POLITICO: Wall Street To Dems: You Can’t Have It Both Ways. “President Barack Obama and other top Democrats are parroting the anti-corporate rhetoric running through the Occupy Wall Street protests, trying to tap into the movement’s energy but keep the protesters at arms’ length. But many bankers aren’t buying the distinction. And some financial services lobbyists and industry insiders say the liberal line will make swing givers think twice before opening their checkbooks this year.” Plus this: “It just makes it harder for people who are Democrats in New York, Boston, Chicago to on the one hand be demogagued and then be asked ‘Hey, you can get your picture with the president for $30,000.’ It doesn’t square.”
Archive for 2011
October 18, 2011
CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN: Inflation On The Up? “One of the key arguments in Detlev Schlichter’s Paper Money Collapse concerns the oft-repeated claim that the world’s central bankers won’t allow inflation to get out of control, because they are fully aware of what a very bad thing it is. But what if they also fear something else that they regard as even worse?”
UPDATE: On the other hand, should I take this as a sign that the Apple folks don’t fear inflation in the immediate future? “Apple Total Cash Hits $81.6 Billion, Over $5 Billion Increase In The Quarter, $22 Billion Increase In 9 Months.” Or at least, they don’t fear it more than they fear other things. . . .
HERMAN CAIN UPDATE: BREAKING: Cain Tells PJTV that he ‘Misspoke’ on the Gitmo Terrorist Question. Video at the link.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Detroit struggles to keep lights on: Copper thieves, aging equipment darken blocks in cash-starved city.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Blu-Ray.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A WALL STREET OCCUPIER?
Polling the OWS folks shows they don’t know much. My favorite: Elizabeth Warren as Warren Buffett’s wife. But this one, noted by Allahpundit as “why I drink,” is probably more significant. These people have no idea where tax money goes, or where it comes from.
MICKEY KAUS: Doubling Down On Scorn: More On Obama’s “Disgusted Headmaster” Schtick. Hey, he did go to a fancy prep school, so this may be his most authentic routine. . . .
Plus this: “Again, if you can’t cut back the government bureaucracy in good times (because there is enough tax money and we have ‘unmet needs,’ etc.) and you can’t cut it in bad times (because we have to preserve those jobs as ‘stimulus’) when does the government stop growing? Has Obama even attempted to answer this concern?”
PROF. JACOBSON ON THE DEBATE: “Perry the winner not because he was so much better than the others, but because he was so much better than he was previously. He may have revitalized his campaign tonight.”
UPDATE: More thoughts from Ira Stoll.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More from John Althouse Cohen.
CARRIE SEVERINO: Senate GOP Jobs Bill Contains a Landmine for Federalism.
Among other things, S.197 sets a statute of limitations for claims, caps damages and creates standards for expert witnesses. These may sound like great ideas, but they are not within the constitutional powers granted to the federal government for the very same reasons Obamacare is not.
The law’s own justification for its constitutional authority should be chilling to anyone committed to limited federal power. The bill’s findings state that health care and health insurance are industries that “affect interstate commerce,” and conclude that Congress therefore has Commerce Clause power to regulate them — even when it involves an in-state transaction between a doctor and patient, governed by in-state medical malpractice laws. Is there any industry that couldn’t be found to have an effect on interstate commerce? The agriculture and manufacturing industries, long considered the paradigmatic areas not covered by the Commerce Clause, certainly fall under federal power under this broad analysis.
Yeah, that’s a problem, as I’ve noted here before. If you’re going to oppose ObamaCare as outside of Congress’s enumerated powers — and you should — then at the very least, you shouldn’t commit your own enumerated-powers violations in the same freaking area.
Randy Barnett calls the Republicans supporting this FINOs, for Federalists In Name Only. Back in 2002, I was criticizing Republicans for Fair-Weather Federalism, and the problem continues.
THE ANCHORESS ON what she likes, and doesn’t, about Herman Cain. “I like the fact that he majored in mathematics in college and took a graduate degree in Computer Science in 1971 — it shows me that he is forward-thinking; he was able to tune into a wave of the future while a lot of people were still wondering if 8-Track cassettes would last forever.”
IS THERE ANYTHING THEY DON’T DO? “Corporate And Bulk Gifting,” at Amazon. Hey, if you work for a company that decides to give 1000 fruit baskets or something, be sure you go through one of my links. I’m just sayin’ . . .
BEWARE THE Clark Clifford Republicans?
ALEXIS GARCIA: Occupy Vegas: Brought to You By SEIU.
STEPHEN GREEN IS Drunkblogging The GOP Debate.
UPDATE: More from Stacy McCain & Co.
HOW TO BE a failure. “I fail all the time, so often that I am somewhat mystified when I get emails in which people perceive me as successful. Because most of the time, I think of myself as a failure. Which, I’ve come to think, is part of what makes me successful. . . . I get emails every week from young men and women who say they want to be a blogger or say they want to be a journalist, but all I want to know is, are they acting like one? Because there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be.”
REGARDING AMAZON ENTERING THE PUBLISHING BUSINESS, a reader emails: “Amazon isn’t getting rid of publishers, it’s becoming a publisher. This means the group that controls the distribution also controls the content selection. Not exactly a blow for the Army of Davids in my opinion — when all the publishers are gone, who will publish the books critical of Amazon? Bottom line: It’s not getting rid of middlemen, it’s just muscling them out so it’s the only middleman. It does however reveal that in the age of digital publishing, discoverability and promotion on the digital storefront is the only thing that actually matters. The role of publishers in curation is almost totally abrogated to the sellers. When anyone can publish a book, it’s no longer the publishers that are the gating factor to what we read, it’s the digital storefront. It’s a very interesting shift and definitely good news for Amazon and the like.”
That’s a good point. I like Amazon, but if they become a chokepoint that would be bad. Right now their platform is very open to self-publishers and others, but if that were to change it would be a bad thing. There would probably be antitrust issues, too.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Charles Cooke: Why Should Your Degree Guarantee You A Cushy Job?
In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college — regardless of its content or application — will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. Worse, that one has a right to these things. In doing so, we have created a Potemkin aristocracy, one based upon the erroneous and tragic conceit that having letters after one’s name intrinsically confers excellence. We are happily encouraging our children to join its ranks, regardless of whether there is any evidence that to do so will be in their interest. This is supremely ironic, given that so many of America’s billionaires — i.e. those who pay for more educations and create more jobs than anyone else — are college dropouts. Indeed, both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates failed to finish college. Can we say with a straight face that this has adversely affected them, or America at large?
On Thursday, I met a guy down in Zuccotti Park. He speaks six languages, but he has nothing useful to say in any of them. He is the movement’s perfect spokesman.
If an education doesn’t add value — that is if it doesn’t let you do something useful that you couldn’t do before — then it’s not valuable in terms of employment. Why should it be?
A REAL, LIVE Third Amendment violation.
SCIENCE: Plastic surgeon finds the ideal breast shape… by examining Page 3 girls. “As Mallucci concludes, it’s not that most surgeons don’t know what makes a breast attractive, it’s just that nobody’s studied and defined it before. In theory it could lead to a reduction in the number of poor boob jobs.”
WISCONSIN DEMOCRAT: “We got a lot of white people in Wisconsin.”
Plus, from the comments: “We got a lot of white people up there on the dais.” Obviously, they should step down and open up their positions to more diverse replacements.
STUPID, EVIL PHARMA COMPANIES! World’s first malaria vaccine works in major trial. “An experimental vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline halved the risk of African children getting malaria in a major clinical trial, making it likely to become the world’s first shot against the deadly disease.”
GREEN FAIL, MICHIGAN EDITION: Sun Not Shining on State Solar Subsidies.
In 2009, then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm touted the $725 million Wixom renewable energy park project as “symbolic for Michigan in what we’re going to become.”
The new solar power companies were supposed to create 4,000 jobs in a closed auto assembly plant and provide a vivid example of Michigan’s economic transition from automobiles to green energy. In return the state approved a $100 million tax credit.
Two years later, Ford told the Wixom city officials the deal wasn’t happening.
Michigan Capitol Confidential took a look back at the nine solar power companies that were approved for state tax credits. Many have fizzled with reports that the companies are laying off employees at a time they were supposed to have been adding jobs.
So Granholm turned out to be right, in a way . . .