…that I would love to wear, say, in Ann Arbor. I wonder if they sell it at Che Mart?
Heh.
…that I would love to wear, say, in Ann Arbor. I wonder if they sell it at Che Mart?
Heh.
Shannon Love says that, when it comes to epidemics, most people today have no idea how good we have it.
Explained:
A compilation of Democrat scandals. But it’s only a “culture of corruption” when it’s Republicans…
Pelosi was supposed to drain the swamp. Instead, she’s diverting a river into it. We’ll see what people think in a year and a half.
Support for a free-market economy is high, and increasing:
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of U.S. voters say that they prefer a free market economy over a government-managed economy. That’s up seven points since December.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also found that just 11% now prefer a government-run economy, down from 15% four months ago.
Funny what a few months of seeing a government attempt to run an economy can do. The other encouraging news is that the support is even stronger (though probably within the margin of error) among voters under thirty. “Capitalism” gets less support, but it’s good to see that people make a distinction. The other interesting result is the number of people who recognize that big business tends to capture the regulators, while free markets are better for small business:
Seventy percent (70%) of voters believe that big business and big government are generally on the same team working against the interests of consumers and investors.
A plurality of voters (46%) say that small businesses benefit more from free markets than big business. Thirty-five percent (35%) hold the opposite view. Most Democrats think big businesses benefit more from free markets, while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters say small businesses are more likely to benefit.
By a 62% to 23% margin, voters also believe that small businesses are hurt more by regulations than big business. This finding is likely driven by public understanding of the way Congress works. Earlier surveys found that 68% say most business leaders contribute to political campaigns primarily because the government can do so much to help or hurt their business.
Which just shows, once again, the result of government, and particularly the federal government, having too much power. And, as would be expected, Republicans and Independents are more sensible on this than Democrats, who (conveniently) fantasize that small business does better under more regulation. Mark Steyn has some related thoughts:
There was an old joke in Britain: “Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?” In fact, it’s a profound observation about the nature of government. We wouldn’t like it if there were only one automobile company or only one breakfast cereal, but by definition there can only be one federal government – which is why, “when the Government’s monopolizing”, it should do so only in very limited areas.
This isn’t an abstract philosophical point, but a very practical one. Fans of big government take it for granted that Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, Barney Frank and a couple of other guys can “run” the financial sector better than 8,000 US banks all jostling for elbow room like bacteria in a petri dish. Same with the auto industry, and the insurance industry, and the property market, and health care, and “the global environment”. The skill-set required to run a billion-dollar company is the province of very few individuals. The skill-set required to run a multi-trillion-dollar government is unknown to human history.
And speaking of not understanding how economies work, Instapundit has an observation on the president:
…when Obama says “We’re not producing enough primary care physicians,” he’s making a mistake. We don’t produce doctors. They’re not widgets. People choose to become doctors — or something else — based on their analysis of what will produce the best life. Medicine has gotten less pleasant, and less financially rewarding, really, over the past several decades as it’s become more bureaucratized and subject to the whims of third-party payors. So will Obama’s plan fix that? Seems doubtful. Will he recognize that you don’t produce doctors the way you produce, say, cars? That’s doubtful, too.
Of course, as James Joyner points out, we don’t exactly have a free market in the medical profession, either.
[Update a few minutes later]
You already knew this, but Eleanor Clift and Jim Warren are economic morons. Not to mention Obama sycophants. It’s a perfect illustration of Rasmussen’s gap between the voters and the Washington elite.
Did the former vice president lie to Congress? Wouldn’t shock me. Unfortunately, as noted, he wasn’t under oath.
Is that what TARP is? Looks like it to me. Of course, government can do lots of things that you and I would go to jail for (including the way they keep their books). But this looks even worse, and an actual violation of the law.
It’s easy to guess that Barofsky is looking into the possibility that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson coerced the CEOs of the nine largest banks to accept capital investments from TARP, even though several of them didn’t want the government as a stakeholder. Wells Fargo chairman Richard Kovacevich, for example, says that he was “forced to take the TARP money.” Philip Swagel, who served at the time as assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury, admits that “there is no authority in the United States to force a private institution to accept government capital. This is a hard legal constraint.”
Is that the “public corruption” Barofsky is talking about?
But then again, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the statute that authorizes TARP, doesn’t give the Treasury the power to make direct investments in banks at all. It gives the Treasury the power to buy troubled assets and to write insurance against losses in troubled assets. But there’s not one single solitary word in the act that authorizes the Treasury to buy stock in banks.
And there’s not one single solitary word in the act that authorizes the Treasury to do anything at all for auto companies like General Motors and Chrysler. The act only authorizes helping “financial institutions.” Yet billions of TARP dollars have gone to the two automakers.
I think these people have simply gone mad with power. Acton had it right.
Ted Rall has been laid off. It’s actually a sign of how good the economy has been for the last several years that a talentless hack like him could make a living in it.
Liar.
Who in the press will call him on it?
[Mid-afternoon update]
Nick Gillespie has more thoughts:
Frank is nothing less than a trickster figure in American politics, especially for us libertarians who believe that economic and civil liberties are conjoined at the hip, the Chang and Eng of what makes this miserable world worth suffering through. As the comment above suggests, Frank is as good as it gets on most lifestyle issues (indeed, he even had Reason’s Radley Balko testify about repealing online gambling bans) and yet he’s a real lummox when it comes to economic freedom. His role in the banking and housing crisis is genuinely godawful. Not only did he strongarm mortgage companies to extend more and more credit to shakier and shakier customers, he did so all while denying anything was amiss at the government-sponsored behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that literally underwrote the mortgage mess.
And Frank’s at his worst again, now pushing The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009, which critics charge would vastly increase the level of complexity in lending and make it more difficult for low-income borrowers and others to get access to credit.
As a commenter notes, being a lummox on economic freedom is a problem of the Dems in general.
Little Miss Attila thinks so (sorta):
Janeane Garofalo is absolutely right: the tea parties are racism straight up. Because if it had been racism on the rocks, PJM would have gotten someone else to do interviews that day, instead of asking Zo to do two jobs. And if it had been racism-and-water, the organizers of the event wouldn’t have imposed upon Alfonzo by asking him to the podium. If it were racism-and-soda, they wouldn’t have recruited Zo to work for PJTV at all, but would have allowed him to continue commenting on events from his living room in the SoCal desert.
But don’t you see, this just proves Janeane’s point, because as all the bien pensant know, Zo (who I had the pleasure to briefly meet at Bill Whittle’s birthday party a couple weeks ago) is obviously a Tom.
Glad I’m not bien pensant.