29th March 2014
One size fits all … if you’re all that one size.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Common Core Forces Autistic Student in Missouri Into Class He Cannot Understand
28th March 2014
Anita Belle’s granddaughter accused her spanking her, prompting an investigation by Michigan’s Child Protective Services (CPS). The investigation cleared her of abuse. But CPS placed Belle on a state registry of child abusers anyway. A Detroit TV station reports the list includes the names of about 275,000 people. Those people haven’t necessarily been charged with, much less convicted of any crimes. And many people aren’t even aware their names are on the list, since all it takes is one CPS worker to decide they should be on there to end up on the list.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on They’re Making a List
28th March 2014
Read it.
Send your kid to a government school,
And he will turn out a fool;
That’s the way
Things are today:
Your tax bucks at work and play!
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on More Parents Choose Homeschooling Due to Common Core
28th March 2014
Thanks a bunch, Barry.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Zero Covered Dentists Within 100 Miles for Mandatory Dental Plan Under Obamacare
27th March 2014
Federal agents raided the offices, home and a hotel room of Democratic New York assemblyman William Scarborough Wednesday morning as part of an investigation over his expense claims, NBC4-NY reports.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Not Really News: Another Corrupt Democrat Legislator
26th March 2014
State Sen. Leland Yee, called “one of the most powerful Democratic politicians in California,” was arrested Wednesday morning in a major series of federal raids in the Bay Area targeting corruption and gang activity, CBS San Francisco reports.
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26th March 2014
New Air Force documents show that the tab to taxpayers for recent trips President Obama and his family took to Africa and Honolulu was nearly $16 million – and that’s just for the flights.
The documents obtained by activist group Judicial Watch show the Africa trip required 35.5 flight hours. At a cost of $228,288 per flight hour, the total cost was a staggering $8,104,224.
For the Obamas’ Christmas vacation in Honolulu, starting in December 2013 and ending in January 2014, the documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show the first family accumulated 36.9 total flight hours. At a cost of $210,877 per flight hour, the flight costs alone for that trip totaled $7,781,361.30, according to the Air Force documents.
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26th March 2014
The 2010 health law says lower earners qualify for tax credits if they obtain health insurance through an exchange “established by the state.” But dozens of states refused to set up their own marketplaces, leaving the task to the federal government.
As The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Corbett Dooren reports, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was divided Tuesday over whether the federal government can stand in for the 36 states that opted out of the exchanges.
If it can’t, the subsidies would be unavailable to a large swath of Americans with incomes ranging from the federal poverty level to up to four times that amount, or $95,400 a year for a family of four. That, in turn, could render the individual mandate meaningless in those 36 states.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on A Serious Challenge to the Affordable Care Act, But Not That One
25th March 2014
What led to the rapid downfall of Southeastern Tours? On October 14, 2013, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a federal agency, ordered the company to cease operations on the grounds that it was a hazard to public safety. Southeastern Tours had never been involved in a serious accident, but during a three-day audit in August, FMCSA inspectors found, among other things, that its drivers filled out their logs incorrectly, that the Rodgers failed to provide their employees with educational materials, and that they allowed a former driver to get back behind the wheel before waiting for the results of his alcohol and drug tests. (They came back negative.)
When their troubles with the FMCSA began in early August, the Rodgers committed themselves to doing whatever it took to get back in the government’s good graces. They hired a consulting firm that was personally recommended by an FMCSA investigator; they installed new devices on their buses for wirelessly submitting drivers’ logs as a way to eliminate bookkeeping errors; and they retained a respected maintenance company to conduct regular vehicle inspections. But after a tumultuous six months of dealings with the FMCSA, the Rodgers are still forbidden to run their buses and they’re beginning to make plans to dissolve the company.
‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … you to the poorhouse.’
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The Government’s Appalling Campaign Against Small Bus Companies
23rd March 2014
The Obama administration has a standard response to all scandals: it stonewalls. Getting information from the administration is like pulling teeth, only slower. Document requests and subpoenas go unanswered, or inadequately answered, for years.
So far Obama’s stonewall strategy has worked quite well. After a year or two, a scandal is treated as old news, even though the administration has never produced the information that would allow Congressional committees, reporters or the public to evaluate it. If the administration stalls long enough, it wins.
In perfecting the art of the stall, Obama has done something that has been tried by no previous president: he has put the White House into the loop when federal agencies respond to subpoenas and Freedom of Information Act requests. A group called Cause of Action has uncovered an April 15, 2009 memo by White House Counsel Greg Craig that lays out the administration’s unprecedented stonewall strategy. Craig’s memo went to every executive department and federal agency.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
23rd March 2014
Here, inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government’s own workers.
But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper.
The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and then key in retirees’ personal data, one line at a time. They work underground not for secrecy but for space. The old mine’s tunnels have room for more than 28,000 file cabinets of paper records.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Sinkhole of Bureaucracy
23rd March 2014
On Thursday, Cover Oregon director Bruce Goldberg resigned as Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber struggled to explain findings from a devastating report showing gross negligence by the state and website contractors in managing the $305 million of taxpayer money the state received to implement its busted Obamacare system.
A report by KATU also revealed charges from a whistleblower who alleged Oregon Obamacare workers pushed through illegal immigrant applications lacking Social Security numbers; used lax identity security such that a reporter plucked a Social Security number out of a garbage dumpster; held rock-paper-scissors tournaments on taxpayer-funded time; and provided front-of-the-line service in processing politicians’ applications ahead of regular Oregonians.
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23rd March 2014
The Friday raids were carried out by the U.S. attorney’s office, FBI, IRS and state police. Boxes of evidence were carried off, but officials have not said whom or what they are investigating.
Fox has represented Rhode Island’s capital in the General Assembly for more than 20 years. He came out in 2004, in an unplanned announcement, while addressing a gay marriage rally. He became the nation’s first openly gay House speaker when he assumed the post in 2010.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Yet Another Corrupt Democrat Politician
21st March 2014
In last October’s government shutdown, the Obama administration closed down, or blocked access to, many private businesses that had been allowed to operate in earlier shutdowns, such as during the Clinton administration. After lawyers and legal commentators suggested that these closures of private businesses were illegal, and pointed out that they were an unexplained departure from past agency practice, I filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the agencies that carried out these closures — the National Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interiors — seeking to find out which officials were responsible for these improper closures, and how the decision to close them was made.
Hey hey hey, it’s the Chicago way — hardball! Hardball! Hardball!
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21st March 2014
The tourists flocking to the French Riviera or Spain’s Costa del Sol this summer will slather on sunscreen containing the latest ingredients for protecting against the sun’s most harmful ultraviolet rays.
But American beachgoers will have to make do with sunscreens that dermatologists and cancer-research groups say are less effective and have changed little over the past decade.
That’s because applications for the newer sunscreen ingredients have languished for years in the bureaucracy of the Food and Drug Administration, which must approve the products before they reach consumers.
“We have a system here that’s completely broken down, and everybody knows that it has broken down,” said Wendy Selig, president of the Melanoma Research Alliance, the largest private funder of melanoma research.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on FDA Review of New Sunscreen Ingredients Has Languished for Years, Frustrating Advocates
21st March 2014
The Antiplanner hears his Bullshit Detector go off.
Per capita incomes in Flint, Michigan, are only about half the national average, and poverty rates are three times the national average. So what does the city’s transit agency do? Why, spend $2.4 million for a $327,000 bus.
Of course, this is a special bus: instead of being powered by Diesel fuel, it is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. And everyone knows that hydrogen power has zero emissions. The transit agency is so happy with the bus that it wants to order up to 30 more.
…
According to the National Transit Database, Flint’s transit agency drove its hydrogen-powered bus less than 9,000 miles in 2012, but it drives its most popular Diesel-powered buses about 48,000 miles a year. Based on the California study, if Flint replaces one of its Diesel buses with another hydrogen-powered bus and drives it 48,000 miles, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 38.4 tons per year. Amortizing the difference in the cost of the buses over 15 years results in a cost per ton of abated greenhouse gases of more than $4,000. (Remember, McKinsey & Company says anything costing more than $50 a ton is a waste.) This doesn’t even count maintenance, which–according to a study of San Francisco Bay Area fuel-cell buses–is more than 75 percent greater for fuel-cell buses than ordinary Diesel buses.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Who’s Counting the Costs?
20th March 2014
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
A new survey reports that if Congress raises the current minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10, there will be catastrophic effects. Among private employers paying the minimum wage, 38% will fire workers, 54% will reduce the number of employees they hire, and 65% will raise the prices on the goods and services they provide.
The survey, conducted by Express Employment Professionals, also revealed that among employers including those who pay minimum wage and those who pay more, if the minimum wage is raised, 19% would fire workers, 39% would cut their hiring, and 51% would raise their prices.
The Congressional Budget Office said last month that even raising the country’s minimum wage gradually to $10.10 by 2016 would see employment numbers plummet by 500,000 workers by the second half of 2016. Other estimates say that there is a 70% chance that the number of 500,000 could zoom close to one million.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Study: 38% of Minimum-Wage Employers Will Fire Workers If Minimum Wage Reaches $10.10
20th March 2014
One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state is that there are so many laws and regulations that no one can possibly know what they are, let alone obey them. Thus everyone is a criminal, and only the despot’s discretion separates the solid citizen from the criminal. Unfortunately, the United States is rapidly approaching–if it has not already reached–this dystopian status.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 2 Comments »
20th March 2014
Obamacare patients are discovering that many doctors, hospitals, and top cancer centers do not accept the plans they purchased.
“It’s so frustrating,” Terri Durheim of Enid, Okla., told CNN. “It’s not doing me a lot of good.”
Durheim is not alone. Obamacare’s so-called “narrow networks” are designed to limit customer choices to push patients into cheaper choices in an effort to control costs. Earlier this year Washington Post health writer Sarah Kliff warned that “Obamacare’s narrow networks are going to make people furious – but they might control costs.” A McKinsey and Co. study finds that more than one in three (38%) Obamacare plans permit patients to select from just 30% of the largest 20 hospitals in their geographic region.
That’s why they call it the Affordable Care Act. Care you can’t get is always affordable.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Obamacare Patients Denied Access to Doctors, Hospitals, Cancer Centers
18th March 2014
If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
18th March 2014
Reason readers are likely already familiar with the perverse federal subsidy system that doles out billions to major agribusiness nationwide. When ag subsidies began, in the 1930s, then-Secretary of agriculture Henry Wallace called them “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” That temporary solution has now lasted nearly a century, in both good and bad times for farmers, and even today when farm household incomes greatly exceed our national average.
But less well-known are the federal efforts to directly aid pork producers. The swine flu surplus buy-up was unfortunately not an isolated incident. In fact, when the country started experiencing drought, USDA stepped in to buy an additional $100 million of unwanted pork.
Were public school kids, service-members, prisoners, and other recipients of federally purchased food demanding more pig on their pizzas? No. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was clear about the motivation: “President Obama and I will continue to take swift action to get help to America’s farmers and ranchers.” No doubt many other industries wouldn’t mind the administration paying them for products they’re having a tough time selling.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on One Pizza, With Extra Federal Handouts
18th March 2014
On the day of his inauguration in 2009, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history.” It did not take long for that promise to be tossed aside, and it has been clear for quite a while that this administration is perhaps the most secretive in history. A new analysis by the AP of how the administration responds to FOIA requests confirms that it is becoming even more secretive each year:
The Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The ‘Most Transparent Administration in History’ Sets New Record in Denying Freedom of Information Requests
18th March 2014
Mark Steyn is not afraid to ask the hard questions.
Speaking of “secession”, it is possible to have an honest difference of opinion about Moscow’s claims upon the Crimea, which was transferred from Russia to the Ukraine in 1954 as little more than a bit of internal housekeeping within the Soviet Union. But it is not possible if one is the Government of the United States or the United Kingdom. London, Washington and Moscow signed something called “the Budapest Agreement” in 1994, guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty in return for the newly independent nation giving up its nuclear weapons. By “guaranteeing”, I mean that Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, and Britain and America committed themselves to seeing that Russia did so. It was shortly after the USSR went out of business and in the heyday of all that talk about the new “unipolar” world. The agreement wasn’t a big news story at the time, and one can argue that there was no reason for London or Washington to get mixed up in the redefined relationships of a hastily deSovietized empire. But the fact is they did sign it, and great powers should not give their word unless they intend to keep their word.
They have now broken it, as Vladimir Putin knew they would.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Why Would Any Foreign Government Trust America?
17th March 2014
Just shy of a decade ago, a retired rector named George Regas stepped into the pulpit at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, a few days before the November election and let fly with some good, old-fashioned fire and brimstone. The targets of his passion: President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Also, “conservative politicians.” Not to mention “the religious right.” Regas described war as “the most extreme form of terrorism.” Speaking in the voice of Jesus Christ, he said, “The killing of innocent people to achieve some desired goal is morally repudiated by anyone claiming to follow Me as their savior and guide.” He went on to condemn poverty, defend abortion rights, and so on.
What happened next will surprise you only if you just fell off a turnip truck: The IRS came knocking. It threatened the church’s tax-exempt status, demanded all kinds of paperwork, and carried on an investigation that lasted more than two years—and cost the church $200,000.
The saga of All Saints could soon be coming to a community near you.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Weaponizing the IRS
17th March 2014
Being a black Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry.
I guess we’re all Trayvon Martin now — except for white people, of course.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Democrat Attorney General Shuts Down Corruption Investigation After Catching Democrats Accepting Cash Bribes, Because Racism
17th March 2014
FlickrTennessee whiskey maker Jack Daniel’s is an unsurprisingly big fan of a local law that basically defines whiskey by standards set by Jack Daniel’s. Under current Tennessee law, only locally-made spirits fermented from mash of at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, filtered through maple charcoal, and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof can legally be labeled “Tennessee whiskey.” Not coincidentally, that’s “almost to the letter the process used to make Jack Daniel’s,” The Associated Press reports.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
This writing of one company’s business process into the law is known as ‘crapitalism’, although you won’t year any of the Usual Suspects, right or left, admit that.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Jack Daniel’s Favors Tennessee Whiskey Law Defining Tennessee Whiskey as Jack Daniel’s
17th March 2014
Read it. And watch the video.
Passed in 1920, the Jones Act was created to protect the U.S. shipping industry by mandating that only ships made in the U.S. and flying the American flag can deliver goods between American ports. This means that a ship from China can only make one stop in the U.S. at a time – it would be unable to unload goods in Hawaii on the way back from Los Angeles.
The law has negatively impacted the Hawaiian economy and now lawmakers are fighting back.
Laws passed to favor one group over another, if they don’t match actual market conditions, result in either smuggling or destruction of the very trade they are intended to constrain. Somehow, politicians never seem to learn this. (Of course, since this is a long-term problem and they’re only interested in the short term [i.e. how much money and votes can I acquire to keep me in office two years from now?], they have absolutely no incentive to pay any attention to it.)
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Lawmakers From Hawaii, Alaska Put Pressure on Feds to Reconsider Jones Act
15th March 2014
George Will lays out some inconvenient truth.
Nearly two-thirds of households receiving food stamps qualify under “categorical eligibility” because they receive transportation assistance or certain other welfare services. We spend $1 trillion annually on federal welfare programs, decades after Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that if one-third of the money for poverty programs was given directly to the poor, there would be no poor. But there also would be no unionized poverty bureaucrats prospering and paying dues that fund the campaigns of Democratic politicians theatrically heartsick about inequality.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Democrats Are Making Income Inequality Worse
15th March 2014
We’ve written about cancer survivor/Obamacare victim Julie Boonstra several times. Today Henry Payne adds to the story and draws the appropriate lessons in “The war on Julie Boonstra.” Payne notes how Boonstra, “a schoolteacher, has come under assault from Democrats and their media allies decrying her as a liar and an ignoramus for failing to embrace her new, Obamacare-approved plan.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The War on Julie Boonstra
13th March 2014
The boarded up building in the photo sits a mere 6 blocks from the White House on prime real estate but it’s been empty for 30 years! What’s the problem? The building is owned/controlled by the Federal government which often doesn’t even know what it owns, lacks the incentive to control costs and whose bureaucratic strictures make selling difficult even when motivation exists. – See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/wasted-resources.html#sthash.liL34h0A.dpuf
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Government’s Empty Buildings Are Costing Taxpayers Billions
11th March 2014
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Emails Reveal Obama Admin Shut Down WW II Memorial Knowing Vets Were Coming
11th March 2014
Austin, the blue pustule on the butt of Texas, demonstrates why the rest of Texas is a red state.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 2 Comments »
11th March 2014
The White House’s annual Economic Report of the President pushes a raft of proposals designed to make the U.S. economy stronger and more productive in the long run. Some of them run the risk of making a subset of U.S. workers, who have been front and center for the White House lately, more vulnerable in the short run.
Not to worry. No government program ever made the U.S. economy stronger and more productive in the long run.
(Or maybe that’s what they meant…?)
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on White House’s Technology Push a Double-Edged Sword for Low-Wage Workers
10th March 2014
Among other things, it teaches us that the government routinely engages in behavior for which it would throw anybody else in jail.
Predatory pricing is one of the simplest business practices to explain: Sell at a loss until you bankrupt your competitors. When you think about it, public schools apply this predatory strategy to an extreme degree. They don’t just sell education at a loss. They “sell” education for free!
What can we learn from this epiphany? First and foremost, predation is a lot less effective than you’d think. After practicing predation to the utmost degree, public schools have only captured 90% of the market.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on What Does Public Schooling Teach Us About Predatory Pricing?
9th March 2014
The Three Year Economic Saving Program, which supervises Muhammad farms, is owned by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The farm is located in Georgia, but the government subsidies, nearly $160,000, have gone to Farrakhan’s home in Chicago since 2002. The program, which was incorporated on Sept. 12, 2001, has been listed as “Not in Good Standing” by Illinois’s secretary of state since last September. The Office of the Illinois Secretary of State said the program was “involuntarily” dissolved by the State of Illinois on Feb. 1.
Stealing from the taxpayer is a constant temptation when what is effectively a rounding error from the government’s perspective is wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to the individual.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Report: Nonprofits ‘Gaming the System’ for Farm Subsidies That Never Reach Farms
9th March 2014
George Will blows the whistle.
The most intrusive and potentially most punitive federal agency has been politicized; the IRS has become an appendage of Barack Obama’s party. Furthermore, congruent with exhortations from some congressional Democrats, it is intensifying its efforts to suffocate groups critical of progressives, by delaying what once was the swift, routine granting of tax-exempt status.
So, the IRS, far from repenting of its abusive behavior, is trying to codify the abuses. It hopes to nullify with new rules the existing legal right of 501(c)(4) groups, many of which are conservative, to participate in politics. The proposed rules have drawn more than 140,000 comments, most of them complaints, some from liberals wary of IRS attempts to broadly define “candidate-related political activity” and to narrow the permissible amount of this.
…
The rules that Obama says befuddled the IRS boneheads — to his benefit — read today exactly as they have read since 1959. For half a century they did not prevent the IRS from processing applications for tax-exempt status in less than three months. Some conservative group should offer $10,000 to anyone who can identify a liberal group that had the experience scores of conservative groups have had — an application delayed more than three years and receipt of an IRS questionnaire containing at least 60 questions.
Speaking of questions: Can anyone identify a Democratic Senate candidate whose tax records were leaked, as Christine O’Donnell’s were when she was the Republican candidate in Delaware in 2010? Is it a coincidence that in January 2011, after Catherine Engelbrecht requested tax-exempt status for two conservative groups she founded in Texas — King Street Patriots and True the Vote — the Engelbrecht family business was notified of its first IRS audit? Does James Comey wonder why (this was before he became FBI director), five months after Engelbrecht’s tax-exemption request, FBI agents appeared seeking information about attendees at the King Street Patriots meetings? Were five subsequent FBI contacts “checking in” for “updates” on the group’s activities really necessary? Why did the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives show a sudden intrusive interest in the Engelbrechts’ business, which has nothing to do with alcohol or tobacco or firearms or explosives?
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The IRS’s Behavior Taxes Credulity
7th March 2014
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to spend $22.3 million to lease temporary office space for two years in a building controlled by an Obama friend and campaign bundler while the new agency’s future headquarters undergoes a $145 million renovation, the Washington Examiner reports. There’s a word for what is being done to taxpayers by this agency’s real estate deals, and “protection” isn’t it.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
In a normal world of checks and balances as envisioned by the founders and enacted in the Constitution, Congress would simply refuse to appropriate these funds, and the agency would find some less expensive workspace. But the agency, as created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, is funded not by Congress but by the Federal Reserve.
We used to have a Constitution; wonder where it went to.
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7th March 2014
Let me note that some pundits insist that choking off the legal availability of this particular service somehow defies the laws of supply and demand and doesn’t breed an illegal market. Robert Mayer, in an oft-cited law review article conflates high-interest loans in the early, unregulated market with illegal loans in the regulated market in a way that seems deliberately obtuse (he gets away with this because the term “loan shark” was originally little more than an epithet for a lender borrowers resented, and then evolved). He also seems ignorant of how illegal markets develop, and that it may take time to evolve the infrastructure for them. Go read his piece and decide for yourself.
I find those pundits unconvincing, though. Supply and demand are universals. It seems unlikely that thwarting demand in the legal market won’t drive it to the illegal market, and I have yet to be persuaded otherwise.
High-interest rate loans suck. But if there’s demand for them, somebody will offer supply. Better that the debts are collected over the phone or by nastygram than by somebody like my cousin.
Markets work, even when you don’t want them to.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Loan Sharks May Owe Some State Lawmakers a Big ‘Thanks’
5th March 2014
When friends complain about evil government (e.g., NSA surveillance), I tell them “never underestimate the stupidity of government employees” — by which I mean their stupidity outweighs their self-interest. The Obamacare website fiasco is a good illustration. Everyone has heard “power corrupts” but closer to the truth is power makes you stupid.
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5th March 2014
Read it.
A former Alcoa City School District employee who oversaw federal funds took nearly $500,000 in taxpayer money to use for herself, according to an audit Tennessee Comptroller Justin Wilson released Tuesday.
Prediction: She is not a ‘person of pallor’.
The former employee spent the money on her home mortgage, food, jewelry, clothing and iTunes songs, Wilson said. She even invested some of that money in a local gym, according to the audit.
Look for … The Union label….
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4th March 2014
What’s the use of power if you can’t abuse it?
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Michelle Obama Plans Pricey Trip to China as The First Family Is Criticized for Spending Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Traveling on the Taxpayer’s Dime
2nd March 2014
The budget resolution, which Congress is required to enact each year, provides a framework for appropriators to produce a detailed spending blueprint for the government. The appropriations committees work within the limits set by the resolution to prioritize spending for every government agency and program.
“Senate Democrats are required by law to produce a budget,” Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Friday. “Our nation is in enormous financial distress, and workers and families are suffering. Senate Democrats have produced only one budget in the last five years. This Senate and, more importantly, the American public, deserve to see a detailed ten-year financial plan to contain our dangerously rising debt and revitalize our dismal economy.”
I guess obeying the Constitution is only for the Little People.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Senate Dems to Skip Budget Resolution… Again
2nd March 2014
That’s why they call it the ‘Affordable Care Act’. Oh, wait….
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Obamacare Hikes Cost to Patients of Specialty Drugs for Complex Conditions
2nd March 2014
ElweterStrictly speaking, Maryland lawmakers aren’t overtly planning a gift to cigarette smugglers, but that’s certainly going to be the ultimate result of a proposal to massively hike taxes on all sorts of tobacco products. The share of cigarettes supplied in the state by the black market more than doubled from 2006 to 2011 under the pressure of politicians’ appetite for other people’s money. That can only continue to grow if SB 589 becomes law and gives the state the fourth highest cigarette tax rate in the country.
…
According to estimates by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which tracks tobacco taxes and smuggling, 25.76 percent of Maryland’s cigarettes come from the black market, up from 10.38 percent in 2006 (the state doubled cigarette taxes in 2007).
“Politicians = Stupid people who can’t think things through” seems to be a universal physical constant, like gravity or the speed of light.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Maryland Plans on Big Boost For Black Market Cigarettes
2nd March 2014
NPR has a story about how The Jones Act, a 1920 law designed to protect the U.S. shipping industry from foreign competition, has made it difficult for New Jersey to get large shipments of road salt this winter. The Garden State could have brought 40,000 tons of salt down from Maine on a single ship, saving time and money during one of the toughest winters in memory, but instead has to ferry a barge capable of handling shipments of under 10,000 tons back and forth, adding costs and delays.
…
It’s not just folks in frigid New Jersey who are suffering because of a dumb old law. The NPR story touches on how The Jones Act screws over Hawaii especially. Thanks to this form of protectionism, residents of America’s furtherst-flung state routinely pay 15 percent to 20 percent more for goods that come from the mainland.
But I’ll bet American Unions love it, like the Davis-Bacon Act.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on How a Dumb Protectionist Law From 1920 Still Screws People From New Jersey to Hawaii
1st March 2014
The U.S. Department of Justice has not only successfully sued Apple for arguably non-existent anti-trust violations in the e-book market. It has even demanded – and gotten – a court-appointed “monitor” placed inside the company to supervise the company’s pricing decisions.
This is a company that went from an $18 billion market value in 2000 to a $455 billion market value in 2013. During the same period, Microsoft’s market value fell from $603 billion to $290 billion. Should anyone expect the success story to continue now that the government is meddling with all the company’s pricing?
Apple appealed the anti-trust judgment this Tuesday but was unable to get the government “monitor’s” work suspended while the case is under appeal. Among the interesting facts that have come out about the “monitor,” Michael Bromwich, it has been revealed that he bills for his time at $1,100 an hour and charged $138,432 for his first two weeks of “work.”
Apple has labeled Bromwich’s appointment “unprecedented and unconstitutional.” We wish it were unprecedented. This form of government price interference and intimidation has become increasingly common.
Joseph Covington, who headed the Justice Department’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Division in the 1980s, told Forbes, in reference to monitors appointed to enforce that act, “This is good business for Justice Department lawyers who create the marketplace [for monitors] and then get… a job there [after they leave government].”
‘Hm. Over $100 billion in cash. Ought to be a way we could get a taste of that.’
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Let’s Milk That Cash Cow — Apple and the Government
28th February 2014
A lawsuit filed against the Cook County sheriff and other county officials by the the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University alleges the systemic use of violence at the jail of the Illinois county where Chicago is located.
Hey, it’s Chicago, Barack Obama’s alma mater. Why the surprise?
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on ‘Sadistic Culture of Brutality and Violence’ Alleged at Cook County Jail
28th February 2014
At issue in Monday’s ruling in Kaley v. United States is an area of the law known as asset forfeiture. In essence, asset forfeiture is designed to help law enforcement officials seize the ill-gotten fruits of criminal activity, such as cash, cars, or homes. To that end, prosecutors are permitted to freeze the assets of criminal suspects during trial if there is probable cause to believe those assets constitute “proceeds” of the alleged criminal activity. Notice that this freezing occurs before the suspect has been duly convicted.
That timing matters a great deal to the plaintiffs in this case, a married couple by the name of Kaley who have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of selling stolen medical supplies. That may sound like a finding of guilt, but in fact grand jury proceedings are a non-adversarial process where the prosecution alone is permitted to call witnesses and present evidence. The suspects have no opportunity at that point to rebut anything the government alleges against them.
In the wake of the grand jury indictments, the federal government moved to freeze the Kaleys’ assets, including their home and a $500,000 certificate of deposit the couple had recently purchased in order to cover the anticipated legal expenses arising from their trial. Put differently, the government has eliminated their ability to pay their lawyer.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Supreme Court Expands Police Power to Seize Your Assets Before Conviction
28th February 2014
Diners at eight Gator’s Dockside casual eateries are finding a 1% Affordable Care Act surcharge on their tabs […]’The costs associated with ACA compliance could ultimately close our doors,’ the sign reads. ‘Instead of raising prices on our products to generate the additional revenue needed to cover the costs of ACA compliance, certain Gator’s Dockside locations have implemented a 1% surcharge on all food and beverage purchases only.’
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Dining Out? There’s an Obamacare Tax For That Too
27th February 2014
In a colossal “oh by the way” revelation, last Friday afternoon the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (that would be the executive branch run by President Obama), quietly released a report exposing the fact that under Obamacare, two-thirds of Americans who work at small businesses will see their insurance premiums increase. So this report – which is more than two years late – says over 11 million American workers will have higher health insurance premiums because of Obamacare. Despite the administration’s attempts to, as House Speaker John Boehner put it, “delay and deemphasize” the report, we now have it straight from the Obama administration that Obamacare will raise health-insurance premiums for American workers. That is a far cry from Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that families would see lower health insurance premiums – $2,500 lower, to be exact – under Obamacare.
When Obama loses the Washington Post, well….
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The Insiders: Another Day, Another Obamacare Disaster