Desperate times call for desperate candidates

Pardon me while I clean up a bit...a blog collects a bit of dust and debris when it's not used for a while. I can't believe I haven't posted anything since September.

OK, that's better. Now, where was I? Oh, right...I was going to opine on the Republican primary race. It's pretty damned hard to get excited about it and I guess I'll just have to assume I'll be voting for Mitt Romney this November. I had to laugh this past weekend during coverage of the GOP primary circus in New Hampshire. A reporter made reference to some "energized Romney supporters", and all I could think was "Energized? Resigned maybe, but definitely not energized."

Anyway, I was pretty excited about Rick Perry's entry into the race right up until the time he started to flame out. Then I started paying more attention to Gingrich, and when he started to surge in the polls after some strong debate performances I thought, hey...here might be a guy who could totally dismantle Obama in a one-on-one debate. But I started to sour on Gingrich when he went batshit crazy on the judiciary.

And this past week, when both Perry and Gingrich went all Occupy Wall Street on Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital, I knew they were both pretty desperate. I don't think Perry and Gingrich have suddenly decided they're 99%-ers, but I do think they're counting on people's ignorance of just what private equity firms do in an effort to paint Romney as a corporate raider.

Sure, private equity firms sometimes shut down companies and lay people off, but that's not their main goal. In fact, that's generally something they try to avoid. They don't just buy up troubled companies, either. As a case in point, the company I work for acquired a company some years back, but after a few years, it was decided that the smaller company's product really didn't fit into our larger portfolio. It would have been very easy for my company to just kill off the product and layoff the staff associated with it, but the product had value so it was decided to sell off that business unit to a private equity firm. That was at least four years ago, and that company is still alive - and growing - today as an independent software firm.

So, thank you Newt and Rick, for making Romney's inevitability a self-fulfilling prophecy, and for making free market capitalism a topic of debate...among conservatives.

The labor debate, before the invention of lying

Not long ago, there was a Rickey Gervais movie called "The Invention Of Lying", which took place in an alternate universe in which people were incapable of telling anything but the unvarnished truth.

Let's superimpose that alternate universe on today's debate over public sector unions and their deathgrip on the public fisc. Our intrepid reporter is cruising labor demonstrations, statehouses, and Chicago hotels filled with Democrats subverting the legislative process in their home states.

SCENE: Big labor rally with lots of people dressed in red, waving their fists in the air.

Intrepid Reporter (to stout 40-ish woman): Excuse me, ma'am...are you a public school teacher?

Stout Woman: Yes, indeedy!

IR: And what are you demonstrating about today?

SW: Well, duh! Those terrorist Koch Whores who are trying to destroy our very way of life!

IR: Oh, you mean the Republicans?

SW: Exactly!

IR: And how are they doing that? Destroying our very way of life, that is.

SW: Well, they want us to work and contribute reasonable amounts of money to our medical benefits and retirement plans, without the right to dictate to the taxpayers how much is reasonable.

IR: Just like private sector workers, you mean?

SW: Exactly!

IR: Oh. So tell me...why did you become a teacher?

SW: Pretty obvious, really. I wanted employment for life, a decent salary, and a nice, fat pension when I retire at an absurdly young age.

IR: Just like private sector workers, you mean?

SW: Exa-- aw, I see what you did there! A regular comedian, you are!

SCENE: Cocktail lounge of a Chicago hotel.

IR (to a distinguished-looking 50-ish gentleman): Excuse me sir, but aren't you Senator Fleebagger from Wisconsin?

Sen. Fleebagger (glancing around furtively): Uh, yes...yes I am.

IR: Why are you here in Chicago instead of back in Madison representing your constituents?

SF: If I had any real interest in "representing my constituents", as you so quaintly put it, do you really think I'd be here? I can get martinis every bit as good as this one at home.

IR: Well, if you have no interest in representing your constituents, why did you run for election to the Wisconsin state senate?

SF: Stepping stone. You see where a state senate seat got our current president, don't you?

IR: Uh, OK. But aren't you just the least bit afraid that this stunt might jeopardize your reelection chances for the next term?

SF: Oh, hell no. I'll be running for the US Senate before this term is up, and my ill-informed and short-on-memory electorate won't let me down.

IR: Right, then. So tell me...why are you so strongly opposed to Gov. Walker's proposal to repair the state's budget?

SF: Look, I'm a Democrat, right? We Democrats depend on unions not just for campaign cash but for campaign workers. Without large, powerful unions that are flush with cash we'd never have a chance against Republicans in any election.

IR: So for you and your Democratic colleagues, this has nothing to do with workers' rights, then?

SF: Bwahahahaha! No.

SCENE: Wisconsin State House, hallway.

IR (to attractive, mid-30s woman): Pardon me, Senator Pachyderm...can you take a few questions?

Sen. Pachyderm: Sure, if you make it quick.

IR: What do you make of your Democratic colleagues' absence from debate on the Governor's budget repair bill?

SP: Well, clearly, they're subverting the democratic process for their own political ends.

IR: But don't you think they have the right to make their position known in the most forceful way possible?

SP: Of course, and the place do that is right here, on the senate floor. That's what they were elected to do.

IR: I assume you're in favor of the Governor's bill?

SP: Yes. We simply can't afford the continued high costs of pay and benefits and we have to prevent future extortion by the unions. And if it levels the playing field in the next election, then booyah!

And there you have it...the interviews we'll never see.

I just cut $258 billion from the federal budget...

...and I haven't even touched Defense spending yet.

The first thing I heard on the news this morning when I got up was how gosh-darned hard it would be for Congress and the White House to cut the budget by $100 billion. Given the size of the federal budget, I figured that just had to be a load of crap.

A quick Google search turned up this set of PDFs summarizing the executive branch budget for FY11. Most department and agency budgets break down to discretionary outlays, mandatory outlays and "credit activity", which I take to mean lending programs of various types. When considering an agency or department's total budget, I disregarded the credit activity, so cuts would clearly be even larger if I took those into consideration.

I basically ignored those budgets that were very small (under a billion or so) and looked at these:

• Agriculture
• Commmerce
• Education
• Energy
• Health and Human Services
• Homeland Security
• Housing and Urban Development
• Interior
• Justice
• Labor
• State
• Transportation
• Treasury
• Veteran's Affairs
• Corps of Engineers
• EPA
• National Science Foundation
• NASA
• Small Business Administration
• Social Security

When a corporate CEO is serious about cutting spending, he or she will go to the various business units and direct their respective heads to cut, say, 10% of their budget. In other words, do it or be fired and replaced with someone who will. So, let's do the same with the federal budget. Granted, the exercise would be nowhere near as straight forward as cutting a private sector budget. Those "mandatory outlays" are mandatory because they're required by law, so a process would be needed to fast track legislation to amend public law as needed.

The bottom line is that an across-the-board cut of 10% of the budgets listed above yields a savings of over $258 billion. If one includes the $719B Defense budget, an additional savings of $71B is realized. Note that this doesn't even take into account the budgets for the various intelligence agencies.

No, finding $100 billion to cut from the budget isn't that difficult.

How a stimulus package works

Actually, I don't even think stimulus packages as conceived by Democrats work even this well, but this is still pretty funny. With thanks to my buddy AB.

It's a slow day in the small Saskatchewan town of Pumphandle, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs before he picks one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.

The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything... However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a Stimulus package works.

Pictorial metaphor of the day

Twitter buddy @RickSheridan posted a link this morning to the above picture which first just made me chuckle, until I realized what a perfect metaphor it is...

Obama is, well, Obama. The umbrella represents the economy, and the far side of the gate is the recession. Since Obama hasn't the first clue about economics, he can't figure out how to bring the economy to recovery, represented by the near side of the gate. Michelle represents the drawing out of the recession, which will keep going while Obama fucks with an umbrella.

Noted lefty truther demonstrates economic skillz

The Daily Caller provides Exhibit 839 in the case against putting progressives in charge of the US economy.

...former White House “green jobs” adviser Anthony Van Jones said it was time to stop worrying about budget deficits and pressure Washington to take more money from American businesses to fund larger social and infrastructure projects.

“This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Haliburton,” Jones told a group of progressive bloggers and activists at the Netroots Nation convention Friday. “There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument.”

“The only question is how to spend it,” he added.

American corporations currently face the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world, according to the Tax Foundation.

What Jones and his fellow travelers on the Left completely fail to grasp is that businesses don't pay taxes, they collect taxes. From you and me in the form of higher prices.

This is why progressives should never, ever be in control of government.

Fact-checking as it's supposed to be

CNN thoroughly beclowned itself a few weeks ago when Wolf Blitzer fact-checked a Saturday Night Live sketch poking fun of Barack Obama's near-total lack of achievement since his inauguration in January. Today the AP partially redeems the mainstream media with a pretty tough fact-checking of the left's demonization of the health insurance industry.

Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

This is similar to the demagoguery the Democrats indulged in last year to smear Exxon-Mobil as another "rapacious profiteer" by tossing around the amount of their "obscene" quarterly profit, which was only around 8% of their revenue at the time.

The ability to turn a profit is a good thing. When companies are making healthy profits they're able to expand and employ more people. When profits are anemic or non-existent, they contract and lay people off. It's really pretty simple. Democrats are the enemy of a good business climate and a healthy economy.

Who'll get hit hardest by tax increases?

Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress are spending money like drunken sailors, piling up deficits once considered inconceivable. Actually, that's not fair. I've known drunken sailors to exercise much more restraint and prudence. Clearly, Obama's campaign pledge to not raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000 a year is going to have to go the way of pretty much every one of his other campaign pledges...right under the bus. Don't believe me? Maybe you'll believe former Democratic White House staffer Lawrence Haas.

I made this graph to illustrate the distribution of who pays what taxes. On the far right, you've got the top 1% of earners in the country - those making $389,000 a year or more - paying close to 40% of all income taxes collected. Working our way to the left, the top 5% - those making over $154,000 a year are paying close to 70%. A little further left are the top 25% - making $109,000 a year or more - at around 86%. Next we have the top 50% - those making $32,000 or more - at around 97%. That leaves fully 50% of the population making less than $32,000 a year shouldering 3% of the load.

So, guess who's going to get hit hardest? Sure, everyone will see an increase, but there simply aren't enough of the top earners in the country to make up the difference. A big chunk of the additional burden - just by virtue of shear numbers - will have to come from that bottom 50%, those who can least afford to pay more.

Blowing off the cobwebs

Yeah, I know I've been neglecting this blog lately. Work's been killing me and when I haven't been traveling (Seattle, WA and Portland, OR this week) I've been trying to play catch-up.

The hell of a recession...those of us still working are doing the work of three people. But I'll have some brief, almost Twitter-length posts coming up.

$100 million in perspective

My buddy Kris once again providing material I've got no time to dig for myself. Gaze upon Barack Obama's $100 million dollar budget cut and despair.

The stimulus plan explained

My buddy Kris sent me this last night and I thought it was too good not to post.

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, "I don't understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?"

The professor replied, "I don't have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I'll be glad to explain it to you." The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor's house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, "First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can." The student did as he was instructed.

The professor then continued, "Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it." The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool.

The confused student asked, "Excuse me, but why are we doing this?"

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn't think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough.

However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, "All we're doing is wasting valuable time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you'll really have accomplished is the destruction of what could have been truly productive action!"

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile, "Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill."

Eye of the beholder

I recall years ago watching the late, great Sam Kinnison doing a standup comedy routine during which at one point while riffing on homosexuals he uttered the line "How does one man look at another man's hairy ass and see love?"

Similarly, how does one look at this graph and say "Hey! I want me some of that!"


I mean, c'mon. Even the White House's own projections are worse than Bush's worse deficits, and the CBO's projections are worse than those. So, how is it that Obama's fanboys snicker at the Tea Parties and dismiss them as meaningless rants by a fringe right-wing element when this hairy ass is what the Tea Partiers are bitching about?

How does one look at this hairy ass and see love?

Smart power: You're doing it wrong

When Barack Obama went hat in hand to his European pals this week, I'll bet he was sure he'd get nothing but eager agreement to his requests for European countries to contribute more to the effort in Afghanistan. He found out pretty quickly that while Europeans might love him and hate Bush, they still don't like us very much. And, collectively speaking, I don't think a plurality of Europeans ever have.

The above cartoon, which I lifted from Theo's place, refers to the economic issues but can just as easily be applied to any other global problem Obama might ask for help with.

Which reminded me of some lyrics from that old George Thorogood song, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer:

So I go down the streets,
down to my good friend's house
I said "Look man I'm outdoors you know,
can I stay with you maybe a couple days?"
He said "Uh, Let me go and ask my wife"
He come out of the house,
I could see in his face
I know that was no
He said "I don't know man, ah she kinda funny, you know"
I said "I know, everybody funny, now you funny too"

Where's MoveOn.org on deficit spending now?

I saw this linked at Hot Air from Red State today. A pointed example of the hypocrisy and outright dishonesty of the left. Watch both videos...they're short. First, the Red State video:



And here's the MoveOn.org video from a year ago:



As Treacher tweeted the other night:

Remember: The guy who's trying to nationalize industry and start his own youth corps isn't the fascist. That was the previous occupant.

Republican deficit spending? Bad! Democrat deficit spending? Good! A president who says "nookewlar"? Moron! A president who presents as a gift to the Queen of England something anyone can get at Best Buy? Brilliant!

Back to the deficit spending thing. Besides Bush's support for amnesty for illegal aliens, the one thing over which he took the most heat from conservatives was his rampant spending and resulting deficits. But compare the two deficits (Bush's actual and Obama's projected):


That's not even an apples to oranges comparison...it's apples to rocks. And yet - unlike the righties with Bush - the lefties are OK with this as long as it's their guy in office.

Lying, hypocritical pieces of shit.

It begins: Leftists demonizing Obama at G20

I'm pretty sure it took George W. Bush more than 70-odd days to be depicted as a fiendish demon by the loony left. But a G20 summit in the midst of economic chaos has a way of accelerating and escalating things, I guess.

Barack Obama: America's Hugo Chavez

It's official...America is turning into Venezuela. Consider General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner's resignation at Obama's insistence Exhibit "A". Exhibit "B" is Obama's creepy idea of regulating executive compensation at any publicly traded company. Exhibit "C" is the Obama administration whipping up a populist frenzy against AIG in the recent bonus fiasco.

This is all right out of the Hugo Chavez playbook of grabbing control of private industry and whipping up populist outrage so that the masses think it's a good idea.

Overreaching

Is it possible that even those of us who sounded the alarm about Barack Obama actually underestimated just how far to the left he'd govern? The latest ill wind blowing from Washington suggests that Obama wants to regulate the compensation of, as Hot Air headlines puts it, "pretty much everyone".

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

Those "other companies"? Well, here's where "pretty much everyone" comes into play:

The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It was that "publicly traded companies" line that really made me sit up and take notice. That covers an awful lot of companies. How many? According to this link, it's around 15,000. That's a whole lot of employers who just might find it more convenient to relocate outside the US.

This kind of overreaching by Obama and his Marxist comrades constitutes class warfare waged by the administration against the nation's top earners. When Obama breezily talked about wealth redistribution, everyone just assumed he was referring to simple confiscatory taxes on the evil rich. I don't think anyone dreamed he'd go this far.

And for anyone who's thinking that even a Democrat-controlled Congress will never go for this, it may not matter:

Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.

Is this the kind of change anyone had really hoped for?

Band names in Obama's economy

The crappy economy that Barack Obama keeps telling us he inherited (but won't tell us why he keeps making worse) got me thinking (for some reason) about what someone might name a new band today. Some ideas:

• Stimulus Bill and the Bailouts
• Nero's Fiddle
• Shovel-ready Project
• Stimulus Package
• Timmy G and the TurboTax

Got any others?

Women, girls to be regulated by White House, or something

Focusing like a laser on the economy, the Obama White House attacked the problem head-on yesterday by unveiling the White House Council on Women and Girls. No, I didn't just make that up.

President Obama today signed an Executive Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response [Wow...this must be really important! --ed.] to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families.

Heckuva job, Barry!

Richmond Tea Party

We'll be having our own Tea Party in Richmond on - appropriately enough - Tax Day, 15 April. If you're in the area, c'mon down and be heard!

I know most of us who give a shit about this stuff are actually, you know, gainfully employed and all that so this will take place from 6PM - 8PM so you can participate and still do your part for the GDP.

Details and directions at the link.

Update: The link I posted is to the Richmond Tea Party blog, which still has all the info you need, but here's the link to the official site.