Miscellany: 6/30/14

Quote of the Day

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Farmer's Almanac, 1995

Via Mercatus Center

Tweet of the Day

@BarackObama is now googling “Can an Executive Order override Supreme Court?” #HobbyLobby — Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) June 30, 2014

Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day

Image of the Day

Via Libertarian Republic

If a Tree Falls in a Forest and No One is Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?

If Obama's Comments Fall Flat in Europe and No One Applauds Him, Did He Say Anything?

HT Zero Hedge



A Good Day for Liberty at SCOTUS

I would have liked a stronger decision against forced unionism in Harris v Quinn, but it's a promising first step. Those who have followed my FB Corner feature knows that there have been a number of threads on this case by Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank (see here for more extended background). Under a Medicaid program in Illinois, Pam Harris, who is mother to Joshua, a developmentally disabled young man, gets a modest stipend under a Medicaid waiver program, that helps her stay at home with Joshua rather than have him institutionalized. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, a crony unionist whore, issued an executive order that essentially declared all home-providers receiving stipends would effectively be "represented" by a union, e.g., SEIU, essentially taxing stipends for the benefit of crony unions, including their political activities. Harris did not like the fact that money meant for Josh's care was being stolen to promote activities she did not necessarily support. The 5-4 decision (take a wild guess as to which 4 "progressive" jurists sided with the crony unionists) basically agreed that the corrupt governor went too far in stealing from home providers to fill the special interest's pockets. Thumbs UP!

The Hobby Lobby decision, also decided by the same 5-4 justices, basically involved an Obama Administration decision to mandate certain birth control provisions, including abortifacients, which pro-lifers, including this blogger, view as murder of preborn life. Requiring pro-life business owners to pay for the abortions of employees involved a serious violation of conscience bearing on religious/moral liberty. The justices made significant reference to the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and relevant reasonable accommodation provisions; they also noted that the Obama Administration had made an accommodation to certain religious institutions/non-profits but inconsistently denied the same accommodations for at-profit/other entities, which might hold similar views. I'm not sure they said so explicitly, but this was clearly an equal protection issue, a double standard that was untenable under Constitutional principle. (Of course, the Obama Administration accommodation is itself a denial of reality. It's saying insurance providers have to provide the benefit, even if the organization can't be charged for it; now either this is a no-cost benefit or it isn't. If it isn't, the insurance company, unlike the government, has to cover its costs; whether the provider engages in a shell game, money is fungible, and there's no such thing as a "free lunch".) But the justices correctly ruled that this accommodation cannot be arbitrarily restricted to non-profits and reaffirms religious liberty. Thumbs UP!

Another Reason To Keep Neo-Cons In Check (Out of Any New Wars)

Via Liberty Viral

The Lawless One Continues....

From CNN: "President Barack Obama said he is starting "a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress.""

More on 'Bad Elephant' Cochran: Illegal Runoff Votes

From Libertarian Republican:

Sources within Mississippi are saying Chris McDaniel has identified more the 1500 people in Hinds County who voted in the Democratic Primary and then voted in the Republican run-off in contravention of state law.

Towards a More Competitive Education Market



Facebook Corner

(Reason). SCOTUS delivered a blow to unions today.
Research the "free rider" problem in relation to economics and social sciences. This is terrible for the future of collective bargaining. People like you are so arrogant because you take for granted what unions have done for you. Do you enjoy your weekends? Thank the unions. Do you enjoy the 40 house work week? Thank the unions. Do you have a pension? Thank the unions. They have done so much for society but mouth breathers like you, who don't know labor history, like to pretend it would have all happened anyway.
Why do "progressive" crony union trolls patrol Reason? Free rider problem? This coming from a corrupt parasitic class, already protected by civil service statutes, that maximizes its legally protected monopolistic profits at the expense of the taxpayers whom don't share in the same level of job security or cushy, unsustainable entitlements. These trolls don't point out that entrepreneurs like Henry Ford doubled daily wages, introduced the 8 hr. day/5 workday paradigm years before Ford ever signed a union pact. Why? For business reasons; the free market works..

(Drudge Report). SHERIFF JOE: DEPLOY THE MILITARY!
Sheriff Joe is JUST AS NUTS as Obama on abuse of military power. NO, you do NOT invade Mexico over a couple of accidental spillovers in the dysfuctional War on Drugs

Via Independent Institute

"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion." —F.A. Hayek
Are you going to stereotype certain social conservatives because of Griswold? You are really confounding religious authoritarians/progressives with conservatives. For example, Catholic Total [Alcohol] Abstinence Union of America wrote, "Our motto is moral suasion. With prohibitory laws, restrictive license systems, and special legislation we have nothing whatever to do." Have some faith activists sought to impose their moral beliefs/customs? Yes; I've lived in dry counties or where purchase of booze was restricted on Sunday morning; there have been sodomy laws, etc. Speaking as a libertarian Catholic whom as a cultural conservative opposes promiscuity, gambling, alcoholism, recreational drugs, etc., I have no interest in State intervention to protect people from self-destructive behavior; I might try to persuade them that they are on the wrong path, but I recognize man has free will.

Marriage Proposals Continued









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of the original artist via IPI

Courtesy of Bob Gorrell via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Missing You". By the way, I recently came across this story about Fogelberg's signature tune, "Same Old Lang Syne", which I embedded a few posts back:

According to the Same Old Lang Syne Songfacts, as Fogelberg tells it on his official website, the song is totally autobiographical. He was visiting family back home in Peoria, Illinois in the mid-’70s when he ran into an old girlfriend at a convenience store.
After Fogelberg’s death from prostate cancer in 2007, the woman who he wrote the song about came forward with her story. Her name is Jill Greulich, and she and Fogelberg dated in high school when she was Jill Anderson. As she explained to the Peoria Journal Star in a December 22, 2007 article, they were part of the Woodruff High School class of 1969, but went to different colleges. After college, Jill got married and moved to Chicago, and Dan went to Colorado to pursue music. On Christmas Eve, they were each back in Peoria with their families when Jill went out for egg nog and Dan was dispatched to find whipping cream for Irish coffee. The only place open was a convenience store at the top of Abington Hill, at Frye Avenue and Prospect Road, and that’s where they had their encounter. They bought a six pack of beer and drank it in her car for 2 hours while they talked.
Five years later, Jill heard “Same Old Lang Syne” on the radio while driving to work, but she kept quiet about it, as Fogelberg also refused to reveal her identity. Her main concern was that coming forward would disrupt Fogelberg’s marriage.
Looking at the lyrics, Jill says there are 2 inaccuracies: She has green eyes, not blue, and her husband was not an architect - he was a physical education teacher, and it’s unlikely Fogelberg knew his profession anyway.

Miscellany: 6/29/14

Quote of the Day

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. 
Because if you haven't courage, 
you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
Samuel Johnson

Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day

Via Libertarian Republic

Image of the Day

Via Libertarian Republic

Via Lawrence Reed

Via Independent Institute

Via Lawrence Reed

Chart of the Day

Hall of Shame

HT Free Thought Project via We the Individuals



Facebook Corner

(IPI). Citizens and politicians agree: Illinois’ budget is a mess. Yet nothing ever seems to be done about it. Why not? Because one-third of the state’s spending — employee compensation — is off the table.
Until Illinois politicians have the courage to take a scalpel to government employee wages and benefits, Illinois’ budget will continue to be unmanageable. But doing so means challenging Illinois’ most deeply entrenched special interest: government unions.
People are in a state of denial until the moment, say, of bankruptcy or some similar crisis. It goes beyond the parasitic crony unionists. You have to confront quack economists, for instance, whom manage to convince the gullible masses whom want to believe the Ponzi schemes of senior entitlements are easily manageable and merely need tweaking. You have to take on the sacred cows of American politics, like the trite lip service expected of any aspiring politician paying tribute to "overworked, underpaid" public school teachers or public safety officers.

I have a couple of nieces whom are public school teachers and a couple of siblings in federal civil service whom are probably not comfortable with my libertarian-leaning views. In fact, one of them posted a "progressive" image suggesting that instead of asking teachers to share in taxpayer pain of unsustainable budgets, let's just slap a surtax on millionaires.... This is a young lady raised on the Ten Commandments, including the ones discussing coveting the goods of neighbors and against stealing. I pointed out public employees making a living at the expense of taxpayers and that public schools should be privatized. In the real world, businesses face competition, sometimes go out of business and employees get fired or layed off in percentages that dwarf the public sector. In public education, there is no effective competition; it's a rigged market that rejects economies of scale, where consumers don't make the decisions, where managers are prohibited from making staffing cuts based on merit instead of union rules protecting the highest-cost or most ineffective teachers. As Col. Jessup would say, my niece can't handle the truth. You get predictable nonsense back, like I work hard for my money, and in a market system, only kids from rich families would get educated. (Never mind, of course, a staggering number of Internet-accessible homeschooling and other curricula, videotaped lectures, a proliferation of education software, Catholic schools which operate at a fraction of public school costs, etc.) [I'm also speaking as a former professor whom held appointments at three state universities.]

(Drudge Report). IOWA PURGE: ESTABLISHMENT DECAPITATES RAND ARMY…
Perhaps it is time for the Tea Party and the Constitutional Conservatives to break off into our own party??
Never happen. Tea Party & Libertarians are ideologically opposed at their very core. Immigration.
No. Immigration restrictions are part of Big Government. Anti-immigrants predated the Tea Party and have attempted to co-opt it. Anyone who believes in the free market believes no one has the right to tell an employer whom he can hire.

(LFC). "These same costly procedures have resulted in the banking industry closing thousands of financial accounts...Banks have essentially blacklisted anyone in the marijuana business from opening a checking or savings account." "Every act of the gov't which can and must be done by administrative discretion with regard to the special merits of each case can be used for the achievement of the gov't's political aims." – Mises
I'm not one whom personally believes in recreational drugs, but the federal interstate commerce authority was intended to promote a free market among states, not micromanage traditional state markets. A clear violation of economic liberty, equal protection, and state police power, the kind of centralization made possible since the SCOTUS' abdication of protecting economic liberty in Carolene Products and the perverse Footnote 4.

(Cato Institute). "From the time that NAFTA’s sugar provisions were fully implemented in 2008, Mexico has been the only country in the world with unfettered access to the U.S. sugar market. Sugar interests now are hoping to clamp the fetters back on."
It's time to end corrupt protectionist/mercantilist policies at the expense of American consumers and declare unilateral free trade.

(Cato Institute). "Not only will the Obama Administration’s actions have no meaningful impact on the amount of future climate change, but it is far from clear that the rate of future change will even be enough to mitigate—or even to worry about."
99 percent of scientists must be wrong right? Climate change is real and man is a huge reason why. The debate is over
Politicization of science is a morally corrupting influence. Science is based on evidence, not some unilateral conclusion made by "progressive" fascists; I have zero confidence in scientists expressing an opinion on matters outside their expertise. The climate alarmists lack any credibility; Climategate, suppression of dissent at major scientific journals, observations inconsistent with existing, rudimentary climate change models--what self-respecting scientist would ever say "the debate is over"? Wishful thinking is NOT science.

Interesting Blurb: Jason Brennan's Research Biography

Civic Enemies: The Rule of All Against All is a sustained critique of democracy. I argue that democratic participation tends to make us enemies with one another. The political liberties are not like other liberties, in that they give us power over others, not just ourselves. For most people, weilding this power is corrupting. The exercise of political liberty does not make us more autonomous. When philosophers try to ground equal political liberty on respect and recognition, they are in fact valorizing human vice--the vice of associating political power with status and standing. We each have a right not to be subject to incompetent or bad faith political decision-making. Democracy systematically violates this right, and is, for that reason, at least prima facie illegitimate. To comply with citizens' right not to be subject to incompetent or bad faith government, we might need to adopt radical changes.

How citizens vote is morally significant. When citizens vote, they can make government better or worse, and in turn, make people’s lives go better or worse. Bad choices at the polls can destroy economic opportunities, produce crises that lower everyone’s standards of living, lead to unjust and unnecessary wars (and thus to millions of deaths), lead to sexist, racist, and homophobic legislation, help reinforce poverty, produce overly punitive criminal legislation, and worse.

I didn't highlight the "sexist, racist, and homophobic" point because (1) I think it comes across as politically correct nonsense, even though I acknowledge, e.g., past sodomy, miscegenation and Jim Crow laws and (2) I think he should make a broader point about group discrimination which goes beyond racial/ethnic/gender/orientation but any group out of favor, for instance, cigarette smokers, beer drinkers, the notoriously outnumbered upper 1%, certain benefit mandates on Catholic institutions which violate Church teachings, etc. I would also like to see more of a focus on generality of and rule of law (where the law is far-reaching and unknowable, tyranny or arbitrary prosecution is possible). What about an unaccountable judiciary which fails to protect negative rights/liberties?

Marriage Proposal Encore







Very cute when the whole mob drops to a knee....



Babies Excited To See Mom or Dad



Political Cartoon

Courtesy of the original artist via Libertarian Republic

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Run For the Roses"

Miscellany: 6/28/14

Quote of the Day

Murphy's Third Law: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Image of the Day

Via Independent Institute

Via Libertarian Republic

Awesome David Stockman Essay: Sarajevo Is The Fulcrum Of Modern History: The Great War And Its Terrible Aftermath

For my own part, my course is taken. In view of all the facts of our situation; of all the terrible experiences of the past, both at home and abroad; and of the united testimony of the wisest and bravest statesmen who have lived and labored during the last century, it is my firm conviction that any considerable increase in the volume of our inconvertible paper money will shatter public credit, will paralyze industry and oppress the poor; and that the gradual restoration of our ancient standard of value will lead us, by the safest and surest path, to national prosperity and the steady pursuit of peace. -  James Abram Garfield (R-OH)

I think it safe to assert that every commercial crisis can be traced to an unnecessary inflation of the currency, or to an improvident expansion of credit... I speak within the limits of all authority when I say that the most pronounced cause of all crises has been the redundancy of money resulting from issues of paper by government itself, or by banks chartered by government.  - William Bourke Cockran (D-NY)

Not what you were taught in American history: I haven't had an opportunity to read The Great Deformation from which I expect this essay is excerpted, but it is a compelling narrative that shows you what an unmitigated disaster the Federal Reserve has been. It is highly readable on its own, and I encourage readers, but I want to underscore a few points in an interactive series of excerpts.

One of the key points is the importance of convertible currency, which kept a country's currency honest by tethering any paper currency to hard assets, like gold. A country which tried to print its way out of debt would soon be "attacked" by customers or trade partners demanding said asset redemption for watered down paper currency. Sound money policies during the Gilded Age were compatible with unprecedented economic growth, a rising standard of living and rising wages:

This liberal international economic order—that is, honest money, relatively free trade, rising international capital flows and rapidly growing global economic integration—-resulted in  a 40-year span between 1870 and 1914 of rising living standards, stable prices, massive capital investment and prolific  technological progress that was never equaled—either before or since.
During intervals of war, of course, 19th century governments had usually suspended gold convertibility and open trade in the heat of combat.  But when the cannons fell silent, they had also endured the trauma of post-war depression until wartime debts had been liquidated and inflationary currency expedients had been wrung out of the circulation. This was called “resumption” and restoring convertibility at the peacetime parities was the great challenge of post-war normalizations.

Without a central bank, the American economy did experience a few short panics/corrections; I've explained some of these were the result of dysfunctional regulations (for example, a protectionist unit banking system that ruled out regional diversification that could ride out, say, harvest time cash crunches and self-defeating asset restrictions that required backing of a shrinking supply of Treasury obligations--yes, this country once upon a time actually paid down on its debts). So how did the private sector deal with these issues? Well, capitalists refused to bail out banks and others whose issues weren't simply liquidity but a failing business model and/or reckless speculation:

This market clearing function of money market interest rates was especially crucial with respect to leveraged financial speculation—such as margin trading in the stock market.  Indeed, the panic of 1907 had powerfully demonstrated that when speculative bubbles built up a powerful head of steam the free market had a ready cure.
In that pre-Fed episode, money market rates soared to 20, 30 and even 90 percent at the peak of the bubble. In short order, of course, speculators in copper, real estate, railroads, trust banks and all manner of over-hyped stock were carried out on their shields—-even as JPMorgan’s men, who were gathered as a de facto central bank in his library on Madison Avenue, selectively rescued only the solvent banks with their own money at-risk.

The Fed started out with modest ambitions: a decentralized system that was to replace the role of Morgan and others in providing liquidity of last resort to worthy institutions adversely affected by economic shocks instigated by the excesses of others, not to mention the fact that government's interventionist policies had to directly compete with the private sector for funding:

The new Fed system was to operate decentralized “reserve banks” in 12 regions—most of them far from Wall Street in places like San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City and Cleveland.  Their job was to provide a passive “rediscount window” where national banks within each region could bring sound, self-liquidating commercial notes and receivables to post as collateral in return for cash to meet depositor withdrawals or to maintain an approximate 15 percent cash reserve.
Accordingly, the assets of the 12 reserve banks were to consist entirely of short-term commercial paper arising out of the ebb and flow of commerce and trade on the free market, not the debt emissions of Washington.  In this context, the humble task of the reserve banks was to don green eyeshades and examine the commercial collateral brought by member banks, not to grandly manage the macro economy through targets for interest rates, money growth or credit expansion.

The Fed soon engaged in macro follies, including propping up foreign imports of American goods and excessive domestic capacity ill-equipped to handle a global recession. In essence, the Fed provided a blueprint for Chinese bankers to emulate over the past 3 decades:

In fact, over the period 1914-1929 the U. S. loaned overseas customers—-from the coffee plantations of Brazil to the factories of the Ruhr—-the modern day equivalent of $3.5 trillion to prop-up demand for American exports. The impact was remarkable. In the 15 years before the war American exports had crept up slowly from $1.6 billion to $2.4 billion per year, and totaled $35 billion over the entire period.  By contrast, shipments from American farms and factors soared to nearly $11 billion annually by 1919 and totaled $100 billion—three times more—over the 15 years through 1929.
So this was vendor finance on a vast scale——reflecting the exact mercantilist playbook that Mr. Deng chanced upon 60 years later when he opened the export factories of East China, and then ordered the People’s Bank to finance China’s exports of T-shirts, sneakers, plastic extrusions, zinc castings and mini-backhoes via the continuous massive purchases of Uncle Sam’s bonds, bills and guaranteed housing paper. In truth, China’s $3.8 trillion of reserves are a gigantic vendor loan to its customers. This is a financial clone of the $3.5 trillion equivalent that the great American creditor and export powerhouse loaned to the rest of the world between 1914 and 1929.

Stockman points out how rapidly the Fed engaged in scope creep during WWI, essentially monetizing the war debt: you want to buy a Liberty Bond but have no savings or collateral? No problem. We'll lend you the money...

This sets the stage for a more interventionist Fed, and the New York Fed Gov. Ben Strong, whom Stockman contemptuously titles 'Bubbles Ben 1.0'  (vs. the implied Bubbles Ben Bernanke 2.0). Strong pushed down interest rates through purchases of government bonds (justified on grounds of combating post-war deflation), helping prop up the British pound while keeping the dollar from strengthening, which could hurt American exports, speculators hoping to profit from higher-yielding foreign bonds. But manipulative cheap credit not only resulted in excess capacity but in rampant, unsustainable speculation:

Crucially, the overwhelming portion of this unprecedented contraction was in exports, inventories, fixed plant and durable goods—the very sectors that had been artificially hyped.  These components declined by $33 billion during the four year contraction [1929-1933] and accounted for fully 70 percent of the entire drop in nominal GDP. So there was no mysterious loss of that Keynesian economic ether called “aggregate demand”, but only the inevitable shrinkage of a state induced boom.

Go figure... In the aftermath of the stock market crash, "After [auto] sales peaked at 5.3 million units in 1929, they dropped like a stone to 1.4 million vehicles in 1932." Demand hadn't disappeared, but much of that 5.3M in sales was an artifact of an artificial boom induced by a megalomaniac Fed, say, by cash-flush Wall Street traders able to buy the latest, greatest car off their unsustainable profits; these car buyers vanished in the aftermath of the stock market crash. See any parallel in a booming housing bubble over the turn of the century, given an aging, slowly-growing population and struggling household incomes? The Fed is not unlike a nauseous person trying to stave off dreaded vomiting, only finally forced to succumb in the end. Blame the greedy? It's like inviting people to a party and then accusing them of eating too much cake.

Stockman doesn't discuss it here, but it is clear that he thinks that the Chinese, by imitating the Fed manipulators, have failed to learn the lessons of the Great Depression. Among other things, an artificially cheap yuan is devastating to the average Chinese citizen, e.g., in food and energy costs, and for imported resources and parts to Chinese businesses. There are factories running on paper thin margins, which will catch a cold if their global customers get a case of recessionary sniffles. Without a true market, how do the State planners know how to allocate resources? It's hubris. In the following clip, you hear about the construction of ghost cities, etc.; string-pushing central planners don't have a clue...



Cherokee Lizzie, the Koch Brothers and Disingenuous Politics

Hypocrisy is never flattering on a political whore. While the Dems are self-righteously trying to regulate political speech via a Constitutional amendment, allegedly based on corporate influence in politics, who are they fooling? Which party has dominated one or both chambers of Congress almost continuously since 1930? Which party is responsible for a radically expanded budget and convoluted tax/regulatory regimen, rife with special interest exceptions? Do you want a seat at the table of a powerful Congressional committee chair or President (say, for a new healthcare initiative involving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money) or at the table of a Tea Party reformer whom vows to alleviate the regulatory burden particularly hurting your upstart competitors and a simplified tax code taking away hard-won tax gimmicks favoring your company or industry?

While Democrats rail about corporations buying elections and demonize the libertarian Koch brothers, here's a reality check:

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations... So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are ... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats, These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million). So, if money is the measure of evil in American politics and the Evil Koch Bros only come in 59th, who is really the most evil donor ever? Turns out it's Act Blue, with just short of $100 million in contributions during its lifetime, which only started in 2004

What exactly do the Dem-agogues believe that the Evil Koch Brothers are trying to buy off with their $18M?  They oppose big budgets, interventionist foreign policy and a large defense department, they don't have a stake in healthcare, entitlements or other billions in expenditures...

Mazorra has another excellent post, which I'll briefly excerpt here:

Straight-talking Elizabeth Warren says the economy is “rigged” against average Americans. Do big company bigwigs pay for political favor? Well, yeah! Think about which party is the culprit (or the primary culprit) in this exchange. Again, who’s primarily to blame, the private sector actors or the public servants? Warren is after the bigwigs, when she should be after the recipients of the bribes—the legislators of the favors.

Do you think that Democrats are thinking of the taxpayer's wallet when they demand federal infrastructure projects pay union-favored (higher) pay scales? Or when they stick expensive "buy American" provisions in stimulus funding measures? There are alternative sources of corruption, including reelection support.

Mazorra points out the politics on a condo board where others wonder a corrupt relationship between contractors and the board, especially if there is a hefty price tag on the projects in question. But their discontent is not with the contractors, whom have no power to do any work without board approval. But in Cherokee Lizzie's view of the universe, the board is being manipulated by wily contractors...

Mazorra points out that Lizzie has no scruples about putting in a plug for a Massachusetts medical device company, arguing that taxes on said medical devices would adversely impact the company's sales and employees.

He then takes Lizzie's position and then rewords it in the context of minimum wage legislation favored by Lizzie (but in terms of consistency should oppose):

When Congress raises the cost of a specific input, as raising the minimum wage does to employers of low-skilled individuals, it disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Breen and Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Leader of the Band"

Miscellany: 6/27/14

Quote of the Day

I like a man who grins when he fights.
Winston Churchill

Image of the Day

Via Libertarian Republic

Thank you, Obama

"Corrosive Culture" at VA? Say It Ain't So, Joe...

This investigation is all a Kabuki dance. The fact is that we are in the sixth year of the Obama era; he specifically ran on VA reform; how was he going to get an independent opinion of his administration's performance, leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse with administrator playing the role of the three monkeys? Obama pandered to the military community when he wanted their votes. The fact of the matter is that he saw the VA hospital system as a showpiece for government-sponsored healthcare; Obama really didn't want to hear or know that bureaucrats were manipulating stats to keep waiting vets off the books. The private sector, which, unlike the government, cannot rely on force to engage in transactions, looks at feedback loops to drive improvements or innovations in products or services. Vets find themselves captive to a Procrustean system driven at the convenience of government hospital administration; there is no private-sector competitive alternative, closer to the vet's home, which can provide more responsive, quicker, and better services. Government employees are almost impossible to fire, attrition rates at less than a third of the private sector (no, not that government employees are "better" but because of civil service or union protections). Compensation is not linked to productivity, service-oriented effectiveness/efficiency criteria, market conditions or metrics, etc.; innovation or creative destruction is not rewarded in a bureaucratic system. In fact, it looks as though politicians across parties seem willing to reward the already expensive VA bureaucracy with counterproductive budget increases, in a transparent effort to demonstrate their concerns for veterans before this fall's elections: why would you reward incompetence and perverse compensation systems? Where's the reform, the competition? The fact is that vets did not rate high on Obama's set of priorities: when did he call in the VA Administration and ask about veteran satisfaction with the hospitals, comparable operation metrics, etc.? This is one of the problems with a government monopoly; how do you know how to allocate resources without the discipline of a free market?

A Niece Public School Teacher Discovers Her Uncle's Views on Public Education

I found myself dealing with another pro-"gay marriage" troll in yet another self-serving Cato Institute thread, pointing out differences between conservatives and libertarians. I am not going to copy and paste the exchange (my initial comment is below) because I think the case is clear and the responses are dismissive, evasive, repetitive and ad hominem, e.g., you're not a real libertarian. Cato Institute's talking point is that conservatives want to use the power of the State to impose their moral principles on others; this is not true of conservatives like me; I personally don't agree with promiscuous lifestyles, recreational drug use, alcohol abuse, gambling, nontraditional relationships, etc., but I don't want to criminalize these activities, dysfunctional though they may be; I think the individual has free will and except for certain violations of the Non-Aggression Principle (attacking or threatening another person, his liberty or property), I don't favor State intervention. If I were a friend or relative, I might try to persuade the person of the errors of his ways. And I'm not alone; for example, probably the most prominent conservative intellectual over the past 60 years was William F. Buckley, and he had reservations about the War on Drugs.

In the midst of this nonsense, I saw one of my nieces favorably post a liberal image saying instead of attacking teacher compensation, we should have a tax surcharge on the rich. Familiar readers may know that two of my nieces are public school teachers. I do not know to what extent my own relatives read my posts; on some days my readership would be higher than it was if they were regular readers. I have been a harsh critic of government employment even though 5 relatives have worked in the military and/or civil service. I graduated from a public high school and two state universities; I have had appointments at 3 state universities, and I worked in the public sector practice for Oracle Consulting. Am I being hypocritical? No. I did graduate from a Catholic college but never got a private college job offer, although I interviewed with 3 Catholic colleges in person (California, Illinois, and Rhode Island) and my last serious college interview was with a fourth (Virginia), and most of my IT experience has been in the private sector.

One of my pet peeves is a sacred cow in American politics: paying lip service to "underpaid, overworked" public school teachers. I have a problem with this; I have known a few gifted public school teachers, particularly a more demanding sixth-grade English teacher and a high school English teacher, but they were the exceptions, not the rule. In my 8 years as a college instructor and professor, I had to deal with students whom were not qualified (needed remedial work), had poor work habits and unrealistic expectations; most couldn't write a decent essay (in a profession where communication skills are essential). Many of the students had been the beneficiaries of inflated grades in high school, Now I had issues with some of my colleagues (for example, another data structures instructor at UTEP didn't require a single computer assignment, and 90% of my database students, most of them his former students, didn't know what a linked list was); I experienced some morale issues with students whom thought my higher standards were at their expense. But spare me the self-serving rhetoric of teachers; I think IPI posted recent statistics about Chicago schools with a mean salary (never mind benefits, including a generous unpaid-for pension system) in the upper 70K's, abysmal reading and math benchmarks and attrition rates of 40 points or more.

In this particular image, it posed the alternative $50K teacher facing a 20% pay cut vs. a 3% millionaire surcharge. Now to be honest, I've never heard of a single public employee taking any significant pay cut; I know of some cases (e.g., in Wisconsin) where some highly-paid teachers refused to take minor cuts to prevent young teacher layoffs. Now I've had to take serious pay cuts since 2000, despite saving my clients literally thousands of dollars. Only in teaching do you have perverse productivity incentives like shrinking class size but hiring more teachers and paying them more. In this case, $50K is in the neighborhood of median household income--for 12 months vs. 9 months of work, for private sector employees with less job security and less generous benefits.

But what really incenses me is the class warfare argument, that effectively asserts that someone else's income/property should be a slush fund to protect teacher income. I consider the Politics of Envy to be morally repulsive and contrary to Judaic-Christian values. When I took lower job offers in a weak economy, I didn't say, "Hey, I've helped make Larry Ellison [billionaire Oracle CEO] a hell of a lot of money from satisfied customers... It's time for him to give back..."

My niece, who is not tenured and makes nowhere near $50K, had a very emotional, defensive response to a few critical comments on the image (I pointed out teachers earn a living at the expense of the taxpayer, and I believe that education should be privatized, things I have written in the blog several times), insisting that she worked hard for her money, and her folks would have not been able to afford private school. (Reality check: my sister was an RN when she met her husband, and I, and to a lesser extent my sister and younger sibilings, attended part or full school years from my second through sixth grades in Catholic schools, when my Dad was a low-earning military enlisted man. Usually Catholic schools take family income constraints into account; there are a number of anonymous donors, fundraisers, lower administration costs. lower teacher costs, etc.) The fact is that we all pay for public schools through a variety of taxes (property, etc.); in a private system, we would simply pay for schools differently with more control over our own money. I had to deal with a teacher troll whom spat out education would only be for the privileged. This is the nonsense that comes from economically illiterate trolls whom take a public monopoly on education as a self-evident truth. I see public monopolies as intrinsically uncompetitive and suboptimal...

Whoops! I Guess Lerner's Computer Didn't Crash Fast Enough...




Facebook Corner

(Cato Institute). "Unlike liberals and conservatives, Cato scholars have a consistent, minimalist view of the proper role of government...We want government out of our wallets, out of our bedrooms, and out of foreign entanglements unless America’s vital interests are at stake.”
I happen to be a fusion libertarian-conservative. This is a red herring distinction. Long before I evolved to a more libertarian perspective, even as a cultural conservative whom opposes socially experimental policy and the gay lifestyle in my personal value system, I had a live-and-let-live perspective towards the gay community. However, make no mistake here--Cato Institute violated libertarian principles by seeking to use government power and intervention to overturn Proposition 8, which simply restored traditional marriage to the California Constitution, which had been stripped by an activist court. Cato Institute cheered the times that "gay marriage" won at the ballot box and hypocritically sues when "gay marriage" fails at the ballot box. The libertarian position should be to get the government out of the marriage business, not agreeing to government intervention to impose special recognition of nontraditional relationships. It's one thing to tolerate nontraditional relationships, another thing to impose them on social norms, which violates the whole concept of free association. You should be ASHAMED of your unprincipled, incoherent position; it lacks intellectual merit and integrity.

(IPI). Not-so-fun fact: Illinois adopted its income tax in 1969 Read more: http://illin.is/1mm5jkH
 It should be repealed. Several states have no personal income tax, it can be done. I'm sure those states have higher taxes and fees elsewhere to help offset it but Illinois already has some of the highest fees and taxes around so it probably works out ok. We need a study on this! Of course we first have to turn the state from blue to red to have any hope at all.
Actually, most states DO have an income tax. There are states without it...7 out of 50. You do realize without an income tax they would just raise sales taxes and property taxes? OR the debt would get even worse. You don't get something for nothing.
The original discussant is correct, but I would go further. Look at what happened once Feds got the income tax--and even worse, made it progressive, which creates a marginal disincentive to maximize labor or production. Federal spending shot up with its obscene plundering of the economy, well beyond the smaller, more legitimate mandates for government. Not only that, liberals have created tons of tax incentives on behalf of corrupt special interests (including unions and environmentalists) to manipulate the economy. We need to turn away from an economically perverse tax and regulatory regimen; we need to stop immoral, wasteful government from taking away from the productive economy to line the pockets of corrupt politicians and unproductive petty bureaucrats. Government needs to divest itself from nonessential operations; note that the troll makes the tacit assumption that functionally bankrupt, failed government is necessary; that is what I refer to as "begging the question". I would say at least two-thirds of what government does, the private sector can do it faster, cheaper, and better.

(Reason) Further evidence that we need Free Range Kids now more than ever.
The 5-year-old victim of a child bully is being terrorized and judged by incompetent school administrators lacking a modicum of common sense, labeled a deviant without due process, including the knowledge or consent of his parents. PLEASE... Kids don't even know the birds and the bees at that age.

I did come across this gem on WebMD: One night at dinner, my husband asked our then 6-year-old son what he wanted to do for work when he grew up. He replied, "I don't want to work, I just want to be a dad." My husband and I exchanged smiles. Then, without missing a beat, our son continued. "But I'm not sure I want to do that either, because then you have to pee in your wife."
The proper response do any child dropping their pants: Please, pull your pants up.
Smack them on the bottom first.
No, violence is never acceptable; you don't overreact. You need to talk to him privately and be patient but firm.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Henry Payne and Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Hard to Say"

Miscellany: 6/26/14

Quote of the Day

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you 
smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. 
The Republicans are the party that says
government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
P.J. O'Rourke

Chart of the Day

Courtesy of Cato Institute

Image of the Day

Via Libertarian Republic

Apparently the EPA Did Not Get the IRS Email On How to "Lose" Politically Inconvenient Emails...

According to Huffpo:

Federal employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have been instructed to stop defecating in the hallway of a regional office in Denver, Colo., according to an internal e-mail obtained by Government Executive.
In a staff email earlier this year, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor warned of "several" inappropriate bathroom "incidents" in the building, including paper towel-clogged toilets and "an individual placing feces in the hallway" outside the restroom.

Physician, heal thyself!

SCOTUS Adds Another Goose Egg On the Lawless Obama Administration and  Other Bad News For Authoritarian "Progressives"

The Supreme Court rebuked Obama 9-0 over his abuse of recess appointment authority in packing the NLRB with crony unionists. Thumbs UP! In other court news, SCOTUS also unanimously reaffirmed the First Amendment, striking down Massachusetts' censorship zones against pro-life protesters. Thumbs UP! And for the Zippers' current home state, former Mayor Michael "Big Apple Nanny" Bloomberg's quixotic big soda ban was finally put to rest. Thumbs UP!

One of My Favorite EconTalks: Yuval Levin on the Great Debate Between Burke and Paine

One of the things about this talk is that I rediscovered an appreciation for the great conservative Burke; it's clear that Levin and moderator Roberts lean towards Burke, but I may need to revisit a few posts where I've made more cursory references to Burke. Burke was particularly pragmatic and nuanced, not a line-in-the-sand-ideologue: he was an incrementalist reformer whom feared the Pandora's box of radical discontinuities (especially the French Revolution), Do I consider myself a Burkean? Certainly not in the sense of being a stare decisis jurist locking in activist anti-liberty judicial rulings; I don't think we're ever going to be able to finesse our way incrementally out of the Baby Boomer tsunami and the unfunded entitlement and pension crises. Burke, while sympathetic with American colonist grievances, never did support independence from the paternalism and second-class citizenship of British imperialism. And whereas he had an incremental plan for abolition of the abominable slave trade and slavery in Britain itself, he never introduced it and we saw an incremental reform initiated over 20 years later, roughly 1806. He also had more faith in the goodness of government.

Levin sees Paine and Burke as forefathers of social liberalism (Rights of Man) and conservatism (Reflections on the Revolution in France) respectively. Paine loathed the social institutions like organized religion as a yoke on liberty and wildly supported the more radicalized French revolutionaries; Burke was so horrified that the contagion might spread to Britain that he worried about what would become of his remains if and when he died.

I heard enough during the interview to want to put Levin's book, up for some book awards, on my wishlist. Roberts has an interesting post-interview reflection on interview comments well worth reading. Roberts' opinions on economic issues are strikingly similar to mine (although he has a more tentative, congenial approach). I did like the side discussion on libertarianism and the problem of marketing a conservative message.

On the Marketing Of a Conservative-Libertarian Message

Picking up where my Levin book discussion left off, I noticed one liberal website mourned the seeming fact that the electoral Senate map favors a GOP takeover this fall--they had been counting on Mississippi and Oklahoma pulling an Akin/Murdock result. I don't think so. Akin and Murdock got off message and talked incoherently on abortion--something that simply isn't an issue on the national stage except perhaps for government funding or mandate. These were predictable questions given the deceptive "progressive" talking point of a "war on women" and I'm surprised veteran politicians had not anticipated them. I don't think any Republican will go off message (at least I hope not), but let me predict this one: "gay marriage". And what I would advise any candidate to say is to remind voters this is not a federal issue; express a preference for government to stay out of the issue but to express personal belief in the traditional definition of marriage and acknowledge gay people's right to pursue personal happiness in their own relationships.

But there's a problem which I call the "paradox of limited government". You can't run a campaign of "good cop/bad cop", acting out as simply Whac-a-Mole on irresponsible "Progressive" programs. Now no political candidate has ever tried to hire me as a consultant, and I'm not going give away professional advice in a free blog, but here are some general points, not intended as a comprehensive program, but a good start:

• "too much government" slows the economy with taxes and expensive, unnecessary regulations which deter job creation
• we need a sound currency, not policies that starve pensioners and lower-income by punishing savings and inflationary healthcare, food and energy prices
• we believe more in the private sector helping people in need than overpaid, ineffective government bureaucrats; point out decades of failed "Progressive" policies, the diversion of resources better left in the hands of the job creators to invest in new businesses, technology and workers
• don't be predictable, do not allow your opponent to define you, don't run a defensive campaign: run a confident, positively-toned one
• don't get caught in a game of "which programs will you cut": point out current spending is unsustainable, everything--include Defense--needs to be cut across the board; talk about eliminating duplication across agencies, shuttering redundant programs and obsolete operations, reducing our overseas troop commitments and bases, selling federal government assets, government head count reductions by attrition, decentralizing social programs to the states
• point out the Democrats routinely overpromise and underdeliver; engage in "plain talk", not empty promises, about unsustainable entitlements and the national debt
• avoid polarizing rhetoric on immigration; do not attack Obama personally--pledge to be the loyal opposition, to engage in win-win negotiation
• lay out a true healthcare market-based agenda, focusing on catastrophic healthcare, cross-state competition and risk pooling and shoring up state/regional high risk pools

IRS Emails and Disk Crashes

I started to comment on a relevant Facebook thread this week when I experienced a browser crash. But as I looked at a Daily Caller column today of 7 IRS employees suffering from relevant "computer crashes", it reminded me of the thread I was commenting on. Another discussant had correctly pointed out that in businesses, messages are not simply stored on desktops but on servers, and there are multiple levels of redundancy in terms of copies and backups. (As a 20-year DBA, I'm obsessed with backup and recovery, and I've had many occasions on my own PC's to migrate or otherwise restore multiple years of emails, filter rules, etc.)

The point of the discussant was to point out that the average citizen or legislator may lack sufficient computing background and professional IT experience to accept explanations of hard drive failures or computer crashes at face value. But when you look at the dependence of many businesses on messaging--and I have seen employee accounts with gigabytes of stored emails and/or attachments. I've seen occasional outages of email services result in lost employee productivity, never mind months or years of exchanges and materials. I've occasionally seen employee systems with corrupted email folders or other anomalies, perhaps a software or disk anomaly, but I've seen technicians resolve these issues within a couple of hours or so using redundant copies.

I have worked at a number of government agencies (city/county, state and federal), although not the IRS. There are often inconsistencies between agencies (e.g., I've had nearly a half-dozen background investigations, because agencies have their own idiosyncratic processes), and most emails are not stored in the databases I've worked with, so my direct knowledge is limited (not to mention contractual restrictions in what I can discuss). But let me point out a few general comments: computer server data storage tends to be state-of-the-art with highly sophisticated disk redundancy. These disks are arranged in a configuration which allows one or more disks to die without losing a byte of data. They are swappable, meaning a technician can remove and replace disks without affecting operations; the government has support contracts that call for vendors to replace these disks within at most a few hours. In addition, the IT manager may maintain a number of disks in inventory which could be deployed. Usually there is at least a minimum once daily disk and/or tape backup of changed data and weekly comprehensive backups and often layered hourly or more frequent backups of changed user files.

In addition, there are government audits/reviews of systems, databases and procedures to ensure "best practices" are being followed for each layer of technology, including security patching and scanning. Most agencies have in place disaster recovery processes that have been tested.

Does that mean things don't fall between the cracks? Of course not. For example, on my first Maryland gig, I discovered that the previous DBA/system administrator hadn't noticed two of the servers were effectively running on their spare tires and the backup power supply on the main server wasn't plugged into a usable socket. But the idea that the IRS "lost" emails is about as credible as the infamous 18.5 minute Watergate tape gap; the most reasonable explanation: criminal evidence tampering and obstruction of justice, pure and simple. Can I prove it? No. But the idea that the only flaw in the IRS IT system coincides with the few emails under scrutiny violates Ockham's razor.

Zipper, Does Everyone You Meet At the Grocery Store Put 14 $550 Swiss Watches on Their Shopping List?





Facebook Corner

(LFC). "Economists call this legitimate racket 'regulatory capture.' When a regulatory scheme is transformed into a competition-stifling tool of the ostensibly regulated industry, that industry has 'captured' the regulations. Regulatory capture in turn encourages rent-seeking behavior...In quota states, holders of liquor licenses see them as fairly liquid assets"
It's the Statist anti-consumer corruption of a mixed economy. Incompetent regulators cannot cope with the dynamism of a vibrant free market: innovation, creative destruction, etc. They believe that fewer market competitors are more manageable for the convenience of central planning.

(IPI). The U.S. Supreme Court could announce its decision in the case Harris v. Quinn as early as today.
Legal experts and unions across the country are closely watching this case because it could be a landmark decision on the issues of unionization and freedom of speech. Here are the facts: http://illin.is/1mqcCwp
The rent-seeking crony unionists want to skim off state funds as paydown on their political chits in supporting the election of corrupt Democrat leadership in Chicago and Springfield.

Videos From the Homecoming Blog (Let's Bring Them ALL Home)







Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Same Old Lang Syne". If there is a signature Fogelberg tune, it must be this one. One of the most memorable story tunes like Chapin's "Taxi". This song got so much airplay that I remember that the ladies in UH Catholic Newman (I was one of the core dozen or two members of the group at the time) loathed hearing it yet again. I could listen to it hundreds of times and it would still sound fresh; I couldn't relate to the life of a traveling musician, but it makes me wonder what would happen if I suddenly ran into one of my old girlfriends (especially the one in Florida)....

(In case you're wondering, no one special in Houston or as a professor; there was a former Houston girlfriend whom didn't take it well when I broke up with her (I thought in a very tactful way, but she was determined to have the final word). She burned her bridges with me and permanently lost my respect and friendship. Houston was rather weird; in my first night MBA class, I was sitting in the front row of my macroeconomics class when a six-foot blonde at my left, whom I didn't know, spontaneously started playing footsie up my left pant leg; I was mortified that the prof might see it. A few years later, I was debugging one of my coed students' COBOL programs when she did the same thing; as in the first case, I didn't know what to say or do, so I froze and pretended that it wasn't happening. I overheard her bragging to another coed in the hall as they left my shared office, "Did you see me turn on the teacher?" Luckily, none of these type things happened when I became a professor; maybe it was something in the water in Houston. Given ideological feminism in academia, I as a single white male constantly worried  about spurious allegations and always insisted on keeping the office door open, especially with coeds; for the record, I never dated any then current/former student. )

Miscellany: 6/25/14

Quote of the Day

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein

Guest Quotation of the Day

Remember Obama pushing infrastructure, education, and green energy as "investments"? Did his strategy lead to robust US economic growth, rising income/wealth?

And it must be remembered that the effect of “encouraging” any industry by taxation [in the form of a tariff] is necessarily to discourage other industries, and thus to force labor into the protected industries by driving it out of others. - Henry George (HT Cafe Hayek)

 Chart of the Day: Bring Them ALL Home...

Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day

What is the Fed Up To? Time For Another Audit...

From Casey Research:

The fed funds rate will remain at zero to 25 basis points from now until we’re all safe and sound. Which might be never. And while the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) whittles $10 billion from the Fed’s monthly securities purchases, the central bank is still gorging itself on $35 billion worth of securities a month and has leveraged its balance sheet skyward to 77 to 1.
It’s bad enough that central bankers create money out of nowhere to buy bonds. Now it turns out that’s not all they’re buying. News from London reveals central banks and other government-controlled pools of money are buying stocks.
A study by global research firm Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) states global public investors “as a whole appear to have built up their investments in publicly quoted equities by at least $1 [trillion] in recent years.”

Bad Elephant of the Year Nominee: Thad Cochran (R-MS)

I made it clear in yesterday's post that I was personally rooting for challenger McDaniel in the race. TPNN describes desperate dirty tactics from the incumbent's campaign (my edits):

Under Mississippi law, voters in one party’s primary must intend to support that party’s nominee in the general election.  Recent polls showed McDaniel ahead by 8%-12%. Democrat voters were flooded with robocalls, smearing McDaniel and the pro-freedom, pro-Constitution Tea Party movement as racist, encouraging them to vote for Cochran. The robocall asks voters to say ‘no’ to the Tea Party, ‘no’ to their obstruction, ‘no’ to their disrespectful treatment of the first African-American president.”The call also urges,” If we do nothing, Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel wins and causes even more problems for President Obama.” One county, Hinds County, drew specific suspicion from the McDaniel campaign. In the June 3 primary, Cochran won the county by 5,300 votes, however, he won there by almost 11,000 votes in the runoff election on Tuesday. 

SCOTUS Decision Day: Aereo Loses 6-3 Thumbs DOWN, No General Warrant for Smartphones 9-0 Thumbs UP

From my May 10 post:

I'm not a fearless predictor of judicial decisions; for example, I would never have predicted that Chief Justice Roberts would have ruled in favor of ObamaCare as an exercising of the State's taxing authority. However, given the context of recent decisions affirming the right of political speech, I would be surprised if SCOTUS didn't strike down Ohio's censorship of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony list. Similarly, I would be surprised if SCOTUS allowed warrantless searches of cellphones. I'm less certain about the Aereo case. I would prefer a ruling for Aereo because, as it argues, it is simply an extension of traditional "free" broadcasting. The national broadcasting companies now share in cable revenues, in addition to commercial sponsor revenues. In essence, the cable companies/networks are arguing equal protection.

I nailed all of my predictions. I dislike the Aereo decision as I view it as anti-competitive and potentially chilling to the production of innovative services, but given programming copyrights and equal protection, I didn't see how Aereo could expect anything better than a licensing agreement with content providers. As for cellphone searches, as I adlib in FB Corner below, now about the NSA...

Follow-up Odds and Ends

Apparently Meriam Ibrahim, on being rearrested after her dismissed conviction of adultery/apostasy, is being accused of "fraud" for not using her Muslim father's name on travel documents. Nothing new on the alleged hoax on the Victoria Wilcher KFC incident: the grandmother is sticking to the story, and the donation website vendor has frozen its operations until the incident is resolved. I did read a story that the grandmother had left the Jackson area for 15 years and recently moved back and was still getting used to new streets, etc. I'm still puzzled about the post occurring almost a month after the investigation date, which seems related to a posted date of a medical appointment for Victoria; the KFC post discussed an incident the prior week.

Facebook Corner

(Cato Institute). "If the benefits of a minimum wage were as good as its advocates believe, then why stop at $15? Why not $20, or $30, or more? You never hear an answer to that because there is none."
 How much CATO getting paid to promote Conservative economic agenda?
 Since when is pricing people out of a job a morally responsible decision?

(IPI). Government-mandated maternity/paternity leave is in the news again, thanks to a new pitch by President Barack Obama that comes just as he’s trying to change the conversation before the 2014 election heats up.
Don't you just miss the good old days where us peasants worked during giving birth and got payed pennies. What's wrong with people and all the crazy ideas about treating workers like human beings?!! (Note the sarcasm)
What wrong with people whom don't know the first thing about running a business and are too economically illiterate to understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch and if you raise the cost of labor, there's less demand for labor?

(Independent Institute) SCOTUS unanimously ruled that the police must have a warrant to search mobile phones. From Chief Justice Roberts' opinion in Riley v. California:
"Our cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response to the reviled “general warrants” and “writs of assistance” of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity. Opposition to such searches was in fact one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself. In 1761, the patriot James Otis delivered a speech in Boston denouncing the use of writs of assistance. A young John Adams was there, and he would later write that “[e]very man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did,ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” According to Adams, Otis’s speech was “the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.”
Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant." 
I expected a win; a unanimous ruling makes it sweeter. To hear the Chief Justice acknowledge the issue of general warrants in historical context is freaking awesome. Now about the NSA....

(Drudge Report). SUPREMES STRIKE DOWN POLICE CELLPHONE SNOOPING http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/25/supreme-court-bans-warrantless-cell-phone-searches/
Good. We need to target the NSA next!
frankly i care less about the NSA than i do about the police as they are the ones average everyday folks are likely to have encounters with
The concept is the same--searches amounting to a de facto general warrant.

(Jeffrey Tucker). How easy it is to sweep all of this grim history under the carpet, blaming the Nazis and Hitler and imagining that “we” had nothing to do with it. In fact, it is all part of the deep history of the 20th century, a horrid stain on elite academia, and also a warning about the unity of science and the state. Science makes errors, sometimes ghastly ones. When error is enshrined in law, the consequences can be unthinkable. http://tucker.liberty.me/2014/06/24/how-the-u-s-became-an-extermination-camp/
I don't think we need to think of restricted "gay marriage" recognition as policy intended to suppress related procreation... Of course, we have a softer version of eugenics in the form of sex-selective and disability-based (Down syndrome) abortions, sperm banks and emerging designer baby technologies.

(Mercatus Center of George Mason). The fight for competition in ridesharing has spread internationally. Veronique de Rugy explains why low-income Americans and consumers lose when regulators try to stop this innovation: http://bit.ly/1sBWZ9Q
as if you were really concerned about 'low income' people.
Kudos to the pro-consumer Mercatus Center recognizing the deadweight consumer loss in protectionist policies favoring crony unionists; those consumers often include lower-income individuals on tight budgets with limited transportation options whom need to stretch their limited resources. The Virginia state Luddites will find that it's impossible to put a genie back in the bottle.

Just a cheeky bit of state coercion to keep the Indians and Unions in check, but don't let facts get in the way of a good myth.
The Gilded Age produced, unlike the modern era of "progressive" hell, growth that lessened consumer inequality, higher wages and increased standard of living. And the "progressives" have brought their own failed domestic and foreign interventions at the point of a gun; the only difference is that they've done it with unsound money and on the backs of our grandchildren.

(Libertarian Republic). Wal-Mart Absolutely CRUSHES New York Times Hit Piece | Liberty Viral
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../walmart-fact-check-new...
This is a typical polemical economically illiterate piece of defensive "progressive" crap. 

Just take, for example, "But by not paying its workers a living wage, which does force some unknown number of them onto public assistance, its policies also arguably eat into a lot of tax revenue. A recent study by Americans For Tax Fairness estimated that Walmart workers cost the U.S. government $6.2 billion a year. The group also estimated that Walmart and its founding Walton family cost the government another $1.6 billion in tax revenue through various tax loopholes."

First of all, WalMart hires people at a commensurate, competitive rate for their skills and experience--if they didn't, they wouldn't be one of the largest employers in America and they would lose employees to competitors. Some arbitrary number picked out of some "progressive"'s ass for "living wage" or related redistributive concept is absolute fiction. And certainly competitors and smaller businesses that pay the same or even less would be subject to the same ludicrous criticism. Note that roughly 98% of jobs pay above minimum-wage--and many, if not most lower-wage earners may be dependents or spouses of the principal breadwinner. 

Second, let us all agree that the "progressive" social welfare net is a failure and morally corrupt and should be eliminated; the only effective thing it does is feed the overpaid parasitic bureaucrats. The idea the Walmart is "subsidized" by the federal government is a laughable departure from reality. Look at anytime Walmart opens a location: they have multiple candidates for any position, applicants whom are aware of the going rate for their marketable skills. If the government were subsidizing employees below their market worth, why wouldn't Walmart be hiring even more? It's only because the benefit/productivity doesn't exceed the cost, 

Let's point out the real story here: the "living wage" is basically a way for crony unionists to shrink the competing work force and thus artificially increase wages. All that wage/compensation floors achieve in succeeding is make employment for the chronically unemployed all but impossible. 

The real solution to improving wages is, like in the Gilded Age, to adopt pro-growth policies: embrace a sound currency by ending the Fed, lower the government cost burden, abolish crony business and union protections, embrace immigration, free markets and free trade, eliminate legally-protected occupational cartels, and privatize at least 75% of government.

Political Humor

• An original: Charlie Rangel told a congregation in 116th St: "God sent us Barack Obama."

God punished Egypt with the 10 Plagues, but we got Barack Obama? Rev Jeremiah Wright said, "God damn America" and sent us Barry...

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Nate Beeler via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Dan Fogelberg, "Heart Hotels". If push came to shove and I had to pick a favorite Fogelberg tune, I would pick this one; the melody and arrangement are awesome. Of course, his "Rhythm of the Rain" is one of the most awesome remakes in pop history...



Cool Science: An Embedded Chip Enables a Paralyzed Man To Move His Hand By Thought

(HT Libertarian Republic/Liberty Viral)