Details over at Noonan for Nevada…here’s the important bit: Romney was going to walk away with Nevada’s caucuses and that is now thrown in to doubt. And Nevada’s caucus date is four days after the New Hampshire primary. This could have a big effect on how the primaries develope.
Month: September 2011
Median Male Earns Less Than in 1968
From Zero Hedge:
While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report of (Lack of) Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in… 1968! While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since risen declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported). The only winner: women, whose median inflation adjusted income over the same period has increased by 188%. That said, it is still at 65% of what the median male makes. So injustice all around…
Why has this happened? Because since 1968 we have gone about destroying – via taxation, regulation, lawsuits and “nimbyism” – the ability of Americans to make, mine and grow things. We can’t all answer phones in call centers, nor can all of us be computer programmers. We have to make things, mine things and grow things…we have to produce wealth. If we do, then wages rise…if we don’t, then they stay flat or decline.
It is time to restore the American economy be removing the barriers to wealth creation. We have to allow people to work for a living – if we do, then wages will start to rise, fewer people will need government assistance and our overall finances – public and private – will improve. If we don’t, then we die as a nation. It is as stark as that.
And in order to do all that, we must over turn the current Ruling Class – they are in charge of Big Government and Big Corporation. They are very well off and don’t care at all about how the average American lives. They live in a world where struggle is non-existent, the family is unimportant and God is forgotten. As long as they are latched on to us, things cannot improve. Remember that as we go in to 2012…anyone who is unwilling to shake up the status quo is unworthy of support…and the more revolutionaries (ie, TEA Partiers) we can elect, the better.
White House Pressured OMB on Solyndra Loan
From the Washington Post:
The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.
The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget…
Hey, gotta rush it through – Biden needed a photo-op and Obama donors didn’t want to wait around for a payoff on their investment! I mean, my goodness, its not like it was real money – it was taxpayer money! You can do anything you want with that! As long, that is, it goes to line the pockets of liberal crony-capitalists…
Special Elections
Here are the AP results for the NY-9 race, and the NV-2 race.
The NV-2 race is just about a foregone conclusion – as it turns out, I’ve been up in Reno the past few days and so caught a bit of the GOP advertising: all Obama, all the time…”don’t send a rubber-stamp to DC”, that sort of thing. I don’t recall they even mentioned the Democrat candidate’s name. Expectations are for a double-digit GOP blowout…but Mark Amodei, taking nothing for granted, has been pressing the turnout efforts.
The polls in the NY-9 race just closed a few minutes ago and while polling has been good for the GOP, I do expect a Democrat win…they are pulling out all the stops and the district does have a reputation for voter fraud. But even if the Democrats managed to squeak out a win, it will be a signal for defeat in 2012 unless Obama changes course. And if the GOP does pull out a win, just that much more devastating for the Democrats.
UPDATE: In NV-02, Amodei has 64% against Marshall’s 31%; NY-09, Turner has 51% against Weprin’s 48%; still way early.
UPDATE II: NY-09, 271 of 512 precincts reporting, GOP winning 53/46; NV-09, 166 of 858 reporting, GOP winning 58/37.
UPDATE III: AP calls NY-09 for Republican Bob Turner. First GOP win in NY-09 since 1921. Dems already spinning it as meaningless…meanwhile, in private, they are starting to wonder if they should “primary” Obama…
UPDATE IV: AP calls NV-02 for Republican Mark Amodei. A crushing victory – 57% to 37%.
Turns Out, It Doesn’t Take a Village
From Physorg:
“In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families,” said U-M researcher Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “There’s a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers.”…
Only in modern, liberal times can it require a study to find out that families raise children and do just fine with it. Sorry, Hillary, but we don’t actually need a “village” populated with Department of Education and Health and Human Services bureaucrats…
All government policies must be directed towards this end: making it possible for one man and one women to raise their children as they see fit. If it helps in that task, it is good and must be done…if it harms that effort, it must be stopped.
HAT TIP: Instapundit
Hatch: Who Wrote the SEIU Goon Handbook?
Senator Hatch’s press release:
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today wrote to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) official Craig Becker to inquire about his involvement in union intimidation efforts. The letter sent to Becker comes after the SEIU’s “Contract Campaign Manual” was made public. The handbook tells union members to purposefully try to damage their employers’ reputations by coming up with allegations against their employers and managers and to even break the law to gain leverage in contract negotiations.
In the letter, Hatch writes that, “the manual explicitly advises union members to engage in tactics designed to attack the reputation of an employer as well as its managers and to purposefully damage an employer’s relationship with vendors and customers. In addition, it advises employees to uncover “dirt” on management officials and publicize the information in order to obtain leverage in contract negotiations. The manual even goes so far as to encourage union members to disobey certain laws when it serves the union’s purposes.”…
As a matter of free speech, you can write all the books on how to be a union thug you like – but who writes the thuggery how-to books is a matter of public interest. Did Becker write it? If not, then who? Inquiring minds want to know…
As the unions become ever more irrelevant to the average, American worker they do appear to becoming more desperate in their tactics. Remember, when you intimidate an employer you are also intimidating employees…if you are willing to smash the property of a corporation which can call upon financial resources to fight back, imagine what effect that will have on individual workers who have no such resources? Essentially, the unions are trying to scare everyone – to prevent anyone from challenging the unions. And that works out to a prohibition against challenging the union bosses, who often don’t act as if they give a fig for the cares of workers.
Finding out who wrote this manual is a good, first step in trying to curb this intimidation…and to call unions back to their duty. A union dedicated to representing the legitimate interests of workers who voluntarily belong to the union is good thing…but a union dedicated to advancing the cause of a particular party and keeping the bosses rolling in wealth, that is another mater, entirely.
Attack on US Embassy in Kabul
From the Wall Street Journal:
Insurgents staged a series of attacks across Kabul on Tuesday, with rocket-propelled grenades, gunfire and suicide bombers targeting the U.S. Embassy, in one of the most brazen Taliban assaults on the Afghan capital.
A spokesman for Kabul police said the Taliban first struck the U.S. and other embassies, then launched assaults at several other targets in the city, including suicide-bomber attacks on a traffic-control office and on a high school. A school bus also was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, wounding several young children. Police rushed to the scene to unload bloodied children from the damaged bus…
Savages to the end – and the reason why, no matter how long and hard the fight is, we can’t withdraw…not until at least a semblance of stability is built in to the Afghan regime. We can’t set a time limit on this – though we can, as time goes on, likely use ever fewer US troops as the Afghan forces become more capable.
Trust me on this, I’m tired of it, too – and I bet the troops are even more tired of it. But to quit is to turn the people of Afghanistan over to beasts in human skin. We can’t, with honor, do that.
Columbia Students to Dine With Iranian Tyrant
From CBS News:
A group of Columbia University students are expected to have dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next week in Midtown.
According to the Columbia Spectator, the school’s newspaper, as many as 15 members of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association were invited.
CIRCA vice president of academics, Tim Chan, told the paper the Sept. 21 meeting is still tentative and none of the members expressed any reservations about breaking bread with the controversial Iranian leader…
Gotta love MSM reporting…”controversial Iranian leader”. Yeah, like Genghis Khan was just “controversial” rather than, more accurately, a “pestilence”.
But, that aside, here we have a prime example of the lack of education which goes on in our schools – no one with any knowledge of the world would bother to sit down with Ahmadinejad who, by word and action, has long ago proved he brings no truth or wisdom to the public square. Ahmadinejad is someone to be fended off until such time as he can be removed from power or destroyed. He is not someone fit for dinner dates…but here come the elite of the elite of Columbia University acting worse than the veriest simpleton out there…having dinner with a dictator. What’s next? Lunch with a famed rapist?
HAT TIP: Alan Stock
A Doomed Ponzi Scheme
From CNS:
There were only 1.75 full-time private-sector workers in the United States last year for each person receiving benefits from Social Security, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Social Security board of trustees.
That means that for each husband and wife who worked full-time in the private sector last year there was a Social Security recipient somewhere in the country taking benefits from the federal government…
This cannot be sustained – even when you throw in government workers (who are paid out of tax dollars, of course) you still don’t get enough total workers paying in to support those who are taking out. You probably have to get to at least 4 total workers for each beneficiary for it to be financially stable; and likely 5 or 6 private sector workers per beneficiary. And it is only going to get worse – even after the Boomers all retire and start to exit the system via death, our rapidly declining birth rate ensures there will be no significant improvement in the worker/retiree ratio.
A Ponzi scheme, just to clarify it for our liberals, is a system where early beneficiaries are paid out handsomely from the proceeds of later entrants. It all works well until you stop getting enough new people to sustain the generous payouts. Social Security was first implemented when most people only lived a few years beyond 65 and there were a couple dozen workers for each retiree. Now we live past 80 as often as not and there are less than 2 workers for each retiree. This a classic example of a Ponzi scheme…and it is failing just like any other Ponzi scheme.
To be sure, Social Security is too deeply ingrained in American life to be easily or quickly done away with…but it must be deeply reformed just to ensure that older people can get retirement pay and younger people can build up independent means of retirement. The time to do it was, of course, after the 2004 election…but a combination of Democrats wanting a campaign issue and Republicans who lacked backbone ensured that the Bush’s modest reform proposals were killed. Now it is 7 years later and things are worse…and they will do nothing but get worse from now on, unless we change.
Additionally, any attempt to get our overall fiscal house in order requires Social Security reform (as well as Medicare/Medicaid reform). The whole economic future of the United States rests on our ability to develope the courage to act. Democrats will never do anything but “fear and smear” on the issue, so it is up to Republicans to lead the way…and our first step is to (a) bring the subject up and then (b) so badly beat the Democrats in 2012 that they can’t stand in the way of reform.
At the GOP Debate: The Question for 2012
From Ann Althouse, noted in tonight’s debate:
A young guys asks a classic question: “Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?”
That is the question to ask – and especially to ask of Obama and the Democrats. What amount of liberty, at the end of the day, are you prepared to leave with the people?
No, not whether we’ll have the freedom to watch filth in popular culture. Not whether we’ll have to freedom to suck up money on welfare of bogus disability. What real liberty – if I work hard and play by the rules, how much of each dollar do you think I should keep? 99 cents? 75 cents? 50 cents? What? You tell us – and then we’ll know who wants a nation of citizens, and who wants a nation of slaves.
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