The day of reckoning looms: The actual debt of the U.S. federal government has now grown to $222 trillion.
This is the actual difference between what the federal government will collect in the future and the actual amount of future fiscal liabilities the government is responsible for. It is not the mere $16 trillion or so of immediate debt.
We’re here to help you: A Virginia county zoning board has fined a farmer five thousand dollars for hosting child’s birthday party on her property.
What an evil thing to do! Thank you Farquier County for protecting our nation from these dangerous felons.
The scramble in Congress to head the House committee on space after November’s election has begun.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) have begun to quietly campaign to replace Rep. Ralph Hall as chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology next year, according to Stu Witt, General Manager and CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port.
If Rohrabacher gets the chairmanship it will be very be good news for commercial space, and bad news for the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS). He has been a strong supporter of private space, and will likely want to funnel money to it from SLS.
I’m not sure giving private space more cash is necessarily a good thing, as that will encourage these new companies to be less efficient, more expensive, and more dependent on the government. However, getting SLS shut down will certainly help the federal budget deficit.
Now we have to repeal it: The price of pizza is going to rise because of Obamacare.
Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter says that Obamacare will result in a $0.11 to $0.14 price increase per pizza, or $0.15 to $0.20 cents per order.
The fact is that these kinds of price increases are going to occur across the board in almost all service industries, since higher regulation always leads to higher prices.
Emails by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and others in the Obama administration now show that, under the GM bailout, they purposely terminated the pensions of 20,000 retirees solely because they were not union members, and then lied to Congress about this.
I wonder why? “Washington [DC] may have the healthiest economy of any major metropolitan area in the country.”
The New York Times article has one explanation:
The main lesson the rest of the country should take from the capital’s prosperity is, per Leonhardt, that “education matters.” D.C.’s “high-skill” economy boasts more college degrees than any other major metropolitan area in America. “If you wanted to imagine what the economy might look like if the country were much better educated,” Leonhardt writes, “you can look at Washington.”
The fact that the federal government is spending trillions of dollars, mostly in Washington, DC, is apparently only a side show to this New York Times reporter.
Leftwing civility: “I hope that someone someday shoot your whole familly” More such comments at the link.
The irony here is that these comments come from people who oppose hunting and the shooting of animals. Yet, these same people find nothing wrong with the idea of shooting a human being with whom they disagree.
Extortion does work! Gibson Guitars has struck a deal with the federal government to avoid prosecution for the use of banned wood.
The company will pay a $300,000 fine under a criminal enforcement agreement that defers prosecution for criminal violations of the Lacey Act. Another $50,000 fine will go to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation “to be used to promote the conservation, identification and propagation of protected tree species used in the musical instrument industry and the forests where those species are found.”
Notice the political payoff to an outside environmental group. How nice. I wish my cause could get funding this way, by having the U.S. government threaten companies I don’t like and force them to give me money.
Does this make you feel safer? Arizona — in corporation with the federal government — has now joined California and Texas in scanning and recording the license plates of all cars traveling near the Mexican border.
Attack of the Cookie Monsters.
The sad part is that the author provides documentation for every single silly attack, none of which have the slightest significance in the greater scheme of our present-day problems, where we have a federal government going bankrupt and a Senate and President who routinely flout the law for political reasons.
Here we go again: The just released Pew poll which shows Obama with a 10 point lead oversampled Democrats by 19 points!
This is disgraceful work, and should discredit Pew as a pollster. There is no chance in hell that Democrats are going to outvote Republicans by 19 points come November. They didn’t even do that in 2008, when Obama won handily. For Pew to release a poll with a sampling that badly skewed smacks of incompetence, fraud, political manipulation, or a willingness to deny reality.
Does this make you feel safer? The TSA has agreed to allow its workers to unionize.
We’ve only just begun: A pro-life Catholic group announced today it will openly defy the new pro-abortion mandate imposed by the Obama administration.
“The unjust and unconstitutional HHS mandate, against which Priests for Life and 57 other plaintiffs have sued the federal government, takes effect today. We at Priests for Life do not qualify for the year that the government has offered certain groups to ‘adapt’ to the mandate. And we are not ‘religious’ enough for this Administration,” he explained. “But regardless of all that, we do not adapt to injustice; we oppose it.
“Therefore today, on behalf of our organization and on behalf of myself personally, I announce our conscientious objection to this mandate,” he said. “Priests for Life has the highest respect for civil government and advocates the observance of all just laws. But this policy is unjust, and today I reaffirm our intention to disobey it.”
The law is such an inconvenient thing: A federal appeals court has now ordered the TSA to explain by August 30 why it has defied an earlier court ruling on the use of the backscatter x-ray scanners.
How the federal government has persecuted a scientist for whistling at a whale.
The disappearance of the old-fashioned chemistry set.
Here’s what it used to be like, when we lived in a free society:
By the 1920s and 30s children had access to substances which would raise eyebrows in today’s more safety-conscious times. There were toxic ingredients in pesticides, as well as chemicals now used in bombs or considered likely to increase the risk of cancer. And most parents will not need to be told of the dangers of the sodium cyanide found in the interwar kits or the uranium dust present in the “nuclear” kits of the 1950s.
The perspective of one man running for President:
[W]hat exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality. [emphasis mine]
Sounds good to me, though we should all reserve the right to remain skeptical of anything a politician says. It is what they do that matters. Nonetheless, that Romney is making freedom a central part of his platform is further proof that he recognizes the trends and, like any politician, wants to be on the cusp of that wave. Or to once again repeat the words of Milton Friedman, “The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”
Another tea party victory: The Republican establishment choice for Texas senator was resoundingly defeated today by the tea party candidate.
2010 was a trend, not a fluke. And this detail from the article should give anyone with an open mind a good hint at what November will bring.
More than 1 million Texans voted in the runoff, a surprisingly strong turnout for balloting that came during the dog days of summer.
Just like in Wisconsin, Republican turnout was high. Come November, it will be higher.
The connection between a child rapist and climategate.
And that connection is the man who engineered the coverups in both cases, and has now been hired by the Obama administration.
