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18 Dec 09
Haley Barbour's Bizarre Pardon Record
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The governor of Mississippi has simultaneously ignored increasing evidence that there may be a disturbingly high number of innocent people in prison in Mississippi and handed out pardons to the convicted murderers who just happen to do work on his house.
Five Reasons for Optimism: As awful as the times may seem, they also contain seeds of hope
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But there have been
countervailing currents as well, broad trends that began before the
dawn of the decade and have continued, even accelerated, in the
time since then. They haven't undone the awfulness oozing from the
District of Columbia, and some of them may yet be reversed. But
taken together they offer a more balanced image of the world, one
with better prospects for peace, prosperity, and freedom than you'd
expect if your only source of news was the Congressional
Record. -
1. A surge in nonviolence.
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Report: Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts
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“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. "But we don't find any correlation."
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“We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.
17 Dec 09
U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit
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The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.
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The Debt Limit has been raised about a hundred times since 1940, when it was $49 billion - about five days worth of federal spending now.
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Penny Wong jeered, Hugo Chavez cheered
The climate change debate is conventionally portrayed as between disinterested scientists and thoughtful laymen on one side; and ideologues, selfish consumers, and greedy businessmen on the other side. Actually, both sides contain people with agendas, as this article shows.
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When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.
But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.
Bland CBO Memo, or Smoking Gun?
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Crafting the private-sector mandates such that they fall just a hair short of CBO’s criteria for inclusion in the federal budget does not reduce their cost, nor does it make those mandates any less binding. But it dramatically reduces the apparent cost of the legislation. It is the reason we’re all talking about an $848 billion Reid bill, rather than a $2.1 trillion Reid bill.
If someone sold you a house, or a car, or a mutual fund this way, we would put them in jail.
The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.
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It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short.
15 Dec 09
Report Says G-20 Remains Protectionist
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The Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations haven't kept their pledge to abstain from protectionist measures and instead continue to enact policies that help domestic over foreign producers, according to a report by Global Trade Alert.
Newspaper: Cleveland aided foreclosure crisis
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The city of Cleveland contributed to its foreclosure crisis by helping low-income people buy homes with mortgage payments they couldn't afford, a newspaper investigation published Sunday found.
The city provided loans of up to $20,000 through the federally funded Afford-A-Home program but did not check whether recipients could afford to stay in the homes, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported Sunday. Cleveland, which has one of the nation's worst foreclosure problems, did not change its policies even as hundreds of people defaulted on their mortgages.
The Market for Liberty
A classic (so I'm told) free-market anarchist book by Linda and Morris Tannehill.
10 Dec 09
Legislative Reality vs. Political Reality: How Democrats game the Congressional Budget Office
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But after the August recess, scores for the various reform
proposals improved markedly. Not only were they cheaper,
requiring less total spending, they were judged by the CBO to
result in net reductions to the deficit. What happened? -
In large part, the answer is that Democrats became more skilled
at manipulating the CBO's scoring process. Indeed, they have
become so skilled at getting what they want out of the CBO that
the office has taken to including strongly worded warnings that
the various bills' real costs may not actually match their
estimates.
Progressives vs. Democracy: The health care debate reveals a nasty tendency within liberal politics
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Their increasingly shrill reaction to the debate has revealed a
disturbing strain of American political thought that cannot
comprehend how anyone could disagree with a big-government
solution to health care without being evil, stupid, insane, or
all three. -
“I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old
tactics to keep things exactly the way they are,” the president
said in a September speech to Congress. “If you misrepresent
what’s in the plan, we will call you out.” Call you out, yes, but
not by name— an understandable strategy, considering that all the
major corporate interests within the health care industry have
been busy negotiating with (and lending support to) the White
House and Congress. - 4 more annotations...
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