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A preview of tonight's network evening news..........

- Michael Jackson died and the funeral was today.............

- Sarah Palin went to the restroom at 12:45, will that jeopardize her 2012 presidential ambitions.....

That's tonight on your evening news.

Be sure to tune in to these can't miss stories

Obama Health Reform and Wait Times Visualization (In Lego!)

Busting out

An interesting take on how public unions have managed, organized crime like, to "bust out" government...........

I finally figured out the end game - the public-sector unions are busting out the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

You know how a bust-out works. The Sopranos did one in season two. The bust-out scene in “Goodfellas” was even better.

You don’t have to be a gangster to bust out a joint, just crooked and greedy. What happens is, shady parties worm their way into a legitimate enterprise and then slowly strip it of all assets, reducing it to a hollow shell, driving it into bankruptcy . . . busting it out.

I finally figured out the end game - the public-sector unions are busting out the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

You know how a bust-out works. The Sopranos did one in season two. The bust-out scene in “Goodfellas” was even better.

You don’t have to be a gangster to bust out a joint, just crooked and greedy. What happens is, shady parties worm their way into a legitimate enterprise and then slowly strip it of all assets, reducing it to a hollow shell, driving it into bankruptcy . . . busting it out.

Read the rest

HT instapundit

Tail wags dog

An really thorough and excellent series on urban finances over at City Journal.

This part focuses on the ability of city leaders to balance budgets in this tough economic times.....

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that balancing New York City’s budget in tough times requires “shared sacrifice,” by which he means combined tax increases and spending cuts. Yet as is often the case in New York, the biggest sacrifice is expected of taxpayers—this time, nearly $1 billion in tax hikes on top of what is already the heaviest tax burden among major cities in the nation (see “Life in Taxopolis,” coming soon).

The city’s budget-cutting, by contrast, is exceedingly modest. In fact, Bloomberg isn’t really cutting the city’s budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1; he’s merely slowing (slightly) its rate of growth. According to the Independent Budget Office, city-funded spending to provide services will rise $1.6 billion, to $46.9 billion, in the new year. That’s a 3.3 percent increase, once you include expenditures in the coming year that the city has already paid with surplus funds from the Wall Street boom. By contrast, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show, inflation in the greater New York area is running at zero percent. In other words, in the middle of a deep fiscal crisis, city spending is rising significantly faster than inflation—part of a pattern that goes back to the beginning of the Bloomberg administration. Over Bloomberg’s tenure, the city has, thanks to annual spending increases, expanded the budget on an inflation-adjusted basis faster than any mayor since John Lindsay, whose spending pushed New York to the edge of bankruptcy (see “New York’s Next Fiscal Crisis,” Summer 2008).

Bloomberg has a reputation in some circles as a cagey fiscal manager, but he owes that reputation mostly to Wall Street, which flooded the city with massive tax revenues—enough for him to offer fat contracts to public unions, add to the city-worker headcount, and still have money left over. But now, facing the possibility of a long-term Wall Street decline, the mayor will need to earn his reputation by real budget-cutting and restructuring of city services. He could start by reducing city spending growth to zero next year, something that Rudy Giuliani achieved in his first tough year in office.

In fact, Bloomberg could do that in one fell swoop by negotiating a wage freeze for city employees, who are scheduled to get 4 percent raises because of his generous contract deals. The Citizens Budget Commission has estimated that a one-year freeze, a concession that has become common in the private sector, would save $1.2 billion. That’s enough to halt spending growth and prevent a tax hike next year.

Is such a wage freeze politically feasible in the face of strenuous public-sector union opposition? Yes, if Bloomberg—or, should he improbably lose this year’s election, his successor—threatens an alternate series of steps that, combined, would likewise make the city’s finances sustainable. The first: shrinking New York’s bloated workforce. In his budget presentations, the mayor typically lists employee-benefit costs, such as pension and health benefits, as “uncontrollable,” since they’re subject to state mandates and fixed by contract negotiations. But one way New York City adds to those costs is letting the city-worker headcount drift up. Since 2003, it has grown by some 41,000 workers, including over 16,000 paraprofessionals made full-timers at the Department of Education and the Department of Parks. At an average cost of more than $100,000 per worker in salaries and benefits, workforce size matters.

Read the rest here.........

Where are the jobs?

James Pinkerton.....

The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. If President George W. Bush was blamed for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- there was plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the disaster was on Bush's watch--then Obama will get the blame for his slow response to the current recession. The difference, of course, is that Katrina afflicted a city and a few states, while the recession afflicts the whole country.

Unemployment is 9.5 percent and rising fast, certain to go higher than 10 percent. And what is the federal government doing about it? Not much. And so House Republican Leader John Boehner makes a good point when he asks, "Where are the jobs?"

On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the Obama administration had "misread" the economic indicators. So what are they likely to do about it? More of the same--which is to say, not much.

The problem the Democrats have--and come to think of it, the country has it, too--is that even if you want to build something, you can't do it. That is, you can't do it without plowing through years' worth of lawyers and environmental-impact-statement-writers, nor without enduring endless hearings and lawsuits where every last NIMBY gets a whack at the project. And so even before this terrible recession, America's capacity actually to build anything--build a highway, build a bullet train, build a power plant -- had been crippled.

So piling on new money does no good, because the old money hasn't been getting spent. Getting spent, that is, on bricks and mortar and technology, as opposed to lawyers and consultants. In the past, "stimulus" was a way to put blue collars and hardhats back to work. Yet now, the only people being stimulated are white-collar lobbyists and litigators.

Throughout the city of Cincinnati there are a number of parks with monuments donning the WPA or CCC on them. For a long time I was a Keynesian; believing that government spending can spark a recovery.

However, after going through my liberal sobriety for the past 15 years, I now understand that the government cannot do anything without a thriving economy.

Think about it, Let's assume the Obamunists give a shovel ready job to every unemployed Amercian today. Where will the money come from? We'll borrow it.

OK, Where does the money come from to pay back the debt. It comes through a growing economy where businesses are making money and people are employed thus paying taxes.

Governments cannot and will never be able to sustain jobs without the live blood of money; specifically taxes. No private sector; no money. Yet the Obamunists seem hell bent on destroying job opportunities by creating an anti business climate in this country.

When The Obamunists get that, we'll truly be on the road to recovery.

more..............

Job Drain - "Progressive" style

Imagine being a business owner Summer, 2009. Your business is struggling but still modestly profitable. You would like to be on the forefront of the economic recovery and hire some workers in anticipation of that recovery.

Would you throw on additional payroll when..........

1. You don't know what the impact of increased costs associated with energy (as a result of cap & trade) will be.
2. You don't know what the impact of a nationalized health care system is going to mean for you, your suppliers and your vendors.
3. You know that taxes will be going up but you don't know how much.

So what do you think the odds are of business sticking it's neck out this summer and adding domestic payroll?

Let's assume that all these issues are resolved this summer by the Obamunists, do you think that companies will be more likely or less likely to ship production overseas (aka JOBS), where these companies don't have to deal with such issue?

Want to know why a recovery isn't about to happen any time soon? Then you aren't paying attention.

Where's Hollister?

Over the weekend I saw about 50 young people wearing Hollister T-shirts.

I don't know where Hollister is but it must not be very selective if everyone is wearing their crap.

If you ever see Gordon in public, here's one thing you'll notice. He doesn't wear anything with a label (ie. he doesn't pay $15 for an $6 T-shirt) unless paid by the company for advertising. Then he has no problems looking like a NASCAR driver.

Apparently, the economy is not too bad.

Going Green with Cap and Trade!

No thanks to liberals

From reader Jeremy on Joe Biden in Iraq.........

Biden later joked to U.S. troops over the significance of holding the ceremony in a palace that was once a symbol of the former dictator's iron-fisted regime.

"That S.O.B. is rolling over in his grave right now," he told troops.

I assume that's a misquoted thanks to George Bush.

More........

Life in the state of "Progress"

From the state of Michigan, where republicans are considered an endangered species.

My daughter has joined the growing number of Michigan college graduates who are leaving the state because the only place they can find jobs is in other parts of the country. She and her husband moved to Iowa, where she will begin a teaching job in August.

She joins thousands of other Michigan college graduates who aren’t staying in their home state after they receive their college degrees.

So much for Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s goal of increasing the number of college graduates in Michigan to revive the state’s economy. While the number of college graduates has increased from 38,615 in 2004 to 41,250 in 2008, the number of students leaving the state has wiped out those gains.

In fact, a 2007 survey of Michigan college graduates showed half of them left the state within a year.

What's so "progressive" about brain drain?

More...........

Independence Day

It's easy to sit back this 4th of July and just kick back with your beer and brat and enjoy life as an American.

But take a moment and jump on the time machine dated 1776 and think of how life was "in the day".

First, your life was almost totally a function of what European aristocracy you were born in to.

Second, there was no free speech as we know it today. In fact, free speech and self determination is still foreign to most of the world 233 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Third, if you pissed off a monarch, your punishment would be a lot harsher than spending time at Guantanamo.

Nothing annoys me more than the dolts and douche bags who hide behind "freedom of speech" when they have never paid, nor are willing to pay, a price for the freedom they enjoy. In fact, many of these people refuse to even provide the proper respect to those who did pay the price for our freedom's.

If you've ever read that email that circulates regarding the futures of the Declaration signers, you get misleading and some out rights falsehoods about what became of the signers (see snopes). But here is one thing that is true. Many of the signers were made men from the kingdom. It took incredible courage and vision to challenge a paradigm of monarch rule which was the only structure of government humanity HAD EVER KNOWN.

Democracy and self determination would have been late night, Saturday, science fiction TV viewing if the colonists would have had TV and Bruce Boxleitner . And for much of the world, it still is.

Most of the signers could have retreated back to their plantations and shipping businesses and had a great life on easy street for their remaining days.

But all put their fortunes and titles on the line for a paradigm of rule so foreign to the world many ruling monarchs probably thought it was a practical joke.

Have a great Fourth and consider what God and men of considerable courage and vision blessed this nation with.

The United States of Europe

As we spend our 4th of July celebrating our independence from the aristocrats of Europe, just remember, it may be our last.

The obamunists have done an excellent job of making sure that our economy is right in line with the EU.

"Tyrannosaurus Debt" ~ Schoolhouse Rock

As seen on Instapundit

It's a good thing Obama whipped out the stimulus

Otherwise, more people would actually be working.........

Bloodhounds

Is America Exceptional?

Now that we're heading towards the 4th of July, a question. Is America exceptional?

American exceptionalism is grounded in the founding of the United States upon an idea, rather than upon the ambitions of men. Indeed, it was designed to be a nation of laws and specifically not of men, built on the concept of individual liberty and equal justice before the law, with freedoms ranging from speech to worship, and rights from gun ownership to assembly.

The Founding Fathers institutionalized these freedoms so we would be safe from the overweening burdens and capricious claims of a too-powerful state. These freedoms would allow individuals to do as they pleased within the confines of the law and to achieve, in ways big and small, to the benefit of the country as a whole.

Even in extremely difficult times, American exceptionalism survived. Faced with the darkest days of civil and foreign wars; economic depression and recessions; weak leadership at home or aggressive, hostile leadership from abroad; the American people kept faith in the uniqueness of our democratic experiment. Liberty provides opportunity, which is why in our 233 short years, we have produced (even with its flaws and flawed representatives) the greatest democracy in the world, the most productive engine of economic growth, the most influential culture and the most far-reaching effects of innovation.

President Obama's reference to British or Greek exceptionalism suggests a belief that the United States doesn't stand alone with a particular greatness but that every nation is great in its own way and America is simply one of many nations with something cool to offer.

Here's how I know America is exceptional. Just look at the net inflow of immigrants to this country. Just in my little "Redville" accounting practice I have clients from Kuwait, Pakistan, Columbia, Venezuela, Russia, Mexico, England, Canada & France just to think of the one's that come to mind.

How many American's have left here to establish permanent residency in another country. Not too damn many.

But tell that to a lefty who thinks that Europe is exceptional. "Isn't it amazing how sophisticated the Euro's are. Well even in France, the kids speak French!"

So as we head into this Independence Day weekend, think about how exceptional the US is.

More.....

Senator, meet hypocrisy

You know how senators have come down hard on Bernie Madoff while they run a Ponzi scheme 100 times the size of Bernie's?

You know? Those senators who bashed corporate executives for taking private planes while their businesses were losing money?

Yeah, those senators, who have no problem taking private jets on exotic trips while their country is 50 trillion in the hole................

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Cause we all know the significance of the Galapagos Islands as a trade partner........

More

Why the traditional media outlets swirl down the drain

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off the record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health-care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer—which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters—is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

Yeah why should they pay for what they've been getting for free all these years?


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24441.html#ixzz0K6ZnJgHc&C

What's in the water in Texas?

My eternal mantra, I'll never pretend to be the smartest guy in the room, but I'll always do what the smartest guys are doing.

So when I read this I have to question, what is it that Texas is doing that Ohio can't seem to get their arms around...........

In a time when many states are experiencing fiscal crises and economic decline, one state stands out above all others as a success story: Texas. I recently heard Governor Tim Pawlenty say that during the year or so before job growth turned negative and the country as a whole was still adding payroll jobs, 53% of all of the jobs created in the U.S. were created in one state: Texas. No wonder that Texas' government is running a surplus and its economy remains strong despite trying times

read the rest

A Branch Gorevidian mocks the Gordon

Yesterday, a Branch Gorevidian, mocked my global warming challenge.

Like most idiots on the left, they made comments without actually reading what the challenge was and my previous comments on the challenge.

So let me take their criticisms and spell it out really slooooow so that even a moron can understand it.

Gordie over at Taxmanblog uses an absurd argument that monthly temperatures from this year somehow debunk global warming science.

First, the challenge is for an entire year. My scoring system is done monthly because I don't have the time to assign points daily as I did last year. At the end of the year, we'll go back an do an average of all the highs and lows for the entire year.

Of course, when you're looking at warming trends you need to look at a much larger picture. To better understand the absurdity of looking at temps from one year, take a look at the graph below & see how the average global temperature is unmistakably rising.

Yeah, let's look at that graph.



Now, if you believe in this graph you see that this graph has a large spike at the end of the axis which means averages on this would tend to be low since we have roughly 80 years of low temperatures with a spike at the end. (by the way, there was no source assigned to this clown's graph so it probably came out of the Gorical Bible - Book of Al, chapter 13, verse 74)

Think of it in these elementary terms. This is how the above graph lays out in basic numbers.




So if you believe that we are in one of these spikes, then these averages work in your favor since the numbers are actually skewed on the low side because of so many years of low temperatures.

Obviously, I'm taking in one reading from one site. But the last I could tell the Greater Cincinnati Airport was still on planet earth so I would have to think that if we have global warming on the globe, it should include parts if not all of Cincinnati.

My challenge has never been set out to prove or disprove global warming. As I said last January, the cool side won last year but it was a fifty fifty probability. I get that.

But if you are a Branch Gorvidian, this is a can't lose. I've set up a scenario that's actually stacked in your favor. And wouldn't it be great to steal some money from the great Gordon Gekko.

If you have the guts.

As an aside, as I've gone through and calculated the score every month, I find it kind of wild that there have been very few high temperature records set in the 2000's. Now if global warming were occurring, don't you think that we'd have more than a statistical average number of record temperatures set in the last decade?

Reporters Hammer Gibbs

A belated congratulations

A belated congratulations to David Payne, a former University of Cincinnati hurdler, for winning the 110 meter high hurdles at the National Track and Field Championships last weekend.

His victory, following his Olympic Silver medal last year, makes him the US's preeminent hurdler.

Nice job David. As a former UC Track athlete, you did us proud.

The settled science

The science is settled?

Someone call Steve Driehaus.

Global Warming Challenge Update

Updated scores for the global warming challenge.

For the month of June, the average high temperature was 82.1 versus a historical high average of 82.4 degrees.

The average low temperature was 63.3 degrees v. a historical average of 61.6 degrees.

That give both sides a point and puts the score halfway through the year

Warm 8
Cool 4

Related to this global warming scam is an article by Jeff Jacoby...........

The president doesn’t describe the legislation in those terms now, but he made no bones about it last year. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, he calmly explained how cap-and-trade - the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey - would work:

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers.’’

In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can,’’ he told the Chronicle. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.’’

The justification for inflicting this financial misery, of course, is the onrushing catastrophe of human-induced global warming - a catastrophe that can be prevented only if we abandon the carbon-based fuels on which most of the prosperity and productivity of modern life depend. But what if that looming catastrophe isn’t real? What if climate change has little or nothing to do with human activity? What if enacting cap-and-trade means incurring excruciating costs in exchange for infinitesimal benefits?

Hush, says Obama. Don’t ask such questions. “There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy,’’ he declared Saturday. “It’s happening.’’

No debate? The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years, and not only in America. “In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming,’’ Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal the other day. “In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted . . . Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the ‘new religion.’ ’’

Once again, will liberals apologize for being on the wrong side of history...... AGAIN!

Read the rest

Matthew Vadum Challenges ACORN on Foreclosure Issue on Fox News June 30 2009

Watch this before you eat

These guys are going to run health care?

The Social Security Administration has continued to pay millions of dollars in benefits to dead Americans, and other elderly U.S. residents are at risk of losing badly needed aid because they're improperly recorded as deceased, federal investigators warn in a new report.

The consequences of either bureaucratic error can be severe.

"The addition of erroneous death entries can lead to benefit termination, cause severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals," investigators with the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General noted in the report, which was quietly released on Sunday.

The mistakes cost taxpayers and individual beneficiaries in different ways. Taxpayers are losing money when benefits are paid to the deceased. Individuals get into trouble when they're prematurely pronounced dead.

In Southern California and elsewhere last year, investigators analyzed 305 Social Security beneficiaries who were recorded as deceased in their Social Security Administration files. At least 140 of them were still alive.

All told, investigators say, more than 6,000 current Social Security beneficiaries are recorded as being deceased. An untold number of them are still, in fact, alive.

More.......

Life in "Progress" City

From the city of Detroit, who hasn't had a republican run the city since man invented time.

Seven teenagers were wounded — three critically — after they were sprayed with gunfire this afternoon by two masked men at a bus stop near Cody 9th Grade Academy on the city’s west side.

Police later recovered a green minivan about a mile away that they believed the gunmen used to flee.

Five of the seven victims were taking classes at Cody. Two boys, ages 14 and 16, and a girl, 17, were in critical condition at Sinai-Grace Hospital.

Four other victims were taken to Henry Ford Hospital. A 17-year-old boy was in serious condition, a 17-year-old girl was in temporary serious condition, and a 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were in stable condition, Detroit police said.

It was the second shooting in as many weeks near a Detroit Public school offering free summer school classes.

Bria Wilson, 15, said she never saw a green minivan, or even the gunmen who fired the shots. But the sound of gunshots meant it was time to run.

What's so "progressive" about genocide?

More....