Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Employee Code: USAPOTUS0044

3 Comments

A performance review:

Deliverable 2: Public Safety. Under your management, violent crime is up 18 percent — the first such increase in 20 years. Your “Fast and Furious” project has caused serious damage to the balance sheet: one dead federal officer, more than a hundred dead civilians, a seriously cheesed-off next-door business partner, and zero cartel convictions — the lattermost being, if I understand your business strategy, the whole point of this mess. Your performance reports here have been remarkably obstructive, which is why you should have on our advice terminated Eric Holder.

Deliverable 3: Energy. When interviewing for this position, you said, and I quote, “We could have headed off $4-a-gallon gas.” We’ve seen gas prices above or near $4 for most of your term, and above $5 in some parts of the country under the management of your associates. Energy production on the firm’s lands is down substantially year-over-year.

Deliverable 4: Balance Sheet. During your interview, you proposed cutting the firm’s current operating deficit in half. In fact, the firm has acquired trillions of dollars of new debt under your management, along with new unfunded liabilities that our accountants are still trying to work out. When you were presented recommendations from a committee named by you and your management team, you refused even to consider implementing them. You are on track to add another $1 trillion in debt this year.

…On a personal note, I’d like to say that the first time I ever had to fire anybody, I felt really bad about it. She was a nice young woman in her first real job, courteous, well-liked, always on time, and eager to do a good job. She had, unfortunately, been hired for a position that required more than her talents and experience enabled her to deliver. This is also true of you, with the exception of being courteous, likable, and punctual. If I could, I would fire you twice.

Well, it was a foolish hire.

[Update a while later]

UNINSTALLING OBAMA…..……………. █████████████▒▒▒ 90% complete.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

Illinois

11 Comments

Thoughts on the president’s home state:

Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.

But other than that, it’s great. And California’s pretty much in the same boat.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Immigration, Democracy And Multi-Culturalism

1 Comment

Pick any two:

The sociopolitical heritage from Spain and the post colonial experience of Latin America has engendered in the Hispanic-American population an understanding of the role of government significantly different from the principles of limited government and imprescriptible rights embraced by the Founding Fathers. Thus classical liberalism, or libertarianism in the contemporary American coinage, does not come naturally to Hispanics.

In a recent American National Elections Study, in answer to the question: “Which of these two statements comes closer to your opinion, (1) The less government the better, or (2) there are more things the government should be doing;” 47.4 percent of the white non-Hispanic population responded “the less government the better.” In contrast, only 17.9 percent of Hispanics responded similarly.

In a question regarding preferences for free market vs. government solutions, 35.8 percent of white non-Hispanics opined that the free market can handle economic problems whereas 83.3 percent of Hispanics expressed that a strong government involvement is required. The political philosophies of classical liberalism that limit the role of government and place the individual in center stage are not nearly as ingrained in Hispanic heritage as they are in the American sociopolitical discourse. In some measure, this undermines effective pluralistic participation in the civil institutions of free societies.

This is a real problem. And it’s made worse by our terrible school system.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Mann-Made Lawsuit

66 Comments

Get the popcorn going.

[Afternoon update]

I, Mark Steyn, National Review and CEI have been named. It’s four separate suits. I may be setting up a legal defense fund.

[Update a while later]

Here’s the story, at Fox News.

Legal Times has a story, too, as well as Ron Bailey at Reason. Also, Scientific American.

[Update a while later]

For those unfamiliar with the background, here are a couple articles at Forbes about the climate-gate whitewash.

Business, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Heresy

Lileks goes to Universal:

And then. Oh. My. And then you are suspended in the largest open space you can possibly imagine, flying. Over a forest. Under a bridge. The wind is in your face and you cannot see yourself attached to anything and the disorientation is utter and complete. I thought: well, this is everything I hate, isn’t it? So enjoy.

It was nothing I would ever willingly do, and it was spectacular. My God – you crashed through roofs, were spat upon by spiders, blasted by a dragon, something big like the limbs of a tree reached for you, and the spectacles moved with such speed it was difficult to discern the real from the filmed. By the end I’d given myself over completely to the experience, and was flying over the water to the very castle I’d entered an hour before, and it was the most utterly exhilarating thing I’d never really done.

There’s more.