True genius sees with the eyes of a child
and thinks with the brain of a genie
Puzant Kevork
The Hypocrite-in-Chief
After the Obama campaign's attempts to demonize Bain Capital (formerly headed by Mitt Romney) and other private equity firms, we find this interesting tidbit:
President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from three Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back.You see, Mitt Romney got only "bad" Bain Capital money, while contributions to Obama come from the "good" Bain money...
What Obama and the Congress Learned from Enron
From USA Today (my edits):
"By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting. The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself [versus companies, states and local governments] from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.This would be funny if it wasn't pathetic:
Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.Yeah, right: that's going to happen. Guess what, hot shot? Accounting rules are based on the relevant facts, not speculation of proposed but improbable legislation. These expenditures come under the category of mandatory spending. Moreover, if you apply the same reasoning to ordinary expenditures, you may as well argue that there is no deficit by fiat because the Congress could theoretically raise general taxes or cut spending.
Why I Love Frédéric Bastiat
Now the French people have elected François Hollande Master Legal Plunderer of France, let us remember the words of a true French patriot, Frédéric Bastiat. From The Law (my edits):
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police,and prisons at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder.
Do not listen to sophistry by vested interests. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing legal plunder: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.
When the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education — then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Ah, you do-gooders and would-be rulers of mankind, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.
But if the government undertakes to control and to raise wages, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to care for all who may be in want, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to support all unemployed workers, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to lend interest-free money to all borrowers, and cannot do it; if the government cannot do all of these things, what then? Is it not certain that after every government failure — which, alas! is more than probable — there will be an equally inevitable revolution?
Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!Isn't it amazing how relevant Bestiat's prescient discussion is today, to the vacuous, elitist, presumptuous, ineffectual sophistical schemes of Barack Obama and his fellow crony progressive Democrats?
Political Potpourri
In the hoopla over American Idol, it almost slipped my mind that two states (Arkansas and Kentucky) had held primaries that day; since no other GOP challengers are actively contesting the nomination at this point, it's no surprise that Romney easily won the contests, putting his WSJ delegate total to 1076, 68 short of the official number, which Romney should easily clinch in next Tuesday's 155-delegate rich Texas primary.
In the RCP latest polls, it looks like Walker (R-WI) continues to trend well ahead of his recall election, with a minimum of 50% in 2 polls. NBC/Marist published a number of race polls favoring Democrats and I believe, in an eyeball glance, that the polls overestimate each leading Democrat by about 4 points. One of the fascinating points I'm looking at is Rasmussen's finding Obama's approval rating exceeding his percentage in a poll against Romney. I'm beginning to see signs of cracks in the blue states, e.g., California tracking at 50% for Obama, less in Pennsylvania. There are ways that Romney could position himself, e.g., against the anti-business, high-tax, high-regulatory environment in California which have led to a net disapproval number for Governor Jerry Brown.
Another troubling sign for Obama: the Democrats in three May primaries voted 40% or above for a convicted felon in West Virginia, John Wolfe, a Tennessee attorney in Arkansas, and "uncommitted" in Kentucky. Obama lost these 3 states in the 2008 election, not to mention in the primaries to Hillary Clinton.
Political Humor
"An Arby's served a customer a sandwich with a piece of human finger inside. The manager apologized and gave the customer some free hair in his shake." - Conan O'Brien
[I don't think the health inspector got the reaction that he expected when he asked the restaurant's employees to give him the finger...]
"Today, members of the Secret Service told the Senate that there’s an unwritten rule amongst agents that what happens on the road stays on the road. Not to be confused with that WRITTEN rule — that they shouldn't have sex with prostitutes." - Jimmy Fallon
[I don't think they got the memo after GSA employees found out the hard way that not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Rolling Stones, "Start Me Up"
