Michigan Democrats want to raise the state minimum wage to ten bucks an hour. This is economically criminal behavior. It will further devastate black youth in Detroit, Flint and Saginaw. Flint’s official employment rate is almost thirty percent.
And meanwhile, the red fox has returned to Detroit. Moose won’t be far behind, if they want to walk across the Mackinac Bridge.
With this more generally applicable opening:
A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. This of course is evidence of a rigged game. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate absolutely every transaction that takes place in a country. Stalin and Hitler couldn’t do it by a long shot. So anything that displeases the ruling regime can easily be laid at the doorstep of freedom and be used as an excuse for stamping out whatever traces of liberty still exist.
The other part of the rigged game is to have so many laws that it is almost impossible to get through a day without violating one or another, making every citizen a subject of the state, vulnerable at all times to prosecution on unrelated issues if she doesn’t toe the state line.
Bill Whittle has a couple new Afterburners up, one two–parter filmed out at XCOR, and the other an interview with the world’s best-known space law professor. Also, thoughts on revising the Outer Space Treaty.
The states hit hardest by the recession are getting the least amount of “stimulus.” Well, what else would you expect from Barack Hoover Obama?
[Mid-morning update]
Or is he Jimmy Carter? At this point, that’s a best-case scenario, I think.
…and the difference between dead-tree and electronic books. This has been a black eye for Amazon.
He sux.
Who knew we were electing a national mother-in-law? And get a chance to endure increased taxes for the privilege. Obama’s supposed to be rallying support from voters, not castigating them. Outside the S& M parlor, most people do not enjoy paying to be disciplined.
What’s amusing is that his acolytes (including some in this very blog’s comments) are just as bad, because they use the same dumb arguments.
No surprise. The only thing he’s ever really been able to sell is himself. He may be the most spectacular example of the Peter Principle in world history.
[Update a few minutes later]
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers…
…It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.
You can see why these fascists object to the notion of reading bills.
[Update late morning]
The civil war among the Democrats:
Blue Dogs had aired their complaints last week in a letter to Pelosi that caused her to delay the rollout of the bill until Tuesday. But when the bill was introduced, they felt Pelosi and the committee chairmen who wrote the legislation hadn’t taken their concerns into account.
That led to a tense session between Pelosi and Blue Dogs at the group’s regular Tuesday meeting hours after the rollout.
“The meeting did not go well. She just kept saying it was a good bill,” said one Blue Dog.
“There is a growing perception among many of us that our leadership meets with us but doesn’t listen to us,” said another Blue Dog.
What do you expect? She’s a moron. And I hope that she’ll continue to lead them…to a massive defeat next year.
[Noon update]
I propose that the government impose a single-payer system on the legal profession. Instead of charging private fees, all attorneys would have to send their bills to LegalCare, a new agency in the federal government. Because the government can bargain collectively, they can impose rational fees for legal services instead of the exorbitant billing fees attorneys now charge. Three hundred dollars an hour? Thing of the past. Everyone knows that the government can control costs through price-setting; now we can see this process applied to the legal system, where the government has a large interest in seeing cost savings.
How will we pay for LegalCare? I take a page from the House surtax method here, which will disproportionately hit doctors in a wide variety of disciplines. In this case, I propose a 5.4% surtax on lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and political officeholders at the state and federal level. They’re the ones who have enriched themselves through this inequity in the legal system. After all, why should we all have to pay for the single-payer legal system when we can penalize lawyers instead?
I think we need a big-bang solution that can integrate a solution to the health-care and legal-care crises.
[Update after 3 PM]
The public-option scam:
Some statements are inherently unbelievable. Such as: “I am an official of the government of Nigeria, and I would like to deposit $60 million in your bank account.” Or: “I’m Barry Bonds, and I thought it was flaxseed oil.” And this new one: “I’m Barack Obama, and I favor more competition in health insurance.”
They must think we’re stupid. And unfortunately, judging by the election results last fall, it might not be a bad bet.
[Update a few minutes later]
A shocking development — honesty from someone in Washington, from the CBO, of all places.
I wish more people would do things like this to these racialist morons. Click on the link to see Senator Boxer eviscerated by an uppity black man who won’t stay on her plantation.
It seems to me that the Democrats ignore polls like this at their political peril:
“Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Mainstream Americans say they are not willing to pay higher taxes and utility costs to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming, compared to only 17% of the Political Class,” reported Rasmussen Reports.
Completely out of touch.
I’m shopping at American for flights from SFO to LAX, and they have a variety of non-stops for fifty-nine bucks. But what’s bizarre is that they offer one-stops as well (e.g., through Seattle, or Dallas). And they only charge four hundred bucks for them. How many people buy one? You have to really want the miles, and like riding in airplanes. I wonder if it’s just an artifact of their reservations software, that no one has bothered to fix? Or if they’ve ever actually sold one?
Let the jobless recovery begin.