Another Racist Calls Obama a Socialist

Where are the denuciations?

"I think that the president and Nancy Pelosi get credit," Sharpton said. "I think this began the transforming of the country the way the president had promised. This is what he ran on."

And if that transformation is socialism, then so be it, he explained. That is what the American public "overwhelmingly" voted for.

Inane at Any Speed

Ralph Nader, one of the biggest frauds of the last half century, weighs in, poorly, on the recent Supreme Court election free speech decision.

The disparities between individual contributions and available corporate dollars mock any pretense of equal justice under the law. A total of $5.2 billion from all sources was spent in the 2008 federal election cycle (which includes 2007
and 2008), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For the same two-year period, ExxonMobil's profits were $85 billion. The top-selling drug, Pfizer's Lipitor, grossed $27 billion in sales during that time.

Of course business is the ultimate boogie man for Nader, unless he is busy shaking them down. Nevermind that the McCain-Feingold act which the court truck down was only created in 2002, and there were plenty of rich companies before that, none of which were spending billions of dollars on campaign related commercials. The idea that they would is just silly.

Nader proposes a solution:

In the absence of a future court overturning Citizens United, the fundamental response should be a constitutional amendment. We must exclude all commercial corporations and other artificial commercial entities from participating in political activities. Such constitutional rights should be reserved for real people, including, of course, company employees, to enhance a government of, by and for the people.

Nevermind that the case he is talking about is not about a commercial corporation, but Citizens United, a non-profit one. This also effects unions and other such non-commercial entities. I would love to see Nader supporting an ammendment banning unions from political speech.

The Public Unions

Personally, even though it will probably never happen, I think it should be illegal for public employees to be unionized. For starters, the whole point of unions was to protect workers from "capitalist exploitation", so why do they need protection from the enlightened government that they helped elect. Secondly, in a private corporation there are checks and balances, a company cannot survive without paying enough to recruit qualified workers for their industry, nor can they survive if they pay their workers too much to be competitive. GM stands as an example of this, although they have managed to survive solely through government intervention. In government though, they have an endless supply of money they can simply confiscate from taxpayers to pay their workers, in a weird sort of monopoly power. Anyway, the WSJ, as usual covers this topic well.

In private industries, union workers are subject to the vagaries of the marketplace and economic growth. Thus in 2009 10.1% of private union jobs were eliminated, which was more than twice the 4.4% rate of overall private job losses. On the other hand, government unions offer what is close to lifetime job security and benefits, subject only to gross dereliction of duty. Once a city or state's workers are organized by a union, the jobs almost never go away.

This means government is the main playing field of modern unionism, which explains why the AFL-CIO and SEIU have become advocates for higher taxes and government expansion in cities, states and Washington. Unions once saw their main task as negotiating a bigger share of an individual firm's profits. Now the movement's main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy's wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers.

Fox News and Media Bias

I found this study on the media and the president interesting. Most of the focus was on the fawningly ridiculous coverage of Obama, but this factoid stood out.

Previous CMPA studies found that Mr. Bush received only 23 percent positive
evaluations in 2001; Mr. Clinton had 28 percent positive evaluations in 1993 and Mr. Reagan had 26 percent positive evaluations in 1981…

Fox News was never in the Obama fan club, however. Only 22 percent of their stories on Mr. Obama were positive during the year, some of it quite pointed.

So otherwise Fox News treated Obama just like the media treated every other president up to Obama. Hey, they really are fair and balanced!

Cheap Economists

I found this rather amusing, and it explained several of my professors in b-school. They know who they are.

Academic economists gather in Atlanta this weekend for their annual meetings, always held the first weekend after New Year's Day. That's not only because it coincides with holidays at most universities. A post-holiday lull in business travel also puts hotel rates near the lowest point of the year.

Economists are often cheapskates.

The economists make cities bid against each other to hold their convention, and don't care so much about beaches, golf courses or other frills. It's like buying a car, explains the American Economic Association's secretary-treasurer, John Siegfried, an economist at Vanderbilt University.

"When my wife buys a car, she seems to care what color it is," he says. "I always tell her, don't care about the color." He initially wanted a gray 2007 Mercury Grand Marquis, but a black one cost about $100 less. He got black.

Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional

I am not a huge Orrin Hatch fan, but he is absolutely right here. If Congress can force you to purchase a private product, then their powers are unlimited, and the constitution is meaningless.

President Obama's health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.

I Guess He Wanted a More Challenging Job

I was a bit amused to see this in the news. Why exactly would you want to go from holding a job where your biggest concern is "where do I stash this ginormous pile of money?" to a company which is doing so poorly it is majority owned by the US government?

DETROIT — General Motors has hired an outsider to run its troubled finance operations, bringing in the chief financial officer of Microsoft.Chris Liddell will join GM next year, GM Chief Executive Ed Whitacre Jr. said in a statement today.

Liddell, 51, brings depth and experience to the job leading GM's global financial and accounting operations, the statement said.

I Think They Are Being a Bit Too Ambitious

I was amused by this Reuter's headline pointed out by Best of the Web.

Obama administration aims for high school financial literacy

Who knows, maybe they can find someone who can teach Tim Geithner how to use TurboTax?

Greatest Music Video Ever

Scary Economics Stat of the Day

While Paul Krugman may have suddenly developed a desire for gigantic deficits, they are terrifying me. George Melloan points out the true size of the money we are borrowing in the WSJ.

A number more relevant to what the government is actually demanding from the capital markets is the Treasury's financing requirement. At a recent Chartered Financial Analyst Institute conference, Treasury official Karthik Ramanathan proudly described the prodigious fund-raising task he and his colleagues pulled off in the fiscal year, what one might call a borrowing feat unparalleled in human history: "In the course of 291 auctions in 251 business days, Treasury issued nearly $7 trillion in gross Treasury marketable securities to raise approximately $1.7 trillion to finance the government."

Idiotic Democrat Quote of the Day

If I knew this new healthcare bill would guarantee immortality, I would have supported it months ago. From Harry Reid:

Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation - indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.

Sarah Palin Comment of the Day

I am hardly the world's biggest Sarah Palin fan, but I am constantly amused by how rabid she makes the left, the very same people who insist she is unimportant while discussing her nonstop. For example the AP dedicated 11 fact-checkers to her new book.

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

So I was wondering, did the AP dedicated 11 people to fact-check, for example, Joe Biden's book? Well, no, the answer occured to me. It is actually rather unlikely that 11 people have ever actually read Joe Biden's book.

First Must See Movie of 2010

Hey, how can you not like a movie whose trailer has the hero introducing himself, "I am a Chief Warrant Officer with the US Army ."? Now that I think of it, Matt Damon does look a lot like me...

UW Medal of Honor Memorial

I donated money to help this get built. I wish I could be there today, but have to work.

Earning a medal, of any sort, was the furthest thing from Bruce Crandall's mind on the morning of Nov. 14, 1965, as he repeatedly flew his Huey helicopter through a hail of enemy fire in Vietnam. Only this mattered: His comrades needed him.

Likewise, John "Bud" Hawk wasn't looking for glory on Aug. 20, 1944, when he stayed exposed in a French orchard, taking a shot in the thigh as he directed fire against German tanks. Fact is, Hawk didn't know if he'd live to see sunset.

On Wednesday, Veterans Day, the University of Washington will dedicate a new memorial to eight UW alumni who have received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor for valor in battle.

Tear Down this Wall

In honor of the 20th anniversary of it happening.

Quote of the Day

I am still amazed by this idiotic Obama campaign against Fox. He won't take on the Taliban or Iran, but Rupert Murdoch is his number one target. Charles Krauthammer weighs in with his usual wisdom.

Defend Fox from whom? Fox’s flagship 6 o’clock evening news out of
Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I’m not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She’s been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high-school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of
individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?

Obamaegomaniac

Could this guy be more full of himself?

President Obama said during his speech today: ‘For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.’

Remember When Dissent Was Patriotic?

I was listening to Nancy Pelosi get hysterical today. How that women ever got into a position of authority in this country is beyond me. Anyway, before we get on to that, a look back at the first (and hopefully last) inaugural address by President Obama:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

Now, apparently Nancy Pelosi disagrees:

"We are a free country, and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance," Pelosi began. She then became emotional as she recalled the events, startling the reporters gathered for the weekly news conference.

Well apparently while dealing with foreign terrorists who like to fly planes into buildings, balancing security and rights is not a dilemma, but when dealing with those evil Republicans on the other hand, then you really have to be careful...

Hoover and the Depression

It has become part of modern Democratic dogma that Hoover just fiddled while the economy collapsed, necessitating a rescue by FDR. Not at all true.

Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation's gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.

"These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover," said Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics.

The policies, which included both propping up wages and encouraging job-sharing, also accounted for more than two-thirds of the precipitous decline in hours worked in the manufacturing sector, which was much harder hit initially than the agricultural sector, according to Ohanian.

"By keeping industrial wages too high, Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product," Ohanian said. "His policy was the single most important event in precipitating the Great Depression."

The findings are slated to appear in the December issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Theory and were posted today on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Reasearch (www.nber.org) as a working paper.

The Opinion Journal Imitates Me

This sounds familiar:

Two Columnists in One!
"Basically we have a world-class budget deficit not just as in absolute terms of course--it's the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world--but it's a budget deficit that as a share of GDP is right up there....