Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas Alva Edison
Joke of the Day
What did socialists use before candles? Electricity. [HT Austin Petersen]Tweet of the Day
President Obama said Joe Biden "would be a superb president." He had earlier issued himself a solid B+. Easy grades: self-esteem movement.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 22, 2014
Rob Ford's nephew Michael is running for Toronto city council. His motto: everyone has a crazy old uncle in the family.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 22, 2014
University of Wisconsin undermines academic integrity by rationalizing politically correct grade distributions http://t.co/iBZqRi8R6P
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 23, 2014
Chart of the Day
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| Via Mercatus Center |
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| Via MyGovCost |
Image of the Day
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| Via Libertarian Republic |
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| Via National Review |
Carpe Diem and Food Inflation
I just got through criticizing a more general critique on inflation by Mark Perry, and he's now focusing on the food inflation cranks in this piece. I understand that my experiences are anecdotal, and I understand that one year's high prices may be impacted by short-lived conditions--one year's freak weather pattern may wipe out a key harvest (say, a coffee harvest in Brazil) and affect prices, or there's a virus breakout affecting large numbers of piglets. What about water shortages in California, which produces a high percentage of the nation's produce? Prices were up sharply earlier this year, e.g., cattle, hogs, coffee, milk, grains, etc. But, other than in-season berries, I've found almost everything sharply up over the past 6 months or so: you name it: bags of onions, tomatoes, hamburger, packaged nuts, cheese, frozen fruit, eggs, etc. And there's often a lag of higher commodity prices hitting the store shelves. Now is a recent 10% jump in food CPI numbers part of a trend or just a blip? But keep in mind if you are on fixed income, this is a loss in your purchasing power and your standard of living--not to mention Perry's optimistic view on incomes rising higher than the CPI pays short shrift to the record low labor force participation rates, the deterioration of household incomes and net wealth since the start of the Great Recession, and we're not even getting started on methodological issues with the CPI measures. And it's not just food: gas prices are double or more since 2009, young people often have significant college loans (I've had nieces working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet), and rents are high because of many former homeowners have had to compete for vacant units. A lot of the things I've seen are an artifact of bad government and/or monetary policy. There are a lot of things Mark Perry is not looking at: many bond funds are now seeing net outflows, and many market interest rates are slowly creeping up. A day late and a dollar short: the Fed is always slow to react to the signs of inflation, and they don't always recognize and respond to the slowing economy soon enough.
A Draw on Two Court Rulings On the Legality of ACA Subsidies On Federal-Run Health Exchange
The Halbig DC Court of Appeals decision is decisive in my view: ObamaCare explicitly links subsidies to state-run exchanges. Why? Because they figured that states didn't want to lose their "fair share" of subsidies. It was their incentive to set up an exchange. They didn't really anticipate states to opt out. Now the Administration wants to change the rules, that they intended to provide subsidies to an unnecessary federal exchange all along. Who's going to believe them? These are the same extortionists whom tried to argue, either you accept our expansion of Medicaid, where you'll eventually pay half the costs, or you immediately lose all Medicaid matching funds which will blow your state budgets wide open. The federal government is not a US state. "Don't tell me words don't matter".
The fourth circuit ruled in favor of the relevant IRS rule, claiming the law was confusing. No, it's not. It's a politically convenient rewriting of legislation by the executive branch. What's the purpose of a qualification of a state exchange if any ObamaCare exchange was eligible? The word 'state' is unambiguous; this is a straightforward application of Ockham's razor. I'm not going to go into an arcane discussion of legal issues, but Peter Sudman of Reason goes into one of their signature 3 takeways from today's rulings.
Where to from here? We could see the DC decision appealed to the full court from the 3-judge decision or we could see SCOTUS taking up the issue next session. I think in this case, Chief Justice Roberts won't read the IRS rule in the legislation. If subsidies aren't available on the federal exchange, it's a game changer...
Cool Science
More Proposals
Facebook Corner
(Bastiat Institute). When Americans are killed by non-Americans, it means war! It's never OK to target civilians, ever! When non-Americans are killed by Americans, it's just collateral damage. If they didn't want to be killed, they shouldn't have been near such a dangerous area.
Isn't it time for his nap?
Isn't it time for his nap?
The working-age population in Illinois grew by 12,000 people over that same three-month period, which leaves nearly 58,000 working-age Illinoisans unaccounted for and out of the workforce in just three months.
Read more: http://illin.is/1p6EcPB
This graph makes no sense. What is the horizontal axis? Doing this kind of stuff is just a foolish attempt at propaganda. We don't need no stinking propaganda. Remember that and stop insulting our intelligence. It isn't that we disagree with the premise of what you are attempting to illustrate...
You're kidding, right? The horizontal axis is time (over 3 months) and the vertical axis is change in the labor population. The top line reflects additions to the labor pool (say, new graduates). The bottom line reflects the net change in labor force. The unemployment rate reflects the official labor force. Discouraged workers are inferred as no longer in the labor force but remain in the labor pool. (Of course, people retire permanently from the labor force/pool.)
De Tocqueville certainly knew what he was talking about.
Not De Tocqueville, but a 50's op-ed writer, Elmer Peterson. I wrote a post on the topic in my political blog: http://rguillem.blogspot.com/2013/01/de-tocqueville-quote-and-general-welfare.html
See Mercatus Center chart above.
Can't walk around most of Asia without a breathing mask and you don't dare drink the water. So what if rats are running around the restaurants and their schools collapses on top of their kids - hey, at least they don't have any damn regulation.
Why is it that Mercatus draws economic illiterate "progressive" trolls? These idiots don't have a basic conceptual understanding of regulatory capture, never mind that $1.86T in regulation is effectively a tax on the economy, hurting economic growth and jobs: one of the highest burdens on the planet. The vast majority of it does not meet a cost/benefit threshold and does little more than favor the political class of parasitic bureaucrats and populist whores.
(Institute for Justice). VICTORY! The Milwaukee Common Council voted unanimously to lift the city’s cap on taxi permits.
It's like playing Whac-a-Mole. Reason.com just posted a story about how Colorado, the 'innovation' state, is cracking down on Uber....
Political Humor
In a recent interview, President Obama said Joe Biden "would be a superb president." In a related story, Hillary Clinton punched a hole in a door. - Seth Meyers
President Obama said Joe Biden "would be a superb president." He had earlier issued himself a solid B+. Easy grades: self-esteem movement.
I heard that Rob Ford's nephew is planning to run for a seat on the Toronto City Council. He has an interesting campaign slogan: "I'm adopted!" - Jimmy Fallon
Rob Ford's nephew Michael is running for Toronto city council. His motto: everyone has a crazy old uncle in the family.
Choose Life
Political Cartoon
Usually I've had at least one or 2 daily that made my standards. Sometimes I find them via Townhall.com, PatriotPost, or Facebook. Over the past couple of days I've been finding cartoons, likely anti-immigrant, neocon in principle, mocking Obama over the child immigrant issue at the Mexican border, his reaction to the airliner shot down over eastern Ukraine (with insurgents backed with Russian weapons), the Israeli invasion of Gaza, etc. Make no mistake; I am NOT supporting Obama's policies in these cases, but I don't like the neo-con or anti-immigrant perspective of the more recent selections.
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| Via Bastiat Institute |
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall |
Billy Joel, "Piano Man"
