No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker
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| Google knows it's the blogger's birthday: awesome yet creepy |
Chart of the Day
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| Courtesy of Mercatus Center |
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| I, Nutella via Independent Institute |
Image of the Day
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| Via Libertarian Catholic |
Rant of the Day: Overdue American Criminal Justice Reform by The Economist
The store camera tells a harrowing tale. John Crawford was standing in a Walmart in Ohio holding an air rifle—a toy he had picked off a shelf and was presumably planning to buy. He was pointing it at the floor while talking on his phone and browsing other goods. The children playing near him did not consider him a threat; nor did their mother, who was standing a few feet away. The police, responding to a 911 caller who said that a black man with a gun was threatening people, burst in and shot him dead. The children’s mother died of a heart attack in the ensuing panic. In September a grand jury declined to indict the officers who shot Mr Crawford.
Bits of America’s criminal-justice system are exemplary—New York’s cops pioneered data-driven policing, for instance—but overall the country is an outlier for all the wrong reasons. It jails nearly 1% of its adult population, more than five times the rich-country average. A black American man has, by one estimate, a one in three chance of spending time behind bars. Sentences are harsh. Some American states impose life without parole for persistent but non-violent offenders; no other rich nation does. America’s police are motivated to be rapacious: laws allow them to seize assets they merely suspect are linked to a crime and then spend the proceeds on equipment. And, while other nations have focused on community policing, some American police have become paramilitary, equipping themselves with grenade launchers and armoured cars. The number of raids by heavily armed SWAT teams has risen from 3,000 a year in 1980 to 50,000 today, by one estimate.Statistics That Pope Francis and Other "Progressives" Don't Know
Above all, American law enforcement is unusually lethal: even the partial numbers show that the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year. By comparison, those in England and Wales shot and killed no one.
- In 2012 alone, average factory wages in China rose 14 percent. In manufacturing, specifically, worker wages have increased 71 percent since 2008. Over the last thirty years, Chinese families living in extreme poverty dropped [by 680 million people] from 84 percent to under 10 percent.
- A study by Yale University and the Brookings Institution finds that in just 30 years - 1981 to 2011 - the world's population living below the extreme poverty line plummeted from 52 percent to 15 percent. The study credits the rise of globalization [international trade] and capitalism as primary drivers of the decline in poverty.
I've always loved red crunchy seedless grapes (although I now have to limit fruit consumption for health reasons); years ago, I remember just buying a batch of imported Chilean grapes at the local supermarket when a big fear-mongering story broke out (maybe it was the 1989 scare). The local newcasts tipped us off we could return our product for refund at our local supermarkets. I had no intention of returning my delicious grapes, but I was halfway hoping (to no avail) that my market would have marked down their remaining produce--the shelves had already been cleared. There had been a tip allegedly of two tainted grapes bound for export, but the panic ended up costing thousands of agriculture sector jobs and a $400M hit to Chile's economy.
Locavorism is a movement that hypes the purchase and consumption of local vs. globally produced foods for a variety of reasons (sustainability, less carbon footprint, taste/freshness, local economy boost, etc.) I'm mostly annoyed at the sham rationale for protectionist policy; mercantilism is a lose-lose policy, and it has the impact of increasing one's food costs and thus lowering one's standard of living. This Daily Beast article does a good job of debunking a variety of hyped claims, but their discussion of economic claims is spot on:
Long-distance trade historically has allowed producers the world over the opportunity to specialize in the crops and livestock for which their local area is best suited, resulting in significant improvements in the volume, quality, and affordability of global food production. But local food activists bemoan the fact that purchasing nonlocal items benefits the distant headquarters of large retailers, shipping companies, and mega-corporate farms, whereas money spent on local products would create more hometown jobs as nearby farmers patronize local businesses.
Purchasing more-expensive local items, however, leaves less money in peoples’ pockets. Other producers of other products suffer lower sales as a result. Consumers may have fewer resources available to purchase goods and services other than food made wholly or partly in the locavores’ community. Higher prices always and everywhere mean greater poverty and a lower standard of living for all.
Locavores are further oblivious to the fact that no sustained economic development has ever occurred without significant urbanization, for cities provide a host of economic benefits ranging from a transportation hub to a wide array of suppliers and skills. Urban agglomerations have also always been essential for agricultural advances by offering large and concentrated markets for rural goods. Unfortunately for locavores, as Plato observed in his Republic over two millennia ago, to find a city “where nothing need be imported” has long been “impossible.” If adopted on a large scale, locavorism can only re-create the misery inherent to subsistence agriculture.No Beer Ice Cream For You!
From Reuters: a political leader even less popular than Obama:
An ice-cream store, Coromoto ice-cream store in the highland town of Merida, listed in the Guinness World Records book for its 863 different flavours ranging from beer to beans has become the latest victim of Venezuela's economic crisis: "We are closed during the season due to shortage of milk."
Venezuelans have been suffering acute shortages of basic goods, from toilet-paper to spare tires, all year due to an economic slowdown, the highest inflation in the Americas, and the impact of strict currency controls.
President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government says foes in Venezuela's opposition and wealthy elite are exacerbating economic problems by hoarding and price-gouging in what he terms an "economic war" against him.
The shortages have annoyed Venezuelans across the political spectrum and contributed to a fall in Maduro's popularity, with one prominent local pollster putting him on 24 percent approval.TSA: Federal Panty Raid?
From Abigail Hall of Independent Institute:
This Christmas I flew out of town with my fiancé to see his family. Since we’d be out of town for several days, I checked a bag with the airline. As I went to my bag to retrieve some things before bed, I was greeted by a note from the TSA. The paper stated that my bag had been searched as a part of necessary “security” precautions. I realized some things were missing from my luggage. Those things were my underwear.
In total, a report on TSA theft obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that the TSA fired over 400 employees for theft between 2002 and 2011. I’ve written elsewhere about problems with the TSA. Not only does the TSA violate your individual liberties every time you fly, it has also failed to catch a single terrorist since it was formed in 2001.Facebook Corner
(IPI). A group of Chicago unions, including AFSCME Council 31 and the Chicago Teachers Union, have sued the city over a recent attempt to reform two of the city’s four pension funds, effectively locking in bankruptcy for city-employee pension systems.
The bottom line, and I wish IPI would make this clearer, is that the distributions are, and have been unsustainable for some time. Past and current retirees have been hollowing out the reserves, due to corrupt dealings between unions and Democrat officials. And if you think things are bad now, underfunded after Fed policy has pumped up stock values, just wait until a market correction of 20-30% or more.
Let's be clear: there will be no federal bailout of special-interest pension funds. And even Illinois' crazy justice system cannot enforce infeasible future bailouts of unrealistic distributions; I'm not a lawyer, but I don't believe the employees/retirees are entitled to more than their vested/accrued contributions (including employer-matched contributions).
Isn't this article a little like the tail wagging the dog? What happened to the money? Who misappropriated the funds? Not the teachers, not the unions. The teachers paid in their share. What happened to the other 75 cents on the dollar? It's easy to bash the unions, why not going to another level and find out what happened to the money. Wait, nobody wants to work as hard as the teachers who are on the verge of losing the type of pension they had planned for throughout their careers. I'm very disappointed in you Illinois Policy.
So many of the public parasites are mathematically illiterate. No, you did not kick in your "fair share" of a million-dollar plus distribution over potentially 30 or more years of retirement. Even multi-millionaires who paid maximum into social security claim a maximum distribution of under $30K/year. The last statistics I've seen is employees' contributions amount to about 20 months of retirement benefits; assuming an employer match, that's just over 3 years; there is no pension system other than maybe Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to provide returns to bridge the gap.
Let's be clear: you are not asking for your "fair share"'; you are demanding future generations of taxpayers, with their own bills to pay--including public services--to make up the difference due to unrealistically high distributions and gross underfunding of these corrupt promises between crony unionists and their bought-for Democrat political whores.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Bob Gorrell via Townhall |
Kenny G, "Winter Wonderland"
