Shocking: Businessman Finds N.Y. Dems are Unfriendly

-By Warner Todd Huston

Water is wet. The sky is blue. And Democrats aren’t friendly to taxpayers. These should be natural assumptions, of course, and in the age of Obama the later is more true than ever. But color powerful New York businessman Tom Golisano surprised that, even after he gave tons of cash to New York Democrats, he was treated like an annoyance when he asked them not to raise taxes in the Empire state.

Golisano says that he was ignored and shunted aside after his big money donations to New York’s Democratic power players in Albany and so he worked with Republicans to engineer the stunning upset that put the New York State Senate back in the hands of the GOP early this week.

I only have to ask: why did Golisano ever imagine that mere campaign donations would keep these Democrat leopards from changing their big taxing spots?

Continue reading


Shocking: Businessman Finds N.Y. Dems are Unfriendly”


AP: Know What All These Job Losses Mean? ‘Brightest Hope,’ of Course!

-By Warner Todd Huston

There is happy-talk and then there is delusion. The Associated Press has just approached the delusional stage with its recent assessment of what the unemployment numbers mean. Absurdly, the AP seems to imagine that the continued job losses under Obama means that job hunters are experiencing “raising hopes”! It’s like sitting on the Titanic pleased that taking on water raises hopes that a nice, relaxing bath is will soon be at hand.

The first paragraph of the story claims that since last month saw a few less layoffs, why, that is saying that what we have here is “the brightest hope yet that an economic recovery” will take hold later this year. What does the AP offer as proof? Not a whole lot, sadly. In fact, the very next paragraph sort of torpedoes the first. After this “brightest hope” business, the AP gives us this:

Continue reading


AP: Know What All These Job Losses Mean? ‘Brightest Hope,’ of Course!”


Hello GovernmentCare, Goodbye Personal Privacy

-By Warner Todd Huston

Do you want your government to know that you have bowel troubles? Do you mind if the president can discover if you have erectile disfunction? Would you be out of sorts if your local Congressman could discover if you’d had an abortion? How about if your state comptroller’s office or your governor could discover if you’d had breast implants? Well, a vote for Obamacare is a vote to give away your personal, private, maybe embarrassing medical information.

Do you think this is a silly claim? Well, don’t. In the newly released Obamacare plan, section 3102 titled “Financial Integrity” makes provision for state and federal governments to be able to investigate any medical care provider at any time. This provision gives government the right to look at any record that a doctor has in his files and that means your private medical information. Worse, they may do so without court approval, without a warrant, with no cause stated.

Continue reading


Hello GovernmentCare, Goodbye Personal Privacy”


Why New WH Cybersecurity Focus is a Game-Changer — for the Internet and Net Neutrality

-By Scott Cleland

President Obama’s new approach to cybersecurity likely is more of an Internet game-changer than many appreciate. Initial reporting and commentary has been superficial and has not connected dots or analyzed the broader logical implications of this new policy emphasis and trajectory.

Why is it a game-changer for the Internet?

  • First, it formalizes a new leading priority for the Internet.
  • Second, it formalizes the lack of cybersecurity as the Internet’s leading problem.
  • Third, it practically redefines what “open Internet” means.
  • Fourth, it practically takes any extreme form of net neutrality off the table.

Moreover, the new cybersecurity focus will likely have a practical effect on the trajectory of Internet 3.0, which embodies cloud computing (where security has not been a primary priority by many); the Mobile web (where security has always been a very high priority); and the Internet of Things (where security will be imperative to prevent theft, intrusion, and sabotage).

Continue reading


Why New WH Cybersecurity Focus is a Game-Changer — for the Internet and Net Neutrality”


Obama Gives U.S.A. an Expiration Date and it’s NOW

-By Warner Todd Huston

In his much ballyhooed speech given in Cairo, Egypt, yesterday, Barack Obama sought to make common cause with the “Muslim world” as if all Muslims are in accord. Of course, this ignores the simple fact that Muslims kill Muslims far more than Muslims even kill others. Still, it’s all well and good to want to make common cause when it is achievable.

There is much to agree with in Obama’s Cairo speech. (Full text here) His rhetoric about freedom of religion and the American success story is right on. There is also much to quibble with, especially that he seems to assume a moral equivalence between all parties in the conflict between the west and that “Muslim world.”

There is, however, one line in his speech that reveals what he thinks of us and where he thinks we should be as a nation. And that “where” is down.

Continue reading


Obama Gives U.S.A. an Expiration Date and it’s NOW”


Why the Steepening Yield Curve?

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Investors are beginning to look ahead, anticipating surging inflation.

A reader signing himself AmendmentX posted a comment with a link to Federal Reserve puzzled by yield curve steepening.

As he noted, that supports my statement that:
Continue reading


Why the Steepening Yield Curve?”


Obama: Nuclear Power OK For Enemies but Not For US?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly power of all, low on emissions, does not require destructive mining or drilling efforts to feed it, and is also one that creates a lot of jobs both in initial construction as well as to sustain its ongoing operation. Nuclear power is also a mainstay power source for such countries as France. It’s clean, safe, and extremely desirable. Its only drawback is what to do with its waste.

But to the U.S. enviro-racket, nuclear power is a bugabear that needs to be deep sixed forever and Barack Obama is a chief bugger of that bugabear. Unless, that is, you happen to be an enemy of the USA. If you are, say, Iran, why, nuclear power is a vital national interest that he is willing to stand behind in principle.

Outrageously the “president of the world” is willing to agree with Iran, one of our biggest international enemies, a nation that has sent its soldiers and trainers into combat against our own troops, a nation that exports acts of terror across the globe, a nation that claims it needs nuclear power for domestic energy… and Barack Obama is on their side.

Continue reading


Obama: Nuclear Power OK For Enemies but Not For US?”


Obama’s Healthcare Deception — It’s Just a Giant Power Grab

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s plan will eliminate the private insurance industry, “its premised on doing so.” He intends to create a socialist, government controlled health care system regardless.

Obama wants a single payer healthcare system. His deception offers a “choice” that is intended to disappear shortly whether people want their private insurance or not.

(H/T verumserum.com)


The media hate the truth, and they lie on behalf of Obama

-By Marie Jon


“He who hates, disguises it with his lips, and lays up deceit within himself; when he speaks kindly, do not believe him, for there are seven abominations in his heart.”Proverbs 26:24, 25

There is a helpless, sinister sense that seems to be hanging like a heavy weight over the country. One can compare the emotion to that of a death of a loved one — America.

Many astute individuals are beginning to understand that something very different from changes of the past is happening to their country. The Democratic National Committee has adopted an extreme, radical-left ideology. It no longer represents the party our parents remember. It would be more aptly renamed the Democratic Socialist Party.

Continue reading


The media hate the truth, and they lie on behalf of Obama”


Circumnavigating the Rule of Law

-By Nancy Salvato

The last I heard, the United States was not a signatory to the Law of the Sea Convention. Yet back in 1996, under President Clinton, we became signatories to an agreement with the Commonwealth of the Bahamas “concerning a cooperative Shiprider and Overflight Drug Interdiction Program for Joint Operations,” known as the 1996 Shiprider Agreement.

“Based on the principles of international law, respect for the sovereign equality of States and in full respect of the principle of the right of freedom of navigation consistent with the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention,” this agreement was superseded by a more comprehensive agreement in 2004 (US State Department).
Continue reading


Circumnavigating the Rule of Law”


Feds to Decide What Can be Sold at Your Garage Sale

-By Warner Todd Huston

With the first days of Summer a long standing American tradition emerges anew from yards and garages all across the country. Once again this season we will see the venerable American garage sale bloom everywhere. Homeowners will be seen busily setting up folding tables or bringing picnic tables from back yards to load them up with used clothes, toys, collectibles, and items of all sorts. Couples will once again cruise the neighborhood looking to those bargains. It’s as American as Baseball, and the rest.

But a new player has been introduced to the venerable garage sale scheme and this one isn’t looking for a deal. It is a new player that isn’t looking to ask you “how much” but is looking to tell you what you’ll be allowed to sell. It’s the federal government and it’s iron boot heel come a’calling at your local garage sale.

That’s right, folks, the federal government is here to warn you that you will no longer be allowed to sell certain things at your garage or yard sales or even on auction sites like ebay. If you are a scofflaw, Big Brother is here to stomp you. The nanny state is here to “protect” you. And you better watch out or there’s no telling what just might happen to you if you don’t bow down to the all powerful state.

Continue reading


Feds to Decide What Can be Sold at Your Garage Sale”


Minding The Times: An Exposition On Postmodernism, Part 1

-By Frederick Meekins

One might say the future is here — and we might want to send it back for a refund. Having waited years and wondering at times whether mankind would even survive to see the day, the world now finds itself on the other side of a new millennium. In some ways, it is everything optimistic futurists dreamed of in terms of faster modes of transportation, improved forms of medicine and almost instantaneous global communication. However, one would hardly consider it the quaint but technologically sophisticated world of George Jetson whose most formidable challenges consisted of navigating Mr. Spacely’s fickle temper and making sure Rosie the robot maid stayed adequately oiled. Instead, inhabitants of the early twenty-first century worry if their children will even return home alive from school in the evening or how much longer they have until turbaned fanatics turn the accumulated glories of Western civilization into a smoldering atomic wasteland.

Somewhere along the highway leading from intentions to actuality society seems to have taken a wrong turn and gotten lost along the way. When finding oneself in unintended surroundings while road-tripping across the country, one pulls over to the shoulder of the road to look at a map to determine where one’s navigation went astray. Likewise, when a culture begins to display signs of being out of kilter, the time has come to examine the sociological roadmap in terms of the philosophies, beliefs, and ideas individuals use to live their lives and those in authority employ to oversee events.
Continue reading


Minding The Times: An Exposition On Postmodernism, Part 1″


Hope and Mirrors: Stimulus ‘Saved’ Cops To Be Fired Anyway

-By Warner Todd Huston

On March 6, Obama’s mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, happily told the nation that the Obama “stimulus” plan had saved the jobs of 25 Cops in Columbus, Ohio. This was an example, Gibbs trumpeted, of how Obama’s supposed stimulus package was “working” to set the country to rights. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder even took a road trip to Columbus to proudly see these “saved” cops being sworn in as police officers.

It was back slaps and grins all around as Obama celebrated his successful “stimulus” program. That was less than two months ago. Today, those same 25 new policemen whose jobs were “saved” by the great father in Washington have been laid off over lack of funds.

Obama’s great hope and mirrors campaign strikes its false stance as savior again, proving that there was no “stimulus” in the stimulus plan and that it was a false front all along meant only to serve as a part of Obama’s permanent political campaign effort. In reality, there’s just no there, there.

Continue reading


Hope and Mirrors: Stimulus ‘Saved’ Cops To Be Fired Anyway”


Feminist Grammar That Isn’t

-By Warner Todd Huston

Feminists are in essence an anti-intellectual lot. After all, the back flips they have to do to justify their anti-male crusade is an act worthy of Olympics style awards. Such are the illogical back bends that feminists must to do to justify their ideology that men become wholly unnecessary, biology and nature be damned. There are many intellectual outrages to education and tradition that feminists employ to make themselves feel superior. But I want to focus here on just one of these.

The example I’d like to discuss today is the elimination of the masculine pronoun. For those not “up” on their Strunk & White’s, the masculine pronoun is used when speaking about people generically. Example: Everyone should take his tea with milk. In this example the tea drinker is identified as “his” because a specific person or gender is not a focus, the sentence being centered on how people in general should drink tea.

Continue reading


Feminist Grammar That Isn’t”


CA Legislative Office Recommends Dumping SEIU Contract

-By Warner Todd Huston

On the Sacramento Bee website, Jon Ortiz has a blog called “The State Worker” and he’s discovered an interesting little tidbit about the state employees union and the current budget woes that face the Golden State.

It seems that someone in the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has wised up and recommended that the state dump the contract the state has with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as well as add a third furlough day to state employee’s work month.

Continue reading


CA Legislative Office Recommends Dumping SEIU Contract”


That Coal-Fired Furnace in the Sky

-By John Armor

Did anybody else notice that the phrase “global warming” has largely disappeared from public discourse? All but the slowest environmentalists have dropped that phrase because for the last three years the globe as been cooling off. So, the new phrase is “climate change.”

As a public service, I’d like to explain this phrase by reference to a pair of coal-fired furnaces, one in Birmingham, Alabama, the other one in Baltimore, Maryland. My mother grew up in Birmingham almost a century ago, in a rambling, wood-framed house on Warsaw Street. It had sleeping porches for summer heat, and a coal furnace for winter cold.
Continue reading


That Coal-Fired Furnace in the Sky”


International Busy Body Laws Waning?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Are we beginning to see the first cracks in the idea of “universal jurisdiction,” the international busy body “law” that said that any nation can arrest the leaders of any other nation and try them for “war crimes”? Let us hope we are, at least.

Now, I’ve always contended that the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals was a mistake. Not because those Nazi scum were innocent, far from it. But, rather, because it set a bad precedent that contended that the “international community” was qualified to capture, prosecute, and punish “war criminals.” This entire concept is made to order if one wants to destroy national sovereignty but not for one much interested in the rule of law. In fact, it is a direct assault on any rule of law because it invites the capricious rule of the mob (by reflecting current world opinion) on just who is and who is not a “war criminal.” Not to mention that the assumption that a world body can make these determinations must as a matter of course preclude any power over its own people by the individual nations involved. The determination of the “world community” will and must supersede national legal rulings — unless those rulings happen to agree with that world opinion which only makes the national decision at best perfunctory and certainly pointless.

Continue reading


International Busy Body Laws Waning?”


Illinois: New Gov. Same Old Garbage

-By Warner Todd Huston

A Pandering, Union suck-up that wants to soak the rich. Is this guy any different than the last guy?

Did you know that unless we pass Replacement Governor Pat Quinn’s union appeasing, pension stuffing budget, Illinois prison doors will be opened for a flood of dangerous criminals to walk free? Did you know that the old and infirm will be left to die in the streets? Did you know that all our teachers will be sent home never to teach again? The busses will stop, health care will end, local governments will lose state aid, locusts will descend from the skies, we will find our skin erupting in boils and disease will plague the state? Did you know it’s doomsday?

Well if you didn’t, Replacement Governor Quinn has been so kind as to have informed us all of the pending doom to the state of Illinois unless he gets his way. Quinn issued his “doomsday budget” warning at an address made yesterday at Chicago’s City Club, a downtown civic organization popular as a platform for city and state politicians to issue political pronouncements. Sadly, the Replacement Governor’s doomsaying is no different than the previous criminal governor we had that did the same thing. It is little else but scare tactics designed to force the legislature to bend to his will.

Continue reading


Illinois: New Gov. Same Old Garbage”


Green Follies: Gov’t Built Solar House Falls Apart

-By Warner Todd Huston

Hailed as a completely self-sustaining building, the solar house at the Troy Community Center in Troy, Michigan was set to open for tours and community use this Summer. Unfortunately, the systems failed to work over the winter, pipes froze, and water burst through the uninhabited structure causing the floors to collapse. As a result, the building sits unused after the hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on it by government.

This is government waste and folly at it worst, but it is typical of the best government can do. Oh, it’s not the best because anything worked, it’s the best because failure is all one can expect from government when undertaking projects of this nature.

The model house was supposed to be an engineering marvel that would save the planet. But ended up being just a monstrous waste of the taxpayer’s money.

Continue reading


Green Follies: Gov’t Built Solar House Falls Apart”


AFL-CIO Uses Bulgarian Website to Advocate for Congress to Act on EFCA

-By Warner Todd Huston

What, there aren’t any websites run by American workers and hosted in the USA that the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department could find to host its press releases? Apparently not as far as the union is concerned, anyway, because a press release to push a Washington conference in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is hosted on PR-USA.net, a misleadingly named site hosted and run in Varna, Bulgaria and registered by one Mr. Dobri Bojilov .

Another amusing aspect of this choice for a site host is the fact that the conference is discussing the issue of H2(b) visa reform. Of course, the H2(b) visa is the the work visa offered to foreign workers by the U.S. government. So, this union is using a foreign website to advocate against the importation of foreign workers. This union is using a foreign run site to advocate for American workers.

Why is the AFL-CIO using a foreign web service to host its press releases? Don’t they care about American workers?

I wonder if the AFL-CIO can spell hypocrisy?

Continue reading


AFL-CIO Uses Bulgarian Website to Advocate for Congress to Act on EFCA”


Another Example of Central Planning Failure

-By Dan Scott

I find it particularly amusing when liberals proclaim the end of capitalism by their self-righteous actions of micromanaging companies they plan to make the centerpiece of their social responsibility. Of course, since I am not directly affected as an employee or investor, my sense of humor might be lost those who are being manipulated for the so-called benefit of society. Chrysler has become the liberal showcase of what they can do when their “superior intellect” is employed. In Chrysler we have fascism, environmentalism, unionism and redistribution of wealth all mixed into one big bubbling pot of failure. While I do feel for the employees and investors of Chrysler and shake my head at the billions of taxpayer dollars yet to be expended on top of that already wasted, I can’t help but smirk at the inevitable debacle of feel good, we must do something, liberalism. As a conservative, I’m not into the self-righteousness thing of projecting an image to get people to like me or manipulate them into doing what I want.

In show of power, Obama’s political appointees running Chrysler recently slashed the company’s advertising budget in half during the bankruptcy process. It’s rather ironic that the very group of people who depend upon the marketing of their image should make the first blow to Chrysler’s ability to sell the vehicles currently sitting unpurchased on the dealership lots. I’m sure the dealerships appreciate the government for having no interest in moving the existing inventory. Apparently, they believe they must look to the future promises of green cars while ignoring current reality of the 80,000 people employed selling cars. What do they care? Chrysler doesn’t own those cars anyway; the dealerships do and are paying interest on the unsold inventory sitting on their lots. It seems Obama’s flunkies either believe cars will magically sell themselves or the surviving dealerships must be made to share in their cause of wealth redistribution occurring at Chrysler by making them expend more money to offset the loss of advertising.
Continue reading


Another Example of Central Planning Failure”


Fake ‘Comments’ Supporting EFCA Posted All Over the Web

-By Warner Todd Huston

Recently, an effort to post all across the web fake comments supporting a key union cause has been discovered. In Internet activist talk, this is called “astroturfing.” The term describes a campaign of fake comments posted on multiple websites where articles are discussing any particular issue about which the “astroturfers” want to have their position known. In this case the issue is the discussion of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and the “astroturfing” is an effort by union supporters to explain away the dangers this act represents to the American worker. The end result is supposed to be that when regular web users come to a page and see the pro-union message they imagine it to be from a “real” visitor. In truth it is an organized campaign to spam comments sections with a canned comment misleading readers into thinking “real people” support the position being “astroturfed.” (i.e., since astroturf is fake grass, this laying on of a fake “covering” explains the reference)

A website named The Truth About the EFCA, discovered the astroturfing effort in the form of the exact same comments in favor of the EFCA on at least three different sites posted under three different names. The site was alerted to this fact because its own site was one of the astroturfed sites.

Continue reading


Fake ‘Comments’ Supporting EFCA Posted All Over the Web”


EFCA: This is Lunacy

-By Warner Todd Huston

Patrick McIheran has a short piece on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website that is a pretty good read. I think you should all check it out in its entirety here.

The piece has several links to other articles in it, but the main point is about the overgenerous and unfunded pension plans that unions all across the country have been foolishly allowed to negotiate. These pensions are simply untenable and always were but most businesses and unions kept kicking this can down the road until it is finally hit a dead end.
Continue reading


EFCA: This is Lunacy”


The President leads America under the guidance of his own destructive beliefs

-By Marie Jon


After a hundred days of Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency, sadly we are finding out the meaning of Obama’s slogan “Change We Can Believe In,” followed by the mantra, “Yes. We. Can.” We now know the meaning of these slick words.

In just three and a half months, we’ve seen Obama yank our country hard to the left — so far to the left, in fact, that we’re fast becoming a socialist nation, along with everything that it implies.

Continue reading


The President leads America under the guidance of his own destructive beliefs”


Union Local’s Sham Expenditures? $93,755 on ‘Computer Services’?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Larry Seale of First Transit Employee Rights Blog found an odd expenditure for Los Angeles based Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1277 early this month. The vexing question here is why would a Local union office need to spend $93,755 on “computer services”? What are they doing, rebuilding flight control for NASA?

On the Local’s LM-2 form, a financial disclosure form required by the federal government, the payout of “computer services” is listed as having been paid to a Doc Fixit, Inc of Santa Clarita, California. $93,755 is an awful lot of money for ”computer services” unless one was fitting an entire TV station, or starting up a printing company or some such major effort. But for sure that sort of money should be thought far and above what might be needed for a simple union Local’s offices.

Seale got curious when he saw the generous expenditure and tried to look up this Doc Fixit, Inc but couldn’t find a listing for it anywhere. It’s as if no such company exists. So where did this money go? What did it buy the Local? And where is this mysterious Doc Fixit, Inc computer company?

Something seems pretty fishy in L.A., doesn’t it?

Continue reading


Union Local’s Sham Expenditures? $93,755 on ‘Computer Services’?”


Obama Pays to Treat Alcoholism in Chinese Hookers

-By Warner Todd Huston

Chinese hookers have a drinking problem. Obama has the answer: U.S. Tax money. So it appears that the President of “change” seems to be The One that drunken Chinese prostitutes “have been waiting for.”

Our informative friends at CNSNews.com discovered that the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse (NIAA) has been awarded $2.6 million U.S. tax dollars to help train Chinese prostitutes to “drink responsibly on the job.” Yes, I said Chinese prostitutes… in China. One wonders if the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse missed the salient fact that they have the word National in their moniker? Or perhaps the NIAA just missed that the nation in their title is supposed to be our nation, not China’s?

I guess it’s heartwarming that the NIAA cares so deeply about China’s FSWs (that is university speak for whores — Female Sex Workers), and all, but what of American prostitutes? Are they unworthy of the attention of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse? Don’t our oh, so intellectual university pinheads care about our own home-grown drunken whores?

Guess not.

Continue reading


Obama Pays to Treat Alcoholism in Chinese Hookers”


The America Hating Kids Enviro Video Coming Soon to Your School

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new propaganda video created by an extreme environmental activist is making its way into America’s classrooms and The New York Times loves the whole idea. Enviro obsessive Annie Leonard, Greenpeace member and activist, has created a 20 minute video filled with anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda to encourage kids to eschew “stuff,” calling the presentation “The Story of Stuff.”

Leonard’s propaganda piece is so anti-American she even begins her video by saying that her “friends” say she should describe the United States by using the symbol of a military tank because “it’s true in many countries and increasingly in our own.” And why is a tank “increasingly” the symbol of the USA? Because “more than 50% of our federal tax money is going for our military.” Naturally, this misleading propaganda doesn’t mention that a large portion of that federal military spending ends up going to the weekly pay and health care of our soldiers, something apparently Ms. Leonard is against. She goes on to say that a government’s job is to “take care of us, that’s their job.” Here she is trying to promote dependency and proves that she has no clue what a government is really for — especially in the U.S. system.

Continue reading


The America Hating Kids Enviro Video Coming Soon to Your School”


Happy Talk

-By Dan Scott

Recently a number of overly rosy pronouncements have been coming out of the Whitehouse in an attempt to talk up the economy and consumer confidence. In the corporate world, putting a brave face on a bad situation is called Happy Talk. The CEO comes out with the pep talk to boost flagging employee morale to keep up productivity and key employees from jumping ship. The positive spin can be come from true concern for the drag on team spirit that would make the difference between success and failure through vision and teamwork. The overly positive spin is done cynically in the knowledge the company leadership has made some bad decisions which are about to have very negative consequences and is done to prevent employees from taking any action to protect themselves. Many things can sink a company, poor attitude, low morale, bad decisions, natural disasters and fraud among the many, but how you characterize the situation speaks volumes as to your intent. In the corporate world, the dividing line between Happy Talk and vision is denial, ignorance and deception.

The Tim Geithner Stress Test for the Banks is an example of such Happy Talk. The results were positively optimistic and a number of banks were told to increase their reserves just in case there was an unexpected drop in the economy. What Geithner and the MSM didn’t say was there are other independent companies who regularly evaluate the health of banks beyond the FDIC conducting periodic evaluations of the banking industry. One such company is called Institutional Risk Analytics (IRA). IRA rates banks via an index based on the year 1995 being a rating of 1. The relative strength of the institution drops as the index number increases.
Continue reading


Happy Talk”


An Example of Obama’s ‘Stimulus’ That Isn’t

-By Warner Todd Huston

If we need no other example of why government can’t “stimulate” an economy, we have but to look at the use to which the city of Akron, Ohio wants to put some of its “stimulus” money. Akron, it seems, wants to spend some of that money for suicide prevention. Oh, not a general suicide prevention program that might at least employ people. No, Akron wants to build a fence on a bridge that seems to emit a siren call for jumpers to prevent them from killing themselves.

Akron’s All-American Bridge, a “Y” shaped structure that serves as a main artery into the city, has been a platform for suicide jumpers for so long now that area residents have nicknamed it the suicide bridge. Consequently, city officials have proposed using more than one million dollars of the city’s “stimulus” money to erect a fence that will help prevent people from being able to use the span as a means to an end.

Sure it might be a good idea. Who the heck wants citizens constantly plummeting to their deaths from the thing? But, is this something that will “stimulate” the local economy? The only possible answer is a resounding “no.”

Continue reading


An Example of Obama’s ‘Stimulus’ That Isn’t”