Glenn Beck relays a story on the radio today. This should give any freedom loving person pause when discussing “regulations”
I was I think you are at the same place that I was at a couple of weeks ago. It’s amazing, Sarah, what is happening with this particular business owner. You know, he’s bringing these conservative people in. The night before I was there, it was about 10:00 at night and they were doing a concert at this arena and there was ZZ Top. And he went into a bathroom or something and he tries to turn on the water and the water was off. And he went to his building manager and said, hey, what’s with the water. Just then the health inspector comes in. The health inspector now, 10:00 at night in the middle of a ZZ Top concert. Health inspector comes in and says, we notice that your water is off. And he said, you noticed that our water is off? And she said, yes, absolutely. Can you show us where your water pump is? So he takes them around and shows them the water pump and she said, yeah, we notice that we noticed that these valves had been turned a couple of days ago. He said, excuse me? You noticed these valves a couple of days ago? She said, yeah, we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to shut you down and you are not going to be able to do anything else for the rest of the weekend.
Now, I was going to give my speech the next day. The next morning they called and said, you know, you are going to be in violation; you’ve got to cancel this. He said, what happens if I don’t cancel? And they said, well, it’s going to be a misdemeanor, it will be a $2,000 fine. He said, fine me. They shut them down on a Friday night and tried to keep them closed and he says he’s convinced that it’s because people like you are coming in, me, and he’s holding conservatives. And he said, even in his little teeny town of Tyler, Texas, he’s getting the regulation heat.
Read more…
It sure looks like this “health inspector” is violating the Constitution and the right to assemble.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Constitution on April 30th, 2010
From the Wall Street Journal:
We should be skeptical about expecting a regulator to make accurate, one-size-fits-all judgments about the merit of specific financial products. For example, before 1996, certain initial public offerings of stocks were subject to merit review in certain states, where the state decided if a security is a “bad” investment and thus not appropriate to be offered to its citizens. In fact, this is exactly what happened to Apple Computer when it first went public in 1980. Massachusetts prohibited the offering of Apple shares because they were “too risky,” and Apple did not even bother to offer its shares in Illinois due to strict state laws on new issues. What if federal bureaucrats had had the power to impose their judgment on a “risky” financial product (such as an IPO) on a nationwide scale, or every state followed Massachusetts’ lead? Would Apple have become the successful company that it is today?
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Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Economics on April 29th, 2010
The chart below shows a disturbing reality about our current recession.
Nearly half of the unemployed, are chronically unemployed. People who lost their jobs back in 2008 are not moving on. They can’t or they won’t. It doesn’t help that government is feeding their dependence. The cliche is unemployment benefits extends unemployment. Is that is what is going on here?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Economics on April 29th, 2010
Russell Roberts has a long piece on what lead up to the financial crisis of 2008.
In the United States we like to believe we are a capitalist society based on individual responsibility. But we are what we do. Not what we say we are. Not what we wish to be. But what we do. And what we do is make it easy to gamble with other people’s money—particularly borrowed money—by making sure that almost everybody who makes bad loans gets his money back anyway. The financial crisis of 2008 was a natural result of these perverse incentives.
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The bill that the Democrats are trying to push through the Senate won’t fix these perverse incentives. It creates a bail out fund. This will further distort the markets and reduce risk for the huge banks. That’s not capitalism. That is corporatism.
One of the largest tax bills I am compelled to pay is school taxes. The cost of schools is driven up by teacher’s unions who have taken the profession to a point where part time workers (they only work 190 days a year) get paid up to $100,000 per year, receive a budget busing pension, have a matched contribution plan and excellent health benefits. On top of all that, their jobs are secured by tenure. Downsizing is not an option.
The reasonable reaction is to say that the voters can elect school board members who will stand tough against the unions. If only that would work. The dirty little secret in Pennsylvania is that the school boards is just marginally involved in what teachers ultimately get paid. The truth is that unions can strike until arbitration and a faceless bureaucrat decides how much the voters most pay the teachers. We see it played out every couple of years. The unions go on strike. While it lasts, emotions run high. In the end it appears that the school boards lose their will. It isn’t a missing backbone at play…it is the threat that arbitration is going to be worse then settling. Often times, taking a known but imperfect contract seems better than loosing control and possibly getting something worse.
The next time your school board gives in to unreasonable teachers demands, remember that they may have had little say in the matter…and you as a voter, have even less say.
Glenn Beck made a good point last night. How come the people who have no problem giving the government the power to ask if you have health insurance are so up in arms over the government having the power to ask if your a citizen. The government can examine your health insurance status anytime they want and force you to buy a product you have decided against. In Arizona, they are proposing to ask for papers only when a there is reasonable suspicion. It seems to me that ObamaCare is much more of a threat to the right to privacy than the Arizona law.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Health Care on April 28th, 2010
Eugene Robinson is concerned that the new immigration law in Arizona will transform it into a racist police state.
It seems to me that a law … requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state…
Time to wake up an smell the coffee. It is a federal law that legal immigrants must carry identification documents. It’s called a “green card”. If asking to see your green cards is a problem, why do we spend so much money on visas and passports? If Eugene Robinson doesn’t know the current law, what makes us think his opinion of the new law has any merit?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Common Sense on April 27th, 2010
Bob Beckle just predicted that we are in the midst of the greatest economic recovery in history. Beckle is a expert on politics and I am assuming this prediction has more politcal calculations than economic calculations. If so, it must be remembered so we can throw it back into his face when it doesnt happen.
Today is Earth Day. Dumb name? I am all for awareness and preserving our environment, but I also like reality. Therefore, it should be widely publicized that Global Warming has been fixed. The evidence is in the ice. According to the IARC-JAXA satellite information, the ice free Arctic is no longer a worry. The chart below shows that the ice has not only returned, it is at is highest level in the last 8 years.
This, of course, is nonsense. This increase in ice extent could have many factors (wind, currents, sun, clouds), but this is the sort of conclusion that passes as logic in the media. See the dark green line above. When it hit a low, we were told that the Arctic ice would disappear and global warming was to blame. Did you believe them? I didn’t.
Here’s what you should take from the graph above. There difference in the ice extent has stayed fairly constant over that last 8 years.
Nancy tells us:
It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest. All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on.
She treating us like idiot?
- A refrigerator has one wire in the back. It’s called the power plug.
- The main function of the refrigerator is not to turn the light on when the door opens
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