Imagine that. Ordinary Americans thinking they know what’s better for themselves than their political betters. Has someone informed The New York Times of this heresy?
And yes, that’s the actual Gallup Poll headline, not an Iowahawk parody of a Gallup Poll headline.
Instapundit usually puts up good, interesting links, but this one by Cindy Perman on disappearing jobs suffers from the fact that the woman who wrote it has no idea what she’s talking about, at least when it comes to computers:
While computer software engineers, the guys who write the software, are projected to be among the fastest-growing jobs, rising 32 percent over the next 10 years, demand for computer programmers, the guys who write the instructions for a computer to use that software, is expected to shrink 3 percent in the next decade.”
What on earth is she trying to say here? “The instructions for a computer to use that software” are, in fact, the software. Does she mean system architects vs. programmers? Those with engineering degrees and those without? Programmers versus Technical Writers (who tell people how to use software, not computers how to run the software they’re already running)? It’s so incoherent you can’t tell what she means.
As a science fiction writer (I think it was S. M. Stirling) said on a convention panel once: “You ever notice how a newspaper article on a subject you’re an expert in always has lots of errors? Well, all the rest of the articles have just as many errors, you just don’t know it.”
At least the article provides a handy example of why so many “Reporters and Correspondents” jobs are going away…
It’s not just the U.S. that believes China’s yuan is pegged artificially low. The EU is also complaining at the current EU-China summit, asking them to let the yuan appreciate 20-40% in value.
China’s reply? Get stuffed.
That’s not the only China-EU news this week. China is also buying up Greek assets at the same time they’re dumping U.S. assets.
Let that sink in for a moment. As The Motley Fool’s Christopher Barker put it, “China may consider Greece a safer bet than the United States.”
If Obama Administration officials weren’t worried about our unsustainable budget deficits before (and every indication is they weren’t), now would be an excellent time to start…
According to The Wall Street Journal
The Detroit company gave $90,500 to candidates running in the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show…The beneficiaries include Midwestern lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who have traditionally supported the industry’s legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.).”
Don’t you feel honored that a company owned by the Federal government is using your bailout money to reward those that supported a bailout?
According to WSJ, that list includes Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip. Mr. Cantor should know better, and should make it a point to give the money back. ObamaMotors shouldn’t be trying to bribe our elected officials with our own money.
(Hat tip Don Surber.)
This piece by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair is a real eye-opener. No matter how fiscally inept and corrupt you thought Greece’s government, the picture it paints is much worse, of a country where no one blows the whistle on tax cheats because everyone is a tax cheat, and everyone still expects to get their 14 monthly paychecks a year. Everyone is in on the game, even the monks.
Especially the monks.
This is the endpoint of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, the final pre-collapse state of socialism: Everyone wants to grab their share, but no one wants to pay for it, and the supply of other people’s money is finally running out. This is the where Obama’s Big Government economic policies must inevitably lead: A declining state with huge budget deficits run for the benefit of bureaucrats.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
My congressman, Rep. John Carter (“Warlord of Mars”) of Texas House District 31 held an open house in Round Rock on Tuesday, August 17. Here’s my brief report. (I’m quoting from memory, so please forgive me if I get any quotes slightly wrong.)
This was a standing-room only crowd (my rough estimate would be 300-400 people), predominately older (not uncommon for political events), and 95% conservative (this is, after all, Williamson County). Save one liberal that shouted questions from the audience rather than waiting to use the microphone, it was also very well-behaved. (It would probably be unfair to compare Rep. Carter’s open house to those of Russ Carnahan or Claire McCaskill or even Ciro Rodriguez, all Representatives catching flack from their constituents for voting for the Obama-Pelosi agenda.) I think about two people in the Q&A session voiced approval for ObamaCare, but even those two were against cap-and-trade.
Indeed, there seemed to be overwhelming sentiment for smaller government in the room, and there were probably more hardcore libertarians than liberals. One attendee suggested the abolition of all federal departments except those (War (now Defense) and State) listed in the Constitution.
Carter, a former Williamson County judge, himself looks a bit older than his website’s official photos, and is a solid public speaker, if not a natural one.
Rep. Carter talked about how he had voted against TARP, the Stimulus, ObamaCare, Frank-Dodd, and cap-and-trade (the first four of which passed anyway). He said they had about two days to consider TARP, with the Bush Administration saying the banking system was about to collapse. He voted against it anyway, despite the pressure brought to bear for him to vote for it. “I told them I had presided over five death penalty case, three of which resulted in the death penalty being carried out, and compared to that their pressure was nothing. After that, they agreed I wasn’t going to change my mind, went away and left me alone.”
He also told us that worst effects of Obama’s policies may not have been felt yet, which is an ominous thought.
He showed off the infamous ObamaCare chart with its myriad array of boxes and new federal entities. He said he had experienced socialized medicine firsthand in The Netherlands (his wife is Dutch) and wanted no part of it.
He said that Washington was destroying small businesses. He talked about a subdivision developer in Bastrop who was making money, had sold half the lots in the subdivision, and was current on all his payments, but because of Dodd-Frank, the bank said he had 30 days to take his loan to another bank because Dodd-Frank said they had too many real estate loans in their portfolio. He said he had to take on a partner just to move the loan.
He also said that Republicans had pleaded with their Democratic colleagues not to let the Bush tax cuts expire. “Where I come from, when you pay more money, that’s a tax increase.” He also said that lower-income earners were going to be some of the hardest hit.
Come question and comments time (Carter appeared as part of the GOP’s “America Speaking Out” tour), there was the usual mixture of personal issues: one small business owner said she thought the government was trying to drive her out of business, questions about having to pay taxes on social security, a recent veteran (standing ovation) relating how he had a job offer pulled at the last minute due to a credit check, exhortations to read the constitution, etc. The usual panoply of grassroots American democracy. (At least in a Republican district. Perhaps speakers at Nancy Pelosi’s town halls exhort people to read Karl Marx or Howard Zinn.)
When it came my turn to ask a question (I was about 15th in line), I asked how, if Republicans were to recapture the majority, they would ensure they showed more fiscal restraint than the last time they were in the majority. Carter flatly admitted “We screwed up,” including himself in some votes early during his tenure when colleagues had urged him to vote for big spending bills “because we have to govern.”
I feel fairly confident that Rep. Carter has repented of the free-spending ways of the late Dennis Hastert-led Republican House, but I’m not sure his colleagues have.
I had to leave shortly after that, but I had a chance to say hi to Republican State House District 52 candidate Larry Gonzales, who I interviewed and endorsed (and have since contributed to) on the way out. I asked him how the campaign was going, and he said “Great! We’re loaded for bear.”
…some of them are now pushing (again) for a state income tax.
And they wonder why they’re out of power…
(Hat tip: Larry Gonzales.)
A few random links to kick off your week:
I immediately began looking for work, but by this point the recession was in full swing and over half the yards on our street had ‘For Sale’ signs up. In fact, the town of Marion, SC has lost nearly 30% of its residential population since January, 2009. There were no jobs within two hours of the town and any jobs that were available were swamped with applications. The high school put up a notice that they were looking for two custodians. They had over 600 people show up for applications. The unemployment rate was over 50%, but people like myself, who didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits, and people on welfare, don’t go on the national unemployment statistic. It’s only for people receiving unemployment checks. Those who didn’t comprised such a huge chunk of that ratio, that the official statistic only stated a 19% unemployment rate for the PeeDee region of South Carolina. Yeah, MSNBC didn’t mention the fine points of that statistic, did they?
(Hat tips: Instapundit, Real Clear Politics, Fark)
A collection of sundry links to enliven your day:
Hat tips to Instapundit, Real Clear Politics, Slashdot, Whipped Cream Difficulties.