The Obama Shutdown

 Unemployment among young people in Greece hit 55 percent last week. We're on a similar track — bloated federal bureaucracy, unsustainable social programs, unprecedented millions of Americans on the public dole and more debt to come — it might be time for the young to stop listening to the music of the pipes on their electronic devices.-John Kass, Chicago Tribune


No shutdown is good for the economy. In Kass' column he cast a justified pox on both their houses. That being said rampant and unchecked government spending doubleplusungood for the economy. Right now we have a stalemate. It seems that leadership in both parties were taken aback by the lucid and accurate statements of Senator Ted Cruz. He is making the case that many of us have wanted to hear for years now. It's upsetting applecarts in Washington and that's a good thing. That's good because we have a government made up of people who have been there for decades and who merely visit their districts. These people no more represent their constituents than Miss American represents all American women. The Founders never envisioned that anyone would want to spend a lifetime in Washington, so they didn't write in term limits. I think that the sluggish and thuggish quality of what passes for leadership in Washington begs for term limits.

"A NYT researcher managed to register at 6 a.m. on 10/1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days was never able to log in.Her last several attempts were a blank screen."
-----on Affordable Care Act in the New York Times

As for the shutdown, like the sequester, this is an Obama construct. He has chosen why and where pain will be inflicted. And he's doing this so that average Americans develop both a fear and gratitude for what Government gives them. This is not what the Founders envisioned. The Founders saw representatives as the voices of the People. The People were the boss. Now we have elitists in both parties who want to tell us what we're going to think, say and do. And they are doing this in direct conflict with constitutional rights and provisions.  

Do you trust your healthcare to the same folks who shutdown the EBT cards this weekend?

We have had 17 shutdowns in government, the most recent being only a few days. That this has lasted so long so far demonstrates a few things. First, it demonstrates that Obama WANTS a shutdown in much the same way he wanted sequester. Jack Lew of the recent claim not to know how many had enrolled in Obamacare the first week (it was 51,000) was the speaker in this column: from Forbes. The shutdown, milked by the White House for political affect, gives ample cover for the disastrous and laughable failure of his much ballyhooed healthcare website. Given the various public examples of the unworkable nature of this program along with the reasons why it is failing which is documented in The New York Times of all places there is plenty of cause for delay. But Obama seems to be delaying on the shutdown not because of the defunding attempt, but because to inflict more problems onto the system would shut it down through natural attrition.

 “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’--on the Affordable Care Act, New York Times

I don't believe that Ted Cruz minds being the lightening rod for this debate. Washington insiders underestimate him. I've talked with him, he's a nice guy, but makes no mistakes in his political stance. In a way, after hired hecklers showed up at a conservative meeting, I think he's somewhat amused at the antics of the Left. Given the vitriol being spewed by the likes of the Washington Post and New York Times I have to wonder how close to a nerve he's hitting. But as Senator Cruz himself said, " 

“The nice thing is, the left will always tell you who they fear, 

and they fear you, the American people.” -@SenTedCruz

Proof that California Doesn't have the Corner on Nutjob Professors

Sir,
In response to this story: http://weaselzippers.us/2012/11/23/univ-texas-professor-thanksgiving-a-white-supremacist-holiday-founding-founders-nazis/

As a resident of Texas who pays far too much in taxes and probably pays part of your salary, I request a response. Where did your family come from? The name Jensen would appear to be Scandinavian in source. That means your ancestors were rampaging and pillaging their way through Europe centuries before a very small group of religions refugees braved the North Atlantic to come to North America. Do you feel your own shame in pillaging Europe, in imposing a rule of terror on Ireland, Scotland, France and Normandy? Or is that okay because it's Europe? How far did the Native American technology advance? They had not even really developed the wheel or advance metal working techniques in the regions inhabited. But you freely brandish the label "Nazi" on people who were trying to achieve religious freedom. Oh, now I understand, it's about religion. You, a liberal who probably claims to be tolerant, cannot allow someone to worship in any way that you cannot control. And in the end, that's what liberalism is all about isn't it-ultimate centralized control. Oh....who wanted that? Who wanted to control what babies were born, how they looked, the control of media and the outcomes of elections-that would be totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Unions. What a sad specimen of academia you are. You should be ashamed.

Update: So it turns out that in their desire to be first, the media has fed us a great deal of disinformation and misinformation. The mother was the first victim, at home. The guns used were hers, and it appears they were kept in a basement gun safe. I can only surmise Lanza knew the combination. It also appears that the triggering moment was when Lanza discovered his mother, who had taken him out of public schools after a disagreement with school officials (this suggests an ARD where the school sought to have more restrictions due to escalating manifestation of violence or other disturbing behavior), removed him from private schools and they was homeschooling him was seeking to have him involuntarily committed. I'm sure she never thought her own son would have such pent up rage. That he went after the now first graders that had been her charges a year earlier is a clear manifestation of his resentment for the time spent with them. The wrong brother was sited as the shooter and a fictional girlfriend was sited as missing along with the father. That was incorrect. It's still a sickening tragedy that would not have happened if we didn't have committment laws that were so challenging to families.

The Math Doesn't Add Up-False Stimulus Numbers

This administration has been adept at smoke and mirrors. But I think many of us are used to looking up their sleeves for the extra card or in the inside pocket for the white rabbits this administration has dreamed up. The most recent one has to do with false positives on numbers of jobs created or saved by the president's stimulus bill. Seems that he's even gone the route of "creating" over 470 jobs in a North Chicago school district that only employs 290 teachers. So somewhere out there are teachers who are being paid for not teaching or.....or.....or.....
The Numbers Lie. Read the story linked in the headline. Appalling.

Excerpt:"...More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.

Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187...."

What About Those "Green Jobs?"

Remember when President Obama, then Candidate Obama, said he would produce millions of "green jobs?" The pundits swooned and the glitterati ate it up like cream. But here's the deal, green energy-which is largely the source of green jobs-is costly. So costly in fact that many economists speculate that it could result in multiple jobs LOSSES for every job created. Since we look to Europe for all ideas these days, one of the key creators of green jobs is Spain. And the result has been higher energy costs and, you guessed, industry and job LOSSES. So while the chortling continues, don't get so comfy in your new green job, because it may not last all that long and there may not be any other jobs open to replace it once its gone...

Full story here

"...I mention this in the context of the Obama administration's assertion that by subsidizing alternative energy sources, it will create 5 million green jobs. To that end, Congress passed in the stimulus bill $110 billion to subsidize and otherwise support such green efforts. And in conceptual support of that argument, the administration has referred to "what's happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they're making real investments in renewable energy."

Well, in March, one of Spain's leading universities, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, published an authoritative study "of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources." The report pointed out: "This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style 'green jobs' agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created."

The central finding of the study is that -- treating the data optimistically -- for every renewable-energy job that the government finances, "Spain's experience reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created."

Despite expensive and extensive green-job policies, a surprisingly low number of jobs were created. And about two-thirds of those "green" jobs were just to set up the energy source, in construction, fabrication, installation, marketing and administration. Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable sources of energy.

Each wind industry job created in Spain required a subsidy of about $1.4 million. Overall, the average subsidy cost for each green job was about $800,000 (571,138 euros). And to create about 50,000 green jobs, Spain lost 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, principally in metallurgy, nonmetallic mining and food processing and in the beverage and tobacco industries.

Each green megawatt brought on line destroyed 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy (8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy and 5.05 by mini-hydropower). The total higher energy cost -- the higher cost of renewable energy over the market price of carbon-based energy -- between 2000 and 2008 was about $10 billion. Moreover, the report concluded, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."

The high cost of green energy predictably drove energy-intensive Spanish companies and industries out of Spain to countries with cheaper carbon-based energy, while the cost to Spanish taxpayers of renewable-energy subsidies was "enormous--4.35 percent of all (value-added taxes) collected, 3.45 percent of the household income tax, or 5.6 percent of the corporate income tax..."