More news from the former great industrial North East.

Remember how the North East (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc) had industry. And now the liberal locusts who infected the great North East and decided to harass one industry after another. And one company after another got the hell out because they can make more money with less aggravation overseas or, hopefully, in other states. Well, the latest example of this is Beretta USA.

Beretta USA Announces Decision to Move Its Entire Maryland Manufacturing Capabilities to Tennessee

Beretta U.S.A. Corp., located in Accokeek, Maryland, announced today that it has decided to move its manufacturing capabilities from its existing location to a new production facility that it is building in Gallatin, Tennessee. The Gallatin facility is scheduled to be opened in mid-2015. Beretta U.S.A. had previously planned to use the new Gallatin, Tennessee facility for new machinery and production of new products only.

“During the legislative session in Maryland that resulted in passage of the Firearm Safety Act of 2013, the version of the statute that passed the Maryland Senate would have prohibited Beretta U.S.A. from being able to manufacture, store or even import into the State products that we sell to customers throughout the United States and around the world. While we were able in the Maryland House of Delegates to reverse some of those obstructive provisions, the possibility that such restrictions might be reinstated in the future leaves us very worried about the wisdom of maintaining a firearm manufacturing factory in the State,” stated Jeff Cooper, General Manager for Beretta U.S.A. Corp....

OK, so what is the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 and why would Beretta USA find a problem with it? Well, take a quick look.

New laws including gun restrictions start in Maryland October 1

The new laws will change how people drive in the state, demands employers can put on pregnant employees, the rules of owning a firearm and marijuana.

Firearm restrictions:

None of the new laws have been as controversial as SB 281, the bill which brings some of the toughest firearm legislation in the country to the state of Maryland.

Firearm Safety Act 2013 banns 45 different semi-automatic handguns and rifles from sale and ownership in the state. Some examples of firearms that will no longer be permitted for sale either publically or privately after October 1 are the AR-15, AK-47 and the M1A.

The law also reduces the detachable magazine capacity that can be “manufactured, sold, purchased, received or transferred” in the state from 20 down to 10.

Hunting rifles and shotguns are not affected by the 2013 law, but handguns are.

Only handguns on Maryland’s official handgun resister will be allowed sold in the state and private sales of “regulated firearms” will be illegal.

After the first of October, to purchase or rent a firearm, the recipient must present aHandgun Qualification License certificate, unless exempted due to being a police officer, member of the military or a licensed manufacturer.

In order to obtain a Handgun Qualification License, the applicant will have to take a four hour class which must include; education of the state law, home safety to include locking and storage, handgun operation to include cleaning and maintenance as well as loading and unloading of ammunition and handling demonstration which will include a live fire of no more than 15 yards.

The new law goes on to say that in addition to the class, there will be a $50 registration fee and fingerprints will need to be submitted to assist with the background check that needs to be completed.

Only one firearm can be purchased every 30 days, and every weapon needs to be secured with a safety lock when it is sold or transported with an external lock on firearms manufactured prior to December 31, 2001 and an internal lock in manufactured after that date.

No firearms will be permitted at school or at demonstrations.

Starting October 1, 2013 it will be a misdemeanor if ammunition is owned by an individual who is prohibited from owning a firearm.

Finally, the Firearm Safety Act 2013 will prohibit anyone who has been voluntarily or involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for 30 consecutive days from legally owning a firearm.

It has been widely reported that there has been such a rush on registering firearms prior to the October 1 implementation of this law that the police department’s licensing division has been unable to process them all.

In the past few weeks, police are averaging 1,000 applications a day.

According to a statement from Maryland State Police, “Marylanders who have submitted handgun purchase applications on or before Sept. 30 will not be required to obtain a handgun qualification license.”...

Something about Beretta USA and magazine capacity. Beretta manufactures the Department of Defense's M9 Pistol, the standard firearm of the US military since the mid 1980s. It became very popular since the original Lethal Weapon. Mel Gibson had one so every cop had to have one. One of the reasons why is because it could hold 15 rounds. Now those magazines are illegal in Maryland. Where they used to be manufactured.

Back to the main post.

...“While we had originally planned to use the Tennessee facility for new equipment and for production of new product lines only, we have decided that it is more prudent from the point of view of our future welfare to move the Maryland production lines in their entirety to the new Tennessee facility,” Cooper added.

The transition of production from Beretta U.S.A.’s Maryland facility to the Tennessee facility will not occur until 2015 and will be managed so as not to disrupt deliveries to Beretta customers. Beretta U.S.A.’s production of the U.S. Armed Forces M9 9mm pistol will continue at the Accokeek, Maryland facility until all current orders from the U.S. Armed Forces have been filled...

...Beretta U.S.A. anticipates that the Gallatin, Tennessee facility will involve $45 million of investment in building and equipment and the employment of around 300 employees during the next five years.

Beretta U.S.A. has no plans to relocate its office, administrative and executive support functions from its Accokeek, Maryland facility.

Should be better phrased, no plans of yet. People of Maryland, elections have consequences. You elected these idiots to pass bad legislation and now you have lost another company to another state. Maybe you should think before you vote.

Tanks to Sense of Events: Time to buy another Beretta for the link.

You can see this in California!

Then my normal answer would be "Don't give Governor Moonbeam and others any ideas!"

Doesn't Obama's buddy look like fun!

I've often said you can well judge a man by his friends and associates. Here is one of our man-child's closest buddies.

RADICAL OBAMA REGULATORY CHIEF CASS SUNSTEIN RESIGNS

Kinda looks like Dean Wormer
The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me. 

Cass Sunstein administered the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Referred to as OIRA (Oh-eye-rah) in wonky academic circles, it is one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes jobs a person can have because it reviews nearly every regulation for an administrative state that continues to expand.

And on Friday, Sunstein resigned from this post and said he would go back to Harvard, signifying another moment in which a key Obama ally decided it was better to jump ship.

Sunstein once argued in a speech at Harvard that the government could be used to eliminate “practices such as ... meat eating,” argued hunting should be banned (“We ought to ban hunting ... that should be against the law ... it’s time now,” he said), and wrote in a 2004 book that animals should be able to sue in a court of law and have humans represents them as clients.

Few represented President Barack Obama’s academic aloofness and air of intellectual superiority more than Sunstein and Obama essentially asked the radical professor what job he would want in his administration.

That would explain why he was given enormous power to review the language of Obamacare. Sunstein also reviewed Dodd-Frank, which is destroying small banks, environmental regulations, new food rules -- such as changing the food pyramid to a plate -- and a variety of fuel efficiency standards. He was also in charge of E.P.A. regulations that created new standards for carbon emissions from various-sized plants, which burdened businesses and created more economic uncertainty for those trying to start businesses or build manufacturing plants at home.

In truth, Sunstein -- and OIRA -- reviewed nearly everything in the vast administrative state. His power is more significant in dealing with under-the-radar rules and regulations that often go unnoticed.

The New York Times aptly described Sunstein as someone who “came to Washington to test his theories of human behavior and economic efficiency in the laboratory of the federal government.”

Like Obama’s, these academic theories are often not grounded in reality, and that is why they fail miserably...

An educated (not necessarily intelligent) academic is brought into the administration of a back bencher senator who lied his way into the Presidency and told "name your position". And the moron says I'll oversee all the regulations put out by the bureaucracy. Oh, joy.

Hopefully the fact he's one of the rats leaving is a good sign.

And So it Goes in Shreveport: Homeowners Association Demands Removal of Sign of Support for Marine (UPDATED)

Homeowners Associations sometimes are useful organizations.....and then there are normal times.

My personal experiences with the HOA, or as I like to refer to them The Garbage Gestapo has not been too plesant. The can send me one certified letter after another on some mold on my house but a foreclosed house two doors down with (no exaggeration) two feet high grass is no real problem.

Now we have another group of busy boddies harassing the family of a Marine in Shreveport. Good news if after the word of this crap spread on talk radio the parents had two lawyers offer to represent them pro bono....and the HOA seems to be calming down now. Gee doesn't sunlight make rats run.

And So it Goes in Shreveport: Homeowners Association Demands Removal of Sign of Support for Marine (UPDATED)

Thanks Pat for broadcasting this!

TSA does it again

OK, you know there is now limit to how stupid and worthless the TSA is...here is the latest example.

TSA Harasses 9-yo Boy and Other Train Passengers After Their Trip

Here's what a traveler recorded on February 13, after his train trip to Savannah:

The only bad thing on our trip was [the] TSA at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling everyone in a roped area after you got off the train. This made no sense! Poor family in front of us! 9-year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting off a plane? Shouldn't they be doing that getting on? And they wonder why so many people are mad at them.

They probably do but it’s a case of “Hey, I’m just doing what I was told…" TSA are civil service and that basically insures they will not be fired. Thanks to the administration of B Hussein Obama they are now going to be unionized. And they will let "Middle Eastern looking males ages 20-40" pass coming…and going. Talk about a classic example of no matter how bad a situation is Washington can make it worse. God January 2013 cannot come soon enough.

The feds say you have to have bats at school

For anyone who knows them New Orleans schools are a disaster (although since Katrina there has been some progress). But buerocratic nonsense like this makes you want to scream.

Bat removal at McDonogh 35 hampered by 'endangered species' designation

NEW ORLEANS – Attempts to rid McDonogh 35 High School of bats that have been flying around the third floor are being hampered due to the fact that officials have been told these bats are an endangered species and can’t be exterminated.

School system officials have been trying for weeks to rid the school of the bat problem that has upset parents and students to the point that they staged a rally outside of the school last week to protest.



The third floor of the building has been closed for classes while exterminators try to get rid of the bats. Putting out poison or sprays is not an option as the bats have to be captured and relocated and released, according to school officials...

...Exterminators plan to continue their attempts to capture the bats over the Mardi Gras holiday if need be.

“I cannot understand how these kids are safe and how it is sanitary for these kids to be here with these dropping and everything,” said Jeanine Bavis, a parent.

No Ms Bavis, your kids are not the issue...we got to make sure the bats are safe. I really wonder who can say with a straight face we don't have enough bats in the country. Oh yes, a Washington buerocrat.

IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World's Wealth”

Before I start my comments on this take a look at the mini bio at from the bottom of the article.

Ottmar Edenhofer was appointed as joint chair of Working Group 3 at the Twenty-Ninth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The deputy director and chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Berlin Institute of Technology will be co-chairing the Working Group “Mitigation of Climate Change” with Ramón Pichs Madruga from Cuba and Youba Sokona from Mali.

As you can see this man has something to do with the global warming, err global climate change scheme over the last twenty years.  Let's see what he has to say now:

IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World's Wealth”

Neue Zürcher Zeitung .Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated.

OK…why is an economist so prominent in a conference where you would think it would be filled with scientists and engineers? Just curious.

Now here is the full interview.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010


Interview: Bernard Potter


NZZ am Sonntag: Mr. Edenhofer, everybody concerned with climate protection demands emissions reductions. You now speak of "dangerous emissions reduction." What do you mean?


Ottmar Edenhofer: So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas. And therefore, the emerging economies fear CO2 emission limits.


But everybody should take part in climate protection, otherwise it does not work.


That is so easy to say. But particularly the industrialized countries have a system that relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. There is no historical precedent and no region in the world that has decoupled its economic growth from emissions. Thus, you cannot expect that India or China will regard CO2 emissions reduction as a great idea. And it gets worse: We are in the midst of a renaissance of coal, because oil and gas (sic) have become more expensive, but coal has not. The emerging markets are building their cities and power plants for the next 70 years, as if there would be permanently no high CO 2 price.


The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.


That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.


That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.


Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.


De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.


First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.


Nevertheless, the environment is suffering from climate change - especially in the global south.  It will be a lot to do with adaptation. But that just goes far beyond traditional development policy: We will see in Africa with climate change a decline in agricultural yields. But this can be avoided if the efficiency of production is increased - and especially if the African agricultural trade is embedded in the global economy. But for that we need to see that successful climate policy requires other global trade and financial policies.


The great misunderstanding of the UN summit in Rio in 1992 is repeated in the climate policy: the developed countries talk about environment, the developing countries about development.


It is even more complicated. In the 1980s, our local environmental problems were luxury problems for the developing countries. If you already fed and own a car, you can get concerned about acid rain. For China, the problem was how to get 600 million Chinese people in the middle class. Whether there was a coal power plant or whether the labour standards in the coal mines were low was second priority - as it was here in the 19th Century.


But the world has become smaller.  Now something new happens: it is no longer just our luxury, our environment. Developing countries have realized that causes of climate change lie in the north and the consequences in the south. And in developed countries, we have realized that for a climate protection target of two degrees neither purely technical solutions nor life style change will be sufficient. The people here in Europe have the grotesque idea that shopping in the bio food store or electric cars will solve the problem. This is arrogant because the ecological footprint of our lifestyle has increased in the last 30 years, despite the eco-movement.


NZZ am Sonntag:  You say that for successful climate policy a high degree of international cooperation is necessary. However this cooperation is not present. I share the scepticism. But do we have an alternative?


Ottmar Edenhofer:  Currently, there are three ideas how to avoid the difficult cooperation: We try unsafe experiments such as geo-engineering, focus on the development of clean and safe energy, or one trusts in regional and local solutions. However, there is no indication that any of these ideas solves the problem. We must want the cooperation, just as you work together for the regulation of financial markets.  But unlike the financial crisis, in climate policy a country benefits if it does not join in.  The financial crisis was an emergency operation - in the face of danger we behave more cooperatively. Such a thing will not happen in climate policy, because it will always remain questionable whether a specific event like a flood is a climate phenomenon. But there is always the risk that individual rationality leads to collective stupidity. Therefore, one cannot solve the climate problem alone, but it has to be linked to other problems. There must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and technology transfer.


NZZ am Sonntag:  In your new book you talk much about ethics. Do ethics play a role in climate negotiations?


Ottmar Edenhofer:  Ethics always play a role when it comes to power. China and Latin America, for example, always emphasize the historical responsibility of developed countries for climate change. This responsibility is not to deny, but it is also a strategic argument for these countries. I would accept the responsibility for the period since 1995 because we know since then, what is causing the greenhouse effect. To extend the responsibility to the industrial revolution is not ethically justified.


NZZ am Sonntag:  Could we the ethics in order to break the gridlock?


Ottmar Edenhofer:  The book contains a parable: A group of hikers, who represent the world community, walks through a desert. The industrialized nations drink half of the water and then say generously: “Let us share the rest." The others reply: “This is not possible; you have already drunk half of the water. Let us talk first about your historical responsibility." I think if we are arguing about the water supply because we cannot agree on the ethical principles, then we will die of thirst. What we need to look for is an oasis that is the non-carbon global economy. It's about the common departure for this oasis.

Well I’ve give him this…he’s not the pure bred hypocrite ALGORE and others are and he honest. He wants to take wealth from developed countries (and developing countries) and send it to the third world.

Now if we actually had leaders in this country concerned about this nation they would immediately pull any support for this conference and most of the UN for that matter. Where is the 4th Estate on this…why aren’t Journolist screaming about this and asking B Hussein Obama and ALGORE and Ted Turner “Why are you pushing this economic destruction in the name of a global warming?”

Again, I thank God for the Internet and the alternative media…this would never be put on ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/MSNBC/NYTIMES. I really want to thank Mark Steyn who brought this up while filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his show Friday.

I think the Edsel is getting a break

The Edsel was a line of car manufactured by Ford 58-60 that never caught on with the market and ended up costing the Ford Motor Company 350 million. In today’s money, that’s 2.45 billion. And in Americana the term “Edsel” has become synonymous with failure. But I think that title will be taken over by two words: Chevy Volt.

From the official propaganda arm of the left, The NY Times has a great column on what we, the is the taxpayers, will be putting into this disaster before one goes to the showroom:

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

What makes me think about this taking the title of failure from the Edsel. At least the Edsel sold some units. 84000 in three years. Less than half the breakeven point for Ford but at least it made the sales without taxpayer support.

A basic question any half ass businessman will ask that no politician will ask, especially B Hussein Obama: Is there a market for this? The answer is no. But that won’t stop a man-child like B Hussein Obama from spending other people’s money. And when the thing falls flat on its face, Obama will just say “I’ll appoint anther Czar to oversee more Volts.”

The electric car has been a dream for the left for over a century. From the Daily Beast,

The electric-car industry has a century-long history of failure tailgating failure. And yet we are being told that this time things are different, that the technologies are better, the batteries are better, and that consumers are ready to adopt electrics like never before. Perhaps that’s true. But consider this declaration: The electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal solution” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical.”

That story was published by The New York Times on November 12, 1911.

Or given that the new Chevy Volt costs as much as a new Mercedes-Benz C350, consider this assessment by a believing reporter: “Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they are within reach of the average family.”

That line appeared in The Washington Post on Halloween 1915.

And since the Volt is being built by GM, this news item says that the giant carmaker has found “a breakthrough in batteries” that “now makes electric cars commercially practical.” The new zinc-nickel oxide batteries will provide the “100-mile range that General Motors executives believe is necessary to successfully sell electric vehicles to the public.”

That story was published in The Washington Post on September 26, 1979.

Now fast-forward to July 2008, when Thomas Friedman of The New York Times declared that Shai Agassi—the founder of an electric-car company called Better Place—was “the Jewish Henry Ford.” Friedman went on to claim that Agassi was launching “an energy revolution” that would end the world’s “oil addiction.” Never mind that when Friedman wrote his story Agassi’s fleet of electric cars consisted of exactly one prototype.

But again, leftist don’t get the fact no one wants it. I doubt there will be enough sales on this electric lawnmower to break the Edsel’s record of 84000 units sold.
Add it up. Almost 75 billion in taxpayer money for nothing.

Good news on the oil drilling ban

Thank you God!

The Obama administration lost its court bid to maintain a six-month moratorium on offshore deepwater drilling which a federal judge ordered lifted last month.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government's emergency request to stay that judge's order pending appeal.

The motion was denied because the government failed to show "a likelihood of irreparable injury if the stay is not granted," the appeals panel judges wrote in a 2-1 ruling.

The government also "made no showing that there is any likelihood that drilling activities will be resumed pending appeal." ....

...President Barack Obama acknowledged the moratorium would cause economic harm, but said it was necessary to give investigators adequate time to understand what caused the accident and create new safety regulations.

Oil companies and Louisiana politicians railed against the moratorium, saying it would cause further economic devastation and that rigs and drilling plans should simply be inspected on a case-by-case basis.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal hailed the court's decision Thursday but expressed concern that the uncertainty has created a "de facto moratorium" which could cost the state 20,000 jobs.

Gentlemen, you are missing a large point. B Hussein Obama doesn't care if John Q Public loses his job. Especially in a Red State. This is payback for not voting for the Obama regime.

Obama voters, how's that hope and change working out for you!
Obama loses drilling moratorium appeal

You want to get rid of marijuana

A good friend of mine sent me the book Freakonomics a few years ago and one of the chapters was on why drug pushers often still live with moma. Because the business doesn't make much money. Now we have legal week...you think you had a problem making a buck now!

When Capitalism Meets Cannabis

At the Farmacy in Boulder, Colo., medical marijuana is sold in a boutiquelike atmosphere. State law lets sellers profit as much as they can, as long as they stay within a labyrinth of rules.

ANYONE who thinks it would be easy to get rich selling marijuana in a state where it’s legal should spend an hour with Ravi Respeto, manager of the Farmacy, an upscale dispensary here that offers Strawberry Haze, Hawaiian Skunk and other strains of Cannabis sativa at up to $16 a gram.

She will harsh your mellow.

“No M.B.A. program could have prepared me for this experience,” she says, wearing a cream-colored smock made of hemp. “People have this misconception that you just jump into it and start making money hand over fist, and that is not the case.”

Since this place opened in January, it’s been one nerve-fraying problem after another. Pot growers, used to cash-only transactions, are shocked to be paid with checks and asked for receipts. And there are a lot of unhappy surprises, like one not long ago when the Farmacy learned that its line of pot-infused beverages could not be sold nearby in Denver. Officials there had decided that any marijuana-tinged consumables had to be produced in a kitchen in the city.

“You’d never see a law that says, ‘If you want to sell Nike shoes in San Francisco, the shoes have to be made in San Francisco,’ ” says Ms. Respeto, sitting in a tiny office on the second floor of the Farmacy. “But in this industry you get stuff like that all the time.”

One of the odder experiments in the recent history of American capitalism is unfolding here in the Rockies: the country’s first attempt at fully regulating, licensing and taxing a for-profit marijuana trade. In California, medical marijuana dispensary owners work in nonprofit collectives, but the cannabis pioneers of Colorado are free to pocket as much as they can — as long as they stay within the rules.

The catch is that there are a ton of rules, and more are coming in the next few months. The authorities here were initially caught off guard when dispensary mania began last year, after President Obama announced that federal law enforcement officials wouldn’t trouble users and suppliers as long as they complied with state law. In Colorado, where a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana was passed in 2000, hundreds of dispensaries popped up and a startling number of residents turned out to be in “severe pain,” the most popular of eight conditions that can be treated legally with the once-demonized weed.

More than 80,000 people here now have medical marijuana certificates, which are essentially prescriptions, and for months new enrollees have signed up at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day.

As supply met demand, politicians decided that a body of regulations was overdue. The state’s Department of Revenue has spent months conceiving rules for this new industry, ending the reefer-madness phase here in favor of buzz-killing specifics about cultivation, distribution, storage and every other part of the business.

Whether and how this works will be carefully watched far beyond Colorado. The rules here could be a blueprint for the 13 states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have medical marijuana laws. That is particularly the case in Rhode Island, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and Maine, which are poised to roll out programs of their own.....

I love that quote "politicians decided that a body of regulations was overdue."....when do they not decide a body of regulations is overdue? I've often said you want to end drug use in this country, let the feds handle distribution. The bureaucracy would spend 20 billion on how to handle sales/distribution of a couple of bags of weed.

Another great idea from California

From my friend Darren at RotLC, another great idea from a democrat (of course) in California

In California, license plates might go electronic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- As electronic highway billboards flashing neon advertisements become more prevalent, the next frontier in distracted driving is already approaching - ad-blaring license plates.

The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles. The move is intended as a moneymaker for a state facing a $19 billion deficit.

The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen.

In emergencies, the plates could be used to broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information.

The bill's author, Democratic Sen. Curren Price of Los Angeles, said California would be the first state to implement such technology if the state Department of Motor Vehicles ultimately recommends the widespread use of the plates. He said other states are exploring something similar.

....

The DMV would be required to submit its findings and recommendations to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2013.

The bill has received no formal opposition. It passed unanimously through the Senate last month and is scheduled to be heard Monday by the Assembly Transportation Committee....

OK...cell phones, radios, cd's, mp3 players, kids screamings, other persons in the car talking to you, looking up directions on the map/GPS system, drinking coffee, billboards on the side of the road and other advertising....let's add another distraction. Also, if you believe any money generated by this is going to be put to reducing the budget deficet you really do belive that Obamacare will reduce cost whilte increasing coverage.

The feds are really helping down in Louisiana

Good to know B Hussein Obama and his gang are doing everything to plug the hole.

BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard

Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor's wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore....

Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.

"These barges work. You've seen them work. You've seen them suck oil out of the water," said Jindal.

"The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil....'"

Governor, you know the feds don't like it when you get something that works...goes against justifing their worthless existance. Now why you ask did the Coast Guard stop this? Well, this was serious business.

But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

After Jindal strenuously made his case, the barges finally got the go-ahead today to return to the Gulf and get back to work, after more than 24 hours of sitting idle.

You know it takes a leader to say "No, do what you got to do to get the job done...I'll take the heat." Jindal is showing leadership...the feds are showing why they need to be neutered this fall. God please let this be the last Congress run by Pelosi and Reid.

B Hussein Obama and leadership

Again, I go back to my often mentioned point...that man is not qualifed to run the night shft at a McDonald's


Spill reveals Obama's lack of executive experience
By: Byron York

In mid-February 2008, fresh from winning a bunch of Super Tuesday primaries, Barack Obama granted an interview to "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Croft. "When you sit down and you look at [your] resume," Croft said to Obama, "there's no executive experience, and in fact, correct if I'm wrong, the only thing that you've actually run was the Harvard Law Review."

"Well, I've run my Senate office, and I've run this campaign," Obama said.

Seven months later, after receiving the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama talked with CNN's Anderson Cooper. At the time, the news was dominated by Hurricane Gustav, which was headed toward New Orleans and threatening to become a Katrina-like disaster. "Some of your Republican critics have said you don't have the experience to handle a situation like this," Cooper said to Obama. "They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience. ..."

"Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees," Obama answered. "We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years."

Obama ignored Palin's experience as governor of Alaska, which was considerably bigger than the Obama campaign. But his point was clear: If you're worried about my lack of my executive experience, look at my campaign. Running a first-rate campaign, Obama and his supporters argued, showed that Obama could run the federal government, even at its most testing moments. He could set goals, demand accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, bend the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

A point for all "Objective Journalist" like Steve and Anderson...B Hussein Obama didn't run his campaign. Neither did McCain. They hire professionals to do that...and these people get paid good money to put people in office. Barry hired David Plouffe who is writing a book to cash in.

Fast forward to 2010. The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing out of control. The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the problem...

For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere....

The bureaucracy wasn't bending to anyone's will. The direction from the top was not clear. And accountability? So far, the only head that has rolled during the Gulf crisis has been that of Minerals Management Service chief Elizabeth Birnbaum. But during a May 27 news conference, Obama admitted he didn't even know whether she had resigned or been fired. "I found out about it this morning, so I don't yet know the circumstances," the president said. "And [Interior Secretary] Ken Salazar's been in testimony on the Hill." Obama's answer revealed that he hadn't fired Birnbaum, and he couldn't reach a member of his Cabinet who was a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

OK Barry supporters...how has this man shown the slightest leadership in the Gulf Oil Spill...or anthing for that? Any answwers would be greatly appreciated.

Canada and Health Care

I've often said in debates on health care on multiple blogs, discussions, etc that when I hear B Hussein Obama and his supporters on the subject, I recall a great line from a movie who's title I can't remember. The power behind the throne looks at the figurehead and says "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?!"

Often the guys who pushed this seizure of one sixth of the nation's economy said "Look at Canada!..."

OK, let's look at Canada.

Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model

TORONTO (Reuters) – Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada's provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

Ontario, Canada's most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate "incentive fees" to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit -- an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It's likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

"There's got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

"We can't continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

"At some stage we're going to hit a breaking point."

No, I think you've already gone past that!

MIRROR IMAGE DEBATE

In some ways the Canadian debate is the mirror image of discussions going on in the United States.

Canada, fretting over budget strains, wants to prune its system, while the United States, worrying about an army of uninsured, aims to create a state-backed safety net.

Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded system, which covers all "medically necessary" hospital and physician care and curbs the role of private medicine. It ate up about 40 percent of provincial budgets, or some C$183 billion ($174 billion) last year.

Spending has been rising 6 percent a year under a deal that added C$41.3billion of federal funding over 10 years...

Brian Golden, a professor at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business, said provinces are weighing new sources of funding, including "means-testing" and moving toward evidence-based and pay-for-performance models.

"Why are we paying more or the same for cataract surgery when it costs substantially less today than it did 10 years ago? There's going to be a finer look at what we're paying for and, more importantly, what we're getting for it," he said.

Other problems include trying to control independently set salaries for top hospital executives and doctors and rein in spiraling costs for new medical technologies and drugs.

Ontario says healthcare could eat up 70 percent of its budget in 12 years, if all these costs are left unchecked.

"Our objective is to preserve the quality healthcare system we have and indeed to enhance it. But there are difficult decisions ahead and we will continue to make them," Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told Reuters.

The province has introduced legislation that ties hospital chief executive pay with the quality of patient care and says it wants to put more physicians on salary to save money...

Funny, the only thing the bureaucrat Mr Duncan seems to think of is cutting back on services...using the free market to enhance medical service in Canada never seems to cross his mind. If it does, the report doesn't mention it.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

The losers could be drug companies and pharmacies, both of which are getting increasingly nervous.

"Many of the advances in healthcare and life expectancy are due to the pharmaceutical industry so we should never demonize them," said U of T's Golden. "We need to ensure that they maintain a profitable business but our ability to make it very very profitable is constrained right now."

Scotia Capital's Webb said one cost-saving idea may be to make patients aware of how much it costs each time they visit a healthcare professional. "(The public) will use the services more wisely if they know how much it's costing," she said.

"If it's absolutely free with no information on the cost and the information of an alternative that would be have been more practical, then how can we expect the public to wisely use the service?"

But change may come slowly. Universal healthcare is central to Canada's national identity, and decisions are made as much on politics as economics.

"It's an area that Canadians don't want to see touched," said TD's Burleton. "Essentially it boils down the wishes of the population. But I think, from an economist's standpoint, we point to the fact that sometimes Canadians in the short term may not realize the cost."

I love this quote from Ms Webb,

,,,one cost-saving idea may be to make patients aware of how much it costs each time they visit a healthcare professional. "(The public) will use the services more wisely if they know how much it's costing,"

People will always spend more when they are not paying the bill, a fact that escapes her. It doesn't matter how much you tell them that. If you don't put the power of the market into the medical system it will crack of it's own weight.

I also love professor Golden talking about the profitable of pharmaceutical industry. What is the standared of "profitable" and "very very profitable"? And I wonder if he has any concept of what it takes to bring new medicine and procedures online. Probably not. That's why he is "an expert" in a news report.

Reflections on a beautiful day...and two great articles

Today I had off and I'm waiting for my fiancée to arrive for the weekend. To my delight the mail actually contained two interesting piece in it...the National Review and the Washington Times Weekly Edition. The cover story on both was on the Arizona immigration enforcement law.



I looked over the National Review commentary and it makes some excellent points on why this law is not the establishment of a police state in Arizona.

Defending Arizona
Its statute will withstand the inevitable — and already begun — challenges in court

KRIS W. KOBACH

A law that basically makes a few small, carefully considered changes in police procedure, Arizona’s S.B. 1070, has inspired a vastly disproportionate response. Few laws have ever been so grossly mischaracterized by so many leaders on the left. From President Obama on down, they rushed to the microphone after it was enacted to hyperventilate about an impending police state in Arizona. Excitable bloggers invoked Jim Crow, apartheid, and the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany.

Their charges are completely false. Most stem from misunderstandings, perhaps willful and perhaps merely ignorant, of what the law is about and how it works. The false charges have been numerous, but the three most common are the following.

First, and most outrageously, critics incorrectly claim that the law would promote racial profiling...More surprising was the commentary from the country’s top lawyer. Attorney General Eric Holder sternly warned the nation on Meet the Press that the law “has the possibility of leading to racial profiling.” A few days later, when pressed about his comments in a House of Representatives committee hearing, Holder admitted that he hadn’t actually read the law. Another S.B. 1070 opponent, secretary of homeland security Janet Napolitano, says she has not read the law either.

If they had read it, Holder and Napolitano would have seen that S.B. 1070 expressly prohibits racial profiling. In four different sections, the law reiterates that a law-enforcement official “may not consider race, color, or national origin” in making any stops or determining an alien’s immigration status...

Second, critics have declared that the law will require aliens to carry documentation that they weren’t otherwise required to possess. President Obama claimed, “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers . . . you’re going to be harassed.” The president would do well to familiarize himself with current federal immigration laws. Since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens not to keep certain registration documents on their person or not to register with the federal government. The Arizona law prohibits aliens from violating these federal statutes (8 U.S.C. §§ 1304(a) and 1306(e)). In other words, the Arizona law simply adds a layer of state penalty to what was already a crime under federal law.

For legal permanent resident aliens, the relevant document is a green card. For short-term visitors from a visa-waiver country (one of 36 countries whose citizens may visit the United States for up to 90 days without a visa), the relevant document is an I-94 registration receipt, which is placed in their passport at the port of entry.

Third, critics have claimed that the law requires police officers to stop people in order to question them about their immigration status...The law operates in straightforward fashion. If a police officer, during a detention to investigate another offense, develops reasonable suspicion that the subject is an illegal alien, then the officer must take specific steps to verify or dispel that reasonable suspicion. And contrary to the claims of critics, “reasonable suspicion” is a well-defined concept.

In sum, the law does not make any radical changes. Rather, it gives Arizona police officers a few additional tools to use when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law-enforcement duties. It also ensures that local cooperation with ICE will occur more regularly. Other provisions that have received less media hype prohibit Arizona cities from restricting enforcement of immigration laws (for example, by preventing their officers from contacting ICE), and make it a misdemeanor for an alien who lacks work authorization to solicit work in a public place.

A point of law should be injected now. Thanks in large parts to idiots on TV and the movies, people believe a cop needs probably cause to initiate a traffic stop, stop on the street, etc. No, a cop needs reasonable suspicion to start a stop. Probably cause is the standard for an arrest. I wonder if Eric Holder knows that. If he does or not I have faith he will join the ACLU and attempt to go after this law in court.


In the Washington Times, David A. Ridenour has a great column on how to react to the usual suspects calling on people to boycott Arizona. Boycott San Francisco, LA, Washington, etc. Hey, good enough for the goose.

RIDENOUR: Boycott the boycotters

In San Francisco and here in the nation's capital, liberal politicians are preparing economic boycotts against Arizona because it had the guts to crack down on the illegal aliens who violate federal laws with sneering impunity. The District of Columbia Council, incompetent beyond imagining in governing the 599,000 overtaxed souls who inhabit its 68.2 square miles, has the audacity to demand that Arizona ignore the drug-runners, human traffickers and murderers who have wreaked havoc in the Grand Canyon State for much of the past decade.

Such chutzpah from a city whose license plates whine about alleged "Taxation without Representation," when, if they reflected reality, they would read "Taxation without Services."

Arizona, it should be noted, covers 114,000 square miles, has a nearly 6.6 million population and has been a sought-after haven by conventioneers, tourists and retirees.

San Francisco, one of the nation's first sanctuary cities and a bastion of left-wing lunacy since the mid-1960s, already has barred city employees from official travel to Arizona. Its board of supervisors is moving to boycott all Arizona businesses.

All of this because Arizona's legislature - after years waiting for the federal government to secure the state's 370-mile long border with Mexico - voted to make it a state crime to be in the state in violation of federal law. Polls show 70 percent of Arizonans support the new law, as do nearly 60 percent of Americans.

The new law directs Arizona law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of persons with whom they come into contact in the course of some other law enforcement activity if the officers have a "reasonable suspicion" - a term well-defined in law - that the person is violating federal immigration laws. The law explicitly forbids checking a person's immigration status if a person's "race, color or national origin" is the only basis for suspicion...

So why all this handwringing by people on the left - people whose hearts apparently bleed copiously for those who break our laws, but not for the Americans who often end up as their victims? Isn't a sovereign state responsible for defending its borders, its economy, its social safety net and its people?

Not according to Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney, who urged Washington Nationals fans to boycott the Arizona Diamondbacks when they play. He's also suggested that Major League Baseball move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix and relocate the spring training Cactus League.

I have a better idea. Let's encourage the 60 percent or so of Americans who, according to numerous polls, distrust the Obama administration and Congress, to shun both Washington and San Francisco this summer and travel to scenic Arizona instead.

After all, both cities are ridiculously expensive and often downright disdainful of people they consider to be yokels -that's the haughty urban code for "average Americans" - who swarm in from the Midwest, the South and the Rockies each summer to clog their streets and ogle their famous sites.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Darren posted on his blog on how San Diego is loosing convention business because the San Diego City Council passed a resolution condeming Arizona and stopping city business in the state...now the Zonies are going to schedule things in Arizona just to piss off the idiots in California, DC, etc. I am planning on sometime in the next few months riding my motorcycle to Arizona...

Things the San Diego embargo make me feel pround to be an American!

Happy Memorial Day!

That's The Chicago Way

In one of the greatest quotes from the 1987 movie "The Untouchables", Sean Connery told Kevin Coster, "He brings a knife, you bring a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue...that's The Chicago Way!"

Unfortunately "The Chicago Way" has morphed to "The Obama Way". And it's not a pretty sight.

Obama Exporting Chicago's Misery to a City Near You

Lurita Doan

If you want to get a good glimpse of what America will look like if President Obama continues to push his “change” agenda, take a close look at Chicago. But brace yourself: it is not a pretty picture.

Chicago, as we all know, is Mr. Obama’s home and the place where he served as a community organizer, a state legislator, and a US Senator. Obama championed a variety of jobs creation programs, advanced ideas to reduce crime, and sought earmarks totaling some $800 million dollars to boost the Chicago economy. By all accounts, he was energetic, determined, and successful pushing these programs.

But while many, including Obama, have focused almost exclusively on Mr. Obama’s noble intentions, few have focused on the results. Which of Obama’s efforts in Chicago delivered the promised benefits? None.

Chicago is a city in crisis. Crime rates have surged despite the many, Obama-led, community-building efforts. The number of Americans murdered in Chicago this year is about the same number of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past year. Two State Senators have argued that Chicago’s crime problem is too big for locals to solve and have called for deployment of the National Guard.

Nor is crime the only problem in the windy city. Unemployment is at 11.2%, 1.3 points above the national average. Worse yet, minorities are particularly hit by a failing Chicago economy that continues to shed jobs as the unemployment rates among minorities top 20%.

Alas, the index of misery in Chicago earned the city the distinction as the third most miserable city in America, as high taxes cripple job growth, innovation, and entrepreneurialism.

No suprise at any of these things...Democratic controlled cities show failures...but this line put it simply:

Is it possible that Mr. Obama made Chicago’s problems worse by championing a philosophy of greater federal support, avoidance of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility? Was the nearly $1 billion of Obama earmarks spent, not on investments that might have helped spark economic activity, but instead directed to dubious causes aimed at rewarding key supporters such as the Unions? Did Obama help choke off economic vitality and entrepreneurialism by acquiescing to high taxes and growing regulatory burdens?

I think so.

Agreed. Leftist want people defendant on government. If they are independent they don't have the need of politicians and bureaucrats. I recall (going by memory) how early in the 2000s the unions and the city council (there are one in the same) kept Wal-Mart from opening a store in Chicago. Why you ask? Wal-Mart is not a union shop. So after enough aggravation Wal-Mart simply opened its first store in a small suburb of Chicago...it would bring millions into the city treasury and most of the people to be employed at the place were Chicago residents. All those jobs and taxes out of reach because the unions and leftist don't like industry...like our current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC.

Mr. Obama did not set Chicago on a path of ruin single-handedly. He had lots of help. Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat Party Whip, White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Valerie Jarrett and other Chicagoans occupy key positions in the Which House. Like Obama, Durbin and Emanuel have, for years, directed funding, both directly and indirectly to Illinois and to Chicago for assistance, entitlement programs, pork projects and perks. And yet, the problems in Chicago only grew.

Here is the scary part: now they are in Washington, working hard to duplicate on a national scale the failures they achieved in Chicago.

None of the powerful Chicago politicians now in Washington have practical experience creating jobs. All of them have a mistaken belief that the federal government can generate job growth by turning the spigot of taxpayer money in the intended direction. They also believe that ever larger and more intrusive government and regulatory regimes added to every level of American life are a prescription for economic growth. This same, failed philosophy that guided their actions in Chicago now guides their efforts in Washington.

As I've often said, Barry Obama isn't qualified to run the night shift at a McDonalds. The concept that people are best left alone to pursue their own self interest without the interference of government is something that is foreign to him and the rest of his followers. We can only pray conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) take control of the Congress and stop him....

The French Retirement Age

Again (and it galls me to say it) France is showing what this country needs to do for a major problem

France poised to raise retirement age

Expectations are growing that France is set to remove the right to retire at 60, as it embarks on a contentious reform of its debt-laden pension system and brings public finances back into line...

...The government is expected to announce its planned reforms next month and expects to have a draft bill before parliament by September. Nicolas Sarkozy, president, has made pensions the last big reform of his government before the campaign for the next presidential election in 2012 gets under way.

All but one of France’s five main unions have rejected suggestions that the retirement age should be increased, favouring instead taxes to fill a deficit expected to hit €32bn this year, as much as €45bn in 2020 and possibly more than €100bn in 2050.

...A similar percentage of respondents agreed that the retirement age needed to be raised from 60 to 62.

After the oil shock of the mid 70s, France switched to nuclear for its electric power. It now gets 85% of its electricity from atomic plants. The US…we’ve gone from 25% of our oil coming from the Middle East to over 50%...and getting a nuke plant built is an act of God.

When Social Security was imposed on the American people, the average life span was around 62 years…and you got full benefits at 65…now people live to 80. We started to move the retirement age to 67 and we need to get that up to at least 75… but I don’t see that happening with the current administration and their efforts to bankrupt the country.

The Washington Pravda

Not to be outdone by the NY Puke, the Washington Pravda has this "objective story" or piece of "journalism" from it's front pages

Louisiana governor Jindal takes active role in dealing with spill

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 18, 2010; A01

OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO -- Strapped into a National Guard Black Hawk, peering down at green water mottled with oil sheen, the most serious man in Louisiana is starting to sound ridiculous.

Over the helicopter's intercom, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is explaining to the mayor of New Orleans about two of the state's efforts to keep back the oil slick. One is named for a Mexican-food entree. The other is named for a Cajun sausage.

The "burrito levee" and the "boudin bag" are part of a vast effort, overseen by Jindal, to hold back a slick that is already spitting up tar balls onto the state's coast. He also has a plan to create more Louisiana, building new barrier islands in the oil's path.

"It makes so much sense. It's so obvious. We gotta do it," Jindal said into his headphones. His call for a major government response stands in apparent contrast to his previous calls for small government.

Excuse me Dave..."His call for a major government response stands in apparent contrast to his previous calls for small government." This is what a state government with a major seashore is supposed to do. Yes, protection of its coast comes under the preview of state control. But more to the point, a smart swipe against the Governor is something for the Editorial pages or columns...then again with Washington Pravda, is there any difference?

Tax Rates and Revenue

One of the basic unwritten laws of economics is the more you tax an activity the less you have of that activity. You tax capital gains at such a high rate people don’t want to liquidate assets and you don’t make any tax money. You tax income so high people stop working overtime…it’s not worth the extra effort. I’ve had a running debate on this with a fellow blogger from Denver.

Now from the Wall Street Journal, a look at the bigger picture of the law.

The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend: Whether rates are high or low, evidence shows our tax system won't collect more than 20% of GDP
By DAVID RANSON

...U.S. fiscal policy has been going in the wrong direction for a very long time. But this year the U.S. government declined to lay out any plan to balance its budget ever again. Based on President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates a deficit that starts at 10.3% of GDP in 2010. It is projected to narrow as the economy recovers but will still be 5.6% in 2020. As a result the net national debt (debt held by the public) will more than double to 90% by 2020 from 40% in 2008. The current Greek deficit is now thought to be 13.6% of a far smaller GDP. Unlike ours, the Greek insolvency is not too large for an international rescue.

As sobering as the U.S. debt estimates are, they are incomplete and optimistic. They do not include deficit spending resulting from the new health-insurance legislation. The revenue numbers rely on increased tax rates beginning next year resulting from the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts. And, as usual, they ignore the unfunded liabilities of social insurance programs, even though these benefits are officially recognized as "mandatory spending" when the time comes to pay them out.

The feds assume a relationship between the economy and tax revenue that is divorced from reality. Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact that needs to be built into fiscal calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly if targeted at the higher brackets, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth.

.The nearby chart shows how tax revenue has grown over the past eight decades along with the size of the economy. It illustrates the empirical relationship first introduced on this page 20 years ago by the Hoover Institution's W. Kurt Hauser—a close proportionality between revenue and GDP since World War II, despite big changes in marginal tax rates in both directions. "Hauser's Law," as I call this formula, reveals a kind of capacity ceiling for federal tax receipts at about 19% of GDP.




What's the origin of this limit beyond which it is impossible to extract any more revenue from tax payers? The tax base is not something that the government can kick around at will. It represents a living economic system that makes its own collective choices. In a tax code of 70,000 pages there are innumerable ways for high-income earners to seek out and use ambiguities and loopholes. The more they are incentivized to make an effort to game the system, the less the federal government will get to collect. That would explain why, as Mr. Hauser has shown, conventional methods of forecasting tax receipts from increases in future tax rates are prone to over-predict revenue.

For budget planning it's wiser and safer to assume that tax receipts will remain at a historically realistic ratio to GDP no matter how tax rates are manipulated. That leads me to conclude that current projections of federal revenue are, once again, unrealistically high.

Like other empirical "laws," Hauser's Law predicts within a range of approximation. Changes in marginal tax rates do not make a perceptible difference to the ratio of revenue to GDP, but recessions do. When GDP falls relative to its potential, tax revenue falls even more. History shows that, in an economy with no "output gap" between GDP and potential GDP, a ratio of federal revenue to GDP of no more than 18.3% would be realistic.

In this form, Hauser's Law provides a simple basis for testing the validity of any government's revenue projections. Today, since the economy already suffers from a large output gap that is expected to take many years to close, 18.3% must be a realistic upper limit on the ratio of budget revenues to GDP for years to come. Any major tax increase will reduce GDP and therefore revenues too.

But CBO projections based on the current budget show this ratio reaching 18.3% as early as 2013 and rising to 19.6% in 2020. Such numbers implicitly assume that the U.S. labor market will get back to sustainable "full employment" by 2013 and that GDP will exceed its potential thereafter. Not likely. When the projections are tempered by the constraints of Hauser's Law, it's clear that deficit spending will grow faster than the official estimates show.

SG Kagan, our next Surpeme Court Justice

OK….this woman who has few appeals court appearances is supposed to be a legal genius.

But if she can’t read the basic facts of the case (expenditures vs. contribution limits) maybe she ain’t that bright and she should try going to court a little more before she is put on the court for life.

From Citizens United v. FEC case:

ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLEE GENERAL KAGAN: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court:

I have three very quick points to make about the government position. The first is that this issue has a long history. For over 100 years Congress has made a judgment that corporations must be subject to special rules when they participate in elections and this Court has never questioned that judgment.

Number two -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Wait, wait, wait, wait. We never questioned it, but we never approved it, either. And we gave some really weird interpretations to the Taft-Hartley Act in order to avoid confronting the question.

GENERAL KAGAN: I will repeat what I said, Justice Scalia: For 100 years this Court, faced with many opportunities to do so, left standing the legislation that is at issue in this case — first the contribution limits, then the expenditure limits that came in by way of Taft-Hartley — and then of course in Austin specifically approved those limits.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I don’t understand what you are saying. I mean, we are not a self — self-starting institution here. We only disapprove of something when somebody asks us to. And if there was no occasion for us to approve or disapprove, it proves nothing whatever that we didn’t disapprove it.

GENERAL KAGAN: Well, you are not a self-starting institution. But many litigants brought many cases to you in 1907 and onwards and in each case this Court turns down, declined the opportunity, to invalidate or otherwise interfere with this legislation.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But that judgment was validated by Buckley’s contribution-expenditure line. And you’re correct if you look at contributions, but this is an expenditure case. And I think that it doesn’t clarify the situation to say that for 100 years — to suggest that for 100 years we would have allowed expenditure limitations, which in order to work at all have to have a speaker-based distinction, exemption from media, content-based distinction, time-based distinction. We’ve never allowed that.

You can hear the argument here.


Of course she will be confirmed...the Senate is too weak to stop it...although I would love B Hussein Obama getting some of his own medicine by having the Republicans filibuster his nominees
.