Archive for 2011

OBAMA DENIES MEETINGS WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS. I believe him. Nobody looking for intelligent life would visit this White House.

#OCCUPYFAIL: “What a shock! The leaders getting criticized get to make the determination whether certain people can speak, and then whether their speech contains opinions or facts. What a great system OWS has designed … for people who want to seize control of the movement and the funds. It looks like this movement has its own 1% that want to dictate to the 99% how to live their lives. Frankly, I think the 99% have a better chance in the system we have than in the neo-Stalinist model they’re building in Zuccotti Park, and we have a century of experience on our side in that argument.”

PROPERTY PRICES COLLAPSE IN CHINA. “Residential property prices are in freefall in China as developers race to meet revenue targets for the year in a quickly deteriorating market. The country’s largest builders began discounting homes in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen in recent weeks, and the trend has now spread to second- and third-tier cities such as Hangzhou, Hefei, and Chongqing. . . . What started slowly in September turned into a rout by the middle of last month—normally a good period for sales—when Shanghai developers started to slash asking prices.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: TIMES DISPATCH: Occupy Richmond’s Special Treatment Weakens Democracy.

On Friday, Oct. 28, Corky Mann, treasurer of the Richmond Tea Party, hand-delivered an invoice to the City of Richmond for the total costs incurred from three separate April 15 events at Richmond’s downtown Kanawha Plaza.

The annual Richmond Tea Party Tax Day Rally, a major venue through which we both alert and educate Virginians on fiscal and other policy issues, has been a mainstay event for the organization each year since the 2009 inaugural rally.

The $8,500 invoice represents dollars budgeted for the Richmond Tea Party’s three Tax Day rallies. When combined with the many hundreds of volunteer hours utilized for these events alone, the overall investment represents a good portion of the organization’s available resources.

For each event at Kanawha Plaza we filed timely applications for governmental review and paid all required permit fees. We arranged for toilets, first-aid care, staging, lights and sound, off-duty police officers for security, event insurance and volunteers trained to support an orderly day of protest. We always left the property as clean as — or cleaner than — we found it.

The Occupy Richmond group met none of these benchmarks while camped out in the same Kanawha Plaza between Oct. 15th and Oct. 31 (the morning they were finally evicted). So in the spirit of our founding principle of equal application of the law, the Richmond Tea Party is requesting a full refund from the City of Richmond for city-imposed costs related to these three rallies.

Occupy Richmond participants, as well as their political supporters, appeared to be using the immediate urgency of their concerns as an excuse for bypassing required procedures and costs. Yet, despite knowing the urgency of our fiscal and overall national plight three years ago, Tea Partiers never expected free services, never destroyed the public areas entrusted to us, never demanded access beyond that allowed by our permit, never failed to make proper payment of fees and insurance, and never strained police and emergency services systems to the detriment of those in need of those protections and services.

Such irresponsible actions and expectations never, to be blunt, crossed our minds.

That’s because you’re not socialists.

Plus this: “Democratic commentator Bob Beckel recently compared the disparity between the Tea Party’s treatment by local governments and the Occupiers’ to one person getting a better deal on a car than another. Imagine an America where basic equalities and a God-given right to public self-expression are reduced to clearance-sale status, depending on the agenda and whims of the ‘bosses’ on duty at a given time.”

That example — government as used-car salesman — captures both the ethos and the performance of Beckel and his ilk. The truth is, these people get a pass because, as client groups of the Democratic Party, they’re exempt from the enforcement of the law. This may make people who aren’t so favored wonder why they should pay taxes to, or obey the commands of, a system that doesn’t follow the law itself. Well: Why should they? Where’s the legitimacy?

EUROPE: TOO SOCIALIST FOR THE CHINESE:

Also last night, the chairman of the supervisory board of China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, put further distance between China and the eurozone bail-out, saying that Europe’s bloated welfare state meant that people did not work hard enough.

“I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies,” Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. “I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack.”

Eurozone leaders had been hoping that China would use some of its trade surplus to back the bail-out fund.

I couldn’t say it better myself.

UPDATE: Malaysian reader Daniel Riveong sends the link to the original interview. He blogged about it here.

#OCCUPYFAIL: “A SLIVER OF MADNESS:” New York Post Reporter Candice Giove spends the night in Zuccotti Park.

They call the NYPD — and it becomes abundantly clear that the cops down there are sick of the antics.

“Every single night it’s the same thing. I mean, some guy was a victim of rape!” an officer snarls. “There comes a time when it’s over. This is a disaster. It’s all we’re doing, every two seconds, is locking somebody up every time. It’s done.

“It’s done,” he repeats. “Occupy Wall Street is no longer a protest.”

Scenes like this — and far worse — have been playing out since the Zuccotti Park “occupation” began on Sept. 17.

The parcel is now a sliver of madness, rife with sex attacks, robberies and vigilante justice. . . . “We have three-quarters of a million dollars in the bank and all these f–king people are not doing financial accounting while we’re calling for it from the larger corporations,” says the transgender leader. “A lot of good people are quitting.”

A day later, a female-only “safety tent” would be erected to shield women from predators.

Organizers plan to add a medical tent, as well as others designed to provide safe sleeping for gay, transgender and co-ed groups.

The threat of rape is very real here — for women and men.

A teachable moment.

JANET DALEY: Europe’s Democratic Deficit Grows Wider By The Day: The Eurocracy’s contempt for the nation-states it governs is growing ever more flagrant. “Is membership of the euro (or the EU) like being a Soviet satellite: a prisoner nation held in bondage to a superior power? Or is it more akin to being the client state of an imperial benefactor, which can call the shots on internal policy and replace elected governments with puppet regimes when it sees fit? . . . If this is now one ‘homeland’, as Mr Sarkozy would have it, who are its enfranchised electors? Where does the power lie to overthrow or replace its rulers? What are the mechanisms for recalling the governing elite? Apparently, they will have to be foregone in the present emergency. “

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: The Numbers: J.D. Degrees and Lawyer Employment. And eye Thomas Cooley’s numbers skeptically. But note this: “From 1996 to 2010, the economy created 146,000 lawyer jobs according to the CPS. In the same time period 614,089 people graduated from ABA law schools.”

TIM CAVANAUGH: Pot calls kettle green in solar dumping petition. “It’s hard to spot all the absurdities in the death spiral of the U.S. government’s green energy policy. But here’s a big one: A group of solar equipment makers is trying to lock inexpensive products out of the United States, and the argument of these subsidized companies is that subsidies create an unfair market.”