Tag: policy

The scientific stupidity of the TSA’s security rules.

10:03 am

The scientific stupidity of the TSA’s security rules.

Here’s one example from the article:

Take the Transportation Security Administration’s rules about carry-on electronics, for example. Laptops have to come out of their bags and lie flat in a plastic tub—but not tablets, phones, Kindles, cameras or portable game consoles. Why the distinction? The TSA says that it’s not just about detecting explosives: removing bigger gadgets also unclutters your bag for better x-ray examination. Even so, on close inspection the rules get arbitrary very quickly. For example, according to the TSA, the 11-inch model of the MacBook Air is fine to leave in your bag, but the 13-inch model must be removed.

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Obamacare: 0-98

2:37 pm

Obamacare: 0-98

As the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, it’s worth reviewing the American public’s response to it across the 27 months since Obama signed it into law. Over that span, from March 2010 through a poll released this morning, Rasmussen has conducted 98 polls of likely voters. All 98 times, support for repeal has outpaced opposition to repeal. Across 98 contests, Obamacare has gone 0 and 98.

What amazes me is how completely oblivious the Democratic Party has been to these polls. Despite the public’s clear and passionate opposition to this law the Democrats have continued to act as if they believe the law will win them votes.

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The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

10:11 am

The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

What comes through in the Moody’s assessment [the credit-rating downgrade of 15 banks] and in any review of their returns on equity is that banks have lost significant ability to generate earnings to offset the inevitable losses. The lost earnings power is surely due in part to reduced leverage, which helps protects taxpayers.

But 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank and countless other federal efforts to put sand in the financial gears are also taking their toll. The Obama tax and regulatory frenzy, of which Dodd-Frank is a part, weighs on economic growth. Those are our words, not Moody’s, but the rating agency does note that the abysmal economic environment is a drag on ratings for everyone.

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Forbidden by the Forest Service from using powered equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

7:30 pm

Forbidden by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

“It took 60 people two days to complete a work project that could have been done in two hours with the appropriate equipment,” Barnes said. “We have a lot more work that needs to be done up there, but we don’t have the permits from the forest service to go back.”

For reasons that only bureaucrats understand, the Forest Service decided that the use of heavy equipment like a bulldozer is more harmful to nature than 60 people with shovels, even though in the end the work done is exactly the same, and that this same work was done repeatedly in the past by heavy equipment.

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The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013.

3:19 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013, not 2020 as claimed.

In 2010, Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary projected that this interest income would keep the trust fund growing in real value through 2020. The 2011 projections moved this date to 2018, and the recently released 2012 projections pushed the date to 2012, meaning that the trust fund will start declining in real value next year. After 2013, the trust fund is projected to decline by greater amounts each year until becoming exhausted in 2033.

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Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

10:51 am

More Fast-and-Furious news: Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

The Justice Department has retracted a second statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. During a hearing last week, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that his predecessor, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder “inadvertently” made that claim to the Committee.

In other words, Holder has now admitted that he lied when he was testifying to Congress.

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President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

9:40 am

Cover up: President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

In related news, the union that represents Border Patrol agents called today for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

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The pork of Obamacare

3:00 pm

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), created by Obamacare, announced its first round of grants today, part of a funding program of fifty “pilot projects” totaling $30 million.

It didn’t take much research for me to conclude that, while some of this work might be useful, most of it sounds like bureaucratic claptrap. For example, consider the description Nature gives for these three grants:
» Read more

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The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

4:05 pm

The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

Essentially, NASA has finally conceded with this agreement that it has no control over a private space launch that is not flying to a NASA facility. That the FAA continues to have as much regulatory control is bad enough, but getting NASA out of the loop will at least ease the bureaucratic burden for private companies.

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The real estate crash: We’ve only just begun

11:37 am

A real estate industry group today announced that there was a nine percent jump in foreclosures during the month of May.

RealtyTrac reported that 205,990 U.S. properties received filings last month, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, marking the first monthly increase since January. Bank repossessions climbed steeply, up 7% to 54,844, after hitting a four-year low in April.

The report also noted that foreclosures made up 26% of U.S. home sales in first quarter and that more than 30% of mortgage borrowers were still underwater.

As someone who just moved to Tucson and spent more than six months searching for and finally purchasing a home, I can add a bit of personal experience to these dry statistics. And my perspective is sadly not encouraging.
» Read more

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Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

3:59 pm

Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

From Clark Lindsey:

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.

As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.

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Tone deaf: The union representing maintenance crews at Belmont is threatening to go on strike on Friday, just prior to the Belmont Stakes where the horse “I’ll Have Another” has a chance to win the Triple Crown.

11:47 am

Tone deaf: The union representing maintenance crews at Belmont is threatening to go on strike on Friday, just prior to the Belmont Stakes where the horse “I’ll Have Another” has a chance to win the Triple Crown.

With more than 100,000 fans expecting to attend the race as well as millions more watching on television, a strike will do wonders in sealing the union’s image in the public’s eye.

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According to a new poll, the number of voters who consider themselves independents is now the highest in seventy-five years.

9:01 am

Good news: According to a new poll, the number of voters who consider themselves independents is now the highest in seventy-five years.

If you call yourself independent, it means you intend to keep an open mind about who to vote for. It means you have decided that loyalty to party affiliation is not a reason to vote for a candidate. It means that you have decided to reject conventional wisdom and go your own way.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you will make a wise decision, but it does mean that on the whole the American electorate has decided our government needs a new approach, and that knee-jerk loyalty to the established political parties is not the way to get it.

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The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has asked the Utah state legislature for permission to scan the license plates of all cars driving on Interstate 15.

7:18 pm

What could go wrong? The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has asked the Utah state legislature for permission to scan the license plates of all cars driving on Interstate 15.

Worse, they are already scanning plates in Texas and California, and plan to add Arizona to the list.

I especially like this quote from a Utah legislator in response to the request. “I’ll be quite frank with you. A lot of us in Utah don’t trust the federal government.” Do tell.

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More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

10:51 am

Repeal it! More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance. [emphasis mine]

And if they don’t drop their healthplan?

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh said its 2011-2012 premium was $440 for a plan that covered up to $10,000 for each injury or sickness. Officials said the premium for the coming year would be $1,300 to $1,600 for a plan that meets the new requirements. The school will continue to require students to carry insurance, either through the school or not.

How’s that hope and change working out for you, students?

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A bank run by an Obama bundler has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Frank-Dodd act, saving the bank $300 million.

5:07 pm

Bipartisan corruption: A bank run by an Obama fund-raiser has gotten an Republican-led House committee to exempt that bank from provisions of the Dodd-Frank act, saving the bank $300 million.

Any law that allows legislators to grant individual waivers isn’t a law at all but a form of extortion: Pay up or you won’t get your exemption. Dodd-Frank, as well as much of all the legislation passed by Congress in the past decade, should be repealed so that everyone gets the exemption.

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An economy built to stall

8:48 pm

“An economy built to stall.”

In his first two years in office, Democrats gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, save for cap and trade and union card-check, which would have done even more harm to job creation. They passed stimulus, ObamaCare, multiple housing bailouts, Dodd-Frank and more.

Even after Republicans took the House, they gave Mr. Obama the payroll tax holiday he demanded first for 2011 and again for 2012. Far from some new fiscal “austerity,” overall federal spending hasn’t declined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has delivered monetary stimulus after stimulus—QE I, QE II, Operation Twist, and 42 months of near-zero interest rates with the promise of 30 months more.

Mr. Obama has had the freest run of policy of any President since LBJ. So maybe the problem is the policies.

Maybe Milton Friedman was right that “temporary, targeted” tax cuts don’t change the incentives to invest or hire because people aren’t stupid. Maybe each $1 of new federal spending doesn’t produce a “multiplier” of 1.5 times that in added output. Maybe the historic burst of regulation of the last three years has harmed business confidence and job creation. And maybe the uncertainty that comes from helter-skelter fiscal and monetary policy has dampened the animal spirits needed for a durable expansion.

As I said yesterday, though no president or Congress is entirely to blame for the state of the economy, they both can do great harm if they make decisions that interfere with the freedom of the market. And sadly, having the government interfere with the freedom of the market has been Obama’s mantra since the day he took office.

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Not good: The Labor Department announced today that the U.S. economy only added 69 thousand jobs in May, the fewest in a year.

10:39 am

Not good: The Labor Department announced today that the U.S. economy only added 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year.

The unemployment rate went up slightly as well, Labor also adjusted downward the number of jobs created in the past two months to terribly comparable numbers.

While no president is ever entirely responsible for the state of the economy, Barack Obama’s policies have certainly done significant harm. High regulation, Obamacare, and a clear hostility to private enterprise in all fields except space exploration has helped produce what appears to be the longest period with a floundering economy in my lifetime.

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A government study has found that the more educated in science and math an American is the more likely they will be skeptical of the dangers of global warming.

8:28 am

A government study has found that the more educated in science and math an American is, the more likely they will be skeptical of the dangers of global warming.

The results of the survey are especially remarkable as it was plainly not intended to show any such thing: Rather, the researchers and trick-cyclists who carried it out were doing so from the position that the “scientific consensus” (carbon-driven global warming is ongoing and extremely dangerous) is a settled fact, and the priority is now to find some way of getting US voters to believe in the need for urgent, immediate and massive action to reduce CO2 emissions.

Having discovered that educating the public will defeat these activists in their goals, the researchers than suggest, like Paul Krugman, that maybe the U.S. government should stop trying to educate people and focus on fake propaganda instead.

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Banned from using heavy equipment by the Forest Service to repair their water supply, Tombstone residents are planning a “Shovel Brigade” in June.

11:30 am

Banned by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment to repair their water supply, Tombstone residents are planning an event in June where thousands will gather to do the work manually with shovels.

According to the Tombstone Shovel Brigade’s website, the group was established for several reasons, including to bring public awareness to the issues facing the city regarding repairs to its historic water system and the “limited cooperation” the city has received from the Forest Service.

“Another goal of the Tombstone Shovel Brigade is to get a lot of work done using hand tools and horses. A few workers can only make so much progress but a couple of thousand people with picks, shovels, ropes and chains can accomplish a lot and will send a loud message to the National Forest Service and the federal government,” states the website.

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“[Christians and Jews] are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised.”

6:52 pm

From the Palestinian Authority: “[Christians and Jews] are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised.”

Two points: 1. This was read on the PA’s official television network by a a young girl as part of a children’s show. 2. Our federal government, under the Obama administration, has sent the PA hundreds of millions of dollars to fund this kind of bigotry and hate.

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