There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal…F.A. Hayek
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense,Quotes on December 30th, 2010
Share on FacebookCharts Selected by the Heritage Foundation
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Economics on December 29th, 2010
I have been to one Broadway show and I hated it. The chair was uncomfortable for a guy with long legs. The story was boring. They singing OK, but definitely not my style. To top it off…it was expensive.
I vowed to never return to Broadway, and that is before I learned this:
The Carnegie stagehands’ pay was something else again, but not, as it turns out, unique. At Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, the average stagehand salary and benefits package is $290,000 a year.
To repeat, that is the average compensation of all the workers who move musicians’ chairs into place and hang lights, not the pay of the top five.
Across the plaza at the Metropolitan Opera, a spokesman said stagehands rarely broke into the top-five category. But a couple of years ago, one did. The props master, James Blumenfeld, got $334,000 at that time, including some vacation back pay.
How to account for all this munificence? The power of a union, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. “Power,” as in the capacity and willingness to close most Broadway theaters for 19 days two years ago when agreement on a new contract could not be reached.
A stagehand makes more than then President of the United States. That vow to never return has been fortified.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Labor and Unions on December 28th, 2010
It’s cold. It’s snowing. My brother is stuck in Europe. My brother-in-law postponed his trip to Florida due to the blizzard. Isn’t it suppose to be warming? Yet the global warming people persist. Here’s what those who claim to honor science don’t get.
Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, “falsifiable.” That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it’s false. That’s what scientific experimentation and observation do. That’s the essence of the scientific method
Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It’s global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it….read more
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Global Climate Change on December 27th, 2010
From the New York Times:
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress.
Obama worried the profit-motive leads doctors to amputate legs and remove tonsils unnecessarily…but he has no problem with the government paying them to instruct people to die…you know…for the great good.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Health Care,Obama Administration on December 27th, 2010
I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual…read the whole thing
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Obama Administration,Quotes on December 27th, 2010
During the campaign, President Obama told us that under his plan, your electricity rates would “necessarily sky rocket”. It looks like he is keeping this campaign promise even though he couldn’t get cap and trade.
he Obama administration has agreed to issue another round of greenhouse gas limits for both power plants and refineries — this time through a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows U.S. EPA to require pollution controls at both new and existing facilities…read more
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Alternative Energy,Obama Administration on December 24th, 2010
The new census data shows that people are moving from traditionally liberal leaning states (blue) to traditionally conservative leaning states (red). The jobs and tax environment has created an unsustainable mess in areas controlled by Democrats. So liberals are packing up and taking their disease to new territory.
We have seen this on a smaller scale in the suburbs. The Democrats have screwed up nearly every large metropolitan area. They have controlled Philly since the 50′s. Liberalism and corruption has been so wide spread that most people of means have decided to move out…out to the suburbs.
For years the suburbs of Philly have been conservative and they have thrived, but now the population is shifting. Liberals are moving farther away from the city. It’s were the jobs are. It’s were the good schools are. Life is better.
With this move comes a shift in political philosophy. Areas that have been ruled by Republicans for over 100 years are now teetering on the edge. Moderates rule the day. It is the start of the down fall.
More liberals are moving in. Older more conservative voters are moving out. The disease is spreading. Soon the failures and corruption of Philly will move into my conservative county.
The same thing is happening on a state level. Why is it so hard for people to see that liberalism and progressive ruin lives, cities and basically everything they control…and they want to control everything.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Crazy Progressives on December 24th, 2010
According to a writer for the Business Insider, quantitative easing has not led to inflation and all the worry about it amounts to hysteria. He believes the recent increase in commodity pricing has come from genuine economic growth being fueled by China.
Despite all of the incessant shrieking over “money printing” and other inaccurate descriptions of QE and its impact on the economy there is still almost no signs thus far that inflation is making any sort of sustained pick-up. And that’s not surprising to anyone who actually understands that QE is a non-event…Read more
A “non-event”. If it is a non-event…why not do it again and again.
Government is good at creating one thing…bubbles. They try subvert market forces until the weight of the market become unbearable. Today we are still staggering around from a punch to the head. That punch was popping of the housing bubble.
According to Zillow, the value of homes in the U.S.A are still falling. I believe the falling prices are a correction that has been a long time coming. The FED thinks it can stop this correction by pumping up the money supply. I have predicted in the past that we will see high inflation due to an increase in the money supply. The writer at the Business Insider mocks this idea. His arrogance says that his point of view is shared by those “anyone who actually understands that QE is a non-event”.
Haven’t we been burned by these people in-the-know before. Barney Frank was on the banking committee in the House of Representatives. He assured us that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were in good shape. He understood the situation. We were too stupid to know what was really going on. Except history showed us that common sense ruled the day. Barnie Frank and all the experts at the big banks were wrong.
Before the housing bubble was the tech bubble. All the experts told us there was a new paradigm. The old economy was gone. Technology changed the world. You could now make money without a solid business foundation. The experts were wrong. The Money Supply as measured by the M3 Money Stock (which has been conveniently discontinued), sky rocketed around 1996. This extra money was pumped into the new DOT-COMs. A tech bubble soon followed.
Personally, I was burned by the tech bubble, but I pulled all my money out of stocks before the housing crisis hit because I knew the financial institutions were build on a foundations of wet sand. That’s what common sense told me to do. Common sense is now telling me that inflation will return when the economy is growing and products are in demand. I don’t believe we are there yet, so any determination that inflation fears were unfounded is still premature.
Only time will tell.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Economics,predictions on December 23rd, 2010
The government raced in and seized domain names, and as usual, they screwed up. In one case against dajaz1.com, the domain was seized for distributing 4 songs, and as it turns out, those songs were not illegally copied. They were distributed as promoting..read more
The government is so busy worrying about our rights on the Internet (Ne Neutrality), but they don’t realize that all we need is protection from them.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in free speech on December 23rd, 2010
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen…Dennis Prager
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Quotes on December 23rd, 2010
10 kids in Virginia are being punished for handing out candy canes. They say the were trying to spread Christmas cheer, but the school says that the candy canes can be formed into a weapon with your mouth. When the parents called, they were told…
not everyone wants Christmas cheer. That suicide rates are up over Christmas, and that they should keep their cheer to themselves, perhaps…read more
Those crazy Christians just had to be punished.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Crazy Progressives,Education and School Choice on December 22nd, 2010
In 2006, the voters rejected the Republican Congress by voting them out. In the two months between the election and the end of their terms the Republicans passed no legislature.
Fast forward today. The Democrats have a historically low approval rating and have been voted out of office. To them, this means put their activity into over drive. They want to get as many laws passed as possible before they head home.
Has there ever been a display of such contempt for the voters of this country? It all boils down to arrogance. The Democrats in Congress believe they are smarter than American people and we need to be lead like sheep to their liberal nirvana.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Congress on December 22nd, 2010
The premise of Net Neutrality is: There isn’t a problem, but we are going to regulate your industry to prevent what we see as a potential problem.
In other words…the Administration says it can regulate any industry it wants without consideration of Congress or the Constitution.
Barney Frank thinks he is so smart. He is a bitter, bitter man. In this video he says that taxes on your estate are not a punishment. He says people who heirs did not work hard, they are just lucky. While that may be true…neither did you…you thief.
When I die, what I have saved (after taxes) is mine to go to whom I chose. It’s a little thing us capitalist like to call “property rights”.
Then Frank argues that this death tax won’t hurt jobs. He couldn’t be more wrong.
I work for a guy who owns a small manufacturing facility. The building and equipment is worth about 3 million dollars. I have no idea how much personal assets he has, but I’m sure it isn’t zero. When he dies, he want to give the company his only heir…his daughter.
If the government comes and demands 1.5 millions dollars because she didn’t work hard to earn the company, they will essentially be killing every job (including mine). The daughter without hesitation will sell the assets of the company in order to pay the taxes.
Barney Franks is a bitter and foolish man. May he and his party never return to the majority again.
