Read it.

An instructive example is the current debate over reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program, enacted in 1968. Passage of this bill was in response to escalating premiums on privately issued flood insurance. It was thought that by mandating coverage, the federal government could manage flood insurance more efficiently than the private sector.

After 50 years of experience, this program has run up a $25 billion deficit. Millions of American taxpayers now shoulder the burden of covering this $25 billion shortfall to protect a small percentage of the population, which continues to build and re-build in designated floodplains.

If your house floods out, you ought not to be able to rebuild in the same place and still get any form of insurance, government or private. Otherwise you’re just rewarding stupidity.

Read it.

Which would never have happened under Obama, much less Hillary.

Read it.

So many rights to violate, so little time….

Read it.

Once again: Trump for the win.

Read it.

The laws of economics works even when you don’t want them to.

The government doesn’t want teenagers working. The government wants teenagers dependent, so they’ll grow up dependent on government benefits, which they will ensure by voting for Democrats.

Let’s get with the program.

Read it.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to rule on a case that could have a major impact on civil liberties and whether civil asset forfeiture can continue to serve as low hanging fruit for bureaucratic interests run amok.

Timbs v. Indiana involves a man whose $42,000 Land Rover was confiscated via civil asset forfeiture. Attorneys from the libertarian public-interest law firm, Institute for Justice, don’t deny their client Tyson Timbs was convicted of selling $385 worth of heroin in two transactions and that his vehicle was used in the sale.

What they do contest is that the confiscation of the Land Rover (purchased with a payment from a life insurance policy, not drug money) was unconstitutional under the Excessive Fines Clause of the 8th Amendment.

How is that? Due to a plea bargain, Timbs was sentenced to one year of house arrest and five years of probation. He was also assessed a total of $1,200 in fees and fines. The offense carries a maximum fine of $10,000. Hence, Timbs’ attorneys assert the confiscation of a $42,000 car exceeds what he was liable for in the first place.

Read it.

Well, that’s all right, then.

Read it.

And started shooting people? No, that only happens in movies.

Prediction: Nobody will get fired, nobody will go to jail. (The government record for protester ‘catch and release’ is close to 100%. That’s why they do it again and again and again and again….)

Read it.

Yet another reason why Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Read it.

The police cruiser was sitting at the edge of the car park in front of the town offices, angled towards the road as if an officer inside were waiting to catch speeders.

Only there was no officer inside. Nor, for that matter, was there a Blandford police officer to be found anywhere else on Tuesday. The entire local police force in this western Massachusetts town had just quit and the cruiser was the law enforcement version of a scarecrow.

Read it.

The Constitution only grants authority for the Census to count people.

All of this other nose-in-your-butthole data collection is unconstitutional. It’s used by the government to collect ‘statistics’ on which basis they can then create stupid programs that wind up helping the Usual Suspects and costing taxpayers more money. That’s why they force you, by law, to answer these extra bullshit questions.

Read it.

Attitudes toward local small businesses are a litmus test that bring out the worst in bureaucracy-minded trolls who, in a rightly-ordered society, would be barred for life from having any kind of government job.

Read it.

I’m scratching my head as to why the White House even needs a ‘science czar’.

Read it.

You knew it had to happen.

David French: A Federal Judge Launches a Futile, Unconstitutional Effort to Block Blueprints for 3D-Printed Guns

Read it.

Omar was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in November 2016. She had agreed to speak at the events before she was sworn into office in January 2017 and did not know the rules for an elected official would apply to her, she said, according the Star Tribune.

Or expected that she could get away with it, like a Clinton.

Read it.

Refreshing to see government employees who realize what their job actually is as opposed to what activists wish it were.

The Usual Suspects of the Chattering Class, of course, will go ballistic.

Read it.

Yeah. It’ll eventually be twenty times that, as government programs invariably overrun cost projections, no matter how conservative.

We have an actual real-world example: Britains National Health Service, which has been exceeding the government’s ability to fund it for at least the last twenty years.

Read it.

Makes you wonder what the Department of Education is doing all day.

Read it.

The 2008 California ballot measure authorizing billions in bonds to construct a high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles was a massive bait-and-switch scam. Not only has the budget ballooned from the promised (if obviously absurd) low ball number on the 2008 ballot of $33 billion to $77 billion, but it remains quite unlikely that the bullet train can hit it’s legally promised downtown to downtown duration.

Read it.

As always, government is the problem, not the solution.

Typically such regulations are established to protect existing firms against competition by raising barriers to entry so that poor people can’t start their own businesses because they can’t afford the time/money to jump through all of the licensing hoops.

Read it.

Generally, Medicaid payments are required by law to go directly to medical care professionals after being allocated to states. But, the previous administration allowed a nice little carve out for unions.

Under the Obama administration, home health care unions were allowed to automatically deduct membership fees from the Medicaid money. By the tortured logic used by the previous administration (and the eleven states with unionized home health industries), health aides are state workers and Medicaid money is state money.

The implication that health workers can have Medicaid money taken away from them, often without their knowledge, is unfair and unsustainable.

Unions are like the Mafia without the accountability.

Read it.

All of these regulations are imposed with the best of intentions but that ol’ debbil The Law of Unintended Consequences comes back to bite us on the ass every time.

The Antiplanner turns over a rock.

Construction of Seattle’s latest streetcar line is late and over budget, so the mayor halted construction and hired a consultant to find out why. Now the consultant report itself is late.

The city knew that the problem had to do with the fact that construction turned out to be more complicated than the city anticipated. Now the consultant says that figuring out the problem turned out to be more complicated than the consultant anticipated.

Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Read it.

Note to self: Avoid California.

Read it.

The Crust takes care of its own.

Read it.

Democrat, of course. Everything we want ought to be free (except to the taxpayers).

Read it.

No. But it does shake the box, and that’s something.

UPDATE: ‘Highly Capable’: Sessions Defends Rosenstein Against Impeachment Effort

It’s not his capability that is questionable, it’s the ends to which that capability is put.

UPDATE: Steve Scalise Supports Impeachment Of Rod Rosenstein: ‘Has Not Done His Job’

Read it.

About fargin time.

However….

The Crust takes care of its own. Prediction: Nobody gets fired; nobody goes to jail.

Read it.

Prediction: Nobody will get fired; nobody will go to jail.

The Crust takes care of its own.

Ordinarily I’d be upset about this but the residents of Seattle elected this numbskull and it’s only proper that they have to live with the result.

Read it.

About time they got the Obama NewSpeak terminology flushed.

Read it.

You may recall my City Journal feature on Buffalo from 2015. This was written about the time New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion program – a pledge to spend $1 billion in state funds to bring back the city economically – was in the earlier stages of development.

Fast forward, and Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion chief Alain Kaloyeros and Buffalo construction magnate Louis Ciminelli were recently convicted on corruption charges. A lot of the heavy lifting journalistically that raised questions about the Buffalo Billion was done by Jim Heaney and his team at the Investigative Post.

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

Whenever a great new government program is announced, the first thing I do is wonder how much of the money will be stolen through cronyism, bribery, and featherbedding.

Read it.

The Crust takes care of its own. None of its rent-a-mob need fear jail time or fines.

Read it.

Being a Democrat elected official can be very profitable. Ask Nancy Pelosi.

Read it.

The Crust takes care of their own, preferably at taxpayer expense.

Read it.

Democrats in Power: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back on the Street….

Read it.

By non-citizens, that’s true. Ellison wants to give the vote to every warm body that wanders across the bofder.

Read it.

Can you spell L-A-W-S-U-I-T? I’m sure you can.

Read it.

But you knew that.

Whenever the government establishes a program, whether it be legitimate, like military procurement, or a boondoggle, like half of the Politically Correct fads these days, it’s like a dinner bell for those who specialize in gaming the system to profit from cheating the taxpayer. They do it for the same reason that Willy Sutton robbed banks: Because that’s where the money is, and a plentiful potful of money it is. They come out of the air like midges after dark, and most of them get away with it because no bureaucrat is as careful with YOUR money as he would be with his own, or with that of an employer would can (and would) fire him for what bureaucrats get away with daily.

It is a sad world that we live in.

Read it.

But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his term in office.

Just keep that in mind.

Absolutely nothing.

Oh, except maybe treason….

Read it.

Maybe the problematical relationship is between Obama and Putin, not Trump and Putin.

Funny, I don’t remember any media feeding frenzy at that time.

Read it.

Or anywhere else.

Wow, that’s news.

Read it.

The author suggests that it wouldn’t be good. However, there are at least two significant lies in this article.

Likewise, there’s the pervasive myth that Social Security’s cash is dwindling because its funds are being disbursed to undocumented immigrants. In reality, only American citizens who’ve earned the prerequisite 40 lifetime work credits are able to collect a benefit. If anything, it’s actually the other way around, with some undocumented workers contributing into the program via the payroll tax without ever having an opportunity to collect a benefit.

Yeah, well, supposedly only American citizens can vote in elections, too. That Polyanna view has been proven false and when Sanctuary Cities get around to allowing non-citizens to vote it will be formally false as well. I doubt that Social Security has tighter security than the voter rolls.

The second issue is that without allowing the government to borrow money, Social Security would be saying goodbye to one of its three funding sources: interest income. For those of you harping on Congress to pay interest to Social Security, the federal government already is. The average yield across its numerous maturities is currently 2.9%. If Social Security were simply to hold cash, the program would be giving up an estimated $78 billion to $83 billion in annual income, according to intermediate-cost model estimates, between 2018 and 2027. This would almost certainly push forward the program’s asset reserve exhaustion date from its current projection of 2034.

The problem is not that keeping Congress’s mitts off of Social Security money would starve it of interest income; the problem is that Social Security could get better returns elsewhere. The theory is that Social Security is supposed to invest in totally secure investment vehicles, and what could be safer than U.S. government bonds? The flaw with that is that it just shifts the money from one U.S. government pocket to another, and allows Congress to go on a spending spree with the promise that ‘we’ll pay you back later’. The Social Security ‘Trust Fund’ therefore winds up being just another general obligation of the U.S., which is exactly the position it would be in if they just spent the money as it came in and didn’t go through the whole hand-waving exercise of laundering the money through government bonds.

Getting 2.9% interest income is pretty anemic. The S&P 500 got a 22% return in 2017; AT&T, the classic ‘widow and orphan’ stock, is currently paying a dividend of over 6%. NO OTHER PENSION FUND HOLDS ITS ASSETS ENTIRELY IN U.S. GOVERNMENT SECURITIES. That ought to tell you all you need to know. Hence the classic complaint that if the money we paid in Social Security taxes were put into a 401k, we’d all be better off. I’ve run the numbers — I certainly would be better off.

Supposedly sites like The Motley Fool feature articles by people who know what they’re talking about. I’m here to tell you that It Ain’t Necessarily So.

Read it.

This is getting ridiculous.

Read it.

Note that the study was based on sea level rise ‘projections’ by NOAA, which has been demonstrated to be one of the chief ‘climate data manipulators’ around. Garbage in, garbage out.

The only thing worse than junk science is brain-dead ‘journalists’ to spread the fear.

Read it.

Welcome to America’s premier Sanctuary City.

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

John Hinderaker at Powerline chronicles the decline.

Gender nazis love to get people fired.

They do indeed.

Steve Sailer points out that porous borders are not the only flaw in our immigration system.

Read it.

Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

Works for me. (What ever happened to hanging?)

Read it.

Three Democratic congressmen declared on Thursday that they will vote “no” on their own legislation if House Speaker Paul Ryan puts their bill on the floor.

Reps. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Adriano Espaillat of New York introduced the Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement Act earlier Thursday, which would abolish ICE within one year of enactment, and also assemble a commission tasked with setting up a new immigration enforcement agency.

Hours later, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced he planned to bring the proposed “Abolish ICE” bill to the floor, reported The Hill.

The three congressmen promptly released a joint statement accusing Ryan of not taking their bill seriously, and as an act of protest, they will vote down their own legislation and instead use the opportunity to discuss Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy and ICE.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.