Job Crushers

Business, Economy, Labor, Political Economy, Politics

Trust the public broadcaster to report the facts in detail and accompany them with transcripts. High marks for that PBS service. However, the service comes with a high price: full-on Keynesian propaganda. PBS’s jobs report begins in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), with an employer who understands that the cost of doing business is increased with every little regulatory tweak issued in DC. Says Bobby Joslin of “Joslin and Son Signs”:

“Well, two years ago, three years ago, we had to have all our tow motor people certified to operate a tow motor. … A forklift. And that cost the company $3,600. Now we’re having to dispose of all our lightbulbs. We’re in the sign business. We create a lot of volume of fluorescent tubes. So we just got through spending $8,500 on a lightbulb crusher.

Then there’s “Obamacare. When we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people and then laying them off.”

But our intrepid PBS reporter can recognize a Republican ruse when he hears one. PAUL SOLMAN thinks the small businessman he just interviewed is one dim bulb. Solman editorializes as follows: “Uncertainty of taxes and regulation crippling job creation; it’s become a Republican talking point.”

According to such Keynesians, who have always struggled with the chicken or the egg problem, business is struggling because, well, because it is struggling:

“Joslin told us business is down 35 percent over the past three years. So of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? … lack of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? But if sales drive everything, how important can policy uncertainty be?”

There is always an expert on hand to expatiate about the mysterious cycle of poverty that starts with reduced demand, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Brownian motion of the DC wealth-consuming machine:

And every businessman I know says exactly that. Non-financial companies are sitting on over $3 trillion of cash, the latest IRS data shows. Companies are not investing that money because there’s no demand. It’s not because they’re concerned that tax rates may go up or regulations may change. They need to have people and businesses with money to spend in order to invest.

[More about Voodoo economics here.]

UPDATED/Cain Campaign Suspended: Steamy Windows Or Steamed-Up Liberals? (& Does It Matter?)

Elections, Ethics, Media, Morality, Politics, Uncategorized

Dennis Miller, a very funny neoconservative (that is a liberal who really likes war), threw in the towel over the Cain fracas. Quoting a caller to his radio show, Miller said that when it comes to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, there is too much steam on the windows and too little in the engine. Bloody funny, for sure.

Still, I tend to think that Ann Coulter makes a good case about the meritless evidence against Cain. Writes Coulter: “Most people say, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ I say, ‘Where there’s smoke around a conservative, there are journalists furiously rubbing two sticks together.'” Read her assessment of that evidence.

Yes, Cain’s alleged consorts are trashy. But it could be that Mr. Cain is drawn to trashy women. The fact that these women are trashy is no proof that he has not consorted with them. Either way, alleged moral or ethical indiscretions don’t disqualify Mr. Cain for the position of “the boss of all bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”; if anything, they make him eminently suited to be Capo di tutti capi of America.

“Saturday Is ‘Decision Day’ for GOP Presidential Contender Herman Cain.”

UPDATE (Dec. 3): Cain Campaign Suspended:

Herman Cain announced Saturday he was suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, citing the “painful price” sexual harassment and extramarital affair allegations have had on his family.

One Nation Under Inflation

Debt, EU, Europe, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank, Federalism, Political Philosophy, Regulation, Socialism, States' Rights

“When it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service.” The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM:

“The EU Commission president, a chap called Jose Manuel Barroso, told PBS’s Jeffrey Brown, on November 28, that the European suprastate is not quite up to American statist standards.

Barroso lamented that the EU lacks America’s level of ‘convergence’: ‘We have a common currency, but not, for instance, a common treasury,’ said this slick operator. Fiscal discipline (one wonders what our commissar means by that) can only come about with more ‘pooling of sovereignty.’

The Commission’s president certainly sees the US as a model ‘fiscal union,’ with a high degree of ‘fiscal policy’ ‘integration’ throughout; and is almost envious of the fact that the US federal government possesses ‘the instruments’ that have allowed it to accumulate enormous liabilities: Evidently, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.

In a nutshell: Barroso longs for Brussels to be able to do the necessary tinkering to keep the PIIGS of the Eurozone —Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—living at the expense of their more industrious, austere neighbors to the north. (Presiding European bureaucrats like himself live-it-up no matter where they reside.) The EU, complained its Capo di tutti capi, needs to create those “instruments.”

When it comes to Newspeak, Barroso still beats Obama.

In any event, when it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service. So successfully has the Unites States government submerged the sovereignty of its states that a top European technocrat longs to be like us. We must be in worse shape than we imagined. …”

The complete column, The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM. Read it.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.

Mr. Omega to Alpha Male Obama: ‘Quit Your Cr-p!’

Barack Obama, Business, Democrats, Education, Elections, Political Economy, Politics

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? … And if not now, when?” said Rabbi Hillel the Elder.

At last a fabulously rich, self-made man has awoken to the fact that it’s time to fight for his life’s work; stand up for his achievements, take pride in his intelligence and graft. Quit pretending an agitator from Chicago, who has lived off the public teat for his entire life, is better than a billionaire who has built a business from scratch. Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman has “made public his letter to the President.” Read it on Gerri Willis’ Fox Business blog.

I like the part where he shows president ponce what real work means, although I am sick of the give-back fallacy or the pleas about divisiveness. That the president is divisive is secondary to the fact that he’s an ass with ears, ignorant of economics and oblivious to rights.

To the letter (I think Cooperman is far more eloquent than Peggy Noonan, Court Courtesan to Bush, whom Cooperman praises):

Just to be clear, while I have been richly rewarded by a life of hard work (and a great deal of luck), I was not to-the-manor-born. My father was a plumber who practiced his trade in the South Bronx after he and my mother emigrated from Poland. I was the first member of my family to earn a college degree. I benefited from both a good public education system (P.S. 75, Morris High School and Hunter College, all in the Bronx) and my parents’ constant prodding. When I joined Goldman Sachs following graduation from Columbia University’s business school, I had no money in the bank, a negative net worth, a National Defense Education Act student loan to repay, and a six-month-old child (not to mention his mother, my wife of now 47 years) to support. I had a successful, near-25-year run at Goldman, which I left 20 years ago to start a private investment firm. As a result of my good fortune, I have been able to give away to those less blessed far more than I have spent on myself and my family over a lifetime, and last year I subscribed to Warren Buffet’s Giving Pledge to ensure that my money, properly stewarded, continues to do some good after I’m gone.

My story is anything but unique. I know many people who are similarly situated, by both humble family history and hard-won accomplishment, whose greatest joy in life is to use their resources to sustain their communities. Some have achieved a level of wealth where philanthropy is no longer a by-product of their work but its primary impetus. This is as it should be. We feel privileged to be in a position to give back, and we do. My parents would have expected nothing less of me.

I am not, by training or disposition, a policy wonk, polemicist or pamphleteer. I confess admiration for those who, with greater clarity of expression and command of the relevant statistical details, make these same points with more eloquence and authoritativeness than I can hope to muster. For recent examples, I would point you to “Hunting the Rich” (Leaders, The Economist, September 24, 2011), “The Divider vs. the Thinker” (Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011), “Wall Street Occupiers Misdirect Anger” (Christine Todd Whitman, Bloomberg, October 31, 2011), and “Beyond Occupy” (Bill Keller, The New York Times, October 31, 2011) – all, if you haven’t read them, making estimable work of the subject. …

Read more.