Read it.

Many executives were driven away by the uncertainty of working for companies closely overseen by Washington, opting instead for firms not under the microscope, including competitors that have already returned the bailout funds to the government, according to executives and supervisors at the companies.

At Bank of America, for instance, only 14 of the 25 highly paid executives remained by the time Feinberg announced his decision. Under his plan, compensation for the most highly paid employees at the bank would be a maximum of $9.9 million. The bank had sought permission to pay as much as $21 million, according to Treasury Department documents.

At American International Group, only 13 people of the top 25 were still on hand for Feinberg’s decision.

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

Read it.

One in five primary schools are rejecting Government demands to identify their brightest pupils because teachers have “philosophical issues” with giving extra support to the most able children, a senior civil servant said.

Of course — that would undercut the myth that Everybody Is Special In Their Own Way, and that there’s no such thing as one kid being smarter than another.

‘No Child Left Behind’ works on the same premise; no child left behind means, in effect, bright kids being held back to match dumb kids, with the result that they get bored and cause trouble and the school environment gets worse and worse and worse … not to mention general educational attainment levels.

Read it. Worse than Swine Flue: Affluenza!

The latest polls show Obama sinking among independent voters (and a few Democrats as well, though possibly for different reasons). They bring to mind an epiphany I had last summer while driving through the residential suburbs of Chevy Chase, Maryland. I was overwhelmed by the abundance of Obama lawn signs, many more than you might see in my own neighborhood of Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, which probably has the highest rate of Democratic registration in the nation.

And now the Savior Obama is threatening to raise their taxes. How else is he going to finance his various projects?

My question is: what were these people thinking back in the middle of last summer? That the outcome of a presidential election as ideologically polarized as the last one would make no difference whatsoever to their lifestyle? That voting for Obama was more of a style choice than a political decision? That they thought this would establish beyond all doubt that they weren’t racists? Who knows? Maybe even they couldn’t answer these questions now.

Read it.

Be the first on your block … not that there’s much competition. There certainly wasn’t a lot of it in the ‘news’.

Read it.

Many people are confused when rich people call for higher taxes.

No need to be. Think it through.

If Bill’s income is a million quatloos a year, and Ted’s income is a hundred thousand quatloos a year, and the tax rate is 25%, Bill winds up with 750,000 quatloos, and Ted winds up with 75,000 quatloos. Bill lives well, and Ted gets by.

If the tax rate goes up to 75%, Bill winds up with 250,000 quatloos, and Ted with 25,000. Bill still lives well (although perhaps not as well), and Ted’s family start eating a lot of pasta. (That’s presuming that Bill’s tax accountant, one of those people that Ted can no longer afford, is so stupid as to have Bill pay Full Price at tax time, the likelihood of which is so small that even Bayes can’t compute it. Remember, Mr Tax Accountant is deductible and gets paid from the 1,000,000 quatloos, not whatever is left.)

More to the point, Ted and family can’t afford to go out any more, and so Bill and family don’t have any competition at their favorite restaurant/concert/resort/marina/ski lodge. Ted also winds up sending his kids to Local Community College rather than Ivy Snootiversity, so Bill’s kids can get in without having a lot of tedious competition. Kids like Bill’s aren’t used to competition; striving is just so middle class, don’t you agree?

Even more to the point, when Ted dies, all he can afford to leave his kids is this old guitar and an empty bottle o’ booze, so Bill’s kids have no fear of them being in the way, unto the fortieth generation.

I’m not saying that’s their motivation; a lot of them have gone to Propaganda Camp for college and may actually believe this horseshit. But that’s the effect, and the more intelligent ones (like Bill Gates Sr. and Warren Buffet … and Al Gore) absolutely know what the tune is and how to play it.

And don’t think that Barak Hussein Obama (mmm mmm mmm) doesn’t want to be there in that number when the Crust go marching in.

Read it.

Can’t say that I blame him. Were I an ice-skating bear, I’d dream of a brighter future than Kyrgyzstan, where about the best you can hope for is to run into Borat some day.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Well, that will certainly come in handy.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Mark Steyn looks back on his life after sounding the alarm about the current demographic meltdown in the West.

Read it.

Read it.

And you think you’ve got problems….

Read it.

The squatters vowed to occupy dozens more, in a bid to force wealthy owners to “squat proof” their wealthy properties.

This is just a guess, but I suspect that mounting their heads on spikes in the front yard would probably do it.

But that’s my idea — what’s your idea?

Jeremy Wagstaff looks at phish.

I’m fully awake now, and doing some digging on who is behind the Driver Robot “driver phish.” The digging has introduced me to a whole level to the software scam industry.

I’m glad somebody had the time and energy to dig into this sort of thing. The most serious aspect is that Google appears to be in pari delicto here.

It seems that either Trentin, Tim and Susan are just really generous with their comments and share software tips on a regular basis, or this software schmoozefest is linked to Swishsoft the company that sells Swift Optimizer, software that compresses Flash files. All three put glowing reviews on the software website, althought it seems Susan has moved from the U.S. to Australia in the meantime. Must be the taxes.

And no, I couldn’t find any reference to Trentin Lagrange apart from glowing software testimonials. Either the guy just lives to write software reviews or he is not really living.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Republican Senator Takes Heat for Cooperating on Cap-and-Trade.

Well, it’s Lindsey Graham, so it’s not like it’s a real Republican Senator, but the video is still pretty amusing.

The video above is difficult to hear at times, but the lead question touched off loud applause: “Why do you think it’s necessary to get in bed with people like John Kerry?”

A very good question.

Read it.

Human rights advocates are unhappy with the Obama administration’s foreign policy, citing three developments: (1) the failure to back the Goldstone Report; (2) the failure to pressure Sri Lanka to improve its treatment of Tamils; and (3) the willingness to deal with Sudan’s President Bashir, who was recently indicted by the International Criminal Court.  It turns out that Sudan is a useful ally in fighting terrorism and Sri Lanka is, well, complicated, and Israel is Israel.  As Julian Ku notes, coddling Bashir is hardly a way to support the ICC, which is already reeling from the decision of members of the African Union not to extradite him to The Hague if he enters their countries, in violation of their legal obligations (most of them belong to the ICC; a few have since backpedaled).  Meanwhile, the Obama administration has apparently succeeded in pressuring Spain to water down its universal jurisdiction statute, the one that the Spaniards were supposed to use to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and David Addington.  Well, good for the Obama administration: it has implicitly repudiated campaign rhetoric that endorsed global legalism, and it didn’t take it as long as one might have thought.

Read it.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, while Secretary of State Clinton was getting a rather brusque treatment, reports appeared that Russia was endorsing not just preemptive use of military force – but even preemptive use of nuclear weapons, and that even in local or regional wars.

George Will understands the dialectic.

As Harvard’s president, Larry Summers, economist and former Treasury secretary, was a lion in a den of Daniels. The faculty Daniels, their tender feelings hurt by his occasional testiness, cowered together and declared him a meanie. Facing a faculty vote of no confidence, he resigned.

Now he is Barack Obama’s principal economic adviser. So, weary of John Boehner, leader of House Republicans, dwelling on rising unemployment, Summers sent him a letter. In it he said, as Obama and his minions so consistently do, something that may be the text of this year’s White House Christmas card: At least we are not George Bush, so there.

But one-quarter of Stimulus II will be spent this year. Another quarter will be spent in 2011. Half will be spent in 2010, an election year. Which suggests that Stimulus II is, and Stimulus III would be, primarily designed to save a few dozen jobs — those of Democratic members of the House and Senate.

Read it.

There is an obvious alternative. We could pay for our medical treatment the same way that we pay for our cars or our food or a roof over our heads: out of our own pockets. Before rejecting the idea out of hand, at least acknowledge that it would encourage us to ask a very different set of questions, including: “is there a cheaper way that would work?”, “can I get better value treatment elsewhere?”, and even “would I save money if I drank less and exercised more?” The effect on cost and quality would be bracing.

We do pay for healthcare. If you have an individual plan, you can see the rapid inflation before your very eyes. If you don’t, your employer provided plan has probably decreased in quality, and there is an argument that the cost of the plan to the employer is one main reason for wage stagnation (in other words, the cost of the employee included healthcare). There are issues with assuming that purchasing healthcare is analogous to purchasing food. But it is true that people do not as individuals (the doctor and the patient) make decisions which minimize costs because there are no incentives to do so.

Read it.

Mario Cuomo and Blue Cross destroyed the individual insurance market in the state. Now Congress wants to impose the same rules on 50 states.

Today, New York’s private individual insurance market is among the nation’s most expensive and highly regulated. New York City residents buying private, unsubsidized individual insurance coverage pay at least $9,036 a year for individual coverage and $26,460 for family coverage. New York’s average premiums in the individual market are more than twice the national average, according to a 2007 eHealth Insurance survey.

Today, 14% of New York’s population lacks coverage, essentially the same as the national average of 15%. Partly because of the high costs of private coverage, nearly one in four New Yorkers is enrolled in Medicaid. New York’s Medicaid program is the nation’s most expensive, requiring high local and state taxes to support it.

Read it.

Just waiting for the Democrats to add this to their ‘health reform’ plan. (Hey, it’s European, right? We want a health care plan like Britain’s, right?)

Read it.

Who names their kid ‘Falcon’? If I had parents like that, I’d be looking to escape, too.

Read it.

Apparently, it’s something that the Other Guys do.

… it is ironic that Keith Olbermann, who, unlike Rush, is actually a hatemonger, is a network commentator on NFL games. Apparently no one thinks Olbermann is too “divisive” to be associated with the league.

Which raises this thought: has any liberal ever been labeled “divisive”? I can’t recall a single instance. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are trying to dismantle our health care system, an effort to which most Americans object and about which many millions care deeply. So, why are they not divisive? If that isn’t divisive, what is?

Read it.

A VAT is by its nature hidden, because no one files a tax return.

The VAT is so slippery that academics here and abroad do not agree on who pays this seemingly magical tax. Some economists still deceive themselves with the old notion that a VAT is simply a tax on consumers. This misperception comes from the European VAT, which uses a system of credits to create the illusion of pushing the tax forward from one business to another and finally to consumers.

The one certainty about a VAT is its enormous revenue-producing potential. At a rate of 17% to 18%—about average for Europe—it could increase total federal taxes to 30% of GDP or more from 15% now, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In combination with higher federal spending, this could forever alter the balance between the public and private sectors.

Read it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claims the latest version of the federal hate crime bill, which the House passed last week and the Senate is expected to approve any day now, includes  “protections for freedom of speech and association” that are “stronger” than the language in the version passed by the House last April. That’s the reverse of the truth. Last spring’s version said “evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense.” The American Civil Liberties Union cited this safeguard in reversing its longstanding opposition to the bill. By contrast, the current version (PDF) says “nothing in this [bill] shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs” (emphasis added). Since all the crimes covered by the bill are acts of violence that already are illegal under state law, this assurance amounts to nothing.

Read it.

And ‘vile’ is not too strong a word.

The fabulously wealthy SPLC exaggerates the scope of racism to frighten donors into opening their wallets. SPLC is nominally a public interest law firm, but it spends little on actual litigation. Instead, it uses politically skewed definitions of racism to indoctrinate children while smearing conservatives who question racial preference programs.

Read it.

Cornish separatists have launched a campaign to scare students out of the county, along with second homers, surfers and celebrity chef Rick Stein.

Read it.

Meanwhile radio commentators begin with the premise that everyone has a fundamental right to have someone else pay for their health care costs, just as everyone has a fundamental right to have someone else pay for their children’s education. The result is a school system that is, perhaps, less than optimal. What the result of applying that principle to health care will be is not so obvious.

Read it.

The Wash Post reports on burgeoning efforts by the Obama administration to butt into even more aspects of everyday life and treat us all as if we have the brainpower of Joe Biden. “A handful of Obama appointees,” writes the Post, “are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products, and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets.”

Near the top of the list? The dread menace of Cheerios, the burp-inducing breakfast cereal that lies (lies!) about its crunchety goodness and heart-helping properties.

Read it.

Barack Obama’s seemingly inexplicable winning of the Nobel Peace Prize says less about him than about the current mentality of Europe’s leadership class. Lacking any strong, compelling voices of their own, the Europeans are now trying to hijack our president as their spokesman.

Take our President. Please.

Read it.

President Obama’s White House blog team reports that “President Obama’s aims (sic) to restore fairness to the tax system by providing the Making Work Pay tax cut to 95 percent of working families….”

Of course, there is a small problem here.  95% of working families don’t pay taxes.  One-third don’t pay any income taxes at all.  So how can we give them a tax cut?

Frankly, we can’t.  But we can give them money.

Read it.

And you think you have problems….

Read it.

But why? Congress doesn’t, judging by the spending they do. Voters don’t, judging by the people they elect.

You’re preaching to the trees, here, Larry.

Read it.

“We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world,” warns Ms. Ehrenreich. “Things are bad and getting worse, any fool can see that,” warns Mr. Derbyshire.

The outside world starts catching up.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Wendy Williams and her husband liked their health insurance plan.  The premium and annual deductibles made sense for them, and a more “gold-plated” plan was not worth the money.  Yet Massachusetts’ health care regulators disagreed, and forced the Williams to pay a $1,000 fine if they wished to keep their insurance plan — a plan they prefer to a comparable state-approved alternative.

Teachable moment: Stay out of Massachusetts.

It wasn’t always this way.  When the Massachusetts mandate was first adopted, their plan was just fine.  But then the rules changed.  The state no longer accepts their insurance plan, even though they are fully insured and are not imposing their health care costs on other taxpayers.

Well, that’s government for you.

Read it.

My species, and welcome to it.

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This pathetic outcome is all that is left of a federal prosecution that threatened Martinez with up to 20 years in federal prison, portraying her as a taxpayer-bilking drug pusher. The case, launched three years ago by U.S. Attorney James A. McDevitt, stemmed from Martinez’s willingness to treat people with histories of illegal drug use for pain, a practice that is not only legal but ethically required. In 2007 a jury acquitted her of prescribing narcotics outside the scope of medicine, failed to reach verdicts on related charges of unlawfully distributing narcotics, and convicted her on eight felony counts of health care fraud. After the trial, Judge Van Sickle dismissed the distribution charges and ordered a new trial on the fraud charges. The Yakima Herald-Republic reports that a medical billing expert hired by Martinez’s lawyer “concluded that the convictions were based on misrepresentations by government auditors.” According to the lawyer, “it gutted the prosecution’s case,” which is why McDevitt agreed to a plea bargain instead of retrying Martinez. As for Martinez, she wanted to keep fighting, but she “had run out of money” and assets, having “lost her home in the process of defending herself against the charges.”

Read it.

Read it.

Gosh, Microsoft wouldn’t lie to us … would they?

In any event, my “Launch Party” package is allegedly on its way. I’m hoping that there will be balloons. I can do some very interesting things with balloons. Some of them are even legal.

Read it.

Psychologists in Canada have revealed new research suggesting that people who become eco-conscious “green consumers” are “more likely to steal and lie” than others.

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

Read it.

Today’s Wall Street Journal headlines that “New Math Boosts Health Plan.” Some new calculations claim that the Health Care Plan (whatever it is, since it’s hardly final) will reduce the deficit. Given that all the health care plans make some form of health care a free good for many new millions of people, the notion that it will save money is ludicrous, and it’s hard to understand how anyone would believe that for a moment. It’s going to cost money — every such plan always has. It’s going to cost a lot more than we project. Every such plan always has. This is the Bullwinkle the Moose principle: “This time for sure!”

And that about says it all.

Read it.

And why?

Since I care more about my country than my personal pride, here’s how I lost my insurance: I moved. That’s right, I moved from Washington, D.C., back to Massachusetts, a state with universal health care.

In D.C., I had a policy with a national company, an HMO, and surprisingly I was very happy with it. I had a fantastic primary care doctor at Georgetown University Hospital. As a self-employed writer, my premium was $225 a month, plus $10 for a dental discount.

In Massachusetts, the cost for a similar plan is around $550, give or take a few dollars. My risk factors haven’t changed. I didn’t stop writing and become a stunt double. I don’t smoke. I drink a little and every once in a while a little more than I should. I have a Newfoundland dog. I am only 41. There has been no change in the way I live my life except my zip code — to a state with universal health care.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Traditional children’s nursery rhymes such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are becoming so unpopular with parents that they could die out, researched suggests.

It highlighted gaps in the knowledge of different age groups, for example three quarters of those over 55 knew all the words to Little Miss Muffet, compared to just over half of those parents under 24.

The figures also show a gender knowledge gap: only 52 per cent of men surveyed knew all the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star compared to 83 per cent of women

Read it.

I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.

Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.

Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920’s that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

Wisdom. Attend.

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work.

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We have the technology.

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But the high salaries of lawyers suggest that there is a genuine demand out there for all that lawyering. Quite simply, we need a lot of lawyers because we have a lot of laws.

Read it.

President and Mrs. Obama filled their speeches to the International Olympic Committee with references to themselves, their lives, their experiences, all because of their self-evident significance to the progress of humanity. “Both Obamas,” writes George Will, gave heartfelt speeches about … themselves.”