Michael Barone has the best, most balanced assessment of Robert Byrd.
Apollo posted this at 10:25 AM HKT on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Race
July 1st, 2010
“Quite an American Life”
June 28th, 2010
Truth > Propiety
In terms of glorious viciousness in honesty, it’s hard to top Radley Balko on the passing of Senator Robert Byrd:
So if I’m correctly reading the various tributes to Sen. Robert Byrd floating around the web this morning, I’m supposed to celebrate how the man atoned for his bigotry earlier in life by devoting the rest of his life to public service . . . where he used other people’s money to build monuments to himself.
I take that back. There’s the following quote from George Mason University Professor Don Boudreaux on Rep. Jack Murtha’s death which — surprise, surprise — I also found on Balko’s site:
If Mr. Murtha on his own had traveled the country picking pockets, robbing banks, and burgling houses, only to bring the booty back to western PA and share it with his friends, he would have been rightly despised as a common criminal. But because Mr. Murtha joined forces with persons having similarly questionable morals, who together pass off their thievery as “lawmaking,” he’s celebrated in your pages – celebrated for doing, save on a grander scale, exactly what common thieves do.
Ouch.
Tom posted this at 2:45 PM HKT on Monday, June 28th, 2010 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
March 28th, 2010
Your Tax Dollars at Work
I heard a true story tonight:
There’s a couple who have both been federal employees for some time. Long enough that they put in for early retirement this year. Originally they were told that their early retirement request had been approved. Then they were told that only x number of people at their office could take early retirement this year, and this couple were x+1 and x+2. So they put off their retirement plans for a year – them’s the breaks, right?
A month and a half after being told that they couldn’t retire until next year, the couple was approached and offered a large sum of money (combined, it was six figures) to take an early retirement this year.
So they were told they could retire, then told they couldn’t, and now they’re being paid a large sum of money to retire almost exactly at the same time the government knows full well they wanted to retire (gratis) in the first place.
I know that, these days, six digits doesn’t even qualify as a rounding error in a Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Assistant Undersecretary’s Administrative Assistant’s copier toner budget. But one is left to ponder whether, if this were a business where that money actually belonged to somebody, someone might notice that this was not an efficient transaction for the employer. In the federal government, it’s SOP, as we used to say.
Apollo posted this at 10:04 PM HKT on Sunday, March 28th, 2010 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors
September 8th, 2009
David Brooks Watch
David Brooks today focuses on the founding of a new magazine today, National Affairs, which will try to fill the gap created when The Public Interested closed. The magazine looks promising, but Brooks manages to do it a disservice in his column praising it. Discussing the mess that is California, Brooks wrote:
As Troy Senik points out in his essay, the California Constitution gives voters relatively direct control over fiscal decisions. The result is that Californians have voted to tax themselves like libertarians and subsidize themselves like socialists.
Reading Brooks alone, one might think that California was a low-tax state. But Mr. Senik’s article paints a rather different picture [emphasis added]:
To address a $42 billion shortfall in February of this year, the legislature enacted a package that included the largest state tax increases in American history, leaving California with the highest sales and personal income-tax rates in the country (though Hawaii would supplant its lead in the latter category in May). . . .
The Golden State’s signature optimism may be to blame: How else to explain the delusion that Californians could be taxed like libertarians, but subsidized like socialists? The result, of course, has been a fiscal crisis addressed with slashed spending on public services and increased taxes in the midst of a deep recession — a recipe for yet more discord and trouble. In a grim irony, Californians are now being taxed like socialists and subsidized like libertarians.
It looks as though Brooks muddled Senik’s point. Californians have tried to control tax rates through direct democracy and have spectacularly failed. How else would they have such sky high sales and income tax rates? A newspaper op-ed cannot convey the depth and subtley of a long magazine article, of course, but Brooks could at least try to keep from giving the wrong impression.
Hubbard posted this at 11:24 AM HKT on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, It's Economics - Stupid!, Politics
July 6th, 2009
If I Had a Million Dollars
I would not use it to pay for Michelle Obama to speak. I simply can’t think of anything interesting that she has to say. Would students at UC Merced rather have had Michelle Obama deliver a canned speach, or get $370 each? Or, if we make this a matter simply for the graduating class, would the 493 graduates rather have Michelle Obama speak at their commencement or get $2000 each? I wouldn’t have payed a wooden nickel to hear my commencement speaker – the insufferable Bill Bradley – but I can’t think of anyone a college graduate, without a job and with lots of debt, should be paying $2000 to hear.
Of course, the question can also be phrased as, “How much would you pay for your grandparents to get sun stroke?”
Because of security concerns, the audience had to show up hours before the ceremony in the campus’ grassy outdoor amphitheater and sit without shade as temperatures reached the mid-90s. Eight people were hospitalized for heat-related problems, a campus spokesperson said. About 80 others were treated at the site.
I hope every one of those people is suing the university. It is completely idiotic to force families to sit through that to watch their kids graduate, just so that Michelle can spout out 25 minutes of Oprah-lite.
I’ve long thought the culture of high-end commencement speakers was stupid. Virtually every college in the country would benefit if it just gave up on that game and instead had a well-regarded professor speak to the students. It would save money, have more content, better connect with students, and not subsidize the egos of political and media elites.
Apollo posted this at 7:32 PM HKT on Monday, July 6th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Edjamacation
May 15th, 2009
Isn’t He Dreamy?
This is awesome.
Hattip: Jonah. Original source from this nifty new blog here.
Tom posted this at 4:36 PM HKT on Friday, May 15th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, CHANGE!
February 27th, 2009
Soak it In
Wow.
Not only will the current deficit reach $1.75 trillion, next year’s will also top $1 trillion and the deficits will remain above $500 billion until fiscal 2019, the last year projected in yesterday’s document.
Any other issue aside, I think there starts to be a legitimate question of whether there really is just $10 trillion laying around, waiting for the U.S. government to borrow it. To this point in our history, after all the moaning and groaning of the Bush years, we’ve amassed a public debt that is a little under $11 trillion, 60% of our GDP. Over the next decade, Obama wants to double that.
Wow.
Update: Even better:
However, to meet that goal, the administration’s budget depends on optimistic projections that the economy, currently in the longest recession in a quarter-century, will come roaring back with economic growth of 3.2 percent next year and 4 percent-plus rates in the following three years, significantly higher than private economists are forecasting.
Translation: those deficit numbers come from someone smoking illegal substances. It’ll be vastly worse than predicted. I think it’s a serious question of how much money there actually is out there for our government to borrow. The number is >∞.
Apollo posted this at 10:19 PM HKT on Friday, February 27th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, That's Not Change!
February 24th, 2009
Three Cheers for Congress
They’re banning pet chimps. On the one hand, this is stupid legislation that addresses a non-problem, and in a rational world Congress wouldn’t bother itself with this. On the other, any minute this Congress doesn’t use to increase spending is a minute well spent. Remember Franklin’s words: A trillion saved is a trillion earned.
Apollo posted this at 3:56 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Animal Kingdom Strikes Back
February 21st, 2009
This is What Hope Looks Like
You wanted HOPE and CHANGE, America, well you got it. In order to reduce our national deficit to a mere half trillion dollars in a mere four years, we have to raise taxes and run away from fights.
Reducing the deficit, he said, is critical to the nation’s future: “We can’t generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control.”
Well, I guess it’s a good thing he’s doing such a great job of controlling deficits!
I thought during the campaign that a President Obama with a Democrat Congress would cause us to look back on the Bush years as a period of relative fiscal discipline. I thought it would take at least a couple of years, though. It’s only taken a month.
Fast fact: If the 2009 deficit were a country, it would be, at least, the 17th largest economy on earth. Indonesia has 237,512,352 people. This year, our government is going to borrow a time and a half as much as those people will produce.
P.S. This looks pretty funny right now.
P.P.S. Allow me to find a silver lining in this. Whatever ambitions Obama and the Democrats may have had for domestic projects (and I’m looking at you, socialized medicine) are simply not going to happen. The pork bill will, by necessity, be the defining domestic achievement of this administration.
Apollo posted this at 8:10 PM HKT on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, That's Not Change!
February 10th, 2009
Pop Quiz Hotshot
Which three Republican Senators voted to heap a monstrous amount of debt onto us for no real gain?
I may be sick.
Jamie posted this at 4:20 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors
February 9th, 2009
Playing Logic Games with a Law Prof
The more I toss it over in my mind, the less sense I can make of two points Obama kept harping on tonight. He kept saying:
- Congressional Republicans won’t help him because they believe that the solution to this problem lies in tax cuts alone, and not stimulus spending.
- Congressional Republicans have no credibility on controlling spending because they’ve engaged in a tremendous spending binge these last eight years.
But doesn’t this cut against Obama? Even Congressional Republicans think this spending is wasteful! It’s like going bar hopping with Amy Winehouse but complaining that she couldn’t keep up: it says more about you than her.
Apollo posted this at 10:22 PM HKT on Monday, February 9th, 2009 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, That's Not Change!
October 4th, 2008
Speaking of Not Judging Until All the Facts Are In
This headline on Fox comes close to matching Tom’s post from the other day: “Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest”
The story is thus: Barney Frank’s live-in boyfriend for 7 years was an executive at a company Frank’s committee regulated. I can’t think of a way to frame it so that that would not, objectively, be a conflict of interest.
Apollo posted this at 1:14 PM HKT on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Journalism
September 26th, 2008
Bailout Thought
Is Barney Frank the most disheveled man in public life? The weight, wearing shirts that fit him 40 pounds ago, the hair, that speech problem that makes him sound like he’s perpetually inebriated. Aside from the fact that he was one of the people leading the charge for Fannie and Freddie to loosen their lending standards, he’s a horrible spokesman for the Democrats to have on any issue. He looks like he had three hours of sleep after a two day bender and rolled out of bed ten minutes ago.
I saw Brad Sherman on Fox earlier. He looked smart, and he dressed like a Congressman (i.e. in a nondescript suit with a nondescript tie). He inspired confidence that there are serious people working on a serious issue. The only confidence Barney Frank inspires is that the cheap aftershave market won’t crash.
Apollo posted this at 3:54 PM HKT on Friday, September 26th, 2008 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors
June 25th, 2008
Congress to Apollo: You Are an Idiot
Well this is fantastic. $300 billion – i.e. $1000 from every man, woman, and child in America – going to bail out people who can’t pay their mortgages.
If you were responsible, if you thought twice before buying a home you couldn’t afford, if you bought a smaller home or a home in a not as nice neighborhood so that you could make the payments, if you stayed in your apartment for another year while you saved up for a down payment: Congress will take your money and subsidize the home purchases of people who chose to be irresponsible. Hope you enjoy your smaller home, or living in apartment that additional year, because the irresponsible are sure going to enjoy living it up in their nicer houses thanks to the money taken from your paycheck. P.S. And if you want to move up to a nicer house, fat chance, because part of the purpose of government spending this $300 billion is to jack up home prices.
This is about as unjust as government spending gets.
Apollo posted this at 6:33 AM HKT on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, An Insult to Drunken Sailors
May 20th, 2008
Of Course
Its no wonder that everyone is so unpopular these days, our current choices being Big Spending Republicans and Big Taxing Democrats.
Well it turns out that 62% of Americans want smaller government and lower taxes.
Too bad we won’t get a president this round that will offer that choice.
I miss Fred.
Jamie posted this at 3:54 PM HKT on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, An Insult to Drunken Sailors