The Predictable Media Response to The Presidents Speech

As explained nicely in the Captain's Quarters blog.
How long can this type of sloppy journalism last?

The Short Memories of Politicians

This property tax surge in California won't go on forever as explained here.

And They Want To Change Prop 13?

Daniel Weintraub notes that Sacramento County will soon enjoy their 3rd year of double-digit property tax growth.

"This will be our third year of double-digit property-tax growth," said Geoff Davey, the county's chief financial officer. "It's been a long time since we have seen that. I don't know if it has ever occurred."

Read the whole commentary here.

More Social Security Tidbits

Some new interesting comments from Kudlow's Money Politic$, SocialSecurityChoice.org, and Students For Saving Social Security.

Read the entertaining and informative transcript from President Bush's speech on Social Security at a high school in Maryland yesterday.
Ben Stein was also there.

Controlling Healthcare Costs

The only sure way to take the first step in reducing healthcare costs generally involve making workers responsible for a portion of those costs. If a worker pays nothing out of his own pocket, he will of course, utilize as much "free" healthcare as possible - whether it is medically NECESSARY or not. Kausfiles points this problem out with regards to GM's healthcare issues.

UAW workers at GM and retirees don't pay monthly premiums or deductibles for health care, but white-collar workers and retirees pay both. GM says union employees pay 7 percent of their health-care costs and white-collar employees 27 percent. (Chicago Tribune)

This was brought up Monday in another completely nonsensical and illogical article from a Los Angeles Times columnist. This time it was Ronald Brownstein who said when dicussing the GM conflict with regards to healthcare costs said healthcare premiums for the average family have increased 59% since 2000. While of course failing to mention that healthcare premiums for UAW workers have increased zero, because they don't pay any premiums unlike most of this countries workers.

Rumsfeld on Guantanamo

Rumsfeld on Guantanamo during an interview with radio host Michael Smerconish:

“Then the question is, what is the alternative. He who would tear down what is has the responsibility of recommending something better. And I haven’t heard anybody who said anything like that who has any idea at all, unless you want to let all these people go and let them kill another 3,000 or 10,000 Americans.”
“This facility is needed. It is housing people who have done great damage to our country, who are determined to go out and kill additional people if they have the chance: bomb-makers and terrorist financers, and suicide bombers. And they need to be kept off the street, and they are being kept off the street in Guantanamo at a facility being operated by young men and women from our armed services who are doing a fine job. They are treating them in a humane way, but they are keeping them off the street, and they are interrogating them to find out additional information so we can prevent future terrorist acts.”

Read more details here. And check out the reader commentary that follows after a blog posting on The Huffington Post actually made some sense.

The Big Picture Being Missed on Gitmo

The bigger picture being missed is that any politician or human rights organization who spends one single second worrying about Gitmo is doing nothing but making partisan political attacks because they are ignoring the real slaughter and oppression going on in North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe and so on.

They know, they know! that the U.S. is not the bad guy, and in the meantime any second taken away from focusing on the real abusers allows more torture and murder to go on.

This is unconscionable.

Optional Taxes - The Best Tax Idea Ever

I swear I came up with this idea over a decade ago. Provide individuals who love paying high taxes the opportunity to do so by choice. It is simply brilliant and upholds every principal America stands for - including individual choice, fairness, compassion for the less fortunate, safety nets and many more.

The IRS simply would add a small box to the 1040 tax form beside these words: “If you believe you should be taxed at a rate above that assigned to your income bracket, please indicate here the higher rate you prefer. Kindly calculate your tax liability, and send it in.”

Here's columnist Deroy Murdock on Higher Rate Optional Taxes.

Gitmo For Dummies

Rich Lowry commentary last week:

We captured more than 10,000 people in Afghanistan. Roughly 750 ended up at Gitmo — exactly because we had reason to keep them. The number now is down to 500, as cases are constantly reviewed. Unfortunately, the release process isn’t perfect. Two former detainees were killed in fighting in Afghanistan last year, and another was picked up in a raid on a terrorist training camp. A former detainee in Pakistan was suspected of involvement in the deadly kidnapping of two Chinese engineers. . . .

. . . The administration should defend the facility there unabashedly. It should force Democrats to argue that the 9/11 hijackers shouldn’t have women stand too close to them and that rice pilaf isn’t good enough fare. It should make Democrats explain how to fight a war on terror without detaining enemy fighters, and work to stem the panic, rather than surrendering to it.

The rest of the article can be found here.

Real Cost of California's Special Election

As expected, substantially less than the unions claim of $80mm and the $100mm claim made by other serial liars.

State election and budget officials said Tuesday that revised figures put the cost between $52 million and $55 million.

Read whole article here.

The Laffer Curve Revisted (yes it still works)

From Stephen Moore in The Wall Street Journal:

The theory is really one of the simplest concepts in economics. Yet its logic continues to elude the class-warfare lobby whose disbelief is unburdened by the multiple real-life examples which validate its conclusions. The idea is that lowering the tax rate on production, work, investment, and risk-taking will spur more of these activities and thereby will often lead to more tax revenue collections for the government rather than less.

The article cites both the Reagan and recent Bush tax rate cuts.
Read the whole article here.

This Weeks Weekend Reading List

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer
Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Milton Friedman Updates Voucher Efforts

A private education market will revolutionize schooling. Since 1970, education spending per pupil has roughly doubled - yet students rank lower in international comparisons, dropout rates remain high, and SAT scores are flat to down.

We have been involved in two initiatives in California to enact a statewide voucher system (in 1993 and 2000). In both cases, the initiatives were carefully drawn up, and the voucher sums moderate. In both cases, nine months or so before the election, public opinion polls recorded a sizable majority in favor of the initiative. In addition, of course, there was a sizable group of fervent supporters, whose hopes ran high of finally getting control of their children's schooling. In each case, about six months before the election, the voucher opponents launched a well-financed and thoroughly unscrupulous campaign against the initiative. Television ads blared that vouchers would break the budget, whereas in fact they would reduce spending since the proposed voucher was to be only a fraction of what government was spending per student. Teachers were induced to send home with their students misleading propaganda against the initiative. Dirty tricks of every variety were financed from a very deep purse. The result was to convert the initial majority into a landslide defeat. This has also occurred in Washington state, Colorado and Michigan. Opposition like this explains why progress has been so slow in such a good cause.
The good news is that, despite these setbacks, public interest in and support for vouchers and tax credits continues to grow. Legislative proposals to channel government funds directly to students rather than to schools are under consideration in something like 20 states. Sooner or later there will be a breakthrough; we shall get a universal voucher plan in one or more states. When we do, a competitive private educational market serving parents who are free to choose the school they believe best for each child will demonstrate how it can revolutionize schooling.

Read the whole commenrary here.

Kudlow Unloads on David Cay Johnston

From Kudlow's Money Politic$:

Mr. Johnston singles out the top 145,000 taxpayers who comprise the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution in 2002. Their average income was $3 million, two-and-a-half times the $1.2 million (adjusted for inflation) that group reported in 1980. Oh, my gosh. They were successful earners and investors.

Over that 22-year span, they were probably the very same people who launched tens of thousand of new companies that hired roughly 40 million net new workers that completely revolutionized the U.S. economy through unbelievable breakthroughs and innovations and inventions in information technology, communications, finance, health care, retailing, and so forth.Imagine that -- 145,000 people. What should we do, go out and shoot them for their success? It is these entrepreneurs that use their God-given talents within the Reaganesque free-market framework that deregulated and slashed tax rates to provide the first strong dose of economic incentives since the 1920’s. These folks should be praised, not punished.

Read the whole posting here.

"Out-Forcing" California Jobs, Not Outsourcing

Commentary from Ted Balaker at the Reason Foundation.

LA Times Columnist & Economics 101

How can L.A. Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik recommend, or even have a discussion on tax increases, without first discussing the inefficiencies, wastefulness, and often outright fraudulent nature of California governmental spending.
And I'm not talking about slashing government programs, that's a completely different argument, I'm talking about mismanagement, high salaries, overgenerous pension funds, 3 government workers doing the exact same job, and paying $100 for a $1 support stocking.

More commentary here.

More New York Times Nonsense

Kausfiles analyzes shallow and biased NYT story on how the rich have gotten richer.

European Woes as Seen Through the Wine Industry

Interesting article from the L.A. Times on the nature of socialism in one of France's most prominent industries.
Did this commentary really come from the L.A. Times?

Where Was Jim Lampley When We Needed Him?

For those of you not following the blogging world, the new celebrity filled Huffington Post almost showcases sports commentator Jim Lampley and his ultra-liberal, often non-sensical commentaries.
You must, must read these commentaries no matter what your political affiliation is.
If this blog would have started in 2004, Bush might have garnered 70-80% of the popular vote instead of just 60%.

More Great EU Constitution Commentary

It's the humerous commentaries that make the most sense.

Wal-Mart Bashing is so 2002

The efforts at exposing Wal-Mart as an exploiter of labor has pretty much faded into the limelight as the facts were reveleaed that 90% of Wal-Mart employees have health insurance coverage (either through the company or a spouse's plan) and that the low prices offered by the giant store chain benefits tens, if not hundreds of millions of lower and middle income families.
(not to mention the obvious fact that Wal-Mart employees are not slaves and CHOOSE to work there, and that many of them, particularly in small towns, had no jobs prior to employment at Wal-Mart).

The attacks are being reinvigorated with an embarrassing Farenheit 9/11 style documentary being developed by liberal movie producer Robert Greenwald, who also did Outfoxed.

Just like the unfortunate true history of liberal activism in this century, this movie, if successful, will end up greatly hurting the people it is supposed to be helping.