39th with only 40,000 tax reprobates! Unacceptable!

When we think about elected or appointed policy makers, I think the general theme of people that pass laws for us to obey, but not necessarily for them is sound. Mr. Rangel and Mr. Geithner are simply the last in a very long line of people that either do not understand or do not care how laws and policies affect the rest of us.

At the same time, I think we ought to be careful about using something as innocuous as tax debt data to slur all federal employees. That brush is more than a little too broad.

I didn't do a rigorous statistical regression, but a plot of the data is mostly linear. While there is a big difference in the dollars owed per person from 2nd to 85th on the list, each office is only incrementally more delinquent than the group below it. The exception at the top of the list is the Presidio Trust with a whopping $68,000 per tax debtor.

The other notable exceptions were at the bottom of the list where six agencies have 35 tax debtors with a cumulative tax debt that is less than the average delinquent from the Presidio Trust.

I would like to have population data for each category as well as some hard numbers of total taxpayers for comparison purposes. I think it is pretty easy to see where the Presidio Trust is a hotbed of tax delinquency, but it would be good to know what percentage of Presidio Trust employees are tax debtors. It would also be good to compare that percentage with the percentage of the general population.

There is no such thing as too much data.

Setting The Record Straight....And Keeping It That Way

Gov. Chris Christie does it....again!

An Automotive Drummer

 

Too cool not to see again....

An Evening With A Pair Of Strippers

In this particular case, the strippers were Stephan and Darrin.  And their strips are "Pearls Before Swine" and "Candorville".

Candor and Pearls: An Evening of Social Satire from the Comics Pages from Walnut Creek Library Foundation on Vimeo.

Mysteries Of Femininity Revealed

At last!

Sadly embedding is not allowed.

A Helping Hand

As you may have heard, one of Mr. Obama's economic advisers has quite.  As a part of her farewell speech, Christina Romer offered the following:

“To this day, economists don’t understand why firms cut production as much as they did, or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would,” said Romer. “The current recession has been fundamentally different from other post-war recessions… Rather than being caused by deliberate monetary actions, it began with interest rates at low levels… Precisely what has made it so terrifying, and so difficult to cure, is that we have been in largely uncharted territory.”

Perhaps I may be of assistance to Ms. Romer.  The administration and the Congress have demonstrated that they are hostile to businesses large and small.  That have immeasurably increased the cost of hiring employees with their health care law.  They continue to threaten to increase taxes on taxpayers.  And they meddle in financial regulations as if they were Captain Picard from Star Trek:TNG and saying "make it so" actually made it so.

Were they not so incompetent at governing, business owners might have the confidence needed to hire new workers and expand the economy.  We are not in uncharted territory.  We are in old and familiar territory.  It has been trod by decades of europeans.  We walked it in the 1970s and in the 1930s.

And the solution remains effective, if lacking in the "nuance" that leftists desire.  It is the free market.

Get government spending under control.  We are not under taxed, they are spending too much.

Pass regulations that solve problems instead of regulations designed to stifle markets.  It is not only acceptable for people to earn large sums of money, it is desirable.

And stop trying to make us look like Europe.  Our forebears left Europe...and other places....for a reason.

Lack Of Facts Undermine A Theory

The more we dig, the less substance we find.  In this case we have partisan speculation that is part of a fund raising campaign that gets sucked into a formal international report as "peer reviewed" evidence.  That formal report is then presented as the ultimate proof of an urgent crisis; documented, peer reviewed, above reproach "proof".

When called on the error, the people that published the report acknowledge that they have no data but continue to suggest that the chances of the phenomenon occurring are "very high".

And people wonder why folks like me are skeptical regarding the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

This is not the first time that a closer look at "the science" has indicated a lack of rigorous "science".

The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is two to three feet a year and most are far lower.

Social Security - A Response

We had someone criticizing Tim Wahlberg for his support of privatizing Social Security.  I'm not wild about sending Tim back to Washington.  He was ousted by our current representative Mark Schauer.  Replacing a pack following Democrat with a pack following Republican doesn't sound like much of an improvement to me.

The following is my response to that letter to the editor.  I'll link to that original letter once it is posted online.

A word of advice to George Brown and others that believe that privatizing Social Security "threatens those benefits".  You have been fooled by generations of politicians that promised you wealth later if you would trust them to transfer your wealth to retirees now.

That Ponzi scheme has finally reached the end.  Social Security began life with over 30 workers providing benefits to one retiree.  Generations of lying politicians have finally whittled us down to the point where we have less than 3 workers per retiree.

The money you "paid in" was spent.  It is gone.  Most of the money was spent funding someone else's retirement dreams.  The rest of the money was spent; on the military, on welfare, on pork barrel projects, on the pockets of the well connected.  Instead of being saved and invested, those surplus FICA taxes were wasted funding our behemoth federal government.

What did you get for your money?  A promise to continue to strip wealth from our children and our grandchildren so that you could retire in style.

Like any other Ponzi scheme, Socialist inSecurity is about to coming crashing down because we can't find another generation that is willing to be suckered into the bottom of the pyramid.

The only hope we have left is to stop stealing from the young to pay for the old.  We must restore our common American values of industry, thrift, and fair play.  That means raising the wage cap on FICA taxes, means testing benefits, and allowing our children to put a portion of their FICA taxes in a private savings account.

Our money is safe only when it is locked safely away from the greedy, incompetent, and lying reprobates that we send to Washington D.C.

Link to the original letter added above.  I have no idea why it takes the CitPat so long to post letters that are in the same day's paper.  

A Theme

Mine....lately.....

Your Time....Is Gone!

You are welcome.

Where The Problem Is

Still over there.

A man and a woman who allegedly had an adulterous affair have been stoned and killed in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz.


...


This month the Taliban also reportedly flogged and killed a pregnant widow in western Baghdis province.


“We were also asked to throw stones, the woman was dead but the man was still alive. Some Taliban shot him three times ”


Mohammad Ayub, the governor of Imam Sahib district in Kunduz, told the BBC on Monday: "The Taliban brought them to the local bazaar.


"They stoned them because they were accused of adultery. There was a big crowd of people who watched.''


Two witnesses from Mullah Quli told the BBC that the Taliban asked the villagers to attend the stoning through an announcement on loudspeakers in the mosque.


"There was a big crowd of people," one witness said. "The Taliban made the women wear black clothes and the men were made to stand. The Taliban started throwing stones.
"We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive.

A Timely Illustration - Cordoba House

I had suggested earlier that the Islamic center proposed by Cordoba House for a location unreasonably, IMHO, near the World Trade Center site would be misinterpreted by more radical Islamists as a sort of victory.  Over the weekend, the terrorist group Hamas confirmed that my concern was valid.

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero -- insisting Muslims "have to build" it there.


"We have to build everywhere," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization's chief on the Gaza Strip.


"In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer," he said on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on WABC.

Then I learned that the face of Cordoba House, Feisal Abdul Rauf, had refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist group.

Hamas first came up in the mosque debate earlier this summer when Abdul Rauf refused to describe the group as a terrorist organization -- despite the State Department listing that identifies it as such.


Tom Brown, a chief opponent of the mosque, said: "This is what we've been saying . . . Imam Rauf is a radical Muslim who will not call Hamas a terror group."

Unlike Mr. Brown, I am not certain that Mr. Rauf is an extremist.  I believe he is a moderate in the mode of other Muslim moderates.  He either lacks the spine to actively oppose the terrorism that is being conducted in the name of his religion, or he finds those actions to be perhaps regrettable, but legitimate.

We frequently hear that Islamic Jihadism represents a small fraction of the Muslim world.  We hear that there are many, many more moderate Muslims that do not support Jihadism.

Yet what we see is that larger group of supposedly moderate Muslims that continue to sit on the sidelines and pretend that their religion is not involved in diabolical acts.  Even Fareed Zakaria's recent show illustrated the reluctance of supposed Muslim moderates to voice their opposition to extremism.

Such reluctance suggests to me that one of two things are true.  One is that extremism is a much larger force in Islam than most people are willing to admit.  Extremism that is capable of cowing so many moderates is not an insubstantial movement.

The other, less palatable suggestion is that these supposed moderates more or less approve of terrorist activities as a legitimate course of action.

In any case, if there is a shortage of mosques in New York, then they should build one.....elsewhere.  The current project is too close to the World Trade Center site to permit a mosque to be built there now.

Perhaps later, after Islam has experienced their version of the Reformation, it would be appropriate to build a mosque at the currently proposed site.  Perhaps when a nation's "Islamicity" is no longer a concern.  Perhaps when other religions are tolerated in Muslim societies.

Not now.

And yet.......

Every once in a while you need to listen to the arguments on the other side.  Or perhaps just other opinions.

Mr. Obama struck an appropriate note when he argued that Muslims have the Constitutionally guaranteed right to build places of worship in accordance with the usual local zoning regulations.  He also noted that he wasn't commenting on the wisdom of that particular project being built at that particular place and at this particular time.

Was it smart to select that location at this time for a new mosque?  Hell no.

Is it their absolute right....subject to the usual local zoning laws....absolutely.  You don't spend a serious chunk of your life defending the idea of religious freedom just to toss it aside willy-nilly.

Roger Simon has a piece that I read as sarcastic criticism of those that want Mr. Obama to follow the polls rather than leading the discussion.  I didn't think much of Mr. Clinton because he was such a poll follower.  I did think quite a bit of Mr. GW Bush because he wasn't.  I appreciate Mr. Obama's character because he does try to lead; even though his ideas as to what constitutes "good governance" appear to be predominantly useless garbage, socialistic claptrap, and statist.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has some similar thoughts to share.

Then I thought to myself....self, where are the other mosques/Muslim centers in New York City?  And where exactly is this current project going to be located?

Ahem...to the first issue and *cough*....to the second.

I would certainly not ask for those existing facilities to be torn down and a few are located a similar distance from the WTC site.  Therefore it is hard to see why a new mosque shouldn't be permitted in that area.

I also ran across this background piece on Salon.com that was very informative.  And thus it appears that the folks at Cordoba House never linked their project with 9/11 or the WTC site.  Their critics did.

Anyone who has never been snookered is free to cast the first stone.  You folks that still believe in Social Security need to sit down first.

Howard Kurtz repeats and amplifies on the Salon.com story.  He includes this from Mr. Rauf

'We want to push back against the extremists,' added Imam Feisal, 61.

                                      
Permit me to suggest that Mr. Rauf could "push back" more effectively if he could clearly identify and rebuke Hamas as a terrorist organization.  He might also be more effective if he declined to participate in projects designed to accurate measure the "Islamicity" of a government.  As with other faiths, anything more than a very low measurement is an indication of a problem to be solved.

So where does that leave us.

Does Cordoba House have a right to build a mosque at the proposed location?

Absolutely.  Without qualifiers.

In light of the statements from Cordoba House and the projects financiers indicating that a certain respect for certain sensibilities is required if one wants to build dialog, was this a good location for their project?

Certainly not.  Had they had any respect for the sensibilities of New Yorkers and Americans in general, they would have looked for a different site.  Such respect is apparently unidirectional.

What would I like to see happen?

One of two options.  Either they can find a more suitable location for their project, or they can stop being so "moderate" in their opposition to terrorism and governments based on sharia law.  Being a little less tolerant of the intolerance common among Islamic jihadists would a step in the right direction.  They should fully embrace the difficulties that all religious people have in living in a pluralistic and multi-cultural country.

And work towards a truly pluralistic and multi-cultural world.

And what if I don't get my way?  What if they continue to be tolerant of intolerance and still want to build the mosque in that spot?

So be it.  Freedom of religion is one of the cornerstones of our country.

As is freedom of speech.  And my right to grouse and complain about their project is equally important with their right to build a mosque and worship as they please.

The right to worship as one pleases does not mean that your religion may never be criticized.  Welcome to the free world, folks.

Surprise!!

Taking your time....again.

You can thank me later.

Skepticism Justified

Anyone that has followed the antics of less vitriolic Muslim groups will not be surprised to learn that one such group has been caught whitewashing their website.  A more humourous example occurred in 2005 when CAIR was caught with their rhetorical pants down after having photoshopped hijabs onto several women in a photo that appeared on their site.

In this particular case, the group in question is Cordoba House.  What they tried to expunge is their association with influential Iranians at a conference for the "Shariah Index Project".

As I mentioned here, I am a bit skeptical about Faisal Abdul Rauf and his ideas regarding Islam, shariah, and whether/how those concepts need to be integrated into western cultures.  Specifically, I suspect that Mr. Rauf is the sort of Muslim that supports the idea of government mandated obeisance towards Islam and shariah based laws.  That isn't to suggest that he's the sort to cut off someone's head, or stone a pregnant rape victim for adultery, or chase young girls back into burning buildings rather than risk having them be in public sight while not being covered from head to toe.

Similarly, I don't think Pat Robertson is likely to kill gynecologists that perform abortions with a sniper rifle.  That doesn't mean I want either man having any greater control over our government.

Attempting to whitewash his relationship with dictatorial and terrorist supporting Iranian government apparatchiks suggests that Mr. Rauf is perfectly comfortable with accepting that rather limited Islamic world view as an appropriate 'interpretation' of Islam.  He is apparently uncomfortable about his fellow Americans knowing of his acceptance of the sort of brutality that the Iranian government visits on the Iranian people under the guise of fostering an 'Islamic' state.

What really bothers me is that he had any involvement with the "Shariah Index Project" and measuring Islamicity in the first place.

Imagine a group that was dedicated to measuring the relative 'Christianicity' of various countries.  How loud would the screaming and wailing be if people discovered that Fred Phelps was a participant?  How quickly would we be in demanding that other participants explain their affiliation with such a group?

What Mr. Rauf apparently lacks is a core belief that governments should not impose religion on citizens.  That is not a concept that requires a lot of meetings to codify levels of imposition.  It is a concept that simply requires clear and concise opposition.

Not a whitewash job.

Time Is Up

It is time to admit that Mr. Obama's economic theories just...don't....work.

What slays me is that before the first stimulus bill was passed in 2009, the CBO stated that the economy would recover on its own by the end of the year.  The continuing string of "unexpected" increases in unemployment as well as the Democrats serial inability to accurately predict the outcome of their initiatives underscores the fact that we are better off leaving the economy alone instead of trying to "tweak" it further.

The continual addition of new regulations, the health care bill, and threats of higher taxes only serve to discourage employers from hiring folks that want to work.  If Congress and the President continue to make it more expensive for employers to hire workers, then employers will continue to not hire workers.

It is just that simple.

My Most Famous Reader

I am just pleased as punch to announce that Michelle Obama is an LAAC reader!  If you check the spinning globe at the bottom of the page, you will note a purple dot in southern Spain that appeared recently.

That must be her!

Like I said, pleased....as....punch!

Regulate Actions....Or Regulate Things

Some wisdom from Robb Allen at Sharp As A Marble....

I'm still of the belief that attempting to regulate things rather than setting punishments for specific behavior [is] idiocy. Things can be created from scratch, and the doohickey the law focuses so intently on can be modified so that my thing doesn't exactly match the definition of the legal thing and therefor isn't really a thing per-se.


Mowing down a bunch of blind orphans on a field trip to the art museum though? That's a behavior that's easy to identify, isolate, and punish for. Trying to decide if the particular paint job or threaded doodad on the firearm wasn't documented properly is not only harder to do, it has no bearing on the action of the individual.

A little editing from me.  Great thoughts from Robb.

More Energy From More Technology

An idea was recently floated that we might be able to reduce our energy bill by storing excess power from low power consumption periods and then using it during peak consumption periods.  The essential imbalance is the result of coal plants only being able to run wide open.  If you only need half of that power, then you are wasting the other half.

Michigan has a plant that pumps water into a reservoir out of Lake Michigan during times of low power consumption.  The excess power is used to move the water "up hill".  Then during high power usage, the water is allowed to flow back into the lake via a set of hydro-electric generators.

The new concept was to use the excess energy to create and maintain liquid oxygen.  Knowing a bit of LOX, I know that this approach would have some serious power loss issues to deal with.

At the same time, it may prove to be economically viable.  Who knows what the future holds.

And it doesn't require a Lake Michigan to be located next to every power plant either.

Newsflash - Glenn Beck Sane

At least for a moment or two.  He discussed the recent ruling regarding gay marriage with Bill O'Reilly.

And apparently, he isn't bothered by the idea of gay couples marrying.

So we agree there.

Apparently, that wasn't always the case.

Glenn also believes that our country's slide began with the 'progressive movement' and Woodrow Wilson.  If he includes the Income Tax, the popular election of US Senators, and banning opium, cocaine, and marijuana, then I'd have to agree.

Sadly, he believes there is some sort of 'conspiracy' involved.  And thus any modicum of agreement dies an early death.

I know that Glenn is a big fan of former President Calvin Coolidge.  As am I.  So we're back on again!

In any case, I find it interesting that Glenn Beck isn't terribly concerned about gay marriage.

Mosque-ow On The Hudson

I still maintain misgivings about the proposed project that would place a mosque and "Islamic center" a couple blocks of the World Trade Center site.  Originally, I was concerned that the project was really intended to provide a stealth victory for more radical Islamic elements.  Most of that concern was based on a few episodes where the front man for the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, had made statements in the Arabic press and other non-US venues that suggested that he was less than supportive of a multi-cultural, multi-religious society than his US and English based pronouncements would suggest.

Arab Muslim leaders are known for offering an opinion that is palatable to the west when speaking to western audiences or western media while simultaneously saying something far more dire in the Arabic press or to Arab audiences. 

I am a little less skeptical regarding the project upon reading this item by David Frum that suggests that while Mr. Rauf may be the front man for the project, the real driving force may be the money men that need to raise enough capital to purchase some of the land required for the project.

The mosque developers are three Arab-American businessmen: Sharif and Sammy el-Gamal and Nour Moussa. They have a partner in Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim writer and publicist who does most of the talking. But the money and credit pledged to the project belong to the company owned by Moussa and the el-Gamals, Soho Properties.


Soho Properties has paid some $5 million in cash to buy the Burlington Coat Factory building, a building that yields no income. They are paying rent to hold rights to the Con Ed building, which also yields no income. All of this in the midst of the worst commercial property slump in memory, in an area of New York with a very uncertain economic future. And these are not super-rich guys: Sharif el-Gamal lives in an Upper West Side apartment purchased in 2007 for $1 million.


.....


You can see why the Gamal-Moussa team would be dazzled by the notion that philanthropists in the Persian Gulf might donate $100 million to raise a grand gleaming Islamic center in lower Manhattan. You can tuck a lot of development fees into a $100 million project. And if not a mosque … what else do you do with their two loser properties on Park Place?

Still, the presumption that they could build a mosque so close to the World Trade Center site and purposefully hold the "grand opening" or "dedication" or whatever on September 11th is particularly galling.  Perhaps these gentlemen are simply tone deaf.  While this group may be businessmen focused on making a profit using a moderate religious front man to generate funding, the more radical elements of Islam will perceive the opening of a mosque located near the World Trade Center site on September 11th as a huge victory for their version of Islam.  Their perception will be unaffected by the intentions or actions of the group that has proposed the project.

Of course, this entire episode has spawned a round of imagining tasteless construction projects.  My personal example would be locating a USO office across the street from Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan.

Greg Gutfeld is supposedly moving forward with a real construction project to be located close to the Cordoba House project that is equally tasteless; a Muslim gay bar complete with alcohol and non-alcohol serving areas [located next to the Cordoba House project].

Naturally that project has spawned yet another round of verbal fireballs being tossed back and forth.  It has also yielded this little bit of wisdom from the folks behind Cordoba House.

You’re free to open whatever you like. If you won’t consider the sensibilities of Muslims, you’re not going to build dialog

And the sensibilities of New Yorkers when it comes to the location of a certain new mosque?

Well the irony certainly is thick these days.  You can almost cut it with a knife.

Why He Connected

Mr. Bush really connected with the military.  He also connected with other groups in the country.

And this is part of how he did it....

Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, made a surprise visit to U.S. troops this afternoon.

They showed up at the USO in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. There they mingled with the returning soldiers, thanked them, chatted and posed for photos as proof of the unexpected encounter for folks back home.

The USO just posted an assortment of the photos on its Facebook page, which quickly drew a growing list of appreciative comments.

His other qualities aside, you knew where he stood when it came to supporting our military and their mission to defend our country and our freedom.

Liberty Expands Again

There once was a time when blacks were considered less than whites.  All sorts of rules and laws were passed to make sure that they never forgot "their place".

Our definition of liberty expanded.

There once was a time when women were little more than a man's property; to be treated as men saw fit and allowed to occupy roles in society as men saw fit to allow.

Our definition of liberty expanded.

Our definition of liberty has expanded yet again.  Freedom works each and every time it is tried.

The fate of gay and lesbian couples who want to wed in California is now in the hands of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has less than a week to decide whether to block the enforcement of a federal judge's historic toppling of Proposition 8.


The matter was kicked upstairs to the Ninth Circuit court by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week said the state's ban on same-sex marriage was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Today, Walker lifted a temporary stay he had placed on those nuptials, but simultaneously ruled that his order not take effect until 5 p.m. Wednesday.

 Let freedom ring!  The Constitution has won again.

Guess That Party!

One game that gets played frequently is "Guess That Party".  When reviewing the news about a politician screwing up criminally, I usually check to see if their party affiliation is ever mentioned.  When it is mentioned, there is a better than 80-90% chance that the politician is a Republican.  When it isn't mentioned, the odds drop down into the 10-20% range.

Kind of funny how that works, isn't it?

And Ace explains how it all works.

Political Correctness Run Amok

Ahem...

Take heed, America. The next time you visit Washington, D.C., feel free to stand in awe of the monuments to our greatest leaders, but do not — DO NOT — sing the National Anthem at the Lincoln Memorial. It turns out that doing so is a violation of federal law.

Perhaps we need to start laying off federal parks employees until they regain their sanity.

Steelin' Yer Time...Fer No Gud Reeson

Don't miss a single upgrade.

The Next Contentious Issue

There once was a day....

....when you made real money in the private sector.

....when public jobs didn't pay well, but had some pretty decent benefits.

But now that relationship has been reversed.  Public sector jobs not only pay well, they generally have great working conditions, and they continue to have great benefits including pensions and frequently lifetime healthcare.  The private sector....not so much.  We have defined contribution retirement plans and our healthcare coverage ends when we retire.

It turns out that we have overextended ourselves with respect to public employee pensions.

There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions.


The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide.


The have-nots are taxpayers who don’t have generous pensions. Their 401(k)s or individual retirement accounts have taken a real beating in recent years and are not guaranteed. And soon, many of those people will be paying higher taxes or getting fewer state services as their states put more money aside to cover those pension checks.


At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a "t," as in titanic and terrifying.

I have relatives that are retired public employees.  And friends.  And my brother and his wife plan on being teachers in the future.  So I've got some sympathy for that side of table.

The state’s case turns, in part, on whether it is an "actuarial necessity" for the Legislature to make a change. To Meredith Williams, executive director of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association, the state’s pension fund, the answer is pretty simple. "If something didn’t change, we would have run out of money in the foreseeable future," he said. "So no one would have been paid anything."


Meanwhile, Gary R. Justus, a former teacher who is one of the lead plaintiffs in the case against the state, asks taxpayers in Colorado and elsewhere to consider an ethical question: Why is the state so quick to break its promises?


After all, he and others like him served their neighbors dutifully for decades. And along the way, state employees made big decisions (and built lifelong financial plans) based on retiring with a full pension that was promised to them in a contract that they say has the force of the state and federal constitutions standing behind it. To them it is deferred compensation, and taking it away is akin to not paying a contractor for paving state highways.


And actuarial necessity or not, Mr. Justus said he didn’t believe he should be responsible for past pension underfunding and the foolish risks that pension managers made with his money long after he retired in 2003.

This problem has been exacerbated by government managers who have failed negotiate aggressively with public sector unions.  As a result, wages and benefits have continued to increase at a pace well beyond what private sector employees can earn.  It is a problem that is similar to that faced by GM, Ford, and Chrysler as a result of their continuing to cave in to demands by the UAW.

Locally, we have had our city, county, and state government employees agree to accept unpaid days off and other compensation package reductions in order to balance those respective budgets.  Not everyone thinks the same way that Mr. Justus does.

Long term we are all going to need take a long hard look at public employee compensation packages.  We should never be in the position of promising more than we can ultimately deliver.  That may very well mean reducing wages, benefits, and pension plans for current employees.  At the very least, we can minimize the pain for everyone by reducing the rate of increase until the problem is resolved.

Perspective

You may have heard that the US Ambassador to Japan will be attending the upcoming ceremonies at the Hiroshima memorial?  As current and long time allies, our solemn respect is certainly appropriate.

To provide some perspective, the Belmont Club asks if anyone knows of any events that caused a larger loss of civilian life than Hiroshima.  And indeed there were at least two.

The difference?  Those people who fought on the side of freedom then are forgotten.  Those who we fought simply omit those atrocities from their national histories.  And time marches on.

What Hypocrisy? Tax Edition

From Victor David Hanson comes a brief broadside regarding the hypocrisy involved in continually calling for the government to enact higher taxes on the rich while simultaneously avoiding higher taxation in the hypocrite's personal finances.

The money line:

Does the technocratic guardian class believe that, as an overseeing nomenklatura, the laws should not apply to thems?(sic)

Of course they think they are above the law.  Laws are for little people.  And unlike Leona Helmsley, they don't even bother to try and abide by the law.

Time For You To Waste Your Time

Play free games at Kongregate

Clueless...Quality Cluelessness....But Clueless Just The Same

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs decided to take on Rush Limbaugh over the latter's criticism regarding the government bailouts for GM and Chrysler.  But something seems amiss:

“I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to walk away” from a milion workers, he continued, “explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision.”


Finally, he wrapped it up: “And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh — I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it’s not an F-150.”


The F-150 truck, we should note, is made by Ford, which didn’t get federal rescue funds.

I suppose that you can't expect to have a rational discussion of the issues at hand with a person who doesn't understand the difference between profits generated by a company that wasn't bailed out with [much smaller] profits generated by a company that was bailed out.

From the 'cheap seats', I'll offer a question for Mr. Gibbs;  Where does the U.S. Constitution grant the federal government the authority to "bail out" any private company?

The country is in the very best of hands.....

Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!

He's 70 years old!  Not bad for a rabbit.

Here's a short he filmed back when he turned 51 and a half.  Regrettably, it is not embeddable.

More Chris Christie

Any chance he could fix the US after he's done fixing New Jersey??

Marines Needed.....

Mark Shields is a columnist with whom I agree on a very infrequent basis.  He prefers a greater level of government influence than I believe to be compatible with living in a free country.

But Mr. Sheilds recently offered the following thoughts that I believe are right on the mark.  I am glad to share some of those thoughts with you here.

I was not a great Marine. I never saw combat. I got a lot more from the Marines than the Marines got from me. But I believe fervently that this nation today needs the values of the Marine Corps as much as the nation needs the Marine Corps.


Of course, honor, courage and commitment are always in short supply. But the Marines teach personal responsibility and accountability by example, that any chain is only as strong as the weakest individual link. As a unit, we are stronger working together than the individual members can separately be.


Marines take care of their own - and they take care of their fellow Marines before themselves. The well-being of the country and of the Corps is more important than our individual well-being.


This may best be stated in the hard-and-fast Marine rule: "Officers eat last." The Marine officer does not eat until after his subordinates for whom he is responsible - the corporals and privates - have been fed. Marines live by the rule that loyalty goes both up and down the chain of command. Would not our country be a more just and human place if the brass of Wall Street and Washington and executive suites believed that "officers eat last"?


The Marine ethic emphasizes responsibility to duty and responsibility to others before self. This is the very opposite of the unbridled individualism that elevates profit and personal comfort to high virtues. The selfish and self-centered CEO or senator who disregards and discards his loyal "troops" would be shunned in the Corps.


Civilian Americans must understand that the greatest civil rights victories have been won by the Marines and the U.S. military, the most successfully integrated sector of our national life. Why? No racial reference and no racial discrimination. The first time I ever slept in the same quarters with African-Americans or Latinos - or took orders from them - was as a private in the Marines Corps.


Yes, America really does need more Marine values and influence.

Apologies Required....

As noted elsewhere, Shirley Sherrod is due an apology or two.  Her firing is unjustified given the context of her remarks.

While we are at it, how about some apologies for these transgressions as well.

Oppressing Iraqis.....With Subtitles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTzSAstxMkY

Sadly, no embedding is possible.  Equally sadly, I think I hurt myself watching it.

Dive Down Where?

National Geographic has a series of dive photos from the Bahamas. Some of the scenes are quite stirring.

Although getting sucked down the Chimney Blue Hole doesn't really sound like a lot of fun.

"All of a sudden, it's got you," says photographer Wes Skiles of the "insanely dangerous" vortex in Chimney Blue Hole off Grand Bahama. Like a giant bathtub drain, it sucks down millions of gallons when the tide comes in. "It's like going over a waterfall—there's no escape." Keeping his distance, a diver sets up equipment to measure the whirlpool's flow rate.

Mistrusting The Government - Classic Examples

There are good reasons why I do not trust the government when it comes to my health.  They have a demonstrably long track record of considering my health to be of secondary importance to their ability to do....something.

As this post demonstrates:

This is a dead end street.  The FDA does not recognize aging as a treatable condition and only approves treatment for "Disease."  Since Alzheimer's is not a Disease but a predictable variant of  aging, the only treatments allowed and currently being developed are those that slow down the progression of the "Disease."  Alzheimer's could quite likely be cured if the money now spent developing means to slow down the condition were devoted to finding ways to directly remove the toxic neurofibrillary tangles that form the Alzheimer's plaques.

It gets worse.  Because the FDA only evaluates treatments for Diseases, and its definition of disease versus aging is completely arbitrary (why is Type II Diabetes a disease while Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass and function that accompanies aging, is not?) we are forced to develop treatments that primarily address symptoms rather than either repairing damage or rejuvenating systems.  In such a bureaucratized environment we might well be better off as mice than men:

Gene Therapy Trains Immune Cells Against Cancer

Some day you'll be able to get your immune cells reprogrammed to go on hunter killer attack missions against tumors.

Researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center created a large, well armed battalion of tumor-seeking immune system cells and watched, in real time using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), as the special forces traveled throughout the body to locate and attack dangerous melanomas.

But for now this sort of thing only gets done for those tricky lab mice who have done such a great job of convincing researchers into developing medical treatments for them first.

If I had terminal cancer and a large sum of money I'd hire medical researchers to do this to my own immune system.

 I don't go all wishy-washy around here very much.  And not very much truly terrifies me beyond the occasional vampire dream.

But I am terrified of growing old.  I watched my Grandmother slowly drift away with Alzheimer's.  I'm seeing some of the same pre-behaviors in my dad.  I'm seeing them in me, too.

And the thought of drifting off into a darkness where thought and conviction and humor and spontaneity and inventiveness and everything else that makes my life worth having slips away quite simply terrifies me.  To have rational thought be uncatchable like smoke.  To have memories sought but never quite found.  To be a rat caught in a maze for which there is no end.

I can imagine few things more terrifying.

Except being in such a condition and having one's government deny the development or application of successful treatments in order that we not inconvenience regulators with the messy problem of occasionally being wrong.

What Media Collusion?

Nah....must have been my imagination.

Felonious And Fraudulent

Why all the concern over fraudulent voter registrations?  Why the concern over keeping voter rolls clear of those that are ineligible to vote?

Because they affect the outcome of close races.  Not theoretically.  Actually.

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.


That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

Of course, some folks just won't care....because they approve of the outcome when fraudulent ballots are used.

Tar, Feathers, Railroad......Premature

I haven't spent any time delving into the firing of Shirley Sherrod; formerly with the USDA.  She was fired when video surfaced of her speech to the NAACP in which she said she had not provided all of the service to a white farmer that she was obligated to supply.  The audience of the NAACP apparently applauded that particular line in her speech quite enthusiastically.

I am still not going to spend much time on it, except to note this post from Eric Scheie over at Classical Values.  In it Eric suggests that Ms. Sherrod's speech included the suggestion that she was wrong to withhold her valuable services and that she has a different view of her job.  The one from which she was fired.  Give the larger context of the speech, it seems appropriate to suggest that her dismissal was unjust.

His other comments regarding the commitment to free speech and pointing out racism among the NAACP audience are also worthy of your time.

What Media Bias?

This media bias.  Read the whole soul crushing thing.  Gutenberg and Franklin must be rolling in their graves.

Climategate......Questions Remain Unanswered

Some time ago, an anonymous individual released emails and computer model coding that suggested that climate researchers that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit had been less than "scientific" in their research.  Investigating committees were appointed.  The results are out....and disappointing.

When the Climategate e-mails were released last year, the evidence of misconduct by the scientists involved was so strong that the climate establishment was forced to commission a series of tribunals. Yet the conclusions of those inquiries are as specious as the science they were supposed to investigate. By asking the wrong questions -- or not asking them at all -- they have failed to advance the climate debate one iota.


...


Yet the hearings did not include testimony from the most severe critics of the hockey stick graphic, such as Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who could have explained exactly why the e-mails did suggest impropriety.


...


Further, the inquiry failed to ask the most basic questions of the CRU scientists, such as whether Professor Phil Jones had actually deleted inconvenient e-mails. Britain's freedom of information office said that the Cimategate e-mails provided the most cogent evidence imaginable that there had been efforts to avoid FOI requirements, yet the Muir Russell review did not investigate this appropriately.

Why The Silence.....Indeed

As my many....erm several....uh...regular reader(s) will attest, I remain quite concerned about the current decision by the Justice Department to drop the federal charges against the New Black Panther Party.  During the election of 2008, NBPP members stood outside of a polling place and threatened voters with violence if they didn't vote a certain way.  One was holding a nightstick.

The Bush Administration filed charges.  The Obama Administration was on the verge of obtaining a default judgment when an apparent political decision was made to drop the charges against all but one of the defendants.  I believe the idea of race-neutral law enforcement is one worth defending.  Apparently, elements of the Obama Administration feel differently on the subject.

I mention all this because the Ombudsman for the Washington Post has published a piece about the delay in WaPo's decision to cover this issue.

For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competitors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing bloggers have been pumping the story. Liberal bloggers have countered, accusing them of trying to manufacture a scandal.


...


That's prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, "Lord, there'd have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months."


To be sure, ideology and party politics are at play. Liberal bloggers have accused Adams of being a right-wing activist (he insisted to me Friday that his sole motivation is applying civil rights laws in a race-neutral way). Conservatives appointed during the Bush administration control a majority of the civil rights commission's board. And Fox News has used interviews with Adams to push the story. Sarah Palin has weighed in via Twitter, urging followers to watch Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly's coverage because "her revelations leave Left steaming."


The Post should never base coverage decisions on ideology, nor should it feel obligated to order stories simply because of blogosphere chatter from the right or the left.

What Mr. Alexander his missed is that it appears that the influence of latent politics is the cause for the delay in covering this issue in the first place.

Were we talking about the Klan threatening voters with clubs, the WaPo would have been among the first to point out how far we have yet to go on the subject of race relations.  They would have called for immediate federal intervention and questioned the character of any administration official that did not move forward with the requisite alacrity.

We already know via the JournoList that members of the media colluded to soften the blow of the Jeremiah Wright story on Mr. Obama.

What Mr. Alexander continues to miss is the fact that were our media truly unbiased, we never would have seen the rise of Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews, or any other conservative media outlet.

Where Did All The Jobs Go?

The NYTimes was recently holding forth on the "missing jobs" that are no longer in the economy.  Glenn Reynolds links to a few reasonable explanations.

The best explanation is that governments do not run economies efficiently.  Government policies distort the economy.  Sometimes those distortions work out well. [Think EPA air and water pollution regulations.]  Sometimes they do not. [The Depression Era restrictions on working hours in the National Recovery Act come to mind.]

We have had a bit of both recently.  The 2009 stimulus bill included up to $8,000 for new, first time home owners.  The purpose of that money was to help sop up the newly created surplus in homes created by the housing bubble.

Quite frankly, I thought this was one of the few occasions of masterful law-making by Mr. Obama.  New home owners buy a lot of things; lawn mowers, refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, etc.  Getting those homes out of the market helped slow the fall in home prices while at the same time created demand for other goods.

Another example of positive legislation is the spending of money on road projects.  If we are going to throw money at the labor market, we may as well do so in a way that results in real improvements to our infrastructure.

A negative example would be the "cash for clunkers" program that took a lot of very serviceable vehicles off the market and then junked their motors.  Essentially, it was a subsidy for people with enough money to be able to confidently afford a new car purchase.  Their used cars might have served as good upgrades for second tier car owners that cannot afford to buy a new car.  [Like me!!]

So where did the jobs go?  Health Care Reform and Banking Reform.

Those two laws have created a great amount of uncertainty among employers.  They simply do not know how much these laws are going to cost.  We are already seeing even greater increases in health care insurance costs due to government action.  We have no idea how much the banking reforms are going to cost our banks....and in turn cost us.

I talk to business owners and managers everyday as a part of my usual employment.  Whenever the subject of the economy comes up....and it does....the insecurity of the current regulatory and tax environment is almost always identified as being the prime cause for companies to not hire new workers.  I have had business owners tell me that they have more work to be done, but they won't hire any new workers because they don't know how much it is going to cost in the long run to hire them.

Governments don't run economies.  They ruin them.  It is a hard lesson that we are going to have to re-learn.

Unfortunately.

Unsurprising

For those of concerned about the media's 'kid gloves' treatment of Mr. Obama, and the concomitant savaging of everyone else, this is no surprise.

“CALL THEM RACISTS:” JournoList Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

Update: Karl Rove, man of tolerance and equanimity:

Rove played down the notion that members of the mainstream press agreed with Ackerman but he said he found it curious that such talk was tolerated within the group. It was important, he added, not to judge the motives of members who chose not to respond.

“I thought it was a revealing insight in the attitude of one minor player in the D.C. world of journalism,” Rove said of Ackerman’s comments. “It’s an even more important insight into a broader group of more prominent journalists that they seem to be willing to tolerate the suggestion that they should all tell a deliberate lie or that they should take somebody’s head and shove it through a plate glass window. I would hope that somebody would say, ‘Mr. Ackerman, do you really believe we ought to fabricate a lie about people just because we don’t agree with them?’”

The Consent Of The Governed

Via Powerline

I think the more significant cause, however, is the general one--a growing conviction that America is governed by a political class that has its own agenda, involving its own enrichment as well as the endless expansion of its own power, and that this political class is contemptuous of the opinions of ordinary Americans and is determined to impose its will regardless of how Americans vote. I think this perception is in fact true.


...


There have been several occasions when the American people have voted for smaller government; most notably in 1972, 1980 and 1994. But it really doesn't matter. You can vote for limited government, but you can't get it; the political class won't let you. This is not to assert the silly proposition that there is no major difference between Democrats and Republicans. The fiscal disaster that we have witnessed since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 proves the contrary. But still: experience shows that voting for Republicans hasn't been enough to offset the power of the political class.

Biden: Tea Parties Aren't Racist

And the President shares that point of view.  Good to know!

“I wouldn’t characterize the Tea Party as racist.  There are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their — their protests — that have expressed really unfortunate comments.


(…)


“I don’t believe, the president doesn’t believe that the Tea Party is — is a racist organization.  I don’t believe that,” Biden said.  “Very conservative.  Very different views on government and a whole lot of things.  But it is not a racist organization.”

Pointing Out Where The Problem Is

A woman is beaten, raped, killed, and was dumped near a cemetery by government agents.  Care to guess the part of the world where this took place?  Care to guess why she was killed?

The problem remains...over there.

My Kind Of Class Warfare

One that focuses on reducing government programs and spending that distort the market in favor of the well connected at the expense of the rest of us that just work for a living.

Still, watching the Giudices sashay through their onyx-encrusted mansion, and knowing that thousands of similarly profligate homeowners are simply walking away from their debts, it’s easy to succumb to a little class-warrior fantasizing. (Pitchforks, tar, feathers ... that sort of thing.)

The trick is to channel those impulses in a constructive direction. The left-wing instinct, when faced with high-rolling irresponsibility, is usually to call for tax increases on the rich. But the problem, here and elsewhere, isn’t exactly that we tax high rollers’ incomes too lightly. It’s that we subsidize their irresponsibility too heavily — underwriting their bad bets and bailing out their follies. The class warfare we need is a conservative class warfare, which would force the million-dollar defaulters to pay their own way from here on out.

Thoughts Upon The Departure Of 'Royalty'

Courtesy of Mike Peterson....

If she were our princess, if we were still part of the United Kingdom, the hoopla surrounding her visit could now honorably die out. But since she isn't and we aren't, we are left in a bit of a quandary: We must either admit that we have been shamelessly groveling at the feet of someone paid $182,000 a year to represent a monarchy our forefathers died to banish from this soil, or we must extend the same warm welcome to every guest to this area.


Let's get down to the business of welcoming our next tourist:


Alfred George Rowles is a greengrocer from Hertford, Herts., England. He will be arriving at the Colorado Springs Airport, at 3:18 p.m. July 30.

Those Traitors! Enemies Of The State!!

Number 3 on the list is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,  a fellow of the Royal Society, and part of the Institute for Advanced Study.  He is one of the creators of the relativistic quantum field theory.

Number 4 is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor at MIT.

Number 6 is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor at Princeton.

Number 38 is a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane.

And this guy comes in at number 1.

They must be stopped before they can act again?

Their crime?  Skepticism regarding the cause and extent of global warming over the last 150 years or so.

Notice that I am not saying that there has been no warming, just that the available raw data that I’ve personally been able to check do not show it. Until all the raw temperature data are placed online, so the data can be checked by anybody, a rational person has to suspend belief in global warming, to say nothing of AGW.


The official government adjusted data for these sites do show a warming trend. All the warming is in the “corrections.” Sorry, I don’t buy it. Especially from “scientists” who are known to “correct’ their raw data to “hide the decline.”


There have been calls to silence the 496 scientists on the list. Besides “climate deniers,’ we have been called “traitors.” We all know the penalty for treason.


So far, no federal agents have come to pick me up. But nowhere in Mein Kampf does Adolf Hitler call for the extermination of the Jews. Hitler does repeatedly refer to the Jews as “tuberculosis bacilli.”  What does one want to do with tuberculosis bacilli?

Emphasis in the original.

Generally, we see the existence of an 'enemies list' as an indication of a problem.  A problem that exists wholely with the person or people that created the list in the first place.

The answer is in the data.  What is needed, IMHO, is a transparent process by which the data is adjusted to account for human activity and its affect on the climate in either the micro or macro scales.  That begins with non-adjusted data.  It proceeds with a review of the measuring devices with an eye towards siting that would unreasonably impact the recorded measurements.  It continues with the transparent application of mutually agreeable and peer reviewed adjustments to accommodate the influence of human activity. 

None of which will happen while lists of "traitors" and "deniers" are still being compiled.

I am a little disappointed that I didn't make the list.

Digging For Dirt

Apparently the Dems are digging for dirt they can use against the Republicans next fall.  Which makes perfect sense when you consider that their agenda is failing so badly that all they have left is dirt.

Deception

I check Matt Drudge's site on a regular basis.  I find it to be one of many useful sites for knowing the major stories of the day.  Unfortunately, he...or his staff...decided to be a bit deceptive today.

The link to this Politico story suggests that Vice President Joe Biden had verbally "slapped" former President George W. Bush.  Yet the text of the actual story suggests that Mr. Biden had actually offered credit where credit is due.

“I think America wins,” Biden told POLITICO in an end-of-trip interview at the ambassador’s residence in the sprawling U.S. Embassy complex. “I sound corny, but I think America gets credit here in the region. And I think everybody gets credit, from George Bush to [President Obama].

It is a sad bit of deception.

I agree that credit is due to many people; including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.  It is a pity that Messrs Obama and Biden couldn't have gotten on board with the campaign in Iraq before they won the 2008 Presidential election.  Victory has many fathers......

A Liberal Appeal

From Daily Kos......regarding the Second Amendment?  Pigs are flying somewhere.

Giving In Willingly.....

Bucky: How do you know this isn't some kind of low-emission based, pre-game grounds-keeping?

Rob: Bucky, this is soccer!

ROFL

I Have Done Been Miracled....

....into the Democratic Party.  'Cause trust me, divine intervention is required to make that happen these days.

But if this represents the thinking amongst the GOP leadership, then they have lost whatever marginal support that I was able to muster in the past.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was caught on video at a fundraiser in Connecticut on Thursday raising doubts about the war in Afghanistan.


The Democratic National Committee (DNC) pushed out the video, which shows Steele saying that the war is of "Obama's choosing" and that it is nearly impossible to win a land war in the Central Asian country.


"Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in," he said. "But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?"

My panties....they done been twisted.

One of the areas where I have been very pleased to support Mr. Obama is his administration's strong support for our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Not unlike his predecessor, there are times when he and his administration could have done a better job.  But they have largely stayed the course to victory in Iraq.  Hopefully they will do the same in Afghanistan.

These Folks Just Do Not 'Get' Living In The West

Perhaps they don't want to.

Afshan Azad, who has appeared in four of the [Harry Potter] films as one of the wizard’s screen girlfriends Padma Patil, hails from a strict Muslim family.


She was allegedly attacked at her parents’ home ­after she had started dating the new lad.


Her dad Abdul, 54, has appeared in court accused of threatening to kill her. The actress’s brother Ashraf, 28, faces the same charge and an allegation that he assaulted her causing actual bodily harm.

Perhaps that is the problem we need to be solving.

A Moose Is Loose

As a courtesy to the sanity of my readers, permit me to offer the following; baby moose in the sprinkler.

I Try.....And Sometimes I Fail

Ta-Nehsi Coates, writer for the Atlantic whom I have come to read frequently, enjoy immensely, and with whom I disagree on a wide range of subjects, offers the following thoughts regarding written criticism in the wake of the Dave Weigel/Washington Post affair.

With that in mind, a few quick words on my own approach to this matter. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of having dinner with James Fallows, along with a few other Atlantic folks. Fallows offered some really wise words on how to criticize people in print, the gist of it being, "Speak to those you would criticize as though they were standing right there."


That's a high standard, but one I've generally tried to maintain. My sense of my role here is as follows: I'm not here to try to humiliate people I disagree with. That goes as much for Jeff Goldberg, who is my friend, as it goes for Bob McDonnell, who is not. For sure there is a little more hot sauce on the thing, when I don't know the person. But by and by, I hope to speak to McDonnell as I would speak to Goldberg--not the other way around.


It's fun to be mean, and it makes your side howl--and sometimes it's even necessary. But  my game is as follows--stating my opinions directly, clearly and without equivocation and without undue malice.

A high standard of discourse indeed.

And yet today I find myself tempted by the following bon mot:

In sum total, what you people did was drive someplace where there wasn't a problem, complain about something you don't fully understand, get in the way of people who may actually be performing a function, and then do nothing, en masse, except hope that someone else notices your little snit and makes it all better.


My god, if there's a more perfect metaphor for the modern progressive movement, I've never seen it.

Emphases in the original.

I am privileged to know a fair number of intelligent people that are a bit left of me politically.  I am also aware of the many reactionary, reflexive, and unthinking people on the right.

Yet there is an underlying truth to the above.  I have sadly come to expect nonsense will follow whenever I hear the word "progressive", or the phrase "speaking truth to power", or similar leftist twaddle.  Sadder still, I am rarely disappointed in that expectation.

I try to think the best of all of my fellow Americans regardless of their opinions.  I hope that what animates their politics is a desire to improve our nation and our world.  I try to remain at least open enough to hear their point of view before presenting my own.

Today...momentarily...I failed.

Distrust In Our Government's Abilities - The Oily Edition

Governments, as with companies and with people, are productive at addressing a limited set of issues.  The latest example of a government operating beyond its abilities is the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Immediately after news of the spill broke, the Dutch government offered the use of their oil skimming ships to help contain the spill.  Our government declined the offer.  These ships take in a mixture of oil and seawater and dump nearly oil-free seawater overboard.  The reclaimed oil can presumably be taken ashore for further processing.

Why weren't we using those Dutch ships?  Because "nearly oil-free" does not meet the EPA's stringent requirement that all discharges into the Gulf be 99.9985% pure.

American oil skimmers transport tanks full of oil and sea water to shore for processing.  That is an incredibly wasteful process given the rate that oil is spilling into the Gulf.

Eventually, our government decided to use the Dutch technology.  But rather than have Dutch ships operating off our coast, we insisted on removing the equipment from the Dutch ships and installing it on American ships.  Rather than having experience Dutch operators, we insisted on training American workers.  A process that created an additional delay in getting the equipment into action.

Our government has grown too large, too entrenched, too enamored of protecting the provincial interests of a plethora of government agencies, bureaus, offices, and departments to respond effectively to any crisis.

Why do I distrust our leviathan federal government?  Because of the demonstrably poor results it routinely provides.

h/t to Ace of Spades

I Am Afraid......

.....and while reading things like this may help me understand the fear, it does nothing to relieve it.

Justices Denied

Jacob Sullen over at Reason points out the hypocrisy involved by members of the Supreme Court that oppose granting the Second Amendment equal footing with the rest of the Bill of Rights.

If "the people" want to ban handguns, they say, "the people" should be allowed to implement that desire through their elected representatives.

What if the people want to ban books that offend them, establish an official church, or authorize police to conduct warrantless searches at will? Those options are also foreclosed by constitutional provisions that apply to the states by way of the 14th Amendment. The crucial difference between a pure democracy and a constitutional democracy like ours is that sometimes the majority does not decide.
Likewise, Stevens defends "state and local legislatures' right to experiment," while Breyer is loath to interfere with "the ability of States to reflect local preferences and conditions—both key virtues of federalism." Coming from justices who think Congress can disregard state decisions about the medical use of marijuana because a plant on the windowsill of a cancer patient qualifies as interstate commerce, this sudden concern about federalism is hard to take seriously.

Another reason to doubt the dissenters' sincerity: They would never accept federalism as a rationale for letting states "experiment" with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or due process protections. Much of their job, as they themselves see it, involves overriding "local preferences" that give short shrift to constitutional rights.

Second Amendment rights are different, Breyer says, because "determining the constitutionality of a particular state gun law requires finding answers to complex empirically based questions." So does weighing the claims in favor of banning child pornography or depictions of animal cruelty, relaxing the Miranda rule, admitting illegally obtained evidence, or allowing warrantless pat-downs, dog sniffs, or infrared surveillance.

When they decide whether a law or practice violates a constitutional right, courts cannot avoid empirical questions. In cases involving racial discrimination or content-based speech restrictions, for example, they ask whether the challenged law is "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest" and is the "least restrictive means" of doing so.

h/t to the blogfather

Did The Coffee House Depicted in "Nighthawks" Really Exist

Did it?

Yet Another Quiz

My score:

Economic Left/Right: 4.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.92

Here's the link if you are interested.  Although most of the questions are rubbish designed to cause a specific reactionary answer.  A lot of the information presented on the "score" page is garbage as well.

Forewarned.....forearmed.....etc.

The Rahn Curve And You

h/t to the blogfather....

link

Elana Kagan - Citizen's United - Banning Books Is OK

In my "stack o' stuff", I have some items related to the Citizens United case recently decided by the Supreme Court.  Fortunately for my loyal readers, I'm not going to delve into it for this post.  I bring up the "stack o' stuff" only to note that I had thought to write at length regarding the decision.

The most important thing I can say today is please take the time to read the full decision before making up your mind about it.  Both the majority and the dissenting minority had some interesting things to say.

One reason why I believe that Citizen's United was decided correctly is because the law in question effectively placed individual citizens in the position of having to ask permission from the government before exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.  That is an unacceptable proposition from my perspective.

I ran across this edited video of Supreme Court nominee Elana Kagan arguing before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government's position in support of the campaign finance laws being challenged before the court.  In her argument before the court, Ms. Kagan argued that it was acceptable for a federal law to ban books because the FEC had never before taken any regulatory action towards a book.

What Ms. Kagan fails to understand is that there is a first time for everything.  She apparently does not understand that each successive instance only becomes easier and easier to justify.  Nor does Ms. Kagan appreciate that the first time she is likely to notice the enforcement of a federal law banning books is when it is a government that is not of her preference [that is] banning a book [that] reflects her perspective.

Applause!!!

Daily Kos got burned.  They paid for survey results that turned out to be untrue.

Why the applause? 

Because Markos Moulitsas had the stones to admit that he got taken...in full....in public....in a manner that left not doubt as to what happened from his perspective.  I don't spend much time over at the Daily Kos....for obvious reasons.

But I can easily respect someone that offers a full, transparent account of events in pursuit of an honest, open, and spirited public debate of the issues at hand.

In Ruth's Honor....

I'm sure she'll love it.

Putting Lunacy In Its Place

I am not a fan of police brutality.  Nor am I a supporter of the idea that the police ought to be given a little "leeway" in the performance of their duties.  There is a line between the legitimate performance of their duties enforcing the laws that the people have established and an unacceptable abuse of a position of authority.  It shall not be crossed.

It gets crossed anyway.  No one should think otherwise.

With that caveat aside, I think it may be time to let loose the dogs of war on the self professed "anarchists" that destroy any city that has the poor judgment to host a meeting of the G-20 group of nations.  Invariably, these socialists.....'cause let's admit that they really are advocating socialism rather than anarchy.....turn to breaking windows, burning cop cars, looting stores, and generally destroying as much of the city in question that they can. They never get near the G-20 meeting.  They just march around until the moment seems ripe and the destruction begins.

Toronto is the latest city to burn at their hands.  The police have demonstrated a repeated inability to halt the actual destruction while at the same time harassing peaceful and legitimate onlookers.  The indications of an overwhelmed and frustrated police force are not hard to miss.  Pittsburgh had similar problems when they hosted a G-20 summit.

Take a good look at some of these "protesters".  Do people that turn up with steel bars and gas masks really intend to demonstrate peacefully?

Of course not.

So for the next G-20 summit, perhaps we ought to call out the national guard.  Have them waiting in the wings.  Arm them with the latest in anti-riot armaments.  And when the protesters fail to respond appropriately to the police, let the guard handle the situation.

And if the protesters escalate things by bringing guns to a gun fight.....well the guard knows how to use those as well.

These are not "one time" events.  They are planned for years in advance.  And the people that inevitably pay the price are the people of the host city; with downtown businesses and property owners paying the largest penalty.

The way to stop those years of prior planning is to make rioting an unacceptable option...in their minds.  Quite frankly, the only way to make that happen is to cause them enough pain that they will think of a more constructive and socially acceptable way to express their point of view.

A Lawyer Quits In Disgust

J. Christian Adams recently quit his job working for the Voting Rights section of the U. S. Justice Department.  He resigned in disgust over the way the Obama Administration appointees have eroded the principle of equality before the law by directing the dismissal of the cases against New Black Panther party members.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.


Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.

The quickest way to turn America into a third world country is to undermine the rule of law and the idea that we all stand equal before the law.  Federal voter intimidation cases should not be sought based on skin color.....that of the victims or that of the alleged criminals that violated federal election laws.

Anything less falls far short of who we are trying to be as a nation.

How Low Can They Go?

link

The last one with the sonic boom rolling across the bay is the best.  The Harrier flying almost low enough to decapitate the flight line crew was the second best.  Woot!!