Shout First, Ask Questions Later: 2011-04-24

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Daily Round-Up 04-30

A Victory for Property Rights in California “Blight” Case

THE GOOD NEWS IS...

Americans favor Republicans' handling of budget: poll

Negotiations: Vindicating Israel

Obama’s Big Labor Paybacks Coming Under Increasing Scrutiny

GENERAL BAD BEHAVIOR

Depraved UN has no right to preach

The Way We Live Now, a continuing series

Sanity Continues Losing Ground In School Culture Wars, Part I

Dem hopeful in ’08: I don’t like paying $4 a gallon so I support Obama

Elderly perverts Bill Maher & David Letterman mock likely voters

Reason.tv: The War on Walmart – Who’s Afraid of Cheap Groceries?

AND THE GOOD GUYS ARE...

Busted… Paul Ryan Catches Astroturfed Heckler at Town Hall: “You Changed Clothes!”

Palin: 'Hells no' I wouldn't raise debt limit

NRA's Wayne LaPierre to call for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation

Black Chamber of Commerce CEO Blasts ‘Marxist,’ ‘Brownshirt’ Obama

Donald Trump’s Message To Republicans: Obama is Beatable

BAD POLITICIAN BAD

President Obama Job Approval

Latest Election Polls

2012 Republican Presidential Nomination

Democrats launch outside fundraising group... "financed in part by the kind of large, undisclosed contributions the president has criticized."

Six Reasons Why Latinos May Stay Home on Election Day. The Latino community's disgust for Obama has turned into contempt for the man and his policies. AND Let’s Pretend!

Obama space goodbye mocks JFK's hello

Obama pledges help for illegal immigrant grads

'Change' via executive power grab

BARACK FOR BRAZIL!! (Featuring an All-Star Cast)

What would Machiavelli do?

Judge orders John Edwards to answer questions about affair

Obama’s Big Labor Paybacks Coming Under Increasing Scrutiny

Rifts in Iran’s Leadership. Plus: Secret Meetings with Obama Admin?

The Backlash That Wasn’t, Cont’d

Critical Legal Studies

Google and Obama: Joined at the Hip

Republican Romney blames Obama for gasoline prices

History Rhymes at the San Francisco Chronicle

You Call This a Recovery? Obama Offers More Excuses Than Solutions

IN ECONOMIC WOES

This is a VERY bad sign - U.S. Treasury: China Has Decreased Its Holdings of U.S. Debt

10 States Where Pensions Are Running Out of Money

More Data on the Spending Multiplier

The Keynesian Growth Discount The results of our three-year economic experiment are in.

Working up a tax storm in Illinois

A Tale Of Two Recessions And Two Presidents

Rethinking Rethinking the Gas Tax

Officials Unfazed by Dollar Slide

Left, Right Can Love Tax Plan

Price Controls for Limo Rides

OBAMACARE

Let Private Enterprise Solve Obesity Problem, Not Government

America Wants Repeal of Obamacare

Paul Ryan ‘Debates’ President Obama on Medicare During Town Hall Meetings

Obama’s Medicare Appointee Has Accidental Encounter with Reality, Learns Nothing

JUNK SCIENCE

New Jerseyites Hate New Solar Panels, Brand Them "Hideous" At least they don't kill birds like wind turbines do.

Red China’s Lessons for Green Boondogglers?

MEDIA BIAS

Glenn Reynolds on the Birth of Instapundit & How an Army of Davids Changed Journalism

History Rhymes at the San Francisco Chronicle

Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn't

The Backlash That Wasn’t, Cont’d

How the journalist prom got out of control

Elderly perverts Bill Maher & David Letterman mock likely voters

BIG UNION/LEFTIE GROUPS

Wisconsin AFL-CIO Lies About Boycotts

Obama’s Big Labor Paybacks Coming Under Increasing Scrutiny

The AFL-CIO, Communism & Right-to-Work in Missouri

Ameren Responds To Don Giljum’s ‘Sabotage’ Tactics

Turning ‘Non-Violence’ Into ‘Violence’: The Quote That Wasn’t

PLANNED PARENTHOOD/ABORTION SCANDAL

Daniels’ Wording

Daniels to sign bill defunding Planned Parenthood

FIGHTING CORRUPTION/TEA PARTY NEWS

Arizona allows Tea Party license plate

Thursday, April 28, 2011

AND THE GOOD GUYS ARE...

You know, I'm starting to want to keep an eye on Mr. Cain! Cain wants to ‘unravel all unfunded mandates,’ has 100,000 strong ‘boot-on-the-ground’ grassroots campaign activists in place

Poll: Seniors Support Ryan Budget Plan

Rand Paul has 'birther' demand for Trump: Prove you're a Republican

Andrew Breitbart’s Heritage Foundation Speech on ‘Righteous Indignation’

Democrat Boren Slaps Obama on Energy Tax Hikes

Allen West: I’m Not ‘Going to be Intimidated’

PLANNED PARENTHOOD/ABORTION SCANDAL

Close the loopholes. End all taxpayer funding of abortion!

Daniels Expected to Defund Planned Parenthood

The Canary in the Mineshaft: Kermit Gosnell and the Abortion Industry. The first in a series examines the climate of callous disregard that made Gosnell's attitude not only possible, but the logical consequence of our political and culture posture.

Indiana poised to cut Planned Parenthood funding

Big Union/Leftie Groups 04-28

Unions suffer another defeat - in Massachusetts

Louisiana Bill Pre-Empts Union-Backed Project Labor Agreements

UW doctors face penalties for writing sick notes for protesters

Progressives Annoyed with Democratic Process

How big a problem are public-sector pensions?

Wis. Grocers Group Warns of Anti-Walker Vandalism in Stores

Leftists Don’t Form ‘Public Interest’ Groups–They Form Government Interest Groups

Left’s Crusade to Destroy Our Heroes Marches On: Superman Renounces God, American Citizenship

The Left’s Faux-Outrage Over the Ryan Plan

House votes to restrict unions

Bad Politician Bad 04-28

President Obama Job Approval

Latest Election Polls

2012 Republican Presidential Nomination

Poll: Obama is losing public's confidence on economy

Obama Job Rating Hits New Low in Pennsylvania

Hidden Money in the 2010 Elections: A Pre-election Primer on Recent and Recently Exploited Avenues for Secretly Funding Elections

Obama Takes a Page From Nixon's Handbook
Well it is another day - Another Obama Administration Cover-up?

Obama’s new math

This is nothing but scary, naked cronyism on Obama's part - Senate GOP to White House: Don't check political contributions of contractors

Discovered: An UNLIMITED Obamacare Slush Fund

Falling Between Two Stools

Barack Obama Seeks Big Bucks

Obama goes to Chicago for Oprah, NYC for money

Democrats' Hypocrisy on Race -- When Will People Wake Up?

Lawmaker Attempts to Hide From Angry Taxpayers Resorts to a drastic measure so he won't be recognized in public.

Obama's Budget: More Waste, Fraud, and Self-Abuse

The White House grasps for a life raft

Obama's Sophistry on the Budget Deficit

To Fund Bloated Government, Dems Target Oil Companies

The Left’s Faux-Outrage Over the Ryan Plan

Wisconsin GOP says Dems using dirty tricks to fight recall effort

Obama Fundraises, Brushing Off Hecklers

Maxine Waters's ethics case going nowhere

Harry Reid’s ‘Green China’ myth

Is that a rhetorical question? What Professor Obama Doesn't Understand

Four in 10 approve of Obama's handling of economy; marks all-time low

Obamacare 04-28

Discovered: An UNLIMITED Obamacare Slush Fund

CBO: Repealing health law's exchange grants would save $14B

States Seek to Nullify ObamaCare

Diagnosing ObamaCare. The president's cousin passes his considered judgment in First Do No Harm.

Drug Control vs. Pain Control: A Crackdown on Opioid Prescriptions Will Hurt Patients

Yes, There Is a Good Alternative to Obamacare

Replacing Obamacare

Liberals embrace death panels

Colo. Republicans Push Bill to Opt Out of Fed Healthcare

Mass. Republicans Loathe Romneycare

New Medicare data sheds light on hospital errors

Reps. Slammed Unfairly For Medicare Plan

Federal reimbursement system exacerbates Medicaid spending discrepancy among states

The Good News Is 04-28

CBO: Repealing health law's exchange grants would save $14B

BP expects to resume Gulf drilling this year

Political Privacy Should Be a Civil Right

The Road Ahead: Victory in Sight

Poll: Ryan/GOP Get High Marks for Budget Plan

But it will still just remain a wish - Chris Christie continues to perform best in DailyCaller/ConservativeHome tracking poll, Paul Ryan makes strong debut showing

Louisiana Bill Pre-Empts Union-Backed Project Labor Agreements

Congressmen explore, consider reopening Yucca Mountain project

UW doctors face penalties for writing sick notes for protesters

House votes to restrict unions

General Bad Behavior 04-28

Miss USA Sexually Molested by TSA

Education Dept. inspector general investigating influence of Wall Street short sellers on regulations

Holder’s DOJ Scuttled More Terror-Related Prosecutions. Congressional sources disclose further revelations. Is more Bush blame and media blackout on the way?

Wis. Grocers Group Warns of Anti-Walker Vandalism in Stores

Only Leftists Behind HBO's Upcoming Hit Job on Palin?

Hidden Money in the 2010 Elections: A Pre-election Primer on Recent and Recently Exploited Avenues for Secretly Funding Elections

DOJ’s Poker Shutdown: Holding on to Americans’ Money

Race-baiting or race-preference-baiting?

The "Audacity" of Tanya McDowell I grew up in southern Connecticut and this isn't the first time that county has done something like this. A million years ago when I was in high school in a town near Norwalk, a good friend called the police on his alcoholic mother for attacking him with a knife. He and his younger brother were taken in by friends but the school and town refused to let him finish high school because he was no longer an official "resident" of the school. Needless to say, this was and is a wealthy and very liberal area. And this story (one of many) explains why I refuse to set foot in it ever again.

More Than 200 With Terror Ties Bought Guns in US

Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law

In Economic Woes 04-28

Never did get a job from a poor man.

Investors, it's time to run and hide. The stock market can ignore economic woes and worries for only so long. Here's why a pullback is on the horizon and the smart money is preparing for the worst, as well as several ways to get defensive. I guess it is lucky I have no money to invest in the first place?

Oil imports spike as Obama oil ban decreases domestic production

The Housing Bubble Broke The Middle Class

The Biggest Legalized Theft of Middle Class American Wealth

Fight of the Century

Naughty or nice: Club For Growth releases 2010 vote scorecard

More people applied for unemployment benefits. More people requested unemployment benefits last week, the second increase in 3 weeks

Don’t let political cowardice and opportunism bankrupt America

Dollar Loses More Ground

Economic Growth Slow as Inflation Measure Spikes Up

Dunce Caps

The slippery slope of ’subsidies’

This ain't good - Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'

Fed says $600B bond program to end in June

American Income Inequality in Perspective

Study: Consumers Misled by Overdraft Protection Programs

Gold Markets Slam Bernanke Speech

‘How Will Our Kids Pay?’

The Gas Price Freakout Ready-made energy incoherence as a gallon climbs towards $4.

Here We Go Again: Economy Slowed in the First Quarter

Economic growth slows to 1.8% in first months of 2011

How Reliable is USASpending.gov?

Toomey: Ryan Spending Cuts Not ‘Draconian’

Economy slowed by high gas prices, bad weather

Economic Indicators Slow Market Rally

Junk Science 04-28

Yes! Yes! Yes! Let's Sunset the Ethanol Subsidy

The New Geopolitics of Food

Moonbeams Over California: The 33-percent Non-solution

End the Federal Monopoly on Energy

The UN ‘disappears’ another inconvenient climate claim, then botches cover-up

Obama's 'Annie' Energy Policy

"The president doesn't know squat about energy production"

Harry Reid’s ‘Green China’ myth

EPA and Radical Environmentalists Increasing Energy Costs

Obama proposes broadening EPA's power over water Three Words - California's Central Valley

Media Bias 04-28

Only Leftists Behind HBO's Upcoming Hit Job on Palin?

Where Are the Indignant Questions to Obama?

As a former copywriter who worked both in general and DR, I can tell you nothing but direct response advertising gets real quantifiable results Television’s Biggest Lie Uncovered

Good Question, where is the unreleased Khalidi tapes, currently in the hands of the LA Times

The Press Conference We Didn’t Get

Sanctimonious Hollywood Has Nothing to Say About Wonkette’s Attack on Down Syndrome Child?

The Media Don’t Get Economics

Fighting Corruption/TEA Party News 04-28

Help Gov. Corbett fight for school choice!

Awesome! Gas Pump Sticky Note Campaign Makes Its Way to Grocery Stores

Shareholders to Challenge Johnson & Johnson's Support for Left-Wing Policy Agenda

Gas Roots Activism: The Tea Party Strikes Again!

Calif. marriage amendment defenders file motion to throw out district court ruling

Actually, this whole thing gets me kinda steamed. I'm NOT a birther however, I am angrily wondering why Obama didn't just release the damn thing earlier.

Same with the college transcripts.

We know the grades of every other president and their kids. Why not his?

To me it's less about any legitimacy issues and more about his condescension.

He condescends to release things others did (and do) willingly. Yes, that refusal begs some questions but so does his whole attitude. Um, excuse me but American politicians work for Americans and if you want to get hired, then I get to see your entire resume, NOT just what you choose to release.

That's what pissed me off about the whole thing. Either he truly has something to hide or even worse it's a sly stunt on Obama's part to discredit others. Such a stunt in any politician is sophomoric.

As sophomoric as when he gave Hilary The Finger during a debate (watch here on YouTube. Actually if you search Obama giving the finger, you'll see President Class Act thinks he's pretty slick. Pathetic.). Ugh.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Knowledge Problem

I like this article from The Washington Examiner by Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) so much I am reproducing it in full below. Enjoy.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Progressives can't get past the Knowledge Problem

"If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981.

Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled "command economies" were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew.

In his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.

Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.

Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.

Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can't possibly be smart enough to make them work.

Hayek's insight into economics and regulation is often called "The Knowledge Problem," and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it's not just the economy that regulators don't understand well enough -- it's also their own regulations.

This became apparent when various large businesses responded to the enactment of Obamacare by taking accounting steps to reflect tax changes brought about by the new health care legislation. The additional costs created by Obamacare, conveniently enough, weren't going to strike until later, after the November elections.

But both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations require companies to account for these changes as soon as they learn about them. As the Atlantic's Megan McArdle wrote:

"What AT&T, Caterpillar, et al did was appropriate. It's earnings season, and they offered guidance about , um, their earnings."So once Obamacare passed, massive corporate write-downs were inevitable.

They were also bad publicity for Obamacare, and they seem to have come as an unpleasant shock to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who immediately scheduled congressional hearings for April 21, demanding that the chief executive officers of AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar, among others, come and explain themselves.

Obamacare was supposed to provide unicorns and rainbows: How can it possibly be hurting companies and killing jobs? Surely there's some sort of Republican conspiracy going on here!

More like a confederacy of dunces. Waxman and his colleagues in Congress can't possibly understand the health care market well enough to fix it. But what's more striking is that Waxman's outraged reaction revealed that they don't even understand their own area of responsibility - regulation -- well enough to predict the effect of changes in legislation.

In drafting the Obamacare bill they tried to time things for maximum political advantage, only to be tripped up by the complexities of the regulatory environment they had already created. It's like a second-order Knowledge Problem.

Possibly this is simply because Waxman and his colleagues are dumb, and God knows there's plenty of evidence that Congress isn't a repository of rocket scientists. But it's just as likely that adding 30 or 40 IQ points to the average congressman wouldn't make much difference.

The United States Code -- containing federal statutory law -- is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117pages long and composes226volumes.

No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can't be aware of all the real-world complications it's producing, it can't even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it's doing.

There's good news and bad news in that. The bad news is obvious: We're governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can't help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or "better" rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system.

The good news is less obvious, but just as important: While we rightly fear a too-powerful government, this regulatory knowledge problem will ensure plenty of public stumbles and embarrassments, helping to remind people that those who seek to rule us really don't know what they're doing.

If that doesn't encourage skepticism toward big government, it's hard to imagine what will

25 Things I Would Do If I Ran The Country 04-27

This was one of my first posts on this website and revisiting it today, I realize there isn't much I would change but feel free to chime in.

25 Things I Would Do If I Ran The Country

In no particular order

1) Education is a state right. Local property taxes pay for local schools. The Federal government should butt out, therefore I would abolish the department of education.

2) If the president has term limits so should all members of Congress. Our government was built on a system of checks and balances. There is a check on the office of the presidency which needs to be balanced by a check on the legislature. 3 terms in the House, 2 terms in the Senate offers a person a 24 year career in politics. That’s long enough.

3) Congress can no longer vote itself raises. Individual Senators and Representatives should appeal to their constituents for pay raises and have it put to a vote or referendum accordingly.

4) Line by line veto to eliminate pork.

5) Ditto Ear marks.

6) Emergency spending bills are only allowed during natural disasters or within 3 – 6 months of an aggressive attack on American soil or overseas bases. Otherwise, the department in question (I’m looking at you DoD) has to get the monies from its existing budget.

7) ALL laws passed must clearly state its intended effect/goal and a review of its effectiveness evaluated by an independent government office, the GAO, for instance after five years. If a law is found lacking by the specified measure, the law is automatically returned to Congress for review – either to be struck down or re-written to address its failures.

8) All government regulations – starting with ones governing business/energy/agriculture – that are over 20 years old must be examined by independent reviewers to determine if said regulation is a help or a hindrance to the business practice and the government’s ability to enforce the regulation. If it fails the test, the regulation is automatically negated.

9) Tax loopholes for individuals and corporations are closed.

10) Tax code must be streamlined until it can be printed on no more than 25 pages in 12pt Times New Roman font. Figure it out.

11) Any Federal agency that is a duplicate of a state function (excepting interstate issues) is automatically eliminated.

12) English is the official language of the United States of America.

13) Our borders are ours to control. All unauthorized entries into the US will be treated as a criminal offense. American citizenship will no longer be extended to children born in the US to illegal immigrant parents under the age of three. They and their parents will be returned to their country of origin where they may re-apply to enter the US.

14) Any business hiring illegal immigrants will face stiff fines and criminal charges.

15) Any persons using false identification will face criminal charges, restitution to the victim, and if illegal, expulsion from the US.

16) Moments of silence are re-instated in schools and government institutions. If you have to put your hand on a bible to swear the truth in court, then God is part of the government.

17) You are the person you chose to be. Victim-statuses in government law will be reviewed as objectively as possible to determine if it helps or hinders various classes of individuals from the handicapped to ethnic minorities to genders to sexual orientation.

18) All treaties between the US and foreign countries will be reviewed. Those deemed unfair to US interests will be renegotiated.

19) Modern developed countries have the ability to defend themselves. We will remove US troops from those countries (I'm looking at you Germany) and relocate to countries with greater need or return the troops home. Many of these overseas bases are now rewards for soldiers rather than actual deployments.

20) Independent reviews will be conducted of every government department starting with the Department of Defense with the intent of eliminating waste and redundancy.

21) Soldiers and government civilians should be making equal pay and receive equal pensions. Saleries either drop or rise but soldiers and civilian workers across all departments of the federal government will be equalized.

22) If you bring a lawsuit to court and you lose, you must pay the defendant’s legal fees.

23) We’re building more nuclear power plants, drilling off shore, and drilling in Alaska. Get over it, we need the energy. The money from taxing the positive economic growth caused by abundant energy can go to research to develop realistic and affordable new energy sources.

24) All government subsidies to corporations and businesses will be reviewed and most likely stopped. The taxpayer should only pay for the goods and services they buy directly. Subsidies are forced gifts from the taxpayer to well-represented-by-lobbies corporations (sugar lobby) via the government. It is theft, wrong and largely unnecessary.

25) Any charity that makes more than $50 million in donations a year, loses its tax-exempt status and is shifted into a slightly progressive taxation rate. (Income from investments, etc. doesn’t count.) Donations to the charity are still tax-exempt, just the charity's total income is taxed. Any charity caught funneling its donations into other charities or shell companies to hide its income will be shut down.