ISN’T THIS LEAKING DIVORCE DETAILS OF A RIVAL kind of an Obama trademark? I’m just sayin’ . . . .
Archive for 2012
January 19, 2012
STEPHANIE WANG: Vacationing with Castro: Should universities travel to dictatorships? “The regime needs those dollars like oxygen.”
I DON’T BLAME HIM: ABC News Reports Romney Has Millions Parked Offshore.
It’s peanuts compared to Apple’s offshore billions, of course. But I imagine Romney’s doing it for the same reasons Apple is.
Meanwhile, Andrew Morriss writes: “As someone who has actually been to the Caymans, and spoken repeatedly with Cayman hedge fund professionals, here are a couple of things ABC News missed that they would have found if – say – they had bothered to use a sophisticated research tool like Google to learn about the hedge fund industry. With even minimal digging, they might have found an expert like Houman Shadab at New York Law School, the best academic writer on HFs around, who could have explained how HFs work. Instead they went to the Tax Justice Network, a highly partisan group dedicated to impoverishing the people of the small jurisdictions that specialize in international business. . . . Had they looked a little more, they would have found that Delaware is the top US domicile for hedge funds. Perhaps they could have asked VP Biden for a comment on why HFs cluster there.”
Meanwhile, from Dan Mitchell: ABC News Produces Empty and Biased Story on Mitt Romney and Tax Havens. “You’re probably thinking you missed something, because there’s nothing to the story. But that’s because the reporters don’t have anything. And if you think I excerpted unfairly, feel free to read the whole article. The only thing you’ll discover is that Ross and Chuchmach are biased hacks. Because not only did they write a story about nothing, they also quoted two left-wingers, Jack Blum and Rebecca Wilson, and failed to give the other side even an inch of column space. Blum is a former John Kerry staffer who is most famous for making unsubstantiated claims (which he later admitted were fabricated) that tax havens resulted in $100 billion of lost revenue to the Treasury each year. And Rebecca Wilson works for Citizens for Tax Justice, a union-funded group so radical that even congressional Democrats usually are reluctant to work with them.”
Related: Isn’t Obama, umm…rich? “I mean Obama and the Democrats keep making noises that approximate a tune that goes like this: ‘millionaires and billionaires are bad.’ . . . What seems to be lost in this endlessly playing sing-along is the fact that President Obama and his wife are millionaires who have no problem enjoying $81 dollar American Wagyu steaks during an evening out. . . . Understand, I don’t want the Obama’s $81 steaks. I don’t even want their access to a tony restaurant or a private dining area. I’d rather not have to get dressed up. But it seems to me that a president should not want to eat an $81 steak if he is disdainful of others who do so.”
UPDATE: A reader emails:
As a Newt supporter watching the Obama media dept. that is MSNBC this morning, the Cayman Island Romney funds aren’t about dodging taxes but making it easier for different investments to pay Romney his profits.
If anything the “tax haven investment story” says more about how federal banking regs hurt the US economy, not that Mitt is a cheat of some sort.
Indeed.
MORE: John Kerry and the Cayman Islands Tax Shelter.
Until now, Kerry has never disclosed details of this tax shelter, which utilized offshore companies registered in the Cayman Islands and a “straddle” scheme of forward contracts to buy and sell commodities. . . . He also did not cite the investment in his financial disclosure statements filed with the US Senate, and only a fragment was in his Massachusetts statement of financial interests for calendar year 1983, when Kerry was lieutenant governor.
Read the whole thing.
MY INTERVIEW with Mark Levin about his new book Ameritopia is now on YouTube.
PAUL HSIEH: SOPA, Guns, and Freedom. “You do not protect honest online content producers from pirates by breaking the internet for the innocent.”
LIFE AMONG THE BARBARIANS: The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns.
Related: Barbies Banned From Iranian Toy Shops.
Iranian “Morality Police” swept in to stores on Monday to warn shopkeepers that Barbies were not to be sold in Iran. “About three weeks ago they [the morality police] came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies,” a Tehran shopkeeper claimed. Many shopkeepers, however, are defying the ban, putting Barbies in behind other toys in order to fool the authorities but still have the popular toys available for customers.
I hope that people in New York will show a similar spirit of resistance where Mullah Bloomberg is concerned.
KEYSTONE CANCELLED, major U.S. refinery closes after EPA imposes $700 million in new costs. It’s like nobody wants us to have gas.
Hey, but they’re banning new uranium mining, too.
SO WILL SOME OF YOU GREENS EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS BETTER FOR THE PLANET? Canada Will Look To China To Sell Its Oil.
NARRATIVE FAIL: Democrats receive more Bain Capital dollars than Republicans. “Democrats have accepted more political donations than Republicans from executives at Bain Capital, complicating the left’s plan to attack Mitt Romney for his record at the private equity firm.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Jobs vs. Greens? On Keystone Obama Chooses His Base. “President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline sums up his presidency. When it comes down to well-paying new jobs and cheaper energy vs. his political base, guess which wins.”
For all his populist rhetoric, whenever it comes to a choice between the interests of working people and the values of the gentry class, Obama chooses the latter.
Related: Obama Kills Keystone Pipeline Plan: Why He Did It. “After all, who needs a secure energy source from a best friend when you can pay a fortune to buy it from unfriendly people in faraway unstable places?”
THE HILL: Lawmakers Rush To Drop Piracy Bills As Websites Go Dark. “Support for two controversial online-piracy bills began to crumble Wednesday in the face of protests from thousands of websites, including tech titans Google and Wikipedia. The unprecedented online demonstration against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) — epitomized by a black censorship bar plastered over the Google logo — spurred a rush for the exits on Capitol Hill as lawmakers rapidly withdrew their support for the legislation.”
PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS: 143 MPH In A 55 Zone While DUI, Cops & Union Want Him Rehired. “Despite the fact that he admits he was triple digit speeding drunk, Saunders and his fellow cops, through their union, think he should be back on the job so he can potentially give you tickets for DUI. Isn’t that nice? It gets better. Since the union’s funds come from dues ultimately paid for by taxpayers, those taxpayers are actually paying for Saunders’ appeal.”
#GREENFAIL: Der Spiegel: Solar Subsidy Sinkole: Reevaluating Germany’s Blind Faith In The Sun. I’ve lived in Germany. They have faith in the sun because for most of the year it never actually appears . . . . No really. We went from November to May in Heidelberg and I think we saw the sun, like, once. So how can this possibly be a surprise?
For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.
As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.
You’re in Northern Europe, for the love of God. Of course you’re not seeing the sun.
JAMES TARANTO: The Passive-Aggressive Presidency: You can make him decide, but don’t blame him for the decision.
It kind of blunts his “do-nothing Congress” attacks, though.
January 18, 2012
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: The scandal over Paul Krugman’s Enron conflict-of-interest. Contrary to some predictions at the time, however, it didn’t end his career as a Times columnist. Ethics rules are for the little people!
CAN YOU REALLY HAVE TOO MANY? A sale on Duracell Coppertop batteries. Be sure to click the “coupon” button.
SABOTAGE: Reader Ed Reynolds (no relation) writes:
Thought you’d appreciate this: I was just over at Costco, and the front corner of the book table had about 12 three-foot tall stacks of Mark Levin’s new book, “Ameritopia.” Someone had very neatly turned the top book in each stack face down so passersby could not see the title. Additionally, in the “other paperback” area, a copy of his other book was also upside down.
I turned them all back over…
Someone is a bit touchy, huh?
Well, it shows what they’re afraid of.
UPDATE: Reader Kimberly Marvel writes:
laughed when I read the comment on this blurb. But it made me think of something that happened when I worked for Barnes & Noble years ago.
I used to work for Barnes and Noble with their magazines and newspapers for our specific location. The magazines were separated out into the various types and located in one of the last sections were the political magazines. When I first started, there were all sorts of lefty magazines and very few conservative ones.
The an interesting thing happened. Rush Limbaugh started issuing his magazine out to the stores instead of by “subscription only” so they actually sent us three copies the first month. I couldn’t keep them on the shelf. By the time I ended my time there, we would receive between thirty and fifty copies a month, with no returns. And it wasn’t just The Limbaugh Letter, but it happened with the other conservative mags too. I always gave any new magazines three months to sell and as long as they sold a few copies a month, I would continue to get them in. And meanwhile, the lefty mags always just sat there, always looking used since people always browsed them, but never bought them. So they were always returned. Well, someone (whoever did the magazine ordering for our region) started noticing that we never returned the Limbaugh Letter, so they started sending us other conservative mags to try.
Amazing thing, every morning, when I would straighten out the racks, the conservative mags were always shoved into the back corners where no one could see them, and the lefty mags were always moved to the front. However, I believed that we sold more if you put the more popular mags at the front so I would always shift them back. It had nothing to do with politics, but only with sales. I actually thought it was incredibly funny that someone went to all the trouble of shifting the magazines almost every night even though I shifted them back the next morning. At least I got paid to do it and the entertainment value went up every month. If it hurt their feelings so much to see the conservative mags in prominence, perhaps they should have started buying the lefty mags instead.
I enjoy your site! Keep up the good work!
Thanks.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWYER RON COLEMAN ON SOPA:
You don’t need a link to find out what’s going with the SOPA “Blackout,” or all that other stuff. It’s all over the place, beyond those with a special interest in intellectual property.
Real news over an IP issue? Not quite.
Rather, the news and the attention arise from the fact that the threatened power-grab that SOPA represents goes far beyond IP, or “enforcement,” or “brands,” or even “piracy.”
Oh, those are all real things, real concepts. But their meaning has become so distorted in the public and political debate and spin that they get scare-quotes here today. It is precisely by turning piracy into a mission-critical bogey-man that the strong-IP advocates have perhaps, for once, overplayed their hands.
Yes, it’s about protecting existing companies from new business models, not piracy. But here’s an easy fix for SOPA: Allow anyone whose site is taken down to recover the greater of either $50,000 or five times actual damages imposed if their site is taken down without good reason, or if they can show bad faith. Given that Big Entertainment was robo-signing complaints a decade ago, that seems a reasonable thing to ask. Also make it a felony to sign a false affidavit in these cases, and allow private prosecution. . . .
Meanwhile, here’s Julian Sanchez on Internet regulation and the economics of piracy.
UPDATE: From reader Max Mulholland, a prediction. Is Obama playing a deep game here?
I am a undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at Missouri S&T and from what I have observed over the last few days is, If SOPA or PIPA are passed by congress and obama vetos them he will most likely get reelected in 2012 by energizing the youth by becoming “the savior of the internet” or something along those lines. It would be reasonable to assume that if he vetoed SOPA or PIPA now to get reelected he would just ram them through in the beginning of his second term.
Interesting. Is he that smart? Regardless, it’s looking as if he’s not going to get the chance. Missouri S&T is a great school, by the way.
MUST-SEE TV: Canadian Response To Obama’s Keystone Pipeline Decision. “He chose Venezuela over Canada.”
EUROPE: Employees at Just One Paris Hospital Are Owed 2 Million Vacation Days. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
Related: Britain: The busiest online shopping day of last year was the day of a mass public sector strikes.
ELECTION: Utah Tea Party Leader David Kirkham Takes On Gov. Herbert.
Packing tea party credentials and touting his business background, David Kirkham jumped into the governor’s race Wednesday with plans to boost Utah business and bust a controversial guest-worker law.
“I will do everything in my power so the people of Utah can arise and be that shining light on the hill for all of the United States,” said Kirkham, invoking the rhetoric of Republican icon Ronald Reagan.
Kirkham, a custom auto builder and Utah tea party founder, becomes the third Republican to challenge Gov. Gary Herbert.
He’s my pick. And not just because his cars are cool.
MARK MECKLER ON the united left/right opposition to SOPA. “The effort against SOPA/PIPA is non-partisan and involves folks from both the left, the right and everywhere in between. From MoveOn.org, to tea partiers, citizens of all political ideologies across the country are uniting against SOPA / PIPA. This is a good model for pushing back against government intrusion on our liberties. This is not about ‘policy.’ It’s about liberty.”