Good grief:
Arthur B. Laffer: The 30-Cent Tax Premium - WSJ.com: "According to his research, as of 2009 the income-tax industry employed 'more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies—more than all the workers at Wal-Mart Stores, United Parcel Service, McDonald's, International Business Machines, and Citigroup combined.' Without diminishing in any way the professionalism of tax attorneys, accountants and financial planners, all of these efforts produce nothing other than, well, tax compliance."
Monday, April 18, 2011
Enron Writ Large
Interesting:
Enron Writ Large - By Kevin D. Williamson - Exchequer - National Review Online: "Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt came as a shock. It shouldn’t have. Credit-rating agencies (CRAs) such as S&P are a government-chartered cartel, with constraints on competition and a customer base guaranteed by statute. They are the sleepy backwaters of the financial world — and they are always the last to know. As one investment strategist put it to me this morning: We’ve been watching this train go by for a while now, and this is the caboose"
Enron Writ Large - By Kevin D. Williamson - Exchequer - National Review Online: "Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt came as a shock. It shouldn’t have. Credit-rating agencies (CRAs) such as S&P are a government-chartered cartel, with constraints on competition and a customer base guaranteed by statute. They are the sleepy backwaters of the financial world — and they are always the last to know. As one investment strategist put it to me this morning: We’ve been watching this train go by for a while now, and this is the caboose"
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Unearthing Matriarchy
Interesting:
Unearthing Matriarchy - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Ten years ago, Cynthia Eller offered a useful and long-overdue demolition of a mistaken idea that gained widespread currency in women’s studies and in some sectors of popular culture. In The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future (Beacon Press 2001), Eller, who is an associate professor of women’s studies and religious studies at Montclair State University, reviewed the archaeological evidence in favor of the idea that human society had, in a remote epoch, gone through a period when women ruled and showed that this proposition was a tissue of wishful thinking, wild surmise, and aggressive misreading of the available facts.
Unearthing Matriarchy - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Ten years ago, Cynthia Eller offered a useful and long-overdue demolition of a mistaken idea that gained widespread currency in women’s studies and in some sectors of popular culture. In The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future (Beacon Press 2001), Eller, who is an associate professor of women’s studies and religious studies at Montclair State University, reviewed the archaeological evidence in favor of the idea that human society had, in a remote epoch, gone through a period when women ruled and showed that this proposition was a tissue of wishful thinking, wild surmise, and aggressive misreading of the available facts.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Imaginary job numbers could lead to real trouble
Scary:
Imaginary job numbers could lead to real trouble - NYPOST.com: "Early this month Labor reported that 216,000 new jobs were created in March. It was better than Wall Street expected.
But the figure included 117,000 jobs that the department thinks, but can't prove, were created by newly formed companies that might not even exist. In fact, the department is getting so optimistic about the labor market that it increased this imaginary job count from just 81,000 in March, 2010"
Imaginary job numbers could lead to real trouble - NYPOST.com: "Early this month Labor reported that 216,000 new jobs were created in March. It was better than Wall Street expected.
But the figure included 117,000 jobs that the department thinks, but can't prove, were created by newly formed companies that might not even exist. In fact, the department is getting so optimistic about the labor market that it increased this imaginary job count from just 81,000 in March, 2010"
President Boring
Yep:
Roger L. Simon » President Boring
But what is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say. He is a boring person, the quintessential “hollow man” in the T.S. Eliot sense. He is kind of a socialist, kind of a liberal, kind of a multi-culturalist, kind of an environmentalist, kind of globalist, kind of a budget cutter — but none of them with any real commitment. Basically, he’s a vague and uncommitted person pretending to be otherwise. He is the man that voted “present,” now in the presidency. The fact that he never specified the targets of “hope” and “change” during his election was far from a campaign ploy and more typical than we ever dreamed. There never was a there there. And now, I strongly suspect, there never will be.
Roger L. Simon » President Boring
But what is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say. He is a boring person, the quintessential “hollow man” in the T.S. Eliot sense. He is kind of a socialist, kind of a liberal, kind of a multi-culturalist, kind of an environmentalist, kind of globalist, kind of a budget cutter — but none of them with any real commitment. Basically, he’s a vague and uncommitted person pretending to be otherwise. He is the man that voted “present,” now in the presidency. The fact that he never specified the targets of “hope” and “change” during his election was far from a campaign ploy and more typical than we ever dreamed. There never was a there there. And now, I strongly suspect, there never will be.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Obama deficit reduction plan leaves deficits
Change:
Obama deficit reduction plan leaves deficits - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "Even if every provision of President Obama's deficit reduction plan is enacted - and he concedes it won't be - there still won't be a balanced budget on the horizon. And the National Debt will continue to expand by trillions of dollars."
Obama deficit reduction plan leaves deficits - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "Even if every provision of President Obama's deficit reduction plan is enacted - and he concedes it won't be - there still won't be a balanced budget on the horizon. And the National Debt will continue to expand by trillions of dollars."
Monday, April 11, 2011
Works and Days » The Razor’s Edge
Works and Days » The Razor’s Edge: "California in the Balance." Read it!
Friday, April 08, 2011
What liberal deficit reduction would look like
Ah, the workers paradise:
What liberal deficit reduction would look like | Philip Klein | Opinion | Washington Examiner: "The assault has not abated. Liberals and Democratic lawmakers have continued to tee off on Ryan, arguing that his GOP budget would cut the deficit on the backs of the poor and elderly, while doling out benefits to the rich.
Yet conspicuously absent from most liberal criticisms is any comparable attempt to confront the nation's unsustainable long-term debt crisis.
This is no accident.
It's much easier to attack a plan when the comparison is an imaginary world in which Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security can remain intact with little action from Washington, than it is to present a counterproposal that itself could become a target."
What liberal deficit reduction would look like | Philip Klein | Opinion | Washington Examiner: "The assault has not abated. Liberals and Democratic lawmakers have continued to tee off on Ryan, arguing that his GOP budget would cut the deficit on the backs of the poor and elderly, while doling out benefits to the rich.
Yet conspicuously absent from most liberal criticisms is any comparable attempt to confront the nation's unsustainable long-term debt crisis.
This is no accident.
It's much easier to attack a plan when the comparison is an imaginary world in which Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security can remain intact with little action from Washington, than it is to present a counterproposal that itself could become a target."
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Bethany University faces financial challenges - San Jose Mercury News
This could be the end of my alma mater:
Bethany University faces financial challenges - San Jose Mercury News: "Bethany University is facing financial difficulties that could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to the end of one of the oldest institutions in Scotts Valley, the small Christian school’s president acknowledged Tuesday.
The fate of the school, established in 1919 as a training center for an urban San Francisco ministry, will be discussed next week in Sacramento by the Northern California and Nevada District of the Assemblies of God, which owns and manages the school, said the Rev. Lew Shelton, who’s served as university president since October 2009."
Bethany University faces financial challenges - San Jose Mercury News: "Bethany University is facing financial difficulties that could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to the end of one of the oldest institutions in Scotts Valley, the small Christian school’s president acknowledged Tuesday.
The fate of the school, established in 1919 as a training center for an urban San Francisco ministry, will be discussed next week in Sacramento by the Northern California and Nevada District of the Assemblies of God, which owns and manages the school, said the Rev. Lew Shelton, who’s served as university president since October 2009."
PauThe Republican's plan is brave, radical, and smart. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine
Compliments from strange places:
Paul Ryan's budget proposal and Medicare: The Republican's plan is brave, radical, and smart. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine: "This dynamic of political evasion and reality-denial may have undergone a fundamental shift today with the release of Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 budget resolution. The Wisconsin Republican's genuinely radical plan goes where Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich never did by terminating the entitlement status of Medicare and Medicaid."
Paul Ryan's budget proposal and Medicare: The Republican's plan is brave, radical, and smart. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine: "This dynamic of political evasion and reality-denial may have undergone a fundamental shift today with the release of Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 budget resolution. The Wisconsin Republican's genuinely radical plan goes where Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich never did by terminating the entitlement status of Medicare and Medicaid."
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