Read it.

Not his rich, you understand; the other rich.

The idea is to help pay for other measures aimed at helping low- and middle-income families.

‘Aimed at’ but won’t; what they will do is hire and pay more government employees.

They may also be used to help pay for increased government spending.

Oh, ya think?

Read it and gag.

It used to be that the ‘Republican alternative’ to an expensive government program was ‘Everybody to pay for their own stuff’, not ‘slightly less expensive government program for the same thing’.

But that was yesterday; and yesterday’s gone….

Read it.

You might as well watch the Super Bowl, America: You’re paying for it.

Forget about the league’s federal antitrust exemption dating back to the ’60s that allows it to yank any game off broadcast television it likes if it feels there aren’t enough backsides in the seats. Let’s forget about the same antitrust exemption that declared the NFL a nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization on par with a Chamber of Commerce or real estate board. Hey, let’s even forget a Federal Communications Commission ruling that, for almost 40 years, forbids cable and satellite providers to switch to a live feed of a game that was blacked out in a local market.

Read it.

Taking candy from a baby is easy. Taking sugar from a senator? Not so much. For decades, economists, free market think tanks, good-government advocates, newspaper columnists, and even the occasional elected official have decried the special treatment enjoyed by the American sugar industry.

Under current policies, U.S. sugarcane and sugar beet farmers receive minimum price guarantees regardless of market conditions. In addition, the federal government allots 85 percent of the U.S. sugar market to domestic producers, and it imposes quotas and tariffs on the 40 countries that are allowed to export sugar to America.

In 1993, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that such policies were costing U.S. consumers $1.4 billion a year because they resulted in “higher prices for domestic sugar.” Twenty years later, the University of Michigan–Flint economist Mark J. Perry estimated that this annual cost had grown to $3 billion by 2012, and that consumers and U.S. sugar-using businesses had paid “more than twice the world price of sugar on average since 1982.”

In other words, sugar producers are getting a sweet deal, while consumers are getting screwed.

Read it.

FlickrOn Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a spate of bills addressing human trafficking. Though politicians on both sides of the aisle have been crowing about their good work here, the bills do very little to address labor trafficking, which comprises the majority of human trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department. Rather, most focus on the more salacious prospect of sex trafficking, especially the sex trafficking of minors.

‘We have 11 human trafficing bills.’

‘Oh? How much are they charging us?’

Read it.

John has written about how President Obama’s campaign team is working to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s upcoming elections. To make matters worse, the anti-Netanyahu campaign is benefiting from U.S. taxpayer money.

As John noted, the organization “One Voice” wants to help take down Netanyahu’s party in the March 2015 Knesset elections that will ultimately determine the next Israeli Prime Minister. “One Voice” claims to be non-partisan, but it is working with V-15, an Israeli group dedicated to defeating Netanyahu. And “One Voice” itself admits that it is teaming up with V15 because Israel “need[s] a prime minister and a government who will be responsive to the people.”

I think we know the identity of the Prime Minister “One Voice” doesn’t mean. If not, here’s a hint: the son of Mahmoud Abbas reportedly sits on its advisory board.

Read it.

“I have girlfriends who have a lot of children who have been killed, and I look at their pain and hurt on their faces, and I don’t want that,” says Shantella Davis, who’s an unemployed recovering drug addict and the single mother of a six-year-old named As-Sidq. “When I leave this earth I want him to be established…I want him to be able to go to college.”

They live in the impoverished city of Camden, New Jersey, which is home to some of the nation’s lowest performing public schools. “A lot of kids that came out of Camden High not knowing how to read and write,” says Davis. “How did the kid get through the school not knowing how to read and write?”

Read it.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week released their annual Budget and Economic Outlook which sets the budget baselines and estimates for the whole year.

Buried in Appendix B of the report is CBO’s attempt to provide an updated score of Obamacare. But that’s not what they did.  They only scored the “coverage provisions” of the law, ignoring some fifteen tax increases which are also a part of Obamacare and its cost to taxpayers.

Makes you wonder what they do up there all day. But I bet they’re well paid.

Read it.

With its “vibrant mix of residential, retail, commercial and green space,” Arlington County, Virginia is exactly where a lot of Millennials in the Washington DC area would like to live–at least according to one such Millennial named Harrison Godfrey. However, many can’t, as the median home price is $550,000, which is far more than two professionals who each earn $50,000 a year can afford.

…

Arlington, says Godfrey, “requires long-term planning and investment, which is why it’s important for millennials to engage in the new planning process unveiled by the county council.” Actually, he has it backwards: it is planning that got northern Virginia into this mess. Moreover, government planning is always going to be more responsive to the desires of the people who already live (and vote) in a place than to those who want to move there (but may never do so which means they’ll never vote there).

Read it.

Thank God somebody can find Obama’s Syria policy; I’ve been looking for it for years without success.

Read it.

As noted at The College Fix back on January 20, one of the ideas you’ll not likely hear about in President Obama’s tax machinations is the repeal of tax-free 529 college saving plans.

The president wants these plans now to be taxed as ordinary income, with as rates as high as 39.6%.

529 plan expert Joe Hurley says this “will result in their effective repeal, as new contributions in will ‘dry up’ overnight.”

But ironically, Mr. Obama took quite advantage of 529 tax rules back in 2007.

…

Forbes writer Ryan Ellis points out this presidential hypocrisy is not unlike that from 2009 when the president wanted to nix 1,700 low income school scholarships for kids in Washington DC … all the while sending his daughters to the exclusive Sidwell Friends School.

Read it.

So for some time now, we have had a Czar to be in charge of Ebola. Oh, not an actual doctor, of course, just a spin doctor. A career bureaucrat and hanger-on. And we haven’t heard Word One about Ebola or the Czar since. Wouldn’t you love to know his salary? Wouldn’t you love to have it? Apparently, just appointing a Czar did the trick and the crisis is now over! Huzzah! I plan to appoint a Czar of Housekeeping and Cooking in hopes that those things will be taken care of as easily. Oh wait, I think that’s me.

So what has the head of the CDC been doing with his time, then? Could he not have outsourced to underlings the task of hounding people to get this year’s near-worthless flu shots? Better still, could they not have come closer to guessing the actual flu varieties for the shot so that my elderly parents didn’t get horribly sick along with all of their fellow residents in their assisted living facility? They all got flu shots like good little soldiers.

Then, too, they might have saved several hundred thousand dollars if they had decided to take a pass on studying why so many lesbians are fat.

Read it.

Venturing down a line of legislative reasoning that apparently sees threats to the republic in convenience store clerks, security guards, globe-trotting journalists, and shopkeepers nervy enough to do business in troubled neighborhoods, Rep. Mike Honda (D-YouGottaBeKiddingMe) offers up HR 378, The Responsible Body Armor Possession Act. Yes, it is in fact a bill intended to limit people’s ability to own gear that reduces injuries and death caused by bullets.

Read it.

But the preferred solution, for those who bitch the loudest, is — more government meddling. Idiots.

Read it.

Note that the amendment didn’t say man-made climate change.

The amendment even won support from James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), one of the vanguard of Republican climate change deniers who had previously called the phenomenon a hoax. Inhofe voted in favor of the amendment, stating that Earth’s climate has “always changed,” and citing “biblical evidence” to support the theory.

…

The Senate has gone on record to agree that climate change is real, but the governmental body is still split on its causes — other amendments introduced later in the day that attributed climate change to the actions of humans failed to receive the 60 votes required to pass, despite some Republican support.

I guess they have to take their victories where they can get them.

Read it.

Following a complaint that one entrance to Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, wasn’t handicapped accessible, officials used benches to block that stairway. Some people are now using another entrance to the park, but others, who presumably aren’t handicapped, are simply going over or around the benches.

Presumably the theory is that if handicapped people can’t use it, nobody ought to be allowed to use it.

Read it.

The latest news from Hawai’i is that the Honululu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) lied to the city council when it told them the city’s rail project was $500 million to $700 million over budget. It turns out it’s really $910 million over budget. HART was just hoping to cover up $210 million of the deficit by quietly transferring bus money to the rail project.

Richard Fernandez provides some inconvenient truth.

Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute believes there should be a National Museum of Government Failure.  He argues that the displays at the Smithsonian would pale into insignificance if set beside the awe-inspiring sight of such things as the “$349 million on a rocket test facility that is completely unused“, the Superconducting Collider whose ruins include  nearly 15 miles of tunnel and the ex-future Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.  Yet these artifacts, whose scale would surpass many a Lost City, are far from the worst failures.  The biggest fiascos by dollar value are the various government programs designed to win the war on drugs or poverty which after having spent trillions of dollars fruitlessly, lie somewhere in an unmarked bureaucratic grave.

Were Chris Edwards a distinguished economist he would realize at once that pointless activity is the best sort of government activity there is.  John Maynard Keynes couldn’t recommend it highly enough.  The great economist said that the best use of government effort was to bury money in a deep hole and employ the idled to dig them up again.

Read it.

Last week the government commenced its prosecution of former CIA official Jeffrey Sterling for violation of the Espionage Act. The government alleges that Sterling leaked the details of a program intended to undermine Iran’s nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen. The program was subject to a security classification indicating its extreme sensitivity.

Sterling did not publicly disclose the details of the CIA program; he laundered them through Risen (with a promise from Risen’s to protect Sterling’s identity as the source). So the government alleges.

The government subpoenaed Risen to testify in the case. Risen declined, and the government has abandoned its efforts to compel him to testify. He works for the Times, and the Times is, after all, on Obama’s team. The case therefore continues without the benefit of Risen’s testimony.

…

If Sterling violated the Espionage Act, as the government alleges, it is even clearer that Risen did so too. He is subject to the same criminal liability as Sterling and other citizens for violation of the Espionage Act, but the government has confined the prosecution to Sterling and now it has also abandoned its claim to Risen’s testimony.

Selective prosecution is a hallmark of tyrannous regimes everywhere. When friends of those in power can ignore the law with impunity, then there is no justice, just a fight for power and influence, which is what we have in America today.

Read it.

Since this is NPR, they have a behind-the-scenes political agenda that comes out in the writing as if by accident. A good example is this paragraph:

This last point is crucial because it suggests that a choice-based system all by itself won’t necessarily increase equity. The most economically disadvantaged students may have parents who are making decisions differently from other families. These parents appear to be more interested in factors other than academic quality as the state defines it. Maybe they have access to different, or less, information. If this is true, choice could actually increase, rather than diminish, achievement gaps within a city.

The first sentence is striking: What does ‘equity’ have to do with anything? A choice-based system isn’t striving for ‘equity’ but for quality of education. That ‘economically disadvantaged’ (great PC style, there) parents make different decisions from ‘other families’ ought not to come as a surprise to a moderately intelligent individual, nor the fact that these parents like schools that are close, have extended hours, and lots of extracurricular activity — poor people use public schools as free day-care, a though that not only doesn’t occur to somebody writing for NPR, but which is a thought they are carefully trained not even to think.

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

After all, those golf vacations at government expense don’t come cheap.

Oh, sure, they’re supposed to fund tax breaks for the ‘middle class’ but you know how long those last.

Read it.

No chance of it passing, of course — to0 much money is made from any government mandate for it to be killed — but they get credit for trying.

Read it.

Eric Goldman calls our attention to a rather astounding story out of Florida, involving how various Florida police departments are engaging in what appears to be basically sham “sting” operations online to arrest and shame men as child sexual predators, then steal their cars (sometimes offering to sell them back), and then doing everything possible to hide the records. The whole thing is quite crazy, and I recommend reading the entire thing. It also comes as little surprise that one of the sheriffs deeply involved in this is Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd — who we’ve written about a few times before. Back in 2009 we wrote about Judd using Craigslist to find and arrest prostitutes… and then blaming Craigslist, the very tool he used to track down the lawbreakers. A year ago, Judd got a lot more attention for his plan to arrest parents of some girls who were accused of bullying another girl into committing suicide (though, eventually charges were dropped and almost no evidence of any bullying was found).

Read it.

Since 2008, the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) has spent $55 billion more than it takes in. This persistent overspending has caused some politicians to call for an increase in the gas tax. Before even considering increasing the gas tax, politicians should implement reforms to ensure that current gas tax revenue is spent efficiently. With hundreds of thousands of dollars of HTF outlays recently going to projects like squirrel sanctuaries and driving simulators, there is much work to be done.

Well, duh….

Read it.

Well, yeah.

Read it.

Under the Affordable Care Act, large employers are required to provide health insurance to employees working full time or pay a hefty penalty. Full-time work is currently defined as 30 hours per week, but both the House and Senate are working on passing legislation that would redefine it as 40 hours a week.

Inside Higher Ed reports that many colleges and universities have started limiting the number of hours adjunct faculty can work to keep them under than 30-hour threshold and keep them as part-time workers.

Obamacare, the gift that keeps on giving.

Read it.

With great fanfare, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and a host of other politicians signed a rail in Fresno as a symbolic gesture toward starting construction of California’s high-speed rail project. But, despite what they say, California can’t afford to build it, and the plan they can’t afford won’t really be high-speed rail all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco anyway.

Read it.

And we wonder why the government sucks so badly.

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After mounting legal fees and media scrutiny, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) dropped its case to seize artist James Dupree’s Mantua-based studio and turn the property into a grocery store.

Dupree and his supporters welcomed PRA’s announcement on their blog: “After years of fighting the system, we have finally received written notice that the deed to our property is finally being returned!”

…

In their release statement PRA says, “the inability to acquire Mr. Dupree’s property puts the prospect of bringing fresh food to this community at serious risk,” such as “obesity, heart disease, [and] diabetes.”

Read it.

The political system, as described in civics textbooks (to the degree the public schools still teach civics) and by Capitol legislators, is a temple of democracy, where elected officials solve problems and do the public’s work. But Buchanan realized that people who work for government are as motivated by economics as those who work outside of it.

They seek power and money within their organizations, just like everyone else.

This not-so-glamorous theory helps explain why most of California’s long-term financial problems are tied to one source — the unsustainable levels of compensation paid to state and municipal workers. Sacramento budget issues revolve around underfunded public-employee pensions, unfunded retiree medical care and the like.

As Jerry Pournelle likes to say, ‘The object of government is to hire and pay government employees.’

Read it.

Read it.

The Obama administration’s preferred method of dealing with the illegals was release pending administrative hearings. How are the hearings going?

At NRO, Mark Krikorian notes that the investigative unit at Houston’s KPRC decided to find out (video below). The Daily Signal’s Natalie Johnson also picks up the story. Krikorian jumps to the story’s major finding” “Looking at the completed cases of people who snuck over the border and were released over a three-month period, the reporter found that more than 90 percent of them didn’t show up for their immigration hearings and joined the illegal population.”

Read it.

Well, that grand government program worked out about as well as any grand government program.

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

In what has been called one of the largest fraud investigations in the history of the organic industry, The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, announced filing formal legal complaints against 14 industrial livestock operations producing milk, meat and eggs being marketed, allegedly illegally, as organic.

After years of inaction by the USDA, Cornucopia contracted for aerial photography in nine states, from West Texas to New York and Maryland, over the past eight months. What they found confirmed earlier site visits: a systemic pattern of corporate agribusiness interests operating industrial-scale confinement livestock facilities providing no legitimate grazing, or even access to the outdoors, as required by federal organic regulations.

Dude, those regulations are there to punish the little guys, not the deep-pocket campaign donors. Selective enforcement is one of the oldest tools in the book of corrupt politicians, as our President doesn’t even bother to pretend any more.

Read it.

Nothing rings in the holidays better than gift giving, except gift taking. With that in mind, please enjoy the Top 25 “Christmas gifts” cops took from you or bought with your money through civil asset forfeiture:

Read it.

Words fail me.

Read it.

“Wow, I never expected that!” said the federal government, who apparently do not have a single economist on staff.

Nor, indeed, anyone who attended Econ 101.

Read it.

The science has spoken: Chicago’s red light camera program hasn’t made driving in the city any safer and has replaced one type of car crash for another. The cameras are there obviously to make money for the city, not for the benefit and safety of the residents.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

But will they stop the stupid gasohol mandate? Of course not! Think of all those campaign contributors depending on all those subsidies!

Read it.

Eight-year-old Dakota Nafzinger attends Gracemor Elementary School. Rachel Nafzinger said school staff took away her son’s cane as punishment for bad behavior on the bus and then gave him a swimming pool noodle to use as a substitute.

The school wouldn’t go on camera, but North Kansas City School District Spokeswoman Michelle Cronk confirmed taking away Dakota’s cane, calling it school property that was given to him when he enrolled. They said they took it away after he reportedly hit someone with it and wanted to prevent him from hurting himself or others.

Perhaps he was being bullied. Doesn’t sound as if they investigated the incident at all.

Read it.

Six years after candidate Barack Obama vowed to make working for government “cool again,” federal hiring of young people is instead tailing off and many millennials are heading for the door.

The share of the federal workforce under the age of 30 dropped to 7 percent this year, the lowest figure in nearly a decade, government figures show.

Heh.

Read it.

Federal prosecutors have stopped trying to steal $33,000 from an Iowa restaurateur who irked the IRS by making deposits of less than $10,000. The New York Times highlighted the case in October, noting that federal law lets the IRS “seize accounts on suspicion, no crime required.”

Mrs. Lady’s, Carole Hinders’ Mexican restaurant in Arnolds Park, does not take credit cards, so she has a lot of cash to deposit. There is nothing illegal about that, although the Bank Secrecy Act requires financial institutions to report deposits of $10,000 or more. Deliberately keeping deposits below that threshold to avoid the reporting requirement is a crime (known as “structuring”), but Hinders was never charged with it. Instead federal prosecutors argued that her bank account had facilitated the crime of structuring, making it subject to civil forfeiture.

Read it.

‘And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Officials in San Luis Obispo, California, plan to buy houses in certain neighborhoods and sell them with deed restrictions requiring they be owner occupied. The goal is to keep college students from living in those neighborhoods.

Hey, you know what college students are like. (Mostly white and Asian….)

Read it.

Everything you’ve heard from the city of Portland about its streetcar lines is a lie. That seems to be the conclusion of the latest review of the operation by the city of Portland’s own city auditor.

Portland Streetcar, the private organization contracted to run the streetcar for the city, claims to have met the city’s on-time goals. The audit finds that it hasn’t. Portland Streetcar claims to have increased ridership by 500,000 riders in fiscal year 2014. The audit finds that that Portland Streetcar overstated ridership by 19 percent and actually ridership was 1.1 million trips less than claimed.

The auditor is also unimpressed by claims that the streetcar has generated billions of dollars worth of economic development. “Based on studies [Portland Bureau of Transportation] provided to us,” says the audit, “we conclude this research has yet to describe a causal relationship of how streetcars may affect economic development.” In other words, it’s just another fabrication.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

But only if they’re Irish. (Don’t tell Michelle; she’ll blow a gasket on all those carbs.)

Read it.

As Judicial Watch previously reported, there has long been ample evidence the Obama Administration was operating in anticipation of a surge in illegal aliens that it, in fact, clearly instigated. As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has said, “The rising crisis at the border is the direct and predictable result of actions taken by President Obama. He and his administration have announced to the world that they will not enforce America’s immigration laws, and have emphasized in particular that foreign youth will be exempted from these laws. The world has heard the president’s call, and illegal immigrants are pouring across the border in pursuit of his promised amnesty. President Obama is responsible for this calamity.”

After Judicial Watch’s HHS-BCFS FOIA lawsuit, we now have further evidence that this is the case. The start date of BCFS’s contract was October 1, 2013—a full eight months before the deluge of illegal alien children the US suffered in mid-summer 2014. The project’s end date of September 30, 2016, suggests that the Obama administration anticipates that the deluge will continue until near the end of his presidency.

Read it.

And why would they? That’s not their job. Their job is to spend money and buy votes, and more spending is always better for that.

Read it.

The Washington state healthcare exchange accidentally canceled coverage for some 6,000 accounts. Exchange officials say they don’t know how large a share of total accounts that represents because they don’t know how many people have signed up.