Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Doesn't Have the Cojones to be President

CNBC reports that Gov. Daniels doesn't have the cojones to stand up to the unions like Reagan did:

In Indiana, top Republican legislators have declared dead a "right to work" bill that would prohibit union representation fees from being a condition of employment at most private companies. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is considering a presidential run, had been saying since December that he wanted to avoid a showdown with labor that could distract lawmakers from moving on proposals such as revamping public schools and the state budget.

As in Wisconsin, the clash has drawn hundreds of protesters to the Indiana Statehouse and led most House Democrats to leave the state to shut down legislative business on the union bill and a slate of other issues. Daniels has appealed to the lawmakers to return because "their conscience tells them they should do their duty."

More here.

Freddie Mac is a mess, and so is the reporting on it.

Compare this from AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon here:

Government-controlled mortgage buyer Freddie Mac managed a narrower loss of $1.7 billion for the October-December quarter of last year. But it has asked for an additional $500 million in federal aid - up from the $100 million it sought in the previous quarter.

Freddie Mac also posted a $19.8 billion loss for all of 2010.

With this from Philip van Doorn for The Street here:

Freddie Mac on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $113 million, and would need another sip from the government trough.

The loss narrowed from a $2.5 billion net loss during the third quarter. For all of 2010, the government-sponsored mortgage giant lost $14 billion, following a $21.6 billion loss during 2009.

So, in Q4 2010 Freddie lost either $1.7 billion, or $113 million.

And for all of 2010 Freddie lost either $19.8 billion, or $14 billion.

But who's counting. They're just numbers.

If I ever straighten this one out, I'll let you know.

Politico Reveals Obama Holds Hundreds of Secret Meetings with Lobbyists

All the while claiming a new transparency:

Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.

The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.

There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.

Read it all here.

Unlike Some People Caroline Baum Still Believes in American Exceptionalism

And she notices its Anglo-Saxon character, too, here:

What about other indicators that challenge the notion the US is going the way of empires past? Students from across the globe flock to the US for college and post-graduate education. Six of the top 10 universities in the world are located in the US, according to US News & World Report. The other four are in the UK, that other emblem of Empire Passe.

US students may score poorly in math and science, but somehow they manage to overcome that handicap to become world-class researchers. The US can claim more Nobel Prizes than any country: 320 versus 116 for runner-up UK. In areas such as physics, chemistry and medicine, the US has two to three times as many Nobels as its closest competitor, which is either the UK or Germany. ...

The number of patents issued to US residents in 2009 (93,727) was about the same as those issued to residents of all other countries combined (96,395), according to the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Let's ask Great Britain to send that statue of Churchill Obama didn't want in the Oval Office to Caroline.

She's marvelous, and she's right.

National Popular Vote Virus Spreads to Vermont

The whole point of writing the constitution to allocate two senators each to the States was to reassure the smaller ones by population that the larger ones would not be able to exert unfair advantage over them in the nation's Legislative branch, and to get them thereby to join the union.

Another way of stating this principle is that population was meant to be reflected in the composition of the US House, but deflected in the Senate. The latter was originally designed to be a creature of the States, not of the people. That is why State Legislatures elected US Senators until the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, the same year that gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Bad things always seem to happen in threes.

Today it is reported here that the senate of the only State of the union which has a Socialist for a US Senator, Vermont, has decided to advance the NPV measure, which should not be confused with the acronym for the Human Papilloma Virus. The National Popular Vote initiative, already passed in 6 States and DC, seeks to deny the will of the voters in a State by allocating its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, not necessarily to the winner of that State.

In the same way that the 17th Amendment sought to weaken the power of the State governments, the National Popular Vote initiative would make it even more irrelevant. What is more, the scheme really represents a rival electoral college which seeks to make the president, like US Senators, a creature directly of the people, in this case of the whole people, and a simple majority of the whole people at that.

If you thought the States have not mattered much in recent years, under the NPV they will mean even less than they already do. Large urban population centers, Democrat bastions, will increasingly replace States not just as campaign stops, but as constituencies. And it is they to whom presidents will become increasingly responsive, at the expense of State capitals.

The States are not dead yet, as people who live in the 26 which have successfully challenged Obamacare in court will tell you. But it is a sign of their weakened sense of themselves that so many are staking everything on their appeals in the courts instead of passing counter legislation and forcing the Federals to sue them. Arizona is a striking exception in this regard in the immigration area, and should be imitated more widely and more often, which prospect the recent and deep Republican resurgence in the States may portend.

When pestilences like the National Popular Vote initiative stop getting traction in the Legislatures, we'll have more reason to be sanguine about the future of the Republic. 

    

Sympathy for the Muslims: We Never Imagined It Either

"Now, ruling America is a black man from our continent, an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined – that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh Obama."

"He is someone I consider a friend. He knows he is a son of Africa. Regardless of his African belonging, he is of Arab Sudanese descent, or of Muslim descent. He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning towards peace."

"I urge all peoples to give him this chance and to support this policy, because America is a country that, when its policy is bad – harms the world, and when it is good – it helps the world."

[I hope that] "the dream that Obama has for a world free of nuclear weapons will come true. This is something that no previous American president has proposed. Obama is a man who opposes wars that previous American presidents were entangled in; he has declared that he will withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq – something which has never been proposed before."

"The Arabs hate America, there is no doubt. There is not an Arab that loves America, and even the leaders who the United States considers allies or friends – hate it. The external love is merely hypocrisy or pragmatism. The reason for this is clear – Palestine."

"The Palestinians today are like the Jews of the past – dispersed in exile and persecuted. Now the Palestinians are at a point where they deserve to have the United States on their side and not on the side of the Israelis."

-- Colonel Gaddafi, quoted here, in better days

Democrat Congressman Urges Union Members "To Get Out On The Streets And Get A Little Bloody"

Speaking of intimidation and militancy. There's your party of crackers, and then there's your party of head-crackers.

Couldn't he at least wait til Giffords gets out of the hospital?

As reported here:

Sometimes it's necessary to get out on the streets and "get a little bloody," a Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday in reference to labor battles in Wisconsin.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.

"I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going," Capuano said, according to the Statehouse News. "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Cost of Obama's Stimulus Revised (Again), Up $34 Billion to $821 Billion

As reported here.

What if the Declaration of Independence Said . . .

. . . The history of the present president of the united States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. A president whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people?

Crowd Based Confuting

What we are really witnessing in Wisconsin and Indiana and Ohio is the reaction of the duly elected representatives of Americans who are finally fed up with the intimidation and militancy of unions first legalized under FDR with the Wagner Act, says Richard Salsman in "Ochlocracy and the Menace of Government Unions" for Forbes here.

Rule by the mob, or the crowd (the "ochlos" in Greek), used to mean you paid way too much for a big American car with tail fins that broke down too often (F.O.R.D. = fix or repair daily). Now it means your property taxes go up and up to pay the salary of a fat Physical Education teacher who routinely gets a substitute to teach his classes while he sits behind a keyboard or schmoozes with the staff as your kid still struggles to tell analog time in the fourth grade:

Government teachers ensure that students (future voters) are illiterate and innumerate, while populist “leaders” appeal not to voters’ reason but to their passions. Sacrificed in an ochlocracy is respect for individual rights, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. Peaceful assembly, petition and persuasion are displaced by the scream, the curse, and the threat.

Don't miss the rest at the link.

Teachers Averaged $272,000 in Salary Under Obama's Stimulus Bill

Stimulus funds preserved 367,524 teacher jobs in 2009-2010, and the amount spent on saving these education-related jobs in the nation's public schools was nearly $100 billion, according to a story in The Baltimore Sun which relies on data from the US Department of Education.

That's about $272,000 for each teacher. Wow. Those must be some kind of wonderful teachers.

That also means taxpayers all across America ended up on the hook for the salaries of about 7,350 teachers per state.

Formerly these teachers were paid directly from local property tax revenues, not borrowed funds, but these revenues have been in dramatic decline due to the crash in the housing market and due to skyrocketing unemployment and home foreclosures.

It is highly unlikely that more stimulus funds are on the way, and it is highly unlikely that property tax revenues will be raised easily in this economy, so isn't it time for the teachers in Wisconsin to pack it in already and quit the illegal strike?

They should be thankful just to have a job.

Wisconsin Teachers Haven't Earned Their Very Generous Pay and Benefits

As the regime itself admits:

In 1998, according to the U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin public school eighth graders scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. In 2009, Wisconsin public school eighth graders once again scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. Meanwhile, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil expenditures from $4,956 per pupil in 1998 to 10,791 per pupil in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator the $4,956 Wisconsin spent per pupil in 1998 dollars equaled $6,546 in 2008 dollars. That means that from 1998 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $4,245 in real terms yet did not add a single point to the reading scores of their eighth graders and still could lift only one-third of their eighth graders to at least a “proficient” level in reading. ...


Nationwide, only 30 percent of public school eighth graders earned a rating of “proficient” or better in reading, and the average reading score on the NAEP test was 262 out of 500.

More here.

Democrats in Wisconsin and Now Indiana Agree

The story is here.

HOPE: THE LAST REFUGE OF THE MISERABLE

The miserable have no other medicine,

But only Hope:

I've hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.

     -- Claudio, William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene I

This is the Way Banks Go 'Round the QE Mulberry Bush

James Hamilton for Fortune here provides an excellent explanation and illustration of how the Federal Reserve "printed" money with which to buy assets from troubled banks, who in turn have kept the "cash" on deposit with the Fed, earning interest, in an effort to re-structure their balance sheets.

Here is an excerpt:

But if the Fed didn't print any money as part of QE2 and earlier asset purchases, how did it pay for the stuff it bought? The answer is that the Fed simply credited the accounts that banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System hold with the Fed. These electronic credits, or reserve balances, are what has exploded since 2008. The blue area in the graph below is the total currency in circulation, whose growth we have just seen has been pretty modest. The maroon area represents reserves.

Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary from the Fed, this operation is not designed to stimulate job growth or boost stock prices. It is designed to do one thing and one thing only: rescue the banks.

And don't even think about maintaining a strong dollar.

When that maroon area returns to an imperceptible sliver, if it ever does, you'll know things are back to "normal." Unlike George Bailey who had two dollars left from his two thousand dollar honeymoon stash at the end of that day when there was a run on his bank, the Federal Reserve can theoretically keep on  running this shell game indefinitely. But the consequences for the value of the dollar will be, and are, grave indeed, which makes Mr. Bernanke's warnings to Congress to get its spending under control almost amusing.


Come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! Why, you 
bald-pated, lying rascal, you must be hooded, must 
you? Show your knave's visage, with a pox to you! 
show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! 
Will't not off?


-- Lucio, in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, V, 1

What Do These American Presidents Have in Common?

U.S. Grant

W.H. Taft

T. Roosevelt

D.D. Eisenhower

J.F. Kennedy

R.M. Nixon

R.W. Reagan

G.H.W. Bush

NRA members all. 

Just a little reminder that America specializes in marksmen, not Marxmen.

Undercover Agent Repeatedly Gets a Handgun Through Scanners

And the screeners missed it on the images.

So all that money for the machines and the personel, and all the inconvenience and humiliation for the public simply boils down to security theater after all?

The story is here.

Michelle Obama Milks It: Jets to Vail with the Girls for some Skiing

Keith Koffler has the story here:

Mrs. Obama has decided to jet out to Vail – instead of visiting slopes closer to Washington DC in Virginia or Pennsylvania – despite already incurring criticism for taking opulent excursions, particularly a trip last summer to Spain. There, she stayed at the country’s swankest [sic] hotel and, like this weekend, was traveling without her husband.

Rooms at her hotel start at $605 a night, and top out in excess of $2,000 a night.

The Marks of a Tyranny According to Aristotle

1.   The object of government in a tyranny is the good of one man only.
2.   The guards of a tyrant are foreigners.
3.   Tyrants arise from the want of a middle class.
4.   Tyrants gain the confidence of the people through hatred of the rich.
5.   Tyrants deprive the people of the use of arms.
6.   Women and slaves do not conspire against tyrants but instead abet them.
7.   The haughtiness of women has been the ruin of many tyrants.
8.   Tyrannies keep the warriors busy with wars.
9.   Tyrannies guard against the rise of high spirits and mutual confidence.
10. Tyrannies quarrel with the nobles.
11. Tyrannies affect to appear to protect the people.
12. Tyrannies extend poverty through public works.
13. Tyrannies oppress the people through poverty.
14. Tyrannies desire to know everything the people say and do.
15. Tyrannies multiply taxes.

You Know, Johnny, It's Not How You Feel, It's How You Rook, and You Rook . . .

Um . . .