Tag: policy

Ted Cruz introduces bill outlawing political targeting of citizens.

11:00 am

Link here.

As Jazz Shaw notes at the link, “You mean that wasn’t already illegal?” Though Shaw does carefully analyze the political ramifications of making Democrats vote for or against these bills, ramifications that will likely weaken the power-hungry in government, my first thought when I read this was instead, “This is more evidence why I am increasingly not a big fan of Ted Cruz.”

You see, how does one really increase freedom and weaken the power of government by passing another law? You really don’t. This law might be politically effective, but if it should happen to pass and Obama actually sign it, all it will accomplish is create another law that can be used as a wedge to pry more power into government.

Cruz does this kind of showboating a lot. Though I almost always agree with him, the behavior illustrates why a senator is not the best choice for President. We don’t need a showboat right now. We need a conservative President who understands how to run a hostile executive branch even as he cuts its power and influence and still wins elections.

Sounds like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, doesn’t it? Both have the right qualifications, winning elections even as they were being slimed by the left wing union, media, and Democratic Party attack machine for actually cutting the power of these power-hungry groups.

As a senator Ted Cruz does not have and cannot get that track record. Worse, he has made me doubt his tea party sincerity with his talk of rebuilding NASA and going to Mars. Instead of trimming the waste in NASA, it appears he wants to keep feeding the Texas pork that NASA sends his way.

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The left wing pundit press makes fools of themselves

9:53 am

Link here. Be sure to watch the video and then read the article. As the author notes quite correctly,

Every one of these “pundits” have spent the last six years extolling the virtues of President Obama’s brilliant foreign policy. Every single one of these panelists have written columns, given opinion, and appeared on TV shows telling the consuming sheeple how brilliant President Obama was. Now they sit around presenting themselves as some form of disconnected gallery observers talking about how the consequences of those same policies they exalted are abject failures.

Insufferable does not begin to explain the level of hypocrisy within the U.S. Obama Praetorian guard media.

I must also note that this video clip does a great job of revealing how the entire panel on Face the Nation are all supporters of Obama and the Democrats. Repeatedly, as they described the President’s string of failures in foreign policy, they were forced to note that it was Obama’s “critics” who were right about every issue, “critics” that happen also to not be present on this Face the Nation panel. So, who are these mysterious “critics” that none of these pundits can name? They are conservatives, including Republicans, journalists, and tea party leaders, none of whom Face the Nation thought worthy of including on its panel.

This shows us again how completely worthless it is to depend on television for intelligent and objective reporting and analysis of the news. Mainstream television is working for the Democratic Party. Know that when you watch it.

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Small businesses dump health insurance

9:57 am

Finding out what’s in it: A new study has found that small businesses are increasingly not offering health insurance to their employees since Obamacare went into effect.

The survey, conducted by Assistant Professor of Economics Leslie Muller, focused on companies that have fewer than 50 employees. Companies of that size are not mandated by the ACA to offer insurance to employees. “Small firms have faced, traditionally faced, higher costs so they’ve been strapped for a while. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the ACA it just has to do with the fact that health care costs have been raising it’s been particularly hard on the small firms,” Muller said.

The Survey found that of small businesses that offered health insurance over the past two years, only 40 percent plan to offer insurance in 2015 and only 28 percent in 2016.

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Putin endorses Russian government consolidation of space industry

10:08 am

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday strongly endorsed the decision by the Russian government to consolidate control of that country’s entire space industry into a single, government-run corporation.

Putin said the plan to unite the federal space agency, Roscosmos, with United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) in a new corporate behemoth that will retain the Roscosmos name was “the right proposal” during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the TASS news agency reported. The union would meld the federal space agency’s strategic oversight function with the industrial might of state-owned URSC — which was itself created from the union of some of Russia’s key space firms in an effort to increase efficiency in 2013.

Shades of the cold war! Even as the U.S. space industry is shifting away from government control to private enterprise, Russia is returning to it. We shall see which model works best as the world competes to get to the stars.

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Why I ignored Obama’s State of the Union speech

9:52 am

Space.com has provided a detailed look, with reactions, of President Obama’s prominent mention of space exploration in his State of the Union speech this week.

I didn’t even watch the speech, nor read it, nor really care much at all about what he said. It is garbage, political propaganda that has nothing to do with getting us into space. The speech’s only real purpose is to puff up Barack Obama and his political allies.

The article above mentions Obama’s April 2010 space speech. What I wrote about that 2010 speech in 2010 focused on this promise by Obama:

[A]s stated in the speech’s fact sheet, that he “will commit to making a specific decision in 2015 on the development of a new heavy-lift rocket architecture.” Somehow this commitment was supposed to convince us that, despite his cancellation of the Constellation program (which already has had six years of development under its belt), his willingness to postpone making a decision for five years more would somehow accelerate the program.

How stupid does Obama really think people are? [emphasis in original]

Five years later, does anyone remember this promise? And is Obama making this decision now, as promised? No to both. The only reason he is building SLS is because Congress required him to. And the purpose of that rocket program isn’t to build a rocket, but to pour ungodly amounts of money into congressional districts.

To me, the real news this week was the big money private enterprise is beginning to pour into real development in space. That will get us to the planets, not the egotistical blathering of politicians.

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Holder’s end to federal property seizure ban exaggerated

10:45 am

Pigs land: A close look at Eric Holder’s announcement on Friday that he was ending the use of federal law to seize private property turns out to be greatly exaggerated.

Holder’s order applies only to “adoption,” which happens when a state or local agency seizes property on its own and then asks the Justice Department to pursue forfeiture under federal law. “Over the last six years,” the DOJ says in the press release announcing Holder’s new policy, “adoptions accounted for roughly three percent of the value of forfeitures in the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program.” By comparison, the program’s reports to Congress indicate that “equitable sharing” payments to state and local agencies accounted for about 22 percent of total deposits during those six years. That means adoptions, which the DOJ says represented about 3 percent of deposits, accounted for less than 14 percent of equitable sharing. In other words, something like 86 percent of the loot that state and local law enforcement agencies receive through federal forfeitures will be unaffected by Holder’s new policy.

The story also notes how the press, especially the Washington Post which led with this story, teamed up with Holder to overstate the impact Holder’s order would have.

Holder’s action is still in the right direction. He just didn’t go very far, which makes perfect sense considering the generally corrupt and oppressive nature of the Justice Department since he took it over. Initially I thought pigs were flying by his announcement. Now I know they can’t.

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A Japanese Nobel laureate blasts his country’s treatment of inventors

9:27 am

The Japanese Nobel winner who helped invent blue LEDs, then abandoned Japan for the U.S. because his country’s culture and patent law did not favor him as an inventor, has blasted Japan in an interview for considering further legislation that would do more harm to inventors.

In the early 2000s, Nakamura had a falling out with his employer and, it seemed, all of Japan. Relying on a clause in Japan’s patent law, article 35, that assigns patents to individual inventors, he took the unprecedented step of suing his former employer for a share of the profits his invention was generating. He eventually agreed to a court-mediated $8 million settlement, moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and became an American citizen. During this period he bitterly complained about Japan’s treatment of inventors, the country’s educational system and its legal procedures.

…”Before my lawsuit, [Nakamura said] the typical compensation fee [to inventors for assigning patents rights] was a special bonus of about $10,000. But after my litigation, all companies changed [their approach]. The best companies pay a few percent of the royalties or licensing fee [to the inventors]. One big pharmaceutical company pays $10 million or $20 million. The problem is now the Japanese government wants to eliminate patent law article 35 and give all patent rights to the company. If the Japanese government changes the patent law it means basically there would no compensation [for inventors]. In that case I recommend that Japanese employees go abroad.”

There is a similar problem with copyright law in the U.S., where changes in the law in the 1970s and 1990s has made it almost impossible for copyrights to ever expire. The changes favor the corporations rather than the individual who might actually create the work.

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Paul Ryan: No new gas taxes

11:58 am

Unlike his Senate Republican cohorts, who were very quick after the election to scream for a tax increase, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) has now made it very clear that the House will pass no gas tax increases this year.

Good for Ryan. The article notes that large majorities strongly oppose any tax hike. The Republicans ran on a platform of shrinking government, not increasing the tax burden. For Senate Republicans to make a gas tax increase practically their first order of business after taking charge in 2015 is beyond disgusting.

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IRS chief warns of bad service due to budget cuts

9:18 am

IRS Commissioner (and Democratic Party shill) John Koskinen has warned in an agency-wide email that the tax agency faces a short-term shutdown and increased bad taxpayer service because of Republican-led budget cuts.

“The effect of these cuts will hurt taxpayers and our tax system,” he wrote. He said the cuts could force the IRS to shut down operations for two days later this year, resulting in unpaid furloughs for employees and service cuts for taxpayers. But in the near-term, the commissioner said cuts in overtime and temporary staff hours could cause delays in refunds. “People who file paper tax returns could wait an extra week — or possibly longer — to see their refund,” he wrote, adding: “Taxpayers with errors or questions on their returns that require additional manual review will also face delays.”

Why am I reminded of the claims of federal agency heads everywhere just before sequestration, claiming doom and gloom should it take effect? None of their claims proved true. Sequestration did nothing to harm government operations and actually saved the taxpayers a load of money.

Koskinen is full of it. This email by him is only intended to pressure Congress to give him more money, so that his agency can continue to abuse anyone who might express opinions hostile to the Democratic Party.

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Scientists demand more skepticism of doom-sayers

9:04 am

The uncertainty of science: Ocean scientists have published a review of the literature, criticizing the ocean science field and the journals and journalists who report on it for overstating the environmental damage to the oceans.

The state of the world’s seas is often painted as verging on catastrophe. But although some challenges are very real, others have been vastly overstated, researchers claim in a review paper. The team writes that scientists, journals and the media have fallen into a mode of groupthink that can damage the credibility of the ocean sciences. The controversial study exposes fault lines in the marine-science community.

Carlos Duarte, a marine biologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, and his colleagues say that gloomy media reports about ocean issues such as invasive species and coral die-offs are not always based on actual observations. It is not just journalists who are to blame, they maintain: the marine research community “may not have remained sufficiently sceptical” on the topic. [emphasis mine]

Gee, what a concept! These guys actually want scientists to base their claims of environmental disaster on actual observations. Who wodda thunk it?

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Oxford University Press bans mention of pork in books to avoid offending Muslims or Jews

10:22 am

Link here.

The absurdity of this ban is so over the top that I at first was reluctant to post a link, thinking it might be a hoax. It still might be, but I have seen it sourced now in at least two publications.

Even if it is a hoax, that people believe it tells us just how subservient our intellectual elites have become when it comes to freedom of speech. Today’s modern intellectual class does not believe in free speech, it believes in not offending anyone with whom they agree or sympathize. The result is that they insist on dictating to everyone what you can or cannot say.

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High Russia space official shoots down idea of new Russian space station

9:35 am

Sergei Savelyev, deputy director of Russian space agency Roscosmos, dismissed the idea that Russia might leave the ISS partnership to build its own independent space station.

“Theoretically it is possible to create a new Russian space station, but neither the current nor future drafts of the federal space program [through 2025] touch on this subject, and any [hypothetical] implementation could be tied in with the continued operation of the ISS,” [he said]…

Savelyev added that he anticipates Russia will continue to use the ISS beyond 2020, but that its focus will shift toward cooperating with China on Beijing’s own space stations — a small station is already in orbit, and a second larger one is set to be operational around 2020 — and aboard the Russian segment of the ISS.

I think the Russians know that it would be foolish to abandon their partnership on ISS, at least not for a few more years. For at least another decade it is going to be the best thing they’ve got in space.

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Politicians in Paris do photo op rather than participate in demonstration

5:54 pm

Why I pay very little attention to demonstrations: A wide shot of the big name politicians at Sunday’s Paris demonstration against Islamic terrorism shows that none of them were really at the demonstration.

Instead, the politicians were gathered together on a separate street, guarded by security, so that they could link arms just for a photo op. The march itself was elsewhere. I also suspect that they all just gathered very quickly to take the picture than scattered their own separate ways immediately afterwards.

This is why I don’t really care that Obama nor anyone important in his administration showed up. Maybe they should have, and in fact maybe it is another sign of Obama’s incompetence that he did not make sure there was an important U.S. presence there, but who really cares? This is just for show.

What would really mean something to me is if these political leaders actually used this meeting to organize some concrete action to deal with Islamic terrorism. Did they? I think not. As far as I can tell they have made no plans to do anything about it, other than maybe increase security in their own nations, which is merely another way of restricting the freedoms of their own citizens.

Hardly what I would call fighting back against tyranny, terrorism, and oppression.

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The madness of IRS Obamacare paperwork

10:09 am

Finding out what’s in it: Tax preparers discover that Obamacare adds so much paperwork to their work it isn’t worth it to do it.

About two-thirds of the way through the morning I questioned the whole process. I stated that if someone walked into to my office who was receiving the [Obamacare subsidy] that I would not accept them as a client. The cost of preparing the paperwork to get them properly qualified to receive the benefit would exceed anything I could reasonably charge them. The instructor, a fine fellow from Iowa, stated he unfortunately had to agree with me. So now tax preparers will have to decide whether to accept clients based on our health care system — just like doctors.

There’s lot more. Read the whole thing.

But you voted for Obama and the Democrats because they care. Aren’t you proud?!

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Islamophobia is a myth created by the bigotry of the elites

10:02 am

Link here.

Islamophobia is a code word for mainstream European elites’ fear of their own populations, of their native hordes, whom they imagine to be unenlightened, prejudiced, easily led by the tabloid media, and given to outbursts of spite and violence. The thing that keeps the Islamophobia panic alive is not actual violence against Muslims but the right-on politicos’ ill-founded yet deeply held view of ordinary Europeans, especially those of a working-class variety, as racist and stupid. This is the terrible irony of the Islamophobia panic: The fearers of anti-Muslim violence claim to be challenging prejudice but actually they reveal their own prejudices, their distrust of and disdain for those who come from the other side of the tracks, read different newspapers, hold different beliefs, live different lives. They accuse stupid white communities of viewing Muslims as an indistinguishable mob who threaten the fabric of European society, which is exactly what they think of stupid white communities.

I would only suggest that this elite bigotry is not limited to European elites, but applies as well to the leftwing elites throughout the entire first world, including the Unites States. They hate conservatives and the general population that is not part of their upper class intellectual community, and express it repeatedly by their expectation of Islamic bigotry that never happens.

Meanwhile, a landmark synagogue in Paris was forced closed on the Sabbath this weekend, for the first time since World War II, because of Islamic antisemitism.

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Senate Republicans call for gas tax hike

5:57 pm

Lying slime: A number of Senate Republicans have joined with Democrats to call for an increase in the gas tax.

Though the last time the gas tax was increased was during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the only reason the highway fund is short of money is that they don’t spend it wisely, wasting a lot on stupid projects. (Sounds a lot like almost everything the federal government does, doesn’t it?) Rather than increase the tax, Congress should take a close look at how the money is being spent, and clamp down.

I should note that House Republicans have already said that they will oppose this increase. Whether they stay that course however remains to be seen.

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Why the pause in global temperature rise?

10:48 pm

The pause in global temperature rise has now lengthened past 18 years, and climate scientist Fred Singer asks some good scientific questions why.

Global warming skeptics like myself have been quick to note the long pause in any temperature increase since 1998, the lack of which has essentially invalidated all the climate models put forth by the global warming activists in the climate community. Singer goes one step further, however, asking the next question: Why has the temperature not risen? He doesn’t know, but he does put forth a number of suspects that the good scientists in the climate field should be pursuing, assuming they can open their eyes and work with real data for a change.

As usual, it isn’t as simple as we would like. The sun for example might explain it, but so could a lot of other factors, including a number put forth by global warming advocates. Good science demands that we look at them all, and find out the truth, rather than cherry-pick our favorite answer and ignore all other evidence.

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Obamacare requirements to employers arrive in 2015

8:21 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Beginning in 2015 employers of more than fifty employees will begin to pay penalties if they do not provide healthcare in precisely the amount and quality as required by Obamacare.

I challenge anyone who reads the article above to tell me exactly what those Obamacare requirements are. They are so complicated and obtuse that no one can easily decipher them. In other words, employers are going to be under increasing pressure — pressure they have already been under for the past four years — to reduce their workforce below 50 to avoid Obamacare.

Should do wonders for the economy, eh?

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The bigoted root of liberal double standards

10:37 pm

Link here.

He lists the innumerable examples in 2014 of blatant liberal hypocrisy, and then notes what to me has become the obvious:

What looks like inexplicably staggering hypocrisy from the conservative perspective is actually remarkably consistent from the liberal perspective.

Well, “perspective” is probably the wrong word because it implies a conscious, deliberate, philosophical point of view. What is really at work is better understood as bias, even bigotry.

If you work from the dogmatic assumption that liberalism is morally infallible and that liberals are, by definition, pitted against sinister and — more importantly — powerful forces, then it’s easy to explain away what seem like double standards. Any lapse, error, or transgression by conservatives is evidence of their real nature, while similar lapses, errors, and transgressions by liberals are trivial when balanced against the fact that their hearts are in the right place.

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The benefits of fewer New York police arrests

10:28 pm

Link here. The author nails it, noting that many of the arrests the cops have stopped doing were probably nothing more than the harassment of citizens and did nothing to improve the city’s quality of life. The cops were doing it under orders of the government, which they are now defying.

The sad part is the police are not defying these orders because they object to the policies, but because they object to the mayor.

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New York cops stop harassing citizens in protest

11:20 am

In a virtual work stoppage, New York cops have ceased issuing citations for traffic offenses, parking, and other low level drug offenses.

Angry union leaders have ordered drastic measures for their members since the Dec. 20 assassination of two NYPD cops in a patrol car, including that two units respond to every call. It has helped contribute to a nose dive in low-level policing, with overall arrests down 66 percent for the week starting Dec. 22 compared with the same period in 2013, stats show. Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame. Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300. Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241. Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.

I see this as a true improvement to the quality of life for the average New Yorker. It isn’t the murders by police that make life hell in New York, but the constant harassment by police for doing the most minor things wrong. In fact, it is these kinds of offenses that probably cause the most friction between citizens and the police.

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Improper charge card use by government employees wastes millions

9:55 am

Serving the taxpayer: Federal employees given charge cards that allow them to buy things freely wasted millions of dollars in unauthorized or improper purchases, according to an inspector general report.

Government purchase cards are intended to be used only for purchases of approved merchandise under $3,000. Southern Command employees used the cards improperly nearly 6,000 times at a cost of $5.1 million, according to a Department of Defense inspector general report. Another $160,000 was spent on an estimated 3,500 unnecessary gifts in the years since 2010, often just days before the government’s fiscal years ended. The items remained in storage at least three years. “The wasteful expenditures could have been put to use in other operational areas and are considered abusive use of the [purchase cards],” the IG said.

Not surprisingly, government officials disagreed with the report, even as they admitted there was nothing factually wrong with it.

Despite the clear misuse of taxpayer dollars, DOD officials disagreed with the IG’s recommendations for tighter management. Southern Command’s chief of staff told the IG “he was unaware of unnecessary gifts in the gift locker.”

The federal government is entirely out of control, and needs to be reined in aggressively. Many people who work there need to be fired. Some need to go to prison for theft. Until that happens, it will continue to suffocate our society with its crippling overspending and increased debt.

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Penalties in Obamacare to rise in 2015

9:44 am

Finding out what’s in it: Based on how the law was written, the Obamacare penalties for not having insurance will jump significantly in the next two years, going from trivial to serious.

The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest — $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), whichever is more. But insurance scofflaws face a sharp increase if they don’t get covered soon. The fine will jump in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures.

But don’t worry, that’s not all. The law is also going to impact small businesses badly in 2015.

So, explain to me again why you voted for the Democrats who created this law?

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33 examples of liberal intolerance in 2014

5:32 pm

Link here.

I dare my liberal readers to come up with a comparable list of conservative intolerance this past year. If they do, I will gladly highlight such behavior also, as fascism from either camp is unacceptable.

However, I have serious doubts liberals can find as many examples of the right squelching freedom of speech in 2014 with the same gusto as shown by the left this past year.

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Shock! A Democrat actually pays attention to cost

11:47 am

Pigs fly: Vermont’s very leftwing Democratic Governor actually canceled his attempt to take over the state’s healthcare system when his experts told him how expensive it was.

Mr. Shumlin ran in 2010 on an explicit single-payer platform in the most liberal state east of California, and the plan was conceived as a model for other states. … Under the Vermont plan, all 625,000 state residents were to be automatically enrolled in the government plan, with the same benefits for all. As with Medicare, employers would be subject to a payroll tax that would reduce wages, and workers would pay a premium based on a sliding income scale.

… The state accountants estimated that his plan required an 11.5% tax on worker payroll, with no exceptions. Individuals, meanwhile, would have paid as much as 9.5% of earnings, which would have applied to everyone making more than four times the poverty level, or $102,220 for a family of four—hardly the 1%. The full $2.59 billion in necessary funding would roughly double current state revenues (about $2.85 billion today).

…His ideological comrades are rarely dissuaded by the prospect of economic damage, as ObamaCare proves. But Mr. Shumlin has succeeded in making Vermont a national model: By admitting that single payer will make health care both more expensive and less efficient, he has shown other states what not to do. [emphasis mine]

As the highlighted text notes, Democrats routinely ignore what experts tell them about the cost of their proposals, being gladly willing to bankrupt everyone else in order to impose their ideological fantasies on us. (I exclude them because the costs of their proposals are never born by them but by others.)

Governor Shumlin’s decision to abandon his plan thus makes him a rare exception that proves the rule. If only more Democrats had this much contact with reality.

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Get ready to have your health records hacked

5:02 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Required by Obamacare to convert all health records into electronic files, those records are now very vulnerable and experts expect hackers to target them in the coming years.

Electronic records have their advantages, no doubt, but the way this conversion was shoved down the throat of both doctors and patients, by Obamacare, has left everyone exposed. Rather than give the professionals in the field the time to make the conversion when practical, convenient, and affordable, Obamacare demanded it be done now, even though many health organizations and doctors were simply not prepared to make the change.

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