Who’s to Blame for the Downgrade? - By Andrew Stiles - The Corner - National Review Online: "I would simply suggest that those who mock the Tea Party, and Republicans in general, for wanting to avert this coming fiscal train-wreck, and who can look at a graph like this and nod approvingly when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) proclaims “We have a plan; it’s called Medicare,” are in no position to be pointing figures, and should think twice before calling anyone else “irrational” or “crazy.”"
In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contracts entered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, decided in 1819. In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment
Rather, I am pretty sure he was trying to say that corporations are made up of people, but not in a Soylent Green sort of way. Rather they are comprised of workers generating goods and services for customers. And when you punish corporations, you punish workers and shareholders and customers. A few additional points:
1) Here an interesting bit from an OECD paper on taxes and economic growth
Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes, and then consumption taxes. …"
Never mind that if a corporation can't charge enough for its products to end up with a net profit sufficient to sustain itself and attract continuing investment then it can't survive. By definition the gozintas have to be greater than the gozoutas. Taxes are just one more ingredient in the gozoutas that have to be covered by prices charged. It doesn't matter that taxes are ostensibly taken from the gross profit. Investors focus on net profitability. That's what their return is...
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Ace of Spades HQ: "It can never be about the policies. It can never be the public's rejection of liberal ideas. It's always about the candidate or the packaging--i.e., the 'messaging'--a communication problem. Ace has written about this several times. We saw it during the lead-up to the 2010 election and for sometime thereafter. It wasn't that the public disliked or misunderstood liberalism; it was that the GOP's packaging was superior. And that if Democrats could simply package, brand, and message their ideas better, then they would be an Instant Hit with the public.
The unstated flipside of the messaging argument is that the public is simply too ignorant to get it. Unstated by some, that is. James Taranto writes about the collapse of 'the Cult of Obama' and points out that some are lashing out at the American people for being unworthy of Obama. Taranto adds that there are still others who are experiencing moments of clarity. He mentions Drew Westen's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday wherein Westen acknowledged being 'bewitched' and 'enthralled' by the Obama candidacy. Westen didn't mention whether he thought Obama's pants were perfectly creased, though."
'Amazing' therapy wipes out leukemia in study - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK – Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia — turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.
They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer. Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer.
'It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did,' said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. 'We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last.'"
Instapundit » Blog Archive » DANIEL HANNAN: Let’s review what brought us to the present economic catastrophe. “The countries …: "DANIEL HANNAN: Let’s review what brought us to the present economic catastrophe. “The countries which decreed the biggest bailouts have generally suffered the worst downturns. Far from averting recession, their governments have burdened generations yet unborn and unbegot with debt. . . . Three years after the collapse, it is surely time to change course. We need to stop printing money and start raising interest rates, to cut taxes and scrap regulations, to rebalance the economy toward the private sector. Are these ideas really so radical?” Well, they don’t offer much in the way of opportunities for graft.
Instapundit » Blog Archive » SO THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC TALKING POINT IS THAT THE TEA PARTY IS SOMEHOW RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEBT DO…: "SO THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC TALKING POINT IS THAT THE TEA PARTY IS SOMEHOW RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEBT DOWNGRADE — because everyone knows that when you’re using your MasterCard to pay your Visa bill, it’s the person who doesn’t want the limit raised who’s the real source of the problem. But Canadian reader Kate MacMillan notes this story on how the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has gone from a “fiscal mess” to a debt upgrade by following Tea Party-like policies:
Rather than quickly spending its newly-earned wealth, the provincial government has put its tax revenue toward paying the bills. S&P gave special credit to Saskatchewan for its “low-and-declining debt burden.” As of March 31, the province’s fiscal year-end, Saskatchewan’s debt totalled $4.6-billion, representing 38 per cent of this year’s projected operating revenues and only 8 per cent of its gross domestic product. Canada’s federal debt-to-GDP ratio sits at around 35 per cent."
Mad Debt - Mark Steyn - National Review Online: "Otherwise, by 2020 just the interest payments on the debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing — like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off any of what you borrowed but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case the interest charge for U.S. taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel combined.
When interest payments consume about 20 percent of federal revenues, that means a fifth of your taxes are entirely wasted. Pious celebrities often simper that they’d be willing to pay more in taxes for better government services. But a fifth of what you pay won’t be going to government services at all, unless by “government services” you mean the People’s Liberation Army of China, which will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers by about 2015. When the Visigoths laid siege to Rome in 408, the imperial Senate hastily bought off the barbarian king Alaric with 5,000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver. But they didn’t budget for Roman taxpayers picking up the tab for the entire Visigoth military as a permanent feature of life."
Steyn is one of my favorite writers. If you don't get why after reading this snip then you never will. Just go RTWT.
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Ace of Spades HQ: "Yes, according to the Household survey, all of that wonderful job creation has not been creating full-time jobs. In fact, we've lost more than 900,000 full-time jobs since March 2011.
So yeah, I think the unemployment report was a stinker."
When, since, have we seen such a firmly expressed appreciation of the harm that excessive taxation can do to the economy, voiced by representatives of the entertainment industries?
Today, those industries are a major source of Democratic contributions and spread-the-wealth rhetoric, even as they prosper based on this tax cut, and numerous other bits of favorable treatment scattered throughout the Internal Revenue Code. It's time for a change.
Were I a Republican senator or representative, I would be agitating to repeal the 'Eisenhower tax cut' on the movie industry and restore the excise tax. I think I would also look at imposing similar taxes on sales of DVDs, pay-per-view movies, CDs, downloadable music, and related products."
This is most definitely a RTWT. Glenn's on a roll here...
Somehow I think we would find that we have hit the limits of "shared sacrifice" with such effrontery, don't you? I mean, a tax on political indoctrination and bribery? The nerve!
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What Happened to Obama’s Passion? | Power Line: "A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
Westen moves on without seriously considering the implications of this paragraph, but in fact it suggests the real answer to the question, What happened to Obama’s passion? That answer is: What passion?"
Du'O. It was written by a liberal loon so it must be right. No, wait... I'm confused... He must actually be a raaaacist! Let's go smear his family!
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Ahmed Khalaf, a lieutenant in the Syrian army said that he was ordered to command his soldiers to shoot indiscriminately at everyone in Deraa, including women and children, London based Asharq Alawsat reported on Saturday.
'I, along with other officers, was ordered by our commanders to commit genocide in Deraa and was told not to spare women and children.'"
Pajamas Media » What’s Wrong with Making Future Generations Pay for our Debt?: "Wow, that whole debt-ceiling debate was scary. For a while there, it looked like a few radical extremists were going to keep the country from going further into debt. And then where would we be? Without all the free stuff we like, because some people are stuck on the primitive notion that a budget should balance? I think you can say without hyperbole that people who think like that are literally terrorists, except a million times worse.
What makes people think the government should spend less money than it brings in? Probably racism. Also, a lust for violence. Because there is no logical reason for the government to spend less. None.
I do know one reason people keep bringing up as to why we should spend less: Because otherwise we leave the debt for future generations. But no one ever explains why that’s a problem."
I'm just quoting the start of this one so I don't spoil it for you. For this one you need to open a container or twelve of your favorite libation and savor it as you read. RTWT doesn't even begin to describe the situation here.
But don't get me wrong, it's quite short actually. And by the end you'll say to yourself: By God that IS the way that liberals think! -- "think" being a gross exaggeration of course. And we're well and truly screwed, aren't we?
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Video: Rich man, poor man? « Hot Air: "Have the rich gotten richer? Indeed they have, Bill Whittle says in his latest Afterburner — but so have the poor. As wealth expands, living standards rise, and Whittle shows just exactly how it did over the last 40 years in the US. In fact, he argues that the better comparison is not between the rich and the poor in this country, but between the American poor and the average citizen in Europe, Asia, and Africa:"
Drop everything and WTWT. Everything you know is wrong.
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Ace of Spades HQ: "Give them the actual offer and most will say No. Because the actual offer is:
Do you wish to empower a cadre of busybody bureaucrats, who frankly are largely mediocrities at best, but believe themselves to be chosen for greatness, to boss you around your whole life, in order to make sure some other people aren't eating french fries and having a cigarette?
The real answer is 'NO!,' because the real answer is, 'Look, sure I want other people to live better lives, but frankly, I don't care very much about that and I'm sure not paying for my own personal censor to scold me for making 'bad' choices.'
See, that's the cost. And if you ignore the cost, you're not talking about business, or sales, or politics, or anything.
You're just talking about fantasy wish-lists with no connection to any physical reality.
Belmont Club » Fear: "Here is Nigel Farage, the head of the UK Independence Party, stating the obvious on Nov 26, 2010. But as President Obama said on the occasion of his birthday, “we’re not even halfway there yet … we don’t have time to play these partisan games. … rebuilding Chicago … rebuilding Detroit … I want to build electric cars in America and ship them all around the world”. Whether he meant it as parody or genuinely imagined he was bestriding the world is up to the reader to decide.
But if we’re not halfway there yet, what does the bottom look like?"
If you don't read the Belmont Club, you really need to get your act together. The quoted post is a great place to start. If you don't want to start with the TinfoilApocalypse that is. Which would be the better place to start today considering that not only has S&P downgraded U.S. credit yesterday but apparently the Taliban have shot down a chopper and killed the Seal team that got Osama.
The fact is that Heinlein's quote about "bad luck" also encompasses the application of the Tinfoil Apocalypse to the "advanced" west. There are the makers and the takers. The takers think they're our "betters" but really they're the equivalent of the Pacific Islander "cargo cults" who think the planes will return if they fashion headsets out of wood and wear them.
Surely the economy will grow at a 3.5% rate no matter how much it is plundered?
Not so. You live in Atlas' world. Go read up on the makers and the takers. Stop worshiping taker man and start to appreciate -- not worship -- the maker man.
And you do that by removing the chains you have placed on him and giving him the freedom to create. Not by having his life planned by his "betters".
Because eventually our "betters" the planners put on their wooden headsets and press the red button if they're given one. One from "Hahvaad" nearly did in a series of crises leading to the Cuban Missile crisis ... and Vietnam. It's just that in the current episode it has "only" resulted in the destruction of the economy ... so far.
Don't forget that "we got out of" the depression partially via WW II.
And did I forget to mention that FDR -- and the early 1900's progressives in general -- were big fans of Il Duce?
OK, you can put your wooden headsets back on now. Sorry to disturb your life on the Jersey Shore...
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But is there a math error? And if so, does it matter?
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Obama lied, our credit rating died.”
Plus, via Drudge, a reminder that just a few months ago Tim Geithner said there was “no risk” of a downgrade. Heckuva job, Timmy!
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader writes: “When Black Friday falls you know it’s got to be — Don’t let it fall on me.” Sorry, got to go catch the gray men. . . .
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:51 pm"
Presented without comment because otherwise your ears would catch fire...
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PIMCO | Investment Outlook - Kings of the Wild Frontier: "“Over the years we’ve had some fun together – killin some ‘bars,’ drinkin moonshine – some even in these chambers. (Whiskey that is – the ‘bars’ I’ve seen once or twice, but only when I was plum drunk). But the time for funnin is over. They’ll be no jokes from David Crockett today.” Davy Crockett Speech to Congress, 1830
Figurative coonskin cap on head, I echo the sentiments of Davy Crockett – Indian fighter, Alamo defender and Tennessee Congressman – not necessarily in that chronological order. The debt ceiling may have been raised and the palpable sighs of relief heard across global financial markets, but the fun times are over. They’ll be no jokes from Bill Gross today, nor across this land for years to come I suspect. Even though the U.S. has managed to avert a debt crisis and perhaps a ratings downgrade, there remains a stain on our reputation, a scarlet “A” for budgetary “Abuse,” that will not disappear. The whole world was watching, and what they saw was a dysfunctional government taking its country to the financial precipice and backing off at the very last moment. “Shades of a Banana Republic,” as former Reagan budget director David Stockman opined somewhat harshly last week. We may not be Greece just yet, but Mr. Stockman is looking in the right direction.
Nothing in the Congressional compromise reached over the weekend makes a significant dent in our $1.5 trillion deficit. “Out year” fantasies, as opposed to “current year” realities, is an apt description of the spending cuts that characterize this compromise."
And your excuse for never reading anything from the man who manages the world's largest bond fund is?...
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The Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2 ? | Watts Up With That?: "There is quite a bit of buzz surrounding a talk and pending paper from Prof. Murry Salby the Chair of Climate, of Macquarie University. Aussie Jo Nova has excellent commentary, as has Andrew Bolt in his blog. I’m sure others will weigh in soon.
In a nutshell, the issue is rather simple, yet powerful. Salby is arguing that atmospheric CO2 increase that we observe is a product of temperature increase, and not the other way around, meaning it is a product of natural variation. This goes back to the 800 year lead/lag issue related to the paleo temperature and CO2 graphs Al Gore presented in his movie an An Inconvenient Truth, Jo Nova writes:
Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.
Salby is no climatic lightweight, which makes this all the more powerful. He has a strong list of publications here. The abstract for his talk is here and also reprinted below."
Well, it would be "never mind" if we lived in a world not controlled by the catholic church of climate. As things are, he's more likely to be stuffed down the memory hole to reside alongside its inventor.
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Ace of Spades HQ: "Geithner's 'pulled out of his hiney' unemployment projection from almost a year and a half ago appears to be holding up pretty well. As I said at the time, though, showing that sort of projection without a solution should have gotten him fired. And the fact that we've closely tracked his projection in the 17 months since tells you that nothing the administration has done has affected the unemployment rate. Which means the lot of them should be fired.
But I'm pretty sure you were already planning to do that."
Shortened: http://gg.gg/sanity Contact: bob underscore wtf at comcast dot net
QUOTE OF THE HOLOCENE: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation" - V.I. Lenin -- You're welcome to point out to me any decision that Hugo Chavez Barack Obama has yet made that Lenin would quarrel with. [ crickets ]
RUNNER-UP QUOTE OF THE HOLOCENE: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke
DUAL QUOTES OF THE 20TH CENTURY: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." and "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it." --H. L. Mencken
LAST YEAR'S QUOTE: Washington, D.C. runs "just like the mob, except it's legal," said Schweizer. "If problems are being solved, if things are going smoothly and things are being fixed, a lot of people are not going to give. The party establishments and the political leaders from both sides are collaborating a lot more than they let on," explained Schweizer."
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